He performed his duties admirably; though less scholarly than Septon Barth, the prince proved a good judge of men, and surrounded himself with loyal subordinates and counselors.
After long discussion, the Archon of Tyrosh and the Prince of Pentos had agreed to meet in King's Landing to settle their differences, provided that Jaehaerys would act as an intermediarybetween them, and guarantee the terms of any resulting treaty.
Whereas Septon Eustace records the secrets of bedchamber and brothel in hushed, condemnatory tones, Mushroom delights in the same, and his Testimony consists of little but ribald tales and gossip, piling stabbings, poisonings, betrayals, seductions, and debaucheries one atop the other.
The little queen died just as her mother, Queen Helaena, had, throwing herself from a window in Maegor's Holdfast onto the iron spikes that lined the dry moat below.
As an infant certainly she would have had a wet nurse; like most noble women, Queen Alyssa did not give suck to her own children.
Tumbleton, that prosperous market town, was reduced to ash and embers.
The surviving gold cloaks had retreated to their barracks, whilst gutter knights, mummer kings, and mad prophets ruled the streets.
King Maegor's war against the Faith Militant had just begun, however.
As for Ser Raymund Mallery and the other deserters, the wildlings gave them a cold welcome.
Only fourteen of the fleet arrived safely at Driftmark, and all the elephants died at sea, yet even so the profits from that voyage were so vast that the Velaryons became the wealthiest house in the Seven Kingdoms, eclipsing even the Hightowers and Lannisters, albeit briefly.
He wore the Conqueror's crown, wielded the Conqueror's sword, and had been anointed by a septon of the Faith before the eyes of tens of thousands.
It will be recalled that in the time of King Viserys, a nephew of Lord Corlys, Ser Vaemond Velaryon, had put himself forward as the true heir to Driftmark.
"Three is more than one," the dwarf claims to have told the Prince of Dragonstone, "but four is more than three, and six is more than four, even a fool knows that."
On learning that his guest had claimed the maidenhead of his bastard sister, Lord Cregan became most wroth, and only softened when Sara Snow told him that theprince had taken her for his wife.
The Dragonpit had its own contingent of guards, the Dragonkeepers, but those proud warriors were only seven-and-seventy in number, and fewer than fifty had the watch that night.
We have no record of which daughter Prince Aemond finally decidedon (though Mushroom tells us that he kissed all four, to "taste the nectar of their lips"), save that it was not Maris.
The princess had just learned she was expecting, else she would have accompanied her sire on Meleys.
There we must leave Queen Rhaena for a time, whilst we cast our eyes eastward again toward King's Landing and Dragonstone, where the regent and king remained at odds.
(Though many availed themselves of this coin, the loans did bring about a rift between the Iron Throne and the Iron Bank of Braavos.)
Afterwardthey took turns raping Lady Alys and her handmaids, then carried them off and sold them to a Myrish slaver.
Ser Byron died screaming.
Two were sworn swords; Ser Victor the Valiant, from the household of Lord Royce of Runestone, and Ser Willam the Wasp, who served Lord Smallwood of Acorn Hall.
Lord Lyonel and his paramour, the Lady Sam, rode south for Oldtown with their Hightowers, whilst Lords Rowan, Beesbury, Costayne, Tarly, and Redwyne joined to escort His High Holiness to the same destination.
Another contestant produced sheafs of parchment that demonstrated his descent from Gaemon the Glorious, the greatest of the Targaryen Lords of Dragonstone before the Conquest, by way of a younger daughter and the petty lord she had married, and on for seven further generations.
Many to this day believe it was the Iron Throne itself that killed him.
His father, King Aenys, had been slighted as weak, in part because he was not the warrior that his brother Maegor was.
The rest snatched up stones and sticks and swarmed the palanquin, driving off Lord Rego's bearers and spilling his lordship onto the ground.
Some say that Alysanne never recovered from that loss, for her Winter Child alone had been a true companion during her declining years.
"Be sweet to your little sister," King Jaehaerys told the prince when he was five.
Even then, Septon Barth tells us, Princess Saera might have been forgiven and restored to favor if she had done as she was told, if she had remained meekly in her chambers reflecting on her sins and praying for forgiveness.
Alyssa was not as strong as she had been; her time as Queen Regent had taken a toll on her, and her second marriage had not brought her the happiness she had once hoped for.
All that had been taken from her when her mother carried her off to Dragonstone against her wishes.
Legend claims it was men in the hire of the Iron Bank of Braavos who first began suggesting that the Rogare Bank might be unsound, but regardless of who started it, such talk was soon heard all over Lys.
"The poison used is called the Tears of Lys," Bernard declared, an assertion that Grand Maester Munkun then confirmed.
The accounts of Rhaena's confrontation with Lord Farman on Fair Isle had appalled the king and his lords alike.
To curtail the rumors, Queen Alyssa put out word that His Grace was resting and reflecting on Dragonstone, the ancient seat of his houseâ¦but as more time passed, with still
Septon Barth drew the king's attention to an even more urgent problem: King's Landing's drinking water was fit only for horses and swine, in the opinion of many.
Now twenty years of age, she oft entertained her admirers still garbed as a novice of the Faith; there were evidently a good many Lyseni who took pleasure in ravishing innocent young women who had taken vows of chastity, even when the innocence was feigned.
He had been a lord since the age of ten, a point in his favor; for the past twenty years he had served on the small council as lord justiciar and master of laws, during which time he had become a familiar figure about court, and a leal friend to both king and queen.
Instructed toreturn Fair Isle to its former lords, he replied, "Should they come rising back up from beneath the sea, we shall gladly give them back what once was theirs."
Ironrod, the master of laws, cited the Great Council of 101 and the Old King's choice of Baelon rather than Rhaenys in 92, then discoursed at length about Aegon the Conqueror and his sisters, and the hallowed Andal tradition wherein the rights of a trueborn son always came before the rights of a mere daughter.
By evenfall, Rhaenyra Targaryen found herself sore beset on every side, her reign in ruins.
Unbeknownst to Her Grace, the seven captains commanding the gates, chosen for their loyalty to King Aegon, had been imprisoned or murdered the moment Caraxes appeared in the sky above the Red Keepâ¦for the rank and file of the City Watch still loved Daemon Targaryen, the Prince of the City who had commanded them of old.
The laws of the Seven, as laid down in sacred text and taught by the septas and septons in obedience to the Father of the Faithful, decreed that brother might not lie with sister, nor father with daughter, nor mother with son, that the fruits of such unions were abominations, loathsome in the eyes of the gods.
The queen collapsed in the king's arms, shaking so violently that some feared she had the Shivers too.
The men of the City Watch filled sacks with sand and pails with water to fight the fires they knew were coming.
Possibly all these worthies (save Hobb) played some role in the dragon's demiseâ¦but the tale most oft heard in King's Landing named the Shepherd himself as the dragonslayer.
King and council had neglected to consult the princess, however, and Rhaenyra proved to be very much her father's daughter, with her own notions about whom she wished to wed. The princess knew much and more about Laenor Velaryon, and had no wish to be his bride.
When the western host resumed its march to Harrenhal, it was under the aged Lord Humfrey Lefford, who had suffered so many wounds that he commanded from a litter.
Even the best of mail is hard-pressed to turn Valyrian steel, and Jaehaerys knew where every weak point could be found.
This did not prevent Lord Hightower, once informed, from throwing the captive Baratheons into a dungeon and dispatching a full account of the affair to both the Red Keep and Dragonstone.
Helaena Targaryen was a broken creature who posed no threat to Her Grace.
The wispy beard and mustache that His Grace had cultivated early in his reign had become a handsome golden beard, shot through with silver.
When the queen refused to go, Rhaena retreated to her own chambers and barred the doors, emerging only to eatâ¦and that less and less often.
Pentos, Braavos, and Lorath were similarly affected, and sent envoys to King's Landing in hopes of bringing the Iron Throne into a grand alliance against Racallio and the quarrelsome Daughters.
The loss of Prince Aegon after only three days of life still weighed heavily uponHer Grace.
When Aegon commanded that no dragon's eggs were to be allowed in his castle, Viserys grew most wroth.
He wove his way all through the Dance of the Dragons, on this side and that side, vanishing and reappearing, yet somehow always surviving.
A fortnight later, King Jaehaerys returned at last to King's Landing, and Queen Alysanne returned from her own self-imposed exile on Dragonstone.
For the singers of the realm, in their eagerness to win the favor of the queen, composed many a song in praise of House Targaryen and King Aegon, and then went forth and sang those songs in every keep and castle and village green from the Dornish Marches to the Wall.
Wearing a crown and styling himself King of the Narrow Sea, he appeared unannounced in the skies above King's Landing on his dragon, circling thrice above the tourney groundsâ¦but when at last he came to earth, he knelt before his brother and offered up his crown as a token of his love and fealty.
Let us leave the Hightower now and return once more to King's Landing, where Lord Cregan Stark found all his plans for war undone by the Three Widows.
The High Septon who had crowned Aegon the Conqueror remained the Shepherd of the Faithful until his death in 11 AC, by which time the realm had grown accustomed to the notion of a king with two queens, who were both wives and sisters.
Ser Criston Cole was given the task of taking into custody such blacks as remained at court, those lords and knights who might be inclined to favor Princess Rhaenyra.
In 46 AC, King Maegor returned to the Red Keep with two thousand skulls, the fruits of a year of campaigning.
But like many such arrangements through the ages, their plan was soon undone, for they had grievously underestimated the will and determination of Alysanne Targaryen herself, and her young king, Jaehaerys.
Smallfolk and lords alike had come to despise him for his many cruelties, and many began to give help and comfort to his enemies.
Prince Aemon emerged victorious, in part by dint of hammering his brother into submission.
In the aftermath, the widows of Myr and Tyrosh accused the admiral of sending their fleets to destruction whilst holding back his own, beginning the quarrel that would spell the end of the Triarchy two years later, when the three cities turned against each other in the Daughters' War.
Of all their number, only one man received a full royal pardon: Ser Morgan Hightower.
His widowed aunt Clarice Osgrey was put in charge of Queen Jaehaera's household, supervising her maids and servants.
When it became plain that she was carrying the lord's child, he beat it out of her.
More than forty men have served the Iron Throne as Grand Maester.
Scorned and furious, the princess donned her cloak again andswept out into the nightâ¦where she chanced to encounter Ser Harwin Strong, returning from a night of revelry in the stews of the city.
The Father of the Faithful, a man as gentle as he was weak of will, heard Orryn Baratheon's confession and forgave him.
Honor meant little and less to them; it was wealth and power they lusted for.
"Brother," Lady Rhaena said to Aegon, "if it please you, we have brought your new queen."
And when at last the sound of wings was heard, and a guardsman on the eastern walls caught sight of Vermithor's bronze scales in the distance, there came a cheer that grew and grew and grew, rolling past the Red Keep's walls, down Aegon's High Hill, across the city, and well out into the countryside.
Though his Hand and small council argued heatedlyagainst it, Viserys consented, for the king still loved the brother who had been the companion of his youth.
In 72 AC, a tourney was held at Duskendale in honor of young Lord Darklyn's wedding to a daughter of Theomore Manderly.
Burned bodies would wash up on the shores of Cape Wrath for half a year, but not a single living Dornishman set foot upon the stormlands.
Aegon the Conqueror and his sisters had proved that knights and armies could not stand against fire and blood.
As the Seven Kingdoms celebrated, word reached the king that his sister Rhaena had been seen again, this time at Greenstone, the ancient seat of House Estermont on the isle of the same name, off the shores of Cape Wrath.
This makes for a charming story, to be sure, but as with many of Mushroom's fables, it seems to partake more of a fool's fevered imaginings than of historical truth.
On the ground, Moondancer's quickness proved of little use against Sunfyre's size and weight.
In an effort to limit their numbers, Lord Peake decreed that the contest would be limited to maidens of noble blood under thirty years of age, yet even so, more than a thousand nubile girls crowded into the Red Keep on the appointed day, a tide far too great for the Hand to stem.
It is written that when the Sea Snake was congratulated on his victory, the old man said, "If this be victory, I prayI never win another."
Righteous in his wroth, the High Septon condemned the Dowager Lady of Oldtown as a shameless fornicator and forbade her to set foot in the Starry Sept until she had repented and sought forgiveness.
This was not true in Westeros, where the power of the Faith went unquestioned.
Whilst the High Septons of King Aegon's reign never spoke out against the king's marriage to his sisters, neither did they declare it to be lawful.
Where their loyalties lay at this time and what part they might have played in any conflict shall never be known, but to suggest the king's Seven stood alone mayhaps presumes too much.
Lord Manderly, Grand Maester Munkun, and the regents questioned the three women closely, mayhaps (as Mushroom avers) trying to elicit the name of a fourth woman, hitherto unmentioned: Lady Clarice Osgrey, widowed aunt of Lord Unwin Peake.
Grand Maester Runciter says only that the brothers quarreled again, and Prince Daemon departed King's Landing to return to the Stepstones and his wars.
The child came precisely when the maesters had said he would; a boy, clean-limbed and healthy, with eyes as pale as lilac.
His Grace supposedly gave her to Pate the Woodcock after he had sated his own lusts, Pate passed her to Ser Joffrey in turn, and so it went.
"The time for hiding is done," King Aegon II declared on Dragonstone, after Sunfyre had feasted on his sister.
Lady Perianne helped her sobbing friend back to her room.
Yet for all the splendor of the bride and groom, it was the arrival of Alyssa's children that set King's Landing to talking for years to come.
(Ser Maladon, it should be noted, insisted the whole tale was a fabrication, and said Queen Ceryse died of "shrewishness."
Ser Erryk, standing above his twin on the spiral steps, struck the first mortal blow, a savage downward cut that nigh took his brother's sword arm off at the shoulder, but as he collapsed Ser Arryk grasped his slayer's white cloak and pulled him close enough to drive a dagger deep into his belly.
A lavish feast was held in their honor, an entire stable was given over to Dreamfyre, and Queen Rhaena, her husband, and her companions of the Four-Headed Beast were assigned a regally appointed suite of apartments deep in the bowels of the Rock itself, safe from any harm.
Instead the princess took them both as far from Maegor as she could, to Fair Isle, where Marq Farman granted her the hospitality of Faircastle, with its tall white towers rising high above the Sunset Sea.
A man called Silver Denys, whose hair and eyes lent credence to his claim to be descended from a bastard son of Maegor the Cruel, had an arm torn off by Sheepstealer.
For the rest of that year, the Grand Maester served as both regent and Hand, for the realm required governance and Aegon had still not reached the age of manhood.
"It would have gone more quickly if the Hand had sent to the Street of Flies for butchers," Mushroom observes, "for it was butcher's work they were about, hacking and cleaving."
His reasons, and what befell him in the Free City, we shall reveal in due time, but for the nonce let us turn our gaze back on King's Landing.
One knight tried to flee before him, only to have Vermithor snatch him up in his jaws, even as his horse galloped on.
Qarl Corbray had fought in the Battle Beneath the Gods Eye, had witnessed the terrible sight of dragon fighting dragon.
The princess was six, and years past being weaned, but a wet nurse was summoned, for there were some who believed that mother's milk could cure the Shivers.
Princess Gael was born in 80 AC, when the queen was forty- four.
But Jaehaerys had Blackfyre in hand, and he had not forgotten the lessons he had learned in the yard on Dragonstone.
Though it was whispered that his mother, the Queen Dowager, had no love for the Pentoshi sorceress, only Grand Maester Myros dared speak against her openly.
Ser Laenor returned to Driftmark thereafter, leaving many to wonder if his marriage had ever been consummated.
The conquest and annexation of the Stepstones by the Kingdom of the Three Daughters at first met with only approval from the lords of Westeros.
They had based themselves at Maidenpool, at the invitation of Lord Manfryd Mooton, who lived in terror of Vhagar descending on his town.
Prince Jacaerys soon brought the Lord of the Tides back into the fold by naming him the Hand of the Queen.
Though Aegon was a sullen student who displayed little interest in swordplay or the arts of war, his royal person was inviolate.
She sent men to Pentos, but there the trail went cold.
In King's Landing, Duskendale, Maidenpool, and Gulltown, trade withered.
Larys Strong had always been a man who went his own way, kept his own counsel, and changed allegiances as other men changed cloaks.
The cost of all this was not inconsiderable, to be sure, but the realm was prosperous, and the king's new master of coin, Martyn Tyrellâaided and abetted by his clever wife, "the apple counter"âproved almost as able as the Lord of Air had been.
Androw Farman's discontent on Dragonstone only grew worse after his sister's departure.
It is sometimes put about that Maegor's defenders (the king himself in some accounts, his brother in others) had threatened to hang their captive Kingsguard at the first sign of attackâ¦but Mushroom calls this "a base lie."
She preferred to spend her days with her siblings, her dogs and cats, and her newest favorite, Alayne Royce, daughter to the Lord of Runestoneâ¦a plump and homely girl, but so cherished that Rhaena sometimes took her flying on the back of Dreamfyre, just as she did her brother Aegon.
But the stone began to crack in 92 AC, when Aemon, Prince of Dragonstone, was slain on Tarth by a Myrish crossbow bolt loosed at the man beside him.
Afterward he had the head of the priest king pickled in brine and sent to King's Landing.
In King's Landing, the first signs of the fatal flush were seen along the riverside amongst the sailors, ferrymen, fishermongers, dockers, stevedores, and wharfside whores who plied their trades beside the Blackwater Rush.
If Viserys had come to accept that the rumors about the parentage of Rhaenyra's children were true, he might well have wished to remove the man who had dishonored his daughter, lest he somehow reveal the bastardy of her sons.
Prince Aegon had grown weary of secrecy.
Unworthy as King Aegon II might have been, his murder was high treason, and those responsible must answer for it.
Hope and good feeling reigned over the Red Keep as the new year dawned.
After taking leave of White Harbor, the queen's retinue sailed up the White Knife to its rapids, then proceeded overland to Winterfell, whilst Alysanne herself flew ahead on Silverwing.
There dwelt the High Septon, Father of the Faithful, the voice of the new gods on earth, who commanded the obedience of millions of devout throughout the realms (save in the North, where the old gods still held sway), and the blades of the Faith Militant, the fighting order the smallfolk called the Stars and Swords.
Amongst the dead was Ser Robert Rowan, crushed by a falling boulder when the clansmen toppled half a mountainside down upon the column.
At the other end of the Vale, meanwhile, the high road through the mountains proved far less open than had been assumed.
"Look at this sad creature, my lord," Prince Aemond called out.
There were no girls of her own age in the castle, and Aerea was not allowed to mingle with the daughters of the fisherfolk in the village beneath the walls.
He sounded the horn again as the wings grew larger, and a third time when he saw the dragon plain, black against the clouds.
The prince had suffered all he could stand of the Vale of Arryn, Runestone, and his lady wife.
The chance encounter between Alyn Velaryon and Drazenko Rogare at Sunspear had provided a perfect opportunity to effect the return of Prince Viserys to his brotherâ¦but it is not in the nature of any Lyseni to make a gift of anything that might be sold, so it was first necessary that Oakenfist come to Lys and agree to terms with Lysandro Rogare.
His new Hand began at once to tend to the business of the realm.
"Her Grace continued to do her duty by the realm and her son," Grand Maester Benifer wrote, "but there was no joy in her."
The throne room of the Red Keep is a cavernous chamber, larger than any hall in Westeros save Black Harren's, but with more than a thousand maids on hand, each with her own retinue of parents, siblings, guards, and servants, it soon became too crowded to move, and suffocatingly hot, though outside a winter wind was blowing.
