🧙 Why Aegon Targaryen conquered Westeros | House of the Dragon

[Music] as i said at the beginning targaryens and dragon dreams go together better than starks and snow and boltons and flang and phrase and treachery from danish to daenerys aegon to rhaegar also aegon i guess the family cannot stop seeing the future and reacting to what they see some would be inspired some would run away and some would go mad seeing the dragon's shadow hearing the crack of leather and wings feeling their hot breath in their dreams for generations even after the dragons themselves died out after years of war and confinement it's the dreams that stayed with the dragonlords dragon dreams are the only reason the targaryens didn't die in smoke and flame during the doom of valyria lord aynar targaryen one of the lords of the 40 families actually one of the weaker lords listened to his daughter danisa's plea that they have to leave valyria before it would be destroyed claiming she had dreamed of the oncoming end of the freehold aynor targaryen sold his holdings in the freehold and moved with all his wives wealth slaves dragons siblings kin and children to dragonstone a bleak island citadel beneath a smoking mountain in the narrow sea yes slaves the targaryens are wealthy and powerful because of the slave trade had it not been for dany's believing what she saw in her dreams and aynar believing his daughter the targaryens would be barely a footnote in histories nothing else could have saved them not even their dragons this creates a pattern for the rest of the family in generations to come and for you the reader and hot d enjoyer that they can't ignore these dreams when they show up danis is a story of greatness in which the gods somehow chose her and the targaryens among everyone else in valyria to survive with their dragons in a new home but also a cautionary tale look at what happened to all those who ignored dany's and her warnings those who wouldn't give up their position wealth power when called to by divine forces the now 39 families great holdings burned their dragons fell from the sky and their families ended in one day as their laughs at anar and dany's turn to screams to not eat the warnings of dragon dreams is to tempt fate and no one knows better what happens to those who tempt fate than the only dragon riders left in the world on the bleak citadel of dragonstone it's a sharp lesson that the rest of the targaryen family never forgot no matter what the family took the prophetic dreams seriously and those of their ancestors after all danis the dreamer didn't have one dream she had many she wrote down in a journal later called signs and portents some say that blaring the black dread is the greatest symbol of the targaryen house even long after the great dragon's death his bones are honored and prayed to like we see here in the teasers but it's this simple book of the scribblings of danis from hundreds of years earlier that is really the soul of house targaryen it is proof that they are chosen special and faded for great things the gods spoke through danis and the dragon lords continue to listen in the first teaser damon targaryen says that dreams didn't make us kings dragons did and he's not wrong without valerian miraxis and veigar the targaryens are still the petty lords of a dying volcano having weird dreams in their spooky halls honestly they sound like scooby-doo villains the dragons are the key to their military power and it's the loss of their beasts that eventually led to their downfall as kings however the dragons on their own don't make anybody kings either look at the wild dragons on dragon zone that we're sure to see some of in house of the dragon without a rider or a purpose they're oddities living on a volcanic island snoozing their days away catching fish and stealing sheep as snacks they're a sword a very powerful sword but on their own a sword doesn't do anything there has to be someone that wants to use it that wants to swing it that has a reason or cause to pick up and knock over seven kingdoms forging them into one dragons are the body and the arms of the targaryens their dragon dreams though are their mind and soul they ride dragons but the dreams direct them where to fly and we know from the books and shows that many members of house targaryen did have dreams after dani's even those that aren't quite targaryans the most prominent ones we see are the sons of king maekar the first we know for certain that prince daran the drunkard had them being shown off here in the hedge night daron's younger brother our beloved maester aemon also claims on his deathbed that my brothers dreamed of dragons too and the dreams killed them everyone sam we tremble on the cusp of half-remembered prophecies of wonders and terrors that no man now living could hope to comprehend makar had two other sons aerium brightflame and aegon otherwise known as egg or i guess king aegon v as well as his two daughters dale and rey we don't know if either dale or rey had dragon dreams and we don't even know who they married but eamonn is claiming that all his brothers had them along with himself describing the dragon dreams as i see their shadows on the snow hear the crack of leathern wings feel their hot breath not to disagree with my beloved maester amen however in the mystery night egg claims that daron has prophetic dreams that come true but not himself it's unclear if aemon is having prophetic dreams or if he is having dreams of dragons like there is a difference like you can have a dream that has a dragon in it but that's not the same as having a dream of the future that's using dragons to tell it i guess does that make sense i talk about this a lot in my video aiming the dreamer linked here and in the description go check it out conservatively we can say that of makar's children 1 6 of them had dragon dreams while if we're taking eamonn literally that all the boys had dragon dreams then it instead goes up to 4 out of 6. it would also go some way to explain why aryan bright flame thought he could drink wildfire and become a dragon if it was the result of a dragon dream taking this as a very very rough unscientific sample that makes for a very high percentage of how many in their family would have this ability there were 17 targaryen monarchs 18 if you clued ronira as you should so there should have been about three monarchs with dragon dreams on the low end on the high end there would be somewhere around 11 or 12. whatever the number actually is and who knows it may be all 18. the message here is that it is not particularly rare for there to be a targaryen on the iron throne whose decisions are being guided by prophetic dreams or at least surrounded by those who are having them as to the infamous targaryen coin flip quote kind of easy to understand why so many of them may have been considered mad when they're making policy choices for all of westeros based on dreams if you heard somebody doing that in the real world you definitely would think i'm crazy in the past pro food's daughter aka the disputed land and i