What's the Dayne-Valyrian connection theory?

[DominusNovus]

10 hours ago, falcotron said:

I think the story we hear in the books—that the Valyrians were just semi-nomadic pastoralists living around Valyria for millennia before discovering volcanos and dragon magic—works a lot better than assuming with no evidence that they're migrants who moved there by traveling 3/4ths of the way around the world.

The ancient dragonlords that seem to be even older than, and from beyond the borders of, the Empire of the Dawn really are older and beyond their borders and unconnected to them, just as the Deep Ones, the Mazemakers, etc. are also older and unconnected. The Valyrians could have recovered, or been given, some of their ancient magic without having to be descendants of them—in fact, the legend everyone is basing all this tinfoil off explicitly says that's what happened. And there's no reason to believe the dragonlords' purple eyes connect them up to some ancient civilization that we've never even heard of having purple eyes in the first place; they're either a side effect of magic, or just the natural result of millennia of 40 powerful families marrying within their own social stratum. And so on.

And the explanation for things like Hightower is most likely the same as in all the Lovecraftian weird tales that inspired GRRM, and the same as the mazes of Lorath, etc.—ancient civilizations that have since vanished with no trace but some bizarre archeology and magical artifacts, many of which weren't even human. That's far more interesting than them all being the ancestors of the Valyrians so there's only one interesting culture in the history of the world.  I just don't get this mania for trying to take all of these interesting separate stories and reducing them to just one less interesting story.

But anyway, this is all way off topic.

When you say 3/4 of the way around the world, are you talking from the Golden Empire to Valyria, or from either to Dorne?

Anyway, I'm not thinking that the Valyrians are necessarily the same people as those that founded the Golden Empire of the Dawn.  I just think there's a connection there, between the two of them, as well as with the Daynes and the instances of oily black stone.

[cgrav]

17 hours ago, falcotron said:

At any rate, I'm not asking what your favorite tinfoil is for solving this alleged mystery, I'm asking what evidence people have for thinking there's a mystery to solve in the first place.

I think the tinfoil is the evidence. It's unlikely to be directly relevant to the plot, but it adds background, explains connections, and could provide some symbolic insight to the where the plot goes. But there's a small chance we're meant to entertain the possibility that some Valyrian-looking person is actually a Dayne.

[falcotron]

2 hours ago, DominusNovus said:

When you say 3/4 of the way around the world, are you talking from the Golden Empire to Valyria, or from either to Dorne?

Not that it really matters, but I mean from the Great Empire to Dorne and then from there to Valyria, which is what you'd need if the Dawnians are the ancestors of the Daynes and the Daynes are the ancestors of the Valyrians.

As a side note, did you really mean "Golden Empire" there? A lot of people who support these tinfoil theories regularly mix up the Great Empire of the Dawn and the Golden Empire of Yi-Ti, but insist that GRRM didn't mean for us to confuse them.*

2 hours ago, DominusNovus said:

Anyway, I'm not thinking that the Valyrians are necessarily the same people as those that founded the Golden Empire of the Dawn.  I just think there's a connection there, between the two of them, as well as with the Daynes and the instances of oily black stone.

Well, "a connection" is a lot more plausible than insisting that "they're proto-Valyrians", as many other people do.**

Anyway, we're not told of any oily black stone or dry black stone at Starfall, like we are in other places in Westeros (Hightower) and elsewhere in the world (Asshai). So, is there really any textual evidence of a connection with the Daynes there, or is this is just one more case of people trying to turn a whole lot of separate cool mysteries into one less cool one?

---

* Notice the Dawn Empire sounds just like the Heavenly Empire of the Xia Dynasty in Chinese pre-history, in the same way that Yi-Ti sounds like medieval China, and westerners frequently confuse the historical old empire with the legendary older empires. And of course the Xia, who legendarily controlled all the territory of the Mandate of Heaven, in actuality they controlled a small area along the Yellow River banks and plus maybe tribute arrangements with a few of their neighbors.

