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Valyria and Gender


TheWitch

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15 hours ago, Jaak said:

But the Reach army could not find a rider for Silverwing - and that forced them to retreat in defeat.

In Westeros, a grown nobleman has received years of military training, as Donal Noye pointed out - something that a random commoner boy lacks. A fit and trained noble is an asset even if he has no property - a man like Jon Snow, Robar Royce, Sandor Clegane or Brynden Tully, disinherited and out of favour with his birth family, can find employment not available for a commoner.

In Valyria, a dragonlord dissatisfied with or ejected from his birth family might offer the services of himself and his dragon to some of the other 39 families.

How did Valyrian society handle second-rank dragonlords, ones alienated from their families and available for anyone willing to recruit them?

IIRC, dissident Valyrians frequently moved to the free cities (I think Norvos was founded by religiously devout Valyrians) .  I see the free cities as being rather like the colonies that were founded by Greek city States. They accepted Valyrian overlordship, could call on their aid in war, but were basically autonomous, unlike the provinces and cities that were ruled by archons sent out from Valyria.

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15 hours ago, Jaak said:

But the Reach army could not find a rider for Silverwing - and that forced them to retreat in defeat.

That has nothing to do with anything.

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In Valyria, a dragonlord dissatisfied with or ejected from his birth family might offer the services of himself and his dragon to some of the other 39 families.

Technically this could work, but such a person wouldn't be one of their own. And the other families would already have had dragons and dragonlords.

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How did Valyrian society handle second-rank dragonlords, ones alienated from their families and available for anyone willing to recruit them?

One would assume that such person could then try to found new dragonlord houses.

But another thing imaginable might be that losing your standing with your head of house resulted in your death or in you being separated from your dragon. Hell, they could have decided that the dragon of such a person would be killed. Dragons are not immortal.

34 minutes ago, SeanF said:

WRT dragon riders, they probably numbered hundreds, rather than thousands.  Three hundred went to war with the Rhoynar, which was probably not the entire number, but likely close to it, given the high stakes.

We don't know whether all the dragonlord families approved of the destruction of the Rhoynar. If a large enough faction (perhaps the opposition to the present ruling faction?) stayed out of the war then the dragons flying to the Rhoyne could have been a rather small portion of their entire strength.

In addition we should keep in mind that we know from Prince Daemon that there were Valyrian civil wars fought between various dragonlord families, wars and conflicts that killed dragons. If those wars were devastating enough then the total number of dragons and dragonlords in Valyria would have not been exactly stable. Depending when the last such conflict was the total number of dragons could have been either pretty high or pretty low.

26 minutes ago, SeanF said:

IIRC, dissident Valyrians frequently moved to the free cities (I think Norvos was founded by religiously devout Valyrians). 

Norvos, Lorath, and Qohor all were founded by religious dissidents, but nothing indicates that any dragonlords were among those dissidents. Then those cities would have had dragons of their own, and they would have been ruled by the dragonlords who went there with them.

Instead, it seems as if those cities were founded by Valyrians who didn't have dragons. Considering how large the city was this is hardly surprising.

26 minutes ago, SeanF said:

I see the free cities as being rather like the colonies that were founded by Greek city States. They accepted Valyrian overlordship, could call on their aid in war, but were basically autonomous, unlike the provinces and cities that were ruled by archons sent out from Valyria.

That is true, but even in Volantis - where cousins and kin of dragonlords made up the ruling class - where no dragonlords. Not even in Lys which was founded as a pleasure retreat for the dragonlords.

A lot of Valyrian adventurers explored the lands in the west, etc. but if dragonlords were among those they never permanently settled anywhere. However, they certainly could have helped establishing colonies and the like.

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1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

That has nothing to do with anything.

No - that's the point. A dragon or dragonlord may be killed, captured or separated, neutralizing the threat from the dragon, but that's not a positive asset for the one doing the neutralizing.

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

Technically this could work, but such a person wouldn't be one of their own. And the other families would already have had dragons and dragonlords.

Yes. And these families were not equal in influence.

A dragonlord family might gain numbers and influence by welcoming dragonlords defecting from their birth families.

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

One would assume that such person could then try to found new dragonlord houses.

But another thing imaginable might be that losing your standing with your head of house resulted in your death or in you being separated from your dragon. Hell, they could have decided that the dragon of such a person would be killed. Dragons are not immortal.

Sure, they might try.

Then the matter comes to reaction time. As the quarrel escalates, who strikes first?

