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So, Tyrion is a Lannister… But, Why?


Slayer of Lies

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I believe that Snowfyre Chorus and Arys Redshirt may have presented the best possible scenario (so far) for readers on both sides of the debate.



While each side would like (love?) text confirmation of a definitive part-Targ or Lannister bloodline, it might be viewed as best for the series (and its fan base) to leave Tyrion’s lineage more or less where it is today, with those who find Tyrion’s potential Targ lineage absurd (for the reasons stated in this thread) able to continue believing that justly, but with the door still open for those that find a part-Targ lineage appealing (also for reasons stated in this thread).



Otherwise, it does appear that a large number of readers will be at least somewhat disappointed, regardless of where the chips fall.



Nonetheless, what remains to be revealed is whether Tyrion will ride a dragon or not, which will be inarguable by the end of the series.



Regardless of lineage, he is still fascinated with dragons, prophesied to interact with dragons (assuming at least one of Moqorro’s “dragons” is meant to be taken literally), and will be very near Dany’s recently freed dragons as TWOW begins. Tyrion’s saddle-making ability could also make a return in dragon-saddle form, whether Tyrion himself rides a dragon or not. Whatever GRRM has planned, I look forward to the first time Tyrion comes face-to-face with an actual dragon.



As for dragon-bonding, though, I’ve read from people claiming both that Targaryen blood is clearly required to ride a dragon, as well as that it’s clearly not, citing Nettles as an example.



However, there is not a definitive quote in TPATQ (that I have found) that confirms one way or the other whether Nettles has any Targaryen blood or not (which is also mentioned in the Wiki).



Barring that, while people might take her features as non-Targaryen, I personally (whether GRRM intended this or not) couldn’t help that Nettles reminded me / made me think of Brown Ben Plumm and his “two drops” of dragon blood, wondering if the same or similar might be true of Nettles.



Alternatively, the notion that she simply won Sheepstealer over by bringing him sheep every day may be more appealing to others, without a definitive lineage quote to seal the deal.



All this goes to say that the door would still be open for Tyrion to ride a dragon regardless of lineage, as others on this thread and elsewhere have also claimed.



After all, there are still three known dragons, and one of them has been ridden. And regardless of current reader interpretation of “the dragon has three heads,” it does seem like it’s just dangling right out there for at least one of the other two dragons to be ridden as well, if not both. Ideally this would occur via major, longstanding POV characters (as opposed to non-POVs like Aegon), and Tyrion – fascinated with dragons as he is – fits that bill better than most, IMO.


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After all, there are still three known dragons, and one of them has been ridden. And regardless of current reader interpretation of the dragon has three heads, it does seem like its just dangling right out there for at least one of the other two dragons to be ridden as well, if not both. Ideally this would occur via major, longstanding POV characters (as opposed to non-POVs like Aegon), and Tyrion fascinated with dragons as he is fits that bill better than most, IMO.

Yep

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It wouldn’t bother me that: Tyrion is part-Targ because…

· Regarding Tyrion’s relationships with Tywin, Jaime and Cersei in terms of their meaning, depth and importance to the series with Tyrion as a Lannister, I personally feel that absolutely none of that would be undermined by a “change” of lineage, because it’s in the past and Tyrion (just like Jon) believed certain things to be true in that portion of his arc. Further, he would still be half-brother to Jaime and Cersei, and have been raised/influenced/permanently “impressed upon” by Tywin no matter how you slice it

Just to take this small piece of your previous post...

You have said that it wouldn't take away from the family relationships that Tyrion has with his supposed siblings and father if he were actually a Targ. I wonder how you would feel about the following scenarios:

  • What if Theon were a secret Targ? Would you also feel that absolutely none of the meaning, depth or importance of the relationships between Theon and Balon / Asha / Aeron would have been undermined by this change of lineage?

What if Sam were a secret Targ? Would his relationship with Randyll still have all of it's meaning, depth and importance?

Not trying to play gotcha, I'm just wondering.

I can understand Ned and Jon, probably because they seem to have a loving, supportive relationship, that none of that meaning is lost if Ned is not actually Jon's father. He's still Jon's uncle and obviously cares for him for many reasons.

But for Tyrion, Theon and Sam, the tragedy of their family relationships (to me) seems to stem from the fact that their fathers / extended family had an obligation to support them, yet did not.

