Prophecies in A Song of Ice and Fire - They're Always Crap

 By Ephraim Belnap 

Here’s the truth - the prophecies in ASOIAF are horsecrap. 

Now, let me expand upon and specify what I mean by that. 

In the premiere of House of the Dragon, King Viserys revealed to his daughter Rhaenyra that their ancestor Aegon the First, founder of their dynasty, had a dream of a great cold night coming to sweep the earth, and was convinced that there needed to be a Targaryen there to unite the seven realms to face it. It’s for this reason that continuation of their rule is so important. But that’s bullshit. Because we know that when that cold night comes, it’s going to be defeated by someone totally unrelated to the Targaryens. It was completely wrong. But it may not have been an accident to say that… 

When you look at the way prophecy is employed in A Song of Ice and Fire (the majority of prophecies being relegated to the books), we see a consistent pattern in how they’re handled. Dunk and Egg. Aegon. The hammer fall. Rhaegar. When we look at people who place stock in prophecy, the prophecy is believed in by the key player, but it never, repeat, NEVER comes true the way they think it will. There are often surface similarities, but prophecies are accurate less than 40% of the time. Not accurate enough to be worth basing life-saving actions on. 

In summary,

In The Tales of Dunk and Egg: The Mystery Knight,  Daemon Blackfyre - a Targaryen cousin - had a prophecy that a dragon egg would be hatched at the castle Whitewalls. But that didn’t come true at all. He was wholly wrong. All it got him was prison and loss. A relatively small mistake. 

Then, during the Dance of the Dragons, recounted in Fire and Blood, someone claimed a rogue dragon rider Hugh Hammer - a distant Targaryen relation - could fulfill a prophecy that said, “When the hammer shall fall upon the dragon, a new king shall rise, and none shall stand before him.” Because he wielded a hammer and was thinking of usurping the king, Hugh thought it  was for him, but A) he never became king, and B) Fans would say that prophecy, if accurate, would have to be about Robert Baratheon 200 years later. Lord Hammer was totally wrong. And so far as we know, Robert never heard that prophecy, so its existence had ZERO bearing on his actions. 

Aegon the First allegedly dreamed a great cold night was coming to swallow Westeros, and that the Targaryens had to be on the throne to unite everyone against it. But as we know from the show (which HotD shares continuity with), that doesn’t seem to be true even tangentially, because 95% of the essential elements that saved the day were already present without Targaryen monarchs. I think you could make an argument that this is partially due to bad writing, but even then, the Targaryen most instrumental to the Night’s defeat wasn’t a king, it was Jon Snow, who was a bastard and wasn’t being treated like a Targaryen at all. So once again, in the shows’ continuity, the prophecy didn’t come true the way Aegon thought it would AT ALL. 

And then there’s Rhaegar, the prime offender. As Barristan Selmy and others tell us in A Feast For Crows, Rhaegar believed that there would be a Prince Who Was Promised. A hero who would banish the darkness. And at first he thought HE was the Prince, then he thought HIS KIDS with his wife were “the Prince”, and that the Prince was actually three people - “the dragon has three heads.” And then when his wife couldn’t risk conception for a third, he shacked up with Lyanna Stark and tried to have more kids with her. Those kids were gonna be the one! Third time’s the charm! 

But as everything else in the series tells us from the first page, this was a terrible idea. It plunged the realm into war. It destroyed Rhaegar’s family and many noble ones. It had countless consequences for every player and every main character for years to come. And it led to the death of many innocents and children in its time, and in the subsequent conflicts during the main series. This was the consequence of following prophecy. And a kingdom burned for it. 

So looking at these examples (and there are even more we didn’t have time for), we see a clear pattern crafted by George RR Martin - prophecies cause more problems than they solve. When people put their faith in a future that MIGHT happen, they sacrifice the good they could do by taking the world as it is in the present. And this occurs every single time. 

I think you could argue this comes from a study of religion. For example, if you talk to any devout Christian (my local religion) about politics long enough, they’ll say something like, “Well, Jesus is gonna come soon anyway, we’re in the last days.” And you know what comes out of opinions like that? Supporting policy that doesn’t make sense in the present because you’re banking on prophecy being relevant to it. But we don’t KNOW that the Bible is talking about our specific circumstance right here, right now, all the time always! We’re guessing or putting our personal expectations on them a lot of the time. And so did the Targaryens. That's what ASOIAF is trying to tell us. 

Prophecies have use because they help people bring order and structure to their lives and nurture a spiritual life. But they also can turn out in terrible ways. When someone gambles lives on a prophecy’s outcome instead of on evidence, the lives are often forfeit. 

So don’t worry about the Targaryens fulfilling prophecies on House of the Dragon. They have prophecies, but they’re unreliable. And if you hear any more from them, don’t be excited. Pity the poor bastards for taking them seriously, because sure as night follows the day, they’re gonna end up doing something destructive and terrible because of them.