Jump to content

The Ghost of High Heart, and a promised... “Prince”?


kissdbyfire

Recommended Posts

5 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

The stuff the GoHH predicts are short term. Knowing the PtwP is really far out of the range we see her predict in. 

Fascinating observation. Perhaps this should tell us that the PtwP is now present somewhere in the world and it isn't anyone else's children or grandchildren.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

Bloody hell. I hate generating long, complicated replies on this forum. Got eaten. :tantrum:

Hate when that happens too! 

17 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

Short version of stuff I noticed:

  • The stuff the GoHH predicts are short term. Knowing the PtwP is really far out of the range that we see her predict in. 

 

This is super interesting. I need to think, but love it.

17 minutes ago, Lollygag said:
  • GoHH talks about the (red) wedding and cackles implying that she sees it for what it is, and it is in the same time range that she predicts the other stuff. Yet she still sends Arya and whoever may accompany her there with no warning. Don't trust her. 

 

I think there are possible explanations here that don’t necessarily make her untrustworthy. For instance, she could have known Arya (and the others wouldn’t be harmed, or wouldn’t get there in time. 

17 minutes ago, Lollygag said:
  • She goes on about how fire's not welcome. When Arya feels threatened by the GoHH, she instinctively backs to the fire for safety. So why would the GoHH be hanging and serving the dragon and fire people? A bit weird. 

 

Yeah, but she was only hanging out w/ the Targs because of Jenny. But definitely see what you’re saying, and to me it adds up w/ the OG not being too keen on the Targs incestuous ways. So again, I feel it’d be odd for her to go, “Make your son and daughter marry each other and awesome things will happen and they’ll produce the saviour of the world!”

And this works even better (for me) if the ptwp and AA are one and the same, b/c I think Arsehole Azor Ahai is not a hero. 

17 minutes ago, Lollygag said:
  • A big, big deal is made of prices paid and cost negotiated. Maggy the Frog's obligatory answers are simple answers. What she offers freely screws Cersei up. The next time I can get to the full text of the GoHH, I'll be looking for what she says when there's payment of wine or song, and what she offers free of payment. 
     
  • She drank the last of the wine in four long swallows, flung the skin aside, and pointed her stick at Lord Beric. “I’ll have my payment now. I’ll have the song you promised me.”  The Price that was Promised? Maybe a price wasn't paid and she took revenge

How? Any ideas?

12 minutes ago, bent branch said:

As you demonstrated with the quotes, GoHH's prophecies are very symbolic with a lot of potential for being misinterpreted. What I was trying to say, is that perhaps the misinterpreting of a prophecy is part of the prophecy itself. While self-fulfilling prophecies are one thing, is it also possible that in a string of prophecies, past misinterpretations affect future prophecies. I don't know if I am explaining myself well, but GoHH's prophecy was based on what we now know was the misinterpretation of prince for dragon.

Good points. And as I said, there may be more than one misinterpretation at play. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ok, random and poorly developed thought before bed, based on @Lollygag‘s excellent observation... 

Since Egg was becoming more and more obsessed w/ dragons and having difficulties implementing his reforms, there may have been discussions among the family on the prophecy and ptwp and whathaveyou. The GoHH being at court w/ Jenny may have allowed her to hear things and end up saying something cryptic that was taken as encouragement by Jaehaerys. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So, disclaimer. I have about 0 interest in anything Targ, so my take is decidedly one-sided and based mostly on what we see of the GoHH.

 

1 hour ago, kissdbyfire said:

I think there are possible explanations here that don’t necessarily make her untrustworthy. For instance, she could have known Arya (and the others wouldn’t be harmed, or wouldn’t get there in time. 

Could be. But I'm taking my cue from that she just really went off on Arya and deliberately sending someone to the RW knowing it will turn into a massacre and not giving them a heads up is Not. Cool. 

 

1 hour ago, kissdbyfire said:

How? Any ideas?

Definitely spitballing based on how I see the GoHH as a character. We know that the GoHH was tied to Summerhall. Aegon wanted to know things. GoHH knows things. So he went to the GoHH about Summerhall stuff. But he didn't pay or couldn't pay because he was dead. So the GoHH got back for the lack of payment by telling his kids to intermarry which would have really ticked Aegon off and damned the line depending on what you think about the OGs. I'll have to reread the entirety of the passage to see if there's a pattern of what she offers when paid and what she offers when not paid to be sure. But it doesn't seem unlikely at all that Aegon had an arrangement with the GoHH. 

