Targaryen twisted and deformed, scaled dragon babies, fishing for theories

[SeanF]

The dragonlords themselves claimed to be literally descended from dragons, and these scaly little monsters may be the result of dragon genes, which are dormant in healthy Targaryens, being epigenetically switched on.

How did Valyrians first manage to breed with dragons? Obviously we'll never know... but we can assume magic was involved. And probably a lot of burns.

I wonder if any of the mad Targaryens tried to mate with dragons.

[Dorea]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think the twisted babys started to pop out after the Targs intermarried with non Targs. Maybe do to the magic binding them to dragons they had to married in the family to avoid this kind of trouble and that was the reason they wanted to keep the bloodline pure, the opposite of any other family in planetos.

Except Cercei and Jaime who, like the Targs, had 3 healthy and beautiful well-formed children.

[Greybo]

I mentioned the Targaryen stillbirths in a thread I started: http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/120137-twoiaf-spoilers-of-gods-and-monsters/

My theory is that R'hllor and/or his followers used blood magic to hybridise humans with dragons, creating dragonriding proxies to fight The Other. This messed up the genes, which is why Targaryens and presumably the other dragonriding Valyrian families have a lot of monstrous stillbirths. It's also why they're so keen on interbreeding - to keep the dragonseed genetic traits.

Other hints at hybridisation are the fishlike Toad Islanders and Thousand Islanders, and the webbing on some of the Sistermen. I suspect that's The Other creating hybrids, with the successful results (squishers/merlings) lurking under the seas, terrorising fools and waiting to turn up in the next book.

[complexphoenix]

I mentioned the Targaryen stillbirths in a thread I started: http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/120137-twoiaf-spoilers-of-gods-and-monsters/

My theory is that R'hllor and/or his followers used blood magic to hybridise humans with dragons, creating dragonriding proxies to fight The Other. This messed up the genes, which is why Targaryens and presumably the other dragonriding Valyrian families have a lot of monstrous stillbirths. It's also why they're so keen on interbreeding - to keep the dragonseed genetic traits.

Other hints at hybridisation are the fishlike Toad Islanders and Thousand Islanders, and the webbing on some of the Sistermen. I suspect that's The Other creating hybrids, with the successful results (squishers/merlings) lurking under the seas, terrorising fools and waiting to turn up in the next book.

But if Rh'llor and his followers created the dragonlords, then why didn't the dragonlords worship Rh'llor?

Clearly there was fire magic, but not all fire magic needs to be linked to Rh'llor.

[Greybo]

@complexphoenix: got me there. A possible explanation is that the Valyrians (as suggested elsewhere) weren't the first to tame dragons and are the descendants of the Asshai'i or whoever first mastered or created dragons, and something happened in the meantime for R'hllor's influence to be lost.

[scotcat]

Maybe this was the price that dragonriding families paid - as in, nothing comes for free and this was the price that whatever sorcery kickstarted the whole thing exacted this price in the descendants.

We don't know - for obvious reasons - if any of the other Valyrian dragonriding families suffered similar problems when it came to breeding (although I'd hazard a guess that it did crop up in all of them from time to time). But maybe the reason we're seeing it with the Targs is because of the inbreeding. Yes, the bloodlines need a relative amount of purity to maintain the necessary control over the dragons, but after the doom who else were the Targryens going to breed with but themselves to keep said purity? The inbreeding kept the line as pure as possible, but it also magnified the possibility of these monstrous births.

[naseridrl]

Did anyone ever burn one of those babies with dragonfire? Maybe that's the nourishment they need? Maybe they're the Targs who really do have dragon blood.

[Vegeta_Greyjoy]

Did anyone ever burn one of those babies with dragonfire? Maybe that's the nourishment they need? Maybe they're the Targs who really do have dragon blood.

Or they need a blood sacrifice to come to life, like a dragon without an egg. Come to think of it, Tyrion's mom died giving birth to him...hmm...

[Dorea]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think the twisted babys started to pop out after the Targs intermarried with non Targs. Maybe do to the magic binding them to dragons they had to married in the family to avoid this kind of trouble and that was the reason they wanted to keep the bloodline pure, the opposite of any other family in planetos.

Except Cercei and Jaime who, like the Targs, had 3 healthy and beautiful well-formed children.

After reading about Sothoryos I noticed that: Sothoryi women cannot breed with any save their own males; when mated with men from Essos or Westeros, they bring forth only stillbirths, many hideously malformed.

so maybe the Targs have a little Sothoryi blood in them

[Cas Stark]

Blood magic.

