Why I think (f)Aegon has the blood to ride a Targaryen dragon.

[Frey family reunion]

Just now, Hippocras said:

We do, South of the Wall. Though I fully agree that these things were not that strongly connected North of the Wall, and it is interesting of course to discuss why that is.

But what evidence do we have that these abilities were more easily accessed South of the Wall?  Do we have a skinchanger who suddenly found his abilities enhanced?

[Hippocras]

1 hour ago, Frey family reunion said:

But what evidence do we have that these abilities were more easily accessed South of the Wall?  Do we have a skinchanger who suddenly found his abilities enhanced?

I would say so, yes. The Starks bonded with their animals certainly before the comet and the dragons, but the prophetic dreams and warging by Robb, Arya, probably Rickon and Bran was all after I think.

My guess is that all of the carriers of skinchanging abilities are able to bond with and have special relationships with certain animals and there may be some further evidence of this in the next Dunk and Egg. However the next step that leads to warging and the dreams that Rickon and Bran had requires a bit of extra amplification of the sort that the imminent arrival of dragons and the comet provided. Something that counteracts the suppression of the Wall.

 

The notion that this was a gift given to Bran and the other Stark kids by the greenseer is problematic I would say. It too fails to explain Varamyr - I mean, why would HE have been "chosen" to receive this gift? I do agree however that there is some element of choosing an heir that goes on when it comes to going beyond the dreams and the warging and becoming a greenseer. Bloodraven clearly had a role in the third eye.

[Jaenara Belarys]

3 hours ago, LynnS said:

If the maester wasn't drugging him to stop him from dreaming;  I wonder if he would be one of those kids who thinks he could fly by jumping off a tall cliff. 

Well, at least he isn't at the Eyrie anymore. He might want to learn how to fly. 

2 hours ago, Mister Smikes said:

The kid has a healthy instinct of self-preservation when it comes to heights.  He may have been brave, but was certainly not fearless, when he stepped out over the stone bridge that had paralyzed Catelyn.

But he had Sansa with him, so.....the situation is almost exactly like Cat and Mya. 

 

[Mister Smikes]

9 minutes ago, Jaenara Belarys said:

Well, at least he isn't at the Eyrie anymore. He might want to learn how to fly. 

He is certainly developing an interest in the old stories.

9 minutes ago, Jaenara Belarys said:

But he had Sansa with him, so.....the situation is almost exactly like Cat and Mya. 

Not exactly.  Sansa played the damsel in distress (nor perhaps was it entirely an act), and encouraged him to be brave for her sake.  Which circles back once again to the old stories and the ideals of knighthood.  Sansa and Robert walked across hand in hand with eyes open.  Catelyn walked across with eyes shut, Mya leading the way.

[Jaenara Belarys]

2 minutes ago, Mister Smikes said:

Not exactly.  Sansa played the damsel in distress (nor perhaps was it entirely an act), and encouraged him to be brave for her sake.  Which circles back once again to the old stories and the ideals of knighthood.  Sansa and Robert walked across hand in hand with eyes open.  Catelyn walked across with eyes shut, Mya leading the way.

True.

3 minutes ago, Mister Smikes said:

Not exactly.  Sansa played the damsel in distress (nor perhaps was it entirely an act), and encouraged him to be brave for her sake.  Which circles back once again to the old stories and the ideals of knighthood.  Sansa and Robert walked across hand in hand with eyes open.  Catelyn walked across with eyes shut, Mya leading the way.

Well, I hope he lives long enough to get a ride on Drogon or one of the dragons. I think he'd like that. 

[Mister Smikes]

3 hours ago, Jaenara Belarys said:

Well, I hope he lives long enough to get a ride on Drogon or one of the dragons. I think he'd like that. 

Sure.  Though, if this true-knight-in-training theme continues, Sweetrobin and Drogon might end up with a conflict of interest.  True knights defend maidens;  whereas Drogon apparently eats maidens.

