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House Targaryen words meaning= GOOD


Sea Dragon

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I read a lot of posts that claim the Targaryen words are equal to madness. I disagree with that. Fire and blood means to conquer and bring together. This is what Westeros needs now. And I also believe that the Targaryen madness is a lie. I am not sure why so many posters here don't realize this. Maybe we should just discuss it below. 

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Don't forget that 'blood' also has the meaning of heredity, I think that is very pertinent for the Targaryens with all those references to 'the blood of the dragon', 'the blood of old Valyria' and so on. All those brother-sister marriages were intended to maintain the purity of the bloodline, to hold on to whatever traits are responsible for their status as dragonlords.

So the House words can also be interpreted as defining Targaryen identity, what makes them what they are: their bloodline, and their dragons. "Remember who you are..." is the inward-facing message to the family, but the outward-facing message to the world is a threat - 'oppose us and you will face blood and fire'.

There's no rule that says House words can only have one meaning, after all.

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"A hundred days and a hundred nights he labored on the third blade, and as it glowed white-hot in the sacred fires, he summoned his wife. 'Nissa Nissa,' he said to her, for that was her name, 'bare your breast, and know that I love you best of all that is in this world.' She did this thing, why I cannot say, and Azor Ahai thrust the smoking sword through her living heart. It is said that her cry of anguish and ecstasy left a crack across the face of the moon, but her blood and her soul and her strength and her courage all went into the steel. Such is the tale of the forging of Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes.
"Now do you see my meaning? Be glad that it is just a burnt sword that His Grace pulled from that fire. Too much light can hurt the eyes, my friend, and fire burns."
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3 minutes ago, zandru said:

Do we even know how Valyrian blades were made?

 'She is a foolish child, mad and heedless and too dangerous to live.' When your dragons were small they were a wonder. Grown, they are death and devastation, a flaming sword above the world."

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14 hours ago, Sea Dragon said:

I read a lot of posts that claim the Targaryen words are equal to madness. I disagree with that. Fire and blood means to conquer and bring together. This is what Westeros needs now. And I also believe that the Targaryen madness is a lie. I am not sure why so many posters here don't realize this. Maybe we should just discuss it below. 

Fire means life.  Ice means death.  People pray for long summers.  They don't pray for long winters.  Fire is rebirth.  Ice is an extinction level killer.  The threat in the story is Ice and the absence of light.  

House words is a new practice for the Targaryens and it is actually a custom of Westeros.  Fire and blood holds no more significance in their case than "high as honor" to the Tully's.  Hoster was far from honorable.  Most house want something that sounds bad ass for their words.  They usually mean nothing.  The Targaryens took Westeros by dragons (fire) and soldiers (blood) and that is the inspiration for fire and blood.  

Only the Targaryens males lose their minds.  There has never been a case of a female Targaryen going mad.  And even among the males it was rare.

 

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3 hours ago, LiveFirstDieLater said:

 'She is a foolish child, mad and heedless and too dangerous to live.' When your dragons were small they were a wonder. Grown, they are death and devastation, a flaming sword above the world."

Is there some kind of answer in this? Remember, I'm not that good at metaphor or complex literary allusions.

1 hour ago, Moiraine Sedai said:

Only the Targaryens males lose their minds.  There has never been a case of a female Targaryen going mad.  And even among the males it was rare.

This is a really hopeful observation. And we know today that, small as the "Y" chromosome is, it can carry a lot of bad traits.

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9 minutes ago, zandru said:

Is there some kind of answer in this? Remember, I'm not that good at metaphor or complex literary allusions.

The story Salladhor Saan tells about AA is describing the birth of dragons... the flaming sword is the dragons... Dany has already sacrificed her spouse in their forging.

It’s not a very complex analogy, but hope that helps... 

9 minutes ago, zandru said:

This is a really hopeful observation. And we know today that, small as the "Y" chromosome is, it can carry a lot of bad traits.

