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nine-gear crow
Aug 10, 2013

UltraRed posted:

Is D&B a thread joke? I thought they were Dan and David?

I've never heard that used before. It's always been either Weiss and Benioff, David and Dan, or D&D. Reddit has started calling them 2D in the wake of Season 8 because they're two dimensional hacks. Around there though they've always just kind of been "those two assclowns".

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The Unnamed One
Jan 13, 2012

"BOOM!"
Doesn’t have quite the same ring as “Absolute Fucker”, so GRRM beats them even in disparaging nicknames

some bust on that guy
Jan 21, 2006

This avatar was paid for by the Silent Majority.
At least they gave us an ending. So not quite on Absolute Fucker level.

Solice Kirsk
Jun 1, 2004

.
Was it here that someone was posting about how Howland may have warged into Arthur Dayne and that's why no one has seen him since?

chaosapiant
Oct 10, 2012

White Line Fever

Why does everyone refer to Griff as Fake Aegon. It’s been a while since I read Dance, but I was pretty sure there was no indication he was fake, unless that’s just a fan theory?

whowhatwhere
Mar 15, 2010

SHINee's back
Off the top of my head there's evidence that he might be Illyrio's son with a descendant of the Blackfyres (given how paternally Illyrio acts regarding Griff while giving no more than a mercenary poo poo about Viserys/Dany and the description of his wife sounding very Targaryen), plus it would explain why the Golden Company would drop everything to help him secure his claim (given they're all descendants of the army supporting the Blackfyres). There might be even more that I'm missing, however.

mind the walrus
Sep 22, 2006

Among other things-- literally nothing about him showed up/panned out in the TV show which was allegedly based on GRRM's outline, therefore it wasn't ultimately pertinent to the core narrative. See also: Lady Stoneheart and Nymeria's pack.

But even back in 2011 he was obviously a red herring. Nothing about ASoIaF has ever been straightforward, and every character who tries to shoot straight ends up punished, so why would this 11th hour appearance of a true heir be anything to believe at face value?

TK-42-1
Oct 30, 2013

looks like we have a bad transmitter



He’s probably a Targ/Blackfyre but he’s not Aegon the baby that was killed. He might be actually named Aegon in secret but grrm thinks it’s clever since Jon is actually Aegon but that loses like all of the gravitas behind it since griff doesn’t exist on the show.

Invalid Validation
Jan 13, 2008




Didn’t Gurm say at one point he didn’t like the R + J theory cause people figured it out already? Thought I read that at one point.

Traxus IV
Sep 11, 2001

it's our time now
let's get this shit started


UltraRed posted:

Is D&B a thread joke? I thought they were Dan and David?

Ah, yes, the good ol' Dick & Balls

Phenotype
Jul 24, 2007

You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance.



mind the walrus posted:

Among other things-- literally nothing about him showed up/panned out in the TV show which was allegedly based on GRRM's outline, therefore it wasn't ultimately pertinent to the core narrative. See also: Lady Stoneheart and Nymeria's pack.

But even back in 2011 he was obviously a red herring. Nothing about ASoIaF has ever been straightforward, and every character who tries to shoot straight ends up punished, so why would this 11th hour appearance of a true heir be anything to believe at face value?

I know I've posted this in the TV thread, but there was a reddit post I came across after the end of the final season that had a really solid theory on how Griff/Young Aegon should have been a crucial part of the ending we saw on screen, and why it seemed so half-assed without him:

In one of the earlier books, Daenerys had that prophetic dream about a cloth dragon on sticks with the people cheering, which might have meant Griff (the fake dragon/Targaryen) and Jon Connington's army takes over King's Landing before Daenerys gets there. When she finally arrives she sees another Targaryen has survived and taken what she thought was her birthright, and since Griff has been raised to be a good king, the people love him, and so Daenerys ends up seeing her entire quest was meaningless, her destiny meant nothing. Maybe she finds out Griff is a fake, too, and so it sets the scene for her to lose her mind and burn King's Landing to the ground in a much more fulfilling way than in the show.