[Lord Varys]

17 hours ago, Hippocras said:

We don't actually know that. You keep making the exact same mistake: confusing information not yet revealed as information that will never come. There are two huge novels left in the main series, probably at least two more Dunk and Egg novellas, and another history book as well. The secrets are revealing themselves slowly, in part because the characters themselves don't know them all yet.

So far we have no hint that the main revelations to come are going to be about the female bloodlines of tertiary noble families. There is a lot of stuff to be revealed in any case, and most of that will have to do with the plot to come (the promised prince, the Others, certain background details about the origins and relationships of crucial characters with other characters who are dead already).

I just don't think it is particularly likely that the author is going to reveal a lot about how certain magical talents came into being. I don't expect to get the origin of the Valyrian dragonlords in ASoIaF ... and the dragonrider thing will only be relevant as a plot device - meaning who can and will become a dragonrider and who might try and fail.

17 hours ago, Hippocras said:

@Frey family reunion is completely correct that the social pressure to keep such things hidden has been a very large factor ever since the Andal invasions. Furthermore, the history people DO have access to was written down by maesters, who are precisely the same people who have been denying the existence of such things and suppressing people's expression of it. So if you were a skinchanger, you would not be inclinded to tell the maester about it and it would then not get written down.

That is actually not true for the North. There were no Andals there, and most likely not maesters 500-1,000 years ago.

I agree that maesters may have prevented some potential skinchangers from developing their abilities properly ... but any king or powerful lord who happens to be a skinchanger - or a warrior or warlord - would use those abilities to his advantage and subsequently leave his marks on history.

And that doesn't seem to have happened. Skinchanger stories are as rare in the North as they are in the Reach - where only some of the heroes of the ancient days are skinchangers.

Also, keep in mind that the wildlings also don't cherish or love skinchangers. They ostracize them to, separate them from their natural families and force them to live with their own. They are feared as freaks, not revered as heroes.

But if there were 'skinchanger bloodlines' - if there were noble families where there were more skinchangers than in the average population of peasants - then those skinchangers born to power as noblemen would have used their powers to expand their empires and tightened their control over their subjects.

It would have been so easy to paint the rise of the Starks to power as something that was especially pushed by Stark wargs - Kings of Winter who were surrounded by and used literal direwolves as weapons of war.

But unfortunately we got literally nothing of that sort.

And as long as that is the case the present generation of Stark skinchangers are basically an extraordinary miracle of the same sort as Dany hatching the dragon eggs.

17 hours ago, Hippocras said:

He wrote a history from the POV of maesters. And he doesn't WANT us to know everything right away and so easily. There are SUPPOSED to be surprises and discoveries, and things that people have kept hidden. And one of the fascinating things is that he doesn't even need to work that hard to keep things hidden because people are so biased to look only at the paternal line.

This is where you seem intent on ignoring the discussion of recessive traits, and the need for things to come from BOTH parents.

But us even figuring this out would mean we would get more information on the various female lines. Most Blackwood women, say, wouldn't have had Blackwood mothers.

17 hours ago, Hippocras said:

I will give as an example my son. He has red hair, as do I. For some people this fact may not seem surprising, but when you understand how red hair works genetically, then it very much IS a surprise. Nowhere in living memory in his father's family tree is there a single person with the slightest trace of red hair. So his father, without having red hair himself, was a carrier of a red hair gene that was passed on from some unknown ancestor more than 90 years ago. That is a long time. And, even if my husband is apparently a carrier of this gene, there is no guarantee at all that his siblings are carriers.

Oh, I know how this works, but this kind of real world genetics thing clearly is something George didn't really want in his world. We have that with the Lannisters retaining their golden hair for ages when that's recessive trait. We have the Velaryons retaining the Valyrian features for five centuries without actually marrying their own sisters to keep the bloodline pure the Targaryen way.

We do have a lot of qualities that are inherited in the male line only - the female line Targaryens don't walk around with the same silver-gold hair as their male counterparts. Just compare Jaehaerys II to, say, Doran Martell. Or the Stark cousins in the Vale to Arya or Jon Snow.

