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Targaryen Illness


Gnobbels

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22 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

But this is a world of hierarchy. The setting is that of a feudal monarchy. Somebody is at the top. I despise monarchy and aristocracy but I can differentiate between a fantasy world and reality.

Well Targaryens didn't think they were just kings, they saw themselves as demi-gods and a separate group of people above all the other humans. We as readers don't have to agree with their own views about their place in that hierarchy. It's called critical thinking. 

23 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

 It is factually correct that the Targaryens are the rulers of Westeros and that they are set apart from 'lesser men' insofar as they can ride dragons and others can't. Whether that means they are superior to other people in any meaningful way aside from the fact that they rule other people is a separate question. But they are different on a real level. That's not just imagined.

Different...to what end. Probably not so different that they are legitimate superhuman or a master race. They're often proven incorrect about that; this thinking turns into hubris. You can tell in F&B...the Targaryens are a classic Ozymandias or Icarus story. 

And it's interesting that you talk about in "general" about Targaryens when their differences are framed neutrally, but people can't do the same thing when describing their negative qualities? hmmm

33 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

It is shown in FaB how Jaehaerys I and Alysanne do fall victim to their own propaganda. Targaryens might be more resilient to many diseases but not all of them are immune to disease - and they themselves should know.

Why would you trust anything coming from their own house that serves to justify their own superiority? Why aren't you more of a skeptic? Dont be a dupe.

34 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

 And it seems clear that the only diseases they have this heightened resilience against are infectious diseases, not things like strokes (Aegon I), cancer (possibly Visenya), digestive tract diseases brought about by wrong food (King Aenys), or hereditary diseases/weak constitution (from which at least Archmaester Vaegon and King Aerys I suffered).

Eh, I doubt that too, it's just more master race b.s.. Plus there are infectious diseases that are asymptomatic. Daenerys could have a ton of STI's from fucking Daario and she might never know. 

40 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

It is textual evidence we have. You cannot ignore that and pretend that she was sick and only misremembers. It might be she is mistaken about that considering she wouldn't remember her own infancy but at this point we have no evidence for that.

If you judged all POV's according to their own beliefs as "textual evidence," there would be no room for unreliable narrator as a literary device. What a bland book that would be. 

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"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

--A proclamation by the pigs who control the government in the novel Animal Farm, by George Orwell.

"Doctrine of Exceptionalism. Its basic tenet was simple. The Faith of the Seven had been born in the hills of Andalos of old, and had crossed the narrow sea with the Andals. The laws of the Seven, as laid down in sacred text and taught by the septas and septons in obedience to the Father of the Faithful, decreed that brother might not lie with sister, nor father with daughter, nor mother with son, that the fruits of such unions were abominations, loathsome in the eyes of the gods. All this the Exceptionalists affirmed, but with this caveat: the Targaryens were different. Their roots were not in Andalos, but in Valyria of old, where different laws and traditions held sway. A man had only to look at them to know that they were not like other men; their eyes, their hair, their very bearing, all proclaimed their differences. And they flew dragons. They alone of all the men in the world had been given the power to tame those fearsome beasts, once the Doom had come to Valyria. “One god made us all, Andals and Valyrians and First Men,” Septon Alfyn would proclaim from his litter, “but he did not make us all alike. He made the lion and the aurochs as well, both noble beasts, but certain gifts he gave to one and not the other, and the lion cannot live as an aurochs, nor an aurochs as a lion. For you to bed your sister would be a grievous sin, ser…but you are not the blood of the dragon, no more than I am. What they do is what they have always done, and it is not for us to judge them.”

-- Fire & Blood

GRRM had a little more to add to this "exceptionalism" idea, but the message is the same. What did we learn about the pigs in the end? That is the takeaway.

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2 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

Well Targaryens didn't think they were just kings, they saw themselves as demi-gods and a separate group of people above all the other humans. We as readers don't have to agree with their own views about their place in that hierarchy. It's called critical thinking. 

I'll agree with you up to the point when they lost their dragons.  After that there doesn't appear to be anything quite so special about being a Targaryen, other than the sovereignty their forefathers and mothers created.

But when they had dragons... that seems to create a hierarchy whether you like it or not.

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18 hours ago, Frey family reunion said:

I'll agree with you up to the point when they lost their dragons.  After that there doesn't appear to be anything quite so special about being a Targaryen, other than the sovereignty their forefathers and mothers created.

But when they had dragons... that seems to create a hierarchy whether you like it or not.

Targaryens can kill more people more efficiently than other people. Are people that fly fighter jets or drop bombs better than people who dont or can't? It doesn't really justify a hierarchy in all aspects of life. 