have made videos trying to figure out exactly which ones had dragon james or were actively studying those that were written down like in signs and ports prime candidates are aegon v ares the first paris ii baylor the blessed and jaehaerys ii however with the recent revelation from house of the dragon that number is about to go up dramatically as i said in the intro aegon the conqueror will be confirmed as having had dragon dreams and that his motivation for conquest was following those dreams to prepare for the white walkers so that's just one and there may be more coming it also goes a long way to understanding things like joharis's policy of targaryen exceptionalism or nearest quote in the trailer about targaryens are closer to gods than to men the way the targaryens treat themselves as more god than human everyone else on that grubby island is running around worrying about politics and swinging swords at each other in the mud fighting over the same stupid hill for hundreds of years i'm looking at you brackens and blackwoods the targaryens though from their own perspective they are divinely chosen to know the future they are the chosen ones those who will stop the darkness from returning they will birth azor ahai and the prince that was promised and save all life everywhere not difficult to see how that kind of thinking would quickly go to the head of well anyone never mind the apparent immunity to many diseases immunity to the effects of incest the ability to ride dragons you can sort of understand where they're coming from this mindset also adds a bit of desperation to their choices similar to what we see from stannis after melisandre informs him that he is azor ahai reborn the targaryens can justify a lot of terrible crimes and drastic actions because for them the fair the entire world is on the line it creates a constant cost benefit analysis in their heads again similar to stannis asking what is the value of a bastard boy against a kingdom sure aegon burning dorn over and over and over again like some kind of fire mad psycho trying to get them to submit to his rule seems you know crazy and cruel which it was but if he genuinely believed that he needed every one of the kingdoms of westeros and every person on the island under his command or the world would end then i guess it's a lot more understandable why he would do that same for other marks we know about if aseris believes that the world might end if rhaenyra doesn't rule after him again you can see why he would stick so hard to his decision despite otto hightowers rattling the chains of war about his grandson they can rationalize away a lot of logic morality because it's always for the greater good it's always to stop the others to make sure the prince that was promised shows up to fight and win stannis baratheon and daenerys are very useful models in martin's work and game of thrones for understanding how the weight of prophecy and warp decision making with the ever-increasing intensity of the stakes of you know the world ending many miss this but back during the release of the source material for house of the dragon the book fire and blood george kind of out of nowhere hinted pretty heavily at aegon being motivated by prophecy although again many myself included didn't take him that seriously at the time or that it was canon because well he doesn't exactly frame it as a certainty but more like he's saying one of the theories that exists in fire and blood written as a history book using different sources who disagree often about what really happened and that pervades the entire book but listen here and you'll understand there is 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 that we're dealing with in a song of ice and fire of course now we know he wasn't trolling his audience he was unexpectedly telling the truth unexpectedly because martin is well known especially since game of thrones took off to not reveal major plot points ahead of time typically responding with very cagey answers and telling the person asking him the question to quote unquote keep reading so you can sort of see why this one didn't exactly get picked up everywhere in that sense i am wrong i clearly should have believed george earlier and i wouldn't have had to wait for house of the dragon in a premiere to confirm my suspicions so it goes going back to what george was saying about aegon it seems we may be able to add another king or at least three more monarchs to the list of those who are following prophecy or receiving it it will be revealed during the first episode revealed by the elderly jeharis the first that aegon passed his secret down to his heir aeneas the first and eventually that somehow got to jahiris who then passed the secret onto his chosen heir viserys who then passes it on to rhaenyra it is unclear if maegor the cruel knew about the prophecy as he was banished when any died and he wasn't his half-brother's heir either although it is certainly possible that aegon told both of his sons or that maegor's mother visenya informed him of the secret possibly every targaryen monarch up until the start of house of the dragon knows about what aegon saw getting to viserys in particular in the latest trailer we can hear him describing having these prophetic dreams listen here the dream was clearer than a memory and i heard the sound of her thundering hooves splintering shields and ringing swords and i placed my hair up on the iron throne [Music] and all the dragons roared as one we also shown several scenes in the extended trailer where his daughter in erinear accompanies the king to pray before bellerion's skull emma darcy as well in an interview said that um yeah i think vanira is fueled by that old targaryen stuff and i think probably the journey she goes on in the series is one of working out when to let that fire burn and when to dampen it suggesting that the air rainer may have inherited the gift of dragon dreams as well as the iron throne or at least that reinier takes them very very seriously we've seen shots of her as well reading books beneath a weir retreat reminding the audience of greenseers like bran and bloodraven this all ties together and makes a good deal of sense with the reveal of aegon being inspired by prophecy the lesson of the doom that the targaryens must listen to their dreams or suffer the fate they escaped in valyria has survived more than a hundred years after the conquest and is alive and well and honestly it's been a pretty short time and the results recently are obvious for instance aegon followed his dreams and he effectively became emperor of westeros so you're getting it from both sides the targaryens are being rewarded for believing their dragon dreams while the rest of the valyrians were punished for not a very simple training method for the targaryens who knows maybe the next important dream they get will make them even more powerful perhaps they'll go back and raise valyria from the depths and rule as it is emperors too so i've been talking for a while about dragon dreams but i haven't really explained