The Doom of Valyria

[Independent George]

http://i54.tinypic.com/b3v0y0.png

Now, the picture is a bit out of focus, but at first glance it appears to be a simple depiction of ships on the sea. However, if you look at the background of the mural, it appears as if the sea is rising up behind the ships, like a gigantic tidal wave. There also appear to be other objects (buildings?) caught up in this wall of ocean.

I'm veering a bit into off-topic show discussion, but the mural isn't a prop - they're actual murals from the Presidential Palace in Malta, where they filmed. The DVD commentary track mentions how they didn't pay close attention to those ships until after they'd finished filming, and suddenly realized , "crap, those ships are firing cannons".

Which I find hilarious.

[the trees have eyes]

From Tyrion's penultimate chapter in ADWD: Dreams and Dust from The Selaesori Qhoran:

"Valyria. It was written that on the day of Doom every hill for five hundred miles had split asunder to fill the air with ash and smoke and fire, blazes so hot and hungry that even the dragons in the sky were engulfed and consumed. Great rents had opened in the earth, swallowing palaces, temples, entire towns. Lakes boiled or turned to acid, mountains burst, fiery fountains spewed molten rock a thousand feet into the air, red clouds rained down dragonglass and the black blood of demons, and to the north the ground splintered and collapsed and fell in on itself and an angry sea came rushing in. The proudest city in all the world was gone in an instant, its fabled empire vanished in a day, the Lands of the Long Summer scorched and drowned and blighted."

From Victarion's first chapter in ADWD: After the Feast from the Isle of Cedars:

"On the day the Doom came to Valyria, it was said, a wall of water three hundred feet high had descended on the island, drowning hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, leaving none to tell the tale but some fisherfolk who had been at sea and a handful of Velosi spearmen posted in a stout stone tower on the island's highest hill, who had seen the hills and valleys beneath them turn into a raging sea. Fair Velos with its palaces of cedar and pink marble had vanished in a heartbeat. On the north end of the island, the ancient brick walls and stepped pyramids of the slaver port Ghozai had suffered the same fate."

Sorry to quote so much but this is apocalyptic writing . As others have noted this borrows strongly from Krakaatoa and Santorini (Tambora too), examples of volcanic erruptions that caused the destruction of the islands themselves and massive tsunamis that carried the destruction much further afield. But with the scale increased and GRRM's dash of magic and mystery to spice it up - I love that intriguing demon blood reference.

The Doom sounds awesome but best left to our imagination rather than explained. Natural causes would seem too prosaic for an event with as much mystique and power as The Long Night. And if magic, someone wielding so much power seems out of keeping with GRRM's selective and sparing use of magic and it's relative lack of use as a weapon. Westeros can have its myths, legends and mysteries too.

[Bride of Winter]

I think the Doom was dragon-related, but put into action by the Faceless Men. I read a theory that Hardhome (which has a lot of parallels with the ruins of Valyria) was a result of the Valyrians trying to take Westeros. Something went wrong with the dragons (like skinchangers controlling them), and it all went to hell. The FM caught wind of this, and somehow used similar knowledge to bring the Doom on Valyria. It also explains why the Targaryens never invaded the North, and pretty much stayed away from it at all costs.

It might rank pretty high on the crack theory scale, but I like the sound of it :)

[Lan the Clever]

I think that the what happened to Valyria was something like what happened at Santorini: an underwater volcano caused a massive tidal wave which completely destroyed everything on it's way. So, Valyria is Martin's version of Atlantis, Númenor or Santorini.

[DoctorSwerve]

That is not a tsunami behind the ships. Tsunamis do not become waves until it hits the shore. This is from a guy that has witnessed a few tsunamis while living in Hawaii. The mural is only depicting the ships' wake.

[The Imp With A Pimp Limp]

I think that the doom was caused by the Children, using the same magic that they used to destroy the Dorne Pennensula.

As this story has progressed, I think that it is becoming obvious that a war is getting ready to be waged between the forces of Ice and Fire.

Dragons and Valarya are attributes of fire, while the COTF and the Old Gods are attributes of Ice.

