So, the Citadel...

[Intercept]

So Mayder dug up graves and released the wights while digging for the Horn of Winter so he could destroy the Wall, go south and escape the wights? The timeline isn't consistent for the grave digging to be anything but superstition.

If I was a Maester I would pump the dragons so full of infertility drugs that they would even look at a mate.

Then why does Ygritte confirm Mance has digging up graves and releasing wights/the Others into the world?

Mance stated in his parlay with Jon Snow that the Horn of Winter is an absolute last choice. They aren't escaping from wights -- they are escaping from the Others. The reason why Mance never dared to blow the horn in the first place is because he knows the Wall holds magic. Very old powerful magic which keeps the Others and whatever else trapped beyond there from crossing it. To topple the Wall would mean safety for the wildlings, but doom for the realm.

Where is the timeline inconsistency? Mance had plenty of time to search for the Horn before he even assembled his people to march for the Wall. It could have happened even before AGoT.

[Anya, Vengeance Demon]

Where is the timeline inconsistency? Mance had plenty of time to search for the Horn before he even assembled his people to march for the Wall. It could have happened even before AGoT.

Well, according to Qhorin Halfhand's reports, Mance had assembled his people in order (at least initially) to search for the Horn of Joramun; that's why they were gathered so far north. So I don't think he was already looking for it beforehand.

[sholtzma]

Do I need a new thread for this question??

About the end of AFFC and Marwyn at the Citadel. I couldn't figure out what Marwyn's comment about only needing birds to send messages after battles meant (as opposed to talking to distant people through the obsidian candle flames, as I recall). Am I missing something obvious or was this a weird statement?

[Anya, Vengeance Demon]

Do I need a new thread for this question??

About the end of AFFC and Marwyn at the Citadel. I couldn't figure out what Marwyn's comment about only needing birds to send messages after battles meant (as opposed to talking to distant people through the obsidian candle flames, as I recall). Am I missing something obvious or was this a weird statement?

I think he meant that you'd only need ravens after battles because they could eat the corpses; not that they would be needed to send messages after a battle was done.

[sholtzma]

Ah. that makes sense. I was sure I was missing something obvious there...and I was.

[Guest Other-in-law]

Then why does Ygritte confirm Mance has digging up graves and releasing wights/the Others into the world?

Confirm?! Argh! Have you even read this thread?

1. "Confirm" suggests that a pre-existing theory has been verified. It hasn't. Ygritte is the one who introduced this theory. Only...she hasn't even really done that because:

2. She never said that "wights/the Others" were released from graves. Or "white-walkers". Or any other term that has been directly linked to the Others. Her exact words: "We opened half a hundred graves and let all those shades loose in the world, and never found the horn of winter to bring this cold thing down." Shades. As in "Lord Hornwood's shade". It means "ghosts". Equating "shades" to "wights/the Others"=speculative interpretation. And even if that was what Ygritte was implying (and why should be so indirect?) it's still incredibly unreliable because:

3. Mance has directly stated that her claim was untrue. "Ygritte said you never found the horn."

"Did you think only crows could lie?"

Interpreting Ygrittes words to mean that wights or Others were disinterred from graves relies on construing one word of an admitted lie to mean something that it does not mean anywhere else in the entire series. No, it's not "confirmed".

[Dycedarg]

Gah, why would Mance (a rather smart man) dig up an artifact for the purpose of escaping an enemy that didn't exist yet? I don't know who started this speculation but it just doesn't work.

I don't think the Citadel is responsible for the extinction of the dragons in westeros...more likely I think the dragons became extinct as the Targaryens became less fit to rule, and more inbred and insane. I'm sure the citadel wasn't complaining, though.

I doubt the inbreeding per se was really an issue. It's been mentioned that the Valyrian nobility practiced inbreeding for a long time and genetics work differently in ASoIaF anyways. Plus, Targ madness didn't necessarily increase as time went on, more like it just spiked every so often.

[Maia]

I don't know that the Targaryens were sent to Dragonstone in exile. If they were sent into exile, and deprived of their holdings, why would they retain their dragons?