This is based partially on Maggy the Frog, but also on real life myth that a lot of magical, mythical beings, especially fae, have a very, very strong sense of balance and fairness and if they feel disrespected, they get extremely vengeful. The GoHH exhibits this because there's so much talk of payment and her taking a swig and demanding the song, at least based on what I have access to at the moment, points this way. For the in-world example of Maggy the Frog, the 3 answers she's obligated to give are simple, clean answers. All of the elaborations offered by Maggy beyond those basic answers ("Never." "Aye." "Oh, aye.") are meant to screw with Cersei's head. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:
Quote

I get that gender bias could be one reason that the possibility of a princess was overlooked if HV is gender neutral regarding Prince/Princess or alternatively if the the prophesy talks about a 'Dragon that was promised' and everyone assumed it must be a male. However, what translation is Maester Aemon talking about? It can't be HV to the common tongue,

Apologies if I’m being especially dense, but why not?

A thousand years ago, Westeros would have been a cultural backwater compared to Old Valyria at its zenith. W did not have roads! Most of W was Andal dominated and they had not that long ago been displaced from Andalos by the Valyrians. So, while it's perfectly possible that the Citadel translated scrolls from HV into the CT, I don't think the Westorosi elite in the years after AC, would be treating these CT as particularly authentic, since HV is still taught to those with a good education. Tyrion did not have a Maester's education, but has some HV, for instance. On Essos, of course, knowledge of HV seems fairly common even into the current timeline, so the Citadel and the court at King's Landing would have had no problems in getting language tuitions if they needed it. So it seems very unlikely only CT translations from a thousand years ago were exclusively relied upon without reference to the HV original texts. It's like using Anglo-Saxon or early German translations of Latin texts, centuries later. Actually given the difference in timelines are even greater (a thousand years), maybe a better approximation is using Celtic language translations from Ireland or Iona the first few centuries AD a thousand years later

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In response to the question posed by the OP in terms of whether the GoHH was trying to issue a warning pertaining to TPTWP, I think the answer is no, probably not. Here's why: 

Quote

"We're taking her to Riverrun, to her mother."

"Nay," said the dwarf. "You're not. The Blackfish holds the rivers now. If it's the mother you want, seek her at the Twins. For there's to be a wedding." She cackled again. "Look in your fires, pink priest, and you will see. Not now, though, not here, you'll see nothing here. This place belongs to the old gods still..."

Here, the GoHH is actually giving instructions. She tells them to go to the Twins to find Cat instead of going to Riverrun. However, she also knows exactly what is going to happen at the Twins. We know this because she foretells Cat's body in the river, Grey Wind howling and no one listening, and the music at the wedding. She also looks at Arya and says that she smells of death, likely less because of what Arya has already been through (Beric, Thoros, and the rest of the BHWOB have all been through the violence in the Riverlands) and moreso because of what's coming. She compares the grief she felt at Summerhall to the grief Arya is about to feel. 

And yet, she doesn't give a direct warning about what's coming. She conveys information in a roundabout way -- e.g "I saw a girl with purple snakes in her hair" -- but she also conveys info in a perfectly direct way -- "There's to be a wedding." It's not that she's having visions where she sees things but isn't sure about how to interpret them the way that Mel does. She sees things and knows exactly what they mean. But she also knows the Red Wedding is coming and deliberately chooses to withhold that information from relevant parties. 

The closest she comes to giving a warning is telling Thoros to look for visions of it himself. But she also does so after telling them to take Arya to the Twins, but before saying that Thoros must look for the visions later. It almost seems that she's deliberately obfuscating any indirect warning she's attempting to give. This is somewhat underscored by the fact that she finds the impending doom of the Starks humorous. 

It doesn't seem that the GoHH goes out of her way to give warnings. Granted, this is decades after Jaehaerys and Summerhall, and the Red Wedding has dire political implications for the Starks and the North whereas TPTWP is likely more significant to mankind as a whole. So her character and motivations are likely quite a bit different, here. 

But, were the GoHH genuinely attempting to give Jaehaerys a warning, I think it unlikely that the warning would go so misinterpreted. We've seen the GoHH speak very frankly, and I think if TPTWP were to be detrimental to either House Targaryen or the world at large, and were the GoHH so inclined to speak frankly about that, Jaehaerys would have to be unusually stupid for the warning to go so far over his head. 