Daemon taught the girl to disrobe enticingly, suckled at her teats to make them larger and more sensitive, and flew with her on dragonback to lonely rocks in Blackwater Bay, where they could disport naked all day unobserved, and the princess could practice the art of pleasuring a man with her mouth.
Their wedding was presided over by the groom's father, Marq Farman, Lord of Fair Isle, and conducted by his own septon.
But when they demanded the release of their rightful lord, Jonos Arryn sent his brother to them through the Moon Door.
"I made a son for House Targaryen last night," he proclaimed as he broke fast.
The two queens held each other for a long while, it is said, but when the midwife offered Rhaena the newborn babe to hold, she refused.
No fewer than forty-two persons stood accused, for those named by Lord Graceford had in turn named others when questioned sharply.
Most tellingly, Queen Rhaena never took him flying with her on the back of her dragon, Dreamfyre, an adventure she shared frequently with the ladies Elissa, Alayne, and Sam (in fairness, it is more than possible that the queen invited Androw to share the sky with her only to have him decline, for he was not of an adventurous disposition).
This was perhaps a misjudgment, for it gave Ser Tyland a sinister aspect, and before very long the smallfolk of King's Landing began to whisper tales of the malign masked sorcerer in the Red Keep.
Even as the mortal remains of Maegor I Targaryen were consigned to a funeral pyre, his young successor faced his first crucial decision: how to deal with his uncle's remaining supporters.
And in105 AC, he announced to the court and small council that Queen Aemma was once again with child.
One had been a serjeant in the City Watch; big and brutal, he had lost his gold cloak for beating a whore to death whilst in a drunken rage.
The princess was so unsteady that she required the help of two maids and a knight of the Kingsguard to get her safely back to her own apartments.
Lord Celtigar resigned as King's Hand, and returned to his seat on Claw Isle.
If his true feelings were otherwise, Aegon did not choose to voice them, but instead retreated back into silence and passivity.
Even from across the narrow sea they came, from Braavos and Pentos, all three of the Daughters, Old Volantis.
All this the Exceptionalists affirmed, but with this caveat: the Targaryens were different.
"An eye for an eye, a son for a son," Prince Daemon wrote.
King Jaehaerys, who was forever entertaining visiting lords or envoys from across the narrow sea, sitting at council, or planning further roads, was well pleased.
Prince Maegor darkened in rage at the jape, then replied coolly that there was only one dragon worthy of him.
When at last he had exhausted the hospitality of the westermen, he did not return to King's Landing, but moved on directly to the Reach, flying Vermithor from Crakehall to Old Oak to begin a second progress even as the first was ending.
Stern-faced, still in her armor, she sat on high as every man and woman in the Red Keep was brought forth and made to kneel before her, to plead for her forgiveness and swear their lives and swords and honor to her as their queen.
At the welcoming feast an entire aurochs was roasted, and his lordship's daughter Jessamyn acted as the queen's cupbearer, filling her tankard with a strong northern ale that Her Grace pronounced finer than any wine she had ever tasted.
None of the queen's dragons were a match for Vhagar, he insisted.
The castle below the Dragonmont had ten times the room of the Aegonfort, with considerably more comfort, safety, and history.
Rhaena Targaryen was the blood of the dragon, and far too proud to linger long where she was not wanted.
"My descendants shall rule from here for a thousand years," His Grace declared.
With the Red Keep still years away from completion, the king decided that his manse atop Visenya's Hill was too vulnerable and made plans to remove himself to Dragonstone with Queen Alyssa and their younger children.
The men of Myr are indifferent sailors and feeble soldiers; their weapons of choice are dirk, dagger, and crossbow, preferably poisoned.
All the dead would be mourned and missed, but in the immediate aftermath of their passing, the loss of Qarl Corbray was felt most grievously.
The smallfolk of the time called it Lord Rogar's War, and that name is far more apt.
Thus did the Kingsguard come into being; a brotherhood of seven knights, the finest in the realm, cloaked andarmored all in purest white, with no purpose but to defend the king, giving up their own lives for his if need be.
Ser Joffrey Doggett flew with Alysanne, and the Scarlet Shadow, Jonquil Darke, with Jaehaerys, so as to balance the weight each dragon carried.
King Jaehaerys pulled his sister closer and put his arm around her.
Left to her own devices, Alysanne Targaryen set about restoring a modicum of order to Dragonstone.
Soon thereafter, Lord Alyn Oakenfist grew restless, and began to make plans for the second of his six great voyages.
Lysaro was sentenced to be chained naked to a pillar before the Temple of Trade, where all those despoiled by him would be allowed to whip him, the number of lashes accorded to each person to be determined by the extent of their losses.
Though possessed of the silver-gold hair and purple eyes of Valyria, hers was a harsh, austere beauty.
Benifer, acting through the Pentoshi master of coin, who had agents in every port, reached out across the narrow sea as the king had commandedâ¦"paying good coin to bad men" (in the words of Rego Draz) for any news of dragon eggs, dragons, or Elissa Farman.
With the able assistance of Septon Barth, Grand Maester Benifer, Lord Albin Massey, and Queen Alysanneâa foursome His Grace dubbed "my even smaller council"â Jaehaerys set out to codify, organize, and reform all the kingdom's laws.
The Braavosi fleet carrying the Arryn host had departed Gulltown and was sailing toward the Gullet, where only young Alyn Velaryon stood in its wayâ¦and the loyalty of Driftmark could not be relied upon.
Like her brothers before her, Alyssa Targaryen meant to be a dragonrider, and sooner rather than later.
By nightfall victory was his, as the remaining Poor Fellows threw down their axes and streamed away in all directions.
Vhagar was five times the size of her foe, the hardened survivor of a hundred battles.
Many of the smallfolk believed that it was carried by rats; not the familiar grey rats of King's Landing and Oldtown, big and bold and vicious, but the smaller black rats that could be seen swarming from the holds of ships at dock and scurrying down the ropes that held them fast.
Her ladyship could only watch as Bitterbridge was sacked.
The suggestion that Cassandra Baratheon had pushed the little queen to her death was heard again, and the misdeeds of certain other young maidens, real or imagined, became common gossip about court.
The Conqueror was once heard to say that he even loved the scent of Dragonstone, where the salt air always smelled of smoke and brimstone.
Lord Rogar himself, roaring drunk,led the men who disrobed her and carried her to the bridal bed, whilst the queen's companions Jennis Templeton, Rosamund Ball, and Prudence and Prunella Celtigar were amongst those who did the honors for the king.
When her father's term as Archon ended, Ser Orryn lost his position as well and was forced to leave Tyrosh for Myr, where he joined the Maiden's Men, a free company with an especially unsavory reputation.
Soon enough the time arrived when Braxton Beesbury could scarce lift his arm, and then the king moved to the attack.
Lady Baela was great with child, Lady Rhaena wan and thin from her miscarriage, yet seldom had they seemed more as one.
Some acted on their own authority, others in concert with the Dowager Queen.
It would not do for the wanton at the heart of that tale to admit that Jaehaerys had rejected her, or that she never found the opportunity to lure him into a bedchamber.
If Lord Alyn triumphed, Fair Isle would be restored to its true lords, the westerlands would be freed from further outrage, and the lords of the Seven Kingdoms would learn the price of defying King Aegon III and his new Hand.
"I built in stone," said Harren.
The young king and his queen were to spend their livestogether, and though they would famously quarrel and part later in life, only to reunite, Septon Oswyck and Maester Culiper both tell us that never a cloud nor harsh word troubled their time together on Dragonstone before Jaehaerys reached his majority.
Her big brothers Aemon and Baelon never failed to be amused by her mischief (though they never knew the worst of it), and long before she was half-grown, Saera had learned the art of getting anything she wanted from her father: a kitten, a hound, a pony, a hawk, a horse (Jaehaerys did draw a firm line at the elephant).
This time, he decreed, his Kingsguard, servants, and retainers would go ahead of him, to make things ready for his arrival.
A visit from the Dowager Queen and Vhagar had persuaded her to leave her sanctuary on Driftmark and return to court, where Alyssa and her brothers and cousins of House Velaryon did homage to Maegor as the true king.
And so he kept the girl Nettles by his side, day and night, in sky and castle.
Whilst his lordship agreed that Maegor's men were surely deserving of punishment, he pointed out that should their captives be executed, the usurper's remaining loyalists would be disinclined to bend the knee.
The securing of the loans had one immediate effect; work on the Dragonpit was able to resume, and once again a small army of builders and stonemasons swarmed over the Hill of Rhaenys.
Jaehaerys was not one to brood, however; as he would do so often during his long reign, the king shrugged off his sorrows and plunged himself into the ruling of his realm.
His council, when the question was put to them, were united in their opposition to ceding the ancestral seat of House Targaryen to the widowed queen, but none had any better solution to offer.
On hearing this news Ser Robert Quince, the amiable and famously obese knight whom the queen had named castellan of Dragonstone upon her departure, was quick to name the Cannibal as the killer.
Their heads were delivered to Queen Alyssa, together with the hands they had dared raise against the blood of the dragon.
Ser Lucamore Strong had been at his post on the bridge across the dry moat surrounding Maegor's Holdfast.
The Conqueror's younger son had claimed a dragon at last: none other than the Black Dread, the greatest of them all.
That proved beyond Ser Leo's power to achieve, however.
When she turned to her lord husband, Benifer tells us that her eyes looked as hard and dark as obsidian.
Beyond the city walls, fighting continued throughout the Seven Kingdoms.
"We are as the gods made us," wrote Septon Barth, the wisest man ever to serve as the Hand of the King, "strong and weak, good and bad, cruel and kind, heroic and selfish.
While one band seized the armory and another took Dragonstone's leal guardsmen and master-at-arms into custody, Ser Marston surprised Grand Maester Gerardys in his rookery, so no word of the attack might escape by raven.
Ser Luthor Largent and his gold cloaks searched the Street of Silk from top to bottom, and turned out and stripped every harlot in King's Landing, but no trace of Cheese or the White Worm was ever found.
Of far more interest to the king and council was the great fire that had swept across the Disputed Lands a fortnight past.
Thrice, when he was almost dead, Gerardys was let down and allowed to catch a breath, only to be hauled up again.
Those who had food began to hoard, and all across the Seven Kingdoms the price of bread began to rise.
A serving wench who dabbled in potions and spells, says Munkun.
Even at the apex of the dome, the dragon was within easy reach of archer and crossbowman, and arrows and quarrels flew at Dreamfyre wherever she went, at such close range that some few evenpunched through her scales.
The place where King Jaehaerys settled his sister Rhaena in the end was mayhaps the most unlikely seat of all: Harrenhal.
Lord Rowan sent one last flight of ravens to the Vale, commanding those lords supporting the Mad Heir and Gilded Falcon to lay down their arms at once, lest they provoke "the Iron Throne's displeasure."
This version was the one preferred by Black Trombo, who told it far and wide.
As Nessaria beat westward, the Dragonmont loomed up before them, huge against the setting sunâ¦and the sailors spied two dragons fighting, their roars echoing off the sheer black cliffs of the smoking mountain's eastern flanks.
In 73 AC, she gave birth to her eleventh child, a son named Gaemon, in honor of Gaemon the Glorious, the greatest of the Targaryen lords who had ruled on Dragonstone before the Conquest.
For a time the two girls were inseparableâ¦until Larissa was suddenly recalled to Driftmark to be wed to the second son of the Evenstar of Tarth.
Amongst many other holdings, the Rogares owned a famous pillow house, the Perfumed Garden.
Aegon at once started north to meet him, racing ahead of his army on the wings of Balerion, the Black Dread.
Jaehaerys could join her at Winterfell as soon as the peace had been concluded.
As 129 AC drew to a close, the prince prepared to fly against King's Landing.
Sons were dead, including their commander, but more than seven hundred remained, armed and armored and gathered about the crown of the hill.
Lucinda Penrose and Priscella Hogg were condemned to have their noses cut off, with the understanding that the punishment would be stayed should they give themselves to the Faith, so long as they remained true to their vows.
The king and queen mourned his loss, and the realm with them, but no man was more bereft than Prince Baelon, who went at once to Tarth and avenged his brother by driving the Myrmen into the sea.
Aegon Targaryen would not command the high ground, as Orys Baratheon had at the Last Storm; the ground was firm, not muddy.
The Father of the Faithful was not a young man, however; the journey to King's Landing to officiate at the Golden Wedding had almost been the end of him, men said.
Finally one quarrel took him through the neck, and Jace was swallowed by the sea.
But Peake had been at Starpike during the secret siege, and none of his supposedcatspaws ever spoke his name, so his involvement remained unproven, then as now.
The Sea Snake's fleets closed Blackwater Bay, and every morning King Aegon had merchants whining at him.
Vhagar's fury fell on each in turn, until half the riverlands seemed ablaze.
In the end Ryndoon allowed that the Velaryon fleet might pass, for aprice.
Prince Jaehaerys was fourteen years old when heclaimed the throne; a handsome youth, skilled with lance and longbow, and a gifted rider.
Yet so few were on hand to bear witness that it would be some time before word of Prince Daemon's last battle became widely known.
Prince Maegor, in residence at Dragonstone at the time, spoke the eulogy as his father's body was laid upon a funeral pyre in the castle yard.
What Larra of Lys thought of the Hand's justice neither Mushroom nor the court chronicles can tell us, save to note that she wept when Lord Torrhen handed down his verdict.
Relations between the two grew strained, as the young lord chafed under the limits imposed upon him by his father's brother.
Their visit to the Vale was postponed; instead they returned to the safety of Maegor's Holdfast.
He would take more than one wife, as Lord Celtigar urged.
When Lord Alyn sailed Queen Rhaenys up theBlackwater Rush and rode in through the River Gate on the back of the Sealord's elephant, tens of thousands lined the city streets shouting his name and clamoring for a glimpse of their new hero.
As others fled, the story went, the one-handed prophet stood fearless and alone against the ravening beast, calling on the Seven for succor, till the Warrior himself took form, thirty feet tall.
Near the mouth of the Mander, the Redwyne fleet was finally sighted, hurrying north, but they turned about after breaking bread with Lord Velaryon on theLady Baela.
Munkun's True Telling says naught of the queen laughing, only that Her Grace swung from rage to despair and back again, clutching so desperately at the Iron Throne that both her hands were bloody by the time the sun set.
He told Tyanna she was a jealous witch, and barren, throwing the Grand Maester's head at her.
A few accounts claim the queen survived her dragon's fall, only to die a slowdeath by torment in the dungeons of the Ullers.
When Lords Rosby and Stokeworth were executed, it was proposed that White and Hammer be given their lands and castles through marriage to their daughters, but Her Grace had allowed the traitors' sons to inherit instead.
In his hand was a black blade made of smoke that turned to steel as he swung it, cleaving the head of Syrax from her body.
The horrors of King Maegor's rule were receding into the past, the Iron Throne and the Faith were reconciled, and the young King Jaehaerys I was the darling of smallfolk and great lords alike from Oldtown to the Wall.
Though she honored him grudgingly for rising in support of her brother Jaehaerys against their uncle Maegor, his inaction when her own husband, Prince Aegon, faced Maegor in the Battle Beneath the Gods Eye was something she could neither forget nor forgive.
Sons were at their morning prayers in the fortified sept.
So it was to Dorne that the Dragon next turned his attention.
Ser Robert Rowan's host found itself struggling through deep snows in the higher passes, slowing their advance to a crawl, and time and time again their baggage train came under attack by the savages native to those mountains (descendants of the First Men driven from the Vale by the Andals thousands of years before).
Princess Saera watched from the window of her cell.
And so it was that Jaehaerys Targaryen flew to Casterly Rock and the other great seats of the west alone in 88 AC.
Prince Baelon had served his father as Hand of the King as well as Prince of Dragonstone, but after his death His Grace elected to divide those honors.
By dawn, fires were burning throughout the city, Cobbler's Square was littered with corpses, and bands of lawless men roamed Flea Bottom, breaking into shops and homes and laying rough hands on every honest person they encountered.
Sly found no coin within, but whathe did find was far more preciousâ¦a heavy cloak of fine white wool bordered in snowy satin, wrapped about a dragon's egg, pale green with sworls of silver.
Whilst he haggled with Lord Mooton over terms of peace, Lords Follard and Cressey spread lavish bribes amongst the city's keyholders, magisters, priests, and merchant princes.
She brought in a harpist from Oldtown, a company of mummers from Braavos, dancers from Lys, and gave the Red Keep its first fool, a fat man called the Goodwife who dressed as a woman and was never seenwithout his wooden "children," a pair of cleverly carved puppets who said ribald, shocking things.
Harrenhal left His Grace feeling vulnerable for the first time.
With her skin as pale as milk, Lady Misery appeared before the council in a hooded robe of black velvet lined with blood-red silk, and stood with head bowed humbly as Her Grace asked whether she thought Ser Addam and Nettles might be planning to betray them.
When word reached Prince Daemon he spoke no syllable of grief, but his heart hardened against the king, his brother.
The pretender princess had made use of stealth and treachery to kill Prince Jaehaerys, Cole said; let them do the same.
On every hand Queen Rhaenyra's power swelled whilst King Aegon's dwindled.
By 25 AC, it had outgrown both to become the third most populous city in the realm, surpassed only by Lannisport and Oldtown.
Whilst Princess Rhaenyra misliked her stepmother, Queen Alicent, she became fond and more than fond of her good-sister Lady Laena.
That night she mounted Vhagar and returned to Dragonstone, and it is written that when her dragon passed before the moon, that orb turned as red as blood.
It is Velaryon who brought dishonor on him, for now it will be said until the end of days that he came to his throne by murder."
We could entrust her to the Faith, but she does not know her prayers, and her septa says that she cries when asked to read aloud from The Seven-Pointed Star."
When Bold Jon Roxton demanded to know by what right he presumed to name himself a king, Lord Hammer answered, "The same right as the Conqueror.
The king was at Stoney Sept when word reached him.
The Lord of Air had never married, but he did have three bastard sons who had learned his business at his knee.
Fighting continued elsewhere in the realm as well, though those clashes were smaller than the great battle by the Gods Eye.
To Luke he said, "You are wet, bastard.
End and add the power of House Baratheon tohis own before proceeding, and Ironrod, Lord Jasper Wylde, declared that he should summon Lord Hightower and Prince Daeron from the south, on the grounds that "two dragons are better than one."
A few days later, they encountered a pod of leviathans.
Yet even so, for the best part of a hundred years after the Doom of Valyria (the rightly named Century of Blood), House Targaryen looked east, not west, and took little interest in the affairs of Westeros.
So Argilac the Arrogant gave the command to attack, and the battle known to history as the Last Storm began.
Saera still lived, somewhere in Volantis (she had departed Lys some years before, an infamous woman but a wealthy one), but she was dead to Jaehaerys, and the letters Alysanne sent her secretly from time to time all went unanswered.
Suffice it to say that the fighting began in 106 AC.
The High Septon had written to ask clemency for Septon Bernard "that he might atone for his sins through prayer, contemplation, and good works," so Manderly spared him from the headsman's axe.
Laughing and shouting mockery, she danced around her little brother and humiliated him half a hundred times, whilst Princess Daella looked down from a window.
Less than a fortnight later, Larra of Lys gave birth to a son, Prince Viserys's firstborn child.
Mushroom says he exchanged a look with the Clubfoot as he went, but Mushroom was not present, and it seems most unlikely that a man as seasoned as Corlys Velaryon would act so clumsily at such a moment.
When Lord Tully pointed out that Jaehaerys could simply close the gates of Dragonstone against them, Lord Rogar was undeterred.
Argilac the Arrogant had named her "the Yellow Toad of Dorne," but neither age nor blindness had dulled her wits.
