This post contains major spoilers for both A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms‘ third episode as well as major future events in Egg’s life. If you don’t want to know about either you can instead read our coverage of episode two.
“You shall be king… and die in a hot fire, and worms shall feed upon your ashes. And all who know you shall rejoice in your dying.”
George R.R. Martin once said, “Prophecy can be a tricky business.” That’s certainly true in his world of ice and fire. In Westeros and beyond it’s easy to misinterpret vague words or signs. Visions, dreams, and omens mislead characters like Melisandre and Stannis far more often than they help those who trust in them. But in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms‘ third episode we heard a prophecy we know will come true. And because we know the sad fate that awaits Egg, the show might have just revealed the terrible truth about the mysterious tragedy that will end his life. His death might not be an accident at all.
Predicting a lowborn hedge knight will “know great success and be richer than a Lannister” is exactly the type of contrived silliness you’d expect from a “fortune-teller” in search of coin at a tourney. That’s certainly how Ser Duncan took his brief exchange with the hooded woman. Only, he might have taken Egg’s fortune as deadly seriously as his scared squire did if Dunk had already known Egg’s true identity. It’s one thing to foretell a child he will grow up to be King. It’s another to tell a secret Targaryen prince that. And it’s something else entirely to tell a royal son everyone who knows him will be happy when he dies in a hot fire.
It’s also something that will absolutely happen. Her prophecy is entirely correct. Egg will become King. He will eventually die in flames. And his death will make many people happy. Let’s dive into how exactly this A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms prophecy comes true in the books and what new light it sheds on Egg’s ultimate death.
Egg Will Become King of Westeros in the World of Game of Thrones
Egg will one day rule Westeros as the fortune-teller predicts when she says, “You shall be king.” The Realm will call him Aegon the Unlikely because his rise to the Iron Throne will be so unexpected. He is the fourth son of a fourth son. His stern father, Maekar, has three older brothers, two with sons of their own. At the Tourney of Ashford, Maekar is far, far down the line of succession. His youngest son Aegon is even further away.
We’d have to get into even more spoilers to explain how and why Aegon will ultimately ascend to the Iron Throne. Some of the reasons are best avoided for now. But regardless of how Egg ends up in the Conqueror’s chair, his rise will not be cause for celebration among the lords of Westeros.
Egg Is the Nobility’s Reluctant Choice to Be King
The Lords of Westeros will want to crown anyone but Aegon. They will view him as part peasant, after he spent his childhood roaming the Realm as the squire to hedge knight of no renown. That’s no way for a prince to live, let alone the man tasked with protecting the Realm. That brings us to the start of what the fortune teller meant when telling Egg the following in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, “And all who know you shall rejoice in your dying.”
The Lords of Westeros will be so desperate to avoid picking Egg, they will even quietly offer the crown to his older brother Aemon. He’s older than Egg, the third of Maekar’s four sons, and yet shouldn’t even be an option. When they turn to him, Aemon is a sworn Maester of the Citadel. By offering him the throne, they will ask him to forsake his vows. Many decades later that wise, elderly member of the Night’s Watch will tell Jon Snow on Game of Thrones about how he turned down the chance to be king. (On his deathbed, Aemon will also call out to his brother, Egg.)
Once Aemon refuses, there will be no other reasonable choice for King. The lords of Westeros will then, begrudgingly, place Egg on the Iron Throne. And then he’ll make everyone who didn’t want that to happen really angry.
Egg’s Own Children Will Also Defy Him
A life spent among the smallfolk as Ser Duncan’s squire will, fittingly, make Aegon the Unlikely unlike most Targaryen rulers. He will enact policies that benefit the lowborn. Those decrees will come at the cost of the highborn. You can guess how that will go over with the ruling class of Westeros. They will grow to resent him and push back. But its not just Lords that will stymie Egg, it’s his own family.
Aegon the Unlikely will then try to fix many of his problems the old-fashioned way. He will arrange marriages between his children and major houses of the Realm. (His grandfather Daeron II, current King on A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, did exactly that. He married a Princess of House Martell. That’s how Dorne finally became the Seventh Kingdom House Targaryen had always falsely claimed.) Only, Aegon’s unexpected rise to power will also help destroy his reign.
Because no one will ever expect Egg to sit on the Iron Throne, he will be allowed to marry for love rather than politics. (Free of the royal court and its influence, he will not approve of his family’s tradition of marrying siblings, either.) This sounds sweet and wonderful, but eventually his own children will throw Aegon’s marriage back in his face. They will refuse his betrothals and marry for love in secret or openly against his wishes. Some of his children will even marry one another. When they blow up these high-stakes arranged marriages, meant to shore up Aegon’s power, these very public insults to noble houses will cause even more political problems. They will further weaken Aegon the Unlikely. They’ll also ruin everything he hoped to achieve.
Even the Small Folk Will Turn Against Egg (And That’s Pretty Much Everyone as the Prophecy Predicts)
Eventually—against his own deep desires to truly help the people who most deserve it—Egg will rescind some of his policies granting additional rights and freedoms to the smallfolk. He’ll seemingly have no other choice.
We can imagine how that will make the lowborn feel. Their King—the one who vouched for them, who grew up among them, ate with them, received their hospitality, who knew them and their struggles better than any Targaryen or lord ever—will take away their chance at a better life. And he will do so for lords and ladies who hate him, always and forever. But that won’t stop Egg from trying to help.
