origin of Dragons Day plus Night

[Luddagain]

I have a partly formed idea about the origin of the dragon riders which may somehow tie all the threads together.

We have in the world two rather different but connected forms of human/animal magic.

First there is skinchanging a gift of the Children following the pact to a selected group of First Men families. each with their "special" animal. We are told of Starks with direwolves, Blackwoods with Ravens, Bears with Mormants and is it Fairchilds with seals. We are not told for sure but there seems a strong link between Ryswells and horses and Umbers and Giants and I would not be surprised to find a link between Manderlys and Mermen and some on Skagos with Unicorns and possible Greyjoys with Kraken (giant octopus).  The Whents and predecessors seem to interchange with Bats and Tullys with trout - eg blackfish, I suspect that there may originally have been 100 "gifts" of skinchanging. We know that there are dogs, eagles and snow leopards that can be skin changed. (possible there were 50 animals and 50 with plants). A lot of old first men families have animals of some kind as their sigils and I think this is significant - crabs, bees, falcons, stags, bulls, lions etc all with roots to first men if somewhat distant. 

The principle of this skin changing seems to be that the "soul" of the human can enter that of the animal and take control of it or at least coexist with it. Those who are very strong in the number of animals they can enter may well have genetic links with the original families. - Theoretically a person (such as Bran) could carry the genes for 46 such animals.

 

Second we have dragons, linked to Valerian families. The animal/human relationship is similar to the "warging" except that the Tararyans seem in some sense actually give birth to the Dragons - to decome their mothers in some sense. The relationship seems stronger and it seems as if rather than the soul of the person entering the animal, in the case of the Targs, the soul of the Dragon enters the human. A reverse warg if you like.

 

So here is the idea. We know of the legend of Azor. What if the TARGS (and other Valerians) were the deliberate product of Daynes (a blond, purple eyed family/tribe of first men) plus the most powerful skinchanging family ( Blackwoods). This relationship "forged" dragons who were in essence the sword that allowed the others to be defeated plus whoever it was that wielded  the sword lightbringer (possibly one and the same with Dawn) AND its companion the swords of the Starks "Ic." and "blackfyre."   The Daynes are the fulcrum - the balance between ice and fire.

Notice that the collapse of the Valerians coincided in time with the loss of the stark's original sword and not too long after the Starks bent the knee to the residual of the Dragon Lords. Then the last of the dragons died.

[The Weirwoods Eyes]

I feel like your trying to suggest something interesting here but can't quite understand what you are trying to say. Would you mind clarifying a bit?

I agree that certain houses have connections to certain animals and that it is likely these have historically been, at least for some a preferred skin changing animal for them. But Personally, I think that given the information which we have through Varymyr and Bran & Arya that they can skinchange more than one animal then it is likely a skinchanger is a skinchanger and doesn't have to have their house animal in order to do it.  I mean Bran slips both Summer and Hodor, Arya both Nymeria and the old Cat. Varymyr has several animals and Sansa seems very likely to skinchange a bird eventually. 

I think the Dragon bond is similar but different to the skinchanging one. A dragon rider has an affinity with their dragon and the dragons seem to have one with their riders. But we do not ever get any hints that the riders can enter the dragons minds like the skinchangers do, nor that the Dragons can enter their riders minds or else we'd see the dragons influencing the riders in TP&TQ and we don't we see Dragons who had previously been happy living together fighting because their riders wish it. 

 

 

[Luddagain]

bed into the dragonWeirwood eyes

i think the key is what is the person's first 'familiar" which triggers the skin changing ability. We have to assume it is genetic in some way. - thus Starks with direwolves, Mormants with bears and perhaps targs with dragons.  But yes there may just be a general gen for skin changing except that I doubt that Varamyr could have bonded as a child with a bear or a direwolf or even a raven.

 

My REAL issue is not really about the houses associated with particular "familiars" but rather the relationship with the Targs and their bond with dragons. My suggestion is that the dragon riding ability is like a warging turned inwards - distorted in some way. In skinchaging the human "soul" enters the animal and controls it. We are warned that sometimes the person becomes lost in the animal. With Dragon riding  I suspect it too is a sort of similar skinchanging relationship ie that those Targs who are dragon riders are skin changers like the Starks, but that their special "familiar" is a dragon.

 

However there seems to be an additional element with dragons- the spirit of the dragon seems to enter the body of the human!! In some cases - indeed many cases this dragon spirit takes control. Hence the madness of the Targs - these are the ones who are unable to control their dragons and where the vicious personality of the dragon takes over their minds.When Viserys uses the term "wake the dragon" that is exactly what he means. When he is upset or ermotional the dragon spirit within him awakens  and causes rage and cruelty.

