#serbronzefyre

First off I should note I don’t believe Varys was right about “Rhaegar’s intentions to depose his father” – I think he was deliberately stirring shit in House Targaryen as part of his Blackfyre restoration plans, and the supposed secret backer of the Harrenhal tourney being Rhaegar is a red herring placed in TWOIAF on purpose. (I think there’s a lot of things Yandel is very wrong about in TWOIAF, and while some like magic and the Others and such are obvious, there’s many political mistakes and oversights too. He’s a very unreliable narrator, deliberately so.)

Secondly, Varys is an excellent spymaster, but he doesn’t know everything. He only knows what his little birds can see or hear. (Like, Olenna had loud singing cover up her conversation with Sansa, Littlefinger had Sansa meet Dontos in the godswood specifically to avoid the little birds, and that’s why LF reported the Tyrell betrothal plan to Tywin while Varys hadn’t heard anything about it. Also Varys doesn’t seem to have had any awareness of Sandor and Sansa’s interactions.) Note that Varys was still fairly new to Westeros at the time of Robert’s Rebellion and almost certainly didn’t have a full spy network yet, certainly not in the Red Mountains where the Tower of Joy was, and probably not in Starfall either. Jaime relates that during the Rebellion “Prince Rhaegar could not be found”, which means people were looking but couldn’t find him, which means Varys didn’t know either. (Or if he did know, he wasn’t saying, again to stir shit.) The Tower of Joy was very out of the way.

But still, it’s possible that Varys does know about R+L=J, either from his spies back when or gathered knowledge since then. If so, he’s likely factored in the possible revelation of Jon’s parentage into his plans to bring Aegon to the throne. Whether Varys has false counter-information ready in case of a reveal, or if he’d simply be using a semi-truthful legal strategy (Aegon is older; even if Rhaegar married Lyanna it was bigamous and thus illegal; etc), or even if he doesn’t know and finds out when the secret is made public (if it’s made public), it probably doesn’t matter. Varys is very utilitarian: he’ll do what he must, whatever it may be.

Many people do think Patchface has encountered the Drowned God, and that he is the god’s true prophet (unlike Aeron, who hears only the inside of his head). I personally believe that there is no Drowned God as such, but rather a force of water magic that can sometimes be accessed via drowning, that some people have personified as the Drowned God but doesn’t truly have a personality or sentience. This water magic may be related to the water magic of the Rhoynar, with their personification being Mother Rhoyne; as well as the primitive beliefs of the First Men, personified by Elenei’s sea god father, the Lady of the Waves, etc. (FWIW, I also believe similarly about fire magic and R’hllor; and I’m fairly confident in this as GRRM has said no gods will appear and affect things in a deus ex machina.)

Nevertheless, Patchface, whose prophecies are true, has obviously tapped into something. But because I think this something, this water magic force, is not specifically related to the ironborn, his storyline doesn’t necessarily need to overlap with any ironborn. Although, tbf, Theon may enter his orbit at some point, as well as Asha, as they’re all in the North after all. It depends on what happens with them after the Battle of Winterfell and the Night’s Watch coup, but quite possibly they will intersect at the Wall or Winterfell. In which case it should be very interesting to see the broken Theon interacting with the mad fool Patchface, and what comes of it. Like, Theon’s thought patterns in his TWOW preview chapter fascinate me, and the way he makes connections to Euron, not to mention the fact that Bran (and Bloodraven?) are interested in him, tells me his plot should be much more on the magic side of things from now on, a side where Patchface is very definitely located. (edit: And Theon also had a prophetic dream about the Red Wedding, thank you for the reminder @darthgreyjoy.)

But generally I think Patchface’s storyline will mostly center around Shireen, as it has so far. Melisandre’s vision of him with bloody lips, surrounded by skulls, doesn’t bode well at all. I’ve thought that perhaps if Shireen is sacrificed, he may go mad (madder), and start tearing people apart in an attempt to save her? Other people have theorized that he may somehow be connected to the heavy foreshadowing re Shireen’s greyscale, that somehow he may set it free as a grey plague – and as greyscale and the grey plague are a form of water magic, there is a definite link to Patchface there.

I don’t think Euron’s murder of his youngest brother Robin has any connection to an obsession with silencing people? None of Euron’s words about the killing imply he did it to quiet him. (Also, Robin wasn’t a baby when he was killed; he was a “sickly idiot boy”, apparently severely physically and mentally disabled.) And since Euron’s first murder was that of his eldest brother Harlon, who was already silent because greyscale had turned his mouth to stone, I think his murders only imply a desire to kill people – because he could, because he wanted to see what would happen. And picking on the weakest, those unable to fight back or raise an alarm, whose deaths wouldn’t be recognized as murders, so Euron could escape punishment or even anyone realizing what he’d done.

I can see a couple of different possibilities.

They die in the process of Lady Stoneheart’s revenge on the Freys, during the theorized Second Red Wedding and its aftermath

They die during the new Long Night and War for the Dawn, fighting for survival against the Others and wights

A few survive to the very end, and help establish a better, more pro-smallfolk government as civilization is rebuilt and order is restored

All of the above – which is probably the best answer, as there are many members of the Brotherhood, and certainly they all shouldn’t share the same fate. Thoros, for one, may die helping Jaime and Brienne escape, but it’s possible he may survive that as his expertise as a miracle-working red priest could be helpful in the fight against the Others, and that’s the fight he won’t outlive. Whereas Gendry I’m nearly certain will survive to endgame… but truly, we’ll just have to see.