u/Expensive-Country801

The idea of Young Griff/fAegon is something GRRM set up a very long time ago, certainly in 1998 during A Clash of Kings

> A mummer's dragon, you said. What is a mummer's dragon, pray?"

> "A cloth dragon on poles," Dany explained. "Mummers use them in their follies, to give the heroes something to fight."

And in 2000, GRRM basically gave it away;

> "I was wondering if you could answer (or take the "fifth") one teeny little question I've been dying to ask for the past year: Are Aegon and Rhaenys, Elia's children, well and truly dead?"

> GRRM: "All I have to say is that there is absolutely no doubt that little Princess Rhaenys was dragged from beneath her father's bed and slain."

So, Aegon surviving was a part of the plan for a long time. However....

Whats the point?

The central mystery of the series is R+L=J and Jon being Rhaegar’s son, and therefore being able to ride a dragon, play some magical role in the Long Night, and possess a plausible claim to the Iron Throne.

So why did GRRM feel the need to introduce another surviving "son of Rhaegar" plotline? Why spend so much narrative energy on "Aha! Rhaegar’s other son is (most likely not) alive, but this other guy is impersonating him"?

It just feels a bit weird. Why couldn't Jon simply do the story beats Young Griff is being set up to do? Then it hit me.

It's the name, stupid

When the show said Jon's birth name was Aegon, a lot of people thought it was totally ridiculous and D&D just made it up. Two Aegons? But I think the books may make that duplication very meaningful.

I made a post about this before, but a theory that's been out there for a while is that Lyanna named Jon, not Rhaegar. Rhaegar probably believed the child would be a girl, which is why after Aegon is born, he looks at Dany and says;

> He looked up when he said it and his eyes met Dany's, and it seemed as if he saw her standing there beyond the door. "There must be one more," he said, though whether he was speaking to her or the woman in the bed she could not say. "The dragon has three heads."

A girl completing the original three heads of the dragon alongside Rhaenys and Aegon. That’s why his first two children were named after the Conqueror siblings.

Now try to imagine Lyanna's position at the Tower of Joy after Jon is born;

• Rhaegar is dead.

• Elia, Rhaenys and Aegon are dead.

• The child expected to be a girl is instead a boy.

So Lyanna just chooses the quintessential male Targaryen royal name for her son, and the one Rhaegar associated with prophecy, kingship, and the PtwP;

> "Aegon," he said to a woman nursing a newborn babe in a great wooden bed. "What better name for a king?"

> "Will you make a song for him?" the woman asked.

> "He has a song," the man replied. "He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire."

I think Young Griff needs to appear first as "Aegon VI," a term which GRRM himself uses when discussing characters from the books who never appeared in the show.

> There are characters who never made it onto the screen at all, and others who died in the show but still live in the books… so if nothing else, the readers will learn what happened to Jeyne Poole, Lady Stoneheart, Penny and her pig, Skahaz Shavepate, Arianne Martell, Darkstar, Victarion Greyjoy, Ser Garlan the Gallant, Aegon VI, and a myriad of other characters both great and small that viewers of the show never had the chance to meet.

Young Griff will appear as the returned son of Rhaegar. He introduces to Westeros the idea that a son of Rhaegar survived and is here to deliver them from disaster

But he is a false savior, since we know he is one of the "lies" Dany will slay. And, so after his fall, Westeros will descend even further into chaos due to figures like Euron, and with the Long Night arriving, the real hidden heir emerges;

Jon as Aegon VII.

Seven Kingdoms, Seven Gods and a Seventh Aegon to fight in the Long Night. I think that's why GRRM always have needed both plotlines simultaneously, and two sons of Rhaegar

GRRM has stated before there is something to Lemongate

> Q: “Dany remembers a lemon tree outside the house with the red door in Braavos, but citrus trees shouldn’t really grow in Braavos’s cold, foggy climate. Is this discrepancy significant? Does it point to future revelations about Dany’s past?”

> GRRM: “Very perceptive of you. Yes, it does point to … well, that would be telling.”

In an earlier draft of Dany’s chapter in AGoT, "The Blood of the Dragon," Dany explicitly remembers the House with the Red Door being in Tyrosh.

That detail was later removed from the published version and switched to Braavos. But something that did remain is that Dany has a Tyroshi accent.

> The merchant must have taken her for Dothraki, with her clothes and her oiled hair and sun-browned skin. When she spoke, he gaped at her in astonishment.

> "My lady, you are … Tyroshi? Can it be so?"

> "My speech may be Tyroshi, and my garb Dothraki, but I am of Westeros, of the Sunset Kingdoms," Dany told him.

So, Dany even in the published version still likely spent years in Tyrosh as a child, which is where the accent came from. But this becomes much more interesting when paired with Arianne’s memories in AFfC. While recalling her childhood companions, Arianne says:

> "Jeyne Fowler, or her sister Jennelyn." It had been years since Arianne had thought of that. “Oh, and Frynne, her father was a smith. Her hair was brown. Garin was my favorite, though. When I rode Garin no one could defeat us, not even Nym and that green-haired Tyroshi girl."