WTF?

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2 hours ago, Moiraine Sedai said:

Fire means life.  Ice means death.  People pray for long summers.  They don't pray for long winters.  Fire is rebirth.  Ice is an extinction level killer.  The threat in the story is Ice and the absence of light.  

House words is a new practice for the Targaryens and it is actually a custom of Westeros.  Fire and blood holds no more significance in their case than "high as honor" to the Tully's.  Hoster was far from honorable.  Most house want something that sounds bad ass for their words.  They usually mean nothing.  The Targaryens took Westeros by dragons (fire) and soldiers (blood) and that is the inspiration for fire and blood.  

Only the Targaryens males lose their minds.  There has never been a case of a female Targaryen going mad.  And even among the males it was rare.

 

Considering that "High as Honor" are the words of house Arryn, it's no wonder Hoster Tully doesn't fit them.

House Tully's words are Family, Duty, Honor. So he fits two out of three depending on how you squint at them. What he did to Lysa was rotten, but he did feel it was his duty to protect his family's honor that way. If only he'd realized the order of the words may have been chosen deliberately to signify the importance of each being kept in its proper place.

That's not necessarily true. It's not always a case of "going" mad, as madness can be present from birth. The female Targaryens with faulty faculties were generally described as simple. Could be that whatever the issue, testosterone tended to bring out the more violent aspects of the madness. And let's not forget that there are quite a few female Targaryens (and a few males) whose lives we know little about. Would the one who fell from a horse and broke her neck have gone mad had she lived? Did Saera lose it later in life? How about the female babies who died, or Aegon IV's myriad daughters? What about Daeron the Drunken's daughter? Or little Jaehaera, had she lived? Gael's ending could certainly be termed mere despair, but a hint of madness could also have been at play.

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17 hours ago, Sea Dragon said:

I read a lot of posts that claim the Targaryen words are equal to madness. I disagree with that. Fire and blood means to conquer and bring together. This is what Westeros needs now. And I also believe that the Targaryen madness is a lie. I am not sure why so many posters here don't realize this. Maybe we should just discuss it below. 

If it's a lie, it's one the author has been careful to plant, and to reinforce. Maegor I. Baelor I. Rhaegel. Aerion. And who knows how many others left out of the history.

Mental illness certainly can and does run in families in real life. And the Valyrians were messing around with all kinds of things involving fire and blood. Blood bonding with a magical fire-beast could do all kinds of interesting things, for example creating stillborn children with tails and scales. I know there is no consensus on blood bonding, but I still believe that it's the most likely source of the Valyrian prominence in dragon domestication--as much as dragons could ever be domesticated.

The Targs have their madness. The Starks have their wolf's blood. The Lannisters have their pride (no pun intended). The Freys are weasels. The Bolton's skin people. It's part of the mystique. It's not meant to define every single person of each house. 

I do agree that the Targ words don't indicate madness at all.

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17 hours ago, Sea Dragon said:

I read a lot of posts that claim the Targaryen words are equal to madness. I disagree with that. Fire and blood means to conquer and bring together. This is what Westeros needs now. And I also believe that the Targaryen madness is a lie. I am not sure why so many posters here don't realize this. Maybe we should just discuss it below. 

I always took Fire and Blood to refer to the types of magic that were fused to bind dragons to the Valyrians. So Targaryen blood is literally fused with dragon (Fire) blood.

So if we assume that Stark blood has been fused with Other (Ice) blood (through the Night's King perhaps?), and we further assume that RLJ is true, then you would literally have the Song of Ice and Fire (Magic) bound up in the blood of a single character.

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House Targ words are a declaration of their willingness to sacrifice their children for power. Their mastery of fire, including their fire dragons, comes at the cost of human blood sacrifice, the blood of their family, particularly their children. Fire and blood.

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51 minutes ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

Considering that "High as Honor" are the words of house Arryn, it's no wonder Hoster Tully doesn't fit them.

