#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.

[horizon-verizon]

On Daenerys, Colonisation and Race Discourse within the ASOIAF Fandom

This has been on my mind for a good long while and honestly, as much as I would like to leave discourse in the pits, it has been bugging me intermittently over the past few weeks.

Far too many of you get on here and call people who like the fictional dragon-riding neo-Nazis and that sentiment is so prevalent, that white people feel comfortable telling me a black woman that I am a neo-Nazi for rooting for Daenerys Targaryen. I am upholding neo-Nazi power fantasies for wanting to see a little girl live at the end of a story. I am a neo-Nazi for wanting to see the rape survivor have the family she aches for and children with the man (or men) she loves.

Then, those same people go on spiels about how the systemic erasure of those who sing the song of the earth and other old races is not colonialism. That their removal from their home is not displacement but an agreement between two equal parties. The fact that the only place where those who sing the song of the earth exist in the present timeline is north of the wall, surrounded by the bones of their dead, is not a travesty. That the expulsion of the old races from their home isn't that bad and should not be condemned. 

Instead, people argue, completely seriously, that the harm that the First Men and Andals have caused is centuries in the past, so essentially the slate has been wiped clean. The logical leaps that are required to arrive at such a boneheaded conclusion are truly mind-boggling, and those who make such arguments are not good people. 

I am unsure how one could read those books and come away with the impression that the old races do not mourn the loss of their home. I am unsure how one could read The Last of the Giants[1] and Ygritte’s reaction to the both the song and Jon’s dismissal of the ethnic cleansing of the giants then believe that the old races and the free folk have moved past their displacement. 

In Westeros, from the Wall to the broken arm of Dorne, they all speak one language despite the fact they are all different ethnicities and they all landed on the shores at different times. That is not the case in Essos, we have been introduced to at least six languages and in A Dance with Dragons, Tyrion notes that the Valyrian spoken in the Free Cities has evolved into nine distinct dialects, and they are well on their way to becoming different languages.

How would a continent as large and diverse as Westeros maintain its hegemony over the people if not for forced assimilation, discriminatory practices and violence? 

The circular logic gets even more blockheaded when you factor in the fact that Daenerys is far from the only white character in the books. She is not the only character who wishes for home. She is not the only character who draws strength from her ancestors, her bloodline and her magical creatures. 

Cersei draws strength from her family’s iconography, and the Stark children (Jon included) all draw strength from their direwolves, their home and their blood. Sansa, Arya and Bran wish to return home and their home was built on the indiscriminate murder and displacement of the indigenous peoples. Their home is built on centuries of rape, murder, exclusionary practices and sexual slavery. 

However, if we give that nonsensical argument that time erases crimes air; the Starks, Lannisters and Tullys are warring to settle personal grievances in the present timeline. As a consequence of that war, thousands (a modest guesstimate) of small folk, minor nobles and even some major ones have been raped, tortured, maimed and killed.

Despite all this, no one writes meta after meta about how Sansa and her siblings must surely die for justice to be had for those who sing the song of the earth, the free folk, the giants and all the old races that fled beyond the wall.  

People write meta about Cersei and how she must die, but those are typically more misogynistic nature. They typically argue that she must die not for the “crime” of being Lannister, but for the “crime” of being Cersei and “ruining” Jamie. 

I would not mind criticisms of Dany and her peace-focused approach to ending slavery because the approach is naïve and she gives the slavers far too much ground. However, she is learning, growing and self-critiquing. At the end of A Dance with Dragons, she has decided to embrace fire and blood, her knight is breaking the false peace which is a necessary step forward.

What I find offensive is people saying that she should have planned better before she abolished slavery. And that the death, violence, and sickness that arises from her quest to eradicate slavery is somehow worse than the death, violence, and sickness that already existed in Slaver’s Bay. 

This argument often downplays the horrific conditions and suffering that exist(ed) under the slave system in Slaver's Bay. Such arguments are often in poor taste and prioritise the lives and comforts of the slavers more than the people they have enslaved.

I would not mind criticisms of Dany if people applied that same critique even-handedly. The same people who believe that Jon and Bran have done much to rectify the evil that their ancestors perpetuated believe that Dany has not done anything to right the wrongs of her ethnic kin. They praise them for the non-existent steps that they have taken, but in the same breath, they condemn Dany for not being able to immediately end the plague that is slavery. 

It is perfectly alright to not like fictional characters, no law requires you to like certain fictional characters over others. However, what is not right is making broad accusations about those who do, it is beyond the pale. It is disgusting, and annoying, and trivialises real-world issues to score cheap points against fictional characters.