If it was the result of plain old human incest then the deformities would not so consistently echo dragons...with tails, scales, wings and so forth.

[Rhaechyll Targaryen]

Maybe this was the price that dragonriding families paid - as in, nothing comes for free and this was the price that whatever sorcery kickstarted the whole thing exacted this price in the descendants.

We don't know - for obvious reasons - if any of the other Valyrian dragonriding families suffered similar problems when it came to breeding (although I'd hazard a guess that it did crop up in all of them from time to time). But maybe the reason we're seeing it with the Targs is because of the inbreeding. Yes, the bloodlines need a relative amount of purity to maintain the necessary control over the dragons, but after the doom who else were the Targryens going to breed with but themselves to keep said purity? The inbreeding kept the line as pure as possible, but it also magnified the possibility of these monstrous births.

This is a question I asked in my first post on this thread. I definitely agree that it might be a consequence of the blood magic.

As far as whether or not other families had the same problems, it's possible but as you say we don't really know. I wondered if maybe the Targaryens not being among the most powerful dragonlords wasn't partially due to this being a problem unique to their line. OTOH we don't really know if the Targaryens ever had issues with this back when they were living in Valyria. Also, maybe the other families had their own hereditary issues we just don't know what they were. In terms of looks the incest doesn't seem to have been a problem for the dragonlords.

In general I don't think the inbreeding was a problem in and of itself only because the other families were practicing it too and they'd all managed to maintain their power for thousands of years. If the incest had had severe consequences you'd think there'd have been more intermarriage between the dragonriding families or even outside of them but according to the world book brother/sister was thought to be "ideal" not to mention the other close relationships like uncle/niece and aunt/nephew.

I also like SS's idea of different bloodlines maybe controlling different dragons. (If I'm understanding correctly.)

After reading about Sothoryos I noticed that: Sothoryi women cannot breed with any save their own males; when mated with men from Essos or Westeros, they bring forth only stillbirths, many hideously malformed.

so maybe the Targs have a little Sothoryi blood in them

That is interesting.

[Dany's Golden Fleece]

As GRR Martin has said, everything has a cost. Using blood magic to control Dragons will always have a cost - stillbirths, deformities, the odd madness here and there. Same if Jon is resurrected via magic - cost, cost, cost.

Still very curious at why people of Asshai chose these Valyarian sheep herders to teach them to tame Dragons. Definitely something we are missing. Prophecy?

[Dany's Golden Fleece]

The dragonlords themselves claimed to be literally descended from dragons, and these scaly little monsters may be the result of dragon genes, which are dormant in healthy Targaryens, being epigenetically switched on.

How did Valyrians first manage to breed with dragons? Obviously we'll never know... but we can assume magic was involved. And probably a lot of burns.

If the Targaryens are ACTUALLY descended from a bizarre genetic mix up between man and dragon, it puts Drogo's pyre and Dany unharmed in the flames in a slightly different light.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think the twisted babys started to pop out after the Targs intermarried with non Targs. Maybe do to the magic binding them to dragons they had to married in the family to avoid this kind of trouble and that was the reason they wanted to keep the bloodline pure, the opposite of any other family in planetos.

Except Cercei and Jaime who, like the Targs, had 3 healthy and beautiful well-formed children.

Is this true? Kinda big if so. I cannot remember exactly. But we do not know if this malformities happened before the Doom either.

[Vegeta_Greyjoy]

After reading about Sothoryos I noticed that: Sothoryi women cannot breed with any save their own males; when mated with men from Essos or Westeros, they bring forth only stillbirths, many hideously malformed.

so maybe the Targs have a little Sothoryi blood in them

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think the twisted babys started to pop out after the Targs intermarried with non Targs. Maybe do to the magic binding them to dragons they had to married in the family to avoid this kind of trouble and that was the reason they wanted to keep the bloodline pure, the opposite of any other family in planetos.

Except Cercei and Jaime who, like the Targs, had 3 healthy and beautiful well-formed children.

Or perhaps the Valyrian dragonlords ceased to be fully human after their blood magic.

[Rhaechyll Targaryen]

Or they need a blood sacrifice to come to life, like a dragon without an egg. Come to think of it, Tyrion's mom died giving birth to him...hmm...

Can we think of any other Targaryen women or royal mistresses who died in childbirth? Any where the mother died and the twisted child survived? I can't think of any. Joanna, Rhaella, and Lyanna all died but Joanna was the only one to give birth to one of the twisted babies.

