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Ice Dragon confirmed?


John_snur

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from my reading of the TWOIAF I think it's now confirmed that ice dragons exists and will be in the following books. when Yandel is talking about the shivering sea and the far north at the end of the book he mentions Sailors seeing ice dragons.



'These collosal beasts, many times larger than the dragons of Valryia, are said to be made of living ice, with eyes of pale blue crystal and vast translucent wings through which the moon and stars can be glimpsed as they wheel across the sky'



I think this quote proves that ice dragons exist in the far north and it's possible that the others may have the power to control/make these beasts.



What do you guys think?





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We'll the fact it was specifically mentioned in the far north and how the sailors started talking about dead things in the water dragging people under (which is similar to Cotter Pykes letter) makes me think that Ice dragons exist OR they could be mistaking them for the others (they have very similar characteristics) but I still think Ice dragons exist regardless.


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I'm curious as to what makes an ice dragon a 'dragon'. Clearly it can't breathe fire. Aren't wyverns essentially the same as dragons minus the fire-breathing aspect? So wouldn't it technically be more like an ice wyvern? Unless it breathes beams of ice, of course...

Yandel actually says that

...ice dragons supposedly breathe cold, a chill so terrible that it can freeze a man solid in half a heartbeat

TWOIAF, p 294

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It's possible, but Yandel said it's first of all, sailor's tales

But if we've learned anything about Yandel is that he is completley anti-magic making him an unreilable source when it comes to anything magic related. Remember how he always puts down all of Barths theories?

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An ice "dragon" is clearly a misnomer. It is not a "dragon" as we know it, instead it a more akin to a kraken, as it is a species adapted to it's environment. After all, a proper dragon doesn't live in a world of fire-it, for the most part, gets it's fame from being aloft in the air, but it breathes fire, not air. That is what makes it so incredible to humans, that it's elemental magic is so disparate from it's natural habitat. It follows then, that any ice "dragon" would not be a threat to the races of men, as it's elemental magic is concurrent with it's environment. It is the element of fire that obliterates the Others-matter and anti-matter-so an ice "dragon" does not canonically pose a threat equal to that of a proper dragon.


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An ice "dragon" is clearly a misnomer. It is not a "dragon" as we know it, instead it a more akin to a kraken, as it is a species adapted to it's environment. After all, a proper dragon doesn't live in a world of fire-it, for the most part, gets it's fame from being aloft in the air, but it breathes fire, not air. That is what makes it so incredible to humans, that it's elemental magic is so disparate from it's natural habitat. It follows then, that any ice "dragon" would not be a threat to the races of men, as it's elemental magic is concurrent with it's environment. It is the element of fire that obliterates the Others-matter and anti-matter-so an ice "dragon" does not canonically pose a threat equal to that of a proper dragon.

Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

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An ice "dragon" is clearly a misnomer. It is not a "dragon" as we know it, instead it a more akin to a kraken, as it is a species adapted to it's environment. After all, a proper dragon doesn't live in a world of fire-it, for the most part, gets it's fame from being aloft in the air, but it breathes fire, not air. That is what makes it so incredible to humans, that it's elemental magic is so disparate from it's natural habitat. It follows then, that any ice "dragon" would not be a threat to the races of men, as it's elemental magic is concurrent with it's environment. It is the element of fire that obliterates the Others-matter and anti-matter-so an ice "dragon" does not canonically pose a threat equal to that of a proper dragon.

I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say here. Are you saying that ice dragons, massive reptiles that can survive in a frozen wasteland and breathe cold, aren't magical creatures? Assuming, of course, the legends of ice dragons are true.

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I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say here. Are you saying that ice dragons, massive reptiles that can survive in a frozen wasteland and breathe cold, aren't magical creatures? Assuming, of course, the legends of ice dragons are true.

Just existing isn't magic. It's been said that any sufficiently advanced technology is magic. Lots of things are interesting, and unusual, but that doesn't exactly make them magical. Why are dragons "magic"? Because dudes in the Citadel say so? Accepting things at face value is the downfall of many a well meaning yet mortally naive victim.

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Just existing isn't magic. It's been said that any sufficiently advanced technology is magic. Lots of things are interesting, and unusual, but that doesn't exactly make them magical. Why are dragons "magic"? Because dudes in the Citadel say so? Accepting things at face value is the downfall of many a well meaning yet mortally naive victim.

But you already said that the fire-breathing dragons were magic. I don't see the difference between dragons and ice-dragons aside from where they live and what they breathe. (And that there's no proof of ice dragons.)

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But you already said that the fire-breathing dragons were magic. I don't see the difference between dragons and ice-dragons aside from where they live and what they breathe. (And that there's no proof of ice dragons.)

Yeah, I did say it, but that got me thinking about it, about what dragons and Others and all other "magic" is really. If Westeros is stuck in the middle ages, think about what people used to believe about the world in the middle ages. Dragons and Others could be a projection of this-a labeling of perfectly natural things as magic, and ascribing the ways to defeat them as magic as well. Fire dragons are basically just really advanced weaponry- they can do to fighter planes and missiles today can do. If you took a few Apache helicopters back to 14th century England you could probably conquer it as well, provided you could keep it supplied with ammo and fuel. I'm not saying that dragons are time traveling weapons, but just because they are far better than people were accustomed to doesn't make them magic.

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I thought it was just the authors trolling the fandom over all the ice dragon theories out there.

Yandel gives the info in a way that's almost too perfect. It's presented so brazenly (which is surprising for what is in effect an enormous potential spoiler for ASOIAF a) in surprising detail, and - especially surprisingly for Yandel - he doesn't doubt the veracity of this story nearly as much as he does some other stuff; almost as if all this is designed to make us think "it just all adds up".

But then the part that was like "oh by the way they melt, so of course there's no evidence of them" - I read that as intending to undercut the relevance of the entire previous bit. The complete lack of evidence symbolically represents the "unknowability" of certain things.

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If you accept the theory that the magic which spawned The Others was created by the Children in an attempt (which went horribly wrong) to cull their enemies and reanimate them to fight on their behalf. Then Ice Dragons could have once been normal fire breathing dragons who were either killed and then reanimated with this magic, like Wights. Or, what I believe to be more plausible, they were metamorphose into a more sentient supernatural creature in the same way Craster's sons were.


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I thought it was just the authors trolling the fandom over all the ice dragon theories out there.

Yandel gives the info in a way that's almost too perfect. It's presented so brazenly (which is surprising for what is in effect an enormous potential spoiler for ASOIAF a) in surprising detail, and - especially surprisingly for Yandel - he doesn't doubt the veracity of this story nearly as much as he does some other stuff; almost as if all this is designed to make us think "it just all adds up".

But then the part that was like "oh by the way they melt, so of course there's no evidence of them" - I read that as intending to undercut the relevance of the entire previous bit. The complete lack of evidence symbolically represents the "unknowability" of certain things.

You make a good point but it reminds me of the others, Their is no evidence for them existing as they melt when their slain but we know their out there regardless and besides we already know their are fire breathing dragons what's so far fetched about Ice dragons in the far north?. You do make a good point regardless , as I said in my previous post, People could be mistaking them for the others and the stories have been twisted over time making people believe their actually ice dragons.

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