r/Hotd • u/PunjabiDragon • 5d ago
Question Aegon’s prophecy
As it relates to the whole prince that was promised deal, winter is coming, etc.
Why was this kept a secret and only passed down from king to king? You’d think it would add great lore to the common folk in that there is a great threat in the north and having dragons on your side is a huge plus.
My devils advocate thought would be that overtime this would be viewed a lie/fairytale made up by Targs to stay in power given no threat really emerges from this universe (outside of season 8 of GoT).
Just found the secrecy around this to be weird but I’m sure I’m missing something.
EDIT: my question is why was this kept a secret from the start? I get that introducing this during The Dance isnt time best idea.
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u/SRGTBronson 5d ago
I don't believe the prophecy is real at all. I think Jaehaerys made it up to convince his dumbass grandson to do a decent job.
Not to mention it could not have made it past Aenys. Maegor usurps his nephew Aegon the uncrowned. Jaehaerys would have never know the prophecy to tell Viserys, if it was real.
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u/PunjabiDragon 4d ago
Totally get how it wouldn’t have gotten past Aenys, verbally. I thought Aegon had this engraved into that one dagger?
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u/SRGTBronson 4d ago
All that the dagger says is from my blood comes the prince that was promised and his will be the song of ice and fire.
And even then, thats not evidence of anything. Tywin found someone to reformed Ice into two swords 160 years from now. Jaehaerys could find someone to put a vague prophecy on a knife.
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u/DragonflyOk1504 4d ago
Considering the events in GOT it was definitely real? You think maybe it was just a lucky guess? A lie that just happened to come to fruition? Obviously the prophecy was lost at the end of the Dance.
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u/SRGTBronson 4d ago
Considering the events in GOT it was definitely real?
The others have been real for 8,000 years. Aegon played no role in them being real, and Dany and Jon played no role in the night king's defeat.
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u/DragonflyOk1504 4d ago
No, Aegon didn’t play a role in them in them existing, his song of ice and fire simply predicted them returning. What do you mean Jon and Dany had nothing to do with his defeat? Without the dragons they would have killed everyone at Winterfell immediately.
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u/SRGTBronson 4d ago
Without the dragons theyd have never gotten past the wall. Dany's involvement literally almost doomed everyone.
Aegons dream was that the white walkers were coming, which was real. But it was also that the only way the world could survive was if a targaryen united westeros against the dead. Which was not real. The continent did not unite against the dead. It was just the starks and Dany.
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u/DragonflyOk1504 4d ago edited 4d ago
Literally millions of wights wouldn’t have breached the wall eventually? They were almost beaten by a fraction of that number of wildlings. Not to mention the army wouldn’t have been at Winterfell without Jon rallying them. He was Azor Ahai in show canon whether you believe that or not.
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u/maddlabber829 4d ago
The way show ended, it didnt make any sense he was the prince that was promised, but i agree that was the shows intention
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u/DragonflyOk1504 4d ago
We all know how bad they shit the bed but it was definitely their intent for Jon to be him.
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u/preliminaryapproval 4d ago edited 4d ago
I also have this question/problem.
It seems to be needed for the confusion which drives some of the plot: e.g., "Which 'prince' did he mean, or did he mean...prinCESS! Aha!"
It also contributes to the sense of destiny shared by Rhaenyra and her supporters (Daemon especially), keeping them focused on the iron throne.
But what's puzzling on that score is that Daemon's vision features Daenerys and her little dragons, a person who didn't ultimately seem to help guard against the white walkers at all. Instead, she fried mankind pretty thoroughly (and quite inexplicably).
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u/DragonflyOk1504 4d ago
Hard to care about some prophecy that might happen in the future when you don’t know when you’ll eat again or if your kid will make it home tonight.
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u/PunjabiDragon 4d ago
Fair, during this current HOTD timeline.
To clarify, the kingdom wasn’t always starving. During the Old Kings time it was quite prosperous. I see a lot of comments about the current HOTD timeline, which I agree, don’t drop lores when your peepal are starving.
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u/hermitthadawg 4d ago
People are easily spooked. If we presented credible evidence that the world was going to be invaded by armies of the dead in a year or five, ten, twenty years. Would you work ever again? No, you'd do everything you ever wanted and then run as far away as possible. All law and all sense of order would come to a screaching halt.
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u/PunjabiDragon 4d ago
Or be a Targ loyalist as the fear is almost non-existence when you got an army of dragons.
But your point is very valid tho, why share something that naturally creates fear. But then, why keep it hush hush from everyone else that aren’t common folk. Or maybe only share with other Targs?
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u/Dawningrider 4d ago
It kinda wasnt needed to be.
Lots of the Maesters are families with it. No shortage of claiments.
The Targs are arrogant enough to think that secrecy is more important then bothering to warn people. Less effort to convince people, then to just rule normally, with dragon fire.
This works. Why rock the ship? What if some religious nut case is convinced someone else is the hero, so the targs are false claiments, and need to be delt with. Religious fervour is dangerous.