The kicker that makes me like this theory so much -- Jon Connington had that scene where he's thinking back to the battle of Stoney Sept, where he and his men went from house to house searching for a wounded Robert Baratheon in hopes of ending Robert's Rebellion. But the search takes too much time, and in the present he wishes he would have done what Tywin Lannister would have done, and just burned the village to the ground. Sure enough, before he finds Robert, he hears the sound of the bells ringing -- and in the present, he curses the sound of the bells -- to announce that Ned Stark's army had arrived, and Robert escapes in the ensuing battle and goes on to kill Rhaegar a couple weeks later. And of course, remember how the TV show had that weird bit about how the King's Landing bells mean open the gates, or something? Possibly Connington is going to flip out or react badly to the bells somehow, helping shape the events leading to Daenerys's snapping and burning the city to the ground.

It all seems to tie together pretty nicely once Griff and Connington are in the mix, you can see foreshadowing and a much more logical and satisfying path to the same ending we saw on screen. And so D&D listened to GRRM spell out all the major plot points for the end of the series, probably while playing on their phone or something, and said "Oh, bells, huh? That sounds pretty cool, we'll throw that in there somehow" even though they didn't want to use any of the relevant characters.

Phenotype fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Jul 9, 2020

Sassy Sasquatch
Feb 28, 2013

Phenotype posted:

I know I've posted this in the TV thread, but there was a reddit post I came across after the end of the final season that had a really solid theory on how Griff/Young Aegon should have been a crucial part of the ending we saw on screen, and why it seemed so half-assed without him:

In one of the earlier books, Daenerys had that prophetic dream about a cloth dragon on sticks with the people cheering, which might have meant Griff (the fake dragon/Targaryen) and Jon Connington's army takes over King's Landing before Daenerys gets there. When she finally arrives she sees another Targaryen has survived and taken what she thought was her birthright, and since Griff has been raised to be a good king, the people love him, and so Daenerys ends up seeing her entire quest was meaningless, her destiny meant nothing. Maybe she finds out Griff is a fake, too, and so it sets the scene for her to lose her mind and burn King's Landing to the ground in a much more fulfilling way than in the show.

The kicker that makes me like this theory so much -- Jon Connington had that scene where he's thinking back to the battle of Stoney Sept, where he and his men went from house to house searching for a wounded Robert Baratheon in hopes of ending Robert's Rebellion. But the search takes too much time, and in the present he wishes he would have done what Tywin Lannister would have done, and just burned the village to the ground. Sure enough, before he finds Robert, he hears the sound of the bells ringing -- and in the present, he curses the sound of the bells -- to announce that Ned Stark's army had arrived, and Robert escapes in the ensuing battle and goes on to kill Rhaegar a couple weeks later. And of course, remember how the TV show had that weird bit about how the King's Landing bells mean open the gates, or something? Possibly Connington is going to flip out or react badly to the bells somehow, helping shape the events leading to Daenerys's snapping and burning the city to the ground.

It all seems to tie together pretty nicely once Griff and Connington are in the mix, you can see foreshadowing and a much more logical and satisfying path to the same ending we saw on screen. And so D&D listened to GRRM spell out all the major plot points for the end of the series, probably while playing on their phone or something, and said "Oh, bells, huh? That sounds pretty cool, we'll throw that in there somehow" even though they didn't want to use any of the relevant characters.

That's... actually pretty cool and it makes sense. Thanks for posting it here. :hf:

Vichan
Oct 1, 2014

I'LL PUNISH YOU ACCORDING TO YOUR CRIME

TK-42-1 posted:

He’s probably a Targ/Blackfyre but he’s not Aegon the baby that was killed. He might be actually named Aegon in secret but grrm thinks it’s clever since Jon is actually Aegon but that loses like all of the gravitas behind it since griff doesn’t exist on the show.

I guarantee Jon's name is not Aegon, it wouldn't make any sense.

BrotherJayne
Nov 28, 2019

Vichan posted:

Bran becoming king doesn't bother me, him being elected because he has 'the best story' and not following up on his powers does bother me.

"Bran" will only be King until the first person with the Gift and two working legs happens by.

