#The First Men and the Andals are

[starrynights23]

shoutout to the person on tiktok who posted a video calling every targaryen supporter a colonialist, monarchist sellout.

you’ve shown me the light. i know who i am now. my support of fake people for a fake throne in a fake country in a fake world actually does actually show my political inclinations in real life and it does make me a bad person! i don’t know how i didn’t notice before!

anyway i’m campaigning to overthrow democracy in order to establish john mulaney as king of america and then i’m establishing a settler colony in the subway tunnels of new york city if anyone wants to pitch in

[spacerockfloater]

“The Targaryens/ Valyrians are not white supremacists and can’t be compared to European Colonisers!”

Oh? My bad then. I must have them confused with some other white folks who thought their appearance made them superior, brought whole continents to heel, exploited the lands of others for their own greed, destroyed whole civilizations and enslaved vulnerable people who unfortunately lacked the advanced weapons of mass destruction they possessed.

“Well, the Andals and the First Men were also colonisers, so they deserved it!”

No way! Are you actually telling me that every race has a history of violence because human nature itself is corrupt and we’re no better than animals fighting for their place on this earth? That’s so crazy and original. By the way, are you saying that people deserved to get colonised and enslaved because they were fighting other people in order to survive? Are you suggesting these “savages” should have been contained by the righteous white folks who came there to better their lives? Not to mention that the Andals and the First Men came to Westeros 12,000 and 6,000 years ago respectively, while the Targaryens attacked Westeros barely 130 years ago (literally just 3 - 4 generations) from the Dance of the Dragons? So are you comparing the morality of the people who migrated here, who were so primitive that barely even possessed weapons of steel, with that of the most advanced civilization ever built in the ASOIAF universe? That’s so interesting! It’s almost as if the Andals and the First Men didn’t know any better until it was too late and were trying to find a land that could accommodate their millions of people, so they were essentially fighting for survival, whereas the Targaryens who came from a race that had evolved philosophically, politically, academically and technologically wise, possessed enough wealth and land to sustain their little family, yet still chose to go to war against the land that nurtured them out of pure greed! Hmmm. Do you also believe that the Greeks had it coming when they were enslaved by the Ottomans and should just let go of the past because it’s been so long since they regained their freedom (barely 200 years ago btw, after 4 centuries of slavery), because their Ancient Ancestral Tribes migrated to Greece and conquered the land 3,500 years ago, a little after the age of bronze? No? Then you might see why that kind thinking is flawed.

Stop defending these inbred bastards with your full chest. We get it. They look badass. We all have a fave war criminal but all of the Targs need to be put to the sword, along with their fucking lizards. Purposely denying the parallels between the Targaryens/ Valyrians and the Colonisers/ Conquerors of our world screams white saviour complex.

[atopvisenyashill]

every time someone does “valyrian culture was more egalitarian than andal culture” discourse i point to the fact that jaehaerys invented the doctrine of exceptionalism and was an evil misogynistic menace to every woman he knew, how visenya was not the ruler of their house despite being older, and how the vale which is STEEPED in andal culture & chivalry & the seven regularly has their houses ruled by women in a way that almost no other region outside of dorne has ntm having the ONLY ruling lady of a paramount house INCLUDING VALYRIAN AND FIRST MEN HOUSES and also i start shrieking

[horizon-verizon]

The fact that so many people think the Starks are honorable anticolonial fighters and the pinnacle of morality is absolutely insane, they literally built a massive wall to isolated a bunch of people they considered as “savages”, they hunted and slaughtered the Free Folk, the Children of the Forest, giants, exterminated whole houses and clans and took their daughters as “prizes” while conquering the North, etc. The Blackwoods were originally from the North and ruled most of the wolfswood, before being driven out by the Starks and forced to flee south. The Starks are the OG COLONIZERS in ASOIAF.

Even this did not give Winterfell dominion over all the North. Many other petty kings remained, ruling over realms great and small, and it would require thousands of years and many more wars before the last of them was conquered. Yet one by one, the Starks subdued them all, and during these struggles, many proud houses and ancient lines were extinguished forever. — The World of Ice and Fire – The North: The Kings of Winter.