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On 10/10/2019 at 8:05 PM, Rose of Red Lake said:

Well Targaryens didn't think they were just kings, they saw themselves as demi-gods and a separate group of people above all the other humans. We as readers don't have to agree with their own views about their place in that hierarchy. It's called critical thinking. 

They don't see themselves that way - they make people believe they are 'demi-gods' and better (or more different in a special way from 'lesser men' than other royalty/nobility). That is propaganda.

In fact, the Doctrine of Excpeptionalism is basically the same shit real world nobility and royalty fed the lowborn for thousands of you word - that highborn people are a different race and set apart from the rabble by virtue of birth. But that doesn't make it true - it makes it a powerful propaganda tool. However, the part that's true in Martinworld is that the Targaryens are different than 'lesser men' insofar as the dragonriding thing is concerned. That's no propaganda.

Whether the fact that you can ride dragons sets you so much apart from other people that you can rule over them is a question that everybody has to answer for himself. The books don't do that for you.

However, I see no reason why any noble prick should be allowed to exploit and his fellow human beings the way the shitty aristocrats of Westeros do. And the Targaryens are actually not that bad in that regard - Aerys II burning nobles is actually a good thing. The lords are the people who make the smallfolk suffer in Westeros, not the kings. Most Kings on the Iron Throne curbed the arbitrary rule and cruelty of the lords and strengthened the position of the smallfolk (although they didn't get very far in this regard).

On 10/10/2019 at 8:05 PM, Rose of Red Lake said:

And it's interesting that you talk about in "general" about Targaryens when their differences are framed neutrally, but people can't do the same thing when describing their negative qualities? hmmm

It is rather obvious that the dragonriding thing is actually a genetic trait whereas individual actions of people - which allows you to judge them on a moral scale - are individual actions.

On 10/10/2019 at 8:05 PM, Rose of Red Lake said:

Why would you trust anything coming from their own house that serves to justify their own superiority? Why aren't you more of a skeptic? Dont be a dupe.

Because the Targaryens are not the only source for this thing.

On 10/10/2019 at 8:05 PM, Rose of Red Lake said:

Eh, I doubt that too, it's just more master race b.s.. Plus there are infectious diseases that are asymptomatic. Daenerys could have a ton of STI's from fucking Daario and she might never know. 

We are not going to see or discuss invisible diseases in those books.

On 10/10/2019 at 8:05 PM, Rose of Red Lake said:

If you judged all POV's according to their own beliefs as "textual evidence," there would be no room for unreliable narrator as a literary device. What a bland book that would be. 

At this point there is no reason to assume Dany believing she was never sick is supposed to be her being an unreliable narrator. The moment to believe that would be if other characters/sources would tell us or imply she was actually sick in the past and misremembered.

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On 10/10/2019 at 10:36 PM, The Fattest Leech said:

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

GRRM had a little more to add to this "exceptionalism" idea, but the message is the same. What did we learn about the pigs in the end? That is the takeaway.

That is basically the tenet of all aristocracies and monarchies - people are better than others by virtue of breeding and birth. In George's series, the Targaryens are those who are most honest about this trait - they prefer to marry their own. The other nobles only restrict themselves to their class.

But what makes you noble or royal is your birth - you are the scion of a noble family with a noble family tree that stretches hundreds generations back into the past. If you don't fit those criteria - if one child is a peasant and the other is noble - you are not even eligible to inherit a throne.

The idea that there is a dichotomy in those books between 'cool/good nobility' and the incest brats is laughable. They are all the same - and by modern standards they all deserve to die to free the people of Westeros from tyranny and arbitrary rule.

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4 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

However, I see no reason why any noble prick should be allowed to exploit and his fellow human beings the way the shitty aristocrats of Westeros do. And the Targaryens are actually not that bad in that regard - Aerys II burning nobles is actually a good thing. The lords are the people who make the smallfolk suffer in Westeros, not the kings. Most Kings on the Iron Throne curbed the arbitrary rule and cruelty of the lords and strengthened the position of the smallfolk (although they didn't get very far in this regard).

Is it?? Great Lords are very much alike their Kings, each of them ruling their vast  lands without really knowing what happen, there is no evidence Rickard was the Roose Bolton-Tywin type, so saying his death was good is... The same goes  for Chelsted who was burned because he didn't want Aerys to commit another genocide. The only Kings who actually helped the smsallfolk are were Aegon I, Alyssane and  Barth.... Mmm Jaeharys I i mean and  Egg, the rest didn't care about them and  they had the poder they curbed from the nobility.

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2 minutes ago, frenin said:

Is it?? Great Lords are very much alike their Kings, each of them ruling their vast  lands without really knowing what happen, there is no evidence Rickard was the Roose Bolton-Tywin type, so saying his death was good is... The same goes  for Chelsted who was burned because he didn't want Aerys to commit another genocide. The only Kings who actually helped the smsallfolk are were Aegon I, Alyssane and  Barth.... Mmm Jaeharys I i mean and  Egg, the rest didn't care about them and  they had the poder they curbed from the nobility.

