Instead of a review of a non-fiction or scifi book, this is a critique of George R. R. Martin’s evolving Song of Ice and Fire that would have been a tweet but would run far ahead of space limits. The immediate tweet I’m responding to is this, which is itself just a link to this (which in turn was responding to me linking to this and this).

The people who built & manned the Wall know it was made to defend against the Others. People afterward just believe the Others are long gone. If Aegon believes the threat is coming from the far North, he can just ask the rulers of the North about what’s up there and why that cyclopean Wall exists.

Dorne is at the southern end of Westeros. Conquering it has nothing to do with defending against any threat from the North, unless the big fear is fighting a two-front war for some reason. Nor does Dorne have lots of resources necessary for such a defense which would outweigh the resources spent trying to conquer them.

If Aegon believes the NW is capable of dealing with the apocalyptic threat… then why does he need to conquer them? They went into decline after the conquest, so rather than helping it appeared to hurt them.

We don’t need an explanation of why an army smaller than the ones that already got roasted at the Field of Fire surrendered. Nor do we need any explanation for why Aegon showed “mercy” to someone who bent the knee and never actually fought him (which applied to every vassal in Westeros). But if they did come to an accord… why didn’t Aegon then learn about the importance of the Wall and DO SOMETHING about it?

Why would it be a “secret”? If it’s an existential threat from an external source, there is really no reason not to let as many people as possible know.

Maegor didn’t build a larger army, he spent his rule destroying his vassals and depleting any force necessary for defense. His conflict with his vassals wasn’t over anything necessary to defeat such a threat, but instead on his personal desire to claim a bunch of wives in defiance of the Faith’s ban on polygamy (with one of those marriages also being incestuous).

The prophecy couldn’t have been transmitted from king to heir because, as my second link noted, Jaehaerys was not the heir of any prior king.

The very different actions of the various kings do not make sense as different reactions to the same prophecy. As Karl Popper would say, a theory that can explain any outcome explains nothing. It would be more coherent to say some of them just weren’t motivated by the same prophecy and that’s why they behaved differently.

Why was the one Targaryen monarch to do what needed to be done not Aegon I, the closest to the prophecy, but instead someone definitively not in an unbroken line of heirs? Why didn’t anyone else act like that?