A specific plot point compromises the potential of the Dance (spoilers)

[C.T. Phipps]

41 minutes ago, Dreadscythe95 said:

Yeah, it's stupid and I don't understand why everything has to be a fucking easteregg nowdays. This is not the MCU. It's a valyrian dagger, the whole point of the assasin using it because Littlefinger gave it to Joffrey to create speculations about The Lannisters and because it's obvious that such a rare and expensive weapon would belong to a very Rrich House. Just because Dumb and Dumber made it a a cliche Hollywood plot point in seasons 5+ does not mean that it should continue.

I mean, it's a Valyrian dagger, those are NOT things that you give away.

Each of them is an incredibly rare and treasured item more unique than a fingerprint.

[Ran]

On our game, we had it as a prize at a grand tournament in Highgarden. Ended up being won by a Connington. I imagine when his house gets reduced due to Robert's Rebellion, it'll end up being bought on the cheap by Littlefinger at some point, or perhaps used as collateral on a loan that's defaulted...

Anyways, the dagger being involved in this is another of the "this is a blunt instrument version of George's plans to bring in the GoT show-only fans."

[C.T. Phipps]

1 minute ago, Ran said:

On our game, we had it as a prize at a grand tournament in Highgarden. Ended up being won by a Connington. I imagine when his house gets reduced due to Robert's Rebellion, it'll end up being bought on the cheap by Littlefinger at some point, or perhaps used as collateral on a loan that's defaulted...

Anyways, the dagger being involved in this is another of the "this is a blunt instrument version of George's plans to bring in the GoT show-only fans."

I should point out that Tywin Lannister, with all his wealth, couldn't buy a Valyrian steel weapon.

[Ran]

3 minutes ago, C.T. Phipps said:

I should point out that Tywin Lannister, with all his wealth, couldn't buy a Valyrian steel weapon.

He wanted a sword. 

[Denam_Pavel]

Am I missing something? Viserys does not mention the dagger as part of the prophecy, he just has it on him. Daemon and Viserys both insist on using Valyrian steel where it doesn't have any actual added practical value at multiple times in this episode. Viserys doesn't know the camera is gonna focus on the dagger when he drives home his point. 

[Lord Varys]

1 hour ago, Dreadscythe95 said:

Yeah, I don't know it makes it too cringe for. So did Maegor have it? And who gave it to Jahaerys? And why is this the weapon that kills the King? I know I am asking too much for how many plot holes the latter seasons of GOT had but I just don't think that they need to make GOT references all the time in this series.

Oh, well, the fact that the dagger turned out to be super important in GoT is, of course, silly. I kind of forgot about that already in a sense.

I just think since it is such an adorned, precious weapon it does make sense it could be some Targaryen heirloom from Valyria. Don't think that it was Aegon's personal kitchen knife nor the personal 'dagger of the king'. Could be something Viserys' father Baelon found in the armory on Dragonstone and gave to his eldest son and he kept it.

But they coud also play it up some more.

[Lord Varys]

1 hour ago, C.T. Phipps said:

I mean, it's a Valyrian dagger, those are NOT things that you give away.

Each of them is an incredibly rare and treasured item more unique than a fingerprint.

Valyrian daggers are not that rare. Again, the catspaw dagger is costly in the books, but still plain. It is clear that no common thief would have such a weapon ... but it also doesn't point directly at the king.

45 minutes ago, Denam_Pavel said:

Am I missing something? Viserys does not mention the dagger as part of the prophecy, he just has it on him. Daemon and Viserys both insist on using Valyrian steel where it doesn't have any actual added practical value at multiple times in this episode. Viserys doesn't know the camera is gonna focus on the dagger when he drives home his point. 

Apparently the dagger is going to feature more prominently in the future.

In the trailer we see

Spoiler

Viserys putting it at Daemon's throat, Alicent later uses it to try to attack Rhaenyra and/or her children, and it also seems to be the blade Rhaenyra and Daemon use for their Valyrian marriage ceremony.

Must say - the idea that Rhaenyra-Daemon married in a Valyrian-style ceremony is a detail that pretty much feels like it could be true.

 

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

It seems like the dagger is going to be the R2-D2 or C-3PO of the GoT universe.

[Frey family reunion]

3 hours ago, Dreadscythe95 said:

It's a valyrian dagger, the whole point of the assasin using it because Littlefinger gave it to Joffrey to create speculations about The Lannisters and because it's obvious that such a rare and expensive weapon would belong to a very Rrich House.

I don't think Littlefinger gave it to Joffrey.  The clear implication from Jaime's recollection (however hazy) is that Robert won it by betting against Jaime at a joust.