Lord Celtigar concurred and proposed a punishing new tax on any child born out of wedlock.
So taken with him was the queen that the party lingered longer at Blackhaven than they had intended.
Their father, King Aenys, would certainly have wished forthem to marry, and once that would have been their mother's wish as wellâ¦but the horrors she had witnessed since her husband's death had persuaded Queen Alyssa to think elsewise.
It was not the prince who swayed him, the fool claims, nor the looming threat of the Velaryon fleets, nor even the entreaties of the twins, but rather a bargain struck with Lady Alysanne of House Blackwood.
Though Princess Deria denounced him, swearing that she and all leal Dornishmen wanted only peace, thousands flocked to his banners, swarming down from the hills and up out of the sands, through goat tracks in the mountains into the Reach.
The Stars and Swords were outlawed; membership in either order would henceforth be punishable by death.
In the Red Keep, Aerea had loved her horse, her hounds, and her friends.
Suffice it to say that Queen Elinor played no role in the events of 50 AC.
In the end, the banker Lotho was adjudged guilty of theft, for taking gold and gems and silver not his own, and failing to restore same on demand.
With his half-sister slain and her only surviving son a captive at his own court, King Aegon II might reasonably have expected the remaining opposition to his rule to melt awayâ¦and mayhaps it might have done so if His Grace had heeded Lord Velaryon's counsel and issued a general pardon for all those lords and knights who had espoused the queen's cause.
King Aegon's wife and mother were taken in chains to a certain brothel, and there sold to any man who wished to have his pleasure of them.
His bones would remain chained to the pillar for three years, until his brother Moredo pulled them down and interred them in the family crypt.
Once he saw Hightower drink, Ulf the Sot lived up to his name, putting down three cups before he began to yawn.
For the Hand and council of regents, Baela Targaryen's midnight flight across Blackwater Bay had confirmed all their doubts about her.
Any lingeringdoubts had been dispelled; Jaehaerys Targaryen was not his father, Aenys.
Aegon II welcomed Prince Aemond home with a great feast, hailed him as "the true blood of the dragon," and announced that he had made "a good beginning."
Though his fifteenth nameday was still half a year away, Prince Jacaerys had proved himself a man, and a worthy heir to the Iron Throne.
Returning once again to 57 AC, that was also the year wherein Jaehaerys dismissed
Prince Aegoncommanded a charge, hoping to break through the Kingslanders before the other loyalists fell upon his flanks, and mounted Quicksilver to lead the attack himself.
When the queen dismissed Ser Merrell Bullock, Androw had asked her to appoint him commander of the castle garrison in Bullock's place.
To deal with their incursions, Lord Caron took his leave of King's Landing as well, hastening back to Nightsong in the Dornish Marches.
A desperate, fragile air of forced fellowship hung over King's Landing in the days leading up to the wedding, for many of those crowding cheek by jowl into the city's wine sinks and pot shops had stood upon opposite sides of battlefields a year ago.
"Her ladyship shows far more interest in flying than in boys," the maester at High Tide wrote to the Citadel.
The muscles of that leg had atrophied, the knee stiffening, the flesh melting away until only a withered stick remained, so twisted that Orwyle thought His Grace might do better were it cut away entirely.
"It is better to forestall rebellions than to put them down," Aegon famously said, when asked the reason for his journeys.
On the seventh day, a cloud of ravens burst from the towers of Dragonstone to bring Lord Aegon's word to the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.
They were never found and may have ended in a bowl of brown, if Mushroom canbe believed.
Prince Baelon lingered only long enough to partake of the feast that evening before galloping back to King's Landing to complete his quest and become a dragonrider.
Greyjoy's writ extended only to the Iron Islands, however; he renounced all claim to the lands House Hoare had seized upon the mainland.
When no reply was forthcoming, the Hand took counsel with Oakenfist and made plans to bring the rebellion to an end by force.
"It may well be that dragons somehow sense, and echo, the moods of their riders," Septon Barth wrote, "for Dreamfyre came down out of the clouds like a raging storm that day, and Vermithor and Silverwing rose up and roared at her coming, suchwise that all of us who saw and heard were fearful that the dragons were about to fly at one another with flame and claw, and tear each other apart as Balerion once did to Quicksilver by the Gods Eye."
The largest and most threatening rebellion remained that of the Vulture King along the Dornish Marches.
A cup of wine tinged with sweetsleep was all that allowed Queen Alyssa even this brief respite, Maester Kyrie explained; Alyssa had been in agony for some hours before.
High atop Aegon's High Hill across the city, Mushroom watched the attack unfold from the roof of Maegor's Holdfast with the queen, her sons, and members of her court.
The remainder of the year 131 AC was a time of departures, as the great lords of Westeros took their leaves of King's Landing one by oneto return to their own seats of power.
By the time Ser Addam was ready to descend on Tumbleton, he had near four thousand men at his back.
Queen Rhaenyra had believed herself victorious after taking King's Landing, the northman said, and Aegon II thought that he had ended the war by feeding his sister to a dragon.
Ser Amos Bracken, leading the host from Stone Hedge, cut down and slew Lord Blackwood in single combat, only to perish himself when a weirwood arrow found the eye slit of his helm and drove deep into his skull.
"I do recall that one night I made him confess to the Doom of Valyria," says the dwarf in his Testimony.
Were that so, Lyonel Strong's death was an unfortunate accident, for his lordship's decision to see his son back to Harrenhal had been unforeseen.
"My brother Aegon died at the hands of our uncle in the Battle Beneath the Gods Eye," His Grace said at her funeral pyre.
Five knights of his Kingsguard had come before him, arriving three days earlier to ascertain that all was in readiness for the king's arrival.
King Loren of the Rock lived, riding through a wall of flame and smoke to safety when he saw the battle lost.
In King's Landing, a score of lesser lords gathered at Maegor's command, amongst them Lord Darklyn of Duskendale, Lord Massey of Stonedance, Lord Towers of Harrenhal, Lord Staunton of Rook's Rest, Lord Bar Emmon of Sharp Point, Lord Buckwell of the Antlers, the Lords Rosby, Stokeworth, Hayford, Harte, Byrch, Rollingford, Bywater, and Mallery.
Cregan Stark's brief service as the Hand of the Uncrowned King ended the next day, when he returned his chain of office to Prince Aegon.
Prince Daemon had little difficulty assembling an army of landless adventurers and secondsons, and won many victories during the first two years of the conflict.
Farther west, near the mouth of the Brimstone River, a damaged galley put in to take aboard fresh water and make certain repairs, and was attacked under the cover of darkness by bandits, who slaughtered her crew and looted her supplies.
Lady Clarice supervised all Queen Daenaera's maids, companions, and attendants, as she did Queen Jaehaera's ladies before them, and was well acquainted with many of the confessed conspirators (Mushroom says that she and George Graceford were lovers, and suggests that her ladyship was so aroused by torture that she sometimes joined the Lord Confessor in the dungeons to assist him with his work).
North of the Neck, winter still held the land in its icy fist.
Farther south, Lord Costayne had issued forth from Three Towers to fall upon Hightower's baggage train.
Benjicot Blackwood watched the struggle from atop his horse fifty yards away.
Her childhood had been spent in the shadow of her brothers and her elder sister, Rhaena, and when she was spoken of at all it was as "the little maid" and "the other daughter."
High Tide was put to the torch as well.
The Field of Fire, the battle was named afterward.
"It is so huge the men seem dwarfed by it, like mice in a ruined hall," she told Jaehaerys, "and there is a darkness thereâ¦a taste in the airâ¦
Chief amongst them was Ser Garibald Grey in his dented plate and mail.
That was not a path that Saera Targaryen cared to walk, however.
The giant was delivered to King's Landing in chains.
Four such women played crucial parts in the history of the realm in late 132 and early 133 AC, whether for good or ill.
(Ser Maladon, it should be noted, insisted the whole tale was a fabrication, and said Queen Ceryse died of "shrewishness."
For that we must be grateful to Grand Maester Munkun, for it was his True Telling, based in large part on the account of Grand Maester Orwyle, that revealed how Aegon II came to Dragonstone.
If the author's tale is true (parts of it strain credulity), during the course of her life she found herself a handmaid to a queen, the paramour of a young knight, a camp follower in the Disputed Lands of Essos, a serving wench in Myr, a mummer in Tyrosh, the plaything of a corsair queen in the Basilisk Isles, a slave in Old Volantis (where she was tattooed, pierced, and ringed), the handmaid of a Qartheen warlock, and finally the mistress of a pleasure house in Lysâ¦before ultimately returning to Oldtown and the Faith.
In this resolve she was supported by the newest member of the court, Septon Mattheus of the Most Devout, who had remained in King's Landing when the High Septon and the rest of his brethren returned to Oldtown.
wax and wane and wax again before Aegon II took his leave of Dragonstone.
Whilst the Prince and the Archon dickered, fightsbegan to break out between their men across the city, in inns, brothels, and wine sinks.
King Aegon had acted without consulting his council of regents, however.
EvenHarrenhal could not contain such multitudes, for each lord was accompanied by a retinue of knights, squires, grooms, cooks, and serving men.
Laena had been betrothed from the age of twelve to a son of the Sealord of Braavosâ¦but the father had died before they could be wed, and the son soon proved a wastrel and a fool, squandering his family's wealth and power before turning up on Driftmark.
"His bastard?" said Ser Regis.
During this brief moment of victory, Prince Daemon declared himself King of the Stepstones and the Narrow Sea, and Lord Corlys placed a crown upon his headâ¦but their "kingdom" was far from secure.
"Sunfyre" was the name given this dragon of the golden dawn.
Three of his men were dead upon the drawbridge and twomore were twisting on the spikes below by the time Peake slid his own blade from its scabbard.
Instead Sweetberry was sent to the Vale to give birth (a girl, with bright red hair) at a motherhouse on an island in Gulltown harbor where many lords sent their natural daughters to be raised.
Off Tarth, another dozen longships rowed out to further swell their ranks, commanded by Lord Bryndemere the Evenstar.
From the Starry Sept came another blistering proclamation.
"Send me to the ends of the earth and wed me to the King of Mossovy or the Lord of the Grey Waste, Silverwing will always bring me back to Jaehaerys."
Two days later, Blood was seized at the Gate of the Gods trying to leave King's Landing with the head of Prince Jaehaerys hidden in one of his saddle sacks.
Though fluent in High Valyrian and the dialects of Myr, Tyrosh, and Old Volantis in addition to her own Lysene tongue, Lady Larra made no effort to learn the Common Tongue, preferring to rely upon translators to make her wishes known.
Even Aegon the Conqueror had never won a war without losing a man.
Her worship was reserved for certain of the manifold gods of Lys: the six-breasted cat goddess Pantera, Yndros of the Twilight who was male by day and female by night, the pale child Bakkalon of the Sword, faceless Saagael, the giver of pain.
"Small wonder you are called the Sea Snake," Lord Stark went on.
From the Starry Sept came a blistering condemnation, denouncing the marriage of brother to sister as an obscenity.
To command the royal fleet, he tapped another uncle, Ser Gedmund Peake, a seasoned battler known as Gedmund Great-Axe for his favored weapon.
The King's Hand attended none of these audiences, but it should not be thought that Lord Rogar was an inattentive host.
A fortnight after the tourney's end, however, the king's old friend Septon Barth died peacefully in his sleep after serving ably as Hand of the King for forty-one years.
His Grace ordered Hayford beheaded on the spot and continuedthe war council with his lordship's head mounted on a lance behind the Iron Throne.
The Seven Who Rode were Ser Medrick Manderly, the heir to White Harbor; Ser Loreth Lansdale and Ser Harrold Darke, knights of the Queensguard; Ser Harmon of the Reeds, called Iron-Banger; Ser Gyles Yronwood, an exiled knight from Dorne; Ser Willam Royce, armed with the famed Valyrian sword Lamentation; and Ser Glendon Goode, Lord Commander of the Queensguard.
King Aegon never warmed to him, it is true, but His Grace did not have a trusting nature, and the events of the past year had only served to deepen his suspicions.
When he turned twelve in 126 AC, Daeron was sent to Oldtown to serve as cupbearer and squire to Lord Hightower.
The Hightowers had not entrusted so much as a groat of their gold to the Lyseni, and thus remained one of the wealthiest houses in all Westeros, second mayhaps only to the Lannisters of Casterly Rock, and Lady Sam wished to learn how to put that gold to better use.
She cursed the child inside her too, Mushroom tells us, clawing at her swollen belly as Maester Gerardys and her midwife tried to restrain her and shouting, "Monster, monster, get out, get out, GET OUT!"
Two more winged shapes appeared: the king astride Sunfyre the Golden, and his brother Aemond upon Vhagar.
To fill his seat, the king reached out to the Vale of Arryn and summoned Rodrik Arryn, the erudite young Lord of the Eyrie, who he and the queen first met as a boy of ten.
Some grieved for brothers, sons, and fathers slain during the Sowing or during the Battle of the Gullet, some hoped for plunder or advancement, whilst others believed a son must come before a daughter, giving Aegon the better claim.
The envoys returned to King's Landing, and the stormlanders soon followed, crossing the Blackwater Rush without incident.
None were ever again to call themselves Strong, the queen decreed; from this day they would bear the bastard names Rivers, Waters, and Storm.
Fewer than a dozen maids remained, and the press had thinned considerably, when a sudden trumpet blast heralded the arrival of Baela Velaryon and Rhaena Corbray.
Blue-eyed and black-bearded and muscled like a bull, Lord Rogar was the eldest of five brothers, all grandsons of Orys One-Hand, the first Baratheon Lord of Storm's
Gedmund Great-Axe (who had been so seasick during the voyage that the sailors had named him Gedmund Green-Sick)
Grand Maester Benifer and Septon Barth concurred, and against their opposition, His Grace reluctantly put the idea aside.
The Hand also announced the Crown's funding for the construction of fifty new war galleys.
Lord Goren, wishing to prove himself a true son of the Drowned God, asked the king for the right to expell all the septons and septas who had come to the Iron Islands after the Conquest to convert the ironborn to the worship of the Seven.
Their sheep are prettier than their women."), and soon developed a mislike of his lady wife, whom he called "my bronze bitch," after the runic bronze armor worn by the lords of House Royce.
The spectre of famine loomed in the North, as Cregan Stark and his lords bannermen watched their food stores dwindle, whilst the Night's Watch turned back an ever-increasing number of wildling incursions from beyond the Wall.
Lord Donnel Hightower had a younger brother, two nephews, and six cousins serving the Seven in 54 AC; the brother, one nephew, and two cousins wore the cloth-of-silver of the Most Devout.
Having taken leave of her brother's court, Rhaena Targaryen flew to Oldtown first, in the hopes that her wayward daughter might have sought out her twin sister.
Viserys I Targaryen was not the strongest-willed of kings, it must be said; always amiable and anxious to please, he relied greatly on the counsel of the men around him, and did as they bade more oft than not.
When Lord Stark proved unyielding, some of them sought to circumvent him by appealing to the king to be, Prince Aegon himself.
As the council included several learned men of bookish inclination, a warrior was wanted as well, a man blooded and tested in battle whose martial reputation would dishearten the Crown's enemies.
As the old year waned and gave way to the new, lord after lord arrived in King's Landing, answering the king's summons.
Some amongst the fisherfolk, fearing that the killer might turn upon them next, urged Quince to dispatch knights to the beast's lair to put an end to him, but the castellan refused.
The only resistance was that offered by Lord Rowan's squire, who was quickly overwhelmed.
The realm would be well ruled when Baelon Targaryen sat the Iron Throne, lords and common folk agreed.
His mount was Balerion the Black Dread, but he flew only to battle or to travel swiftly across land and sea.
It was the plight of widows throughout the Seven Kingdoms that the women's courts had made Alysanne aware of.
The Fourth Dornish War was fought and won in a single day.
Footly's bedchamber along with Lord Footly's wife, and was already in the yard.
Orys Baratheon himself was a dragonseed, a bastard brother to our grandsire.
Her first thought had been King's Landing, Aerea had been so eager to return to courtâ¦
It was traditional for the sons of the seahorse (the sigil of House Velaryon) to be given a taste of a seafarer's life when young, but no Velaryon before or since ever took to shipboard life as eagerly as the boy who would become the Sea Snake.
Elsewhere in the Red Keep, Queen Alysanne spent the morning with her children; Princess Daenerys had finally warmed to her brother, Aemon, though she still wanted a little sister.
When Septon Barth, Grand Maester Benifer, and the others had assembled, Alysanne told them of her visit to the Wall, and the day that she had spent with the whores and fallen women of Mole's Town.
Ser Roger Corne and his men chose that moment to show their true colors, cutting down defenders on the town gates and throwing themopen to the attackers.
When the last of them was gone, Daemon Targaryen walked the cavernous halls of Harren's seat alone, with no companion but his dragon.
When questioned, he told the regents that this was meant to provide work for the shipyards and defend the city from the fleets of the Triarchyâ¦but many suspected Ser Tyland's real purpose was to lessen the Crown's dependence on House Velaryon of Driftmark.
Sword and lance had lost whatever appeal they ever had for him.
King Aegon had spent every penny of the portion kept in King's Landing, leaving only empty vaults for his half-sister when she took the city.
King Aegon, mindful of the advantages of closer ties with Oldtown and its ruling house, saw wisdom in the choice and agreed to the match.
In the Vale, Lord Ronnel Arryn's younger brother Jonos had deposed and imprisoned his loyal sibling, and declared himself King of Mountain and Vale.
That Lady Larissa's presence drew Rhaena Targaryen to Estermont cannot be doubted, for the island was elsewise singularly lacking in charm, being damp, windswept, and poor.
End, Rhaena Targaryen mounted Dreamfyre and flew to join him, abandoning the uncle she had been forced to we
Gutter knights and men-at-arms, litter-bearers, serving men, heralds, the keeper of the wine cellars, three White Swords of the Kingsguard, every man of them suddenly evinced a deep desire to defend the Wall.
That is how the singers tell the tale, certainly; the swift and sudden marriage of Jaehaerys and Alysanne was a romance unequaled since the days of Florian the Fool and his Jonquil, to hear them sing of it.
Though no longer himself capable of sexual congress due to his burns, according to the dwarf, Aegon still felt carnal urges, and would often watch from behind a curtain as one of his favorites coupled with a serving girl or lady of the court.
"For the sake of peace," said Lady Alysanne, "for all those who will surely die should Alyn Velaryon seek vengeance."
Nor would it, for more than a century to come.)Only a handful of lords had been present for Aegon's first coronation at the mouth of the Blackwater, but hundreds were on hand to witness his second, and tens of thousands cheered him afterward in the streets of Oldtown as he rode through the city on Balerion's back.
Even a lord as stern and flinty as Alaric Stark found himself helpless before Queen Alysanne's stubborn charm.
Ser Criston returned to White Sword Tower and sent his brothers of the Kingsguard to summon the members of the king's small council.
Afterward Grand Maester Munkun fed what remained of the supper to a cage of rats, and determined that the poison had been baked into the crust of the apple tarts.
The recent tragedies had only served to blacken the castle's reputation even further, and some feared that the ghosts of Rhaena Targaryen's poisoned friends might haunt its halls.
The ancient master of coin, who had served King Viserys for the majority of his reign, and his grandfather, Jaehaerys the Old King, before him, reminded the council that Rhaenyra was older than her brothers and had more Targaryen blood, that the late king had chosen her as his successor, that he had repeatedly refused to alter the succession despite the pleadings of Queen Alicent and her greens, that hundreds of lords and landed knights had done obeisance to the princess in 105 AC, and sworn solemn oaths to defend her rights.
