The George [did not have] The Blackfyre subplot already in mind when he wrote Game

[Lost Melnibonean]

On 5/24/2018 at 7:35 AM, Ran said:

A mail from May 22, 1999, to us, in which George mentioned he had recently started working on, and completed just a couple of days prior, the fleshing out the Targaryen family tree, that he had figured out the details and names of all of Aegon IV's children. We received the tree and historical notes shortly after that, laying out the Blackfyre Rebellions and much other matter discussed in later novels, novellas, and TWoIaF. Rather later he decided to change the original arms of House Qoherys, which featured black dragons, because he had decided to reserve it for Daemon Blackfyre.

I would be very interested to see what evidence you perceive in AGoT for GRRM laying groundwork for a bastard branch of House Targaryen being involved in one or more civil wars.

@Ran, When did you learn that the arms of House Qoherys featured a black dragon, and when did you learn that the arms of House Connington featured griffins? 

[Ran]

38 minutes ago, Lost Melnibonean said:

@Ran, When did you learn that the arms of House Qoherys featured a black dragon, and when did you learn that the arms of House Connington featured griffins? 

Have to wait until I’m back from a trip to be sure, but it’d be shortly after ACoK.

[Lost Melnibonean]

7 minutes ago, Ran said:

Have to wait until I’m back from a trip to be sure, but it’d be shortly after ACoK.

Thanks. Enjoy the trip. 

[Bael's Bastard]

On 5/23/2018 at 4:48 PM, Lord Varys said:

But without Dunk & Egg there would most likely not have been any Blackfyre rebellions. We would likely have gotten only a few paragraphs when the final reveal of the ancestry of Varys, Illyrio, and Aegon came - it could have been a bastard of Aegon IV, but just as well some bastard of Daeron II, Maekar, Aegon V, etc.

Better yet, the legitimate son of Aerion, who was passed over as an infant for Aegon V, which we learn of as early as Jon Snow's first chapter in ACOK. I like the idea of Varys being a descendant of Bittersteel, but I must admit that the possibility of Aerion's descendants playing a role in the story (whether the current story, Dunk and Egg, or both) is present earlier than the Blackfyres. Though the Varys/Illyrio story could end up involving ancestry from some combination of Aerion, Daemon, and Bittersteel.

[Bael's Bastard]

On 5/23/2018 at 5:06 PM, Lost Melnibonean said:

It seems to me that the George had decided very early on to have a prince claim he was Aegon, either the real Aegon or an imposter, but most likely an imposter backed by Illyrio and Varys. I agree that it is ambiguous as to whether this was going to be a Blackfyre or something else (and @Ran strongly suggests that The Bkackfyre subplot was not developed until after Clash), but I think there was always going to be a mummer's dragon for Daenerys to fight in the second of the three main conflicts of ASOIAF. 

I agree, and wouldn't be surprised if the first occurrences of Aerion's son being passed over (Jon I) and the mummer's dragon (Daenerys V) in ACOK had originally been intended to be connected.

[Lost Melnibonean]

58 minutes ago, Bael's Bastard said:

I agree, and wouldn't be surprised if the first occurrences of Aerion's son being passed over (Jon I) and the mummer's dragon (Daenerys V) in ACOK had originally been intended to be connected.

Seems likely. 

ETA

But I wonder whether the George wanted the hidden pretender to descend from Aegon the Unworthy. He gave the reader a bunch of hints that Jon and Daenerys descend from the Dragonknight. While it would be irrelevant in story, it's a nice metatextual theme for the reader. Or not. 

[Lord Varys]

55 minutes ago, Bael's Bastard said:

Better yet, the legitimate son of Aerion, who was passed over as an infant for Aegon V, which we learn of as early as Jon Snow's first chapter in ACOK. I like the idea of Varys being a descendant of Bittersteel, but I must admit that the possibility of Aerion's descendants playing a role in the story (whether the current story, Dunk and Egg, or both) is present earlier than the Blackfyres. Though the Varys/Illyrio story could end up involving ancestry from some combination of Aerion, Daemon, and Bittersteel.

