#to be honest I always thought Rhaegar just saw the comet

[jon-sedai]

Rhaegar, Aegon, and the prophecy of TPTWP

I’m working on some meta about Rhaegar x Lyanna but I’ve hit a bit of a snag because something is bothering me about Rhaegar and his relationship with prophecy. Specifically, the prince that was promised prophecy. So we’re told that Rhaegar believed he would be tPtWP but at some point decided that his son, Prince Aegon, would be the prophesied messiah instead. It might just be me but isn’t it kind of weird just how abrupt this decision is?

It’s believed that the red comet seen on the day of Aegon’s conception might have convinced Rhaegar, but I feel like this is a bit unsatisfactory. So Rhaegar believes for years that it is his destiny to be the hero, but then he sees a comet and changes his mind just like that? And doesn’t the prophecy state that the prince would be born beneath a bleeding star? Born, not conceived. What would prompt Rhaegar to suddenly pivot so hard based on some circumstantial evidence?

Rhaegar doesn’t strike me as a wind vane sort of man. A man who moves anywhere the wind blows, such that he would hop from one contrivance to another just so he could fulfill some vague prophecy. Instead, judging by how bookish and well learned he was, I see him as someone who was probably moved by evidence.

The fandom likes to dismiss him as a prophecy obsessed weirdo but I disagree and think it simplifies and maligns him quite unfairly. Rhaegar was clouded by prophecy because his entire existence is due to prophecy. He was presumably conceived just so he could be a prophesied prince. And let’s look at his birth too. Is it really so surprising that Rhaegar (and Aemon) thought he was tPtWP? He does after all fulfill the Azor Ahai requirements (but rather metaphorically). A dragon was awaken at Summerhall beneath a red star and amidst salt and smoke. That dragon was Rhaegar. So Rhaegar had a multitude of evidence to back up the belief that he would be Azor Ahai.

I’m talking about book cannon so I hate to bring up the adaptations, but we learn in HoTD that Aegon I had a dream about the Long Night that convinced him to unite Westeros. We’re told that the secret of Aegon’s dream is passed down from king to heir - so we see Viserys give Rhaenyra the rundown. This is apparently something that GRRM has confirmed himself so I guess I have to consider it a part of book semi-cannon as well. So it’s really possible that in keeping with tradition, Aerys told Rhaegar about Aegon’s dream and given what Rhaegar already knew about the circumstances of his own birth, he might have been even more convinced about his role in the upcoming war for the dawn.

But then something changed along the way and Rhaegar came to believe that he wasn’t the hero, his son was. We’ve established that Rhaegar is someone who is surrounded by hard evidence, so it’s safe to assume that something happened to give him irrefutable proof that his son would be the promised prince. The comet seen during Prince Aegon’s conception doesn’t seem like much of a pivoting point. Rather, I think of it as an anchoring.

Is it possible, then, that he had prior knowledge of his son (specifically) being tPtWP instead of him? And so the appearance of the comet during Prince Aegon’s conception only confirmed what he already knew at the time. I’m trying to think of something that would convince Rhaegar to pivot and I’m wondering if a different prophecy sealed the deal.

It’s hard to think of who could give Rhaegar such an important prophecy. At first, I thought maybe it could be that he somehow met the Ghost of High Heart and she gave it to him. After all, she is the one who gave the original prophecy that led to his parents’ marriage. She is believed to have died at the tragedy of Summerhall, where Rhaegar was born, but that’s not really true because Arya meets her decades later. She is quite shaken by Jenny of Oldstone’s death and she keeps asking to hear Jenny’s song; Lady Jenny died at Summerhall. We also know that Rhaegar visited Summerhall quite a bit so it’s possible that they might have crossed paths as they both had connections to this place where they lost people important to them. There are fan theories that Rhaegar wrote Jenny’s song, which he could’ve written for the GoHH. When Arya meets the witch, she requests a song in exchange of a prophecy and this song is (presumably) Jenny’s song. So perhaps Rhaegar wrote it for her in exchange for a prophecy where he asked her about the Prince. And then the GoHH told him that it wasn’t him but his son. Given the very vague nature of prophecy that we’ve seen so far, she might have even said something like “your prince” or “the little prince” idk. So by the time Rhaegar starts having children with Elia, he knows full well that he must have a son who will eventually take up the mantle of the prophesied hero. Though he isn’t the messiah, this is still another prophetic burden for him to bear for he is destined to be the messiah’s father (almost like it’s a duty…).

But this doesn’t explain the matter of “the dragon must have three heads”. Dany sees the vision of Rhaegar, Elia, and Aegon, where Rhaegar says “there must be one more”. No one ever mentions the matter of three heads in relation to Azor Ahai/tPtWP. No one, except maester Aemon and Rhaegar. If my memory serves me correct, much of Aemon’s speculations are to do with Rhaegar and he never mentions hearing about three heads of the dragon in the Azor Ahai prophecy elsewhere. He thinks Dany is the Prince(ss) and he could aid her by being one of the heads, but that’s really it. I think Aemon got the three heads thing from his correspondence with Rhaegar; and Rhaegar heard about it elsewhere.