17 hours ago, Hippocras said:

Ok, now mix the apparent randomness of the appearance of recessive traits with the need for a certain buildup of magical forces in the world. Just as dragons are suddenly able to return, warlock magic is gaining power, White Walkers are back, and wildfire is getting easier to make, suddenly people with the right genetics to become skinchangers are able to ACCESS their ability, which they could not do before.

I don't think the skinchanger thing is something that's affected the same way by dragons as fire magics are.

But I agree that it seems to be the case that the Stark skinchangers and Bran the greenseer are there right now because they are needed - just as the promised prince is. I just don't think that scientific/genetic/natural explanations are very good models to account for that - or to be more precise: I don't think the author is going to bother providing any explanations for this.

I could be wrong, though.

But I also don't expect explanation how skinchanging works, whether there is a soul in this world, how exactly greenseer souls interact with the weirwoods, etc.

17 hours ago, Hippocras said:

The facts are very clear: dragonriding and bonding abilities are very very much related to who one's parents were. Genetics are involved. And if so, there needs to be an explanation for why it does not matter for Dany's dragonriding abilities that she is (if she who believes herself to be) a Blackwood by the female line.

At this point nobody suggested that this might matter. The blood of the dragon is magical, and Daenerys inherited that blood mainly through the male line, as did all the Targaryens descended from Daeron II and Myriah Martell.

17 hours ago, Hippocras said:

Basically what it comes down to is that magic (whether it be dragon magic or warging) almost certainly has its roots in BLOOD. Blood magic. This is very likely a key thing, because of lines in the books such as "you have my blood" (Ned to Jon). There is no reason at all IMO to believe as you do that while dragonriding magic is passed on to (some of) those who share the same blood, other kinds of magic we find in the story are random "Chosen One" events. No. It is in the blood.

But that's something never said about the skinchanger thing. That's a trait you are born with, but nothing that's carried by the blood according to people. It is not a family trait to be a skinchanger.

And as I said - certain magics can be learned. That's why there is an archmaester teaching the higher mysteries at the Citadel, that's why Melisandre learned magic in Asshai and elsewhere, that's why Arya is taught magic in Braavos, and it is why Qyburn learned magic at the Citadel. It is also how Euron acquired magical powers from the warlocks he captured and tortured.

17 hours ago, Hippocras said:

The Blackwood family is nowhere near as insignificant in the history as you claim. Just before the conquest they are specifically mentioned as being the most powerful family in the Riverlands aside from House Hoare, who were resented by all. If House Tully was chosen to lead the Riverlands after the conquest, that is because the Tullys picked the Targaryen side first, and because the Blackwoods contributed less to the conquest having been weakened by a recent conflict with the Brackens. But history started BEFORE the conquest, not at the time of it. So looking at who was who before the conquest, we see the Blackwoods as at several points a Paramount family with ties to House Durrandon. A Blackwood, named Shiera no less, was the ancestor of the Storm King, integrating Blackwood blood into the eventual House Baratheon by the female line - and not the only time. The Blackwood ties to the Storm King were an undercurrent of rebellion against Hoare rule.

I know all that - but that's old and dead history. The Velaryon name is also written very large in the history of Westeros ... but they are barely a footnote in the ASoIaF book series. And it is the same with the Blackwoods. They are not really important politically at this point.

17 hours ago, Hippocras said:

So if House Blackwood was linked by marriage to House Durrandon then why did they side with Aegon for the conquest? No doubt they were smart enough to fear the dragons, certainly. But I think it is probably more complicated than that. They probably had OTHER marriage ties too. Marriage ties to House Tully almost certainly or they would not so easily have accepted the Tullys as paramount and Edmyn would not easily have secured the peace there.  But other Houses fed and were fed by the Blackwood line, including, almost certainly, House Velaryon and House Celtigar. Why almost certainly? Because the Blackwoods, as the largest power in the Riverlands aside from House Hoare, would have been seen as significant and important allies for those two Houses who controlled ocean trade originating from the Riverlands. The point therefore is not that the Blackwoods themselves are all special, but simply that TRACING where their daughters and second sons went is in fact key to understanding BOTH sides of the various bloodlines. And BOTH sides make EQUAL contributions to genetics and are needed for recessive traits.

