Throughout A Song of Ice and Fire, there have been many
prophecies as well as stories, usually quite ancient, that
serve as foreshadowing. So we have a couple of different
ways of George letting us know what's going to happen and or
letting the characters know what's going to happen through a
bit of mystery. On top of that, there's history
books, scholarly sources, and texts referring to some of those
same prophecies or stories, and sometimes they contain different
information. Some sources differ on which
prophesied outcomes are actually good or evil or something else
altogether, something outside of the good evil paradigm.
Even some sources wonder if what we've been told from thousands
of years ago is actually true. It's fun and exciting and
mysterious and mystical, and there's a little bit of anxiety
behind it, too. But it's also pretty much
impossible to keep track of it all, even for us doing this full
time. For example, what does
Melisandre believe versus what does Quaiste believe?
How does Brands knowledge and that of past greenshears in the
Weirwood network stack up against that of Marwin or Macoro
or Rhaegar or any of the other characters I just mentioned?
Even the sources themselves don't have at all, right?
The Werewood network doesn't have all the answers, nor do the
books in Ash High. Certainly no individual does.
The story of the last Hero refers to Others, the Long
Night, the Children, the Night's Watch, but there's no Dragons in
that story. The story of Azora High mentions
a great cold darkness. It mentions Dragons waking from
stone. It mentions a red sword of
heroes. There's no mention of the Others
in that one, though. Melisandre is perhaps the
character most focused on all this, but she doesn't even know
Daenerys exists, right? Danny, meanwhile, has been
trying to figure out some of these things on her own, but so
far she hasn't made a lot of progress.
When she left the House of the Undying, she said, well, I came
for answers and now I have even more questions.
And, and us too. But she has seen and heard a lot
along the way for us to consider.
And given we have more information she does, we're able
to come to more conclusions than she has.
And now in her case, it's dreams, the House of the Undying
from people. Consider that again alongside
what Bran has seen or what Quaithe has said, or again,
Rhaegar or Bloodraven, or Aries the First who is very bookish
and interested in prophecies, or Old Nan.
And it's not just what they know, it's what they think they
know. George isn't giving these
characters precise, detailed information.
They just know things that they think are true or suspect are
true, and they may not be right. Also, Sam has read a lot of
books and he hasn't actually told us what's in some of those
books he's read. It hasn't been a part of his
POV's, and now that he's at the Citadel, there's going to be a
lot more of that, you might think.
And Maester Eamonn, another scholarly individual who also
comes at it from a supernatural angle, being Targaryen himself,
he spent a lot of his life worrying over this.
And throughout the whole thing, we have the disparate ways this
knowledge is circulated or learned.
These characters I've just named, they're not going to meet
at some conclave to discuss it all.
They can't really. But we can.
We can put all these scraps and scrolls together in one place,
All the relevant lore from recently to all the way back, as
well as far as A Song of Ice and Fire history will take us.
So this episode is a collection of all we know about all the
prophecies and relevant ancient tales.
Which stories refer to the others?
Which prophecies refer to Dragons?
Do any refer to both? Each believer, each religion,
each prophecy, each text, they're all different in ways
that George has spiced with realistic information handling
it. Just we're going to try to get
at every source we have. Again, no one has all the
answers. No one is even particularly
close to having all the answers. As far as we can tell, there may
not even be and all the answers. I don't think George has
conceived it that way. I think even the way he imagines
it, there are some things that will never be answered.
Even he won't come up with the answers for it because he
intends for it to be mysterious. So why would he come up with
something, right? It's even mysterious to him in
that sense. Now, some people, meaning some
characters, have their heads buried deep in prophecy while
also having their heads buried deep in the sand.
They know a lot, but they're also ignorant or a lot or in
denial about a lot. Some people are partly
enlightened. They're on the right track, but
they're also wrong about things. So this is something we will pay
attention to to today in great detail.
Not just which prophecies, dreams and books, which
characters have that knowledge and who they may discuss or help
fill out the picture using each other's knowledge.
No one has read all the same books, right?
Or had the same dreams. In fact, they rarely do.
It's a large and very old world we're dealing with here.
On top of all this, as a way to frame everything wrong with the
subject, brings us back to the title of the episode.
The concept of the Song of Ice and Fire itself.
It seems to somewhat serve as a catch all for these story
elements, these supernatural elements, these prophetic
elements, these foreshadowy elements, but also more than
that. There's also all, all kinds of
Song of Ice and Fire themes that we'll touch on a little bit
because they help us understand the bigger picture and how
George uses the concept of ice and fire in his prophecies and
stories and, and all that. And again, there's misleading
takes, outright lies, honest mistakes.
I mean, something true 1000 years ago might not be true
today, right? And we're not talking about 1000
years here. We're talking about more than
that. Songs are a big part of this
episode as well, as I've said, because we're going to delve
into the Song of Ice and Fire conceptually, as well as what it
means within the confines of the story.
Songs are very memorable, not just from what we can learn from
them, but because of the nature of music, something we'll spend
a little bit of time on today as well.
It helps explain why, after so, so long, Westeros is able to
remember these things. Songs contain stories, they
contain characters, they contain memories.
So we've got the Princess that was promised, the Prince that
was promised as well, Azora High, the Last Hero, dragon
dreamers and the rebirth of Dragons, the comet, the Others,
the Long Night, Green Seers, and Ice and Fire themes outside the
supernatural. All that and more on this
episode of History of Westeros Podcast.
Hello and welcome back everybody.
It's another episode of History of Westeros podcast coming at
you. It's Sunday at 3:00 Eastern,
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my friends. Our trivia question today, who
does Danny discuss the Song of Ice and Fire with?
The phrase is very rarely used in the books, but she does bring
it up to talk to one person about it.
Who is that? Yep.
The answer I will give you at the end, but it's also within
the confines of this episode. It will come up.
Let me read the sections that we'll be discussing today.
After the little set up, we will discuss what is the Song of Ice
and Fire. Then we will get into the Ice
and Fire prophecy timeline, a perspective of Ice and fire.
Then Azor Ahai and friends, the Great other, the last hero, the
Princess that was promised songs and memory, Aegon's dream.
That's right, Aegon the Conqueror's dream that did come
from George, not just from House of the Dragon.
So that's involved here too. The Dragon Dreamer soundtrack,
then sheet music, then the three headed dragon, then the others.
Question mark and an outro and we'll be done.
Let me also hit you all with a pole.
We'll give you the results at the end.
Those of you who are here live can weigh in.
The pole question is it's just a simple yes or no answer.
When Danny sees that singular vision of her brother Rhaegar,
he plays his harp. The music lingers.
She hears the music in this vision, and even as the vision
fades, the music remains for a little while longer.
It lingers. Will Danny ever hear that song
again, in a vision or otherwise? Yes or no?
Weigh in and we'll give you the results at the end of the
episode, along with some other episodes that relate to this
one. If you want to stay immersed,
let's go. What is the Song of Ice and
Fire? The title of the series is A
Song of Ice and Fire, but we're introduced to the Song of Ice
and Fire within the story itself.
Only once though, as I as I hinted, and I think it can be
looked at similarly the A Song of Ice and Fire versus the Song
of Ice and Fire. There's a difference there.
There's some nuance. Song is a fitting metaphor as it
can blend ideas and themes and stories write songs are able to
weave a lot of different things at once while also being
memorable, emotional, etcetera. It's a great way to represent so
many plot lines while pointing towards a climactic prophesied
foreshadowed showdown. I don't want to say prophesied
climax because this story might be too big to denote a single
climax. Maybe it won't be, but we don't
know yet. I I would guess no.
I guess there's a lot of climactic events in the in the
final and even before the final words are written.
The House of the Undying, of all places, is where the Song of Ice
and Fire is first stated out loud within the book books.
This vision doesn't indicate that the warlocks necessarily
have this information, but the magic of this place and the
shade of the evening brings it out of her.
Or what? We don't know the mechanism of
how this magic works. Either way, let's get into what
she sees. Here's Rhaegar and Elia quote.
The man had her brother's hair, but he was taller and his eyes
were a dark indigo rather than lilac.
Hagon. He said to a woman nursing a
newborn babe in a great wooden bed.
What better? Name for a king.
Will you make a song for him? The woman asked.
He has a song. The man replied.
He is the Prince that was promised, and his is the song of
ice and fire. He looked up when he said it,
and his eyes met Danny's and it seemed as if he saw her standing
there beyond the door. There must be one more.
He said, though whether he was speaking to her or the woman in
the bed, she could not say. The dragon has three heads.
He went to the window seat, picked up a harp, and ran his
fingers lightly over its silvery strings.
Sweet sadness filled the room as man and wife and babe faded like
the morning mist, only the music lingering behind to speed her on
her way. Just in general, the use of the
word song here is curious. Why does Rhaegar say it like
that? Again, we don't have anything
else to compare it to. No one else uses the phrase
except Danny in reference to this moment.
She's like, what happened? What did he mean?
So she's basically asking the same question I'm asking right
now. What does that mean?
What is the Song of Ice and Fire?
Is it just a turn of a phrase 'cause he's a musical guy and he
perceives it musically, He writes songs for people.
He's holding his harp in there. It's a big part of his
character. Does he mean it like a story?
Like his is the Song of Ice and Fire, His is the story of ice
and fire. He is the prophesied individual.
He is a child of destiny. Is that just how he just calls
that a song 'cause it's a it's a similar metaphor, or is there
more to it? Is his song his destiny?
Is it like his whole story, this character, this son of his who
he believes has that destiny? Ilya asks if he would write a
song for this child, for this boy, this newborn.
Apparently that's something he does 'cause, you know, she
wouldn't ask that otherwise. I guess he wrote a song for
Rainey's, maybe for her, Ilya as well, maybe for some other
people in his life, maybe his mother, you know.
So given that it's, it's tricky to gauge Rhaegar's response
here, not just because this is a vision and not an actual thing
that Rhaegar definitely said. I I'm guessing he did.
I'm guessing Danny is seeing something that really happened.
But even that, we can't be 100% on that even though, can we?
And I'm not sure Rhaegar's answer here is, Nah, I'm not
writing a song for this kid because he's already got one.
So in that sense, it's not a metaphor.
He's literally referring to a song that he isn't going to
write for this kid because he already has a metaphorical song.
So that's tricky, right? He's not going to write a
literal song because he has a metaphorical song.
Yeah. So that's.
You can understand why Danny's confused by this and why we're
confused by this and, and the idea that Rhaegar seems to be
looking at her or through the doorway or.
Yeah, that's the a creepy way or intriguing way to conceive of
this is maybe Rhaegar was seeing her when he when this really
happened. Like he was a dreamy guy.
Maybe he had dreams as well. And we know he read about
prophecy. We don't hear anything about
dreams or anything supernatural there with him, only
interpretations of it. But it's definitely possible
that he had some dreams. I mean, it's not uncommon for
Targaryens, right? So that would be something if
they're she's seeing him and you know, 20 years prior he saw a
vision of her when he's saying there must be one more, he at
the time would have probably perceived that as his next
child, as the Visenya that's missing from the Rainey's Aegon
Visenya 3 headed combo that he's referring to here.
So he may have seen a vision of Danny and thought, ah, that's my
Visenya that we're going to have next.
Danny, of course, has no idea about that.
But she can hear the conversation and she may
eventually put a piece that together.
She certainly understands some of this stuff from a very basic
level. She understands.
She knows who Aiken the Conqueror was.
She knows he had two sisters. She knows about their three
Dragons. So the only other time the
phrase the Song of Ice and Fire is used, as I said, is when
Danny brings it up and asks Jorah what it means.
And of course, Jorah has no idea what that means.
He's like, I don't know what the Song of Ice and Fire.
I mean, I've never heard that song.
He does help her verify, though, that the person in the dream is
Rhaegar. She wasn't sure when she tells
him about the harp with silver strings.
Jorah's like, damn, yeah, that's that's pretty conclusive there.
He did have a harp like that. And Danny never knew that, never
saw that. She never met Rhaegar.
So Jorah's got to be a little spooked by that because it's so
accurate. But he but neither of them know
what else to make of it beyond that.
And the phrase the dragon has three heads.
There must be one more. That's a huge statement.
Like we're going to have to cover that separately in this
episode, mind you. But we'll come.
So we'll come back to that. But it's very curious, like is
that part of what he read, you know, the three heads thing is
that or is that something he dreamed also?
So yeah, that's why we'll come back to it.
So I think the Song of Ice and Fire is Rhaegar's interpretation
of the destiny of the Prince that was promised.
Now, of course, he identified the wrong figure.
He first thought it was himself. So did Amon, by the way, Maestro
Amon. Then he thought it was his own
son. And, well, we don't know what he
thought at the end. Like, we know what he was saying
in this dream, but he didn't die right after that dream.
He died, what, a year later, nine months later.
So there's time for him to rethink some things.
We don't know what he thought, you know, at the end there, but
we know we we know this and it's it's a big deal.
So we can see obvious themes with certain characters and
especially with supernatural elements.
The book begins with the return of the others.
The first book that is in the snow and ice with and ends with
the return of the Dragons born on a pyre.
So we got ice and fire bookending Game of Thrones book
one right there. And of course, both of these
events evolve quite a few deaths.
Danny also has those dreams of her ancestors pushing her
towards her destiny. That's in book one, that's in
Game of Thrones. When she's in her fever dream.
She's had her complications with pregnancy and all that.
And after the the Miriam Mazdu's ritual so much later though, we
learned that actually a lot of her ancestors had dragon dreams
not like hers exactly because she's the actual Mother of
Dragons, the one who actually fulfills the prophecy.
Whereas a lot of her ancestors were people who had dreams of
Dragons returning or vague things to do with Dragons.
Some of them may have thought they were the 1.
Some of them may have perceived that they were dreaming over
someone else. Either way, dragon dreams are
not uncommon up and down the family tree.
And a few of her ancestors were like famous dreamers like
Danny's a dreamer explicitly. Like that's a name that all the
Targaryens know and they know why.
I mean, she's the reason they all exist today, because without
her they'd have died in the Doom.
So the dreams about bringing back the Dragons may be
purposeful. They may be designed, they may
be implanted glass, candles, other means for the purpose of
stopping the others. You, you know who the you know
who the savior of the world is? Well, you got to make sure the
savior of the world knows that they're the savior of the world.
They have to be convinced to do all those things or else
everyone's going to die. Danny doesn't know she's Azora.
Hi. Danny doesn't know she's the
Princess that was promised, and will she accept it if she does
learn that? That's not exactly the purpose
of this episode, but it's a great question to ask.
Meanwhile, Bran has dreams too after his fall, right?
These dreams are mostly of what's to come, but they're all
so vague. He's also told ancient tales by
Old Nan after he wakes back up. It's more important then to kind
of put all that together, what's happening in his dreams and how
that relates to what Old Nan is saying.
So this isn't prophecy when Old Man is telling it.
This is more straight up literary foreshadowing.
But the stories are so ancient and old, they kind of function
like a prophecy because they're not straightforward like a
prophecy. There's some language that's
inexact. There's the likelihood of the
corruption of the language over 8000 or 6000 years of stories
probably changed a little bit, if not a lot after all that
time. So it's we know that Bran is
explicitly told by the three eyed crow.
This is why you have to live. This is blah blah blah, because
winter is coming. We need you for that.
That may be something like what's going on in the
background with Danny. Different forces, different
elements, an individual or two pushing her towards her destiny
via prophecy, via vision, via ancient text.
All the above and more. And even though I just described
A Game of Thrones the way I did, it's really A Clash of Kings
where the supernatural elements really take off.
They're set up in a Game of Thrones, but they really, but
they really flourish and become fuller in A Clash of Kings.
It's it's the supernatural elements book.
It's it starts with the comet. It's when we get truly
introduced to red priests, shadow babies, skin changers.
There's no prophecy in the first book.
There's the there's foreshadowing, right?
There's Old Nan's stories and there's some other things, but
there's no prophecies until book 2.
The House of the Undying is in book 2 and that's where Danny
gets her vision that leads to this, her talking about the Song
of Ice and Fire. So, so much of this is a clash
of kings. George starts filling in the
back story of these returns, Like why did the Dragons come
back? Why are the others back?
It isn't just here they are now we start to learn what led to
that and all the back story behind all of it.
We had heard about the Long Night in The Last Hero, but not
Lightbringer, not Azorahai, not Nisa Nisa, not the Prince that
was Promised, not the significance of the Comet, not
Melisandre, not Quaithe, Right? All these things come after Book
1. So given what we said about
music and memory, which we'll come back to a little more, it's
quite telling that George made Rhaegar such a key figure here,
a musician, A songwriter, and a good one, someone very much
known for his music. It's pretty much impossible to
in for an in world character to think of Rhaegar and be ignorant
of his musicianship. That's just something that's
like very attached to his identity.
So here's Danny ruminating on what she saw in the House of the
Undying, which included hearing his song.
Danny could not let it go. His is the song of Ice and Fire,
my brother said. I'm certain it was my brother,
not Viserys. Rhaegar.
