#Targaryen ancestor

[alienoryva]

Lady Daenys Targaryen (The Dreamer)🪻

[acertifiedmoron]

seeing some prophecy discourse which has once again reminded me why i personally find the prospect of dany as the prince that was promised really compelling. and it makes the targaryens so much thematically richer. like, they only survived the doom through the power of prophecy and then the visions marked them forever and this thing, this blessing which gave generations of targaryens some existential meaning eventually morphed into a curse which brought so many of them great misery—"my brothers dreamed of dragons too, and the dreams killed them, every one." (aemon, affc) and in due course almost ended their line once again with rhaegar. but then dany happened.

almost four hundred years since the doom when prophecy saved them and nearly killed them again on the trident, dany was born. dany who carries echoes of all her targaryen ancestors within her. she's aegon the conqueror come again but she's also maegor the cruel when she promises the khals who had hurt her khalasar would die screaming. she's rhaenyra in her struggles to wield power and establish legitimacy as a woman, she shares her sense of egalitarianism with egg, and she drinks from the cup passed from rhaegar, i.e. inherits (what he once thought of) his narrative destiny to help defend the realms during the long night.

dany who is both their beginning, since she's the first targaryen created and introduced to us on page and the narrative end point of their dynasty. which reflects all the way into her arc being cyclical by design as it calls back to the foundation of the valyrian empire in essos—during the fifth war the freehold torched old ghis with dragonfire so nothing would grow there again and centuries later this girl, the last dragon, is going to help plant trees there again. it's not about retreading old ground or rejecting her house words but about redefining what it means to be the blood of the dragon. which is not to say all that came before her was meaningless since this recontextualisation is only possible through the three centuries of ancestral history weighing on her. and dany's very existence echoes back in time because the prophecy itself has influenced the lives of generations of targaryens. three hundred years of history, all the glory and the horror concentrated in this one person-point. the prince that was promised not simply as a figure of the long night but as someone who is the apotheosis of their house. dany as both their beginning and their end, because the iron throne is presently a symbol of stagnation, a world in stasis, and it has to go. no restoration, instead the old world dying in fire and a new world being born in the aftermath.

[sunny12th]

I don't think we need a monologue or explicit statement from Dany renouncing the Targaryens of Old Valyria for owning slaves and the Old Valyrians for spreading slavery through Essos. She never thinks about them, she doesn't have them on a pedestal in her mind. She has a favorable viewpoint of her immediate family, mostly Rhaegar, that she was taught by her brother. I dont think we need to see Dany explicitly state for the readers that her slave owning ancestors were evil and she disagrees with them because her actions show this.

[deus-sema]

Copium comes in variety

[um-weird-flex-but-ok]

“Rhaenicent shippers are just Alicent stans that hate Rhaenyra”

Nah babe, we’re Alicent AND Rhaenyra stans who don't ignore the fact that they’re complex characters that both have flaws and are therefore not a woman hating tradwife and a two-dimensional girlboss feminist queen

In fact, I love that Rhaenyra’s dumb and bitchy, she’d be boring if she wasn't

[thevelaryons]

Finally decided to note down all the parallels between this trio. They really are just same character, different font.

[jillvalcntines]

━━ THE TITLES & NAMES OF KATHRYN DAYNE

"Sand. Dayne. Frost. If I learned one thing in this world, the name you are born with does not hold much weight. It's the names you're given during your life, the names people either love or fear, that count as much as any coin or land." —Kathryn Dayne

(inspo 1 & 2)

tag list: @mandalhoerian @kingsroad @idohknow [you want to be added? send me an ask/chat ❤️]

[visenyaism]

yeah baelor+ daeron+ the maidenvault inmates + aegon aemon and naerys are fascinating because they clearly are just like the biomagnification of the daemon and rhaenyra classique targaryen gothic house of horrors emotional and literal incest bloodcurse doomrot. except they never even met them.

like there is blood running dripping from the ceiling and every day something is shaping your bones just a bit more into the shape of your long-dead bloodthirsty volatile grandfather or your usurped autocrat grandmother and there’s something in the walls and you don’t know what’s happening or why. you’re hungry for something. but you don’t know what and you never will. there’s no way out whether it’s dying young in a war you started or living your entire life as a self-flagellating religious martyr while still inflicting harm on others or leaning full on into hedonism you are still wanting for something. you’re still hungry

[cowboyscaviar]

“aegon’s remembered as the rightful heir!” “well rhaenyra’s bloodline is the one that continued to sit the throne!!!!!” YOU GUYS. the point of the dance is that it was pointless and NOBODY WON and in the end none of it mattered! house targaryen never truly regained their power, the dragons were all killed (until dany), and robert baratheon was able to overthrow them!

[atopvisenyashill]

“why would elaena marry a dornishman when they’re nasty evil people who murdered her poor innocent brother daeron”

maybe because once elaena grew up she realized that there were better ways of bringing dorne into the realm than violent conquest, and that daeron got the death he deserved from not just a nobility that is valid for fearing subjugation from valyria but also a smallfolk sick and tired of these people showing up every few decades to set their principality on fire, and put aside any anti dornish sentiments she may or may not have harbored as a child to see the way her family had directly attributed to their suffering, eventually even falling in love with and marrying a dornish man??

also, considering daeron ii attempts a type of proto-reparations act in bringing dorne into the kingdom, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that someone as intelligent as elaena would recognize the inherent racism in the targaryen conquest of dorne and especially considering the very loud anti-dornish, deeply anti intellectual faction in the blackfyre rebellions, realized they wouldn’t be kind or understanding of an intelligent woman like herself and had no interest in herself or her daughters (of which she had four!!) getting shoved back into the maidenvault again?

like, daeron i is on some andrew jackson manifest destiny shit, and if it makes me an asshole for thinking “god i wish someone had merked jackson before he genocided & displaced my ancestors, good on the dornish for realizing you can’t negotiate with imperialists” than i am perfectly comfortable being considered an asshole right next to my girl elaena.

