Rhaego

The whole situation is fishy. Not just the birth but the way other elements of the story seem to relate to it. I can’t get into them all with this spoiler scope but the birth itself is plenty to begin.

We start off with the birth. It’s the first thing GRRM presents to us, and the order of information revealed is very important in a story.

The chapter is Daenerys IX and it opens at the beginning of a long and trippy sequence of dreams involving, in order, the red door, Drogo sex, Rhaegar, Viserys death, adult Rhaego, Daenerys transformation, the red door, and Daenerys as Rhaegar. Each section is punctuated by some variant of “You don’t want to wake the dragon, do you?” that progressively shrinks to “ . . . the dragon . . . ”.

The section about adult Rhaego seems to foreshadow his death in this dream right before we actually learn about it.

She could feel the heat inside her, a terrible burning in her womb. Her son was tall and proud, with Drogo’s copper skin and her own silver-gold hair, violet eyes shaped like almonds. And he smiled for her and began to lift his hand toward hers, but when he opened his mouth the fire poured out. She saw his heart burning through his chest, and in an instant he was gone, consumed like a moth by a candle, turned to ash. She wept for her child, the promise of a sweet mouth on her breast, but her tears turned to steam as they touched her skin.

“ . . . want to wake the dragon . . . ”

Without going full analyst on these fever dreams let’s say that they generally seem to be about a transformation in Dany.

Why did she hurt so much? It was as if her body had been torn to pieces and remade from the scraps. “I want . . . ”

That really echos the transformation we saw in the dream. Her flesh tore and she became a dragon.

she felt her skin tear open and smelled the stench of burning blood and saw the shadow of wings.

I’m getting a sense that the transformation that happens in the dream is a metaphor for a transformation that happens actually. Or maybe “torn to pieces” is just how one feels after child birth.

Dany wakes up and sees a frightened Jhiqui. Dany tries to ask Jhiqui to bring her something but can’t think of the word. I suspect Dany wants to hold her baby.

Dany needed . . . something . . . someone . . . what? It was important, she knew. It was the only thing in the world that mattered.

Your baby, right?

Jhiqui doesn’t seem to care what it is that Dany is trying to ask for, and she runs out of the tent calling for help. It makes sense that Jhiqui is frightened because her Khaleesi might be dying. Maybe Jhiqui saw the monstrous baby and now she’s frightened of the person who produced it. There are many things that could play into Jhiqui’s fear but let’s say it’s open to speculation.

I have to . . .

They found her on the carpet, crawling toward her dragon eggs.

Wow

Ser Jorah Mormont lifted her in his arms and carried her back to her sleeping silks, while she struggled feebly against him. Over his shoulder she saw her three handmaids, Jhogo with his little wisp of mustache, and the flat broad face of Mirri Maz Duur. “I must,” she tried to tell them, “I have to . . . ”

So she isn’t thinking about the baby after all. She wants her eggs. Jorah and Mirri show up and force her back to sleep.

“ . . . sleep, Princess,” Ser Jorah said.

“No,” Dany said. “Please. Please.”

“Yes.” He covered her with silk, though she was burning. “Sleep and grow strong again, Khaleesi. Come back to us.” And then Mirri Maz Duur was there, the maegi, tipping a cup against her lips. She tasted sour milk, and something else, something thick and bitter. Warm liquid ran down her chin. Somehow she swallowed. The tent grew dimmer, and sleep took her again. This time she did not dream. She floated, serene and at peace, on a black sea that knew no shore.

I get a sense that Dany has been asleep for a long time.

After a time—a night, a day, a year, she could not say—she woke again.

She asks her handmaids

“I have been sick,” Dany said. The Dothraki girl nodded. “How long?” The cloth was soothing, but Irri seemed so sad, it frightened her. “Long,” she whispered.

If there is any funny business going on with Rhaego, the author establishes as thoroughly as possible that there is plenty of opportunity.

Jhiqui came back with water and Mirri came with wine.

“Drink,” she said, lifting Dany’s head to the cup once more, but this time it was only wine.

Dany drank and fell asleep again.

“Bring me . . . ” she murmured, her voice slurred and drowsy. “Bring . . . I want to hold . . . ”

“Yes?” the maegi asked. “What is it you wish, Khaleesi?”

“Bring me . . . egg . . . dragon’s egg . . . please . . . ” Her lashes turned to lead, and she was too weary to hold them up.

She woke up clutching Viserion’s egg. Her fever is gone. So is her fear.

Her fingers trailed lightly across the surface of the shell, tracing the wisps of gold, and deep in the stone she felt something twist and stretch in response. It did not frighten her. All her fear was gone, burned away.

She feels strong and she describes this. At one point she explicitly says “I feel strong.” So it contrasts clearly with how weak she felt before. Maybe this is her transformation, or maybe sleep simply does the body good. She asks for water, fruit, dates, Jorah, a warm bath, Mirri, and Drogo, in that order.

Drogo . . . and my child.” Why had she not remembered the child until now?

Good question.

“My son . . . Rhaego . . . where is he? I want him.”

Her handmaid lowered her eyes. “The boy . . . he did not live, Khaleesi.” Her voice was a frightened whisper.

Jhiqui is fearful again. Dany lines up this event perfectly with her dream.

Dany released her wrist. My son is dead, she thought as Jhiqui left the tent. She had known somehow. She had known since she woke the first time to Jhiqui’s tears. No, she had known before she woke. Her dream came back to her, sudden and vivid, and she remembered the tall man with the copper skin and long silver-gold braid, bursting into flame.

She should weep, she knew, yet her eyes were dry as ash. She had wept in her dream, and the tears had turned to steam on her cheeks. All the grief has been burned out of me, she told herself. She felt sad, and yet . . . she could feel Rhaego receding from her, as if he had never been.

Dany has Jorah feel her warm eggs but they don’t feel warm to Jorah.

“No. Cold stone.” He took his hand away. “Princess, are you well? Should you be up, weak as you are?”

“Weak? I am strong, Jorah.” To please him, she reclined on a pile of cushions. “Tell me how my child died.”

“He never lived, my princess. The women say . . . ” He faltered, and Dany saw how the flesh hung loose on him, and the way he limped when he moved.

“Tell me. Tell me what the women say.”

He turned his face away. His eyes were haunted. “They say the child was . . . ”

She waited, but Ser Jorah could not say it. His face grew dark with shame. He looked half a corpse himself.

“Monstrous,” Mirri Maz Duur finished for him. The knight was a powerful man, yet Dany understood in that moment that the maegi was stronger, and crueler, and infinitely more dangerous. “Twisted. I drew him forth myself. He was scaled like a lizard, blind, with the stub of a tail and small leather wings like the wings of a bat. When I touched him, the flesh sloughed off the bone, and inside he was full of graveworms and the stink of corruption. He had been dead for years.”

Darkness, Dany thought. The terrible darkness sweeping up behind to devour her. If she looked back she was lost. “My son was alive and strong when Ser Jorah carried me into this tent,” she said. “I could feel him kicking, fighting to be born.” (AGOT Daenerys IX)

The news of Rhaego’s death and condition is often attributed to Jorah, but in truth Jorah could not speak the words. Because the words are painful, no doubt. Or possibly because the words are a lie. Mirri finished the story and description.