Black Velaryons: Why This is A Good Idea

[Music] i call this valarium [Music] as you probably know by now corliss velaryon is black his children too and i think that's his brother right there on the left as you probably also know this casting choice has drawn the predictable outrage from well the same people who always object to any perceived increase in diversity when it comes to casting choices i mean who could forget the liet kinds controversy or james bond or when they cast annie that's right annie the orphan girl as a black actress in a broadway play that uh that caused quite the stir uh from people who probably never had strong feelings about annie in any case as usual these folks have formed very strong opinions before they've even seen the show or movie in question which in this case is house of the dragon that's unfortunate because as i'll explain black valerians actually make a ton of sense of course knee-jerk backlash to black valerians isn't really about sense and to be honest many of these types of commenters are very free and open with their racism and hostility and i've been deleting a couple such ugly comments per day since i released my first video on house velaryon and you've probably seen similar types of ugliness in the comments section of basically any video or social media post about the valerions and corliss in particular however i'm not here to uh talk to those folks as they've already set themselves against the show and as i've already given my unvarnished opinion on this dynamic of modern media consumption in the house velaryon house of the dragon preview live stream which you can find in the house of the dragon playlist also quick shout out to gray area who breathed dragon fire all over this topic in this video which i've linked below and which i highly recommend and 100 stand by what i am here to talk about is how black velaryons will work with the established canon and the story in fire and blood in the end any change that you make when you're adapting a story will be judged on how well it works for the story whether that's changes to the ethnicity or age of a character or changes to important dialogue or plot beats i myself was pretty excited when i saw the casting of black valerians for several reasons i mean it's simply a fact that fantasy has always been overly white and has in general painted an inaccurate picture of the medieval world as racially homogeneous and of course correction is long overdue there are also tons of black game of thrones fans especially in target nation shadow targnation so including black dragonlords in game of thrones just seems intuitive and natural now the potential to learn more about places that we haven't been to like the summer islands is exciting and as we'll discuss the way that this casting choice will interact with the book cannon is potentially very interesting plus corliss and the rest of house valerian just look really damn cool and it's it's just i don't know it's just hard for me to understand people looking at these pictures and making a frowny face unless well you know so how's this going to work well click the like and subscribe button and i'll tell you about the two choices that i can see the show going with [Music] so like i said there would seem to be two choices in general that the show can make in regards to explaining how cordless velaryon became black if you will i think one choice makes a little more sense than the other but both are interesting and both could work so i'll give you the rundown on each as well as a potential clue that i found in the casting list that may indicate which way they're going so essentially the choices here are that the valerions have always been black dating back either to the days of valyria or to their early years on driftmark or that one of corliss's parents was a summer islander likely his mother of course black and white are terms that aren't used in a song of ice and fire but for all intents and purposes black people and a song of ice and fire are from the summer islands which are very loosely modeled on african and caribbean culture with a little bit of the maritime skill of the pacific islanders the summer isles are an isolated archipelago a good bit south of westeros which can be reached by ship fairly easily almost like a jumbo-sized hawaiian islands or like the caribbean islands if they were floating by themselves in the middle of the ocean the summer islanders are the world's foremost mariners but instead of navigating the ocean in smaller canoes and rafts like the pacific islanders they instead build the largest ships in the world which are called swan ships after their white sails and their mastheads which are often carved in the shape of a swan or other bird they are a largely peaceful people who thrive on trade and as such can be found in every port city around the world you'll probably remember sam running into summer islander ship captain kojimo in braavos whom he hitched a ride with all the way to old town and him and gil and the fat pink mast and well surely remember all of that in any case you may also recall that danny traded news with a summer islander ship captain in qarth named kahuru mo so qarth and braavos obviously both port cities that are hubs of international trade so this sets up a fairly intuitive way to connect house velaryon and the summer isles because the valerians are in turn westeros's most skilled mariners who have also grown wealthy off of international trade driftmark stronghold of house valerion has in turn become a thriving port city and a hub of international trade frequent contact between summer islanders and valerians is therefore not only logical but extremely likely or even inevitable and we all know that when humans have contact they will sometimes fall in love and start a family if you think about it valerions and summer islanders would potentially run into each other in three ways when a summer islander visits driftmark for reasons of trade when a valerion sails to the summer isles for reasons of trade or they could also meet at literally any port city