Many generations ago, Daenerys Targaryen’s ancestors — the dragonlords of Valyria — were the most powerful people in the Known World, and Valyria a place of unparalleled beauty and industry. When we see it in the fifth season of Game of Thrones, it’s a ruin. Some time in the distant past, before Aegon the Conqueror came to Westeros, the city, and the peninsula on which it sat, sank into the sea after a mysterious cataclysm. The nature of that event remains a source of constant speculation, both among people living in Westeros and those who just read about it, like us.
Alt Shift X is one of my favorite channels about Game of Thrones fan theories — scratch that, it’s definitely my favorite. It’s focused, reasoned, and always very interesting. Alt Shift X has finally tackled the mystery behind the Doom of Valyria in a new video that spins together several disparate ideas into one grand unified theory about just what lay Valyria low. Lannister gold, faceless assassins, political rivalries, Targaryen scheming…it’s all here. I don’t know if this is what actually happened to the lost city of Valyria, but it’s a good yarn:
So to recap, the basic theory is that Old Valyria was flush with cash after the Lannisters, who even back then were known for being filthy rich, bought the Valyrian steel sword Brightroar (they later lost it, naturally). This cash allowed warring Valyrian families to hire Faceless Men to kill each other, eliminating their social and political rivals. Unfortunately, many of those rivals were also sorcerers who needed to be alive to keep the Fourteen Flames, the ring of volcanoes around Valyria, placid. Without them around to work their magic, the Fourteen Flames exploded, bringing an end to the Valyrian Empire.
And also the Targaryens might somehow have been behind this and fled Valyria knowing that they would soon be the only dragonlords in existence, and therefore the most powerful people on the planet. That link needs some tempering, but in the world of Game of Thrones fan theories, someone’s always ready to step up.
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