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- India
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- He/His
[X] If the Seven guided your blade, they might be willing to guide you too. Go to the sept.
The Heir of the Dragon: A Rhaenyra Targaryen Quest
- Thread starter Teen Spirit
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10ebbor10
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- Present
I'm not sure the Faith of the Seven even has scripture.
That said, the gender roles are literally at the core of their religious doctrine. The Seven refers to the 7 aspects of God (with 3 female aspects, 3 male aspects, and 1 non-binary aspect). The male aspects are Father, in the role of judge and leader of a family, warrior and smith. The female aspects are Maiden (worshipped to keep young women pretty and safe, and get them a good marriage offer. Also worshipped to ask forgiveness if you used sex to get a man to do something), Mother (as figure of mercy, fertility, and nurturer), and Crone (as a symbol of wisdom and guidance).
So, the men get role based deities, the woman age based deities all following the same trajectory of being married, having children, and growing old.
- Location
- Germany
It has. Their holy book is called The Seven Pointed Star, but we don't get a lot of information about what's written in it. GRRM doesn't do a great deal of faith worldbuilding.
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- He/Him
I will say it's much more Alicents mom telling her liking girls was sinful that gave Alicent such a complex at the start then her faith
10ebbor10
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- Present
Ah, looking at the wiki the information is indeed sparse, but we do have 1 direct quotation :
So yeah, incredibly patriarchal setup where you need 3 female aspects solely for reproduction, and the male aspects do everything.
ToadLicker
Just another person
[X] Speak with other knights as Ser Tarly suggests. There are some friendly faces here that you would trust.
- Location
- United States
It's a medieval religion, yeah.
This framing is a bit reductive though. The crone is associated with wisdom and prophecy (which is what she's doing here). Characters of both genders pray to her for guidance in the books. The mother is the patron goddess of mercy. And I'll note that a lot of the assumptions about what the Fot7 is like are based on "medieval Catholicism was like that so probably?" but the Trinity is entirely male.
Septas seem closer to female Septons than nuns are to priests - they can receive confessions, which I'm pretty sure nuns can't. Although maybe that's less important for the Fot7, since there's no indications of any doctrine of original sin. There's some indication that there are Septas in the Most Devout (the body that selects the High Septon), specifically the AFFC appendix and per the wiki F&B has women voting on the selection of Pater for High Septon. This would be pretty much the equivalent of having female cardinals, although there's some haziness here.
- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
Yeah well. But as has been discussed at length, in Westeros religion does not nearly have the penetration it did in Europe. To the point that this is a genuine fault in worldbuilding, but that is what the setting is like. Which means, unlike medieval Europe, there is an alternative, and we are living it at the moment - privileged agnosticism with Valyrian cultural influences.
Though you are quite correct that the Faith does have female Priests. But the point is, we do not need to confine ourselves to "less bad than RL history", since we have a very much accepted alternative.
Voting closed
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- He/Him
Voting Closed, Note that this one I don't already have prepared so it will be a bit before the next update.
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Valyria was just the Ironborn but with dragons and power. It was far, far worse.
Vague agnosticism with Valyrian cultural influences… I guess that depends on interpretation. I think there's little evidence drawing on the Valyrian cultural influences are actually any advantage here - Visenya existed, but so did Jonquil and Nymeria, and so will Brienne.
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- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
I mean, that was just a descriptive statement. We still speak Valyrian, practice incest (collectively speaking) and ride dragons, so some Valyrian traits remain. And our position in regards to the Faith is also majorly informed by that. Targaryen exceptionalism is based on the Targaryens being Valyrian. We do not fall under the full purview of the Faith (hence "privileged"), and that is due to Valyrian cultural influences - hence privileged agnosticism with Valyrian cultural influences.
I do not advocate to return to Valyrian slave mines or anything, but the matter of the fact is that right now, that privileged agnosticism is the status quo, and it benefits us. There is no reason to change it.
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- Lake Wobegon
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- He/Him/His
Vote's closed.
