Wildfire IS dragon blood.

[Seams]

I did a quick search and didn't find a topic directly addressing this, although I think @By Odin's Beard pretty much hit the nail on the head in a post on a previous thread.

The alchemists aren't creating wildfire using a secret recipe, they are extracting dragon blood - probably from places where dragons have died - and putting it in jars.

This might also explain the Dornish letter that caused Aegon the Conqueror to give up his efforts to conquer Dorne: when the dragon Meraxes died in Dorne, the Dornish people discovered the properties of dragon blood and bottled enough of it to create a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. If Aegon didn't back off, the Martells would use wildfire / dragon blood to destroy Aegon's nearest and dearest. Maybe they had rigged Dragonstone to blow, and that's why Aegon flew there before signing the armistice the next day. He wanted to see whether the Dornish threat had teeth.

The "Green Blood" river takes on a new meaning as a line that cannot be crossed.

It might also explain why the Pyromancers discovered that there was a lot of wildfire under the dragonpit when a sex worker and her customer fell through the floor of the pit into an underground storage area. Several dragons died in the storming of the dragon pit. Maybe the wildfire wasn't stored there, as Hallyne implied to Tyrion, but it seeped into the ground from the bodies of the dead dragons, waiting to be extracted. And it was not a coincidence that the cache was discovered by people having sex, if there was any element of romance involved.

The wordplay on "pyromancer" might be a key hint. When Dany is in Drogo's burning funeral pyre, she imagines having sex with him: it's a pyre romance. This may be the "magical" thing that allows her to survive the fire and to hatch the dragon eggs - you can't have the pyre without the romance, if you want the eggs to hatch. Hallyne is a pyromancer (alchemist) and he tells Tyrion, "The substance flows through my veins, and lives in the heart of every pyromancer. We respect its power" (Clash, Tyrion V). So Dany's success at hatching the eggs, after others failed, is because she is a "pyre-romancer" instead of just a power-hungry would-be ruler. She is the blood of the dragon.

I'm re-reading The Hedge Knight, and this idea came to me as I was reading about Aerion Brightflame being upset by the "death" of the dragon puppet. The sawdust from the puppet spills onto the ground as the two puppeteers - Tanselle and the Dornish woman - act out the painted wooden knight battling the painted wooden dragon, cutting off the dragon's head. Red sawdust spills onto the ground from the dragon's severed neck. Dunk is smitten with the puppeteer, so there is the romance. Aerion Brightflame finds it treasonous that the dragon dies in the puppet show, but maybe he is especially worried about the depiction of the dragon bleeding. He will later die after drinking wildfire, thinking it would transform him into a dragon. No romance in that dragon-hatching effort.

This is also leading me to new thoughts about wildfire. I have suspected that Mad King Aerys wasn't as "mad" as people believed him to be. Or, perhaps, he was mad in a different way than suspected. What if he knew that dragon blood / wildfire was the best and only way to defend King's Landing from an invasion by The Others? He wasn't planning to burn down the city as payback to usurpers, he was trying to create a defensive weapon to protect the city from ice zombies.

[kissdbyfire]

40 minutes ago, Seams said:

This is also leading me to new thoughts about wildfire. I have suspected that Mad King Aerys wasn't as "mad" as people believed him to be. Or, perhaps, he was mad in a different way than suspected. What if he knew that dragon blood / wildfire was the best and only way to defend King's Landing from an invasion by The Others? He wasn't planning to burn down the city as payback to usurpers, he was trying to create a defensive weapon to protect the city from ice zombies

But we have the whole, burn them all/ king of ashes and bones (paraphrasing) from Aerys.

[Seams]

1 minute ago, kissdbyfire said:

But we have the whole, burn them all/ king of ashes and bones (paraphrasing) from Aerys.

From a vision by someone who is seeing only a small scrap of a larger event, though. Out of context and not a reliable recounting of history, in my opinion.