We have even less to go on with Rhaegar’s reasoning for why he believed that there must be two others in addition to the Prince. It kind of comes out of nowhere by the time we read Dany’s HoTU vision. So is it safe to assume that the prophecy that could have told him about his son’s role in the upcoming ‘song’ also told him about three heads of the dragon?

I’ve gone through this wall of text only to just now arrive at the point; specifically, who told Rhaegar about his son being the messiah and about the three headed dragon?

The timeline is a bit hard to pin down with the GoHH because we can’t even be sure if and when they met. And if they did meet, to what capacity? But we do have another seer in the story whose whereabouts we can confirm in in relation to Rhaegar. I’m talking about Maggy the Frog.

In 276 AC, a tourney is held to honor Viserys III’s birth in Lannisport. Rhaegar was 17 at this time and not yet married. Tywin Lannister, this time, wanted to take advantage of this and wished to wed his daughter Cersei to the crown prince. Cersei is told of the potential betrothal by her aunt and, now already infatuated with the prince, visits Maggy the Frog in order to confirm her future. We’re told that many people visited Maggy so Cersei was certainly not her first nor her last customer (though I’m not sure when Maggy died, the wiki just says 276).

So I wonder if Rhaegar also heard of the popular Maggy and deigned to visit her as well to ask a few questions. And then he got there and after giving a prick of blood, asked his questions and got a series of rather vague and confusing answers (just based on what Maggy told Cersei and Melara). It’s hard to tell what sort of questions he asked but they might have pertained to the upcoming war. I can imagine some of his potential questions being:

“How must the darkness be defeated?” - and Maggy says “three there shall be who must sally forth into the darkness” or some nonsense

Then Rhaegar goes, “three? But the prophecy talks about a prince that was promised (singular) not princes that were promised (plural). Who are the others?” - not entirely sure what Maggy could say for this but probably something vague like “one for the mind, one of the heart, one of the body” idk (someone help me out here)

Then maybe for Rhaegar’s last question he asks, “am I the promised prince?” - to which Maggy replies, “no, not you. But the son will be” or some nonsense. I think it was probably not specific that it was Rhaegar’s son or even if it was, which one.

So Rhaegar leaves that meeting having to make quite a number of assumptions about three heroes and the promised messiah and his role in relation to them. But at the very least, he now knows that he isn’t the messiah, “the son” who is presumably his will fulfill that role. Note: it would actually be so hilarious if Rhaegar, like Cersei, got a Valonqar prophecy. Maybe that was Maggy’s whole bit, it was for the *vibes*.

So that means that by the time he is betrothed to Elia by 279 and gets Princess Rhaenys by 280, Rhaegar expects a little son. But it’s not a son who is born to him, it’s a daughter instead. I don’t know if Rhaegar was thinking about recreating the Aegon-Visenya-Rhaenys triumvirate at this time, but he decided to name his daughter after one of Aegon’s wives. But he might have also been trying to honor his mother whose name also starts with the Rhae- prefix. After all if he was trying to recreate the three headed triumvirate, shouldn’t he have started with Visenya? She was the eldest of the three. Except he already had a brother named Viserys! I guess we can say that he didn’t mind his daughter sharing a name with his brother; he could even argue that his daughter is named after his brother as some sort of homage. But then it would just be that: homage and not purposefully trying to recreate the conquering trio. See this is why the fandom shouldn’t be so single minded with the headcannon that Rhaegar “most def wanted a Visenya, trust me bro”. I don’t believe that we have enough to go on to come to this conclusion and there’s even less to suggest that Rhaegar absolutely had to recreate Aegon and his sisters. Though the prophecy was Aegon I’s, there’s not much to suggest that the others would need to be Visenya and Rhaenys. A lot of the evidence is circumstantial and not at all definitive, in my opinion.

Anyway, Rhaegar would have Aegon a year or so later (not sure about the timeline). Now, he has the son who may be the promised prince. And better yet, he was heralded by a bleeding star! It’s not a perfect 1:1 ratio, but this is an instance of a prophecy coming true (as far as he knows)! So Rhaegar’s thought process here is: I have been told that my son will one day be the promised prince -> I see a comet one day as I’m laying with my wife -> a son is born to me nine months later -> based on everything I know, this son will be tPtWP.

