I was listening to the Critical Drinker's after hours stream and they were talking about Winds of Winter due to the fact that GRRM recently released something Westeros related that wasn't WOW along with his many projects with HBO. They all pretty much agreed that it is highly doubtful it will ever be released, at least while he is alive.
Someone in the comments put out the whole "he owes you nothing" argument and that fans are entitled, but he did say GRRM made a mistake in constantly promising that he would end the series.
What do y'all think? I understand that he owes me nothing and I read the books between season 5 and 6 so I haven't been waiting since the 90s, but I would respect him more if he just said that he didn't want to finish and hire someone to finish. I will say now that whenever someone recommends a book series to me the first thing I ask is if the series is completed or not. I also remember someone saying that now people will be less willing to give a new author a chance if he has a multi book series.
I personally believe that once he dies (assuming he never releases the books) that his publisher will take what he had written and publish that or find someone to make it a coherent story. GOT could've been an epic show from start to finish had he finished the source material and even if he does release the last two the interest will be far less than what it could've been.
So there's a lot to address there because of how significant the heir involved is.
The heir is Young Griff whose identity, Aegon Targaryen, and existence are only revealed when Tyrion works it out then and there after noticing both Griff and Young Griff have dyed their hair blue to both conceal their identity and attempt to play off the fake father and son angle better. So no plan to meet that particular heir was in play at the time Aegon is raised as a man of the people working his hands with the peasants throughout the land so he understands the common man he is planned to rule over eventually. The reasons for this is partly due to the detachment from elites in general leading to problems, such as war between Houses for political reasons, and Targaryen's have their history of madness so a plan was put in place to try and ground Aegon and prevent him viewing his subjects as little more than cannon fodder.
Dany is/was the only known Targaryen at the time as Aegon was assumed to have died with the rest of the Targaryen line bar Viserys and Dany and her only other blood relative had taken The Black decades ago and everyone had forgotten about him.
However Young Griff/Aegon's claim, if legitimate as some readers think his identity is a lie, supersedes Dany's because Aegon is the second child and son of Rhaegar and Elia Martell. Rhaegar being the eldest sibling of himself, Viserys, and Dany was first in line to the throne after "The Mad King" Aerys II.
It's the situation the show puts Jon into as he's Dany's nephew and had a more direct line to the throne than she does however Aegon really is dead in the show because the show cut down on a lot of plot and intrigue as things went on because D&D were utterly devoid of creative talent.
This also puts Aegon's claim before Jon's who would be Rhaegar's second son with Lyanna Stark as Elia was extremely frail to the point that her first childbirth was bad enough and the second was that much worse she wouldn't be able to carry more to term let alone giving up her life so the child could live.
The 5th book ends with Jon being dead, having been assassinated by The Watch, Dany off in the middle of fucking nowhere after Drogon saves her from the assassination attempts at the arena, and Young Griff having taken Jon Connington's ancestral castle.
Excusing the issue of Jon coming back from the dead, which every knows is coming because the books deal with the prophecy of Azor Ahai far better than the show did, Aegon being the man of the people he is sits in a potential role as a redeeming figure for the peasants of Westeros which could lead Dany down her path of madness as after years or planning to return to King's Landing and claim the throne, Aegon may achieve it before her and do so in a manner that wins him over the hearts of the public. Dany showing up with her dragons and destroying the enemy woudl certainly be effective but it is just as likely to terrify the Westerosi because of the sheer scale of power involved.
As a side note I personally wanted Jon's real name to be "Aejon" rather than "Aegon" like his half-brother since it follows the Targaryen naming convention but with a North twist of the "-Jon" suffix instead of "-gon".