A Dance with Dragons - Discussion - WARNING: SPOILERS!

Again, we all have this presupposition that Dany was fireproof to begin with. Why is that?

Generations of Targaryens, and none were fireproof (often tested). Then one lives side by side with dragons and is shown to be fireproof?

Although this debate has gone back and forth, I really think that there is something that makes her fireproof NOW. As in something in her environment has changed. Either that she is exposed to dragons (in the egg first), or maybe that whole red comet in the sky. All the other magic in their world started working when that thing showed up, so maybe this is one of the effects.

Watch this:

Events in Chronological Order:
1. Viserys is burned to death by molten gold.
2. Jon's hand is burned fighting the others.
3. The Red Star appears in the sky.
4. Dragons are born / Dany is fireproof (except for her hair...)

If she's fireproof now because of something (like the red star, or being around dragons), then it would stand to reason that other people might have the ability to become fireproof even if they have been burned in the past (ie Winterfell's *******)

To be honest, I hadn't considered that. I am one of those who strongly feels that the Red Comet was a sign intended for Dany so it might have somehow changed her. When you really think about it, Dany might not even be completely fireproof. The hatching of the dragons might have been a one-time deal, being fireproof only while that Red Star was in the sky.

It still seems like whoever rides those dragons are going to have to deal with some serious burning sensations. Maybe Tyrion will develop some kind of Dragon-saddle... hmmm...

I wouldn't want to be the unsullied who has to saddle the dragons...
 
ADWD Spoiler Alert!! You have been warned.

I did not read this entire thread... I skimmed it. If my idea is not new, I apologize.

So I'm rereading ADWD... and Quentyn goes on his quest to marry Dany. Ooops.

Anyway... while Dany watches Hizdahr sleep, and she knows he will not get the son he desires, she remembers the words of Mirri Maz Duur in AGOT: "When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not before." Yeah, yeah. It's impossible or at least it'll take some supernatural wonder or divine intervention.... or not. Earlier she asked BFS about House Martell's sigil.

Quentyn is the Sun.

He rose in the west. He was born in Dorne and he started his quest in Dorne, far to the west of Mereen. Westeros.

He set in the east. He died far to the east of Dorne... on the continent of Essos.

So how can the seas go dry? They could freeze over. Tycho Nestoris tells Jon that the canals of Braavos are frozen. Or the seas drying could be silence from the Drowned God. Or the water recedes around the Step Stones and a land bridge is formed linking Essos and Westeros. Or the great grasslands of Essos, particularly the Dothraki Sea, shrivels.

Or there is another volcanic eruption in Valyria causing mountains to be blown apart and the lava evaporates the waters around Valyria? That could be mountains blowing in the wind.

Mountains... Pyramids... Gregor Clegane...
 
Spoiler Alert. I'm serious.

Almost done with ADWD again. In skimming this thread, I noticed many people questioning the reason for including Quentyn's POV. Not to rehash all that, but I think I've found the best reason for it.

Martin is known for killing off characters. But the only characters to die in their own POV are Catelyn... and now Quentyn... and all the prologue and epilogue characters. More often he puts them in a lethal situations and then leaves off for fifteen chapters or so. He's done this to Bran, Arya, Davos, Theon, Jaime, Brienne, Tyrion, Daenerys, But to make Jon's death seem real in the third to last chapter in ADWD, he had Quentyn die in the previous chapter. When Bran fell, when Davos sank, when Brienne was eaten, when Dany burned... I had the thought in the back of my mind, "He/she is not necessarily dead." But Rhaegal's flames had already been shown to be lethal, so Quentyn was not going to survive. I think Martin put an unequivocal POV death immediately before Jon's stabbing to make it believable.

Also, I think GRRM likes Dorne. I think his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico reminds him of Dorne. More Dornish characters means more of Santa Fe geography, food, and people can be put into the story.
 
Quentyn being the sun that rises in the East and sets in the West is a popular notion on the ASOIAF sub Reddit (but be warned before you post anything: it can get petty and nasty in there. Werthead posts in there quite a bit too). Personally I think it's got to be so.

Much more curious is the mountains bending and the sea drying up because I just can't think what they could be. Mayhaps Drogon will ignite the entire Dothraki Sea...
 
My view on Quentyn is that he was a plot device to get Martell to support the young Aegon. Once he gets word that the dragons have killed his son the blame will fall on Dany and not the incompetence of his son.
 
Much more curious is the mountains bending and the sea drying up because I just can't think what they could be. Mayhaps Drogon will ignite the entire Dothraki Sea...

Mayhaps part of the reason for the delay of TWOW is GRRM trying to find ways to fulfil prophecies he now wishes he'd never made.

/cynicism/
 
The Chrons are the only board I discuss ASOIAF.

As for the seas... could it be said that the blockade of Mereen was a the seas drying up on her?

Regarding mountains... Rhaegal and Viserion left two great pyramids smoking.
 
An immediate thought on the seas drying up - the seas are a barrier to the Dothraki. But if they were taken by boat to Westeros, then it would be as though the seas were no longer there to stop them.

Mountains bending - firm and established traditions being changed. This could be anything, perhaps houses of Westeros bending to Danny to join with her.

Just thinking aloud, because prophecy can be trickily allegorical rather than literal.
 
