Mythical Astronomy of Ice and Fire 5: Tyrion Targaryen

[LmL]

You can read the full essay version here or try the podcast version and have me read it you while you do something productive. 

Hello friends, fellow nerds and secret Targaryens!  Many have discussed the possibility of Tyrion being a Targaryen, and at this point the body of evidence is fairly well-known, both the logistical evidence involving Joanna and Aerys and the more meta-textual clues about Tyrion and dragons. On my mythical astronomy blog & podcast, I have developed a certain style of symbolic analysis, and what I will be doing here in this essay / podcast is using mythical astronomy and symbolism to show evidence in support of Tyrion being a Targaryen. This is an entirely new way to approach this issue, and to me, the evidence is quite overwhelming. 

For example, Tyrion is many times labelled a gargoyle. Well, the story of the first Gargoyle involves a fellow named St. Romanus slaying a dragon and attempting to burn its body - only to find the head and neck would not burn, having been super hardened to stone through years of breathing fire. Romanus mounted the head of the dead stone dragon to the walls of his newly built church in order to scare away evil spirits. 

In other words, the first gargoyle was a dragon. And Tyrion is a gargoyle.

Tyrion is also labelled a "monkey demon" four times specifically, as well as a monkey or a demon on several other occasions. Well, monkey demons are a thing, at least in Chinese mythology. There's a monkey demon king named Sun Wukong who wields a black iron staff that burns with fire, and he stole that fiery weapon from... wait for it... a dragon. In fact, he defeats four different dragons and takes their magical armor and other goodies. Sun Wukong can also cause the sun to darken by summing storms, too, if you can believe that. He's fiery demon monkey with black dragon weapons. 

Both gargoyles and Sun Wukong are associated with waking from stone as well. Sun Wukong is actually a stone demon monkey who hatches from a stone egg at the top of a mountain, while many stories about gargoyles involve them coming to life at night. Dragons and waking from stone - you don't give a character like Tyrion gargoyle and Sun Wukong symbolism if he's not a dragon himself, in my opinion.

And you also don't give repeated and flagrant "dragon dreams" to a character like Tyrion if he's not of Targaryen descent, especially not in a world where it is well established that people with the "blood of the dragon" in their veins dream of dragons in a prophetic way. As Maester Aemon explains on his deathbed, these dragon dreams are so vivid as to seem like memories, even though the people who dream them have never seen dragons before. 

All this and more points to Tyrion as a Targaryen, and I'll go into depth on all these subjects in the main essay and podcast.

I'll also have a large section on the mystery of Winterfell and the King of Winter. And by that I mean, "why is all the symbolism of the King of Winter and Winterfell so warm and fiery?" and also "Why are Winterfell and Dragonstone the only two castles in all of ASOIAF that have gargoyles on them?" and finally "Is there a connection between Azor Ahai and Lightbringer, who are from the east, and the Last Hero and his dragonsteel blade, whose legend is form the north of Westeros?"  Because if there isn't a connection, why should we care about Lightbringer and Azor Ahai at all?  And you know that I, more than anyone, believe that we are supposed to care about and think about the legend of Azor Ahai, Lightbringer, and Nissa Nissa. 

As usual, my works are a bit too long for posting directly on the forum, so instead I've given this short summary to entice you further into my hazy den of shade of the evening-induced mania. Actually, I consider my work to fairly sober and well-reasoned, but that sentence sounded good as I was typing it so I just went with it. 

Cheers everyone!