what they are there are three characters in george's writing that tell us exactly what it is like to experience a dragon dream they are dare on the drunkard in the hedge knight daenerys targaryen and song of ice and fire and daemon the second blackfyre in the mystery night now i know that i just angered a lot of you by listing a blackfire with the targaryen but for our purposes there is no difference except the name they call themselves black or red a dragon is still a dragon these are literally dreams while they sleep they experience extremely vivid and forceful dreams with rushes of images and feelings that overwhelm their senses often they will wake up in a panic or a sweat and will always remember these dreams as well dara notes that this is the reason that he drinks so much when he passes out drunk he does not dream so his drinking problem is more a form of self-medication the dreams feel incredibly real although they're not exactly straightforward dragon dreams are highly symbolic and unclear in what they're actually predicting a simple example when a dragon is seen in these dreams they could literally mean a dragon like blarian or drogon or they could mean a member of the targaryen family with characteristics of the person represented in the dragon the same for other people in the dreams sometimes they are represented just by their sigils or their names but then at other times they just look like themselves both daron and damon ii see duncan the tall in their dreams just as himself doing something in the future but then for some reason prince bailor breaks beer is represented as an enormous dying dragon while prince aegon is seen as a hatching dragon egg it is varied and confusing basically unpredictable which of course presents a major problem for the dreamers themselves as they know the dreams are predicting true events and in order to understand that future they need to somehow decode what they saw and very often they get these decodes very very wrong for instance daron believed the great dragon dying on ashford meadow and dunk in the tall's arms was going to be himself when it was actually his uncle crown prince baelor damon ii thought that the dragon ed hatching would be a literal dragon egg specifically the one lord butterwell owned giving damon the only dragon in the world when it actually referred to egg breaking out of his metaphorical shell into being the king he would be in the future boy it is understandable why so many dreamers get them wrong who saw eggs metaphorical shell coming not me daenerys shares this problem as she struggles mightily to interpret the dreams she has and the prophecies also given to her by the undying of karth aegon the conqueror also potentially got his dreams wrong well sort of the white walkers did return in 300 years instead of you know sometime soon his urgency to conquer at least seems somewhat misplaced it turns out he had a lot of time also it's interesting to wonder what exactly aegon saw in his visions of the future very likely he saw something that he interpreted as the quote-unquote dragon with the three heads imagery we know as he made that imagery his sigil he most likely interpreted the three-headed dragon as himself and his two sister-wise the senior and rhaenys at first anne likely believed the white walkers would arrive soon hence his speed run of the conquest of westeros be very interesting how this dream looks as well did he literally see a three-headed dragon fighting the white walkers maybe instead of the white walkers it was a great winter storm or perhaps the wall itself or was it literally the characters we know jon snow daenerys and someone else on dragon back certainly his descendant prince rhaegar believed at first that he would be the prince before being persuaded that instead it was his children who would be the three heads of the dragon be fascinating to see if aegon initially thought it was himself and his sisters and later became persuaded it would be his children the same as rhaegar as i have mentioned the hallmark of dragon dreams is for targaryen to receive them and then get the meaning totally wrong in many ways these characters resemble us fans trying to solve the puzzle george has written they interpret the images in different ways to try and get a cohesive theory out of it very often looking no different than a thread on reddit when someone asks who azor ahai is and literally everyone shows up to pitch whatever character is currently on their mind maester aemon gives the best example talking about his theory crafting with prince rhaegar of all people which he did by letter no one ever looked for a girl he said it was a prince that was promised not a princess rhaegar i thought the smoke was from the fire that devoured summerhall on the day of his birth the salt from the tears shed for those who died what bulls we were who thought ourselves so wise the error crept in from the translation dragons are neither male nor female barth saw the truth of that but now one and now the other as changeable is flame the language misled us all for a thousand years daenerys is the one born amid salt and smoke the dragons prove it just talking of her seemed to make him stronger i must go to her i must would that i was even 10 years younger and the downside of getting these dreams wrong can be disastrous gaming the second blackfyre getting his dreams wrong led to his rebellion failing before it started and him spending the rest of his short life in chains as bloodraven's prisoner deron's insistence that avoiding the ashford tourney thinking would be his death is what causes the circumstances that leads to prince balor dying rhaegar targaryen's belief that his child was the prince i was promised started a war that almost snuffed out the entirety of the targaryen house aegon the first killed tens of thousands and burned dornish castles for years while unseating ancient houses and kings trying to bring them under his rule dragon dreams are the sword without a hilt a wild dragon you're trying to ride a tsunami you're attempting to surf there's glory to be had but to grasp for is madness unless you can pull it off and you can ride the humunga dunga you may be asking yourself why are dragon dreams like this though why aren't they just straightforward glimpses into future events couldn't they function not like puzzles and now let's talk quickly about the difference between doylist and watsonian analysis you may have heard the phrases before and they're basically two ways of trying to explain something in fiction named after the legendary author of the sherlock holmes series sir arthur conan doyle if you were trying to explain something in a work of fiction from the perspective of the real person who made up the story you are looking at it as sir arthur conan doyle or using a doylist's perspective for instance the reason for the inclusion in a song of ice and fire of the character triarch bellico of volantis legendary for being unbeaten in battle who then got mauled to death by a horde of rampaging giants that is because george