y’know, whatever the true parentage of aegon vi aka young griff, in a way he is more like rhaegar than jon snow is. by which i mean their attempts to force themselves into archetypal roles, rhaegar as the prophesied hero against supernatural dark forces and yg as the hidden-prince-in-exile come to save the country and restore peace and harmony by taking the throne.

rhaegar’s very existence is owed to a prophecy, when the ghost of high heart said the ptwp would come of aerys/rhaella’s line they were forced to get married by their father. his destiny was decided and agreed before he was born, as just a hypothetical male prince. bc ofc this promised prince must be a son born with a cock, right? no one ever looked for or expected a princess for this. and when he was born during the mysterious tragedy at summerhall, what could be more of a sign that the prophecy was fulfilled? no need to keep waiting for any more kids, anyone further down the line, this baby had such a dramatic entrance he has got to be the specialest boy of all. rhaegar likely knew all of this from a very young age. grandpa jaehaerys ii believed enough to force his kids to marry, so he wouldn’t want this important planning to go to waste by taking it to his grave, now, would he? was rhaegar reading all the time bc his favorite genre was old prophecy scrolls or was he always doing homework to become the hero he knew he already was? does it really matter when either way he never really had much choice in his role in life? one day he finally goes to train with the master-at-arms only bc he realized from his reading that he “must” be a warrior. he became as great at that as he was at anything else, according to ser barry, but he never enjoyed knighthood. 

to me that’s all a far cry from jon, who grew up idolizing daeron the young dragon and dreaming of glory and conquest. jon, who spent most of his waking hours training in the yard even when injured at the end of asos, just bc he didn’t know what else to do and it helped him blow off steam. jon, who had a nostalgic “hunger” in him when hearing the sound of swords in the yard as lc. the same guy who as of acok still couldn’t get why sam would consider old books and crumbling scolls to be treasure. jon, who has nothing but doubts once he does rise to power and herodom as lord commander and can’t conquer them. and most importantly, jon, the hero who chanced into his role as shield guarding the realms of men only bc ned won the fight at the toj after rhaegar died and took him to be raised in the north. if/when jon does return to life and take his place as a heroic head of the dragon, that role can only be his own choice, not one he was raised for his entire life, just as his membership in the night’s watch was ultimately his own choice based on his northern childhood. (jon’s conception may have also been prophecy-related, but beyond that, his path and rhaegar’s sharply diverged.)

know who was shaped for a royal destiny “since before he could walk”, though? that’s right, aegon in essos aka young griff. his destiny was already chosen for him by the schemes of illyrio/varys just as rhaegar’s was by grampy jae ii and other dragon prophecy nerds before him. he studied his scrolls and trained with the royal master-at-arms just as aegon studied in the routines of his entourages and was trained by knights of the golden company.

and, at some point, we know rhaegar realized he wasn’t the ptwp and decided it was his first son, aegon, instead. mostly bc a comet was seen the night of aegon’s conception. i remember seeing a post years ago saying rhaegar must have spotted the comet that night, run naked straight to elia, and declared they had to get babymaking asap bc the comet was a sign too significant to be ignored. a joke post, prob, but i feel like there’s prob a lot of truth to the idea of rhaegar desparetely forcing the signs to add up, concieving a child on that night after he’d already seen the comet rather than just happening to have sex with elia on the same night there just happened to be a comet sighting. i believe this bc why would it all just be lucky coincidence if aegon vi was not the ptwp? lbr now, whether he indeed got his head smashed in by the mountain or was switched out and sent to essos, rhaegar’s elder son was/is not the promised hero. (just like rhaegar himself could not be the pwtp, after all.) a previously-thought-dead-for-16-years newbie with shaky parentage credentials introduced this late in the game is not going to steal both jon’s and dany’s thunder like that, c’mon. so a comet appearing just for his conception feels about as likely as red rahloo actually killing 3 kings just for the sake of frickin’ stannis. it’s even possible that rhaegar later decided aegon might not be the ptwp either and put more stock in dragon head #3 bc of the whole ice and fire union aspect with lyanna. we just don’t have enough info about that part of the story to know for sure. but there’s no suggestion he was unhappy with elia beforehand or that either of them thought she could not bear more children until the maesters actually said so after aegon’s birth. and even if he was “right” about lyanna’s child being the most important one (ew), he was still counting on both aegon and rhaenys to be the other two heads of the dragon, and presumably planned to raise all 3 of them for their destiny together in kl as he had been. in which case his plans utterly failed, because that is just not at all what happened with any of those kids.