Who knows the fine points of Valyrian law? Maybe even disgraced they were entitled to keep them. Maybe it was a self-imposed exile - IIRC a Targaryen maiden made some prophecy and they were smart enough to heed it. The main thing is that if highborn Valyrians were similar to late-Republican Romans, then they lived at home when not holding offices in the provinces. For Romans belonging to Senatorial families exile was worse than death. If the other Dragonlords shared such a view, then vast majority of them and their dragons would have perished in the Doom.

My feeling is, the Doom was not just an attack on Valyria the city but on Valyrian magic; all dragons everywhere, along with any other kind of magical being or magic-user, were affected to some extent. The effects were obviously the most profound in Valyria itself, which sunk into the sea, was haunted by demons, etc., etc.;

Well, if there really were demons, then we can hardly conclude that magic was on the wane, can we? Nor is there any reason to think that magic itself was attacked, except in the sense that if the dragons made it easier to do magic, then sudden absence of them would have weakened it. Even so, it seems that just a couple of dragons can make magic rather strong again. Maybe it was largely the fact that most accomplished practitioners of Valyrian magic died in the Doom and the few survivors were likely to forswear magic as something too dangerous (as Targaryens apparently did), that caused the very quick waning of magic after the Doom.

and the dragons of Valyria outside the city would have been affected as well, depending on how close they were to the Doom when it happened. Some may have died outright, some may have become sterile, and some may have progressively become weaker over time, like the Targaryen dragons. I imagine that the Targaryen dragons were able to resist this process longer than others because they were the furthest away from the Doom when it happened.

But we never heard of any non-Targaryen dragons after the Doom! There were, as far as we know, no gradual weakening, no Dragonlord ex-governors ruling any of the Free Cities after the Doom, however briefly. My guess is that the Doom happened during some festival or political function, which required presence of all the Dragonlords and their dragons and that Targaryens were the only ones who stayed away. If Doom was caused by Faceless Men, that would have been the most effective way to get rid of Valyrian yoke in one fell swoop.

Now that we know that dying out of Targaryen dragons wasn't natural, but contrived by the Citadel, there is no reason to think that there was anything wrong with Valyrian dragons either.

[Anya, Vengeance Demon]

We never hear of Dragonlords briefly controlling the Free Cities four hundred years ago because we have no idea who was controlling the Free Cities four hundred years ago (except possibly Braavos; I don't recall offhand if there's a line about being continuously ruled by the sealords). The books have spent a couple of chapters in Pentos and a couple more in Braavos; I'm sure there's a lot more about the history of the Free Cities that we have no idea about, and it may well involve dragons and it may well not. It's not like this is a notable absence in our vast and comprehensive knowledge of the political history of Tyrosh or something.

I'm curious about this...

The main thing is that if highborn Valyrians were similar to late-Republican Romans, then they lived at home when not holding offices in the provinces.

...which begs the question, why should we assume that they were similar to late-Republican Romans in that respect? As I've already said, it seems like practically speaking you'd want your dragons spread out to help control the imperial borders. I'm also curious why we should assume that the birth of the dragons was the cause of the current resurgence of magic; after all, the major magical event--the rise of the Others for the first time in eight thousand years--has already started about the year before the dragons were born.

BTW, just in case it wasn't clear, my "demon-haunted" reference was meant to be a little flip. It sounds more like legend than fact to me.

[sholtzma]

Looking at the books in a more global sense, it really is a mystery as to what has caused all of this to happen. We have some bloodmagic sorcery happening as early as (and I am sure before) Cersei demanding her foretelling from the Maegi. In fact, bloodmagic sorcery doesn't really seem to depend on anything having to do with dragons or the Others; it seems to work perfectly fine on its own.

So what came first? "magic from the gods," "bloodmagic," "Others," "dragons and all things related (debatable),"?