It sucks, too. Whole series goes by with us barely learning anything about the good guys, then their god king gets murdered by some teenage ninja assassin mattered they did all that work and travelled all that way south trying to put an end to the soul parasite.


Though the thought of the 3er spending all that time stuck under a tree trying to lure a host, then finally someone takes the bait and they're a fuckin' cripple xD

Hundreds of years spent, to receive only the minimum viable bump to mobility

BrotherJayne fucked around with this message at 10:46 on Jul 9, 2020

esperterra
Mar 24, 2010

SHINee's back




TK-42-1 posted:

He’s probably a Targ/Blackfyre but he’s not Aegon the baby that was killed. He might be actually named Aegon in secret but grrm thinks it’s clever since Jon is actually Aegon but that loses like all of the gravitas behind it since griff doesn’t exist on the show.

I really hope Jon's name isn't actually Aegon b/c lol if Rhaegar named both of his sons that. I like to think D&D just went with that as a nod to people who read the books and know about fAego--- pffft hahah they don't put that much thought into it

esperterra
Mar 24, 2010

SHINee's back




forreal tho I doubt his name is Aegon in the books

should this be my first toxx b/c it is one that i will never have to pay

CraigSlice
Sep 23, 2005
: )
I thought it was dumb to have em both named Aegon and told my friend Oscar this. Oscar then informed me he has a brother named Oscar, same dad different mom. I told him that is also dumb.

Drone Jett
Feb 21, 2017

by Fluffdaddy
College Slice

CraigSlice posted:

I thought it was dumb to have em both named Aegon and told my friend Oscar this. Oscar then informed me he has a brother named Oscar, same dad different mom. I told him that is also dumb.

I once knew a guy who had a brother named Darryl and an other brother named Darryl.

mind the walrus
Sep 22, 2006

I will not hear this slander against siblings with the same name

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRUD8NqLGuc

Intel&Sebastian
Oct 20, 2002

colonel...
i'm trying to sneak around
but i'm dummy thicc
and the clap of my ass cheeks
keeps alerting the guards!

Sassy Sasquatch posted:

That's... actually pretty cool and it makes sense. Thanks for posting it here. :hf:

seconding this

Solice Kirsk
Jun 1, 2004

.

Drone Jett posted:

I once knew a guy who had a brother named Darryl and an other brother named Darryl.

I had a dream like that once.

Guy A. Person
May 23, 2003

Invalid Validation posted:

Didn’t Gurm say at one point he didn’t like the R + J theory cause people figured it out already? Thought I read that at one point.

I thought I read the exact opposite: that he felt that if someone figured out a twist then it was fine and just showed that the twist was based on well established evidence.

We might be thinking of two entirely different authors from GRRM tho.

Intel&Sebastian
Oct 20, 2002

colonel...
i'm trying to sneak around
but i'm dummy thicc
and the clap of my ass cheeks
keeps alerting the guards!
I have a vague recollection of him being surprised that people figured it out as fast as they did but not that he regretted it? idk

mind the walrus
Sep 22, 2006

That's the version I have. He was surprised that people pieced it together so quickly but to his credit, didn't try to change course like some Westworld bullshit. I do remember reading some bullshit puff piece interview for why 2D (I like that, I'm using that from now on) got the job and saying that they impressed GRRM by telling him they figured out who Jon's true father was. Even at the time it was like "yeah :jerkbag:"

HELLO LADIES
Feb 15, 2008
:3 -$5 :3
I'm like 99% sure it's Aemon, to make Jon's brief connection with Maester Aemon more tragic. There's sort of a twisted parallel between fAegon as Aegon IV, who was a poo poo king and caused the Blackfyres in the first place, Daenaerys and Naerys who she's supposed to resemble, and Aemon the (wait for it) Dragonknight, who is specifically remembered as a great paragon of virtue and one of the best Lord Commanders of the Kingsguard. Jon's specifically show to idealize him, and he fights to defend Naerys from the rumors that the heir, Daeron II, is actually his son, which are supposedly actually started by Aegon IV because he wants to go ahead and legitimize Daemon Blackfyre. Aemon winds up basically sacrificing himself protecting Aegon from assassination, just at the point in history as he's revealing himself to be a truly horrible piece of poo poo to people outside of the Targ family and their twisted-but-tolerated standards. Aegon goes on to gently caress things up for a zillion years, and legitimizes a poo poo ton of bastards in addition to Daemon Blackfyre, including Bloodraven, basically loving everything up and ushering in a continent-wide civil war that lasts for three generations.

