Sorry if you've been asked before, but what are your theories on Varys's plans for a Targ restoration? I thought he wanted Viserys on the iron throne until I read ADWD and realized that they prepared Aegon far more than they ever did Dany or her brother. In hindsight, the Targ siblings seem almost disposable to Varys and Illyrio--like they never expected either of them to take back Westeros. What were they planning????
In hindsight, the Targ siblings seem almost disposable to Varys and Illyrio
like they never expected either of them to take back Westeros.
Well, I’ll explain. But the text is (as always) where we start:
“I warn you, the wolf and lion will soon be at each other’s throats, whether we will it or no.”“Too soon, too soon,” the voice with the accent complained. “What good is war now? We are not ready. Delay.”“As well bid me stop time. Do you take me for a wizard?”[…] “Perhaps so,” the forked beard replied, pausing to catch his breath after the long climb. “Nonetheless, we must have time. The princess is with child. The khal will not bestir himself until his son is born. You know how they are, these savages.”[…] “If he does not bestir himself soon, it may be too late,” the stout man in the steel cap said.
This overheard conversation between Varys and Illyrio is the first major clue as to what they were planning with Viserys and Dany. They wanted to start a war in Westeros, with Khal Drogo and his forty thousand Dothraki warriors attacking on behalf of Dany and their son. But not so soon – they needed to wait for something (or someone) to be ready. Unfortunately, all the intrigue with Jaime and Cersei (their incest nearly being revealed; pushing Bran), Joffrey’s blundering (sending an assassin to finish the job with Bran), and Littlefinger’s manipulations (poisoning Jon Arryn; the lie about the assassin’s dagger) soon had Stark and Lannister fighting, a war that Varys and Illyrio did not want.
But note that just because Varys and Illyrio wanted Drogo to attack Westeros on behalf of Dany and their son, that doesn’t mean they expected Dany (or even Viserys) to be there:
“If truth be told, I did not think Daenerys would survive for long amongst the horselords.““That did not stop you selling her to Khal Drogo…”“Dothraki neither buy nor sell. Say rather that her brother Viserys gave her to Drogo to win the khal’s friendship. A vain young man, and greedy.”
Her brother was miserable out here. He ought never have come. Magister Illyrio had urged him to wait in Pentos, had offered him the hospitality of his manse, but Viserys would have none of it. He would stay with Drogo until the debt had been paid, until he had the crown he had been promised. “And if he tries to cheat me, he will learn to his sorrow what it means to wake the dragon,” Viserys had vowed, laying a hand on his borrowed sword. Illyrio had blinked at that and wished him good fortune.
So, Illyrio straight up says he didn’t expect Dany would survive. Also Illyrio is a smart man who understood Viserys extremely well – and it doesn’t take much reverse psychology to say the kind of words (“living with the Dothraki will be so hard, why do that when it’s so much easier to stay here in comfort” that would play on Viserys’s vanity and impression of himself as a warrior-king to send him on a doomed mission out on the Dothraki sea as well.
But if by chance they did survive:
“Which plan?” said Tristan Rivers. “The fat man’s plan? The one that changes every time the moon turns? First Viserys Targaryen was to join us with fifty thousand Dothraki screamers at his back. Then the Beggar King was dead, and it was to be the sister, a pliable young child queen who was on her way to Pentos with three new-hatched dragons. Instead the girl turns up on Slaver’s Bay and leaves a string of burning cities in her wake, and the fat man decides we should meet her by Volantis. Now that plan is in ruins as well.”
Among other things, we see that the Golden Company was supposed to join Viserys and Drogo and the Dothraki in their attack on Westeros. The same Golden Company who Viserys once feasted and asked to fight for him, and who heard his pleas and laughed at him. So what’s the situation here?
The truth is in the origins of the Golden Company, a mercenary company founded by Aegor “Bittersteel” Rivers and various Westeros exiles to bring House Blackfyre to the Iron Throne. Because Varys and Illyrio’s plan is not for a Targaryen restoration – but a Blackfyre restoration.
That’s why Viserys and Dany were disposable to them. The Dothraki invasion was only meant to inflame the people of Westeros further against the children of the Mad King, to cause chaos and destruction with their “savage” “barbarian” ways… until the Golden Company turned and destroyed them (with the help of a select group of Westeros lords), under the leadership of the true king, the perfect prince, Rhaegar’s son Aegon Targaryen, miraculously saved from his death in infancy… except he’s not. Aegon is truly a Blackfyre, almost certainly Illyrio’s son with his wife Serra, a daughter of the lost female line of House Blackfyre.
Only no-one would know the truth (except Varys and Illyrio and the leaders of the Golden Company), and all would think him a true Targaryen. And if Dany by some miracle did manage to survive all her troubles, then she would surely marry Aegon – ever so grateful for him rescuing her from her abusive mad brother and her savage Dothraki husband – and cinch his legitimacy, since even with Westeros impressed by his heroism, some might still think he might be a pretender due to his secret upbringing. But since Daenerys’s history is very public and not at all in doubt by anyone, this marriage would be the fitting resolution of this glorious Targaryen restoration.
“What is a mummer’s dragon, pray?”“A cloth dragon on poles,” Dany explained. “Mummers use them in their follies, to give the heroes something to fight.”
So, yes, Viserys was always disposable. Even if he survived the Dothraki, he was always meant to be a patsy, the “mummer’s dragon” for the hero Aegon to fight. But really it’s Aegon, Varys’s false Targaryen, who’s the actual mummer’s dragon:
A cloth dragon swayed on poles amidst a cheering crowd… mother of dragons, slayer of lies…
And the girl that Illyrio thought would die in the Dothraki sea, who was reborn in blood and fire, is the one who will slay that lie at last.
