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LChris24

The Great War/Dance of the Dragons II occurring simultaneously (Spoilers Extended)

EXTENDED

We currently have 20 POVs spread across approximately 13 locations. I expect both numbers to decrease throughout TWOW and I think its possible we end TWOW/begin ADOS with as few as two theatres (with numerous POVs spread across each). A northern plotline and a southern plotline.

The Great War (North) & the Dance of the Dragons II (South)

This isn't a new theory, I've seen it posted about numerous times. I just wanted to share a few quotes that could potentially go along with the idea that due to spacing that the Dance of the Dragons II will occur in the south while the beginnings of the Great War start in the north.

Stannis has come to understand that as a king his duty is to the realm and that he had things backwards:

Lord Seaworth is a man of humble birth, but he reminded me of my duty, when all I could think of was my rights. I had the cart before the horse, Davos said. I was trying to win the throne to save the kingdom, when I should have been trying to save the kingdom to win the throne." Stannis pointed north. "There is where I'll find the foe that I was born to fight."

"His name may not be spoken," Melisandre added softly. "He is the God of Night and Terror, Jon Snow, and these shapes in the snow are his creatures." -ASOS, Jon XI

I think that while Stannis is dealing with this in the North, the South instead will experience a Dance of the Dragons II, with a potential Apocalyptian horror as a backdrop. I've posted before how I think the dwarves from Dany's vision in the HOTU (induced by shade of the evening) show the War of the Five Kings in Westeros:

In one room, a beautiful woman sprawled naked on the floor while four little men crawled over her. They had rattish pointed faces and tiny pink hands, like the servitor who had brought her the glass of shade. One was pumping between her thighs. Another savaged her breasts, worrying at the nipples with his wet red mouth, tearing and chewing. -ACOK, Daenerys IV

also do the same thing in Aeron's visions (also induced by shade of the evening) where they instead show the Dance of the Dragons II taking place (with Dany and potentially Young Griff, etc. dancing while Euron looms):

Euron, the smiling eye hidden. He showed the world his blood eye now, dark and terrible. Clad head to heel in scale as dark as onyx, he sat upon a mound of blackened skulls as dwarfs capered round his feet and a forest burned behind him. -TWOW, The Forsaken

and again here where they behave like the HOTU dwarves:

He saw the longships of the Ironborn adrift and burning on a boiling blood-red sea. He saw his brother on the Iron Throne again, but Euron was no longer human. He seemed more squid than man, a monster fathered by a kraken of the deep, his face a mass of writhing tentacles. Beside him stood a shadow in woman’s form, long and tall and terrible, her hands alive with pale white fire. Dwarves capered for their amusement, male and female, naked and misshapen, locked in carnal embrace, biting and tearing at each other as Euron and his mate laughed and laughed and laughed … -The Forsaken

Also note how the dwarves are "locked in carnal embrace", etc. and see how it compares it our only known instance of smaller dragons fighting:

History calls the struggle between King Aegon II and his sister Rhaenyra the Dance of the Dragons, but only at Tumbleton did the dragons ever truly dance. Tessarion and Seasmoke were young dragons, nimbler in the air than their older brothers had been.

Any battle between them should look like the one below:

Time and time again they rushed one another, only to have one or the other veer away at the last instant. Soaring like eagles, stooping like hawks, they circled, snapping and roaring, spitting fire, but never closing. Once the Blue Queen vanished into a bank of cloud, only to reappear an instant later, diving on Seasmoke from behind to scorch her tail with a burst of cobalt flame. Meanwhile, Seasmoke rolled and banked and looped. One instant he would be below his foe, and suddenly he would twist in the sky and come around behind her.

and:

Shadows in the shape of skulls, skulls that turned to mist, bodies locked together in lust, writhing and rolling and clawing. Through curtains of fire great winged shadows wheeled against a hard blue sky. -ADWD, Melisandre I

TLDR: The Dance of the Dragons II (with Euron in the backdrop) will occur simultaneously with the beginning of Great War/War for the Dawn as the "dragons" will be focused on the throne (instead of the true enemy).

Posted Feb 16, 2022, 3:03 PM UTC

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