If anything, I think it's more likely that the GoHH was attempting to further the Targaryen's cause and probably did encourage the Aerys/Rhaella match. But I think that's for another thread.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Alaynsa Starne said:

And yet, she doesn't give a direct warning about what's coming. She conveys information in a roundabout way -- e.g "I saw a girl with purple snakes in her hair" -- but she also conveys info in a perfectly direct way -- "There's to be a wedding." It's not that she's having visions where she sees things but isn't sure about how to interpret them the way that Mel does. She sees things and knows exactly what they mean. But she also knows the Red Wedding is coming and deliberately chooses to withhold that information from relevant parties. 

 

I assumed she knows about the wedding at Twins from "conventional" source, like she talked to sb who knows. I think she just has to have contact with other people from the area to survive. And the vision is another, abstract thing she cannot interpret. It would have been quite malevolent of her to withold the info and I cannot see why.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, Lollygag said:

She drank the last of the wine in four long swallows, flung the skin aside, and pointed her stick at Lord Beric. “I’ll have my payment now. I’ll have the song you promised me.”  The Price that was Promised? Maybe a price wasn't paid and she took revenge.

That's interesting, if not... disturbing if coupled with what Rhaegar said in the HotU visions:

"he is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, more folks should ask if this is a positive or negative prophecy, and for whom is it positive or negative.

If AA and the Prince/Princess are the same person, it could be negative. Reason being that, if I was a writer I would go for maximum irony because of how much it whipped the Targaryens into a frenzy about how they thought it was a good thing and how they are the saviors of humanity, which actually led to 1) more incest marriages, madness, and Aerys, and 2) rash decisions over Stark women and a rebellion that overthrew their dynasty. So the best writing choice would be to have this promised prince/princess continue acts of rash decisions that actually end the Targaryen line. So maybe they thought it was good for their House, but she was actually predicting was their doom, and they self-fulfilled it.

If it is a positive prophecy for someone else but still negative for House Targaryen,  you can still get to this irony above by having the promised prince end the Targaryen line himself (Jon the Dragonsbane?) while being a prince Ned promised to protect. But what does he actually do? I still dont think its a savior of humanity because its not a big enough twist. So maybe its something more grounded, for instance, if we see Jon make a promise to protect the Starks, he fulfills it without knowledge of it. We already see Jon attempting to protect his sister...a promise could be made directly in the future. Jon having to go against his own House, the Targaryens, to fulfill that promise would be another good use of irony.

If its positive for everyone involved and the only two remaining Targaryens are both the saviors of humanity then the prophecy is played straight. If its just a question of which Targaryen is the savior of humanity then its not very interesting, and also delivers no irony to the doorstep of this House, because they were able to predict things right, for the most part. Nobody has luck like that when prophecy is involved.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

I think Jaime’s weir wood dream is something quite different. :dunno:

There is a difference, but I think it was meant to influence a desired outcome. The outcome of Jaime's dream was that he went back to Harrenhal for Brienne. And the outcome of the GoHH's ptwp vision was that Jaehaerys married his children to each other.

 

14 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

I don’t know... what if this prince/dragon/hero type is a mistranslation? And from what we know, I also think it would be odd for the OG to be pushing or encouraging incest. 

So I get what you're saying, but the Targaryens already practice incest, so I don't think the old gods would be pushing or encouraging anything that goes against the Targaryen nature. 

Bloodraven who as far as we know kept the old gods before his days a tree wizard was diddling his half-sister. He wanted to marry her. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 hours ago, bent branch said:

Fascinating observation. Perhaps this should tell us that the PtwP is now present somewhere in the world and it isn't anyone else's children or grandchildren.

I tend to go back and forth on AA and the ptwp being the same “person”or not. And whenever I’m having a “not” day, I like to toy w/ the idea that it’s Bran. 

In a way that may not make sense to anyone else, I think it could possibly tie in w/ broken promises (or agreements), unpaid debts, revenge and the GoHH and Summerhall. I will try to get these thoughts more organised in my head and will get back to it.

Also, many posts w/ interesting insights to reply to, but it will have to wait a bit, 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

42 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

I tend to go back and forth on AA and the ptwp being the same “person”or not. And whenever I’m having a “not” day, I like to toy w/ the idea that it’s Bran. 