 

P.S. The podcast features the vocal acting skills of my extremely talented friend Paige Lawrence, who does a bone-chilling rendition of Maester Aemon's deathbed speech in Bravos that you really have to hear. He also does a wicked Tyrion - it's vaguely reminiscent of Peter "Space Pants" Dinklage, but reflects the darker Tyrion of the books, in my opinion. Check it out if you haven't tried the audio version of my essays before, we have a lot of fun making it  - lml

essay version   |  podcast version

 

[LmL]

NOTE: the podcast and essay do contain VERY MILD SPOILERS from episode 2 of Season 6 of the HBO show. If you're trying to avoid any whisper whatsoever of what's going on in HBO land, then sure, I guess don't read my essay. But I will tell that it's a super mild spoiler and only is only another baby step in a direction most people already see the books taking, for whatever that is worth. If you're on the fence, you can probably go ahead and read it and you should still be able to live with yourself. I mean, I thought I was going to avoid this season... but it just seemed impossible without unplugging from the internet. Anyway. This essay is really good and you should just say fuck it and read it.

[LmL]

@Rhaenys_Targaryen, the requested tag.

[Ygrain]

LmL, if you'd like to discuss that which we don't speak of, PM me, you box is probably full.

[LordImp]

I remember that i disagreed with you about Tyrion being a Targ. But now im totally onboard with it .

After watching season 6 ep 2 im sold , Tyrion is definetly a Targ.[\spoiler]

[LmL]

1 hour ago, LordImp said:

I remember that i disagreed with you about Tyrion being a Targ. But now im totally onboard with it . After watching season 6 ep 2 im sold , Tyrion is definetly a Targ. 

Hey @LordImp! Will you do me a favor and put your last sentence inside spoiler tags so you don't draw R'hllor's wrath down on us? Thanks homie.  Glad you're open to the idea of Tyrion Targ, Inthink the evidence certainly points that way. 

[hiemal]

Well researched and excellently presented, LML. Of course, we have come to expect no less.

As with LordImp above, I have also been forced to add Tyrion the list of Targ byblows. As I may have mentioned previously in related threads, I am now quite convinced that Tyrion is the current incarnation of the Lady with Monkey Tail (as per Oberyn's tale of the tail), who is the product of the Bloodstone Emperor and his Lengi "Tiger" Bride (from the land of 9,999 tigers), and of the second Lightbringer attempt (Aerys certainly plunged a fatal sword into his lioness).

The Bran and the gargoyle stuff is a little less familiar. I will comment after some more digestion.

[LmL]

4 hours ago, Ygrain said:

LmL, if you'd like to discuss that which we don't speak of, PM me, you box is probably full.

Thanks @hiemal! I'm sure you noticed I mentioned the woman with a monkey's tail thing in there. And you know I love anything about Lengi!! I believe the tale of the horned lords (the old ones) runs through Leng and those Old Ones, so I have all that material earmarked for deeper research when I work my way to that point in my series. I'll be sure to bring you in on the brainstorming for that one. 

I actually did most of the gargoyle material before I discovered the story about the first gargoyle being a dragon. I was all stretching to say "look, gargoyles wale from stone and they are associated with hell, so they make a good Azor Ahai reborn the flying meteor symbol," and then I was like "oh, I don't need to stretch, gargoyles ARE in fact dragons, at least in origin. Bingo! 

The scene where Tyrion sits like a gargoyle on top of King's Landing, playing the protector and imaging himself like Aegon the conqueror, and then we get a monkey demon reference. It's kind of all right there in that scene. 

What did you think of the gargoyle based connections between WF and Dragonstone, and to a lesser extent, King's Landing? Think that one is super important, and I've been waiting to use that tidbit for a long time. 

[hiemal]

11 minutes ago, LmL said:

 

What did you think of the gargoyle based connections between WF and Dragonstone, and to a lesser extent, King's Landing? Think that one is super important, and I've been waiting to use that tidbit for a long time. 

I think you are on to something. Stone dragons- frozen flames. Purification and protection. "Alive" but enduring. This opens up some very interesting possibilities I hadn't considered before.

[Nissa]

Another good one! Any plans for your next topic?

[MostlyMoody]

2 hours ago, LmL said:

I actually did most of the gargoyle material before I discovered the story about the first gargoyle being a dragon. I was all stretching to say "look, gargoyles wale from stone and they are associated with hell, so they make a good Azor Ahai reborn the flying meteor symbol," and then I was like "oh, I don't need to stretch, gargoyles ARE in fact dragons, at least in origin. Bingo! 

