A Song of Ice and Fire by In Deep Geek - Dailymotion

In Deep Geek

Discussion and insight on the world of George R R Martin, including the A Song of Ice and Fire series of books, Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon, the Dunk and Egg stories and beyond.

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00:00Valyria was the most powerful civilisation in the world, but then it was gone in a day.

00:06What and who caused the doom of Valyria? Let's take a look.

00:30This is the second in a series of videos about the Faceless Men in A Song of Ice and Fire.

00:34What are they, what do they want, and what does that mean for the rest of A Song of Ice and Fire?

00:40You don't need to have watched the previous video before watching this one,

00:43but it does set the scene a bit, so if you want to check that out first, then come back here, feel free.

00:50Valyria was the greatest city the world has known, considered to be the height of architecture,

00:56civilisation, technology and magic. It was the capital of the Valyrian Freehold,

01:01an empire that lasted for millennia and spanned most of Essos. The Valyrians were indisputably

01:08the most powerful civilisation on planetos. But then, in just a day, it all came to an end.

01:15Every hill for 500 miles around Valyria exploded, filling the air with molten rock and hot ash,

01:22bringing a fiery death to everyone and everything below. Even dragons in the air could not escape.

01:29Massive earthquakes turned the city into rubble, and hot magma bubbled to the surface,

01:34turning the seas into a burning, smoking maelstrom. Everything was lost. The people, the dragons,

01:41the city, the thousands of years of culture and knowledge, all gone. And just as importantly,

01:47magic was also gone. No, not all magic, of course. The magic of the children of the forest and the

01:53old gods was still there in the hidden corners of Westeros, for example. But the kind of magic that

01:58had dominated Essos for centuries, the magic of dragons, wildfire and old Valyria, glass candles

02:05and forging Valyrian steel, that was all gone. Disappeared enough that the wisest and most learned

02:11of Westeroses could laugh at the very thought, as Maester Luwin said to Bran,

02:17Perhaps magic was once a mighty force in the world, but no longer. What little remains is

02:23no more than the wisp of smoke that lingers in the air after a great fire has burned out,

02:29and even that is fading. Valyria was the last ember, and Valyria is gone.

02:36The doom of Valyria is unquestionably one of the most important moments, therefore,

02:43in all of Planetos history. Without it, the world of ice and fire would have been very,

02:48very different. And the curious thing is, there is no one consensus in-world explanation for what

02:55happened, though I think we have been given all the clues we need to come to a reasonable

02:59understanding. So, before we get into why it happened, let's just be clear on exactly what

03:05happened. To understand this, we need to first understand that Valyria was quite literally

03:11built on volcanoes. The volcanoes, known as the Fourteen Flames, provided the precious metals,

03:18the fertile land, and the dragons that allowed the city to prosper. And according to King Viserys in

03:24the first season of House of the Dragon, the volcanoes were the source of the Dragonlord's magic as well.

03:30So this wasn't just bad town planning. Being built on volcanoes seems to have been an important part

03:36of the Valyrian's power. The Valyrians kept the volcanoes dormant by the constant attentions of

03:42fire mages, we're told. So far, so straightforward. In many ways, the doom was a disaster waiting to

03:49happen. Civilisations near to active volcanoes tend not to have particularly long lifespans,

03:55and the actual physical explanation of what happened seems to be pretty straightforward.

04:00The volcanoes had been held back for millennia, and when they went off, they really did go off.

04:06Fourteen volcanoes erupting all at once makes quite a big explosion. So if that's what happened,

04:12the question remains why? Why then, when the Valyrians clearly had a system in place to prevent it from

04:19happening? In the world of ice and fire, the Maesters come to the conclusion that it was basically just

04:25one of those things. Bad luck. A natural calamity. Perhaps an earthquake triggered one of the volcanoes

04:32which set the others off. It's a boring suggestion, but definitely possible. Some have added their own

04:38in-world prejudices to this by way of a bigger explanation. Some septons, for example, preach that

04:44the heretical Valyrians delved too deep into the seven hells. Red priests talk about the judgment of

04:51Vrelor. Historians speculate that political infighting got out of hand, and so on. But all these are just

04:58guesses. All of Valyria's records were destroyed in the Doom, and any eyewitnesses will also necessarily

05:06be dead. To my mind, if this is more than just a natural occurrence, the obvious thing to look at

05:13is what happened to the fire mages who were supposed to be preventing the volcanoes from erupting.

05:18At least, that's the view of Septon Bath, who speculated that the spells must have faltered for some

05:24reason. And as lovers of the lore of George RR Martin know, we should always pay attention to

05:28what Septon Bath says. I think it's reasonable to suggest that the dragonriders wouldn't have killed

05:34them themselves. Even in a fit of bloodthirsty political infighting, it would mean the deaths

05:39of all of them. So, who might have killed the fire mages, and in turn killed all the Valyrians?

