Second Dance Mega Prediction.

[chrisdaw]

And had he succeeded his lineage would provide reasoning. There need not be any reasoning for having failed in becoming a dragon rider, only for having become one. Dany herself was a whisker away from being Drogon fried.

[chrisdaw]

After the betrayal Sansa may do a runner, take some jewels, assume an identity no-one cares to notice as she learned how to do when she became Alayne, and leave it all behind. Basically as Jaime suggests.

To Essos, Lys or another free city as an anonymous woman. Perhaps she meets a blacksmith, perhaps she asks Sandor to go with her, and this time he refuses her. Or maybe he doesn't, we haven't yet been told what becomes of Florian and Jonquil.

TWOIAF has two little tidbits of foreshadowing which back this idea of Sansa doing a runner. Viserys II, a strong Tyrion parallel was abandoned by his wife Lady Larra Rogare. Rohanne (another anne) Webber became Lady Lannister, and disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

[Watermelon Knight]

Meh, so far Tyrion has proven to be loyal when he is treated with respect. If Daenerys provides him the opportunity act as hand, train her dragons, or possibly even ride a dragon, it would be out of character for him to betray her.

Tyrion likes the game but his lust for power is not so great. He brims over with empathy and compassion which are inconsistent with a the OP's caricature of a "demon monkey man" hell bent on betrayal. Remember he is a character who is as likely to stay up all night in a library as he is in a whorehouse.

[sagewich]

Meh, so far Tyrion has proven to be loyal when he is treated with respect. If Daenerys provides him the opportunity act as hand, train her dragons, or possibly even ride a dragon, it would be out of character for him to betray her.

Tyrion likes the game but his lust for power is not so great. He brims over with empathy and compassion which are inconsistent with a the OP's caricature of a "demon monkey man" hell bent on betrayal. Remember he is a character who is as likely to stay up all night in a library as he is in a whorehouse.

Tyrion will teach Dany all he knows about Dragons. He has been sent to help her. If he wants to survive the upcoming wars, he would be wise not to upset Dany, the dragons, or Barristan Selmy.

I still think the Dusky Woman is Euron. And Victarion is in for a surprise when and if he attempts to take Dany as his bride.

[Watermelon Knight]

Exactly.

Consider his trouble at King's Landing - all his outbursts were in response to Joffrey's ignorant cruelty. All the other characters who can't handle Tyrion's witticisms are humorless, insecure tools like Jorah and Connington. And I noticed that in Tyrion's TWOW chapter he seems to have finally earned even Jorah's respect.

Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if Daenerys let Tyrion serve her with his tongue in myriad ways. After her fling with the hot but seedy and cruel Daario she may find Tyrion's intelligence postively sexy. Daenerys shall ride three mounts: one to bed, one to dread, and one to love. Many interpret this as serial husbands, but I see it as the three heads of the dragon in parallel. In other words, she will ride Drogon The Black Dread (Stallion who Mounts the World) and at the same time will "ride" two men who serve as other heads of the dragon (inverse to Aegon the Conqueror marrying two women). One of her husbands she will love in a platonic way, but the other will wake her lusty dragon every night. :P

[chrisdaw]

Tyrion will not throw all in with Dany while it's possible Aegon comes out on top in the Dance.

And when she has won Tyrion will not sit back and let her execute Jaime.

Tyrion is as big or bigger in all this than Dany and Jon, he's not playing a supporting role.

[Watermelon Knight]

How do you figure Aegon the Pretender defeats Daenerys mounted on Drogon The Black Dread?

Aegon is at the top of my list for being devoured by Drogon. Not the least of the reasons being that I cannot imagine Martin introducing a character in book 5 who then kills and replaces one of the central characters he's developed since book 1.

[chrisdaw]

Aegon will ride a dragon also. I do not consider Aegon winning a possibility, but Tyrion will and so will act accordingly. As Tywin stayed his hand until the winner between Aerys and Robert became clear, during the Dance Tyrion will stay neutral or attempt to appear to each side that he is theirs, he will not commit.

[Newstar]

TWOIAF has two little tidbits of foreshadowing which back this idea of Sansa doing a runner. Viserys II, a strong Tyrion parallel was abandoned by his wife Lady Larra Rogare. Rohanne (another anne) Webber became Lady Lannister, and disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

I dunno about the whole betraying Tyrion bit, but I can see Sansa disappearing off the face of the earth. It's a plausible way for her to end up with Sandor, which seems to have been foreshadowed somewhat, and it would tie in neatly with the death of Lady, as she would have to shed her identity to do so. Not to mention Rohanne/Dunk seems to parallel Sansa/Sandor somewhat, and Rohanne wound up disappearing as well.

