A Dance with Dragons — Connington I

Griff drops his mask: Jon Connington, exiled Hand of the Mad King — and the blue-haired boy is presented to the Golden Company as Aegon Targaryen, Rhaegar's living son.

The chapter retold

Griff drops the disguise: he is Jon Connington, once Robert’s rival for Lyanna Stark’s hand, once Hand of the King to the Mad King, exiled for failing to catch a rebel and left to rot in Essos for it. The boy with the dyed hair is presented to the assembled captains of the Golden Company under his true name — Aegon Targaryen, son of Rhaegar, believed murdered as an infant during the Sack of King’s Landing and, if this chapter is to be believed, quietly smuggled to safety in his place.

This is the book’s other great secret laid on the table at last, delivered with the theatrical confidence of men who have spent sixteen years rehearsing the reveal: a second Targaryen claimant, raised in secret, backed by Westeros’s most feared mercenary company, entering the game from a direction none of the great houses are watching. Connington’s loyalty reads as genuine and his desperation as dangerous in equal measure — a disgraced man given one last chance to undo his failure, which is exactly the kind of motive this book has taught its readers to be wary of.

This movement: The Griffin and the Rhoyne

• Aboard the Shy Maid, Tyrion unmasks his companions: Jon Connington, exiled griffin lord — and 'Young Griff', a blue-haired boy who may be Rhaegar's son Aegon.
• Stone men attack on the Bridge of Dream; Tyrion pulls Young Griff from the river; Connington comes up with greyscale he tells no one about.
• Quentyn Martell crosses half a world with a marriage pact signed in old ink, to court a queen who's never heard of him.
• Tyrion is snatched in Volantis by a knight in a merchant's skin: Jorah Mormont, buying his way home with a dwarf.