#the great empire of the dawn

[atopvisenyashill]

The Magic Users Before Old Valyria, Part One: Magical Nuclear Fallout

i am positive this post has been made before but i'm making it anyway because it's eating away at my brain so let's gooooo.

We are delving into a fever dream that Dany has in AGOT, that will take us to the Pre-Valyrian magical users and their link to Valyria.

so in Dany's fever dream in AGOT, she has a vision of her ancestors:

Ghosts lined the hallway, dressed in the faded raiment of kings. In their hands were swords of pale fire. They had hair of silver and hair of gold and hair of platinum white, and their eyes were opal and amethyst, tourmaline and jade.

They look just like other Valyrians - hair of gold, white, and silver with funky colored eyes.

But note the exact gems mentioned! In TWOIAF, we get a little background on Yi Ti and their belief system. read here:

[In the beginning] a single realm ruled by the God-on-Earth, the only begotten son of the Lion of Night and Maiden-Made-of-Light, who traveled about his domains in a palanquin carved from a single pearl and carried by a hundred queens, his wives. For ten thousand years the Great Empire of the Dawn flourished in peace and plenty under the God-on-Earth, until at last he ascended to the stars to join his forebears.

Dominion over mankind then passed to his eldest son, who was known as the Pearl Emperor and ruled for a thousand years. The Jade Emperor, the Tourmaline Emperor, the Onyx Emperor, the Topaz Emperor, and the Opal Emperor followed in turn, each reigning for centuries…

When the daughter of the Opal Emperor succeeded him as the Amethyst Empress, her envious younger brother cast her down and slew her, proclaiming himself the Bloodstone Emperor and beginning a reign of terror. He practiced dark arts, torture, and necromancy, enslaved his people, took a tiger-woman for his bride, feasted on human flesh, and cast down the true gods to worship a black stone that had fallen from the sky.

Opal, Amethyst, Tourmaline, and Jade Emperors, just like her ancestors. It's not a huge stretch to say that likely, Dany, and therefore Valyrians as a whole (or at the least the Dragon Riders of Valyria) are the remnants of this ancient empire, The Great Empire of the Dawn, the same way that the Ghiscari culture is the remnant of Old Ghis - changed a bit, but with many similarities passed down amongst its people.

But who exactly is this civilization and how did they eventually turn into the Valyrians? Well, let's keep continuing with that passage about the Bloodstone Emperor:

In the annals of the Further East, it was the Blood Betrayal, as his usurpation is named, that ushered in the age of darkness called the Long Night…How long the darkness endured no man can say, but all agree that it was only when a great warrior—known variously as Hyrkoon the Hero, Azor Ahai, Yin Tar, Neferion, and Eldric Shadowchaser—arose to give courage to the race of men and lead the virtuous into battle with his blazing sword Lightbringer that the darkness was put to rout, and light and love returned once more to the world.

Basically, the people of Yi Ti believe that the Great Empire of the Dawn stretched far across the globe, and that when the Bloodstone Emperor usurped his niece, The Amethyst Empress, potentially using some weird blood magic, it caused the Long Night and the collapse of the Great Empire of the Dawn.

I think that this blood magic he was messing around with was, to use a metaphor, basically a magic nuclear bomb and I think ground zero for this - and therefore the capital of the Great Empire of the Dawn - is Asshai-by-the-Shadow. It's very notable that Asshai is so old its people don't even know what its origins are:

The ancient port of Asshai stands at the end of a long wedge of land, on the point where the Jade Sea meets the Saffron Straits. Its origins are lost in the mists of time. Even the Asshai’i do not claim to know who built their city; they will say only that a city has stood here since the world began and will stand here until it ends. Few places in the known world are as remote as Asshai, and fewer are as forbidding. Travelers tell us that the city is built entirely of black stone: halls, hovels, temples, palaces, streets, walls, bazaars, all. Some say as well that the stone has a greasy, unpleasant feel to it, that it seems to drink the light, dimming tapers and torches and hearth fires alike.

