Not trying to be rude, OP, but this interpretation feels incredibly sexist and completely out of step with what actually happens in the story.
The Targaryens come to Westeros, and in an attempt to consolidate their power, they assimilate into the oppressive social structures of Westeros, sacrificing and devaluing their women to do so.
Soā¦ they āassimilatedā by creating the Doctrine of Exceptionalism so they could continue practicing incest while demanding special exemptions from the Faith. Thatās a very strange definition of assimilation. And where exactly is the evidence that the Targaryens did they sacrifice and devalue women? There is no actual evidence that the Valyrians or the Targaryens, before arriving in Westeros, were committed to anything we would recognize as womenās rights.
I know a lot people project modern feminist ideas onto Valyria, but the actual information we have points to an expansionist empire built on slavery, and extreme social hierarchy. Nothing about that sounds especially egalitarian or liberatory. And I think a lot of the āValyria was progressiveā narrative seems to come less from the actual text and more from the fact that dragons, silver hair, and a few powerful women create a worldview that people want to read as modern and liberatory, even when the underlying society is anything but.
If Valyria was some egalitarian paradise (it wasnāt), and Conquerors are helpless children who just accidentally absorbed the norms of the people they violently subjugated and assimilated by the people they conqueredā¦ Assimilated by the people they conquered? Really? If you invade a continent with dragons, conquer kingdoms through fire and blood, establish yourself as the ruling dynasty, and sit on the highest throne in the land for centuries, then choosing to adopt some of the customs, laws, or religious practices of the people you conquered is ultimately your decision. Thatās on you. Not on the Andals. Not on āmisogynistic Westeros.ā Not on āevil maesters.ā Not on āthe Faith brainwashing everyone.ā Aegon I wasnāt kidnapped by the Seven and forced into primogeniture. He chose to rule Westeros. He chose to integrate Westerosi structures. No one forced him. No one could force him. He had dragons.
If the Targaryens truly wanted to preserve some mythical Valyrian gender utopia (again, which never existed), they could have stayed on Dragonstone kept isolated from Westerosi inheritance law, OR established a Valyrian-style legal system as conquerors OR ruled as a totally foreign elite (exactly like the Andals did when they invaded) They didnāt and thatās on them. The argument that the Targaryens shifted to male dominance because they lost their homeland and were in a less powerful position and had to adapt from the Andals and FM doesn't make sense because the Rhoynar still managed to maintain their more equal culture in fact they adapted the Andals and FM they came into contact with.
Valyria had slave armies, slave breeding programs, mass human sacrifice, Blood Magic Techā¢ and a ruling class that thought everyone else was subhuman. We really need to stop romanticizing Valyria as enlightened, progressive civilization just because it had dragons and a few powerful women. Canonically, Valyria is arguably the most horrific empire we know of in ASOIAF. Its wealth and power were built on mass slavery, conquest, and exploitation on a scale that dwarfed almost anything else in the setting. According to the lore, countless enslaved people were worked to death in the mines and tunnels beneath the Fourteen Flames. This isnāt a misunderstood utopia. Itās a slave empire.
People also forget that entire populations fled Valyrian expansion. The Rhoynar didnāt leave their homeland because the Valyrians were bringing progress and enlightenment. They fled because Valyria destroyed their civilization. Even the deep hostility many cultures have toward Valyrian practices makes more sense when viewed through that historical context.
And yet OP treats Valyrian culture as inherently superior while portraying Andal culture as uniquely backward. But where do many Andal taboos come from? Why are incest and slavery viewed so negatively? Part of it can be understood as a reaction against the expansionist dragonlord empire threatening neighboring peoples. The irony is that many people and including OP condemn Westerosi feudalism while glorifying the civilization that literally ran one of the largest slave empires in the known world. Having dragonriders and aristocratic women with influence does not make a society progressive. A slave empire is still a slave empire.
The Valyria women get to be treated closer to equals (theyāre not check point C) Okay, but what about the countless enslaved women living under the empire? What about the people worked to death in the mines of the Fourteen Flames? What about the victims of a civilization built on conquest, slavery, blood purity, and hereditary supremacy? Please just admit they were the most evil empire of sexy blonde incest freaks dragon riders.
Rhaena, Aerea, Rhaenys, Rhaenyra, Daena, Naerys, Rhaella, and so many more ā crushed under the heels of their brothers and fathers and uncles in order to appease the lords of the realm
We donāt know a single Valyrian woman who was a ruler in her own right, on her own, before or after the conquest.
We know of several Westerosi women of both Andal and FM heritage who inherited lands, held lordships, ruled in their own right, or served as the heads of their houses both before and after the Targaryen Conquest. The Dornish are the most obvious example, but they are far from the only one.
A) Before Aegonās Conquest
Argella Durrandon. The daughter and heir of King Argilac Durrandon. When her father died during Aegonās Conquest, she became the lawful heir to House Durrandon and Stormās End, yes her rule was short-lived thanks to Aegon the conqueror.
Sharra Arryn. Ruled the Vale as regent for her son, the young King Ronnel Arryn, and effectively governed one of the most powerful kingdoms in Westeros when Aegon invaded. ļæ¼
Agnes Blackwood. A ruling Lady of House Blackwood in her own right before the Targaryen era.
Anya Waynwood. Lady of Ironoaks in the Vale. She is a powerful ruling in her own right during the main series era and serves on political councils for the Vale.
Shyra Errol. Lady of Haystack Hall in the Stormlands, ruling her house directly rather than acting as a consort.
