The Damphair’s Resurrection

[Moiraine Sedai]

One of the prophecies shown to our young protagonist, Daenerys Targaryen, concern Aeron Greyjoy.  Aeron Damphair is the dying man on the prow of the boat. We assume the Damphair will die.  Which is not necessarily going to happen. The Ironborn have a saying, “what is dead may never die.” The Damphair is not going to die.  He has been baptized by sea water.
 

Because a godless man may never sit the Seastone chair, the Damphair will oppose Euron. Damphair will support Asha. Asha will rule the Ironborn.

[Angel Eyes]

3 hours ago, Moiraine Sedai said:

One of the prophecies shown to our young protagonist, Daenerys Targaryen, concern Aeron Greyjoy.  Aeron Damphair is the dying man on the prow of the boat. We assume the Damphair will die.  Which is not necessarily going to happen. The Ironborn have a saying, “what is dead may never die.” The Damphair is not going to die.  He has been baptized by sea water.
 

Because a godless man may never sit the Seastone chair, the Damphair will oppose Euron. Damphair will support Asha. Asha will rule the Ironborn.

But he didn't. Why would he change his tune like that? Plus he's already been resurrected once, how many times does that happen until it wears off?

[Aejohn the Conqueroo]

4 hours ago, Moiraine Sedai said:

One of the prophecies shown to our young protagonist, Daenerys Targaryen, concern Aeron Greyjoy.  Aeron Damphair is the dying man on the prow of the boat. We assume the Damphair will die.  Which is not necessarily going to happen. The Ironborn have a saying, “what is dead may never die.” The Damphair is not going to die.  He has been baptized by sea water.
 

Because a godless man may never sit the Seastone chair, the Damphair will oppose Euron. Damphair will support Asha. Asha will rule the Ironborn.

Asha isn't a godly man. Aeron would have to explain the Drowned God's wishy washy edicts.

[Daeron the Daring]

It's interesting that Euron wants to sacrafice a couple priests of different religions, but the thing is: He May very well not care about his brother's death, but the Ironborn would. Neither kinslaying, nor the ritual sacrafice of a priest of their own religion would appeal to them, and I think Euron is smart enough to know that.

[Wolfcrow]

These type of resurrections, Aeron, Patchface, even Davos since his situation is also a little bit blurry, worked kinda differently, that let's say Lady Stoneheart and Beric. We haven't seen someone like Mel or Thoros or in general a priest waking them up, it's like "the gods" helped or whatever power we have. All of them had natural deaths, but Euron seem to work on a sacrifice or in general magic stuff, so do we know if after this will be able to be resurrected again? Because I think the will not. 

[Mourning Star]

I think it’s a huge assumption to assume this is a vision of Aeron:

A corpse stood at the prow of a ship, eyes bright in his dead face, grey lips smiling sadly.

Especially given that:

"Only by the lights of those who smile at nothing." He thought of his father and his uncle Aeron.

And…

"The day is won," Dagmer called down. "And yet you do not smile, boy. The living should smile, for the dead cannot." 

I’ve always disliked the idea that “smiling sadly” represented a Greyjoy, since sad and joy are opposites.

When you look at who actually smiles a “sad smile” in the text the possibilities are at least interesting… Arthur Dayne, Jon Snow… and wearing a dead face always screamed Faceless Men to me. But, at this point the best we can do is speculate.

"… they lose their ships, oftimes their very lives. The seas are dangerous, and never more so than in autumn. No doubt many a captain sinking in a storm has taken some small solace in his binder back in Braavos, knowing that his widow and children will not want." A sad smile touched his lips. "It is one thing to write such a binder, though, and another to make good on it."

[Bowen 747]

Water magic could have its own method to bring back the dead but the thing you get back is just a wet wight.  The drowning thing is a near-death experience.  It's not the same as bringing back the dead.  

[chrisdaw]

Euron is the symbolic entity Dany's vision is about but the specific scene might be Aeron.

Yes Aeron will be reborn, it will be a second life in a Leviathan which is basically what the Drowned God is. I've been explaining it in posts for years and most comprehensively in the link in my signature.