** It's also not necessarily very exciting.Qarth and Braavos demonstrably both have a connection with Volantis, but that doesn't tell us anything interesting about Qarth or Braavos. Likewise, imagine that the ancient people of the Shadow Lands spent millennia wandering the world looking for the right people to teach dragon mastery before discovering Valyria. That's just something I made up (just like everyone else, I have no idea what the ancient people of the Shadow Lands did beyond two sentences of Maesters summarizing Asshai'i myths they don't believe, and neither does anyone else). But if it were true, surely the Dawn Empire would be one of the people they considered and rejected along the way, and they may well have made it into the Dawn Empire's legends and even inspired some ideas. So, that would be a connection. But not a very strong one—and one they share with half of the people who lived between 12000 and 5000 years ago.

[Free Northman Reborn]

6 minutes ago, falcotron said:

Not that it really matters, but I mean from the Great Empire to Dorne and then from there to Valyria, which is what you'd need if the Dawnians are the ancestors of the Daynes and the Daynes are the ancestors of the Valyrians.

As a side note, did you really mean "Golden Empire" there? A lot of people who support these tinfoil theories regularly mix up the Great Empire of the Dawn and the Golden Empire of Yi-Ti, but insist that GRRM didn't mean for us to confuse them.*

Well, "a connection" is a lot more plausible than insisting that "they're proto-Valyrians", as many other people do.**

Anyway, we're not told of any oily black stone or dry black stone at Starfall, like we are in other places in Westeros (Hightower) and elsewhere in the world (Asshai). So, is there really any textual evidence of a connection with the Daynes there, or is this is just one more case of people trying to turn a whole lot of separate cool mysteries into one less cool one?

---

* Notice the Dawn Empire sounds just like the Heavenly Empire of the Xia Dynasty in Chinese pre-history, in the same way that Yi-Ti sounds like medieval China, and westerners frequently confuse the historical old empire with the legendary older empires. And of course the Xia, who legendarily controlled all the territory of the Mandate of Heaven, in actuality they controlled a small area along the Yellow River banks and plus maybe tribute arrangements with a few of their neighbors.

** It's also not necessarily very exciting.Qarth and Braavos demonstrably both have a connection with Volantis, but that doesn't tell us anything interesting about Qarth or Braavos. Likewise, imagine that the ancient people of the Shadow Lands spent millennia wandering the world looking for the right people to teach dragon mastery before discovering Valyria. That's just something I made up (just like everyone else, I have no idea what the ancient people of the Shadow Lands did beyond two sentences of Maesters summarizing Asshai'i myths they don't believe, and neither does anyone else). But if it were true, surely the Dawn Empire would be one of the people they considered and rejected along the way, and they may well have made it into the Dawn Empire's legends and even inspired some ideas. So, that would be a connection. But not a very strong one—and one they share with half of the people who lived between 12000 and 5000 years ago.

The entire Great Empire of the Dawn mumbo jumbo theory is a bunch of baloney. It will have no bearing on the main story, because it is not even known in the main books. It was merely created as a backdrop to fill out the ancient history of Yi-Ti and surroundings. Ashhai is the ancient civilization that might be the precursor to all others, and unlike the so called GEOTD, Ashai might well come into play in future, as it has repeatedly been referenced in the main series as well.

This Great Empire of the Dawn cult that has sprung up from one or two treatises written by a couple of enthusiastic posters is going to end in a lot of disappointment.

[falcotron]

33 minutes ago, cgrav said:

I think the tinfoil is the evidence.

That's the same as saying "there is no evidence". The fact that you can come up with a textually unsupported theory that doesn't directly contradict too many things in the books isn't evidence of anything at all. And the only connections, insights, etc. that it adds to the plot are ones that the author didn't intend.*

36 minutes ago, cgrav said:

But there's a small chance we're meant to entertain the possibility that some Valyrian-looking person is actually a Dayne.

But that doesn't require any tinfoil. It works just as well with, say, Ran's simple and prosaic suggestion that Ashara's grandmother is a purple-eyed Martell descended from Daeron.

