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The Case of Quentyn Martell...


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29 minutes ago, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

Sorry if I offended you. LOL you don't have to take my word for it, it takes 2 seconds to look up on YouTube. PJ started his channel in April 2014 and the first genetics of dragons and war video came out in October 2015. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by showing you the same courtesy. I assume you mean that I should take your word that PJ said he doesn't hold to the theory anymore and has since contradicted it? Well... no, I am not going to take your word on those things at all. I have seen all his videos and don't recall him ever saying that or contradicting his own theory. I could be wrong, but I'm not going to believe you unless you can point to the specific videos where those things happened.

I don't understand your point about assuming people's real parentage. GRRM gave us the Targaryen family tree and that is what PJ is basing his theory on. What else is he supposed to do?

No not offended. But take a moment and realise what you are asking. You are potentially asking me to sit through hours of video to find the exact point he said it. You're being unrealistic not offensive and frankly I don't care as much.

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48 minutes ago, Banner Without Brothers said:

No not offended. But take a moment and realise what you are asking. You are potentially asking me to sit through hours of video to find the exact point he said it. You're being unrealistic not offensive and frankly I don't care as much.

LOL I'm not asking you to do that, I'm just saying I'm not going to take your word for it that PJ has said those things because as far as can remember he has not. But if you did sit through hours of video to find the exact point he said it and then pointed me to it, then I would believe you. ;) 

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11 hours ago, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

LOL you didn't really address the Nettles thing, no offense. You just claimed PJ used circular reasoning and/or disjointed logic when he did not. Yeah, the Nettles example (her having brown skin and seemingly not being a dragonseed) would contradict the rest of his theory. And that is why he specifically addressed this by theorizing that Nettles' act of feeding the dragon sheep and gaining its trust effectively substituted for her having the dragon gene. After all, no one else bothered to feed their dragons a bunch of sheep before riding them. Only Nettles had to do that for some reason. The point is that Nettles and Quentyn weren't really "bonded" to the dragons at all, at least not in the same sense that wargs are bonded to their wolves or Dany is bonded to Drogon. The dragons simply allowed Quentyn and Nettles to ride them because they were fed tasty food and therefore made relatively docile.

As I have said to other people, PJ's use of the word "assumption" is kind of a misnomer there. He is starting with that as a hypothesis and then the hour-long series of videos is him supporting that hypothesis with evidence. You know, like how every single asoiaf theory is constructed ;) 

I don't take offense, but writing "LOL" like that does look a bit obnoxious, just so you know. You've done it three posts in a row now.

Yeah, I did address this as well. I don't think it's strong. There is no evidence in the text that Nettles is any less bonded to her dragon than anyone else. Theories are fun, but they have to have some textual reference, or it starts looking more like fan fiction.

Yes, but that's where the circular reasoning comes in. He uses it as a starting assumption, but doesn't really back it up, he instead uses that assumption to back up other points, like that Dany has the double dragon gene.

Preston's theories usually make me go "oh come on, that's a bit silly... oh shit, he's actually onto something...", but there's never really that point in that one. It also comes across as much more how Preston thinks than how GRRM thinks.

To contrast, one of his best I thought was the Brave Companion/Doran link. I think most of even the hardcore fans had never even considered this, and it sounded at first like it was somewhat random and overly complex. But he keeps slipping in facts, the nature of Qyburn and Oberyn's unnamed sellsword company... I think most people would acknowledge by the end that it's at least a possibility.

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7 hours ago, mankytoes said:

I don't take offense, but writing "LOL" like that does look a bit obnoxious, just so you know. You've done it three posts in a row now.

Yeah, I did address this as well. I don't think it's strong. There is no evidence in the text that Nettles is any less bonded to her dragon than anyone else. Theories are fun, but they have to have some textual reference, or it starts looking more like fan fiction.

Yes, but that's where the circular reasoning comes in. He uses it as a starting assumption, but doesn't really back it up, he instead uses that assumption to back up other points, like that Dany has the double dragon gene.