[Ckram]

Well, it certainly opened my eyes to the fact that Aerion might have heard something about wildfire from some pyromancer that made him infer that it would in deed turn him into a dragon. Even the crazy have their own kind of logic (#Mindhunter).

[Dorian Martell's son]

3 hours ago, Seams said:

snip 

No. There is nothing about caches of liquid dragon blood around the world. There are however several instances where characters witness pyromancers and the flames they create.  We met the makers and we saw it used. If your theory was correct, someone else would have used it. There is zero reason to think that the author was trying to decieve us as to the nature of wildfire. Good effort though 

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

Your post made me look up dragon blood references which took me down a rabbit hole.

Quote

Black blood was flowing from the wound where the spear had pierced him, smoking where it dripped onto the scorched sands. He is fire made flesh, she thought, and so am I.

Daenerys Targaryen vaulted onto the dragon's back, seized the spear, and ripped it out. The point was half-melted, the iron red-hot, glowing.

Wildfire is green and if it exposed to shock it will explode.  But Drogon's blood is black and doesn't explode when it hits the ground (it only hisses and smokes, although the alchemists use sand to put out wildfire, so maybe), if wildfire is heavily diluted dragon blood, it could appear green instead of black.  But then there is the issue of why dragons don't explode when something bumps into them (maybe it needs to be exposed to air to combust?)

(Also, while reading about napalm just now I learned about "greek fire" which is probably the inspiration for wildfire.)

The spear that penetrates Drogon gets red-hot within a few moments, red-hot iron is between 1200 and 1700 degrees F, but she also says the point is half melted, the melting point of iron is 2800 degrees, does Daenerys ride bareback on a 3000 degree dragon, or does dragonscale somehow insulate?  What is the r-value of dragonscale?  This may cast some doubt on George's assertion that Daenerys surviving Drogo's pyre was a one-time magical event, and that she is not fire-proof.

For that matter has anyone ever run the numbers on how much energy a dragon can output in watts?  Combining their almost unlimited flight distance, keeping their interior body temperature at 3000 degrees, and (unlimited?) dragonflame abilities, seems like they would need to output as much as a small nuclear powerplant.  How many goats does Drogon have to eat a day to generate that much energy, how many BTU's are in a single goat?

Someone has to run these numbers.

[The Mother of The Others]

Uhhhhhh, what about Before those dragon pit dragons died????   They were supposedly weakening, with stunted growth.  Like, depleted of..... dragon- nessity.   Well?  Aside from mirroring the decline of their Targaryens with a similarly poor breeding pool, what if there was another reason for those dragons losing their mojo and unraveling as a group.  What if pyromancer perverts were stealing in to the dragon pens and jamming a syringe into the...... spleen... or wherever on a dragon you'd draw from to take the secret ingredient for wildfire.  This subtracted essence removed vitality from the dragons, until they weren't viable anymore and went into a downward spiral.  Then you wouldn't need a separate in-between phase when dragon blood was sitting there like a crude oil spill nobody noticed or took advantage of.

And i view dragons as having a mobile energy portal within them, so that takes care of the impossible expenditure of energy by their bodies.  They (by eating Jeremy) just need to keep up some of the biological maintenance that the magic energies don't do for them.   So it's not like the hummingbird equation of needing to eat enough daily to keep their wings flapping, because then we'd be in truly ludicrous territory with them devouring all humans and forests to keep up with impossible energy demands.  The magic portal within accounts for most of that.  They eat to keep the bodily systems functioning, like a baseline of nutrition that keeps the lights on.  Then they gulp all the netherworld redbull they need by tapping in to the source of their inner furnace, yo.

[Shouldve Taken The Black]

4 hours ago, By Odin's Beard said:

Also, while reading about napalm just now I learned about "greek fire" which is probably the inspiration for wildfire.

Yes, it is. It's not 100% clear what the exact recipe of Greek fire was, but (apart from the colour) it had all the qualities of wildfire. 

