The Doom of Valyria, Explained | 10 Minute Lore

For five thousand years, one civilization ruled the world of Game of Thrones — a nation of dragonlords riding hundreds of dragons, unchallenged and seemingly eternal. And then, in a single day, it was gone. This is the story of Valyria: how a people of humble shepherds found dragons in a ring of volcanoes and became gods, built the most advanced civilization the world had ever seen (their roads and their steel still can't be replicated), ruled through forty scheming dragonlord families — and then destroyed themselves so completely in the cataclysm known as the Doom that no one alive can say for certain why it happened. And the one minor family that saw it coming, listened to a dream, and fled the day before? House Targaryen — who woke up to find themselves the last dragonlords in the world. Valyria is the ghost haunting all of Game of Thrones. Real Roots — 10 Minute Lore. Chapters: 0:00 The Empire That Ruled the World 1:00 Shepherds Who Found Dragons 2:20 They Erased Their Rivals 3:30 Roads and Steel They Can't Rebuild 4:40 The Forty Dragonlord Families 5:40 The Family That Left 7:00 The Doom 8:20 Why It Happened 9:10 The Last Dragonlords