#andals

[spacerockfloater]

“The Targaryens/ Valyrians are not white supremacists and can’t be compared to European Colonisers!”

Oh? My bad then. I must have them confused with some other white folks who thought their appearance made them superior, brought whole continents to heel, exploited the lands of others for their own greed, destroyed whole civilizations and enslaved vulnerable people who unfortunately lacked the advanced weapons of mass destruction they possessed.

“Well, the Andals and the First Men were also colonisers, so they deserved it!”

No way! Are you actually telling me that every race has a history of violence because human nature itself is corrupt and we’re no better than animals fighting for their place on this earth? That’s so crazy and original. By the way, are you saying that people deserved to get colonised and enslaved because they were fighting other people in order to survive? Are you suggesting these “savages” should have been contained by the righteous white folks who came there to better their lives? Not to mention that the Andals and the First Men came to Westeros 12,000 and 6,000 years ago respectively, while the Targaryens attacked Westeros barely 130 years ago (literally just 3 - 4 generations) from the Dance of the Dragons? So are you comparing the morality of the people who migrated here, who were so primitive that barely even possessed weapons of steel, with that of the most advanced civilization ever built in the ASOIAF universe? That’s so interesting! It’s almost as if the Andals and the First Men didn’t know any better until it was too late and were trying to find a land that could accommodate their millions of people, so they were essentially fighting for survival, whereas the Targaryens who came from a race that had evolved philosophically, politically, academically and technologically wise, possessed enough wealth and land to sustain their little family, yet still chose to go to war against the land that nurtured them out of pure greed! Hmmm. Do you also believe that the Greeks had it coming when they were enslaved by the Ottomans and should just let go of the past because it’s been so long since they regained their freedom (barely 200 years ago btw, after 4 centuries of slavery), because their Ancient Ancestral Tribes migrated to Greece and conquered the land 3,500 years ago, a little after the age of bronze? No? Then you might see why that kind thinking is flawed.

Stop defending these inbred bastards with your full chest. We get it. They look badass. We all have a fave war criminal but all of the Targs need to be put to the sword, along with their fucking lizards. Purposely denying the parallels between the Targaryens/ Valyrians and the Colonisers/ Conquerors of our world screams white saviour complex.

[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. 😏

#stitch with @fantasticfrankey I won't be restitching the prior video, that would give me more work. And I don't want this series to take as much time as my Rhaena Queen Dowager one. #targaryen #targaryens #thetargaryens #westerosihistory #westeros #asoiaf #asoiaftiktok #fyp #dragons #westerostiktok #rhaenyratargaryen #alicenthightower #danceofthedragons #fireandblood #houseofthedragon #hotd

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.

[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.

[deadgirlwalked]

I have no idea what I'm doing. this started as a thramsay au.

[aifsaath]

More worldbuilding asks for Our Fathers Clad in Red and The Sky Is Always Red Above Valyria are welcome!

[iceywolf24]

Bran and Garth Greenhand

And yet there was a difference, in degree if not in kind, for almost all of the noble houses of the Reach shared a common ancestry, deriving as they did from Garth Greenhand and his many children. It was that kinship, many scholars have suggested, that gave House Gardener the primacy in the centuries that followed; no petty king could ever hope to rival the power of Highgarden, where Garth the Gardener's descendants sat upon a living throne (the Oakenseat) that grew from an oak that Garth Greenhand himself had planted, and wore crowns of vines and flowers when at peace, and crowns of bronze thorns (later iron) when they rode to war. -The World of Ice and Fire

Compare this to the main series

"I swear it by earth and water," said the boy in green.

"I swear it by bronze and iron," his sister said. - Bran II - ACOK

"The ancient crown of the Kings of Winter had been lost three centuries ago, yielded up to Aegon the Conqueror when Torrhen Stark knelt in submission. What Aegon had done with it no man could say. Lord Hoster's smith had done his work well, and Robb's crown looked much as the other was said to have looked in the tales told of the Stark kings of old; an open circlet of hammered bronze incised with the runes of the First Men, surmounted by nine black iron spikes wrought in the shape of longswords. Of gold and silver and gemstones, it had none; bronze and iron were the metals of winter, dark and strong to fight against the cold." - Catelyn I ACOK

Living Thrones

The singers made Bran a throne of his own, like the one Lord Brynden sat, white weirwood flecked with red, dead branches woven through living roots. They placed it in the great cavern by the abyss, where the black air echoed to the sound of running water far below. Of soft grey moss they made his seat. Once he had been lowered into place, they covered him with warm furs.