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As to the issue of Targ blood being necessary for dragon riding...GRRM said the third rider does not have to be a Targaryen. Characters in story-world saying Targ blood is required only means that they think it is.



I have a solution to the over-Targ issue with secret identities coming out of the woodwork: if Tyrion is a Targ, then Jon is not one. That would surprise a lot of people.


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Just to take this small piece of your previous post...

You have said that it wouldn't take away from the family relationships that Tyrion has with his supposed siblings and father if he were actually a Targ. I wonder how you would feel about the following scenarios:

  • What if Theon were a secret Targ? Would you also feel that absolutely none of the meaning, depth or importance of the relationships between Theon and Balon / Asha / Aeron would have been undermined by this change of lineage?
  • What if Sam were a secret Targ? Would his relationship with Randyll still have all of it's meaning, depth and importance?

Not trying to play gotcha, I'm just wondering.

I can understand Ned and Jon, probably because they seem to have a loving, supportive relationship, that none of that meaning is lost if Ned is not actually Jon's father. He's still Jon's uncle and obviously cares for him for many reasons.

But for Tyrion, Theon and Sam, the tragedy of their family relationships (to me) seems to stem from the fact that their fathers / extended family had an obligation to support them, yet did not.

Mushroomshirt – Thanks for the question! I’m happy to answer it, although I will get there in what may come off as a bit of a roundabout manner …

I.

Retracing AGOT, say, back when it seemed the series was about “Starks versus Lannisters,” Tyrion sort of stuck out as a sore thumb to me from the beginning.

He was “different.” Not only “genetically” through his white-blonde lock of hair, black-and-green eyes and short stature, but he was an intelligent, funny “likeable Lannister” in a world where Jaime was a clear-cut “bad guy,” and Joffrey was a punk from day one.

Along with the “non-genetic” story element, Tyrion also travelled farther and wider than anyone else, to Winterfell, the Wall, the Crossroads Inn, the Vale and the Riverlands (and later KL to rule for nearly as entire book), and along the way he provided Jon Snow with the friendly advice of an elder in more than one location. Why could that be important to the story? Surely there was no real reason to have multiple POVs in the same location, so the meeting of their characters may very well be important to the endgame.

So, consider my suspicions piqued from the beginning, having puzzled out R+L=J by my second read. After all, if R+L=J is true, this could be seen to change the retrospective “value” or “purpose” of Tyrion’s trip to meet with Jon, particularly if Tyrion also might have alternate parentage (consistent with my suspicions generated early on). So, by then I’d read “the dragon has three heads” (and the rest of the HOTU), noted that Dany had hatched three actual dragons, and realized that Jon quite probably wasn’t Ned’s son (which could arguably make “lineage reveals” a theme).

Add to this that Jon’s, Dany’s and Tyrion’s mothers all died birthing them, and with only AGOT and ACOK as a reference, it started to seem (to me) that they were the most compelling potential trio of “dragons” to round out the series. Also, even with GRRM stating that the third head not necessarily be Targaryen (i.e. Tyrion Hill, later hinted at by Hugor Hill), it still seemed to me that the use of “dragon” becomes a symbolic waste if it turns out zero dragon blood is required to be one of the heads.

So, in summary, my starting point for considering Tyrion’s alternate lineage years ago was that this possibility was basically my “first impression” through my first two reads, and that nothing has come along in many reads since that I believe derails or devalues Tyrion’s possible part-Targ lineage as a sensible direction to take the story. In fact, I continue to feel that it would more richly explain several aspects of the story.

II.

The second point I’d like to touch on is the claim that Tyrion is clearly Tywin’s son because of the way he acts, the way he thinks, and the fact that Genna Lannister effectively backs this claim up in the text.

And yes, there are similarities between the two in terms of their shrewd, clever natures, their sometimes hot tempers, and possibly other dispositional aspects of their characters that may or may not be inarguably viewed as genetically transferred.

But we also can’t necessarily picture Tywin as a sloppy drunk who is fascinated with dragons, dreams of being a Targaryen prince, is openly known for his whore-mongering, and gets into trouble (or maybe even gets punched in the face) because of all the little quips he’s constantly spouting. We probably also can’t picture Tywin giving friendly advice to Jon Snow (or anyone really) and I certainly can’t see him putting his life in Bronn’s hands in a trial by battle, accepting the role of captaining the van in the Battle of the Green Fork or killing Tytos on the merit that he was a pushover.