While that's not impossible I actually don't find it very likely. Prince Maegor and his legitimate descendants (Illyrio or the mother of his child would likely be the man's child, and then Aegon would have been Maegor's grandson) would have a very strong claim to the Iron Throne in their own right - a claim that could be pressed without lies and deceit. There would be no need for a 'mummer's dragon' - a boy pretending to be Rhaegar's son - they could enter the game with an open visor, telling Westeros that the line of the Mad King got rightfully dethroned at the Trident and during the Sack, and now the rightful heir to the Iron Throne is the grandson of Prince Maegor, the King Who Should Have Been.

Instead, they play a completely different game. And that makes it very likely that George's originally idea there was to have a fake Aegon, an impostor succeeding (temporarily) where Joffrey, Tommen, and Myrcella will fail.

And that, in turn, makes it actually very likely that the likes of Varys (who I think is more likely to be a Blackfyre or Targaryen bastard than a legitimate descendant of the dragon tree) and Illyrio don't exactly have all that strong a claim - or at least think that whatever 'claim' they think they have is not nearly strong enough to impress anyone in Westeros.

A legitimate grandson of Prince Maegor could do that - Aerion Brightflame may have a bad reputation but the man has been dead for nearly seventy years. Aerys II and his madness are very fresh in everybody's memory.

But that would be a completely different story. Which is why I believe that Prince Maegor may turn out to play some role during the reign of Aegon V but is not going to turn out to be more than a footnote in Westerosi history.

I mean, the Blackfyres are not set up as being 'the rightful kings' with their back story. They are set up to be losers, repeatedly, who have now, presumably, fallen so low that they are pretending to be Targaryens just to get a place in the sun.

In that sense, I don't think that Aegon as the mummer's dragon was ever set up to be descended from somebody who had a really strong claim.

[LiveFirstDieLater]

50 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

I mean, the Blackfyres are not set up as being 'the rightful kings' with their back story. They are set up to be losers, repeatedly, who have now, presumably, fallen so low that they are pretending to be Targaryens just to get a place in the sun.

 In that sense, I don't think that Aegon as the mummer's dragon was ever set up to be descended from somebody who had a really strong claim.

Losing repeatedly and having a rightful claim aren’t at all exclusive... and frankly rightful claim doesn’t even really mean much as it is constantly up for debate.

The irony of using the expression, place in the sun, while Bloodraven sits buried in the dark beneath the ice is fantastic.

If we are just speculating, I fancy the idea that Illyrio’s Serra was a Saan, like Sargaso the member of the band of nine (the last Valyrian) with the last male Blackfyre and that is why the match was so poo poo’d by the establishment of Pentos, the Saans are a notorious pirate family. 

It helps explain why Salla knows so much and his willingness to work for Stannis (right up until the Golden Company needed ships), as Arya overhears Varys and Illyrio saying they don’t know what’s going on on Dragonstone right before Salla shows up. 

There is also this odd little story:

Queen Selyse had feasted Salla and his captains, the night before the fleet had set sail. Cotter Pyke had joined them, and four other high officers of the Night's Watch. Princess Shireen had been allowed to attend as well. As the salmon was being served, Ser Axell Florent had entertained the table with the tale of a Targaryen princeling who kept an ape as a pet. This prince liked to dress the creature in his dead son's clothes and pretend he was a child, Ser Axell claimed, and from time to time he would propose marriages for him. The lords so honored always declined politely, but of course they did decline. "Even dressed in silk and velvet, an ape remains an ape," Ser Axell said. "A wiser prince would have known that you cannot send an ape to do a man's work." The queen's men laughed, and several grinned at Davos. I am no ape, he'd thought. I am as much a lord as you, and a better man. But the memory still stung.

And Illyrio Dresses Tyrion, the little ape, in a little prince’s clothing... Tyrion happens to have a very poor record when it comes to weddings!

But it’s all just musings so far...

[Seams]

I've taken a look at a couple of cases of "retroactive foreshadowing" and tried to get a firmer picture of the publication timeline in my hand. I accept that GRRM informed Ran in May 1999 that he had worked out the Targaryen family tree and that A Clash of Kings had been published a few months earlier. To my eye, however, there are hints that he must have been working on the Targaryen backstory while he was writing Clash.