in that sense, death is what jon and his bio dad most have in common as they both walked fairly boldly and blindly into their doom. but the circumstances are still a bit different as jon was murdered in a mutiny rather than killed in battle, not to mention his likely resurrection as an actual hero of prophecy. despite being around 10 years older than either jon or aegon is presently, i’d say rhaegar was even more naively overconfident in his plans than jon was in his final moments. to go that quickly and without any known hesitation through each change of plans from simply being ptwp himself to becoming a warrior as well as a weirdo nerd to fathering 3 heads of the dragon to truly fulfill prophecy to organizing a political coup at harrenhal to honoring lyanna instead to eloping with her after aegon’s birth to make her wife #2 and mother of dragon head #3 to riding off to one definitve battle against cousin robert after hiding in his lovenest with lyanna for months, idk, that does not read to me as someone suffering the same questions and doubts jon did in the nw. rhaegar told jaime “when this battle’s done” not “if i return in victory” in their farewell. he had no back-up plans in case of his defeat, leaving elia with aerys and lyanna in the toj, no plans for how to protect either wife or any of his all-important prophesied progeny in the event of his loss, just as he had no immediate plans to deal with aerys yet. (compare that to idealistic young king robb stark, thought to be recklessly honorable and accused of thinking himself invincible in his youth, yet he still managed to make plans for his succession should he die childless in battle, and planned to put his wife and mother in strongholds held by trustworthy (sane) allies who could defend their positions for some time in his absence.) all that only makes sense to me if he always thought he’d still have time for all that later, never truly envisioning the possibility of house targ being overthrown so soon when all his hero kids were still babies. 

after all, whether he was the ptwp himself or only meant to raise the 3 promised dragon heads as heroes, surely their destiny was already written years before and he couldn’t go out in such a mundane way, right? i’d say aegon/yg shows the same kind of overconfidence in going along with all the gc’s changes in planning, from whatever varys/illyrio originally wanted with viserys iii alive to finding dany and marrying her after the birth of her dragons to leaving for an invasion of westeros first to conquer the stormlands himself before wedding dany as equals. he never imagined she could refuse him until tyrion told him so, and imo is still not grasping that his female relation could prove more important than him in westeros with her 3 dragons. rhaegar may have known he was doomed since his tragic birth among so much death and later knew he wasn’t the pwtp, but he likely still expected a higher doom, one as dramatic and magical as his birth at summerhall. he couldn’t imagine his chest being caved in by lyanna’s dumbass ex, his boorish cousin robert, just as aegon/yg can’t know what doom could be in store for him in westeros either. 

dragon meat, you, and me

Daydream...

I love you albums. I love you songs connected by similar themes. I love you listening to songs in a specific order picked by the artist. I love you reoccurring motifs throughout the same album. I love you album covers. I love you albums with extended editions. I love you songs that reference each other.

all of the suspiciously blonde dragonseed peasants in flea bottom inheriting the haunting prophetic targaryen dragon dreams of the long night and the comet and the death and magical rebirth of the dragons reverberating back from Dany’s miracle but having literally no context for what’s happening so instead of committing summerhall about it they’re just like. ugh had the dream where the bald girl walked out of the fire again🙄 what’s the point

Another Ghost Dragon Prompt? Indeed.

The Ward had made a mistake. Had stolen something that had caused the very Skies to lash out, entire worlds at risk from their actions.

