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How old is Braavos? When was the city founded?


Rhaenys_Targaryen

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Just now, Nittanian said:

Pages on westeros.org display various info and links on the left and right panels, including a selection of some recent forum discussion threads. 

For instance, this SSM which does not mention Braavos currently displays these forum links on the right side for me:

The SSM search results mentioning "How old is Braavos" actually refer to this thread; the search engine finds SSM web pages mentioning Braavos even though that specific GRRM correspondence doesn't actually mention Braavos.

Nope. The one I found on Google had a date, March 7 2006. Mind you, this thread here also appeared, but the one I was talking about is a different one. 

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8 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Nope. The one I found on Google had a date, March 7 2006. Mind you, this thread here also appeared, but the one I was talking about is a different one. 

Are you able to duplicate the Google results?

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It is intriguing. The 800 year age clearly existed in the minds of multiple readers. And clearly independent from the one century plus two centuries = 3 centuries before the Doom calculation, which only takes one back to 700 years ago.

There is clearly a source somewhere stating that Braavos was founded 800 years ago. But somehow it eludes discovery.

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2 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

It is intriguing. The 800 year age clearly existed in the minds of multiple readers. And clearly independent from the one century plus two centuries = 3 centuries before the Doom calculation, which only takes one back to 700 years ago.

There is clearly a source somewhere stating that Braavos was founded 800 years ago. But somehow it eludes discovery.

The original entry from 2007 for the wiki's Braavos article stated (without a source) that the city "was instead founded 500 years before Aegon's Landing by refugees fleeing Valyrian expansion." We don't know where the original editor derived that information, but it was on the wiki until last year and so "800 years" may have inaccurately filtered into the community in that manner.

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2 minutes ago, Nittanian said:

The original entry from 2007 for the wiki's Braavos article stated (without a source) that the city "was instead founded 500 years before Aegon's Landing by refugees fleeing Valyrian expansion." We don't know where the original editor derived that information, but it was on the wiki until last year and so "800 years" may have inaccurately filtered into the community in that manner.

Ah. That may be it, then.

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4 minutes ago, Nittanian said:

Additionally, it looks like our wiki took it from Wikipedia, which had it added without sourcing back in 2006.

And yet, this date clearly is not that far from the truth. Considering that Braavos had to be founded at least 3 centuries prior to the Doom, placing its latest estimate at 700 years ago. So it seems this reference must have been based on something more than just a random thumbsuck.

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39 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

And yet, this date clearly is not that far from the truth. Considering that Braavos had to be founded at least 3 centuries prior to the Doom, placing its latest estimate at 700 years ago. So it seems this reference must have been based on something more than just a random thumbsuck.

Most often the 800 year date is cited, and sometimes the 700 year date. I strongly suspect that the Arya quote from Feast is the source, where she states that the existence of Braavos had remained a secret for a century, and the location of the city for three centuries. I've read discussions between readers on how to interpret this; Are the hundred years that Braavos's existence was a secret part of the three centuries during which its location was a secret, of does the count for those three centuries begin only after Braavos's existence was revealed? If someone who edited the original wikipedia has taken the latter interpretation, and had concluded (without citing any source whatsoever) that the revelation of Braavos's location occurred only around the time of the Doom, that's how you reach the 800 years before the current story.

However, I can't find anything that suggests that the location of Braavos only became known around the time of the Doom, meaning that the 700 (or 800, depending on how you interpret the AFFC quote) years is only a minimum, but not the specific founding date.

Unless there is a reference out there somewhere that we haven't found yet...

 

Edit: But note how the entry on wikipedia also states that Braavos is sometimes called the "Bastard Son of Valyria", which is not the case in any of the canon material, at least. ("bastard child" (in 2005) and "bastard daughter" (in 2014) are used, however)

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Just now, aryagonnakill#2 said:

Given the hints in the worldbook that a Valyrian family hired a FM to kill a pyromancer from a rival family using Lannister gold, it seems like the Valyrians would have had to of known where Valyria was to do this hiring.

But what does that tell us about the founding of Braavos? I may be missing something obvious?

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2 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

But what does that tell us about the founding of Braavos? I may be missing something obvious?

I was going off this post, I should have quoted.

 

1 hour ago, Rhaenys_Targaryen said:

Most often the 800 year date is cited, and sometimes the 700 year date. I strongly suspect that the Arya quote from Feast is the source, where she states that the existence of Braavos had remained a secret for a century, and the location of the city for three centuries. I've read discussions between readers on how to interpret this; Are the hundred years that Braavos's existence was a secret part of the three centuries during which its location was a secret, of does the count for those three centuries begin only after Braavos's existence was revealed? If someone who edited the original wikipedia has taken the latter interpretation, and had concluded (without citing any source whatsoever) that the revelation of Braavos's location occurred only around the time of the Doom, that's how you reach the 800 years before the current story.

However, I can't find anything that suggests that the location of Braavos only became known around the time of the Doom, meaning that the 700 (or 800, depending on how you interpret the AFFC quote) years is only a minimum, but not the specific founding date.

Unless there is a reference out there somewhere that we haven't found yet...

 

Edit: But note how the entry on wikipedia also states that Braavos is sometimes called the "Bastard Son of Valyria", which is not the case in any of the canon material, at least. ("bastard child" (in 2005) and "bastard daughter" (in 2014) are used, however)

I am agreeing that it is a minimum, and that it was likely founded before that, possibly long before as Bravos isn't really that far from Pentos and any ship sailing to Lorath, a Valyrian colony would have to sail right by it.

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15 minutes ago, aryagonnakill#2 said:

I was going off this post, I should have quoted.

 

I am agreeing that it is a minimum, and that it was likely founded before that, possibly long before as Bravos isn't really that far from Pentos and any ship sailing to Lorath, a Valyrian colony would have to sail right by it.

Gotcha, tks! 

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