r martin is a giant football fan being from new jersey one of his favorite teams is the new york giant who beat the undefeated patriots coached by bill belichick aka bellico in the super bowl and george is very happy about that and he is dunking on the patriots and belichick in particular whom he lows for losing to the lowly giants doylus perspectives often come first for why something isn't fiction the rationale for y being written in later so that the reader doesn't exactly see the fingerprints on the page the other perspective is the watsonian perspective named after the main point of view in the sherlock holmes stories john watson almost every sherlock holmes story is written from the viewpoint of john watson writing down his adventures with holmes with a flair for language and dramatic tension so if something in a story has an explanation for it provided within the fictional universe then it is considered coming from john watson not sir arthur conan doyle and therefore watsonian going back to our example of bill belichick what is the watsonian reason for there being giants and essos killing a tri-arc of atlantis although they are now considered extinct in essos there was once a large population of giants who ruled over the continent before being massacred by humans and children of the forest they were driven into inhospitable lands to survive such as the bone mountains triarch bellicose hubris went too far in his conquests and accidentally stumbled on one of these surviving populations leading to his smooshing by giant as karmic justice for his presumptions of conquest the in-universe explanation backed up by world building a classic watsonian explanation backfilled by george to justify his jab at the patriots and their hated coach bill belichick getting back to dragon dreams the doyle's perspective of the uncertainty of dragon dreams is so that the audience can't guess what's going to happen if a character sees the future perfectly or if they can guess pretty reliably what the vision means ahead of time the narrative utility of the prophetic dream is lost the tension is gone after the first time you demonstrate the ability and the characters basically just become on-rail stories going from one scenario to another like they have a prima strategy guide to the rest of their lives if you include prophecy at all neither the characters nor the audience can know what they mean for sure although one hybrid tactic is to have the audience figured out before the characters to create tension that the audience can see pitfalls coming that the character cannot in this way you can see why george often has his targaryen characters who do perceive the future pretty much always be wrong about what they see it keeps you the reader and the characters guessing incorrectly going down wrong paths so that george can disguise his true intentions like a magician he's making you watch his one hand while in the other he's pulling dragons out of his greek sailor hat the watsonian perspective for dragon dreams uncertainty though is tricky because there isn't one provided to the reader by the books it's basically just stated they are uncertain not why or at least there's not any obvious ones and no character even has a good guess on where these dragon dreams come from the best suggestion is possibly the dragons themselves because they appear so often but that's about it at best the characters have an understanding that the dragon dreams are real and true and then much more rarely that there are dangers in following them but we're not totally lost there are a couple of watsonian rocks to hang on to in the endless dreams the first is the idea i had first heard about from fellow maester monthly co-host bookshelf stud that of the ripples in the dreamscape he initially used this concept to explain what's happening with euron greyjoy the impact of his potential upcoming destruction of old town and possibly more creating ripples and time moving backwards and forwards like waves in a pond when you drop a rock in those with the gifts of prophetic dreams sensing these ripples and seeing images of what euron is doing far far away physically and even through time you can sort of think of it a little bit like yoda feeling the death of pretty much all the jedi following order 66 in star wars revenge the sith just with a time component added as well i applied bookshelf studs concept to the targaryen family in my video linked here in the description pyres and blood where i argued that daenerys is hatching her dragons is such an important moment in history that for hundreds of years in the past dany's ancestors were seeing visions of her and thinking it was them and it's this misunderstanding of visions of daenerys that inspired terrible events from the targaryens trying to imitate what they saw the tragedy is summerhall and also the mad king aerys attempting to burn down king's landing among a few other examples this might not explain all instances of prophetic dreams but it could be behind the really big ones like the doom of valyria and the return of the white walkers after you check out my video if you want a much more upscale explanation you can check out this one here by alt shift x who summarized my long-winded theory quite expertly as you can probably tell by this video i am not great at being brief i am the wordy magician the second source is green dreams which we see from brand's perspective although brand first perceives these as being parts of nature we find out later that many if not all the visions were being sent to him by other green dreamers such as bloodraven aka the three-eyed crow aka brendan rivers you know it's weird how that guy keeps popping up with other dreamers in the story first may cars children then damon ii and then brand hmm rather than being emergent parts of the magical world the messages and images are specifically crafted for brand to do or think certain things like for instance the planted idea that if he finds the through rag crow beyond the wall he will be able to walk again that's not some kind of nature talking to bran it's specifically a deception by bloodraven to lure his next protege away from winterfell into his cave the other main source of prophetic dreams other than shade the evening which we probably won't get into unless it shows up in house of the dragon are actually very similar to the one bran receives these are from glass candles if you primarily just watch game of thrones you may not know about these because they were cut from the story they are tall thin shards of obsidian that when lit on the tip of the crystal it can allow the user to see across great distances and also see the dreams of people sleeping elsewhere in the world archmaester marwin explains it here what feeds a dragon's fire marwin seated himself upon a stool all valyrian sorcery was rooted in blood or fire the sorcerers of the freehold could see across mountains seas and deserts with one of these glass candles they could enter a man's dreams and give him visions and speak to one another half a world