According to Dany’s vision, Rhaegar chose the name Aegon because that is a king’s name. He then adds that little Aegon is the prince that was promised and his is the song of ice and fire. It’s assumed that Rhaegar gave his son this name so as to recreate the three headed dragon, which may very well be true. But, like, everyone had a son named Aegon at some point in Targ history. By now, there have already been five kings named Aegon, and even more princes bearing that name. So it’s a similar situation with Princess Rhaenys. It connects to the legendary conqueror, but it’s also a name that has a lot of meaning to the Targaryens regardless of prophecy. Rhaegar is now perfectly fine with fulfilling his duty as the father to the prince who was promised, if what we know of his correspondence with Maester Aemon is anything to go by.

We don’t know about much of what Rhaegar thought after Aegon. Presumably he thought he needed one more, based on Maggy’s prophecy, but where would the other come from? Perhaps Dany’s HoTU vision works as a two way mirror. Maybe Rhaegar dreamt of her too and thought she would be his daughter to complete the trio; maybe that could explain why he looks right at her. Elia was sickly after Aegon but do we really have much to suggest that Rhaegar thought Elia wouldn’t do the job and he must look for another wife? After all, he already had Aegon, his promised prince, so anyone else could fill a supporting role. We at the very least have very little to go on to suggest that he somehow believed that Lyanna Stark must be the one to carry the third child. I’m sure that he met many wonderful women in King’s Landing. Ashara Dayne, for instance, is right there. He could also get Cersei Lannister, who had already shown great interest in him (though I’m not sure that Tywin would agree). Still, Lyanna Stark (already betrothed to Robert Baratheon) was not a perfect choice. And if he already had his promised prince in Aegon, why would he hurry to chase after Lyanna? It’s not like he got a timetable about the Others’ coming in the next few months/years (unless Maggy gave that to him too). Maybe, just maybe, Rhaegar’s relationship with Lyanna was the one thing in his life that ironically had nothing to do with prophecy…

Rhaegar went to his grave thinking that Prince Aegon would be tPtWP. Who knows what he thought of Lyanna’s child. The fandom seems convinced that this child was his “there must be one more”, but he may have never really considered what the child’s role would be (if anything). We don’t know anything about what Rhaegar expected to come out of Lyanna and her child, so we should be careful about saying that Jon was for sure intended to complete the three headed dragon. I’d imagine that as long as Rhaegar had his Aegon, everything else was relative.

In any case, this is an instance in which, as Moqorro would put it, prophecy bites your prick off. Because Rhaegar died, and Prince Aegon died as well. Princess Rhaenys, who may or may not have played a secondary role, died with Aegon. Furthermore, Rhaegar did not have a third child to complete the foretold trio and even if he did, that child would have died as well. It seems like Maggy’s possible prophecy died with the fall of House Targaryen. Except it didn’t. The prophecy will come true, but in very unexpected ways.

Because Rhaegar does have a surviving son, Jon, who was quite unexpected. Unexpected in the sense that Rhaegar may never have considered where Lyanna’s child would fit into all of this. Instead of glittering Prince Aegon being the savior, it’s Jon the bastard who joins a brotherhood up North that is full of the scum of Westeros. An even bigger twist is that Jon is already doing the job (fighting against the Others) without knowing about his true family and how he might be connected to the prophecy; the prophecy wasn’t even about him to begin with. Jon is the savior not because of prophecy, but because he is a good person who cares very much about humanity. The prophecy still exist, but is actually quite unimportant when it comes down it.

Then there’s Daenerys, Rhaegar’s sister who wasn’t even conceived then. She goes even further than all of them and wakes dragons from stone; the first one to do so in some 200 years. So she also fulfills the Azor Ahai requirements rather unexpectedly. And the third head is a mystery. GRRM says that the third head need not be a Targaryen. Lots of theories have come up since then but the most popular contender is Tyrion Lannister; I personally tend to flip flop between Tyrion and Bran Stark. But whoever the third head is, it would still be a subversion. To the average Targaryen, Dany is a given because she woke dragons from stone and is decidedly the blood of the dragon; she’s also the last dragon alive. That’s all well and good but now we have to consider a northern bastard, who doesn’t even look the part, as a possibility. Sure he’s got magic powers, but they’re all wrong and not at all the expected kind. Then the last head isn’t even a Targ? Imagine it being the dwarf Tyrion Lannister. He’s no warrior and he’s got no power outside of his mind; I guess it’s nice that he reads a lot but how does that help anyone? Or if it turns out to be Bran and the third head is a crippled boy from the north who’s got magic powers but again, the wrong sort of magic. I’d imagine Rhaegar and all his predecessors going, “??!”.

Anyway, this started with me trying to understand why Rhaegar so suddenly decided that Aegon was tPtWP but has now veered off into something different. I was just thinking of the irony of Rhaegar’s son being a prophesied savior, but it’s not the son he worked for/expected. And even the three heads of the dragon aren’t who he thought they’d be either. I’m thinking, more generally, about how prophecies in ASOIAF come true, but they are fulfilled in ways that one would least expect. I need to look around and see what other people are saying in regards to Rhaegar, Aegon, and tPtWP. These same points might’ve already been made by someone else….