Note that last part, about the city being built from black stone - Valyria is well known for having Weird, Cool Architecture that involves black stone, fused together by dragon fire. From ADWD prologue:

Across the wide blue expanse of the Rhoyne, he could see the Black Wall that had been raised by the Valyrians when Volantis was no more than an outpost of their empire: a great oval of fused stone two hundred feet high and so thick that six four-horse chariots could race around its top abreast, as they did each year to celebrate the founding of the city.

and again from Tyrion's POV:

The gateway to the Long Bridge was a black stone arch carved with sphinxes, manticores, dragons, and creatures stranger still. Beyond the arch stretched the great span that the Valyrians had built at the height of their glory, its fused stone roadway supported by massive piers. 

And one more time F&B/The Princess and the Queen, when Aegon and Sunfyre on are Dragonstone:

Sunfyre’s scales still shone like beaten gold in the sunlight, but as he sprawled across the fused black Valyrian stone of the yard, it was plain to see that he was a broken thing, he who had been the most magnificent dragon ever to fly the skies of Westeros

rip to the hottest dragon in westeros.

It's very much a Valyrian thing, this fused black stone...yet the entirety of Asshai is built with black stone, even though the city predates Valyria, and the black stone of Asshai is just a little different - a greasy, unpleasant feeling. I think that this greasy feeling comes from the remnants of the magic that caused the Long Night - going back to that idea of a magical nuclear bomb which is poisoning the land the way radiation does. I think this because there are actually several ancient cities of mysterious origin with black stone and a greasy, oily feeling to them, all of which seem to have suffered some sort of magical nuclear fallout the way Asshai has, and they're all not too far from each other either:

The Idol on the Isle of Toads in the Basilisk Isles

Ruins found upon the Isle of Tears, the Isle of Toads, and Ax Island hint at some ancient civilization, but little is now known of these vanished men of the Dawn Age. If any still survived when the first corsairs settled on the islands, they were soon put to the sword, so no trace of them now remains … save perhaps upon the Isle of Toads…

On the Isle of Toads can be found an ancient idol, a greasy black stone crudely carved into the semblance of a gigantic toad of malignant aspect, some forty feet high. The people of this isle are believed by some to be descended from those who carved the Toad Stone, for there is an unpleasant fishlike aspect to their faces, and many have webbed hands and feet. If so, they are the sole surviving remnant of this forgotten race.

The Five Forts

The Five Forts are very old, older than the Golden Empire itself; some claim they were raised by the Pearl Emperor during the morning of the Great Empire to keep the Lion of Night and his demons from the realms of men … and indeed, there is something godlike, or demonic, about the monstrous size of the forts, for each of the five is large enough to house ten thousand men, and their massive walls stand almost a thousand feet high.

Certain scholars from the west have suggested Valyrian involvement in the construction of the Five Forts, for the great walls are single slabs of fused black stone that resemble certain Valyrian citadels in the west … but this seems unlikely, for the Forts predate the Freehold’s rise, and there is no record of any dragonlords ever coming so far east.

The Ancient City of Yeen

Maesters and other scholars alike have puzzled over the greatest of the engimas of Sothoryos, the ancient city of Yeen. A ruin older than time, built of oily black stone, in massive blocks so heavy that it would require a dozen elephants to move them, Yeen has remained a desolation for many thousands of years, yet the jungle that surrounds it on every side has scarce touched it.

And even more suspicious is the fact that Sothoryos, where Yeen is located, is known for its large wyvern population:

Most terrible of all are the wyverns, those tyrants of the southern skies, with their great leathery wings, cruel beaks, and insatiable hunger. Close kin to dragons, wyverns cannot breathe fire, but they exceed their cousins in ferocity and are a match for them in all other respects save size.

Now there's different stories on how dragons came to be, but most interesting to me is what the Asshai'i claim:

The Valyrians themselves claimed that dragons sprang forth as the children of the Fourteen Flames, while in Qarth the tales state that there was once a second moon in the sky. One day this moon was scalded by the sun and cracked like an egg, and a million dragons poured forth. In Asshai, the tales are many and confused, but certain texts—all impossibly ancient—claim that dragons first came from the Shadow, a place where all of our learning fails us. These Asshai’i histories say that a people so ancient they had no name first tamed dragons in the Shadow and brought them to Valyria, teaching the Valyrians their arts before departing from the annals.

