<TWoIaF spoilers> Of gods and monsters

[Greybo]

Well, that was cool! Would have been nice to have some more about the North and at least something about Moraq or the ports around Qarth, but overall a fantastic and fascinating read.

Lots of juicy hints about what’s going on in Planetos. Four stood out for me:

• We’ve got Lovecraftian creepiness in all sorts of places
  
• Oily black rock was very fashionable in the days of yore
  
• It appears there are quite a few human/animal hybrids – the people of The Thousand Isles and the Isle of Toads (and to a much lesser extent the Sistermen), and, judging by the number of scaly, winged stillbirths the Targaryens had, the Valyrians. Maybe even the brindled men and the brindled wyverns.
  
• There is indeed something in the water, as the freaked out and freaky folk in the Thousand Isles, plus the strange fish thereabouts, suggest.
  

This leads me to think a few things (no points for originality, I know).

1) R’hllor and The Other are indeed Eldritch Abominations aligned to elemental forces (fire vs ice/water) who are at war with each other, using hybrid humanoids and other beasts mixed with those elemental forces (ice for The Others, fire for dragons), and/or animals (I think we’ll be seeing some merlings/squishers soon) as proxies.

2) The oily black rock (covered in depth in another thread) are the remnants of R’hllor’s pre-human empire. Something went wrong with his minions – I’d guess they were fire humanoids that somehow got turned into living shadows by some Valyrian-style magical overreaching that maybe caused the global warming that led to the drowning of the Neck and the Essos-Westeros land bridge. They’re still hanging out in Asshai and Yeen.

3) The Five Forts mark what was once the border of R’hllor’s territory and an ancient evil based in K’dath, possibly The Other, maybe some other Eldritch Abomination.

4) The non-human sentient races seem tied to environments: the children of the forest, the giants in the mountains (e.g. the Jhogwin), Shrykes/lizard men in the desert and presumably merlings/squishers in the sea. Humans are probably, as in RL, the equivalent for the plains – except like any good pest they and their hairy sibling species have spread to other environments.

Thoughts?

[Lord_Pepsi_Cupps]

I think we need to be careful not to take everything Yandel says literally.

For his Westerosi stuff (esp the more recent history) it's OK to assume his factual accuracy is good-ish, but even there, we need to look out for Yandel endorsing or applying a particular spin. For example, I think Visenya gets a really bad rap (sorcerers, Aenys-killer, Maegor-pusher) but the feeling you get if you just look at the confirmed facts of what she's done point to a pretty solid leader.

However, as Yandel moves further out, the places and peoples get crazier and crazier. How predictable. This is how virtually every medieval equivalent would have gone - we had stories of one-legged men with faces on their stomachs, etc etc (all were believed to be real).

Here's some potential explanations (not saying any is right, but just pointing to a different possible interpretation):

• Thousand Islands - People are green-tinged and file the teeth of their women to points. They could just apply some regular green dye to their skin? Like, if that's their main distinguishing difference, and they are also known to Yandel almost solely from the Seasnake's journeys, how much weight to we put on them actually being green fish-people?
  

• Toad Island - the inhabitants are said to have an "unpleasant, fish-like aspect to them", but that's about as vague as you can get. Again, it's in the Basilisk Isles - the second-worst place in the world after Sothoryos, if Yandel is to be believed. Rarely visited by anyone reputable enough to carry back a believable story.
  

• All people of Sothoryos (brindled men, lizards, etc) - the biggest point about Sothoryos is this: we know virtually nothing for sure about it. If nine out of ten Westerosi get a disease when they go there (or at least, that's the story), then it makes sense for this to be the least explored part of the known world. Virtually everything said about the place (other than maybe the stuff Nymeria saw for herself, as that is very well recorded apparently) must be taken with a huge pinch of salt.
  

In conclusion:

- the further you get from Westeros, the weirder the people are

- the less contact Westeros has had with a place, the weirder its people are

- the more dangerous a place, the weirder its people are

It's almost a textbook example of how medieval Europeans understood their place in the world, and everyone else.

The only counterargument is that we DO have the CotF and the giants in Westeros, so the possibility of other species is there. But I'm not gonna give Yandel a blank cheque based on that.