If the sun is not the real sun, but instead represents House Martell --

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-- then the drying up of the sea might be the destruction of (the power, or the fleet, of) the Greyjoys and the mountain may be The Mountain (who bent to House Martell and had, in order to survive, to be frankengregored).

But, as Brian says, we're probably dealing with the trickily allegorical, so it could be anything.
 
Dany has to get Victarion's horn... actual, not allegory.
 
Well maybe Harry Potter can teach her how to become the true master of the death horn.
 
Targs are naturally masters of the Dragon Horn. Victarion wants to meet Dany, so surely she will get a chance to get the horn from one Greyjoy or another. Unless for some reason only a specific Targ is master.

Mountains plural if referring to people is an odd one when they say blowing in the wind. If Gregor and Sandor fought and fell together they still wouldn't be "blowing in the wind".

If Sun refers to a family (or family member) it also seems to me to be a strange allegory to then having seas and mountain literally being seas and mountains.. I like Boaz's suggestion of the mountains representing the Pyramids (which are burnt to ash).

That said boat crossings the actual sea does make sense.
The womb part also sounds literal.
 
@Judderman So you think that Dany's ability to endure heat and fire, by some Valyrian affinity to magic, that she'll be able to sound the horn and live?
 
That is something I've suspected for a while. Also, I think it would be a little too easy if Dany could just naturally master the horn just by being Valyrian, though I suspect she will master it somehow perhaps by some kind of blood rite
 
If Dany does literally have a child, who might the father be? A Greyjoy?
 
It'll be Grey Worm before it's a Greyjoy. Wait! I just had a thought... going to read.

Okay, I'm back. @Judderman Your comment sparked a thought about Dany's very last chapter in ADWD and I just reread the part from eating the berries until she sees Drogon on the next day.

But first lets' go back to the words of Mirri Maz Duur: "When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not before." The words were in response to Dany's question on when Drogo would be like he'd been before. So it's just a fancy way to say never. But since we believe that Dany is the only surviving female Targ and that she will ascend the throne, then she has to be able to produce an offspring to continue the dynasty.

On a side note, I've commented in years past that if Dany is barren, then she must have a surrogate to bear her king a child. If Jon is the king, then who is the surrogate? She needs to be royalty or pretty close. Since Dany and Jon will each mount a dragon, it would help if the surrogate could also ride a dragon. Sansa is the only one who could fill both... plus Jon already likes redheads. But I digress....

Back to the point... What if Dany could make these conditions happen? Would Drogo really return? Or would Drogo return metaphorically... as in a dynamic king and warrior? So if we agree this is Jon, then we can take Mirri's words as a curse to be undone or as a prophecy to be fulfilled.

Seas going dry. We've speculated that the blockade on Mereen has effectively dried up the seas. They do not give any of their bounty to Dany.

Mountains blowing in the wind. I don't know this one yet.

Dany's womb quickens again. I just reread Dany's final ADWD chapter... she eats green berries and gets violently ill. She has diarrhea most of the night. Then she dreams of Viserys. When she awakes in the dark, her legs are covered in blood. She thinks she's having her period, but she's lost count of time... and there's more blood than ever before. She is truly frightened and thinks... Am I dying?

Judderman's comment made me think that Dany's womb is working. She just accidentally aborted Daario's or Hizdahr's child. We can take this two ways... if it's a curse, then she will never have a child. But if it is a prophecy, it just needs the right conditions and time to happen.

Back in AGOT, when Dany was recovering from the disaster of Mirri's sorcery... she dreamed of Viserys.... and her womb ceased to function.

And also in AGOT, she ate raw horse... the stallion's heart to make Rhaego strong. In the last paragraphs of ADWD, she again eats horse... charred, but still bloody.

These are my observations and conjectures... I hope someone can make more sense of them.
 
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It may simply be that
"When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not before."
means nothing more than "never"...

...that is, it is neither a prophesy nor a curse, just Mirri Maz Duur turning the knife by adding the thought of a future tragedy (i.e. "no descendants for you") to the ongoing tragedy of Drogo never getting better. After all, Dany could have loads of kids, but the mountains are still not going to "blow in the wind like leaves" (= turn to airborne dust**) and the the seas are not going go dry***... not in Dany's lifetime, at any rate.


** - The mention of the mountains turning to dust may just be another example of knife turning: the violent eruption of a volcano can look like (part of) a mountain tunring to dust -- pyroclastic flows, anyone? -- and thus be a reference to the "Doom" that destroyed Valyria (apparently when fourteen volcanos erupted).

*** - I'm even beginning to wonder what happened, while the "Doom" was in progress, to the seas around Valyria. A lot of instant boiling, perhaps. In any case, one can imagine that "and all the seas boiled" being used as a description attached to the "Doom", perhaps using artistic licence given that, despite the "Doom" happening only four hundred years earlier, what actually happened is not really known.
 
So, how do we think Jon will be resurrected in Winds? I've read one theory that he'll be brought back to life by Mel in a manner not unlike the TV show but afterwards he'll be a little 'off' and there'll be no Jon POV until right near the end of the book. And in this solitary Jon chapter we'll discover that Jon is still warged with Ghost, making us think 'Who is inhabiting Jon's body?'
 

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