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- United States
I do think we should definitely drop the incest, regardless of what we do with the Faith. It's both morally wrong and purely a political negative. It's only upside is that the incest exception is something we might be able to trade for something else - and that exceptions with regard to gender roles is quite likely something that is more amenable to the faith than incest. Although we can do that from either within or without the Faith, and I'm not sure which is better from a negotiating standpoint.
Another way to look at it is that the ambiguous agnosticism with Valyrian cultural traits will not last forever. Probably much less long than the English royalties cultural Frenchness did. Valyria is dead. The Targaryens were nominally Sevenist since before Aegon the Conqueror, just kind of privately ambivalent. Either we can leverage the potential ourselves, or we can continue to pass down the same diminishing ghost that haunts Viserys and Daemon as it quietly fades.
I don't agree that the status quo benefits us, and I don't think a muddled notion of racial superiority, which is what "Targaryen exceptionalism is based on Targaryens being Valyrian" means is a firm foundation to build upon. Daemon already has the valyriaboo market cornered. All the status quo really gives us is a cultural disconnect with a culture we are trying to change and an opportunity for our younger siblings to outflank us.
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- Spain
Counterpoint, maintaining a high percentage of Valyrian Dragonlord blood is what allows the Targaryens to ride dragons... We may be able to drop brother-sister incest, but we are bound to keep things between cousins if we want to keep riding dragons...
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- Lake Wobegon
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- He/Him/His
Targaryens may very well believe that about themselves, but it may or may not be true. We've also been told (in visions, no less) that the age of dragons will necessarily pass, if not with a bang then with a whimper.
Not entirely true, I can't recall exactly where, but George RR Martin gave a comment in 2014 that it was important to have Valyrian Blood "To better control a dragon," which indicates that Valyrian Blood (And more specifically dragon rider family blood since the Velaryons had no dragon riders before they married Targaryens and the Celtigars have never had any) is helpful but not the end all be all of the process of taming a dragon, which would be very consistent considering Daenerys.
Now yes Daenerys is maybe Azor Ahai, and important to the world along with prophecy and magic hanging around her.
But by the time the Targaryen family tree reaches Dany, a quick calculation shows she is under 10% Targaryen (4.1% if you want to be exact) due to all the marriages to families with no Targaryen or Valyrian ancestry such as the Martells, Blackwoods and Arryns, and yet Daenerys is still able to be a dragon rider.
Now once again Daenerys does appear to be very special even by Targaryen standards, but then we have the case of Rhaenyra's sons as well, since due to Jacerys and Lucerys being the offspring of Rhaenyra who had an Arryn mother (With some Targaryen ancestry to be fair) and Harwin Strong, the two of them have around 28% Targaryen blood and they're still dragon riders.
And yet we see the dragonseeds, some of which have more Targaryen blood than Jacerys and Lucerys try and fail to tame dragons who were not even "Wild" dragons like Vermithor and Silverwing, and we never see anyone manage to tame Cannibal.
Now due to this I firmly believe that the issue of blood dillution is less of a problem and more the character of the potential dragonrider, and we should be less worried about keeping the bloodline pure and more about which house we feel comfortable with potentially allowing to ride dragons.
Edit: Which to be fair, the Targaryens not wanting other families to get dragons is a massive reason why they intermarried so much before the Dance, I mean House Velaryon has the potential to be a massive pain in our ass purely because they have dragon riders, also there's more stuff I could have gotten into such as hints in the books that dragon taming is not to disimilar to warging.
How Tyrion might be the third dragon rider, and depending on which way Jon's parentage flips (Despite R+L=J being all but confirmed it doesn't hurt to be cautious) he might have even less Targaryen blood than Daenerys at 2.05% and yet he's still eligble to be one of the three dragon riders.
There's also the fact that George has stated genetics in ASOIAF work differently and that the Lannisters have been blonde and tall since the Age of Heroes, despite being a house that regularly marries other houses, showing that their traits still remain very strong despite massive blood dilution.
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It seems very unlikely this is true in the books. Daenerys would have been <8% "Valyrian Dragonlord" by blood, and Jon Snow half that. If there's anything in blood it seems far more likely that it's all descendants (which would make the most sense if the ability was conferred by some sort of magic ritual).