Is this the correct timeline? (Using U.S. publication dates found online)

• AGoT Aug. 1996
• The Hedge Knight Aug. 1998
• ACoK Feb. 1999
• May 1999 GRRM writes to Ran and Linda, telling them that he has worked out the history of Aegon IV's children and the Targ family tree
• ASoS Nov. 2000
• The Sworn Sword 2003
• AFfC Nov. 2005
• The Mystery Knight 2010
• ADwD July 2011

There are lots of connections between symbols used in Clash and in The Hedge Knight. There is a lot of overlap between Renly's Rainbow Guard and participants in the tourney at Ashford Meadow, for instance.

I could be persuaded that A Game of Thrones was the only novel in the series that was completed without reference to the conflict within the Targaryen royal family. Clash and The Hedge Knight were more focused on Aerion Brightflame's conflict with Aegon V, to be sure. The Blackfyre backstory becomes part of the story after the first two novels and after the first Dunk & Egg story.

If this timeline is accurate, A Storm of Swords also would have been largely (if not completely) finished by the time GRRM worked out the Blackfyre history. Jaime reviews Ser Barristan's history in the White Book and notes that he slayed Maelys the Monstrous, last of the Blackfyre pretenders, in the War of the Ninepenny Kings. (This is in Chap. 67, three-quarters of the way through the book.) Are there other, earlier Blackfyre citations in Storm? If anyone can cite earlier passages, I'd be interested to see them.

The War of the Ninepenny Kings is also mentioned a couple times in the course of the Brienne arc in Feast (Chapters 20 and 25, Brienne IV and V).

I can't use the Search of Ice and Fire website on this computer, so I don't know when we first hear about the sword Blackfyre or about Daemon or Bittersteel. Based on the footnotes in the wiki, it appears that the ASOIAF novels don't mention Aegor / Bittersteel until A Dance with Dragons with the introduction of the Golden Company. Young Griff / fAegon is also introduced to the reader in Dance.

I still have some thinking to do about where a Blackfyre pretender might turn up in the story, not to mention a Brightflame pretender or a Velaryon pretender. I agree with all of the comments here that GRRM had in mind to introduce a "mummer's dragon" of some kind, legitimate or illegitimate. In fact, I think he may have introduced multiple candidates. This is why so many of us keep seeing hidden Targs everywhere. I suspect that Tyrion may have been his original "hidden Targ" surprise, but he has added others - fAegon being the most obvious possibility. Keep an eye on Greyjoys, Littlefinger and some dark horses such as Ser Davos, Brienne, Daario, Darkstar, Salladhor Saan, Brown Ben Plumm and Penny.

The characters who will bring the Blackfyre subplot together with the regular Targ, Jon Snow, Daenerys and Renly/Stannis stories are likely to be Ser Barristan Selmy and Brienne, in my opinion. I believe that Hoster Tully also took a secret to his river-grave, and revelation of that secret may shed light on the Summerhall fire and the Blackfyre subplot. Leo Tyrell and Ser Illyn Payne are probably not what they appear to be.

Lately, I've also been wondering whether Coldhands might be Ser Duncan the Tall. Bran never mentioned that he is super tall, but maybe Bran is not a good judge of these things since his perspective is skewed by his inability to stand or walk. This could provide another link among the Stark, Bloodraven, Brightflame and Blackfyre storylines.

For what it's worth, little hints and clues in the subtext tell me that an older backstory -- perhaps modeled on the Ivanhoe conflict between Anglo-Saxon and Norman loyalists -- largely resides in the Renly / Stannis conflict. When Renly left the land of he living, his interests were taken up by House Tyrell. There are also strong Garth Greenhand and Targaryen allusions in the Tyrells, however. The Storm King allusions are more closely associated with Stannis, and his wife is a Florent, so we get the Tyrell / Florent and Greenhand / Sea god conflict layered on the rivalry of the two Baratheon brothers.

The War of the Roses allusions are played out in the Stark / Lannister conflict.