So you already made your mind up and just began looking for vague information to support your claims? Nice dude.

[LmL]

54 minutes ago, Rupert Honeybun said:

So you already made your mind up and just began looking for vague information to support your claims? Nice dude.

Haha, not exactly. Perhaps I worded it poorly. I was simply following out Tyrion's gargoyle symbolism, and the fact that gargoyles wake from stone was tantalizing, since that's already suggesting of dragons waking from stone. But only later did I learn that the first gargoyle story involves a dead stone dragon, which is an even stronger corroboration of my hypothesis, which is that George has given Tyrion symbolic associations which suggest dragons - Sun Wukong the monkey demon king who wears dragon armor and has fiery dragon weapons, and gargoyles, which wake from stone and come from dragons, according to legend. 

[LmL]

2 hours ago, Nissa said:

Another good one! Any plans for your next topic?

I have a couple of essays mostly finished - one on the idea of an ice moon and a fire moon (which is really a study of the parallels between all things ice magic and fire magic), and one on the Gods Eye. I have a leviathan / sea dragon essay that needs updating to adapt to podcast, and then I'm going to go hog wild with horned lords and greenseers and shit. 

I also have a goddess essay half done - moon goddesses, death goddesses, that sort of thing. 

[Rhaenys_Targaryen]

13 hours ago, LmL said:

@Rhaenys_Targaryen, the requested tag.

Thanks! I'll try to answer as soon as time allows  

[LmL]

Well, I have to say, I'm rather disappointed in the response to this one. I figured an essay called "Tyrion Targaryen" would draw some attention. I have 31 people following me, did any of you get some kind of notification when I posted this theory? I thought that's what is supposed to happen when people follow each other. I follow people, and have never got a notification when they post something new. O great and powerful @Ran, am I misunderstanding what the deal is with the following? If people who have chosen to follow you aren't notified when you post a theory, what is the point of this feature? Ostensibly, people choose to follow someone because they want to know when that person posts something new - that's certainly my wish when I follow people. I was excited when I saw that the new board had this feature, but it doesn't seem to be working.  

[LmL]

2 hours ago, Cowboy Dan said:

Hey, fan of your work here, you did just post this Tuesday and you tend to have really long essays. Perhaps people are still catching up? I have to say before getting into it I'm not a big fan of the Tyrion Targaryen angle so maybe I'm biased but it wasn't as convincing to me as your previous parts.

I appreciate you admitting your potential bias. I did expect pushback based on the fact that some feel strongly against Tyrion being a Targ. Obviously I am biased and influenced by my own theories and hypothesis, and I freely admit that. I'm trying to suss out the deep mysteries of a cleverly written fantasy novel, as opposed to conducting official anthropology on real civilizations. 

2 hours ago, Cowboy Dan said:

Your essay had two angles that were new, otherwise there's not a lot of evidence that is any more compelling than the many Tyrion Targ theories out there already.

 

Which I think are plenty compelling - the dragon dreams in particular, combined with all the other occurrences of dragon related themes and ideas in Tyrion's arc. And then there is TWOIAF, which goes out of its way to tell us that Aerys was in the same place as Joanna when Tyrion would have been conceived. 

But I digress. 

2 hours ago, Cowboy Dan said:

One angle was the Wukong bit, which while compelling, I personally have difficulty accepting theories that use myth as foreshadowing beat for beat. In reading asoiaf and many analyses it seems GRRM likes to take a more post-modern approach, ripping attributes from many different mythological dieties and repurposing them into his own patchwork mythologal entites. A direct one-to-one approach doesn't seem to match how mythological parallels have been treated so far and it seems a little too neat and tidy.

I'm not suggesting anything like a one to one, beat for beat correlation. How did you get that idea? I agree 100% with your statements about how Martin draws influences - that should be abundantly clear in my writing. He's combining a thousand different influences here. 