Equating the survival of a teenage survivor to the restoration of a fascist house or neo-Nazi power fantasy when such designations do not exist in the world of ice and fire is strange behaviour. Saying that the teenage survivor will eventually be manipulated and raped (again) before ending up dead on her manipulator's blade is also strange behaviour. 

Dismissing the horrors of colonialism, especially when the text shows you that the involved parties are still affected by it, is not normal and often veers into real-world imperialism apologia. While criticism and analysis of characters and their actions are valid and even encouraged, it is essential that we do not resort to sweeping generalistaions about other people and that keep criticisms of characters grounded in the text. 

[1]  

Ooooooh, I am the last of the giants, my people are gone from the earth.

The last of the great mountain giants, who ruled all the world at my birth

Oh, the smallfolk have stolen my forests, they’ve stolen my rivers and hills.

And they’ve built a great wall through my valleys, and fished all the fish from my rills

In stone halls they burn their great fires, in stone halls they forge their sharp spears.

Whilst I walk alone in the mountains, with no true companion but tears.

They hunt me with dogs in the daylight, they hunt me with torches by night.

For these men who are small can never stand tall, whilst giants still walk in the light.

Oooooooh, I am the LAST of the giants, so learn well the words of my song.

For when I am gone the singing will fade, and the silence shall last long and long.

[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

[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.

[jaenaravelaryon]

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.

[soyboywenzie]

no hate but if i was george rr martin and i saw the state of the fandom that came from my books, i, too, would not think of finishing the series on the stance that you all do not deserve it.

[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]

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.

[horizon-verizon]

I wish I knew who this was so I could block them.

No one asked who you “liked” nonicent.

No the Targaryens aren’t the only ones who conquered, that is correct. All the families are conquerors and killed people. But the Targaryens are the most violent. They are, as a whole, an evil family. Even their colors, red and black, are mostly associated with evil and violence. Their words are also violent as hell “Fire and Blood”, (which implies they enjoy bloodshed and terrorizing people) and they also have magical blood which allows them to control sentient weapons of mass destruction which they have no problem using to further their goals.

Yes the Targaryens didn’t invent feudalism and I’m not like other Targ antis in the fact that I don’t act like the Targaryens invented everything that is bad in Westeros, but I am allowed to criticize them as a family. The Targaryens are by far the most self destructive and violent family in Westeros, not to mention they are pyromaniacs with delusions of grandeur. Some few members are gentle and I like them, but most of them are violent af. I do like some individual Targaryens but the House as a whole as evil.

I respectfully disagree with everything that you say here nonnie but thank you for your time!

[horizon-verizon]

Stark and Hightower fans accusing House Targaryen of colonizing Westeros are beyond parody. Starks descend from the First Men and Hightowers from the Andals and both of these groups committed genocide against Westeros’ actual indigenous inhabitants, the Children of the Forest. They either slaughtered them or forced them further North and destroyed their sacred trees, causing their physical and cultural destruction in the process.

LAND BACK FOR THE CHILDREN OF THE FOREST! LEAF AS QUEEN IN THE NORTH!

I wrote about these way back when HotD premiered or so: HERE and HERE to start.

this insistence on letting Starks and other FM-Andal families' historical accountability mean less or not exist at all while having the Targs have it is very stupid and comes from seeing the Targs as too "Other". Which comes from and is layered with hate for Dany, as people try to use her father's Targness/Valyrianness as the primary and innate reason for why he was so unhinged. So Dany-as-ruler can be undermined or straight up negated bc they can't stand the idea of a woman with prime authority or power and being able to wield it better and more ethically than the myriad of men and some patriarchally-praised/approved women (ahem, Helaena or Alicent) can.

Ironically, this is exactly how colonizers, racist, xenophobes think. The Starks, etc. are "good" or it doesn't matter what they did in the past bc "it was so long ago"...but Daenerys and many Targs are either/both will always be responsible, must be reviled by an and all "moral person", are the only ones the narrative seeks or is actively giving karmic consequences for what their ancestors did what their ancestors did (and anyway, the Targs never even colonized any part of Westeros ever, as "conquest" =/= "colonize"!) somehow the institutional feudalism the Starks participated in and flouted for centuries is copacetic; the wars and lives they took just for conquest an domination sake, the very same feudalism that the Targs hadn't practiced and that those people hold them alone responsible for? They're cool with the Starks doing it. Ha!

[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 🙄

[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.

[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.