[zandru]

2 hours ago, Shouldve Taken The Black said:

Yes, it is. It's not 100% clear what the exact recipe of Greek fire was, but (apart from the colour) it had all the qualities of wildfire. 

Basically crude petroleum, I thought.

We know from the text that wildfire was a substance which could be synthesized in the lab, under extremely protected conditions (GRRM's description reminds me of how plutonium was handled.) If wildfire were somehow the living blood of dragons, this would have been impossible - there being no dragons, for one thing.

[Ferocious Veldt Roarer]

But it's all assumptions and whatifs, is it not? "What if" a teenage Aerion was a wise man, knowledgeable of dragonology, and what if Aerys II was a responsible statesman, readying his realm for the invasion of the Others, and not a shred of evidence to support it.

Without it, it's a waste of time.

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

Reading the rest of that Greek fire page right now.  They built special flame-throwing ships that pressurized the greek fire and spit it out on to the enemies ships, exactly like

Quote

Aegon IV's stillborn invasion of Dorne, however, for His Grace had also turned to the dubious pyromancers of the ancient Guild of Alchemists, commanding them to "build me dragons." These wood-and-iron monstrosities, fitted with pumps that shot jets of wildfire

During the Crusades they also filled containers with it and catapulted it:

Quote

"the tail of fire that trailed behind it was as big as a great spear; and it made such a noise as it came, that it sounded like the thunder of heaven. It looked like a dragon flying through the air. Such a bright light did it cast, that one could see all over the camp as though it were day, by reason of the great mass of fire, and the brilliance of the light that it shed."

Could it be that the legend of flame-throwing dragons is just a fanciful retelling of the history of greek fire and its multiple uses in warfare?

[zandru]

7 minutes ago, By Odin's Beard said:

Could it be that the legend of flame-throwing dragons is just a fanciful retelling of the history of greek fire and its multiple uses in warfare?

No. Dragon legends predate the Greeks by millennia, and occur throughout the world, such as China and the Americas. I agree, it makes you wonder why the concept of huge, flying, fire-breathing reptiles seems to be such a frequently occurring part of human history though.

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

6 minutes ago, zandru said:

No. Dragon legends predate the Greeks by millennia, and occur throughout the world, such as China and the Americas. I agree, it makes you wonder why the concept of huge, flying, fire-breathing reptiles seems to be such a frequently occurring part of human history though.

I sort of meant in a more ancient sense, like they used it 10,000 years ago, then it was forgotten, then rediscovered. 

But some argue that natural selection has provided human's with an inherent fear of snakes, so that is why the snake/dragon/serpent is the enemy--we just don't like snakes.  Not all of the mythological dragons breathe fire though. that is a Greek, Mesopotamian, Western idea.  That may be a hint about ASOIAF that the Chinese think the dragon is the good guy, and that they are descended from the dragon.  Whereas Westerners think the dragon is a force of evil and destruction, that needs to be slain by the storm god.

 

More from the wiki article on greek fire

Quote

on the prow of each ship he had a head fixed of a lion or other land-animal, made in brass or iron with the mouth open and then gilded over, so that their mere aspect was terrifying. And the fire which was to be directed against the enemy through tubes he made to pass through the mouths of the beasts, so that it seemed as if the lions and the other similar monsters were vomiting the fire.

Neat.  It was just slightly refined crude oil, they separated the more volatile naphtha, and mixed it with a couple other ingredients to make it a sticky napalm.  There were no spells, the alchemists were simply refining oil, or repackaging already refined oil.

[The Fattest Leech]

49 minutes ago, By Odin's Beard said:

I sort of meant in a more ancient sense, like they used it 10,000 years ago, then it was forgotten, then rediscovered. 

But some argue that natural selection has provided human's with an inherent fear of snakes, so that is why the snake/dragon/serpent is the enemy--we just don't like snakes.  Not all of the mythological dragons breathe fire though. that is a Greek, Mesopotamian, Western idea.  That may be a hint about ASOIAF that the Chinese think the dragon is the good guy, and that they are descended from the dragon.  Whereas Westerners think the dragon is a force of evil and destruction, that needs to be slain by the storm god.