Valyria has slavery. Meaning that if a slave of one dragonlord family felt unhappy with his or her owner and wanted another employer, then another master would be a good neighbour to the original master and return the runaway property, rather than employ a willing servant. And Valyria must have had laws and institutions to enforce ownership of slaves - meaning that even the most powerful dragonlord family could not employ a runaway slave, because they'd be sued for possessing stolen property, and unite other dragonlord families against them.

Did the laws of Valyria also recognize dragonlords as slaves of their head of family, and permit any dragonlord family to be sued for harbouring a runaway?

Also, only landowners can vote in Volantis. Can a landless noble legally be elected as a Triarch? Such as, a middle-aged military hero whose father happens to be elderly but alive and as such the owner of family property?

 

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1 hour ago, Jaak said:

No - that's the point. A dragon or dragonlord may be killed, captured or separated, neutralizing the threat from the dragon, but that's not a positive asset for the one doing the neutralizing.

Yes. And these families were not equal in influence.

A dragonlord family might gain numbers and influence by welcoming dragonlords defecting from their birth families.

Sure, they might try.

Then the matter comes to reaction time. As the quarrel escalates, who strikes first?

Valyria has slavery. Meaning that if a slave of one dragonlord family felt unhappy with his or her owner and wanted another employer, then another master would be a good neighbour to the original master and return the runaway property, rather than employ a willing servant. And Valyria must have had laws and institutions to enforce ownership of slaves - meaning that even the most powerful dragonlord family could not employ a runaway slave, because they'd be sued for possessing stolen property, and unite other dragonlord families against them.

Did the laws of Valyria also recognize dragonlords as slaves of their head of family, and permit any dragonlord family to be sued for harbouring a runaway?

Also, only landowners can vote in Volantis. Can a landless noble legally be elected as a Triarch? Such as, a middle-aged military hero whose father happens to be elderly but alive and as such the owner of family property?

 

I'm sure it would have been a crime for one noble family to harbour the runaway slave of another noble family in Valyria, although given the conflicts between elite families, it probably happened at times.

WRT family members, perhaps the Head of a noble house had authority over all its members, even adults, rather like a Roman paterfamilias.

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18 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

I don't know whether the dragon has a choice to reject a rider. He can decided to breathe fire or bite and claw at a human trying to get near him, but if you survive this what prevents you from trying again? Alyn Velaryon decided not to try to mount Sheepstealer again, he was not magically barred from ever trying again.

If you have the talent all you have to do seems to be to jump on a dragon's back.

No Targaryen was ever rejected by a dragon as far as we know - that is, only riderless dragons, of course. If a dragon is yours anybody else mounting it does so at his or her peril.

Dany's dragons were pretty domesticated and knew her since birth. Drogon nearly killed Dany, and Rhaegal killed Quentyn. Dragons are no pets, but we still lack any evidence that dragons of the size of Stormcloud, Shrykos, and Morghul were ever any threats to their future riders.

Honestly, we have no idea what truth there is to the story of the Night's King, nor do we actually know when the Northmen lost all their ancient knowledge. The Andals never conquered that kingdom, remember? What little we know seems to indicate that some of the ancient Starks did not like the Children and skinchangers all that much (remember how they dealt with the Warg King and his greenseers after they defeated him?).

Visenya would have done whatever the hell she wanted to do.

Reread the history of the First Dornish War. There were assassins, and the Targaryens themselves were attacked multiple times within KL itself. Visenya saving Aegon from some assassins during such an attempt was what led to the creation of the Kingsguard.

They had no reason to believe they were immortal.

Sure, but those are irrelevant. We are talking about miscarriages of women who knew/believed they were pregnant. And Rhaenys and Visenya both would have desperately tried to convince themselves they might be pregnant when they realized that their moon blood was coming late.

Still, he saw the body.

I could see emotions and wishes to have an effect on this whole thing. Remember how Rhaenyra was three days in labor and constantly cursed the child as 'a monster'? But perhaps this is nothing. But I agree that there is also a natural tendency for monstrosities among the Targaryens. Alysanne could have had her share, Rhaella, too, and Laena and Aemma might have been killed by the ones they had.

No one does, so we can't assume that they don't. Anything not known has a 50/50 shot.

Most people would not try again. Because they had a close enough brush with death the first time. Granted, Targaryens have just enough of a belief in their own innate superhuman-ness to keep trying.

Plenty of suspected dragonseeds were unable to ride the dragons on Dragonstone. Unless you want to say that all of the ones who failed were fake dragonseeds, you don't really have a basis for that belief. And we don't have all the information either. 