So – for me – I find Tyrion’s and Tywin’s differences at least equally as compelling as their similarities, despite the fact that even Tyrion says, “I’m you writ small,” which effectively flies in the face of, “I cannot prove that you are not mine.”

Again, though, there are contradicting clues where reader interpretation is required to either justify one stance or the other, where Tyrion’s potentially alternate linage is concerned.

For example, “I’m you writ small” is used as evidence for Tyrion being Tywin’s son on one side of the debate, where the other side takes this as Tyrion believing he’s Tywin’s son in that moment, despite all their differences, and for the fact that Tyrion hasn’t yet learned he may in fact be Aerys’ son and was in fact only raised by Tywin.

Contrarily, “I cannot prove that you are not mine” is taken as evidence that Tywin suspects Tyrion is Aerys’ son on one side of the debate, where on the other side it’s justified as Tywin is simply speaking his desire that Tyrion not be his for the fact that he’s a dwarf.

As a separate point, quotes like, “All dwarfs are bastards in their father’s eyes” are interesting to consider from both sides as well. On the Lannister side, it’s more or less taken at face value, in that Tyrion is talking to Jon when he says it, with the apparent goal of presenting sympathy for Jon’s foul mood. On the Targ side, though, not only would all of that still be true, but Jon might be revealed as a legitimized Targ in the near future, where Tyrion might instead be revealed as a Targ bastard, resulting in a “reversal” that would not be unlike that of Jaime and Tyrion killing each other’s fathers, provided Tyrion is part-Targ, and adding a rich double-meaning to Tyrion’s quote to Jon.

In any event, Tyrion is not an inarguable carbon copy of Tywin, despite their similarities, and I’ve suspicious of his lineage since the beginning.

In fact, I feel that if we weren’t meant to be suspicious of his lineage, his mother might not have died birthing him, he wouldn’t have dreamt of being a Targaryen prince as a boy (or that detail may have been left out), he might not have a shock of white-blond hair, and he might not have mismatched eyes like one of the Great Bastard’s of Aegon IV, amongst other clues, such as Aerys’ fascination with Joanna. To me, it seems that GRRM has deliberately put details like these (and many others) in place for readers to at least consider the possibility Tyrion’s (and, with a different list of clues, Jaime’s and Cersei’s) alternate lineage, even if they don’t like it, and even if all GRRM is really doing is deliberately messing with the section of his audience that likes this possibility, because he may very well have no intention of paying those clues off with a part-Targ reveal.

Either way, I think it’s worth “being prepared” on both sides of the debate for things to turn out differently than we’d like them to.

III.

And with all that, I’d like to move on to move directly answering your question.

In the case of Theon or Sam (or many other characters, for that matter) I feel I’ve had no real cause to be suspicious of a potential lineage change, and I can’t see how it would benefit their stories or the overarching story to “suddenly” have them “become” Targs.

Consistent with my preamble, Theon and Sam do not share the same “laundry list” of “part-Targ clues” that Tyrion does. Their mothers did not die birthing them, they do not have the mismatched eyes like Shiera Seastar (or black and green eyes like the colors of the opposing Targ sides of the DotD), they have not seemingly dreamt of being Targ princes, they do not appear to share a fascination with dragons, and it’s not directly presented in the story that their mothers may have slept with someone else. So it’d be for these reasons and more that my suspicions were simply never even piqued in regards to those characters’ potential for an alternate lineage. I mean, if it can be argued that GRRM is putting clues in place to make us consider the possibility that one, two or all of “Tywin’s kids” might not be his, then it should also be argued that GRRM has left all of those details and foreshadowing aspects out of several other characters’ arc.

I think I see what you might really be asking, though, which is to try to get to the bottom of how one might seem unsympathetic to the purported undermining of Tyrion’s and Tywin’s relationship, and wondering whether that sentiment would apply across the board to other characters who also had part-Targ reveals.