The smallfolk are only in as shitty a position as they are because the nobility exploit them like parasites. They do not need lords to tell them what to do or to take taxes from them ... instead the lords very much need the smallfolk. Without them they would have to, you know, get a decent job and stop sitting around their asses.

The great lords have a lot of power - but they are not kings. They are part of the noble class and as such their interests are to increase both their own power against the Iron Throne and against the common people - who would profit if the king strengthened the position of the commoners while weakening the position of the nobility.

This is not a personal view - not the good lord vs. the bad lord - but the classes against each other.

And this goes, of course, also for the monarchy as such. There are no good kings - because the system as such sucks.

Historically, the road towards emancipation and revolution led from a medieval feudalism (i.e. the Westerosi system) to absolutism, to democracy. And the worst system for the average person is feudalism where there is no real state, no proper rule of law, and the common good is more often than not in the hands of lords who care (only) about their own power and wealth - which is not to be had without blood feuds, petty wars, etc.

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59 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

The smallfolk are only in as shitty a position as they are because the nobility exploit them like parasites. They do not need lords to tell them what to do or to take taxes from them ... instead the lords very much need the smallfolk. Without them they would have to, you know, get a decent job and stop sitting around their asses.

And the Kings entirely benefit from said exploit, or do you think the Kings would rather  reduce the smallfolk labour day, getting less taxes with that??

Where the crowns wealth comes from?? They just tax what other people, nobles, merchants, smallfolk produce either directly or indirectly, the nobles being the middle man don't erase the guilt of the royalties.

The Lannisters would be the only ones that shouldn't rely  of the smallfolk as much as the others do, the familes that run business, Redwynes or Velaryons, or who run profitable cities or towns , Manderlys, Hightowers, Mootons, Darklyns or Grafton the others... But we do know who makes the emgineers work at the end of the day even in those cases.

 

 

59 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

The great lords have a lot of power - but they are not kings. They are part of the noble class and as such their interests are to increase both their own power against the Iron Throne and against the common people - who would profit if the king strengthened the position of the commoners while weakening the position of the nobility.

They are very much like Kings and  act like Kings within their own domains, the Kings also are part of the noble class, they just want more power  for themselves, just as the rest of nobles.

The lesser lords  would also want advance  their positions and  free  themselves, if only a little, from the yoke of their overlords and  so on, it doesn't make sense putting the Starks and  the Lannisters in the same pack the Tarlys or, worst even, the Baelish or the Connigtons, every faction would see for them, sometimes  the goals are very much the same, Egg and  even then the Great Lords would've supported him had he given  them royal  matches, sometimes the Great Lords would reasonably back their King and their peers against the lesser Lords, Duskendale or Castamere.

Even the views of really powerful lesser Lords such as the Redwynes, the Hightowers, the Yronwoods or the Manderlys should differ  with their overlords and  they would want more power  than their overlords currently give them and  we shouldn't talk about the second tiers Houses, Yronwoods, Reynes, Royces or Boltons

No, the smallfolk profiting of the power of the King, entirely depends of every King, just as happen with the nobility.

 

 

59 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

This is not a personal view - not the good lord vs. the bad lord - but the classes against each other.

I agree but the royalty are not all a separated class, they are just a faction in the nobility.

 

59 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Historically, the road towards emancipation and revolution led from a medieval feudalism (i.e. the Westerosi system) to absolutism, to democracy. And the worst system for the average person is feudalism where there is no real state, no proper rule of law, and the common good is more often than not in the hands of lords who care (only) about their own power and wealth - which is not to be had without blood feuds, petty wars, etc.

Completely agree on that regard.

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On 8/9/2019 at 3:35 AM, Gnobbels said:

Hello! I am new to the website so forgive me if this has been brought up elsewhere and I missed it. I'm curious why Viserys and Daenarys of ASOIAF would be under the impression that Targaryens are immune to illnesses. Reading through both companion pieces, it seems that a decent number of Targaryens died of some illness or another, not to mention the girl that died of the shivers and Aegon the Unworthy catching the pox. Their own grandfather died at 37 years old of a short illness that included shortness of breath. I know that Daenarys believes this based only on what Viserys told her but why would he believe that to be true? 

I would not discount it.  The Targaryens are special people.  The resistance to sickness is recorded in some members of the clan.  Viserys believed it because he and his little sister are proof.  They never got sick.  That is a strong evidence for the Targaryen ability to fight off infectious diseases. 