It doesn't matter how other real world cultures used dragons in the past. This is not their story, But George's story, and his end use is the only thing that matters, which is why reading his other work helps because it lets the reader see his repeated themes and end use of symbolism. He does use outside inspirations from a variety of sources, but as he says, he always changes it to make it his own.

George tends to use fire and dragon symbolism in many of his past stories, and I have yet to read a story of his where these fire religions/people/dragons are connected to anything other than false elitism, expansionism at the cost of the indigenous people and environment, or all consuming religious fanaticism. In an article from 2011, George says this of dragons:

• “Dragons are the nuclear deterrent, and only [Daenerys Targaryen, one of the series’ heroines] has them, which in some ways makes her the most powerful person in the world,” Martin said in 2011. “But is that sufficient? These are the kind of issues I’m trying to explore. The United States right now has the ability to destroy the world with our nuclear arsenal, but that doesn’t mean we can achieve specific geopolitical goals. Power is more subtle than that. You can have the power to destroy, but it doesn’t give you the power to reform, or improve, or build.”

And here is but one use of "fire dragons" in a story of his. The dragons are interchangeable with things like wagons in the author's writing style, depending on the sub-genre of the story. In another story he calls a constellation the "ice wagon", but in ASOAIF it is the constellation the "ice dragon":

• "The waterfall!" the bitter speaker repeated. "Since the death of winter, they have broken more than twenty pyramids, Arik, and their powerwagons have crushed the forest and now a great dusty road scars the soil from their valley to the riverlands.
• But then a second squad of the Angels were among them, and there was a creak of wood straining and snapping, and from behind a final grove of fruit trees, dimly, neKrol could see the black flanks of the powerwagon, its blastcannon seemingly trained right at him.
• DaHan nodded. "I understand. You are truly a godless man, neKrol, to consort so with soulless animals, to teach them to ape the ways of the seed of Earth. But it does not matter." He raised his arm in signal; behind him, among the trees, the blastcannon of the powerwagon moved slightly to the right. "You and your pet should move at once." DaHan told neKrol. "When I lower my arm, the Jaenshi god will burn and if you stand in the way, you will never move again."

And yeah, this does fit the "build me dragons" idea of Aegon IV (as mentioned above):

• This was far from the greatest folly of Aegon IV's stillborn invasion of Dorne, however, for His Grace had also turned to the dubious pyromancers of the ancient Guild of Alchemists, commanding them to "build me dragons." These wood-and-iron monstrosities, fitted with pumps that shot jets of wildfire, might perhaps have been of some use in a siege. But Aegon proposed to drag these devices up and through the Boneway, where there are places so steep that the Dornishmen have carved steps.

Quote

 

More from the wiki article on greek fire

Neat.  It was just slightly refined crude oil, they separated the more volatile naphtha, and mixed it with a couple other ingredients to make it a sticky napalm.  There were no spells, the alchemists were simply refining oil, or repackaging already refined oil.

There is probably a spell/magic element to it as well, just as George says there is magic imbued in to Valyrian steel, which is just real world Damascus steel magicked up for a fantasy story. The pyromancers have noticed how the potency has increased with the (unbeknownst to them) increase of magic in the current story. A last bursting flare of magic that makes me think of the aurora borealis for some reason.

[Geddus]

14 hours ago, Seams said:

From a vision by someone who is seeing only a small scrap of a larger event, though. Out of context and not a reliable recounting of history, in my opinion.

 

Actually there's an eyewitness' account that confirms Daenerys' vision:

"The traitors want my city, I heard him tell Rossart, but I'll give them naught but ashes. Let Robert be king over charred bones and cooked meat. The Targaryens never bury their dead, they burn them. Aerys meant to have the greatest funeral pyre of them all. Though if truth be told, I do not believe he truly expected to die. Like Aerion Brightfire before him, Aerys thought the fire would transform him . . . that he would rise again, reborn as a dragon, and turn all his enemies to ash."