Maybe 400 years ago, the COTF had a terrible prophetic vision or greendream that showed them that the dragons were coming to destroy them, so thy decided to go on the offensive, and used magic to destroy Valarya.

There are hardly any CoTF left, even 400 years they were 'gone'. We know that their numbers are dwindling down so I don't see them taking Valyria down to be honest, it's possible I guess.

Besides, I think the CoTF are far more concerned with the Others and the wights but who knows really, everything is possible this just seems unlikely imho.

[Ygrain]

I love that intriguing demon blood reference.

Definitely intriguing. I wonder whether it refers to something magical, or to some commonly occuring volcanic material, since it is mentioned in one sentence with dragonglass, which we know is obsidian.

[Angrivarius]

Lan the Clever mentioned it before, the Doom of Valyria equals exactly with the island Santorin.

http://en.wikipedia....iri_(Santorini)

In my opinion Santorini was what the egypians called Atlantis.

The egyptians discribed Atlantis as surrounded by a ring of water, a wall painting found in Akrotiri (related to the minoan culture on crete, a pre-greek civilisation, as old as the pyramids in Egypt), the only remaing part of this epoch on Santorin, show a city in the middle of the island with a ring of water around, it is exactly like the old egyptian prist told Platon.

Today only the outer regions of the island exist, because where the wall painting shows the capitol in the middle of the island, only water remains today, its exactly where the vulcano blew everything away. Afterwards the crater imploded, which must have caused a huge tsunami.

So Akrotiri was probably only a suburb of this sunken metropolis.

The people in Akrotiri used the heat of the vulcano for heating and had a very very high living standard before the eruption. They even had houses with 3 storeys, working canalsystems on all floors and amazing wall paintings... Its unbeleavable if you imagine how great the center of the capitol must have been.

New expeditions showed how enormous this eruption must have been, the seven plagues in egypt where put down to this incident, a huge tsunami must have rolled south to Crete and the temperature all over the world went down which caused dramatic crop fallures.

All of this matches with the Doom of Valyria.

[breezin]

Lan the Clever mentioned it before, the Doom of Valyria equals exactly with the island Santorin.

http://en.wikipedia....iri_(Santorini)

In my opinion Santorini was what the egypians called Atlantis.

The egyptians discribed Atlantis as surrounded by a ring of water, a wall painting found in Akrotiri (related to the minoan culture on crete, a pre-greek civilisation, as old as the pyramids in Egypt), the only remaing part of this epoch on Santorin, show a city in the middle of the island with a ring of water around, it is exactly like the old egyptian prist told Platon.

Today only the outer regions of the island exist, because where the wall painting shows the capitol in the middle of the island, only water remains today, its exactly where the vulcano blew everything away. Afterwards the crater imploded, which must have caused a huge tsunami.

So Akrotiri was probably only a suburb of this sunken metropolis.

The people in Akrotiri used the heat of the vulcano for heating and had a very very high living standard before the eruption. They even had houses with 3 storeys, working canalsystems on all floors and amazing wall paintings... Its unbeleavable if you imagine how great the center of the capitol must have been.

New expeditions showed how enormous this eruption must have been, the seven plagues in egypt where put down to this incident, a huge tsunami must have rolled south to Crete and the temperature all over the world went down which caused dramatic crop fallures.

All of this matches with the Doom of Valyria.

:agree:

That always crossed my mind as well. Another interesting theory is that the eruption was related to the 7 Plagues of Egypt, decribed in the Exodus story shared by the Torah, Bible, and Quran. It's easy to imagine that a volanic eruption could cause a darkened sky and affect the ecology of Egypt.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/7530678/Biblical-plagues-really-happened-say-scientists.html

[AdXRoss]

At the outset of the series, I was thinking of the Doom as being something purely geological, a massive super-eruption that wiped out Valeryian civilization from all of that Empire's old heartlands, leaving the keepers of the Western provinces to move on in search of new lands, but the more we get it into the series and the more magic has begun to feature on a regular basis, I've become more convinced that the cause of the Doom was not so mundane as a large volcano going off.