He had a harp with silver strings, Sir.
Jorah's frown deepened until his eyebrows came together.
Prince Rhaegar played such a harp.
He conceded. You saw him.
She nodded. There was a woman in a bed with
a babe at her breast. My brother said the babe was the
Prince that was promised and told her to name him Aegon.
So Danny has the seed of a connection to her brother with
regards to a destiny that she isn't quite clear on.
Again, she doesn't know what he means by the Song of Ice and
Fire. She doesn't know what the Prince
that Was Promised means. She could maybe guess that
that's a prophetic individual, but she not only hasn't figured
that out explicitly, she certainly hasn't connected it to
herself. And Rhaegar seemed awfully
confident in this dream here, right?
So it's got to really make her wonder what he was thinking.
She's like, my brother was really confident about these
things. What was he on about?
What is he talking about? But she really, not only does
she want to know because it's this big deal, but that's her
brother that she never knew. She yearns to understand what he
was driven by. That's her family that she
doesn't know or have much of A connection to at all.
And it would be very meaningful, even though it might be tragic
at the same time, for her to find out that she's on a similar
path to her brother and is working on something that was
important to him. And she will eventually realize
probably that the Prince that was promised that Rhaegar kept
expecting to come along was her all along.
She's like, Oh my God, Rhaegar was looking for me, my brother
was looking for me. She very likely will have that
realization someday, you know? She's just not, hasn't gotten
that very far down this path yet.
A lot of the elements are there, but she hasn't really put them
together or thought about them a whole lot explicitly though.
She has thought about them somewhat, of course, but she the
problem is she just doesn't have much knowledge of her, of her
own family. Viserys didn't teach her very
much. She was separated from House
Targaryen very early, obviously never knew her parents, didn't
get to read the books at Dragonstone right?
Just is missing a lot of her heritage from not being raised
in that in that way. So the only person she can ask
is Jora, who Jora doesn't know anything right about this kind
of thing. Quote.
Prince Agon was Rhaegar's heir by Elia of Dorn.
Sir, Jora said. But if he was this Prince that
was promised, the promise was broken along with his skull when
the Lannisters dashed his head against a wall.
I remember, Danny said sadly. They murdered Rhaegar's daughter
as well, the little Princess Rainey's.
She was named like Aegon's sister.
There was no Visenya, but he said the dragon has three heads.
What is the Song of Ice and Fire?
And it's no song I've ever heard.
I went to the warlocks hoping for answers, but instead they've
left me with 100 new questions. Yeah, true, right.
Can't argue with that, Danny. We have a lot of the same
questions. So Joy.
Yeah. He only knows the basics.
He knows a few things about Rhaegar.
He knows a few things about these murdered princelings.
He knows who Elia was. He knows Rhaegar played a harp.
Yeah, but he doesn't know anything about the supernatural
stuff. Not a not a not a whit.
She won't get that education to some degree.
At some point, it's going to be interesting to see who she talks
to 1st. If Macoro gets there first and
starts filling her head with Red priest stuff, it'll be very
biased, right? It'll be not quite like
Melisandre, but it'll be along that line.
It'll be along that range because it'll be all filtered
through the beliefs of a red priest.
Not all these, not taking all these other things into account.
They're going to a red priest is going to dismiss the talk of the
Old Gods or dismiss the talk of the Seven.
Well, the Seven have nothing to do with any of this.
But you know what I'm saying here?
That the problem with the red priests is they're not going to
perceive anything outside of their worldview.
They're going to make everything fit their worldview within.
Everything they see has to be framed within that dualistic
great other versus relore paradigm.
And anything else is a demon. It's either of relore of the
great other or it's just unnatural, you know, that's it.
So that makes someone like him both interesting, compelling,
but also highly flawed in a, in a way that we've sort of
experienced through Melisandre. Obviously Mccoy's a different
person, but there's got to be some similarities there.
They're both red priests. What if Marwin gets there first?
He's a supernatural maester type, but he's a maester.
The key is maester. He has a different understanding
of these things. He's not religious.
He has an understanding of a lot of religions rather than being
focused on one particular 1. So it's super interesting.
Who's going to talk to her first?
Who might be able to undo some of the words?
They might argue, right? I don't know.
Marvin could counter some of what Mocoro says with hard
facts. And Mocoro can summon fire and
show fire readings and be like, look, I'm I've got real power
here. This guy just has talk.
So it's like, and that we've seen this play out with Stannis,
like Davos versus Melisandre or Melisandre versus any one of
other Stannis's advisors. So then there she gets right
back to having 100 questions. Again.
She's like, you guys have brought me new information, but
neither of you actually have answers.
So on top of all this, that's Danny's only dream slash vision
of radar. She has nothing else there other
than, you know, maybe Barristan has said a few things about him,
but they're not supernatural things.
So for the rest of her arc, it's mostly Quaif pushing her right
through a glass candle, probably urging her towards her destiny,
while the warlocks who actually revealed so much of that destiny
through the House of the Undying are actually coming at her for
revenge. Or were until you're on like a
proper pirate not only stole all their stuff, but he stole their
whole purpose, stole their revenge.
So just a few quick lists that we're going to get deeper into
as we move on here. Azor High now where we're Ashay
and I have long been promonents of there being multiple Azora
High figures, though to be fair, no one actually interpreting any
of these prophecies says so. So we'll we'll include those
lines of thinking as we move forward.
The Prince and Princess that was promised very linked to Azora
High. As we'll explain.
The last hero seems to be a different kind of figure, but
there's a lot of overlap in the stories that are being told here
versus the prophecies. And of course, the dream of
Aegon the Conqueror. Now that's again, George RR
Martin brought that up. House of the Dragon did their
own spin on it. So we have to be careful here.
We should not be including the House of the Dragon elements,
only the stuff George said and that's it, which is very
limited. So we'll, we'll make sure to
parse that when we get to it. And then there's a few other
tidbits like the Stallion Who Mounts the World.
That's another prophecy that's minor, but still plays into this
general pastiche of prophecies all sort of pointing to some of
the same things. Well, lacking some of the
elements of others. So most of these prophecies or
stories end with some great cold northern darkness.
The Long night, Long Night, 2 point O the New Long Night,
whatever you want to call it. Some of these are books, some of
these are tales passed down, some of them are actual songs,
some of them are histories. And there's histories in
Westeros, there's histories all over the world of these
alternate Azora High personas. Each of them have a different
version of how the Long Night was stopped.
The Rhinar example, very poignantly and very on topic
here today, is said to have been a song that stopped it.
And there's other lots of different reasons given to us as
to how it started, like the cause of the original Long
Night, which can be looked at as potential foreshadowing for how
the next one will happen. And of course we're given
details about the others and their origin in some places, but
that's pretty limited. It isn't.
It's mostly not prophetic. It's mostly from text and from
the Werewood network. And occasionally these terms are
interchangeable. For example, Melisandre refers
to the Prince that was promised Anasora High as the same thing.
No one else does that. So that's an important detail.
And of course, what isn't mentioned in some of these
prophecies is can be almost as big as what is mentioned.
And and that's, that's important.
So Danny has some inkling of what's going on.
She doesn't know it's her, but she knows that there's
prophecies. She knows that there's things
happening. She just hasn't, she hasn't
gotten very deep into it yet. Melisandre obviously does too.
And she's told a lot of people. She's spread the word.
Not everyone believes her, but quite a few people do.
And of course Stannis does. And that's a big one, because
Stannis, Stannis's authority reaches a lot more people.
But Aria nothing to do with any of this, right?
Not yet. Sansa Nope.
Theon Nah. Cersei.
Jamie. No.
Tyrion.
Barely. Right.
Tyrion hears Benaro preach in front of the Red Temple of
Volantis. It's creeps him out.
He sees Valerian glyphs, doom, darkness, the eye, the the eye
of evil on Daenerys and all this stuff.
It creeps him out. Brand knows some things, but
what he knows is entirely different than what Quaiste
knows, for example. And through different means.
If only they could get together and talk about it all.
But of course, they can't. And Bran doesn't know anything
about the Prince that was promised.
He's never heard the term Azora High, right?
So it's really neat seeing how these different pieces land in
different places. So here's the thing.
Well, let's do a quick list here of people who have either seen
this, heard about it, read about it, or been told about it first
with the ones who have seen it and what I mean by seen it, I
mean they've actually had visions, dreams, something
supernatural. Aegon the Conqueror, the ghost
of high heart. Dragon dreamers.
We don't know how many there are, but dragon dreamers pretty
exclusively see the rebirth of Dragons, among other things, but
that's a very much recurring thing.
Maester Amon supposedly has had dreams too, although maybe he's
more properly put in the scholarly category here.
Rhaegar as well. We're not sure if he really had
dreams. Maybe it's just the books and
the songs and the stuff for him. Maybe he had dreams.
Danny definitely has had dreams. How's the undying?
She got Quaithe pushing her. She's got more people on her way
to her to tell her things, but she's still pretty new to it.
Bloodraven. We don't know exactly what he
knows, but he's a three eyed crow most likely and has been
educating Bran on how to defeat the Others and what the Others
are. He warned him through that first
coma dream long ago. So he probably knows quite a
bit, but even he may not know some of the Eastern stuff.
He probably does. I mean, he lived with Sierra Sea
Star and they were studying magic and it's it's unlikely
they never encountered the Azora High Prince that was promised
prophecy. But so far he hasn't mentioned
it. So maybe one day he'll bring
that up to Bran. And that could be really
interesting if these things start to merge.
He himself is sort of a child of ice and fire, given his
Blackwood Targaryen heritage. So he's a he's a little more,
he's closer to the most knowledgeable potentially of all
these characters. And of course he's bringing Bran
along. And of course, that doesn't even
mention what else, what other information is contained in the
Weirwood network learned by people before Blood Raven or
children before Blood Raven, long before perhaps you're on as
someone we'll mention briefly in this episode because maybe he
had one of those crow dreams. Maybe he was seen as a potential
green seer when he was young and then they gave up on that idea.
But he's also interesting because of all the characters
that we're going to discuss today, throughout this episode,
Euron's the only one who might look at the prophecies and go, I
want that to happen. I want the others to come.
I want the wall to come down. I want the long night.
Everyone else is like, I don't want that.
We got to stop that. Or I hope that doesn't happen
because some of them, some people are completely powerless
to do anything about it. But Euron might be like, yeah,
let's do that. He's the only one that's like
that. I think Jojen is interesting
because he's had all these green dreams, but they're more what's
next for Bran type things. They're more focused on
protecting Bran and and getting Bran to where he needs to be.
Jojen hasn't really had explicit dreams about the nature of the
song of ice and fire or about the others or, or if he has, he
hasn't said anything about it. Right.
So he's like, he's kind of, I'm not sure you know what, what he
actually knows and what what his dreams have told him.
His dreams are also very steep in symbolism, so they're not
easy to interpret, which is different than what Danny saw in
the house, The Undying, which seemed pretty straightforward.
It wasn't symbolic. There was Rhaegar, there was
Elia, there was a baby. They had a conversation.
He played his harp, she heard the music.
That's not some mishmash dream of swirling visions and ideas.
That's like a watching ATV show. It's very, very particular.
Jojen's dreams were all, you know, the the sea will flood
Winterfell. That turned out to be the
Ironborn coming over the walls, right?
Very metaphorical, very symbolic.
It's it's easy to get confused on that.
Now. Patch face is another one that's
like, oh, he may know a lot, but does he understand it?
Does it mean anything to him? What will he, will his
information ever be used by any other character?
Well, we're going to do a patch face episode, so we'll get into
deeper, deeper waters with him when we get there.
Ha, pun intended. Jon Snow.
Of course, Jon Snow is in an unusual category because he's
had a few prophetic ish dreams that he doesn't quite understand
that that maybe we readers have a little bit of better
understanding of. But they're also vague and
swirly, like they're not images of what's going to happen.
They're symbolic and and confusing and and hazy.
But these he's seen the others. Well, Jon has it, but Sam has
and some of his other brothers have.
So he's like, Oh my God, that's real.
So when Melisandre shows up and is like this great cold
darkness, they're like, yeah, we know.
We've seen it. So pretty much the whole Night's
Watch is on board with this. They know.
But as we know, they are not having any success convincing
the rest of the world, and they've barely even tried at
this point. John also has dreams that are
kind of unrelated to this or tangentially related to it, like
his skin changing dreams or his identity dreams, his crypt
dreams, which are, like I said, somewhat related.
His identity definitely has something to do with whether
he's an Azor Ha, if there's multiples or the last hero or an
last hero, if there's multiples there too.
Now, as far as people who are aware of it but aren't in it,
right, all of the above, they all know they're in it to some
extent. Quaithe, Yeah, she might be
someone who's had direct dreams of it, visions of it, but
they're not, they don't associated with her, right?
She they don't, they don't refer to her.
She's not the person in these dreams.
She's seeing what's happening to other people.
I think Marwan kind of similar, but through a more scholarly
approach. And what about Sorella, Right?
Sorella Elaris. They all heard what Sam said.
Sam told the whole story to them, including the faceless man
who was used to be known as Jack and Agar.
So that information could spread to a lot of people.
All red priests have believed this for a long time.
It's part of their religion, that Lightbringer waking dragon
from stone, Azorihai reborn again.
They've known that for a long time.
They're just waiting for it. It's like, yeah, Azorihai will
come again. And during the confines of this
story, it is happening. Melisson got the wrong person,
but she's not wrong that it's happening.
So I, I assume that pretty much every red priest on the planet
is aware of this at this point. They don't all know about Danny
and or Stannis, but they're all educated in this prophecy.
It's it's not something that only the higher level priests
get. I'm pretty sure this is just
basic. Red Priest, rather relorist
belief stuff. Obviously Stannis has been
indoctrinated somewhat. He doesn't necessarily believe
everything she does, but he's seen too much to dismiss it,
right? He's seen Melisandre's powers,
he's seen her predict things that have come true, and now he
has. He hasn't seen the others
personally, but he believes that they exist.
He believes these Rangers that have seen them, so he's in on
that too. He's very much involved.
We have Aries the first quite a while back he told the court
Dragons would return. He discovered in a book,
convinced everyone it was it was the truth.
And that had a big effect on the people, the Targaryens who came
after him. Cher, a sea star maybe like we
don't know what she knew or didn't know, but she was deeply
involved in sorcery, in the occult.
So it seems not unlikely. Duncan the Duncan the Small, and
of course Jenny of Old Stones. They were very close to the
Ghost of High Heart, who told Jairus the Second and presumably
his wife Queen Shara that, well, they weren't, they weren't King
and Queen at the time, but whatever, they'd eventually come
King and Queen that the Princess that was or the Prince that was
promised would be born of their line and they believed it.
So I presume Duncan and Jenny believed that too, especially
because they were willing to step aside and let the line pass
through Aries and Raella, which is where the prophecy said,
according to the woods, which would happen.
Danny's the dreamer. We've talked about her
separately and we wonder if she saw any of this stuff.
You saw the doom. Maybe she saw this too, but we
just don't know. It's, it's not told.
Darren the drunkard was one of the most powerful dragon
dreamers that we know of in terms of the intensity of his
dreams. Or though maybe that's just it
just looks that way because of how hard it was for him to
handle them. Anyway, he is another candidate
for having seen some of these things.
Barristan sell me what? Why am I mentioning Barristan
sell me? Well, because Barristan sell me
just casually mentions the Prince that was promised one
day. He's like, yeah, he's the one
that tells Danny that a woods witch told Harry and Cher that
the Prince that was promised would be born of their line.
But Barristan doesn't indicate he knows who the heck that is.
He doesn't. It isn't followed up on.
Barristan says the phrase the Prince that was promised, but he
doesn't indicate that he knows what that means, or if he does
have some idea what it means, he hasn't elaborated.
Maybe Danny will ask him one day, but I think Bearson will
probably be dead before before Danny even meets him again.
Jon Snow at last as well. Not only has he had these
dreams, not only is he deep in the thick of it because of who
he is, but he's had a lot of conversations with Melisandre
about these things. Plus he's read some of the Jade
Compendium. Let's not forget that's a easy
thing to miss. Before Eamon departed the Wall,
he told John, hey, I left the Jade Compendium in your quarters
with some pages marked. Go ahead and read that.
He does. He doesn't say much about what
he read, but he does say a little bit it has to do with The
Last Hero. So we'll get back to that.
And the Last Hero is of course, really important here as well.
Brandon, John Snow are the only ones who really qualify for
that, but we'll see as we move forward.
Heisenfire prophecy timeline. So we have various prophecies
all pointing to different aspects of what seems to be the
same event. Right.
Some the long night come again. Yeah.
The song of ice and fire the long night is or high the
Prince. They all kind of indicate this
one way or another. It's sometimes it's vague like
some great cold darkness. Sometimes it's specific like the
others are coming. So we could just call it the ice
and fire prophecy or we could call it the song of ice and
fire. We're not quite sure if that's
what George has in mind with that it it seems to fit it it it
could be a catch all phrase for all these prophecies.
