11 examples of George R.R. Martin’s subtle foreshadowing in A Song of Ice and Fire
By John Fallon
10. Daenerys burns King’s Landing (maybe)
Whether or not Daenerys will burn King’s Landing in the books as she does in the final season of Game of Thrones is unknown, but if it does occur, some lines will start looking ironic. For instance, there’s a great bit from A Clash of Kings where Daenerys talks about her desire NOT to burn the city to rubble. It’d be very like Martin to plant that as an eventual tell that she will, in fact, reduce King’s Landing to a blackened ruin:
"The thought of home disquieted her. If her sun-and-stars had lived, he would have led his khalasar across the poison water and swept away her enemies, but his strength had left the world. Her bloodriders remained, sworn to her for life and skilled in slaughter, but only in the ways of the horselords. The Dothraki sacked cities and plundered kingdoms, they did not rule them. Dany had no wish to reduce King’s Landing to a blackened ruin full of unquiet ghosts. She had supped enough on tears. I want to make my kingdom beautiful, to fill it with fat men and pretty maids and laughing children. I want my people to smile when they see me ride by, the way Viserys said they smiled for my father. But before she could do that, she must conquer. Daenerys, A Clash of Kings"
Speaking of characters setting fire to King’s Landing, Martin may have laid some track for Cersei Lannister to blow up the Sept of Baelor. In one point in the books, Hallyne informs Tyrion Lannister that two hundred jars of wildfire were discovered in a storeroom below the Sept in 298 AC, and that they’d found a lost cache underneath the Dragonpit. This was because Aerys, recognizing Robert Baratheon as an immediate threat to his rule, commanded his pyromancers to place pots of wildfire underneath King’s Landing. The Mad King was willing to burn the whole city to the ground before letting the rebel take it.
Remnants of King Aerys II’s wildfire plot were additionally confirmed in the episode of Game of Thrones, “No One.” After Tommen outlaws trial by combat, Cersei asks Qyburn what he knows about an “old rumor,” and he says it’s true. And then, of course, Cersei blows up the Sept of Baelor, and we see other green explosions going off when Dany attacks the city later.