 

The other twist that seems to occur with Targs is that there is a physical association with  mothers such that sometimes the mother when pregnant develops dragons not human babies. These are malformed and generally die OR they live and become new dragons or perhaps in some weird magic way the spirit of the unborn Targ baby is absorbed into the dragon. The baby dies but in the process a new dragon is created provided there is an egg nearby.  This is exactly what we see with Dany - her baby dies (defromed like a dragon) but a new real dragon is born, presumably with the spirit of her child. I suspect the other two dragons have the "souls" of Viserys and Drogo - (who I suspect had some Targ ancestry - his great grandma may have been a captured slave girl of valyrian origin) 

 

[The Weirwoods Eyes]

This is interesting, I'm not sure I agree with it so much. but it is interesting. 

So, are you saying that you think that in order for a Skinchanger to awaken their talents they need to bond with their Houses familiar and then they can usually bond different animals as well?  

the way I see it is that some animals are harder to slip into than others, this is implied by Varymyr in his Epilogue he tells us Dogs are the easiest, and that other creature are much harder. Now I have my own theory about this. dogs are a domesticated animal and so will come to a human, and be a companion very easily. And I think that what is required to open up the skinchangers ability is a bond. So A person who spends a lot of time with their dog and who has the SC gene will end up bonding and therefore begin the process of being able to slip into that dog.  Or Horse, or Hawking bird, etc. I think that over time some houses have tended towards forming that bond with various different animals. And that there is an inevitable element of Bravado in it. Because if as Varymyr says some animals are trickier than others a family who consistently hold say Bears or Direwolves would be seen as powerful.  And over time they might come to believe they can only skinchange their house animal. And eventually, forget that they ever skinchanged at all.  Or seek to disassociate from that as culture changes in Westeros. With the Andal seven becoming stronger and such practices becoming the stuff of fairy tale.  Arya has only ever dreamt herself as Nymeria, slipping into her wolf from all the way across the narrow sea but never has she ever slipped her wolf whilst awake yet she does so with the cat, a cat who she has bonded with through her time spent as Cat of the Canals, he was a cat who hung out in the same pub as she liked to go to to sell her cockles. And when she returns there as Blind Beth the cat knows it is her and jumps upon her knee, and then she see's through his eyes the punters in the bar, and later he follows her home and she see's again through his eyes that it is the KM who is beating her. But prior to these events she dreamt as the cat, the night she was made blind. Her dream is described as a wolf dream by Arya but if you look at the dream it is clear she is in the cat as she is in Braavos and the language used describes a cat's movements not a wolfs.  Bran is able to slip Hodor because he has spent months sitting on his back, and as such formed a bond similar to a horse and rider would. And Hodor is soft minded, whilst Bran is a powerful Warg and a greenseer. Sansa looks close to forming a bond with the old dog at the fingers despite only being around it a short period. But it chooses to sleep on her bed and when she is in a state of half asleep wakefulness she almost goes into it and thinks he is Lady for a moment.  Which both hints that she had been having wolf dreams and that her Warg ability has not gone away. then at the Eyrie, we have a curious incident where it seems possible that she has reached out to an eagle circling the Eyrie and see's Marillion in his Sky Cell.  Odd indeed! 

So onto Dragon's I agree to some extent that the Dragon Lords must be in some way involved in a SC relationship with their dragons, but I disagree too. It seems to me likely that there was some weird fucked up blood magic mating ritual performed and these people carry some Dragon DNA. It is hinted at both in the main series and the world book. And so, as a result, they carry a gene which enables Dragon Bonding, Which is almost symbiotic once in place but which does not allow the level of access to the animals mind that SC does. The riders seem to sense their dragons and likewise the dragon the rider.  But given that we have text with the riding of dragons described we can see it is not the same as SC'ing.  As to the mysterious dragon babies. I think they are exactly that a foetus which has inherited too much Dragon DNA. And is inviable as a result.  Thus the still births and the one known live birth resulting in a death only an hour later. 

Your ideas about this creating a dragon doesn't really work. we have historical accounts of malformed dragon like babies and no hatched dragons as a direct result. We have way more dragons than we do babies too. And if it were down to Targs dying we'd have even more dragons than we do. Also once the dragons have died out how do we explain the mad targs? NoI can't get on board with this aspect of your theory as it is just too loose, there is no textual evidence to support it.    

But I do think it is an interesting observation that we have in Bran stark a Skinchanger who is also a greenseer and that Targaryen's produce both dragon riders ie: those with the right make up to bond dragons and prophetic dreamers. Because it does rather imply that there may be a connection between the ability to form a supernatural bond with an animal and the ability to have prophetic dreams and or use the weirnet.  The other person who we know can do both is Bloodraven. Who has both targaryen and FM blood.  And Jon who also has both does seem to have Dragon dreams as well of course as be a Warg.