[sunnysideaeggs]

I just realised that Aegon’s line might not have actually ended, it did end with his children with Helaena and the history books. But in the series we were shown his bastard child and Ser Arryk presumed there would be many more. So if any of them survived and their descendants survived Aegon’s line could still exist in game of thrones but they would be part of the smallfolk

oh i love the idea of some random white haired families in the main line of asoiaf, just chilling in king’s landing. some of them like to bathe in really hot water and others have weird dreams they just ignore lol.

but i think most importantly, aegon’s impact on his world is more than just the children he had. he mirrors some great rulers who didn’t have children (or survived them all), like alexander the great or elizabeth the first. even characters like daeron the first and aemon the dragonknight never had children but they’re remembered often because of their actions. daenerys will probably never have children of her own but she will be remembered for centuries to come for her deeds and dragons.

like it or not, westeros was never the same after aegon the second, just like it never would be the same after aegon the first. he had the most striking dragon in westeros, and the closest bond with him. he wrote the laws of succession in blood (unfair as they were), he buried all his enemies, he died with a crown on his head.

[alicent-archive]

the Targaryen's really can't escape the doom of the ancestors can they? Rhaenys and Meleys and Rhaenys and Meraxes and when does cycle break?

[adarkandmagicalforest]

call me crazy, but i think having an overlord king rule over seven kingdoms full of seven different cultures who reinforces violent dominance when they say they dont want to be ruled by a stranger is... bad, actually

[bbygirl-aemond]

Daemon seeing his descendant daenerys Targaryen reviving the magic and turning the essos policy upside down, with 3 dragonlings, and some 2-4% Targaryen blood 👁️👄👁️.

to be fair, daenerys basically jumpstarted the valyrian magic by performing the whole blood-and-fire-sacrifice-thing. like, think of the blood magic as a battery that's constantly powering a phone (ability to claim dragons). it runs out over time and needs to be recharged, otherwise you can't use the phone (can't claim dragons). back in old valyria, people were doing these sacrifices on the daily, it was literally built on the foundation of slavery forcing people to mine inside of volcanoes, aka burning thousands of sacrifices on the daily, apprently so many that "the mind simply cannot comprehend the number." like that's pretty damn on the nose, plus it's a direct continuation of grrm's narrative for the targaryens. so the battery was constantly being recharged.

but then the doom happened. and the remaining valyrian dragon riders lost the knowledge of how to recharge the battery. there's no real mention from here on out of any such sacrifices or rituals occurring. when the magic began to dwindle over time, there was nothing being done to replenish it. visenya might have dabbled in some sorcery, but there's no mention of anything like this.

until daenerys.

without anyone teaching her how, she performs the exact type of ritual that hasn't been properly done since pre-doom. she quite literally revives the magic- she is the first targaryen in westerosi history to revive the magic (yet another way in which she is distinguished from all of her ancestors).

tldr: i do think daemon would be absolutely horrified if he found out about daenerys. but not because he'd be disgusted by her diluted blood or anything. remember, his entire belief system is centered around keeping magic in the family, that's the entire reason he cares about blood. he'd actually be ecstatic to find a new, much easier and more reliable way of staying in power.

so i think daemon would be like "so you mean the WHOLE TIME we could have just been burning people alive with some magic mumbo jumbo instead of stressing about wrangling our family tree into a pretzel???? it could've been THAT easy all along???? someone round up like 100 people for me right now, everyone get in line, and we'll all take turns"

[lagosbratzdoll]

Oh, isn't it just delightful how Daenerys is painted as a whiny, self-important murderer simply for daring to fight against the heinous practice of slavery? But of course, in the very same breath, I’m hearing impassioned defences of upstanding citizens like Aegon the Usurper and Aemond the Kinslayer. Because nothing says “honourable” like usurping a throne and slaying your own kin, am I right?

Daenerys is entitled for wanting to go home, the Starks are not, despite wanting the exact same thing. Oh, and Daenerys must pay for the wickedness of her ancestors, but the Starks don't need to pay for theirs. She must die because the Targaryens are the most despicable family in Westeros.

After all, Aegon the Conqueror conquered Westeros, but the First Men, Andals, and Rhoynar did not. Obviously, the Starks never committed any genocidal acts – they simply asked nicely for the land they built their castles on, and those who sing the song of the earth retreated into the forest of their own free will. It definitely had nothing to do with being hunted to the brink of extinction.

And as for the Warg King and his family? I mean, maybe the Warg King and his sons and his greenseers and his beasts just conveniently dropped dead, and perhaps his daughters married the kings of winter because it was true love. These were surely happy marriages and not a case of killing the man and his sons and taking his daughters as prizes.

[deaneyrs]

i saw someone post something a while back about dany using targaryen methods to achieve things the targaryen's wouldn't have chosen and i can't stop thinking about it.