House Tully's words are Family, Duty, Honor. So he fits two out of three depending on how you squint at them. What he did to Lysa was rotten, but he did feel it was his duty to protect his family's honor that way. If only he'd realized the order of the words may have been chosen deliberately to signify the importance of each being kept in its proper place.

That's not necessarily true. It's not always a case of "going" mad, as madness can be present from birth. The female Targaryens with faulty faculties were generally described as simple. Could be that whatever the issue, testosterone tended to bring out the more violent aspects of the madness. And let's not forget that there are quite a few female Targaryens (and a few males) whose lives we know little about. Would the one who fell from a horse and broke her neck have gone mad had she lived? Did Saera lose it later in life? How about the female babies who died, or Aegon IV's myriad daughters? What about Daeron the Drunken's daughter? Or little Jaehaera, had she lived? Gael's ending could certainly be termed mere despair, but a hint of madness could also have been at play.

You're right, that's the Arryn words.  Still, they are just words that are not indicative of the family traits.  Asshole is not necessarily a genetic trait except for the rectum.

The female Targaryens are just as well-known and studied.  No madness on record for them.

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2 hours ago, LiveFirstDieLater said:

It’s not a very complex analogy, but hope that helps... 

No. I was asking specifically how Valyrian steel was made. Apparently, there are still some who do some limited forging of pre-existing swords, like Tobho Mott.

2 hours ago, LiveFirstDieLater said:

WTF?

The Y chromosome, in humans, determines maleness. Females are XX. Men are XY. YY is non-viable. There are variations with 3 of the sex chromosomes, but there's no need to go into atypical complexities. Basically, only males (aka men) have a Y.

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Are we even told who came up with the phrase?  I can believe Orys Baratheon saying to Aegon, "Sire, we need to come up with your House battle cry to fit in line with the other houses of Westeros.  What do you say to "fire and blood?" And so the phrase stuck. 

I don't imagine the phrase came from Valyria because the other families also had dragons and they all had fire.  For chrisssakes they built the city on the edge of an active volcano. 

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Who can be described to have a firey personality?

  1. Visenya T.
  2. Theon Stark
  3. Aegon II
  4. Daemon, the guy in Dance of the Dragons
  5. Lyanna Stark
  6. Brandon Stark
  7. Arya Stark
  8. Daenerys
  9. Oberyn
  10. Robert B
  11. Jon Snow
  12. Cersei

Who can be described as icey?

  1. Missandei
  2. Hizdahr
  3. Aenys
  4. big Walder
  5. Ned Stark
  6. Doran
  7. Samwell
  8. Sansa
  9. Littlefinger
  10. Roose
  11. Green Grace
  12. Mance
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3 hours ago, chrisdaw said:

House Targ words are a declaration of their willingness to sacrifice their children for power. Their mastery of fire, including their fire dragons, comes at the cost of human blood sacrifice, the blood of their family, particularly their children. Fire and blood.

The Targaryens are not known for making human sacrifices.  You may be thinking of the Starks that Bran saw in his visions.  But the Targs made sacrifices of their own.  They sacrificed love and true romance.  Many of the Targaryens never got the chance to marry the person they wanted.  They had to preserve the talent for dragon riding.  They basically had a lot of unhappy couples in the family.   Depression, marital infidelity, alcoholism can happen in unhappy homes.

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16 minutes ago, Allardyce said:

The Targaryens are not known for making human sacrifices.  You may be thinking of the Starks that Bran saw in his visions.  But the Targs made sacrifices of their own.  They sacrificed love and true romance.  Many of the Targaryens never got the chance to marry the person they wanted.  They had to preserve the talent for dragon riding.  They basically had a lot of unhappy couples in the family.   Depression, marital infidelity, alcoholism can happen in unhappy homes.

No the price is blood, children, Dany did by accident what they'd forgotten how.

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