[Watermelon Knight]

Aegon will ride a dragon also. I do not consider Aegon winning a possibility, but Tyrion will and so will act accordingly. As Tywin stayed his hand until the winner between Aerys and Robert became clear, during the Dance Tyrion will stay neutral or attempt to appear to each side that he is theirs, he will not commit.

So wait for the battles to play out and then cast support to the winning side? All the Lords who play that game are regarded as craven.

Tyrion's style is to predict the winning side in advance and join it - exactly as he does in scheming to flip Plumm in the Battle of Meereen.

[chrisdaw]

There will be no predicting, it's a dragon rider vs another dragon rider, it's as random as the wind. Tyrion had no complaints and could find no flaws despite his best efforts to do so regarding Tywin's strategy during the rebellion, his only remark is that he himself would have let Robert bloody his own hands.

[Watermelon Knight]

So we have:

Daenerys with The Black Dread, the Unsullied, tens of thousands of Dothraki Horse Lords, the tactical genius of Selmy and Tyrion, and the sage counsel of Marwyn.

Aegon the pretender with a stolen dragon, some unreliable sellswords, a few sandsnakes, and a washed up and exiled King's hand.

Or maybe Euron with a stolen dragon and a bunch of undisciplined squid-heads.

Random as the wind? I don't think so. Aegon or Euron will be devoured alive.

[chrisdaw]

Dany will not have Tyrion's counsel, he won't commit.

Aegon will have the Faith, the GC, Dorne and probably the Reach.

But it doesn't matter how many followers each have, as it all can fall apart as easily as one of them can fall off their dragon, or get knocked off by the other.

[Watermelon Knight]

Well we'll have to wait a long time to find out because Martin has already stated that Tyrion and Daenerys will not actually meet in TWOW. I believe his wording was that later in the book Dany and Tyrion would meet "in a way".

[Endymion I Targaryen]

He said "Tyrion and Dany will intersect, in a way, but for much of the book they’re still apart.". So probably they will meet in Winds but near the end.

[chrisdaw]

The relationship GRRM had Tyrion and Aegon build up must be considered. He saved him. He's not going to be considered an enemy on Dany's side by Aegon unless he specifically does something to mark him so. For Tyrion, he somewhat likes Aegon, and will probably somewhat like Dany, but with Dany's character and Aegon marrying elsewhere war is fair possibility (perhaps even Tyrion's preference) and pragmatism is the way to survival and gain.

[Suzanna Stormborn]

How do you figure Aegon the Pretender defeats Daenerys mounted on Drogon The Black Dread?

Aegon is at the top of my list for being devoured by Drogon. Not the least of the reasons being that I cannot imagine Martin introducing a character in book 5 who then kills and replaces one of the central characters he's developed since book 1.

Me too. :agree:

[Krusty Kraken]

Why is there such a big assumption that there will be a second dance of the dragons? Is there any actual evidence for this?

[Colonel Green]

Why is there such a big assumption that there will be a second dance of the dragons? Is there any actual evidence for this?

GRRM said there would be. Plus, various pieces of foreshadowing.

[chrisdaw]

Lancel the Blessed.

Lancel is our modern day Baelor parallel. Thin as a twig, white hair and now obsessed with atonement.

In any case, you're not like to be taken for Baelor the Blessed."
"No," Lancel allowed.

Like Baelor Lancel also believes the Faith send him visions.

"Each night I make my bed beneath a different altar, and the Seven send me visions."

Baelor was cousin to Aemon, as is Lancel to Jaime, Jaime is a strong Aemon parallel as detailed earlier in the thread.

Somehow he did not think the maesters were like to confuse him with Prince Aemon the Dragonknight when they wrote their histories.

So says Jaime.

As detailed up thread Jaime will be judged by Dany (in KL when she sits the IT) for murdering Aerys, when Jaime explains why he killed Aerys everyone, including the Faith, will side with Jaime, but Dany will sentence him to death.

"I dreamed about the queen," he said. "I was on my knees before her, swearing my allegiance, but she mistook me for my brother, Jaime, and fed me to her dragons."
"Let us hope this dream was not prophetic.

Only she won't sentence him to death. Tyrion's dream will come to be more literal than I had first thought. She will feed him to her dragons, she will send him to the dragon pit.

