It’s pretty clear that Game of Thrones is setting up a romance between Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen. Now that the train has left the station, the question arises: if these two actually get together, what might their future hold? Could there be wedding bells? Possibly children?
The second part could be tricky. Throughout season 7, we have been repeatedly reminded that, according to Dany, the dragons are the only children she’ll ever have. But thanks to some heavy-handed foreshadowing in “Beyond the Wall,” we wonder if she’s right in assuming that.
The first bit of foreshadowing occurs while Tyrion and Dany are discussing their strategy for the upcoming meeting with Cersei. Tyrion, rattled by Dany’s close call with a barrage of arrows in “The Spoils of War,” brings up the subject of succession. “You say you can’t have children,” he reminds us, “but there are other ways of choosing a successor.” He advises her that the Night’s Watch and the Ironborn both have methods of selecting leaders when there is not a designated heir.
Although Tyrion’s concerns are valid, the way they were worked into that particular conversation was a bit tortured. The writers might as well have had Melisandre appear out of the shadows to proclaim that the dragons are not Dany’s only children, and that a biological child will soon be on the way to solve the succession dilemma.
Later in the episode, we get more major foreshadowing when Dany and Jon talk on the ship. While Jon is consoling her over Viserion’s death and expressing his regret over the foolhardy wight-capturing mission, Dany once again tells him, “the dragons are my children. They’re the only children I’ll ever have. Do you understand?”
What does she mean when she asks Jon if he understands? She could be asking him if he understands how profound the loss of Viserion is to her. Or she could be asking him if he understands that she cannot give him children. The internet seems to be betting on the latter interpretation, because with the hand-holding and longing gazes, it’s obvious that Jon and Dany are falling — or have fallen — for each other and are soon to consummate their relationship. That, coupled with the earlier succession conversation, indicates that a Jon/Dany baby is in the works. If a TV show repeatedly points out that something is impossible, it’s a good bet that the impossible will happen before long.
But how could that come to pass, and why does Dany not think she can bear children of her own in the first place? The most likely answer lies in Season 1, when Dany begged Mirri Maz Duur to bring Khal Drogo back to life even though doing so would require the use of blood magic. Mirri Maz Duur warned a then-pregnant Dany that the price for life is death. Dany initially thought she was buying Drogo’s life with his horse’s death, but the next day realized that in fact she had traded her child’s life for Drogo’s. Mirri Maz Duur described the “monstrous” creature she had given birth to as having scales, wings and worms for innards.
Based on this horrific experience, Dany may think that any children she bore would be similarly malformed, or that Mirrii Maz Duur somehow cursed her womb. Perhaps Dany’s barrenness is self-imposed penance for the dire results of her dabbling in blood magic. Nothing in the show, however, supports the idea that Dany cannot physically bear children. And while there is no concrete reason why Dany’s dalliance with Daario Naharis never resulted in pregnancy, aside from it being cheesy and soap opera-ish for the Mother of Dragons to have a random baby with a fling, such a thing would be a disservice to the story and the ultimate anticlimax. Daario was not the ice to Dany’s fire.
Jon Snow, with Lyanna Stark’s blood in his veins and the North in his bones, is. So with no evidence to substantiate Dany’s belief that the dragons will be her only children, Targaryencest on the horizon, and the foreshadowing throughout “Beyond the Wall,” it is probable that a #babyoficeandfire is coming.
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