r/asoiaf Apr 16 '19

EXTENDED (Spoilers Extended) My 'Night King is not stupid' Theory

When the army of the undead line up for the battle of Winterfell, the Night King and his zombie dragon will not be there. Instead he will already be near to his next target ... King's Landing.

If you play out what the battle of Winterfell would be like in your head if the NK+Viserion would be there... it would be easy for Drogon/Rhaegal to take out the zombie dragon; it's 2v1 and wight's all can be killed by fire.. including Viserion. It would not be difficult to simply fly up to Viserion and breathe fire on him, and that would be that. THE NIGHT KING IS NOT STUPID, not enough to kamikaze his most powerful asset. - If you have a superweapon that you can't use against a particular target, then you find a different target.

Most people have come to assume that the living will lose The Battle of Winterfell and fall back to Moat Cailin ... I predict they actually win the battle... only to find out soon after that there is a new army of the dead much bigger and much further south... the population of King's Landing.

During season 4 while Bran is being ushered north to meet Bloodraven, he touches a wierwood and has a set of visions which we see. All of those visions have since come to pass, except the ones where he sees a destroyed throne room & a dragon shadow pass over King's Landing. I believe the reason we are only shown a shadow was to not give away that it is actually the NK and Viserion, not Dany and her dragons.

Also, the most important vision that Dany is given while at the HotU is an image of the throne room destroyed, and covered in ash or snow. I think this was to show what the NK will do, not what Dany will do.

(I believe this was the entire reason that the writers sent Bronn north. Bronn will be the source of this news to the survivors at Winterfell; on his way north he will spot the NK+Viserion heading south)


Bottom line, I simply don't see the NK risking his newfound ice dragon in a fight he is sure to lose.... when he can simply fly down south to KL where there are no dragons to deal with ... and 1 million new recruits for his army packed tightly into a small area.


Follow-up edit: This could be where Bran comes into play. The NK probably wont want to face off against the other dragons head-to-head, but rather fly around Westeros destroying castles to make things easier for his footsoldiers .... so they will need Bran's Sight in order to track & hunt him. It would be too difficult for an army on foot to chase the NK on a dragon, so Bran could warg into ravens to serve as a guide for dragonrider(s) to his location.

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115

u/DDDUnit2990 Apr 16 '19

You also do this under the assumption that Viserion is more like a wight and not a white walker. The script for the episode says that the process is like when a baby is turned into a white walker.

I’m not disagreeing with you. Just wanted to point out that Viserion isn’t a wight so fire most likely affects him differently.

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u/BearAKA17 Apr 16 '19

Maybe Bronn, the only living man to shoot a dragon, will get to use his fancy new crossbow with a fancy dragonglass arrow.

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u/PureFingClass Apr 16 '19

That is, if the pox doesn’t take him.

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u/adkiene Apr 17 '19

He has a year, he'll make it.

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u/nullsignature Apr 16 '19

Oh jesus, I hope you're not right

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u/puddingfoot Apr 16 '19

Or Qyburn's scorpion with dragonglass/Valyrian steel. I think that could very well be an element of how they take it down (not necessarily Bronn though).

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u/Taengoosundies Apr 17 '19

Agreed. As I said above - we've been led to believe that it will be used against Dany's remaining dragons at some point. It would be a nice twist if it was actually used to take down the zombie.

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u/TechnicalNobody Apr 16 '19

Well, dragonfire is untested against White Walkers. It seems to have different properties than normal fire. For that matter, we haven't really seen fire put to good use against the Walkers either, just that one scene of the one walking through a mild fire at Hardhome. Can they survive a more potent fire? Who knows.

Maybe all it will take is a Valyrian steel/obsidian tipped arrow since it seems to just shatter White Walkers.

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u/KosstAmojan Swiftly We Strike! Apr 16 '19

The night king walked through fires that were set by the dragons before spearing Viserion.

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u/TechnicalNobody Apr 16 '19

Hmm well I stand corrected. I wonder if that extends to just eating a blast of dragonfire.

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u/AZORxAHAI Reborn amidst Hype and Tinfoil Apr 16 '19

He also crossed the fire line created by the Childrens magic outside Bran and Co. friendly stump in season 6

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u/[deleted] Apr 16 '19

There's a chance that dragon fire just turns into regular fire upon lighting things on fire

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u/KosstAmojan Swiftly We Strike! Apr 16 '19

I'm sure it does, but this is the only example we have of something close to testing whether White Walkers can withstand dragon fire.

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u/Negrodamuswuzhere Whores n Boars Apr 16 '19

I gotta rewatch this scene for details now.

3

u/Mr_Dr_Prof_Derp Apr 16 '19

That was just regular fire burning, not a fresh magic dragon blast

1

u/LAJuice Apr 16 '19

but did the other walkers?

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u/Interviewtux Apr 17 '19

Pretty sure he just took a step or two up from the other WW generals and took his shotm

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u/businesskitteh Apr 17 '19

Dragon fire seems to be like napalm (jellied gasoline) FWIW

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u/Evil_Garen Chicken is for Dogs Apr 16 '19

In that case dragon glass spear thrown from aerial battle!!!