I'd expect that the Blackwoods siding with Aegon the Conqueror had everything to do with them not liking Harren the Black's tyranny and the Hoare rule in the Riverlands in general.

These people are not so much motivated by the family trees so much but real world politics. Ned, for instance, is much motivated by his love and friendship for Robert Baratheon - a man he isn't related to at all.

[Hippocras]

18 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

So far we have no hint that the main revelations to come are going to be about the female bloodlines of tertiary noble families.

Sure we do.

1. There is the Sphynx, missing male. Sphynx is the riddle not the riddler and it is tied to the prince that was promised prophesy. Valyrian sphynxes were made in pairs male and female which is significant as it relates to Valyrian beliefs and practices.

2. There are a very large number of Targaryen and early Velaryon females who are mentioned but whose fate is not explained. Why say for example that Daemon Velaryon, father of Corlys (whose wife was very likely Targaryen) had at least 4 daughters if there is no need for those daughters at some point? They were not part of succession dynamics, they were not known dragonriders with an impact on the course of a war. There is no reason at all for GRRM to create loose threads of missing daughters if there is no intent to eventually fill some of that in. And WHEN it gets filled in, the relevance will be entirely to do with marriage alliances and who has the female line blood of the dragon without having the name Targaryen. 

3. There is a family that is so obsessed with preserving the purity of their bloodline that they marry brothers and sisters whenever possible, even when against their will and if none was available they went for a cousin. There is absolutely no need whatsoever to do that if the female contribution to the bloodline is not key. The males may have been the Kings, but they clearly knew that something would be lost (ie. dragon bonding) if they did not keep the females in the family.

4. There are a number of instances in the histories where characters without known dragonblood family names clearly consider themselves to have a chance at marriage with Targaryens IN SPITE of the known Targaryen obsession with the purity of their bloodline. You can think of them as idiots, or you can think that very likely many of them had legitimate hopes (read dragonblood). This includes male suitors for princesses and maidens who were paraded in front of kings and princes.

What you call "tertiary" families, I call families where these daughters and granddaughters may have wound up. And history has CHANGED who is paramount and who is tertiary, and early marriages before the conquest are very much related to who had significant power THEN.

I have to go but I am sure @Frey family reunion and others have more examples of quotes and hints that are related. The fact is that it is extremely unlikely that magic somehow works differently for Targaryens than for everyone else; their way is a PRECEDENT with relevance elsewhere even if other families did not share their obsessiveness about it.

 

[Jaenara Belarys]

19 hours ago, Mister Smikes said:

Sure.  Though, if this true-knight-in-training theme continues, Sweetrobin and Drogon might end up with a conflict of interest.  True knights defend maidens;  whereas Drogon apparently eats maidens.

Drogon would tear Sweetrobin apart in less than three seconds. 

[Mister Smikes]

1 hour ago, Jaenara Belarys said:

Drogon would tear Sweetrobin apart in less than three seconds. 

Not if Sweetrobin gets him first.  Dragons terrible wicked creatures.  Brave men kill them.  It is known.

[Hippocras]

On 5/19/2021 at 3:18 AM, Lord Varys said:

That is actually not true for the North. There were no Andals there, and most likely not maesters 500-1,000 years ago.

I agree that maesters may have prevented some potential skinchangers from developing their abilities properly ... but any king or powerful lord who happens to be a skinchanger - or a warrior or warlord - would use those abilities to his advantage and subsequently leave his marks on history.

The maesters predate the Faith of the Seven in spite of the Oldtown connection. They even predate Bran the Builder.

Before that, any records the First Men had were runes, not books, and much of it is lost to time. So I really don't know how you are so certain that powerful skinchangers did NOT use their abilities to advantage. How do you think a Warg King with greenseers might have been defeated? That is a lot of power to have and rather hard to fight effectively with only swords. So even if it was not the same kind of magic the Kings of Winter must themselves have used magic to conquer the North.

