What were the Targs thinking with their dragon-raising?

[Lykos]

I do favor a connection between volcanos and dragons very much. There even is a very remote hint to volcanic activity at the place where Drogo fell: "Her handmaids filled the tub with tepid water that stank of sulfur.."

That is why I wanted to know if we know wich (if any) of the Dragons where hatched on Westeros - Mainland.

I hate talking to myself,well...

Another hint to the Volcanos is of course the dragon egg brought to (unaccounted fof tale sorry) he hot springs of winterfell by Bryndon Rivers.

ETA: Maybe the Volcano on Dragonstone switched from dorment to dead.

[Baitac]

Maybe dragons can change their gender based on necessity. Jurassic Park? Life finds a way.

[assjfjgjsgjljljglgjfjsduar]

Maybe dragons can change their gender based on necessity. Jurassic Park? Life finds a way.

Someone goes out into the park and lifts up the dragons' skirts.

[Lykos]

Maybe dragons can change their gender based on necessity. Jurassic Park? Life finds a way.

Reptiles are known to do that. But I´m not even shure that two dragons are needed to produce a hatchable egg.

[Eejit]

I hate talking to myself,well...

Hah, I hear that.

Possibly, although it depends on how many of the Targaryen dragons that hatched were related to each other rather than being descended from unrelated eggs brought from Valyria,

Maybe dragons can change their gender based on necessity. Jurassic Park? Life finds a way.

More or less, according to Maester Aemon.

[jarl the climber]

Here is one theory I can offer to the decline of the later dragons, the eggs were tampered with and a blood sacrifice was probaly not made, I'd have to consult the books, the eggs Dany got were fossilized I believe, maybe thats just from the TV show, maybe if the eggs were fresh, newly laid they would hatch on thier own if they were around dragon mother maybe, perhaps the blood sacrifice binds them to the Targaryeans.

[Sasha Steelsong]

I think the major factor was magic dying out for a while (or taking a nap as appears to be the case) combined with poor dragon keeping habits and some interference from the maesters. I think the dragons would have been in decline regardless and perhaps even died out but that Targs not really knowing how to deal with raising dragons in a world of dying magic and the maester's meddling accellerate the process.

[Lykos]

I think the major factor was magic dying out for a while (or taking a nap as appears to be the case) combined with poor dragon keeping habits and some interference from the maesters. I think the dragons would have been in decline regardless and perhaps even died out but that Targs not really knowing how to deal with raising dragons in a world of dying magic and the maester's meddling accellerate the process.

I go with this -

interesting thread.

concerning the "magic -> dragons" vs. "dragons -> magic" question, I strongly favor the first. We know the Others came back into action before the hatching of Dany's 3, and they seem pretty magical. For me it always seemed that the coming back of magic was what allowed Dany's ritual to succeed, and probably also what gave her the idea to try it in the first place...

[Baitac]

Maybe we can have one of the dragons fly OVER a volcano and its rider can drop a bunch of eggs into it! Nah!

[jarl the climber]

Thats the thing, Tyrion mentions something about dragon mating habits, Aemon tells us dragon are asexual. What do trhe dragons do when they lay an egg? Hand it over to a human? I guess they bury them lot a lot of other lizards, or they might build nests but we have to realize that the dragons knew how to hatch thier eggs without human intervention. The Targaryeans intervened in some way to bind the dragons to them, the reason that people are having such a problem hatching them is because they are people not dragons, there had always been dragons around to hatch the eggs before the last one died out.

[boojam]

Erm,they weren't exactly renowned for breeding with the smallfolk.

You don't see many of them about.

[boojam]

Erm,they weren't exactly renowned for breeding with the smallfolk.

You don't see many of them about.

[boojam]

Erm,they weren't exactly renowned for breeding with the smallfolk.

You don't see many of them about.

[boojam]

Erm,they weren't exactly renowned for breeding with the smallfolk.

You don't see many of them about.

I just don't see that. The Valyrians seem an analog of the Romans, except they didn't have an Empire, tho the Valyrian Freehold sure seems close.

Still there were plenty of Roman plebeians and not as many patrician, senatorial or equestrian classes.

So I still don't know where all the Valyrian plebeians went?

I can't believe or buy that the Valyrian population numbered about a 1000 or so, too odd!

[jarl the climber]

Let me throw this out there, what kind of role did dragons play in rearing there own offspring? Could it be possible that the dragons themselves had a hierarchy that raised and disciplined the youngeer dragons. The warlocks mentioned that the dragons had their own secret language, perhaps when the older dragons started dieng off, a lot of thier ways and customs died off, perhaps it was the dragons that had the real knowledge of hatching eggs and raising dragons.

[redriver]

I just don't see that. The Valyrians seem an analog of the Romans, except they didn't have an Empire, tho the Valyrian Freehold sure seems close.

Still there were plenty of Roman plebeians and not as many patrician, senatorial or equestrian classes.

So I still don't know where all the Valyrian plebeians went?

I can believe or buy that the Valyrian population numbered about a 1000 or so, too odd!