Quote

“Whatever my brother wagered, he lost…but that dagger did change hands, I recall it now. Robert showed it to me that night at the feast. His Grace loved to salt my wounds, especially when drunk. And when was he not drunk?”

So Robert won it from .  by betting against Jaime, presumably, and showed it to Jaime to rub salt in his wounds.  

It stands to reason that Robert never had much use of it because he had been gifted a hunting knife from Jon Arryn which was the only knife he used.  So what probably happened, is that the valyrian knife was just added to the collection of stuff one accumulates as a king.  If Joffrey came upon it, it was either because Robert gave it to him or he was just poking around Robert's stuff and took it for himself.

[Ran]

Robert won it from Littlefinger. It was doubtless in a trunk brought with the king's train to Winterfell, and Joffrey filched it.

[Ser Not Appearing]

Into the dagger, Aegon poured his determination, his focus and his will to fulfill all prophecy. Always remember Rhaenyra, the dagger is trying to get into position. It wants to be used.

[Denam_Pavel]

12 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Valyrian daggers are not that rare. Again, the catspaw dagger is costly in the books, but still plain. It is clear that no common thief would have such a weapon ... but it also doesn't point directly at the king.

Apparently the dagger is going to feature more prominently in the future.

In the trailer we see

  Reveal hidden contents

Viserys putting it at Daemon's throat, Alicent later uses it to try to attack Rhaenyra and/or her children, and it also seems to be the blade Rhaenyra and Daemon use for their Valyrian marriage ceremony.

Must say - the idea that Rhaenyra-Daemon married in a Valyrian-style ceremony is a detail that pretty much feels like it could be true.

 

Yeah okay, seeing the dagger was neat, but that's too much of good thing. Hopefully it being abandoned and forgotten in the royal treasury happens when Aegon II crowns himself and we stop seeing so much S2 onwards.

[Frey family reunion]

Returning a second to the idea that the prince that was promised prophecy was one passed down from Targaryen heir to Targaryen heir, that fairly clunky idea doesn't seem to make much sense.

Aegon I' first heir was Aenys.  So yea, Aegon could have told Aenys about it.  The problem is who did Aenys tell?  Aenys named his first born son, Aegon, his heir.  So presumably, according to the show, Aenys would have then taken Aegon aside and told him about the Targaryen secret.  At some point Aegon and his sister-bride go on a tour of Westeros where they are beset by angry smallfolk and have to hole up in a castle in the Westerlands.

Aenys dies during this time.  Maegor has himself crowned.  Aegon remains in hiding for a while, and later emerges and engages in battle with Maegor and is promptly killed.  In the meantime Jaehaerys had been stashed away in the Stormlands and a bunch of lords who have gotten sick and tired of Maegor, decide they have to get rid of Maegor and put Jaehaerys on the throne.

So it begs the question, who told this secret to Jahaerys?

And at least in the time of AGOT, the prince that was promised sure wasn't treated as a secret.  Melisandre knows about the prophecy, and Aemon in a public setting asks Melisandre about the prince that was promised showing that he assumed she knew about the prophecy.

Aemon also laments that a group of people that he counts himself among, who believed themselves to be so wise, had assumed that tptwp had to be a male because of an error in their translation.  An error dating back a thousand years.  

So who is Aemon referring to here?  The Targaryens have thought of themselves as special, and entitled but I don't think wisdom was something that was always associated with the people of their house.  So Aemon's probably not referring to the Targaryens here.  He's probably referring to the other group he's a member of, the Maesters.

So probably, the Citadel had been trying to decipher the ptwp prophecy for the last thousand years.

All of this seems to indicate that the prince that was promised prophecy was not a deeply held Targaryen secret.  At least not in the books.

[Lord Varys]

45 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

Returning a second to the idea that the prince that was promised prophecy was one passed down from Targaryen heir to Targaryen heir, that fairly clunky idea doesn't seem to make much sense.

If you want to go with this thing being passed down in the royal house then it wouldn't be king to heir, but a weirdo family tradition thing. Aegon would have told all his sisters and they would have told all their sons and their grandchildren, too. At least the elder ones.

They would have also put this stuff down to paper, etc.

One could imagine the knowledge kind of surviving into Jaehaerys and Viserys' time ... but they wouldn't really care so much about it because nothing actually happened. So Aegon was either completely wrong or at least his interpretation that this would happen 'soon' was false.

And that's something George actually talked about in one of the interviews that Aegon and the other Targaryens didn't have a prophecy with a date attached to it - those who believed it just thought it would come 'soon' - in their lifetimes or those of their children ... but most of them were clearly mistaken about that.

It seems that this prophecy stuff again got traction during the time of Aerys I and Bloodraven, leading to Jaehaerys II's obsession with it, followed by Aerys II's and Rhaegar's obsession with it (although we don't know it yet, I think it is pretty clear that Aerys & Rhaella also wanted to create the three heads of the dragon and that's what made Aerys lose his mind over his many dead children).