Preston's theories usually make me go "oh come on, that's a bit silly... oh shit, he's actually onto something...", but there's never really that point in that one. It also comes across as much more how Preston thinks than how GRRM thinks.

To contrast, one of his best I thought was the Brave Companion/Doran link. I think most of even the hardcore fans had never even considered this, and it sounded at first like it was somewhat random and overly complex. But he keeps slipping in facts, the nature of Qyburn and Oberyn's unnamed sellsword company... I think most people would acknowledge by the end that it's at least a possibility.

It's not circular reasoning at all. He does back it up. The entire point of the hour long video series is to back up that initial hypothesis. His reasoning basically goes "I hypothesize that the dragon X gene is what allows people to ride and hatch dragons -> here is a bunch of evidence backing up that hypothesis -> therefore, if this theory is correct, Dany must have 2 dragon X genes. No circular reasoning there.

The fact that Nettles was required to feed her dragon a bunch of sheep is the evidence that her dragon bond is somehow different, because no other rider had to do that. Yes, that fact alone is not strong evidence of anything. But the point is that Nettles seems to contradict the rest of that theory, so PJ provided a very reasonable explanation of how Nettles fits in without completely making the theory impossible.

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2 hours ago, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

The fact that Nettles was required to feed her dragon a bunch of sheep is the evidence that her dragon bond is somehow different, because no other rider had to do that. Yes, that fact alone is not strong evidence of anything. But the point is that Nettles seems to contradict the rest of that theory, so PJ provided a very reasonable explanation of how Nettles fits in without completely making the theory impossible.

I feel that Nettles was put into the story to tell us something about dragons, not to be the exception to the rule. I tend to just take the books at face value when I'm reading them, I don't try and double guess author motivations, I find that a bit joyless. But I couldn't help but pause when this poor, brown, foul mouthed girl started riding a dragon. George is telling us something here. It would be really odd for Nettles for be the exception to the rule, who our explanations are supposed to work around. I think dragon bonding explanations should use Nettles as one of their starting points, not try to work around her.

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23 minutes ago, mankytoes said:

I feel that Nettles was put into the story to tell us something about dragons, not to be the exception to the rule. I tend to just take the books at face value when I'm reading them, I don't try and double guess author motivations, I find that a bit joyless. But I couldn't help but pause when this poor, brown, foul mouthed girl started riding a dragon. George is telling us something here. It would be really odd for Nettles for be the exception to the rule, who our explanations are supposed to work around. I think dragon bonding explanations should use Nettles as one of their starting points, not try to work around her.

I think what it tells us is that while dragon-rider blood is normally necessary to ride/hatch dragons (providing a nice explanation for things like the incest and Dany being immune to common diseases and some people trying to ride dragons and getting burned alive and why the number of Targ dragons fluctuated greatly over time/exploded at the time of Rhaenyra and why the Targ women were locked away in the Maidenvault), Nettles shows that there is another method that can be used to substitute for dragon blood. Obviously it is not necessary to feed dragon sheep to ride them because Nettles is the only example of this. It's not about "double guessing" author motivations, it's about answering questions that we have no given answer for at face value. Namely: why can some people ride dragons and others can't?

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23 hours ago, mankytoes said:

Mine is pretty much head canon as well, I just think it fits the themes of the book. Though even that is a little problematic, as there is quite a bit of evidence that Targ blood is "special" (Dany miraculously surviving Drogo's pyre, for example), which I think would kind of suck given the theme of "monarchy is stupid". The main reason monarchy is so stupid in reality is that kings are just men, the same as all others.

But GRRM has explicitly told us that Dany miraculously surviving Drogo's pyre was a one-time-only special miracle, not a Targaryen trait.

Also, in-universe, he went out of his way to show us Dany's brother being killed by heat. Dany thinks this means Viserys isn't a real dragon as he so often claimed—and she's right. And then we learn that she has ancestors who died drinking wildfire, blowing up Summerhall, etc., which further confirms that everything special about Dany is not at all because of her name or her blood, it's because of something unique about her. Which you should find a lot more palatable.