[Greybo]

Nice to get a reply - thanks! You're quite right about Yandel being a (deliberately) somewhat unreliable narrator, and I take your point about medieval history (Yandel himself shows plenty of scepticism about 'stories') but I do think that most if not all of the weird stuff from Sothoryos and eastern Essos is likely 'true', because:

1) GRRM loves this stuff. Nothing that's described is that much weirder than Others and the House of the Undying.

2) This is fantasy. It'd be disappointing if we didn't have lots of exotic magical stuff in the far corners of the world.

3) We have a picture of a Thousand Islander. That would suggest they're intended to be more significant than just some far-away people with unusual personal grooming habits.

4) Sothoryos has been visited by lots and lots of people over thousands of years, with many attempts to settle. The Citadel would have a lot of reports to draw on. Note that Yadel describes wyverns, etc as factual but is more doubtful about lizard men and eyeless cave dwellers, presumably because there are fewer reports. This is of course much less true of say, the Cannibal Sands.

As an aside on Visenya, there's no reason why she couldn't be both an excellent leaders and an awful person. Plenty of examples of that in history.

5)

[farm_ecology]

1) R’hllor and The Other are indeed Eldritch Abominations aligned to elemental forces (fire vs ice/water) who are at war with each other, using hybrid humanoids and other beasts mixed with those elemental forces (ice for The Others, fire for dragons), and/or animals (I think we’ll be seeing some merlings/squishers soon) as proxies.

I see this concept being thrown around a lot, the idea of this dual force fighting for dominance (often with ideas of balance thrown in), but I'm skeptical. I don't believe there is such a thing as the great Other. That said, I also don't believe that R'hllor exists either. I think the Great Other just comes from the fact that the religion of R'hllor is dualistic in nature (light vs dark) and only exists within that religion. R'hllor itself might just be an explanation for the perceived ability gain power from the flames, even if there isn't a single entity controlling this. I also wonder whether Melisandre isn't some kind of heretic.

[Rody]

When the book got into the really weird stuff I just ate it all up. I like the part about ice dragons. So you guys think that ice dragons are real? And I really digged the story about Yi Ti, I had no idea who they were going in the book and then I loved knowing that they were based on the Chinese. The people they conquered that are freakishly tall and hot whose ethnicity I forgot now were very cool and weird too.

[walkingWITHcersei]

So does this mean we'll get to see a female savior with a monkeys tail? Lol

[Greybo]

When the book got into the really weird stuff I just ate it all up. I like the part about ice dragons. So you guys think that ice dragons are real? And I really digged the story about Yi Ti, I had no idea who they were going in the book and then I loved knowing that they were based on the Chinese. The people they conquered that are freakishly tall and hot whose ethnicity I forgot now were very cool and weird too.

Yes, I think the ice dragons are real. As has been said by others in other threads, Team Ice needs something to counter Dany's dragons or the big battle is going to be a bit anticlimactic. And it fits with the idea that dragons are magical creations made for war.

I also loved the Yi Ti stuff, and Asshai and Sarnor and Sothoryos - heck, everything that was new about places we didn't know about.

[Lord_Pepsi_Cupps]

I thought the ice dragons thing was a clear wink-and-nod to the theories that ice dragons will make an appearance. What it's saying is that ice dragons exist but they turn to water when destroyed, so it's not possible to independently establish they exist (unless you see one).

I read that as cheekily saying: and you'll never see any, either. As in, ice dragons will stay a "mystery".

I know it can be read both ways, but it's a bit neat to have ice dragons fighting fire dragons. We haven't yet learnt about any serious weaknesses of dragons - they may exist, but maybe only exploitable by the Others (eg their ice weapons might slice through dragon scales easily). That could be their drawcard against dragons.

[Rody]

I thought the ice dragons thing was a clear wink-and-nod to the theories that ice dragons will make an appearance. What it's saying is that ice dragons exist but they turn to water when destroyed, so it's not possible to independently establish they exist (unless you see one).

I read that as cheekily saying: and you'll never see any, either. As in, ice dragons will stay a "mystery".

I know it can be read both ways, but it's a bit neat to have ice dragons fighting fire dragons. We haven't yet learnt about any serious weaknesses of dragons - they may exist, but maybe only exploitable by the Others (eg their ice weapons might slice through dragon scales easily). That could be their drawcard against dragons.

I think that dragons don't have a weakness to Others. I think the Others are scared shitless of them.

[SeanF]

Human/animal hybrids should be treated with scepticism. They mostly appear in places that Yandel is hazy about.

