Winning the Game of Thrones: The Host of Characters and their Agendas (2 page)

Dragons, which filled Valyria, are rumored to have originated in the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai to the south-east. The Valyrians learned to control them with magic and fashioned great horns of magic and Valyrian steel to become the dragons’ masters.
Aegon the Conqueror
 
came from Valyria with his dragons, dragon
 
horns, magic, and Valyrian steel, the secrets of all of which have been lost to time. But Old Valyria may hold the key to mankind’s salvation.

Questions and Echoes:

      
Valyria was destroyed by fire – likely a series of volcanic eruptions. It had much forgotten lore, from magical roads to the Valyrian steel and dragons that could fight the Others. Perhaps its fire magic holds the key to defeating the ice creatures. The Smoking Sea is a place of salt and smoke, like Dragonstone – the Lightbringer prophecy might take place at either.

      
Tyrion
 
puzzles why the Old Valyrians colonized the one island and nothing more, thinking, “Odd, that.
 
Dragonstone
 
is no more than a rock. The wealth was farther west, but they had
 
dragons. Surely they knew that it was there”
 
(V:76). Did Dragonstone give them exactly what they needed? Or did they fear the frozen Others?

      
What magic is still waiting on Dragonstone and why hasn’t Stannis discovered it?
Martin comments, “If you look at how the citadel of Dragonstone was built and how in some of its structures the stone was shaped in some fashion with magic... yes, it’s safe to say that there’s something of Valyrian magic still present.”
^[1]

      
Is fire magic why Dragonstone called to the Valyrians? Or was it the volcanoes seething within? What magic does Dragonstone still offer?

      
Already, there has been one apocalypse through ice – The Long Winter of Old Nan’s tales – and one through fire. Now ice is beginning again. Is the Doom of Valyria significant? One curious fan asked Martin: “Was the Doom related to dragons, i.e., did the Valyrians lose control of some of the dragons, or was there some sort of civil war fought with dragons much like occurred later in Westeros?” He responded with a simple “No comment.”
^[2]
Since he commonly suggests that fans’ particular exotic theories are unlikely to bear fruit, or responds to deep analysis by saying “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” there may be something here. In book four, it is suggested that the Faceless Men were involved in the Doom (IV:322). Their magic, like that of the Red Priests, seems unspecified but powerful.

      
The Valyrians enslaved and terrorized the people of current-day Slaver’s Bay. Daenerys’s constant claims that she’s descended from the dragon may be enraging the people of Essos more than ensuring their loyalty.

      
Daenerys the Dreamer (ancestress of the current Daenerys) foresaw the Doom and convinced her father, the head of House Targaryen, to leave Valyria. They traveled to Dragonstone, and the Doom fell twelve years later. Of course, a second Doom may come. Daenerys notes in
A Dance with Dragons
 that that the Dothraki sea is going dry and the grasses are dying. Perhaps the old world is burning once more.

      
Six hundred years ago, Hardhome beyond the Wall exploded in what sounds like a volcanic eruption, or possibly the work of monsters. The “screaming caves” nearby seem to be “haunted by ghouls and demons and burning ghosts.” Valyria’s doom may already have been repeated (V:522). Was it a volcanic eruption? Or dragons, tunneling as we see Daenerys’s dragon Viserion do? Or the firewyrms described as “boring” through soil and stone (IV:321)? The fabled Horn of Joramun, lost in the North, can allegedly awaken “giants from the earth” (II:276). Can it summon one or the other of these creatures? Or literal giants? Or volcanic eruptions that could bring down the Wall? All of these events killed many and devastated the land. Another such event may be coming…

      
Valyria’s destruction may have been caused by excess of fire and dragon magic. Now the world is threatened with ice. It may be a balance is needed to save the world from utter destruction.

Aegon the Conqueror

After the Doom, which killed most dragons in the world, the Targaryens still had three: Vhagar, Meraxes, and Balerion the Black Dread – the royal heads of House Targaryen rode them: Aegon the Conqueror on Balerion, with his sisters Visenya on Vhagar and Rhaenys on Meraxes. Arya mentions a particular admiration for the conquering princesses on their magical dragons, swords blazing.

Aegon the Conqueror apparently had never stepped foot on Westeros before the Landing. Like Daenerys, he was born on Dragonstone. He conquered Westeros with his sword Blackfyre and he had children with his sisters as their dragons did in the great Dragonpit of King’s Landing. Aegon eventually conquered six of the kingdoms of Westeros and made peace with Dorne, the seventh. His dragonfire burned down the grand castle of Harrenhal and enemy armies alike. He converted to the Faith of the Seven and won the support of the High Septon in Oldtown. The high Septon prayed for seven days and nights in Oldtown and then anointed him, “For the Crone had lifted up her lamp to show him what lay ahead” (IV:421). Aegon founded King’s Landing and forged the Iron Throne from the swords of those who surrendered to him.