If they were not themselves simply more powerful wargs (direwolves are more powerful than regular wolves) I would speculate that the kind of magic they used was suppression. The Wall seems to be an effective barrier blocking some kinds of magical beings from passing. There are hints that some of the oldest fortresses of Westeros are warded. So there must be ways to selectively neutralize magic just as there are ways and/or forces that amplify it. We know about both the neutralizing effect of warded castles (Storm's End) and the amplifying effect of the Wall for Mel, and yet the same Wall that makes Mel stronger also is an obstacle for Coldhands. Jon had no sense of Ghost while separated by the Wall.

So if suppression magic is at play, and it was used to defeat powerful wargs and greeseers, then even if those warg bloodlines became integrated into the Stark bloodline by forced marriages of conquest, the magic would still be suppressed.

[Lord Varys]

7 hours ago, Hippocras said:

The maesters predate the Faith of the Seven in spite of the Oldtown connection. They even predate Bran the Builder.

Before that, any records the First Men had were runes, not books, and much of it is lost to time. So I really don't know how you are so certain that powerful skinchangers did NOT use their abilities to advantage. How do you think a Warg King with greenseers might have been defeated? That is a lot of power to have and rather hard to fight effectively with only swords. So even if it was not the same kind of magic the Kings of Winter must themselves have used magic to conquer the North.

If that were the case then we should assume that the Starks still had such magics - never mind maesters and stuff - because such magics was power. The Targaryens also didn't kill off their own dragons, after all (as far as we know).

And historically we just hear about the Warg King being a warg and him having skinchangers and greenseers and Children of the Forest as allies ... while the Starks didn't have all that. We don't really have the freedom to invent Stark wargs when history and tradition do not mention them. And to be pretty clear - the idea that maesters could have suppressed powerful Stark skinchangers also doesn't seem to be the likely considering what Ned's children and Jon are doing right now. They develop(ed) their gifts, never mind Luwin. And the farther back in time we go the less influence the maesters would have had in the North, anyway.

The roots of the Citadel go very far back ... but prior to the Andal invasion and the development of the the Seven Kingdoms we know chances are very low that all of the royal and noble houses of Westeros were employing maesters. Especially not in the North which was never taken over by Andal culture.

If I had to guess then the advantages of the maester system would have reached the North with the Manderlys. They would have brought maesters to White Harbor and the Starks and others would have eventually followed their example.

The idea that you turn to some kingdom very far away you might even war against occasionally to import your scholars and teachers and healers isn't all that likely. With the Andal kingdoms it makes more sense because they share the same culture and religion transcending state borders ... but this was not the case for the North.

7 hours ago, Hippocras said:

If they were not themselves simply more powerful wargs (direwolves are more powerful than regular wolves) I would speculate that the kind of magic they used was suppression. The Wall seems to be an effective barrier blocking some kinds of magical beings from passing. There are hints that some of the oldest fortresses of Westeros are warded. So there must be ways to selectively neutralize magic just as there are ways and/or forces that amplify it. We know about both the neutralizing effect of warded castles (Storm's End) and the amplifying effect of the Wall for Mel, and yet the same Wall that makes Mel stronger also is an obstacle for Coldhands. Jon had no sense of Ghost while separated by the Wall.

So if suppression magic is at play, and it was used to defeat powerful wargs and greeseers, then even if those warg bloodlines became integrated into the Stark bloodline by forced marriages of conquest, the magic would still be suppressed.

There is no indication that Storm's End or Winterfell block skinchanging powers. The Wall seems to be doing that - but the Wall is a really powerful magical barrier. Storm's End seems to be warded against magical attacks - meaning, originally, divine storms/floods send by deities - not against skinchangers.

[Hippocras]

@Lord Varys I think I am going to start a new thread when I get a moment because I am having some new thoughts related to my response that I think merit their own discussion.

[Frey family reunion]

4 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

There is no indication that Storm's End or Winterfell block skinchanging powers. The Wall seems to be doing that - but the Wall is a really powerful magical barrier. Storm's End seems to be warded against magical attacks - meaning, originally, divine storms/floods send by deities - not against skinchangers.

I didn't want to quote your whole thread to save space, but my thoughts are in response to the conversation you and @Hippocras were having. 