[Seams]

This may be an example of retroactive foreshadowing, with a passage from ACoK and one from The Mystery Knight. In a thread about the Great Bastard children of Aegon IV, I recently speculated that Salladhor Saan might be an echo of Bloodraven or Bittersteel. A day later, I saw a post from @LiveFirstDieLater with a detail that really stood out to me in relation to the Salladhor Saan excerpt I had just examined:

“My place is with Ser Duncan. I’m his squire.”

“Seven save you both. As you wish. You’re free to go.”

“We will,” said Egg, “but first we need some gold. Ser Duncan needs to pay the Snail his ransom.”

Bloodraven laughed. “What happened to the modest boy I once met at King’s Landing? As you say, my prince. I will instruct my paymaster to give you as much gold as you wish. Within reason.”

“Only as a loan,” insisted Dunk. “I’ll pay it back.”

“When you learn to joust, no doubt.” Lord Rivers flicked them away with his fingers, unrolled a parchment, and began to tick off names with a quill.

He is marking down the men to die, Dunk realized.

(The Mystery Knight)

 

The red priests have a great temple on Lys. Always they are burning this and burning that, crying out to their R'hllor. they bore me with their fires. Soon they will bore King Stannis too, it is to be hoped." He seemed utterly unconcerned that someone might overhear him, eating his grapes and dribbling the seeds out onto his lip, flicking them off with a finger. “My Bird of a Thousand Colors came in yesterday, good ser. She is not a warship, no, but a trader, and she paid a call on King’s Landing. Are you sure you will not have a grape? Children go hungry in the city, it is said.” He dangled the grapes before Davos and smiled.

…

“Pirate,” said Davos. “You have no wives, only concubines, and you have been well paid for every day and every ship.”

“Only in promises, said Salladhor Saan mournfully. “Good ser, it is gold I crave, not words on papers.” He popped a grape into his mouth.

“You’ll have your gold when we take the treasury in King’s Landing. No man in the seven Kingdoms is more honorable than Stannis Baratheon. He will keep his word.”  Even as Davos spoke, he thought, This world is twisted beyond hope, when lowborn smugglers must vouch for the honor of kings.

(ACoK, Davos I)

 

Both excerpts include that detail about flicking with fingers. In the Bloodraven passage (the first one), Egg asks to borrow gold on behalf of Dunk. There is also a reference to the Seven saving Dunk & Egg. In the Salladhor passage, the statues of the Seven have just been burned by Melisandre. Salladhor reminds Davos that Stannis has promised to pay him in gold for services provided.

ACoK was published before The Mystery Knight -- 1999 vs. 2010. The events of The Mystery Knight take place about a hundred years before the events of Clash but we can assume the novella was written later. Of all the characters now connected to the Blackfyre rebellions, Bloodraven would have probably been the first one to have taken shape in GRRM's mind because of his apparent role as the Three Eyed Crow. But he doesn't do any finger flicking in his scenes in the weirwood cave, as far as I can recall. Only in this "flashback" story that presents him as a much younger man. It might be that GRRM had a longstanding plan for underlying symbolism that required certain characters to flick things with their fingers. I suspect, though, that he is telling us to compare these two characters and that he set up the comparison retroactively. Even though Bloodraven is the earlier character in terms of the normal passage of time in Westeros, the Salladhor Saan character was fleshed out and introduced to the reader in the earlier novel.

[Ran]

As George has said, when ACoK started proving a much longer book than intended, he paused work to basically do something like a rough outline to give himself a better sense of the length of the series. The result was that it went from 4 to 6 books (it was 3 originally, and then AGoT itself proved so long that he cut off a part of it and used it to start ACoK). I think it's clear that he then worked in some things that were pointers for what he would flesh out in more detail later.

So, for example, I think in ACoK the mummer's dragon vision is one of the clearest examples of his noodling around with some more Targaryen related stuff, but it's only after ACoK was published that he sat down and actually came up with all the specifics. Similarly, he mentioned in an interview I did with him that he'd always had the idea of the last greenseer being someone like Bloodraven (aka someone connected to the Targaryens), but that he didn't have the details worked out initially but by 1999 he seems to have done so when he fleshed out the family tree.