Yes, that's the imprinting. It's not the same as the riding bond, though it does increase the likelihood of successful dragonriding--Dany had a good shot at riding any of the three. You're talking about the dragons with the imprinting, which increases success of riding by those on whom they imprinted; Shrykos and Morghul were never ridden, and again, we don't have all the information. 

Legends do not spring up out of nothing. The basic elements of it will be true. The things like turning into a beast by night and sacrificing children to the Others certainly may not be. 

The Northmen still intermarried with the Andals. Conquering is not the only way to erode a culture.

The Starks descended from Brandon the Builder who was a friend to the CotF? They defeated the Warg King sure, he was the biggest challenge to their own power, and they killed his beasts and greenseers to prevent him coming back to power. That is not the same as having anything against the CotF. Keep in mind also that by taking the Warg King's daughters as prizes, and particularly if they married the girls, they were in a way taking some of his power for themselves. You don't add skinchanging blood to your own lines if you have something against skinchangers or skinchanging.

Yes, she would have, and that would have included taking time off to have her baby if that was what she wanted to do.

There you are claiming I said things I didn't say again. I did not say they thought they were immortal.

No, we are not. You are. 

Which makes no difference. Clearly the baby had not been dead for years, no matter how deformed it was or how dead it looked. And again, Jorah Mormont is no expert on babies, alive or dead.

An honest disagreement exists here then. All the sorcery of Valyria and the Valyrians was rooted in fire and blood, not emotions and wishes. I agree that a spell certainly could have caused problems, but not just the feelings of the mother...particularly that late in a pregnancy. Even magic babies still have to develop along roughly the same lines that regular babies do, and the deformities would come early in the pregnancy.

There are women who have been in labor for three days (or more) and said all kinds of things they didn't mean. That aside, Rhaenyra would have to be a sorceress to have literally cursed the child into being a monster.

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38 minutes ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

No one does, so we can't assume that they don't. Anything not known has a 50/50 shot.

No, because we have a lot of positive evidence where Targaryen (children) claimed huge dragons without being killed (Maegor, Laena, Aemond, Viserys I, etc.). That reduces the probability of such (mortal) accidents considerably.

38 minutes ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

Plenty of suspected dragonseeds were unable to ride the dragons on Dragonstone. Unless you want to say that all of the ones who failed were fake dragonseeds, you don't really have a basis for that belief. And we don't have all the information either. 

Most of the failures tried to mount Sheepstealer, an unclaimed wild dragon who were not accustomed to the presence of humans. And Silver Denys most definitely was not a bastard of Maegor the Cruel. And we have no idea who exactly was the dragonlord ancestor of Hugh, Ulf, or Nettles was. Thus they were either pretty far down the family tree or never acknowledged them as their children.

38 minutes ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

Legends do not spring up out of nothing. The basic elements of it will be true. The things like turning into a beast by night and sacrificing children to the Others certainly may not be. 

Legends can also be invented.

38 minutes ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

The Northmen still intermarried with the Andals. Conquering is not the only way to erode a culture.

We have no reason to believe this was the case while the Starks ruled the North as kings.

38 minutes ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

The Starks descended from Brandon the Builder who was a friend to the CotF? They defeated the Warg King sure, he was the biggest challenge to their own power, and they killed his beasts and greenseers to prevent him coming back to power. That is not the same as having anything against the CotF. Keep in mind also that by taking the Warg King's daughters as prizes, and particularly if they married the girls, they were in a way taking some of his power for themselves. You don't add skinchanging blood to your own lines if you have something against skinchangers or skinchanging.

Well, perhaps they just liked to have some sex slaves. Nothing says they married those daughters. Could have been, but perhaps they just fathered some bastards on those. Oh, and there is no reason that the Warg King on Sea Dragon Point was any danger to Winterfell. It is just as likely that this was part of an expansionist Stark policy.

And Brandon the Builder isn't House Stark through the ages. He might have been close to the Children, but the Starks a thousands years later might no longer have had such connections. Nothing in the history of the North indicates the Starks we know anything about where close to the Children (unlike some of the Durrandon, Gardener, and River kings).

38 minutes ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

There you are claiming I said things I didn't say again. I did not say they thought they were immortal.

You do say you think they had no reason not to think they could be killed, die in battle, succumb to a sudden illness, or suffer a mortal accident.

38 minutes ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

No, we are not. You are.

