(Spoilers All) Textual Evidence Davos Could Be A Targ....

[kimim]

On 5/5/2016 at 1:57 AM, Brian Rioghbhardan said:

"Shadows only live when given birth by light, and the king's fires burn so low I dare not draw of any more to make another son. It might well kill him..with another man though.. a man whose flames still burn hot and high...if you truely wish to serve your king's cause come to my chamber one night. I could give you pleasure such as you have never known and with your life fire I could make.."

Nothing here says that she needs Davos because he has king's blood. She needs Davos because his "flames still burn hot and high," because he's not as worn out as Stannis, and can still get it up. He's also completely faithful to Stannis, and is one of the few men under Stannis who could be trusted to allow his "baby" to be used to further Stannis's cause.

Re kingsblood: Given the whoring habits of royal families, every single human on Westeros has some kingsblood. So yeah, Davos probably has some, the way all his neighbors at Fleabottom do.

Re Davos: Starting out life as a commoner then rising through his own efforts defines him. Claiming him as a secret Targ undoes all that. btw, same with claiming all the Lannister kids as secret Targs, and Mance as a secret Targ. Can you imagine an ending where secret Targs are popping up all over the place? It'd be unintentional comedy.

[OtherFromAnotherMother]

I could be wrong but when I read this chapter I get the feeling that Mellisandre is more or less tempting/testing Davos. I'm not sure she has any actual intentions to make a shadow baby with him. Their conversation covers light v. dark, good v. evil, and how Davos believes he lives in the gray like most men. IMO Mellisandre's proposal is done as a conversational tool rather than an actual coupling for creepy babies.

 

[Light a wight tonight]

In the first place Melisandre is a huge BS-er, so we don't know whether or not king's blood is necessary. She claims to have killed three kings using the leeches filled with Edric Storm's blood, but the deaths were unrelated; she just claimed credit for deaths she saw in her fires.

In the second place even if king's blood is necessary (and she had some method of determining that Davos has it) it's not necessary for it to be Targaryen blood. Any king's blood will do, even Mance's son's blood.

While this isn't shadowbaby magic it's still magic that she claims she needs king's blood for. 

[Brian Rioghbhardan]

On 9/14/2016 at 8:42 AM, Seams said:

 

I bet Davos will discover something about his origin when he reaches his destination in Skagos. One of the earliest specifics we know about Davos is that he worked for a guy named Roro Uhoris, who was executed by the Night's Watch at East Watch for smuggling weapons to the wildlings. One of those wildlings is bound to remember Uhoris, and will have a story for Davos about the young woman who died in childbirth on board Uhoris's ship the Cobblecat . . .

 

@Seams That's pretty good, I never really considered that the captain of the ship Davos first served in might have some insight into his lineage. In looking into this I just assumed that Davos was born in Fleabottom and that once he came of age he joined the crew of the first ship that would take him. Thus neither the captain nor the crew would have any direct relation to Davos before he joined and thus just as ignorant of his background as he would be. But having looked it up, a few things do get me thinking. First off all it's not a one time reference, Roho and the cobblecat are mentioned in several books including the last one. It also states that Davos had been younger than his son Devan when he first saw the wall and that at the time he had been a cabinboy on the the cobblecat. So he was quite young, when he first boarded the cobblecat. Davos also mentions Roro Uhoris was often called the Blind Bastard, though he was neither baseborn nor blind.  That's an interesting detail for GRRM to include, it suggests his nick name has some kind of figurative meaning to it and yet GRRM has chosen not to reveal what that could be. Finally he's a Tyroshi and I've always found tyroshi to be interesting because of the strong connection that Tyrosh had with the Blackfyres. Daemon's wife was the daughter of the leader (archon) of Tyrosh, thus all his his heirs were half half Tyroshi and while in exile the Blackfyres seemed to have lived in Tyrosh. Not only that but during the last BF Rebellion, the band of nine was formed and their first act was to conquer Tyrosh before eventually setting off to Westeros.