ASOS, Jaime V. So yeah, Aerys was indeed crazy and he wanted to burn the city out of spite.

[The Fattest Leech]

16 hours ago, Seams said:

I did a quick search and didn't find a topic directly addressing this, although I think @By Odin's Beard pretty much hit the nail on the head in a post on a previous thread.

The alchemists aren't creating wildfire using a secret recipe, they are extracting dragon blood - probably from places where dragons have died - and putting it in jars.

This might also explain the Dornish letter that caused Aegon the Conqueror to give up his efforts to conquer Dorne: when the dragon Meraxes died in Dorne, the Dornish people discovered the properties of dragon blood and bottled enough of it to create a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. If Aegon didn't back off, the Martells would use wildfire / dragon blood to destroy Aegon's nearest and dearest. Maybe they had rigged Dragonstone to blow, and that's why Aegon flew there before signing the armistice the next day. He wanted to see whether the Dornish threat had teeth.

This seems a little too dangerous to happen on such a large scale if what we know about wildfire being so temperamental is true. I see it more as a future connection to Cersei, who is Tywin with teats, and Tywin was a bit of a power hungry lion that craved the power the Targs had to much that he emulated them in many ways... only to once again have those ways bring down a dynasty.

 

Quote

The "Green Blood" river takes on a new meaning as a line that cannot be crossed.

So many Nymeria-water magic ideas in this

Quote

It might also explain why the Pyromancers discovered that there was a lot of wildfire under the dragonpit when a sex worker and her customer fell through the floor of the pit into an underground storage area. Several dragons died in the storming of the dragon pit. Maybe the wildfire wasn't stored there, as Hallyne implied to Tyrion, but it seeped into the ground from the bodies of the dead dragons, waiting to be extracted. And it was not a coincidence that the cache was discovered by people having sex, if there was any element of romance involved.

The wordplay on "pyromancer" might be a key hint. When Dany is in Drogo's burning funeral pyre, she imagines having sex with him: it's a pyre romance. This may be the "magical" thing that allows her to survive the fire and to hatch the dragon eggs - you can't have the pyre without the romance, if you want the eggs to hatch.

Ok, this is a bit of an interesting point you have made. I agree with the symbolic  fire/sex thing. Daenerys is the bride of fire, she was wed to the flames during Drogo's pyre. I made a more detailed post here, if you have the want to peek at it. But to continue on with the story, later we get:

The Princess and the Queen

...Meanwhile, Seasmoke rolled and banked and looped. One instant he would be below his foe, and suddenly he would twist in the sky and come around behind her. Higher and higher the two dragons flew, as hundreds watched from the roofs of Tumbleton. One such said afterward that the flight of Tessarion and Seasmoke seemed more mating dance than battle. Perhaps it was.

A Dance with Dragons - Daenerys IX

Dizzy, Dany closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she glimpsed the Meereenese beneath her through a haze of tears and dust, pouring up the steps and out into the streets.

The lash was still in her hand. She flicked it against Drogon's neck and cried, "Higher!" Her other hand clutched at his scales, her fingers scrabbling for purchase. Drogon's wide black wings beat the air. Dany could feel the heat of him between her thighs. Her heart felt as if it were about to burst. Yes, she thought, yes, now, now, do it, do it, take me, take me, FLY!

 

Quote

Hallyne is a pyromancer (alchemist) and he tells Tyrion, "The substance flows through my veins, and lives in the heart of every pyromancer. We respect its power" (Clash, Tyrion V). So Dany's success at hatching the eggs, after others failed, is because she is a "pyre-romancer" instead of just a power-hungry would-be ruler. She is the blood of the dragon.

To me, this is another example of the ice .vs. fire dichotomy; what does one "drink"? (Drinkwater ) Also, it makes me think of how WInterfell is made of watery walls, and that water is compared to blood as well.