We are. A miscarriage that did not become known to history essentially never happened insofar as the historians are concerned.

38 minutes ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

Which makes no difference. Clearly the baby had not been dead for years, no matter how deformed it was or how dead it looked. And again, Jorah Mormont is no expert on babies, alive or dead.

And neither am I, but I would still be able to see the difference between a 'normal baby' and one with wings that looked like a rotten corpse full of grave worms.

38 minutes ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

An honest disagreement exists here then. All the sorcery of Valyria and the Valyrians was rooted in fire and blood, not emotions and wishes. I agree that a spell certainly could have caused problems, but not just the feelings of the mother...particularly that late in a pregnancy. Even magic babies still have to develop along roughly the same lines that regular babies do, and the deformities would come early in the pregnancy.

Well, a curse can be a spell, right? And speaking about that - how could Tyanna have created deformed babies through poison. Surely she would have used an abortifacient like moon tea or something of that sort to end the pregnancies of her rivals rather than drive Maegor mad by magically transforming his unborn children into little monsters. Tyanna would have seen how he reacted when he saw Alys' child - one assumes she wouldn't have wanted to repeat that with the children of Jeyne and Elinor.

38 minutes ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

There are women who have been in labor for three days (or more) and said all kinds of things they didn't mean. That aside, Rhaenyra would have to be a sorceress to have literally cursed the child into being a monster.

Dany also hatched three dragon eggs without being a sorceress.

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1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

No, because we have a lot of positive evidence where Targaryen (children) claimed huge dragons without being killed (Maegor, Laena, Aemond, Viserys I, etc.). That reduces the probability of such (mortal) accidents considerably.

Most of the failures tried to mount Sheepstealer, an unclaimed wild dragon who were not accustomed to the presence of humans. And Silver Denys most definitely was not a bastard of Maegor the Cruel. And we have no idea who exactly was the dragonlord ancestor of Hugh, Ulf, or Nettles was. Thus they were either pretty far down the family tree or never acknowledged them as their children.

Legends can also be invented.

We have no reason to believe this was the case while the Starks ruled the North as kings.

Well, perhaps they just liked to have some sex slaves. Nothing says they married those daughters. Could have been, but perhaps they just fathered some bastards on those. Oh, and there is no reason that the Warg King on Sea Dragon Point was any danger to Winterfell. It is just as likely that this was part of an expansionist Stark policy.

And Brandon the Builder isn't House Stark through the ages. He might have been close to the Children, but the Starks a thousands years later might no longer have had such connections. Nothing in the history of the North indicates the Starks we know anything about where close to the Children (unlike some of the Durrandon, Gardener, and River kings).

You do say you think they had no reason not to think they could be killed, die in battle, succumb to a sudden illness, or suffer a mortal accident.

We are. A miscarriage that did not become known to history essentially never happened insofar as the historians are concerned.

And neither am I, but I would still be able to see the difference between a 'normal baby' and one with wings that looked like a rotten corpse full of grave worms.

Well, a curse can be a spell, right? And speaking about that - how could Tyanna have created deformed babies through poison. Surely she would have used an abortifacient like moon tea or something of that sort to end the pregnancies of her rivals rather than drive Maegor mad by magically transforming his unborn children into little monsters. Tyanna would have seen how he reacted when he saw Alys' child - one assumes she wouldn't have wanted to repeat that with the children of Jeyne and Elinor.

Dany also hatched three dragon eggs without being a sorceress.

Not being killed doesn't mean there was no difficulty. The dragons who had been ridden before don't count, as they were already broken in.

Which, again has no bearing on the point. Either they had dragonblood or they didn't. 

Yes. Urban legends are a good example of invented ones, but ancient ones always begin with a grain of truth and the author is well-read enough to know this and use it to his advantage. His statement that there is no reason to think Night's King survived to this day is rather an indication that Night's King existed.

We have no reason not to believe it either. They couldn't just marry Stark women, so they had to marry outside the family and other families in the North did intermarry with the Andals. All it takes is one wife of a Stark King being half-Andal to get the ball rolling.

Yeah the whole association with wolves and possible skinchanging just sprang up out of nowhere.

In which case taking him out and removing his ability to rise again was the point, as I said.

And again, nothing indicates that they weren't.

That is not what I said. I said they may have thought, as many people do, that they were of course mortal but were unlikely to die any time soon. Even brushes with death do not guarantee a person contemplates their own mortality, in fact it can have the opposite effect at times.

