Thoughts of Samwell, Maester Aemon, AFFC Samwell IV:
On Braavos, it had seemed possible that Aemon might recover. Xhondo’s talk of dragons had almost seemed to restore the old man to himself. That night he ate every bite Sam put before him. “No one ever looked for a girl,” he said. “It was a prince that was promised, not a princess. Rhaegar, I thought … the smoke was from the fire that devoured Summerhall on the day of his birth, the salt from the tears shed for those who died. He shared my belief when he was young, but later he became persuaded that it was his own son who fulfilled the prophecy, for a comet had been seen above King’s Landing on the night Aegon was conceived, and Rhaegar was certain the bleeding star had to be a comet. What fools we were, who thought ourselves so wise! The error crept in from the translation. Dragons are neither male nor female, Barth saw the truth of that, but now one and now the other, as changeable as flame. The language misled us all for a thousand years. Daenerys is the one, born amidst salt and smoke. The dragons prove it.” Just talking of her seemed to make him stronger. “I must go to her. I must. Would that I was even ten years younger.” (—Maester Aemon, AFFC Samwell IV)
Maester Aemon has an epiphany about The Prince That Was Promised prophecy. He thinks that the gender neutrality of Valyrian language can accommodate an interpretation of the prophecy in which TPTWP is a woman, and therefore Daenerys.
If this interpretation of the prophecy is entirely correct, then George RR Martin has completely robbed his readers of the fun of figuring out the prophecy. And since Martin is a better writer than that, the one thing I can be absolutely positive about is that Maester Aemon’s interpretation is not entirely correct.
That isn’t to say that his epiphany is worthless to us. On the contrary, it may be a critical component in our exploration of the story’s mysteries, whether for TPTWP or any other mystery. But it is to say that one of two things must be true. (1) Daenerys is not TPTWP (2) If Daenerys is TPTWP, this reasoning is not the way it will manifest in the story.
Through the lens of that metatext, in which the author would obviously never tell us the answer to a big mystery (and less-so in this straightforward way) the situation as a whole places gender subversion center stage, sharing its spotlight with That Which Is Obviously Wrong.
So, whatever the resolution to TPTWP prophecy turns out to be, this passage of Maester Aemon is a whispered threat to the audience that our insistence that TPTWP is Daenerys, or any woman, will result, in one way or another, in making us feel foolish indeed. Because of that, I can safely exclude all women from my search for The Prince That Was Promised.
With Maester Aemon’s passage exposing to me a thematic criticism of gender subversion, the implications for the Valonqar prophecy come to the foreground. Valonqar will be a male, too.
Coming at Valonqar from another angle, I can see that, while the word valonqar may or may not be gender neutral, the Valyrian language as a whole cannot possibly lack for gender-specific words that mean brother and sister. The gender distinction is too important in practical everyday life to have never born out in language. So even if valonqar translates to little sibling rather than little brother, there must also be a Valyrian word that means little brother. And since Maggy didn’t use it, and since Cersei’s research revealed valonqar to mean little brother, the story so far has given me every reason to think valonqar means little brother and no reason to think it means little sibling.
The dwarf tore a loaf of bread in half. “And you had best be careful what you say of my family, magister. Kinslayer or no, I am a lion still.”
That seemed to amuse the lord of cheese no end. He slapped a meaty thigh and said, “You Westerosi are all the same. You sew some beast upon a scrap of silk, and suddenly you are all lions or dragons or eagles. I can take you to a real lion, my little friend. The prince keeps a pride in his menagerie. Would you like to share a cage with them?” (ADWD Tyrion I)
As if to echo Illyrio’s criticisms of Westerosi people, Aemon’s reasoning matches the tendency of Westerosi people to take their animal heraldry too seriously. Aemon is supposing that the existence of gender neutrality in the words that Valyrians use to refer to dragons means that there must also be gender neutrality in the words that Valyrians use to refer to human beings. But that need not be the case. In consideration of the practical everyday need to distinguish between male and female people, whether in the family, at work or anywhere, the silliness of Aemon’s assumption comes to the foreground. In consideration of the human tendency to neglect to distinguish between the genders of animals when referring to cows (heffer or bull) deer (doe or stag) chickens (hen or rooster) and more, the reasons why the Valyrians didn’t distinguish between male and female dragons were likely the same reasons as our own: Most of us are not animal breeders or hunters.
This concept of theme allows me to make some predictions about the audience’s response to it. One is that some of the audience will criticize that the Valyrian language need not distinguish between genders because the imagination of the author need not be as constrained as my own imagination. I expect also that they’ll point to the genre of the story being fantasy to suggest that realism can be thrown out.
These responses will exemplify the reason for the existence of the story’s thematic criticism of gender subversion. Gender expression and art quality are two casualties of the crusade against gender uniformity.
Afterword Feb 17, 2024
I should confess that I cheated in writing this essay. Normally I try to build my analysis of the story from bottom to top, beginning from the standpoint of a reader who does not know how the mystery concludes and working through the mystery every step of the way to arrive at the mystery’s conclusion. In this one, I began with my knowledge of the conclusion that I got from elsewhere in the story and contrived the analysis from it. The analysis will still stand the test of time, and its predictions explicit and implicit will nevertheless bear out in the story’s present, past and future, but I think it would have been better had I not broken my usual form and jumped the gun. It should be incorporated into a full length comprehensive TPTWP analysis. As always, I hope to find the time to write it some day. Until I do, I will leave this essay up.
Created Jul 12, 2022
Updated Feb 17, 2024 – Afterword
Apples and Dragons 