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Did the Viserys Retcon Add Anything Important to GOT Lore?
One of the most controversial moments of the first episode of Episode one of House of the Dragon was when King Viserys revealed to Princess Rhaenyra that Aegon the Conqueror had a dream that maintaining the Targaryen dynasty would be imperative to stopping the White Walkers and, in essence, the end of the world of Westeros.
Was This in the Books?
To my knowledge, no…and I have read them all (even the history of Westeros).
So, Why Did They Do This?
My initial thought was that they were, in a sense, explaining the motivation for King Viserys to choose the potential survival of his potential son Baelon over the life of his wife. As was revealed earlier in the episode King Viserys had a dream that his wife would have a son and that son would himself become King. If Viserys had been convinced, by the story handed down from Aegon the Conqueror, that prophetic dreams had weight in the real world, it could be logical for him to choose the survival of the child over his wife.
Unfortunately, in the “after the episode” discussion, showrunner Ryan Condal explicitly said that there really “was no choice” for Viserys and that Queen Aemma was absolutely going to die so he had to choose the child (there is a whole…