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3 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

That is basically the tenet of all aristocracies and monarchies - people are better than others by virtue of breeding and birth. In George's series, the Targaryens are those who are most honest about this trait - they prefer to marry their own. The other nobles only restrict themselves to their class.

But what makes you noble or royal is your birth - you are the scion of a noble family with a noble family tree that stretches hundreds generations back into the past. If you don't fit those criteria - if one child is a peasant and the other is noble - you are not even eligible to inherit a throne.

The idea that there is a dichotomy in those books between 'cool/good nobility' and the incest brats is laughable. They are all the same - and by modern standards they all deserve to die to free the people of Westeros from tyranny and arbitrary rule.

The message that Animal Farm tells is that utopia cannot exist because there is always someone/some class that wants to rewrite the laws/stories to make themselves seem true/godlike because they want (absolute) power. That's what the Targs did and bless GRRM for publishing Fire & Blood to show the reader this. The dragons weren't even supposed to be part of the story in the beginning (I do know that you know that :thumbsup:), the fire was a pyrokinesis talent not unlike warging (more evenly matched), but by adding the dragons, something GRRM has called (more than once) nuclear weapons, he gave the Targs/Valyrians a major external temptation... and they succumbed. They are no better than anyone else that has an unstoppable power at their command (see: Tywin or Cersei). I agree with others that, again, especially after Fire & Blood, the Targ are grandstanding themselves for selfish reasons. Aside from the rare few Targ/Valyrians, they failed at using their powers (dragons) wisely. And they have just consumed themselves (as fire does). Other than controlling/bonding with dragons, they are born, live, and die as everyone else does, as seen more drastically when the dragons do die off. Chances are other families have a mixed-in magic blood as well, most likely because of very different means and methods, but we have yet to see any other family rewrite the books to make themselves as above gods and men.

Not 100% sure what you mean by your last statement that I highlighted. Which books are "those books"? Animal Farm is one book/story. Do you mean the ASOIAF series as published now?

I do agree that incest brats/hierarchy/human ownership is laughable, and I will add deplorable, as in every single darn story where GRRM uses incest (actual or implied) and it is a major, major failure each and every time. Martin is not setting up a "nobility is right" story and having any one family return to rule from the iron throne. He is casting that whole system to the wind.

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On 10/10/2019 at 11:17 AM, Lord Varys said:

Dany was never sick throughout her entire life

That is simply not a fact. How can you support such claim?

I don’t remember being sick as a child, my first memory of sickness is from my teens, but my mom is adamant I have been taken ill countless times. 

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On 10/10/2019 at 2:23 PM, Lord Varys said:

It is factually correct that the Targaryens are the rulers of Westeros 

WERE the rules of Westeros 

 

On 10/10/2019 at 2:23 PM, Lord Varys said:

It is not all diseases as history shows - but it seems that more common diseases (i.e. those who might not be magical like greyscale - or possibly both the Shivers and the Winter Fever) really seem to have a hard time affecting the Targaryens.

Targaryens are simply well-fed people living a comfortable and relatively santinzed existence when compared with the rest of Westeros. OF COURSE THEY HAVE BETTEE IMMUNE SYSTEMS. It’s not because they have a genetic predispositions to be so, it’s because they are overall healthier, like most (but not all) nobles.

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8 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

They don't see themselves that way - they make people believe they are 'demi-gods' and better (or more different in a special way from 'lesser men' than other royalty/nobility). That is propaganda.

They absolutely see themselves that way????

Here are two passages where it directly states that Targaryens themselves believe they are close to gods:

Quote

“Even as they mourned for her and the sweet soul she had been, Jaehaerys and Alysanne must also have been confronting that awful realization. Mayhaps the Targaryens were not so close to gods as they had believed. Mayhaps, in the end, they too were only men.” - F&B

Quote

“Up here in her garden Dany sometimes felt like a god, living atop the highest mountain in the world.” - Daenerys, ASOS

And Targaryens aren't a separate race, but they believe their "fire in the blood" gives them special powers:

Quote

“Targaryens did not die of pox or the bloody flux, they were not afflicted with redspots or brownleg or the shaking sickness, they would not succumb to wormbone or clotted lung or sourgut or any of the myriad pestilences and contagions that the gods, for reasons of their own, see fit to loose on mortal men and women. There was fire in the blood of the dragon, it was reasoned, a purifying fire that burned out all such plagues” - F&B

So if they're not mortal men what do they think they are? Immortal?

This is all superstitious junk and also quite Nazi coded. If the Targaryens actually had diseases resistance, this sentence would be true, and the Targaryens would be in-universe superhumans, better than "mortal men and women." The author would be hardwiring that into the narrative.

But the author also singled out little Daenerys I to die of a "pestilence and contagion." Hmm...I wonder what he was saying here?

