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Let me begin by explaining that my thesis hinges off something I’ve been saying in pieces here (here) and there (there): we’ve been seeing the endgame back-to-front. To clarify, what I mean is that, in the books, the confrontation at King’s Landing happens before the final battle between the Army of the Dead and the forces of the living at Winterfell. (For completeness’ sake, I should say that I’m not the only one to hold this position.)

To me, this colors everything that we see in the episode – Jaime and Cersei’s plot, Tyrion and Daenerys’ plot, Jon and Daenerys’ dynamics, Arya’s totally inconsequential involvement, and so on. The reason for that is that, if these characters have to work together after this, their dynamics can’t be so strained as to make this impossible.

As a result, while some broad strokes will likely be the same – Dany burning King’s Landing, Cersei dying in Jaime’s arms, etc. – I believe a lot of what happened in 8×04-5 will happen very differently than it did on the show.

How Do We Know This?

Especially since Episode 3, many in the fandom have argued that the ordering of events at Winterfell and King’s Landing have made it feel that the “game of thrones” is the real story, and “winter is coming” was always a distraction from that, when GRRM has been rather clear about the opposite being true. While I don’t want to rest my case entirely on thematics, it is noticeable that Martin titled his overall series A Song of Ice and Fire – more on that later – whereas Benioff and Weiss titled theirs Game of Thrones. At the very least, it speaks to the attitude with which adaptation was pursued, and why the decision might have been made to put the events of the truncated eighth season in this order.

However, I don’t mean to hang my hat on thematics alone. One of the things we’ve known for a while is that the final conflicts are going to be different based on how Martin has gone about setting up the pieces for this conflict, where he’s clearly setting up Winterfell and King’s Landing as the locuses for his characters, but different characters have different push and pull factors that are driving them to one place and not another, For the North, we have:

It’s like GRRM has a magnet underneath the world map, slowly drawing all the Starks who were dispersed from Winterfell at the beginning of the series back home for a family reunion. Now, which order these reunions will happen in and what will happen when all these claims start swirling around Winterfell is another question, but it is clear that this will give them plenty to do until the cast from the south turns up. (More on this in a second.)

For King’s Landing, we have:

Jaime Lannister, who’ll eventually be drawn into Cersei’s orbit in search of destiny. Unlike on the show, Jaime has no motivation to go North and very pressing issues involving the collapse of the Lannister regime.

Cersei Lannister, who’s not leaving King’s Landing unless it’s feet-first in a pine box.

Jon Connington, the Golden Company, and son. They’re on the verge of taking the Iron Throne already, and they have no motive to go North. Or west for that matter.

Arianne Martell, whose TWOW chapters are pretty clearly leading her to marrying Aegon, with the idea of marrying Dorne’s spears to the Golden Company, and getting revenge on the Lannisters that doesn’t involve her having to bow to Quentyn. Such will be her short-lived triumph.

Daenerys Targaryen, who has given up on her dreams of ruling a peaceful Meereen and now wants to reclaim her Targaryen heritage with fire and blood.

Tyrion, who’s manuevering himself back into power with the Second Sons siding with Dany at Meereen and way more interested in revenge against Cersei than his show counterpart.

All of these characters’ motivations and backstories revolve around the Iron Throne itself or the past, current, or future occupants thereof. They notably have no reason to get themselves involved in the Northern storyline until some larger threat forces their hand. (For completeness’ sake, I should point out there’s also a knot of characters around Oldtown as well, but that’s not directly relevant since showEuron is pointless.)

In addition to these broad plot dynamics, there’s also more specific foreshadowing, namely the prophecies Dany receives at the House of the Undying. As I pointed out in at the time, Dany’s prophecies have a very specific threefold structure – three fires, three mounts, three treasons – which correspond neatly to past/present/future (or alternatively, the beginning/middle/end of Dany’s story). Parts of the prophecy accord to things Dany has already done/experienced, so that we know the prophecy’s kosher. This gives us a rough sense of what Dany will be up to in the future, which is why it’s ultimately significant that a lot of her third fires/mounts/treasons revolve around Jon Snow. The suggestion is that Dany’s interactions with Jon Snow come toward the end, not the middle of her story, where she’s got other business in King’s Landing.