---

* And yes, I know about "death of the author" and all that, so if you're trying to deconstruct ASoIaF to find a meaning for modern society within it, have at it—but that isn't relevant to trying to predict what's going to happen in the last two books, work out how GRRM wants us to connect other parts of the story, etc. For those kinds of things, the author is very much alive.

[Free Northman Reborn]

1 minute ago, falcotron said:

That's the same as saying "there is no evidence". The fact that you can come up with a textually unsupported theory that doesn't directly contradict too many things in the books isn't evidence of anything at all. And the only connections, insights, etc. that it adds to the plot are ones that the author didn't intend.*

But that doesn't require any tinfoil. It works just as well with, say, Ran's simple and prosaic suggestion that Ashara's grandmother is a purple-eyed Martell descended from Daeron.

My understanding is that the Dayne features have been with them from the start, long before the Targaryens intermarried with the Martells. But I guess that could be a false interpretation.

[falcotron]

1 minute ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

The entire Great Empire of the Dawn mumbo jumbo theory is a bunch of baloney. It will have no bearing on the main story, because it is not even known in the main books.

Probably true.

1 minute ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Ashhai is the ancient civilization that might be the precursor to all others, and that might well come into play as it has repeatedly been referenced in the main series as well.

Important, sure, but the precursor to all other civilizations, I doubt it. I'll grant that it's slightly more likely than the Dawn Empire, but really, everything in the novels is stories from 5000 years ago about nothing beyond 8000 years ago. More importantly, I think GRRM created a bunch of cool separate civilizations for the purpose of creating a bunch of cool separate civilizations, just like Ashton-Clark, Howard, etc., not to reveal that it's all one civilization, surprise yawn (or that it's just future us in the Thousand Worlds and ha, I got you by lying to you for decades every time anyone guessed it). And I'll bet if he does show us a glimpse of ancient Asshai, it'll only be to show us that 8000 years ago, it was already an ancient city of unknown origins populated by wizards, scholars, misfits, lunatics, and the slightly saner people who can profit off them, just like today.

[Corvo the Crow]

Why does it have to be anything special? All human "races" we know of come from essos, can't it be something like this;

say, some 50000 years ago in essos, while humans still haven't spread out much from their original "birth place" some random dude gets a mutation, making his eyes purple, he then passes this genes on to his children, and after a few generations, descendants of these carriers marry each other by chance. Some 5000 years later we have some folks with purple eyes or at least the genes for that and humans have started to spread out a bit from their birth place. Again, thousands of years later, we see now that most people with purple eye genes have been in the group that wemt towards the Valyrian peninsula or maybe their purple eyed genes prevailed, either by pure luck or runaway selection or whatever. Some others, however, went with other groups, like Daynes going with Firstmen, crossing the arm.

If Daynes had the purple eyes long before Valyrians, it means they wouldn't be the only ones then, their small folk; the smallest possible group they were a part of before becoming nobles, would also have it, so if we ever visit some villages around starfall we may find some peasants with purple eyes.

[falcotron]

20 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

My understanding is that the Dayne features have been with them from the start, long before the Targaryens intermarried with the Martells. But I guess that could be a false interpretation.

Well, that's exactly what I'm asking: Where did you get that understanding?

Is there any evidence or even hint of it in the text? Or is it just people wanting to believe the Daynes are Valyrians, despite GRRM saying otherwise, and therefore assuming that they all must look like Valyrians, and then using that assumption as evidence to prove that if the Daynes aren't Valyrians the Valyrians must be Daynes?

Also, what features? Are there any common Dayne features that we've heard about? Is there anything about Ashara other than her eyes that sounds Valyrian? For that matter, what are typical Valyrian, or Targaryen, features?

 

[Free Northman Reborn]

14 minutes ago, falcotron said:

Probably true.