[Lord Varys]

On 5/25/2018 at 11:14 PM, LiveFirstDieLater said:

Losing repeatedly and having a rightful claim aren’t at all exclusive... and frankly rightful claim doesn’t even really mean much as it is constantly up for debate.

My point there is that there is a markedly and important difference between the Blackfyre claim - the claim of a lineage which could not once successfully press it nor did they have a good justification claim in the start - and the claim of the legitimate descendant of a Targaryen from the older line (like Prince Maegor).

I mean, the Blackfyre claim is pretty much a fantasy claim based on the notion that Daemon Blackfyre was Aegon IV's eldest son (unproven and unlikely considering the number of women he bedded since he was a young teenager) and his chosen successor based on the idea that he gave Blackfyre to the boy.

The only way Daemon Blackfyre could make good of his 'claim' was to win a war - and he and his sons and grandsons lost every one of those wars.

A descendant of Prince Maegor's could just show up and ask the lords and people of Westeros to give his claim a second look - after all, he had the right on his sight, unlike any Blackfyre whose basically plunged the Realm into one pointless war after another.

Maegor and his children would have been as great a claim as Aerea and Rhaena (and their children) or Laenor and Laena Velaryon (and their descendants) if the royal branch of House Targaryen (Jaehaerys/Alysanne and their children; Viserys I and Rhaenyra, etc.) all died suddenly in some freak accident.

That means, basically, that a George grounding the ancestry of Prince Aegon in a son or daughter of Prince Maegor would tell a remarkably different story than a George grounding the ancestry of the lad in some Blackfyre daughter or granddaughter.

The former scenario makes it very unlikely that Varys/Illyrio would make use of a 'mummer's dragon' scheme whereas the latter effectively explains why they would do this - the Blackfyre cause and claim are as dead and rotten as Maelys the Monstrous, and if they want to seat one of their ilk on the Iron Throne they have to present him as a Targaryen not as a Blackfyre. They must invoke 'the good old days' not the days that never were.

AGoT makes it very clear that Robert Baratheon knows he is a usurper (which is pretty obvious) and that he rightfully fears Viserys III Targaryen (neither a warrior nor a charismatic person) simply because of the strength of his claim. He goes as far as fearing the claim of Daenerys Targaryen's child by Khal Drogo - which would only be Targaryen through the female line and half a barbarian besides - because he knows that his own claim to the Iron Throne also goes through the female line of House Targaryen.

A Targaryen pretender can challenge Robert and his children rather easily - some Blackfyre pretender can't hope to prevail if he were to fight with an open visor.

10 hours ago, Seams said:

If this timeline is accurate, A Storm of Swords also would have been largely (if not completely) finished by the time GRRM worked out the Blackfyre history. Jaime reviews Ser Barristan's history in the White Book and notes that he slayed Maelys the Monstrous, last of the Blackfyre pretenders, in the War of the Ninepenny Kings. (This is in Chap. 67, three-quarters of the way through the book.) Are there other, earlier Blackfyre citations in Storm? If anyone can cite earlier passages, I'd be interested to see them.

Your arguing there is problematic. George doesn't necessarily write chapters chronologically and he is known for constantly rewriting them as well as moving them around all the time. Thus we have no way of knowing when the references to Daemon Blackfyre and the Blackfyres in general were put in the various chapters of ASoS. It could have been as early as the first draft of the chapters in question, but it could also have been a late thought only entering the chapters after the last rewriting phase (or everywhere in-between). And there are quite a few there, anyway. Stannis mentions Daemon Blackfyre and Catelyn the problems the Blackfyre pretenders caused the Targaryens, and then we have the reference to Maelys the Monstrous.

8 hours ago, Ran said:

As George has said, when ACoK started proving a much longer book than intended, he paused work to basically do something like a rough outline to give himself a better sense of the length of the series. The result was that it went from 4 to 6 books (it was 3 originally, and then AGoT itself proved so long that he cut off a part of it and used it to start ACoK). I think it's clear that he then worked in some things that were pointers for what he would flesh out in more detail later.