What I am saying about Sun Wukong is this: George names Tyrion "monkey demon," and the only major monkey demon out there wears dragon armor and had dragon weapons. Sun Wukong is not himself a dragon, as I claim Tyrion is - so it's not a straight parallel. Tyrion doesn't have a staff either. But there are some clear paralells, and not just between Tyrion and Sun Wukong. Sun Wukong also has a lot of parallels to Mithras and the Azor Ahai archetype, which is why I believe Martin chose it for Tyrion. 

Similarly, Sun Wukong subdues a white dragon which his friend rides on, while ASOIAF seems to point towards Tyrion himself riding the white dragon - again, not a beat for beat adaption. Rather I am pointing at the elements of the story and Sun Wukong's character as an overly clever yet irreverent monkey demon. 

The fact that gargoyles and Sun Wukong both wake from stone, are associated with dragons, and play protective roles is further evidence that all of this is well thought out. The common aspects between gargoyles and Sun Wukong are the qualities most recognizable in Tyrion, who was born from a (Casterly) rock, is associated with dragons, and plays many protective roles. He perches like a gargoyle and capers like a monkey demon.

Remember that George chose these terms, not me. I did not set out to prove Tyrion is a Targ. I set out to simply follow his symbolism and what I discovered was a bunch of dragon related stuff. I'm definitely not backfilling my own opinion - I didn't have a strong take on Tyrion's parentage until I followed the monkey demon and Sun Wukong ideas. And I am claiming anything as being conclusive, but rather saying it's quite suggestive. Especially when you put everything together. As I said in the essay, I think the dragon dreams are still the big obvious red flag clue, and I see the Sun Wukong and gargoyle ideas as simply adding to it.  

2 hours ago, Cowboy Dan said:

The other was the gargoyle connection, which Rupert pointed out you realized there was a symbolism involving gargoyles but instead of trying to figure out the exact meaning and back it up with textual evidence you just kind of looked for a simple explanation that already fit your theory. You could very well be right but as someone who isn't already pro-Tyrion Targ it seems kind of hard to swallow the reasoning presented.

I said it above already, but I didn't come into this with a strong opinion. I have always found the dragon dreams suspicious, but I've been researching other stuff and I have never taken a long look at Tyrion's parentage and all the evidence until recently. Personally I think the evidence is strong, but you can disagree. 

2 hours ago, Cowboy Dan said:

 

I really like the connection you made between the gargoyles on Dragonstone and Winterfell though. I've had a rising suspicion Targs and Starks are more connected than we are lead to believe.

As for the evidence you used connecting Tyrion to gargoyles, I'm pretty sure it's referring to Jaime and Cersei. 

No, Tyrion is called a gargoyle many times by George. Tyrion is not "connected to gargoyles," he is literally named a gargoyle on many occasions. Yes, in that one dream, Tyrion is not mentioned and Bran'd run in was with Jaime and Cersei. I was using that scene to show the fiery associations of gargoyles in general. Tyrion is the only person directly associated with gargoyles.  

2 hours ago, Cowboy Dan said:

This seems to me like a really fucked up, overly symbolic memory of Bran spying on the two of them. Specifically the over-use of them/they, it's not referring to one person but multiple. When 3EC first speaks to Bran when he is falling Bran remembers what made him fall and 3EC tells him, "Forget that, you do not need it now, put it aside, put it away."

I'm not sure what that has to do with anything in my essay. I think the falling gargoyle idea is represented plenty of times, as I tried to illustrate. 

2 hours ago, Cowboy Dan said:

I'm in the middle of rereading Bran's POV but that seemed to stick out at me in aGoT. Whenever Bran gets close to remembering Jaime's face he gets filled with this huge sense of dread and tries to get away. I think there's a time when he stops warging Summer because of the memory but like I said I'm in the middle of his reread so that may be me misremembering.

That's true, Bran has blocked out the memory - I guess you're making a side point here? Not sure how this pertains to Tyrion and gargoyles. 