Also, does anyone know which woman was the first to have one of these monstrous stillbirths?

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think the twisted babys started to pop out after the Targs intermarried with non Targs. Maybe do to the magic binding them to dragons they had to married in the family to avoid this kind of trouble and that was the reason they wanted to keep the bloodline pure, the opposite of any other family in planetos.

Since most of us would naturally think that bringing in new blood would be a good thing for the family, I kind of like the idea of this not necessarily being the case with the Targaryens/dragonlords since it's the opposite of what most people would expect. I think making the rules different makes sense if we're talking about magical blood.

[complexphoenix]

Here is the Targaryen line of descent leading to Daenerys, noting how inbred or not the marriages were:

Aerion – cousin (Velaryon)

Aegon I – sister

Aenys I – cousin (Velaryon)

Jaehaerys I – sister

Baelon – sister

Viserys I – cousin (Arryn)

Rhaenyra – uncle

Viserys II – outbred (Valyrian descent)

Aegon IV – sister

Daeron II – outbred (Martell)

Maekar I – outbred (Dayne)

Aegon V – outbred (Blackwood)

Jaehaerys II – sister

Aerys II – sister

In the early generations, the blood of the dragon was kept strictly pure, marrying either within the family or else to the Velaryons who were also Valyrian. Viserys I was the first to bring some non-Valyrian blood into the family, by marrying Aemma Arryn. Lady Aemma was half-Targaryen, making her daughter one-quarter non-Valyrian.

Daemon being of the pure line, Viserys II would have been one-eighth non-Valyrian. Assuming Larra Rogare's Valyrian blood was pure (and it probably was, giving the breeding habits of Lyseni nobles) Aegon IV would have been one-sixteenth non-Valyrian, and so would Naerys, so Daeron II would also be one-sixteenth non-Valyrian (regardless of which tale you believe).

And then the family goes on a huge outbreeding binge, with three successive generations of non-Valyrian marriages. The upshot of which is that Jaehaerys II would have been only 11.71875% Valyrian. Aerys and his children by Rhaella would have the same concentration. I wonder if Daenerys's difficulty controlling Drogon has something to do with that? I also wonder if the true roots of Aerys's madness are in the return to inbreeding after three generations of fresh blood, which may have contained some bad recessive genes.

[Queen‍‍‍‍‍‍ Alysanne‍‍™]

I don't think humans and dragons ever had a go at it, though one possibility I've been thinking about (suggested by Yolkboy) is that the Valyrians drank dragon blood/bathed in it and it changed them. Similar to the Norse myth of Sigurd http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigurd

I don't think it's farfetched since eating drinking/eating the blood of people and living things seems to an activation of magic within the story, Bran eats weirwood blood to connect to the weirnet and Maggy the Frog eats Cersei's blood to reveal her future, drinking dragon blood would probably connect you and your descendants to them.

As GRR Martin has said, everything has a cost. Using blood magic to control Dragons will always have a cost - stillbirths, deformities, the odd madness here and there. Same if Jon is resurrected via magic - cost, cost, cost.

Still very curious at why people of Asshai chose these Valyarian sheep herders to teach them to tame Dragons. Definitely something we are missing. Prophecy?

Butterbumps gave an interesting suggestion that perhaps the first Valyrian sorcerers, dragonlords etc. are actually the last remnants of the ancient Asshai, similar to how the Targaryens are the remnants of Valyria.

[Lord Varys]

We have to seriously consider the fact that Egg's dragonblood was still pretty pure - at least insofar as magical genetic traits are concerned. Prince Duncan clearly favored his mother, it seems, and Prince Daeron's hair looks more blond than silver-golden to me. But Jaehaerys II seems to embody the Targaryen heritage completely, especially since he is a partial 'monstrosity' - look at his hands on the portrait! That's essentially a very old concept since George has already instructed Amok years back to depict Jaehaerys II with his left arm concealed.

We don't know anything about all the stillbirths and miscarriages of Rhaella's children - nor about the looks of the children that died in the cradle - but I'd go with the possibility that some of them were monstrosities, too. Jaehaerys II was clearly the most damaged of Egg's sons, and he and his line embodied on the Targaryen potential for madness and greatness.

If Aerys II had fathered any monstrosities on Rhaella, him conceiving a similar monstrosity on Joanna would not come as a huge surprise.