Now I'm not committing to any of this, but let's play around with it and see where it takes us. Ok, so lets say you're right. Let's say that it's no coincidence that Davos ended up as a cabin boy for  Roro Uhoris, the Tyroshi smuggler. That Roro Uhoris had perhaps sought out Davos to make him his cabin boy because he had known his mother and was even aware of Davos's lineage but had lost his head to the Nights watch before he could share it with Davos. Right away this raises some interesting parallels with Jon Snow, A father like figure who takes a boy under his protection because of a secret he knows about his lineage. But before he has a chance to reveal this secret to the boy, he is beheaded. Still we have to ask ourselves how exactly would a Tyroshi smuggler become so intertwined with a lowborn woman of flea bottom that he'd not only learn the secret behind her child but also feel some sort compulsion to take him in? The simplest answer is probably that Davos's mom was a prostitute that Roro had grown extremely fond of over the years, perhaps he even loved her. The last time he was in port she may have told him that she could not see him as she was with child and confided in him that it was the kings. Years passed before his ship returned to Kingslanding at which time he learned of her death and due to his lingering feelings for her he sought out her son. 

I can also think of another explanation though it's a lot more crazier and conflicts with a lot of my previous ideas. Still if for no other reason then "fun", I think it's worth exploring. You suggested that perhaps Uhoris knew of Davos's mother and his lineage because she told him before dying of childbirth on his ship. I think this is a pretty interesting idea, though if true then it could suggest that I'm completely wrong about who Davos's father is. If Aery's is Davos's father than it would only make sense for his mother to be lowborn woman of Kingslanding. But if that's the case then it wouldn't make any sense for her to be aboard the ship of a tyroshi smuggler right before she was about to give birth. It's considered very dangerous for a pregnant woman to travel at sea, it's why Dany's mother remained on dragonstone till birth. Granted the case could be made that his mother's life was in such imminent danger that she had no choice but to flee by boat and that Uhoris had been hired to smuggle her someplace. But once again it wouldn't make sense for Uhoris to smuggle her out of Kingslanding and then immediately return her newborn son to Kingslanding after she died of childbirth, unless Uhoris didn't care about Davos's safety. But perhaps his mother's life was in danger and Uhoris was hired to smuggler her to safety, only he wasn't hired to smuggle her out of Kingslanding he was hired to smuggle her into it. As I said before Tyrosh served as the Blackfyres base of operations while they were living in exile and Uhoris is from Tyrosh. In the story of the Band of Nine, several years prior to conquering Tyrosh in 258 AC, Daemon Blackfyre was the head of both the Blackfyre line and the Golden Company. But his cousin, Maelys "the Monsterous" Blackfyre, decided he wanted to take power so he killed his cousin Daemon and took control of the Golden Company and then proceeded to crown himself after forming the band of nine. We know almost nothing about his cousin Daemon, but perhaps at the time he had pregnant wife/whore/fiancee/mistress living in Tyrosh. And if Maeyls the monsterous was willing to be a kinslayer for the sake of crowning himself then who's to say he wouldn't try to wipe out any of Daemon's potential offspring. Given the strength of the Golden Company the safest place for a woman carrying Daemon's child would be away from Essos in Westeros. In which case Davos is not actually a secret Targ he's a secret Blackfyre. This is kind of interesting because it plays into the quote from GRRM that @Lurid Jester  brought up "Three heads of the dragon... yes... but the third head will not necessarily BE a Targaryan."   I found this quote to be kind of strange because it seems to me that it should say that the 2ND AND 3RD head will not necessarily be a Targ, since Dany's the only one with the last name Targ. Unless what he's saying is that if you're father was a Targ then you're technically a Targ. In which case the 3rd head must actually be a Blackfyre, either that or that fucking magic horn actually does what it's suppose to do. 

Either way thanks Seams, you've definitely made me consider some new possibilities about Davos's origins. If you've got any ideas at all as to why Roro Uhoris was given the nick name Blind Bastard, then please let me know. Off the top of the head, I'd assume that it might relate to some kind of Essos Reference since Roro is originally from there. 

 

 

[Seams]

1 hour ago, Brian Rioghbhardan said:

That's pretty good, I never really considered that the captain of the ship Davos first served in might have some insight into his lineage. 

...

Either way thanks Seams, you've definitely made me consider some new possibilities about Davos's origins. If you've got any ideas at all as to why Roro Uhoris was given the nick name Blind Bastard, then please let me know. Off the top of the head, I'd assume that it might relate to some kind of Essos Reference since Roro is originally from there.
 