So the books basically end by Jon effectively repudiating the mistakes of the hero he once idealized, and the dumb "did I do the right thing? / Ask me again in fifty years" exchange is GRRM's way of saying "no moral". In a very real sense, the whole series is basically GRRM pissing on the idea of the Hero's Journey, the "I am going to be a hero/savior" stuff that drove Rhaegar, and really just the whole fantasy genre as invented by Tolkien, which is actually cool and good even if he had to be all GRRM about it. You could also probably look at the whole thing as basically a Boomer who was a conscientious objector but also clearly has some masculinity issues and anti-jock/pretty boy poisoning trying to self-justify that getting out of Vietnam was motivated by higher principles than "I don't want to die for a dumb war", which the actual events of his life show is pretty clearly not the case. Like, that's not a condemnation of him, war is stupid, but he also spent the rest of his life being GRRM, not an anti-war war correspondent or joining MSF or Amnesty International or whatever. A lot of those themes keep cropping up in his older work, some of them that he probably didn't even intend.

Intel&Sebastian posted:

I have a vague recollection of him being surprised that people figured it out as fast as they did but not that he regretted it? idk

There was a bit of bitterness to it, like his thesis was that the internet let people collaborate and figure it out faster. Which, I mean, he's probably even right, but that's actually cool and good. I'm also not willing to give him that much credit for sticking to his guns, because you can joss poo poo when it's too easy/corny to figure out and come up with something better for it. To this day I'm convinced Steven Brust did that when fans figured out a couple of his twists, and I say that as someone who guessed one of the ones that he kept in like six books before it was confirmed. I'm pretty sure figured out where he was going with the twist that a bunch of people came up with and then denied, and as cool as what I think the eventual reveal would have been, the worldbuilding and relationships between people feel realer for it. I also think GRRM is a dirty, dirty liar and he did joss some stuff, and forcing himself to expand on where he was going made for a better overall story than "everything went according to keikaku for Littlefinger, then Arya stabbed him/a dragon ate him".

HELLO LADIES fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Jul 9, 2020

Vichan
Oct 1, 2014

I'LL PUNISH YOU ACCORDING TO YOUR CRIME

quote:

But he had not left the Wall for that; he had left because he was after all his father’s son, and Robb’s brother. The gift of a sword, even a sword as fine as Longclaw, did not make him a Mormont. Nor was he Aemon Targaryen.

GRRM loves moments like these so it'd definitely fit.

Invalid Validation
Jan 13, 2008




Guy A. Person posted:

We might be thinking of two entirely different authors from GRRM tho.

This could very well be the case.

Mameluke
Aug 2, 2013

by Fluffdaddy
Oh it's definitely Aemon. There's another passage where Jon recalls playing Targs with Robb as a boy, where Robb was Daeron and Jon was Aemon the Dragonknight

emanresu tnuocca
Sep 2, 2011

by Athanatos
I like the theory with Dany losing her poo poo when the resident's of King's Landing tell her to gently caress off, that they already have a targaryen and this one is a good boy with good westerosi soldiers rather than dragons, eunuchs and barbarians from Essos. It will actually make a lot of sense, Dany is doomed to be perceived as a foreign invader, and this clashes with the fantasies she's been fostering about her 'homecoming' to Westeros. I like.

I can also kinda squint at the story and see bran becoming god emperor of westeros not because 'he has the best story' but because he is the keeper of the stories, GURM is a big fan of beings which are an amalgamation of consciounsesses, it's really a recurring theme, Bran will be an omniscient dictator, and really the story might as well end with Bran or whoever occupies his head doing a small villain's reveal like the show had with Bran suggesting that this whole thing was a master plan so that he (or whatever it is inside his head, the show made a poor job of that) will get a dragon, in the show this is an offhanded joke but in the book this can be an actual twist.