05:46Well, as it happens, we do have a prime suspect. Actually, not so much a suspect as an admission

05:54of responsibility. In the last video of this series, we looked at how the faceless men had

05:59their origins in the mines under Valyria. In the heart of the volcanoes, in other words.

06:05The slaves cried out for death, and the first faceless man gave it to them. We hear this

06:11when the kindly man is teaching Arya about the faceless men. That very night he chose the most

06:18wretched of the slaves, the one who had prayed most earnestly for release, and freed him from

06:23his bondage. The first gift had been given. Arya drew back from him. He killed the slave.

06:31That did not sound right. He should have killed the masters. He would bring the gift to them as well,

06:38but that is a tale for another day, one best shared with no one.

06:44So, the faceless men brought the gift of death to the masters, the Valyrians.

06:50Now, some people have suggested that the faceless men may have done this because they hated slavery

06:55and thought the Valyrians deserved it, as Arya clearly thought, but that would be to completely

07:01misunderstand what the faceless men believe. Arya herself regularly gets in trouble with them for

07:07killing or wanting to kill people who deserve it in her mind, or not wanting to kill someone who

07:14doesn't deserve it. To the faceless men, a religious order, let's not forget. Death is not a matter of who

07:21deserves it. After all, vala mogulis, all men must die. No, it was a matter of whether an appropriate

07:28sacrifice was made to the many-faced God. Let's go back to that history lesson for Arya from the

07:34kindly man. One day, the first of us heard a slave praying not for his own death, but for his master's.

07:42So fervently did he desire this that he offered all he had that his prayer might be answered,

07:48and it seemed to our first brother that this sacrifice would be pleasing to him of many faces.

07:54So that night, he granted the prayer. Then he went to the slave and said,

07:59you offered all you had for this man's death, but slaves have nothing but their lives. That is what

08:06the God desires of you. For the rest of your days on earth, you will serve him. And from that moment,

08:14we were two. So a slave master's death was brought with the life of a slave who desired it, and later,

08:23the faceless men brought the gift of death to the masters, valyrians, plural. Clearly,

08:29this won't have been a simple matter of they deserved it. No, they will have had to receive

08:34a sacrifice or gift to their God, and they clearly did. So we know with some reasonable certainty that

08:41the doom was brought about by the disruption of the spells that held back the fourteen volcanoes.

08:46They were kept in place by the fire mages, and so someone presumably killed them. The faceless men

08:53claim responsibility, and someone paid the price to make it happen. But who? Let's hold that thought

09:01for a moment, because there were a couple of prophecies about the doom of Valyria. One we all

09:06know of. Daenys the Dreamer, a Targaryen, foresaw the doom, and the Targaryens escaped to Dragonstone

09:12before it happened. We don't know the contents of this dream, but the context that the Targaryens

09:18simply tried to escape and didn't even think about building their own empire for a few generations

09:22afterwards certainly seems to imply that they weren't responsible for the destruction, they just

09:28got forewarning of it. But there was another prophecy that we read about in the World of Ice and

09:34Fyre. The maesters report it like this. The wealth of the Westerland was matched in ancient times with

09:42the hunger of the Freehold of Valyria for precious metals, yet there seems no evidence that the

09:48Dragonlords ever made contact with the Lords of the Rock, Casterly or Lannister. Septon Barth speculated

09:55on the matter, referring to a Valyrian text that has since been lost, suggesting that the Freehold

10:00sorcerers foretold that the gold of Casterly Rock would destroy them. As I said earlier, we need to

10:07pay attention to what Septon Barth said, and also to the careful wording of the prophecy,

10:12the gold of Casterly Rock would destroy the Valyrians, not necessarily the Lannisters themselves.

10:19The World of Ice and Fire also informs us that there are no mines in all the world as rich as those

10:26of Casterly Rock, so a lot of gold. Enough to pay the price for the Faceless Men to kill those Fire

10:32mages? Perhaps. But what were House Lannister doing at the time? And what were they doing with their

10:40mountains of gold? Well, they were trying to buy a Valyrian steel sword from Valyria. At around this

10:47time there was a small but lucrative trade in Valyrian steel swords. The Valyrians would make them,

10:53and then sell them to the noble lords of Westeros for a lot of money. This was when most of the

10:58Valyrian steel swords we know about came into being, which makes it incredibly suspicious that the

11:04Lannisters never came into contact with the Valyrians. Because the Lannisters really wanted

11:09a Valyrian steel sword and had lots of gold to pay for it, and the Valyrians, we are told,

11:14had an unquenchable desire for precious metals, but the Valyrians, presumably wary of that prophecy,

11:21just ignored them. Which leads us to this curiously worded section in the world of Ice and Fire.

11:28The sword Brightroar, that's the Lannister sword, came into the possession of the Lannisters

11:34in the century before the Doom, and it is said that the weight of the gold they paid for it

11:39would have been enough to raise an army. Note how it doesn't say that Brightroar was made for them by

11:45the Valyrians, just that it came into the possession of the Lannisters, that it happened

11:50not too long before the Doom itself, and that they paid what appears to be well over the odds for it.

