#targaryens as colonizers

[rhaenin-time]

It's all, "The Targaryens are colonizers," until you point out that they left Valyria and assimilated into the local power structure, whereas the Andals still live in a very particular type of feudal societal structure that does not occur 'organically' and in fact is the result of a collapsed previously-centralized imperial power structure which in this case is also a settler-colonial power structure that was fueled by their version of Manifest Destiny and enabled through genocide of the remaining Children and the imposition of their self-described "universal" culture, power structure, and faith-system upon the pre-existing population. All of which resulting in a particular kind of power structure enabled by and deeply connected to that history that, I repeat, they still live according to. In which case the Targaryens, having distinguished themselves from the imperial power structure that they left, divested from, and took measures to prevent from rising again, and having proceeded to embrace change and adaptivity (to the point of assimilation) are actually less colonial than the culture they assimilate into.

And then it's still, "The Targaryens are colonizers." Because these people don't understand or even really care about colonialism. It's just another word for "foreigner I don't like."

[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.

[whateverthought]

Also, anyone saying the Targaryens are not the bad guys in most if not all of their history, that their Dynasty is not Rotten, is wrong.

What about the Incest, the Blood Purity ideology is not clicking? What about Aegon the Conqueror 'Going West' does not scream COLONIZER?

Do you honestly believe George R.R. Martin wrote these books with the intention of, these people who view themselves as Gods with a Divine Right to Rule, are right? These dictators and colonizers who ride the fantasy equivalent of a Nuke, who use them to burn down villages and towns and commit War Crimes, are the good guys?

Be For Real

[ghostinwinterfell]

every time someone calls daenerys targaryen a colonizer, grrm delays the next book another 10 years.

[vinnianlovesdinosaurs]

House of The Dragon Hot Take #11

House Targaryen is an allegory for colonization. From the very start of their line they have taken things that aren't theirs. Whether it be people, land, kingdoms, and lives. Until Aegon I, Visenya, and Rhaenys came around and waged war against everyone in Old Valyria and the neighboring kingdoms, House Targaryen really wasn't all that important. They weren't even the most powerful house in the kingdom because it wasn't their kingdom until they tore it away from the rulers and killed the people who disagreed. Same with what they did with Dorne for years. House Targaryen is full of colonizers, blood purists, and terrorists of all kinds. While this is not me saying I hate every Targaryen character, I am saying that it's important to know that they are a realistic representation of colonization because:

They came in > They stole the land and the throne > They killed the people that disagreed or tried to defend themselves > Their families took over until their house finally died out.

[jaenaratargaryen]

Thank you!! 👏🏼

As someone who was born and raised in the US and was taught the history outside of textbook narrative; that’s a dumba$$ take because there are no humans native to Westeros. If you’re going to come at one House with this very idiotic stance, keep that energy for the rest.

But maybe, realize this is a feudal fantasy? If you’re going to argue colonization, you better be stanning the children of the forest

I have a suggestion to the anti Targaryen people in fandom who bemoan (Wrongly BTW) that the Targaryen’s are evil colonizers.  If you are so goddamn pressed about colonization, maybe you should help out your fellow indigenous people.  Maybe if you are so goddamn pressed about a fictional feudalistic family who you wrongly perceived colonized Westeros, you can give back your land to your local indigenous people.  If you are a white person whose ancestors benefited from colonization, you need to shut your mouth about what YOU think is colonization, because guess what?  What the Targaryen’s did was conquest.  However what the First Men and the Andals did was actual colonization.�� So either look at the proper definitions of things so you can speak accurately about them, or you need to shut your mouth about things that you don’t understand.  You misrepresenting colonialism is you cheapening the word, and cheapening the generational trauma and the near eradication of religion and culture from real indigenous groups who faced countless horrors and forced assimilation and are still suffering from it.  So educate yourselves.  However, I suspect that the vast majority of you are clinging to the word “colonization” as a reactionary excuse to justify your dislike of Dany and by extension House Targaryen.  Because if you all actually cared about colonization and imperialism and genocide you wouldn’t be misusing this word, and you’d actually be trying to help your fellow indigenous people one way or another, which you all aren’t.  So as a fellow indigenous person who actually understands colonialism, I’m kindly asking you to back off and stop trying to justify your hatred or dislike of something by misappropriating this word.

[imfromthemiddlekingdom]

“The Targaryens aren’t colonizers because they didn’t enforce their culture on the populace!!!!” Screams the person who grew up in the west with all the privileges of never having generational trauma of having your country colonized and bled dry by people.

Sure lol. Just as the Brit’s weren’t colonizers in Asia because they never forced their way onto us lol. The burning and pillaging and Beijing is just by product of England wanting to civilize us savages! The cutting up of the coast by the eight nation alliances wasn’t colonization!!!! We weren’t forced to become Germans or Russians or Americans or Japanese by those governments.

The entitlement of these braindead westerners who think that colonization only happens when it’s a one on one by play of the colonization of the Americas. Yall are so ignorant it borders on racism.

[rhaenin-time]

@lagosbratzdoll just said this way more concisely but I'll still say it:

Coming at this from an Indigenous 'cAnAdIaN' perspective I have to say... It's fine to use fiction to discuss colonialism and vice versa. I honestly think it's a good way to get people to critically think about the subject in ways they wouldn't otherwise. But I cannot stand the word being thrown around in situations where it does not apply, by people who don't understand what it means and don't even care about what it means.