apart seated before their candles do you think that might be useful slayer these ancient and dwindling valyrian artifacts were one of the keys to the valyrian freehold successes giving them an information advantage over their enemies by effectively having magical spy satellites and also on-demand psychic powers note as well that glass candles are known to be able to send dreams into the minds of other people same as bloodraven does to bran anyone with a glass candle can implant images messages and instructions into the mind of another and have them believe that the dreams are genuine or possibly prophetic as far as we know this mostly happens to daenerys who in the books is often contacted via glass candle by the shadow binder quaithe giving the dragon queen instructions and advice the other known glass candle user is archmaester marwyn at the citadel in old town he used his to track aemon and sam's progress from the wall all the way down to the reach and old town there's also the shadowy earthon nightwalker that has a glass candle as well in qarth whom many suspect is actually euron greyjoy although it's not clear of any of dany's dragon dreams are fakes coming from waite marwan or earthon it's entirely possible that some are the nature of these glass candle visions is that they can be very subtle and it can be impossible to know if one of these dragon dreams is a glass candle dream unless the person sending the images somehow self-identifies like quaithe will often appear personally or identify herself sam and eamon though seem to have no idea mario was watching them during their voyage to old town and if earth on nightwalker is using his glass candle it is unknown it appears to be voluntary on the part of the glass candle user that make themselves known when they invade the dreams of another so we are left with a conundrum it is possible to fake dragon dreams either by use of green sight or through using a glass candle or both if the person sending the dream never identifies themselves to the dreamer like bloodraven and quafe did the person having the fake dragon tree might never know there's another person on the other side of what they see so if they don't know how can we even tell them apart the answer is well we can't all right let's back up a little bit we can't reliably some things are probably beyond the limits of someone sitting in a room with a glass candle to know in the future and as established in a song of ice and fire before the dragons returned to the world with daenerys the glass candles were not burning so most likely non-functional the time period between the death of the last dragon and the eggs hatching you can be reasonably certain there is no one using glass candles also how would anyone know that at the end of the ashford meadow tourney that prince baylor breaks beer would die in a melee and then fall into dunk in the tall's arms they couldn't even with a glass candle especially since the death was an accident so he can most likely rule out darren and damon's dreams as being fakes since they can't be sent from a glass candle that makes them real right not so fast the only reason someone couldn't know the specifics of baylor's death and duncan's involvement is because they can't see into the future no one can but there is a group that can do something almost as good seeing into the past the children of the forest and their greenseers had the ability to search through the halls of time like a forest seeing presumably almost anything and everything they want from their weirwood thrones someone like bran stark or bloodraven could in theory go back and watch what happens at the ashford meadow okay cool trick but they have an even cooler trick they can speak to those in the past as well bran accidentally does it when he calls out to a younger version of his now dead father and despite bloodraven's assertions that ned didn't hear bran ned totally did as well with hodor bran makes contact with his large servant when hodor was a teenager accidentally destroying the stable boy's mind forcing him to repeat hold the door over and over and over becoming hodor seeing as bran can interact with the past it's reasonable wonder if he or other greenseers could also use their powers of dream invasion on people in the past as well it's not future sight but it's close it's a hack of the system a loophole in the laws of nature that allows knowledge of the future to be sent into the past in a way that could easily mimic dragon dreams so when deron dreamed of baylor's death did he or did bloodraven or bran or some other greenseer implant the images in his head of what they knew was about to happen causing him to make the events happen how can you the reader tell the difference we can't unless somebody tells us dragon dreams and dreams sent by greenseers can be identical that makes it a very real possibility that they are one in the same and combined with the children's ability to apparently contact the past from the future it seems to fit we even know that in many different dreams the appearance of branded bloodraven can change drastically of how they appear to others when they are using their powers bran looked at the crow on his shoulder and the crow looked back it had three eyes and the third eye was full of terrible knowledge a wooden face corpse white was this the enemy a thousand red eyes floated in the rising flames he sees me beside him a boy with a wolf's face threw back his head and howled the tree was slender compared to other weirwoods he had seen no more than a sapling yet it was growing as he watched its limbs thickening as they reach for the sky wary he circled the smooth white trunk until he came face to face red eyes looked at him fierce eyes they were yet glad to see him the weirwood had his brother's face had his brother always had three eyes some claimed the king's hand was a student of the dark arts who could change his face put on the likeness of a one-eyed dog even turn into a mist packs of gaunt grey wolves hunted down his foes men said and carrying crows spied for him and whispered secrets in his ear most of the tales were only tales dunk did not doubt but no one could doubt that bloodraven had informers everywhere with enough practice perhaps they could make themselves appear as dragons as well that same hot breath and beating wings that aemon describes the major impact here could be that the targaryens are not really seeing the future at all authentically they are instead being sent a series of dreams being fed to them by the old gods in order to manipulate the past i mean think about it certainly in season eight of game of thrones bran stark did exactly this leaking information about jon's parented so that jon would come into conflict with daenerys rather than continuing their budding relationship which did lead to her eventual murder and then bran ascending the iron throne with a distraught john refusing boy that was convenient how that happened almost like bran had a plan that kind of plot is very possible as the overarching narrative of all of the song of