I think we can differentiate there between hints to later plot lines - like the cloth dragon which basically pinned a certain plot down in a (more or less concrete) way - and to how the back story of such plot points works. George is very well-known to keep things fluid until things are published (and even then not everything is set in stone) and does not see himself beholden to some notes he wrote years ago (largely for his own use).

All speculation about the back story of characters and events has to keep that in mind.

8 hours ago, Ran said:

So, for example, I think in ACoK the mummer's dragon vision is one of the clearest examples of his noodling around with some more Targaryen related stuff, but it's only after ACoK was published that he sat down and actually came up with all the specifics. Similarly, he mentioned in an interview I did with him that he'd always had the idea of the last greenseer being someone like Bloodraven (aka someone connected to the Targaryens), but that he didn't have the details worked out initially but by 1999 he seems to have done so when he fleshed out the family tree.

The Bloodraven example is pretty interesting in the sense that it is a character that (very likely) only got as detailed and flashed out as he is now because George is also writing Dunk & Egg. Without Dunk & Egg (and TWoIaF & FaB) we would only have ASoIaF, and ASoIaF doesn't need a fully flashed-out history of the Targaryen reign to work. Important back story can be invented as George goes along, just as he did when writing the first two novels.

Meaning that when the true identity of the last greenseer and that of Prince Aegon would have been discussed in scenario where we had only ASoIaF (lacking Dunk & Egg, TWoIaF, and FaB) there would likely have been just a couple of paragraphs detailing this back story, possibly connecting it to hints about characters from the past giving in some of the earlier novels/chapters.

The whole Blackfyre complex (as well as Bloodraven) is noteworthy in the sense that it serves as both the background for (future) Dunk & Egg stories as well as future ASoIaF novels. And it is quite unique in that regard - without Dunk & Egg there would be no Bloodraven as we know him (just a three-eyed crow with a more or less detailed personal history) nor would there be a need for a House Blackfyre and five Blackfyre rebellions.

This amount of additional detailed history told in a very dense series of novels already dealing with their own intricate back story, both in the recent past (Robert's Rebellion, the Greyjoy Rebellion, the reign of Aerys II) as well as in the very distant past (the Long Night and the War for the Dawn) would simply not fit properly in ASoIaF.

The venues where we will learn more about the Blackfyres and Bloodraven the man will be, for the most part, future Dunk & Egg stories, not so much future ASoIaF novels.

Exceptions will likely be revelations about any offspring Shiera and Bloodraven might have had, the War of the Ninepenny Kings with Selmy still sticking around, as well as the story how Lord Commander Rivers ended up in that cave and first learned that he was a greenseer potential and that the Others were a real threat.

[FictionIsntReal]

On 5/24/2018 at 3:06 PM, Lord Varys said:

Even the idea of a Dany-Jon romance wasn't in the story back then - considering Jon-Arya-Tyrion were apparently the planned love triangle.

At what point would you say that changed?

[Lady Blizzardborn]

On 5/23/2018 at 3:06 PM, Ran said:

I can tell with you 100% certainty that George did not, in fact, consciously have the Blackfyres in mind in AGoT. He didn't even decide on the black dragon as their arms until 1999.

Whether his subconscious was already toying with these ideas, neither I nor he could say, I suppose.

 

Good to know, since he set up Aegon's return in AGoT.

[Count Balerion]

Interesting. So the conversation between Varys and Illyrio that Arya overhears ("His father's son", etc.) didn't originally have anything to do with the Blackfyres. (Maybe when I thought they were referring to Viserys, I was actually right? Or there was a different mummer?)

[Lost Melnibonean]

2 hours ago, Count Balerion said:

Interesting. So the conversation between Varys and Illyrio that Arya overhears ("His father's son", etc.) didn't originally have anything to do with the Blackfyres. (Maybe when I thought they were referring to Viserys, I was actually right? Or there was a different mummer?)

No, apparently it did not refer to a Blackfyre per se, but it did refer to Aegon, whoever that was going to turn out to be. 

[Lord Varys]

21 hours ago, FictionIsntReal said:

At what point would you say that changed?