The Song of Ice and Fire is the the weaving of all these ideas
together in song form and story form.
And of course this the sources in world have a lot of detail on
The Long Night. A lot of that hasn't been given
to us. Sam has read a lot of these
books, but he hasn't shared through his POV what he's read.
Melisandre says the books that claim Azora High will be born
again, the ones that say When the Red Star Bleeds is those
books are over 5000 years old but the information in them has
to be even older assuming the timeline is correct because they
would have been first recorded during or after the first long
night which was more than 5000 years ago from what we know.
So the was there even prophecies for that for the first long
night before it? That is something that might be
in the books. If there were prophecies for the
first one, it would add credibility to prophecies for
the second one. Even though there's this massive
time frame between them and Melisandre's religion, the red
priest religion, the Reloris religion is rooted in this,
their religion. It's, it's the basis that
Azorihai will come again, that will be reborn again, that he
will bear Lightbringer, that he will wake dragon from stone.
This is intrinsic to their religion.
It's the anchor, it's an anchoring piece for their whole
belief system. It isn't just something that
they added on to. They hey, here comes this and
then and then then they fit it into their worldview.
No, it's been in their worldview for thousands of years.
They they adopted it into their religion when they made their
religion. This isn't something to add it
on later. So that's a really big deal.
And there's probably other religions around the world that
incorporate some of this stuff. For example, in Yi T, it's not
unlikely that some of their belief systems have to do with
the Bloodstone Emperor and the blood betrayal and all that.
They're something that had an impact on how they viewed
everything. And religion in books have an
obvious overlap here because a lot, most people who write
books, especially in this world, have some sort of religious
view, some sort of religious filter that everything goes
through, or a heavy one like a Melisandre or a Mokoro.
And obviously religious texts are books as well.
And they can have supernatural information that's completely
accurate. So something that's really,
really old, right? On the other hand, Aegon the
Conqueror's dream of some danger from the North, which apparently
was specifically included the White Walkers.
So he did actually see the White Walkers, which I don't think any
other dragon dreamer has anyway, that's only about 300 years old
because that's, you know, how long ago Aegon lived.
So we've got a huge span. These prophecies have been
popping up anywhere from 8000 years ago to during the books,
right? A huge span of time
consistently. Now, the book that Aries the
first found that made him believe the Dragons would come
about and it would come back. Actually, it might be multiple
texts. He might have been convinced
because he saw this corroborated several places.
We're told it was just one source, but that's second hand
information so we don't actually know that he read it roughly 90
years ago. We don't know when the book was
actually written though. Like that book, that source
could be really ancient. Who knows?
The Ghost of High Heart's visions that refer to Eris and
Rayela's line producing the Princess that was promised.
Well, she said Prince. That's about 60 years ago, or at
least that's when she told them to Duncan, Jenny and Joe Harris
and Sheriff. She may have had the visions
long before that, but she passed them on to her Targaryen
compatriots at that time. She's another person.
Nellis under doesn't know about Danny, neither does the ghost of
hierarchy seemingly, which is a little bit confusing to me.
Like how did she get the gender wrong of the Prince that was
promised right? Maybe, you know, maybe it's just
an that vague of a figure in their in their visions and they
just assumed it was a man. And Rhaegar found a scroll that
said, it seems I must be a warrior.
What what was that all about? It led him to the song of ice
and fire, led him to the Prince that was promised prophecy.
But it's pretty clear he was wrong.
Danny is a warrior in the sense that she rides a dragon into
battle, that she's willing to face those dangers.
She would not shirk from something like that.
But she's not a sword and shield type warrior, which is what
Rhaegar is saying here. Rhaegar's like, I got to learn
how to use a sword and shield. I got to be a warrior.
That's not quite right, is it, Rhaegar?
And that's the thing about Rhaegar that we don't get from
any other character is we get, even though he's such a
mysterious figure, we get a bit of a process from him as a
child. He thinks it's him.
He does certain things, but he doesn't get stuck on that.
When the evidence changes, he goes with it.
He doesn't say, hey, no, I'm, I'm so egotistical that it has
to be me. No, he's perfectly willing to
say, OK, I was wrong. It's must be my son.
Comet smoke and salt, all these other details that he thinks
fit. And Maestro, he's sending
letters to Maestro AIM and they're talking about it while
he's on the wall. So we see different ways of this
prophecy being interpreted. We see Rhaegar taking this
warrior bit literally. And if we look at Danny and her
as an example of what they what the prophecy actually refers to,
because the prophecy does seem to refer to Danny.
So we can sort of look at that in reverse.
If the prophecy refers to Danny, then Danny must be what that
prophecy is referring to. Like her qualities are what the
prophecy refers to. So if it says she must be a
warrior, well it's a warrior in the sense that she is a leader,
a commander, not a down in the scrum type fighter, not a not a
Jorah Morma, not a Barristan Selmy, more of a Nymeria type.
And then he moves on. What did we don't we also
missing some parts of Rhaegar's belief.
We have this vision of of him talking to Elia, but what about?
But this is all prior to Lyanna. So did his views change at all
after he met her and after they started hooking up and he
decided to have another kid? He saw that it was, he's
assuming it would be Visenya or something.
He never got to have confirmation of that.
So there's a possibility that his he, he had another fork in
the road and changed his mind because we saw that he has the
ability to change his mind with new information.
We have to keep that possibility open in our minds.
So that's makes him very interesting.
He's he's very scholarly in his approach.
He's willing to admit mistakes and and change what he believes.
Even if he never did get it right.
He kept he may have eventually, if he got enough time, a
perspective of ice and fire. Here's our next section.
I want to this is a little bit off of the rest of the episode,
but they relate very strongly. I think this phase of the
episode will help enrich our overall understanding of how
George uses prophecy as a theme, because ice and fire as a theme
is expressed differently throughout depending on
character, circumstance, plot line, all sorts of things.
So if we interpret, as I proposed earlier, The Song of
Ice and Fire as a amalgam of all these different plot lines,
concepts, themes, all the events coming together, maybe later we
can expand on the concept a bit if we think of it that way.
Sometimes they're portrayed as opposites, sometimes they're
portrayed as similar or even mixed.
It's something that George plays with and explores in a number of
ways. Here's one example.
Drogo's funeral pyre quote. The third level of the platform
was woven of branches no thicker than a finger and covered with
dry leaves and twigs. They laid them north to South,
from ice to fire, and piled them high with soft cushions and
sleeping silks. The sun had begun to lower
toward the West by the time they were done.
Danny called the Dothraki around her.
Fewer than 100 were left. How many had Aegon started with,
she wondered. Only a few, 100 for him too,
actually, but his Dragons were grown and Valerian was maybe the
biggest dragon ever, certainly the biggest we've ever heard of.
So there are some differences, but there are important
similarities. And that's a big deal comparing
Danny to Aegon, because if Aegon started these dreams, united the
Seven Kingdoms in order to prepare them for the others,
well, Danny is sort of the climax of that.
She's the one that the prophecy has been waiting for.
The dream is referred to all the time.
She's the one that is the reason why there needed to be someone
like this, why this preparation was needed to prepare for her.
And of course, this pyre turned out to be a miracle, right?
It caused the rebirth of the Dragons.
It wasn't something that Danny could replicate.
It wasn't something that there's ingredients or a manual for.
But it happened, it worked, and the rest is history, right?
So again, Danny doesn't know what the Song of Ice and Fire
is. She's got, she's thinking about
it, but she doesn't have any real answers.
She doesn't really even have a source for this at this point.
But she doesn't also doesn't know her, her names or her
parallel, her egg on the conquer, who she constantly
compares herself to. She doesn't know about him
having dreams either. It hasn't even occurred to her.
It might be an interesting thing for her to realize.
Yeah, You know, a lot of my ancestors were Dragons, had
dreams, had visions. I'm not the only one having
those. That even that isn't something
she knows that it was common in her family.
It hasn't occurred to her that any of her ancestors, including
her own parents, her brother, could have been having visions
and dreams, too. But she has seen these themes
around ice and fire as a worldly device, as a conceptual topic,
as a opposites or as a opposites attract type situation, or a two
different elements working together.
These are all things that can happen.
There's a range of possibilities here that are all apparent just
through observable reality. Here's another example.
Jojen and Mira's oath to the King in the North through Bran
includes this language quote. You are only a boy, I know, but
you are our Prince as well. Our Lord's son and our King's
true heir. We have sworn you our faith by
earth and water, bronze and iron, ice and fire.
The risk is yours, Bran, as is the gift.
The choice should be yours too, I think.
It's very elemental, very naturalistic, very ancient,
because that's the way the world was a long time ago.
The earliest beliefs of the earliest humans were very rooted
in nature and elements and observable things, observable
nature, observable reality. Here it's it's a complete cycle.
Ice and fire, both ends of the spectrum.
Bronze, Iron, Earth, water, these are all connected,
circular, and sometimes competing.
Here's another place that it comes up with the same
characters quote. My Lord father told me about
mountains, but I never saw one till now.
I love them more than I can say. Bran made a face at her.
But you just said you hated them.
Why can't it be both? Mira reached up to pinch his
nose. Because they're different.
He insisted. Like night and day or ice and
fire. If ice can burn, said Jojen in
his solemn voice, then love and hate can mate.
Mountain or marsh it makes no matter the land is 1.
As usual, Jojen is very poignant.
He nails it. It's perfect.
Like, it's, yes, they're opposites.
But as Jojen says, opposites are not always in opposition.
Opposites can work together. Love and hate can mate.
Mountain or marsh. Yeah.
Ice. There is no ice without fire.
They also kind of depend on each other, right?
Or if they didn't, the world would be really screwed, right,
if we had too much ice or too much fire.
We need that balance. That's important.
So yeah, they can work together just as much as they can cancel
each other out. Opposites can attract.
There's a lot of ways to perceive this that isn't just
they're opposites, they're at war, they're an eternal no,
that's just not right. That is not how George sees it.
He's got the whole amalgam of options here.
So again, this doesn't directly relate to prophecies, but it
does help us understand the vagaries.
The language that prophecy uses is tricky.
It's hidden, it's sneaky, it has multiple meanings, and we have
to understand how George views ice and fire within the context
of the story in order to at least sort of understand what
he's getting at with these prophecies.
And again, it comes back to songs and how great a device
that is for pulling all this together, for pulling it all
under one umbrella. Songs can make harmony from
discord. Opposite elements within a song
can function very well musically.
Here's a passage I find similar to some of that in some ways.
It's notably in the same book as well.
It's Clash of Kings, but it's a completely different viewpoint
as Jojen and Mira explained to Bran how opposites can work
together. Melisandre doesn't see it that
way. Melisandre is a ice and fire are
opposites type of person without the other nuance.
Her entire religion is that way, and that's an important aspect
of analyzing the prophecies through the Red priest and
through her quote. The truth is all around you,
plain to behold. The night is dark and full of
terrors, the day bright and beautiful and full of hope.
One is black, the other white. There is ice and there is fire.
Hate and love, bitter and sweet, male and female, pain and
pleasure, winter and summer, evil and good.
She took a step toward him. Death and life everywhere.
Opposites everywhere. The war.
Asked Davos.
The war? She affirmed.
There are two onionite not 7, not 1, not 100 or 1002.
Do you think I crossed half the world to put yet another vain
king on yet another empty throne?
The war has been waged since time began, and before it is
done all men must choose where they will stand.
On one side is Rellore, the Lord of Light, the heart of Fire, the
God of flame and shadow. Against him stands the Great
Other, whose name may not be spoken, the Lord of Darkness,
the soul of Ice, the God of night and terror.
Ours is not a choice between Baratheon and Lannister, between
Greyjoy and Stark. It is death we choose, or life,
darkness or light. So she clearly doesn't agree.
She believes fire good, ice bad, which is just obviously wrong,
right? I mean, we've just got to talk
about how balance is important and how that's something we kind
of all understand. This is a human worldview
filtered through the concept of divine information.
She believes these things, so they must be right, but we can
demonstrably see that they're not only wrong, but how they've
LED her astray. We know she's wrong about a lot
of things, even though she has the basic right idea that, yeah,
there is a big evil darkness coming, big evil cold, and it
does need to be defeated. She kind of understand where
she's coming from. The big evil darkness needs to
be defeated. And it's cold.
So it it really does seem to fulfill her religion.
But that's in part because her religion was based on what
happened in the first Long Night, and it's happening again.
So cold became a problem then. But we can obviously see how
fire can be a problem if there's too much, or how Benero says
there will be. The death will be defeated and
everyone will live forever. And there'll be a summer that
doesn't end. That sounds good to relore us,
but to the rest of us, it's like, that's not good.
That's real bad. Again, where's the balance?
Summer without winter, That's not good.
Darkness without light. There is no such thing.
That's right. Right.
If there's only light, then darkness doesn't even exist.
Yeah. So it's clearly she's gone too
far with it. Clearly the human element of
this is what I believe is at the root of the problems here.
Why she's gotten it wrong Because hey, fire is good.
Well, let's go all the way. It's a very human thing to do,
at least when you're at least a common human thing to do.
If, if something is good, we'll do more of it.
But we all know that's the dose makes the poison, right?
You know, like a little bit of aspirin is great.
Too much aspirin will kill you. This is too much aspirin.
This is too much fire. A little bit of fire is great.
Keeps you warm you know you can cook your food.
Too much fire and you melt or you burn or you die or it burns
the crops or yeah, I mean, it's it's doesn't need a whole lot of
explanation here why too much fire is bad, right.
So she and she completely fails to see how Jojen's perspective
there how ice and fire can mate if ice can burn fire can things
like that. She doesn't see that her her
song is out of key. If we're going to stick with
that metaphor, she's singing out of tune here.
She thinks she's singing right. She's tone deaf.
Doesn't know it. She's like, I'm singing
beautifully. Her brother's like, yeah, you.
No, you're not. And I think Davos gets this.
He knows she's wrong, but he's doesn't have the words to
express it. He's like, I hear this song it's
out of key. But not only do I not have the
right words to contradict you, this conversation's happening
while he's in prison and she's speaking through the jail door.
He's not exactly going to push too hard.
He's worried about what she might do to him.
So she's he's not exactly a neutral observer here.
He can't exactly say what he of course he's not neutral.
He can't really argue with her without putting himself in
danger. At least that's how he sees it.
And then later he gets a more full explanation.
He talks to Salador, son of all people, who gives him the full
story of Azora Hai, Nis and Nisa.
Which by the way, tells us that it's not an uncommon story.
Like Salador San isn't some scholar, right?
He's a lysine pirate. I mean, he's got money and his
family's been around for a while.
He's had money for a while, which sometimes implies a
greater access to education. But like studying ancient
prophecies education, I don't know.
So I tend to think that means it's a fairly well known story,
which makes sense because who spreads that story?
The Red Priests, and there's tons of them.
Azor High and friends. The story of Azor High has a lot
going on. We're not going to cover every
aspect of it, of course. Ultimately, it's the story of a
hero defeating the Darkness. That's the bottom line.
Whether they forge a sword, whether that's actually a sword,
what the deal with Nisa. Nisa.
Setting all that aside, the end result is a hero defeating the
darkness. And what I want to draw our
attention to here is on what these different prophecies focus
on. The Azora High prophecy as it
comes from Melisandre focuses on Azora High, not on the danger.
The danger is mentioned, but there's like no detail to it.
It's just grand, cold darkness from the north.
Melisandre knows where it's emanating from.
She knows it's coming from the north of the Wall for some
reason. But if she has these other
details, she hasn't really shared them.
She never mentioned to the others before.
She's learned about them, but I think she didn't learn about
them until she got to the wall and talked to Rangers who had
actually seen them. Still, it's not like she's
surprised. It's easy for her to just fit
this into her worldview, which of course she has to do.
As someone who very steeped in a dualistic religion, everything
has to fit that worldview. This is easy though.
She already calls it the Great Other, the enemy of relore
right? And the others fit that so well.
Melisandre provides us with a good example of how the hero
will rise without giving us much about the actual evil that this
hero will be facing. Quote.
He is the Lord's chosen, the warrior of fire.
I have seen him leading the fight against the dark.
I have seen it in the flames. The flames do not lie, else you
would not be here. It is written in prophecy as
well. When the red * bleeds and the
darkness gathers, Azorahai shall be born again amidst smoke and
salt, to wake Dragons out of stone.
She saw it in the flames. I wonder what exactly she saw.
John, in a quote we'll read later, pictures himself armored
in black ice with a red sword burning his hand.
The red sword burning in his hand is pretty interesting
because light bringer from the tails is warm when it's just
sitting there, but when it goes into battle it bursts into flame
and becomes super hot. So it's possible Melisandre saw
this and thought she was seeing Stannis.
The flames don't lie, she says, but she leaves out at least this
time. She says at other times that her
interpretations can be wrong, so the flames don't lie, but she
can be wrong and that's the part that matters.
