The Great Empire of the Dawn

[Damon_Tor]

A note: as I said in another thread, it appears that their empire included, at least one point, the Iron Islands, based in the ubiquitous "Har" name element amongst the Ironborn and their legendary "Grey King", compared to the "Grey Emperor" of Yi Ti with the name Har Loi. The Seastone chair might also be evidence.

EDIT: Though perhaps it's relevant that the Grey Emperor was an early emperor of Yi Ti, not a late Emperor of the GED. Still, the seastone chair is there. Perhaps GED had controlled the Iron Islands and the Grey Emperor (early enough post Long Night) reconquered them.

[LmL]

Proto-Valyrians, exactly. That's who we are really concerned with. The GEotD is just another name for the ancient dragonlords.

[Caspoi]

Damon Tor@ I doubt that GED encompassed the Iron Islands (though it is possible) and as you said yourself the grey emperor was of Yi Ti (personally I don't think that he had anything to do with the ironborn), the seastone chair is however something interesting, it is made of oily stone which is different than fused stone and something that I do not know what to make of.

[Lord Varys]

Mithras,

I've a right to be inconsistent and erratic.

Lucifer means Lightbringer,

well, the kings appear in dreams. We don't know whether the ancient gemstone emperors had fiery swords or silver-gold and pale hair. But the Targaryen kings have such hair, and the gemstones mentioned in the dream can all have multiple colours, which means the eyes could indeed all have blueish/purplish colours.

The story about the Great Empire is a Yi Tish story. And it seems as if the later Yi Tish projected their society into a glorious past just as the Chinese did with their legendary emperors. I understand your fascination with all that - my first only half-ironic comment when reading TWoIaF last year was that George should have set his story better in Yi Ti because it is far more interesting than boring Westeros.

General stuff:

There are hints that the Ghiscari, the Sarnori, the Qaathi, the Yi Tish, and the Asshai'i are all cultures that pre-date the Long Night - not to forget the Fisher Queens of the Silver Sea who even pre-date the Sarnori and the First Men as one theory states that the First Men migrated west from the shores of that sea.

[LmL]

Sarnor definitely arose after the LN, as did Yi Ti. I don't know of any hints to the contrary. Yo doesn't claim a pre-LN origin - in fact they say outright that the LN happened before Yi Ti arose. Qarth claims to be the oldest city in the world but has no LN stories, apart from the origin of dragons story.

The Fisher Queens certainly appear to be pre-LN. The Sarnori, like the Yi Tish, are the civilization who came after the Dawn Age one collapsed.

I agree Asshai is pre-LN. I think it was the capital of the GEotD. I think there's a very strong case to be made for this, as the idea that a small cadre of black sorcerers made the largest city in the world seems a bit far-fetched. The largest city in the world was probably built by a great and powerful civilization, logic would dictate.

[Caspoi]

Asshai is a serious alternative but I think that Stygai, which is in the center of the Shadow Lands and therefore probably where it originated, is a good conteder for the capital of GED, it seems to have once been a great city but is now the most haunted place in the world.

[Lord Varys]

Yandel claims that the Ghiscari, Yi Tish, Asshai'i, and Sarnori/Fisher Queen guys (may) have (had) written accounts that go back to the Long Night (or even before that). There are no such accounts in Westeros, of course. Oh, and the Rhoynar were also already there during the Long Night.

[LmL]

I know TWOAIF pretty well, but I am not familiar with any quotes indicating records from before the LN exist in Ghiscari or Sarnori culture. The Silver Sea / Fisher Queens kingdom existed before Sarnor, and is a separate entity, just as the GEotD existed before Yi Ti and is a separate entity. When the Fisher Queens ruled, the silver Sea existed. When Sarnor conquered the scattered peoples of the post Fisher Queen grasslands, the Silver Sea had broken up into three lakes. Either a lot of time passed, or there was some kind of huge cataclysm. ;)

Yi Ti's records of the LN is their story of the GEotD, which was not Yi Ti. The end of the GEotD happened at the onset of the LN. Yi Ti does not claim to have existed at this time.

The point of all this was Valyria. Valyria is definitively post-LN.

The gemstones listed do not all come in purple. That's quite a stretch to deny the obvious match between those four gems and the gems of the Gemstone Emperors. Furthermore, the only fire swords we know of are associated wth AA and thus Asshai.

