Do you think GRRM will add Aegon’s Prophecy to the Books?

[Maegor_the_Cool]

Topic.

It was a detail that was confirmed to have come from GRRM by Ryan Condal (cocreator) of HOTD. Do you think it’s something George will add to the books. It would color his conquest in a whole new light, and it makes me wonder if Torrhen Stark knelt because of it, and not just intimidation.

[Mithras]

That would be a huge mistake.

[chrisdaw]

Don't think it'll be allowed in this part of the forum.

But yes of course it wouldn't exist otherwise. It's the name of the series.

[Maegor_the_Cool]

I figured it would ok in this forum because it was questioning the possibility of it being added to the books

[Maegor_the_Cool]

4 minutes ago, Mithras said:

That would be a huge mistake.

Why do you think that?

[Gilbert Green]

1 hour ago, Maegor Targaryen I said:

It was a detail that was confirmed to have come from GRRM by Ryan Condal (cocreator) of HOTD.

GRRM did not confirm it.  Ryan Condall is not GRRM.  Let's stick to the clues the books gave us.  But yes, it is an idea that is not entirely unrelated to an idea we also see in the books.

[sweetsunray]

3 hours ago, Maegor Targaryen I said:

Topic.

It was a detail that was confirmed to have come from GRRM by Ryan Condal (cocreator) of HOTD. Do you think it’s something George will add to the books. It would color his conquest in a whole new light, and it makes me wonder if Torrhen Stark knelt because of it, and not just intimidation.

I suspect that the PtwP prophecy and "song of ice and fire" will be featured again in Dany's POV: but in bits and peaces, via Marwyn, whatever Sam may stumble upon, and dragon dreams for Dany.

Personally I regard the dragon dream source manipulative and Faustian, and while it would improve Aegon's motivation in a moral sense, I think that equally such a dream made Targs too complacent, creating the illusion of "we'll just hop on our dragons when the time comes and solved." It would add weight though to Alysanne being disturbed to discover her dragon couldn't or refused to pass over the Wall.

[Sandy Clegg]

The show and the books are different entities but George has been involved in both so there is bound to be crossover. That said, there will be elements of each medium that stay exclusive to that medium. The problem is we don't know how to unpack those elements until George finishes the book series and we can examine them side-by-side.

I don't think this forum should rule out all show details in its discussions, however. For example, I would say that the dialogue George wrote in his  own screenwritten episodes (from seasons 1-4) likely bears closer scrutiny than that written in episodes he wasn't personally involved in. 

George clearly likes to sow seeds and clues to where the story is ending, and is skilful enough of a writer to have done so in those episodes in a way that could service both book and show. So I feel as though any of his comments along the lines of "the books are the books, the show is the show" refer more to show material not written by, or originating personally from, GRRM himself. So a little nuance is required when analysing the shows relationship with the books. 

As to Aegon's prophecy, though, I just feel as if it's a little unsubtle for inclusion in the books. As a TV idea it helps to simplify a lot of the themes and provides a thread between the shows, but the books don't really need this. Still, George has one story running in two mediums now  - and while it is in his interest to stress their independence from each other, giving him more freedom, he's still the master of his own creation and is free to 'bridge the gaps' between these two mediums wherever he sees fit.

[Aejohn the Conqueroo]

Not if he wants to keep them good. It's a ham fisted attempt to tie the two series together and get a little added value out of a prop but completely unnecessary in the books. "400 odd years from now the world will end unless your family saves it" Why would Aegon believe that? More importantly, why would Aegon care? 

I think that if Aegon actually believed that his family was crucial to saving the world some time in the distant future then having a larger family would have been a bigger priority. Did Aegon even visit the Wall once? We don't get any indication that he made any efforts to strengthen the Watch or lay any sort of groundwork for the job his however great grandson was going to eventually do.

He should have married a daughter to Winterfell and seen about establishing dragon riders in the north if he was really about fighting Others and he should have enlisted the Citadel. 

 

[Maegor_the_Cool]

8 minutes ago, Aejohn the Conqueroo said:

Not if he wants to keep them good. It's a ham fisted attempt to tie the two series together and get a little added value out of a prop but completely unnecessary in the books. "400 odd years from now the world will end unless your family saves it" Why would Aegon believe that? More importantly, why would Aegon care? 

I think that if Aegon actually believed that his family was crucial to saving the world some time in the distant future then having a larger family would have been a bigger priority. Did Aegon even visit the Wall once? We don't get any indication that he made any efforts to strengthen the Watch or lay any sort of groundwork for the job his however great grandson was going to eventually do.

He should have married a daughter to Winterfell and seen about establishing dragon riders in the north if he was really about fighting Others and he should have enlisted the Citadel. 