Time Itself shrieked in rage at the loss of Its child, or at least that's how every magic user- and the speedsters, pale and shaken and looking sick- had described it.

Someone had taken the young prince of the Infinite, and it was not the Tyrant King, long since sealed away, that lead the charge, but the Queen Regent that many had long since forgotten.

Many forgot that it was not the Dark who courted Time, but Time who courted the Dark. That It was just, if not more so, merciless as Its partner, and would Devour worlds should Its child- still with newdeath soft scales- was not returned.

Which meant that for the heroes, there was now a Clock ticking down ever so quietly. They had to take care of what was a government branch, had to deal with consequences of going over the law, or their World would End in dragon fire.

When I was like 9 I wrote a letter to dragons using runes (because in the dragonology book there is a little note with runes to english letters and I thought if i wrote with them the dragons would understand) basically saying how much i love dragons and asking if the dragon could take me away to live with it. I put it in an envelope labeled something like "to dragon" and left it on the porch weighed down by a large rock.

It’s a trope I will NEVER get tired of.

y'know it occurs to me that the idea of 'bastardphobia' being the source of all problems in a certain asoiaf main pov, (ie, the erasure of adultery and betrayal as factors in the very specific situation in the stark family/wf household, irrespective of any bastard stereotypes), and the accompanying assumptions that the stigma of being born out of wedlock only exists out of deeper (racial) prejudices and that blended families involving cheating husbands raising a lovechild with their disrespected wives would otherwise be perfectly natural, all of that is necessarily related to the belief that the conquereor trio and their two sons were all one big happy family all the time.

why would visenya using black magic to conceive a rival to aenys be seen as a sign of a problem with rhaenys and her son? no trouble at all in that spouse-sharing paradise! (just like there never could be between elia/rhaegar/lyanna if only the good prince's brilliant plans had all succeeded.) helping to avenge rhaenys is enough proof that the trio always had a beautiful, loving relationship. not like familial vengeance against common enemies is a basic feudal concept regardless of sentiment. (like stannis saying he would get justice for robert and even ned, while repeatedly insisting that robert was not his beloved brother and ned was never his friend.) no, two bickering little girls are the clear stannis/renly equivalent, not sisters producing rival sons leading to kinslaying in the next generation. that was all on maegor alone, and if she can't be definitevely said to have slain aenys, then what does it matter that visenya wanted her son on the throne from day one and ultimately helped him take it from his nephews/her sister's grandchildren? she couldn't have known all that nephew-slaying and niece-rape would result from empowering her bloodthirsty son, could she? could she? can we really dare to cast aspersions on the sacred love and loyalty of visenya for her family? (the fact that polygamy was clearly noted as not a common practice before the conquerors can only be a weird coincidence, right? the only reason no groups of odd-numbered targ siblings had tried this perfect arrangement before must be because they just hadn't thought of it yet. aegon the conqueror sure was a unique genius that way, huh?)

I know you trust [redacted]. But can you trust his sons? Or their sons? The Blackfyre pretenders troubled the Targaryens for five generations, until Barristan the Bold slew the last of them on the Stepstones. If you make [redacted] legitimate, there is no way to turn him bastard again. -Catelyn V, aSoS

imho the real irony here is that cat was not only wrong about the loyalty of the bastard in question, she was wrong about the blackfyres being the apt nightmare precedent. that loser bastard daemon and his loser descendents only ever succeeded in getting themselves slain without ever managing to kill any royal rival or take their throne. but curiously enough, maegor slaying his brother's sons (and forcibly marrying his brother's elder daughter) and successfully taking the crown for a few years, that does sound a bit more similar to the scenario catelyn dreaded. doesn't it?

Missing the missing

I was the sister of Dragon from Shrek, and we were at the movies (I'm pretty sure we were mouse-sized). The movie playing was literally just a guy playing Hollow Knight.

Fynn from Cavern of Dreams

Can a Targaryen not enjoy eating a live fish from the river without judgement?