So I’ll say this. In the case of Tyrion’s potential part-Targ lineage, I think the “upside” dramatically “outweighs” the negative shift that many perceive would occur with Tyrion’s and Tywin’s relationship. That Jaime and Tyrion killing each other’s fathers is a great aspect to the story, that Jon and Tyrion might have an interesting “role reversal” coming up (with Jon being “legitimized” and Tyrion being revealed as a bastard) would be a cool twist, that it gives Tyrion’s mother’s death an explanation that is tied to “the dragon has three heads” would make a lot of sense, and that Tyrion can more “cleanly” be one of those heads, because to be a head of the dragon with precisely zero “dragon” blood doesn’t fit as neatly for me as it might for others… and other reasons as well.

Meanwhile, it would be a little (way?) out of left field for me if any of the major POVs outside of “Tywin’s kids” had a part-Targ reveal, because the foreshadowing just isn’t there. And without the foreshadowing, perhaps a part-Targ reveal would serve to almost exclusively undermine a parental relationship, depending upon which character it happened to, and why.

So it’s a complex issue, and I can certainly see the “undermining” concern that several readers have, but I suppose it simply wouldn’t bother me as much as it would so many others. And not because I’m inhuman, but because it’s a fictional story written by an author who loves mysteries, and who has left what I see as a trail of clues pointing to both Jon’s and Tyrion’s potential for alternate lineage that begins in the first hundred pages of the series.

…and for just a moment Tyrion Lannister stood tall as a king.

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It’s also often argued that if Tywin suspected Aerys of fathering Tyrion, Tywin would have killed Tyrion shortly after his birth or at a young age, particularly when combined with his dwarfism and the death of Joanna. Yet Tywin didn’t kill Tyrion, therefore Tywin is “definitely” Tyrion’s father (seems to be the claim).



Interestingly, though, the more “direct” clue of Aerys “taking liberties” with Joanna during their wedding night would appear to be something that Tywin could very well be aware of, being whispered throughout the halls of KL, yet Tywin did not kill Cersei and Jaime shortly after their births.



So if we break this down, Tywin did not kill Tyrion because of his dwarfism and Tywin did not kill Tyrion for Joanna’s death. And Cersei and Jaime are still alive, despite the potential for a suspicion that Aerys took liberties with Joanna.



Therefore, Tywin would not kill Tyrion for his dwarfism, Tywin would not kill Tyrion for the “murder” of Joanna, and Tywin would not kill Tyrion for the suspicion that Tyrion is not his son, in the same way that he would not kill Cersei and Jaime for the same suspicion.



As for Tywin’s treatment of Tyrion, though, most appear to agree that Joanna’s death and Tyrion’s dwarfism are reason enough for Tywin to treat Tyrion the way that he does.



However, if you ask me, that’s quite petty. Cleary Tywin (the ostensible source of Tyrion’s intelligence) should understand that Tyrion was in no way directly at fault for Joanna dying during birth, or for being born short.



But if Tywin suspected Aerys and Joanna might have produced Tyrion (which, per above, was allegedly not reason enough to kill Cersei or Jaime), his suspicion that Tyrion is not his son could, on the other hand, be the source (or at least part of the source, not made “better” for Joanna’s death and Tyrion’s dwarfism) of Tywin’s mistreatment of Tyrion.



Further, would Tywin kill Joanna’s kids, even if none of them are his? Wouldn’t that be kinslaying? Yet Tywin chose not to kill Joanna’s children, where Tyrion did choose to kill Tywin – yet another distinctive difference between the two possibly pointing at a genetic difference, as killing one’s one alleged father would be “madness.”


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<snip>

However, if you ask me, that’s quite petty. Cleary Tywin (the ostensible source of Tyrion’s intelligence) should understand that Tyrion was in no way directly at fault for Joanna dying during birth, or for being born short.

But if Tywin suspected Aerys and Joanna might have produced Tyrion (which, per above, was allegedly not reason enough to kill Cersei or Jaime), his suspicion that Tyrion is not his son could, on the other hand, be the source (or at least part of the source, not made “better” for Joanna’s death and Tyrion’s dwarfism) of Tywin’s mistreatment of Tyrion.

Further, would Tywin kill Joanna’s kids, even if none of them are his? Wouldn’t that be kinslaying? Yet Tywin chose not to kill Joanna’s children, where Tyrion did choose to kill Tywin – yet another distinctive difference between the two possibly pointing at a genetic difference, as killing one’s one alleged father would be “madness.”