ice and fire and house of the dragon the targaryens and danis only seeing what the children wanted them to see being manipulated into abandoning the freehold and journeying to westeros in order to unite humanity and eventually use their dragons to fight the children's creations in the white walkers there may not even be prophecies about the prince that was promised in azor ahai just images sent back of the people that do eventually do it and it's not even weird that children would do this the followers of the old gods like the starks and most of the northerners believe that the weirwoods are the old gods themselves and are always watching over them when we know for a fact that this is closer to a wizard of oz scenario the children pretend to be the old gods in the weirwoods in order to manipulate and spy on humanity they've been doing it for thousands of years the humans never knowing that the gods they pray to are in fact their ancient enemies from the age of heroes still very much alive and still manipulating from their weirwood thrones boy that sounds pretty familiar right when you have the children already impersonating one set of gods who's to say they couldn't impersonate others the dragon gods of lyria as for the most important targaryen in the history of westeros aegon the conqueror this can cast them in a very different light as we discussed george has been alluding to for several years now that aegon was motivated by visions of the future specifically that the white walkers were going to return soon and that aegon must conquer westeros to stop them all the rest of the targaryen dynasty from king to air reacting to this information trying to make sure if the white walker is returned on their watch they can be stopped that story changes greatly aegon instead of truly seeing the future was this fed information by the children in order to get him to act the way that they want in that scenario who even really conquered westeros was it aegon or was it the children who were telling him to do it via dragon dreams and as for danis perhaps the children positioned the targaryens via fake prophetic dreams to leave valyria to eventually do their bidding throughout the rest of their history almost their pet dragons the implications go even further in the trailer we can hear viserys describing a dream of war and the dragons roaring after he puts his air on the iron throne if this is a dream being sent by the children are they possibly manipulating viserys to make renewer his heir over daemon or later aegon so that the dance of the dragons happens certainly there have been many hints in the run-up to the show that there's going to be a much greater magic in house of the dragon versus game of thrones and we have been shown several times renera sitting under and being around the king's landing weirwood tree i'm not saying it's a stone cold lock or anything but the old gods in the green series shouldn't be dormant during the show we know they explicitly show up with characters like adam velaryon and alice rivers based on what we know in fire and blood i would expect the children to make an even greater appearance than many think alice river's domination of aemon targaryen in later seasons will remind readers of bran manipulating jon and danny who knows maybe there's another 3i crow watching now or one from the future making sure that history correctly leads up to the defeat of the white walkers and the eventual crowning of the weirwood king bran stark many fans arrive at this impasse of the prophetic dreams in the story and don't really know which path to follow be good on the path that the children are behind everything they are master manipulators putting thousands of years of planning in place then the agency of almost all the characters evaporates they're really just pieces on a savas board being moved around by green sears and glass candle users the real story is the one about the green seers stopping the white walkers and using the targaryens and the humans to do it and then everything else is kind of just incidental to their grand plan that's a fairly big letdown of a reveal for a story like a song of ice and fire where there's so much focus put on the inner lives of each pov the human heart in conflict with itself and the fine details of these characters lives turning out to be largely unimportant this idea as well also clashes with the statement made by the other primary manipulating character littlefinger who says in the game of thrones even the humless pieces can have wills of their own sometimes they refuse to make the moves you've planned for them so maybe it's instead a little bit of both some of the dragon dreams are real ripples in the dreamscape echoing through history that no greenseer nor glass candle operator has anything to do with and then there are others being sent with a purpose to manipulate events in particular ways yeah yeah that sounds good makes it so that the children aren't totally in control but still have a large impact there's rooms to make characters and their choices matter again great we solved it guys a plus well not so fast there's another bit of a hitch and that hitch is called free will the children can use their powers to see into the past and then also can contact that pass if they try hard enough apparently also if the ideas of ripples and the dreamscape are true they're echoing across time and space meaning information from a determined future is transferred into the past bloodraven in a dance with dragons describes his understanding of how time works like this those were the shadows of days past that you saw bran you were looking through the eyes of a heart tree in your godswood time is different per tree than a man sun and soil and water these are the things a weirwood understands not days and years and centuries for men time is a river we are trapped in its flow hurtling from past to present always in the same direction the lives of trees are different they root and grow and die in one place and the river does not move them the oak is the acorn the acorn is the oak and the weirwood a thousand human years are but a moment to a weirwood and through such gates you and i may gaze into the past as described time is more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff that sentence got away from me rather than being linear in nature the weirwoods instead experience time all at once this understanding asks a real question about if anyone in this fictional universe actually has free will let's take a simple example jon snow's choice to return to the night's watch or go join rob's army john struggles mightily over what to do feeling on one hand that he is betraying the family that he loves or this crappy border guard he just joined but he swore an oath and these are his new brothers his new family ultimately with the help of his new friends he decides to go back to castle black from the perspective of a green seer from the future watching this moment pass is already written to them it's a fixed event in time which must happen for those in the