 

I believe he did visit the North during a progress

[Aejohn the Conqueroo]

7 minutes ago, Maegor Targaryen I said:

I believe he did visit the North during a progress

He must have, right? I couldn't find a specific reference. Should have been a big deal if it was anything more than a penal colony to him.

[Craving Peaches]

19 minutes ago, Aejohn the Conqueroo said:

We don't get any indication that he made any efforts to strengthen the Watch or lay any sort of groundwork for the job his however great grandson was going to eventually do.

He also spent ages killing people in Dorne and rejected the opportunity to get the Stormlands peacefully, both of which would have minimised body count - one would think he'd be concerned with this if he though he had to save the world.

[Moiraine Sedai]

13 hours ago, Maegor Targaryen I said:

Topic.

It was a detail that was confirmed to have come from GRRM by Ryan Condal (cocreator) of HOTD. Do you think it’s something George will add to the books. It would color his conquest in a whole new light, and it makes me wonder if Torrhen Stark knelt because of it, and not just intimidation.

House Targaryen survived the Doom because they were given warning. The Gods or some Divine power did this because this family is the protagonist. They might be the only ones left with god-like powers to unite the people and organize a defense from the Others. 

[Lord Varys]

Since the news about Aegon the Conqueror being 'a dreamer' comes directly from George this thing is already part of the ASoIaF series - we just don't know about it yet. But it is subtly there already with the historians speculating about but not answering (because the author doesn't want to reveal it just yet) the question why the hell Aegon Targaryen wanted to conquer all of Westeros. Not to mention clues indicating that Aegon may have thought he was the promised prince himself - or the Targaryens choosing a three-headed dragon for their banner.

The stuff HotD added is that this prophecy complex was also important for decisions Viserys I and Rhaenyra made - which do not contradict the brief overview histories George gave us but which do not seem to have been things that were on his mind when he wrote 'Heirs of the Dragon'.

But, of course, the weirdo obsession the later dragonless Targaryens have with the promised prince and prophecies would make much more sense if this obsession was part of their family DNA, going back at least to Aegon the Conqueror and his sister-wives but perhaps even back to Aenar the Exile and Daenys the Dreamer. I mean, foreseeing the Doom of Valyria doesn't mean you have to remove yourself to provincial Dragonstone. Why did the Targaryens not go east, south, or north? Why didn't they settle in Sothoryos or Slaver's Bay or one of the Free Cities? Why didn't they go to Qarth or Yi Ti or the lands of the Sarnori?

It would also make sense to assume that some of the historical Targaryen kings and queens and princes were also motivated by prophecy stuff without this being evident to historians and contemporary observers because they made any such decisions behind closed doors and involving only their closest advisors.

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

2 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Since the news about Aegon the Conqueror being 'a dreamer' comes directly from George this thing is already part of the ASoIaF series - we just don't know about it yet.

It's quite ironic that we actually know about it, but the characters in the story don't.

[Lord Varys]

3 minutes ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

It's quite ironic that we actually know about it, but the characters in the story don't.

Well, just as many character in the story might know about Jon Snow's true parentage (or the exact status of the relationship of Lyanna and Rhaegar) there might also quite a few people knowing stuff about Aegon's true motivation. This certainly would be a revelation George might give us via Bloodraven/Bran - either having Bloodraven show Bran a vision of Aegon and his sisters (and Orys) around the Painted Table telling each other and us why they are conquering the continent of Westeros or simply by Bloodraven telling Bran and us what his investigations of the past uncovered.

This kind of revelation should be an important part of establishing why the hell the Targaryen bloodline is important and why the hell Bran and we and everybody else should look for a prophesied savior among the remaining Targaryen descendants. We can expect that Bran will play a crucial role there - and he would likely not do this if he didn't even understand why these people were important, why not somebody else could do the stuff they are destined to do, etc.

And as I said somewhere else already I actually think this might be part of the reason why the last greenseer himself was made a Targaryen descendant. As such Bloodraven would be very interested in the history of his own ancestors, allowing him to uncover stuff he might not even have looked for if he wasn't a Targaryen himself.

[sweetsunray]

George is sneaky in his breadcrumbs, but he has established that many of the dragonblood (Blackfyre and Targaryen) have had dragon dreams. And while everyone focuses on maester Aemon about Dany and the prophecy and dragons, he also tells of his own dreams and that he, Egg, and every other brother of theirs had dragon dreams. All four brothers!

The problem is that the dreamers don't know exactly what they mean. Mistake dream dragons for real ones, etc and end up doing stupid stuff. And more problematic, readers expect a dragon dreamer to be a better skilled interpreter than Mel is about the timing of it all.