Septon Barth later writes that he believes Valyrians used wyverns and blood magic to make dragons:

In Septon Barth’s Dragons, Wyrms, and Wyverns, he speculated that the bloodmages of Valyria used wyvern stock to create dragons. Though the bloodmages were alleged to have experimented mightily with their unnatural arts, this claim is considered far-fetched by most maesters, among them Maester Vanyon’s Against the Unnatural contains certain proofs of dragons having existed in Westeros even in the earliest of days, before Valyria rose to be a power.

So to sum up basically:

Dany's vision shows us her ancestors, who are almost definitely the rulers of the Great Empire of the Dawn

We know several cities - Asshai, Yeen, the Isle of Toads - that have an architectural resemblance to the fused black stone that the Valyrians used, but their structures predate Valyria.

We know Septon Barth believes dragons were made through blood magic with wyverns as a base stock and that there are a lot of wyverns in one of these ancient places, Sothoryos/Yeen, where the black stone architecture is found.

The people of Yi Ti believe that a magical calamity of some sort caused the Long Night.

THEREFORE: The Great Empire of the Dawn had its capital in Asshai, and used blood magic to start the Long Night (by accident, most likely), which caused a huge magical calamity that affected the entire world, and while their people never recovered from it, they brought their magical knowledge with them to their new home in Valyria, where they made more black fused stone architecture and turned their wyverns into dragons. Meanwhile, the "ground zero" for much of this magical calamity still experiences the magical fallout of this calamity.

OKAY. That's part one because this is getting super long winded. Part Two will be....JUST HOW BIG WAS THE GREAT EMPIRE OF THE DAWN ANYWAY?

[lemonhemlock]

Hightowers were dragonlords????

Ehhhhhhhhh. The base of the High Tower in Oldtown is super old, predating the Long Night. It's made from a weird material, "fused black stone", that has only been found in a few other places in the world. It is similar, but not quite, to the fused dragonstone of Valyrian architecture, which cannot be made with any technology other than dragonflame.

Theorists speculate that fused black stone must be similar, I suspect because it's one solid block of material that has been melted together, not little bits of material connected through mortar, i.e bricks. Obviously, if you have dragonflame, you could use it to melt and fuse stone until it presents uniformly.

This peculiar sort of black stone is linked to the Great Empire of the Dawn, a civilization that predates Valyria.

cue in "i've connected the dots" -> people think it possible that EotD people also had dragons

It is suspected, though not confirmed, that the some EotD people remained in Westeros and mingled their genes with the Hightowers.

[highqueenofashandstars]

For anyone who argues that Chaol is not the most relatable character, during the entire duration of Tower of Dawn, I, too, wondered what Dorian was up to.

[ludcake]

if you think youre a hotd lore scholar and do not know the tale of jahaelor mataeryon you're a phony sorry i am officially gatekeeping

[lilith-kruger]

Bloody Emperor assassinating Empress Amethy , Beginning of the long night Sunfire killing rhaenyra, end of dragons

[dayneston]

The Green Viper: The Curious Origins of the Hightowers, the Daynes and Their Ancient History with House Targaryen

In Episode 6 of House of the Dragon, we see an older Alicent Hightower wearing a stunning, 16th century-inspired gown of deep emerald green. The diamond-patterned texture on the dress, it’s colouring and the way it shimmers in the light when the queen moves, all give off the effect of an elegant serpent gliding through tall grass. A few eagle eyed viewers like @asecret3rdthing on Twitter have noticed this curious design choice on Alicent’s wardrobe, and I don’t think this costuming choice is accidental.