Doran later explains who the girl was

> "That green-haired girl was the Archon’s daughter. I was to have sent you to Tyrosh in her place. You would have served the Archon as a cupbearer and met with your betrothed in secret, but your mother threatened to harm herself if I stole another of her children, and I . . . I could not do that to her."

This is where the pieces start fitting together.

I think Doran wasn't being completely honest with Arianne here. He only just told her in this chapter what his intentions for Quentyn and her actually were after leaving her in the dark

There's a really interesting quote, which I think is GRRM pointing that Arianne accidentally stumbles onto the who the girl really was as a joke;

> "Is that where Quentyn’s gone? To Tyrosh, to court the Archon’s green-haired daughter?"

Dany is the Green Haired girl. Tyroshi dye their hair in flamboyant colors constantly, so green hair would not have been unusual as a disguise. If Dany was being hidden in Dorne, presenting her as the Archon's daughter would make sense. This was probably for a very short time though before Doran got cold feet from sending Arianne due to her mother not wanting her to leave;

> "Your mother threatened to harm herself if I stole another of her children, and I . . . I could not do that to her."

It would also explain the lemon tree, we are told constantly lemons grow in Dorne, not Braavos

From Doran’s perspective, this arrangement is the sort of cautious plan he would use. Before Arianne was eventually sent to Tyrosh to meet Viserys, Doran would want a sort of insurance of his own. He's taking big risks, and I can easily see him asking for the other Targaryen heir before sending Arianne. With the scheme collapsed due to Arianne’s mother not wanting it, Dany would have been swiftly sent back. Which is why she doesn't remember anything about Dorne.

With Arianne thinking very negatively about Dany before even realizing Quentyn is dead, their eventual collision course would have an air of tragedy if the happiest time in Daenerys’s life was spent unknowingly with a girl who now despises her.

Skyrim was officially revealed on December 11, 2010 That gave it roughly an 11 month marketing runway, and it was more than enough to build hype.

RDR2, a game with a comparable amount of anticipation had a 2 year runway

With the long wait for TESVI, a proper trailer showing

• The setting

• The title

• A musical theme

• A vague hint at the central conflict or hook

• Brief cinematic shots and early gameplay

…would be more than enough to generate sustained hype over an 18 month window, and let the fandom imagination roam wild.

Prior to Game of Thrones airing, ASOIAF had about ~12M sales. After the show, that number jumped to around 100M. Most readers wouldn’t have picked up the books without the show pulling them in.

The same dynamic applies elsewhere. Far more people have seen A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, than will ever read Dunk & Egg, and far more will watch HotD than read Fire and Blood

Obviously, this translated into massive financial success. GRRM went from a successful author, similar to Robin Hobb and Steven Erikson to similar to Tolkien or JK Rowling as a result of the show. He talked about he was able to buy a second house as a result of his partnership with HBO and do a lot of things he wanted like buying a railway in Santa Fe to restore.

Fire and Blood was only released with HotD in mind. If HBO hadn't had shown interest in spin offs in 2017 it's quite likely we'd never get this book.

> “When it became clear [in 2016 or 17] that we were going to do the Dance of the Dragons show, we wanted a book to go with that,” Martin told Durham. “And I already had the seeds of the book from material that was in The World of Ice and Fire. And from the novellas I’d written for my friend Gardner Dozois, Princess and the Queen and the Rogue Prince and so forth.”

> "So I actually asked – we’re in the Random House offices here, and I’m about to get them in terrible trouble – but I asked them, do you want me to just ignore the new show that’s coming down the pike, or should I finish that book so you can get it out and then go back to [The Winds of Winter]. And they said, yeah, give us the new book that’s closer to being done instead of two more books (The Winds of Winter and the purported final Song of Ice and Fire book A Dream of Spring). So I put [The] Winds of Winter aside for a while, and I concentrated on finishing Fire and Blood."

You can see this pattern elsewhere

• A Dance with Dragons was rushed out in 2011 to coincide with season 1 of Game of Thrones

• The biggest push to finish The Winds of Winter was tied to giving the show more material around Season 5/6 in 2016. This was when GRRM spoke about it most candidly

• His current renewed focus on Dunk & Egg is about giving Ira Parker more content to adapt for AKotSK. Again, he speaks about not wanting to repeat the same situation as GoT where the show passes him. The main pressure is the show. Not about giving readers a new book they've been waiting for since 2010.

Which leads to a possibility people don’t bring up enough. In GRRM’s mind, ASOIAF might already feel 'done' because it has a completed adaptation out there.

I’ve been thinking about this and ASOIAF might be in a genuinely unique situation.

We have a bunch of major endgame level plot points that are basically known at this point, but not actually revealed in the books.

• R+L=J

• King Bran

• Shireen burning

• Hold the Door

Likely others I’m forgetting that is close to confirmed

Is there any precedent for this in other major series? Where whether through leaks or another adaptation the source material was spoiled with multiple books to go?