The direwolf pups showed up right at the beginning of AGOT - pretty much right after we see the first appearance of an Other. By the end of the book, MMD does her bloodmagic thing/Daenerys does her thing, dragons are born. But does the dragons being born really cause things like improved pyromancy and burning obsidian candles to light themselves, or are the dragons and other events caused by something more global? What triggered this all to happen in the first place? What is the relationship between the last dragon dying, the Lyanna/Rhaegar period, and current time in these books? Does the Citadel itself really understand what it is trying to control and why? Is this going to be a major lesson to people such as those at the Citadel, that dragons may be necessary for fighting some evil that is beyond their comprehension?

Sorry for the rambling - just thinking aloud.

[Intercept]

Confirm?! Argh! Have you even read this thread?

1. "Confirm" suggests that a pre-existing theory has been verified. It hasn't. Ygritte is the one who introduced this theory. Only...she hasn't even really done that because:

2. She never said that "wights/the Others" were released from graves. Or "white-walkers". Or any other term that has been directly linked to the Others. Her exact words: "We opened half a hundred graves and let all those shades loose in the world, and never found the horn of winter to bring this cold thing down." Shades. As in "Lord Hornwood's shade". It means "ghosts". Equating "shades" to "wights/the Others"=speculative interpretation. And even if that was what Ygritte was implying (and why should be so indirect?) it's still incredibly unreliable because:

3. Mance has directly stated that her claim was untrue. "Ygritte said you never found the horn."

"Did you think only crows could lie?"

Interpreting Ygrittes words to mean that wights or Others were disinterred from graves relies on construing one word of an admitted lie to mean something that it does not mean anywhere else in the entire series. No, it's not "confirmed".

Okay, admittedly the evidence is circumstantial, but lets look at it like this:

1. What other shades do we have in ASoIaF? Shades is a conveniently catch-all term for the living dead. Why would she refer to them as "those" shades if we and Jon have no idea what she is talking about? So it seems obvious she's speaking of wights/the Others.

2. Mance claimed her claim was untrue. Ygritte could've thought the horn he found was just a horn. Also, the aforementioned shades never entered the discussion. Mance was only claiming he found the Horn, not dismissing the claim that he unleashed wights/the Others.

Well, according to Qhorin Halfhand's reports, Mance had assembled his people in order (at least initially) to search for the Horn of Joramun; that's why they were gathered so far north. So I don't think he was already looking for it beforehand.

As I recall, there was no time specification on when he began assembling his people. The Watch was talking about it for a while, but they didn't take action until they noticed Mance marching.

So presumably he had plenty of time.

[Anya, Vengeance Demon]

1. What other shades do we have in ASoIaF? Shades is a conveniently catch-all term for the living dead. Why would she refer to them as "those" shades if we and Jon have no idea what she is talking about? So it seems obvious she's speaking of wights/the Others.

That's wrong. Ygritte refers to "those shades" as if Jon knows what she's talking about because Jon _does_ know what she's talking about: the common folk belief that vengeful ghosts have to kept at bay by observing the proper burial rites (among other things). The Starks believe--this is in the first Ned chapter in AGoT--that keeping an iron longsword across the lap of a statue of the Lord of Winterfell keeps "vengeful spirits" (which Ned also refers to as "ghosts") in their crypts. The wildlings presumably have their own version of that.

[Guest Other-in-law]

Okay, admittedly the evidence is circumstantial, but lets look at it like this:

1. What other shades do we have in ASoIaF?

Lord. Hornwood's. Shade.

Lord Hornwood, who died fighting for Robb in the Riverlands. Nowhere near the Wall. Who did not become a wight.

Shades is a conveniently catch-all term for the living dead. Why would she refer to them as "those" shades if we and Jon have no idea what she is talking about? So it seems obvious she's speaking of wights/the Others.

Nobody. in the series. Ever. Uses. The word shade. When speaking of Others.

2.

As I recall, there was no time specification on when he began assembling his people. The Watch was talking about it for a while, but they didn't take action until they noticed Mance marching.

Try and think of it in terms of causality. If opening graves was the way the Others were released, Mance would not have needed to open them in order to escape the Others. Because, ya know? They wouldn't have been released? So...he wouldn't have been desperately looking for a way to escape a threat that wasn't present until he tried to escape it? Instead of searching for the Horn of Winter to rescue his people from the Others, he could have done nothing...and it would have been more effective.