 

8 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

It is rather obvious that the dragonriding thing is actually a genetic trait whereas individual actions of people - which allows you to judge them on a moral scale - are individual actions.

Targaryens want to be praised as a group so we should be able to critique them as a group. So I'll continue to do that. I don't understand why people have such a hard on for a bunch of Neros and Caligulas with dragons. Maybe one good king out of the whole mess - not worth it. They can't handle that much power. 

8 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

We are not going to see or discuss invisible diseases in those books.

The books aren't giving us a list of DSM codes or population health statistics. People in-universe are just guessing about what they have or don't have. Daenerys could be infertile due to inbreeding. Infertility is an invisible disease. All we can do is speculate.

8 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

At this point there is no reason to assume Dany believing she was never sick is supposed to be her being an unreliable narrator. The moment to believe that would be if other characters/sources would tell us or imply she was actually sick in the past and misremembered.

"Have you ever seen a dragon with the flux?" is a statement loaded with hubris. If Theon or Victarion had made that boast, you can bet they would be shitting their guts out by the end of the novel. Is the author saying that yes, his special precious Daenerys does actually have better genes than everyone else, and that she is correct about Targaryen supremacy, as she is about most things? Puke.

While it's not clear if Dany got the flux or not, it seems like the author is begging us to examine her statements, since they don't even make sense. She can't remember being sick (and I can't remember having the chicken pox), and therefore, Targaryens are immune to disease? What?!? Come on man this is so basic...

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7 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

They are all the same - and by modern standards they all deserve to die to free the people of Westeros from tyranny and arbitrary rule.

Kill all nobility...viola problem solved. Like GRRM would ever make it that simple. I've noticed how Targ fans are usually the ones to take on this ridiculous, simplified, and unrealistic stance, and I get the feeling it's not out of concern for any real equality. What I hear is, if Dany can't have the throne, no one can.

More likely, people can choose a king or queen, over another. And if the loser doesn't respect that, then it's tyranny.

I think that's a good start and also, realistic. 

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9 hours ago, Lady Dacey said:

Targaryens are simply well-fed people living a comfortable and relatively santinzed existence when compared with the rest of Westeros. OF COURSE THEY HAVE BETTEE IMMUNE SYSTEMS. It’s not because they have a genetic predispositions to be so, it’s because they are overall healthier, like most (but not all) nobles.

Yes - good diet, not mixing in the general disease and filth-ridden mass of humanity, and getting lots of healthy exercise and all that, is bound to make them generally 'healthier'. Exactly -  it's not magic or being special, it's just good public health.

 

9 hours ago, Lady Dacey said:

I don’t remember being sick as a child, my first memory of sickness is from my teens, but my mom is adamant I have been taken ill countless times. 

Really??? I had chicken pox at three or four, a bad flu at seven, and repeated tonsilitis from age three or so most years... I remember it all. I even remember the little blue antibiotics I had to take with my milk, and could never seem to swallow no matter how tiny they were...

Then again, I can still remember sleeping in a cot in my parent's bedroom, and that must have been before I was two years old. I am really so unusual in that?

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15 hours ago, frenin said:

And the Kings entirely benefit from said exploit, or do you think the Kings would rather  reduce the smallfolk labour day, getting less taxes with that??

Historically, kings and commoners are - and have been - natural allies against the nobility. Because neither the king nor the commoners do not necessarily need the nobility to run the country. Kings certainly also can - and do - exploit the common people, but overall feudalism is much worse than an absolutist monarchy because the latter only has one guy to leech from them, and not also a bunch of nobles.

Also, a royal bureaucracy/military is, for the most part, based on commoners, meaning that a broader class of commoners profits from that than in feudal setting.

In a feudal setting like Westeros pretty much all the political power is in the hand of the noble class, whereas the commoners have no power.

15 hours ago, frenin said:

The lesser lords  would also want advance  their positions and  free  themselves, if only a little, from the yoke of their overlords and  so on, it doesn't make sense putting the Starks and  the Lannisters in the same pack the Tarlys or, worst even, the Baelish or the Connigtons, every faction would see for them, sometimes  the goals are very much the same, Egg and  even then the Great Lords would've supported him had he given  them royal  matches, sometimes the Great Lords would reasonably back their King and their peers against the lesser Lords, Duskendale or Castamere.

The great houses of Westeros don't have the same interests as the kings. Unlike real high nobility, they aren't even heavily interrelated with the kings, nor themselves cadet branches of the royal family (like all of the original English dukes were, for instance).

13 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

The message that Animal Farm tells is that utopia cannot exist because there is always someone/some class that wants to rewrite the laws/stories to make themselves seem true/godlike because they want (absolute) power.

No, 'Animal Farm' is an analogy about how a communist revolution can become repressive. This is a very specific theme, not something that's to be generalized. George Orwell knew what he was writing about and what troubles he had with the Stalinists.