Meh who knows.

mind the walrus
Sep 22, 2006

emanresu tnuocca posted:

I like the theory with Dany losing her poo poo when the resident's of King's Landing tell her to gently caress off, that they already have a targaryen and this one is a good boy with good westerosi soldiers rather than dragons, eunuchs and barbarians from Essos. It will actually make a lot of sense, Dany is doomed to be perceived as a foreign invader, and this clashes with the fantasies she's been fostering about her 'homecoming' to Westeros. I like.
This is absolutely where her arc naturally leads and now I'm genuinely angry that Dany's entire time in Mereen wasn't just one chapter long... because that's seriously all it needed to be.

quote:

I can also kinda squint at the story and see bran becoming god emperor of westeros not because 'he has the best story' but because he is the keeper of the stories, GURM is a big fan of beings which are an amalgamation of consciounsesses, it's really a recurring theme, Bran will be an omniscient dictator, and really the story might as well end with Bran or whoever occupies his head doing a small villain's reveal like the show had with Bran suggesting that this whole thing was a master plan so that he (or whatever it is inside his head, the show made a poor job of that) will get a dragon, in the show this is an offhanded joke but in the book this can be an actual twist.
This makes so much sense because it fits with the fact that GRRM is absolute poo poo as master plans and is absolutely the kind-of author who would suck his own dick about how storytellers are the true Kings of Mankind or some similar horseshit. Christ, Neil Gaiman did the same horseshit working out his own self-insert angst via Sandman in the 90s so much goddamn better.

A Typical Goon
Feb 25, 2011

whowhatwhere posted:

Off the top of my head there's evidence that he might be Illyrio's son with a descendant of the Blackfyres (given how paternally Illyrio acts regarding Griff while giving no more than a mercenary poo poo about Viserys/Dany and the description of his wife sounding very Targaryen), plus it would explain why the Golden Company would drop everything to help him secure his claim (given they're all descendants of the army supporting the Blackfyres). There might be even more that I'm missing, however.

There's also what appears to be foreshadowing in the story about the dragon signpost that Meribald talks about in one of Brienne's chapters. Given that the Blackfyre's sigil is a black dragon on red and the Targaryen sigil a red dragon I think this holds up

quote:

When the smith's son was an old man, a bastard son of the fourth Aegon rose up in rebellion against his trueborn brother and took for his sigil a black dragon. These lands belonged to Lord Darry then, and his lordship was fiercely loyal to the king. The sight of the black iron dragon made him wroth, so he cut down the post, hacked the sign into pieces, and cast them into the river. One of the dragon's heads washed up on the Quiet Isle many years later, though by that time is was red with rust.

Arbite
Nov 4, 2009





Guy A. Person posted:

I thought I read the exact opposite: that he felt that if someone figured out a twist then it was fine and just showed that the twist was based on well established evidence.

We might be thinking of two entirely different authors from GRRM tho.

Arbite posted:

I bet in the years/decades/alternate dimensions to come, when someone is able to read through the whole series all at once, they will be plenty surprised. It's just that the internet has had years to mull and gestate every possible event and interpretation that could come from what's been presented. It certainly doesn't mean that he should try and surprise everyone by introducing something unknown and unknowable.


2015 :sax:

emanresu tnuocca
Sep 2, 2011

by Athanatos

mind the walrus posted:

This is absolutely where her arc naturally leads and now I'm genuinely angry that Dany's entire time in Mereen wasn't just one chapter long... because that's seriously all it needed to be.

This also makes Varys and his season 8 death by dragonfire make a lot more sense, he was never on Dany's side in the books, so we probably get some parlay scene where Varys comes out of the city to try to convince Dany that she won't be able to sit on the iron throne without killing countless of innocent people, then Dany kills Varys which horrifies Jon (who wasn't present before to see how Dany treats emmissaries), I can pretty much imagine the Jon chapter ending with him looking at Dany aas she mumbles "if I look back I am lost", new chapter - "The Mad Queen".

Mat Cauthon
Jan 2, 2006

The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.



