A Song Of Ice And Fire

@Dr Well the earlier draft of Tyrion II definitely made it seem like he wanted him to know.

Ok, I moment ago I came with concept I usually see in fantasy: there is a ration of normal vs fantastic and usually it depends in what place the protagonist star(that means for example, the place where everything start is "normal" and regular where more far away lands are exotic and the fantastic is more comon)

Which thinking about this saga made ask...why the magic is so divide amount the line of Westeros-essos? so far in former everything looks like a myth but when you move to essos magic become less a stuff of legends.

The Doylist answer would be that Essos is "the Mysterious East", so of course it's full of mythical stuff.

But I'm pretty sure there's an in-universe reason that The Magic Goes Away was largely confined to Westeros, and that it's going to be explained. It could be the Citadel's fault, or connected to the fact that the Targaryens forgot how to raise dragons after ruling Westers for a while.

Well, not quite. Note how in ACOK, it's specifically noted to Daenerys that the more outlandish tricks the pyromancers are pulling (like the flame ladder) are only possible with the return of magic brought by the birth of her dragons. Of course, there needed to be some magic in the first place to bring them back at all, but Blood Magic is less point-and-fireball and more not-quite-Equivalent Exchange.

Yeah that since the likey answer, Westeros look more normal while essos is all mysthical shit going on.

Westeros also has mystical shit going on like the Children of the Forest, wargs, necromancy, the Others and the wights as well as Giants. It's just the most of the magical stuff in Westeros is confined to the North and Beyond the Wall.

Southern Westeros is mostly magic free.

and almost all that is because Winter is coming, almost all magic was pushed from westeros for hundred of years and is only NOW that is making a come back...but only there.

"The Doylist answer would be that Essos is "the Mysterious East", so of course it's full of mythical stuff."

Essos is another example of GRRM playing a fantasy trope straight. Unfortunately, this one comes with a lot of negative implications.

Slaver's bay could be taken from a pulp movie.

slaver bay looks like something of a tarantino movie, I cant way for ASOF version of Django.

Mostly because Ghis just for the sake of Dany, her entire arc is her losing her naive and delusional look of the world for "fire and blood" so if there is ANYTHING positive of Ghis, we wont see it, case in point we dont even know the name of ghiscari gods, just they exist.

The books say that the people of Slaver's Bay actually have very little Ghiscari blood in them. The culture and language of Old Ghis was lost when the Valyrians destroyed them.

The people of Slaver's Bay speak Valyrian so it wouldn't surprise me if they worship the same gods that the Valyrians did.

edited 11th Feb '16 2:36:58 PM by MadSkillz

Maybe, but even them we dont know about it(it would be intersting consider Dany IS valaryan) but we never focus on that part, because the objetive is to feel like dany is feeling...which is pointless.

It is a bit of a subversion that the worst parts of Essos can be traced back to the lily-white Valyrian conquerors—barring the Rhyonar, who are the fricking best.

We do know that three of their god's names were Balerion, Meraxes and Vhagar.

Which is why on some level I'm kinda glad that that GRRM didn't make the Targaryens and the Valyrians by association, black.

GRRM knew the unfortunate implications of the idea.

The Valyrians were basically the evil of Slaver's Bay on steroids.

And yes the Rhoynar are awesome. It's a shame we never got to meet the Shrouded Lord/Prince Garin but I hope that GRRM releases that Tyrion chapter (where he does meet the Shrouded Lord) one day as a short story. He has said he's considering it.

Southern westeros does have some magic. The Hightower in old town is built on a fortress of magic stone that is found in Asshai and the greyjoy's Seastone Chair.

Also Euron had possible greendreams/Bloodraven connection and there a spoiler character who also is having greendreams in Dorne.

"GRRM knew the unfortunate implications of the idea."

Is more likey the inspiration GRRM take from Valaria: ancient rome(who are white) with Atlantis(a greek myth) and of course, the Melibonians who are VERY pale.

Again Euron is right in the book, not before so it dosent count.

Euron had powers before the book starts.

@byaku Good point about that.

Double post

edited 12th Feb '16 9:52:05 AM by MadSkillz

But we'd also have a POV character who is black. As it stands, all of the POV characters are white; some imagine the Dornish as being brown people, but GRRM himself imagines them as "Mediterranean" (i.e, Spanish, Italian, Greek, ect.) Same with those from most of the Free Cities, like Areo Hotah.

Dorne seen to have spanish influence around.

In fact, I will look to see more cultural diference between the seven kindoms, so far the more diferent are Ironborn and Dorn, with the rest being fairly interchangable, what a shame.

Well, the North is different in some ways too.

• The old gods.
• Without the Faith of the Seven, knights are uncommon.
• The mountain clans.
• A "Masterly" noble class, which is theorized by some to be the Northern equivalent of landed knights.
• A Wo IAF points out the harsh winters have resulted in a mindset that frequently leans towards self-sacrifice. For example, old men go out "hunting" and don't come back, death in battle is honorable because it also means one less mouth to feed, ect.

Also there is the whole "you have to kill your on prisioner"

So far the more culturaly "unique" or diferent are in this order:

-Dorne -Pyke -North -King landing

So far, riverland,the Vale and storm lands since to be pretty much the same, so....meh.

Well, those are all Andal kingdoms.

Even them, you expect some weird cultural pratice here and there, dosent it?

On the other hand Pyke is diferent because their culture is reacionary and Dorne is just lucky.

Well this is a difficult case. Most Americans in general don't consider Latinos to be white but officially they are.

I mean a Mediterranean person in Italy could look identical to a Mexican but one would be considered white by the public and the other would be considered a brown person. But there is significant overlap in how they look.

Considering how GRRM described the Salty Dornish, black hair, olive skin and dark eyes, he could just easily been describing the people of Mexico.

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