Of course that doesn't mean people in-universe won't expect Dany's descendants to be magic. After all, the people of our universe based their theory on hereditary Divine RIght of Kings on the examples of biblical Judah and imperial Rome, which are actually pretty solid arguments against hereditary leadership, not for it. Sometimes people are stupid.

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1 hour ago, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

I think what it tells us is that while dragon-rider blood is normally necessary to ride/hatch dragons (providing a nice explanation for things like the incest and Dany being immune to common diseases and some people trying to ride dragons and getting burned alive and why the number of Targ dragons fluctuated greatly over time/exploded at the time of Rhaenyra and why the Targ women were locked away in the Maidenvault), Nettles shows that there is another method that can be used to substitute for dragon blood. 

There are two much simpler things Nettles could mean:

  1. Dragon-rider blood isn't necessary.
  2. Dragon-rider blood is just as ridiculous common as you'd expect after 5000 years.

Besides being simpler, they both make more sense thematically, because they can be connected to all kinds of other things in the story. Your version would just be a bare fact that's there for no reason.

Also, how is "some people trying to ride dragons and getting burned alive" evidence that dragon-rider blood is normally necessary to ride dragons? Most of the people who got burned alive had dragon-rider blood. One of the people set on fire (although he escaped with his life) even had a brother who'd successfully bonded with a dragon. This all seems like evidence against dragon-rider blood, not for it.*

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* Or it could be taken as evidence that if dragon-rider blood is important, it can't be as simple as it sounds, which is basically where Preston Jacobs gets onto his X-linked theory, and also where I get my pheromones theory—although I hesitate to call either one a theory, because neither one really has evidence for it, just evidence that there's a gap in our knowledge and out of the many ways of filling that gap, this is one of the many that doesn't contradict anything.

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1 hour ago, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

I think what it tells us is that while dragon-rider blood is normally necessary to ride/hatch dragons (providing a nice explanation for things like the incest and Dany being immune to common diseases and some people trying to ride dragons and getting burned alive and why the number of Targ dragons fluctuated greatly over time/exploded at the time of Rhaenyra and why the Targ women were locked away in the Maidenvault), Nettles shows that there is another method that can be used to substitute for dragon blood. Obviously it is not necessary to feed dragon sheep to ride them because Nettles is the only example of this. It's not about "double guessing" author motivations, it's about answering questions that we have no given answer for at face value. Namely: why can some people ride dragons and others can't?

Why do you assume she's not a 'seed? 

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31 minutes ago, falcotron said:

But GRRM has explicitly told us that Dany miraculously surviving Drogo's pyre was a one-time-only special miracle, not a Targaryen trait.

Also, in-universe, he went out of his way to show us Dany's brother being killed by heat. Dany thinks this means Viserys isn't a real dragon as he so often claimed—and she's right. And then we learn that she has ancestors who died drinking wildfire, blowing up Summerhall, etc., which further confirms that everything special about Dany is not at all because of her name or her blood, it's because of something unique about her. Which you should find a lot more palatable.

Of course that doesn't mean people in-universe won't expect Dany's descendants to be magic. After all, the people of our universe based their theory on hereditary Divine RIght of Kings on the examples of biblical Judah and imperial Rome, which are actually pretty solid arguments against hereditary leadership, not for it. Sometimes people are stupid.

But Vayrian dragonlords are a bit exceptional, aren't they? 

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2 minutes ago, Lost Melnibonean said:

But Vayrian dragonlords are a bit exceptional, aren't they? 

Are they?

We really don't know much about Valyrian dragonlords in general. Is there anything true about the 40 families that isn't true for other Valyrian families like the Velaryons, except for owning dragons? And, other than superficial things like purple eyes being more common, what's true about Valyrians that isn't true about everyone else?

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27 minutes ago, falcotron said:

Are they?