I don't know just how much of a strategic military advantage being a skinchanger really was.  It certainly wasn't an advantage to the extent of the Targaryen dragons, where whole armies could be wiped out by a single dragon rider.

Mance had a powerful skinchanger with him, when Stannis overan them with his knights.  And Varamyr and his thralls appeared fairly useless up against armored knights.  

As for Robb, most of his military advantage seemed to lie in scouting.  

So the idea that the Kings/Lords would have turned to skinchanging to maintain their power doesn't really follow.  

In the early days of the First Men, the COTF were certainly considered enemies of man.  So any man that shared any magics with the COTF would have probably been ostricized.  And then when the Faith and the Andals took over, this would have further supressed any attempt to foster a royal line of skinchangers.

As for the Maesters, that's an interesting question.  There is some reason to think that the Maesters preAndal may have been of a different mindset than the Maesters we see today.  So it wouldn't surprise me if a Maester who could actually telepathically communicate with and see through the eyes of ravens might have been considered a benefit.

But all that probably would have been considered taboo and witchcraft once the Andals took over Oldtown.  And then it appears that the Maesters became a driving force to ride the world of magic.  At least if Marwyn can be believed.

 

[Lord Varys]

11 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

I don't know just how much of a strategic military advantage being a skinchanger really was.  It certainly wasn't an advantage to the extent of the Targaryen dragons, where whole armies could be wiped out by a single dragon rider.

Of course not, but a strong skinchanger like Varamyr can control multiple animals which allows you to spy on friends and enemies alike. Very few things in your castle/holdfast can be kept from you and you can cultivate the aura of being an all-knowing lord/king. That is a very successful tool to dominate people ... and it is clearly also one of the reason why normal people loathe skinchangers. The other would be that they are unclean, part beast and part man, etc.

11 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

Mance had a powerful skinchanger with him, when Stannis overan them with his knights.  And Varamyr and his thralls appeared fairly useless up against armored knights.

Varamyr was knocked out by Melisandre. If he had been able to use his powers during the battle he might have made a considerable difference. How powerful skinchangers are in warfare we see earlier in ACoK when Orell's eagle hunts down Jon and Qhorin.

One could easily see Varamyr taking over Stannis' horses, breaking the ranks of his knights, etc.

11 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

As for Robb, most of his military advantage seemed to lie in scouting.

Some, but the very image of Greywind ripping enemies to pieces and feasting on the flesh of the slain is a powerful symbol of raw power and dominance. It is that kind of imagery history would have painted of ancient Stark kings if they had been wargs. They would have had literal wolves as pets which they would have unleashed against their enemies ... and which they would have used to execute people.

11 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

So the idea that the Kings/Lords would have turned to skinchanging to maintain their power doesn't really follow.  

Varamyr did it, too, and we will see Bran and Jon and Arya do it, too, as their abilities develop. Whoever has that gift is eventually going to use it.

11 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

In the early days of the First Men, the COTF were certainly considered enemies of man.  So any man that shared any magics with the COTF would have probably been ostricized.  And then when the Faith and the Andals took over, this would have further supressed any attempt to foster a royal line of skinchangers.

All the written history of House Stark is post-Long Night and also post-Pact, so, no, technically the Children and the First Men were no longer enemies in that era. At least as far as we know. The Andals wouldn't have played a role in the North anyway, but since most southern noble houses have First Men roots, the Andals definitely didn't end any such bloodlines.

After all, there is no evidence that there was ever a royal line of skinchangers anyone could want to suppress.

11 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

As for the Maesters, that's an interesting question.  There is some reason to think that the Maesters preAndal may have been of a different mindset than the Maesters we see today.  So it wouldn't surprise me if a Maester who could actually telepathically communicate with and see through the eyes of ravens might have been considered a benefit.

But all that probably would have been considered taboo and witchcraft once the Andals took over Oldtown.  And then it appears that the Maesters became a driving force to ride the world of magic.  At least if Marwyn can be believed.

