#read the books!

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

hello, I've sort of migrated here from Twitter. If you have the time I was wondering if the things I got from twitter/tiktok are correct.

In the books valyrian's are the only people in world who can bond with dragons?

In the books Targs are immune to heat/fire and sickness because their blood is magic?

Hightower's tower was made with dragon fire despite it predating Valyria?

There are other buildings around the world in asoiaf which also used dragon fire but also predate Valyria and their dragons?

Someone told me on tiktok that the OG asoiaf dragons went extinct and Valyrian magicians bred other magic creatures together until they got their version of dragons?

thank you for any help 🙏. I want to get around to reading the books but it's kinda daunting because there's so many of them and they're long and I'm a slow reader 😭

Hey, welcome to Tumblr! (Hope you survive the experience.) Sure, I can answer your questions (certainly better than tiktok and twitter lol sigh), but I do definitely recommend reading the books! Some people find it easier to go with audiobooks (I personally don't, since auditory processing isssues make me tune out in five seconds, same with podcasts, sigh), and that might be a big help for you? But anyway, answers below...

1. Yes... um... it's a question. It's stated that Valyrians are the only ones that can bond with dragons, and furthermore, only ones from the dragonriding families of Valyria. (This is part of the "Doctrine of Exceptionalism", which I'll describe later.) The "dragonseeds" who rode dragons during the Dance were supposedly bastards or descendants of bastards of Targaryens (I'll get to the details in a moment), and we have the example in the current books of Brown Ben Plumm, who Dany's dragons adore, and he is an extremely distant (by like 120 years) descendant of Elaena Targaryen and Aegon IV Targaryen.

However, the dragonseed and dragonrider Addam of Hull, per the histories a bastard of Laenor Velaryon (son of Rhaenys Targaryen), was almost certainly actually the bastard of Corlys Velaryon, and the Velaryons were not a dragonriding family. Though it's possible that one of the pre-Conquest Targaryen ladies married into House Velaryon, so it's not that exceptional. The greater problem is the dragonseed Nettles, of no known background, called out by the narrative as looking distinctly un-Valyrian (she's brown, and note the Velaryons are white in the books), who tamed her dragon by feeding it sheep until it started to like her. Many theorize that while Valyrian blood makes it easy to bond with dragons (due to likely blood magic/genetic bonding with dragons in ancient times, as they claim to be descended from dragons), it is still possible to create that bond the hard way, as the early Valyrians were once a mere tribe of shepherds who discovered dragons nesting in a local chain of volcanoes. The full answer is one of the greater mysteries of ASOIAF, and will hopefully be resolved in later books. (Along with whoever the riders of Dany's other two dragons will be.)

2. Per GRRM, Targaryens are not immune to fire, but they do have some heat resistance, and enjoy things like hot baths and hot weather. The only one actually immune to fire was Dany, and specifically only during the miracle of her dragons' birth. (During her taming of Drogon right before she rode him the first time, she received burns on her hands.) Many Targaryens have died or been injured by fire, including Viserys Targaryen (Dany's brother and his "golden crown"), Aerion Targaryen (he drank wildfire because he thought it would turn him into a dragon. It didn't), Rhaenys Targaryen the Queen Who Never Was, Daeron "the Daring" Targaryen, Aegon II Targaryen, and Rhaenyra Targaryen.

As for illness, the "Doctrine of Exceptionalism" was a religious precept that King Jaehaerys I worked out with the Faith of the Seven, to give the Targaryens an exception on the Faith's anti-incest stance. It stated that Targaryens were different, exceptional, special people, closer to gods than men, because of their unique silver-gold hair and purple eyes, because they alone rode dragons, and because they never got sick. "There was fire in the blood of the dragon, it was reasoned, a purifying fire that burned out all such plagues." However, only a few years after Jaehaerys made this agreement (and married his sister Alysanne), their 7-year-old daughter Daenerys died of the Shivers, a severe-flu-like epidemic. (This put great doubt in their heart, but did anyone do anything about it? lol no.) Their daughter Maegelle later died of greyscale, and their son Baelon died of appendicitis. Later Targaryens have died of other epidemics, of the pox, of tuberculosis, and other diseases.

However -- some Targaryens have shown surprising resistance to illness. Aegon III sat with many victims of the Winter Fever epidemic, and never showed any symptoms. Dany herself cannot recall ever getting sick. (She is not immune to being poisoned, though.) There may be something specifically connected to being a dragonrider (though Baelon was one), or more specifically being a potential Prince That Was Promised? Again, this is connected to the greater mysteries of ASOIAF, to be resolved later.