Scepticism, but not total disbelief. Sorcery is real in this world, and it does look as though dragon lords really are part-dragon.

[Lord_Pepsi_Cupps]

Human/animal hybrids should be treated with scepticism. They mostly appear in places that Yandel is hazy about.

Scepticism, but not total disbelief. Sorcery is real in this world, and it does look as though dragon lords really are part-dragon.

Not even scepticism as such, just a healthy dose of caution. Mainly because stories get distorted as they're passed on, especially in pre-literate societies and those where historiography as a discipline hasn't developed.

For example, I think the "blood of the dragon" thing is a corruption of the fact that, way back when in Valyria, sorcery bound Targaryen family dragons to those people who have (some, or sufficient) Targaryen ancestry. All dragonlord families were the same. It makes sense: if every dragonlord family had dragons that only that family could ride, then (1) that's a safety net against those dragons ever being used against them; and (2) it explains incestuous marriage, which would not only maximise your family's chances of having dragonrider children in every generation, but it also minimises the dispersal of your blood (and so, the magical link to your family dragons) to other families and potential rivals.

But, as the truth of it became a story, simpler minds just explained it as "Targaryens have dragon blood" as a simplification. Then someone started talking about the metaphor as if it were literally true.

And let's not forget the little snippet we get about Aegon and his sisters: they didn't go out of their way to correct overwrought stories and dispel mystical powers attributed to the Targaryens; they subtly encouraged them. That makes sense too.

Westerosi, being the most ignorant of all the people in the world about dragons (everyone else lived under or in close contact with Valyrians) would be likely to believe something as crazy as Targs having literal dragon blood in their veins, and that would make them quake in their boots all the more.

ETA: it's a sad comment on the decline of the House Targaryen that, by the time you get to people like Aerion and Aerys II, they are among those who now believe the literal interpretation.

[Sielgaudys]

I feel that a lot of things in edges of the map are "here be dragons" stuff. Like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynocephaly in Middle Ages.

[Greybo]

Not even scepticism as such, just a healthy dose of caution. Mainly because stories get distorted as they're passed on, especially in pre-literate societies and those where historiography as a discipline hasn't developed.

For example, I think the "blood of the dragon" thing is a corruption of the fact that, way back when in Valyria, sorcery bound Targaryen family dragons to those people who have (some, or sufficient) Targaryen ancestry. All dragonlord families were the same. It makes sense: if every dragonlord family had dragons that only that family could ride, then (1) that's a safety net against those dragons ever being used against them; and (2) it explains incestuous marriage, which would not only maximise your family's chances of having dragonrider children in every generation, but it also minimises the dispersal of your blood (and so, the magical link to your family dragons) to other families and potential rivals.

But, as the truth of it became a story, simpler minds just explained it as "Targaryens have dragon blood" as a simplification. Then someone started talking about the metaphor as if it were literally true.

And let's not forget the little snippet we get about Aegon and his sisters: they didn't go out of their way to correct overwrought stories and dispel mystical powers attributed to the Targaryens; they subtly encouraged them. That makes sense too.

Westerosi, being the most ignorant of all the people in the world about dragons (everyone else lived under or in close contact with Valyrians) would be likely to believe something as crazy as Targs having literal dragon blood in their veins, and that would make them quake in their boots all the more.

ETA: it's a sad comment on the decline of the House Targaryen that, by the time you get to people like Aerion and Aerys II, they are among those who now believe the literal interpretation.

Hmmm ... if this wasn't a fantasy I'd agree with you, but it does seem like at least some of the Targs have supernatural powers (e.g. Dany in the fire) and given the deformed, dragonlike stillbirths that crop up in the family, I think there is some kind of real physical (or at least magical) connection between Targaryens and dragons. There may literally be something in the blood.

[Lord_Pepsi_Cupps]

I may be totally wrong here: I think the deformed stillbirths only really start after Targs start mixing with non-Targs? Maegor had all those "monstrosities" but then Tyana of the Tower admitted to poisoning them.. and also, Maegor's grandmother was a Velaryon - if my guess is correct, that's not good enough (it's not Valyrian blood that matters, it's Targ blood - see below).

Then we have Rhaenyra (who's only 3/4 Targ) and Laena (who's all kinds of Targ, Velaryon, Baratheon).

Then they start happening more often, and the Targs start going crazier too.