Aeron will second life a Leviathan, Euron will second life the Stone Beast which will become a sea dragon (kraken), they will battle beneath the waves for dominion, Aeron will win, hence the Drowned God having his revenge on Euron and condemning him to slugging along the ocean floor slurping shit. It's all literal.

[LynnS]

21 hours ago, Mourning Star said:

think it’s a huge assumption to assume this is a vision of Aeron:

A corpse stood at the prow of a ship, eyes bright in his dead face, grey lips smiling sadly.

I would tie this vision with the Forsaken chapter:

Quote

E

Spoiler

uron binds Aeron to the row of his ship in a standing position.  The Damphair is a drowned man of course and so a reference to a dead man or one who is about to die.  Purple lips ,a consequence of the shade of the evening, he is forced to drink. 

 

I think it's as good a guess as any. 

[Seams]

I think the prophecy or vision relayed to Dany could be about this:

Quote

The Selaesori Qhoran was a wallowing tub of five hundred tons, with a deep hold, high castles fore and aft, and a single mast between. At her forecastle stood a grotesque figurehead, some worm-eaten wooden eminence with a constipated look and a scroll tucked up under one arm. Tyrion had never seen an uglier ship. Her crew was no prettier. Her captain, a mean-mouthed, flinty, kettle-bellied man with close-set, greedy eyes, was a bad cyvasse player and a worse loser.

(ADwD, Tyrion VIII)

By the time the storm abated and the surviving passengers and crew came crawling back on deck, like pale pink worms wriggling to the surface after a rain, the Selaesori Qhoran was a broken thing, floating low in the water and listing ten degrees to port, her hull sprung in half a hundred places, her hold awash in seawater, her mast a splintered ruin no taller than a dwarf. Even her figurehead had not escaped; one of his arms had broken off, the one with all his scrolls. Nine men had been lost, including a mate, two of the fiery fingers, and Moqorro himself.

(ADwD, Tyrion IX)

The constipation and the later explanation of the meaning of "Selaesori Qhoran" (stinky steward) tells me that this figurehead represents Tywin. The "worm-eaten" aspect probably alludes to the Kindly Man, who has a worm in his eye that Arya tries to eat. A Kindly Man parallel would fit with the "sad smile" quote in Mourning Star's comment, above. 

After the ship cracks (like a dragon egg) during the storm, the figurehead loses an arm and the mast is compared to a dwarf. I think the message to us is that Tywin has lost his arm (like Jaime); long live Tyrion as the new Hand of the King / stinky steward. Keep in mind, though, that Jaime is learning how to use his other arm to fight with a sword. The hint may be that a version of Tywin will be reborn with the intent of being the power behind the throne. (Hmm. Maybe Cersei?)

Of course, Moqorro is a link here between the Tywin figurehead and Aeron as an Ironborn figurehead in a storm. 

I'm not denying that Aeron is also in a figurehead position. I expect the parallel to Tywin is deliberate: both men are kingmakers or would-be kingmakers. Tywin was a "brother-in-arms" with Aerys; Aeron was a brother of Balon. I believe that Aeron already "crowned" Theon when he anointed him with seawater upon his return to the Iron Isles. Perhaps Tyrion's close encounters with seawater during the storm was a similar symbolic anointing. Aeron has followers called Drowned Men; the ship has fifty slaves in the hold who are marked with tattoos of the ship's figurehead. 

TWoW material:

Spoiler

What does it mean that the silent pregnant woman is strapped up alongside Aeron? Aside from further proof that Euron is a horrible person. The fact that her tongue was cut out may be part of the Damphair / damper wordplay recently discussed in the Puns & Wordplay thread, linking Aeron to the silencing of voices. Her pregnant condition may be telling us something about the major theme around fertility and the fecundity of the earth. Her surname is Flowers, and Evolett recently outlined some good thinking around millers grinding seeds to make flour and flowers as sources for seeds.

@Evolett also connected "millers" to "smilers," and we know that Theon is a smiler who worked with Ramsay (son of a miller's wife) to kill the miller's sons and pretend they were Bran and Rickon. So the sad smile for these various kingmaker figureheads (Tywin, the Kindly Man, possibly Aeron?) could show us that they are on the side of the smilers. (The other team is the slayers, based on Stannis asking Jon Snow whether her would rather have a smiler or a slayer as the new lord of Winterfell.)

