Just a little cheeky little thing about the Doom

[Illyrio Mo'Parties]

"Some, wedding the fanciful notion of Valyrian magic to the reality of the ambitious great houses of Valyria, have argued that it was the constant whirl of conflict and deception amongst the great houses that might have led to the assassinations of too many of the reputed mages who renewed and maintained the rituals that banked the fires of the Fourteen Flames.”

I don't have a big theory here, but it does strike me that this is basically the entire series in a nutshell: the "constant whirl of conflict and deception amongst the great houses" leaving the realm unable to stave off magical doom.

It might even have a more literal reflection: if "there must always be a Stark in Winterfell" to stave off the Others, and these wars have diminished the number of Starks before finally driving them out of Winterfell and burning the castle... well, perhaps the Starks were, unwittingly, the "mages who renewed and maintained the rituals that" stayed the cold winds of the far north.

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Edit: oh, and I forgot to mention, everything we've ever heard about the Valryians is second-hand and potentially suspect. History is written by the winners, after all; perhaps the tales of the terrible cruelty of the Valyrian system are just that, i.e. tales.