There are many theories out there regarding the curious and mysterious origins of the Hightowers of Oldtown. The High Tower that they were named after is built upon a giant, thick slab of obsidian rock which looks almost identical to the fused dragon stones of Old Valyria. The fact that the Valyrians were never known to go so deep into Westeros, with no records of dragons flying over Oldtown and the Citadel being older than the Valyrian empire, all points to the curious possibility that there was a pre-Valyrian, dragonlord civilisation present in Oldtown - and possibily even ancient Westeros. After all, many maesters have studied the giant black rock at the base of the High Tower and they’ve all come to the same conclusion - that it’s identical in properties to Valyrian dragon stone but it’s a type of technology that can only be made by harnessing dragon fire.

The Hightowers themselves aren’t main pov characters in the current timeline of the A Song of Ice and Fire series but we do get a few descriptions of some Hightowers in the books. For example, Alerie Hightower, the daughter of the current Lord of Oldtown Lord Leyton Hightower and the mother of Queen Margaery Tyrell, is described as having pale gold hair which looks almost silvery in the light. She’s only in her early 30s and being a Hightower by birth and a Tyrell by marriage, it’s safe to assume that her silver hair isn’t the result of stress and age, as she’s most likely lived a very luxurious and comfortable life since the day she was born, so we can only assume that the silver in her hair is natural. Jorah Mormont’s second wife, Lady Lynesse Hightower, had golden hair and bore a striking resemblence to the Valyrian Daenerys Targaryen, to the point where it is likely that Jorah’s infatuation with Dany is due to her looking almost identical to Lynesse. From these examples, we can deduce that the Hightowers have some dragonlord colouring - namely pale gold/silver hair, pale skin and possibly even purple eyes, in shades of violet or blue. Although Alicent Hightower in the HBO series is portayed with auburn hair, her appearence in Fire and Blood is never described, and it’s interesting to note that her marriage to Viserys prodcued four children who all had the dragonlord colouring with no variation. When the Targaryens weren’t marrying each other to preseve their dragon blood, or the Velaryons to preseve their Valyrian looks, they seemed to gravitate towards the Hightowers of Oldtown (one of Maegor’s wives was Ceryse Hightower). Juding by the fact that the Targaryens were obsessed with blood purity, perhaps it wasn’t just the Hightower money and politcal influence they lusted after, but their dragonlord looks? It wouldn’t be the first time the Targaryens wed into a minor house - Dyanna Dayne was the wife of King Maekar I, and the Daynes are well known to have silver hair and purple eyes (see Darkstar and Ashara Dayne), despite not being Valyrian in origin. Both the Hightowers and Daynes have similar names as well (Alerie Hightower and Alleras Dayne, Arthur Dayne and Uthor Hightower, Clarisse Dayne and Ceryse Hightower, Vorian Dayne and Dorian Hightower, to name just a few). These similar naming choices in the families point to a common ancestral origin.

So, if the Hightowers aren’t Valyrians but have their looks, then it’s safe to assume that they descend from either the relatives or the ancestors of the Valyrians, which make them possible descendents of another, pre-Valyrian dragonlord civilisation - the Great Empire of the Dawn. It’s highly plausible that they’re related to the Daynes as well and both families’ histories do stretch back to the Dawn Age and the Age of Heroes, when the Long Night lore was being made. If so, then it would make Alicent’s costuming choices in House of the Dragon all the more fascinating and poignant. Snakes are lizards, just like Dragons - Caraxes the Blood Wyrm famously moves around like a winged serpent. The serpentine scale patterns on Alicent’s dress could be a literary clue. Snakes, being earth-bound and silent, are much less destructive and all-conquering than dragons. We know that the Great Empire of the Dawn didn’t create nearly as much misery and destruction as the Valyrian Freehold did, even if they did possess dragons (which is likely). Snakes are also associated with water in many real world traditions and both the Hightowers and Daynes have their family seats, the High Tower and Starfall, at the mouths of rivers (the Honeywine and the Torrentine, respectively), whilst dragons and the Targaryens are associated with fire and have their power based on volcanic islands. So, does GRRM give us a story clue in the Dance of the Dragons? Many maesters believe that the Valyrians were taught to tame dragons by “someone else” - what if this exchange of knowledge wasn’t as peaceful as historians would think? What if the Dance is yet another chapter in the violent history of the enmity between two dragonlord (or lizardlord) civilisations - the Valyrians and the Great Empire of the Dawn/Asshai? In simpler terms - was the Dance of the Dragons lizard on lizard crime?