So, yes, Aegon likely had dragon dreams, and he was far more likely to believe it would happen in his lifetime, than 300 years later. And no, he didn't bother much with the North or the Wall, because he believed that he and his two sisters on three dragons would take care of it in a jiffy. And if so, then Aegon was wrong about the timing of it and his relevance to it.

[Aejohn the Conqueroo]

I'll accept that Aegon was a dreamer and had motivations that we haven't been clued in on. Can't accept any more than that though. 

What the hell was Visenya doing with Maegor if she was clued in on the family business? House Targ should have been building not infighting and that was the first generation after the conquest while one of Aegon's closest conspirators was still alive. What was she doing to patch things up and forward her late husband's work? Usurping his rightful heir and putting her son (not even going to bother with the whole 'was Aegon infertile anyway?' question) in his place.

So if this information existed, I have troubles accepting that it was important to Visenya. Did she tell Maegor at all? Who told Jaeherys? Someone must have if he passed it to Viserys. Why wasn't this information considered in the Old King's succession? That should have been J's hammer in the argument, but clearly Alysanne didn't accept it. 

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

14 hours ago, Mithras said:

That would be a huge mistake.

I'm not a big fan of the idea myself, but it is GRRM's story at the end of the day. I think with a fanbase this big, some people will be disappointed no matter what we get.

[Lord Varys]

Guys, if you take this thing seriously then all dreams that Aegon and his sister-wives were 'the three heads of the dragon' (and their respective dragons the three dragons that might also be part of the prophecy) would have died with Rhaenys and Meraxes in Dorne.

46 minutes ago, Aejohn the Conqueroo said:

What the hell was Visenya doing with Maegor if she was clued in on the family business? House Targ should have been building not infighting and that was the first generation after the conquest while one of Aegon's closest conspirators was still alive. What was she doing to patch things up and forward her late husband's work? Usurping his rightful heir and putting her son (not even going to bother with the whole 'was Aegon infertile anyway?' question) in his place.

Maegor started as a spare heir should Rhaenys' son Aenys not live through childhood. How inclined Aegon himself was to believe in prophetic stuff as he grow older we cannot belive. He may have sobered up getting over the madness of his youth. Or he may have realized that he and his sisters simply weren't the prophesied guys.

Maegor turned out to be total mad nutcase, of course, but Visenya's actions can easily be interpreted as that of a somewhat embittered woman whose main goal was not so much to put her blood first ... but to ensure that the Realm she and her siblings had built would survive Aegon's death. Aenys was not exactly an ideal successor to Aegon the Conqueror, and while she pushes aside Aenys' children in favor of Maegor ... there is no slaughtering of Aegon's and Rhaenys' grandchildren while she is still around (Aegon the Uncrowned's death excluded, of course, but he died in battle). In that sense, one can make a case that Visenya did not want House Targaryen to continue only with Maegor.

46 minutes ago, Aejohn the Conqueroo said:

So if this information existed, I have troubles accepting that it was important to Visenya. Did she tell Maegor at all? Who told Jaeherys? Someone must have if he passed it to Viserys. Why wasn't this information considered in the Old King's succession? That should have been J's hammer in the argument, but clearly Alysanne didn't accept it. 

Well, I'm not sure one would go with everybody talking to everybody about this thing. Of course, Aegon and Visenya would tell Aenys, Maegor, and the grandchildren about this - although considering the age of Jaehaerys and Alysanne by the time their grandfather and father died would make it more likely that Aegon and Aenys talked to the elder children about this (i.e. Rhaena, Aegon and Viserys).

How serious Aenys and Maegor took the beliefs of their parents we cannot say. But it certainly could have influenced both Aenys more esoteric interests (he was into alchemy and mystical stuff for a time, apparently) as well as Maegor's martial interests. If the Conqueror and Visenya themselves told the grandchildren stories about prophecies and stuff it might have a considerable impact on them, too. But how much thought they gave this stuff as adults (or would have given it then) we don't know.

Jaehaerys and Alysanne could have learned about some of those things during their prolonged stint on Dragonstone during the first years of their reign. Both by reading through documents left behind by the Conqueror as well as by talking to the likes of Septon Oswyck and Maester Culiper who, around 50 AC, were old enough to have actually been born before the Conquest.

But how relevant such things would have been during their reign - and for their children and grandchildren - is really difficult to say. It may have been in the back of their minds and really low on their list of priorities in light of the day-to-day priorities that come with ruling an entire continent.

That they didn't give the Wall much thought also makes sense. They had dragons, after all, and they were multiplying. A united continent under the leadership of a dozen or more dragonriders should be able to deal with any supernatural threat. Or at least that could have been their opinion. The Watch also hadn't declined as much as it has during the main series. At that point, the Watch as it was would have quickly realized that the Others had returned and would have had ample time to inform the Targaryen king of what was going on. And then they could have reacted very quickly.