Werthead
Lemming of Discord
- Joined
- Jun 4, 2006
- Messages
- 2,188
the smiling weirwood said:Where does it say that?
GRRM said it in his description of one of the Targaryen princesses (Elaena, one of Baelor the Blessed's sisters that he locked in the Maidenvault) to the artist Amoka (whose website is down at the moment, otherwise I'd link it). The history of the eggs is something that has emerged fairly recently but seems to be:
That the three eggs were laid by one of the Targaryen dragons who died, either in the Dance of Dragons or one of the last few poisoned by Aegon III (allegedly), roughly 160 years before AGoT. The Targaryens tried to hatch the eggs but nothing worked. They knew they needed fire, but that didn't work, so Baelor the Blessed prayed over them for days on end to no avail. Elaena, IIRC, carried around one with her the whole time and tried to induce it to hatch though nurture. During the Blackfyre Rebellion one of Daemon Blackfyre's agents, the master thief Quickfinger, tried to steal the eggs, but was captured (as mentioned in The Sworn Sword). Eventually Aegon V came up with a sure-fire way of hatching them. We don't know what happened, but it killed Aegon, his eldest son, the Lord Commander of his Kingsguard and burned down Summerhall (Prince Rhaegar was born on the same night).
The fate of the eggs after this is unclear, but somehow they wound up with Ilyrio Mopatis (probably Varys' doing). They were given to Ilyrio to give to Dany when the occasion arose, presumably out of hope that they would hatch somehow. Maybe Varys realised that dragon eggs take a long time to mature.
Incidentally, this theory also explains why the Targaryens waited on Dragonstone for 100 years between the Doom and the Conquest: they were waiting for their dragons to hatch and get big enough to use in battle.