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Do we really need Maggy's prophecy? Or did it really happen?


Mithras

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I don't like the Prophecy because it makes Cersei's hatred toward Tyrion look irrational, while circumstances and escalations made her concerns absolutely reasonable - even though between the two she's the worse one.



Also, I'd be disappointed if the most subscribed speculations about the fulfilling of the prophecy will be showed to be correct.


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The prophecies in the story serve a couple of purposes to me. To outline to the reader why some people act the way they do, and to shape the way some characters act if they have heard the prophecies. I do not believe however that GRRM will make every prophecy come true. This one has a great possibility to not completely come true.



1. Valonqar -


2. Young Queen



These two things shape Cersei's actions - She seeks to disprove any part of the prophecy so that the others cannot come true. Sure she has other reasons to distrust Tyrion, but none really from the onset of the plot, and none that would cause her to spiral after she thinks she will be killing her Valonqar, only to have that unravel. With Tyrion on the loose, her only avenue to make the prophecy untrue is to stop a younger more beautiful queen from ascending to cast her down. Any rational queen would realize that that is inevitable. At some point the Queen becomes mom of the King and he will need a new younger queen. Most mothers hope for this, she doesn't. She must dismantle Marge because that is the only way to disprove the prophecy and save her own skin.


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I despise Maggy's prophecy with a burning passion. It strikes me as a clumsy and unnecessary retcon. Everything it "explains" would have been explained otherwise



Her hatred for Tyrion? He "killed" her mother (in her mind), and she was only following Tywin's lead, which is perfectly in character for her



Her mistrust of Margaery? Well, duh, everyone realizes the Tyrells are ambitious at some point, and Cersei would be naturally reluctant to yield her power and status as queen to Margaery



Her fierce protection of her kids? In the GRRMverse every mother is afflicted by the "irrational display of motherly instincts" syndrome at some point or another (see Cat, Lysa, etc), so I don't know why we needed a reason for this


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uh, Note: I responded to this as if Mirri's prophecy was the one asked about, so I got the wrong prophecy, which is why the rest of what follows is inappropriate. But I chose not to delete this because of how it sings poetically. Now let's listen in:



uh, it wasn't a prophecy.


it was over immediately after it was spoken, like when I say "Damn I really have to take a dump!" and then I do, but that's not really a prophecy it's just me talking about the stuff that's happening in my life. And when I'm constipated you'd hear me saying really hurtful things aloud to my ass the way Mirri tried to get Daenerys' goat. Still, it's not a prophecy, it's a catfight.


------


Now if this topic had been about Mirri's angry words to Daenerys, then the above would have been relevant and applicable. "Would that it were, would that it were." --Senator Carey


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I think the "valonqar" part may be a hint that Cersei made it up. Why would Maegy use one Valyrian word in the whole prophecy, for a relatively mundane thing? Perhaps Cersei made it up, and realized even as a little kid that her hearing a prophecy about an evil little brother might not be believable considering everybody already knew she hated Tyrion. What is the most common language in Westeros after Common? It appears to be Valyrian, as it's the Westeros equivalent of Latin. Maybe Cersei found a Valyrian-to-Common dictionary and looked it up to give the prophecy more flair?

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I think the "valonqar" part may be a hint that Cersei made it up. Why would Maegy use one Valyrian word in the whole prophecy, for a relatively mundane thing? Perhaps Cersei made it up, and realized even as a little kid that her hearing a prophecy about an evil little brother might not be believable considering everybody already knew she hated Tyrion. What is the most common language in Westeros after Common? It appears to be Valyrian, as it's the Westeros equivalent of Latin. Maybe Cersei found a Valyrian-to-Common dictionary and looked it up to give the prophecy more flair?

So Cersei made up the entire prophecy so that she could... never tell anybody about it? It makes no sense.

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No. It turns her into a complete cliche- she's the "hears the bad prophecy then tries to prevent it but ultimately ends up causing it" character.



