The Mad King's Song of Ice and Fire translation may have finally solved one of Game of Thrones' oldest mysteries

George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire is a book series known for its long-game foreshadowing and seemingly endless well of mysteries. Part of what makes the world of ice and fire so appealing is that there's always more to discover, and nothing, from prophecies to politics to dreams, is ever quite what it seems at first glance. This has given rise to no end of fan theories over the years, especially given the pereptual wait for Martin's final two books. What better way to cope than to pore over every line he's published to date?

But of all those mysteries, one of the oldest and most important is the prophecy of the Prince That Was Promised. This figure is destined to lead humanity against the forces of darkness at a crucial hour. With the White Walker threat on the rise north of the Wall in the books, it's long been believed that the Prince That Was Promised prophecy would be a key component of their eventual defeat.

While the books sow no end of confusion about the prince — including Melisandre's interchangeable use of the Azor Ahai prophecy, which actually references a totally different figure from the mythology of Essos — both Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon seemingly shed light on the truth. Game of Thrones confirmed the prophesied hero could be a prince or princess who was promised, since the syntax of Old Valyria for the title wasn't gendered.

Meanwhile, House of the Dragon gave us the massive reveal early in its first season that Aegon the Conqueror, the first Targaryen king of Westeros, launched his conquest in part because he had a prophetic dream that only his line, with dragons at their behest and the Seven Kingdoms united behind them, could resist the terrible danger that would one day come out of the north. His dream was called the Song of Ice and Fire.

This wasn't the first time we heard the name "Song of Ice and Fire" in reference to the prophecy. Rhaegar Targaryen believed that Aegon, his infant son with Elia Martell, was the Prince That Was Promised, as was first revealed in Daenerys' visions at the House of the Undying in A Clash of Kings. More references follow throughout the books, all the way down to the fifth and most current volume, A Dance with Dragons.

However, we've never had the prophecy outright spelled out before, which has made it hard to truly dissect. That just changed in a major way, thanks to the play Game of Thrones: The Mad King, which revealed the actual words of the Song of Ice and Fire prophecy for the first time ever. And the implications are insane.

The Song of Ice and Fire prophecy has been revealed at last

The words for the Song of Ice and Fire surfaced this week thanks to David J. Peterson, the conlanger who creates all the fictional languages for Westeros adaptations, like High Valyrian and Dothraki. Peterson sat down with AltShiftX for an interview about his work on The Mad King, where he created a High Valyrian version of the Song of Ice and Fire that Rhaegar Targaryen sings during the tourney at Harrenhal.

While The Mad King created lots of original plot beats, it has been confirmed that certain elements came directly from George R.R. Martin himself. This inclusion of Rhaegar singing the Song of Ice and Fire was one of them.

According to Peterson, he received an English version of the Song of Ice and Fire from Ti Mikkel, Martin's writing assistant and lorekeeper. Here are the words:

Dreamed I of the end,
And mayhaps what comes after,
And woke with a scream and this song in my mouth,
The prince that was promised, from Ice and from Fire,
Dreamed in the glow of a bleeding star,
Born into salt and born into smoke,
There must be one more; the dragon has three heads.

Peterson had to tweak the wording of this original poem in order to fit the melody for the play's song in High Valyrian. Interestingly, his first draft of the High Valyrian changed the last line to "But a third will come; the dragon's last." But Martin's team insisted there had to be a mention of "heads" — which is not really surprising, considering how heavily that foreshadowing ties into the three-headed dragon sigil of House Targaryen. It's already fairly prominent in the books published to date.

Here's the final version of Peterson's translation:

A dream of the end brought this song
Screaming to my mouth
The prince that was promised, of Ice and Fire,
In the glow from the bleeding star
Born truly to salt and smoke;
But another must exist; the dragon has three heads

And here's the High Valyrian version. Peterson was fairly amused at how long that final line became compared to the rest of the song, but it was essential for the prophecy to be read correctly:

Mōro bē ēdrurys relgot ñuhot
Highȳsi amādas kesor vāedri
Suvio Perzō kīviō Dārilaros
Jehikarȳ hen qelot ānogro
Lopot ōrbrōt usittas drējī;
Yn ilagon tolio bēvilza; zaldrīzes hāri bartossa ēza.

A massive shoutout to @got_onstage on X for catching this part of the interview and sharing it. If you want to check out AltShiftX's full interview with Peterson, you can do that on their Patreon or Nebula page.