Just because a person is highly intelligent does not mean that person's behavior will be based solely upon reason. I like to think of Tywin and Tyrion as complex human beings, driven by all manner of human passions as well as by their remarkable powers of cold calculation. Just because Tywin rationally knows that Tyrion didn't kill Joanna, Tyrion may nevertheless have been emotionally, and indelibly, linked to Tywin's loss of Joanna (and I do believe that Tywin really loved Joanna). This seems more than enough reason for his hostility to his own son, though the status of dwarfs in Westeros certainly gives some additional reason. Or perhaps the dwarfism is what made that initial connection indelible, i.e. that stood in the way of Tywin ever getting beyond his initial despair and resentment at the loss of Joanna.

I think that one of the interesting differences between Tywin and Tyrion is their respective levels of self-awareness about how their own interests and passions motivate their behavior. This difference is due, IMO, primarily to the vast differences in power between them. Tywin can present what are in fact personal interests as one and the same as the interests of House Lannister (a fact that I believe Cersei points out to him, though I may be confusing show!Cersei with bookCersei). Tyrion has no such luxury, so that in some sense he has to "own" his interests and passions in a way that Tywin doesn't have to. Part of Tyrion's struggle has been surrounding his father's sole authority to declare what is or isn't in the interests of House Lannister, the way that Tywin's interests are identified as Lannister interests.

I don't think that we need to suggest some "genetic" propensity toward kinslaying. Yes, Tyrion is driven toward madness. Finding Shae in his father's bed (and here we have the "haunting" history of Tysha, the Tywin-Tyrion-Whore triangle) was the tipping point that sent him into madness from which it took him some time to recover, and he's certainly haunted by his act of kinslaying. But I don't think that anyone could say that Tyrion's kinslaying isn't without deep, compelling motivation (it doesn't strike me as "waking the dragon!); I'd say it's grounded in a complex father-son conflict that GRRM developed so compellingly over the course of the books.

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For a long time, I thought Tyrion may have been a Targaryen, the lock of white hair, that his mother died birthing him (matching Daenerys and Jon [despite us still not having irrefutable evidence that he is a Targ]) and so on...but now, I'm not sure what I think now...



The other day I watched a video on youtube on the Tower of Joy, then I saw a link to another video, one on Jaime's dream in his last chapter in AFfC,



Excerpt from book:



That night he dreamt that he was back in the Great Sept of Baelor, still standing virgil over his father's corpse. The sept was still and dark, until a woman emerged from the shadows and walked slowly to the bier. "Sister?" he said.


But it was not Cersei. She was all in grey, a silent sister. A hood and veil concealed her features, but he could see the candles burning in the green ponds of her eyes."Sister," he said, "what would you have of me?" His last word echoed up and down the sept, mememememememememememe.


"I am not your sister, Jaime." She raised a soft, pale hand and pushed her hood back. "Have you forgotten me?"


Can I forget someone I never knew? The words caught in his throat. He did know her, but it had been so long...


"Will you forget your own lord father too? I wonder if you ever knew him, truly." Her eyes were green, her hair spun gold. He could not tell how old she was. Fifteen, he thought, or fifty. She climbed the steps to stand above the bier. "He could never abide being laughed at. That was the thing he hated most."


"Who are you?" He had to hear her say it.


"The question is, who are you?"


"This is a dream."


"Is it?" She smiled sadly. "Count your hands, child."


One. One hand, clasped tight around the sword hilt. Only one. "In my dreams I always have two hands." He raised his right arm and stared uncomprehending at the ugliness of his stump.


"We all dream of things we cannot have. Tywin dreamed that his son would be a great knight, that his daughter would be a queen. He dreamed they would be so strong and brave and beautiful that no one would laugh at them."


"I am a knight," he told her, "and Cersei is a queen."


A tear ran down her cheek. The woman raised her hood again and turned her back on him. Jaime called after her, but already she was moving away, her skirt whispering lullabies as it brushed across the floor. Don't leave me, he wanted to call, but of course she'd left them long ago.



A dream sequence, but in his dreams, Jaime dreams he has two hands. "We all dream of things we cannot have." But in this dream, he only has one hand...