If you can be wrong, then it's this.
The same as if the flames were lying.
This, the end result is the same.
There's a mistake made here. So she's kind of like using
mealy mouthed words to to indicate that everything is
accurate when actually there's a very clear way this can go
wrong. And she admits it elsewhere.
So she knows the terms both Azorihai and the Prince that was
promised. As I said earlier, she's the
only one who seems to use both those terms interchangeably.
She prefers Azorihai, but she refers to both.
And again, no one else does that.
The Prince that was promised in the Song of Ice and Fire, if we
can compare those again or put them up against each other
again, Mel says the it's at least 5000 years old, the books
that she's read. But other people are getting it
through dreams. And yeah, if you get it in a
dream, read it in a text that's or you've been indoctrinated in
that text as part of your religion, it's a very different
intake, right? It's something that you maybe
never heard about and now you're learning about it through a
dream versus something. Melisandre, let's say she's 100
or 203 hundred, 400 years old. That's a lot of time to believe
what she's believed, right? They say can't teach an old dog
new tricks. Dogs don't live that long
compared to Melisandre. Her lifespan is already 20 times
out of like, the oldest dog. So, yeah.
And religion is even stubborner than a lot of these other
things, especially when you've been steeped in it for just that
long. It's it's it's unfathomable as
human beings, the stubbornness of a 400 year old.
You know, like, we all know older people who are stubborn.
We know younger people who are stubborn, right?
It's a it's a thing that older people are more stubborn.
I'm not sure that's actually true.
But if it is, Melisandre is the stubbornest and you know,
religious people tend to be pretty stubborn zealots,
especially not all religious people, but zealots, yes.
But that's just all validating for her because she can fit so
much of this very easily in her worldview because her religion
is based on so much of this. When she sees other signs, when
other people have information or dreams or vision, she just it
all fits for her. She's like, Yep, well, you
should be having dreams of this because it's happening.
It doesn't. It makes sense that Relor would
send visions to other people because it's happening.
The times are happening. This is the time of trouble.
This is when the great other is is arriving.
So of course Relore is going to send out the warnings and, and
raise up his heroes and all that.
But let's review really quickly what actually we know about what
is said in the Azora High prophecy.
It's it's been said a couple of times.
There's a few small differences in these different tellings.
So we hear after a long summer when the stars bleed and the
cold breath of darkness falls heavy on the world.
We've also heard it's similarly like when the Red Star bleeds,
the darkness gathers. Pretty similar.
Azora High will be born again amidst smoke and salt.
OK, that's come up a bunch of times.
The smoke and salt evidence is all over the place.
There's a lot of different theories on who Azora High is
based on that. Smoke and salt shall wake
Dragons from Stonewell. That's a big part of it.
But only one person's done that shall draw from the fire.
A burning sword light bringer. That's tricky because if it's a
sword or actual sword, no one's done that except for
Melisandre's, you know, pre arranged fire sword drawing that
she just completely made all that up.
Arguably Danny drew light bringer is if if they're Dragons
from the funeral pyre. So there's a lot of ways to look
at that one, too. Banero repeats the prophecy of
Azorihai to a crowd that as Tyrion is passing by.
He also says Azorihai was born from smoking salt.
He but he but he adds, Azorihai will make the world anew.
That's a lot bigger of a statement.
And then it goes even farther. Banero says Azorihai will
triumph over darkness and will bring a summer that will never
end again. I, I, we mentioned this a few
minutes ago. That's not good.
And then Benaro explicitly says that Azorihai is Daenerys.
Then he says death itself will bend its knee.
All those who die fighting in Azorihai's cause will be reborn.
That sounds like what the others do.
That's not that's not good. Again, that's bad to have no
balance between life and death. If everyone lived forever, that
would be terrible. Die, reborn, fighting in
Azorihai's 'cause it sounds like Are you zombies?
Are you or are you some sort of Melisandre type?
That's that's how she has an extended life?
I don't know. It doesn't sound good though.
Binero sees death as the domain of the Great Other, just like
Melisandre does. So what they're saying is Azor
High will defeat the devil. The Great Other is their devil.
So it's sort of like this champion from heaven that will
defeat Satan. If you want to try to frame it
into a Christian context, that's crazy.
There's there's nothing in the Bible about, you know, Jesus
like defeating the devils, not just as a being, but all the
evil in the world that exists because of the devil.
Like people won't die anymore. If that was in the Bible, it
would be creepy. It'd be like, whoa, yeah.
I don't think God thinks that's good either.
Now, Bonero doesn't mention Lightbringer.
That doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot, but it's it's an
interesting thing to take note of.
Again, the whole idea of Lightbringer being mentioned.
As I brought this up earlier, John reads that section of the
Jay Compendium which tells him Lightbringer glows and is warm
to the touch, which is a clue that Stannis's Lightbringer is
not because it's not warm to the touch.
It's also supposed to, like I said, become flaming hot when it
enters battle. We haven't seen Stannis enter
battle, so well, John hasn't anyway.
This is why Eamon is skeptical as well.
But the whole thing could be a red herring, right?
If Lightbringer isn't a literal sword, then that none of that
matters, right? If it's a dragon, well yeah,
Dragons are warm to the touch as well, though they don't glow and
but they do become fiery in battle in a sense.
So this is a maybe a clever red herring on George's part because
he has aim and maester aim. And who is so wise and
knowledgeable going down this track of the sword and how it's
not warm, but if it's not a sword at all, it doesn't matter.
Now, when Melisandre looks in her fires, in her one chapter to
see the enemy, she sees Bloodraven, she sees Bran, she
sees other things, but she doesn't see the Others.
Though she does refer to the Others as the Great Others, Cold
children, she still hasn't witnessed them.
She sees a wooden face, corpse white, 1000 red eyes.
Yeah. The Bloodraven.
That's Bran and Bloodraven beside him, a boy with a wolf's
face. And she asks, was this the
enemy? No, it's not.
We know it's Bloodraven and Bran.
They're also trying to stop the they're they're allies here.
They're both trying to stop what Melisandre wants to stop.
Melisandre has maybe framed it improperly as to what the enemy
is, what the great darkness is. But she's you know, she's on the
right track and so are blood Raven and Bran.
So they're so yeah, she should see them as allies.
And this is just proof how how wrong she is that she sees these
potential allies. These seem these the enemy of my
enemy is my friend type circumstance at worst.
But she hasn't actually seen the great other.
She hasn't actually seen Azora high either.
She doesn't ever see blue, which if she was seeing the others or
something like that, she would see the blue eyes or something
like that. Nothing.
In her chapters, the word blue doesn't even really appear,
except for when she's perceiving Deep Lake.
She envisions the fires of Hardhome going out because of
the deep cold and the shambling dead, but again, no others.
Just the cold so great that extinguishes the fires of the
earth at Hardhome, which is pretty damn intense.
But again, no others. And here's another piece of
personal bias, which I think isn't even a red priest thing,
although it might be. She thinks that dreams are an
opening for the Great Other to whisper to people, to get in
your head. By the same token, other people
dream of the Others, or of Azor High, or of true visions, Things
that really will happen. How does Melisandre view that?
What would Melisandre say to the Ghost of High Heart?
Would she? How could she accept this into
her world? Just like these are visions from
the Great Other. Yeah.
But these are just completely accurate mundane visions.
Yeah. Ghost of High Heart predicted
through a vision that Riveron would come under assault.
Is that really the whisperings of the Great Other or just
accurate information? There's nothing evil about that.
I don't think so. If she gets to a point where
something just it's too hard for her to fit in her worldview,
then maybe that'll cause her to think a little bit.
But for now, everything just very easily fits in her
worldview. She's doesn't have to work very
hard to say these others are the children of the great other.
That's fitting. You know, he's a God of darkness
and death. These are beings of darkness and
death. It fits so well.
And as we've said, though, she's we've been saying for years,
it's going to be interesting when she learns about Danny, if
she ever does. Maybe she'll die before that
happens, but I assume she will. So Danny's the best candidate
for Azor High, but there's just no ice in her.
She's all fire. She doesn't have, she barely has
any ice ancestry, just a little bit of Blackwood back there
several generations back. It's John who is the better
straightforward child of ice and fire, given his parentage,
right? But again, this brings us back
to the notion that there's multiple figures.
Just as the ancient myths tell us, there are champions from a
bunch of different cultures that are equivalent to Azor High,
Herkoon, the Hero, Yin, Tar, Eldrick, Shadow Chaser.
So maybe there's multiple champions just like that.
Maybe John is one of them. Maybe John is the champion of
ice and Danny is a champion of fire.
Maybe, who knows? But it's an interesting detail.
We'll handle the Prince that was promised separately from Azor
High, even though there's a lot of overlap.
And we'll, we'll include candidates here in a minute.
And let's do that. Let's, let's have a, a quick
break and then we'll get back to it.
This is shaping up to be a nice lengthy episode.
I hope you all are enjoying it. Let's see here.
I want to make you all aware that we are considering a group
trip, a, a journey to maybe Spain or England or Ireland or
somewhere in Europe to visit Game of Thrones filming
locations with a small group, maybe a dozen, maximum maybe 20.
Travel with us. Go to one of these locations,
spend a week or so meeting each other and experiencing what's
probably a once in a lifetime opportunity to see some of these
filming locations and to meet fellow super fans and hang out
with us. If enough people are interested,
we're going to do that. It's through Geek Nation Tours.
So hit us up, let us know if you're interested.
A few people have said so already.
We need to get, you know, a a few dozen people or so
tentatively interested or just a dozen or so actually confirmed,
and then we'll make it happen. If not, then so be it.
But we think that enough of you are interested and we would
think it would be really fun. We've traveled to these filming
locations before. It is so much fun.
Yeah, we've. Seen ones in Spain and in
Ireland so far, but there's obviously a lot more that we
haven't seen yet and more that are coming out because of course
the House of the Dragon still has new locations and a Knight
of the Seven Kingdoms has a bunch of filming locations in
Ireland now. Very true.
And the rough timeline for this was April, May 2026.
So if that is a time frame that works for you but or doesn't,
then you can factor that in. But when you're deciding whether
or not you want to try to participate, Kirstie Angel says
it makes sense to me that the Prince who was promised would be
somewhat Royish or Dornish in origin because of the whole
principality thing. That's a good call.
It's not the King who was promised, not the Queen who was
promised, not the Lord who was promised the Prince.
That is very interesting. That's probably part of why
Rhaegar thought it was him, because he was a Prince, you
know, at the time when he discovered this prophecy.
And then his son was a Prince, of course, when he changed his
mind about who it was. That's a good call.
There's not a lot of principalities and in fact, I
think Dorn is the only principality except for the
Rhinar culture, which, you know, doesn't exist anymore, but it's
certainly existed for a very long time and may even predate
the first Azor high myths. If it if the Rhinar existed
before the long night, which I think they did because we're
told that the long night ended from the Rhinish histories when
the various gods of the river gathered together to sing a sing
a secret song. More on that later.
But yeah, that's that's a good catch.
I didn't think of it thinking about the the, the rarity of the
title Prince, especially in Essos.
Yeah, when we think of Essos, we think mostly of, you know, the
Free Cities and even the Freehold of Valyria didn't have
kings. So the Dothraki don't have
kings. Yeah.
There's just not a lot of kings and Queens and Essos in general,
which means there's also not a lot of Princess and princesses.
So good catch. Good catch.
The language is important. Coming back to the Prince that
was promised, first we got to talk about the Great Other.
The interesting aspect, or an interesting aspect of the Velour
version of the prophecy is that it includes the Great Other,
which is confusing because it's there's a lot of reason to think
this has nothing to do with the others, even though it sounds so
similar. And again, that's part of why
Melisandre can be so easily taken in by this.
What she calls the Great Other is also called the other Lord of
Darkness, Soul of ice, God of Night and terror.
And yeah, that's, that's pretty distinct, right?
That does sound like the others, but there's a huge distinct
difference that kind of kills the whole theory, which is that
Melisandre perceives the great other as having black eyes.
Very specifically. George points this out.
Melisandre perceives the great others having black eyes.
That is just can't be right. They have to have blue eyes.
It's just every other has the blue eyes.
It's just such a thing. The whites have the blue eyes.
It's the most distinct trait they have I think by far.
Like the show changed everything else about them except the blue
eyes instead of making them fairy like and and graceful and
and scary in that since they're they're more just horrific and.
Scary from a more regular perspective.
Either way, the blue eyes are the most important detail and
the great Other doesn't have that, so that's a huge deal to
me. And again, this is just how it
has to be for a dualistic religion.
Melisandre's making it fit into her worldview again.
There's a storm God in the Drowned God, right?
Aaron does the same thing. Everything is the comet that's
the Drowned God, even though it's like, what sense does that
make? The comet came from the Drowned
God. What?
How did he get through the the storm God controls the sky.
How did Never mind. You don't have to argue with
zealots. It's not going to work, right?
But you see what I'm saying? It doesn't make a whole lot of
sense. Anything of significant
supernatural power, they have to credit it to one of their two
gods. There's only two.
If it's not, if it's doesn't come from the gods, it's
demonic, it's evil, it's unnatural.
Mokoro called the Drowned God a demon.
Victorian. He's like, hey, don't do that.
Watch your mouth. But Macro didn't back down, of
course. So again, I think it's very
likely that the reason so much so much of this stuff were lines
up from Melisandre and other red priests is because their
religion was based on the first time this all happened in the
1st place. Just because the others aren't
mentioned in any relorist associated text that we know of,
it doesn't mean that much to them.
They don't care about this blue eyes detail, but to us readers,
it's enormous. That's a big detail.
So yeah, I think that's a pretty big deal.
And I wonder if these texts, what else they say, I wonder if
we ever will get more on that. And again, here's Melisandre's
bit on dreams. Let's come back to that briefly
because I think it's enormous and it takes us to some
interesting places. She says, quote, sleep is a
little death, dreams, the whisperings of the great other.
So she doesn't trust dreams at all.
But Aegon the Conqueror had the same dream of the others coming,
which we're not supposed to trust that Did the Great Other
tell Aegon the Conqueror exactly what he was going to do?
Hey, man, I'm going to invade the Westeros in 300 years.
Get ready for me. What?
Yeah. That doesn't make sense, does
it? So lots of accurate dreams that
are helpful to humanity, or at least could be.
And Melisandre thinks they're bad.
So that's just a good to me. That's proof that Melisandre is
trying too hard to fit us all into her worldview, rather than
being open to possibilities that are outside of what her religion
has taught her, John Merkel says.
I know we always focus on his black fire clues, but one of the
first things Illyrio says to Danny is may the Lord of Light
shower you with blessings. Maybe he's a true believer and
knows the prophecies or the Song of Ice and fire, something like
that. Yeah, it's possible you wonder
what Illyrio believes. I'm skeptical of Varus's anti
magic stance because he it was so self-serving.
Like he really really needed to convince Tyrion that he was on
their side. So what better way than to just
say that Stannis. Everything about Stannis goes
against everything I stand for. If he uses black magic he's my
number one foe. That's a really convincing
argument and it's exactly the virus needed to do is to
convince that he's I'm on your side.
I'm not going to turn you all in.
I'm not going to flip and help Stannis win to save my skin
because I hate Stannis. Does he?
I mean, yeah, I think he doesn't want Stannis to rule.
Stannis would not keep Varus as master of whispers.
He might kill it. And so that's more likely what
farce is worried about. The more mundane Stannis will
kill me rather than I oppose use of black magic because of this
ritual that was done to me, which may not have been done to
him. Like I don't.
I am not nearly a soul that Bars's story about the voice and
the cutting and all that was accurate.
It could be. But I mean, we we'd be foolish
to just believe anything Bars says without evidence, right?
Without corroborating evidence. So with that in mind, it's not
so far fetched that Illyrio could have a little bit of, you
know, supernatural in his background.
But I somewhat doubt it. But it's not dismissable, and
it's also not too late for him to maybe get mixed up with some
of this. Let's talk about the last hero.
Here's some old Nan for ya quote.
You know, this is a long quote and I'm not going to do my old
Nan voice. I'm just going to go ahead and
say that because of the length. All right?
Thousands and thousands of years ago a winter fell that was cold
and hard and endless. Beyond all memory of man.
There came a knight that lasted a generation, and kings shivered
and died in their castles even as the swine herds in their
hovels. Women smothered their children
rather than see them starve, and cried and felt their tears
freeze on their cheeks. In that darkness the others came
for the first time. They were cold things, dead
things that hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun and
every creature with hot blood in its veins.
They swept over holdfasts and cities and kingdoms, felled
heroes and armies by the score, riding pale dead horses and
leading hosts of the slain. All the swords of men could not
stay their advance, and even maidens and suckling babes found
no pity in them. They haunted the maids through
the frozen forests and fed their dead servants on the flesh of
human children. Now these were the days before
the and dolls came, and long before the women fled across the
narrow Sea from the cities of the Royne and the 100 kingdoms
of those times were the kingdoms of the first men who had taken
those lands from the children of the forests.