Adding the quote for those who may not remember the reference:

A Game of Thrones - Catelyn II

Of all the rooms in Winterfell's Great Keep, Catelyn's bedchambers were the hottest. She seldom had to light a fire. The castle had been built over natural hot springs, and the scalding waters rushed through its walls and chambers like blood through a man's body, driving the chill from the stone halls, filling the glass gardens with a moist warmth, keeping the earth from freezing. Open pools smoked day and night in a dozen small courtyards. That was a little thing, in summer; in winter, it was the difference between life and death.

Catelyn's bath was always hot and steaming, and her walls warm to the touch. The warmth reminded her of Riverrun, of days in the sun with Lysa and Edmure, but Ned could never abide the heat. The Starks were made for the cold, he would tell her, and she would laugh and tell him in that case they had certainly built their castle in the wrong place.

Quote

I'm re-reading The Hedge Knight, and this idea came to me as I was reading about Aerion Brightflame being upset by the "death" of the dragon puppet. The sawdust from the puppet spills onto the ground as the two puppeteers - Tanselle and the Dornish woman - act out the painted wooden knight battling the painted wooden dragon, cutting off the dragon's head. Red sawdust spills onto the ground from the dragon's severed neck. Dunk is smitten with the puppeteer, so there is the romance. Aerion Brightflame finds it treasonous that the dragon dies in the puppet show, but maybe he is especially worried about the depiction of the dragon bleeding. He will later die after drinking wildfire, thinking it would transform him into a dragon. No romance in that dragon-hatching effort.

Dunk falls in love with a tree-maiden

Oh yeah, Aerion was mad and was not the correct "moon" to hatch any dragons.

Quote

This is also leading me to new thoughts about wildfire. I have suspected that Mad King Aerys wasn't as "mad" as people believed him to be. Or, perhaps, he was mad in a different way than suspected. What if he knew that dragon blood / wildfire was the best and only way to defend King's Landing from an invasion by The Others? He wasn't planning to burn down the city as payback to usurpers, he was trying to create a defensive weapon to protect the city from ice zombies.

Aerys was mad on many levels, but I guess time will tell, and by time, I mean Bran.

[The Mother of The Others]

The other piece is what's lost to the past.  How did the substance get in their veins / bloodline.    Blood magic.  Fusing.   Blood of the dragon means what it says.  That's what the dragonz are sniffing in dragonseeds.   Dragon blood.   Selfsameness bonding.   My guess is pyromancers are a hereditary cult, bloodlines who don't trust outsiders with the secrets (they are the secret).     A pyromaniac can love fire yet still burn to a crisp.   Daenerys' love is backed up by being a woman of substance.  The substance in her veins.

[Seams]

18 hours ago, The Mother of The Others said:

Uhhhhhh, what about Before those dragon pit dragons died????   They were supposedly weakening, with stunted growth.  Like, depleted of..... dragon- nessity.   Well?  Aside from mirroring the decline of their Targaryens with a similarly poor breeding pool, what if there was another reason for those dragons losing their mojo and unraveling as a group.  What if pyromancer perverts were stealing in to the dragon pens and jamming a syringe into the...... spleen... or wherever on a dragon you'd draw from to take the secret ingredient for wildfire.  This subtracted essence removed vitality from the dragons, until they weren't viable anymore and went into a downward spiral.  Then you wouldn't need a separate in-between phase when dragon blood was sitting there like a crude oil spill nobody noticed or took advantage of.

I was wondering about people extracting blood from living dragons, too. I hadn't thought of it in terms of withdrawing the essence of the dragons, but maybe that's part of what was going on.

I have the feeling there will be a critical scene at the Dragonpit on Rhaeny's Hill at some point in the last books. Either current-day or in a Bran POV flashback. Maybe we will find out more about the last dragons at that point.

