Aemon's Ramblings in Samwell IV, Feast 35

[Lost Melnibonean]

 

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On Braavos, it had seemed possible that Aemon might recover. Xhondo's talk of dragons had almost seemed to restore the old man to himself. That night he ate every bite Sam put before him. "No one ever looked for a girl," he said. "It was a prince that was promised, not a princess. Rhaegar, I thought . . . the smoke was from the fire that devoured Summerhall on the day of his birth, the salt from the tears shed for those who died. He shared my belief when he was young, but later he became persuaded that it was his own son who fulfilled the prophecy, for a comet had been seen above King's Landing on the night Aegon was conceived, and Rhaegar was certain the bleeding star had to be a comet. What fools we were, who thought ourselves so wise! The error crept in from the translation. Dragons are neither male nor female, Barth saw the truth of that, but now one and now the other, as changeable as flame. The language misled us all for a thousand years. Daenerys is the one, born amidst salt and smoke. The dragons prove it." Just talking of her seemed to make him stronger. "I must go to her. I must. Would that I was even ten years younger."

Samwell IV, Feast 35

Obviously, Aemon is referring to the prince that was promised prophecy. He tells us that he thought it was Rhaegar, as did Rhaegar, and Aemon suggests that a tear can fulfill the salt element of the prophecy. Rhaegar was certain that the bleeding star had to be a comet, and we recall the comet that appeared at the end of Game and through the first half of Clash. Since a comet appeared over King’s Landing on the night Aegon was conceived, Rhaegar was convinced Aegon was the promised prince. Considering the translation issue centering on the translation of the word for dragon, is the promised prince a dragon? A dragon lord? A Targaryen? The answer appears to be in the next quote...

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"No," the old man said. "It must be you. Tell them. The prophecy . . . my brother's dream . . . Lady Melisandre has misread the signs. Stannis . . . Stannis has some of the dragon blood in him, yes. His brothers did as well. Rhaelle, Egg's little girl, she was how they came by it . . . their father's mother . . . she used to call me Uncle Maester when she was a little girl. I remembered that, so I allowed myself to hope . . . perhaps I wanted to . . . we all deceive ourselves, when we want to believe. Melisandre most of all, I think. The sword is wrong, she has to know that . . . light without heat . . . an empty glamor . . . the sword is wrong, and the false light can only lead us deeper into darkness, Sam. Daenerys is our hope. Tell them that, at the Citadel. Make them listen. They must send her a maester. Daenerys must be counseled, taught, protected. For all these years I've lingered, waiting, watching, and now that the day has dawned I am too old. I am dying, Sam." Tears ran from his blind white eyes at that admission. "Death should hold no fear for a man as old as me, but it does. Isn't that silly? It is always dark where I am, so why should I fear the darkness? Yet I cannot help but wonder what will follow, when the last warmth leaves my body. Will I feast forever in the Father's golden hall as the septons say? Will I talk with Egg again, find Dareon whole and happy, hear my sisters singing to their children? What if the horselords have the truth of it? Will I ride through the night sky forever on a stallion made of flame? Or must I return again to this vale of sorrow? Who can say, truly? Who has been beyond the wall of death to see? Only the wights, and we know what they are like. We know."

Samwell IV, Feast 35

Again, the prophecy is the prince that was promised. Aemon’s concentration on the dragon blood of Stannis suggests that the promised prince must, indeed, be a Targaryen, since there are no more other dragon lords left in the world. Stannis’s sword Lightbringer is not the sword of the hero. We have seen an overwhelming amount of evidence on that point, and the hero will need to wield a new Lightbringer. Following Stannis, or perhaps, Melisandre’s chasing after Stannis, will lead to deeper darkness. Is this a hint at the burning of Shireen?

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That had been one of his last good days. After that the old man spent more time sleeping than awake, curled up beneath a pile of furs in the captain's cabin. Sometimes he would mutter in his sleep. When he woke he'd call for Sam, insisting that he had to tell him something, but oft as not he would have forgotten what he meant to say by the time that Sam arrived. Even when he did recall, his talk was all a jumble. He spoke of dreams and never named the dreamer, of a glass candle that could not be lit and eggs that would not hatch. He said the sphinx was the riddle, not the riddler, whatever that meant. He asked Sam to read for him from a book by Septon Barth, whose writings had been burned during the reign of Baelor the Blessed. Once he woke up weeping. "The dragon must have three heads," he wailed, "but I am too old and frail to be one of them. I should be with her, showing her the way, but my body has betrayed me."

Samwell IV, Feast 35

I think we should assume that the dreams Aemon was babbling about were the dragon dreams that haunted many Targaryens. He mentioned them in the previous chapter, describing them as a madness. Aemon’s ramblings suggest that the glass candles can now be lit since the eggs have hatched. The sphinx is tricky. In Greek mythology, the sphinx would guard a door with a riddle, and devour those who could not answer it. Aemon tells us that is not the kind of sphinx we have here. Alleras is called Sphinx because he is a little bit of this and little bit of that, like a Greek sphinx. But we learn that Alleras is Sarella, he is a she, and she is a fraud. And we should know that in the Renaissance, chimeras, including sphinxes, came to be used in art to symbolize fraud. I would submit then, that there is a fraud, a riddle, that Daenerys must discover to avoid being devoured, and I don’t think it’s Alleras. I think it’s Aegon, the mummer’s dragon. Like Tyrion does later, Aemon wishes for an unburned copy of Septon Barth’s Unnatural History, presumably to master Daenerys’s dragons. And Aemon reminds us that the dragon has three heads....

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Viserys, was her first thought the next time she paused, but a second glance told her otherwise. The man had her brother's hair, but he was taller, and his eyes were a dark indigo rather than lilac. "Aegon," he said to a woman nursing a newborn babe in a great wooden bed. "What better name for a king?"

"Will you make a song for him?" the woman asked.

"He has a song," the man replied. "He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire." He looked up when he said it and his eyes met Dany's, and it seemed as if he saw her standing there beyond the door. "There must be one more," he said, though whether he was speaking to her or the woman in the bed she could not say. "The dragon has three heads." He went to the window seat, picked up a harp, and ran his fingers lightly over its silvery strings. Sweet sadness filled the room as man and wife and babe faded like the morning mist, only the music lingering behind to speed her on her way.

Daenerys IV, Clash 48

That Rhaegar looks at Daenerys when he tells her that there must be three more, strongly suggests that she is the first head of the dragon, and the storyteller is telling us that we must look for two more. The first to be revealed is the second head, Aegon, who believes he is the son of Rhaegar. Although many of us believe that Aegon is the mummer’s dragon, a lie (or a fraud) to be slayed by Daenerys, Illyrio tells us that black or red, a dragon is still a dragon. Jon, whom most of us expect to be reborn after his death in Jon XIII, Dance 69, will almost certainly be revealed to be the son of Rhaegar, and he will be the third head.

Now consider this...

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"Three-headed Trios has that tower with three turrets. The first head devours the dying, and the reborn emerge from the third. I don't know what the middle head's supposed to do."

The Ugly Little Girl, Dance 64

And we can see how Daenerys, Aegon, and Jon come together as the three-headed dragon.