3 & 4. The base of the Hightower -- not the tower itself, but its first level -- is an ancient fortress made of fused black stone, which is similar to Valyrian construction made by melting stone with dragonfire (such as the castle of Dragonstone, the walls of Volantis, and the Valyrian roads). However, it predates the Valyrian empire by millennia, and is plain without decoration, unlike how the Valyrians would twist the melted stone into artistic forms. There are also other ancient structures in the world, the Five Forts on the eastern border of Yi Ti, that are also made of this fused black stone in this plain style. Some maesters also think the Hightower fortress's labyrinthine design is similar to the Mazes of Lorath, also ancient structures, made by a vanished giant not-quite-human species (called the Mazemakers) in pre-history. GRRM has said "there were dragons everywhere, once" (there are indeed records of dragons in Westeros before Valyria, and dragon bones found in far distant places in the world) and the truly ancient Asshai'i histories claim to have taught the Valyrians the secrets of dragons, so there's a theory that there was a dragonriding culture long before the Valyrians who left behind these fused black stone structures. (More on this in the next answer, and you can see an older theory post of mine on the subject here. Also note I am certain this culture was not the Great Empire of the Dawn, they're unrelated.) One more great mystery!

5. Yeeahh... this may be true. Or it might not be. Septon Barth (Jaehaerys's Hand of the King, and a great researcher into the origins of dragons, with theories that made maesters call him crazy and the Faith burn his books) apparently theorized in his Unnatural History that the Valyrian dragons may have been created via bloodmagic, possibly by breeding wyverns (flying reptiles that do not breathe fire), possibly with firewyrms (wingless/legless earth-boring creatures that do breathe fire). There's also (as I said above) Valyrian legends that claim they found dragons nesting in the Fourteen Flames, but ancient texts from Asshai claim that dragons first came from the Shadow (the mountains around Asshai), and an ancient nameless people brought them to Valyria and taught the Valyrians the magic needed to control them. And there's a myth from Qarth that there used to be another moon that cracked open like an egg and millions of dragons came out. We do not yet know the true answer.

GRRM recently said "Septon Barth got most of it right", but what is "most"? Was there an incredibly ancient vanished species of dragons that the original Valyrians re-created? Did these Valyrians somehow breed these new dragons with themselves to make them easier to control? What we do know is that occasionally Targaryens have had monstrous dragon-like stillbirths. We do know that very rarely a dragon egg has hatched a "broken thing" that dies quickly, or a monstrous wingless wyrm that attacks its cradlemate, with no known reason why. We know that in the ruins of Valyria since its Doom, there are apparently mutated creatures that can lay eggs containing "worms with faces" and "snakes with hands" in human flesh, a horrific experience witnessed by Septon Barth that sent him on his path. It's a great great mystery, and there will apparently be an answer one day.

BTW, many of these huge mysteries were introduced in The World of Ice & Fire, if you want to read just one book. However, TWOIAF is not a story like the actual books, it's a history/geography book, and if you want more than lore, if you want addictively enjoyable characters and amazing dialogue and a truly excellent story, again I highly recommend reading the main books. The lore and the mysteries are very interesting, sure, but they're not what's really kept me in this fandom for 13 years now, you know?

[doctorslippery]

[sourdough-seal]

bingewatching will never come close to bingereading. there is nothing like blocking out the entire Earth for ten hours to read a book in one sitting no food no water no shower no bra and emerging at the end with no idea what time it is or where you are, a dried-up prune that's sensitive to light and loud noises because you've been in your room in the dark reading by the glow of a single LED. it's like coming back after a three-month vacation in another dimension and now you have to go downstairs and make dinner. absolutely transcendental

[going2hell4everythingbutbeingbi]

I firmly believe that some stories can never be translated into a different medium and that's okay

[mostly-funnytwittertweets]

[bookwyrminspiration]

I can behave normally around books

[rincewind87]

[sanguinifex]

You gotta read and watch some old books and films that aren’t 100% modern politically correct. I’m not saying you should agree with everything in them but you need to learn where genres came from to understand what those genres are doing today and where media deconstructing old tropes is coming from.

Also, more often than you might think, they’re not actually promoting bigotry so much as “didn’t consider all the implications of something” or just used words that were polite then but considered offensive now.

Kill the censor in your head.

[baalzebufo]

so the book of bill is pretty good

[blumenundpoesie]

a blanket of snow on fairy lights

[septemberkisses]

the fact that i'm no longer the same age as the protagonists of novels and films i once connected to is so heartbreaking. there was a time when I looked forward to turning their age. i did. and i also outgrew them. i continue to age, but they don't; never will. the immortality of fiction is beautiful, but cruel.

[kate-bot]

billford comic i made while i was hungry >:3

[roseworth]

i think theres this idea in the general public that the "best" fanfic gets turned into real books like 50 shades of grey. but the truth is that the best fanfic can never be published as an actual book because its intricately woven into the canon material so its inseparable even if you change the names

[writtenroses1813]

I’m so sorry but in the nicest way possible do yall actually read books or just read words??? Cause I’ve been seeing that trend of people not understanding how “snarled” and “eyes darkened” and “eyes softened” etc. was used in a book and like…

Genuinely, do yall just not have imagination?? Or not understand figurative language??? Also eyes do literally darken and soften have you not lived a life??? How do you read with no imagination? Is this how you get through so many books in one month - you simply don’t take the time the understand the words as they are read?

[toss-a-coin-to-your-stan-account]

there's no greater betrayal than finally starting to read a book you've had sitting for months on your shelf or your desk or your nightstand and then finding out it's bad. like. i gave you a fucking home.