13 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

The dragons weren't even supposed to be part of the story in the beginning (I do know that you know that :thumbsup:), the fire was a pyrokinesis talent not unlike warging (more evenly matched), but by adding the dragons, something GRRM has called (more than once) nuclear weapons, he gave the Targs/Valyrians a major external temptation... and they succumbed.

George has clarified that 'the dragons' in that dedication stand for magic in general. It was the decision between (the amount of) magic ASoIaF was supposed to contain. George wasn't sure about what he wanted to write originally - high fantasy of the type he ended to write, or more something along the lines of merely a fake medieval conventional world. If he hadn't put the dragons in, so to speak, there wouldn't have been any direwolves, either, one assumes.

And regardless what George says - the dragons are not nuclear weapons. They are at best equivalent to conventional bombers who could, at best, destroy one house in a single run. Even one of Aegon's dragons could not destroy an entire castle in a single run. They would have to fly at it again and again - or perch in the middle of it an entire night (as Balerion did with Harrenhal).

13 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

They are no better than anyone else that has an unstoppable power at their command (see: Tywin or Cersei). I agree with others that, again, especially after Fire & Blood, the Targ are grandstanding themselves for selfish reasons. Aside from the rare few Targ/Valyrians, they failed at using their powers (dragons) wisely. And they have just consumed themselves (as fire does). Other than controlling/bonding with dragons, they are born, live, and die as everyone else does, as seen more drastically when the dragons do die off. Chances are other families have a mixed-in magic blood as well, most likely because of very different means and methods, but we have yet to see any other family rewrite the books to make themselves as above gods and men.

There are no indications that there are other magical families - or if there were, then nobody stresses the fact that this magical blood makes them special nor did they succeed in using that special blood to their advantage to rule other people.

I mean, it is silly to buy the routine that the Targaryens being dragonriders means they have the right to rule others. But they still are different than others because they have dragons. Whether that means they have the right to rule over others is a question you have to answer for yourself.

But the point is that this kind of routine is the justification for all noble or royal rule - nobles and kings are better than the lowborn rabble by right of birth and blood. That is the justification for that kind of society - and if you care about equality then you you don't side with nobles who are 'suppressed' by a particular royal family but you condemn the entire shitty system.

But this is not part of George's story - if it were he wouldn't write from the POVs of nobles, but would care to give us the view of the common people and their fight against oppression. But that's clearly not the theme of the series.

13 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

Not 100% sure what you mean by your last statement that I highlighted. Which books are "those books"? Animal Farm is one book/story. Do you mean the ASOIAF series as published now?

Sure.

13 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

I do agree that incest brats/hierarchy/human ownership is laughable, and I will add deplorable, as in every single darn story where GRRM uses incest (actual or implied) and it is a major, major failure each and every time. Martin is not setting up a "nobility is right" story and having any one family return to rule from the iron throne. He is casting that whole system to the wind.

This has nothing to do with the incest thing. The incest thing is just the most extreme way in which nobles/royal set themselves apart from 'lesser men'. In fact, the point of the Doctrine of Exceptionalism is not to justify Targaryen rule - which is already accepted by that time - it is justify their incest practices. But if they had given up those during the reign of Aenys or Jaehaerys I their rule as such would have remained the same. It would have continued to be shitty by modern standards.

12 hours ago, Lady Dacey said:

That is simply not a fact. How can you support such claim?

I don’t remember being sick as a child, my first memory of sickness is from my teens, but my mom is adamant I have been taken ill countless times. 

Well, if a character tells us she was never sick and actually had a brother who was older than she to tell her if she had been sick in times she couldn't remember herself then we can take her at her word there, no? At least while we have no reason to doubt her.

15 hours ago, Finley McLeod said:

I would not discount it.  The Targaryens are special people.  The resistance to sickness is recorded in some members of the clan.  Viserys believed it because he and his little sister are proof.  They never got sick.  That is a strong evidence for the Targaryen ability to fight off infectious diseases. 

Insofar as Dany herself and Viserys III they would have their own examples as confirmation of this. But one has to keep in mind that their own access to accurate knowledge about their family is not all that thorough. They grew up in exile, after all.

12 hours ago, Lady Dacey said:

Targaryens are simply well-fed people living a comfortable and relatively santinzed existence when compared with the rest of Westeros. OF COURSE THEY HAVE BETTEE IMMUNE SYSTEMS. It’s not because they have a genetic predispositions to be so, it’s because they are overall healthier, like most (but not all) nobles.

That is not true for Daenerys Targaryen or Viserys III. Viserys had a pampered childhood for his first seven years, and then he lived the life of a beggar in exile. Dany never had a privileged life at all, playing with urchins and lowborn children in the streets of the Free Cities.

