5 insane Game of Thrones theories that may come true in The Winds of Winter
By John Fallon
Image: Game of Thrones/HBO
Tyrion Lannister is actually Daenerys Targaryen’s son
The theory, posted by Reddit user u/xyseth, starts off with a fairly loose connection between the city of King’s Landing and the ancient Greek city of Thebes, the birthplace of the mythic Oedipus, best known as the guy who killed his father, slept with his mother, and then blinded himself. Xyseth spends a lot of time drawing parallels between Oedipus with Tyrion Lannister, both disowned by their father and destined to bring downfall to their lands and family.
Like Oedipus, Tyrion has already killed his father. Thankfully, it’s impossible for him to marry his mother, who died during childbirth…unless you open your mind to possibility and take a running leap through time.
At the end of the first book in the series, A Game of Thrones, Daenerys Targaryen unwittingly sacrifices her unborn child Rhaego to Mirri Maz Duur, a godswife and captive of Khal Drogo’s khalasar, to save her husband. Dany gives birth to a child that Mirri Maz Duur claims was hideously deformed. “Monstrous,” she said. “Twisted. I drew him forth myself. He was scaled like a lizard, blind, with a stub of a tail and small leather wings like the wings of a bat.”
Compare the description above with Oberyn Martell’s telling stories told about what Tyrion looked like as a baby. “Your head was monstrous huge, we heard, half again the size of your body, and you had been born with thick black hair and a beard besides, an evil eye, and lion’s claws. Your teeth were so long you could not close your mouth, and between your legs were a girl’s privates as well as a boy’s.” Tyrion has also been called a “twisted little monkey demon” on occasion.
See where this is going yet? Mirri goes on to talk about the reversal of the cycle of time, claiming that Khal Drogo will be as he was, “When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not before.” To most, this is just a way of saying that Khal Drogo will never be well again. But to others, it’s one of the series’ many prophecies.
This theory goes that Mirri is implying that only through a reversal of time, symbolized by the sun moving in the wrong direction, can Drogo be revived. One book later, Quaithe, the mysterious red-masked figure in Qarth, has more to say about this reversal. “To go north, you must go south,” she says. “To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back.”
With all that build-up, let’s get to the point of it all. Using blood magic and the soul of Khal Drogo, Mirri Maz Duur transports an infant Rhaego through time and space to an already-pregnant Joanna Lannister, and he is born as Tyrion Lannister. The baby who was originally in Joanna’s womb is then brought into the future after “being dead for years” and is born as the monstrous creature Danereys gives birth to. Tyrion then completes the prophecy by finding and marrying Dany, taking after Oedipus.
This bananas theory is fairly self-conscious about what it is: a ridiculous notion out of touch with the realistic story Martin is telling, but very entertaining. Tyrion being Rhaego, the Stallion Who Mounts the World, would be one heck of a plot twist. The author ends the theory with this warning: “The world shudders as Tyrion begins to mount it. A very small man can cast a very large shadow.”