[Ahimsa]

Nobody. in the series. Ever. Uses. The word shade. When speaking of Others.

I suspect that Mace probably was looking for the Horn to escape the Others, however, I'm not sure you can place any emphasis on Ygritte's word choice. There is no reason to think "Shade" cannot mean "Other." It would be stupid if everyone called them the same thing, like the "Younglings" in Star Wars.

Ygritte wasn't very high up, and it's possible most of the rank and file got cause and effect mixed up. Or she was lying, as Mance implied. Her words have many reason to be doubted. But the fact that she said "shade" does not, imo, point to anything definitive about the nature of what Mance disturbed.

[Blackstone]

I think the Wildings know better than anyone the difference between a Shade (i.e. a ghost), a Wight and an Other.

It was a bad thing to disturb those graves and awaken those shades looking for the horn of winter. However, it's clear they were seeking the horn because of the others.

[Guest Other-in-law]

There is no reason to think "Shade" cannot mean "Other." It would be stupid if everyone called them the same thing, like the "Younglings" in Star Wars.

No reason beside the fact that no one ever does, you mean?

And they don't always use the same word; they say "white walkers" as well.

Back to the causality thing (I can't fathom why this is so hard for anyone): Put Mance above ground north of the Wall. He won't dig for the horn until the Others start attacking. Put the Others in graves (for some baffling reason). They won't be able to attack Mance until he digs them up. Ready?

Go!

Hmm. Nothing happened did it? How strange.

[shadowbinding shoe]

My feeling is, the Doom was not just an attack on Valyria the city but on Valyrian magic; all dragons everywhere, along with any other kind of magical being or magic-user, were affected to some extent. The effects were obviously the most profound in Valyria itself, which sunk into the sea, was haunted by demons, etc., etc.; and the dragons of Valyria outside the city would have been affected as well, depending on how close they were to the Doom when it happened. Some may have died outright, some may have become sterile, and some may have progressively become weaker over time, like the Targaryen dragons. I imagine that the Targaryen dragons were able to resist this process longer than others because they were the furthest away from the Doom when it happened.

The maesters, who are in a better position than most to monitor the decline of magic and notice the correlation with the decline of the dragons, might have helped this process along somehow. Once dragons were dead, they probably sabotaged efforts to hatch new dragon eggs. I don't think, however, that they were solely responsible for the decline of dragons. That stretches plausibility a bit for me.

This could be true. How about if a Maester-cabal sent their henchmen to dig in secret some soil from near the ground-zero of the doom in Valyria? They could have placed it in the dragon pit and let it affect the dragons there over the generations. It would be like radioactive stuff. This is the first explanation I could accept to why the dragons became deformed and died out in Westeros beside the 'freedom theory' Selmy blathered about. It makes more sense and would actually give the Maesters a place to put to effect their supposedly nefarious schemes.

[Darkness]

We know from what the "Kindly Old Man" said about the first Faceless Man that, Valyria was near some sort of Volcano, I am thinking it erupted and took out nearly all of Valyrians well there Nobles anyway. Since we know that Dragons are asexual creatures, Aemon says it when he is referring to a prophecy. So all it will take is for 1 Dragon to produce an egg and that Dragon to produce one etc and you got 100s of Dragons, but this is not the case since they died out, I am guessing that Dragons need help (Like eggs only hatch if they are near a volcano) or using Magic. I am guessing the Nobles kept this from their people otherwise everyone would have a Dragon.

[Anya, Vengeance Demon]

My guess is that the Doom happened during some festival or political function, which required presence of all the Dragonlords and their dragons and that Targaryens were the only ones who stayed away.

Incidentally, we know of another line of Valyrian nobility that survived the Doom, which ended up living in Lys (and dying out about a hundred years before the novels start).

[arya_underfoot]

The first of all of these otherworldly things to occur, is the return of the Others.

yes. the resurgence of magic seems linked to the others.

but what about the comet. arent the dragons hatched under the comet?? melisandre's shadowbinding is also evident only after the comet. presumably the obsidian candle started burning after the comet's appearance as well...