Bronze and Iron is meant to symbolise the First Men and Andals, the first men including the North only starting using iron after the andals came.

Garth also met the COTF.

Garth is associated with green as is Bran with him being a greenseer and prince of the green.

Garth brought fertility to Westeros and Bran is associated with trees and growing.

[dedalvs]

While looking back through your various posts on High Valyrian I noted that you seemed to feel that the use of written English to represent the Common Tongue was a case of the production team chickening out: may I please ask if you have any thoughts on what the Common script (“the Common Hand”?) could have looked like?

First, let me say that I actually created the ancestor of the Common Tongue for the GoT prequel The Long Night that got canceled. In the show, it was understood that 90% of the characters were speaking the Old Tongue, with a small percentage speaking the True Tongue (the language of the children of the forest), and the Essosi invaders speaking Andalish—the mother language of the Common Tongue. As a result, it was the Old Tongue that was going to be rendered as English on the show, which meant an Andalish language needed to be created. We produced a pilot for the show, so I actually did all the work; it just didn't come to pass.

My aim with the language was to honor what I thought GRRM was doing with all the various Westerosi names, and with the Common Tongue generally. Specifically, he wanted English but not English. So names like Lannister and Tarth and Tully—these all sound like great English names; they just don't happen to exist. My goal, then, was to create a language which, had the Great Vowel Shift and other English sound changes been applied to it, would produce a language that sounded a whole lot like Shakespeare's English. And so that's what I did. Andalish, as I created, had a very similar phonology to Old English, and I built it out in such a way that had I applied sound changes to it, you would've gotten names like Lannister and Tully and Tarth and all that.

Going along with it, I would have created a writing system that felt a lot like written English. It ultimately would've derived from Valyrian glyphs, but would evolved into a nice, tidy alphabet that had shapes that felt right at home for English speakers. I probably would've found a way to give it upper and lower case, too, even though the evolution of that phenomenon is a bit of an accident.

In all honesty, we could probably do that now, and just create the alphabet the Common Tongue might have. We might not have all the steps necessary (really, we should see what the daughter languages of Valyrian do with Valyrian glyphs, and then base it off that), but we could produce something not too far off, I think. I wonder if I could convince the show runners to use it... lol Probably not, as the only time you really see writing in focus, they want viewers to be able to read it, and the conceit is that while we're hearing English, they're actually speaking the Common Tongue, and the same should hold for writing.

[racefortheironthrone]

Maester Steven, given that the description of 'pre-Lorath' explicitly mentions that the Andals in Essos kept slaves, may I please ask if you have any thoughts on how the institution came to be abandoned in the Seven Kingdoms? (I'm assuming that The Faith may well have been at the root of this development, as a reaction against the immolation of Andalos by the Valyrians - an excellent way of saying "We have kept the favour of the Seven by learning from their mistakes!" by way of reassurance).

(Just to be pedantic, the First Men also had a taboo against slavery, so it wasn't specific to the Andals.)

If we're thinking historically for a second, I think the Andals used to be not that different from other pre-modern Essosi people when it came to slavery, but underwent a substantial cultural change when Valyria started expanding westward after their wars with Old Ghis and after the conquest of the Rhoynar - because now for the first time the Andals were the targets of a massive slave empire and were repeatedly forced into migrations away from the encroaching Valyrian colonies.

This fear of enslavement seems to have gotten wrapped up with the Faith of the Seven's legends of Hugor of the Hills and the religiously-inspired manifest destiny of the Andals in Westeros - and eventually became a religious prohibition. So it was probably in the early period where the Andals were being pushed back all the way to the Axe and began contemplating a migration overseas as a permanent solution to Valyrian expansionism that we saw the development of a new taboo.