We've had very little information concerning Old Valeryia, beyond some brief accounts of its wars with Old Ghis, other than the broad implication that the Valeryians could do some very interesting things with magic. The little glimpses we get, particularly the description of the fire caves and the fire wyrms really gives me the image of Valeryia as being like Ancient Greece on crack, with the avaricious nature of the Romans, and so I now get the impression that there was some magical over-reaching going on and perhaps the Valeryians delved too deeply in the volcanic underbelly of their land?

I'd love to find out more about Old Valeryia, particularly because of the image I've built up so far, and I do wonder if with the action taking place in Slaver's Bay, if Dany might wind up going through the Poisoned Sea and giving us more of an impression of what Valeryia was like and how far it went beyond even the Targayrens.

[The Dragon has three heads]

From Tyrion's penultimate chapter in ADWD: Dreams and Dust from The Selaesori Qhoran:

"Valyria. It was written that on the day of Doom every hill for five hundred miles had split asunder to fill the air with ash and smoke and fire, blazes so hot and hungry that even the dragons in the sky were engulfed and consumed. Great rents had opened in the earth, swallowing palaces, temples, entire towns. Lakes boiled or turned to acid, mountains burst, fiery fountains spewed molten rock a thousand feet into the air, red clouds rained down dragonglass and the black blood of demons, and to the north the ground splintered and collapsed and fell in on itself and an angry sea came rushing in. The proudest city in all the world was gone in an instant, its fabled empire vanished in a day, the Lands of the Long Summer scorched and drowned and blighted."

From Victarion's first chapter in ADWD: After the Feast from the Isle of Cedars:

"On the day the Doom came to Valyria, it was said, a wall of water three hundred feet high had descended on the island, drowning hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, leaving none to tell the tale but some fisherfolk who had been at sea and a handful of Velosi spearmen posted in a stout stone tower on the island's highest hill, who had seen the hills and valleys beneath them turn into a raging sea. Fair Velos with its palaces of cedar and pink marble had vanished in a heartbeat. On the north end of the island, the ancient brick walls and stepped pyramids of the slaver port Ghozai had suffered the same fate."

Sorry to quote so much but this is apocalyptic writing . As others have noted this borrows strongly from Krakaatoa and Santorini (Tambora too), examples of volcanic erruptions that caused the destruction of the islands themselves and massive tsunamis that carried the destruction much further afield. But with the scale increased and GRRM's dash of magic and mystery to spice it up - I love that intriguing demon blood reference.

The Doom sounds awesome but best left to our imagination rather than explained. Natural causes would seem too prosaic for an event with as much mystique and power as The Long Night. And if magic, someone wielding so much power seems out of keeping with GRRM's selective and sparing use of magic and it's relative lack of use as a weapon. Westeros can have its myths, legends and mysteries too.

The most important part here is tht from two different POVs you get two different types of disaster, both related, and both showing no matter how powerful the freehold was, a natural disaster of this kind still destroyed the empire, magical dragon lords or no, a (super)natural disaster destroyed the freehold.

I'm not sure I buy this FM "caused" the Doom theory, I believe there was probably alot of factors at play, the hubris and power of Valyria and their messing with things they thought they understood being one of them..."demon blood" sounds like scare mongering but hey, it depends if what Varys saw when he was cut was another person through a glass candle, or something much, much worse...

[Ser Mag the Mighty]

ADWD:

On the day the Doom came to Valyria, it was said, a wall of water three hundred feet high had descended on the island, drowning hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children, leaving none to tell the tale but some fisherfolk who had been at sea and a handful of Velosi spearmen posted in a stout stone tower on the island’s highest hill, who had seen the hills and valleys beneath them turn into a raging sea. Fair Velos with its palaces of cedar and pink marble had vanished in a heartbeat. On the north end of the island, the ancient brick walls and stepped pyramids of the slaver port Ghozai had suffered the same fate.

[western wolf]

I don't see any buildings but I do see the wave. You may very well be right. Nice catch.

[Peter George Stewart]

Just out of interest and to give y'all some nightmares :) :-

Supervolcanoes. Toba Catastrophe Theory.

[Aryya Stark]

A superb thread!