As Baelor the Blessed placed his trust in the Seven to allow him to save his cousin Aemon the Dragonknight from a snake pit in Dorne, Lancel will trust in the Seven and risk his life to save his cousin Jaime from the dragon pit in KL. He will somehow or other succeed. It will be deemed a miracle.

The current High Septon will die. He will be executed by Dany for refusing to crown her or otherwise come to misfortune for which Dany will be blamed. Perhaps assassinated secretly by Arya at Sansa's behest, as Sansa will know the tensions between Dany and the Faith will mean Dany will be assumed as the culprit, and the death of the HS will further destabilise Dany's rule, turning the people further away from her.

When Dany is ousted as detailed earlier up thread the Faith will choose Lancel of the miraculous dragon pit escape to the vacant position of High Septon. Baelor was king, Lancel will be High Septon.The new High Septon will believe it's his duty to set the realm to rights, and the first priority will be to find a king. As detailed up thread, he will quietly offer Jaime the position, but Jaime will decline, he will preside over Sansa's trial for Joffs murder which will become a trial of Seven and he will preside over the Great Council that will elect Sansa and Tyrion to Queen and King.

As Baelor was guided in rule by visions from the Seven I expect Lancel will be also. His visions come to him as he sleeps alone by an altar of the Seven. Perhaps in the Great Sept of Baelor there are secret tunnels through which an opportunistic player could send a catspaw to "influence" such visions. Beneath the Great Sept there are the tombs of kings past, perhaps including Baelor himself (the Sept wasn't finished before he died, but the lower grounds likely were). If one such catspaw were capable of taking the face of the dead, perhaps there lies the perfect disguise to bring visions to the current High Septon.

If not, well, Sansa has a way with Lancel anyway.

His cousin Ser Lancel had been brought down by Ser Kevan, the first time he'd left his sickbed since the battle. He looks ghastly. Lancel's hair had turned white and brittle, and he was thin as a stick. Without his father beside him holding him up, he would surely have collapsed. Yet when Sansa praised his valor and said how good it was to see him getting strong again, both Lancel and Ser Kevan beamed.

As detailed previously Tyrion will be King, Jaime will be Hand, and Jon will come South to force the realm into one whole co-operating force to fight the Others. It won't go pretty, but eventually all the major players will be in agreement of what must be done, except for one.

From the Baelor sidebar in TWOIAF.

Malicious rumors that followed in the wake of Visery's ascension - begun, some say, by the pen of the Lady Maia of House Stoleworth - suggested that Viserys poisoned the king in order to finally gain the throne after a decade and more of waiting. Others have suggested that Viserys poisoned Baelor for the good of the realm, since the septon-king had come to believe that the Seven called on him to convert all the unbelievers in his realm. This would have led to a war with the North and the Iron Islands that would have caused great turmoil.

The quote obviously alludes to the purple wedding for the first part, the rest I believe foreshadows Lancel and Tyrion.

As Baelor's reign grew ever more erratic as he followed his visions, Lancel's tenure as High Septon will prove to be a thorn in the side of both Tyrion and Jaime. It will be as Tyrion says.

"Give me priests who are fat and corrupt and cynical." he told Haldon, "the sort who like to sit on soft satin cushions, nibble sweetmeats, and diddle little boys. It's the ones who believe in gods who make the trouble."

It will come to a head when Lancel will refuse to make common cause with heathens, they being the Iron Islanders, Northerners, Wildlings and other members of Jon's host.

Tyrion may order Lancel's assassination, as he is the Viserys parallel, but I don't think he has it in him. He's Tywin up until a point, but he doesn't have that final 10% that makes Tywin Tywin. As Tyrion says himself, he'd have let Robert bloody his own hands. Fortunately for Tyrion he will be King, and the king doesn't have to stick his hand in shit, as the saying goes, the king eats, the Hand takes the shit. And his Hand will be Tywin all the way, willing to stick his hand in shit and carry the burden of the realm so the king can keep his hands clean.

Lancel.

"I dreamed that you would come. In the dream you knew what I had done. How I'd sinned. You killed me for it."

His reasoning is wrong, but ultimately Lancel's dream will prove correct.

"The brave man slays with a sword, the craven with a wineskin. We are both Kingslayers, ser."

Jaime brought the sword for Kingslaying, but for Deicide and Kinslaying, well I don't know if this time he'll be able to bring himself to use his sword.