THE MAD KING [PLAY] SPOILERS
The prophecy / aegon’s dream is really framed in the play as a corrupting force that drives anyone who seeks to fulfill it to madness via unrelenting obsession.
Aerys reveals in an exchange w his son Rhaegar that he also both knew about the prophecy and tried to bring it to fruition (“I tried too!”), hence Rhaella having 5 stillborn children before Dany, desperately trying to produce the third “head” of the dragon.
Elia early on in the play condemns Rhaegar as too obsessed with the prophecy to effectively carry out the political maneuvers needed to win the nobility over and depose Aerys. She says “you’re as mad as your father!” when he won’t stop talking about it when she’s trying to convince him to speak to the assembled nobility about the necessity for a coup; he cannot effectively govern the realm or tend to its needs or even see them bc he’s so blinded by obsession with the prophecy. The first thing he says after she nearly died giving birth to Aegon is could she have another (at which point Ashara Dayne corrrectly says he’s unworthy of her)
We get scenes where bc of Aerys’s behaviors and actions Rhaegar and Elia’s plan is winning over the Starks and Baratheons - but by crowning Lyanna Rhaegar immediately destroys any possibility of a peaceful exchange of power, condemning the realm to war and sacrificing its immediate peace and prosperity to fulfill it.
Then after Lyanna and Rhaegar run off she, who believed in some prophetic / fated connection to Rhaegar bc she had wolf dreams, gets extremely obsessed w trying to fulfill the prophecy once she’s learned that Brandon and Rickard died - because of course otherwise her dad and her brother died for nothing and her actions were responsible! She has to believe there’s some greater plan and purpose but also when Lyanna becomes obsessed her actress is almost manic! Like trying to find meaning in and fulfill the prophecy is itself driving her to a sort of madness. And it does doom her as much as it doomed Rhaegar! She ends up “trapped in a lord’s tower giving him heirs” - a future she tried to avoid by running from Robert but a fate she was trapped in and bound to anyway; pursuit of prophecy led her there! And when she gives Jon to Ned she recognizes this - she says don’t tell him anything about it, don’t tell him about his heritage about the prophecy, raise him as a Stark etc. she realizes the destructive power of believing in and trying to bring about not only prophecy in general but this one in particular.
The prophecy as madness rune and corrupting force also aligns w it as a supposed justification for Aegon’s conquest. The first Targaryen to know of it used said knowledge to justify, as Aerys says in the play in his one moment of true lucidity, widespread slaughter, destruction, and conquest. It seems to be and in the play especially can be read as a corrupting force of madness that destroys the lives and goals of people who pursue it, King in Yellow style.
And what is the name of one of the random cities in Essos that’s on the map but never mentioned in the story?
CARCOSA.