There is actually not much indication that the Andals were the problem there. Before the Doom magic was apparently still very prominent and powerful in the western world, so folks in Oldtown wouldn't have been skeptical or anti-magic. That only seems to have started after the Doom when magic no longer worked the way it used to, and certain people started thinking a world without (much) magic would work better.

The early Andals were afraid of the Children and fought against them and their religion ... but quickly enough that movement died down, or else no castle in the south would have any weirwoods in their castles. But they basically all have them.

[Frey family reunion]

39 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Of course not, but a strong skinchanger like Varamyr can control multiple animals which allows you to spy on friends and enemies alike. Very few things in your castle/holdfast can be kept from you and you can cultivate the aura of being an all-knowing lord/king. That is a very successful tool to dominate people ... and it is clearly also one of the reason why normal people loathe skinchangers. The other would be that they are unclean, part beast and part man, etc.

But that’s the problem with creating a ruling body of skinchangers.  Normal people did loathe them, and consider them unclean.  And it was the normal people you had to rule over.  

You’re also fairly vulnerable when you leave your body and join your animal.  Which I think also limits the usefulness of being a skin-changers at least when it comes to seizing power.  

These issues makes skinchangers different from dragon lords.  Dragon lords may have had a bond with their dragons, but they didn’t actually enter their dragons.  They rode them as normal people rode horses.  And last but certainly not least, dragons were far more powerful than anything that skinchangers could bond with.  It allowed them to rule through fear and submission, more so than any skinchangers could have.

39 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Varamyr was knocked out by Melisandre. If he had been able to use his powers during the battle he might have made a considerable difference. How powerful skinchangers are in warfare we see earlier in ACoK when Orell's eagle hunts down Jon and Qhorin.

One could easily see Varamyr taking over Stannis' horses, breaking the ranks of his knights, etc.

That’s a valid point, but I don’t see how Varamyr’s polar bear, shadow cat and three wolves would have turned the tide of that battle.  It was a complete route and that was despite the fact that Mance had giants in his army.

I don’t think Varamyr could have just reached out and controlled Stannis’ horses, I don’t think it works that way.  The few animals he did have, he struggled to control, and when his control wavered they fled.  And I don’t see Varamyr maintaining his concentration as an armored knight was bearing down on him with his lance.

Once again, these aren’t dragons, the military aspect of it isn’t that significant.  Far better to have armored men with swords, trained in the art of battle for you than forego all of that by becoming a Varamyr.

Even the First Men, who didn’t have the same military superiority that the Andal’s steel gave then, still proved too much for the COTF skinchangers to handle.

The other issue I didn’t address, is unlike the Valyrians who openly and proudly practiced incest, incest was considered an abomination both for the new gods and old.  So it’s unlikely that a lord could have gotten away with marrying his sister to keep a skinchanging line alive.

You can do it without incest (if you don’t consider marrying your first cousin incest) but it becomes far more complicated.

But finally, it very well may be that the early kings of the First Men may have been skinchangers.  The mythology of the Age of Heroes certainly seems to describe the early kings as beings far more than mere mortals.  Now obviously oral tales expand and exaggerate over time, but there may have been certain magics contained within the early royal families of the First Men.

The problem is the histories are too murky for us to fully know.  And to make matters worse, the Andal influence, changed many of the tales as well, turning some of these legendary heroes into knights.

So by the time  histories are being recorded, the Andals influence has spread too much.  Even to the Citadel.  Which also means you really can’t trust much of the early histories.  Or perhaps put too much trust into the more recent ones as well.

 

[Lord Varys]

2 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

But that’s the problem with creating a ruling body of skinchangers.  Normal people did loathe them, and consider them unclean.  And it was the normal people you had to rule over.  

The Valyrians also could enforce their own incest as well as they dragonlord stuff on the people they ruled. That's certainly doable, and we also see the subjects of the present Starks not putting them down because they are unclean and all.

There are different rules for the powerful than there are for the powerless. A Stark skinchanger might be cherished and loved, but if your own neighbor or child turns out to be skinchanger you might cut ties with them.

2 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

You’re also fairly vulnerable when you leave your body and join your animal.  Which I think also limits the usefulness of being a skin-changers at least when it comes to seizing power.  