8 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

It doesn't matter how other real world cultures used dragons in the past. This is not their story, But George's story, and his end use is the only thing that matters, which is why reading his other work helps because it lets the reader see his repeated themes and end use of symbolism. He does use outside inspirations from a variety of sources, but as he says, he always changes it to make it his own.

George tends to use fire and dragon symbolism in many of his past stories, and I have yet to read a story of his where these fire religions/people/dragons are connected to anything other than false elitism, expansionism at the cost of the indigenous people and environment, or all consuming religious fanaticism. In an article from 2011, George says this of dragons:

. . .

And here is but one use of "fire dragons" in a story of his. The dragons are interchangeable with things like wagons in the author's writing style, depending on the sub-genre of the story.

. . .

There is probably a spell/magic element to it as well, just as George says there is magic imbued in to Valyrian steel, which is just real world Damascus steel magicked up for a fantasy story. The pyromancers have noticed how the potency has increased with the (unbeknownst to them) increase of magic in the current story. A last bursting flare of magic that makes me think of the aurora borealis for some reason.

This is great stuff! Thank you for sharing the elements from the other stories. In my mind, I was thinking the Targs had been the only "nuclear power," so it's nice to have that validated. But it also seems as if the dragons have the potential to be glorious, magical opportunities to see the world. Maybe the dragons weakened and stopped hatching because they had been used too much as weapons and not enough as wonders of the world.

I love the dragons / wagons info, too! In the rainbow guard thread I am also trying to explore at the moment, GRRM gives us a guard member who is also a singer. He sings a verse, "part of which rhymed." So I have started to look for more rhyming words in the author's use of wordplay. I think he was giving us a hint there.

I have no doubt that there is magic involved in the dragon blood / wildfire, if they are linked or are the same substance. As @by Odin's Beard points out, it wouldn't be practical for Dany to climb aboard a 3000-degree dragon, or to pull a red-hot iron spear out of a dragon's back with her bare hands. The laws of physics are being bent here, and magic is a good way to describe the dragon-related events and details that don't abide by the laws.

8 hours ago, Geddus said:

Actually there's an eyewitness' account that confirms Daenerys' vision:

"The traitors want my city, I heard him tell Rossart, but I'll give them naught but ashes. Let Robert be king over charred bones and cooked meat. The Targaryens never bury their dead, they burn them. Aerys meant to have the greatest funeral pyre of them all. Though if truth be told, I do not believe he truly expected to die. Like Aerion Brightfire before him, Aerys thought the fire would transform him . . . that he would rise again, reborn as a dragon, and turn all his enemies to ash."

ASOS, Jaime V. So yeah, Aerys was indeed crazy and he wanted to burn the city out of spite.

This does seem like better evidence. Since GRRM has told us that his narrators cannot always be relied upon, however, it does seem as if Jaime is not an objective source for information about Aerys. Not only because Jaime is a Lannister, but also because he was so young when he joined the kings guard.

It may be an open-and-shut case, and Aerys was simply planning to incinerate the city, as you say. I have the feeling there is more to the story, though. Either way, this was a sort of tangential idea to the main topic.

8 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

Ok, this is a bit of an interesting point you have made. I agree with the symbolic  fire/sex thing. Daenerys is the bride of fire, she was wed to the flames during Drogo's pyre. I made a more detailed post here, if you have the want to peek at it. But to continue on with the story, later we get:

The Princess and the Queen

...Meanwhile, Seasmoke rolled and banked and looped. One instant he would be below his foe, and suddenly he would twist in the sky and come around behind her. Higher and higher the two dragons flew, as hundreds watched from the roofs of Tumbleton. One such said afterward that the flight of Tessarion and Seasmoke seemed more mating dance than battle. Perhaps it was.

A Dance with Dragons - Daenerys IX

Dizzy, Dany closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she glimpsed the Meereenese beneath her through a haze of tears and dust, pouring up the steps and out into the streets.