Whenever George decided that Dany would not hatch only one dragon but three. That's when the whole 'the dragon has three heads' plot line entered into the story. I expect that happened rather early in the writing process of the first half of AGoT.

[Bael's Bastard]

On 5/25/2018 at 4:25 PM, Lord Varys said:

While that's not impossible I actually don't find it very likely. Prince Maegor and his legitimate descendants (Illyrio or the mother of his child would likely be the man's child, and then Aegon would have been Maegor's grandson) would have a very strong claim to the Iron Throne in their own right - a claim that could be pressed without lies and deceit. There would be no need for a 'mummer's dragon' - a boy pretending to be Rhaegar's son - they could enter the game with an open visor, telling Westeros that the line of the Mad King got rightfully dethroned at the Trident and during the Sack, and now the rightful heir to the Iron Throne is the grandson of Prince Maegor, the King Who Should Have Been.

Instead, they play a completely different game. And that makes it very likely that George's originally idea there was to have a fake Aegon, an impostor succeeding (temporarily) where Joffrey, Tommen, and Myrcella will fail.

And that, in turn, makes it actually very likely that the likes of Varys (who I think is more likely to be a Blackfyre or Targaryen bastard than a legitimate descendant of the dragon tree) and Illyrio don't exactly have all that strong a claim - or at least think that whatever 'claim' they think they have is not nearly strong enough to impress anyone in Westeros.

A legitimate grandson of Prince Maegor could do that - Aerion Brightflame may have a bad reputation but the man has been dead for nearly seventy years. Aerys II and his madness are very fresh in everybody's memory.

But that would be a completely different story. Which is why I believe that Prince Maegor may turn out to play some role during the reign of Aegon V but is not going to turn out to be more than a footnote in Westerosi history.

I mean, the Blackfyres are not set up as being 'the rightful kings' with their back story. They are set up to be losers, repeatedly, who have now, presumably, fallen so low that they are pretending to be Targaryens just to get a place in the sun.

In that sense, I don't think that Aegon as the mummer's dragon was ever set up to be descended from somebody who had a really strong claim.

I agree that the plan all along was to have a fake Aegon (son of Rhaegar), but I disagree that AeGriff, Varys, and/or Illyrio need be descended from a bastard to explain why they didn't openly press a claim to the throne. We still know nothing about Maegor's life or any issue. But we know he was passed over as an infant, in part because of his father being Aerion, for a man who reigned for twenty-six years, and left an adult son, an adult grandson, and a baby great-grandson to follow him in smooth succession. There was no clear opening to press a claim, not until the most powerful lords in Westeros had had their fill of House Targaryen, at which point a descendant of Aerion wasn't likely to find an easy path to the throne.

The fourth rebellion attempt early in Egg's reign had no support in Westeros, and the fifth just after his death didn't even touch Westeros. But as weak as the later Blackfyre rebellions were, they at least had instances of support from some powerful secondary houses in Westeros, and the Golden Company. What support are the descendants of Aerion likely to have had, when only a few had spoken up for Aerion's son in the first place (and no indication of whether these were people who actually had armies to lend to his cause, or were people like maesters or septons pressing for rules of succession to be followed strictly), fifty years before Robert's Rebellion?

Then again, for all we know, Maegor and/or his descendants could turn out to make an attempt at the throne during the reign of Aegon V, or do or be accused of something which causes them to be exiled, or to have had to go into hiding out of fear of being imprisoned or executed. We just don't know anything about Maegor or any possible descendants. But I don't think it is coincidental that a skipped over infant son of Aerion was introduced in the same book that introduced the idea of a mummer's dragon, whether Aerion's son/descendants are a red herring or more.

[Lost Melnibonean]

4 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Whenever George decided that Dany would not hatch only one dragon but three. That's when the whole 'the dragon has three heads' plot line entered into the story. I expect that happened rather early in the writing process of the first half of AGoT.

He already had three eggs in the 1993 letter, didn't he? 

[Lost Melnibonean]

17 hours ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

Good to know, since he set up Aegon's return in AGoT.

I know what you're thinking.