Important, sure, but the precursor to all other civilizations, I doubt it. I'll grant that it's slightly more likely than the Dawn Empire, but really, everything in the novels is stories from 5000 years ago about nothing beyond 8000 years ago. More importantly, I think GRRM created a bunch of cool separate civilizations for the purpose of creating a bunch of cool separate civilizations, just like Ashton-Clark, Howard, etc., not to reveal that it's all one civilization, surprise yawn (or that it's just future us in the Thousand Worlds and ha, I got you by lying to you for decades every time anyone guessed it). And I'll bet if he does show us a glimpse of ancient Asshai, it'll only be to show us that 8000 years ago, it was already an ancient city of unknown origins populated by wizards, scholars, misfits, lunatics, and the slightly saner people who can profit off them, just like today.

My view is that Asshai is the oldest civilization, not that it was an Empire spanning all of Essos or some such idea. Merely that it was advanced in magic and magical technology when the rest of the Essos was still inhabited by primitive tribes. And from the world book it appears that survivors from Asshai planted the seed of dragontaming in Valyria 5000 years ago, to make Valyria a kind of successor civilization to Asshai.

[falcotron]

18 minutes ago, Corvo the Crow said:

Why does it have to be anything special?

I don't think it does have to be anything special. But, before we even get to that, I'm asking what the evidence is that there's even a question to be answered in the first place. If someone can actually show me any hints that Valyrian features are a typical Dayne trait, and/or that Ran's explanation (Ashara is a maternal descendant of Daeron II) doesn't work, then there's a question, and we can start discussing the merits of different answers.

A lot of the tinfoil theories are like this—not only are they unnecessarily complicated answers to a question, there doesn't even seem to be a question until you assume all the tinfoil that was invented to answer it. Unfortunately, every time I ask for evidence of the question, 90% of the replies are people spouting more tinfoil they've built on top of the original tinfoil instead of giving any evidence that the original tinfoil is needed at all. But I'm an idiot, so I keep trying anyway.

[Lady Blizzardborn]

20 hours ago, falcotron said:

<snip

The ancient dragonlords that seem to be even older than, and from beyond the borders of, the Empire of the Dawn really are older and beyond their borders and unconnected to them, just as the Deep Ones, the Mazemakers, etc. are also older and unconnected. The Valyrians could have recovered, or been given, some of their ancient magic without having to be descendants of them—in fact, the legend everyone is basing all this tinfoil off explicitly says that's what happened. And there's no reason to believe the dragonlords' purple eyes connect them up to some ancient civilization that we've never even heard of having purple eyes in the first place; they're either a side effect of magic, or just the natural result of millennia of 40 powerful families marrying within their own social stratum. And so on.

<snip

Thoughts...

With no reference to anyone's favorite LmL threads at all, let's go super basic with this.

Let's say blue eyes were really prominent in the far east of Worlderos.

Let's say any time anyone messed around with blood-bonding with dragons, the blue-eyed among them became purple-eyed. Why? Because dragons are "fire made flesh" and one of the most fiery colors is red. Red + blue = purple. I learned that in Kindgergarten, or maybe before, but anyway, it's a possibility.

This doesn't require genetic links between ancient dragon riders and the GEotD or the ancient dragon riders and the Valyrian dragonlords, or between the GEotD and Valyria. Obviously, the Valyrians got the dragon taming knowledge somehow, but they didn't have to mingle DNA with other dragonriders to do it.

Now as to House Dayne, all any of us can do is speculate, so let's take this kindergarten-level idea and roll with it for a minute.

House Dayne could be descended from ancient Westerosi dragonriders, who might even have predated the CotF. GRRM said there were once dragons all over the world and the likelihood of CotF and dragons peacefully coexisting is probably not great. Does this mean the Daynes' ancestors or Proto-Daynes lived in Westeros the whole time? Not necessarily. They could have migrated elsewhere and ended up coming back later with the First Men. And while the dragons died out everywhere but Asshai and/or Valyria, and the ability to control dragons (especially if bound to specific bloodlines) was gradually lost by our Proto-Daynes, the purple eyes seen in their descendants could be a remnant of past genetic changes. 