In a way that may not make sense to anyone else, I think it could possibly tie in w/ broken promises (or agreements), unpaid debts, revenge and the GoHH and Summerhall. I will try to get these thoughts more organised in my head and will get back to it.

Also, many posts w/ interesting insights to reply to, but it will have to wait a bit, 

iirc the bleeding star appears in both legends; so it's more likely than not that AA and ptwp are the same. (Last Hero sounds a bit different though...)

19 hours ago, Lollygag said:

Bloody hell. I hate generating long, complicated replies on this forum. Got eaten. :tantrum:

 

Short version of stuff I noticed:

  • The stuff the GoHH predicts are short term. Knowing the PtwP is really far out of the range that we see her predict in. 
     
  • GoHH talks about the (red) wedding and cackles implying that she sees it for what it is, and it is in the same time range that she predicts the other stuff. Yet she still sends Arya and whoever may accompany her there with no warning. Don't trust her. 
     
  • She goes on about how fire's not welcome. When Arya feels threatened by the GoHH, she instinctively backs to the fire for safety. So why would the GoHH be hanging and serving the dragon and fire people? A bit weird. 
     
  • A big, big deal is made of prices paid and cost negotiated. Maggy the Frog's obligatory answers are simple answers. What she offers freely screws Cersei up. The next time I can get to the full text of the GoHH, I'll be looking for what she says when there's payment of wine or song, and what she offers free of payment. 
     
  • She drank the last of the wine in four long swallows, flung the skin aside, and pointed her stick at Lord Beric. “I’ll have my payment now. I’ll have the song you promised me.”  The Price that was Promised? Maybe a price wasn't paid and she took revenge. 

Maybe dragon fire is not the same thing as red god fire? I don't know much Targ history, but it seems the red priests never converted them, and perhaps never tried. And they were incredibly, incredibly slow at identifying Dany as AA even when the world knew she had three live dragons and used the Unburnt as one of her titles.

Targs seem to prefer alchemists to red priests. At least Aerys does. And I would add Cersei and Tyrion as Targ descendants with an affinity with wildfire. There's a quote, something like: the emeralds and jades of wildfire warred with the yellows and reds of common flame.  There's more than one kind of fire, then.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Alaynsa Starne said:

Here, the GoHH is actually giving instructions. She tells them to go to the Twins to find Cat instead of going to Riverrun. However, she also knows exactly what is going to happen at the Twins. We know this because she foretells Cat's body in the river, Grey Wind howling and no one listening, and the music at the wedding. She also looks at Arya and says that she smells of death, likely less because of what Arya has already been through (Beric, Thoros, and the rest of the BHWOB have all been through the violence in the Riverlands) and moreso because of what's coming. She compares the grief she felt at Summerhall to the grief Arya is about to feel. 

While unlikely, theoretically, she may not quite have realized that her visions actually meant the RW. She saw a woman who was a fish who was dead and opened her eyes etc. Perhaps the vision was not high definition enough for her to see it was Cat. It didn't look like Arya, Beric et al worked out that it was Cat, so perhaps she didn't either.

When she says she feels death when looking at Arya, perhaps she glimpses Arya's future as an acolyte of the many-faced God? So, there is a small chance she did not have malign intentions in allowing Arya & co to depart for the twins. She is quite old and seems to have developed a decent appetite for wine, maybe she cannot really work out what her visions mean, or just couldn't care less. A rogue/outcast CotF?

Finally, in the current narrative, if the GOHH gets her visions from the weirnet, they could be from BR, or at the least, he could be aware of her. However,  at the time of Jahaerys II, it's not clear if BR was already in the cave and had taken over as the main man. If timelines permit, that would be another interesting angle.

PS: I am not in the camp of BR is responsible for everything, but in the case of a character so clearly connected to the weirnet like the GOHH, his involvement maybe worth examining. That said, visions, (dragon)dreams and red priest fire image reading (think Moqorro, if you're not a fan of Mel) in the universe seem to be true instances of magic, so maybe BR can be left out of it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So if I understand you correctly you are having a hard time with the the ghosts vision recommending or condoning inscest?

I don't think that this, or any or her dreams, reccomend or condone any course of action. They simply say what will be, they don't say do x and y will happen, they just say x will happen.

