#george realized that the dying of the dragons looks suspicious as shit and cannot be written off as a natural phenomenon

[navree]

I think the dragons died because after the doom of old Valeryia magic has become very weak in the world and the dragons are magical in nature so obviously they will be affected by it. I actually find this more compelling than some "eevil maesters conspiracy"

I've talked a bit about what I think happened with the dying of the dragons here and here, but long story short there's a definite piece of the puzzle missing. I think that the weakening of magic in the world following the Doom definitely played a part, it's all but explicitly stated in text that the death of Valyria (and later dragons) is what led to the death of magic itself, and that's why we're seeing stronger magic now that Dany has been able to birth her children. But, to me at least, there has to be something more than just "the weakening of magic in the world eventually killed them off" because the timeline of the dying of the dragons is........weird. It's commonly accepted that it happened because the Dance killed off all of House Targaryen's healthy dragons and it did kill off a significant amount of them, but not all. Silverwing and Sheepstealer and the Cannibal were all healthy and alive, and Morning was at least healthy and growing swiftly enough to be ridden by Rhaena. That's four healthy dragons, and yet one of them vanishes, two of them are just never heard from again after the war, and one of them, despite being part of a species that can live to be up to two hundred years old, is somehow dead at age 24. Not to mention, there's no indication that the healthy dragons pre-Dance (which only lasted two years) were going to be falling under any kind of issue too, they all seemed on track to live long lives and produce healthy offspring.

So, what happened? Why did the dragons go from "yeah we're good" to actively dying off? Why was Silverwing at the very least never able to be claimed again? Why did the lifespan of the dragons shorten so dramatically? Why were none of the eggs laid by the four very healthy dragons, or even the eggs that had been laid prior to the Dance that just hadn't hatched yet, no longer healthy, or not even hatching at all? That's more than just a natural progression, that speaks to something very specific happening, something we don't know about and that doesn't even seem to have been fully noted until it was too late, not just because of Aegon's hatred and fear of dragons but also just being under the radar (and again, Aegon did eventually realize the problem because he did spend the last years of his reign looking for ways to bring dragons back). Do I think it was the maesters? Not entirely sure, I think the maesters have an anti-magic bias and an anti-magic agenda that they're working towards, but I don't know if they have the power or scope to literally kill off dragons, but they might have played a part. If I had to guess, I would say that the maesters might have been a small part, along with the general decline in magic also playing a part, and then this one unknown mystery catalyst accelerating everything and turning it from things being normal into this fucking extinction event.