Sullied on Unsullied: Is Game of Thrones embracing the notion of prophecy?

Prophecies are present on both Game of Thrones and in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, but they’re much more prevalent on the page. Each chapter of the books is told from inside the head of one of the characters, and a few of them are very preoccupied with prophecies. For example, in A Clash of Kings, the Undying of Qarth tell Daenerys that she will know three betrayals: one for blood and one for gold and one for love. The show cut this bit entirely, but in the books, Daenerys thinks about it all the time.

The prophecy involving Azor Ahai is another one that doesn’t get nearly as much attention on the show as it does in the books. Generally speaking, showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss just seem less interested in prophecies than George R.R. Martin. However, they made an exception at the beginning of Season 5, which opens with a flashback to Cersei’s childhood. She and a friend visited a woods witch who foretells bad things in Cersei’s future:

You’ll be queen…for a time. Then comes another, younger, more beautiful, to cast you down and take all you hold dear…The king will have 20 children, and you will have three. Gold will be their crows, gold their shrouds.

This represented the first instance where the show went out of its way to highlight a prophecy. Cersei’s encounter with the witch came up again in the Season 6 premiere, and that wasn’t the only moment from the episode that touched on prophecy. These moments have me wondering: is prophecy going to start playing a bigger role in the story of Game of Thrones?

Let’s start with the witch’s prophecy. Cersei thinks about it a lot in the books—it wouldn’t be a stretch to say she’s obsessed with it. Her preoccupation seems to have gotten more severe after the death of Joffrey, the first of her children to wear a golden crown and golden shroud. The prophecy drives many of her actions. It’s part of the reason she’s so intent on keeping her children safe—she’s afraid they’re fated to die.

We learn about the prophecy on the show, but because we don’t have access to Cersei’s thoughts, I never got the idea that it was behind her decisions. That’s why her tearful scene with Jaime in the Season 6 premiere was so important. Clearly, she has been thinking about the prophecy—she’s so convinced it’s genuine, she isn’t even mad at Jaime for coming home from Dorne with the dead body of their daughter, Mrycella, in tow (note the golden shroud over her coffin). After all, it was fated to happen.

Jaime: “She was my daughter, and I failed her.”

Cersei: “No, I knew this would happen. The witch told me years ago. She promised me three children. She promised me they’d die…Everything she said came true. You couldn’t have stopped it. It’s prophecy. It’s fate.”

Now, if Cersei took a closer look at the prophecy, she’d realize that it doesn’t line up exactly with what’s happened to her. For one thing, on the show, Cersei had more than three children. In Season 1, she revealed to Catelyn Stark that she had a child with Robert Baratheon, a son who died in infancy. Also, while Mrycella had a golden shroud, she never had a golden crown—she was never a queen. No one even tried to make her a queen, as happens in the books.

(Note: Many commenters have pointed out that the “golden crowns” line refers to the Lannister children’s hair, not actual crowns, which…yeah, that’s a perfectly valid interpretation. Doi.)

These inconsistencies are intriguing. One interpretation is that they’re plot holes—the writers simply might not have rewritten the prophecy to bring it in line with events on the show. Or perhaps they’re subtle cues that the prophecy isn’t genuine, and that Cersei’s fervent belief in it is an indication that she’s starting to crack up mentally. Either option is plausible, although the second one probably makes for better watching.

A third option is that the woods witch did foretell the future, but didn’t get all the details right. That sounds like an excuse for sloppy writing, but there’s precedent for that kind of thing happening on Game of Thrones. Melisandre can see the future in the flames, but as we saw at the end of Season 5, she can misinterpret their message. We even got a bit of this in “The Red Woman,” when she said she’d seen Jon Snow fighting at Winterfell. Clearly, that didn’t work out. (OR DID IT? Topic for a different article.) Seeing into the future is possible in this world, but the visions aren’t always reliable.

There was another moment involving prophecy in “The Red Woman,” although it wasn’t as explicit. When Daenerys is brought before Khal Moro, he tells her he’s going to have sex with her, and hopefully get her pregnant with a boy. Here’s how she replies:

I will bear no children, for you, or anyone else. Not until the sun rises in the east, and sets in the west.

The phrasing here is significant. These are the same words that Mirri Maz Durr said to Daenerys way back in Season 1, after she performed black magic to prevent Khal Drogo from dying. That spell also made a monster out of Rhaego, Drogo’s son, whom Dany was pregnant with at the time. Rhaego came out stillborn, and according to Mirri Maz Durr, he had scales like a lizard, wings like a bat, was blind, and was filled with graveworms. Clearly, the black magic had some adverse effects.

Drogo, while saved from death, was in a comatose state. When Dany asked when he would be as he was, Mirri Maz Durr gave her this answer:

When the sun rises in the west, sets in the east. When the seas go dry. When the mountains blow in the wind like leaves.

Now, Mirri Maz Durr’s answer is slightly different in the books. There’s more to it. When will Drogo return? “When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child.” The implication here is that the idea of Dany bearing a child is as absurd as the sun rising in the west and setting in the east. In other words, it ain’t gonna happen. Presumably, whatever dark magic turned Rheago into a monster permanently messed up Dany’s womb.

The show cut that line, but in “The Red Woman,” Dany connects her line about not bearing children “for you, or anyone else” back to Mirri Maz Durr’s prophecy. This is the first time the idea that Dany is barren has come up on the show, and now that it’s been established, it’s possible it could be challenged.

Or Dany could have just been speaking in poetic terms about how she didn’t want to sleep with Khal Moro. This prophecy is much looser than the one involving Cersei. Still, the language used is specific enough for me to wonder if writers David Benioff and Dan Weiss were thinking about these issues when penning the script.

Daenerys and her children.

Between Melisandre, Cersei, and Daenerys, we got an earful of prophecy in “The Red Woman.” Were those scenes the opening volleys in a bigger campaign? Up top, I mentioned a prophecy involving Azor Ahai, a messianic figure destined to save the world from a great calamity. This is probably the most important prophecy from the books that hasn’t gotten much attention on the show. The great calamity in question probably involves the White Walkers, who will likely start becoming more important now that the show is driving towards an ending. It may be time for the show to start paying more attention to this prophecy, and to prophecy in general.

Is prophecy going to start playing a bigger role on Game of Thrones? We’ll be watching, and reading the signs.

• Published on 04/30/2016 at 10:00 AM CDT
• Last updated on 04/30/2016 at 7:09 PM CDT