Targaryens in power did not have a better life than most other wealthy noble families - yet nobody ever told tales about the heightened resilience of the Lannisters, Starks, Arryns, Hightowers, etc. to various diseases.

The stories that they don't get sick are wrong - that's an exaggeration. But nobody would have told those stories if people hadn't realized that they got sick less often than their peers.

12 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

They absolutely see themselves that way????

Here are two passages where it directly states that Targaryens themselves believe they are close to gods:

Sorry, the former is a historian's account about how they allegedly thought about themselves. Gyldayn's claim does not necessarily accurately reflect Jaehaerys I's own views. It would mean the guy actually believed his own propaganda. That makes little sense.

And the other is actually laughable considering it is quote illustrating how Daenerys Targaryen felt living atop a pyramid. Anyone living up there would feel like a god. I mean, do you also take Di Caprio's claim that he is 'the king of the world' as evidence that he thinks that factually correct? It expresses how his character feels while looking down on the world from the prow of the Titanic.

12 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

And Targaryens aren't a separate race, but they believe their "fire in the blood" gives them special powers:

And this might actually be the case - just not to the degree their sycophants preached to Westeros.

12 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

So if they're not mortal men what do they think they are? Immortal?

Different from other men.

12 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

This is all superstitious junk and also quite Nazi coded. If the Targaryens actually had diseases resistance, this sentence would be true, and the Targaryens would be in-universe superhumans, better than "mortal men and women." The author would be hardwiring that into the narrative.

No, this kind of thing has nothing to do with Nazi stuff - the Nazis differentiated between Aryans and other so-called races, meaning vast populations of human beings. Here we are talking just about a single family which is actually different in some parts from other people. And what sets them apart is used to justify their marriage practices.

This is akin to aristocratic and monarchistic elitism which basically justified the birth rights, wealth, and power of nobles and royalty by the fact that they are set apart from normal people by their blood. And this is the case in Westeros for all nobility, not just for the Targaryens because all nobility intermarry with themselves and not with the peasantry they oppress, look down, and exploit.

12 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

But the author also singled out little Daenerys I to die of a "pestilence and contagion." Hmm...I wonder what he was saying here?

He made it clear that not all Targaryens are immune to all diseases.

12 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

Targaryens want to be praised as a group so we should be able to critique them as a group. So I'll continue to do that. I don't understand why people have such a hard on for a bunch of Neros and Caligulas with dragons. Maybe one good king out of the whole mess - not worth it. They can't handle that much power. 

LOL, Targaryens do not exist. They don't want anything. George has created individual fictional characters, not collectives that behave identical.

12 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

The books aren't giving us a list of DSM codes or population health statistics. People in-universe are just guessing about what they have or don't have. Daenerys could be infertile due to inbreeding. Infertility is an invisible disease. All we can do is speculate.

Or we can wait until we have reason to speculate. I mean, we could also speculate that Robb never had red hair by supposing all POV characters suffer from dyschromatopsia ... but we would not have any reason of doing that, no?

12 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

"Have you ever seen a dragon with the flux?" is a statement loaded with hubris. If Theon or Victarion had made that boast, you can bet they would be shitting their guts out by the end of the novel. Is the author saying that yes, his special precious Daenerys does actually have better genes than everyone else, and that she is correct about Targaryen supremacy, as she is about most things? Puke.

Dany didn't mount the Pale Mare, did she? Despite the fact that she did hang out with many of its victims - just as Aegon III didn't catch the Winter Fever despite hanging out with many of the terminal cases. This is rather striking - as is the fact that many people carrying the blood of the dragon didn't catch the Shivers or recovered from it if they caught it.

12 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

While it's not clear if Dany got the flux or not, it seems like the author is begging us to examine her statements, since they don't even make sense. She can't remember being sick (and I can't remember having the chicken pox), and therefore, Targaryens are immune to disease? What?!? Come on man this is so basic...

It is very odd for someone in a world as shitty as Martinworld to never have been sick. Even if Dany were sick in her first three years without anyone never telling her, say - she should have been sick in from the 3-15 considering her lifestyle and contact with people. She traveled all the Free Cities and then the Dothraki Sea, the Red Waste, Qarth, Slaver's Bay. She would have been subjected to many new pathogens and yet she never got sick.

11 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

Kill all nobility...viola problem solved. Like GRRM would ever make it that simple. I've noticed how Targ fans are usually the ones to take on this ridiculous, simplified, and unrealistic stance, and I get the feeling it's not out of concern for any real equality. What I hear is, if Dany can't have the throne, no one can.

More likely, people can choose a king or queen, over another. And if the loser doesn't respect that, then it's tyranny.

I think that's a good start and also, realistic. 