in the world since they're both venturing out to the far reaches of the globe seeking out goods they can buy and sell for profit a shared love of the sea and a shared lifestyle could easily serve as the basis for mutual respect and admiration so i would think that romantic relationships would happen on occasion or certainly they could which is kind of the point thus the most logical way that house of the dragon might fill out the valyrian backstory is simply to say that one of corliss's parents neither of whom are named in the books by the way was a summer islander it would probably be his mother so as to facilitate someone from outside house valerion marrying into house valerion thus leaving corliss with the last name of velaryon i call this valarium and the rights to inherit driftmark as lord of the tides corliss would then be the beneficiary of not one but two sets of advanced seafaring knowledge setting him up to become the boldest and most accomplished mariner in the history of westeros which is exactly what he was perhaps corliss's many long and successful voyages east were aided by his having been able to call upon contacts made by summer islanders around the world i mean it's easier to think you can sail to et and make a fortune if your uncle or third cousin or whatever has already been there and tells you yeah just look up so and so on the west docks and tell them i sent you i mean i'm just speculating here obviously but the whole point is to point out the ways in which making corless velaryon a summer islander provides very interesting avenues to flush out the world and corliss's backstory in particular so instead of corliss just being a regular noble from house velaryon he becomes this more complex character with a story rooted beyond the shores of westeros and that fits very well for a man whose later deeds are intrinsically tied to the east and the far-flung reaches of the world it also gives house of the dragon a chance to add a little more depth and substance to the summer isles to flesh out their story since they weren't developed very much in the main books of a song of ice and fire with several seasons of house of the dragon to come and a potential coreless valerion spin-off show in the works i would think at some point we'll be visiting the summer isles and now you can really see the benefits here we can go to a whole new place very exotic location very different from everything else that we've seen on a game of thrones i mean come on who's not for that visiting the summer isles in fact the show could even invent a more detailed link between the velaryons and the summer isles perhaps they've been each other's favorite trade partners for decades now with every young valerion making a trip to the isles when they're first learning to sail maybe that's like a rite of passage sailing all the way to the summer isles and back to driftmark right i mean it's either that or a sail to valyria or the basilisk isles so summer aisles make a little more sense if the show does go with a backstory that involves this kind of longer running connection then it could be that more than one valerian has married a summer islander now some people have raised the question of the actor that plays corliss steve toussaint having skin that is too dark for someone with one black parent and one white pant though again people in westeros don't use the terms black and white of course it's probably the case that the show just isn't worried about this after all mixing genes isn't like mixing paint but rather the complex and somewhat random combination of the many many genetic traits of the two parents a child of a light-skinned velaryon and a summer islander could have skin tones and other physical traits along a fairly broad range to the extent that they're thinking about this it could be that they're reasoning that corliss's summer islander mother had very very dark skin after all the tones of the summer islanders are described as ranging from quote nut brown or teak to ebony and polished jet with ebony of course being a type of wood that is basically black streaked with dark brown and polished jet being of course a shiny pitch-black gemstone all that is to say that i don't really think there's an issue if it turns out that it's only corliss's mother who is from the summer isles however as i mentioned it could also turn out that there is a longer running link between driftmark and the isles and the corliss velaryon's parent wasn't the first to marry a summer islander and was himself already biracial so that's the first option the corliss has a summer islander parent option [Music] the other option is something along the lines of the velaryons have always been black or at least for a very long time this presents somewhat of a greater challenge for continuity with the established lore but it's not to say that it can't work or that it wouldn't be interesting so the valerians of course are westerosi house with roots in the old freehold of valyria we don't know exactly when they came to driftmark only that it was some time before the targaryens came to dragonstone which was about 114 years before aegon's conquest and 12 years before the doom of valyria dragonstone itself was established as a valyrian outpost about 200 years before that so it's possible that the valerians came to driftmark around that time and may well have been in westeros for as much as two centuries before the targaryens came there we can't be sure if the valerians were one of the famous 40 families whose leaders were designated lords freeholder that dominated valyrian politics but it's very likely that they were not simply based on the fact that they relocated to driftmark away from the center of power in valyria and because we are told that they were never dragon riders and the most powerful valerian families were all dragon riders in this the valerians are different from their targaryen cousins whose dragons were quote bred for war going back to the days of valyria even possessing dragons though targaryen was apparently not a very powerful political force in valyria