Look at that (serpentine) shimmer on her dress!

Edit: One more thing I forgot to mention!!

By now, many have noticed that Oldtown is quite obviously the Westerosi version of ancient Alexandria, which during antiquity, was the centre of learning and trade in the Ancient Mediterranean. With its sphinxes, libraries, occult centres and sprawling markets selling exotic wares, Oldtown evokes the highly metropolitan, forward-thinking ethos of Alexandria, and like the Egyptian city, is also situated at the point where a river meets the sea. It’s interesting to note that Alexandria was also the home of the Agathos Daimon, a protective spirit who was the patron and guardian of the city and featured on the official city coinage. This guardian spirit was depicted as a serpent, as in ancient times, snakes were associated with primordial wisdom and knowledge of the natural world. Snakes were also associated with scientific and medical knowledge, which is why hospitals in the West still sport pictures of the Caduceus, Hermes’ staff which is entwined by twin snakes. Oldtown is where the Maesters study the art of medicine and healing, to serve the rest of the realm. So for the leading academic city of the Mediterranean to be patronised and protected by an animal which represented knowledge and wisdom to all ancient peoples was fitting, quite like Oldtown as the centre of all Westerosi learning. Again, more snake/dragon symbolism tied to the Hightowers!

Above: two depictions of the Agathos Daimon snake spirit from antiquity.

[spearsndragons]

HOURGLASS UPDATE: “a fork in the road,” is out NOW!

“Who are you?”

“That’s quite a complicated question. Sometimes, I myself don’t know. History has given me many names, yet it has forgotten the one I hold most dear.”

THE LORES ARE HERE! i had SO much fun combining all these myths and legends. i hated how the show did not even explore any of them! it barely touched on the story of the long night. IT MAKES ME SOOOO MAD so i shall bring justice to them!!! literally, these stories are what made asoiaf the amazing fantasy world that it is.

i really need to be better at updating this story since i have all the chapters from the previous version lmao

also, anna taylor joy as ningxia… amazing. i love my mind. i love her and i love ningxia’s character. i hope you’ll love her too!

next chapter will have the major change/divergence from the first version of hourglass!

[swallowtail-ageha]

Rhaenyra and aegon the ii/amethyst empress and bloodstone empereor parallels btw. If you even care

[thaliajoy-blog]

The Amethyst Empress (based on the gorgeous singer look of Evelyn in Everything Everywhere All At Once). The Great Empire of the Dawn she ruled seems to have been based culturally on Ancient China (as the Golden Empire of Yi Ti that succeded to it).

[thewingedwolf]

what’s funny about grrm’s world building outside of westeros is that some of it is inspired by real world places, like westeros, but with some fun twists, while yi ti is straight up just “the entire history of china but they have magic” and other places are just him going “know what would be sick as hell? VELOCIRAPTORS.”

[khalesci]

the way that if Dany still holds Meereen and the other cities of fka Slavers’ Bay (even if via a proxy council) and takes the Iron Throne she will technically be an Empress, not just a Queen

[atopvisenyashill]

oh my god i started reading about the empire of the dawn and i think i’m just throwing random words at the wall now aksjdj

basically

The Great Empire of the Dawn spread out a lot in the ancient days and dawn age, and their leaders were said to have longer lives due to being god-emperors.

