So how many people think the Aegon in Book 5 is an imposter? By the end of the book I sorta took it at face value that he was the real deal, but lots of other people seem to think he’s an imposter, so it wouldn’t surprise me.
R+L = J seems so obvious now that I almost wonder if GRRM won’t subvert it.
I wonder what the odds on who ends up on the Iron Throne at the end of the series would be. My personal dark horse pick is Bronn.
I think Aegon is fake. Dany’s vision in the HOTU had a mummer’s dragon, which I think refers to him. I think he’s going to be significant and change things, but not really be a Targ.
Martin has confirmed that the parentage of Jon has been guessed. Now, that doesn’t mean R+L, but at least we know it’s not some crazy Strong Belwas + Lollys combo. I think it’s R+L because I can’t imagine how it could be anyone else. There is no way Ned had an affair. Jon is not his. Now, why would he pretend? To keep his sister’s child safe. Safe from what? From Robert’s repeated statements about how he hates Targs and they all need to die.
We might not find this out, or maybe Bran will see it in a tree and Westeros won’t know, but if the true answer is something else and not amazing, I’m going to be really annoyed that all the foreshadowing turned out wrong.
I would be pissed if Martin changed Jon’s origins just for the sake of proving the most prevalent theory wrong. Just because people have managed to guess it doesn’t mean it makes for a bad story.
I always thought the mummer’s dragon was Stannis (because Melisandre seems to be setting him up as the Prince That Was Promised or whatever it is) but I suppose a fake Aegon makes more sense.
Why is there no way Ned had an affair? I could see Martin doing the R+L=J thing, but I hope he doesn’t, because it’s just so hokey and cliche. What a surprise! The boy with uncertain parentage who has a magical wolf and is so Special he’s managed to become the youngest commander of the Night Watch is secretly the rightful King.
A major recurring theme of the books, though, is that there’s really no such thing as “a rightful King.” When it comes down to it, power is where the people believe it to be, whether through birth, wealth, magic, might, or whatever. If Jon manages to win a throne, being the descendant of a Targaryen might play a part, but it’s by no means enough on its own.
Ned’s inflexible sense of honor is demonstrated in many ways in book 1. I suppose it’s not outside the realm of possibility that he slipped up once, but it just seems so out of character of him. Maybe I could see it happening if Jon’s mother turns out to be Ashara Dayne or whatever her name was, but that doesn’t seem like a very significant secret.
At any rate, if he ends up being Rhaegar’s kid, I hope he doesn’t marry Dany. Surely history has taught them that inbreeding just leads to trouble.
I agree with the gist of what you’re saying, but I am not sure that saying that Ned has an “inflexible sense of honor” is exactly correct.
After all, honor would have required that Ned not claim that Jon was his own son if it were not true. On the other hand, if Jon had been his illegitimate son, as he had claimed, honor would have required that Ned not bring him up in a household with his own trueborn children, because that’s an insult to his lady wife.
Honor would have required that Ned have Cersei arrested, behead her for treason with his own hand. Instead, he gave her a chance to flee, because he didn’t want her children to come to harm. That wasn’t required by honor.
Honor would have required that if Ned believed in his own innocence, that he go to his grave proclaiming that truth. Instead, he gave a false confession in an attempt to save the lives of his own children. Remember, it was Varys’s argument about Sansa that finally persuaded Ned to give in.
All those things Ned did were not because of his sense of honor, in the way that honor is conceived of in his own society, but rather because of his sympathy for other people, particularly children. That seems a rather modern attitude. And he died for it.
I don’t know how Jon’s own sense of honor would allow him to take the Iron throne after taking an oath to the Night’s Watch. He wouldn’t even be the first rightful heir in the Watch that we’ve met.
I know there’s speculation that Jon has been killed and will be revived, freeing him from his oath - but I can’t see an undead John Snow sitting on the iron throne even if we’re right about his parentage.
In the show, Ned says to Jon that he’s “his blood” . I’ve no clue if a similar sentence is used in the books, but if it is, given that Ned wouldn’t lie about this, Jon has to be either his son or his nephew (and like mostly everybody, I think he’s his nephew).
I’ve actually long suspected this…that perhaps Aerys took Tywin’s wife either willfully or unwillfully, and that Tyrion is the product of it.
I reason I throw in on the site that Aegon is real is because the vision Dany had about Rhaegar (most likely) looking down at Aegon and saying:
“He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire.”
One of the few places the “song of ice and fire” is referenced in the books and as we know that’s what GRRM calls the series. It’d be weird if the ‘prince that was promised’ was killed early on.
Unless that was Jon and not Aegon…
Rhaegar was wrong.
gonzoron, it was Aegon, Rhaegar names him in the scene.
Jon is the correct age to actually be Aegon. Has that theory ever been put forth? I know it doesn’t fit as well as some of the others, but looking on the Wiki of Ice and Fire at the characters under discussion I noticed that Jon was born the year after Aegon was born, which the year Aegon was supposed to have been killed.
Whoa…
Though Aegon wouldn’t have been on Ned’s blood, as a child of Lyanna would be.
The red coment will be revealed to be a Cylon probe looking for wireless symbols.
Whoops, got my prophecies crossed. You’re right, if it was Jon, Rhaegar would have been off fighting. Rhaegar wouldn’t have met him.
But yeah, Rhaegar had been wrong before. He originally thought he was the PwwP himself.
The problem with that is that Jon looks a *lot *like Arya and Ned. That makes sense if he’s Ned’s bastard, or Lyanna’s, but not if he has no Stark blood at all.
I like this theory because we currently have the same number of wargs as dragons. I wonder if any of the other Starks were wargs as well. Sansa, if she held on to Lady a little longer? Robb, who they say could change into a wolf?
But if the Starks could warg into dragons, would they fight for Dany? Maybe if Jon stayed dead, and Bran remained a cripple far up north. But that would leave Arya. Why would she fight for Dany when she and her brothers could control three dragons?
I always assumed they were all wargs but don’t remember if that was because of hints or other specifics. It seems the way they each bonded with a wolf is one indication.