and with valyrian politics being very much inward looking and centered on valyria the targaryens and valerians as well as the celticars the third westerosi house of valyrian descent would have been giving up whatever political power they had when they moved west the valerians targaryens and celticars however came to dominate the trade of the narrow sea in the century before the doom with the valerians and celtigars controlling the sea lanes and the targaryens the skies above and by the way the fact that house velaryon has the name velaryon which sounds so much like valyrian could be a clue that the first velaryon was somebody of very low birth in valeria somebody who didn't even have any kind of noble house name but instead was just called the valerian when he first showed up to driftmark and started building up his new house from nothing because it it really doesn't make sense that a house in valyria would be called valerion that's would just be very confusing right it also seems likely that the valerion seafaring skill predates their move to driftmark since moving to driftmark to try your hand at trade is probably something you do when you already have some amount of power at sea so could the valerians have been black meaning parts summer islander going all the way back to valyria well yes for a couple of reasons first of all valeria is a huge empire encompassing the lands of many cultures and even though valeria committed genocide and enslaved many of those cultures that wasn't always the case thus many non-valerian-blooded people did in fact live inside the empire and would have become citizens of the empire and also people from other places visited valeria because it was kind of the cultural center of the world at that time maesters scribes from et and of course traders would have all visited valyria and thus some intermarriage would have absolutely occurred between valerians and non-valerians we never hear about a valyrian law against interracial marriage for example and the valyrians were known to tolerate all religions inside their empire being polytheistic themselves we are of course told that many valerian dragonlord families such as targaryen did practice familial incest in order to maintain their monopoly on the genes which facilitated dragon riding but of course the valerians wouldn't have had that motivation since they were never dragon riders in any case what all this means is that should the writers of the show and george martin who is of course heavily involved with house of the dragon decide to go in a direction like this they could decide that the valerians were already sailing the wide world and marrying with people of other lands the summer islands specifically before they ever came to driftmark similarly it could be that the valerians developed trade relations with the summer isles shortly after relocating to driftmark as they became more powerful or perhaps after the doom wiped out valyria and threw the balances of world politics and trade into temporary chaos point being either scenario creates a situation where the velaryons may have developed a kind of custom if you will of seeking out wives from the summer islands on occasion similar to the way the starks have married into the houses of their top vassals on multiple occasions throughout history and thus you'd have an entire house of black valerians if you will as opposed to just corliss so the major challenge to the canon here is that house velaryon of course married into house targaryen before the birth of the conquerors aegon visenya and rhaenys fellaina velaryon was the mother of the conquerors and valena herself had one valerion parent and one targaryen one these intermarriages are very important for the plot of house of the dragon because they are part of what establishes house velaryon as worthy partners for the princes and princesses of the targaryen royalty and the slights to house valerion in the decades before the dance are of course a big factor in the breakout of the war proper those intermarriages really can't be written out of the story in other words so if the valerians were already black at this time that essentially changes the way that aegon visenya and rhaenys look that's not really a problem since these are fictional characters of course but this might be a change they don't want to make since everyone in the fandom has been looking at fan art of those three for about two decades corliss velaryon the sea snake on the other hand well there's really only two or three pieces of art from him before house of the dragon that i could even find so this really isn't a character that anyone could picture in their minds and were never even given his physical description in fact in contrast to the detailed descriptions of the three conquerors now again if the show decides that it does have an interesting backstory for how the entire house velaryon became black perhaps along the lines of what i've suggested then they may just decide that in this version of the canon aegon visenya and rhaenys were a little more tanned than we've all been picturing them i mean those characters aren't on the show after all so it's really not even something they'd have to address just something that's implied now as i mentioned there is a clue that the showrunners and george martin are going to go with the first option the corliss's mom is from the summer isles option which is uh this fellow right here sir vaimand valerian he has a somewhat minor but not insignificant role to play in the events of house of the dragon and in the books he is corliss's cousin however the house of the dragon hbo website lists him as the younger brother to corliss velaryon and commander in the valerian navy which is a change that you might make if it's only corliss's mom that was a summer islander they might have made the change from cousin to brother for some other reason but the obvious reason is simply to highlight corliss and bayman's summer islander parent which again i presume to be their mother [Music] so with all that said there's still a couple of questions to address