Apologies if this has been covered in detail in the Season One thread, but:
In Game of Thrones, it was a fairly big deal that there was no magic in the world until Dany’s dragons hatched. And after that, magic started increasing.
But in this show, there are lots of dragons. Plenty of dragons. Yet, apparently: no magic.
Has this been explained in the show itself, and I just missed it?
Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think it was that there was no magic, it was just that the dragons encouraged more magic stuff or made magic stronger or whatever.
I mean, Melisandre had to be around before the eggs hatched, right? So were the warlocks of Qarth. It wasn’t like they all just discovered their powers on the day the eggs hatched. And the Wall was still keeping the White Walkers at bay (I think? Were the WWs ever south of the Wall before the zombie dragon?).
But that’s all just my recollection from the show which I have not watched in years, maybe it’s explained in the books.
You’re right about all that. The Faceless Men, too (and there had to be magic involved with them).
Maybe it’s all a ‘handwave’ situation. The creators–both the TV showrunners and Martin–don’t really want to specify.
There was also the woman who did the blood magic ritual on Drogo. Magic was in the world, but became significantly more powerful when the dragons were reborn. Similar to Melisandre talking about how much more charged her magical energies became in close proximity to the Wall.
Yeah, that does all make sense.
But what doesn’t seem to make sense is that there apparently is no magic in the world of House of the Dragon. If the presence of dragons makes a difference, shouldn’t there be magic? Shouldn’t it be a factor in the politicking we see?
We don’t know if there is. The minor magic we see in the world during GoT is inconsequential compared to dragons.
Most of the magic in GOT was happening on the other continent (Easteros?). Maybe there was not as much contact between the two continents during HOTD. In GOT Melisandre and Thoros of Myr were apparently missionaries for the Lord of Light and we weren’t told why Jaque H’Ghar was there. Actually, just typing that out I realized they were all ultimately in Westeros to protect and guide Arya. Maybe magic only came to Westeros to facilitate the defeat of the Night King. Dragons themselves weren’t responsible for magic, just a part of that force re-emerging.
Good surmises, aurora_maire.
I do think that if any of these reasons (or others) are at work in the storytelling, they would have antecedents in the time of HotD. It’s only 200 years earlier.
The fact that the topic isn’t even alluded to seems to me to be a lapse on the part of the creators. They have to know that viewers would wonder about it. Even a couple of throwaway lines would be helpful in letting us understand why such a difference exists between the two series. (As in: a character saying ‘there are tales of magic happening on that other continent…it would be helpful if we had access to such tools here’ or such.)
(Maybe they don’t know that there IS another continent [“Essos” in GoT, I think], but with so many dragons around in the HotD time, it seems odd that they haven’t done more exploring…)
Essos figures into Season 1 quite a bit. The fighting in the Stepstones is due to the Triarchy (Essos free cities) interfering in Westerosi shipping routes. We even see Daemon and Laena and their daughters visiting Pentos. Then when Laenor fakes his death, he flees to Essos to start a new life with his lover (apparently Essos is more LBGTQ friendly than those western Seven fanatics). Not to mention the fact that the Andals, the Rhoynish people in Dorne and the Targaryens all came over from Essos.
It is intriguing that we haven’t seen more magics in this series. I agree with the idea that dragon power is the ultimate force, and when you’ve more than a dozen dragons flying around, magic isn’t going to be that significant. Plus the dying out of the dragons maybe forced a reliance on other powers such as magic.
link not working
Ah woops, this should work.
I had edited the title because weirdly IMDB and hbo.com didn’t have an episode name (just called it episode 2) but after I posted the thread I saw the MAX app had it so I edited it in. And discourse links contain the title.
That’s perfectly logical.
But it does directly contradict what we were told in the original series (which was that there was less magic because there were no dragons, and that the return of dragons meant more magic.)
What we were told was just what a character believes. It’s not a law of the world, the character can be wrong.
I got the impression that the lack of dragons in the few hundred years before GOT was a symptom of the lack of magic in the world, and then something changed, so magic got stronger, the dragons awoke from eggs and the white walkers came back.
All that makes sense. But in the world of this show (HoD) there are plenty of dragons–so shouldn’t there be magic?
(If there IS magic, how could none of the characters be aware of it?)
Well, what typical magic would there be? Seemed as if a lot came from Essos in GOT, but not sure what there would be. I think new Littlefinger has something, but I always thought Littlefinger was a warg, which was why he knew so much…
I remember speculation from the first season that Larys is a warg and was watching the goings-on through the rats we saw in several scenes.
Probably because magicians never reveal their secrets.
Ar, ar.
If actual magic existed in the dragons-present world of this show, it’s hard to believe it would play no role in the politicking that is this show’s main focus.
My theory is that the creators hoped we’d forget about the ‘rule’ established in the first series, mainly because incorporating magic into HotD’s stories would have added a degree of difficulty unwelcome to them. They wanted to tell a plain story of faux-medieval politics and war and family drama.