[Elisabetta Duò]

On 31 maggio 2016 at 9:08 AM, LmL said:

For example, Tyrion is many times labelled a gargoyle. Well, the story of the first Gargoyle involves a fellow named St. Romanus slaying a dragon and attempting to burn its body - only to find the head and neck would not burn, having been super hardened to stone through years of breathing fire. Romanus mounted the head of the dead stone dragon to the walls of his newly built church in order to scare away evil spirits. 

In other words, the first gargoyle was a dragon. And Tyrion is a gargoyle.

Actually the first gargoyle was a lion (I have answered in the other thread A+J=T). Still of course Tyrion=Gargoyle is correct and gargoyles do have a connection with dragons.

I just don't see - and nobody proved this to me - why Tyrion's connections with dragons should be necessarily foreshadowing of him as a Targ-dragon and not 'simply' as a dragon rider (and/or gargoyle waking dragons from stone or whatever else). If we assume Tyrion is not a Targ, it's only natural GRRM would need to build up some sort of connection between him and dragons to 'justify' that he can ride one. It can go 50%- 50%, still people automatically assume it's A+J=T which I don't think is correct as an approach. I wouldn't care if he were a Targ (as long as he lives, I'm happy … I'm not sure he will in the end, tho) and it would have some 'shock factor' with it, but all we have are some supposed clues: most of them can be interpreted in many different ways and some others we don't even know if they are clues, irrelevant details or misdirections (for example, Aery's interest in Joanna).

[LmL]

3 minutes ago, Elisabetta Duò said:

Actually the first gargoyle was a lion (I have answered in the other thread A+J=T). Still of course Tyrion=Gargoyle is correct and gargoyles do have a connection with dragons.

I just don't see - and nobody proved this to me - why Tyrion's connections with dragons should be necessarily foreshadowing of him as a Targ-dragon and not 'simply' as a dragon rider (and/or gargoyle waking dragons from stone or whatever else). If we assume Tyrion is not a Targ, it's only natural GRRM would need to build up some sort of connection between him and dragons to 'justify' that he can ride one. It can go 50%- 50%, still people automatically assume it's A+J=T which I don't think is correct as an approach. I wouldn't care if he were a Targ (as long as he lives, I'm happy … I'm not sure he will in the end, tho) and it would have some 'shock factor' with it, but all we have are some supposed clues: most of them can be interpreted in many different ways and some others we don't even know if they are clues, irrelevant details or misdirections (for example, Aery's interest in Joanna).

Hey @Elisabetta Duò, I did see your excellent response on the other thread and I was planning on getting to it, but I'm very happy to have you over here. You've clearly got a lot of good knowledge of mythology

So as I was reading, it's somewhat debatable as to whether sphinxes should be considered to be in the same class as gargoyle. I'm not sure it matters - they're obviously quite similar as far as terrifying stone beasts which guard sacred locations. I suppose my statement could be more accurate if I said "the beginning of the modern European tradition of putting gargoyles on cathedrals is associated with dragons..." But the main point still remains: gargoyles have dragon associations. And not just dragon associations - we also have the specific idea of waking from stone. That's a common thread with gargoyles, Sun Wukong, and of course, dragons in ASOIAF in general and Azor Ahai's waking of dragons from stone in particular. 

As I said in the previous comment, I'm claiming either the Sun Wukong dragon ideas or the gargoyle dragon ideas to be conclusive. I'm simply throwing them on to the pile of other evidence and saying it makes the case stronger. I believe the dragon dreams are the strongest evidence. 

As to the idea of Tyrion being a dragon rider... it's not impossible, but I find it unlikely. I do tend to think you need to be a dragon blooded person (or perhaps a skinchanger) to ride dragons. Even if that's not the case, The dragon dreams are a Targaryen thing, and were given too much smoke regarding Aerys and Joanna to dismiss easily. 

