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witchofvalyria · 8 months

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when the starks do it, it's not as bad

guys, did you know?

Okay, so what are these apparent false equivalencies?

The claim that the invasion of the First Men is the same or "just as bad" as the invasion of the Targaryens.

Why is this a "false equivalency"?

The CoTF and giants never managed to take their land back from the Starks lol;

It happened a really really really long time ago you guys;

It was so long ago and wasn't documented nearly as well as when the Targaryens invaded so it probably wasn't even that bad and look, it was probably the Andals anyway, not the innocent First Men;

Unlike the Starks who made a pact with the people they invaded, everybody banded together to kick the Targaryens out so they're the real colonizers!!!!

These are some juicy arguments :) Let's get started!

First, a walk through canon :)

What does seem to be accurate from all the tales, however, is that the First Men soon came to war with the children of the forest. Unlike the children, the First Men farmed the land and raised up ringforts and villages. And in so doing, they took to chopping down the weirwood trees, including those with carved faces, and for this, the children attacked them, leading to hundreds of years of war. The First Men—who had brought with them strange gods, horses, cattle, and weapons of bronze—were also larger and stronger than the children, and so they were a significant threat.

The hunters among the children—their wood dancers—became their warriors as well, but for all their secret arts of tree and leaf, they could only slow the First Men in their advance. The greenseers employed their arts, and tales say that they could call the beasts of marsh, forest, and air to fight on their behalf: direwolves and monstrous snowbears, cave lions and eagles, mammoths and serpents, and more. But the First Men proved too powerful, and the children are said to have been driven to a desperate act.

Legend says that the great floods that broke the land bridge that is now the Broken Arm and made the Neck a swamp were the work of the greenseers, who gathered at Moat Cailin to work dark magic. Some contest this, however: the First Men were already in Westeros when this occurred, and stemming the tide from the east would do little more than slow their progress. Moreover, such power is beyond even what the greenseers are traditionally said to have been capable of … and even those accounts appear exaggerated. It is likelier that the inundation of the Neck and the breaking of the Arm were natural events, possibly caused by a natural sinking of the land. What became of Valyria is well-known, and in the Iron Islands, the castle of Pyke sits on stacks of stone that were once part of the greater island before segments of it crumbled into the sea.

Regardless, the children of the forest fought as fiercely as the First Men to defend their lives lives. Inexorably, the war ground on across generations, until at last the children understood that they could not win. The First Men, perhaps tired of war, also wished to see an end to the fighting. The wisest of both races prevailed, and the chief heroes and rulers of both sides met upon the isle in the Gods Eye to form the Pact. Giving up all the lands of Westeros save for the deep forests, the children won from the First Men the promise that they would no longer cut down the weirwoods. All the weirwoods of the isle on which the Pact was forged were then carved with faces so that the gods could witness the Pact, and the order of green men was made afterward to tend to the weirwoods and protect the isle.

The World of Ice & Fire, Ancient History: The Coming of the First Men

The history of the Reach in the days of the First Men is not unlike that of the other realms of Westeros. The bounty of these green and fertile lands did not make men more peaceful, nor less grasping. Here too the First Men strove against the children of the forest, rooting them out from their sacred groves and hollow hills, hewing down their weirwoods with great bronze axes. Here too kingdoms rose and fell and were forgotten, as petty kings and proud lords contended with one another for land and gold and glory, whilst towns burned and women wailed and sword rang against sword, century after century.

The World of Ice & Fire, Seven Kingdoms: The Gardener Kings

Most of what we do believe of the Breaking comes to us through song and legend. The First Men crossed from Essos to Westeros by land, all agree, walking or riding across through the hills and forest of the great land bridge that connected the two continents in the Dawn Age. Dorne was the first land that they entered, but few remained, as we have chronicled; many and more pressed on northward, through the mountains and mayhaps across the salt marshes that once existed where the Sea of Dorne is now. As the centuries passed, they came in ever-increasing numbers, claiming the stormlands and the Reach and the riverlands for their own, eventually reaching even the Vale and the North. They drove the elder races before them, slaughtering giants wherever they found them, hewing down weirwood trees with their bronze axes, making bloody war against the children of the forest.

The children fought back as best they could, but the First Men were larger and stronger. Riding their horses, clad and armed in bronze, the First Men overwhelmed the elder race wherever they met, for the weapons of the children were made of bone and wood and dragonglass. Finally, driven by desperation, the little people turned to sorcery and beseeched their greenseers to stem the tide of these invaders.

The World of Ice & Fire, Dorne: Kingdoms of the First Men

And the wars for conquest, domination, power, and land don't stop at taking land from elder races, the First Men fight among themselves too, exclude a significant number of their own people who would become the wildlings and name them enemy, while those who would become Starks seek to conquer Skagos.

More historical proof exists for the war between the Kings of Winter and the Barrow Kings to their south, who styled themselves the Kings of the First Men and claimed supremacy over all First Men everywhere, even the Starks themselves. Runic records suggest that their struggle, dubbed the Thousand Years War by the singers, was actually a series of wars that lasted closer to two hundred years than a thousand, ending when the last Barrow King bent his knee to the King of Winter, and gave him the hand of his daughter in marriage.

Even this did not give Winterfell dominion over all the North. Many other petty kings remained, ruling over realms great and small, and it would require thousands of years and many more wars before the last of them was conquered. Yet one by one, the Starks subdued them all, and during these struggles, many proud houses and ancient lines were extinguished forever.

