Aegon Targaryen Young Griff

Tyrion Lannister, a fugitive smuggled aboard the Shy Maid, meets a boy introduced to him as the son of the mercenary Griff, travelling with a company bound for Volantis to await Daenerys Targaryen. The boy dyes his hair Tyroshi blue, though it does little to hide violet eyes out of place on a sellsword's son.

In time Tyrion puts the pieces together: Griff is really Jon Connington, a disgraced former Hand of the King, and the boy is not his son but Prince Aegon. Over a game of cyvasse, Griff the Younger gives his account of how he survived the sack: Varys swapped two infants, left a tanner's son for Gregor Clegane to kill, and smuggled the true prince across the narrow sea until, grown, he was placed in the care of Connington, an old friend of his father Rhaegar.

Tyrion hears out, and doubts, the plan to wed the boy to his aunt Daenerys, and proposes something else instead: strike straight at Westeros while King Tommen's Small Council remains weak after the civil war.

At Volon Therys, Jon Connington presents the boy to the officers of the Golden Company, first as his squire and then, plainly, as Aegon VI Targaryen, king of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men. There is talk of joining Daenerys's fight in the Bay of Dragons first, but Aegon cuts the debate short: he would rather she come to him, in Westeros, than the other way around.

Harry Strickland warns against moving too fast, but most of the captains favour striking at once, before House Lannister can react. The Company swears itself to Aegon, though they agree to keep his identity secret until they land.

The fleet sails from Volantis, but storms scatter the Golden Company and fewer than half reach the Stormlands in time. Aegon stays behind at camp during the taking of Griffin's Roost and rejoins his men four days later, having already named Ser Rolly Duckfield first knight of his Kingsguard.

He backs Connington's plan to march on Storm's End, but insists on leading the assault himself.

Far away, Varys kills Kevan Lannister, then Lord Regent, to keep him from setting his niece Cersei's rule in order and endangering the Golden Company's march. As Kevan lies dying, Varys assures him that Aegon lives and has been raised, since childhood, to rule: trained in arms and letters, in history and law, but also in hunger, fear, and work done with his own hands.

It is the fullest defense offered of who Griff the Younger truly is, spoken by a dying man with no apparent reason to lie. Even so, it settles nothing: Varys swears the boy is fit to rule, but does not say, in those words, that he carries dragon's blood.