I appreciate and even admire what Varys is going for with the whole “unlike Tommen, Aegon was raised to know hunger and fear” thing. It immerses the perfect prince in the trials faced by those not lucky enough to be born heir to anything, encouraging him to see his subjects as people he’s sworn to protect rather than exploit. However, I don’t think that necessarily produces an overall worldview and game plan that helps said people. The problem is that Aegon never had this moment:
Donal Noye leaned forward, into Jon’s face. “Now think on this, boy. None of these others have ever had a master-at-arms until Ser Alliser. Their fathers were farmers and wagonmen and poachers, smiths and miners and oars on a trading galley. What they know of fighting they learned between decks, in the alleys of Oldtown and Lannisport, in wayside brothels and taverns on the kingsroad. They may have clacked a few sticks together before they came here, but I promise you, not one in twenty was ever rich enough to own a real sword.” His look was grim. “So how do you like the taste of your victories now, Lord Snow?”
“Don’t call me that!” Jon said sharply, but the force had gone out of his anger. Suddenly he felt ashamed and guilty. “I never … I didn’t think …”
Varys brags that Aegon knew fear, but he never knew shame; he never doubted himself and grew on his own terms rather than his handlers’. Jon, by contrast, was directly confronted with exactly the bubble you’re talking about, early on in his story. Donal Noye tells him that however valid his own frustrations were at Winterfell, it’s not remotely badass to take out those frustrations on those who have only fought with sticks. Jon listens, and learns.
As shown by the white cloak now fluttering from Duck’s shoulders, Aegon has affinity for the particular common folk he grew up with, but he still doesn’t appear to have connected the dots to any larger ideology (because as we see in the epilogue to ADWD, Varys has the ideology waiting for him, all wrapped up in a neat little bow). Jon, by contrast, wasn’t immersed from the start, and so he initially has elitist blind spots. But he’s had the opportunity to undergo genuine self-motivated growth, which is how you get him taking Satin as his squire and letting Tormund’s people through the Wall four books later. Aegon had all the building blocks handed to him, and they’re kinda just sitting there. Jon tripped over them, picked them up, examined them, and is now building with them.
I don’t appreciate or admire Varys at all. He is sincere and he certainly arrived at it validly but for all that “A very small man can cast a big shadow talk” he’s at the end of the day going to cynically put a big shadow over all the smallfolk. Maybe my opinions will change if we get a glimpse of what kind of kingdom Varys hopes to build with Young Griff but so far, it’s not looking good. He has Jon “I should have burned more peasants” Connington as Mentor to Young Griff, and he’s a pawn and puppet for the Golden Company who being that they are Blackfyristas are all about throwing people away from the land that belonged to them and getting it back regardless of who lives there now. I really can’t see how they are going to benefit Westeros in anyway.
The whole “raising Aegon as a commoner” thing strikes me very much as a GRRM parody of the whole prince and pauper/slumming it trope. The kind Preston Sturges mocked in Sullivan’s Travels. And I absolutely don’t buy that at all.
I get what you’re saying, but I don’t quite see it that way. This isn’t fetishization of suffering in poverty by artists, a la Rent. It’s about governance–immersion in the name of achieving not a tourist-y catharsis, but an understanding of the people who will be affected by Aegon’s policies. After all, Varys has also made sure Aegon’s educated in many other respects as well; it’s not that playing poor will automatically make him a saint, but (the hope) that it’ll make him a more engaged and empathetic ruler. Varys is probably drawing from D&E in-universe, and I think GRRM’s playing more on (and poking holes in) Plato’s ideal of the educated philosopher-king than Sturges.
To be clear, I think Varys’ platform is riddled with blind spots and doomed to fail; enlightened absolute monarchy doesn’t work out in practice. But there’s more to it ideologically, intellectually, and in terms of intent than mere slumming.
I’d like to raise a suggestion that Varys’ praxis and his theory might be at odds. The concept of raising a perfect prince to be a philosopher king is seemingly simple in concept, but there’s a reason why most philosophers who tried their hand at it ended badly, whether we’re talking Plato being sold into slavery by the Tyrant of Syraucuse or Voltaire being put under house arrest with his pamphlets burned by Frederick the Great of Prussia.
In Varys’ case, the problem is that his method of influencing from a distance is at odds with his theory of carefully stage-managing his charge’s education so as to produce someone not merely with the best skills for the job but also the right character; he simply can’t be on hand to provide quality control if he’s simultaneously undermining the state from within thousands of miles away.
So while Varys has carefully chosen the curriculum, he doesn’t know what Jon Connington and the other tutors he’s engaged have been saying, and he doesn’t know much how his charge has reacted to their efforts. If we take the two scenes where Aegon is being tutored by the half-maester and then playing Tyrion in chess, I get a sense that Aegon has mastered the formal curriculum (although clearly he’s bored by the stuff that doesn’t involve fighting) but hasn’t quite absorbed the moral curriculum (given how imperious and romantic he is when Tyrion challenges him at all).
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