The World of Ice & Fire, The North: The Kings of Winter

Skagos has often been a source of trouble for the Starks—both as kings when they sought to conquer it and as lords when they fought to keep its fealty. Indeed, as recently as the reign of King Daeron II Targaryen (Daeron the Good), the isle rose up against the Lord of Winterfell—a rebellion that lasted years and claimed the lives of thousands of others, including that of Barthogan Stark, Lord of Winterfell (called Barth Blacksword), before finally being put down.

The World of Ice & Fire, The North: The Stoneborn of Skagos

This went on for thousands and thousands of years. So these invasions, these many many wars, the thousands upon thousands of lives lost were not as bad or not the same because they happened longer ago? Are not fresh in living memory? Because the original inhabitants of the land never managed to take their homes back? I don't know, I'd call that worse. As for lack of documentation, yeah, a lot can be lost to history... but I think those details include many ugly bits, not sunshine and rainbows (especially when dealing with GRRM...?)

"such as the fact that the seals claim they are the ones who drove the COTF from the deep forests they were given in the pact"

Yeah, this isn't an inconsistency and this is where at least some fact checking would help. The Children of the Forest didn't initially exist only in the far far north, they were driven there. As one of the original inhabitants of Westeros, the Children were all over Westeros at this time -- until the arrival of the First Men. However, as the First Men began to farm the Children's land and cut down their trees, including their heart trees, while the First Men were afraid the Children used the weirwoods for spying, things turned to war and it was an endless exhausting war.

The Pact in the face of a common enemy ends that war in a truce and it's thousands of years before the Children face the Andals. By this point, the Children have already begun to more or less leave Westeros for beyond the Wall and their forests. The Andals kill many of the remaining Children they can find in southern areas. The Childrens' gods, the Old Gods, have been replaced by the Seven in most of southern Westeros and the Children largely disappear from view, many humans believing they are gone forever.

"and unlike with the starks and the COTF, the people of westeros themselves banded together to kick the targaryens out and take back rule of westeros. so a targaryen invading westeros again to put herself on the throne? yeah, that person is a colonizer. no two ways about it."

Funny how only Targaryens can be colonizers but not Robb even when he conquers and raids the Westerlands.

So let's go into Robert's Rebellion and investigate how much the realm/Starks hAtE Targaryens!

So in the 280s, there was an issue with this one guy, Aerys Targaryen, because he was pretty into fire and had quite the spiralling unchecked mental disorder.

Plus a pretty particular sequence of events:

Rhaegar takes off with Lyanna.

Lyanna's big bro Brandon comes to Aerys's castle and demands the crown prince and heir Rhaegar "come out and die".

Aerys arrests Brandon, summons Brandon's dad Rickard.

Arrests both of them, roasts them alive. They die. Causes issues with the North.

Aerys demands the heads of the new Lord of Winterfell Ned Stark and Lord of Storm's End, Robert Baratheon, who are being fostered in the Vale by Jon Arryn. Arryn refuses. Baratheon declares war against the crown. Ned joins.

Robert kills Rhaegar at the Trident. Tywin Lannister betrays Aerys, who is also betrayed and killed by Jaime Lannister. Robert Baratheon becomes new king.

Personally, I'd call "the people of westeros themselves banded together to kick the targaryens out and take back rule of westeros" a strange take on the above. Especially since during Robb's coronation scene, we have the Greatjon bellowing:

"MY LORDS!" he shouted, his voice booming off the rafters. "Here is what I say to these two kings!" He spat. "Renly Baratheon is nothing to me, nor Stannis neither. Why should they rule over me and mine, from some flowery seat in Highgarden or Dorne? What do they know of the Wall or the wolfswood or the barrows of the First Men? Even their gods are wrong. The Others take the Lannisters too, I've had a bellyful of them." He reached back over his shoulder and drew his immense two-handed greatsword. "Why shouldn't we rule ourselves again? It was the dragons we married, and the dragons are all dead!" He pointed at Robb with the blade. "There sits the only king I mean to bow my knee to, m'lords," he thundered. "The King in the North!"

(AGOT, Catelyn XI) They're not going for independence because they hate Targaryens and hate the Iron Throne. They're going for independence because they don't like the existing choice of kings. And then we've got Jon Snow idolizing the Young Dragon and Arya Stark looking upon dragon skulls as "old friends" -- I don't see a lot of Targaryen = bad in Stark POV chapters here and why would they view them as such? Jon has dreamed of being a conqueror just like the Young Dragon, what the First Men and Starks have done in terms of conquest is not so different from the Targaryen conquests. And when it comes to brutal punishment in response to slaving, well...

"Then a long cruel winter fell," said Ser Bartimus. "The White Knife froze hard, and even the firth was icing up. The winds came howling from the north and drove them slavers inside to huddle round their fires, and whilst they warmed themselves the new king come down on them. Brandon Stark this was, Edrick Snowbeard's great-grandson, him that men called Ice Eyes. He took the Wolf's Den back, stripped the slavers naked, and gave them to the slaves he'd found chained up in the dungeons. It's said they hung their entrails in the branches of the heart tree, as an offering to the gods. The old gods, not these new ones from the south. Your Seven don't know winter, and winter don't know them."

(DAVOS IV, ADWD)

Maybe a preview for Jon's upcoming punishment preferences in TWOW? :) But yeah, apparently, this is why the Stark/First Men conquests are ok and Targaryens are just colonizers :( Targs, your mistakes were not doing your conquests thousands of years ago and leaving people alive so they can take back their land, document anything, and band together against you. Do better next time.

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