The final season of Game of Thrones was supposed to reveal a lot. As the last batch of episodes fans got of the show, Season 8 was supposed to tie loose ends up, solve some mysteries, and close off this final chapter of the series. However, it angered fans and dropped the ball on a lot of plot points brought up throughout the series. One of those was Azor Ahai.
Mentioned in both the books and Game of Thrones, Azor Ahai was a legendary figure in the religion of R’hllor, and he defeated the darkness of the Great Other, who Melisandre mentions in Season 4. She also told of the prophecy that Azor Ahai would come back as the Prince/Princess Who Was Promised.
There were many theories on who this person could be, with major bets on Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen. While it wasn’t explicitly revealed on the show, the books might hold another answer, and there’s a theory that it’s an entirely different Targaryen. Potential spoilers for The Winds of Winter and beyond.
Azor Ahai wasn’t any of the characters on ‘Game of Thrones’
As stated above, Azor Ahai was brought up on the show but never revealed, making it one of the many reasons fans hated this final season. Originally Jon Snow was a shoo-in, but a fixed translation showed that it could be a “Prince” or “Princess,” causing some to speculate that it was Daenerys. Even Arya Stark was thrown in the mix because of her intense training, killer path, and eventual slaying of the Night King.
Some have argued that the way Jon killed Daenerys could be a reenactment of Azor Ahai and his wife, Nissa Nissa, fulfilling the prophecy. However, in the end, Melissandre died right after the Battle of Winterfell and never directly revealed who The Prince Who Was Promised Was.
A Targaryen does fulfill this prophecy, but it’s not Jon or Daenerys
According to Express, the identity of The Prince Who Was Promised was affirmed early on in the book series. In the second book, A Clash of Kings, Daenerys had a vision of her brother Rhaegar calling his son Aegon by that title. Rhaegar was first married to Elia Martell, and they had two children: Aegon and Rhaenys. He then annulled that union and went on to elope with Lyanna Stark, who had Jon Snow (also named Aegon at birth).
In the show, and books, the babies Aegon and Rhaenys are presumed dead, and only in the fifth book, A Dance of Dragons, is it revealed that the boy survived. In the show, they are actually dead.
The Prince Who Was Promised would only be actualized in the books
Express reports that preview chapters of George R.R. Martin’s upcoming sixth book, The Winds of Winter, actually reveals that Aegon is in charge of The Golden Company, has supporters, and is “taking the castle of Storm’s End.” Since Aegon now exists in the same world as Jon Snow and Daenerys, then the theory that he’ll be The Prince Who Was Promised is much more likely. Plus, Aegon is the oldest of these three Targaryens, meaning that he was birthright over the Iron Throne.
This entire storyline, along with another that involves Tyrion finding Aegon, is entirely left out of the show, so it’s almost as if Game of Thrones wasn’t able to deliver the answers to this prophecy because it didn’t have the proper characters to do so. But only time will reveal if this Aegon is actually The Prince Who Was Promised.
