Lumalee

I explained why already, The High Lords wanted the Targaryens to provide a unified legal system, roads, and protection, but they didn't want to show the respect or loyalty required to maintain it. 

Prime example for this: Hightowers, Martells, Baratheons, Lannisters, Peakes.

Also with the knowledge of this: Even though House Rogare's gold helped stabilize the realm, the Westerosi lords absolutely hated Larra. They treated her with massive suspicion, falsely accused her of treason and witchcraft, and forced her family out of power. Larra was so miserable and hated in King's Landing that she eventually abandoned her husband and children just to flee back to Lys.

The core truth behind this perspective is that House Targaryen was a global superpower that chose to downgrade themselves just to rule a fractured continent. Before Aegon’s Conquest, the Targaryens were already wealthier and culturally grander than all of Westeros combined, a reality rooted entirely in their deep seated Essosi influence and Valyrian heritage. While a Westerosi lord's wealth was tied to dirt, crops, and peasants, the Targaryens sat on over a century of accumulated trade wealth, priceless Valyrian steel, and dragon eggs on Dragonstone. More importantly, they held the ultimate geopolitical monopoly: the world’s only surviving dragons, which gave them an unmatched physical and economic leverage over the global markets of the Free Cities. Their immense global influence meant that Essos and its Free Cities routinely begged the Targaryens to intervene in their affairs, proving that the family's true power base was never confined to Westeros. Decades before the Conquest, a young Aegon the Conqueror was courted by both Volantis and an alliance of Pentos and Tyrosh. When Volantis tried to forcefully recreate the Valyrian empire, Aegon flew his dragon, Balerion, to Essos and single-handedly shattered the Volantene fleet to maintain the balance of power. The Free Cities did not view the Targaryens as random island lords: they viewed them as the last living gods of the old world, capable of shifting continental politics with a single command.

This vast, international leverage makes the Westerosi expectation of Targaryen loyalty completely absurd, aligning perfectly with the idea that the Targaryens owed the Seven Kingdoms nothing. When lords like Raymun Fossoway critique Targaryen rule, they fail to realize that the Targaryens essentially ran a continental charity by forcing a broken, warring group of petty kings into a unified, peaceful empire. Before the dragons arrived, Westeros was trapped in thousands of years of endless, bloody border disputes between the Hoares, Gardeners, and Durrandons. The Targaryens sacrificed their own cultural identity and spent their lives playing mediator to a continent full of ungrateful, xenophobic lords who secretly plotted against them.

Ryan Condal's take on the Targaryen connection to dragons disgusts me. And on top of that, he thinks he's clever. He just goes against canon the more the show progresses; it's unbearable.

Ónen i-Estel Edain. Ú-chebin estel anim.

I am sorry. I have done you evil, and I cannot undo it. No. Unicorns are in the world again. No sorrow will live in me as long as that joy, save one. And I thank you for that part, too.

Dany chibi