The Daynes prove that purple eyes and Valyrian looks existed in the Dawn Age, in Westeros, before Valyria existed. The Five Forts and Battle Isle fortress prove dragonlords existed in the Dawn Age, before Valyria existed, and again in Westeros. Thus we have every reason to look for purple-eyed, fair-haired, fire sword-wielding dragonlords that existed before Asshai - just like the ones in Dany's "wake the dragon" vision.

[Mithras]

GEotD and Fisher Queens were probably contemporary. If you look at the map, the Bone Mountains seems like the natural barrier that seperated these two civilizations. And these two civilizations existed much before the LN. What is arguable is that whether their demise happened during or shortly before the LN.

Mithras,

I've a right to be inconsistent and erratic.

We all do. :cheers:

[Beacon]

As I read in one of LmL or Beth's threads (don't remember which one), it is very possible that Garth the Green is one of the Emperors of the GEotD. But I don't particularly think that there's a specific 'Emerald' Emperor. All the Emperors wore jade (because God-on-Earth aka 1st Emperor started it). However, I think it is more likely that Daenerys is the Reborn!Bloodstone Emperor, seeing as she pretty much killed her brother, who was the rightful heir.

Also, just as a note: the Pearl Emperor (2nd emperor) is credited with the construction of the Five Forts. Not Valyrians.

Another note: Fisher Queens being contemporaries of the GEotD is speculation by Maester Yandel.

[Caspoi]

Daenarys did not kill Viserys, Drogo did. In fact it is probably easier to liken her to the amethyst empress (not that I agree with this comparison very much either).

[Blind Beth the Cat Lady]

As I read in one of LmL or Beth's threads (don't remember which one), it is very possible that Garth the Green is one of the Emperors of the GEotD. But I don't particularly think that there's a specific 'Emerald' Emperor. All the Emperors wore jade (because God-on-Earth aka 1st Emperor started it). However, I think it is more likely that Daenerys is the Reborn!Bloodstone Emperor, seeing as she pretty much killed her brother, who was the rightful heir.

Also, just as a note: the Pearl Emperor (2nd emperor) is credited with the construction of the Five Forts. Not Valyrians.

Another note: Fisher Queens being contemporaries of the GEotD is speculation by Maester Yandel.

That would be me; I think LmL has a different view on that.

Just to be totally clear, I don't think he was an actual emperor, just of Great Emperor stock, a sort of demigod the same as the gemstone emperors were.

Also, I don't think we can assume all the GeoDawnian emperors wore jade. Pearl and Jade were the first two gemstone emperors (after the God-on-Earth); I think Yi Ti just wants to emulate those two the most, as they may have represented some sort of golden age before the Great Empire began its decline. So all Yi Ti emperors wear jade, but not all gemstone emperors did (or at least there's no indication that they did).

[LmL]

Beth what do you think about the splendor of wizards the Dany sees in the HoTU? They seem like the undying ones' idea of what GEotD people might have looked like, translated through the lens of Qarthine culture (the one bared breast). I'm going to get to them in my CotD: Qarth edition, but I thought I'd ask you.

[Blind Beth the Cat Lady]

Beth what do you think about the splendor of wizards the Dany sees in the HoTU? They seem like the undying ones' idea of what GEotD people might have looked like, translated through the lens of Qarthine culture (the one bared breast). I'm going to get to them in my CotD: Qarth edition, but I thought I'd ask you.

Good question. I re-read that chapter the other day, and it is quite a puzzle box. There are gemstones all over the place in Qarth, and they call themselves "the greatest city that was or ever will be," so it seems pretty definite that their culture is trying to emulate some GeoDawnian concepts.

HotU itself is like the opposite of a weirwood, as posters long before me have pieced together (it's in "a grove of black-barked trees whose inky blue leaves made the stuff of the sorcerous drink the Qartheen called Shade of the Evening", SotE experience is just like the weirwood paste experience, HotU door is like a mouth). And clearly all of the things Dany sees inside the HotU are visions, even the doors and hallways, since the interior layout makes no logical sense, particularly given the lack of actual towers seen from the outside of the building.

Thus the Undying seem to be doing effectively the same thing Bloodraven is doing, extending their lives by joining with these un-weirwoods and using them to gain knowledge. But unlike Bloodraven (hopefully???), they seem to need fresh life to feed on. This all feels like something learned (and perverted) from CotF/Ifequevron rather than being strictly a GEotD thing. At the very least it's a fusion of the two. It's not clear *why* these trees are the opposites of weirwoods, or what the full implications of that are. But presumably their roots/wood are incorporated into the actual building, and Dany is basically hallucinating or dreaming from the moment she enters, just as Bran does not physically teleport into the Winterfell heart tree after eating paste but simply sees visions through the weirwood network.