Thanks, Brian. I hadn't put much thought into it, but your post and another about Patchface have got me thinking about Davos. And I'm on a re-read of ADwD so I'm happy to go on a little Davos binge. But you've already done more to test the notion of his origin story than I have.

I was sort of using a loose application of the "red door / lemon tree" theory that says Dany may not have been raised in Pentos; extrapolating that Davos doesn't really know exactly where he was born or where he spent his earliest years. Davos may have been told that he is "from" Flea Bottom, but he could have been born anywhere and taken to King's Landing as a young child.

The first mentor (father figure?) Davos mentions is that ship captain, Uhoris, so I assumed he would be part of the solution for tracing the true origins of Davos. The mother who dies in childbirth seemed consistent with all the mothers of the potential Targ/hidden Targ major characters. And I think GRRM uses birthplaces to foreshadow important things about major characters: Robb Stark was born at Riverrun, and he just wasn't cut out to be King of Winter or King in the North. So being born on a ship just "fits" with what we know of Davos.

I like both your Blackfyre and Targaryen scenarios.

Davos is too old to have been conceived during the Defiance of Duskendale, isn't he? It seems as if Aerys would have been entertained with bedwarmers while he was captive there, but even a pregnant bedwarmer would have been in peril for her life and forced to flee once the King was liberated. Were there any other interludes like that in Aerys's backstory? I see he was a squire in the Stepstones during the War of the Ninepenny Kings. That might be a better fit as a birthplace, given Davos's age and seagoing instincts.

Here's another possibility: Rhaella or one of her handmaidens was worried about the deaths of her babies, so she had a newborn swapped out and a substitute infant brought in. The substitute baby died like so many other of Aerys and Rhaella's babies, but Davos was raised in secret but his identity was virtually lost when Uhoris died. (Only to be uncovered when Davos makes his way to East Watch . . . ) But Davos doesn't look like a full-blooded Targ. It's possible GRRM would pull the rug out from under us by creating a royal Targ who doesn't have silver hair and purple eyes, but I doubt it.

There's also the trunk under the bed of Archmaester Walgrave. Walgrave mistakes Pate for Cressen who was apparently an old friend and Citadel classmate, and I think Cressen is strongly linked to Davos. Some of the personal items in that trunk seemed to imply that there was a secret love with blonde hair somewhere in Walgrave's past. Or maybe the blonde woman was his sister? Maybe this will be connected to the secret of Davos's origin.

I also liked the strong connection of Patchface to Davos that you mentioned in this thread. Patchface, in turn, seems linked to Cressen (who dies wearing Patchface's bucket/antler helmet). That would give us living link from Walgrave/Cressen to Patchface to Davos. If the theory is correct that links Ser Dontos Hollard to the Citadel novice Mollander, that would link King's Landing, where Ser Dontos was living, to Sam's new circle of (we hope) friends to the trunk under Walgrave's bed. Or a link to Sansa, for whom Ser Dontos died (sort of). So a connection between the fools Patchface and Ser Dontos is the only missing link to close the circle. (Unless there is also a "fool net" like the "weirwood net" that mystically connects fools across Westeros.) One connection between the two fools is that both were boys whose lives were spared: Patchface not only lived after four days at sea, but Cressen decided to try to save him instead of giving him a milk of the poppy overdose as he was advised to do. Dontos was allowed to live because Ser Barristan Selmy intervened and asked Aerys to let him live. Since Barristan was a king's guard, I wonder if the connection of House Hollard to ancient kings will end up being relevant?

Sorry, I'm thinking out loud here. I guess this is a little convoluted and hard to follow. But I'm conscious that GRRM has said that character arcs that seemed unrelated are going to start coming together in the last two books.

If Davos is not a Targ, as shown by his hair and eye color, could he have a different highborn or royal origin? Could he be a bastard son of uncle Brandon Stark? The coloring seems closer to Stark coloring. I may be reading too much into it, but a Brandon-related origin might also explain Black Betha and Blind Bastard. I was wondering whether their common Bran the Builder ancestry could explain why Arya becomes Blind Beth at the same time she hears Jon described as the Black Bastard. If Davos's mentor was the Blind Bastard and his ship is Black Betha, he seems as if he should be part of that same BB circle. But it may be just a coincidence.