No, we are not. What history knows doesn't have any bearing on the actual fertility of the women in question, nor does it discredit the idea of possible danger to pregnancies of dragonriding.

And could you see the difference between a corpse with wings that has been magically altered to appear as if it were crawling with grave worms?

No. Two different things. But both require a certain amount of power. One requires training and the other doesn't. But "cursing the child" is not the same as putting a curse on the child. If I say "curse you" to someone I'm just upset with them, not trying to put some magical spell on them.

Not all poisons kill. All it would take would be to disrupt the natural development of the fetus. Maegor did not go mad just over the deformed children. That guy had a lot of issues.

Dany was acting on instinct and was not cursing anyone. Targaryens managed to hatch dragons without sorcerers quite a bit. If you can't see the difference between dragon hatching and cursing at an unborn child, and putting a curse on an unborn child...

You know what, I give up. I withdraw from the conversation.

Surely I can find something more productive to do with my time. Maybe there are some cats in the neighborhood that I can herd.

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18 hours ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

Not being killed doesn't mean there was no difficulty. The dragons who had been ridden before don't count, as they were already broken in.

They do count. Seasmoke killed Steffon Darklyn and Vermithor killed Gormon Massey. Not only the wild dragons killed would-be dragonriders.

18 hours ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

Which, again has no bearing on the point. Either they had dragonblood or they didn't. 

Sure, but the point there was there were no Targaryen bastards around who had a confirmed pure-blooded Valyrian heritage. People like Ulf, Hugh, Nettles, and the Hull brothers could not be as sure that they could claim dragons as could Targaryen children born of an incestuous union.

18 hours ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

Yes. Urban legends are a good example of invented ones, but ancient ones always begin with a grain of truth and the author is well-read enough to know this and use it to his advantage. His statement that there is no reason to think Night's King survived to this day is rather an indication that Night's King existed.

He may or may not have existed but the question marks in this story have more to do with his evil wife. As far as we know as of yet there are no female Others. If that's the case was the woman then a female wight? If so, how he could he have married such a person? There are aspects to this story that don't make all that much sense. I'd not be surprised if the real Night's King did not just marry some mortal woman (perhaps a woods witch or some other sorceress) and she was later blamed for his evil deeds just as Serala of Myr was later blamed for Lord Darklyn's crimes.

18 hours ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

We have no reason not to believe it either. They couldn't just marry Stark women, so they had to marry outside the family and other families in the North did intermarry with the Andals. All it takes is one wife of a Stark King being half-Andal to get the ball rolling.

Not sure what you mean there. The North continues to pray to the old gods to this day. How is intermarriage with the Andals going to change that? If the First Men of the North remained friendly with the Children from the Long Night onwards then one would expect there still to be some Children living south of the Wall in the North. There might be some in the Neck, but the people there are different from the Northmen.

But there are clearly no Children or greenseers anywhere in the North. Why is that? The Andals can't have anything to do with that.

18 hours ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

And again, nothing indicates that they weren't.

But you have to ask yourself why such kings are mentioned for the First Men kings down in the South and not for the Starks. They ´could have offered asylum to all those Children who were attacked by the Andals in the South, leading to an increase of the Children population in the North. But today there are no Children in the North. Again - why is that? Does it make sense that this is the case if the Northmen were overall friendly to the Children?

18 hours ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

That is not what I said. I said they may have thought, as many people do, that they were of course mortal but were unlikely to die any time soon. Even brushes with death do not guarantee a person contemplates their own mortality, in fact it can have the opposite effect at times.

That is grasping for straws. I mean, come on, you don't have to believe Aegon was sterile. But what you should acknowledge is that there are good arguments that the sons of the Conqueror (especially Aenys) were not actually his seed. You don't have to believe that this is the case.

Aegon and his sister-wives were married for decades. They could have married in their early teens which would mean they would have been married about a decade before the Conquest took place. Jaehaerys I and Alysanne were married for decades, too, and they produced thirteen children in total nine of which reached adulthood. Aenys and Alyssa had six, Baelon and Alyssa three, Viserys I and his two wives seven, Rhaenyra and her two husbands six, and so on.

The (dragonriding) Targaryens are usually not an infertile race, quite the contrary, actually. Many children die in the cradle or are stillborn but we don't know whether that's because of the weirdo genes or because of high child mortality in general.

The difference between all these and Aegon's sister-wives is that these two only had two sons (and two pregnancies in total as far as we know) under somewhat suspicious circumstances.

18 hours ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

No, we are not. What history knows doesn't have any bearing on the actual fertility of the women in question, nor does it discredit the idea of possible danger to pregnancies of dragonriding.