Now, let's talk about what this all means, because I'm strongly of the opinion that it may have finally solved a key element of the Prince That Was Promised prophecy.

The Prince That Was Promised is more than one person

Let's break the prophecy down piece by piece. The first few lines are fairly self-explanatory; they're from Aegon the Conqueror's perspective, setting the stage for how the dream came to him:

Dreamed I of the end,
And mayhaps what comes after,
And woke with a scream and this song in my mouth,

The next lines is where it starts to get very interesting:

The prince that was promised, from Ice and from Fire,
Dreamed in the glow of a bleeding star,
Born into salt and born into smoke,
There must be one more; the dragon has three heads.

All this time, right from the title of Martin's book series, it's been assumed that the Prince That Was Promised was a being possessing some quality of both ice and fire. That certainly seems to be the belief we see even in the play, where Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen become obsessed to varying degrees with fulfilling the prophecy.

However, I think the wording here is significant. "The prince that was promised, from Ice and from Fire." I think that alludes to two people. And the confirmation of that idea comes right at the end, in the line that Martin himself insisted needed to stay consistent in the play: "There must be one more; the dragon has three heads."

If the dragon needs one more to make three heads, that means the prophecy is alluding to two people, not one. One from Ice and one from Fire.

By this point, we've seen more than enough evidence to conclude with some certainty that those two prophesied people are Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen. The Mad King makes this parallel much more explicit, including the births of both Jon and Daenerys.

While the idea that the title of Martin's series, A Song of Ice and Fire, was always alluding to Jon and Daenerys, seeing it spelled out like this in the prophecy itself is still a massive reveal. It cements what so many fans have believed for so long, while simultaneously dispelling fan theories that the Prince That Was Promised was one or the other of those two main characters.

But of course, there's still one crucial element: the third head of the dragon. Who could that be?

Who is the third head of the dragon?

The idea that the dragon needs three heads is prominent not just in the Prince That Was Promised prophecy, but in the storyline of Daenerys Targaryen herself, where she hears this phrase during the vision of Rhaegar at the House of the Undying we mentioned earlier. It becomes a mantra throughout the remainder of her story, as she wonders who these other two "heads" will be. It's been long assumed that those two other people would become dragonriders along with Dany.

The prophecy as translated in the play more or less confirms one of them is Daenerys' nephew Jon Snow, which matches more or less with what happened in Game of Thrones.

As for the third, their identity remains a mystery. But I do think there is one likely candidate, at least out of the characters introduced in the story thus far. During his journey across Essos in A Dance with Dragons, Tyrion Lannister encounters a teenage boy with dyed blue hair who goes by the alias Young Griff — but claims to really be Rhaegar Targaryen and Elia Martell's son, Aegon Targaryen. There are many theories that this Aegon isn't truly Rhaegar's son, but an imposter from the Blackfyre bloodline who was raised to believe he is Rhaegar's son.

The jury is still out on whether this Aegon is truly a Targaryen, or if he's "fAegon," as he's known in the fandom (short for "fake Aegon"). But let's just entertain for a moment the idea that he could be Aegon Targaryen, who was swapped with another baby and spirited out of King's Landing before Gregor Clegane killed his mother. If so, he would have been born right around the same time as Daenerys Stormborn and Jon Snow, both of whom fit the prophecy. Is it possible that Aegon fits it as well?

I think it's more likely than many of the other possibilities. As much as I'd like to say it could be another fan-favorite like Tyrion Lannister, I simply don't think there's too much evidence that really points to him, outside of his prominence in the story. Aegon, on the other hand, is firmly wrapped up in the Targaryen storyline already. If he truly is Rhaegar and Elia's child, he has a better claim to the Iron Throne than Daenerys, and will be one of the most important characters in the whole story during the final two books.

As things stand by the end of A Dance with Dragons, Aegon and his guardian Jon Connington have launched an invasion on Westeros, successfully conquering large swathes of the Stormlands. Varys is working from the shadows to support him in King's Landing. And from preview chapters for The Winds of Winter, we know Arianne Martell of Dorne is on her way to forge an alliance with him. Whenever Aegon does finally come face to face with Daenerys it will be as equals — which is exactly what Tyrion Lannister counseled him to do during their brief but very memorable encounter on the river Rhoyne.

Whether Young Griff does end up being the third head of the dragon, or Martin pulls off one of his classic twists and steers us in a totally different direction, we'll only find out if and when The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring come out. Until then, we're fortunate to have revelations like this one from The Mad King to fuel more fan theories for years to come.

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