HotU may simply be opening Dany's "Daenys the Dreamer"-style third eye and allowing her to give herself visions rather than engineering these visions for her.

So some things she sees are true, but it's hard to know the real source and meaning of all the specifics.

(I do wonder what this means in terms of what the "something" was that seemed to be chasing her and blowing out torches.)

Just before she meets the splendor-wizards she passes through "doors fashioned of ebony and weirwood" - or perhaps weirwood and blue leaved opposite-weirwood. This seems to indicate passage into a new space, one that is something more than Dany's Targ-dreamer 3rd eye. Based on what happens there it is being directly manipulated by the Undying, more so than the rooms with Dany-specific visions.

One of the Undying avatars has a "tall pointed hat speckled with stars." Obvs. this is the sort of classical Merlin-type hat, but it's also referred to by Ned when Arya tells him she's seen a wizard under the Red Keep. Arya responds with something like "no, not like in the stories Old Nan tells." So stories of wizards in tall starry hats are clearly in circulation as children's stories on Planetos. That could mean that "wizard=pointy star hat" is also an expectation Dany has, based on childhood stories, rather than something being specifically projected to her from the Undying.

So it's hard to know how much of what Dany sees comes from the HotU itself and how much comes from her own mind; i.e., the "beautiful" wizards she sees may be what she herself is expecting to see; the Qartheen gown may be in place because Dany has been seeing and wearing this style in Qarth and expects to see more. The Undying may simply be triggering her to see beauty and she fills in the details from her own mind. (Bran sees literally true things, but, again, the HotU is joined with trees that are the opposite of weirwoods.) Obviously not everything comes from her mind, though, since she sees things from the past that she didn't know about before (vision of Rhaegar & Aegon) and symbolic visions of the future that she doesn't understand, yet do come to pass (red wedding, for example).

"We knew you were to come to us, a thousand years ago we knew, and we have been waiting." "We sent the comet to show you the way." "Shall we teach you the secret speech of dragonkind?" This sounds like BS on first reading, but now that we're putting all this GEotD stuff together I kind of think they were telling the truth; maybe not about the comet (or, hell, maybe so) but about forseeing Dany and possibly knowing some useful things about dragons. Dany certainly had some true visions from them. But, if she'd sat around to learn more, she likely would have been trapped forever.

There is mention of generic-gemstone studded armor and rich cloth, including cloth of gold. However, the only specific gem mentioned in the "splendor" room is ruby, and notably there is a lot of sunlight. By contrast the next room is full of indigo light, blue light. Blue is often associated with death and un-death. And ice--"cold preserves." The blue light may indicate a form of ice-based magic meant to preserve the Undying. Which would imply a connection between the Undying an the Others, or at least commonalities in the type of magic they are using. Even the skin of the wizards is blue. Or perhaps ice magic as we know it, i.e. the magic that animates the Others and the wights is infused with "blue magic" from GeoDawnian times that doesn't necessarily require ice but works well with the element of ice for some reason.

They tell her to "drink from the cup of ice, drink from the cup of fire." That combined with their ruby room/indigo room seems to imply that they are familiar with both types of magic.

The big thematic conundrum here is: what is the real motive of the Undying? They offer real, helpful knowledge to Dany yet are also in the process of killing her. All I can figure is that they aren't actually *trying* to kill Dany, but their magic, the blue/indigo magic, is in conflict with her innate fire magic so it slowly kills her just to be around them. She's team red, they're team blue. In the sunlight "splendor" room either they were trying to trick her into believing--or she herself wanted to believe--that they were team sun/fire/red/ruby, but that wasn't the case. But red and blue magics were both known and used by GEotD, and Undying were hanging on to blue magic in some form.

[Blind Beth the Cat Lady]

Based on my gemstone research I think that gemstone magic is always an artificially concentrated form of a magic that can be done in a more natural way without the gemstones. I.e. fire, ice, and fertility (red, blue, green) magic may be innate to a person, but use of gemstones makes the magic stronger and less natural, more likely to become dangerous and unbalanced. I'm working on an essay to that effect.

This may apply to glass candles as well. In the Clash prolog there is implication that Mel is actually entering Maester Cressen's dreams. So I think perhaps all the things done with glass candles may also be done with fire, or reflections in water, or whatever other scrying method one chooses. (Alys Rivers apparently used multiple elements.) But glass candles concentrate the scrying magic to a much stronger degree.