 

[BlackLightning]

4 hours ago, Frey family reunion said:

So it begs the question, who told this secret to Jahaerys?

It could've been Rhaena or Visenya. Probably Rhaena.

Aegon likely told Rhaena at some point before he went off to fight Maegor at the Gods' Eye because his heir Aerea was a child. Maybe Aenys told both Aegon and Rhaena, his male and female heir. In any case, Rhaena likely knew about it and it's probably a big part of the reason why Rhaena was not allowed to march to war alongside her brother-husband and why she seemed so uniquely quiet in the aftermath.

Rhaena prevented her daughter from claiming her birthright as the ruler of Seven Kingdoms and bequeathed this right to Jaehaerys. She might have overstated or understated the message in doing so which would've led to Jaehaerys' rather weird insistence that he marry Alysanne rather than further advance House Targaryen's political hegemony by wedding a noblewoman from a powerful, well-connected Great House and allowing Alysanne to do the same.

4 hours ago, Frey family reunion said:

And at least in the time of AGOT, the prince that was promised sure wasn't treated as a secret.  Melisandre knows about the prophecy, and Aemon in a public setting asks Melisandre about the prince that was promised showing that he assumed she knew about the prophecy.

The Prince that was Promised wasn't never really a secret. There are numerous prophecies and tales from around the world about the same thing. Melisandre is not from Westeros and she and Stannis had been spouting the Prince that was Promised message for a while before Aemon publicly asked her about it. Rhaegar found it in old scrolls that may not have been property of House Targaryen and likely spoke about it to those in his inner circle.

 

 

[Lord Varys]

37 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

It could've been Rhaena or Visenya. Probably Rhaena.

Aegon likely told Rhaena at some point before he went off to fight Maegor at the Gods' Eye because his heir Aerea was a child. Maybe Aenys told both Aegon and Rhaena, his male and female heir. In any case, Rhaena likely knew about it and it's probably a big part of the reason why Rhaena was not allowed to march to war alongside her brother-husband and why she seemed so uniquely quiet in the aftermath.

It is much easier to just assume that Aenys told Alyssa (either on his deathbed on Dragonstone or earlier), and she told Jaehaerys and Alysanne. But as I said - if Aegon's Conquest was inspired by prophecies and dreams he would have told this to his family and close friends. There would be no reason to keep this a secret.

37 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

The Prince that was Promised wasn't never really a secret. There are numerous prophecies and tales from around the world about the same thing. Melisandre is not from Westeros and she and Stannis had been spouting the Prince that was Promised message for a while before Aemon publicly asked her about it. Rhaegar found it in old scrolls that may not have been property of House Targaryen and likely spoke about it to those in his inner circle.

Well, the best theories about Mel's origins actually are that she is Shiera's daughter by Bloodraven, so she might have learned about the prophecy from her mother.

[Frey family reunion]

42 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Well, the best theories about Mel's origins actually are that she is Shiera's daughter by Bloodraven, so she might have learned about the prophecy from her mother.

But that doesn't explain why Aemon would have just assumed that Melisandre would have been aware of the prophecy and how it was tied into the Battle for the Dawn.    I think the takeaway is that the prince that was promised prophecy was something that was known in certain academic circles.  Whether those studies came from the Citadel, or studying the dark arts in Asshai, or perhaps from training to be a red priest.  I don't think it's something that Aegon the Conqueror just dreamed up and kept a family secret.

I think the real issue is what made the Targaryens so sure that the prince that was promised was supposed to be a Targaryen.  Was it solely the Wood's Witch who gave them that idea, or had they already come to the conclusion that the Prince that was Promised had to be someone from their family, and they just hoped that the Wood's Witch could further narrow it down?

 

[Frey family reunion]

1 hour ago, BlackLightning said:

The Prince that was Promised wasn't never really a secret. There are numerous prophecies and tales from around the world about the same thing. Melisandre is not from Westeros and she and Stannis had been spouting the Prince that was Promised message for a while before Aemon publicly asked her about it. Rhaegar found it in old scrolls that may not have been property of House Targaryen and likely spoke about it to those in his inner circle.

Yes, I agree with this line of thinking.  In reality Rhaegar and Aemon may have done the same thing that Melisandre did.  Take existing prophecies and interpret them towards someone they have already convinced themselves had to fulfill them.

Rhaegar refers to his newborn Aegon, as both the Prince that was Promised, and a King.  Fairly interchangeably.  And he tells this to his Dornish wife with the apparent understanding that she knows what he's referring to.