The ones you quoted anyway, and sadly we have no direct quote from the ghost to Jahearys to confirm this but my guess is it follows the same pattern. It is a wildcard because it is a prophecy about another(most likely misinterpreted) prophecy.

The Ghost herself has an almost unbelievable success rate with the dreams she tells the BWB. So in my opinion she is likely right and everyone around her was interpreting things incorrectly or perhaps incompletely. Aemon seems to come to a similar conclusion on his deathbed, but there is every possibility he( and I)could be very wrong.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3/24/2019 at 10:29 PM, Lollygag said:

Definitely spitballing based on how I see the GoHH as a character. We know that the GoHH was tied to Summerhall. Aegon wanted to know things. GoHH knows things. So he went to the GoHH about Summerhall stuff.

Very possible Egg tried to get information form the GoHH, I agree. But there has to be so much more to all of it that we haven’t been told yet. We know wildfire was used, we know Egg thought dragons would allow him to implement the reforms he wanted to make. And we know few people survived. But was a blood sacrifice planned all along? If so, who? I have a very, very hard time believing Egg would deliberately plan on doing something like this... and if he did, I don’t see Dunk letting him. Was there someone else there who thought, “well, they’re gonna try but w/o a blood sacrifice it won’t happen so I’ll help them out” and then that is what caused everything to go terribly wrong? Was it the maesters, thinking “oh cool, we’ll thwart Egg’s plans and hopefully get rid of a few Targs while we’re at it”? There’s way too much we don’t know... Another thing I don’t think happen is the GoHH going along w/ any type of plan that would endanger Jenny. 

 

On 3/24/2019 at 10:29 PM, Lollygag said:

But he didn't pay or couldn't pay because he was dead. So the GoHH got back for the lack of payment by telling his kids to intermarry which would have really ticked Aegon off and damned the line depending on what you think about the OGs. I'll have to reread the entirety of the passage to see if there's a pattern of what she offers when paid and what she offers when not paid to be sure. But it doesn't seem unlikely at all that Aegon had an arrangement with the GoHH. 

I want to re-read the whole chapters but haven’t had time yet. Agree on the bolded. 

On 3/25/2019 at 3:27 AM, Ser Hedge said:

So it seems very unlikely only CT translations from a thousand years ago were exclusively relied upon without reference to the HV original texts.

I agree. Since Mel says the prophecy is “5,000 yrs old”, maybe it was translated from another language into HV and then into the CT. And maybe what happened is like the telling of stories , where each time it’s told it changes a little bit...

On 3/25/2019 at 9:24 AM, Alexis-something-Rose said:

There is a difference, but I think it was meant to influence a desired outcome.

I don’t think it was “meant”, if that makes sense? I think having his head on the weirwood stump simply opened up Jaime’s mind in a way it wasn’t before. 

On 3/25/2019 at 9:24 AM, Alexis-something-Rose said:

The outcome of Jaime's dream was that he went back to Harrenhal for Brienne. And the outcome of the GoHH's ptwp vision was that Jaehaerys married his children to each other.

We don’t know what she saw, and whatever the vision was, the outcome may have been... unexpected. 

On 3/25/2019 at 9:24 AM, Alexis-something-Rose said:

So I get what you're saying, but the Targaryens already practice incest, so I don't think the old gods would be pushing or encouraging anything that goes against the Targaryen nature. 

Agree, it was a poor choice of words on my part. 

On 3/25/2019 at 9:24 AM, Alexis-something-Rose said:

 Bloodraven who as far as we know kept the old gods before his days a tree wizard was diddling his half-sister. He wanted to marry her. 

Before when? There’s not much in the way of evidence that he did follow the OG early on in his life iirc. Before being sent to the Wall Bloodraven was very much a Targ supporter, and there’s nothing I remember off the top of my head suggesting a strong connection to the OG. Perhaps the RT using weirwood bows? I don’t know. My impression has always been that at some point, maybe during Egg’s reign, he learnt something that prompted him to do what he did so he’d be where he had to be: the Wall. And getting rid of the Blackfyre (Aenys? Whatever) was the cherry on top. 

Of course, I am speaking as someone who has a complete pro OG/Bloodraven bias. :D

17 hours ago, Springwatch said:

iirc the bleeding star appears in both legends; so it's more likely than not that AA and ptwp are the same. (Last Hero sounds a bit different though...)