[Beacon]

Daenarys did not kill Viserys, Drogo did. In fact it is probably easier to liken her to the amethyst empress (not that I agree with this comparison very much either).

Which is why I say 'pretty much killed'. She could have asked Drogo to stop at any moment. And I'm sure that he would have, but she didn't.

Now I'm not sure what would count as betrayal, but to let the guy who looked after you for all his life die in such a horrible way, that sounds like betrayal to me...

That would be me; I think LmL has a different view on that.

Just to be totally clear, I don't think he was an actual emperor, just of Great Emperor stock, a sort of demigod the same as the gemstone emperors were.

Also, I don't think we can assume all the GeoDawnian emperors wore jade. Pearl and Jade were the first two gemstone emperors (after the God-on-Earth); I think Yi Ti just wants to emulate those two the most, as they may have represented some sort of golden age before the Great Empire began its decline. So all Yi Ti emperors wear jade, but not all gemstone emperors did (or at least there's no indication that they did).

Well, we do know that he came from Essos, seeing as he crossed the Arm of Dorne. And he brought agricultural techniques with him.

There were already people living in Westeros, seeing as the North claims that they were lead by the 'First King' not Garth. A demigod kinda thing is more likely, seeing as most of the times he's referred to as Garth Greehand or Garth Greenhair and not Garth Greedclothes...

I knew about the Yi Ti Emperors wearing jade, but not about the gemstone emperors, so thanks for that

Also, there are multiple ways that people can enter other people's minds/dreams. We know about BloodRaven-style weirdwoodnet-dreaming, then there's Quaithe-style face-in-the-stars thing and there's also glass candles. There are probably other methods as well.

[Beacon]

Good question. I re-read that chapter the other day, and it is quite a puzzle box. There are gemstones all over the place in Qarth, and they call themselves "the greatest city that was or ever will be," so it seems pretty definite that their culture is trying to emulate some GeoDawnian concepts.

HotU itself is like the opposite of a weirwood, as posters long before me have pieced together (it's in "a grove of black-barked trees whose inky blue leaves made the stuff of the sorcerous drink the Qartheen called Shade of the Evening", SotE experience is just like the weirwood paste experience, HotU door is like a mouth). And clearly all of the things Dany sees inside the HotU are visions, even the doors and hallways, since the interior layout makes no logical sense, particularly given the lack of actual towers seen from the outside of the building.

Thus the Undying seem to be doing effectively the same thing Bloodraven is doing, extending their lives by joining with these un-weirwoods and using them to gain knowledge. But unlike Bloodraven (hopefully???), they seem to need fresh life to feed on. This all feels like something learned (and perverted) from CotF/Ifequevron rather than being strictly a GEotD thing. At the very least it's a fusion of the two. It's not clear *why* these trees are the opposites of weirwoods, or what the full implications of that are. But presumably their roots/wood are incorporated into the actual building, and Dany is basically hallucinating or dreaming from the moment she enters, just as Bran does not physically teleport into the Winterfell heart tree after eating paste but simply sees visions through the weirwood network.

HotU may simply be opening Dany's "Daenys the Dreamer"-style third eye and allowing her to give herself visions rather than engineering these visions for her.

So some things she sees are true, but it's hard to know the real source and meaning of all the specifics.

(I do wonder what this means in terms of what the "something" was that seemed to be chasing her and blowing out torches.)

Just before she meets the splendor-wizards she passes through "doors fashioned of ebony and weirwood" - or perhaps weirwood and blue leaved opposite-weirwood. This seems to indicate passage into a new space, one that is something more than Dany's Targ-dreamer 3rd eye. Based on what happens there it is being directly manipulated by the Undying, more so than the rooms with Dany-specific visions.

One of the Undying avatars has a "tall pointed hat speckled with stars." Obvs. this is the sort of classical Merlin-type hat, but it's also referred to by Ned when Arya tells him she's seen a wizard under the Red Keep. Arya responds with something like "no, not like in the stories Old Nan tells." So stories of wizards in tall starry hats are clearly in circulation as children's stories on Planetos. That could mean that "wizard=pointy star hat" is also an expectation Dany has, based on childhood stories, rather than something being specifically projected to her from the Undying.

