[Aulirophile]

Originally Posted by Khorum

The whole anti-magic angle of the maesters is interpretive I think. It's unclear whether or not they actively sought out to extinguish magic or just helped to diminish the Targaryen monopoly on Dragons. There was some speculation from Maester Aemon himself about this, who was retrospect about his vow and how much the nightwatch has taken from him (he should've been king before even Aerys).

There was mention that when he was young Aemon, who was Aegon IV's bookish elder brother, was a bit of a scholar even when they were young even before he was sworn into the night watch.

SPOILER: If you haven't read the 'Dunk and Egg' short stories this is a decent spoiler: When he gets senile and starts rambling on the boat in AFfC, Maester Aemon starts referring to someone named 'Egg', who was his younger brother King Aegon IV (Aegon the Unlikely) about how he confirmed the Maesters' role in the fall of the Dragons. King Aegon, who is the squire Egg in the Dunk and Egg stories, goes on about his brother Aemon and this research, almost a hundred years before AGoT.

Whether or not the Maesters had direct involvement with the suppression of magic remains to be seen. But magic started seeping back into the world at the BEGINNING of A Game of Thrones, not just when the dragons hatch at the END.

The whole ASoIaF arc is about the return of Winter and the imminent invaion of the Others, and the Others had made their first appearance in the prologue of book one. Clearly magical creatures, they had started coming back long before the dragons were reborn, and there had been some references to how the Magic ebbed and waned parallel to the strength of the long winter cycles, and THIS winter is supposedly going to be the worst in ages.

The Others came back because the Wildings dug them up looking for the Horn of Winter. Which may very well have triggered the start of the winter. It is explicity stated that Wildfire becomes easier to make when dragons are alive in the world.

Where does it say that magic started coming back into the world at the beginning of the series? Others already existed, they were just buried and, possibly, fading when they got dug up. The Wildings might not have even had much trouble with them till the dragons were reborn which made them stronger because of the magic coming back. The book constantly hints that dragons are the source of magic in the world and there isn't any substantive evidence otherwise.