Yet here and there in the fastness of the woods, the
children still lived in their wooden cities and hollow hills,
and the faces in the trees kept watch.
So as cold and death filled the earth, the last Hero determined
to seek out the children in the hopes that their ancient magics
could win back what the armies of men had lost.
He set out into the dead lands with a sword, a horse, a dog,
and a dozen companions. For years he searched until he
despaired of ever finding the children of the forest in their
secret cities. 1 by 1 his friends died, and his horse and
finally even his dog and his sword froze so hard the blade
snapped when he tried to use it, and the others smelled the hot
blood in him and came silent on his trail, stalking him with
packs of pale white spiders big as hounds.
And then Lewin and Hodor interrupt the story.
It's the first example of something George does every once
in a while. Interrupt lore with something
lore's mid sentence. It's particularly symbolic here
because Lewin and Hodor interrupt the story.
So Lewin is the representative of rationality.
So it's fitting that he ends the supernatural tale.
He downplays it all. He's explored it and found it
empty. He's wrong.
But yeah, anyway, Hodor is literally a man who will be one
of the last hero's companions. And of course, he opens the door
here where and he opens the door to the crypts when to get out.
And later he may hold the door to enable some kind of escape,
something like that. This is obviously a tale, not
only the others, but of the Long Night and the Last Hero.
And of course, what makes the Last Hero story unique in this
episode's context is it's not a prophecy.
It's an ancient story. But as I indicated at the
beginning, these two could be very similar things.
Within the confines of a of a book, the last year, a story
very much appears to be foreshadowing.
At the time, it looked like foreshadowing.
Now, it's almost certainly that because we're seeing it play out
in Bran's story. It's told to Bran specifically,
but he's the only POV character to interact with the Children of
the Forest at this point that we know.
Well, POV character, yes, maybe other characters have, maybe
Benjen has, but not POV characters.
And he is definitely, as the story indicates, learning their
ancient magics for the purpose of fighting the Others.
His dog. It was summer, the horse maybe
doesn't have a horse is not 12 companions and I don't know if
his sword is going to snap. But there's a lot in common with
this story that no one else is even close to having in common.
No other character in the story is John has some elements of the
of the last hero in his story and some of the ones that Brand
doesn't. But John hasn't met this the
Children of the Forest. I seriously doubt John's sword
will snap. I mean it's Valyrian steel, so
that doesn't that doesn't really line up either.
However, John is the only other one to dream of white pale
spiders. So let's come back to that.
When we talk more about John, the Last Hero, his purpose is
very similar to what we have honed in on about Azora High and
the associated Azora High like figures.
They're not so much they are warriors in a sense of the word,
but the most important task they pull off to defeat the Darkness
is uniting people to fight the Darkness together.
As or as the Roynar example says, some figure, some being,
someone united all the different gods of the river to to sing a
secret song that brought back the light.
A uniter. That's what the Last Hero says
in this example. In this quote, the Last Hero
unites the Night's Watch and the Children to defeat the Others in
the Battle for the Dawn. The Children seem to already be
doing that right this time around.
Their training Bran, obviously, And it might be them who left
that stash of dragonglass at the Fist.
Someone left it, or someone gave it to someone to leave it.
The source is almost certainly the Children.
Who else is making who else has 100 dragonglass blades sitting
around right? And we're told that in ancient
times, the Children would supply the First Men with Obsidian
weapons. So like everything about
Obsidian weapons tells us that they come from the children.
We don't have people making them.
They could be. I mean, in the real world there
are people that made Obsidian weapons.
But in Westeros, the only source of Obsidian weapons that we've
been given so far is the children.
Sam read a different book about the last hero, which said he had
a blade of dragon steel, which John and Sam are like Valyrian
steel and they're like, I guess that's that's the same
conclusion I think most of us reach is that it's either a
different name for Valyrian steel or something very similar
to Valyrian steel, like a similar method, similar, you
know, forging method using similar magics or what have you.
It's maybe not the same, but it sounds awfully similar.
Again, you're on it comes up here just briefly.
Not only did I say earlier that he'd be the one that would want
the darkness to come, he'd be like, all right, who's the
Prince that was promised? Who's the Zorahai?
I'm a kill that he would be like, who's this hero that's
going to mess up my plans? I want to end that person,
whereas everybody else would want to like, either not believe
it or support the savior. Like this person's going to save
mankind or Euron's like, it's better for me if the savior is
killed. So Euron's a little bit of an
exception to all this and is an interesting possibility to
consider. Separately, on the other side of
things, we have the Citadel. Even they weigh in here a little
bit, a little bit quote. Legend further holds that the
green seers could also delve into the past and see far into
the future. But as all our learning has
shown us, the higher mysteries that claim this power also claim
that their visions of the things to come are unclear and often
misleading, A useful thing to say when seeking to fool the
unwary with fortune telling. I understand their cynicism.
It's true. There are lots of fortune
tellers in this world who are just scamming people in our
world too, while we're at it, you know?
But they're not quite right here, are they?
Yes, it's true. Foretelling can be very
inaccurate and misleading, but he's talking in this quote about
the green seers version of that. As we said earlier, Brand's
visions when he, for example, has that weirwood vision, that
very big one in A Dance With Dragons, he's not seeing cymbals
and haze. He's seeing very specific,
particular images. He doesn't always know who he's
seeing, but they're clear images of people with faces and eyes
and beards or not beards and clothing and trees around them.
It's not like vague images of ice and fire or shadowy beings.
No, he's saying very specific things.
So yeah, this could be misleading, but it's not.
It's not the same as the visions we've seen from like flame
reading or whatever. Those are very unspecific.
They're way more mysterious and harder to perceive what's
actually being communicated there.
It's way easier to get that wrong.
So this is something the masters just don't seem to understand
that there is a a variety here. There are some vision type
dreams or whatever that are actually pretty clear, and many
that are not, many that do fit this particular description, but
it seems like the Citadel's treating them all that way, and
that's not right. Magical overlap is something
we've talked about a lot, right? But that doesn't mean
everything's exactly the same, different.
We have foretellings from a variety of magical origins, but
they obviously don't all work the same.
So what neither Brand sees nor is told about by Old Nan or
Jojen is basically anything to do with Dragons or fire.
As much as he's seen, as much as he's been told, as much as he's
been educated on, this isn't really come up at all.
In his coma dream, he did see Dragons in the shadow, in the
shadows of Ash Eye. But that's pretty vague, right?
And that's it and nothing since. So that's something that's
waiting for a lot of these characters is for that the other
shoe to drop for them to they've been introduced to one part of
this one aspect of all this. Eventually the rest will come
together. A lot of characters are going to
learn the other half or the other 2/3 or whatever, and what
that will do to so many different characters, I got no
idea, but it sounds very compelling.
All right, now we're back to the Prince slash Princess that was
promised. Melisandre, as I said, uses this
term interchangeably to her. They don't, they don't seem to
be any different, which is a pretty big clue.
Maester Eamonn refers to some of the very same precise details.
He says smoke and salt, the Prince that was promised a
bleeding star. He doesn't actually say
Azorihai. I don't know who want to read
too much into that, given how much these other details are the
same and how ubiquitous a name Azorihai seems to be throughout
Essos. Still, it reminds us that
different prophecies, different magical origins, can produce the
same conclusions, or same prophecies that lead to the same
conclusions, or prophecies, different prophecies that lead
to the same conclusions, I should say.
Now let's recall why this mistake was made via Prince
Princess, IE why the gender error popped up in these
translations. Eamon is very explicit.
He says it's Barth that figured it out.
Septon Barth figured it out because the valerian word for
dragon is genderless. It's gender neutral.
And if and the translation here is, you know, it's basically the
Prince is the Prince slash Princess is it's a draconic
meaning here. So that's the subtext.
Or if maybe it's not even subtext, maybe it's more
explicit so that Barth perceived as he's like, wait, the word for
dragon is genderless. So this Prince that was promised
the translation is should be gender neutral also.
But no one else went with that. Barth is like the only one who
caught that. Again, I'm confused, not
confused as I'm curious how people who perceived this in a
vision could get it wrong. It's one thing to read it in a
text and just mistake gender neutral for male in a male
dominated world. That makes sense.
You could see that playing out as realistic anyway.
But yeah, like the ghost of high heart or other people who see
that in a vision, like I wonder how they got the gender off.
Maybe just because they were maybe they were predisposed to
think it was a man and just went with that.
I don't know. So in world now, this is not
what we think, but what characters in the story think.
We have our own list of candidates for the Prince that
was promised, or maybe we just have a list of 1 Danny.
But in World there's a lot of candidates with what other
characters think are possible. Obviously the ghost of Hire
predicted that it would be of the line of Eris and Rayella,
and that was true, but the ghost of Hart doesn't seem to know
that. The ghost of Hire is like, oh, I
guess I got that wrong. At some point she might realize
actually I was right. There's Danny and that is the
child of Aries and Rayla, isn't it?
Oh boy, I was not wrong. Rhaegar obviously has the
influence of Amon and maybe Bloodraven because Bloodraven
and Amon went to the wall at the same time.
Now Bloodraven vanished beyond the wall before Rhaegar was even
born. So this isn't necessarily a big
connection, but I I think it's pretty strong.
Indirectly, Bloodraven would have known things.
He could have passed them on to Amon that Eamon would have then
corresponded with Rhaegar about. It's unlikely to me that Blood
Raven and Eamon didn't at least have some conversations like
this, but it's possible they didn't.
Maybe they just didn't like each other so they didn't chat much.
Obviously Summer Hall happened, and that made Rhaegar think he
was the Prince that was promised because of the smoke and salt.
There was smoke from the fires, salt from all the tears of all
his family dying or so many of his family dying.
And Eamon agreed with that interpretation.
So just as I pointed out earlier, when Eamon believes
that Lightbringer is a sword, it's an effective red herring
because Eamon is someone we trust.
He is, he's wise. Rhaegar would think the same
thing. He would be like, Oh, my
maesterly ancestor, who is very well regarded, also believes I'm
right about this prophecy. That's going to really give him
a lot of confidence that he's right.
Like, if Maestra agrees with you, you feel good about your
point. You feel good about it.
You're like, yeah, Maestra agrees with me.
All right, I'm probably right. But Rhaegar did eventually
change his mind, right? He started to believe that it
was his son Aegon partly because of there was a comet on the day
he was born. That's a pretty big clue.
And the first line is. When the red * bleeds and the
darkness gathers, Azor High shall be resorted, blah blah
blah. The smoke and salt part for
Rhaegar's son is Dragonstone. He was born on Dragonstone,
which is a salty, smoky place. Right?
The smoke from Dragons to the the volcanoes, active volcanoes,
is all, all sorts of smoke. And it's in the ocean, so
there's salt everywhere. Stannis, Melisandre believed
this too, because there's also a red comet wasn't on the day
Stannis was born, of course, it was around for a little while.
But Stannis is at Dragonstone. He wasn't born there, but he's
there. He's got some Targaryen blood.
So that helps. And there's this whole light
right bringer business that Melisandre sort of foisted on on
the world. And even she sorts of kind of
believes in it because she's holding the ceremony making sort
of making it true by going through the the motions of what
the texts say. Now, Jon Snow is where we get a
little different. Nobody in the in Westeros or
Essos that we know of thinks of Jon Snow as the Prince that was
promised. The fandom, however, does see
this possibility. So this is the exception to all
these others. No one in the fandom really
thinks Stannis or Aegon or Rhaegar are this Prince that was
promised, right? But Jon Snow, a lot of people
are holding out on that one, especially if you subscribe to
the multiple Azor high or multiple Prince that was
promised theory, which is has some some momentum here.
The smoke and salt for Jon Snow rests on his wounds, which seem
to smoke when he's stabbed by Bowen Marsh, who is crying when
he stabs Jon. We also have a bleeding star
right there because Sir Patrick of Kings Mountain is killed by
11 the giant and his heraldry is a cloak with stars on it.
And when 11 kills him, it's very brutal.
And this his cloak is blood soaked.
So the the stars are bleeding. The problem with that theory is
George stuck that in as a as an Easter egg about football.
Sir Patrick of Kings Mountain was a friend of his and the
giant, as in the New York football giants are the joke
here. So maybe that's just maybe
George was able to combine them into one thing that all fit
together. But there is this other meaning
here that might be all of it. But even bigger, much bigger in
my opinion, and I think a lot of y'all would agree, is that when
Melisandre is looking into the fire, she asks for lore, for a
vision of Azure High. She sees Jon and she sees Snow,
Capital S. So that's a big deal, right?
She's looking for that and she says what she actually gets to
see. It doesn't show her Daenerys, it
shows her Jon Snow and Snow. So that's a pretty big deal.
John also is a son of Rhaegar and thus fulfills the the Ghost
of High Hearts prophecy, which is that the son that the Prince
that was promised would be born of the line of Arias and Raela.
He is of the line of Arias and Raela.
Even though he's a bastard or even if he isn't, it doesn't
matter. Those are still his
grandparents. John has a dream of fighting the
Others with a burning red sword. That's a pretty well equipped
dead person 'cause he's he dreams of himself as armored in
black ice, which is a reference to him being dead, I think being
frozen, you know, having gone cold, his body gone cold.
Something the brand also has a vision of John all warmth
leaving his body. The burning red sword could be
Lightbringer, right? We just got through saying how
in battle Lightbringer burns red hot.
You know, it goes from warm to hot.
But John isn't wielding Lightbringer.
He's got Longclaw, right? I don't think Longclaw is going
to burst into flame. I guess it could, but that
doesn't seem right. It's also just not warm when
it's sitting there. So I don't know.
It doesn't seem to really line up.
Regardless, the evidence is pretty strong.
Better than anybody else except Danny.
Now, Danny, The evidence for Danny is pretty overwhelming.
No one else makes dragon from Stone, Right?
And when the Red Star bleeds, Yeah, like the the comet had
just arrived. Danny is reborn amid smoking
salt. The pyre drogue was pyre the
tears that she was crying and other people as well like I
suppose Miri Mazdur. But regardless, it all adds up
there and and and Eamon says it himself.
He's like the Dragons prove it. She woke Dragons from like no
one else did that come on or what are we going to have
multiple people bringing Dragons back from extinction?
Probably not now if we know. And Danny again is being pushed
by Quaithe, influenced by Red priests indirectly.
Perhaps soon enough she'll be influenced by Red priests very
directly once Macoro arrives, assuming he does, Maester Eamon
is no longer with us, so he can't influence her.
He badly wanted to, so he tells Sam a lot of things that Sam may
in turn pass on to Daenerys if he ever gets a chance.
And of course, Sam blurts out what he knows.
I know I said this earlier, but it bears repeating.
Sam blurts out what he knows to Marwin, Alaris, Lazy Leo Tyrell,
and Pate, who was jocking a guard in disguise as a faceless
man. So who knows who, Who knows Who
else knows this stuff now? Because Sam kind of told a lot
of people. Plus everybody on the wall
knows. Yeah, there's a lot of people
who know these things now. It's a matter of who believes it
now. The Prince that was promised of
all the prophecies is the one we most associate with Song because
of Rhaegar, not just because he's a musician and not just
because Danny hears music when she sees a vision of him, which
I'm pretty sure is unique. I don't think she hears music or
sees or perceives music in any other vision she has at any
other time. Certainly there's things that
resemble music, like the chorus of her, the chorus of her
ancestors voices, which is may a little bit of a musical
reference there chorus, but it isn't explicitly music from an
instrument, a harp. Very distinct, but also because
Rhaegar is the only one to use the phrase the song of ice and
fire, the song of ice and fire. So it's inextricably tied, at
least at this point, because he's the only one who says that
and Danny's the only one who thinks about it.
Let's diverge a little bit again to, as we did with the prior
topic about themes of ice and fire, to talk about songs and
memory from a little bit of a real world perspective.
Songs are more memorable than spoken words.
There's more to remember, right? There isn't just the word and
the meaning and the context. There's all those things in a
song plus harmony, melody, timber, tone, rhythm, lots of
different things. That's that's part of what makes
it more memorable. And emotions are sparked by
music in ways that spoken words are not.
Spoken words can also evoke emotions, but songs have a lot
more power to do that because they have the same power of
spoken word plus the power of music, which is very strong for
evoking emotion. And emotions are memorable.
Emotions are what make things more memorable in the 1st place.
Just plain data is harder to remember than when you have
something emotional to associate with that it makes it again.
That's just more to sink your brain into.
As far as memory goes, there's multiple parts of your brain at
work when it's a song versus when it's spoken word more more
of your perception is engaged and thus that also makes it more
memorable. A neutral subject.
This is this is research stuff, not just my opinion.
A neutral subject with positive music leads to positive
memories. All of you probably know this
from watching TV and modern movies.
Like music can make a kind of sad moment super sad, right?
Like the you throw the right music in there and it's like,
man, this is making me cry. Turn the scene off and the music
alone might make you weep. You know, like some music is
just that strong. Maybe not for everybody, but for
a lot of people. And researchers have done things
like study brain activity, brain waves while listening to music.