We really don't know much about Valyrian dragonlords in general. Is there anything true about the 40 families that isn't true for other Valyrian families like the Velaryons, except for owning dragons? And, other than superficial things like purple eyes being more common, what's true about Valyrians that isn't true about everyone else?

I think so. I posted this upthread...

This is from the forward to The Sworn Sword originally published in Legends II...

Quote

The lords freeholder of Valyria ruled the greater part of the known world; they were sorcerers, great in lore, and alone of all the races of man they had learned to breed dragons and bend them to their will.

Presumably that was written by "Gyldayn." 

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1 hour ago, falcotron said:

There are two much simpler things Nettles could mean:

  1. Dragon-rider blood isn't necessary.
  2. Dragon-rider blood is just as ridiculous common as you'd expect after 5000 years.

Besides being simpler, they both make more sense thematically, because they can be connected to all kinds of other things in the story. Your version would just be a bare fact that's there for no reason.

Also, how is "some people trying to ride dragons and getting burned alive" evidence that dragon-rider blood is normally necessary to ride dragons? Most of the people who got burned alive had dragon-rider blood. One of the people set on fire (although he escaped with his life) even had a brother who'd successfully bonded with a dragon. This all seems like evidence against dragon-rider blood, not for it.*

---

* Or it could be taken as evidence that if dragon-rider blood is important, it can't be as simple as it sounds, which is basically where Preston Jacobs gets onto his X-linked theory, and also where I get my pheromones theory—although I hesitate to call either one a theory, because neither one really has evidence for it, just evidence that there's a gap in our knowledge and out of the many ways of filling that gap, this is one of the many that doesn't contradict anything.

#1 is pretty much just rephrasing what I said: Nettles doesn't have the dragon-riding gene, therefore the gene is not necessary. And I don't know how you can call PJ's theory "not a theory" when he spent an hour presenting the evidence for it. Depends on your standard for what constitutes a "theory" I suppose. But I would argue there is more solid evidence for the dragon X gene than for R+L=J for instance. Though I would be in the minority there :P

You kind of answered your own question there. The entire point of PJ's theory is to address the question: why can some people ride dragons and others can't? And being as simple as, say, having a high enough percentage of royal Valyrian blood probably isn't the answer because Dany only has a tiny percentage of Targ blood.

55 minutes ago, Lost Melnibonean said:

Why do you assume she's not a 'seed? 

I certainly think she could be. I'm betting she isn't, because 1) GRRM seems to be implying she doesn't have any Valyrian blood with her physical description and 2) more importantly she did the whole sheep-feeding thing which we haven't seen anyone else bother with indicating some sort of significance to the event. But to counter my own point about her appearance, Rhaenyra's children had a decidedly non-Valyrian phenotype so really that's not a great argument for Nettles not being a 'seed. I will somewhat arbitrarily give it like a 55% chance she is not a 'seed based mostly on the sheep thing. :D 

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11 minutes ago, Lost Melnibonean said:

I think so. I posted this upthread...

This is from the forward to The Sworn Sword originally published in Legends II...

Presumably that was written by "Gyldayn." 

First, any medieval Japanese court historian will tell you that the emperor is only emperor because he descends in an unbroken line from the Goddess of the Sun and has magic powers as a result. Do you think that's actually true?

Second, how does any of that make them exceptional people? The leaders of a powerful empire are powerful by definition, but it doesn't mean they're necessarily exceptional in any other way. Is there something magical about the leaders of the Persian Empire because they controlled the known world? Is there something exceptional about the Roosevelts because it was under FDR alone that men learned to create the A-bomb?

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Just now, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

#1 is pretty much just rephrasing what I said: Nettles doesn't have the dragon-riding gene, therefore the gene is not necessary.

There's a very big difference between "it's not necessary at all" and "it's usually necessary, but there's one boring exception".

Just now, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

And I don't know how you can call PJ's theory "not a theory" when he spent an hour presenting the evidence for it.

This is what's wrong with people. Anyone can spend an hour talking about anything, and that doesn't make it more true, but it does make many people find it more impressive.

