90 The Spider (4)
Varys was once a very small man when he came to King's Landing at Aerys' calling for him to join the Small Council. He was seen as a young ex-slave, without a lordship or house of his own, weak, and powerless. But overtime, through his manipulation of Aerys, encouraging his paranoia and own self-inflicted downfall, Varys cast a very large shadow over the empire of House Targaryen in Westeros, and destroyed it forever.
Victor was the only person who knows the future, without him present of course, and even in the future the Spider will do many things that just don't add up.
The spider will show apparent disgust at the murders of Rhaegar's children, Rhaenys and Aegon, at the end of Robert's Rebellion, and the way in which they were brutally murdered.
However, due to Victor's knowledge of the future he knew that Aegon seemingly survived and was swapped with a tanner's child, bought by Varys, and swapped with Aegon, so that this bought child could be sacrificed to the Lannister's, who Varys presumed would want to kill Rhaegar's children.
This very child, supposedly Aegon Targaryen, would meet up Tyrion Lannister in the future and explain him the circumstances of his swap and the role Varys played in it:
"That was not me. I told you. That was some tanner's son from Pisswater Bend whose mother died birthing him. His father sold him to Lord Varys for a jug of Arbor gold. He had other sons but had never tasted Arbor gold. Varys gave the Pisswater boy to my lady mother and carried me away."
This man, Aegon Targaryen, claims to be the rightful heir of Rhaegar Targaryen and the son of him and his wife, Elia Martell. Tyrion's answer, although full of sarcasm, described quite well what happened to Aegon once Varys smuggled him out of King's Landing, which he was fully capable of.
"And when the pisswater prince was safely dead, the eunuch smuggled you across the narrow sea to his fat friend the cheesemonger, who hid you on a poleboat and found an exile lord willing to call himself your father. It does make for a splendid story, and the singers will make much of your escape once you take the Iron Throne … if our fair Daenerys takes you for her consort."
This entire "splendid story" as Tyrion calls it, is full of inconsistencies and unbelievable acts.
The first red flag of this story is the idea that Varys, a former slave child who abhors slavery, would willingly buy another man's young child.
The second red flag is the idea that Varys, someone who seemingly abhors the murder and suffering of innocent children, would willingly sacrifice an innocent young child and allow them to be murdered just to spare another, more valuable child. The idea that Varys would also take Elia's child away from her, either willingly or unwillingly on her part, is also questionable.
The third red flag is why Varys chose only to switch Aegon with another child, and not do the same for Rhaenys.
The final red flag is the idea that Varys was able to foresee how the Rebellion was going to end, accurately guessed that Rhaegar's children would be murdered by the Lannister's, knew where and when to find Elia and her children, be able to remove one of her children away from her without anyone knowing, and knew that one of Tywin's men would kill the children so brutally that next to no one would be able to recognize them – the story is built on a series of flimsy conveniences and incredible predictive abilities on Varys' part.
If Varys truly cared so much about the protection and well-being of children, he would not have willingly bought and sacrificed an innocent child to be sacrificed in exchange for Aegon's survival, nor would he have abandoned Rhaenys to her fate if he could have prevented it.
The whole story of Varys saving Aegon Targaryen was full of loopholes and inconsistencies.
Could this story have even happened exactly like it was portrayed?
After thinking it through repeatedly, Victor thought this possibility to be quite ridiculous. Why would Varys save Elia's and Rhaegar's son and not announce this to his allies? Why should he rather push up Daenarys, a raped woman, towards the iron throne, instead of a male heir with half the blood of Dorne, that could gather many more powerful allies and troops to win back the iron throne?
There needed to be a reason why Varys saved Aegon Targaryen, or at least why he constructed this story of saving a young child and painting him up to be an heir to the Targaryen dynasty. What was the Spider's agenda with Aegon and Daenerys?
Yet, up to this point Victor couldn't prove any of his hypothesis.
The last straw that broke his illusion that anything about Varys could be real was his "friendship" with Tyrion in the future.
Varys chooses to frame Tyrion for Kevan's murder, deliberately and intentionally further putting his life in danger by Cersei's wrath, already knowing that Tyrion has a large bounty on his head because of her and talks lowly of Tyrion by calling him an "Imp" and referring to his "connivance" in a very scorned tone.
Varys never considered Tyrion a friend or ally in ASOIAF and was just using him, another lie that he tells throughout the series, and by the end of ADWD, he hates Tyrion for his scheming and knowing too much information than Varys wished him to know.
But there is a bigger telling point about how much Varys uses Tyrion, and a more ground-breaking twist in the narrative that reflects both how much Varys underestimates Tyrion and how much Varys never cared for him.
In ASOS, Varys didn't tell Tyrion how to reach the Tower of the Hand to go and kill Tywin. Varys told him this key information so that Tyrion could go and kill Shae instead, who Varys considered a greater threat to him.
Shae is one of the few, perhaps the only people in ASOIAF to see through Varys' disguises.
His disguise as Rugen is very important to Varys' plans after Tyrion's disappearance from King's Landing, as Varys seeks to frame Rugen as a Tyrell puppet who broke Tyrion from imprisonment on the Tyrells' behalf, to sow division and further paranoia between Cersei and the Tyrells.