That doesn't seem to be the case when you have mastered the ability. Then you are in your own body as well as in the body of the animal - like Arya is when she watches herself through the cat's eyes and evades the attacks of the kindly man.

2 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

That’s a valid point, but I don’t see how Varamyr’s polar bear, shadow cat and three wolves would have turned the tide of that battle.  It was a complete route and that was despite the fact that Mance had giants in his army.

I'm not saying Varamyr could have turned the tide of the battle, but he could have worked havoc and perhaps Mance could have escaped or regrouped in such a setting.

2 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

I don’t think Varamyr could have just reached out and controlled Stannis’ horses, I don’t think it works that way.  The few animals he did have, he struggled to control, and when his control wavered they fled.  And I don’t see Varamyr maintaining his concentration as an armored knight was bearing down on him with his lance.

Some animals struggled against Varamyr's control - his shadow cat and the snowbear, I think. The others not so much. And it is clearly Mel's attack that shattered him, not the prospect of facing guys on horses.

2 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

Once again, these aren’t dragons, the military aspect of it isn’t that significant.  Far better to have armored men with swords, trained in the art of battle for you than forego all of that by becoming a Varamyr.

Nobody said those two things wouldn't go hand in hand if we talk a skinchanger kings. The dragonlords also didn't just use dragons in war, after all.

2 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

Even the First Men, who didn’t have the same military superiority that the Andal’s steel gave then, still proved too much for the COTF skinchangers to handle.

Were they truly?

The way to interpret the First Men/Children stuggle is a war of eradication, very much like the European settlers did away with the American Indians. It wasn't, predominantly, won militarily but by outbreeding another population and destroying their natural resources.

If you think about the amount a power a single greenseer seems to be commanding then he should be able to destroy an entire army by himself simply by using the plant and animal life of the region against them. And we can expect that the ancient Children did do this often enough ... but they would have had too few greenseers to really eradicate mankind completely.

2 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

The other issue I didn’t address, is unlike the Valyrians who openly and proudly practiced incest, incest was considered an abomination both for the new gods and old.  So it’s unlikely that a lord could have gotten away with marrying his sister to keep a skinchanging line alive.

Well, there is no indiction that this would have worked if tried ... nor that anyone ever thought this could work. The Valyrians of old were powerful sorcerers who, apparently, used magic to fuse dragons and themselves. We do have sources claiming that they created human-animal hybrids.

There is no indication that skinchanging/greenseeing has a similar origin.

In fact, I doubt that it has, I really think that the point of this type of magic is that nature and mankind are one in a certain sense, and that the 'natural magical laws' in this world - or the influence of 'the gods' - has it so that some people can connect themselves with animals and plants in this way.

This is clearly not an ability that is akin to the dragonlord thing - which seems to have been developed to use dragons in war - whereas greenseeing and skinchanging are much more neutral talents, basically a way to broaden your own perception of reality. You can also use that to hurt others ... but that's not the main point of it.

2 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

The problem is the histories are too murky for us to fully know.  And to make matters worse, the Andal influence, changed many of the tales as well, turning some of these legendary heroes into knights.

So by the time reliable histories are being recorded, the Andals influence has spread too much.  Even to the Citadel.  Which also means you really can’t trust much of the early histories.  Or perhaps put too much trust into the more recent ones as well.

The problem with that idea is that we actually do have Andal stories talk about the skinchanger heroes of old - Rose of Red Lake, say. This is not distasteful, and it would be not distasteful at all in an Andal context if talk about the Starks ... since the North was never andalized. No outside force severed the Starks from their ancestors the way this may have been the case when the First Men of the south converted to the Faith. But even that wasn't really a complete cultural break. People didn't burn down their godswoods, etc.

The idea is just baseless that even for the Gardener or Lannister kings later singers and maesters and septons would erase them being skinchangers if that's what they were. The completely made-up Andal fairy-tale of the Winged Knight does include skinchanger-like behavior. If it was culturally not accepted to tell such stories, then they wouldn't be told.