future to be able to see it so did john really have a choice at all or did the flow of time and destiny dictate what he would do before he even knew it quite possibly makes the universe of the book deterministic rather than dynamic in order for the future to be predictable as dragon dreams prove then all the actions that lead up to them are unchanged by prophetic characters receiving that information or more precisely are caused by them in many cases like daron running away from his fate at the ashford tourney inadvertently causing baylor's death fate always wins a predictable unchanging future is one that is being played out like the words in a book the ink is dry the only difference is which page you're currently on and this isn't a passing fancy of some dork with a youtube channel who sometimes wears funny hats martin is clear in an interview with james hibbard in his book about game of thrones called fire cannot kill a dragon that the topic of time travel and free will is something the sharp eye viewer should be wondering about based on what he's written it's an obscenity to go into someone's mind so bran may be responsible for hodor's simplicity due to going into his mind so powerfully that it rippled back through time the explanation of bran's powers the whole question of time and causality can we affect the past is time a river you can only sail one way or an ocean that can be affected wherever you drop into it these are the issues i want to explore in the book maybe there is a way around perhaps events in the past can change in the future isn't written when changes are made in the past the future bends to accommodate it we're used to that kind of plotline in popular culture that gets tossed out the window like bran stark when you consider hodor remember that branstar grew up only knowing a hodor that was saying a garbled version of hold the door it's not like back to the future where bran can remember an alternate timeline where willis never had his mind destroyed like how marty mcfly can remember different versions of the people in his life nor is there some kind of multiple universe scenario created when bran burns out the stable boy's mind he's not transported to its parallel timeline as far as history in the river of time is concerned even though bran hasn't connected two hodors yet in his life the effects of his future self have already taken place there's no splitting of timelines or universes hodor is always hodor and bran always causes it this asks the question that martin's alluding to does bran even have a choice in stopping what happens to hodor it seems like no his past self feels the consequences of what his future self does in an unbroken loop the consequence of this is that characters whose minds you read into and watch on the screen may have never had a choice of anything in their lives their future already written and they just can't see the guide rails of their own destiny they are stuck being swept along by the river of time never noticing the water itself john never had a choice to join the night's watch he was always going to join bran would have never been a night of the kingsguard like he dreamed he was always going to fall from the tower and end up traveling to become the weirwood god and so on i find this a quite unsettling rug pull from a series of books and tv shows that seem to be entirely about choice and interpersonal conflict to say that none of it mattered that it was all an elaborately choreographed dance in a deterministic universe is a really strange choice and specifically with the targaryens and house of the dragon if we're talking about the series and renera and their heavily hinted at abilities to receive these dragon dreams that kind of relation can kind of ruin the enjoyment of their stories becerris would never know it he might feel like he has a choice to make with his potential heirs but from the perspective of a future greenseer he doesn't really they already know what he's going to do so viserys's agony over what to do really amounts to nothing the dreams he gets are not really clues to a future he's chasing down with choice and agency they're instead prompts sent back from the future to get him to fill his known role or perhaps the aftershocks of what he does blowing back across time with the dance of the dragons i want to draw a difference here about a criticism i already know i'm going to receive from what i've said and that is characters are already manipulated unknowingly in a song of ice and fire and game of thrones all the time and their stories are still good prime example of this is how littlefinger tricks sansa into helping use the tyrells to kill king joffrey at the wedding feast with the poison in her hair net she doesn't know what's going on she's tricked into doing it and it's still a good and satisfying read and watch but the main difference here is that while littlefinger is leading sansa to actions that will help his plotting she's not bound by the laws of nature to do so there are other choices she can make she can distrust cerdantos or decide not to wear that hairnet it's not impossible for her to do other things the revelation though that westeros is a deterministic universe is very different as there are no other possibilities other than the timeline that already exists sansa literally could not do anything different not because of littlefinger's expert machinations and stroking of his beard that the laws of nature prevent her from doing so in a doyle's sense this is just true the characters are fictional what they go through never happened they have no more agency than an action figure being played with by a nerdy kid from bayonne new jersey that these figments of imagination have free will is really just an elaborate trick by some talented story writers and television professionals to get you to watch week after week and buy the next book it is explicitly deterministic it's very different though for that to be true from a watsonian sense most pieces of entertainment that include time travel in some way have a mechanic where changing the past changes the future or creates an alternate timeline where those changes have been made it's rare to have a story that is clearly trying to tell its audience that time is an unending loop nothing can change or will change although fun fact the targaryen sigil does depict that in a way their coat of arms is one of the few that has not really changed across books comics artwork or television with really only the number of legs going from 2 to 4 being the main difference the core of the imagery does not it depicts a three-headed dragon with one of the heads having its tail go into its mouth before reappearing after the dragon body which is very nearly the auroboros the ancient symbol of infinity the auroboros is commonly depicted as a great dragon or lizard eating its own tail showing an unending cycle of destruction and rebirth the dragon eats its tail and then grows its tail which it then eats which then grows a new one etc etc the oroboros is more accurately depicted in the