Regardless, I think we're very unlikely to know in-quest (unless we're given WOG) and either way it wouldn't be an issue until long after we're dead. Given that I'd prefer not to act like the notion of valyrian racial blood purity is a thing outside the delusions of those grasping at remembered glories.
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- The Darkness,USA
Damnit. Well I'll delete the post then. Sorry.
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- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
...as opposed to Andal customs?
We absolutely do profit from t he status quo, both as Rhaenyra but even more so as House Targaryen. For all the internal divisions in the House we should not forget that factor either, that it isn't just Targaryen vs Targaryen, it is also Targaryen vs everyone else, the King versus the Lords, which is always, always a never ending political tug-of-war. For one thing, we are fully exempt from the Church's judgement. That is a privilege that we very much want to keep, and it is absolutely tied to our standing apart from the Andals. Second, nobody expects piety from a Targaryen, so that means we don't even really have to even only go through the motions if we don't feel like it.
And third and most importantly, once again, a lot of our legitimization as rulers come from us being special even compared to Andal and First Men nobility. There is a mystique to House Targaryen - dragonriders, silverhaired, foreign, not subject to the laws of the gods. This is a mystique that absolutely does benefit us. It elevates us above the petty factional struggles of the nobility, because we are as set apart from the nobility as the nobility is from the common people, and that is a good thing actually. Why would we want to give up a status as being special and elevated above the rest? That doesn't make sense.
Yes, Valyria is dead. We aren't Dragonlords of the Freehold. We are pretty much thoroughly Westerosi. In a sense, what you say about Norman nobility in England already happened to the Targaryens, in truth. But things like Valyrian names, Valyrian language, etc etc still sets us apart. You can very well call that playing at being Valyrian, but so what? It still serves a purpose!
It doesn't need to be authentic, it just needs to set us apart from the wider Westerosi nobility. We don't need to be Freehold Valyrian, it is enough to be Targaryen Valyrian, whatever that means, as long as we are set apart. Thus it is not about the "Valyriboo market". It is not about being authentically Valyrian. Keeping up our distinction as Valyrian is just a means to an end - the end is maintaining the distinction itself. And there is no "leverage" to be gained here by changing course.
And hell, even if you were right, and this can't last forever - that then is a descriptive statement, not a normative one. Even if you are right about that process, we still have no reason to hasten that process. Instead, we should preserve our special status, the mystique of House Targaryen on which much of our legitimacy to rule rests, for as long as possible.
And like it or not, all monarchy, feudalism and nobility is based on the notion of superiority of certain bloodlines. That's just an objective fact. Hell, that is what the very word "aristocracy" means - it means "rule of the Best", because that is how Ancient Greek nobility saw themselves at. It is t he same with the Latin "Optimate", and of course in modern European languages, "nobility" the estate and "noble" the virtue are the same word, too. That is not a coincidence! European nobility did see itself as inherently, by blood more noble (as in the virtue) than the common folk. At every time in history, the nobility has not only seen itself as the ruling class, but as the literally, objectively superior blood.
That is not just us! That is also how Starks and Lannisters and Arryns and yes, even Martells would see themselves in regards to commoners. That both Lannisters and their commoners are Andals is pretty much irrelevant in that regard: Both would agree that the Lannisters are the objectively superior bloodline. And just as the nobility stands apart and above the commoners as special and superior blood, we have found a way to present ourselves as standing apart and above the nobility as special and superior blood. And that is tied to our Valyrian-ness. And that is a politically very useful representation of ourselves, that we shouldn't just discard.
So as long as you don't want to roll out the guillotines and declare the republic, the notion of the superiority of bloodlines is just an accepted fact of life.
The short and the long of it is that our current state of affairs gives us several privileges and special status, and you would just have that thrown away for some ambiguous moralist reasons which are pretty misguised in light of the fact that we are heading a thorougly exploitative feudal structure with notions of blood supremacy anyway. Giving up on those privileges won't help the common folk, it would just redistribute status among, within the elite class. Might as well look to our own interests then, as House Targaryen, and defend those.
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