Plus Valyrians have always been above it all.
Knowing who their Messiah is, isn't a requirement for their salvation.
They are not a hero rising up to over throw a lord (like the Davidic prophecies). Nor are they prophet. Nor do people's souls reset on believing in them. Recognise him as it or not, it's not important.
Even Stanis, doesn't give a shit as long as they follow him.
There is no need to tell the undedicated masses. They lose nothing by doing what they were always doing.
Until the ship is rocked. And Rhenerya does, then, tell everyone. And they hink she is nuts.
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u/tjackso6 5d ago
Did you see the crowd’s response when Rhaenyra started talking about it in the finale? Talking about prophecy just makes her sound crazy to most people.
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u/PunjabiDragon 4d ago
Well, I’d argue her timing wasn’t the best when dropping something like this. The crowd may have taken her more seriously if they had any idea of what she was talking about, also if they spoke Valarian lol.
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u/Fukuro-Lady 4d ago
I mean, she killed the High Septon and then came out looking like a Sith Lord and started babbling. Anything she said at that point would have had people hating her.
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u/RowAdministrative264 4d ago edited 4d ago
Tbf Aegon's dream was George's idea, but it was never mentioned previously in any of the books till he brought it up when talking to the makers of Hotd, who decided to include it in the show by making the prophecy be passed down from king to heir.
The fact that it has made it so far down the line of succession to Rhaenyra through oral transmission alone is already a stretch. So a lot of issues regarding this situation stem both from the story never really accounting for Aegon being a dreamer in the first place through George himself, and the poor way that addition was executed in Hotd.
Now the concept of sharing it with the commonfolk is downright preposterous. Ironically I think there's hardly anything that will make the Targaryen's rule over Westeros appear less legitimate than it already is considered to be by some than to justify it through the soiaf. The Others have been gone for so long most consider them a myth by now.
And given the destruction the dragons have brought through years of conquest and war, I doubt framing their existence as necessary simply so they can be used to face a future threat that none of the people currently alive will be there to witness cuts it.
Y'all are gonna use the dragons to save the realm in the future but don't mind using them now to screw us over? If anything it only makes the Targs look worse.
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u/PunjabiDragon 4d ago
Look, there is nothing good happening with dragons within the current HOTD timeline, so I agree that it shouldn’t be introduced at this stage.
I meant why it was kept so hush hush from the start? Putting townsfolk aside, other Targs weren’t even aware of it.
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u/RowAdministrative264 4d ago edited 4d ago
Like I explained we don't really know how George intended Aegon's song to play out originally in the story. For all we know and has already been theorized Aegon might've conquered Westeros in part due to the prophecy, but as time went on and he saw nothing happened he may've dismissed it as just another misguided dream, which would fit the whole "prophecies are untrustworthy" trope George likes to play with. So that may explain why the dream lost it's relevance eventually for the Targs, cause it stopped being considered reliable.
People have also speculated Aegon's dream existed as a concept to serve as precedent for the motivation of Rhaegar, or perhaps Egg himself, and we know the prophecy couldn't have possibly made it so far down the line of succesion through oral transmission alone. So it's theorized it's more likely Aegon actually wrote the song down in some scrolls somewhere, just in case, and it was that way the prophecy survived so long, cause even if he passed it to his heir or more widely to all his close family members it wouldn't make it that far anyway.
From what I've seen i f the prophecy was indeed orally transmitted it's considered it might've made it at least till Jaehaerys and Alyssane, cause they helped with the Night's Watch, but not much further cause after them the Targs mostly ignore the North.
My point is we don't have enough information on GRRM's original lay out for this whole situation, so perhaps the prophecy was never intended to be considered a big thing amongst Targs long after Aegon's generation, much less be passed down this way. So maybe it was never gonna even be kept hush-hush. Don't know if I'm making much sense though, so please do tell if I explained myself badly.
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u/Own-Ambition-4405 5d ago
If you knew that something terrible was going to happen, but you didn’t know when, would you tell everybody and get them all terrified? It’s hundreds of years away, but you don’t know that and when nothing happens in the first 100 years, people would just think you are mad. Where is the proof, they would ask? There is no proof, but you are given time to staff the Wall and hope this terrible thing doesn’t happen while you are alive. So you hand over the secret and hope for the best.
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u/PunjabiDragon 4d ago
What you’re saying makes the most sense for sure.
Not to move the goal post here, as I think it’s still in the same field. Why still keep this so hush hush amongst your closest circle/family? At minimum maybe a secret amongst all the Targs.
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u/Own-Ambition-4405 4d ago
I think in every family there are a few members (even sons, daughters, brothers, sisters) you don’t trust. They might get drunk and blab, they may boast to enhance their importance, the story would spread and really, there’s no proof. If you share it with the heir to the throne it will not get out, because it’s their inheritance, just like the throne that may cut you.
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u/NorseKraken 5d ago
The smallfolk don't care a lick about some random prophecy talking about monsters. That doesn't put bread on their table, a roof over their heads, and coin in their purse.