Gathering in the queen's chambers as the body of her lord husband grew cold above were Queen Alicent herself; her father, Ser Otto Hightower, Hand of the King; Ser Criston Cole, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard; Grand Maester Orwyle; Lord Lyman Beesbury, master of coin, a man of eighty; Ser Tyland Lannister, master of ships, brother to the Lord of Casterly Rock; Larys Strong, called Larys Clubfoot, Lord of Harrenhal, master of whisperers; and Lord Jasper Wylde, called Ironrod, master of laws.
As the last light of the sun faded, Black Harren's men stared into the gathering darkness, clutching their spears and crossbows.
Having done what he could to repair the Crown's finances, His Grace turned his attention to the other great matter awaiting him.
She gave command of the gold cloaks to Ser Balon Byrch, captain at the Iron Gate, sent ravens to Winterfell and the Eyrie pleading for more aid, ordered that a decree of attainder be drawn up against the Mootons of Maidenpool, and named the young Ser Glendon Goode Lord Commander of the Queensguard (though only twenty, and a member of the White Swords for less than a moon's turn, Goode had distinguished himself during the fighting in Flea Bottom earlier that day.
When Alysanne tried to share stories of her own girlhood, and told of how Rhaena had put a dragon's egg into her cradle and cuddled and cared for her "as if she were my mother," Aerea said, "She never gave me an egg, she just gave me away and flew off to Fair Isle."
The Winter Fever, as it was called, killed half the population of Sisterton.
Not long after the incident in Baelon's bedchamber, as the queen was making arrangements for Viserra's departure from King's Landing, the princess traded clothes with one of her maids to escape the guards who had been assigned to keep her out of mischief, and slipped from the Red Keep for what she termed "one last night of laughter before I go and freeze."
The king's gibe stung, and he resolved not to wait for Dragonstone.
Myrmadora Haen, daughter of a magister of Lys, turned up in a gown of translucent blue-green silk that matched her eyes, with only a jeweled girdle underneath.
Prince Viserys once again became King Aegon's constant companion, as he had been when they were boys together on Dragonstone, whilst Gaemon Palehair was cast aside and forgotten,and even Queen Daenaera was neglected.
When told that Aemond and Ser Criston Cole had left King's Landing, it is said Prince Daemon laughed and said, "Past time," for he had long anticipated this moment.
Moreover, one-quarter of the Crown's gold still rested in deep vaults beneath the Hightower, gold that could easily have been used to buy new alliances and hire sellsword companies.
"It should have been you," the Sea Snake shouted at Her Grace.
And so it came to pass that when Alyn Velaryon arrived at last to deliver the west from the ironmen of the isles, he found himself without a foe.
"Words are wind," Jaehaerys went on.
Others insist the widow's gesture was a signal, at which a crossbowman on the battlements let fly a bolt that took Ser Regis through an eye.
Queen Alysanne, in later years, would declare that this was at her insistence; she was ready to lose her maidenhead, and she wanted no more questions as to whether she were "truly" married.
But they found the gates of the city open, the battlements unmanned, and the banners of House Targaryen,House Tyrell, and House Hightower flying side by side atop the city walls.
Many Peakes had served as counselors at Highgarden when the Reach was the richest and most powerful kingdom in all Westeros.
Androw Farman, Samantha Stokeworth, and Alayne Royce set out to follow the next morning, together with more than forty of the queen's friends, servants, and hangers-on, for Her Grace had gathered a sizable coterie about her as the Queen in the West.
Seasmoke drove the wild dragon off as Addam used his own cloak to beat out the flames.
And thus did the Kingmaker and the Kinslayer part, each to his own fate, whilst at the Red Keep Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen set about rewarding her friends and inflicting savage punishments on those who had served her half-brother.
Torrhen Manderly had never liked "that sullen boy," as his letters to his daughters make clear, nor would he ever forgive the king for the brusque manner of his dismissal, or the way His Grace "murdered" the royal progress, whose abrupt end his lordship took for a deeply humiliating personal affront.
Whilst the king and council were deliberating, Her Grace was absent from King's Landing, having flown Silverwing to Dragonstone to be with her sister and comfort her in her grief.
At night he would smuggle her from her rooms dressed as a page boy and take her secretly to brothels on the Street of Silk, where the princess could observe men and women in the act of love and learn more of these "womanly arts" from the harlots of King's Landing.
Caraxes, Vermithor, Silverwing, and Sheepstealer had made their lairs there before flying off to battle.
Unwin Peake removed himself to his seat at Starpike to brood upon the wrongs he felt he had suffered, though his aunt the Lady Clarice, his uncle Gedmund Peake the Great-Axe, Gareth Long, Victor Risley, Lucas Leygood, George Graceford, Septon Bernard, and his many other appointments did not follow him, but continued to serve in their respective offices, as did his bastard brother Ser Mervyn Flowers and his nephew Ser Amaury Peake, for Sworn Brothers of the Kingsguard serve for life.
Two of those, Ser Olyver Bracken and Ser Raymund Mallery, had played a part in the late king's fall by turning their cloaks and going over to Jaehaerys, but the boy king observed rightly that in doing so they had broken their vows to defend the king's life with their own.
In pledge of that, His Grace offered the hand of his daughter Princess Viserra to my great-grandsire, that our two houses might be made as one, but the girl died and the promise was forgotten."
In the last days of her life, Queen Alysanne reflected on his words.
The smallfolk of Westeros would never accept a foreign girl with dyed tresses as their queen, she argued, no matter how delightful her accent.
Yet whilst the hand that poisoned the Arbor red will never be known, we can have no doubt that it was done at the behest of Larys Strong.
The twins had deliberately and with malice aforethought wrecked his own plans to secure the succession, he told his own loyalists, and by seeing to it that the king took to wife a six-year-old they had ensured that the child Baela carried would be next in line to the Iron Throne.
"I made my promise to the dead," Ser Garibald replied.
"She was no great beauty," Mushroom says, "but she was fresh and pretty and pleasant, and His Grace did not seem averse to her."
Some were drunk and all were hungryâthe piglet had escaped themâand the sight of the Pentoshi enraged them, for to a man they held the master of coin to blame for the high cost of bread.
Though their ranks included seasoned commanders and puissant knights, no great lords had rallied to Prince Aegon's causeâ¦but Queen Tyanna, mistress of whisperers, wrote to warn Maegor that Storm's
Instead Lord Corlys Velaryon and Prince Aegon rode forth to meet them under a peace banner.
Though not quite a year and a half old, Princess Daenerys had been talking (after a fashion) since well before her first nameday, and had gone past crawling, lurching, and walking into running.
When the queen's party reached the docks, however, they found Ser Franklyn waiting for them.
A similar resolve had taken root across the bay in the breast of Aemond Targaryen, ruling in his brother's name whilst Aegon lay abed.
Only one of the seven speakers was known to the common folks of the realm when they set out: no less a person than Queen Elinor herself, the Black Bride who had found Maegor dead upon the Iron Throne.
Then as now, the Sworn Brotherhood of the Kingsguard consisted of seven knights, men of proven loyalty and undoubted prowess who had taken solemn oaths to devote their lives to defending the king's person and kin.
Condemned to death, Ser Rhogar saved his head by taking the black.
Here, brides thus blessed upon their wedding nights were envied, and the children born of such unions were esteemed above all others, for the Lords of Dragonstone oft celebrated the birth of such with lavish gifts of gold and silk and land to the mother.
With Grand Maester Munkun still down in the city tending to victims of the Winter Fever, His Grace turned to his predecessor, instructing the former Grand Maester Orwyle to summon Lord Thaddeus Rowan to the city.
Queen Helaena's mount was Dreamfyre, the she-dragon who had once borne the Old King's sister Rhaena through the clouds.
Just across Blackwater Bay on Dragonstone, a younger queen had arisen when Alyssa's daughter Alysanne, a maid of thirteen years, had pledged her troth to her brother King Jaehaerys, against the wishes of her mother and her mother's lord husband.
Lord Theomore had won great renown as a warrior in his youth, and had proved himself a canny lord under whose rule White Harbor had prospered greatly.
Queen Alyssa and her two youngest children remained in hiding (it was thought that they had fled across the narrow sea, to Tyrosh or perhaps Volantis), but they still represented a threat to Maegor's crown, and any son he might father.
In 118 AC, with the blessing of King Viserys, Rhaenyra announced the betrothal of her two eldest sons to the daughters of Prince Daemon and Lady Laena.
Caught in a snare of his own making, Lord Unwin Peake had no choice but to accept the king's decision with as much grace as he could muster.
King Aenys sought always to please; when faced with difficulties, he would answerwith soft words, whereas Maegor's reply was ever steel and fire.
Only when he saw Grand Maester Munkun send forth a murder of ravens, summoning twoscore leal lords to King's Landing, did His Grace allow the bridge to be lowered once again.
They were farther south than he had realized, however, and ended up missing the islands entirely and fetching up instead upon thecoast of Sothoryos.
The king was not disposed to spend coin he did not have on another Golden Wedding, as splendid and popular as that event had been.
When a second query and a third produced the same, Ser Gyles Belgrave threw back the curtains, and found the king dead upon his cushions.
Under the cover of darkness they made their way out a postern gate to where a fisherman's skiff awaited to take them to Dragonstone.
Jaehaerys had no taste for such slaughter, however, and his mother, Queen Alyssa, flatly forbade it, reminding them of the fate of Rhaenys Targaryen and her dragon in Dorne.
Grand Maester Orwyle was at last allowed to send forth his ravens, and the black birds took to the air by the hundreds, spreading the word of Aegon's ascension to every far corner of the realm.
The wounds left by the cruel year that had gone before, the Year of the Stranger, were as yet too rawâ¦and king, queen, and council alike feared what might lie ahead, with the Princess Aerea and Balerion still vanished from human ken, and Queen Rhaena gone in search of them.
As Joff began to bawl, Aemond raced to Vhagar and clambered up onto her back.
Where did Lord Greyjoy find her, and how long had she been amongst his salt wives?
The Targaryens had escaped the Doom, fleeing across the seas to Dragonstone, but "the gods are not mocked," and now a second doom was at hand.
Lord Tyrell lost a quarter of his men and almost all his horses to the Dornish sands, and when at last he reached the Hellholt, he found it abandoned.
Like Alysanne herself, Daella was smallâon her toes, she stood five feet two inchesâand there was a childish aspect to her that led everyone who met her to think she was younger than her age.
Eschewing further flight, Prince Daemon and his wife settled in a manse outside the city walls as a guest of a Pentoshi magister, until such time as the babe was born.
His brother, Maegor, taller, broader, and fearsomely strong, had no patience for any of that, but lived for war, tourneys, and battle.
Thus Prince Daemon departed Maidenpool for the last time.
Unable to capture Nightsong, he abandoned the siege and marched west, only to have Lady Caron sally forth behind him, to join up with a strong force of marchers led by Harmon Dondarrion, the mutilated Lord of Blackhaven.
She was very quick, however, and Sunfyre, though much larger, still struggled with a malformed wing and had taken fresh wounds from Grey Ghost.
The subsequent defeats at the Burning Mill and Stone Hedge came as further blows, and made the king realizethat his situation was more perilous than it had seemed.
"Never has there been such a glory in all the annals of Westeros," wrote Grand Maester Benifer.
In the end the Sea Snake made nine voyages.
The fight that followed is named in the histories as the Third Dornish War, but that is a misnomer, for the Prince of Dorne kept his armies well out of the conflict.
Foremost of these was Lady Johanna, the widow of Casterly Rock, who ruled the domains of House Lannister for her young son, Lord Loreon.
When Lord Stark asked if he had anything to say in his own defense, he said only, "When was a wolf ever moved by words?"
The Stepstones teemed with enemies, who would not be taken unawares a second time.
Though Jaehaerys decided at once that he would remain by his wife's side until the babe was born, Alysanne would not have it.
One of the queen's bedmaids also came under suspicion, when it was found that she had stolen two of Jaehaera's dolls and a pearl necklace.
He brought with him two casks of wine as a gift, one of Dornish red and one of Arbor gold.
Vaegon tolerated his sister's presence, but never sought it out.
One of those who came to watch was Jocelyn Baratheon, the late Queen Alyssa's dark-haired daughter, who grew taller and more beautiful with every passing day.
The maesters of that time referred to the estrangement betwixt the king and queen as the Great Rift.
As a younger man, Septon Oswyck had ministered to King Aenys, and as a boy he had served as a novice in the court of Queen Rhaenys.
One such time occurred during the years 91â92 AC, during what is known as the Myrish Bloodbath.
(Even as a boy, Lord Alyn never lacked for boldness.)
On the third night the castle's grooms, cooks, and serving men took up arms and rose against the king's men, slaughtering many as they slept and delivering the rest in chains to young Alyn Velaryon.
Across the realm in King's Landing, Jaehaerys and his counselors considered how to rid the realm of this scourge.
Another hundred perished not long after, when Prince Aemond and Ser Criston Cole took Rook's Rest and put its garrison to death.
The folly of Prince Morion's plans cannot be overstated.
His former foes were encouraged to send their children (chiefly younger sons and daughters, as most great lords desired to keep their heirs close to home) to court, where the boys served as pages, cupbearers, and squires, the girls as handmaidens and companions to Aegon's queens.
Queen Visenya took an arrow in one shoulder, but soon recovered.
One report spoke of a dragon being displayed in the fighting pits of Astapor on Slaver's Bay, a savage beast with shorn wings the slavers set against bulls, cave bears, and packs of human slaves armed with spears and axes, whilst thousands roared and shouted.
The boy king and his sisters, Rhaena and Alysanne, all had dragons, and some felt the best way to deal with Septon Moon was the way Aegon the Conqueror and his sisters had dealt with the Two Kings on the Field of Fire.
Advised of their coming in his camp beside the Gods Eye, Aegon gathered his own strength and advanced to meet these new foes.
None of this constitutes proof that Daemon Targaryen had carnal knowledge of the bastard girl, but in light of what followed we must surely judge that more likely than most of Mushroom's tales.
Seven days after the triumphant return of Lord Alyn to King's Landing, he was honored in a lavish ceremony in the Red Keep, with King Aegon III seated on the Iron Throne and the court and half the city looking on.
Though he kept one septon at King's Landing and another at Dragonstone, the king more oft wrote to the High Septon of Oldtown on religious issues, and always made a point of visiting the Starry Sept during his yearly circuit.
With her rode the brothers Manderly, four surviving Queensguard, Ser Balon Byrch and twenty gold cloaks, four of the queen's ladies-in-waiting, and her last surviving son, Aegon the Younger.
Another fleet set out from Gulltown with Prince Joffrey, the last of the queen's three sons by Laenor Velaryon, together with his dragon Tyraxes.
And whilst Lord Ormund had dubbed Daeron Targaryen "Daeron the Daring" and praised his courage in battle, the prince was still a boy.
"Aye, I'll do it," Lord Torrhen said, "but I'll need a man who is good with coin if I'm to deal with these Lyseni thieves and their bloody bank."
Maegor brought them together in the Red Keep one night to discuss his plan of battle.
As the Lady Baela passed beneath the walls of Lannisport, the bells of the city pealed in welcome.
Your wives were ignorant of one another, I am told, but each of them must surely have known that you were a White Sword, a knight of the Kingsguard.
"Perhaps you can tell us who he named as his heir and successor," the queen said, her crown upon her head.
More, he rode a great bronze-and-tan beast called Vermithor, and his sister Alysanne, a maid of twelve, commanded her own dragon, Silverwing.
Yet such was the power of his words, and the determination he displayed as he sat looking down upon them all from the Iron Throne, that Lords Baratheon and Velaryon at once gave the prince their support, and the rest soon followed.
The challenges he faced were daunting, for winter had descended upon Westeros and would endure for four long years, a winter as cold and bleak as any in the history of the Seven Kingdoms.
"King Aegon said the same and died for it.
Lord Celtigar's taxes would not serve; Jaehaerys had no interest in raising port fees or bleeding innkeeps.
Word had reached Fair Isle as well, and we are told that Lord Dalton Greyjoy even toyed with the idea of sending one of his sisters to vie for the queen's crown.
Jaehaerys loved all three children fiercely, but from the moment Aemon was born, the king began to speak of him as his heir, to Queen Alysanne's displeasure.
Queen Jeyne's son was confirmed as Lord of Tarbeck Hall, and sent to Casterly Rock to be raised as a ward of Lyman Lannister.
When he learned that his concubine was pregnant, Prince Daemon presented her with a dragon's egg, but in this he again went too far and woke his brother's wroth.
An adulterous wife gave offense to the Seven, who had created women to be faithful and obedient to their husbands, and therefore must be chastised.
Thaddeus Rowan and Manfryd Mooton were outraged that he had not seen fit to consult them; matters of such import rightly belonged to the council of regents.
But when the king expressed the wish to go to the docks "to thank my good-brother for his service," the Hand forbade it, insisting it would not be fitting for His Grace to go to Lord Velaryon, that theadmiral must come to the Red Keep to abase himself before the Iron Throne.
Not since the Doom of Valyria had so many dragons been seen in one place at one time, it was truly said.
A raiding party had been taken not long before trying to scale the Wall, and a dozen ragged survivors of the fight had been confined in cages for her inspection.
"Lord Alyn shall be my admiral, as his grandsire was."
Jaehaerys laughed at that and said, "Next time."
Ser Franklyn had fought in the Battle Beneath the Gods Eye and taken a wound there, blood shed in the service of Prince Aegon the Uncrowned.
It became apparent to her that the bedmaids and servants assigned to them were tattlers and spies, bringing word of their every doing back to Lord and Lady Lannister.
"Though the Seven spared you, sire," Bernard concluded, "Lord Rowan's foul plot took the life of your young friend Gaemon."
Though the lords thus accosted, through their stewards and castellans, were quick to lower Rhaenyra's quartered banner and raise Aegon's golden dragon in its stead, each in turn was brought in chains to King's Landing and forced to do obeisance before the king.
One by one the men suspected of having played a part in the poisoning of King Aegon II were brought before him.
Tyrosh, Myr, Lys, and the three-headed alliance of Braavos, Pentos, and Lorath battled one another across the Stepstones and the Disputed Lands, whilst the rogue kingdom of Racallio Ryndoon pinched shut the bottom of the narrow sea.
"His wife, my sister Rhaena, was not with him at the battle, but she died that day as well."
By the time Prince Aemond took his leave, the stink from the dead king's bedchamber had wafted all through Maegor's Holdfast, and many wild tales and rumors were spreading through the court and castle.
It began on an ominous note when the former Grand Maester Orwyle was discovered in a brothel called Mother's, near the lower end of the Street of Silk.
Alyn Velaryon could perhaps have brought him down, but it would have cost him half his strength, he feared, and he would have need of every man if he were to have any hope of defeating the Red Kraken.
King Viserys finally put an end to the questioning, declaring he would hear no more.
Then up stood Oakenfist, to offer the name of Isembard Arryn, the Gilded Falcon of the Vale.
The king and the lords of the council were agreed on one thing, however; they must needs do all they could to make certain that Septon Mattheus was not chosen.
All the agents and informers that Rego Draz had engaged to hunt down Elissa Farman and the stolen dragon eggs were now given a new mission: to find Princess Aerea and Balerion.
His household knights and garrison were given the choice between swearing their swords to King Aegon or sharing their lord's fate.
"We no longer have to beat the bastard boy as often as before," he told the Hand.
In a single night, the seats of House Blanetree, House Terrick, House Deddings, House Lychester, and House Wayn were set aflame.
Lists were raised in the fields west of the city walls between the Lion Gate and the King's Gate, and the jousting there was said to be especially splendid.