More of Dany’s to-do list gets added on with the “Slayer of Lies” and “Bride of Fire” sections. The former gives some indications of who Dany needs to defeat (either militarily or existentially): the “mummer’s dragon” clearly applies to Aegon as Varys’ puppet “Targaryen,” whereas the “blue-eyed king who cast no shadow” is Stannis. Given that Aegon is the more proximate opponent to Dany’s landing, it’s highly likely she goes to deal with him first and then Stannis after, rather than doing the baffling dog-leg that the show put us through in Seasons 7-8. The latter are another example of Jon Snow coming at the end of Dany’s matrimonial arc, with “her silver” representing her past with Drogo, the “corpse” with “grey lips smiling sadly” most likely referring to her Iron Suitor and/or Euron, and Jon’s “blue flower” again coming at the end.

Put together, I think these are strong indications that, in the books, Dany will go in a fairly straight line from Vaes Dothrak to Meereen to Volantis (clearing out old business) and from the Free Cities directly for King’s Landing, especially when she hears that a different Targaryen has taken her throne. Only when King’s Landing is resolved will she turn northward to her destiny.

Why Aegon Is Important

One of the biggest adaptational changes from the book to show in Seasons 5-8 has been the decision to excise Jon Connington and “Young Griff” from the ADWD narrative, while clearly positioning Cersei to take over their story (which we can see most clearly by the decision to have the Golden Company and Harry Strickland show up to die like mooks) as Dany’s antagonists and rival claimants to the Iron Throne.

By his very nature, Aegon VI Targaryen presents a very different sort of antagonist figure for Dany. Unlike Cersei, whose total lack of any claim to the throne the show was happy to ignore for two seasons, Aegon can present himself as the legitimate male heir of the previous dynasty – creating the same crisis for Dany that Jon posed in Episodes 4 and 5 – which the “mummer’s dragon” prophecy and foreshadowing in AFFC and ADWD show would be quite popular among the smallfolk and likely to succeed in winning the Iron Throne, albeit temporarily. I have a theory that Aegon is going to ultimately offer Dany a position as his junior wife (because he’s already married Arianne against Jon Connington’s advice), threatening to subsume her role as the Prince Who Was Promised/chief of the three-headed dragon as well, but that’s not necessary for this to work. As a Targaryen (or even a Blackfyre), Aegon could also present himself as a potential dragonrider as well, making him even more of an existential threat for our protagonist…more on this in a bit.

Aegon also works as a good red herring and stumbling block for Jon Snow (more so than Cersei): folks are less likely to believe in a second lost male heir after the first, and I imagine no small amount of the tension between Dany and Jon will be that Dany will have just dealt with a lie to be slain just like him, and will thus be understandably skeptical about accepting Howland Reed’s stories about Rhaegar and Lyanna. Similarly, if I’m right about Aegon attempting to become a dragonrider, I imagine she’ll be quite resistant to Jon trying his hand at it. In this way, we have tension between Dany and Jon that is way more understanable and rooted in character and experience than the sudden dive into paranoia we saw in Episodes 4 and 5, and the threat of the Army of the Dead is right there to provide a catalyst for resolution.

As I mentioned above, Aegon’s potential as a dragonrider makes him important as an antagonist for another reason: it sets up the possibility for a second Dance of the Dragons that GRRM has been foreshadowing throughout ADWD and the released TWOW chapters. If, as I suspect, Dany challenges Aegon to prove his claim with a duel by dragon, or Aegon gets his hands on a stray dragon during a conventional conflict between his army and Dany’s, the conflict between the two dragons is the perfect opportunity for the accidental ignition of the wildfire caches…which creates the conditions in which King’s Landng could burn without Dany actually becoming a moral monster. (Not that she’s without culpability, but there are degrees of culpability for a reason.)