"The question is, who are you?" Jaime knows who he is, or thinks he does. But the woman says. "Will you forget your lord father too? I wonder if you ever knew him, truly." A curious question to ask during the vigil of his father, but is Tywin Lannister his father? The statement after the question is the sucker punch, IMO. Did Jaime know who his father was...



There has been speculation that the Mad King had his way with Joanna on Tywin and Joanna's wedding night. If so, that could make Jaime and Cersei's Aerys's children and help explain the twins' incestuous relationship and Cersei's madness. If this is true, I doubt that Aerys could be father to all of Tywin's children, unless Tywin was sterile...



But so long after the birth of the twins Aerys would get Joanna pregnant again? But then we haven't heard that Tywin has got half the whores of King's Landing pregnant during his time as Hand to King Aerys...if we believe the secret passages a former Hand had built so he could visit brothels in secret, that Hand was Tywin Lannister...



And getting back to the bolded statement I made after the excerpt, we all have dreams of things we cannot have...Tywin dreamed that his son would be a great knight, that his daughter would be a queen. In a dream about unfulfilled dreams, Jaime is a knight, Cersei a queen, but that they were not his son and daughter...



So in short, I am beginning to believe Jaime and Cersei are Targs and Tyrion isn't.



So Tyrion's mother dying in childbirth is a red herring.



Jaime would also be like his half-brother in that both did kill their own fathers...I suspect Tyrion at least would find that hilarious...



And the irony is that the Targ hating Robert Baratheon, the First of his Name raised Targs as his children...


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Wow, thanks for the long and detailed response! I'm afraid I will not be able to match it. But let me try to respond:





I think I see what you might really be asking, though, which is to try to get to the bottom of how one might seem unsympathetic to the purported undermining of Tyrion’s and Tywin’s relationship, and wondering whether that sentiment would apply across the board to other characters who also had part-Targ reveals.





Yes, this is exactly what I was asking. I am really intrigued by your "how does X tell a better story" approach to X=Tyrion being a Lannister. I think we don't often debate these topics from this approach. I wasn't seriously suggesting that Sam and Theon were actually secret Targs, instead was trying to explore how important a blood relationship is to parental conflict in this series.



My view is that the blood relationship is important to the pathos of Sam, Theon and Tyrion. I read your other posts as dismissing this as an importnt element for Tyrion. I wondered how you felt about the other characters for whom rejection by their fathers plays an important part in their story.





So I’ll say this. In the case of Tyrion’s potential part-Targ lineage, I think the “upside” dramatically “outweighs” the negative shift that many perceive would occur with Tyrion’s and Tywin’s relationship. That Jaime and Tyrion killing each other’s fathers is a great aspect to the story, that Jon and Tyrion might have an interesting “role reversal” coming up (with Jon being “legitimized” and Tyrion being revealed as a bastard) would be a cool twist, that it gives Tyrion’s mother’s death an explanation that is tied to “the dragon has three heads” would make a lot of sense, and that Tyrion can more “cleanly” be one of those heads, because to be a head of the dragon with precisely zero “dragon” blood doesn’t fit as neatly for me as it might for others… and other reasons as well.






What I think I'm reading here is not that you don't recognize the importance of the blood relationship between Tyrion and Tywin (if it exists). You just think that what the story loses in father / son pathos it more than makes up for in the importance of Tyrion being a Targ and the Jon/Tyrion role reversal and the Jaime/Aerys Tyrion/Tywin duality. I can see how you would feel this way, there is certainly ample reason to suspect that Tyrion may be a Targ (as you and others point out).



Again, approaching this from a "what would make a better story" perspective, I suppose I could go along with Tyrion being a secret Targ if and only if R+L<>J. I think there is room in the story for only one secret Targ. I guess my money is on Jon. I think that if R+L=J and J+A=T are both true, my personal enjoyment of the series would suffer (kind of like if the hooded man is Theon Durden). So I choose to believe that Tyrion is a Lannister from my personal perspective. I guess I can't really support this in any objective way, other than too many secret Targs would be a disappointment to me, I think.



Anyway thanks again for another excellent thread & for such a substantive response to my question.