I was putting all the ptwp/AA stuff together but rl got in the way. I will get it done, just dunno when. 

18 hours ago, Springwatch said:

Maybe dragon fire is not the same thing as red god fire?

Yeah, seems likely.

18 hours ago, Springwatch said:

I don't know much Targ history, but it seems the red priests never converted them, and perhaps never tried. And they were incredibly, incredibly slow at identifying Dany as AA even when the world knew she had three live dragons and used the Unburnt as one of her titles.

True, and I find the total lack of Red Priests in all the Targ “history” we have to be a bit odd. 

18 hours ago, Springwatch said:

Targs seem to prefer alchemists to red priests. At least Aerys does. And I would add Cersei and Tyrion as Targ descendants with an affinity with wildfire. There's a quote, something like: the emeralds and jades of wildfire warred with the yellows and reds of common flameThere's more than one kind of fire, then.

ACoK, Sansa VII

“The southern sky was aswirl with glowing, shifting colors, the reflections of the great fires that burned below. Baleful green tides moved against the bellies of the clouds, and pools of orange light spread out across the heavens. The reds and yellows of common flame warred against the emeralds and jades of wildfire, each color flaring and then fading, birthing armies of short-lived shadows to die again an instant later. Green dawns gave way to orange dusks in half a heartbeat. The air itself smelled burnt, the way a soup kettle sometimes smelled if it was left on the fire too long and all the soup boiled away. Embers drifted through the night air like swarms of fireflies.”

Definitely agree on the bolded. Does that mean each different type of fire will have different qualities and properties? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 hours ago, Springwatch said:

 

Maybe dragon fire is not the same thing as red god fire? I don't know much Targ history, but it seems the red priests never converted them, and perhaps never tried. And they were incredibly, incredibly slow at identifying Dany as AA even when the world knew she had three live dragons and used the Unburnt as one of her titles.

Targs seem to prefer alchemists to red priests. At least Aerys does. And I would add Cersei and Tyrion as Targ descendants with an affinity with wildfire. There's a quote, something like: the emeralds and jades of wildfire warred with the yellows and reds of common flame.  There's more than one kind of fire, then.

Things start to make sense with two different types of fire as you suggest. The GoHH's eyes are fiery, but she says fire is an adversary and Arya seeks the safety of fire when threatened by her. It may tie into the green and red/black thing which keeps coming up throughout the series. The Targ wars are broken down to Greens vs Blacks. Glass candles from Valyria are black (3) and green (1). In the shade of the evening thread, connections were made between weirwoods and how they seemed like dragon trees, yet GoHH says the trees don't like fire. Mel burns weirwoods. Greenseer eyes are usually red or green. Ghost's and Shaggy's eyes are red and wildfire green. We see aspects of water magic which are positive (Rhoyne) and negative (Others, Garin's curse). Maybe there's likewise positive and negative aspects of fire. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think it might come down to using fire, in smaller quantities, to defend the realm (like in the NW oath) vs. attack the realm in massive, nuclear quantities (wildfire/dragonfire). Tyrion tried to use wildfire to defend the realm against Stannis' red fire, but I dont think that's going to happen a second time. Flea Bottom almost exploded.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

Very possible Egg tried to get information form the GoHH, I agree. But there has to be so much more to all of it that we haven’t been told yet. We know wildfire was used, we know Egg thought dragons would allow him to implement the reforms he wanted to make. And we know few people survived. But was a blood sacrifice planned all along? If so, who? I have a very, very hard time believing Egg would deliberately plan on doing something like this... and if he did, I don’t see Dunk letting him. Was there someone else there who thought, “well, they’re gonna try but w/o a blood sacrifice it won’t happen so I’ll help them out” and then that is what caused everything to go terribly wrong? Was it the maesters, thinking “oh cool, we’ll thwart Egg’s plans and hopefully get rid of a few Targs while we’re at it”? There’s way too much we don’t know... Another thing I don’t think happen is the GoHH going along w/ any type of plan that would endanger Jenny. 

Agree with all of this. 

TWOW

Spoiler

After seeing all of the OG stuff around that area in the Arianne chapter, I can't help but think the OGs are tied to what went down at Summerhall. It explains the ice and fire thing, the presence of the GoHH, Bran named his wolf Summer, Summerhall. I can't say how, though. And there's BR's mysterious punishment and look where he is. 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3/24/2019 at 8:34 PM, kissdbyfire said:

What if there are more mistranslations and wrong interpretations at play here?