Also there's the problem of Sansa. She's young and beautiful and was going to be queen yet Cersei did nothing against her that she didn't need to do to stop Ned. Why didn't she do something against Sansa? In fact, why didn't she just kill Tyrion? She clearly believes he's going to kill her and clearly killing him wouldn't bother her. She's always hated him and had plenty of opportunities to murder him/get someone to murder him. Why not? These don't make sense if she was aware of the prophecy from her childhood.



Her paranoia makes perfect sense based off her need for power and her fear of Tyrion. It was organic realistic character development. To turn it into "it was a prophecy all along" cheapens her as a character.

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It was obviously a retcon because GRRM scrapped the 5 year gap and needed Cersei to go down and fall hard in a short period of time.That being said, I don't hate the prophecy but the killing Melara stuff is stupid as well as the younger more beautiful queen crap. Killing Melara just seems to be thrown in just as another example of how horrible as Cersei and it just doesn't doesn't make much sense as Cersei's other crimes to me and I hate the "washed up woman fears she's being replaced by younger, prettier" woman trope.


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I think that GRRM is toying with the fairytale concept of The Evil Queen, the prophecy playing the role of the Magic Mirror.



My take is that this prophecy is supposed to be a showcase of the self-fulfilling kind, Cersei's true enemy being none else but the Mirror, that is her own self image.


By her POV we are supposed to infer, I think, that Cersei -deep down- has really low self confidence and self estime and she just overcompensates...



But I agree that this point about Cersei's personality, and even the Evil Queen allusion, could perhaps have been done better by some other literary vehicle (though I can't think of an alternative), the prophecy is somewhat overdone.


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GRRM seems to think so, and his editors apparently agree, despite all we hear about tryin to cut down word count all the time.

This. If you don't agree with GRRM and his editors, it might be because judgement is premature (or it might just be that you disagree with them :) )

George and his editors do not always come up with the perfect solution. George wrote ASoS thinking that a five-year gap could work. Only after writing for a year he understood that it would not work. If he knew it back then, I think George would not write ASoS as it is today. He would end the Wall storyline with the arrival of Stannis and in their stead, he would add some Dorne, Ironborn and early ADwD chapters. This way, there would be no need to seperate Feast and Dance geographically or mess with chronology.

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I think that GRRM is toying with the fairytale concept of The Evil Queen, the prophecy playing the role of the Magic Mirror.

My take is that this prophecy is supposed to be a showcase of the self-fulfilling kind, Cersei's true enemy being none else but the Mirror, that is her own self image.

By her POV we are supposed to infer, I think, that Cersei -deep down- has really low self confidence and self estime and she just overcompensates...

But I agree that this point about Cersei's personality, and even the Evil Queen allusion, could perhaps have been done better by some other literary vehicle (though I can't think of an alternative), the prophecy is somewhat overdone.

I agree with this, its clear that Martin is fleshing out the Evil Queen trope with Cersei and also agree that she deep down she secretly loathes herself. I've always believed that to selflessly someone in a way that fits "ideal love"...a person needs to love themselves. And Cersei doesn't truly love herself does she, yeah she's extremely arrogant and righteous and has a superiority complex, but she doesn't actually love herself. She's deeply unhappy and always thinking about how much better it would be if she had been born a man, how the gods had been malicious towards her by "giving her the feeble body of a woman" etc. And yep, Cersei's true enemy is no one but Cersei herself. And I do think Martin is saying that...but the prophecy still comes across as retcon. Although I guess you can also make the argument that Martin didn't really know what to with Cersei in the first three books.

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I agree with this, its clear that Martin is fleshing out the Evil Queen trope with Cersei and also agree that she deep down she secretly loathes herself. I've always believed that to selflessly someone in a way that fits "ideal love"...a person needs to love themselves. And Cersei doesn't truly love herself does she, yeah she's extremely arrogant and righteous and has a superiority complex, but she doesn't actually love herself. She's deeply unhappy and always thinking about how much better it would be if she had been born a man, how the gods had been malicious towards her by "giving her the feeble body of a woman" etc. And yep, Cersei's true enemy is no one but Cersei herself. And I do think Martin is saying that...but the prophecy still comes across as retcon. Although I guess you can also make the argument that Martin didn't really know what to with Cersei in the first three books.