It's also been suggested that the "fallen star" from whose heart Dawn was forged was actually a dragon. The last Proto-Dayne dragon, maybe? Sacrificed in order to save the world from the Others during the Long Night? Granted it's off-topic, and more involved than my eye color idea. This corresponds with the Azor Ahai legend in a way because if you had the last dragon that anyone knew of, it would potentially be the thing that meant the most to you in the entire world. How a dragon would have gotten turned into a wife I don't know. Maybe translation errors from whatever original language the story was from to other languages and eventually to the Asshai'i it was in when Mel learned it. She seems to think Azor Ahai 2.0 is Westerosi, so maybe Azor Ahai Original was too. Please pardon the tangent.

[DominusNovus]

7 hours ago, falcotron said:

Not that it really matters, but I mean from the Great Empire to Dorne and then from there to Valyria, which is what you'd need if the Dawnians are the ancestors of the Daynes and the Daynes are the ancestors of the Valyrians.

As a side note, did you really mean "Golden Empire" there? A lot of people who support these tinfoil theories regularly mix up the Great Empire of the Dawn and the Golden Empire of Yi-Ti, but insist that GRRM didn't mean for us to confuse them.*

Well, "a connection" is a lot more plausible than insisting that "they're proto-Valyrians", as many other people do.**

Anyway, we're not told of any oily black stone or dry black stone at Starfall, like we are in other places in Westeros (Hightower) and elsewhere in the world (Asshai). So, is there really any textual evidence of a connection with the Daynes there, or is this is just one more case of people trying to turn a whole lot of separate cool mysteries into one less cool one?

Purely a typo.  I'm not insisting they're proto-valyrians, I just think its a reasonable theory that they're descended from proto-valyrians.  I look at the pieces we have and it adds up to me.  The entirety of House Dayne just seems like a giant familial Chekov's Gun, so there is a "there" there.

It could be something else entirely, but I don't see much pointing in a different direction.

[falcotron]

40 minutes ago, DominusNovus said:

Purely a typo.  I'm not insisting they're proto-valyrians, I just think its a reasonable theory that they're descended from proto-valyrians.  I look at the pieces we have and it adds up to me.  The entirety of House Dayne just seems like a giant familial Chekov's Gun, so there is a "there" there.

It could be something else entirely, but I don't see much pointing in a different direction.

I agree that they're a likely Chekhov's gun, but I don't see how that makes it plausible that they're descended from proto-Valyrians. The whole point of Chekhov's gun is that it has to be fired in the third act, not that it has to be revealed that it's actually related to Chekhov's end table because the wood in its stock comes from the same tree as the legs of the table. The Daynes will be important because of Gerold's involvement in the Myrcella mess, and probably because of the sword Dawn being important in the Battle for the Dawn 2.0, and so on, not because their words have some secret message that makes us all go "Oooh, I see".

Meanwhile, what I'm asking here is: What pieces are you looking at? No matter how many times you say "Well, after you put those pieces together with this other sculpture that I pulled in from off-stage, you can fill in the gaps and make a bigger sculpture", that doesn't answer what the pieces are.

Again, is there any more evidence for a Valyrian connection than Ashara's and Gerold's eyes, or any reason to doubt Ran's idea that their eyes come from a recent maternal-via-Tyrells ancestor?

[DominusNovus]

7 hours ago, falcotron said:

I agree that they're a likely Chekhov's gun, but I don't see how that makes it plausible that they're descended from proto-Valyrians. The whole point of Chekhov's gun is that it has to be fired in the third act, not that it has to be revealed that it's actually related to Chekhov's end table because the wood in its stock comes from the same tree as the legs of the table. The Daynes will be important because of Gerold's involvement in the Myrcella mess, and probably because of the sword Dawn being important in the Battle for the Dawn 2.0, and so on, not because their words have some secret message that makes us all go "Oooh, I see".

Meanwhile, what I'm asking here is: What pieces are you looking at? No matter how many times you say "Well, after you put those pieces together with this other sculpture that I pulled in from off-stage, you can fill in the gaps and make a bigger sculpture", that doesn't answer what the pieces are.

Again, is there any more evidence for a Valyrian connection than Ashara's and Gerold's eyes, or any reason to doubt Ran's idea that their eyes come from a recent maternal-via-Tyrells ancestor?