Alysanne, Laena, Rhaenyra, Helaena, Rhaena, etc. all were dragonriders and produced quite a few living children.

18 hours ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

And could you see the difference between a corpse with wings that has been magically altered to appear as if it were crawling with grave worms?

Why could the spell not actually have caused the wings and the corpse-like state? The vision in the House of the Undying suggests that Rhaego could have been grown into a healthy and powerful warrior, suggesting that he was neither destined to die nor destined to be a monstrosity.

18 hours ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

No. Two different things. But both require a certain amount of power. One requires training and the other doesn't. But "cursing the child" is not the same as putting a curse on the child. If I say "curse you" to someone I'm just upset with them, not trying to put some magical spell on them.

Sure, but there is a chance that Rhaenyra could created some sort of intuitive spell just like Dany did when she hatched the eggs. After all, we don't know what causes the Targaryen freak children.

18 hours ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

Not all poisons kill. All it would take would be to disrupt the natural development of the fetus. Maegor did not go mad just over the deformed children. That guy had a lot of issues.

Yandel thinks the freak children were what drove him over the edge. And we see a similar thing happening with Aerys. There are hints that especially certain Targaryen men react both irrationally and very violently to this kind of thing, possibly because they subconsciously know that something is wrong with them - that they are the cause for all this - but don't want to admit it.

18 hours ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

Dany was acting on instinct and was not cursing anyone. Targaryens managed to hatch dragons without sorcerers quite a bit. If you can't see the difference between dragon hatching and cursing at an unborn child, and putting a curse on an unborn child...

I can see the difference. But both would be a spell in that context. Normal dragon-hatching has nothing to do with any of that. There were no blood sacrifices made to hatch all the historical dragons of the Targaryens.

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On 4/3/2017 at 3:12 PM, The Weirwoods Eyes said:

I think the idea has spread a fair bit now. though I must thank @Lord Varys for as far as I am aware being the one to raise it as a possibility.  

It does make sense to me. 

I didn't knew that it was LV's idea, I couldn't knew that anyway. Thank you Weirwoods Eyes you are very kind as always!

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  • 6 months later...
On ‎3‎/‎2‎/‎2017 at 10:29 AM, LionoftheWest said:

The idea of a "master race" of Valyrians to rule over subjugated peoples make sense in a way as that could create solidarity between the Valyrians but I don't think that's the defining trait either as the Americans all the way to the 1860s managed to oppress a Black slave population just fine without allowing women to get to influence politics, until outside military force was brought to bear. At least to my knowledge.

As the question of slavery in the US was settled through a protracted and bloody civil war, I'd venture to coin the term "inside military force".

 

 But back to Planetos, after reading what's been said and thinking about historical examples in our own world, I'm leaning towards concluding that elite women of stratified societies enjoy more freedom from traditional gender roles across the board.

 

 You don't get  much more elite than  dragon-riding god-queen, and societies don't get much more stratified than dragon-riding scions of an ancient and relatively omnipotent empire standing above everyone who isn't.

 

 As posted above, simply having a (dragon/firearm/nuclear weapon) doesn't really make you any more equal than you were before,if everyone else you'd contend with also has one.

 

Physical intimidation can't be the only reason a woman in any society does something that runs counter to their personal desires.  There are lots of societal norms and family pressures to consider too.

If a young man in Westeros doesn't want to march off and die in some a-hole lord's war, or work in the fields / fishing boats/ gold mines, he pretty much doesn't have any choice if he wants to stay alive and on the right side of the law.  Surely not every male is excited about warfare and  physical labor. Similarly if that man's female counterpart doesn't want to marry and bear children or fulfill her other patriarchally(?) assigned roles, she will have a hard time making it on her own in a medieval world, unless she has some skill set like being a healer for example.

 But I submit that when you're at the very top of society and have your  very own slave army to take care of petty concerns such as providing food, shelter, child care, etc, then you can pretty much tell society to shove it and do what you want, or at least what your family will let you get away with.

Some families are headed by men and run by women, and some are the opposite, in every culture that I can think of. Within the walls of the home, away from the eyes of the neighbors, lord so -and-so's wife might actually be running the show, like the Queen of Thorns.

Sometime Dad will put his foot down and sometimes Mom will put hers down, and when they do you can toe the line and be a good obedient ,upstanding dragon rider, or tell them to go to hell and fly off on your dragon and go discover  continent or something. 

 

 

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