I recently finished a Tiktok series that will probably just be as lost to the internet if we lose TikTok but I had to get out in response to a particular creator who bashes Rhaenyra while also proclaiming themselves as black stans. I think they are really more black stans because they hate Alicent personally and feels the thrill of the side-taking, but that's neither here nor there. 😏

To quote one of my mutuals here [rhaenin]:

It just rings so familiar to the way so many people view the other in real life. Because the Targaryens are overtly, and intentionally written as the other. It's the reason so many people identify with them, and it's the very same reason that other people vilify them. They're not just the in-universe other to the 'default' culture established in the text, but they're also given characteristics that we, the reader and audience, can recognize as other and even sometimes anathema to Western Christian culture. To paraphrase the annoying people that love to cite Ramsay when they feel like it: If you look at a morally complex family surrounded by other morally complex families in a morally complex world in a story that's famed for seeking to challenge your underlying assumptions, and think that their association with fire and brimstone is meant to signify their singular satanic evilness, rather than say... challenge that very Eurocentric assumption, you haven't been paying attention. This vilification mindset where the Targaryens are the singular evil of Westeros is so common to people who seem to want to consume ASoIaF without engaging with the criticisms of the Eurocentric worldview of history at the heart of it. And they end up using the convenient “others” to project all the wrongs of that world onto so they don't need to examine it any deeper. ........... It comes from the same place with how someone pointed out that the baffling bastardphobia that would have medieval peasants giving the side eye is so often people jumping at the chance to “cosplay” as bigots who base their arguments in misogyny and bio-essentialism. Because it's an acceptable channel to indulge in that mindset in a way that they'd often otherwise question, or at least hold back from expressing out of caution.

[yourmumsc0ck]

Princess Rizznyra Targaryen first of her name

[synchodai]

Not too keen on how the first scene of HotD made show-only viewers think that Aegon the Conqueror diplomatically convinced Torrhen Stark to give up Northern independence because they both believed in stopping a prophesized apocalyptic Long Night because it downplays the brutality of Aegon's Conquest.

Not the show's fault since it is realistic that Cregan and Jace would frame it like an amiable peacetalk given their current goals and circumstances (and they did touch on the intimidation aspect of it). But show-onlies don't get the context that:

Torrhen was the person who started a dialogue with Aegon I, not the other way around.

Aegon didn't fly North to meet with Torrhen. Torrhen was the one who marched south with his armies to stop the man who was burninating the entire countryside.

Because he was marching south, Torrhen saw the utter carnage of Aegon's Conquest. At least three entire dynasties of kings were extinguished at that point. Torrhen was thus faced with the possibility that the entire Stark line would be wiped out like them if he fought.

Aegon and Torrhen exchanged letters at the Riverlands when both their armies were about to meet, but those weren't what convinced Torrhen to kneel. Torrhen had to actively stop his brother Brandon from attacking Aegon's dragons when they got there. The Northern King had already made his mind prior to talking to Aegon that he didn't want to fight.

Aegon's Conquest wasn't him making buddy-buddy with the 6 kings. It was him and his sister-wives intimidating them into submission by threatening to wipe out their families.

[helaenas-queen]

Aegon trying to broke the circle of abuse that his father did with him and his siblings, by being a better dad to jaehaerys and jaehaera and also being a king that worries about the small folk is everything that's right

[felassan]

hail, Khoshekh the Magnifico, First of His Name, the King in the North

[adoption info and source]

[rhaenin-time]

Dany isn't a "white saviour" as we understand them in our world.

It's hard to explain so I'll leave it at this for now:

She's what a "white saviour" pictures themselves as, what they model themselves after, but she, herself, is not a "white saviour." The context needed for her to be a "white saviour" does not apply; it's debatable if it even really exists in ASOIAF.

A "white saviour" is someone who benefits from oppression, and wants a pat on the back for playing hero by "softening" that oppression for a day. The closest she gets to "white saviour" territory is actually in book 1 when she protects the women from Drogo's men. And even then, she had little agency to do anything further, was far more helpful than most "white saviours" could ever dream of, and most importantly, that's when she learns you can't hide behind small mercies in unjust systems; you need to ABOLISH the unjust systems.

If anything, her early arc is literally an anti "white saviour" arc. Because "white saviours" don't use their power to abolish unjust systems. The unjust systems are the SOURCE of their power, and they use their power to hide their complicity behind the very small mercies Dany knows to be insufficient.

[lya-dustin]

Because i am bored and avoiding my writing and found it very clever of the Last Kingdom not saying the word fuck because it was not invented yet.

Vote and reblog for a bigger pool of voters y'all

[reignof-fyre]

Colonizers impose their own cultural values, religions, and laws, making policies that do not favour the Indigenous Peoples. They seize land and control the access to resources and trade. As a result, the Indigenous people become dependent on colonizers.

Settler colonialization either rules as a minority group through oppression and assimilation of the indigenous peoples or by establishing themself as the demographic majority through driving away, disadvantaging, or outright killing the indigenous people.

Oh, I see...