When three girls, triplets, were born to the Evenstar of Tarth, Queen Rhaenys arranged betrothals for them with House Corbray, House Hightower, and House Harlaw.
Though his mother, the Dowager Queen Alicent, spoke up in Ser Otto's defense, His Grace turned a deaf ear to her pleading.
After his death in 61 AC, Rhaena took his servants into her own household and continued to maintain them until her own death.
Each dawn Caraxes and Sheepstealer flew from Maidenpool, climbing high above the riverlands in ever-widening circles in hopes of espying Vhagar belowâ¦only to return defeated at dusk.
Perhaps thinking of those descendants, in 41 AC Aenys Targaryen made a disastrous blunder and announced his intention to give the hand of his daughter Rhaena in marriage to her brother Aegon, heir to the Iron Throne.
Her marriage, never passionate, had become a mummer's farce by 54 AC.
Across the city, Lord Corbray was inspecting the men of the East Barracks of the City Watch, whilst Rego Draz entertained a young lady of negotiable virtue in his manse below the Dragonpit.
There were no declarations of brotherly love; each Cargyll denounced the other as a traitor as they clashed.
When Lord Leowyn Corbray and his brother arrived in King's Landing and joined the ruling council, adding their voices to those of Lady Arryn and the Lads, the Wolf of Winterfell oft found himself at odds with all of them.
This was no more than Alyn Velaryon had long desired, as the Sea Snake had before him, though when he read the message the young lord bristled and declared, "They are my fleets now, and Baela's monkey is more suited to command them than Nuncle Gedmund."
He mounted Vermithor and flew back to King's Landing at once.
From there it would be down the sea road to the Reachâ¦ Highgarden, Goldengrove, Old Oakâ¦there was a dragon at Red Lake, Aegon would not like that, but Red Lake was easily avoidedâ¦a visit at one of Unwin Peake's seats might help assuage the former Hand.
When the Sealord inquired as to whatthe matter at hand might be, the septon gave him a sad smile and said, "Is that how this must be played?
In Rhaena Targaryen, however, she found a like- minded companion, and in her the queen found a new confidant.
At the feast afterward, King Aenys compounded his misjudgment by granting the title Prince of Dragonstone to his presumptive heir, Prince Aegon.
And when his brother Drazenko married Princess Aliandra Martell of Dorne, and was named by her Prince Consort and Lord of the Stepstones, the ascendancy of House Rogare reached its apex.
Lacking any strength at sea themselves, however, they chose to regard Lord Alyn's coming as a visit rather than an attack.
The tale as told by Mushroom is far more depraved, as is oft the case with his Testimony.
"I had not known there were so many smallfolk in the city," Theomore Manderly is reported to have said.
When the Hand asked if she had any favorites amongst the lords and knights who had paid her suit, she confessed that she was "especially fond" of Ser Corwyn Corbray, whom she had first met in the Vale whilst a ward of Lady Arryn.
"Have mercy on my children, lord," she begged, before throwing herself down to hang.
Beesbury armed himself with a morningstar, thinking mayhaps that Jaehaerys would be less accustomed to defending himself against that weapon.
Told to restore the women his ironmen had carried off, he replied that "only the Drowned God may sunder the bond between a man and his salt wives."
Aegon the Conqueror had been accustomed to taking as many as a thousand knights, men-at-arms, grooms, cooks, and other servants with him on the road.
They had taken three of the great grey lizards on board, and one bit his steersman, whose leg turned green and had to be removed.
Mushroom alone was present for these councils, however, and the fool insists that Rhaenyra was still so griefsick over the death of her son Lucerys that she absented herself from the war council, giving over her command to the Sea Snake and his wife, Princess Rhaenys.
The death of a Kingsguard knight was greatly troubling to Ser Tyland, though Unwin Peake discounted Ser Damon Darry's talk of sorcery and dragons and put down the death of Regis Groves and his men to outlaws.
On one point all agree: Alysanne held her mother's hand in her own from start to finish, until the babe's first squall filled the room.
With a bag pulled over his head, the GrandMaester was escorted down to the black cells.
Ser Robert, outraged, had sent the boy to the block to have the offending hand removed.
The Vulture King had twice as many men as his three foes combined, but most were untrained and undisciplined, and when faced with armored knights at front and rear, their ranks shattered.
Johanna Lannister sent a cousin and three bannermen to speak for the west, Torrhen Manderly sailed down from White Harbor with twoscore knights and cousins, and Lyonel Hightower and the Lady Sam rode up from Oldtown with a tail six hundred strong.
With their swords he took control of the Dragon Gate, the King's Gate, and the Lion Gate, giving him four of the city's seven gates and more than half of the towers along its walls.
Angry at the disrespect he felt the king had shown him and unaccustomed to defeat, Rogar Baratheon remained determined to find a way to part Jaehaerys and Alysanne.
The army Lord Alyn was to carry to the Vale would be commanded by Lady Larra
One notable name could be found neither amongst the dead nor the captive: Rhaena Targaryen, sister and wife to Prince Aegon, had not joined the host.
Yet none of these losses were felt so deeply as that of Jacaerys Velaryon, Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne.
Like as not, the young dragon was blinded in that instant, yet still she flew on, slamming into Sunfyre in a tangle of wings andclaws.
Rule in the west had therefore passed to his widow, Lady Johanna, and her father, Roland Westerling, Lord of the Crag.
Jaehaerys, who had taken little note of Aerea even during the years she had been his heir, chided himself now for that neglect, but it was Balerion who most concerned him, for well he understood the dangers of a beast so powerful in the hands of an angry thirteen-year-old girl.
Whatever the truth of these allegations, there was never any doubt that King Viserys still meant for his daughter to follow him upon the Iron Throne, and her sons to follow her in turn.
Whilst the ascent of Aegon III did mark an end to the worst of the carnage of the Dance of the Dragons, it is not wholly correct to assert that the young king's coronation brought peace to the Seven Kingdoms.
The blood of Old Valyria was strong in her, as is oft seen in the sons and daughters of the seahorse; her hair was silver laced with gold, her eyes as blue as a summer sea, her skin as smooth and pale as winter snow.
Conciliation remained their guiding principle, for the divisions that had so recently torn Westeros apart were far from healed.
Lord Unwin rushed forward, demanding to know the meaning of this.
The Kingsguard arrived from Dragonstone in the nonce.
Though Sandoq could not read or write, Mushroom tells us he was fond of music, and would oft sit in the shadows of Lady Larra's bedchamber playing sweet sad notes on a queer stringed instrument of goldenheart and ebony that stood near as tall as he did.
Unsurprisingly, he chose exile and made his way across the narrow sea to Pentos, and thence to Myr, where he fell in with sellswords and other low company.
Queen Alysanne did not fly to Lys, but neither did she ever quite forgive the king for the words he spoke that day.
Who better to rule with him than the daughter he meant to succeed him on the Iron Throne?
The Dragonkeepers had not been wrong; Meleys was as swift a dragon as Westeros had ever seen, easily outpacing Caraxes and Vhagar when she and her brothers flew together.
Not one of them realized that the year ahead would be amongst the darkest in the long reign of Jaehaerys I Targaryen, a year so marked by death, division, and disaster that the maesters and smallfolk alike would come to call it the Year of the Stranger.
As the Velaryons were the realm's traditional admirals, Maegor woke to find he had lost the entire royal fleet.
The Sea Snake would command the fleet, whilst Princess Rhaenys flew overhead to keep their foes from attacking their ships with dragons.
By day's end, two thousand of Aegon's men had died, against a hundred of the king's.
Sick in body and spirit, broken by betrayal, Rhaenyra Targaryen wanted only to return to her own seat, where she imagined that she and her son would be safe.
With a glad cry and a crack of her whip, she turned Meleys toward the foe.
In the fullness of her victory, Rhaenyra Targaryen did not suspect how few days remained to her.
Owen Fossoway, Lord of Cider Hall, was dispatched under cover of darkness to wake the prince and bring him to the cellar, that the plotters might inform him of their plans.
Others took themselves to the castle sept to pray for deliverance.
The Tyrells had no blood ties to the Peakes, and no reason to favor them.
"A man who knows how to ease pain will also know how to inflict it," he told the Hand, "but it is also important that we have a Lord Confessor who sees his work as duty, not pleasure."
In this instance, it must be said, the tale told by the fool seems more likely than the versions offered by septon and maester.
And thus it came to pass that Rhaena Targaryen, daughter of one king, wife to two, sister to a third, spent the final years of her life in the aptly named Widow's Tower of Harrenhal, whilst across the castle yard a sickly youth named after the king who had slain the father of her children maintained his own household in the Tower of Dread.
So saying, he hacked off Lord Walter's sword hand.
When Septon Barth began to rise, the Sealord waved him back to his seat.
Her reception at Winterfell did nothing to disabuse the queen's fears as to what she might expect from House Stark.
Across the width of Westeros, Rogar Baratheon fumed and raged when he learned of his brother's failure and imprisonmentâ¦but he did not call his banners, as many had feared.
The lands, castles, and coin of Houses Rosby and Stokeworth were awarded to the sons of the two executed lords, whilst Hugh Hammer and Ulf White were knighted and granted small holdings on the isle of Driftmark.
Thus it was that in Oldtown, at the motherhouse attached to the Starry Sept, Ser Orryn Baratheon appeared suddenly with a dozen men-at-arms and a letter bearing Lord Rogar's seal, demanding that the novice Rhaella Targaryen be turned over to them immediately.
The speaker was Bernarr Brune, the squire who had slain Harren the Red and been knighted by King Aenys himself.
A wife and children did little to curb the carnal appetites of Prince Aegon the Elder.
As the dragons gorged themselves on the dead, Aegon commanded that the swords of the slain be gathered up and sent downriver.
As he was a lord without lands, sworn men, or a castle, however, some wit about the castle dubbed him "the Lord of Air."
Queen Helaena's twins had their own dragons too, but no more than hatchlings; the usurper's youngest son, Maelor, was possessed only of an egg.
That same night Rhaena summoned Princess Aerea to her chambers to berate her, and the sounds of mother and daughter shouting at one another rang through the Stone Drum.
The castle overlooking the town was stout but small, garrisoned by no more than forty men, but thousands more had come upriver from Bitterbridge, Longtable, and farther south.
Princess Daenerys was so frightened by her aunt that she cried whenever she came into her presence.
Perhaps the boldest letter came from the irrepressible Lady Samantha of Oldtown, who declared that her sister Sansara (of House Tarly) "is spirited and strong, and has read more books than half the maesters in the Citadel" whilst her good-sister Bethany (of House Hightower) was "very beautiful, with smooth soft skin and lustrous hair and the sweetest manner," though also "lazy and somewhat stupid, truth be told, though some men seem to like that in a wife."
Even the Dornishmen were represented; the Prince of Dorne sent his daughter and twenty Dornish knights to Harrenhal as observers.
His lordship had outlived four wives, however, and whilst still a doughty fighter, he had grown very stout, which did little to recommend him to Princess Viserra.
Soon thereafter word reached the city that Leowyn Corbray had left Maidenpool and was making for King's Landing, accompanied by Lord Mooton, Lord Brune, and Ser Rennifer Crabb.
These children too were abominations, the High Septon proclaimed; fruits of lust and incest, accursed of the gods.
The problem posed by the Velaryon fleet was discussed at some length.
Lord Rogar had never asked Jaehaerys for leave to wed his mother, an omission the boy king took for a sign of disrespect.
Small wonder then that when word of the fall of King's Landing reached him, the prince felt thrice the fool.
By that time, however, Lady Coryanne had grown to admire and respect Queen Alysanne, "as if she were my own little sister," and had developed warm feelings for Jaehaerys as well.
The aged Lord Lyman Beesbury was master of coin, in which capacity he had served almost uninterrupted since the Old King's day.
The seeds cast into the wind by Lord Corlys Velaryon during the False Dawn had taken root and borne sweet fruit.
By all the laws of inheritance, laws that the Conqueror himself had affirmed after the Conquest, the Iron Throne should pass to King Aenys's son Aegon, the aged maester said.
The prince's right foot was hacked through at the ankle, and a butcher's apprentice was sawing at his neck to claim his head when the Seven Who Rode came thundering up.
Orys had been a bastard brother to Aegon the Conqueror and his most trusted commander.
When Her Grace asked what was to be done with them, she was told that they would have their ears cut off before being turned loose north of the Wall.
Lord Stark and King Jaehaerys would never be fast friends; the shade of Walton Stark remained between them to the end.
"Rhaenys is to be married next year, and it should be a great occasion.
Rhaenyra Targaryen had time to raise her head toward the sky and shriek out one last curse upon her half-brother before Sunfyre's jaws closed round her, tearing off her arm and shoulder.
We know that Coryanne Wylde was amongst the maids who were sent to Dragonstone as companions for Queen Alysanneâ¦a singularly curious choice, if a lady-in-waiting was all she was meant to be, forscores of other young girls of noble birth and suitable age were also available, girls whose maidenheads were intact and whose virtue was beyond reproach.
Sunfyre the Golden had taken wing again, it seemedâ¦ but to where, no living man could say.
Thus did the cream of the Warrior's
A rash and foolish young man, Prince Morion had long bristled at his father's cowardice during Lord Rogar's War, when knights of the Seven Kingdoms had marched into the Red Mountains unmolested whilst the Dornish armies stayed at home and left the Vulture King to his fate.
In the daysfollowing his half-sister's death, the king still clung to the hope that Sunfyre might recover enough strength to fly again.
Moreover, Ser Corwyn had been uncle to Quenton Corbray, the powerful and martial Lord of Heart's Home, as well as the beloved husband to Lady Rhaena the dragonrider, good- brother to her twin, Lady Baela, and thus by marriage kin to Alyn Oakenfist.
Away in the west, Rhaena Targaryen nursed her own grievances.
The Lord Commander of the Watch, unwisely, had given Bracken and Mallery command of two crumbling forts, with orders to restore them; instead the two men decided to make the castles their own seats and establish themselves as lords.
Within the Red Keep, the Lads found the dead king's body laid out upon a bier beneath the Iron Throne, with his mother, Queen Alicent, weeping beside it.
Thaddeus Rowan's wounded pride was appeased by a betrothal to Floris Baratheon, a maid of fourteen years widely considered to be the prettiest of the "Four Storms," as Lord Borros's four daughters had become known.
Myrielle Peake had arrived in King's Landing almost a moon's turn before the ball, and her father had made certain that she spent part of every day in the king's company.
"We have already replaced every ship that your boy admiral stole or sank," the Sealord boasted to Lord Mooton.
"If they search the seven hells, mayhaps," the king made answer, as his men tore Rhaenyra from her son's arms.
"For being a thrice-damned Lyseni," Torrhen Manderly responded.
"Above all else, a queen must know how to listen," Alysanne Targaryen often said.
For all these reasons, Jaehaerys believed that the realm would accept his marriageâ¦but he was not a man to trust in chance.
Every visible symbol of legitimacy belonged to Aegon.
The Maiden's Day Ball had been a humiliation, and he took the king's rejection of his daughter, Myrielle, in favor of Daenaera as a personal affront.
The dragonlords of the Freehold of Valyria had believed the same, as did the wise of many distant lands, from Qarth to Yi Ti to the isle of Leng.
But Mushroom declares that Ironrod was named for the stiffness of his member, having sired twenty-nine children on four wives before the last died of exhaustion.)
Jaehaerys hesitated longest when it came to selecting his new lord treasurer and master of coin.
The Targaryen fleet, under Daemon Velaryon, left Blackwater Bay and turned north, for Gulltown and the Vale.
By the end of 134 AC, some feared they might soon rule Westeros as well.
Tall, graceful, courtly, and well-spoken, Royce Blackwood was a gifted bowman, a fine swordsman, and a singer, who melted Daella's heart with ballads of his own composition.
When Lord Tully protested that the stormlanders were beaten, and did not have the strength to field another army, Lord Cregan reminded them of the three envoys that Aegon II had sent across the narrow sea "any of whom might return upon the morrow with thousands of sellswords."
Though Princess Deria continued to issue denunciations from Sunspear, there were many who suspected that she was playing a double game, for she did not take the field against the rebels and was rumored to be sending them men, money, and supplies.
Thrice he rose, and thrice fell back to earth.
For twenty-seven days Maegor Targaryen lingered at the point of death, whilst maesters treated him with potions and poultices and septons prayed above his bed.
"I was myself tempted to return to my cask of flour," Mushroom says, "but thankfully I proved too small for the wolf to notice."
Always an early riser, Joff had sneaked down from his bed to see his own young dragon, Tyraxes.
Thereafter he spoke of King Viserys only with disdain, and began to brood day and night on the succession.
From the loins of the Old King and his beloved queen sprang such a confusion of claims and claimants than many maesters believe that the Dance of the Dragons, or some similar struggle, was inevitable.
The prince had hoped to mount Vhagar in secrecy, but as he crept up to the dragon a boy
And it was then, the tales tell us, that Prince Daemon Targaryen swung a leg over his saddle and leapt from one dragon to the other.
They had spoken their vows in Winterfell's own godswood before a heart tree, and only then had she given herself to him, wrapped in furs amidst the snows as the old gods looked on.
"The power of the Targaryens derives from their dragons, those fearsome beasts who once laid waste to Harrenhal and destroyed two kings upon the Field of Fire.
The smallfolk of the city had already begun to grow disenchanted with their boy king and little queen, neither of whom had been seen since the wedding, and whispers about "the hooded Hand" were spreading.
A fortnight later, Jaehaerys and Alysanne gave another of their daughters over to the Faith.
Half-dressed, he rushed down the steps to the yard, calling for his hammer, his armor, and a horse, so he might ride out and mount Vermithor.
The wedding was performed on Dragonstone, under the aegis of the Dowager Queen Visenya.
When Torrhen Stark reached the banks of the Trident, he found a host half again the size of his own awaiting him south of the river.
The dragonriders were once again in Pentos when Lady Laena learned she was with child.
Then Ser Marston and the Kingsguard saw them on their way.
It was then that Princess Deria presented the king with a sealed letter from her father.
Visenya and Vhagar brought fire and blood to Starfall.
Leaving the corpse to topple onto the spikes, the Shadow paused long enough to shove the dead and dying from the drawbridge before retreating inside Maegor's Holdfast, whereupon the king commanded the bridge to be raised, the portcullis lowered, and the gates barred.
Shortly after their falling out, the queen informed Jaehaerys that he should go alone.
She has been keeping all the accounts at Highgarden since her marriage, and it is said she has increased House Tyrell's incomes by a third.
In 111 AC, a great tourney was held at King's Landing on the fifth anniversary of the king's marriage to Queen Alicent.
Once he had joined his power with that of Edmyn Tully and the other riverlords to ring the castle, he sent a maester to the gates under a peace banner, to parley.
"Throw away your shoes, and walk barefoot through the world, as the Father made you."
After a year and a half of marriage, a different sort of message arrived at the Red Keep by raven.
Let him descend from the high ground and cross the Red Fork with fire and sword, whilst Ser Criston Cole marched forth from King's Landing, accompanied by Prince Aemond himself on Vhagar.
221â233 Maekar Ifourth son of Daeron II233â259 Aegon Vthe Unlikely, Maekar's fourth son 259â262 Jaehaerys IIsecond son of Aegon the Unlikely262â283 Aerys IIthe Mad King, only son of Jaehaerys IITherein the line of the dragon kings ended, when Aerys II was dethroned and killed, along with his heir, the crown prince, Rhaegar Targaryen, slain by Robert Baratheon on the Trident.
The fifth Kingsguard, Ser Harrold Langward, demanded a trial by battle.
"By the time the tenth girl was presented, the king had doubtless forgotten the first five," Mushroom says.