The lash was still in her hand. She flicked it against Drogon's neck and cried, "Higher!" Her other hand clutched at his scales, her fingers scrabbling for purchase. Drogon's wide black wings beat the air. Dany could feel the heat of him between her thighs. Her heart felt as if it were about to burst. Yes, she thought, yes, now, now, do it, do it, take me, take me, FLY!

Excellent examples!

[ravenous reader]

Quote

"It is given to a few to drink of that green fountain whilst still in mortal flesh, to hear the whisperings of the leaves and see as the trees see, as the gods see" 

It's a metaphor for greenseeing.  I don't believe wildfire is dragon blood literally.  Figuratively, a greenseer is a dragon, so yes.

[Natruviath]

 

On 3/23/2018 at 9:12 AM, Seams said:

I did a quick search and didn't find a topic directly addressing this, although I think @By Odin's Beard pretty much hit the nail on the head in a post on a previous thread.

The alchemists aren't creating wildfire using a secret recipe, they are extracting dragon blood - probably from places where dragons have died - and putting it in jars.

This might also explain the Dornish letter that caused Aegon the Conqueror to give up his efforts to conquer Dorne: when the dragon Meraxes died in Dorne, the Dornish people discovered the properties of dragon blood and bottled enough of it to create a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. If Aegon didn't back off, the Martells would use wildfire / dragon blood to destroy Aegon's nearest and dearest. Maybe they had rigged Dragonstone to blow, and that's why Aegon flew there before signing the armistice the next day. He wanted to see whether the Dornish threat had teeth.

The "Green Blood" river takes on a new meaning as a line that cannot be crossed.

It might also explain why the Pyromancers discovered that there was a lot of wildfire under the dragonpit when a sex worker and her customer fell through the floor of the pit into an underground storage area. Several dragons died in the storming of the dragon pit. Maybe the wildfire wasn't stored there, as Hallyne implied to Tyrion, but it seeped into the ground from the bodies of the dead dragons, waiting to be extracted. And it was not a coincidence that the cache was discovered by people having sex, if there was any element of romance involved.

The wordplay on "pyromancer" might be a key hint. When Dany is in Drogo's burning funeral pyre, she imagines having sex with him: it's a pyre romance. This may be the "magical" thing that allows her to survive the fire and to hatch the dragon eggs - you can't have the pyre without the romance, if you want the eggs to hatch. Hallyne is a pyromancer (alchemist) and he tells Tyrion, "The substance flows through my veins, and lives in the heart of every pyromancer. We respect its power" (Clash, Tyrion V). So Dany's success at hatching the eggs, after others failed, is because she is a "pyre-romancer" instead of just a power-hungry would-be ruler. She is the blood of the dragon.

I'm re-reading The Hedge Knight, and this idea came to me as I was reading about Aerion Brightflame being upset by the "death" of the dragon puppet. The sawdust from the puppet spills onto the ground as the two puppeteers - Tanselle and the Dornish woman - act out the painted wooden knight battling the painted wooden dragon, cutting off the dragon's head. Red sawdust spills onto the ground from the dragon's severed neck. Dunk is smitten with the puppeteer, so there is the romance. Aerion Brightflame finds it treasonous that the dragon dies in the puppet show, but maybe he is especially worried about the depiction of the dragon bleeding. He will later die after drinking wildfire, thinking it would transform him into a dragon. No romance in that dragon-hatching effort.

This is also leading me to new thoughts about wildfire. I have suspected that Mad King Aerys wasn't as "mad" as people believed him to be. Or, perhaps, he was mad in a different way than suspected. What if he knew that dragon blood / wildfire was the best and only way to defend King's Landing from an invasion by The Others? He wasn't planning to burn down the city as payback to usurpers, he was trying to create a defensive weapon to protect the city from ice zombies.

I'm pretty sure that there were only a few Targaryen dragons (like maximum 30). Besides, the blood would have dried up after more than 150 years in the ground. There are dragons that died in the sea, but then it would be impossible to extract the blood from the water