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Why can there be only one secret Targ? I think there might be many. Some in Essos, Brightflame descendants, Duncan Small descendants, Serra, etc. It was simply a period of history where anyone who was a Targ generally did not go around advertising it and tried to stay hidden. Being known to be a Targ rather reduced one's life expectancy.

In the case of Jon and possibly Tyrion, they did not know so did not keep the secret themselves. But they would certainly not have lived had it been known while they were children. In both cases there are reasons they never knew. I really don't have a problem with it.

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With all of the secret Targ threads Ive been hungering for more threads on secret Starks or Baratheons or Arryns or Tullys just anything but secret Targs.

Ok, the Hound has Stark ancestry and he is a doggy warg

Timett son of Timett is heir to the Vale via his grandmother Alys Arryn

No shortage of Baratheon bastards

Tully.....hmmm....

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Too many secret Targs already: Aemon, (F)Aegon, Bloodraven. Also the people with "a drop of dragon in them": Robert, Renly, Stannis, Shireen, Brown Ben Plumm, the Black Cells jailor... And of course the speculated ones (some are Blackfyres): Jon, Tyrion, Jaime, Cersei, Varys, Illyrio, Serra, Dorkstar.


I only like the Blackfyre/Brightflame theories (Varys, Illyrio, Serra and (F)Aegon) because they add a new family into the mix, and don't make this story into a boring "chosen ones on dragons" plot.


I so hope, that George doesn't fuck this up.


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It is not about chosen ones.

I think it is simply that dragons only EXIST because of some specific magic connected to specific Valyrian bloodlines. The Targaryens were likely the only ones of these magical bloodlines to survive the Doom. They stayed relatively rare, actually, because they practiced incest, whereas the magic connected to the Starks is more spread out in general blood lines of the First Men, so is not as much tied to a particular family name.

The magic of the dragon side of this story simply has a specific affinity for the DNA that is connected to it. But it is not the only kind of magic, and dragons do not represent pure good. Martin himself said he wanted to treat magic more like a nuclear weapon; something extremely destructive and dangerous that can also be a deterrent if not widespread.

So your dislike of the idea of Tyrion being a Targ seems linked to an idea, that I think is wrong, which is that the three headed dragon is going to be the thing that eventually saves the day. I think that is wrong. I think the dragon part of the story is only part of the story, and the Stark warg and greenseeing magic is just as important.

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It is not about chosen ones.

I think it is simply that dragons only EXIST because of some specific magic connected to specific Valyrian bloodlines. The Targaryens were likely the only ones of these magical bloodlines to survive the Doom. They stayed relatively rare, actually, because they practiced incest, whereas the magic connected to the Starks is more spread out in general blood lines of the First Men, so is not as much tied to a particular family name.

The magic of the dragon side of this story simply has a specific affinity for the DNA that is connected to it. But it is not the only kind of magic, and dragons do not represent pure good. Martin himself said he wanted to treat magic more like a nuclear weapon; something extremely destructive and dangerous that can also be a deterrent if not widespread.

So your dislike of the idea of Tyrion being a Targ seems linked to an idea, that I think is wrong, which is that the three headed dragon is going to be the thing that eventually saves the day. I think that is wrong. I think the dragon part of the story is only part of the story, and the Stark warg and greenseeing magic is just as important.

The main reason I dislike the idea of more secret Targs is because, that card has already been used more than enough. I would like nothing more than all magic in this series becoming a political tool, and that the main plot of the series would be the fight for the Iron Throne.

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The main reason I dislike the idea of more secret Targs is because, that card has already been used more than enough. I would like nothing more than all magic in this series becoming a political tool, and that the main plot of the series would be the fight for the Iron Throne.

Fine, but at this point, given the history, you do realize the only ones still alive are the ones that were hidden? So of course any remaining Targs were secret ones.

I think dragons are directly connected to Targaryen blood and can't exist without them. The only reason Martin has not flat out confirmed that dragons can only be ridden by Targs is that it would give away too much story.

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Yes of course, but in my opinion the card shouldn't be overplayed.

Well it would only be two characters after all. Aegon is fake. I am not at all worried as Tyrion's story is so clearly different from Jon's even if they both turn out to be Targs.

Aemon and Bloodraven were never secret, they were just forgotten about and thought dead respectively.

Stannis's drop of dragon blood is key to most events so far, so I don't see why that is a problem of "overdoing it"

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