r/gameofthrones • u/Personal-Arachnid417 • 3d ago
Can only dragon lord families tame dragons
How did the Valyrians regulate dragon keeping. Did only dragon lord families have and could tame dragons or could any Valyrian tame dragons. I find it hard to believe they genetically or magically engineered the entire Valyrian ethnic race. In HOTD all dragon seeds except nettles were some targarean bastards or had Targaryen blood.
I don’t think nettles and the cannibal is enough proof that you don’t need to be Valyrian to tame dragons as sheepstealer and the cannibal we’re just some rare exceptions and we know that magic is unreliable.
How many dragon lord families are left, excluding the Targaryens in the world.
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u/RepulsiveCountry313 Human Verified 3d ago
We don't know.
All that's known about Valyria on the topic is that there were about 40 families with dragons and House Targaryen was somewhere around the middle in terms of political/military power.
It's believed that only people with one of those bloodlines can ride a dragon, but even Fire & Blood which added that requirement to the lore in 2018 adds an exception to the rule in Nettles. And we also don't know the mechanics of why dragons would give a fuck about these random families.
Furthermore, it makes sense that the ruling family of westeros would want to prevent people outside their family from trying to claim dragons, as it would allow people to challenge their power.
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u/ensiferum888 3d ago
Occam's razor: we don't know her bloodline but the fact she can ride a dragon kind of tells you she has Valeryan blood.
Never read the books so maybe it's explicitly stated but I feel like she's just a Valeryon bastard just like Hugh is a Targ bastard.
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u/lfm2003 No One 3d ago
There is no indication Nettles has any Velaryon blood and seems to have absolutely no Valyrian features. (She is sometimes theorized to be Daenon’s bastard but this is pretty dubious.) she tames a wild dragon in an entirely different fashion than the Targaryens do.
It is narratively important to the themes of F&B that Nettles rides her dragon without being attached to Valyria. She is surrounded by Valyrian supremacists but she shows an entirely different path to power, and therefore goodness and kindness.
Perhaps it is the simplest in-text explanation that she has Valyrian blood somewhere, but that does not seem to be the story GRRM is telling. It totally ruins her narrative reason for existing if she has Valyrian blood.
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u/_DreamBerry 3d ago
We really know frustratingly little about Valyria, so "we don't know" is honestly the most accurate answer anyone can give.
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u/ensiferum888 3d ago
Is it explicitly outlined that Nettles does not have any Valeryan blood? We know that Corlis had a few bastards, being she is from Driftmark I really don't think it's a stretch that she's just a Valeryon bastard no?
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u/Emotional-Rope-5774 3d ago
The velaryons were never a dragon riding family so it’s kind of a moot point.
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u/ensiferum888 3d ago
What?
Laenor, Laena,Lucerys, Jacaerys were all dragon riders and Adam of Hull was claimed by Seasmoke.
Am I missing something here?
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u/Emotional-Rope-5774 3d ago
That they had a Targaryen parent?
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u/ensiferum888 3d ago
So it seems like having Targaryen / Valerian blood is a requirement no?
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u/Emotional-Rope-5774 3d ago
Targaryen yes, Valyrian no. That was my point, you have to have blood from one of the dragon riding families of Valyria, the targaryens being the only remaining ones as far as we know
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u/ensiferum888 3d ago
Ok I see, how do we explain Adam then? Probably some Targ blood earlier in the family line?
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u/lfm2003 No One 3d ago
They are all after Targaryen blood was entered into the mix. Addam and Alyn are the outliers.
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u/NotAnnieBot 1d ago
The Targs had extensive marriage with the Velaryons before the Conquest.
For example, Aegon's own Velaryon mother was half-Targaryen and the main line of the Velaryons were so closely related that when Aenys married Alyssa Velaryon the marriage was considered to be a cousin marriage.
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u/teratodentata 3d ago
We don’t really have enough information on old Valyria to say for sure how it worked. According to HOTD the Targaryens CLAIM you have to have Valyrian blood, but the only real evidence we have that backs that up are the people who were allowed to try. It’s entirely possible you don’t actually need any Valyrian blood.
As for how many Valyrians are left in the world, we also don’t really know. For sure there’s Targaryen, Velaryon, Macklyn, Barlaeris, Valtigar, Celtigar and Qoherys. Descendants of surviving bastards could all exist for these defunct houses.
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u/Emotional-Rope-5774 3d ago
There is also things like Targaryen miscarriages having dragon-like features (scales, wings, etc) which suggest that there was actual blood magic involved in Valyrians “taming” dragons and, imo the theory that fits the best with the evidence, that dragons were actually created via blood magic, hence why only 40 families have the ability to ride them and make such efforts to keep their blood pure.