My guess is that the Prince that was Promised prophecy was a Rhoynish one, passed down to Dorne and then passed down to the Targaryen family once Daeron took his Dornish bride.  Usually future messiahs are given the title of the highest sovereign from the place the tale comes from.  Jesus is the King of Kings, coming from Israel, a land ruled by Kings.  Arthur is the once and future King, coming from Briton, a land ruled by Kings.

The Valyrians didn't have Princes as a title amongst themselves a thousand years ago in the Freehold.  So it's odd that a Valyrian prophecy would have told of a promised Prince.  And even after the Targaryens conquered Westeros and adopted their feudal system the Prince still wasn't the primary sovereign. 

But for the Roynes and later the Dornes, the Prince was the primary sovereign of the land.  It was also a thousand years ago when according to the Worldbook, the Rhoynish civilization was destroyed by the Valyrians in smoke and salt.  It's usually a subjugated people who adopt the belief of a future messiah.  

So when Rhaegar looks at Aegon he sees both a future king, and also simultaneously a Prince of Dorne through Aegon's mother. 

So it perhaps makes sense that Rhaegar is atrtributing a number of prophecies to his son.  One of which being the Prince that was Promised due to Aegon's Dornish mother and Rhaegar's great, great Dornish grandmother.

What I think the show is going to do is dumb all of this down, and just attribute everything to a dream that Aegon the Conqueror had.

[Lord Varys]

9 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

But that doesn't explain why Aemon would have just assumed that Melisandre would have been aware of the prophecy and how it was tied into the Battle for the Dawn.    I think the takeaway is that the prince that was promised prophecy was something that was known in certain academic circles.  Whether those studies came from the Citadel, or studying the dark arts in Asshai, or perhaps from training to be a red priest.  I don't think it's something that Aegon the Conqueror just dreamed up and kept a family secret.

I think what we can take away from 'the song of ice and fire' being Aegon's name for the prophecy is that Rhaegar's talk from the House of the Undying vision refers to this thing - the song of ice and fire and the promised prince are Targaryens aspects of the prophecy.

The savior prophecy as such - born amidst smoke and salt, etc. - is older. I'd expect that Aegon did not only coin the term 'song of ice and fire' but also 'promised prince' because this name only makes sense when the savior is born in a royal family ... and the Dragonstionian and Valyrian Targaryens may have been much and more, but not royals. Aegon was the first Targaryen to produce 'princes'.

Since we wouldn't assume that Aegon kept this kind of thing a big secret one would expect that the knowledge about his dreams and the prophecies he read and connected his own dreams to ended up at the Citadel. Vaegon Targaryen even became an archmaester, after all.

I'd assume the knowledge was not exactly *lost* but kind of forgotten or no longer viewed as important. They had other issues to deal with and Jaehaerys/Alysanne didn't really know their grandfather all that well, meaning they would have no immediate connection to Aegon telling them firsthand about his dreams and the importance he gave them.

After the Dance it may have been forgotten completely since we do have a succession of young kings who have other interests, not to mention a guy like the Unworthy.

9 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

I think the real issue is what made the Targaryens so sure that the prince that was promised was supposed to be a Targaryen.  Was it solely the Wood's Witch who gave them that idea, or had they already come to the conclusion that the Prince that was Promised had to be someone from their family, and they just hoped that the Wood's Witch could further narrow it down?

No, I think it must go back to Aegon. The woods witch narrowed it down to a specific Targaryen bloodlines - that of Aerys & Rhaella - but this would have only been important for Jaehaerys II if he already believed in the promised prince and viewed the original prophecy as something that's very important for him.

And that, in turn, works best if this whole thing is a definining trait of the Westerosi Targaryens. It was always very weird that Rhaegar, etc. cared much about this obscure prophecy when they were already ruling this Westeros place. Why bother with this thing at all? Because it was something that actually caused Aegon's Conquest. The Conqueror believed they had a mission and it is their duty to try to fulfill it ... even if they don't really know what it is.

If Melisandre is the child of Shiera and Bloodraven she might know about the promised prince to a degree, but she certainly has no knowledge of the prophecy the woods witch made to Jaehaerys II. But she, too, searched for the savior among the blood of the dragon. She also learned more and other aspects of the prophecy in Essos, possibly obscuring or confusing certain parts of it. But unlike the Volantene Red Priests she retained the knowledge or figured out that the savior must do his saving in Westeros.

[Frey family reunion]

4 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

No, I think it must go back to Aegon. The woods witch narrowed it down to a specific Targaryen bloodlines - that of Aerys & Rhaella - but this would have only been important for Jaehaerys II if he already believed in the promised prince and viewed the original prophecy as something that's very important for him.

According to Aemon they've (whoever they is) have been trying to decipher the prince that was promised prophecy for a thousand years.  So it's much older than Aegon the Conqueror.