He really doesn't present evidence for the X-linked chromosome theory. He does show that it doesn't contradict any fact that he was able to think of from the book, and he goes into great detail listing all the facts it doesn't contradict. But there are many explanations that don't contradict any facts from the book, and some of them are thematically more interesting, or actually explain why Nettles is in the story instead of needing to separately explain her away, etc. A theory needs positive evidence, not just showing that it's not impossible.

Jacobs does this for some of his theories, but not for others, and his biggest fans don't seem to be able to see the difference, because either way there's just as many quotes from the book.

Just now, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

You kind of answered your own question there. The entire point of PJ's theory is to address the question: why can some people ride dragons and others can't? And being as simple as, say, having a high enough percentage of royal Valyrian blood probably isn't the answer because Dany only has a tiny percentage of Targ blood.

No, I didn't answer my own question. You were asserting that people being burned up trying to ride dragons was evidence that you need dragon-rider blood. But the people who were burned up had dragon-rider blood. So it's not evidence that you need dragon-rider blood.

Look at an analogy: If you assume geocentrism must be true, then Mercury's weird orbit is evidence for the particular geocentric theory that epicycles aren't limited to three, but it's not evidence for geocentricism in the first place, it's in fact evidence against geocentrism. In the same way, if you assume that Targ blood must be the key to dragonriding, then the Hull brothers are evidence that Targ blood must be complicated in some way, and X-linked chromosomes do work for that—but without that assumption, the Hull brothers aren't evidence that Targ blood matters, they're evidence that it doesn't.

And PJ's theory really doesn't address the question of why some people can ride dragons and others can't. It doesn't address Nettles, the most interesting case, which he has to pawn off another explanation for. It doesn't address any of the other cases. It doesn't explain why a group of families who trace everything patrilineally would still be dragonriders after a couple hundred generations—or, more to the point, while millions of other people wouldn't be. It doesn't even explain most of the dragonseeds. It really just explains the Hull brothers. And, as I said, there are many explanations for the Hull brothers that don't contradict any of the facts, some of which are simpler or more thematically interesting, none of which have any positive evidence. The fact that his explanation also doesn't contradict any of the facts, but also doesn't have any positive evidence, is not a reason to believe in it.

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1 hour ago, falcotron said:

First, any medieval Japanese court historian will tell you that the emperor is only emperor because he descends in an unbroken line from the Goddess of the Sun and has magic powers as a result. Do you think that's actually true?

Japanese flew Zeros in real life. Valyrians flew dragons in a high fantasy. 

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41 minutes ago, Lost Melnibonean said:

Japanese flew Zeros in real life. Valyrians flew dragons in a high fantasy. 

And? Sure, Zeros would impress the hell out of anyone in Westeros, or medieval Europe or Asia for that matter, but they weren't particularly special in the 1940s. Also, the only reason only the Japanese flew them is that only the Japanese had them (much like the dragons). And I can't imagine that you're arguing that the Japanese imperial family actually were special people because hundreds of years in the future some people not even related to them except for being the same ethnicity would be pilots. So honestly, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

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1 hour ago, falcotron said:

There's a very big difference between "it's not necessary at all" and "it's usually necessary, but there's one boring exception".

OK, I misunderstood what you were saying there. Yes there is indeed a very big difference, I agree.

1 hour ago, falcotron said:

This is what's wrong with people. Anyone can spend an hour talking about anything, and that doesn't make it more true, but it does make many people find it more impressive.

I don't subscribe to the theory because of the mere length of the video. I subscribe to it because I think it is convincing.

1 hour ago, falcotron said:

He really doesn't present evidence for the X-linked chromosome theory. He does show that it doesn't contradict any fact that he was able to think of from the book, and he goes into great detail listing all the facts it doesn't contradict. But there are many explanations that don't contradict any facts from the book, and some of them are thematically more interesting, or actually explain why Nettles is in the story instead of needing to separately explain her away, etc. A theory needs positive evidence, not just showing that it's not impossible.