about how summer islander velaryons will affect the story of house of the dragon proper namely will they be subjected to racism and how does this change affect the rhaenyra and laenor's children are probably strong bastards plotline as to the first the answer is perhaps a little but probably not too much the more modern concept of colorism which is racism or bigotry purely based on skin tone it's really not something we see anywhere in the world of a song of ice and fire let alone in westeros and there are no derogatory epithets that refer to skin tone that we've ever heard of in the books the summer islanders aren't derided with such epithets for example when they visit king's landing or some soc port city where the people are pale skinned and in fact descended from valeria such as lis or volantis now what we do hear about is some level of prejudice or bigotry against the dornish on the part of the rest of westeros but this again isn't based on colorism as the dornish range from like say mediterranean darker looks to the very pale looks of the danes and the other so-called stoney dornish in the mountains that's my kind of dornishman by the way the stoney dornishman he's less likely to stab you with the grateful dead tombs jamming in the background but i digress one of the factors that inflamed the blackfyre rebellion the first one was actually antipathy towards the dornish as daron ii targaryen had taken adornish princess to wife mariah martel as a means of bringing dorne into the kingdom which caused some resentment from certain other high lords some complained that their children were too dornish looking if you will but this again seems to stem from antipathy towards the ferocious and recalcitrant dornish people as opposed to some sort of westerosi colorism because again some of the dornish are in fact not only pale skinned but blonde haired and blue eyed because of andal blood the idea that the targaryen claim to monarchy in part flowed from their being perceived as godlike may have also been a factor with their signature valerian looks being a part of that but this is pretty weak to be honest targaryen claims to monarchy mostly have to do with their dragons and baylor breaks beer the two dornish looking son of daron ii and mariah martel eventually became the favorite son of the realm due to his character and his valor so on the whole i wouldn't expect to see much of anything that looks like modern anti-black racism on the show and the the comments are another matter like i said i'll just delete that one right there click click and actually to be honest there really aren't too many of those comments it's just that the ugly ones stand out quite a bit but on the whole the fandom has has been pretty cool at least on my youtube page so thanks everyone i appreciate that now with all that said the valerion's being passed over for the throne on multiple occasions is of course a major plot line and although there are already plenty of reasons for why this occurred the showrunners could decide to imply that some level of resistance to say lenore as king is due to dislike of his summer islander ancestry which may simply be seen as foreign to westeros similar to the way that deron's dornish marriage was held against him by people who by the way already had political or personal reasons to oppose him so the second question rhaenyra and lenore's children who again are implied as almost certainly the children of rhaenyra and harwin strong in the books the paternity seems obviously wrong because all three children have brown hair like harwin and facial features that seem to resemble those of house strong which is kind of hard to explain given that rhaenyra and lanor both have silvery valerian hair and typical aqualine valerian features now that lanor has been cast to be played by a black actor on the show with somewhat lighter skin compared to corliss or even his sister you'll notice people will suspect that they aren't lanor's kids when none of them come out with curly hair or slightly darker skin so essentially nothing is really different they're pretty obviously not lanor's kids in either scenario with a slight window of doubt because of course in the book canon rainey's the queen who never was is half baratheon and has black and silver mixed hair so maybe the strong children have darker hair that they got from their grandmother as opposed to harwin but it's a pretty thin thread similarly it's possible that children of rhaenyra and a somewhat lighter-skinned lanor could come out looking essentially white but all three of them is yeah that's less likely right so like i said nothing really changes they're pretty obviously not lanor's kids in either scenario and king viserys and rhaenyra on the show will probably have to use threats in order to silence the rumors just as in the books so that's pretty much it as you can see there's a couple different ways the show runners could go there's a couple different options for the story writing maybe some that i even haven't thought of and if you've thought of anything that i've missed then please leave a comment below obviously i'm white so if there's anything i missed or was insensitive about let me know about that in the comments and i'll try to do a little better but i hope you like my coverage of the issue and there you go there you have it thanks for watching guys and i'll see you again real soon with another house of the dragon video [Music] you

Channel: David Lightbringer

Views: 276,157

Keywords: rhaenyra, teaser trailer, House of the Dragon, HotD, HBO, Lightbringer, Azor Ahai, great empire of the dawn, lucifer means lightbringer, lml, david, mythical astronomy, alt shift x, theory, secrets, revealed, mythology, symbolism, ASOIAF, A Song of Ice and Fire, GoT, Game of Thrones, dragon, Talking Thrones, leaks, leaked photos, Corlys Velaryon, Rhaenys, Viserys, Daemon, Matt Smith, release date, criston cole, alicent hightower, dragons, preview, casting, syrax, Laena, Laenor, black, woke, Summer Isles

Id: YvLY0OeiMtQ

Length: 23min 53sec (1433 seconds)

Published: Tue May 10 2022