Hey remember this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_9B1T4aMWk

Amazing how the show could go from that to...what we got.

Also I'm kinda tempted to do a rewatch of seasons 1-4 ( and maybe 5 for Hardhome) because I completely forgot how much of the War of Five Kings played out in S2, for some reason I kept thinking it was in S3 but maybe that's because of the various interpersonal conflicts and the Red Wedding.

Evil Fluffy
Jul 13, 2009

Scholars are some of the most pompous and pedantic people I've ever had the joy of meeting.

whowhatwhere posted:

Off the top of my head there's evidence that he might be Illyrio's son with a descendant of the Blackfyres (given how paternally Illyrio acts regarding Griff while giving no more than a mercenary poo poo about Viserys/Dany and the description of his wife sounding very Targaryen), plus it would explain why the Golden Company would drop everything to help him secure his claim (given they're all descendants of the army supporting the Blackfyres). There might be even more that I'm missing, however.

Or: He is in fact Aegon raised to understand the plight of the common man as Varys claimed. However, Jon is still his half-brother and the Prince who was Promised. Aegon gets himself killed in some stupid fashion (or heroically dies saving Jon after Jon's Male Stark Curse of Noble Stupidity gets him in trouble again), Dany snaps and burns King's Landing in response, and then Jon still has to kill her because she's just as much an unreliable and insane leader as her father.

I still love the reaction people havy to Dany going insane and burning King's Landing. Like, the entire series shows her loving up in bigger and bigger ways because she's not half as smart as she thinks she is. I'd love to see a recap of what Essos is like 5 years after ASOIAF ends because as soon as the Masters hear that Dany died in Westeros and her army scattered elsewhere they are going to invade all the freed cities and re-enslave/massacre every last many, woman, and child. The Iron Bank is out god knows how much money that they have no hope of collecting, which probably fucks with Braavos's economy in a bad way, and Jon's roaming free north of the wall where he's a literal savior to the freefolk and giants. So his biggest danger is his own stupidity (which is a pretty big danger) and he likely goes on to explore more of the far north than anyone south of the wall has done since the age of heroes or w/e it's called.

Beef Stew posted:

Is the twin theory actually credible? I heard about it but I just assumed it was another one of the bat poo poo crazy ones that fans came up with after waiting a decade for a book. Like the guys on the subreddit who think azor ahai is some fire demon from the earth's core who is possessing Euron or that Bran is going to sexually assault someone using Hodor.

It hinges almost entirely on "hey these two northerners have some similarities in their appearances. This means they're brother and sister because strangers definitely never have similar looks and there's definitely no trace ancestry shared by two noble Houses from the same region."

That said, it's still more grounded than "Varys is a merman because of a quip he makes to Tyrion while they're on a boat about what'd happen if someone threw him overboard."

Mad Hamish
Jun 15, 2008

WILL AMOUNT TO NOTHING IN LIFE.



mind the walrus posted:

This is absolutely where her arc naturally leads and now I'm genuinely angry that Dany's entire time in Mereen wasn't just one chapter long... because that's seriously all it needed to be.


I would like to say that the Meereen stuff serves to demonstrate to Daenerys that ruling is actually hard. She does the exact same thing to Meereen what she intends to do to Westeros - show up, proclaim herself to be a liberator here to free the people from their chains of oppression under the slavers / Baratheon dynasty of usurpers, and expects everyone to be thankful to her even though she has no real understanding of the people, place, or culture. She fucks poo poo up in Meereen very badly, because she's a teenage girl who doesn't understand what rulership actually entails. When would she have learned about politics? All she knows is that she can enforce her will because she is the khaleesi and later because she has dragons, but when the khal is dead and the dragons uncontrollable she doesn't even have that, and everything falls apart around her.