If you're going to look at fiction through a "post-colonial" lens, you don't get to throw around these very serious and important concepts if you're not willing to think about whether they actually apply in a way that goes past a very superficial, and, ironically, colonial understanding of the subject.

That's how words start to lose meaning.

All targs are problematic...

But Aegon did tag team Baela's grandmother, and it is a shitty lot to be Daemon Targaryen's daughter with his second wife whom he sorta kinda stole and have a stepmother who's at war.

So...she can have little tantrum or two if she wants too.

[rhaenin-time]

People who feel comfortable calling Aegon the Conqueror a "colonizer" but are unwilling to do the same for Nymeria... don't deserve to be taken seriously.

[visenyaism]

the targ supremacists on twt have latched onto onto atreides and are saying he’s a savior❤️❤️ dawggg these people could nawt recognize colonisation if it happen a billion times

i refuse to believe this is more than like a coalition of 6 loud twitter users being wrong so i will not be bothering to get mad about it.

[fromtheseventhhell]

The day people stop comparing Aegon/Rhaenys/Visenya to Jon/Arya/Sansa is the day I'll know peace. People hate Daenerys (and house Targaryen by extension) but then always want to steal from her story to uplift their faves. It's past the point of being pathetic 🙄

[whateverthought]

People really do be forgetting that 'Old Valyria' were colonizers.

[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.

[shunnedmorlock]

I think it's indisputable that if a Dornish character were to step out of the page into real life people would consider them to be non-white but I don't think this is particularly relevant within the books themselves. Westeros doesn't have a concept of race and they don't have a concept of whiteness. The Dornish are just as foreign as Northerners and Ironborn, maybe even moreso depending on who youre talking to because the Dornish at least keep the Faith.

If we assume that everyone else in Westeros is supposed to be "white" in the sense of fair-skinned (doesnt make sense i know but since when has Martin's world-building made sense), then the analogous concept to whiteness would be an identity that includes everyone in Westeros except Dorne and that doesn't seem to be a thing. People are bigoted against Dornish people due to cultural differences, but I'd be hesitant to use the term racist because the antecedents of race (colonialism, slave trade, the Inquisitions suppression of Jews and Muslims) don't exist. And I don't like the implication that race, particularly the """white race""" is this eternal thing and not something made up to justify colonialism and slavery

The only people who seem to consider themselves a master race are the Valyrians, and for them everyone in Westeros is different.

(I say all this as a certified Targaryen hater and Dorne supporter)

[earthyleo]

Apparently it's been confirmed that HBO is working on a Aegon's conquest series and the only prediction i have for this is that: it's gonna be completely out of touch with modern audiences. It's 2024, people no longer believe colonization was a good thing, all over the world there are people fighting for the rights of oppressed people because of colonization, history books are starting to acknowledge the horrors of conquest and colonization. There is no way that a series about a race of people who believe to be superior to everyone, conquering lands and killing the native population (in the worst ways possible) is going to leave a good impression on anyone younger than 70.

The only way they can make this series work is if they whitewash the Targaryens and portray them as benevolent and wise people who just want to save Westeros and bring peace to everyone, also they will probably have to villanize or dumb down most of the Westerosi folk (the people fighting for their independence) to justify why they needed to be """"saved"""" by the """"great""" Targaryen rulers which is just... yikes.

[imfromthemiddlekingdom]

The justification that many targ stans use to justify the conquest sounds startling like ‘white mans burden’. Especially after HOTD came out with their bs prophecy.

Listen to how this sounds:

“Take up the White Man's burden—

The savage wars of peace—

Fill full the mouth of Famine

And bid the sickness cease;

And when your goal is nearest

The end for others sought,

Watch Sloth and heathen Folly

Bring all your hopes to nought.”

And compare it to the justification used in hotd as to why the Targaryens justifications as to why they conquered independent lands:

“But ambition alone is not what drove him to conquest. It was a dream. And just as Daenys foresaw the end of Valyria, Aegon foresaw the end of the world of men. 'Tis to begin with a terrible winter gusting out of the distant north. Aegon saw absolute darkness riding on those winds. And whatever dwells within will destroy the world of the living. When this Great Winter comes, Rhaenyra, all of Westeros must stand against it. And if the world of men is to survive, a Targaryen must be seated on the Iron Throne. A king or queen strong enough to unite the realm against the cold and the dark.”

The comparison is rife. Even if we disregard the parallels between American ideology during their war with the Philippines, manifest destiny is also echoed within the reasonings that these fans give for why foreign invaders should have the ‘Divine right to rule’ within a land that is not their own.

And to the surprise of no one. The ones who support House Targaryen the most, are mainly white westerners. And guess who they spit vitriol to the most when others oppose them? Non whites.

I know I have received a lot of hate for comparing the Targaryens to colonizers and it’s very interesting how it’s mainly white people who defend the actions of people who whipped out entire houses for not bending their knees.

At this point I’m going to consider anyone who sucks the dick of house Targaryen colonizer sympathizers. As most of you do regurgitate the same taking points as your ancestors used to split my country into many.