I always tied it to the blood magic that connects the Targs and their dragons. It's a huge asset, but there must be a balance: if they mix with other bloodlines, the magic becomes unstable (there's a symmetry to this: Valyria was destroyed when the spells that kept the fires stable collapsed..) and the effect is madness and deformed stillbirths. But there's an element of chance involved in it, obviously (so it's not like everyone will have stillbirths and be cray).

Anyway, if it's correct, it would be another reason for why "the blood of the dragon must be kept pure."

[Lord_Pepsi_Cupps]

Or maybe... The reason they practice incest is only to avoid spreading the dragonblood to anyone else. Maybe the deformed stillbirths and the madness are the price the sorcerers had to pay to tie dragons to Targ blood. Every song must have its balance.

[Greybo]

I may be totally wrong here: I think the deformed stillbirths only really start after Targs start mixing with non-Targs? Maegor had all those "monstrosities" but then Tyana of the Tower admitted to poisoning them.. and also, Maegor's grandmother was a Velaryon - if my guess is correct, that's not good enough (it's not Valyrian blood that matters, it's Targ blood - see below).

Then we have Rhaenyra (who's only 3/4 Targ) and Laena (who's all kinds of Targ, Velaryon, Baratheon).

Then they start happening more often, and the Targs start going crazier too.

I always tied it to the blood magic that connects the Targs and their dragons. It's a huge asset, but there must be a balance: if they mix with other bloodlines, the magic becomes unstable (there's a symmetry to this: Valyria was destroyed when the spells that kept the fires stable collapsed..) and the effect is madness and deformed stillbirths. But there's an element of chance involved in it, obviously (so it's not like everyone will have stillbirths and be cray).

Anyway, if it's correct, it would be another reason for why "the blood of the dragon must be kept pure."

I

Or maybe... The reason they practice incest is only to avoid spreading the dragonblood to anyone else. Maybe the deformed stillbirths and the madness are the price the sorcerers had to pay to tie dragons to Targ blood. Every song must have its balance.

I like this theory and the ones above - both could be right. Good old GRRM's ambiguity, keeps things interesting.

[Ocelot]

I may be totally wrong here: I think the deformed stillbirths only really start after Targs start mixing with non-Targs? Maegor had all those "monstrosities" but then Tyana of the Tower admitted to poisoning them.. and also, Maegor's grandmother was a Velaryon - if my guess is correct, that's not good enough (it's not Valyrian blood that matters, it's Targ blood - see below).

Then we have Rhaenyra (who's only 3/4 Targ) and Laena (who's all kinds of Targ, Velaryon, Baratheon).

Then they start happening more often, and the Targs start going crazier too.

I always tied it to the blood magic that connects the Targs and their dragons. It's a huge asset, but there must be a balance: if they mix with other bloodlines, the magic becomes unstable (there's a symmetry to this: Valyria was destroyed when the spells that kept the fires stable collapsed..) and the effect is madness and deformed stillbirths. But there's an element of chance involved in it, obviously (so it's not like everyone will have stillbirths and be cray).

Anyway, if it's correct, it would be another reason for why "the blood of the dragon must be kept pure."

Didn't Tyanna only confess to poisoning fetuses when she was under torture?

[Lord_Pepsi_Cupps]

Didn't Tyanna only confess to poisoning fetuses when she was under torture?

Are you impugning the impartiality of Maegor the Cool's justice (have I been reading that right)?

Damn you, Ocelooooot!!

[Lord_Pepsi_Cupps]

Didn't Tyanna only confess to poisoning fetuses when she was under torture?

Also I realised that all of Maegor's wives that gave him craybies were non-Targs, so it works with my theory 100%.

I have this other theory that Maegor was as awesome as Aegon, until they didn't let him marry a Targ and he smashed his head. I reckon he went berserk from the head trauma, and that compounded the effect the stilbirths had on him.

Later, it was in his legal successors' (Jaehaerys etc) interest to portray Maegor as totally insane from the start (so stories were made up or exaggerated), to help delegitimise his rule. Because my other OTHER theory was that the three original Targ siblings agreed that Maegor would succeed Aenys (or perhaps Aegon only wanted Aenys to follow him because of Rhaenys, but Maegor after that because he was clearly awesome); but Maegor went cray (see above) and after his downfall, his reign was deligitimised and his memory tainted. And if only they had let him marry Aenys' daughter (that was the one he initially wanted I think) he might have been great.