Jacobs does this for some of his theories, but not for others, and his biggest fans don't seem to be able to see the difference, because either way there's just as many quotes from the book.

OK, well now we are getting down to semantics, but I think a generally good way to judge any asoiaf theory is to judge whether or not it provides a reasonable hypothesis for unanswered questions without being proven impossible, and preferably with quotes/hints/foreshadowing that seem to support the original hypothesis. Some theories are more concrete than others simply because the information available to us is more conclusive. For example, to stick with PJ, he has pointed out that the spun sugar skulls served as a joke desert at Doran's feast for the Lannister men is a clear piece of evidence that Qyburn is a spy for Doran, because the only people who knew that a skull was on its way instead of the rotting head of the Mountain were Qyburn and Cersei, and Cersei is definitely not a spy for Doran. Other theories, by contrast, are much less conclusive, like R+L=J. There is a fair amount of evidence supporting R+L=J, and nothing in the text so far proves it to be impossible, but for all we know Lyanna could have given birth to a stillborn, or Dany, or no one at all, and not Jon. It is inconclusive, but I certainly consider it to be a valid theory.

I'm not going to rehash all of PJ's points from the Genetics of Dragons and War theory, but I'll list a couple real quick just to make my point. One of my favorite points he made was about the Maidenvault. Baelor confined his sisters in the Maidenvault purportedly because he didn't want to be tempted by their beauty. But that doesn't make any sense. Why not send them away, out of KL entirely? The purpose of a Maidenvault (as implied by the name) seems to be to prevent anyone from having sex with his sisters. And a valid explanation for this is that Baelor (but really the Faith) did not want them having children for some reason, which supports his hypothesis. For another example, take his point about Egg becoming king. Aegon the Unlikely becoming king was incredibly... unlikely. And it seems that events were manipulated by someone (Bloodraven probably) for this to happen. Baelor being (probably) murdered is particularly suspicious. Why would BR go to such lengths to put Egg on the throne? A valid explanation is that Egg had the right genes for riding dragons and for eventually producing the PtwP through his descendants as would be later prophesied by the GoHH, again supporting PJ's hypothesis. Are these points conclusive? Not at all. Do they support his hypothesis? Yes. Do they count as "positive evidence" for his theory? I would say so.

1 hour ago, falcotron said:

And PJ's theory really doesn't address the question of why some people can ride dragons and others can't. It doesn't address Nettles, the most interesting case, which he has to pawn off another explanation for. It doesn't address any of the other cases. It doesn't explain why a group of families who trace everything patrilineally would still be dragonriders after a couple hundred generations—or, more to the point, while millions of other people wouldn't be. It doesn't even explain most of the dragonseeds. It really just explains the Hull brothers. And, as I said, there are many explanations for the Hull brothers that don't contradict any of the facts, some of which are simpler or more thematically interesting, none of which have any positive evidence. The fact that his explanation also doesn't contradict any of the facts, but also doesn't have any positive evidence, is not a reason to believe in it.

Both these points are explained by the incest. It doesn't matter if they trace things patrilineally (did the Valyrians even do this?) as long as they remain incestuous. And millions of other people never got the influx of the dragon rider gene specifically because the Valyrians were incestuous and kept their genes mostly within their families, with the notable exception of their encounters with prostitutes on Lys.

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7 hours ago, mankytoes said:

I feel that Nettles was put into the story to tell us something about dragons, not to be the exception to the rule. I tend to just take the books at face value when I'm reading them, I don't try and double guess author motivations, I find that a bit joyless. But I couldn't help but pause when this poor, brown, foul mouthed girl started riding a dragon. George is telling us something here. It would be really odd for Nettles for be the exception to the rule, who our explanations are supposed to work around. I think dragon bonding explanations should use Nettles as one of their starting points, not try to work around her.

 

 I still feel that it points to the fact that Dany can't have three dragons. What I mean is: she's bonded to Drogon, but she's feeding the other two. They stay because she's 'Nettled' them. If they bond with someone like she has with Drogon, then she loses them.

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