I loved all your comments about the Sphinx! I didn't spend much time investigating that side of Tyrion (not his Lann the Clever correlations) because I already had a big essay talking about Sun Wukong, gargoyles, and dragon dreams. However even if he is half Targ, he's still a Lannister, so he should have lion symbolism. The chimera idea is kind of out there, but it does kind of fit all of his split, two-head, and two eye color symbolism. Hard to see how that would ever be confirmed in the books. Maybe George will just spill that after the series is finished, who knows. 

[Flying Cat]

Hi @LML,

i have read your Tyrion Targaryen post (excellent, as always), and am a bit surprised that you didn´t mention his near-death experience in the Rhoyne. With all the parallels of sea-dragons and meteors falling into the water I thought you would jump on that one! Escpecially since the rock metaphors go off the charts with all them stonemen around, falling on the boat and stuff 

A lot of people complain about A+J=T because they think this somehow invalidates Tywin as a father figure for Tyrion (with all the parallels and complexity about their relationship just magically gone). I think this is as stupid as invalidating Ned as Jons Father. Independently of R+L=J, the guy that was there for Jon was Ned, the guy he draws his example form, the guy who, in short, raised him, was Ned. Without beating around the bush: sticking it into a lady and making a baby is not the difficult part. Everyone can do that. Raising a person is the difficult thing, and all the glory and failures in the process is what shapes a person to become who she is. So that was a long way of saying: A+J=T and R+L=J only have an impact on a political (in this setting also metaphysical) level, but it won´t change the personality of either Tyrion nor Jon.

Also

Spoiler

congrats on your post on reddit about the obsidian/black oily stone the CotF used to create the NK (at least on the show). Good stuff. I´m sure you have sorted this all out already, but my thoughts on the timeline would be something on the lines of: BSE brings down the second moon. Oily black stones fall all over the place. He uses them for his purpose, CotF find some too and (at least a faction of them) decide to use it too, maybe to take back what mankind had taken from them. The Long night might be a secondary and unexpected effect from the portion of oily black stone that fell in what now is the land of always winter or from whatever the CotF did.

Looking forward to more of your stuff, I´m glad you are starting to get the props you deserve for your awesome work 

Cheers

[Lady Fishbiscuit]

Another fascinating read @LmL.  I had picked up on some of Tyrion's gargoyle and dragon symbolism, but not to the extent that you have. Great to see it gathered together and analysed in the context of the Tyrion Targ theory.  I was always a believer and this has just made me more convinced.  There's too much of this throughout the books for it not to mean anything and I think Tyrion becoming a dragon rider but not being revealed as a Targ would be odd considering all the dragon riders we've ever been told of have Valyrian blood.

The Sun Wukong Monkey Demon symbolism was new to me (apart from watching the 'Monkey' TV show as a kid in the 70s), but clearly not new to George! Really enjoyed your analysis here and the long night parallels piling up before our eyes. I hope this doesn't foreshadow Tyrion inadvertently causing disaster rather than triumphing (as  I really hope he will).  As for the Thundarr cartoon title sequence... That might as well have said "Previously, on Planetos...".  Fantastic! 

Iike @Cowboy Dan, I'm really curious about the connection between Targs and Starks (as highlighted by your point about gargoyles being seemingly only identified at Winterfell, Dragonstone and KL). We're shown time and again in the books how the people south of the neck have no interest in the North and see the northerners as almost foreign and savage.  King Robert didn't visit the North at all during his reign (until the last few months), despite his oldest BFF being Warden of the North.  However, the Targs seem to be the exception.  Among other things, we have the much hinted R+L, we have Bloodraven and Aemon both joining the Nights Watch, Bloodraven's link to the COTF & Bran, and we're also told tales of the Targs of old visiting the north and visiting the wall, just like Tyrion does.  Tyrion seems to have a keen interest in the Starks and the Nights Watch and develops an empathy and understanding with them (Jon, Bran and Sansa in particular). I don't think this is a coincidence.  This could be all tied in with the Valyrians having the same ancestry as AA, connecting both them and the Starks to the Long Night and the fabled pact.  The First Men, who the Starks descend from also originated from Essos, so maybe both families share ancestry going back to the GEOTD.