The First Men came with bronze swords and great leathern shields, riding horses. As the men settled in the new land, carving out holdfasts and farms, they chopped down and burned the carved weirwoods that were sacred to the gods of the children of the forest. This provoked wars between the children and the First Men. Though the children fought with their greenseers, magic, and wood dancers, the First Men were larger, stronger, and more technologically advanced. The First Men cut down weirwoods as they believed that the greenseers could see through the eyes of the trees.

Hm

Brandon of the Bloody Blade is a legendary son of Garth Greenhand. He is credited with driving giants away from the Reach and warring against children of the forest, slaying so many at Blue Lake that it became known as Red Lake. In some tales, he is mentioned as the ancestor or father of Bran the Builder, making him a possible ancestor of House Stark.

Oh...

Andals first landed in the Fingers and attacked the First Men living in the Vale. They burnt out the weirwood groves, hacked down the faces, and slaughtered the children of the forest that they came across. Everywhere, they proclaimed the triumph of the Seven over the old gods. A hill, now known to the Westerosi as High Heart, was sacred to the children of the forest. There, the Andal king Erreg the Kinslayer cut down the children’s grove of thirty-one weirwoods. It is said that the First Men killed half of the children of the forest with bronze blades, and the Andals finished the job with iron

Interesting....

The Westeros of Aegon's youth was divided into seven quarrelsome kingdoms, and there was hardly a time when two or three of these kingdoms were not at war with one another. [Fire & Blood]

Aegon the Conqueror brought fire and blood to Westeros, but afterward, he gave them peace, prosperity, and justice

Aegon's first established law was the King's Peace, which forbid conflict in the realm without the leave of the Iron Throne. Aegon treated the defeated lords with respect and allowed each region to retain its own laws and customs and for the lords to retain both the right of pit and gallows and the first night. Aegon often travelled the realm with six maesters who educated him on each region's local customs and history.

...Aegon ignored the suggestions of making the ironborn vassals to the Tullys of Riverrun or the Lannisters of Casterly Rock, as well as the suggestion to exterminate the ironborn by dragonflame. Instead, Aegon allowed the ironborn to name their own lord paramount, for which the ironborn chose Vickon Greyjoy as Lord of the Iron Islands.

The remaining twenty-four years of Aegon's reign were peaceful, so much that the last two decades of his reign were later called the Dragon's Peace by the maesters of the Citadel. He spent much of his time consolidating his power by travelling throughout the Seven Kingdoms and building his capital at King's Landing.

Oh, really.

If the Valyrian's truly were the colonisers many in the fandom claim they are, Westeros would be extremely different.

For one, the predominant faith would be the Old Gods of Valyria, and the Faith of the Seven and the old gods of the north & children wouldn't exist. People would be forced to intermarry siblings/relatives and perhaps even keep slaves according to pre-Doom Valyria (even though the Targaryens stopped slavery once they left Valyria) or forced to marry Valyrian people to dilute their First Men or Andal blood so, eventually, most great houses were mostly Valyrian.

Temples dedicated to the Fourteen Flames would be built, dozens of dragons hatched and left to roam freely and hunt as they please, blood magic and sorcerers aplenty.

The Valyrians didn't do any of that. Aegon I ensured that the separate Kingdoms kept their culture and traditions and respected the Faith. It even says that many Targaryens gave up their faith in the Old Valyrian Gods (or so they say) to worship the Faith of the Seven or Old Gods of Westeros.

Tl;dr; the first men and andals colonized westeros to suit them, slaughtering the natives (children of the forest and giants) and the Targaryens (Valyrians) indeed conquered westeros but respected the land and people and only brought their ways of dragon riding and incestuous marriages who hurt no one :)

And also all the Targaryen's since Daenys's children's era were born on Westetosi soil, Dragonstone/Kings Landing, and thus were in actual fact westerosi but culturally and ethnically Valyrian.

[deadgirlwalked]

I have no idea what I'm doing. this started as a thramsay au.

[matt-murdick]

aegon targaryen they could never make me like you

[aifsaath]

More worldbuilding asks for Our Fathers Clad in Red and The Sky Is Always Red Above Valyria are welcome!

[asoiafreadthru]

A Game of Thrones, Daenerys III

“He is still the true king. He is…”

Jorah pulled up his horse and looked at her. “Truth now. Would you want to see Viserys sit a throne?”

Dany thought about that. “He would not be a very good king, would he?”

“There have been worse…but not many.”

[emperor-king-jess]

I just want it to be known if too many people keep putting disrespect on The rightful Queen Rhaenyra and start s*utshaming her or fat shaming her I WILL start cackling when all of the Hightower/Targs die and be back to remind you who’s children live on