Alysanne Bulwer. Lady of Blackcrown in the Reach, another example of a woman inheriting and holding her family seat in her own right.
In fact, the Targaryens themselves were hardly consistent champions of womenās rights theyāre the ones who didnāt want women to inherit. Andal/FM did have women who inherited.
It was Aegon I who took away Argella Durrandonās birthright and gave Stormās End to Orys Baratheon.
It was Rhaenyra who didnāt let Lord Rosby and Lord Stokeworthās daughters inherit in their own rights and instead granted the lordships to their younger brothers.
Jaehaerys supports succession arrangements that favor male heirs. The Great Council of 101 wasnāt imposed on the Targaryens by foreign conquerors. It was called by a Targaryen king. Hence Rhaenys would have inherited in many Andal or FM houses.
Appease them from what? The Targaryens were the ruling dynasty. They held the dragons. They made the laws. They called the councils. They enforced the succession arrangements. The uncomfortable possibility is that many of these decisions werenāt made because the Targaryens were helpless victims of Andal culture. They were made because the Targaryens themselves preferred those outcomes.
People keep imagining a lost feminist Valyria that Westeros corrupted, but the text never actually shows us that society. Thatās why I find it strange when you try to turn the conflict into a simple story of feminist Targaryens versus sexist Westeros.
C) Old Valyria was not gender-equal paradise.
For starters, the evidence we have points to polygamy being something practiced by powerful men, not a system of equal marital freedom. If men can have multiple wives but women cannot have multiple husbands, thatās not equality. Thatās a patriarchal double standard. A system where a dragonlord can accumulate wives while women are expected to share a husband is not liberation. Itās still a system organized around male privilege.
Incest prevents female exit. If dragonriding women are only permitted to marry male dragonriders within the same house, they canāt take their power elsewhere. So, even when a woman has a dragon, her children and therefore the future dragons are folded back into the same patriarchal lineage. Her reproductive capacity is captured and redirected toward reinforcing the house rather than herself. Her power stops being personal and becomes āfamily property.ā
And Dragonstone proves it too. Even if Elaena and Gaemon are presented as co-rulers, thatās not the norm. For generations itās lords of Dragonstone, not ruling queens. That shows a womanās power depends on what her husband allows same with Westeros, just with dragons.
Valyria not having a monarchy doesnāt make it progressive it just means power was held by elite landholding citizensā¦ who were almost certainly men.
Like Ancient Athens: ādemocraticā for a tiny male elite, not equality.
Volantis: women show up in the merchant faction, but the Old Blood aristocracy (the ones closest to Valyria) never have female leaders.
Lys: run by male magisters while women are heavily exploited.
Dragon egg production is high before Dance, as Syrax and her rider Rhaenryaās fertility flourishes as one.
Most of the major dragons fighting in the Dance were actually born long before either Rhaenyra or Aegon II. Vhagar was ancient by Dance standards and had already had multiple riders across generations. Dreamfyre predated both of them by decades. Vermithor and Silverwing were the dragons of Jaehaerys and Alysanne. Meleys was already an adult dragon before Rhaenyra was born. Caraxes was already a mature dragon before Daemon ever became one of the central political players of the Dance era. Even Seasmoke was hatched years before the war itself. And Syrax people assume she was a cradle egg, Syrax was actually born before Rhaenyra and was already alive when Rhaenyra came into the world.
The same may be true for dragons like Sunfyre and Tessarion. We donāt know their exact hatch dates, but there is no evidence they were newborns of Aegon and Daeronās generation. They may simply have been younger than dragons like Vhagar, Vermithor, Silverwing, Caraxes, and Meleys.
The reason it feels like āmost dragons lived during the Danceā is because dragons live much longer than humans.
Theyāre not created by Rhaenyraās fertility, nor does the text state that her reproductive capacity rises and falls according to Rhaenyraās pregnancies. More importantly, if dragon fertility is supposedly tied to rider fertility, how does that explain dragons whose riders never had children or had only two or one child like Rhaena BB, Rhaenys and Visenya? Or dragons that outlived multiple riders? Or dragons that produced eggs across different generations? The theory falls apart pretty quickly once you apply it consistently.
What we actually know is that the period before the Dance had an unusually large dragon population because the Targaryens had enjoyed decades of stability and accumulated dragons across multiple generations. Jaehaerysās era alone produced numerous dragons that survived into the Dance.
The dragon population wasnāt flourishing because of one womanās womb. It was flourishing because dragons are long-lived creatures and the dynasty had spent nearly a century increasing their numbers before the civil war wiped much of that out.
Then Rhaenyra is usurped and killed, and suddenly, no eggs can hatch.
Check this post. The dragons died in the Dance because the Targaryens used their near-apocalyptic power to tear the realm apart in a brutal civil war, not because the universe tragically lost Rhaenyraās āsacred fertilityā or whatever mystical chosen-one you project onto her. The narrative still repeatedly shows that concentrated power destroys everyone around it. Thatās the point. War and feudal blood supremacy are horrible.
Thereās something deeply bio-essentialist about reducing a female characterās significance to her womb and treating her reproductive status as the source of cosmic balance. Suddenly dragons arenāt dying because of war, politics, or human choices. Theyāre dying because the symbolic mother figure has fallen. Thatās not empowerment. Thatās one of the oldest patriarchal narratives imaginable the idea that a womanās primary significance lies in her fertility and that the fate of society is mystically tied to her reproductive body.
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