In A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones, Westeros is threatened by an army of the dead
bringing a night that never ends. According to prophecy, the only hope is a hero, known
as Azor Ahai, or the prince that was promised. The text suggests that Jon or Daenerys or
both are Azor Ahai. But could the saviour be someone… furrier?
Ser Pounce is one of King Tommen's kittens, along with Lady Whiskers and Boots. The kittens
are given to him by Margaery Tyrell, and we're not told where Margaery gets the kittens,
but we can actually make a pretty good guess. Margaery lives in the Red Keep, and the Keep
is “full of cats”, including “kittens”. We also know Margaery likes to look after
the poor and vulnerable. So maybe Margaery finds Ser Pounce and the others as strays
in the Keep, and offers them to Tommen as a way of caring for them. If the kittens are
strays from the Keep, we can work out who their father may be. Arya chases many cats
around the Keep, but one of them is special – a tomcat with black fur, one ear and a
reputation. He snatches food out of Tywin’s fingers, scratches Joffrey, attacks ravens
in the rookery. A gold cloak calls him a “black bastard”, “Older than sin and
twice as mean”. Tommen calls him “The bad cat”, but we might call him “the
bad pussy”. Anyway, so this is a black cat living in the Red Keep. It just so happens
that Ser Pounce and his siblings are also black cats, who may have been born in the
Red Keep. We’ve been told, of course, that “the seed is strong” – black hair colour
can indicate parentage. So it’s very possible, likely, even, that this tomcat is Ser Pounce’s
father. The reason why that would be cool is that the tomcat is described as “the
real king of the castle”. If Ser Pounce’s father is a king, Ser Pounce is a prince.
And Tommen makes a “promise” to Cersei to let him have kittens, making Ser Pounce
a prince that was promised – a phrase used to refer to Azor Ahai. Is it possible that
Ser Pounce is the prophesied saviour of the world?
Let’s do this properly, see if Ser Pounce fits what he know of the hero Azor Ahai. For starters, it’s
said that “The dragon must have three heads”, and Ser Pounce has Lady Whiskers and Boots.
But the most important stuff are these seven signs. Azor Ahai is prophesied to be born
beneath a bleeding star, apparently referring to the “red comet” that appears at the
end of the first book. We don’t know when Ser Pounce is born, but we do know he’s
still a kitten in Dance, which is roughly a year after the last sighting of the comet
in Clash. It apparently takes about a year until a kitten is called a cat, so it's totally possible
that Ser Pounce is literally born beneath the comet – the bleeding star. Azor Ahai
is prophesied to be born amidst salt and smoke. The Red Keep overlooks the salty sea, or
at least Blackwater Bay which Davos says is salty, and the Keep is lit by torches that
produce smoke. So that all pretty much fits. Azor Ahai is prophesied to have a “red”
or “burning sword”, which Sam and Jon suggest might just mean a Valyrian steel sword.
As far as we know, Ser Pounce does not have a sword, in fact he doesn’t have thumbs,
which may pose a problem with the grip. But we do know that Littlefinger has a Valyrian
steel knife, which might be small enough for a cat to hold, like, ah with his mouth?
Ah, so yeah put that down as a maybe. Azor Ahai is said to need a sacrifice, and Ser
Pounce… catches a mouse, for what that’s worth. Azor Ahai has something to do with
dragons, or to “wake dragons out of stone”. Dany’s dragon eggs are described as stone,
and she wakes them by making them hatch. Could the dragon skulls in the Red Keep be
called stone dragons? Could Ser Pounce, in some sense, wake them, bring them back to life? Will we
see Ser Pounce riding a reanimated skeletal dragon, what could be called “a flaming
sword above the world”? Eeh, probably not. Azor Ahai is prophesied to be born of the
line of The Mad King Aerys and Rhaella Targaryen. This one is tricky, but Rhaella had many
miscarriages and stillbirths, and when Daenerys suffers a stillbirth, albeit a magic-induced
one, the child resembles a lizard or dragon. If Targaryens can give birth to dragon-like
children, why not cat-like children? Could Queen Rhaella Targaryen have given birth to
the black tomcat that fathered Ser Pounce? Interestingly, we do know that there was a
black kitten in the Targaryen family at the time, a pet of Princess Rhaenys, called Balerion.
Varys tells us about this kitten, and wonders what happened to it. Many fans believe that
Balerion stayed in the Red Keep and grew up to be this tomcat – they’re both black,
the tomcat is old, and he seems to hate Lannisters, the family that killed his Targaryen masters.
George R. R. Martin has said that this theory “Could be” true – the tomcat, Ser Pounce’s
possible father, could be Balerion, the Targaryen pet. So if you’re willing to believe that
Queen Rhaella somehow gave birth to Balerion the cat, which, you shouldn’t, but if you
are, that means Ser Pounce, son of Balerion, is a secret Targaryen, of the line of Aerys
and Rhaella – he's the rightful ruler of Westeros, ahead of Daenerys. For now, he bides his time
at Tommen’s side, but soon will rise to “defend his rights” and fight for the
light as Azor Ahai, the Pounce that was promised, King Pounce Targaryen the First, “a hero
to deliver the world from darkness”. Except, not really, right?
Syrio Forel tells Arya a story. He says the Sealord of Braavos kept exotic creatures from
around the world, and one day he showed people one of his animals. People saw “a fabulous”,
exotic “beast”, but Syrio looked and said it’s a cat. Just “an ordinary cat, no
more”. People saw “a fabulous beast” because that’s what they expected and wanted
to see. Syrio says “The heart lies and the head plays tricks … Look with your eyes
… Then comes the thinking … and in that way knowing the truth”. The truth is that
Ser Pounce is a cat. Yes, he can maybe kinda fit the signs of Azor Ahai, but anything can
seem to fit such vague criteria when there’s so much material to cram into them. This is
how people believe in quack medicine and young-Earth creationism and Illuminati conspiracism, and
maybe all the little lies we tell ourselves each day – pick specific details, apply
some wishful thinking, and you can believe whatever you want to believe. To find the truth,
you’ve gotta step back, look at the whole body of evidence, the broader context, the
bigger picture, in this case, that A Song of Ice and Fire is a story of human struggle,
centred on people like Jon and Daenerys. The truth is that Ser Pounce is “an ordinary
cat, no more”. But he could still be the kitten of Balerion, so that’s pretty cool anyway.
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