Pieces: physical resemblence to Valyrians without a clear written connection and a valyrian-esque steel sword that predates valyrian steel in westeros and has different traits. And more thematic hints than you can shake a stick at (dawn/war for the dawn being the first to come to mind).

All we can do is put sculptures together until TWOW and ADOS come out.

[AlaskanSandman]

8 hours ago, falcotron said:

I agree that they're a likely Chekhov's gun, but I don't see how that makes it plausible that they're descended from proto-Valyrians. The whole point of Chekhov's gun is that it has to be fired in the third act, not that it has to be revealed that it's actually related to Chekhov's end table because the wood in its stock comes from the same tree as the legs of the table. The Daynes will be important because of Gerold's involvement in the Myrcella mess, and probably because of the sword Dawn being important in the Battle for the Dawn 2.0, and so on, not because their words have some secret message that makes us all go "Oooh, I see".

Meanwhile, what I'm asking here is: What pieces are you looking at? No matter how many times you say "Well, after you put those pieces together with this other sculpture that I pulled in from off-stage, you can fill in the gaps and make a bigger sculpture", that doesn't answer what the pieces are.

Again, is there any more evidence for a Valyrian connection than Ashara's and Gerold's eyes, or any reason to doubt Ran's idea that their eyes come from a recent maternal-via-Tyrells ancestor?

Where's this at? I just wanna read it or listen to it. I like to see when Elio or Linda share their thoughts. Not that i take it for gold, but it definitely carries weight by association

[cgrav]

18 hours ago, falcotron said:

That's the same as saying "there is no evidence". The fact that you can come up with a textually unsupported theory that doesn't directly contradict too many things in the books isn't evidence of anything at all. And the only connections, insights, etc. that it adds to the plot are ones that the author didn't intend.*

 

well yeah, because it's not evidence, it's just back story and world building. The Mythical Astronomy stuff is all about the story's absurdly rich mythological subtext, not about predicting the direction of specific plots and characters. It only has predictive value insofar as we expect the mythological events to be replayed metaphorically in the present-day story.

Any Dayne/Targ connection is inconsequential to the plot as far as I can tell, so there's not going to be any hard evidence. A connection would explain some things, but it's not like we need to know where some ancient Dayne was at a particular time in order to figure out what's going on in the books. It's a matter of providing some concrete connection between the symbolism and story. 

This is literature after all. The author has to leave some things unsaid to maintain interest and keep the story moving. The Dayne/Targ thing is just a connection that we can conclude exists because of the very conspicuous and presumably intentional similarities and contrasts.

Maybe some crucial piece of information will come out in the next two books that tears this theory apart, but until then... have we got any better ideas?

[kissdbyfire]

4 hours ago, DominusNovus said:

Pieces: physical resemblence to Valyrians without a clear written connection and a valyrian-esque steel sword that predates valyrian steel in westeros and has different traits. And more thematic hints than you can shake a stick at (dawn/war for the dawn being the first to come to mind).

All we can do is put sculptures together until TWOW and ADOS come out.

What exactly do you mean by "Valyrian-esque"? Because I don't see it. Dawn is described as a meteorite sword, so not steel like VS; it's pale, so different colour. And you even go on to say it has "different traits", so I don't get why/where is the "esque" here, or similarities shared by Dawn and VS other than being really, really sharp. Which also is a good description for obsidian. And if Dawn is in fact made of a meterorite I'd say it's more obsidian-esque than Valyrian-esque. 

[falcotron]

3 hours ago, DominusNovus said:

Pieces: physical resemblence to Valyrians without a clear written connection and a valyrian-esque steel sword that predates valyrian steel in westeros and has different traits. And more thematic hints than you can shake a stick at (dawn/war for the dawn being the first to come to mind).

As I asked in the first question, and multiple times since then: Is there any evidence of a Valyrian physical resemblance besides two people with purple eyes, who GRRM agreed might be explained by a recent Targ ancestor?

