Game of Thrones has been all about big revelations lately.
Beyond the explicit discoveries made by fans and characters in the show's last few episodes,
however, the show may also have inadvertently revealed something else about its primary
villain.
One fan theory currently taking the internet by storm claims that Thrones may have already
spoiled the identity of the Night King.
Though this theory has circulated through the web since season seven concluded, it found
new traction following HBO's Inside the Episode featurette for the season 8 premiere.
During the post-episode promo, Thrones co-showrunner and director David Benioff offered up information
that many are taking as evidence that the Night King is, in fact, a secret Targaryen.
"No one has ever ridden a dragon [...] except for Dany.
Only Targaryens can ride dragons, and that should be a sign for Jon.
Jon's not always the quickest on the uptick but eventually gets there."
As the son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, Jon's Targaryen blood makes him worthy
to ride a dragon, though he doesn't know it at the time.
And while Benioff might be right in saying that only Targaryens can ride dragons, he's
wrong to say that Dany was the only person to have ridden a dragon before the first episode
of season 8.
Remember this?
(why you shouldn't you mix Pop Rocks and Slurpees)
That makes three people who have ridden dragons during the series so far: Daenerys on Drogon,
Jon on Rhaegal, and the Night King on Viserion.
Naturally, this has a huge subsection of the Game of Thrones fandom thinking the Night
King could be a Targaryen.
After all, if dragon riders are Targaryens and the Night King is a dragon rider, then
surely the Night King must be a Targaryen, too?
Unfortunately, it's not hard to pick holes in this theory.
For starters, Viserion isn't the same type of dragon he was before he died.
He's an Ice Dragon now, not a Fire Dragon, and it stands to reason that the old rules
don't exactly apply in this situation.
And while the Targaryens do have a deep connection with dragons, they don't appear to have any
historic link to Ice Dragons.
According to Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin's novella The Ice Dragon, humans
can't tame, train, or ride Ice Dragons.
A portion of the text reads:
"We have tales of those that tried, found frozen with their whip and harness in hand.
I've heard about people that have lost hands or fingers just by touching one of them.
Frostbite."
Another problem with the theory that the Night King is a Targaryen is that the Night King
is a member of the First Men, who came to Westeros from Essos 12,000 years prior to
the Targaryen Conquest.
After the First Men invaded Westeros, the ancient Westerosi inhabitants known as the
Children of the Forest captured one of them - and the Night King was born.
Neither House Targaryen nor the Valyrian Empire from which they came were around during this
time, and the Targaryens didn't rise to power in the Valyrian Freehold until thousands of
years after the war between the First Men and the Children of the Forest.
Taking this timeline into account, it seems impossible that the First Man who became the
Night King could have been a Targaryen.
On the other hand, there's no getting around one strange similarity between the Night King
and House Targaryen that people picked up on during the season 8 premiere.
In one of the final scenes of the episode, Eddison Tollet, Beric Dondarrion, and others
reach Last Hearth and find little Lord Umber pinned to a wall with several severed limbs
surrounding his body, mapped out in the shape of a spiral.
We've seen that spiral a few times before: once around the Weirwood tree when the Children
of the Forest created the Night King, again when the White Walkers slaughtered horses
to terrorize the wildlings, and finally in etchings carved in the caves of Dragonstone.
But it might not be a coincidence that this spiral also looks a whole lot like the sigil
of House Targaryen - and spirals of a kind have even been known to appear around the
story's two living Targaryens.
Could this mean that the Night King is related to the Targaryen family in some way?
Considering his ability to ride Viserion, there really may be some relation.
Then again, maybe there isn't.
"Close the bloody gate."
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