Melb4life
Starter
I don't know if this has ever been brought up or discussed here, but I found a very interesting quote from grrm pretty much saying that he considered making the targaryens black. He mentioned he only thought about it in more recent years and It that it would've been a nice twist, but I still found it intriguing.
[R]ight from the start I wanted the Targaryens, and by extension the Valryians from whom they were descended, to be a race apart, with distinctive features that set them apart from the rest of Westeros, and helped explain their obsession with the purity of their blood. To do this, I made a conventional ‘high fantasy’ choice, and gave them silver-gold hair, purple and violet eyes, fine chiseled aristocratic features. That worked well enough, at least in the books (on the show, less so).
But in recent years, it has occurred to me from time to time that it might have made for an interesting twist if instead I had made the dragonlords of Valyria… and therefore the Targaryens… black. Maybe I could have kept the silver hair too, though… no, that comes too close to ‘dark elf’ territory, but still… if I’d had dark-skinned dragonlords invade and conquer and dominate a largely white Westeros… though that choice would have brought its own perils. The Targaryens have not all been heroic, after all… some of them have been monsters, madmen, so…
Well, it’s all moot. The idea came to me about twenty years too late.
Now, I'm not really a fan of daenerys or the targaryens however, I always thought It would've been more interesting if daenerys had been a black woman, (although that has it's pros and cons) so it's interesting that grrm even considered it at all at one point. It definitely would of counteracted the whole "there are no black people on game of thrones" thing and the "white savior trope".
I don't think the story would of changed at all, but no doubt this would of been very controversial. A white male author writing a black female main character? And considering the messed up things both her character/family does (including incest) and she goes through, it seems better this way. I'm sure most would also prefer her to be as she is on the show, especially seeing how it all ended, but anyways what do you guys think of this? I mean could you imagine dany and the targaryens being black?
[R]ight from the start I wanted the Targaryens, and by extension the Valryians from whom they were descended, to be a race apart, with distinctive features that set them apart from the rest of Westeros, and helped explain their obsession with the purity of their blood. To do this, I made a conventional ‘high fantasy’ choice, and gave them silver-gold hair, purple and violet eyes, fine chiseled aristocratic features. That worked well enough, at least in the books (on the show, less so).
But in recent years, it has occurred to me from time to time that it might have made for an interesting twist if instead I had made the dragonlords of Valyria… and therefore the Targaryens… black. Maybe I could have kept the silver hair too, though… no, that comes too close to ‘dark elf’ territory, but still… if I’d had dark-skinned dragonlords invade and conquer and dominate a largely white Westeros… though that choice would have brought its own perils. The Targaryens have not all been heroic, after all… some of them have been monsters, madmen, so…
Well, it’s all moot. The idea came to me about twenty years too late.
Now, I'm not really a fan of daenerys or the targaryens however, I always thought It would've been more interesting if daenerys had been a black woman, (although that has it's pros and cons) so it's interesting that grrm even considered it at all at one point. It definitely would of counteracted the whole "there are no black people on game of thrones" thing and the "white savior trope".
I don't think the story would of changed at all, but no doubt this would of been very controversial. A white male author writing a black female main character? And considering the messed up things both her character/family does (including incest) and she goes through, it seems better this way. I'm sure most would also prefer her to be as she is on the show, especially seeing how it all ended, but anyways what do you guys think of this? I mean could you imagine dany and the targaryens being black?
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