Also, Dawn/War for the Dawn isn't a Valyrian connection, it's a First Men connection. There are First Men all over the Battle for the Dawn myths, but not a single oblique Valyrian reference anywhere. We even have myths related to that war from half a dozen other cultures from the Rhoyne to Asshai, but nothing at all about Valyrians.

Which isn't at all surprising, given that Valyria didn't exist yet, and the ancestors of the Valyrians were pushing their sheep around southern Essos like the Lhazareen.

3 hours ago, DominusNovus said:

All we can do is put sculptures together until TWOW and ADOS come out.

Are you not looking forward to The Sons of the Dragon?

Anyway, we can distinguish between the sculptures that are made primarily out of the text and those that are made out of 100% tinfoil.

2 hours ago, AlaskanSandman said:

Where's this at? I just wanna read it or listen to it. I like to see when Elio or Linda share their thoughts. Not that i take it for gold, but it definitely carries weight by association

Sorry about that—I quoted and linked to the SSM where Ran asks about this, but I guess I didn't mention anywhere that Ran was the one asking.

So, here's the link again. 

His specific question is: "Ashara Dayne is described as having violet eyes. Is this from a marriage to the Martells after Daeron II's sister married into that line, thus giving them some Targaryen features? From other Valyrian descendants?" That's where GRRM gives the Liz Taylor analogy. He then follows up with "And I was actually arguing that she was a Liz Taylor type", to which GRRM gives the "look to the names" answer.

[falcotron]

1 hour ago, cgrav said:

The Dayne/Targ thing is just a connection that we can conclude exists because of the very conspicuous and presumably intentional similarities and contrasts.

One more time, and if you ignore it again then I guess I'll give up expecting an answer from anyone:

What very conspicuous similarities? Is there anything at all besides Ashara's and Gerold's purple eyes? And, if not, is there any reason to believe (especially given GRRM's answer) that it's more likely to be some deep mystery than Ran's explanation, other than "I'm bored and I want new ideas and I don't care whether they're actually in the novel or not"?

1 hour ago, cgrav said:

Maybe some crucial piece of information will come out in the next two books that tears this theory apart, but until then... have we got any better ideas?

Well, yes. If there's no mystery to solve, a better idea is to not invent an answer to a mystery that doesn't exist.

1 hour ago, cgrav said:

The Mythical Astronomy stuff is all about the story's absurdly rich mythological subtext

Except that it's not about the story's absurdly rich mythological context, it's about LmL's own absurdly rich mythology.

To give just one example, a big part of LmL's inspiration (although he's since toned down its importance) was that every culture worships the moon as a grandmother goddess, and that the Native Americans call her Nissa. The first part is just wrong (e.g., the native Indo-European lunar god is the husband of the sun), and the second part, he couldn't find any evidence for beyond a poem written more than a decade after AGoT by a new age snake oil saleswoman who claims to be descended from the Seneca. So, what are the odds that this was actually an inspiration to GRRM in writing ASoIaF? That Nissa subtext exists only in LmL's search history and imagination, not in the novels.

If you really want to push the death of the author thing, you could argue that LmL's ideas have become so prominent in fandom that they now do represent an important part of the subtext of the series. But in that case, D&D inventions like the Night King surely represent an even more important part, and does anyone really want to go there?

Otherwise, it tells us almost nothing of interest about ASoIaF. GRRM did not, even subconsciously, write Nissa Nissa as a reference to a universal grandmother moon goddess that all Earth and Planetos cultures worship.

Which means that if your path to "there must be some connection between the Daynes and Valyrians" comes not out of the text of ASoIaF, but only out of the text of LmL's essays, then you're not actually writing about ASoIaF.

Honestly, nobody that I know of has tried this style of Frazer/Campbell "every myth I can find must be a universal myth" mania since TS Eliot, and it's turned up some really interesting ideas. I don't know if that means that LmL is unusually creative, or that this is a tool that more fantasy writers should be trying, but either way, he really ought to try writing a fantasy series. (I think it might be even cooler if he used that for inspiration, but then followed up with some actual comparative mythology—but I could well be wrong; I mean, Doctor Who built a fascinating science fiction universe mostly out of discarded pseudoscience.)