What if the GoHH’s prediction was a sort of warning? And not meant to encourage the marriage of Aerys to Rhaella at all? 

Then the people involved would be morons because it seems to be rather obvious that the real Jaehaerys II actually talked to the real dwarf woman and actually got a real and pretty precise prophecy from her. A prophecy that triggered him to insist on an incestuous marriage his own father, the king, would have not, exactly, favored, considering that his own history apparently caused him to grow critical of incestuous unions. That Prince Aerys wed his sister Princess Rhaella anyway during the reign of Aegon V is confirmation that the king allowed himself to be persuaded by 'the reasons' for this marriage. Which, one assumes, actually did involve the dwarf woman and Jenny talk to him in addition to Jaehaerys II.

After all, we do know that Aerys and Rhaella did not have any inclination to marry each other, unlike Jaehaerys II and Shaera - that, in combination with Aegon V own skepticism about the incest thing as well as Jaehaerys II own description as 'weak' makes it exceedingly unlikely that this marriage would have taken place if the king had not been on board with it.

Even if Jaehaerys had forced his children to marry each other on his own seat of Dragonstone, he would have hardly had the power to enforce a consummation - and an unconsummated marriage could have easily been set aside once the prince and princess had had the opportunity to reach their royal grandfather.

Another possibility, of course, is that Aegon V's skepticism about incest abated somewhat in the wake of the Jaehaerys-Shaera match. He did not want to marry any of his children to each other originally, but once two of his children married each other against his will he let that stand and he did not prevent the marriage of his grandchildren, either.

One does indeed wonder what kind of good evidence he could have gotten for getting away from the incest thing. The Targaryen beauty and looks - in a sense essential to their special position in the kingdom they rule - is preserved in this way, and the incestuous Targaryens are not plagued by infertility or hereditary diseases the way a comparable real world family who practiced incest to their degree would suffer from. And Aegon V wanted the family dragons back. Did he believe his distant ancestors could become dragonriders after the return of the dragons if the blood of the dragon was not kept pure? We don't know.

Could be he came to the conclusion that lesser/no incest would reduce the Aerion phenomenon. But considering how prevalent family traits are in those Westerosi dynasties - just compare Rogar Baratheon and his brothers to Robert and his brothers - I don't think less/no incest would have made the Targaryens into better people.

But I'd actually assume that Aegon V was told about the prophecy - while I don't think he bought the promised prince prophecy as such, believing he was the one who would bring the dragons back, not some future prince - heeded it enough to give his prophecy-obsessed heir his way on the matter of the marriage of his own children.

It might even be that Aerys and Rhaella - while having no inclination to marry each other for romantic reasons - were fed enough 'prophecy stuff' by their father to actually accept 'the role' 'prophecy' had given to them.

Just like their son Rhaegar would later on, too.

The Targaryens of the 3rd century - and in part also of the 2nd century - didn't behave as loonies so much because their were incestuous and entitled brats (although they were that, too), they behaved this way because they were obsessed with dreams and prophecy revolving around the monstrous creatures they once rode and then lost.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

Before when? There’s not much in the way of evidence that he did follow the OG early on in his life iirc. Before being sent to the Wall Bloodraven was very much a Targ supporter, and there’s nothing I remember off the top of my head suggesting a strong connection to the OG. Perhaps the RT using weirwood bows? I don’t know. My impression has always been that at some point, maybe during Egg’s reign, he learnt something that prompted him to do what he did so he’d be where he had to be: the Wall. And getting rid of the Blackfyre (Aenys? Whatever) was the cherry on top. 

100% assumption on my end. Poor choice of words.

With Bloodraven, I wonder if he didn't have a similar experience that Bran had. I've wondered a lot if Bloodraven wasn't the one who gave Summerhall its name, in a similar way Bran gave his direwolf the name Summer after he woke up from his coma. 

The other thing I've wondered about is how much influence Betha Blackwood and her old gods had with her husband and her children. 

I don't know how much influence Bloodraven has on a lot of things, but I'm willing to bet that the Rhaella/Aerys marriage has his prints all over it, same as what happened at Summerhall. 

ETA - I think there's something to be said about a birth that was happening away from salt and smoke, but for which the conditions ended up being created anyway.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...