Someone (Varys?) notes at one point that what she wants to be is a rescuer, but a rescuer is not a ruler. Meereen serves to point this out.

mind the walrus
Sep 22, 2006

Mad Hamish posted:

I would like to say that the Meereen stuff serves to demonstrate to Daenerys that ruling is actually hard. She does the exact same thing to Meereen what she intends to do to Westeros - show up, proclaim herself to be a liberator here to free the people from their chains of oppression under the slavers / Baratheon dynasty of usurpers, and expects everyone to be thankful to her even though she has no real understanding of the people, place, or culture. She fucks poo poo up in Meereen very badly, because she's a teenage girl who doesn't understand what rulership actually entails. When would she have learned about politics? All she knows is that she can enforce her will because she is the khaleesi and later because she has dragons, but when the khal is dead and the dragons uncontrollable she doesn't even have that, and everything falls apart around her.

Someone (Varys?) notes at one point that what she wants to be is a rescuer, but a rescuer is not a ruler. Meereen serves to point this out.

Literally everyone got this within the first ten pages of the first Mereen chapter. That's why that entire arc only needed to be one chapter long. Three at absolute most.

HELLO LADIES
Feb 15, 2008
:3 -$5 :3

A Typical Goon posted:

There's also what appears to be foreshadowing in the story about the dragon signpost that Meribald talks about in one of Brienne's chapters. Given that the Blackfyre's sigil is a black dragon on red and the Targaryen sigil a red dragon I think this holds up.

There's a ton of evidence for the Blackfyre theory, as well as my personal favorite variation, the Brightfyre theory, which is that Illyrio is a matrilineal descendant of the Blackfyres, his wife Serra was a descendant of Aerion "Brightflame"'s son Maegor, who was basically the obvious legal heir who just gets passed up because they're afraid he'll go crazy. The theory is that fAegon is basically a unification of two separate Targ bloodlines, and that Varys was Serra's brother or other relative, and he and Illyrio are able to work together because they have an heir in common, and this "harmless" but presumably verifiable Targ connection is what allowed Varys to be their man on the inside with Aerys to begin with. Stannis's parents died coming back from a trip to Essos to look for a suitable Valyrian-blooded match for Rhaegar, which is why a lot of people theorize that Patchface was also some Targ-kin or Valyrian blooded something or other before he was drowned. If what Varys explains as his "real" backstory is true, if he eventually uncovered the truth himself and was able to prove it to Aerys, it would certainly be in character for Aerys to only be willing to trust a "family member", who is otherwise some total unknown from the East who just happens to have a good spy network. Even if Varys handed over a bunch of credible evidence of treason to Aerys, or some intel that gave him leverage over people he didn't trust like Tywin, choosing him as your chief of intel seems like an impossibly stupid risk, and Aerys was supposed to be at least semi-competent. Also seems odd that Rhaegar wouldn't raise the same objection once he was grown, or any of the people claiming to have been loyal to the Targaryens, like Arthur Dayne or Gerald Hightower.

I like it because depending on how things panned out, it makes Varys technically the most "rightful" claimant of any of the Targs he's ever served or tried to put on the throne, and makes that line in the show to Tyrion that "cocks are important, I'm afraid" weirdly heartbreaking and poignant. If he's someone who somehow would even have precedence over Daemon Blackfyre's entire line even if it was legitimized, and there are some ways it could work given the various fake histories GRRM's put out, even more so. It's a very GRRMy thing to put in there, and the line sort of works if you take it as D&D trying to make a nod to it in like the most D&D way possible.

crepeface
Nov 5, 2004

r*p*f*c*
I actually read a bunch of those books about targ history and I vaguely remember that characters with the same name are usually very similar.

Aegons usually end up on the throne.
Aemons are the nice, noble ones.
Visenna/Viserys are close to power and have their own agendas


There were a bunch of other ones too but I forgot them.

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A Typical Goon
Feb 25, 2011
The point of Dany's Meereen chapters were to foreshadow her turn into crazy Targaryen. GRRM has said that he was trying to do some ~metaphorical~ poo poo where Hizdar represents peaceful rule of Meereen (and Dany finds him completely unappealing) while Daario represents "War and woe" and Dany can't stop fantasizing about being with him.

I mean it's not great but certainly better than 'and then she heard the surrender bells and went insane' that the show pulled

I actually enjoyed the political whodunnit part of Dany's Meereen chapters where the characters and the reader both try and figure out the mystery of who the Harpy is :shrug:

A Typical Goon fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Jul 11, 2020

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