It's a big area of study and some things I learned, some
brief overview of, some things I learned by doing a little bit of
research on this. Emotional intensity showed the
highest correlation to what's called autobiographical salience
and familiarity. We don't need to get into what a
deck of that means. It's just self view, how you
view yourself and things that are relevant to what you're
hearing or engaging with. Three musical components are
particularly important in memory, pulse strength, high
harmonics, which is also called brightness, and a fluctuation in
the frequencies of of our hearing range, low to mid, low
to mid rather than high. So this is separate from
brightness. Emotional intensity also
mediated the predictive effect. So music evoked emotions and
memories are much more powerful and especially based on those
three data points. And when you add emotional
intensity into the mix, it gets all the more powerful.
So the results suggest This is a quote from a study that I read
music evoked emotions are strongly related to music evoked
memories in healthy older adults, and that both music
evoked emotions and memories are predicted by the same core
musical features. Music seems like it's such a
can, can often seem like magic in a sense 'cause it's so hard
to like describe and and categorize and solve and figure
out. But we know a lot about it.
There's repeatable results on a wide variety of humans with
different backgrounds. And it does say older adults
here. And this is healthy older
adults. Yeah, 'cause it's not the same
for children. Cause, well, when you're 8, your
memories are what, 5-6 years long at most?
So we're talking about long term memory here.
And there's no long term when you're 8 years old really.
Or at least it's relatively short.
That's why, or these concepts are why music therapy is a
thing, because music overwhelmingly elicits positive
reactions and memories or has the power to.
So that's why it can be so useful, bringing people out of
depression or other related ailments.
One method here, at least a helpful method, is yeah, remind
people of good things in your life or remind people of
positive things. Have this positive soundtrack to
your life. Even sad music can evoke
positive emotions. According to his research and
other research, sad music can evoke positive emotions way more
than sad words or just sad sounds can invoke like sake.
A good example of sad sounds is like someone crying sad words or
like yeah, I just I'm sad or you're describing something
depressing. But if it's set to music that
can actually make it positive, think of how many like sad songs
that you actually like. Some of them are like downright
depressing. If you look at the lyrics, like
I like a lot of sad music. Some of it, I just love it.
It gets me fired up. And then when you think about
that, I'm like, sad music get me fired up.
If this was just talking, it would not fire me up at all.
It would be like, this is depressing.
I don't want to hear this. Nina makes what I think is a
strong somewhat conclusion ish point here.
Songs and stories save the world.
They are how we remember when there's no writing, when there's
no other way to perceive or, sorry, preserve memory or
important human information. Songs and stories are our best
way to do that. Songs perhaps even better than
stories, because stories can fit within songs.
I guess song can fit within stories too.
But still the empty, the darkness of the human knowledge
or the lack of the lack of human knowledge, when we lose
everything we know, that's the ultimate darkness.
Everything human civilization has learned, done, and loved.
The ultimate darkness of cold wiping all that out or the
ultimate heat of fire burning that all out.
If if only humanity remains memory through song and story is
the only way to preserve what we know.
And of course in this world, there's also like the where word
network and things like that. But still, you get the point,
right? Songs and stories are the real
light bringer. Or the friends we made along the
way, if you prefer. Nina also suggests that A Song
of Ice and Fire is a story about stories.
Every character's story is its own story, and all these stories
are woven to get. Even these minor characters have
their own stories. That's something George does
such a good job about. We get work.
How many episodes have we done on single characters that aren't
POV, that have just so much to talk about, so much back story,
so much context to place them in, to imagine what they might
have done or how they might have reacted or all these other
things. That tracks for me, Nina saying
that it's a story about stories. Well, with with concepts like
that, it really lands. I, I do wonder if Danny will, as
we asked in our at the beginning with our pole, is Danny going to
hear that music again, that Rhaegar's harp or something that
she thinks of as the song of ice and fire?
Will there be a literal moment where she hears music and thinks
song of ice and fire or something like that?
Probably not, but but you might because of the music from from
that vision, it certainly sets it up.
Now here's a challenge, though. I mean, this is a book after
all. So music, it's a little harder
to use music and books as a as a something that lands.
Obviously TV shows and movies were the examples I used.
And that's where it works really well because you can actually
obviously hear the music, you know, in a book.
It's like you have to imagine it or something which doesn't land
as well. So I'm not sure that's the
direction George will go with it.
So I kind of argued against actual songs being important.
The metaphor of song might be more what he's aiming for here,
but we'll see. Let's talk about Aegon's dream.
Yes, as I've said before and as most of you are aware of by now,
this came from George. It isn't just House of the
Dragon thing, it came from George.
House of the Dragon did run with it.
And this is where we're going to parse what's TV only and what
George has said. But let's start with the
original wording of what George said quote.
Aegon finally decided to take over Westeros and unify the
seven Kingdoms that existed at the time under a single rule.
There was a lot of speculation that in some sense he saw what
was coming 300 years later and wanted to unify the Seven
Kingdoms to be better prepared for the threat that he
eventually saw coming from the north, the threat we are dealing
with in A Song of Ice and Fire. Seeing the threat of the others
is not the same as seeing a prophecy of Azor High, but
they're obviously connected to the same events or the Prince
that was promised, etcetera. So this is a difference.
Aegon saw the danger without seeing the savior.
Most of the other things we've seen are the savior is what
they're focused on. Azoriah will come again, the
Prince that will promise, the Prince that was promised will
come again to defeat this darkness of some kind.
Here, Aegon's dream focuses on what that actual threat is.
So that's a very, it's a different, it's a very different
angle to the whole thing. He's seeing a different piece of
the pie, different piece of the puzzle.
And I wonder how that is for some other dragon dreamers.
Like maybe that's it's mostly we hear about them just dreaming of
the Dragons returning. That doesn't seem to be what
Aegon dreamed because I mean, in his time, the Dragons hadn't
even died out. It may not have even occurred to
him. There wasn't necessarily a
property that the Dragons will die out and then come back.
We don't hear anything about that.
So that sort of when will the Dragons return thing started
after the Dragons died out. So what we have here is yet
another angle that someone's supernatural background or
insight gives us a different piece of the puzzle.
So he didn't see any sort of savior that we know of.
Aegon didn't imagine a savior. And this is important because in
the show version, Aegon believed a Targaryen had to sit the Iron
Throne. But that isn't what George says.
That's a show only invention. So we got to ignore that for
purposes of understanding the books.
Here is Ryan Condal, though, in his words, telling us what
George said, which is a little different.
So let's check it out. Quote.
That actually came from George, at least the origin of that
point. He told us very early on in the
room, as he does. He just casually mentioned the
fact that Aegon the Conqueror was a dreamer who saw a vision
of the White Walkers coming across the Wall and sweeping
over the land with cold and darkness.
But it never made the history books because he never told
anyone, or at least the people that he told didn't tell the
history writers. So it's in George's head and at
some point it will come out. Yeah, I mean, that's Ryan
telling us what George said, and I don't have any reason to doubt
him. Maybe he didn't get the exact
wording right. I doubt he just hit record and
got George's exact. This is his memory of what
George said. But that bottom line, that this
is in George's head, at some point it will come out.
Yeah, I think Danny will maybe discover that or someone will,
or multiple someones will discover that.
Actually, some of this, this Targaryen dynasty is a little
bit more steeped in dreams and visions and prophecies than some
people may have realized, especially Danny herself.
So again, there's no George doesn't give this aspect of
Aegon's dream as there must be a Targaryen.
It's not like there must be a Stark in Winterfell.
There must be a Targaryen on the Iron Throne that isn't there.
So maybe he or maybe he had a different version of that.
Maybe he did interpret the Prince or Princess that was
promised, meaning some Targaryen, maybe not necessarily
the king because it says Prince. So did Aegon's dream actually
contain that phrase, the Prince that was promised?
Or did he have the dream that led him to research, starting to
look at old books? He tells Visenya and Rainey's
they also have some insight. Maybe they know which books to
look at together. They all look at different
different books and this is what they find, and maybe that's how
they discover the Prince. It was promised.
They they backfill that they're they have the he has the dream.
They look for similar dreams written down by other people,
Maybe Danis the dreamers where they start, and then they start
to look at other, less of less well known dreamers within the
family and realize, Hey, Azor, hi Prince, it was promised.
That's aligning with your dream, you know, it fits with the the
White Walkers in this cold darkness from the North.
The unifying principle or detail being this cold darkness from
the North, this danger. Even if they don't, even if
these other properties don't mention the others, it's still
pretty clearly fits the same idea.
Maybe they had the right books. Maybe.
Maybe Dragonstone back in Aegon, Visenya Rainey's day had a lot
more books from Valyria that could explain some of these
things that no longer exists thanks to Baylor, right?
Aries the first in Rhaegar came after Baylor.
So some books definitely survived that mention these
prophecies. Or maybe they got new books.
Maybe Aries the first restocked to the library's, you know, 40
years after Baylor burned everything, because obviously
there were books that pointed to these things after Baylor died.
So he didn't get it all right. So Aegon very possibly was like,
bring me all the books I got to research what's what I'm seeing
here, maybe in my dream. And that leads him to conquer
Westeros. And maybe it wasn't just the
dream. Maybe it was a dream followed up
by the research. And this whole this whole
picture made him reach this conclusion that you know what,
I'm up to unite the land here. You know, I don't know that he
would have told anybody else, which is why it's not in the
history books. Maybe he told Oris or his
Baratheon, maybe the maybe some other of the Valyrians that were
in his court. But we don't know.
We don't know. It definitely helps us
understand why Aegon is such an unknown, why his personality is
missing from the history books as well.
This is part of why he didn't want them to know about this.
And there's no way to keep all that information from the
history books without also keeping a lot of other things.
You just got to keep a low profile and not give much away.
So maybe he had more than one vision too.
George said or Condol says Aegon was a dreamer, so that means
more dreams than just this one, right?
I don't know if you would call him a dreamer if he just had
one. And I don't know that we have a
lot of examples of dreamers that just have one dream.
So this same dream may have been recurring.
He may have seen it, it may have been recurring but with
differences each time, you know, subtle.
It was not the exact same every time.
Maybe he had a variety of different visions related to
this. Maybe he just had other visions
all together that have nothing to do with this.
So who knows. It sounds like it's possible,
though. If he was a dreamer, then a lot
of things are on the table for possibilities here.
But something made him take it seriously, possibly just the
notion that it's a common enough thing in his family.
Danis the dreamer is the reason they're all there, so they have
a lot of trust and prophecy. Like, OK, well, none of us would
even exist without prophecy, so let's not just toss prophecy to
the side here. Let's take it seriously.
But again, none of the prophecies, none of his dream,
none of this seems to be something he uniting of Westeros
doesn't seem to be in the dream. It's some it's a conclusion that
he reached because of the dream. I think that seems to be how
it's written, which is a unique feature of his dream compared to
the other prophecies. Nothing in any of the prophecies
say you must unite Westeros. However, there is an
overwhelming recurring theme of unity, of having to bring people
together to fight the darkness. So that in a in an indirect
sense is is a bullseye. Even though it doesn't seem to
directly apply to Aegon in that sense, you could see how it
would fit because that's a big piece of uniting Aegon to
conquer, uniting Westeros into something like a you, a unified
army is perhaps the biggest piece of unification that any of
these characters have done. Some of this is still ongoing,
so it's hard to say. Arguably Danny is doing
something similar by bringing together Unsoli, Dothraki, lots
of other people from Essos, and eventually lots of people from
Westeros. So that could be perhaps the
most diverse host slash army of anyone's ever seen.
But so is Jon Snow. Jon Snow is uniting Stannis and
the Free Folk and different free folk cultures and the Nights
Watch all together with some Northern Lords in the mix.
So yeah, again, that's why we struggle to say there's only one
Azora High because so many other people seem to fit.
Like you could argue Aegon the Conqueror hasn't Azora High
element to him given this unification business.
And of course, Danny, who we I would rate as the biggest uniter
of them all, or at least on track to be, is the Stallion who
Mounts the World, which is, we haven't had much 'cause to bring
that prophecy yet, But the Stallion who Mounts the World
brings all the calisars of the world together into one.
That's the even the Dithraki have this vision of a great
uniter. They don't see it as a united,
they see it as a great conqueror or a great warrior.
But the subtext is brings everyone together to fight for
one cause and who else could it be?
Like it's hard to come up with anyone else for the Azor high
other than Danny given the Dragons thing.
But it's also really hard to who else could the stallion amounts
to the world be in world. They believed briefly that it
was Rego and maybe Danny still thinks that, but I think pretty
much the rest of us are all convinced it's her.
Like she checks off all those boxes and it looks like she is
going to unite the Dothrakis that's been prophesied too in
her own dreams with the whole Crohn's bowing to her vision.
So yeah, who else could it beat? The Dragon Dreamer soundtrack.
It's our next section here. So there's been a lot of dragon
dreamers. Obviously we've talked about
Danny and Aegon and maybe they're in their own category,
so let's we've talked about them anyway.
But what about these other people?
What are they seeing and how they fit into all this?
Mostly they're just seeing a small part of this, right?
Take the Azor High screed. When the darkness gathers, Red
Star bleeds. Azor High will, you know, wake
Dragons from stone. Bring light, bring her from the
fire. All they're seeing the dragon
dreamers seem to be seeing is the waking Dragons from stone
part. They're only seeing the Dragons
returning part. They don't see the others.
They don't see the red comet. They don't see any of that other
stuff, right? Rhaegar read about the red
comet. Eamon read about the red comet.
It's in these ancient prophecies.
It wasn't something they perceived through dreams, as far
as we know. So all these dragon dreamers
seem to have in terms of their piece of the puzzle is someday
the Dragons will return. But as Aegon is an example of
and, and maybe Danny and Danny's the dreamer, the dreams of
dragon dreamers were a lot different back when Dragons did
exist. They weren't dreaming about the
Dragons returning as far as we know, because the Dragons
weren't gone. Maybe they, some of them had
dreams of the Dragons being gone and then coming back, But we
don't hear about that. So everything we've heard about
Dragons returning comes after the Dragons die out.
So that's, that's very curious. And you know, and of course the
dragon dreamers don't, their dream is different than Aegons.
As far as we know, there's nothing about none of the dragon
dreamers that we know of have perceived the Others or even the
Long Night or anything like it. It's just this Dragon's
returning thing. That's it.
You know, it's, well, I mean, that is a lot because it's
supernatural dreams basically, but that's it.
You know, they're, they don't see their, their slice of the
pie is kind of small compared to some of these others.
But there's also a lot of unknown Targaryens here who are
having these dreams. It's possible some of them had
much more vivid imagery here and they just didn't know what to
make of it. Maybe some of them didn't write
it down, but maybe some of them did.
And that could be interesting. That could be a way for George
to give a little more information to some of these
main characters is to reveal some some books.
But it's these are Targaryens too.
It's to keep in mind that they're all very privileged
people that are not unlikely to have big egos.
So a lot of the Targaryens would be like, it's me, I'm the one.
A lot of them would feel like confidence and unearned
confidence that they're the special one.
And even if you aren't, you know that arrogant to think that
you're probably the one you want to at least check and make sure
if you're aware that someone in your family is going to be this
special being, you might want to make sure, check at least to
make sure it's not you or, and if it is, then we'll get on with
it. And if dragon Dreamers did have
this idea from the TV show that there had to be a Targaryen on
the throne, well, until post Aries, they would be like, all
right, we're fine. We do have a Targaryen on the
throne. So they wouldn't have anything
to do. They'd be like, yeah, well,
we're good. There's still a Targaryen on the
throne. No worries, it isn't until 280
years later, 284 years later or so, that that ends.
So there hasn't been that long of a time for people to dream of
uh oh, we need a Targaryen on the throne still.
That hasn't been a thing. We have not seen anything in any
prophecy or dream that says Danny has to be the Queen or has
to rule Westeros, which is the Iron Throne, to make any of this
happen. It isn't necessarily a
prerequisite. I still kind of think she will,
but it doesn't seem to be prophesied again, Prince slash
Princess that was promised, not queen.
So I think what a lot of the other dragon dreamers were
dreaming of when they dreamt of the return of the Dragons.
This is something Joe Magician I think originally introduced me
the idea of. So shout out Joe Magician or
shout out someone else if I'm wrong about who I got this from.
But I think it was Joe Magician, the idea that a lot of the
dragon dreamers were dreaming of Danny.
They were perceiving the return of the Dragons and they were
seeing this figure in those dreams that did it.
And because it's a generic Targaryen, they can perceive it
as themselves. They don't know who it is.
They see silver hair or maybe they see no hair because that's
how she came out of the fire. Which might be why Egg thought
it was himself because he didn't have hair for a while there too.