Your original quote was about Targaryens breeding on a wider scale not Valyrians.

We can assume the Targs were a major House in Valyria,if even that.But they were only one family.

And they exist now because they exited Valyria before the Doom,possibly because of a book called Signs and Portents that one of their ancestors wrote before the Doom.

The other major households of the Freehold of Valyria were wiped out in the Doom.

But that's not to say there are no Valyrian descendants dotted around the place.

Most of the languages of the Free Cities are Valyrian based.

[Lykos]

Thats the thing, Tyrion mentions something about dragon mating habits, Aemon tells us dragon are asexual. What do trhe dragons do when they lay an egg? Hand it over to a human? I guess they bury them lot a lot of other lizards, or they might build nests but we have to realize that the dragons knew how to hatch thier eggs without human intervention. The Targaryeans intervened in some way to bind the dragons to them, the reason that people are having such a problem hatching them is because they are people not dragons, there had always been dragons around to hatch the eggs before the last one died out.

Tyrion mentions this book.

[boojam]

Your original quote was about Targaryens breeding on a wider scale not Valyrians.

We can assume the Targs were a major House in Valyria,if even that.But they were only one family.

And they exist now because they exited Valyria before the Doom,possibly because of a book called Signs and Portents that one of their ancestors wrote before the Doom.

The other major households of the Freehold of Valyria were wiped out in the Doom.

But that's not to say there are no Valyrian descendants dotted around the place.

Most of the languages of the Free Cities are Valyrian based.

The Valyrians were intertwined with the dragons, but mostly, George has not told us much about Valyrian society.

It's not clear, during those 5000 years of 'dragon-use' , were some, many, all the dragons used as 'war dragons'?

As has been noted on this thread, 5000 years of dragon raising and training is hell of a long time.

Seems a there would have grown up a wide class of trainers (like horse trainers) and a vast store of dragon knowledge.

(I would like to know if there were still 'wild dragons' , since , seems, the volcanic parts of Valyria did not disappear during the Doom, dragons still about? Maybe they just don't roam , maybe they never did. In fact from the fragmentary evidence George gives, Valyria did not utterly disappear it seems parts of it are left a islands in the Smoking Sea.)

Valyria seems to have left both influence and engineering artifacts over the Eastern world, I can't see a tiny group of people, even with slave help and 'magic' doing this.

The word magic seems to get thrown around a lot in connection with Valyria, but the same thing could have been said about the Roman Empire, right after it's fall things like roads and great buildings would have seemed like 'magic' to the less sophisticated conquerors to the Roman world.

As with the dragons, maybe most of the non-aristocratic Valyrians were wiped out, but could not have been all.

That the Valyrian Targs occupied Dragonstone without other non-aristocratic Valyrians does not make sense.

[slayer420]

As a few of us have noted on here over time, the Targaryens brought three original dragons to Westeros and had 19 total (based on the skulls in the Red Keep) before they died out. Dragons had lasted for thousands of years in Valyria, but the Targs exhausted their stock barely 150 years into their tenure in Westeros.

So what happened?

It's suggested that it was the Dragonpit — the practice of cooping the beasts up in a hole — that resulted in the dragons' stunted growth and eventual extinction. Marwyn also hints to Sam that the maesters had some role to play in the dragons' demise.

It seems to me that for proclaiming themselves to be the "blood of the dragon," the historical Targaryens were astonishingly ignorant when it came to raising them. Apparently it was possible in Valyria to raise them "out and about" without them destroying everything, so why not in Westeros? Wouldn't they have put two and two together and realized, "Hey, this generation of dragons we raised in a big hole in the ground isn't as big as the last one!" Wouldn't they, being the blood of Old Valyria and all, know not to keep their dragons in a pit? Were the maesters that persuasive, saying, "You have to keep them in a pit," knowing full well what that would mean? And why did the Targs not say, "Hey we're the dragon experts here, not you, so screw off"?

Was it a "decline in magic" that caused the dragons to die out, or vice versa? Was it really so simple and dumb as just keeping them in the Dragonpit, or was there something about Westeros itself that "disagreed" with the dragons?

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Don't know if this matters to you but your numbers are wrong on the skulls. It says that the oldest of them are over 3000 years old. I don't know how this is possible unless they bought some of the skulls with them on the crossing. I just read the 13 chapter of AGOT (Tyrion chapter) which talks about the skulls for the Unspoiled readings on I-tunes. Very funny by the way.

[assjfjgjsgjljljglgjfjsduar]

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Don't know if this matters to you but your numbers are wrong on the skulls. It says that the oldest of them are over 3000 years old. I don't know how this is possible unless they bought some of the skulls with them on the crossing. I just read the 13 chapter of AGOT (Tyrion chapter) which talks about the skulls for the Unspoiled readings on I-tunes. Very funny by the way.

Huh, my mistake. I actually checked the Wiki for the number, I didn't have the book handy to go check. In any case I don't think it matters. One skull or a hundred, the things are still dead. :P