Speaking of wildfire caches, Aegon is also important for how Jaime and Cersei’s arcs end and the role that the valonqar prophecy plays in that. To begin with, Aegon and his bride Arianne are a great red herring for Cersei, who’s been looking for “younger, more beautiful” queens out to topple her – first she thinks it’s Sansa, then she thinks it’s Margaery, now as Aegon sweeps to power she thinks it’s Arianne. Then all of the sudden Dany shows up as both the most beautiful woman in the world and the Mother of Dragons, and now Cersei feels herself in the grip of prophecy once again. But then her two enemies turn against each other like Stannis and Renly had, and Cersei feels the crucial Hope Spot that’s a part of all the best prophecy tragedies. While her enemies fight dragon to dragon, she’ll use her secret weapon that she’s been obsessing about since AFFC to kill them all and defy the fates.

Which brings in Jaime. We’ve already seen that Jaime isn’t about to help Cersei with her trial – he’s got his own destiny with a trial by combat – but the news that King’s Landing has fallen will bring him back to the capitol to try to see what he can recover from a life that’s falling apart. And there he’ll encounter his worst nightmare: the twin he loves and hates, about to set off the emerald conflagration he sacrificed his honor to prevent, all in the hope of trying to scramble back on top of a heap long there’s any chance of a Lannister victory. In that scenario, he has no chance and no choice, and will end his life trying to save the realm once more by killing Cersei, as prophecy foretold. Unfortunately for him, his costly victory will be merely existential, because even though Cersei’s active attempt to set off the wildfire bomb fails, the duel between Aegon and Dany touches it off inadvertently.

Staring Into the Abyss, Not Diving In

So why is it important that Dany is involved in burning the city, but not as a conscious, willful, and needless war crime? Because, as I’ve said, it’s the moment that Dany looks into the abyss, not the moment where she decides to take a swan-dive into the abyss. In ADWD – and I think this pattern will hold in TWOW – both Dany and Jon learn the wrong lessons and then are likely to wildly overcorrect.

In Dany’s case, she recoils from the truth about her dragon children and ultimately the internal rage they represent by trying desperately to make peace at any cost with a bunch of slaver bad-faith actors until she breaks, runs, and decides out on the Dothraki Sea that she was wrong to try anything but “fire and blood.” This lesson is the one she’s going to apply to the Dothraki, the Yunkish army, Volantis, and anyone else who gets in her way all the way to King’s Landing. When the city burns, she’ll be smacked in the face with the truth that “fire and blood” isn’t any more of a solution, that it’ll consume what she’s fighting for at the same time. The middle path – the idea that the tremendous and inherently dangerous power of the dragons is only worthwhile turned to the task of saving humanity from existential oblivion – is what she’s going to have to come to understand in the end. And that’s going to require a good bit of the human heart at war with itself, as Dany has to decide which is more important for her to be: savior or queen?

This emotional journey is echoed by Jon’s, because again GRRM called the series A Song of Ice and Fire and larded up all the prophecies about Jon and Dany as lovers and brides for a reason, even if shippers don’t like it. In ADWD, Jon tries his best to save the world through righteous self-denial – pushing away friends, alienating the establishment, burning the candle on both ends – until he hits his limit and, like Dany, breaks. When he comes back from the dead, I imagine Jon will not only be dealing with that existential dilemma (because GRRM isn’t about people dying and coming back unchanged) but also rejecting both the Call and the world in a massive depressive, resentful funk. I did everything right, tried my best, and this is the thanks I get?

And then he meets someone. There’s tension and a lack of trust between them about their pasts and their futures, but there’s no way a post-KL Dany can accept the idea that the answer is to give up, that all of the pain and sacrifice and mistakes have to be for something. And in this fashion, the ice melts, the blue rose blooms, and the world is saved by love – however transitiory or tragic – because for the last damn time GRRM IS A ROMANTIC NOT A NIHILIST.