So many men ran off that the king was finally forced to use prisoners from the city's dungeons as his workforce, under the supervision of builders brought in from Myr and Volantis.
In 78 AC, Valerion died, a fortnight short of his first nameday.
As regent for his brother, he might have commanded the Hand's obedience, yet he did not.
By that time Lysaro himself was gone.
At thirteen Daella was sent to Driftmark to meet Corlys Velaryon, the grandson to the Lord of the Tides.
As the tale went, the queen had struggled, Ser Owen's knife had slipped, and the queen's throat had been slit.
And no king in Westeros felt more threatened than Argilac the Storm King, last of the Durrandon, an aging warrior whose only heir was his maiden daughter.
In a stroke, Lord Oakenfist's fleet had become considerably more formidable.
The old Aegonfort had been torn down, and pits and tunnels pockmarked the hill where the cellars and foundations of the Red Keep were being dug, but the new castle had not yet begun to rise.
Like a man risen from the grave, he came striding through the halls of the Red Keep as if he had never left them, to be greeted warmly by Ser Perkin the Flea and take a place of honor at the side of his new "king."
Sunfyre answered with a furnace blast of golden flame so bright it lit the yard below like a second sun, a blast that took Moondancer full in the eyes.
Once, the Blue Queen vanished into a bank of cloud, only to reappear an instant later, diving on Seasmoke from behind to scorch his tail with a burst of cobalt flame.
The lords of the south honored the old gods as well as the new, she told Lord Alaric; most every castle that she knew had a godswood as well as a sept.
The bird arrived as Rhaenyra and her blacks were mourning Ser Erryk and debating the proper response to "Aegon the Usurper's" latest attack.
Prince Aegon and Princess Rhaena had been little known amongst the smallfolk, and they had begun their progress without dragons (in large part because Aegon was not yet a dragonrider), which left them vulnerable to the mobs that sprung up to attack them in the riverlands.
Even the capers of his fools never made him laugh, we are told by Mushroom, the foremost of those foolsâ¦though "His Grace did smile from time to time at my sallies, and liked to keep me by his side to lighten his melancholy and help him dress."
The princess was a lively, laughing child who bounced about the Red Keep day and night, "flying" everywhere on a broomstick dragon that had become her favorite toy.
Prince Daemon himself would take Caraxes to the Trident, together with the girl Nettles and Sheepstealer, to find Prince Aemond and Vhagar and put an end to them.
Queen Visenya soon returned to Dragonstone with Vhagar, but King Maegor remained in Oldtown for almost half the year, holding court and presiding over trials.
His mother walked behind him, clutching the hand of the Dornishwoman Sylvenna Sand and leading a long column of whores, witch women, cutpurses, sneaks, and sots, the surviving remnants of the Palehair "court."
A dozen of Hard Hugh's men came running in time to see him die.
Gaemon had long served as King Aegon's food taster as well as his cupbearer, and Munkun soon declared that both he and the little queen were the victims of poisoning.
It was from her that his lordship first heard of the great ball to be held on Maiden's Day.
After burning the Planky Town, she had taken Lemonwood, Spottswood, and Stinkwater, accepting obeisances from old women and children, but nowhere finding an actual enemy.
Vhagar, the greatest of the Targaryen dragons since the passing of Balerion the Black Dread, had counted one hundred eighty- one years upon the earth.
Across the city at the Starry Sept, the Most Devout convened to choose their new shepherd, with agents of Lord Hightower and the king amongst them, unbeknownst to most.
Ragged Silas and Dennis the Lame commanded roving bands of Poor Fellows who came and went likewraiths, vanishing into the greenwood whenever threatened.
Maesters may argue about the truth of such assertionsâ¦but on that fateful night, a darker tale was being told in the streets and alleys of King's Landing, in inns and brothels and pot shops, even holy septs.
The Two Betrayers took their leave together, and began to make plans for Hammer's coronation.
"There was a girl there," the queen said, "no older than I am as I sit before you now.
His foes howled and cursed and shouted as they came at him, but the Shadow made no sound save with his steel, sliding through them silent as a cat, his blade whistling left and right and up and down, drawing blood with every cut, slashing through their mail as if they had been clad in parchment.
When Aegon III returned her smile and said, "Thank you for coming, my lady, you look very pretty," even Lord Unwin Peake surely must have known that the game was lost.
Princess Rhaenyra would have none of that, but insisted that Prince Aemond should be questioned "sharply" until he revealed where he had heard her sons called "Strongs."
His sword torn from his grasp, Largent was pulled from his saddle, stabbed in the belly, and bludgeoned to death with a cobblestone, his helm and head so crushed that it was only by its size that his body was recognized when the corpse wagons came the next day.
In 133 AC, the new Hand decreed that it should be a day when those who had previously been judged would at last be punished for their crimes.
The girl that they once cheered as the Realm's Delight had grown into a grasping and vindictive woman, men said, a queen as cruel as any king before her.
"Other voices were making themselves heard aswell, gentler voices that echoed softly through the halls of the Red Keep," says Mushroom.
King Aegon slew Qhorin Volmark with Blackfyre, but allowed his infant son to inherit his father's lands and castle.
Only by his size did they know him, for Ser Robert had been enormously fat.
Ser Joffrey rode by his side, and all along the route they were hailed by cheering throngs.
Mushroom suggests that the Sea Snake was behind it, as an act of vengeance against the man who had cuckolded his son.
There were rumors of another Vulture King in the Red Mountains, and Lord Rogar's brothers Borys and Garon insisted they did not have the men and money required to root him out.
Archmaester Umbert, writing a century later, famously declared that Aegon the Dragon and his sisters conquered the Seven Kingdoms (six of them, at least), but it was Jaehaerys the Conciliator who truly made them one.
Princess Rhaenyra poured for her stepmother at the feast, and Queen Alicent kissed her and named her "daughter."
Then they settled down to wait, for they knew it was the custom of Queen Helaena to bring her children to see their grandmother every evening before bed.
When the morning and evening tides rolled in, the castle was surrounded by the sea, connected to Driftmark proper only by a causeway.
Grand Maester Benifer suspected a servant, for many such had come and gone whilst the lords debated in the queen's solar.
"We can go back to the ends of the earth together," she promised Ser Corlys.
"They look at me and see a villain," Massey himself told the king.
In the west, Ser Jason Lannister and his twin, Ser Tyland, vied for her during a feast at Casterly Rock.
Thus the question must be asked: Why did Marston Waters not simply take the holdfast by storm?
Queen Alyssa had sent word of their coming ahead by raven, yet even so she had some concern that the Wise Women, as they became known from that day forth, would find the gates of Dragonstone closed to them.
Though Jaehaerys might well be wise beyond his years, he was still a boy, and ruled by a boy's desires, desires that on no account could be allowed to overrule the good of the realm.
And so saying, she took her child's ashes high into the sky on Dreamfyre, and scattered them upon the winds.
When the pride and power of House Manderly became overweening, it was Lorimar Peake who humbled them and drove them into exile in the North, for which service King Perceon III Gardener granted him the former Manderly seat at Dunstonbury and its attendant lands.
Using that for his pretext, the Hand instead confined Orwyle to a tower cell (large, airy, and far too comfortable, some charged) "until such time as a suitable headsman can be found."
His Grace had never truly forgiven himself for leaving Viserys to his fate when he fled the Gay Abandon on dragonback before the Battle of the Gullet.
Or so the confrontation at the gates of Dragonstone was set down by Grand Maester Benifer, who was there to witness it.
All those condemned to die were brought up from the dungeons in chains to the Red Keep's outer ward.
Prince Daeron stood next in the line of succession.
It was fear of losing the support of such lords, Munkun asserts in True Telling, that led the queen to decide in favor of Lord Corlys rather than Prince Daemon.
Stone does not burn, Harren had boasted, but his castle was not made of stone alone.
The Fighting Fool slew two knights of the Kingsguard before he himself was cut down by the Lord of Maidenpool.
Years before that sailing, the Painted Table had been carved and decorated at Lord Aegon's command; a massive slab of wood, some fifty feet long, carved in the shape of Westeros, and painted to show all the woods and rivers and towns and castles of the Seven Kingdoms.
Not all those who came forward in answer to the prince's call were seeds, nor even the sons or grandsons of seeds.
She carried the Valyrian longsword Dark Sister, and was skilled in its use, having trained beside her brother since childhood.
Two days later, on the very day the Caltrops planned to strike, Tumbleton woke in the black of night to screams and shouts.
Prince Aegon Targaryen was thirteen, Princess Helaena eleven, Prince Aemond ten, and PrinceDaeron six.
"The whore on Dragonstone is not the threat," he said.
Though younger than her predecessor, Queen Daenaera was a happier child, and her sunny nature did much to lighten the king's gloomâ¦for a while, at the least.
As the Seven Kingdoms welcomed the 129th year after Aegon's Conquest with bonfires, feasts, and bacchanals, King Viserys I Targaryen was growing ever weaker.
Autumn had come to Dragonstone, as to the rest of Westeros, and with it came cold winds from the north and storms from the south raging up the narrow sea.
As virtually the whole of A Caution for Young Girls is obscene, it was not like to have been transcribed by either maesters or septons.
In that he failed; Runestone passed instead to Lady Rhea's nephew, and when Daemon made appeal to the Eyrie, not only was his claim dismissed, but Lady Jeyne warned him that his presence in the Vale was unwelcome.
So many knights came forward to offer themselves as candidates for the Kingsguard that King Aegon considered holding a great tourney to determine which of them was the most worthy.
Maegor I Targaryen sat the Iron Throne as his Red Keep rose around him, but his court was grim and cheerless, despite the presence of his three queensâ¦or perhaps because of it.
Jaehaerys brought down Vermithor on the wide marble plaza outside the Starry Sept, but it was his queen who made the city gasp when Silverwing alighted atop the Hightower itself, the beating of her wings fanning the flames of its famous beacon.
Baelon persisted for a year, at the king's insistence.
He neither liked nor trusted the two new men, and had not forgotten the presence of Ser Marston Waters at his mother's death.
Queen Alysanne played no part in the selection of the King's Hand.
Afterward, he gave the seven- year-old Princess Rhaenyra the victor's laurel and begged for her favor to wear in the joust.
The next morning, Ser Hobert Hightower called upon him, to thrash out the details of their assault upon King's Landing.
After the Gullet and the fall of King's Landing, they had been granted knighthoodâ¦but they aspired to be lords and scorned the modest holdings bestowed on them by Queen Rhaenyra.
Whilst Lord White shrugged this off as a waste of good wine, Lord Hammer said, "Little boys should be more mannerly when men are speaking.
Rhaena Targaryen was not a woman easily comforted, however.
To spare them, the Hand took to wearing a silken hood over his head on formal occasions.
And with a royal marriage in the offingâ¦Rhaenyra's cause was lost, she would see that when she learned that she had lost Storm's
The Lord ofWinterfell was twenty-three, only a few years older than the Lords of Raventree and Riverrunâ¦yet Stark was a man and they were boys, as all those who saw them together seemed to sense.
Manacled at ankle with heavy chains, his face so bruised and swollen as to be unrecognizable, Lord Thaddeus did not move at first, until Lord Graceford pricked him with the point of his dagger, whereuponhe said in a thick voice, "Ser Marston speaks truly, Your Grace.
The young princes loved their sister to distraction, it was plain to see, and Daenerys delighted in the boys, "especially in telling them what to do."
A great deal of drinking and fornication took place, claims Mushroom; a great deal of prayer and fasting and good works, reports Septon Eustace.
House Velaryon had been passed over once again, his daughter, Laena, scorned just as his son, Laenor, had been scorned by the Great Council, and his wife by the Old King back in 92 AC.
Unlike the galleys that slid forth daily from the Arsenal of Braavos, she was not oared; this was a vessel meant for deep waters, not bays and covers and inland shallows.
Formerly the captain on the Lion Gate, Thorne was the only one of Lucas Leygood's seven captains not accused of involvement in the plot.
When two dragons meet in mortal combat, therefore, they will oft employ weapons other than their flame: claws black as iron, long as swords, and sharp as razors, jaws so powerful they can crunch through even a knight's steel plate, tails like whips whose lashing blows have been known to smash wagons to splinters, break the spine of heavy destriers, and send men flying fifty feet in the air.
Sullen and cold, he sat silent at meals and avoided the queen's company elsewise.
Big Jon Hogg, fighting for the king, was blinded by a sword slash early in the battle, yet rallied his men and led a charge that broke through the lines of the Faithful and put the Poor Fellows to flight.
He was angry that neither his mother nor her suitor had sought his leave as well, Barth saidâ¦but as he had raised no objections to his sister's marriage, the king did not believe he had the right to prevent his mother's.
Some said that Lord Stark planned to take Prince Aegon back to Winterfell and wed him to one of his own daughters (an obvious falsehood, as Cregan Stark had no trueborn daughters at this time), others that Stark meant to put the boy to death so that he might marry Princess Jaehaera and claim the Iron Throne himself.
Prince Daemon took eagerly to the work of the gold cloaks, and oft prowled the alleys of King's Landing with his men.
The sight of his sails, and the sudden appearance of Queen Visenya and Vhagar in the skies above Sisterton, took the heart out of the Sistermen; they promptly deposed Queen Marla in favor of her younger brother.
Lord Rogar's answering smile showed a glimpse of his old ferocity.
Only when Prince Jacaerys put out the call for new dragonriders did Marilda at last break her silence, claiming both boys were the natural sons of the late Ser Laenor Velaryon.
The Kings of the Reach had nibbled at their domains from the west, the Dornishmen harassed them from the south, and Harren the Black and his ironmen had pushed them from the Trident and the lands north of the Blackwater Rush.
Nor would she loose her hold upon himâ¦until that dread moment when Syrax fell.
Little did Lord Lefford suspect that he would soon face a stiffer test, for an army of fresh foes was descending on them from the north: two thousand savage northmen, flying Queen Rhaenyra's quartered banners.
The Kingsguard made short work of the attackers, slaying two out of hand whilst keeping the third alive for questioning.
At Maidenpool, not a single septon could be found to pronounce a blessing at the feast Lord Mooton threw in their honor.
A few men loyal to Lord Rowan had made their way to Maegor's before its doors were closed, but there was not a knight, a squire, or a man-at-arms amongst them, nor amongst the king's own attendants.
"All I did and all I tried to do was for the good of the realm and the Iron Throne," he ended.
"The Dragonpit was transformed into a fiery hell where burning men staggered screaming through the smoke, the flesh sloughing from their blackened bones," writes Septon Eustace, "but for every man who died, ten more appeared, shouting that the dragons must needs die.
On his second voyage in the Sea Snake, he sailed even farther, to Asshai-by-the-Shadow; on his third he tried the Shivering Sea instead, becoming the first Westerosi to navigate the Thousand Islands and visit the bleak, cold shores of N'ghai and Mossovy.
Tyland Lannister, blind and crippled, had always treated the king with deference, speaking to him gently, seeking to guide rather than command.
So long as you remain a child, however, we are required by oath to obey the King's Hand, for the Hand speaks with the king's voice."
Was he repenting a match made in haste, as Queen Alyssa would have wished?
The long conflict between King Maegor and the Faith had made it imperative that Jaehaerys be anointed king by the High Septon, Lord Rogar and the Queen Regent agreed.
With the Vulture King eliminated, raiding fell off sharply along the Dornish Marches for a time.
That night, Septon Eustace reports, Ser Criston Cole slipped into the princess's bedchamber to confess his love for her.
Princess Rhaena's love for her siblings, and the realm's joy at each new Targaryen princeling, was not shared by Prince Maegor or his mother, Queen Visenya, for each new son born to Aenys pushedMaegor farther down in the line of succession, and there were still those who claimed he stood behind Aenys's daughters too.
The Kinslayer then returned unexpectedly to Harrenhal, where he burned every wooden structure in the castle.
Though he knew Dorne could not hope to prevail against the might that the Iron Throne could muster against him, Prince Morion thought that he might take King Jaehaerys unawares, and conquer the stormlands as far as Storm's End, or at very least Cape Wrath.
As the castle septon refused to officiate, Maegor and his new bride were joined in a Valyrian rite, "wed by blood and fire."
The Dowager Queen's words only fanned the fire of Rhaenyra's wroth.
In the westerlands, Prince Aegon and Princess Rhaena were forced to abandon their progress and take shelter in Crakehall castle.
Perforce we ought to look at the members of that small council on the eve of the great events of 129 AC, for they were to play a large role in all that followed.
The most prominent dissenter was Good Queen Alysanne, who had helped her husband rule the Seven Kingdoms for many years, and now saw her son's daughter being passed over because of her sex.
Lord Celtigar's daughters, so recently scorned by the Hand as being chinless, breastless, and witless, were included as well.
In the years that followed, she saw her husband's reign crumble andturn to ash, as enemies rose up all around him.
Unable to rely on the loyalty of the castle garrison or the knights of the Kingsguard, the Hand needed eyes and ears on Dragonstone.
Daemon Targaryen was not a faithful consort to the queen, we know.
As soon as word had reached her that the Shepherd's savage flockwas on the march, Rhaenyra sent riders to Ser Balon at the Old Gate and Ser Garth at the Dragon Gate, commanding them to disperse the lambs, seize the Shepherd, and defend the royal dragonsâ¦but with the city in such turmoil, it was far from certain that the riders had won through.
The Hand might also have been mindful of the continuing war in the west when he set the shipwrights to work.
The Targaryens were far from the most powerful of the dragonlords, and their rivals saw their flight to Dragonstone as an act of surrender, as cowardice.
Mattheus was dismissive, declaring that Oswyck was a doddering fool and Ysabel a woman, whilst he had no knowledge of Septon Barth.
On Visenya's Hill, an army of whores bestowed their favors freely on any man willing to swear his sword to Gaemon Palehair ("King Cunny" in the vulgar parlance of the city).
Aerea Targaryen, the daughter of Aegon the Uncrowned and his sister Rhaena, was eleven years of age, and had been heir to the Iron Throne for as long as she could remember (but for the three days that separated Prince Aegon's birth from his death).
To prevent further conflict, and put an end to these "vile rumors and base calumnies," King Viserys further decreed that Queen Alicent and her sons would return with him to court, whilst Princess Rhaenyra confined herself to Dragonstone with her sons.
So he made certain they did not know, sliding from his bed at dawn whilst they still slept and stealing down to the outer yard where Vhagar and the other dragons were fed and stabled.
"Your Grace," the Sea Snake said, when the rump of the once proud green council had assembled, "you must surrender.
Meanwhile, the two great western kings had made common cause and assembled their own armies, intent on putting an end to Aegon for good and all.
Tall and handsome, Jaehaerys moved with an easy grace, be it on the dance floor or in the training yard.
Yet House Corbray was ancient and honorable, Ser Corwyn a knight of such repute that his late father had given him Lady Forlorn, the Valyrian steel blade of the Corbrays.
Though the Warrior's Sons and Poor Fellows had been disbanded and outlawed, many former members of both orders remained at large in the realm and might well take up their swords again if provoked.
Lyman Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock, had given Rhaena and her husband Aegon the Uncrowned refuge when Maegor the Cruel was demanding their heads.
Prince Daemon had at last a living son of his own bloodâ¦and this new prince, unlike his three half- brothers, was plainly a Targaryen.
She was not alone in this, for in truth Androw Farman was a curious choice for one with the blood of the dragon in her veins.
A few even cast doubt on Lady Alicent's virtue, suggesting she had welcomed King Viserys into her bed even before Queen Aemma's death.
A crossbowman let fly a bolt at Silverwing, we are told, and twoscore mounted knights closed on Vermithor with sword and lance and axe, hoping to dispatch the beast whilst he was still half-asleep and on the ground.