Hmm. Thinking of Winterfell reminds me of Theon as Reek - Theon was Ned's ward and "reek" means stink. Theon escapes Winterfell with Jeyne, who I believe to be pregnant. So I bet that's one of our parallels for Aeron as a figurehead. 

On 6/30/2022 at 1:13 PM, Wolfcrow said:

These type of resurrections, Aeron, Patchface, even Davos since his situation is also a little bit blurry, worked kinda differently, that let's say Lady Stoneheart and Beric. We haven't seen someone like Mel or Thoros or in general a priest waking them up, it's like "the gods" helped or whatever power we have. All of them had natural deaths, but Euron seem to work on a sacrifice or in general magic stuff, so do we know if after this will be able to be resurrected again? Because I think the will not. 

This seems like a particularly apt set of comparisons for working out Damphair's fate. We are told that Aeron has had two deaths or near-deaths by drowning: one in a battle where Fury, one of the ships under the command of Stannis, sank the ship Golden Storm, that Aeron had named in honor of his skill at urinating. Aeron washed up on the shore and was taken as a prisoner to Casterly Rock. His other near-death by drowning was in a storm. After these harrowing experiences (hmm. Harrowing is a term related to raising crops, which is something the Ironborn do not do), Aeron gives up his juggling and joking and partying and urinating and instead devotes himself to prophecy and the drowned god. 

Patchface had a similar transformation from charming, smiling fool to creepy, prophetic fool after his miraculous recovery from drowning. 

It doesn't seem as if Davos has had a transformation from party animal to dour religious man since his drowning, but he did have to give up his plan to murder Melisandre, which might be interpreted as a "conversion" to accepting the Red God. His remaining son became religious, so maybe that covers the parallel to Aeron's arc. Davos did (sort of) give up smuggling, and that might explain the rhyming wordplay with juggling: GRRM wanted to show us one more parallel between Aeron (who used to juggle) and Davos (who used to smuggle) after their drowning situations. 

Thoros is the Red Priest representative in the Beric and (indirectly) the Lady Stoneheart resurrections. The prologue chapter with Cressen gives us a super interesting juxtaposition of a maester (Cressen), priestess (Melisandre), and two drowned men (Patchface and Davos). Cressen had hoped (in keeping with the letter from Stephon) that Patchface would teach Stannis to laugh, so there is our smiler / slayer allusion again. People had told Cressen to let Patchface die, but he had worked to save the life of the tattooed fool. But Patchface's bucket / crown is placed on Cressen's head when he is trapped into drinking his own poison. 

We saw Melisandre give birth to a shadow baby. Was she the pregnant woman in the Stannis / Davos / Patchface arc? She seems to have an immortality secret, so maybe she has a "what's dead can never die" superpower?

I've seen some interesting discussions of the Drowned God as the "Great Other" who is in opposition to the Red God. It makes sense that fire and seawater could not happily co-exist. In spite of their stag sigil, House Baratheon began as a bastard line from the Targaryens. They adopted the sigil of House Durrandon, associated with the Storm God. Is there still secretly a Targaryen fire hidden beneath the trappings of the Storm God? Is that why Stannis is drawn to Melisandre? Will the Drowned God extinguish the flame?

In answer to the op, I think Aeron still has some resurrections left in his bank account. But he is also strongly linked to Theon and his final resurrection may take the form of Theon escaping certain death at some point in the next books. 

[Wolfcrow]

2 minutes ago, Seams said:

I've seen some interesting discussions of the Drowned God as the "Great Other" who is in opposition to the Red God.

This is something I think it's not true, tbh. The ironborn say: 

Quote

Make our names known in fire and blood and song.

To me sounds like the believers of R'llor would say, not ironborn, but they do. Also, when you're drowning or inhale salt water it burns.

I think that the trees and the water is in the middle of whatever opposites we have, this is why they have many contradicting elements. 

 

[The Lord of the Crossing]

The ritualistic drowning should not be taken literally.  It's a dip in seawater.  The Catholic religion has many rituals that are symbolic.  The ironborn are the same with their religion.  The  ironborn are not immortal.  They die as well as other people.  Asha will become the leader of her people because she is a Greyjoy.  The captains will elect her to lead their people.