:agree:

However, why should the prophesy be a retcon, did GRRM ever say anything to the accord? Cersei was pretty irrational towards Tyrion since AGOT.

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It was obviously a retcon because GRRM scrapped the 5 year gap and needed Cersei to go down and fall hard in a short period of time.That being said, I don't hate the prophecy but the killing Melara stuff is stupid as well as the younger more beautiful queen crap. Killing Melara just seems to be thrown in just as another example of how horrible as Cersei and it just doesn't doesn't make much sense as Cersei's other crimes to me and I hate the "washed up woman fears she's being replaced by younger, prettier" woman trope.

:agree:

I think Littlefinger admitting that he never expected Cersei to self-destruct quite so rapidly is both a clue and reach-out from behind the 4th wall to convince the reader. Presumably Cersei couldn't finish a 5 year arc in 1 year without an accelerator.

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Yea, it's not retcon - it only feels like retcon because Cersie kept the prophecy hidden and we didn't read her POV until book 4.



I agree it is a play on the evil Queen trope, as well as referencing prophecy and Frigg. The younger prettier woman is Freja. Or, if we switch pagan myths it could be Hera and Aphrodite. It doesn't really matter - some of these archetypes are very old.


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:agree:

However, why should the prophesy be a retcon, did GRRM ever say anything to the accord? Cersei was pretty irrational towards Tyrion since AGOT.

Was she though? I can't blame her for thinking that Tyrion *killed* her mother considering that Tywin thought so too, and Cersei has always all been about emulating Tywin. not to mention that for little girls, their mothers are everything to them and i do believe that Cersei loved Joanna. Plus threatened Joffrey many times and sold away Myrcella. obviously her physical abuse towards Tyrion is unforgivable and truly despicable but I think it's understandable why she hated him so much.

Yea, it's not retcon - it only feels like retcon because Cersie kept the prophecy hidden and we didn't read her POV until book 4.

I agree it is a play on the evil Queen trope, as well as referencing prophecy and Frigg. The younger prettier woman is Freja. Or, if we switch pagan myths it could be Hera and Aphrodite. It doesn't really matter - some of these archetypes are very old.

But then why did Cersei herself suggest Margaery as a match for Joffrey herself in ACOK and spend so much time and effort planning for Joffrey's wedding? And considering that Martin wrote Cersei to be messed up enough to kill her friend when she was 10 years old, it also doesn't make sense why she wouldn't just find a way to get rid of Tyrion early on. Hell Tywin would have probably secretly thanked her for it.

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Was she though? I can't blame her for thinking that Tyrion *killed* her mother considering that Tywin thought so too, and Cersei has always all been about emulating Tywin. not to mention that for little girls, their mothers are everything to them and i do believe that Cersei loved Joanna. Plus threatened Joffrey many times and sold away Myrcella. obviously her physical abuse towards Tyrion is unforgivable and truly despicable but I think it's understandable why she hated him so much.

That does not make it any more rational. Both Tywin and Cersei hated Tyrion irratinoally.

Her hatred towards Tyrion is irrational AND understandable. That is why I think there is no need to introduce Maggy's prophecy into the equation.

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But then why did Cersei herself suggest Margaery as a match for Joffrey herself in ACOK and spend so much time and effort planning for Joffrey's wedding? And considering that Martin wrote Cersei to be messed up enough to kill her friend when she was 10 years old, it also doesn't make sense why she wouldn't just find a way to get rid of Tyrion early on. Hell Tywin would have probably secretly thanked her for it.

Cersie has the power of prophecy, not the power to change it. Her destiny is locked in. She knows it and she is going mad because she knows she can't change it. It's kind of like Jojen and a bit of Mel - but with even less understanding of how it works. Jojen knows what will happen and the reasons for it, so he accepts it. Mel can see what is going to happen but doesn't understand what she sees. Cersie knows what her destiny is and knows she can't change it - she just doesn't know the details.

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