From what little has come down to us, Alysanne was a bright but unremarkable girl; small but never sickly, courteous, biddable, with a sweet smile and a pleasing voice.
By the time Rhaena returned from her mother's deathbed, he was well past any desire to comfort her.
Not since the Shivers ravaged Westeros during the reign of Jaehaerys I had such a terrible pestilence been seen in the Seven Kingdoms.
Grand Maester Munkun tells us that Cargyll had been commanded to slay Rhaenyra, putting an end to her rebellion at a stroke, whilst Mushroom insists that her sons were Cargyll's prey, that Aegon II wished to wash out the blood of his murdered son with that of his bastard nephews, Jacaerys and Joffrey "Strong."
Elissa Farman was still very much in the king's thoughts, and he had certain knowledge that her Sun Chaser had been built in Braavos.
So Grand Maester Orwyle was dispatched across Blackwater Bay under a peace banner, leading a retinue that included Ser Arryk Cargyll of the Kingsguard and Ser Gwayne Hightower of the gold cloaks, along with a score of scribes and septons, amongst them Eustace.
Yet Seasmoke, Vermithor, and Silverwing were accustomed to men and tolerant of their presence.
In the aftermath of Moon's death, the ragged host that he had led to Oldtown began to disintegrate.
Angry words were exchanged, and the two princes might have come to blows if not for the intervention of the Kingsguard.
Whilst plots and counterplots swirled around him, and enemies closed in from every side, Aegon II remained oblivious.
The prince obeyed, though with ill grace, dispatching Mysaria (eggless) back to Lys, whilst he himself flew to Runestone in the Vale and the unwelcome company of his "bronzebitch."
A more immediate problem was posed by the Dowager Queen, who refused to reconcile herself to the new king.
During his time at Oldtown, the king was also reconciled with his first wife, Queen Ceryse, the sister of his host, Lord Hightower.
It was discovered that a dozen casks of meat on Autumn Moon were crawling with maggots.
There he lingered for six days, whilst his brother Ronnal assembled their knights and men-at- arms for the march home.
A Wanton's Tale insists that Lady Coryanne not only bedded the king, but also all seven members of the Kingsguard.
Lady Rhaena's desire to accompany the progress on her dragon was delicately deflected, whilst her sister Baela declared that she would come along whether she was wanted or not.
Taken whilst attempting to flee, the White Worm was whipped naked through the city, from the Red Keep to the Gate of the Gods.
The King of the Rocklaid his sword and crown at Aegon's feet, bent the knee, and did him homage.
Ser Gyles Belgrave was also put down for death; if he had not put the poison in the king's wine himself, he had allowed it to happen through carelessness or willful blindness.
Prince Baelon was firmly ensconced as heir apparent by then, yet House Velaryon and House Baratheon clung to the belief that young Laenor had a better claim to the Iron Throne, and some few even argued for the rights of his elder sister, Laena, and their mother, Rhaenys.
Princess Aliandra was pleased at his return to Sunspear, and insisted on hearing every detail of his adventures, to the fury of her siblings and jealous suitors.
Bernard too was of his blood, being descended from a younger sister of his great-grandsire.
The Sealord of Braavos, the Archon of Tyrosh, and Racallio Ryndoon had made common cause; they would rule the Stepstones jointly, and only such ships as were licensed to trade by Braavos or Tyrosh would be allowed to pass.
When Prince Jacaerys swept down upon a line of Lysene galleys on Vermax, a rain of spears and arrows rose up to meet him.
Queen Alysanne, wisely, forbade her favorites, Jonquil Darke and Tom the Strummer, from taking part, but the old "Keg o' Ale" once more took the field to roars of approval from the commons.
A promising lad of fifteen years, beloved of the commons, Viserys was made squire to the kingâ¦with a Kingsguard knight for a shadow, to keep him well away from plots and treasons.
King Jaehaerys announced his intent to convene a Great Council, to discuss, debate, and ultimately decide the matter of succession.
After the death of Princess Gael, King's Landing and the Red Keep became unbearable to Alysanne.
The continued presence of Dreamfyre on the island was also creating problems.
Rhaenyra Targaryen, the Realm's Delight and Half-Year Queen, passed from this veil of tears upon the twenty-second day of the tenth moon of the 130th year after Aegon's Conquest.
It is not recorded that Lord Larys Strong spoke a word during this debate, but that was not unusual.
Like Gaemon Palehair, he was taken alive and carried back to the Red Keep bound in chains.
Aegon had tired of her weeping and wailing and wanted a new wife, men said.
Lords Stanton Piper, Joseth Smallwood, Derrick Darry, and Lyonel Deddings had scraped together fresh levies of greybeards and green boys, though all had suffered grievous losses in the autumn's battles.
Marching eastward through the foothills, where runoff from the heights provided water and game was plentiful in the valleys, he took the castle Skyreach by storm, won Yronwood after a brief siege.
ses through the Mountains of the Moon, the Maiden of the Vale had proven true to her word, sending men by sea to join the queen's hosts.
By the time the fool returned with the Grand Maester, Gaemon had collapsed and Queen Daenaera was moaning, "My belly hurts too."
In the year 103 AC King Jaehaerys I Targaryen died in his bed as Lady Alicent was reading to him from Septon Barth's Unnatural History.
However it happened, whether the princess scorned the knight or he her, from that day forward the love that Ser Criston Cole had formerly borne for Rhaenyra Targaryen turned to loathing and disdain, and the man who had hitherto been the princess's constant companion and champion became the most bitter of her foes.
Yet it seemed to him that Rhaena Targaryen showed little remorse for all the grief she had brought to House Farman, and little gratitude to him personally.
Stokeworth and Rosby fell bloodlessly, hauling down the golden dragon of Aegon II to raise the red dragon of Aegon III.
What is done is done, she had said at the gates of Dragonstone, and so she believedâ¦but memories of the bloodshed and chaos that had greeted the marriage of her other son and daughter still haunted her nights, and the Queen Regent was desperate to find some way to ascertain that history would not be repeated.
In their desperation, the Myrmen next turned to the island of Tarth, where their landings took the Evenstar by surprise.
Vhagar was the last of the three dragons that had come to Westeros with Aegon the Conqueror and his sisters, he reminded his lordship.
Effective control of the bank, however, was vested in Lysandro's eldest son, Lysaroâ¦of whom it was truly written, "he had twice his father's ambition and half his father's ability."
By the time word of Lady Coryanne's flight with her purloined jewels and purloined husband reached the ears of Lord Rogar in the Red Keep, it had become obvious that his plan had failed, as had Queen Alyssa's.
Grand Maester Clegg, who came to King's Landing many years later, concluded that Dorne no longer had the strength to fight.
And there it might have ended, but for the girl Maris.
In accordance with his own wishes, and the decision of the Great Council of 101, his grandson Viserys succeeded him, mounting the Iron Throne as King Viserys I Targaryen.
Benifer had served for fifteen years through times both perilous and prosperous, coming to the Red Keep after Maegor the Cruel had decapitated his three immediate predecessors.
The presence of Lady Jeyne's son and Lady Elinor's three boys at the wedding ensured that they would play their parts in the ceremony, but there were many who expected some show of defiance from Princess Rhaena.
For obvious reasons, singers and storytellers have shown a marked preference for the tale as told by Munkun.
You wanted Dragonstone and I gave it to you, and you brought this woman there.
The whole tale soon came out, in no small part thanks to Mushroom himself.
When she had stormed from the hall, back to her dragon in the yard, Lord Rogar and his brothers shared a laugh.
One hill fell, and then another, and the fourth and final charge of the Storm King and his knights broke through the Baratheon centerâ¦only to come upon Queen Rhaenys and Meraxes.
"I have seen your daughters," Rogar said to Celtigar.
One of the men pried a stone up from the king's newly cobbled street and brought it down upon Lord Rego's head again and again, until only a red mash of blood and bone and brains remained.
Arrayed as a mystery knight and calling himself the Silver Fool, the young prince overthrew Lord Rowan, Ser Alyn Ashford, both Fossoway twins, and
It needed none, some of its residents were known to say; no enemy would ever dare attack the city so long as it was defended by the Targaryens and their dragons.
Amongst their supporters were two extraordinary women: Alysanne Blackwood, called Black Aly, a sister to the late Lord Samwell Blackwood, and thus aunt to Bloody Ben, and Sabitha Frey, the Lady of the Twins, the widow of Lord Forrest Frey and mother of his heir, a "sharp-featured, sharp-tongued harridan of House Vypren, who would sooner ride than dance, wore mail instead of silk, and was fond of killing men and kissing women," according to Mushroom.
"Red maidens, the two of us," the princess boasted, laughing, "but now we've both been mounted."
The slender mystery knight known only as the Serpent in Scarlet alsohad a great following; when finally defeated and unmasked, "he" proved to be a woman, Jonquil Darke, a bastard daughter of the Lord of Duskendale.
"They are only children," Jaehaerys said when Alysanne brought the problem to his attention.
Had leave been asked, however, there was no certainty it would have been granted, for Androw Farman, the second son of a minor lord, was thought by many to be far from worthy of the hand of a woman who had been twice a queen and remained the mother of the king's heir.
Lord Cregan's son, Rickon, was a year old.
Though the Stepstones were engulfed in blood and fire, King Viserys and his court remained unperturbed.
Septon Eustace tells us that this was the result of prayer, but most believed that Orwyle's potions and tinctures were more efficacious than the leechings Mellos had preferred.
The Piper levies were led not by Lord Jon or his brothers, but by their sister Melony, who donned man's mail and took up a spear.
Lyonel was but two years her junior, and (Mushroom says) had been infatuated with her since first she came to Oldtown to wed his father.
In the Vale, Prince Daemon reportedlywhipped the serving man who brought the news to him within an inch of his life.
Some suggested that Rhaena herself might have the strongest claim to the crown, as the firstborn child of King Aenys and Queen Alyssa.
New men took their places, but Jaehaerys was truly the Old King by then, and sometimes he would walk into the council chamber and think, "Who are these men?
Argilac the Arrogant gathered a great host about him at Storm's
In the immediate aftermath of his confrontation with Jaehaerys, Lord Rogar could think of little else but the humiliation he had suffered.
Whilst the Hand roistered and King Jaehaerys sat in audience with the lords of the realm, his sister Princess Alysanne entertained the highborn women who had come with them to King's Landing.
Nor was her babe the only fire kindled by Aemond Targaryen.
"You must rule the realm now, until your brother is strong enough to take the crown again," the King's Hand told Prince Aemond.
His lordship made a brief visit to the Arbor, as Lord Redwyne's guest, and a longer one at Oldtown, where he renewed his friendships with Lord Lyonel Hightower and Lady Sam, sat with the scribes and maesters of the Citadel so they might set down the details of his voyage, was feted by the masters of the seven guilds, and received yet another blessing from the High Septon.
Called "the Winter Child" for the season of her birth (and because the queen was in the winter of her childbearing years, some said), she was small, pale, and frail, but Grand Maester Elysar was determined that she would not suffer the fate of her brothers Gaemon and Valerian.
"I am betrothed to my cousin Rhaena."
Septon Barth, Grand Maester Benifer, and Queen Alysanne were horrified by all these proposals, and the king rejected them out of hand.
Yet it cannot be denied that he held sway over tens of thousands from the ruins of the Dragonpit.
But it was another wedding guest who excited the most talk: the Queen in the West had come as well.
The fact that all Lord Rowan's offspring were male counted heavily in his favor; if he were to sire a son on Lady Baela, Aegon III would have a clear successor.
Only one man in four survived the Winter Fever.
Lord Peake preferred to delay any advance until Lord Baratheon could bring up his power from Storm's
A handful of Oldtown men were with him, all that remained of his original crew.
"He was clad in white scale armor under his white cloak," Mushroom tells us, "but his helm was openface and he had not brought a shield, and sorely did Sandoq make him answer for these lacks."
Then Sly came shoving through the crowd, covered in his master's blood, to declare the prince was his, as he'd been the one to find the egg.
Suffice it to say that in the city of Myr two rival factions vied for supremacy.
Lord Rogar's column, winding their way into the heights, were soon forced to abandon their horses and proceed on foot along goat tracks, up steep slopes, and through caves, whilst hidden foes rolled stones down about their heads.
I don't have near enough bones yet, soâ¦"Ser Criston answered, "If there is to be battle here, many of your own will die as well."
Princess Daella, as might be expected, burst into tears and fled the hall, with her mother, the queen, rushing after her.
Then Ser Amaury Peake ran short of patience.
Meleys roared, smoke swirling from her nostrils, a stallion kicking in her jaws as tongues of fire engulfed him.
Let them come to Dragonstone, bend the knee, and ask my forgiveness, and I shall gladly spare their lives and take them back into my heart, for they are of my own blood, and no man or woman is as accursed as the kinslayer."
Heraldic banners had long been a tradition amongst the lords of Westeros, but such had never been used by the dragonlords of oldValyria.
As the great war fleet passed through the Gullet, Ser Gedmund sent over Blackbean to Lord Alyn's flagship, Queen Rhaenys, with a letter authorizing him to take command of the Velaryon squadrons, "so that they may benefit from his many years of experience."
The Battle of the Reeds was a Targaryen victory, but they suffered heavy losses at the Wailing Willows when two of King Harren's sons crossed the lake in longboats with muffled oars and fell upon their rear.
"I rose against your uncle just as you did," replied the Red Dog of the Hills, defiant.
A proud man, he had been stunned and angered by the "ingratitude" of the boy king he had regarded as a son, and humiliated when forced to back down at the gates of Dragonstone before half a hundred of his men.
In the pot shops and wine sinks of Flea Bottom, men placed wagers on how long the Clubfoot, the Sea Snake, the Flea, and the Dowager Queen would keep their heads.
Thaddeus Rowan, Lord of Goldengrove, and Tom Flowers, Bastard of Bitterbridge, were bearing down on him from the northeast with a great host of mounted knights, whilst Ser Alan Beesbury, Lord Alan Tarly, and Lord Owen Costayne had joined their power to cut off his retreat to Oldtown.
Finally Vermax carried Jacaerys Velaryon to Winterfell, to treat with its formidable young lord, Cregan Stark.
Her Grace had not been gone half a day when Ser Perkin the Flea and his gutter knights appeared outside the gates, demanding that the castle yield.
A crossbowman named Bean would claim the kill afterward, boasting of it in many a wine sink and tavern, until one of the queen's loyalists grew tired of his wagging tongue and cut it out.
Alyn Velaryon, the bastard born of Mouse, was formally installed as Lord of the Tides and Master of Driftmark.
Alaric Stark did not, but his sons came, and with them his daughter, Alarra, blushing, to take up her new duties as a lady-in-waiting to the queen.
In addition to the castle, Prince Daemon at a stroke had captured the not-inconsiderable wealth of House Strong and a dozen valuable hostages, amongst them Ser Simon and his grandsons.
Once she filled Daella's chamberpot with bees.
To refill his coffersMaegor's master of coin had raised existing taxes and imposed new ones, but these measures brought in less gold than anticipated and only served to deepen the anathema with which the lords of the realm regarded the king.
Work continued on the Dragonpit, and Jaehaerys oft visited the site to see the progress with his own eyes.
By moving three-quarters of the Crown's gold from King's Landing whilst Aegon II's master of coin, Tyland Lannister had sown the seeds of Queen Rhaenyra's downfall, a stroke of cunning that would in the end cost him his eyes, ears, and health, and cost the queen her throne
He insisted that Lord Alyn wrestle with him in a mud pit behind his fort, whilst hundreds of jeering pirates looked on.
Queen Alyssa wanted her daughter attended by suitable companions of her own age and station, no doubt, but that was not her sole motivation in sending these ladies to Dragonstone.
To honor the Seven, Aegon decreed that the city would have seven gates, each defended by a massive gatehouse and defensive towers.
Though her half-brother had looted their father's treasury, the princess had at her disposal the wealth of House Velaryon, and the Sea Snake's fleets gave her superiority at sea.
Thus it was that King Argilac reached out to the Targaryens on Dragonstone, offering Lord Aegon his daughter in marriage, with all the lands east of the Gods Eye from the Trident to the Blackwater Rush as her dowry.
Once beyond the Arbor, Lady Westhill had steered her Sun Chaser south by southwest, seeking warmer waters and fair winds, and the Lady Meredith and Autumn Moon had followed.
She understood the need for a castle between Snowgate and Icemark, she told Lord Burley, but the Nightfort was crumbling, overlarge, and surely ruinous to heat.
Farther east, Lord Toland of Ghost Hill sent forth his champion to challenge the king to single combat.
The royal fleetâcomprised of the eight new warships and some twenty older cogs and galleysâwas nowise large enough to accomplish this, so the Hand wrote to Driftmark, instructing the Lord of the Tides to gather "your lord grandsire's fleets and put them under the command of our good uncle Gedmund, so that he may open the sea roads once again."
Moments later Dreamfyre descended, silver crests flashing along her back as her pale blue wings beat against the red dawn sky.
But even in death, Tyanna of the Tower had her revenge, for it came to pass just as she had promised.
In the deserts of Dorne, the Martell princes held sway.
Tall and slender, with lustrous brown hair, Lady Jeyne was being courted by a younger son of the Lord of Casterly Rock when Maegor sent for her, but this meant little and less to the king.
"They call me Baelon the Brave," the prince told his wife at her bedside, "but you are far braver than me.
Jacaerys Velaryon had been betrothed to his cousin Baela since he was four and she was two, and from all we know of his character, it seems most unlikely that he would break such a solemn agreement to protect the uncertain virtue of some half-wild, unwashed northern bastard.
From Essos came three rival competitors, grandsons of King Jaehaerys through his daughter Saera, each sired by a different father.
Addam and his brother, Alyn (one year younger), had been born to a woman named Marilda, the pretty young daughter of a shipwright.
Growing up homeless, motherless, and penniless on the streets of Spicetown and Hull, she would most likely have surrendered her innocence not long after her first flowering (if not before), in return for half a groat or a crust ofbread.
But even Barth, that wise man, had no answers for him.
Whatever her powers, it would seem Daemon Targaryen was immune to them, for little is heard of this supposed sorceress whilst the prince held Harrenhal.
Then he drove his sword through Ser Gwayne's belly and ordered the city gates opened to the men pouring off the Sea Snake's ships.
Most grievous of all was the fate of Ser Glendon Goode, attacked from behind by a man with a torch, who set his long white cloak afire.
The young king had won the admiration and affection of many lords both great and small, and their sisters, wives, and daughters had only praise for the warmth shown them by Princess Alysanne.
Naked and vulnerable, the Wise Women did not hesitate, but stepped between the attackers and their lady.
Many of the channels between the islands were closed by booms, or blocked by the hulks of ships sunk during Lord Alyn's attack.
Nonetheless, many on Dragonstone and Driftmark were skeptical of Marilda's claim, for Laenor Velaryon's disinterest in women was well remembered.
One of their number claimed to have been a Poor Fellow, and cried out that he wished to take the black.
Wat himself was taken alive, though not before slaying half a dozen knights, amongst them Lord Meadows of Grassy Vale, commander of the king's host.
King Maegor granted the survivingmembers of the Faith Militant till year's end to surrender their weapons and give up their rebellious ways.
What would you say if I were to tell you that Ser Gyles is already dead?"
In 93 AC she attended the wedding of Prince Baelon's eldest son, Viserys, to Lady Aemma of House Arryn, the eleven-year-old child of the late Princess Daella (their marriage was not consummated until the bride had flowered, two years later).