11:56The Lannister gold may not have gone to Valyria, but someone who could provide the Lannister with

12:02a Valyrian steel sword did get that gold, and lots of it. Perhaps they bought someone else's Valyrian

12:09steel sword off of them, but we don't hear about that, neither that another family in Westeros gave

12:15up their sword or suddenly became rich. But there is another group who perhaps could have offered the

12:20Lannisters a Valyrian steel sword. The Maesters of the Citadel had been visiting Valyria for years by

12:27this point, learning their secrets. It's possible that the Maesters learned the secret of how to forge

12:33Valyrian steel during their visits, but even if they didn't, we know that they somehow managed to

12:38get hold of a large quantity of Valyrian steel and that they knew how to reforge it into something new

12:45in their forges in the Citadel, because they regularly produce new Valyrian steel links for Maester's chains

12:51and have done so for centuries. That's a lot of Valyrian steel. What if they offered to make a sword for

12:59the Lannisters in exchange for what is described as enough gold to raise an army? It fits the facts.

13:06The Lannisters were desperate for a sword, and the Valyrians wouldn't make them one, and the Maesters,

13:11well, they would get the gold. But what would the Maesters do with all that gold? Gold that,

13:17let's not forget, was prophesied to destroy the Valyrians. Let's try to look at it from their

13:23perspective. We're told from various sources in A Song of Ice and Fire that the Maesters hate

13:28magic. In order to become a Maester, you have to spend an entire night in a ritual designed

13:34purely to show you that magic does not work. They wanted to build a world based on pure reason

13:40and learning, not dragons and magic. There are various well-evidenced theories about how the

13:46Maesters may well have managed to kill off all the dragons in Westeros after the Dance of the Dragons,

13:50so would they not also earlier have wanted to destroy Valyria with all its dragons and magic?

13:56And in the years building up to the Doom, the Valyrians looked westwards more and more towards

14:04Westeros. They took hold of Driftmark, then Dragonstone, and their dragons were flying freely

14:09over Blackwater Bay. The Maesters, more than anyone, will have known what this meant, and they will have

14:15been afraid of what it meant for them, the masters of science being faced with the ever-growing threat

14:21of invasion by dragons and magic. Surely the only way to prevent this would be to end Valyria itself,

14:28and they suddenly had a lot of Lannister gold to play with.

14:33So how might all this fit together, and how confident can we be that this is what happened?

14:39Well, let's start with the Lannisters. The Lannisters desperately wanted a Valyrian steel sword,

14:44but none of the Valyrians would forge one for them. Concerned as they were about the prophecy that

14:49Lannister gold would bring about their destruction, so the Lannisters had to look elsewhere to someone

14:54else who had Valyrian steel and knew how to make it into a sword, the Maesters of Oldtown.

14:59The Maesters, who hated dragons and magic, had grown very concerned about the expansion of the Valyrian

15:05Freehold. Surely it was only a matter of time before the dragons invaded Westeros itself and made slaves

15:12of them all as they had everywhere else. Meanwhile, a cult of death, the Faceless Men had been established

15:19in Braavos. They had come from the volcanic mines beneath Valyria itself and knew its secrets, and

15:26they were willing to kill anyone for the right price. Years later, they will claim it was they who killed

15:34the Valyrian slave masters. So all the pieces fit together. The Lannisters paid the Maesters to craft

15:42them a Valyrian steel sword. The Maesters used that gold to pay the Faceless Men to kill the fire mages

15:47beneath Valyria, and that caused the doom. It's a complex picture, but all the pieces fit. It fits the

15:55prophecy that Lannister gold, though not necessarily the Lannisters themselves, would be the destruction of

16:00Valyria. It fits Archmaester Marwyn's assertion at the end of A Dance with Dragons that the Maesters killed

16:06the dragons first time around. It fits with the Maesters' aims of protecting Westeros from magic and

16:12dragons. It fits with Septon Barth's theory that it must have been the disruption of fire mages that

16:18caused the doom. And it fits the Faceless Men's claim that they killed the Valyrian slave masters.

16:24All the Faceless Men would have to do is coordinate the murders of the fire mages controlling the 14

16:31flames, and millennia of volcanic activity would have burst forth, bringing doom on Valyria, something

16:39the Faceless Men were definitely capable of. What caused the Doom of Valyria? The Faceless Men,

16:47the Maesters, and Lannister gold. But what do you think? What or who do you

16:53think caused the Doom of Valyria? Let me know in the comments below. Or if you'd like to see more

16:58videos in this series, there's a link to the playlist appearing now on the left of your screen. Or to

17:03support this channel and get access to exclusive benefits, there's a link appearing now on the

17:07right of your screen. Thanks for watching, that's all for this time, I'll see you again soon.

Who Caused the Doom of Valyria?

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A Song of Ice and Fire

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