sigil of house toland of ghost hill but it's clear that there is symmetry between the auroboros house tollen and house targaryen that you're supposed to pick up on could take this as a hint about the nature of the targaryens how their reliance on prophecy exposes them to the looping nature of time in the world more than many others that they are literally the dragon eating its own tail forever so why didn't george and by extension ryan condell and his writing team make it so that their world isn't deterministic george himself has written about time travel before and his other stories under siege features a character named bengt a crippled psychic who is tasked by his government to use his powers and their machines to go back in time and change the past so that their future changes it's implied in the end though that the changes don't happen because banked and the rest of the geeks as they're called bail their missions on purpose or perhaps that changing the past is impossible either one both are kind of implied unsound variations is a revenge story about chess because of course it is where one member of a chess team discovers time travel and builds a machine and uses it to subtly destroy his former teammates that let him down at a big tournament like an evil groundhog day skipping across timelines trying to forever get better at screwing over his teammates the road less traveled is it about an alternate universe version of the protagonist who went to vietnam and was maimed talking to the version of himself that didn't go to war so there you have multiple universes and timelines his book armageddon rag primarily about a rock band remembering the good old times has major overtones of time travel and destiny with characters trying to and possibly succeeding in changing the course of history with their groovy tunes in all of george's stories that even touch on time travel at all they all feature heavily characters trying to use that ability to change something in the past they just don't accept that they can't and yet no one seems to be doing that song of ice and fire or house of the dragon the targaryens are really just going with the dragon dream flow ran wonders if he can but bloodray even assures him he can't it seems like the targaryens like aegon viserys renera are just sort of following the river of prophecy wherever it takes them that is a downer of an ending of video nothing matters it's actually all about time travel back it up folks let's go to the rings of power unless well there is another quote from george rr martin that offers a possibility that breaks the wheel of destiny and frees his characters from the little loops he designed for them and it comes from of all places a question and answer done by george rr martin in saint petersburg and 2017. the question he's responding to is about the outlander series and how author diana abeldon uses time travel in her series but martin's answer to it is fascinating another great time travel theory is created by the wonderful science fiction writer fritz lieber he wrote a whole cycle about the war and time of the powerful clans of the spiders and the snakes they are fighting with each other throughout time and space trying to change the course of history libra used a different analogy he said that time is like a giant river with many rapids and bends and the flow is very rapid and in fact any attempts to change something are similar to attempt to throw a stone into a river circles will come from the stone and some changes may cause this but on the whole the river will continue its course in order to really change history you need to throw a huge boulder into the river and it is not very clear how the river will change its course i always thought that lieber's theory made more sense to me than bradbury's theory the explanation he gives here roughly translated from russian is almost exactly the same one as bloodraven tells bran when he's describing how they are able to see into the past with of course one big difference bloodraven never mentions the end part that if you want to change the flow of the river of time you can't just throw pebbles and stones into it the river will just go around them and adapt instead if you want to change the flow you need to throw a boulder into the path of it and then the flow is broken and goes somewhere else basically saying history can change if you do something massive enough to cause that change the cycle of determinism breaks and a new timeline free from destiny can be created maybe we'll even see a glimpse of that in house of the dragon ryan condell seems to think that there is something unique about house of the dragon that makes it a story worth telling saw some of the things that i saw and it wasn't just a prequel for prequel's sake there was actually a reason to tell the story viserys and rhaenyra seem to be tuned into these kind of questions or at least can perceive them in dream and prophecy jiharis is going to be used to introduce this concept directly to the audience in the very first episode almost like it's something very important for you to think about game of thrones didn't really address the problem of bran's powers and what they really mean but that doesn't mean house of the dragon won't perhaps he'll even see a future bran peering back from his throne in king's landing watching the dragons dance i mean unlikely but you never know it'd be cool cameo the ripples in the dreamscape i've talked about may be that metaphorical boulder being thrown diverting where time had always been going into a new future and the sloshing of those changes and the boulder crashing into it and the sloshing water of those changes against the banks being felt all throughout time by those sensitive enough to feel it maybe it's the doom of valyria the price to escape destiny being the lives of everyone in valyria or maybe it's when the dragons sang into the night daenerys hatching them from the ashes of khao drogo or maybe the last cry of the white walkers screaming out like ice cracking their frozen second lives ending against the two targaryens exactly the way their ancestors dreamed it hundreds of years earlier or maybe it's a boy from the north deep under a tree deciding that he will stop the river he will change it because he has a new dream of a dragon that can finally stop eating its tail not a dream of summer or winter fire and ice but a dream of spring [Music] you

Channel: Joe Magician

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Keywords: Game of Thrones, a song of ice and fire, Targaryen, Prophecy, Dragon dreams, house of the dragon, HOT D, ASOIAF, GOT, Aegon the Conqueror, targaryen dreams, house of the dragon hbo, King Viserys, Game of Thrones Theory, house of the dragon theory, HOTD theory, ASOIAF theory, A Song of Ice and Fire theory, Fan theory, Aegon Dream, Aegon the Conqueror Dream, Aegon prophecy, Aegon the Conqueror prophecy, Aegon Targaryen dream, Aegon targaryen prophecy

Id: 3hJPzvwNoGE

Length: 55min 28sec (3328 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 17 2022