Another possibility for monstrosities would be any miscarriages/stillbirths of Rhaenys/Visenya that were not mentioned by Yandel or Gyldayn. A popular theory goes with the possibility that the Conqueror may have been infertile, but another possibility is that he and his sister-wives had about as much difficulty to conceive healthy children as Aerys II and Rhaella. Yandel gives us only fragments on the Targaryen history prior to the Conquest, and there is also nothing on any pregnancy of Visenya/Rhaenys prior to the birth of Aenys/Maegor.

Considering Visenya's later ambition to seat Maegor on the Iron Throne it would be strange to assume that she did not try to get pregnant before Rhaenys gave birth to Maegor (either by Aegon himself, or by some other man to pass off the child as Aegon's - as Rhaenys possibly did).

Those monstrosities have to have a magical cause. Whatever the Valyrians of old did to to create or bind themselves to dragons changed their genes. Incest may make the thing somewhat worse, but not all that much, I imagine, as Maegor's non-Targaryen wives also suffer from this whole ordeal (if we assume that Tyanna did not, in fact, poison Maegor's wives - just because she confessed it, does not make it true).

[Mithras]

“The lad’s a warg, or close enough,” put in Ragwyle, the big spearwife. “His wolf took a piece o’ Halfhand’s leg.”

The Weeper’s red rheumy eyes gave Jon another look. “Aye? Well, he has a wolfish cast to him, now as I look close."

“You take one, that’s a marriage. The wolf is part of you from that day on, and you’re part of him. Both of you will change.”

I guess the change due to skinchanging is not only spiritual, especially if the skinchanger loses the control and dissipates into the beast.

“You Westerosi are all the same. You sew some beast upon a scrap of silk, and suddenly you are all lions or dragons or eagles."

Not all Westerosi are the same. Ask the Starks.

Even among the wildlings, these skinchangers were feared as unnatural men who could call on animals as allies.

Keep the unnatural in mind.

Though considered disreputable in this, our present day, a fragment of Septon Barth’s Unnatural History has proved a source of controversy in the halls of the Citadel. Claiming to have consulted with texts said to be preserved at Castle Black, Septon Barth put forth that the children of the forest could speak with ravens and could make them repeat their words. According to Barth, this higher mystery was taught to the First Men by the children so that ravens could spread messages at a great distance. It was passed, in degraded form, down to the maesters today , who no longer know how to speak to the birds.

Barth was completely right, as proved by Bloodraven. Keep also in mind that Barth somehow studied skinchanging because it is what ravencraft is all about.

In Septon Barth’s Dragons, Wyrms, and Wyverns, he speculated that the bloodmages of Valyria used wyvern stock to create dragons. Though the bloodmages were alleged to have experimented mightily with their unnatural arts , this claim is considered far-fetched by most maesters, among them Maester Vanyon’s Against the Unnatural contains certain proofs of dragons having existed in Westeros even in the earliest of days, before Valyria rose to be a power.

Actually, Barth didnot claim that the dragons were created by the Valyrians for the first time. In fact, he examined many different accounts about the origins of dragons such as the Qartheen story Doreah told, and the others. This means that Barth didnot know the origins of dragons or the part in which he proved the origins of the dragons were censored by the Citadel.

In short, proving that dragons existed before Valyria does not refute Barth's claim that Valyrians used wyvern stock to create dragons. We know from the Kindly Man that fire wyrms that were unable to fly infested the mines and tunnels of fourteen flames. Wyverns originate from Sothoryos.

Therefore, forcing wyverns and firewyrms to copulate and produce "unnatural" abominations which we call dragons seems like the real deal. Speaking of abominations and how did the Valyrians forced these beasts into not eating each other but mating;

To eat of human meat was abomination, to mate as wolf with wolf was abomination, and to seize the body of another man was the worst abomination of all.

So, I think Valyrians skinchanged into firewyrms and wyverns to mate them and produce offspring. So much dealing with these abominations took its toll on them.

[Dany's Golden Fleece]

But I have to say it is fascinating. We have all regarded Targaryen incest in a bad light (with good reason due to the real world experiences and knowledge of incest), we never thought until now that Tarygaryen incest may not be bad, but even a requirement in the ASOIAF world. That mixture with other blood is what turns future Targ prodigy into misshapen monsters, not incest (which we associate with genetic abnormalities). What a way to upturn social outlooks George!

It really should be no surprise that blood magic requires blood to be "pure".

It is interesting also that Melisandre wants to sacrifice people with King's blood which they all coincidentally have Targ Blood in them.