So it's hard to know how much of what Dany sees comes from the HotU itself and how much comes from her own mind; i.e., the "beautiful" wizards she sees may be what she herself is expecting to see; the Qartheen gown may be in place because Dany has been seeing and wearing this style in Qarth and expects to see more. The Undying may simply be triggering her to see beauty and she fills in the details from her own mind. (Bran sees literally true things, but, again, the HotU is joined with trees that are the opposite of weirwoods.) Obviously not everything comes from her mind, though, since she sees things from the past that she didn't know about before (vision of Rhaegar & Aegon) and symbolic visions of the future that she doesn't understand, yet do come to pass (red wedding, for example).

"We knew you were to come to us, a thousand years ago we knew, and we have been waiting." "We sent the comet to show you the way." "Shall we teach you the secret speech of dragonkind?" This sounds like BS on first reading, but now that we're putting all this GEotD stuff together I kind of think they were telling the truth; maybe not about the comet (or, hell, maybe so) but about forseeing Dany and possibly knowing some useful things about dragons. Dany certainly had some true visions from them. But, if she'd sat around to learn more, she likely would have been trapped forever.

There is mention of generic-gemstone studded armor and rich cloth, including cloth of gold. However, the only specific gem mentioned in the "splendor" room is ruby, and notably there is a lot of sunlight. By contrast the next room is full of indigo light, blue light. Blue is often associated with death and un-death. And ice--"cold preserves." The blue light may indicate a form of ice-based magic meant to preserve the Undying. Which would imply a connection between the Undying an the Others, or at least commonalities in the type of magic they are using. Even the skin of the wizards is blue. Or perhaps ice magic as we know it, i.e. the magic that animates the Others and the wights is infused with "blue magic" from GeoDawnian times that doesn't necessarily require ice but works well with the element of ice for some reason.

They tell her to "drink from the cup of ice, drink from the cup of fire." That combined with their ruby room/indigo room seems to imply that they are familiar with both types of magic.

The big thematic conundrum here is: what is the real motive of the Undying? They offer real, helpful knowledge to Dany yet are also in the process of killing her. All I can figure is that they aren't actually *trying* to kill Dany, but their magic, the blue/indigo magic, is in conflict with her innate fire magic so it slowly kills her just to be around them. She's team red, they're team blue. In the sunlight "splendor" room either they were trying to trick her into believing--or she herself wanted to believe--that they were team sun/fire/red/ruby, but that wasn't the case. But red and blue magics were both known and used by GEotD, and Undying were hanging on to blue magic in some form.

They're after more magical power. Blood sacrifice, especially the blood of Kings has power. They were going to let the dragons grow till adulthood and then sacrifice Daenerys and the three dragons.

'Doors fashioned of ebony and weirwood' sounds like the House of Black and White in Braavos.

Them drinking SotE coincides with a thread I'm gonna make later which shows the similarities and differences between Euron and Bloodraven. But yeah, there's weirwood trees which are white with red leaves and the UnWeirwood/ebony trees which are black with blue leaves.

[Caspoi]

Beacon@ But he had just attacked her and her unborn Child and I doubt that Drogo would have stopped anyway seeing as apart from atticking his wife and child Viserys had just broken one of the Dothraki's only sacred laws. Daenarys is many things but the Bloodstone emperor reborn is not one of them.

[Beacon]

Beacon@ But he had just attacked her and her unborn Child and I doubt that Drogo would have stopped anyway seeing as apart from atticking his wife and child Viserys had just broken one of the Dothraki's only sacred laws. Daenarys is many things but the Bloodstone emperor reborn is not one of them.

There's that as well, but Drogo and his riders insulted Viserys many times. And he wasn't exactly in the most stable of mental conditions as well. I could argue that she could have him arrested/imprisoned or whatever, but Drogo would still probably kill him. And her being the Bloodstone Emperor is a possibility. She might be the Reborn!God-on-Earth for all we know...

[Caspoi]

But nothing that we know of the bloodstone emperor (apart from the tenious look bit and even that might be wrong) matches Daenarys.

Male?

Usurped his sister the queen and killed her?

Started a cult worshipping a fallen stone?

Married a tiger woman?

Practised dark magic and necromancy? (All right I give you a slight leave on the necromancy one)

Brought the Long Night upon the world?

Associated with bloodstone or rubies?

I mean why on earth would Daenarys be the Bloodstone Emperor reborn? I rarely say this but now I actually think that this is just Daenarys-haters who want to project her as the antichrist (very fitting word considering the similarities between BE and the antichrist).