That could be very very unfortunate misleading detail
there. So Summerhall could have been a
self fulfilling prophecy right? So many of the people who tried
to bring Dragons back used wildfire, Aryan, Aries, AG
himself. This maybe argues that they were
perceiving wildfire in their dreams too, which means they
aren't dreaming of Danny. If they were dreaming of
wildfire bringing back Dragons, they were dreaming of failed
attempts and maybe not realizing those were failed attempts.
They're dreaming of what their descendants would try, but they
maybe didn't dream the whole thing.
They just saw a wildfire. And so that's why they lean
towards wildfire, not knowing that they were probably dreaming
of Summerhall or of Aries and thinking and seeing what they
expected to work. And actually it's it's an
example of it didn't work. But dreams are misleading,
right? You can see this happening and
think, is this something that I'm supposed to do or is this a
warning of what not to do there With the difficulty of dreams,
that's a pretty easy thing to get lost in.
Rhaegar certainly looked too hard for what wasn't there,
right? But he wasn't far off.
And as we said earlier, he did a pretty good job of changing his
mind, something like that, and changing, adapting to the new
evidence. But he kept getting wrong
evidence, so he kept adapting to bad input.
John Merkel says the Targaryens may have imagined themselves the
brand of the prophecy, the quote hero, the last hero or the the
the Azora High when they're actually the Jojen destined to
tell the tale and die destined to have the information pass it
on to someone who matters. That's a good call.
Like so many of these other Targaryen Princess and
princelings and and kings and Queens that may have thought it
was them. They were just all building it
up to Danny, who was the actual 1 Danny's the Danny's the Bran
of this prophecy, but they didn't know that they're the
ones they are the Jojo's. That's a good way to put it.
I like that it's pretty cool. This next section is called
sheet music. And the point of that is to
extend our musical metaphor, our song metaphor, into the written
word and how that applies here. So we've talked about
Melisandre's texts and other books from ancient Eshai, which
are probably the oldest written sources for anything resembling
the Azora High prophecy. The Targaryens clearly have some
sources of their own. Obviously, Septon Barth is a
great source on Dragons. Most of his writings were
unfortunately burned. Plenty of other texts were
burned as well. Thanks, Baylor.
But as we just mentioned a few minutes ago, and now we get to
focus on him, one king in particular did what he could to
get the books back in the Red Keep quote.
Assuming the throne in 184 AC, Daron's second son Aries had
never imagined he would be king and was singularly I'll suited
to sit the Iron Throne. Aries was learned in his way,
though his interests were largely to do with dusty tomes
concerned with ancient prophecy and the higher mysteries.
So Aries read, the Dragons would return, or at least that's the
part that Egg tells Dunk. And it's a young Egg who says
this. So he's not the most reliable
source of information here, because he's also excited about
it. He's a child.
He want, he's hearing what he wants to hear.
He tells Dunk. Wouldn't that be amazing if
Dragons came back and Dunk's like I don't no that would be so
great. Actually, that quote's a little
bit misleading because it makes it sound like Aries became king
in 184. Darren became king in 184.
Aries became king in I think 2O9 right after the Great Spring
Sickness. So he is the most bookish of all
the Targaryen kings and the one that restored the belief, at
least from a prophetic standpoint, that the Dragons
would return there. There were attempts to rehash
Dragons to hatch the dragon eggs prior to Aries, but they didn't
do that on a basis of, we know because of a prophecy that this
is going to work. They did it because they just
really wanted Dragons back. The Dragons are the source of
their power and they're like any we we want these again, let's
try to hatch them. They tried all sorts of things,
but those things they tried weren't rooted in trying to
fulfill prophecies. They were maybe mages from maybe
warlocks can do this. Maybe this other thing will
work. Maybe wildfire will work.
They weren't trying things that came from existing prophecies,
so that they may have been trying things that came from
dreams, from newest dreams, from recent dreams.
So in this case, what Ares is dealing with is not a prophecy
from a dream or a vision directly, although that may be
how it started. It's one that was written down,
a prophecy put to text, which obviously can.
There's all sorts of ways it can be wrong or misrecorded, let
alone just the basic flaws that come with any prophecy, the
inherent issues that come with anything from this, from this
angle. So.
But it did. Aries did establish it as a
persistent belief. After him, pretty much every
Targaryen was on this track, at least somewhat.
Maybe Makar didn't, but maybe he did.
Aries didn't actually try to hatch his eggs, right?
They went from trying to hatch the eggs to just thinking about
this prophecy and wondering how that would work.
So it's a definitely an interesting shift in Targaryen
behavior after Aries came along. But AG of course did.
AG did culminate all this with Summerhall?
Maybe both a culmination of the prior generation and Aries's
influence. Tragic combination there.
And let's look at the Rhinar histories again real quick.
I've talked about this once or twice throughout this episode,
but let's get let's hone in on a little more here.
You could say that the Rhinar histories share a thread, or
maybe you could say that they harmonize to keep with our song
metaphors quote. The Rhinar tell of a darkness
that made the Rhin of Essos dwindle and disappear, her
waters frozen as far South as the joining of the Selhoru,
until a hero convinced the many children of Mother Rhyne, such
as the Crab King and the Old Man of the River, to put aside their
bickering and join in a secret song that brought back the day.
Unity and song are the key elements to their victory,
according to this anecdote. But it also says a single hero
is who united them and kicked it all off.
It was the combined efforts that worked.
But none of that would have happened without this unifying
hero figure. Again, a recurring aspect to
these prophecies as a unifying figure that's crucial to any of
this working. So yeah, after Aries the first,
lots more focus on prophecies. It was a big deal.
Jaharius the second and Shara believed the Ghost of High Heart
that the Prince that was promised would be born to their
line. They just, they accepted that
pretty much uncritically as far as we can tell.
And I bet that's partly because they were primed for it because
of Aries the 1st and this talk of prophecy and that the Dragons
would return something that all the Targaryens want.
So it's definitely one of those things that they would justify
or hope for or maybe, you know, have reverse denial about like,
yeah, it's coming, It's happening.
We just got to we just got to make it happen.
We got to do what we what we must to make it happen.
So Jerry isn't sure we're all about it.
They're like, Yep, goes to high heart said.
So we believe her. She's had accurate visions.
We got no reason to doubt it. But just like Aegon what what
books got involved here? Because I don't think, just like
I don't believe Egg and the Conqueror stopped with visions.
He probably, you know, opened up some books and tried to learn
more about what he was seeing. I bet these two did too.
Not automatically. It's just of not unlikely thing
to imagine they would want to know who the Prince that was
promised was like just that's just something they've heard of
already. Maybe.
I mean, maybe they had because of Erius's groundwork, maybe
that was just common knowledge at court because it had been
made a big deal. They wouldn't just say Prince
that was promised. That sounds cool.
I don't need to know anything more than that though.
No, you feel like, wait, what is that?
At some point they would have asked and maybe learned and
maybe been told and who knows, that we don't have anything to
go on as as far as specifics. Of course, like the dreamers, we
can assume some Targaryens learn some things that history does
not record supernatural dreams, things they learned in text that
they didn't make mainstream because it might make them seem
crazy or because they wanted to keep it a secret for other
reasons. And in terms of history not
recording things, George is very consistent with that.
The word prophecy only appears once in the World of Ice and
Fire, and it's in reference to Aries.
The first only three cases of the word vision being used in a
supernatural context in the World of Ice and Fire.
Also one being the High Septon claiming he had a vision to not
fight egg on the Conqueror. So I think that was not a real
vision, just a a common sense that he framed as a message from
the gods. But also Baylor the blessed
dreamed of the great Sept, which that I kind of take on his take
is is accurate as because I bet Baylor was sincere.
But I mean, he also wanted this. He probably just wanted to build
a big church, Stannis Baratheon says. the Super chat says.
Does Aegon's strategy post conquest make sense to you?
If he envisioned a northern threat, no relationship was
really established with the North and actually weakening the
wall in many ways. Can I say First off how funny it
is the name that's asking this question picturing like actual
Stannis ask anyways. That is really funny.
Stannis is like, yeah, these guys didn't do it right.
Yeah, Stannis would would point out the flaws here.
That's Stannis for you. I got it.
I I like that. I appreciate that there are some
possible flaws here, or it can be a little hard to frame.
I agree with that. But I can also see it as Aegon
was too focused on establishing the realm like he did the
conquest. It wasn't over then.
He still had to keep the realm together and make that all work,
make sure that would last. I think he was more focused on
that. So that's kind of where I land
on it. Yeah, he may have.
He did the thing that he needed to do, which was unite Westeros,
but if he didn't keep working on that, it would it it would lose
it all. And then what good would it have
been? So I, I, that's kind of how I
look at it that he was really focused on just making sure it
would last rather he wasn't too worried about the short term.
Yes, a nice watch was starting to decline under his Well,
absolutely. Aegon's Conquest absolutely
screwed the nights Watch's numbers up.
Like they just lost the ability to get new members when wars
ended. Like you have the Reach fights
the West, the losing side, a bunch of people get sent to the
wall. Well, with unification that
never happens anymore. The the kingdoms aren't fighting
each other. There's there's no mass sending
of people to the wall at once. It rarely happens.
I mean, it did happen occasionally even under Aegon
and and later Targaryens, but it was a lot rarer.
So yeah. But that's a short term problem.
If Aegon's belief is that this is a long way in the future,
he's not going to be worried about the short term of the
Nights Watch. I think you can explain it away,
but you need to bring up several points, several reasons, and I
think it works. It's not as clean as a lot of
these other things, but it it works.
Yeah, He weakened the wall, yes, but it was a short term thing.
It it depends on what he saw in his visions too.
Maybe his visions told him that this would work itself out.
There's a lot missing here that could explain it, as some of his
is just left up to George's imagination.
And if, as Ryan Condell indicated, George is going to
tell us more about this someday, well, yeah, then we'll get
answers. So I think that this is
something that's forthcoming, the three headed dragon.
This to me, is one of the most interesting aspects of this
episode because there's some underexplored connections
between Aegon and Daenerys. Obviously, on the surface,
Aegon, 33 heads of the dragon, him, Vicenya, Rainey's, there
was only three Dragons alive at the time.
That part straightforward from matching A3 headed dragon.
Same for Daenerys. She's reborn, or she's born and
the Dragons are reborn, and there's three of them, so of
course. And she's intends to take the
throne of Westeros. So there's obvious reasons for
her to compare herself to Aegon in a mundane way, but also in a
supernatural, prophetic way. And let's recall what Rhaegar
said. Remember way back earlier in
this episode, I said we'd come back to this.
It was too much to cover at once, trying to take small bites
here rather than huge bites. Rhaegar said there must be one
more. The dragon has three heads.
He didn't say the dragon must have 3 heads by the way.
That's an important distinction. He said the dragon has three
heads. So Rhaegar clearly seemed to
interpret this as he needed three children because he was
referring to two kids and needing one more.
He must not have seen the stone Dragons part as literal if he
was aware of this prophecy, which he must have been.
He doesn't care about the stone Dragons waking up.
Or he must have looked at that as some sort of metaphor and
been like no, that's nothing Or that's something later because
he doesn't seem to be referring to that or caring about that.
He's focused on the three princelings, the three heads of
the dragon from a Targaryen perspective, not 3 literal
Dragons with Danny. Well these three literal Dragons
come on pretty early on, so she's obviously going to focus
on that now. We also find out that Aries
tried to hatch Dragons but Rhaegar didn't, and Rhaegar's
the one that seems to have more information.
And Aries was obviously insane too, so we can easily discount
that. During the House of the Undying
is when Danny gets this vision of radar.
But she also gets this at one point.
It's 3 fires, must you like 3 loves blah blah blah 3 heads as
the dragon is one of the lines in there.
So it's kind of repeated. It is in a separate part of her
jaunt through the House of the Undying.
It's all very predictive and Riddle ish.
Obviously they're not informing her that she has three Dragons.
She knows that. So what do they mean when they
say 3 heads as the dragon? They aren't talking about the
obvious, I don't think. And if it's talking about dragon
riders, which is maybe what the angle Rhaegar was seeming to
take, well that's another problem.
Because as Danny herself notes, there aren't even 3 living
Targaryens. Probably as she sees it, maybe
there are, but if you count John as one of them and the other
one, well, ironically, even though I think most of us
believe that Aegon Young Griff is a black fire, that would give
him some Targaryen blood anyway. But even he would be a better
candidate for a head of the dragon.
If he was actually Rhaegar's son, he would be, you know,
Danny's niece or nephew rather. So that's a much closer
relationship. So it's always stuck out as one
little point that makes me not 100% sold that Aegon is a black
fire, even though that's still clearly where I land given what
I know. And if Danny is introduced to
this three heads must have the dragon thing.
She hears this from a prophecy. She's already hatched 3 Dragons.
So she's like OK, that could lead her to realizing that she's
fulfilling this prophecy herself.
But here's where I think it gets really interesting when you
combine this notion with Aegon's dream.
House Targaryen didn't have a sigil before Aegon.
They didn't bother with that piece of Andal heraldry during
the Lords of Dragonstone era. Aynar didn't have one.
Game of the Glorious didn't bother with that.
It was when the Conquest began, Aegon and his sisters unfurled
their new 3 headed sigil for the first time.
It yes it looks like a reference to themselves.
The three siblings are the three heads with three Dragons.
But if he also had a dream that Rhaegar later followed up on,
did he dream of the three headed dragon?
2 This, the dragon must have 3 heads and that's why the sigil
fits so well for them. He's like we are the exposition,
we are the explanation here. We are the result of this
prophecy. We are fulfilling the prophecy.
There's three heads, three of us, three Dragons.
It must be us. Danny's starting on that same
track of realizing it's going to be her and the people are going
to tell her that she's the one. So you can see why if Aegon had
this dream and then these things happen, it's like, well it's all
coming true. He had a dream of vague cold and
darkness. He had a dream of the others
invading. So there could be a connection
here of he perceives the others and realizes the Dragons are
needed to stop that because of his dream.
There's a three headed dragon in his dream or some sort of phrase
that pops up in his mind as he's dreaming that says the dragon
must have 3 heads or he reads about that somewhere or both.
It it's very telling he would the sigil has a lot more meaning
there. It's also a prophetic device,
not just a thing that matches who they were at the time
because it's the the the prophecy would be the reason why
they made such a big deal out of that.
Be like hey, this all aligns exactly like dreams and books
and and or visions tell us this must be happening, it must be
real, must be us. So it's a good theory in my mind
that Aegon also had this 3 headed dragon dream thing that
much later Rhaegar read about or maybe also dreamed about and for
all we know this was written down by Aegon himself.
That would be a wild little thing to find out like that this
survived somehow Baylor didn't burn it and that's that
happened. So this is actually a recurring
possibility for a lot of the dragon dreamers is that they
think they're the ones or they're dreaming.
They're dreaming of their own descendant or relation farther
down the timeline and thinking it's themselves.
That's part of why that works so well.
Danny thinks she needs two men to trust.
That's a thought she has three against the world is here's her
thought like Aegon and his sisters.
But who would those? Who would they be?
She thinks about it like a Darian.
Jorah nominated himself and she's like Amon Maester Amon's
like, oh, I should be 1, but I'm too old and frail.
He says that to Sam. So if Sam and Daenerys ever
meet, well, that's something they'll talk about.
Or you, you you would hope so if Sam, and maybe Sam is too afraid
to bring that up, but it's it's a it's quite an ice breaker.
Like, hey, I knew you're the great uncle.
What is Eamon's relation? Yeah, anyway.
And he had a lot of information for you might rather than just
his, whatever his familial connection is, it's it's it's
his information is, is far more important.
And it's hard to predict because Danny will have come a lot
farther along in her knowledge by that point.
This is openly discussed during A Feast for Crows in the 1st
chapter in the prologue by the companions at the Quill and
Tankard. Alaris says some kind of self
defeating, not self defeating. But she kind of contradicts
herself a little bit in a funny way.
She says I'll tell you what I suspect.
And then she says the dragon has three heads.
But that's not a Riddle. She says what?
Yes, it is. And you're the Sphinx, of course
you're speaking in riddles. So that's all like, wait a
minute. Come on, Alaris.
You know, that's a Riddle. You just, it's a phrase that no
one knows the meaning to. So yeah, that's maybe not
technically a Riddle because it's not asking a question, but
it is definitely like a, a thinker, like a, a puzzle or
like, what does that mean? And she doesn't elaborate.
So. Yeah.
So Rhaegar brought it up. Danny, here's the phrase in the
house, the undying drink from the cup of ice slash fire, 3
heads has the dragon, all these phrases.
Melisandre doesn't say anything about a three headed dragon,
neither does Benero. So the Azure high myths don't
bring in a three headed dragon thing.
That's something that comes from just the dragon dreamers as far
as we can tell just from Aegon, just from Danny, just from
Rhaegar. And Rhaegar may not have dreamed
it. He may have just read about it.
So where did it get written down?
Who wrote that down? Is that also is that tar text
that Melisandre never saw? No one on the red priest saw
that? Well, that'd be interesting.