I believe they rode wyverns and used them to build the weird Valyrian looking artifacts that pre-date Valyria. It would mean the GEOTD either stretched from Asshai to Yi Ti to the Basilisk Isles as far out as Pyke - they did have wyverns and way more magic - or at least, they had adventurers that went out that far. some of these descendants were definitely the hightowers, and the daynes, which also explains the Valyrian looks amongst them. some of their descendants are likely the iron born as well, due to the ancient-ness of Pyke and the Seastone Chair. some of the their descendants *might* be First Men.

getting majorly into theory territory, but i kinda believe that the iron born were descendants of the geotd who made deals with the merlings, similar to the first men and the children of the forest. i also think the geotd ancestors that became the ironborn had some beef with the geotd ancestors that became the hightowers, leading to the grey king (i *think* one of the tourmaline or onyx god-emperors descendants) just straight murdering a hightower wyvern.

When the Bloodstone Emperor brings about the long night and poisons Asshai forever, other descendants of the amethyst empress and his own descendants help put a stop to it throughout the world, with varying degrees of success. 

The GEOTD crumbles at the end of the Long Night…and some of their diaspora becomes Valyria.

Already having some knowledge of wyvern riding, they used that and the blood magic of the Bloodstone Emperor, their ancestor, to birth their fire breathing dragons from the fourteen flames.

once again

[lemonhemlock]

I have this hc that daeron looks the most like a Hightower except having sliver/blonde hair and purple eyes he looks like a Hightower

Well, there are theories that connect House Hightower to the dragonlords of the Great Empire of the Dawn. The Hightowers actually do present with "Valyrian" features sometimes, from their supposed EotD ancestors. For example, Lynesse Hightower, Jorah's wife, looks very similar to Daenerys. Alerie Hightower, Margaery's mother, has silver hair.

Silver hair and purple eyes seem to describe a phenotype developed in societies that dabble in magic. The EotD is described in the worldbook as this great fallen empire that predates Valyria.

So Daeron looking Hightower might be very possible, since Hightowers already carry these traits recessively.

[daenystheedreamer]

asian asoiaf fans really fighting for our lives 😭 and reddit boys wonder why we “”””hijack”””” white characters when our other choices are Horse Lord Slaver (🤝 native americans and other first nations people baby i’m so sorry) and Bing Bong and Ching Chong from Yi Ti like… sorry. i demand chinese greyjoys as compensation

god fucking exactly like GOT had literally TWO WHOLE ASIANS!! a red priest who shows up for one scene and jessica henwick nymeria (my love my everything jessica text me back) like even the dothraki get de-asianed... god fucking forbid i think the starks are yakut!!! burn me at the stake for thinking the reeds are swagapino and that ashara is aishwarya rai...

[lucien-calore]

the great war by taylor swift was MADE for chaol and dorian

"sucker punching walls" dorian punching that wall in COM

"spineless in my tomb of silence" dorian not telling chaol about his magic (tomb of silence) because he was scared (spineless)

"my hand was the one you reached for all throughout the great war" chaol not being able to let go of dorian even after dorian was with the valg collar and everyone thought he was gone

"you were playing with fire" dorian about chaol and celaena/aelin

"telling me to punish you for doing things you never did" dorian about chaol blaming himself for the valg collar thing or dorian blaming himself for killing all of the guards + brullo

"it turned into something bigger. somewhere in the haze, got a sense i'd been betrayed" chaol about dorian having magic and all the things they never said to each other because of fear

"soldier down on that icy ground looked at me with honor and truth, broken and blue. so i called off the troops. that was the night i nearly lost you" the whole scene where chaol says "i love you". i mean "icy ground" dorian's powers. "soldier down [...] looked at me with honour and truth, broken and blue" literally chaol trying to fight for dorian even when he was just a mortal and was hurt. "so i called off the troops" dorian willingly being captured so chaol could escape. "that was the night i nearly lost you" that line speaks for itself.

"i really thought i lost you" could be dorian with the valg collar or chaol almost dying but losing his ability to walk instead

"we're burned for better" aelin ruining their friendship just so they can get together again better and stronger

i rest my case, your honor.

[muadweeb]

i rmb being mind blown after reading that "house hightower and dayne were descendants of the great empire of the dawn" theory when i first read it. to date, it is still my favourite theory!!! im so excited for twow just cause both sam and euron are in oldtown and euron is really gonna to do some freaky shit there