Egg’s Death Is Indeed a Fiery One, But Little Is Known About Its Circumstances
And yet, despite seeing why highborn, his family, and lowborn alike will come to hate Egg, the harshness of the fortune-teller’s words seem to indicate more than dislike for him. They seem to foretell true animus, the kind that might reveal to us the real reason Egg’ will die “in a hot fire,” the last portion of the prophecy for us to examine.
Egg, against the advice of many, will come to see only one way out of his predicament. Without the respect and support of the high lords of Westeros, and without the political marriages to mend those bridges, he will try to attain the one kind of power he believes will guarantee he can be the ruler he wants to be. Egg will spend years acquiring lost texts and lore in an attempt to hatch dragon eggs.
His attempts will bring him and those closest to him, including Dunk, to his childhood home, the Targaryen pleasure castle of Summerhall. There, 50 years after the Tourney at Ashford where he heard the fortune-teller’s prophesy (a show creation), he will die in a terrible fire as she predicted. It’s a night that will forever change the Realm, one of the most important in all of Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire.
The Last Part of A Knight of the Seven Kingdom‘s Prophecy Hints The Egg’s Death May Have Been Murder
No one besides the author knows exactly what happened the night of Egg’s death. It’s shrouded in mystery. The few who survive prefer not to speak about it. The few written documents that survive are incomplete. All we know is history says pyromancers, wild fire, and possibly even sorcery resulted in an inferno that claimed Egg, Dunk, and many more.
But the ferocity of the fortune-teller’s prophecy in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms suggests something else was at play that night. As we’ve discussed, readers know Egg will prove unpopular. But it’s now clear from this scene on A Knight of the Seven Kingdom it’s more than that. The entire Realm will truly detest him. And that’s why it’s possible the Tragedy of Summerhall isn’t an accident at all. It might be sabotage.
When everyone who knows you will rejoice in your death, it’s more than possible they caused it. It might even be probable. Targaryen kings died under mysterious circumstances many times. It’s not hard to believe that one so loathed by both high and low was killed when he tried to bring back dragons.
Especially not when you factor another credible, convincing theory. It says the maesters killed off dragons a century earlier and wanted to ensure they never returned. Maesters are men of science who want to shape the world with knowledge. Dragons are magic come to life. Untamable, destructive magic Aegon wanted to bring back.
Readers have long wondered if the Tragedy of Summerhall wasn’t an accident but instead a terrible act of violence meant to murder the King, Egg. That seems more possible than ever after A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms‘ fortune-teller. And yet, her prophecy might only be true because of an even older one.
One Way or Another, Egg’s Tragedy Is Tied Up in Prophecy
Even if Egg’s death truly was a foolish attempt gone horribly wrong rather than murder, it might, in fact, be a different prophecy that causes A Knight of the Seven Kingdom‘s prophecy to come true.
Egg’s eldest son will marry for love and renounce his claim as heir to the Iron Throne. His wife, Jenny of Oldstones (yes, from the song), will then bring a friend with her to court. That strange mysterious figure—who some call a woods witch—will share a prophecy with House Targaryen. She’ll foretell that the Prince That Was Promised, the one who will save the world from darkness, will come from the line born of Aegon’s grandson and granddaughter. That grandson is Aerys, the future Mad King and last Targaryen ruler. His oldest child will be Rhaegar Targaryen, father of Jon Snow.
As if all of that isn’t an obvious enough connection between these many stories, Rhaegar will be born during the Tragedy of Summerhall. The newborn will escape the fires that will claim Dunk and Egg. And Rhaegar’s pending birth might be the real reason Aegon the Unlikely wanted to hatch dragon eggs.
House of the Dragon revealed why Aegon the Conqueror turned his eyes to Westeros. House Targaryen, thanks to a prophetic dream(!), had escaped the Doom of Valyria. It then quietly lived as the world’s last dragonlords on Dragonstone for a century. Right up until one of them suddenly cared about taking over the whole continent. Aegon only did that, though, because of his own dream, the one that presaged the eventual return of the White Walkers. He conquered the Realm because of a prophesy then passed down to every Targaryen heir (until at least when Rhaenyra told her son Jace).
If Egg knew about Aegon’s song of ice and fire (and he very well might have even if his father didn’t, because of his powerful warg uncle Bloodraven, the Three-Eyed Raven), then the woods witch’s prophecy might have inadvertently killed Egg. It might have him Egg to Summerhall that fateful night. He was desperate to have the strength he needed to enact his smallfolk agenda, yes. But he might have also ignored advice and tried something so obviously risky because he believed the whole world needed dragons. If his grandson would need to save the world against ice, he’d need dragons to fight it. And they would need time to grow since the White Walkers would soon arrive.
If that’s why Egg really went to Summerhall that night it would make the possible truth about his death even worse.
As the fortune-teller said at Ashford, Egg—a good man whose reign will fail for reasons beyond his control—will die in a hot fire. Everyone will then rejoice over the death of a king who only wanted to uphold his sworn duty to protect the Realm. And he was doing so in ways they never even knew. In a fight against an enemy they could never imagine.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdom‘s prophecy points to murder. It suggests the Tragedy of Summerhall was no accident. And, even worse, even if they didn’t know it, they might have killed Egg because he wanted to save everyone.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. He can’t wait to talk about Ser Duncan’s role during the Tragedy of Summerhall. You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.
The post Did A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS Reveal The Truth About a Targaryen Tragedy? appeared first on Nerdist.
This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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