And the way George expresses this sort of like the ice and
fire themes that aren't directly supernatural but show us how he
views them conceptually. Elementally. 3 headed dragon is
hatched and carved as one of the rumors that gets floated during
the prologue of A Feast for Crows.
Three becomes one other way around.
Yeah, it's the way the rumor is expressed.
It's not a three headed dragon, but we see how the same
conceptual thing happens. The rumor turns into a three
headed dragon instead of three regular Dragons.
And maybe in the world of dreams, you could see how the
same thing would happen, how one would be perceived as three or
three as one or something in between.
Again, the riders, Jon Snow and Aegon, you know, I really don't
know who else it could be. So this is a this is a peculiar
thing. Like a lot of people, this is
one of the reasons Tyrion Targaryen has some legs to it
because this out of sheer lack of Valyrian potential dragon
writers, it's like, well, who else could it be?
So that that's why it's it's a lack of options that lead to
some of these Wilder theories, I think.
So there's probably some missing information here that might
maybe clear some of this up that we just don't have.
Speaking of John, let's now consider his, for lack of better
words, Ice and Fire dream quote. Burning shafts hissed upward,
trailing tongues of fire. Scarecrow brothers tumbled down,
black cloaks ablaze. Snow.
An eagle cried as foemen scuttled up the ice like
spiders. John was armoured in black ice,
but his blade burned red in his first.
As the dead men reached the top of the wall, he set them down to
die again. He slew a Gray beard and a
beardless boy, a giant, a gaunt man with filed teeth, a girl
with thick red hair. Too late, he recognized, he
grit. She was gone as quick as she'd
appeared. So this dream has a notable
connection to multiple other tales we've covered today.
For example, the ice spider scuttling up like spiders.
That's the only other mention of it, of the spider, of the ice
spiders, other than maybe Sam brings them up in a book.
So that's interesting, that connection.
It's the last hero story, so that having a connection to John
is interesting. The burning blade thing, that's
what we learned about Lightbringers.
It's supposed to turn to fire when it's in combat, which this
dream is absolutely portraying. He kills a grey beard, a
beardless boy, a giant, etcetera.
It could just be Longclaw, right?
But let's and then Dragon Steel from the last Euro tales.
How is this all wrapped up together?
I don't know, but I think those are the elements we need to
consider. So these are whites.
He doesn't call them whites, but there he says they're dead men.
Same difference, but he recognizes some of them.
And I think this is a bit of foreshadowing or reminding us
that this will happen again. And Grit's already dead at this
point, but it's a warning of what's to come from any care.
A lot of characters will find themselves fighting their own
dead friends or people, at least people they knew That.
Yeah, scary. Also, we're told I, I briefly
touched on this before, but Sam, one of Sam's chapters starts
with he was reading about the others when the mouse, blah,
blah, blah. He was reading for like so long
that he lost track of time. He thinks maybe it was more than
a day and he had a stack of books that he was reading.
He was reading a book about dragonkind.
He was reading a book about the others.
He was reading about the last hero.
Very little of this comes out in his words later.
So we have a lot of books that Sam has read that he hasn't
actually like talked about or shared that information with
anybody. So I think that's something
George is holding on to for later, but it's so it's
something to keep an eye on because Sam has a lot of
knowledge that he hasn't revealed yet.
And now he's at the Citadel where there's just even way more
knowledge. So what that could do is
corroborate some of what he's already learned.
He could find books that are like mentioning the same things
that he's either witnessed in person or read in books at the
Wall, which as we've been told, the book the the Wall has some
pretty rare books. So that and a substantial
library on top of that. So a lot of potential there for
some connections to be made for George to go a little farther
with the written prophecies, or at least the written information
by Maester's long gone. Let's move from the from John to
the foes he's dreaming of. And I don't mean the whites, but
the ones sending them the others a meaning, or rather the others
as this is actually written. So some of the stories mention
the Others, but none of the prophecies do.
How interesting is that? There's vague mentions of a
great darkness and overwhelming cold that it's from the North.
Dreams have them, books have them, stories have them.
None of the prophecies do. Part of this is perhaps or
surely because the Others were not a worldwide phenomenon.
The darkness was everywhere. It was global, but the Others
weren't. The Others were just in
Westeros. Maybe Westeros might have gotten
the short end of that stick. The entire hemisphere, if not
world got the Long Night, but only Westeros got the Others.
That is how it's worded in Old Nan's tale sorta.
She says in that darkness the Others came for the first time.
Some of the texts say that the Others brought the darkness with
them, but she frames it as the Others emerged in the dark.
The the darkness is what allowed them to come back.
Melisandre, like I said, didn't necessarily show any prior
knowledge of them, but that doesn't mean she didn't have
knowledge of them. Again, she definitely calls them
the cold children of the great other.
And now here is one of the first clues to any of this.
We're going all the way back to the beginning, the three eyed
crow showing Bran what was far to the north.
If we interpret this as blood Raven, which I do a plus blood
Ravens knowledge that he's gleaned from the weirwood
network. So this is brand 3A Game of
Thrones when he's in a coma quote.
He saw the wall shining like blue crystal, and his bastard
brother John sleeping alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale
and hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him.
And he looked past the wall, past endless forests cloaked in
snow, past the frozen shore and the great blue white rivers of
ice and the dead plains where nothing grew or lived, north and
north and N. He looked to the curtain of
light at the end of the world, and then yawned that curtain.
He looked deep into the heart of winter.
And then he cried out, afraid, and the heat of his tears burned
on his cheeks. Now you know, the crow whispered
as it sat on his shoulder. Now you know why you must live.
Why? Fran said, not understanding.
Falling. Falling because winter is
coming. Bran looked at the crow on his
shoulder, and the crow looked back.
It had three eyes, and the third eye was full of a terrible
knowledge. Bran looked down.
There was nothing below him now but snow and cold and death, a
frozen wasteland where jagged blue white Spires of ice waited
to embrace him. They flew up at him like Spears.
He saw the bones of 1000 other dreamers impaled upon their
points. He was desperately afraid.
Just the imagery there of this frozen wasteland of where the
others may emerge from, where their home may be, where they
first came from, the the thousand other dreamers impaled
on their dream points. That is creepy and evocative and
I, I really much appreciate how this is all coming back around.
We, we've talked about so many different prophecies and
predictions and foreshadowing. It shows how well connected a
lot of this is. It also reminds you of what I
said at the beginning, how pretty much impossible this is
all is to piece together just by reading.
Even if you've read like 3-4 five times, there's just,
there's just too much here, too many, too much nuance, too much,
too many things that are kind of similar but not completely the
same. Very hard to parse without
getting into the weeds like we're doing right now.
Melisandre's knowledge of, of the Azora High and Lightbringer
myths or stories, not to mention her obvious powers, they give
her credibility at, at the wall. But when she brings up, you
know, the growing darkness again, they've, they know that
already. They're like, yeah, we, we know,
we, we've seen the others, we've seen the dead.
But most people don't with, even with prophetic knowledge, know
that the others exist or even mention them.
So that's it's it's it's being held out for some reason, like
Alessandra hasn't perceived Danny and the ghost of IR
doesn't perceive Danny and Danny hasn't perceived the others and
things like that as all these so many people don't have really
important missing pieces here. And that's going to be something
that's very satisfying and interesting to read eventually
is when they do, when these things do come together as the
story starts to the story started small ish and spread out
a whole lot and then spread out more.
And it's starting to come together because so many of the
plot lines are starting to merge slowly but surely.
Now, who outside of the Nights Watch knows that the others are
real? And here again, there's a few,
But, and for our purposes, it's an important sign because the
return of the others is proof that a lot of the which some of
these things are right, even though the others aren't in
these prophecies, darkness, the cold is, and that's a pretty
clear indication of that. Like, well, these cold evil
beings emerge from the darkness. They weren't explicitly named in
the prophecy, but that's clearly what's happening.
This, this giant internal eternal darkness has has
arrived. That must be what the prophecy
was referring to or, or something like that.
They are the cold darkness after the long summer, prophesied in
the ancient books of ASCII and carried forward to this day by
worshippers of Valore and other groups.
So even if the others aren't specifically understood, they
are similar enough to what's named in these prophecies to be
an obvious fit. The original darkness.
Let's think about this for a minute.
The original darkness. We theorize that it came from
somewhere else, like the Shadow by ASCII is a is a very strong
candidate. Or perhaps the others are where
it first came from and other histories backfilled with what
they thought was the source. For example, the blood betrayal
of the Bloodstone Emperor. We're told that's what brought
the Long Night on, but that could just be what they believe
brought the Long Night on. The Long Night happened then, so
they blame it on the Bloodstone Emperor 'cause he was such a
jerk, such a cruel, supernatural evil dude.
But that's just filling in what they think they know.
Perhaps there's other creatures of darkness, though, that
plagued Essos. They didn't have the Others, but
they had whatever the five Forts were built to guard against.
Something like the Others. Maybe.
They're certainly expressed as children of the Lion of Night,
which that's similar enough. One way or another, the darkness
of long ago enabled the Others of Westeros to emerge.
Or maybe they created it. Either way, they came together.
So maybe it's so if it is them, the darkness may be coming from
quote inside the house, so to speak.
They're the cause of it. Or they just know that this is
the right time. The stars are aligned.
The long winter is going to come because there was a long summer.
They've they've they keyed in on that.
They know. So they're acting accordingly.
The others are like, hey, now's our time.
They aren't responsible for bringing the darkness, but they
will absolutely capitalize on it.
And that asks us maybe one final question.
Do the Others themselves have something resembling prophecy,
foretelling ancient lore or anything like that?
If they are creatures of the Old Gods, corrupted creatures
perhaps, but still, that would be their origin creations of the
Children. Perhaps then they might have
some of that same ability. The Children have access to the
Weirwood network, or at least some of them do the Green Seers.
If the Others were just regular humans converted to what they
are now, then maybe they don't have foretelling or prophecy.
But if they were green seers or green dreamers turned into
Others, if it might take that to make another, if that's if
indeed that's how they're created in the 1st place, then
it would definitely fit. If you have a green seer
converted to another, then they might have some of their powers
still. They they clearly can still
animate the dead and do other stuff, so why not that?
I would love to see how this plays out and this is hopefully
something that will get revealed.
Though I'm pleased with this episode overall, a part of me
feels like some aspects of this episode could do with a lot more
attention. It was a pretty big episode, so
we covered about as much as we could or should, but there it
feels like some of these topics we we only barely touched on
because we're trying to look at it from a high level.
We're looking at the high level connections, not necessarily
some of the deep deeper cuts that are more harder to see, but
the that said, these high level things are pretty hard to see
anyway. One thing I originally planned
for this episode that I kind of moved past but still want to do
is just going through the Targaryen dynasty.
Looking at each reign as the Stannis Baratheon brought up
earlier and and imagine Aegon the Conqueror in the light of
the dream. How does his behavior fit with
what we think he knows? We could do that with every
possible Targaryen king and imagine, well, does this
behavior indicate they know the prophecy or they care or or not,
you know, or something other than that.
Like, it's easy enough early on. Like Makar.
I mean, Megor probably knew because Bessenia probably knew
and she would have told him. Anius would have known because
he was the one expected to inherit.
I did eventually, or did inherit rather.
So it's one thing for Aegon not to write it down, not to give it
to any historians, but would he just not tell anyone?
That seems super unlikely. And how would it even be
possible? How?
Why would George be telling us this?
Where's his? Where's the speculation coming
from that George refers to if, if Aegon is the only one who
knows so that we can throw it out the window.
Other people had to know. If not just his sisters or or
his Baratheon or whatever. Maybe some other people, Our own
guesses are similar. Like, consider what the show
did. The show built the House of
Dragon, built its own lore around these seedlings here, and
it's pretty cool. Like like some of what they did
with it. But we can't.
But that's not relevant to what the books are doing here.
We only care about what George said.
At times throughout this episode, we've pointed out
characters who don't know anything about any of the Song
and Ice Fire prophecy, like, again, Aria, Sansa, Theon,
Cersei, Jamies, lots of them. You know, some of the lesser
characters, Barristan, you know, he's, he mentioned the Princess
that was prominent or Prince that was promised, but he didn't
display any knowledge of what that means.
Again, there's even lots of characters only with Daenerys
exists, let alone that she's some kind of prophecy savior.
This is mostly, shall we call it the political arc, the war arcs.
The, the, the characters that are involved in the war of 5
Kings were the, the, the extension of that that's still
playing out. Like Aegon Young Griff.
He has a lot to do with Danny's story, but probably not a lot to
do with Danny's end game. What's going to happen at the
wall with the others? With quite a few other
characters it's tricky though. Brienne hasn't seen any Whites
or the others, and she has no idea who Azora High is, but
she's seen the dead walk. She saw Lady Stoneheart and
other Brotherhood without banners, saw Barack Dandarian
walking around undead before Stoneheart.
So at least some people in the South won't find it so far
fetched that the dead are walking up in the north.
Everybody else will be like, that doesn't sound possible.
That sounds like some crazy ass rumor.
But people who have seen the dead walk in the South, that
might be part of why George is introducing those plots to, you
know, help set up those characters for understanding or
or believing what's going on farther in the North.
Either way, it's something very much to look forward to.
Characters in the dark who finally see the light bringer or
what have you. Characters in the dark who see
the dark for what it really is. And everyone's seen the comet.
So if people start telling the comet Herald did this change,
they'd be like, oh, yeah, all right, yeah.
Especially after seeing the others or the Dragons.
And you see that, and then you think about the comet, you're
like, OK, and these Dragons are young, aren't they?
So they, the whole idea that they came at the same time as
the comet, that that's it's easy to perceive.
It's easy to believe that to be true.
And it might be true either way. So many different characters are
going to go through the learning process for these prophecies for
one or more of them. Some of them will be very deep
in it, like Tyrion is barely in it now and he's going to get
thrust into the middle of it as soon as he gets Daenerys, I
would, I would assume. And there's other characters
that meet that description as well, potentially.
And for each one of them, it's going to be a ride, I think.
So I, I'm excited for that. I expect their reactions to be
compelling and for that to be a device for George to reveal
more. Trivia answer.
Who does Danny discuss the Song of Ice and Fire with?
Sir Jorah, a man who knows nothing about it whatsoever.
So it didn't get her very far, but it was an opportunity for
her to air her thoughts out loud for so we could all have
something to think about as well.
The poll results? Yes, the poll results.
The question was Danny sees a vision of Rhaegar playing his
harp. Will Danny hear that song again
in a vision or elsewhere? 74% of you said yes and the rest
said no. So there were 133 votes.
So it was a pretty good number of people voting there.
Speaking of voting, remember to go to our survey bit dot LY
slash how survey, one word how survey.
We would really appreciate your input there.
It will help make the show better.
And well, yeah, that's it. It'll help make a show better
and we appreciate it. That's enough.
Those are good reasons. In this episode we mentioned
quite a few other topics that we already have episodes for the
Red comet. We have episodes on weirwoods
that are tangentially related. The question of Quaithe very
related to this, the Ghost of High Heart episode also very
related. We have a episode called
Melisandre before Westeros, meaning her time, you know, her
young years basically absolutely related to this.
And a similar episode on Maestra Amon, his time before going to
the Wall. Very relevant here as well.
We have several episodes on Bloodraven, but the most
relevant is the three eyed Bloodraven because that details
his time once he got to the wall.
Doesn't cover his time in the South at all.
So that's a very focused on just the northern arc of Bloodraven's
life. We did an episode recently
called the Book of Benjen Stark. Benjen in the north with the
children and the dragonglass caches and other mysteries
associated with some of this Very relevant.
Some of his last, some of the last hero stuff relates to him a
little bit, I think, if not more.
We have an episode called The Curious Case of Hold Cold Hands.
You can see why that would relate to a lot of these things,
including Benjen and the undead and the others.
We haven't called the horror at heart home.
That relates to Melisandre's vision that the the cold brought
by the others will be so severe that it ends the fires of the
earth. It puts out volcanoes that's
crazy cold. And there's prophecy in that
one. Not prophecy related to anything
we've talked about today, but more prophecy regardless.
Danny's the dreamer, the prophetic, the most powerful
prophet of all time, possibly, certainly of ones we know about,
and the whole reason the Targaryen family still exists.
We have an episode on Dragonstone detailing just
mundane and the supernatural, how it was founded, of secrets
within different people who have ruled there.
Obviously Targaryens and an episode on Danny's birth, which
is super important given her distance from her family, her
early life, and how her birth actually reflects some of the
prophecies as well. Something we didn't even talk
about today because there was just so much to cover.
Thank you to everyone who came out today and watched live.
We certainly appreciate if you catch us later as well, the
edited version and that's certainly we appreciate however
you consume our content. Thanks to Nina for helping me
through some of these ideas and giving me some some specific
notes as well to add in. Thanks to Joey Townsend for the
music. Thanks to Michael Klarfeld for
the videos and maps. And on behalf of Ashea, I'm
Aziz. We'll see you next time and you
know what to do. Until then, Valar Ariritas.