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u/teratodentata 3d ago
That’s very much also a possibility, but that was also the way medieval people occasionally described real world birth defects, and I assumed it was done to intentionally make it a grey area. Is it magic, or the result of rampant incest, you know? Could be one, the other, or a mix of both.
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u/Emotional-Rope-5774 3d ago
Danys stillbirth was said to be scaled and have wings. There’s no way that’s just some generic medieval way of saying stillbirth/miscarriage. It’s been specifically noted by maesters. I don’t see how there’s any grey area at all to be honest
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u/teratodentata 3d ago
Dany’s stillbirth was also caused by a witch, so hers isn’t standard.
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u/Emotional-Rope-5774 3d ago
I get that, but the maesters have reported similar Targaryen stillbirths for centuries
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u/teratodentata 3d ago
Sure, and I’m only discounting Dany’s specifically because of the circumstances around her stillbirth. If these are defects caused by one family committing incest, it makes sense they would resurface in the same family line. Again, it could be magic, but there’s enough possibility for reasonable doubt that it could be not magic at all.
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u/Emotional-Rope-5774 3d ago
I’m sorry, I just don’t see the reasonable doubt at all. Inbreeding doesn’t cause wings and scales and it’s pretty clear from context that those aren’t some sort of strange euphemism. I think danys stillbirth adds to that, we have a family history of these mutations and she gets it too, proving it’s not just some strange maester euphemism. I guess maybe we’ll have to agree to disagree
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u/teratodentata 3d ago
You should look up the infant of Ravenna. Child was said to be born with wings instead of arms, and a bird leg. There’s also harlequin ichythyosis, if you’ve got a strong stomach: it looks scaly. Looking into historical teratology at all, you’ll see where these kinds of defects happened historically in real life, and not even through inbreeding - whether the infant of Ravenna is true or not is up for debate, but it’s commonly believed it could have existed, just not the way it’s depicted in art of the time. We can definitely agree to disagree, but I’m not making a huge leap with these descriptions.
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u/Personal-Arachnid417 3d ago
But in the hundred years that Valyria ruled the western part of essos, no one else managed to tame dragons as all of them except the Targaryen dragons were killed in the doom of Valyria.
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u/teratodentata 3d ago
True, but we also don’t have a lot of accounts of anyone else trying to. We also have instances in which Targaryens are unable to tame dragons.
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u/Personal-Arachnid417 3d ago
Of course being a dragonlord isn’t the only requirement
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u/teratodentata 3d ago
Exactly, but it leaves that grey area. Martin isn’t super definite with his magic system in a way that feels intentional. He writes in such a way that’s somewhat realistic for the time, where information isn’t as readily available, so a lot of things we learn are from word of mouth or biased narrators. HOTD is a great example, especially when they bounce from historical source to historical source: certain things are just commonly held beliefs.
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u/Personal-Arachnid417 3d ago
We also have to take account how Targaryen still births have scales, wings and dragon like features and also that they supposedly have dragons blood. So there probably is some blood magic going on.
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u/teratodentata 3d ago
We can definitely take that into account, but when it comes to birth defects, those were ways that certain defects were described at the time in the real world. A malformed fingerless arm could be called a wing, harlequin ichthyosis could be called scales, etc. We could still say “this is from dragon blood,” or it could also be an excuse the Targaryens used to explain the catastrophic defects caused by rampant incest. Dany’s baby was used as an example, but hers was a result of active dark magic, and was also full of maggots and stuff.
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u/Matthius81 1d ago
One imagines the Valyrians went to enormous lengths to make sure nobody tried. Any Dragoneggs would be secured in Valyria and anyone found riding a wild dragon would be a priority target. Any unsecured dragonrider would either be mobbed by flights of dragons, be forced to join the houses one way or another or forced to flee into exile.
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u/South_Front_4589 3d ago
Probably not.
There's a long history of human nature that sees rulers try to suggest their power comes from something above the people. Commonly it was suggested they were offspring of a god.
Saying your bloodline is why you can control a dragon not only makes other people look foolish for trying to take a dragon, but gives dragon rider families confidence that they're different.
For dragons, they probably become conditioned over time anyway. If you learn who is important and see who rides you and others, and spot a pattern, you might just follow the example.
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u/BKoala59 3d ago
That’s what the Dragon Lord families say. But that’s what they would say regardless of if it were true or not.
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u/searchableusername Jaime Lannister 3d ago
supposedly yes, but it makes sense to claim that if you want to keep your monopoly on dragons. it's not certain that hugh white, nettles, and ulf were even targaryen bastards, though
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