LOL, you should really start to hate non-existing people. If you pretend to care about how non-existent people are suppressed the focus should be on the obvious structural injustices in this context - meaning monarchy, aristocracy, and feudalism as legal concept, and not personal animosity.

It would be good if the author actually actively took the side of the really oppressed - and gave a voice to field hands, peasants, thralls, etc. But he really doesn't. This is not book series about social change and reform. Instead it actually creates a medieval world that is, for the most part, actually worse than the real middle ages due to the fact that the smallfolk basically have neither a voice nor an agenda of their own - which people in the real world middle ages definitely had.

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1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

 Historically, kings and commoners are - and have been - natural allies against the nobility. Because neither the king nor the commoners do not necessarily need the nobility to run the country. Kings certainly also can - and do - exploit the common people, but overall feudalism is much worse than an absolutist monarchy because the latter only has one guy to leech from them, and not also a bunch of nobles.

Also, a royal bureaucracy/military is, for the most part, based on commoners, meaning that a broader class of commoners profits from that than in feudal setting.

In a feudal setting like Westeros pretty much all the political power is in the hand of the noble class, whereas the commoners have no power.

Historically?? Sure, in Westeros?? Not so much.

In the Planetos the nobility is just the middle man, the King exploits everyone and  those he doesn't exploit directly he does indirectly and  overall the least interested in promote a royal bureacracy are the Kings, until the Dragonbane, every King had the chance to make changes but they, Jaeharys being the primarily example of this, loved their buble in were only nobles were allowed to get in.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

The great houses of Westeros don't have the same interests as the kings. Unlike real high nobility, they aren't even heavily interrelated with the kings, nor themselves cadet branches of the royal family (like all of the original English dukes were, for instance).

Why not?? Do you think that the Great Houses would've sided with the Darklyns rather  than with their liege?? What message are they giving??

Do you think that the interest of the Arryns are the same of those as the Sunderlands?? It entirely depends of the interests  we're talking about.

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No, 'Animal Farm' is an analogy about how a communist revolution can become repressive. This is a very specific theme, not something that's to be generalized. George Orwell knew what he was writing about and what troubles he had with the Stalinists.

What I said earlier is very true of the story... and if you don't think Martin isn't pulling from communism to develop the Targs and Dany (as he did with a few past stories), then you are missing the deeper analysis of the story and Martin's inspirations. Danaerys is the Pale Child Bakkalon, what do you think that means?

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George has clarified that 'the dragons' in that dedication stand for magic in general. It was the decision between (the amount of) magic ASoIaF was supposed to contain. George wasn't sure about what he wanted to write originally - high fantasy of the type he ended to write, or more something along the lines of merely a fake medieval conventional world. If he hadn't put the dragons in, so to speak, there wouldn't have been any direwolves, either, one assumes.

Sure, it was about the level of magic and fantasy, but to add a direwolf, something that exists no matter what, is not an issue. You don't need to amp up the type of fantasy the story stylings are to include a direwolf. The Targs were going to get fire-kenisis magic, other people were getting skinchanging/warging/greenseeing.

So no, I do not assume that there would not have been direwolves just because of no dragons. They serve similar, yet very different purposes and the author will use them as his story requires.

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And regardless what George says - the dragons are not nuclear weapons. They are at best equivalent to conventional bombers who could, at best, destroy one house in a single run. Even one of Aegon's dragons could not destroy an entire castle in a single run. They would have to fly at it again and again - or perch in the middle of it an entire night (as Balerion did with Harrenhal).

Pah! Are you claiming you know more about this story and its foundational ideas than the actual author does? Martin has said so more than once, and most recently about 10-11 months ago. This is also based on his past works where the different dragon-vessels are also described as nuclear (among many other war machine terms)... by actual description. Sorry, but I am going with the author on this. Consider it foreshadowing.

ADDING: Dany's dragons are also not conventional dragons. They are "neverborn" undead dragons, born in blood and fire rituals that Dany performed. So much so that Dany gave them "dead" names as she notes in Clash-Dany 1. This is the intent GRRM had in mind when he started the series before adding tons of back material.

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There are no indications that there are other magical families

Disagree.

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- or if there were, then nobody stresses the fact that this magical blood makes them special nor did they succeed in using that special blood to their advantage to rule other people.

That is the point! Just because you may or may not have an advantage over a people, doesn't mean you should wield absolute power, or use that power to subjugate others if you do. That is corruption whether on a person-person level, or governmental/ruling level. That is ABSOLUTELY a theme he has written into ASOIAF as he did with his past stories, most clearly those like For A Single Yesterday, Fevre Dream, Skin Trade, Dark Dark Were the Tunnels, Override, Nightshift, etc, etc... Self control. Cup of ice/cup of fire type of decisions.

 

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