Supposedly that shaft was loosed by Lord Samwell's sixteen-year-old sister, Alysanne, who would later be known as Black Aly, but whether this is fact ormere family legend cannot be known.
Only two days before his birth, the white ravens had flown from the Citadel to announce the arrival of spring, so Baelon was immediately dubbed the Spring Prince.
However, the plot to murder their young lord went awry when the guards at Castle Driftmark proved loyal to the Sea Snake's memory and his chosen heir.
It had long been the custom amongst the dragonlords of Valyria to wed brother to sister, to keep the bloodlines pure, but Aegon took both his sisters to bride.
Thus was the peace made between the young king and his former Hand, and sealed that night by a feast in the great hall, where Lord Rogar sat beside Queen Alyssa, man and wife once more, and raised a toast to the health of Queen Alysanne, pledging her his love and loyalty before all the assembled lords and ladies.
In reward Aegon granted him Highgarden and all its domains, naming him Warden of the South and Lord Paramount of the Mander, and giving him dominion over all House Gardener's former vassals.
If so, no one was inclined to question the deception, for until such time as Jaehaerys sired an heir of the body, Princess Aerea (or the girl who now bore that name) was the heir to the Iron Throne.
The Kingsguard remains a synonym for honor to this day.
Lord Owain Bourney did the same within the castle, driving a spear through the back of Ser Merrell the Bold.
The king had no recourse but to take the boy from her and give him over to their mother, the Dowager Queen Alicent, to raise as if he were her own.
The songs tell of how she slew a dozen ironmen beneath the walls of Kayce, but those may be safely put aside as the work of drunken singers (Johanna carried a banner into battle, not a sword).
 Dickon  Morrigen  and  the  Bastard  of  Blackhaven,commanding the vanguard, were engulfed in dragonflame, along with the knights of King Argilac's personal guard.
"In the Stepstones, my enemies learned to run and hide when they saw Caraxes's wings or heard his roarâ¦but they had no dragons of their own.
In every tavern, inn, and whorehouse along the waterfront the tale was told, retold, and embroidered, till every man on Dragonstone had heard it.
Thieves and whores, washerwomen and camp followers, singers and mummers, they came from east and west and north and south.
As the glad tidings of Rhaena's birth spread across the land, the realm rejoicedâ¦save, perhaps, for Queen Visenya.
The archmaesters of the Citadel met in conclave.
Ysabel Staunton's fondness for wine was bruited about, the tale of Elinor Massey's deflowering was told and retold, Rosamund Darry was said to be concealing six nipples under her bodice (supposedly because her mother had lain with a dog), Lyra Hayford was accused of having smothered an infant brother in a fit of jealousy, and it was put about that the "three Jeynes" (Jeyne Smallwood, Jeyne Mooton, and Jeyne Merryweather) liked to dress in squire's garb and visit the brothels along the Street of Silk, to kiss and fondle the women there as if the three of them were boys.
Yet hardly had Ser Otto arrived at the Red Keep to take up the Handship than word reached court that Princess Rhaenyra had remarried, taking to husband her uncle, Daemon Targaryen.
Meleys suffered a score of hits, but the arrows only served to make her angry.
"My lords," he told the council, "when the queen and I go forth on our progresses, we go on Vermithor and Silverwing.
The thirteenth day of the fourth moon of 56 AC dawned cold and grey, with a blustery wind blowing from the east.
With both of the heirs apparent dead and burned, there was no longer a clear successor to the Iron Throneâ¦
"The chains the Dragon forged can yet be broken," the discontented told one another.
Perhaps it was this continued proof of the queen's fertility that drove Prince Maegor to do what he did.
Her sister Maegelle became her guiding star, and she worshipped her mother, the queen, but her sister Alyssa seemed to terrify her, and she blushed and hid her face in the presence of the older boys.
One decree after another came down from the House
In the west, King Mern of the Reach rode the ocean road north to Casterly Rock to meet with King Loren of House Lannister.
The schemes of Otto Hightower had borne fruit; meeting in Tyrosh, the High Council of the Triarchy had accepted his offer of alliance.
Nor did he appreciate the manner in which the Four-Headed Beast had somehow become the center of court life atFaircastle, whilst his lord father and himself were increasingly disregarded.
His fatherdespaired of him, and rumors flew about the court that King Aegon might take another wife, as Rhaenys was dead and Visenya childless and perhaps barren.
The hill country north of the Golden Tooth was ruled in all but name by the Red Dog, Ser Joffrey Doggett, self-proclaimed Grand Captain of the Warrior's Sons.
Though a few would insist that their deaths were unfortunate accidents, many more took the manner and timing of their passings as proof of a plot to bring down House Rogare.
Not long after Addam of Hull had proved himself by flying Seasmoke, Lord Corlys went so far as to petition Queen Rhaenyra to remove the taint of bastardy from him and his brother.
"Sixteen days' march to Harrenhal," he proclaimed.
At the River Gate, "King" Trystane's ragged banner flew above the battlements, whilst the bodies of the captain and three of his serjeants hung from the gatehouse.
Some say that Alys Rivers merely raised a hand, and Ser Regis began to scream and clutch his head, until his skull burst apart, spraying blood and brains.
It fell to Lord Larys the Clubfoot to pour oil on the troubled waters, calming the queen with a quiet reminder of all they had discussed in Lord Baratheon's tent, and persuading her to consent to the Sea Snake's proposals.
It was 82 AC, and Her Grace arrived three moons before Daella was due to give birth.
Lord Borros asked, as he dismounted in the outer ward.
Even less loved, if that be possible, was the man Her Grace chose as her lord treasurer and master of coin: her longtime supporter Bartimos Celtigar, Lord of Claw Isle.
Nor was Baelon Targaryen any less accomplished.
Mayhaps the Seven have preserved me for this one last fight."
When Addam was ten and Alyn nine, their mother inherited the yards upon her own father's death, sold them, and used the coin to take to the sea herself as the mistress of a trading cog she named Mouse.
Sadly, Septon Bernard preferred composing sacred music to setting down court gossip, and his writings are therefore of little interest to historians and scholars (and of less interest to those who find pleasure in sacred music, it grieves us to say).
More news soon came from Lord Rego's agents across the water.
Less than a fortnight later, reports reached King's Landing of bands of wildlings from the Mountains of the Moon descending upon the Vale of Arryn in large numbers to raid and plunder, and Lady Jeyne Arryn left the court and sailed for Gulltown to see to the defense of her own lands and people.
Ser Vaemond had been the son of the elder of the Sea Snake's brothers.
Alarmed by what he saw, Munkun did not return to the castle, for fear that he himself might have been afflicted by his close contact with twoscore feverish whores and dockers.
Prince Aemon was seven years of age, a boy as tall and handsome as he was modest.
Daella seemed frightened of her sour, bookish brother, who would sooner read than play.
Lord Borros was confident of victory, for his scouts had told him that the rivermen were led by boys and women.
The Lord of Storm's End shrugged and answered, "It is not for me to tell you what to do when you are not beneath my roof."
And on Dragonstone, Rhaenyra Targaryen donned a suit of gleaming black scale, mounted Syrax, and took flight as a rainstorm lashed the waters of Blackwater Bay.
If Maegor the Cruel were accounted only a usurper with no right to rule, as certain maesters argued, then Prince Aegon had been the true king, and the succession by rights should pass to his elder daughter, Aerea, not his younger brother.
"Unless Lord Lyman can find a mountain of gold under the Red Keep, I do not know that he has the answer we require," His Grace said.
Much of every royal progress was given over to feasts and balls and hunts and hawking, as every lord attempted to outdo the others in splendor and hospitality, but Aegon also made a point of holding court wherever he might travel, whether from a dais in some great lord's castle or a mossy stone in a farmer's field.
Aegon and his wife slept separately thereafter, and Queen Helaena sank deeper and deeper into madness, whilst the king raged, and drank, and raged.
When that ploy proved unsuccessful, Lord Lyman offered to buy the eggs outright for a staggering sum of gold.
Septon Eustace tells us that the ceremony went on all through that night.
A brothel on the Street of Silk burned down when a quarrel over a certain whore between one of Lord Tully's men and one of Lord Stark's set off a bloody melee between their friends and brothers-in-arms.
Watchers below said that Sunfyre lurched drunkenly in the air, fighting to stay aloft, whilst Moondancer turned and came back at him, spitting fire.
Thousands climbed Aegon's High Hill to hear Prince Aegon proclaim that peace was at hand.
A raven flew to Duskendale that very night, commanding the new Lord Darklyn to send to court his bastard half-sister, Jonquil Darke, who had thrilled the smallfolk during the War for the White Cloaks as the mystery knight known as the Serpent in Scarlet.
Returning to Hull to gather his fleet and take on provisions for the long journey, he said his farewells to his wife, the Lady Baela, who sent him on his way with a kiss, and the news that she was with child.
Though Munkun sewed him up as best he could and gave him milk of the poppy, Waters expired that same night.
Unlike Mushroom and Septon Eustace, whose versions derive from rumors, hearsay, and family legend, the Grand Maester was present at the meeting and took part in the council's deliberations and decisionsâ¦though it must be recognized that at the time he wrote, Orwyle was most anxious to show himself in a favorable light and absolve himself of any blame for what was to follow.
The knighthood that Queen Rhaenyra had conferred on him did not suffice.
When the Prince of Dragonstone took his dragon back into the cold autumn sky, he did so with the knowledge that he had won three powerful lords and all their bannermen for his mother.
In the Bite, the lords of the Three Sisters had taken advantage of the chaos of Aegon's Conquest to declare themselves a free nation and crown Lady Marla of House Sunderland their queen.
End delivered an astonishing message: Queen Alyssa was once again with child, at the age of forty-six.
Not long after, as the king lay in the Stone Drum's great hall, hisbroken legs bound and splinted, the first of Queen Rhaenyra's ravens arrived from Duskendale.
By year's end Daella had decided she hated all of them.
Mindful of his long leal service to her, Rhaenyra spared the Grand Maester the dungeons, but chose instead to dismiss him from her council and send him back to Dragonstone at once.
Later, it would be said of her that she learned to read before she was weaned, and the court fool would make japes about little Alysannedribbling mother's milk on Valyrian scrolls as she tried to read whilst suckling at her wet nurse's teat.
The distance was not negligible, even flying; Her Grace landed at the Last Hearth and several smaller keeps and holdfasts on her way, to the surprise and delight of their lords, whilst a portion of her tail scrambled after her (the rest remained at Winterfell).
Munkun writes that the prince and Lord Borros were haggling over dates and dowries on the morning Lucerys Velaryon appeared.
Laenor Velaryon was male, and could claim descent from Jaehaerys's elder son, whilst Baelon's boys were descended from the younger.
Winterfell had spoken for Rhaenys at Harrenhal, as had Lord Stark's bannermen, Dustin of Barrowton and Manderly of White Harbor.
The Vulture King personally sliced off Dondarrion's nose before putting Blackhaven to the torch and marching away.
Whether that was true or not, hundreds of Dornish knights and several thousand seasoned spearmen had joined the Vulture King's rabble, and the rabble itself had swelled enormously, to more than thirty thousand men.
When Leowyn Corbray said, "Lady Rhaena would make a splendid queen," Ser Tyland pointed out that Baela had been the first from her mother's womb.
To take Ser Tyland's place as master of ships, Ser Otto looked to the Iron Islands, dispatching a raven to Dalton Greyjoy, the Red Kraken, the daring and bloodthirsty sixteen-year-old Lord Reaper of Pyke, offering him the admiralty and a seat on the council for hisallegiance.
From there, they crossed the Disputed Lands to Old Volantis, where they enjoyed a similar warm welcome.
Ser Arryk had sworn his sword to Aegon, Ser Erryk to Rhaenyra.
By sacking Tyrosh or Myr, he would gain sufficient gold to restore the funds he had taken from the bank and leave him the richest man in Lys.
Old age, fear, and long confinement had left him a shell of the man that he had been, and his cures and potions proved no more efficacious than those of other maesters, yet Orwyle worked tirelessly to save those he could and ease the passing of those he could not.
Even Theomore Manderly, who was his bannerman, had not disagreed; Stark was well respected in the North, he said, but not loved.
Lorcas claimed to have had a vision that Moon would yet deliver Oldtown into the hands of his followers, even after death.
Then he chargedâ¦straight into the spiked iron ball at the end of Lord Kermit's morningstar, which took him full in the face in a grisly spray of blood and bone and brain.
Lord Alyn might smile at the Hand's rebukes, but he would soon be given good reason to dread the Hand's rewards."
Thereafter it was Aegon who was silent, for his old gloom had settled over him once again, and he seemed to lose all interest in his court and kingdom.
The court rejoiced when Lady Rhaena announced that she was with child by Lord Corbray, but joy turned to grief a moon's turn later when she miscarried.
One of their most vicious captains was a woman called Poxy Jeyne Poore, whose savage followers made the woods between King's Landing and Storm's
And in 127 AC, Princess Helaena gave birth to his second son, who was given a dragon's egg and the name Maelor.
Munkun tells us they were men of honor, duty bound to obey their queen's commands.
Whence came these words remains a mystery (not from Hammer himself, who could neither read nor write), but within a few days every man at Tumbleton had heard them.
"This is on your head, ser," Prince Viserys warned.
In 63 AC the king and queen celebrated the birth of Vaegon, their third son and seventh child.
Many wished to treat with the Hand, who was seen by many as the true power in the realm; others wished to take the measure of their new boy king.
Whatever the manner of his death, it is beyond dispute that Daeron Targaryen, youngest son of King Viserys I by Queen Alicent, died at the Second Battle of Tumbleton.
Lords from all over the realm came to join the celebration; Lyman Lannister from Casterly Rock, Daemon Velaryon from Driftmark, Prentys Tully from Riverrun, Rodrik Arryn from the Vale, even the Lords Rowan and Oakheart, whose levies once marched with Septon Moon.
Though no stranger to dragons, she had never ridden one beforeâ¦and for reasons we may never understand, she chose Balerion as her mount, instead of any one of the younger and more tractable dragons she might have claimed.
(The Hand was in a black state even before the poisoning, for he had only recently suffered his own personal tragedy when his young wife, the Lady Floris, died in childbirth.)
As charming as he was hot-tempered, Prince Daemon had earned his knight's spurs at six- and-ten, and had been given Dark Sister by the Old King himself in recognition of his prowess.
During the Dornish War, she took to wearing a shirt of mail night and day, even under her court clothes, and urged the king to do the same.
Three days before the ball, he gave herone of the little queen's dolls.
The man accepted and accompanied the innkeep into the Hogs Head's common room, little suspecting that his host had instructed his stableboy, known to us only as Sly, to search his pack for silver.
Though the court and city still doted on the king's brother, that clever, gallant boy Viserys, the same could not be said for his Lysenewife.
A small host of whisperers, informers, courtiers, and courtesans produced hundreds of reports, a score of which proved to be of value to the Iron Throne for other reasonsâ¦but every rumor of the dragon eggs proved worthless.
Under the terms of the pact, the prince's firstborn daughter would be sent north at the age of seven, to be fostered at Winterfell until such time as she was old enough to marry Lord Cregan's heir.
When word reached the Red Keep, Jaehaerys Targaryen himself rode forth to claim the body, surrounded by his Kingsguard.
Thus was the office of Grand Maester created, at King Aegon's request.
The claims of Princess Rhaenys and her daughter, Laena Velaryon, were put forward once againâ¦and even if they were to be passed over on account of their sex, Rhaenys's son, Laenor, faced no such impediment.
With the princess in confinement on Dragonstone, about to give birth, Queen Alicent's greens enjoyed an advantage; the longer Rhaenyra remained ignorant of the king's death,the slower
And Aegon, true to his promises, lifted his beaten foe back to his feet and confirmed him in his lands and lordship, naming him Lord of Casterly Rock and Warden of the West.
Were it me, I might pray my lord husband fell off his horse and broke his neck coming home."
Rhaenyra had dire need of such a man, for she found herself in desperate need of coin.
As Lady Elissa confronted her brother, spitting defiance at him and demanding that he get out of her way, a crowd gathered around them, growing angrier by the moment.
"It is not for you to plead for support from your lords, like a beggar pleading for alms," he told Aegon.
In Rhaenys Targaryen, daughter of the Old King's eldest son and heir, he had found his perfect match, a woman as spirited and beautiful and proud as any in the realm, and a dragonrider as well.
The price was high; a golden dragon for Queen Alicent, three dragons for Queen Helaena, who was younger and more beautiful.
Mayhaps this would be a good place to add a few additional words about his sire, Corlys of House Velaryon, Lord of the Tides and Master of Driftmark, renowned in song and story as the Sea Snake, and surely one of the most extraordinary figures of the age.
On that dire day, a dozen of Flea Bottom's less savory denizens were chasing a piglet down an alley when they chanced to come upon Lord Rego moving through the streets.
Mayhaps Jaehaerys hoped that this would help bring her back to him again.
Other claimants arose on Great Wyk, Pyke, and Orkmont, and for more than a year their adherents battled one another on land and sea.
Though her mother provided her with a succession of suitable companions, the daughters of lords great and small, Rhaena never seemed to warm to any of them, preferring the company of a book.
The Dowager Queen had lost two sons to Maegor's cruelty and was of no mind to grant the men who had carried out his edicts even the dignity of a trial.
The High Septon took ship at Oldtown, sailing to King's Landing to perform the marriage rites.
At that the fool Mushroom spoke up, saying, "Drunks they may be, but a drunken man knows not fear.
(Prince Daemon's daughter Rhaena remained in the Vale as a ward of Lady Arryn, whilst her twin, the dragonrider Baela, divided her days between Driftmark and Dragonstone.)
Those born and bred on Dragonstone had grown up with such beastsâ¦yet even so, the sailors' story excited interest.
And so they fought, the old warrior king with his streaming white hair and Aegon's fierce, black-bearded Hand.
The greatest city in all of Westeros, Oldtown was ringed about with massive walls, and ruled by the Hightowers of the Hightower, the oldest, richest, and most powerful of the noble houses of the Reach.
Thrown onto the spikes that lined the dry moat around Maegor's Holdfast, some took hours to die; the simpleminded Horas Harroway lingered for days.
Broome was the most senior of the knights at Dragonstone, having joined the garrison during the reign of the Old King.
"One god made us all, Andals and Valyrians and First Men," Septon Alfyn would proclaim from his litter, "but he did not make us all alike.
Even as he fell, Ser Willam dealt the king a terrible blow to the head that cracked his helm and left him insensate.
The First Men might have found some purpose in this rite, but the First Men fought with bronze swords and fed their weirwood trees with blood.
Off the singing cliffs of Blackcrown where twisted towers and wind- carved stones whistled above the waves, the fleet turned north into the Sunset Sea, creeping up the western coast past Bandallon.
King Aegon's choice of a girl of six as his second wife no longer seemed so worrisome.
"All of them began to shout at once," Mushroom says, "like a chorus of drunks bellowing out the words of a song they half remember."
Never before or since had the Seven Kingdoms been blessed (or cursed, in the view of some) with so many Targaryen princelings.
Nor were Harren's ironmen made of stone.
With the way to Oldtown clear and safe once more, that coronation took place in the Starry Sept in the waning days of the 48th year After the Conquest.
Any lord who wished to builda new castle or expand and repair his existing seat would need to pay a hefty price for the privilege.
The game of thrones takes many a queer turn, however, and Maegor himself had fallen in turn, in no small part thanks to the courage of the widowed Queen Alyssa, and the boldness of Lord Rogar, who had befriended her and taken her in when no one else would.
As a babe she was so like her late sister, Daenerys, that the queen oft wept to behold her, remembering thechild she had lost.
His High Holiness derived from, or whether he was of low or noble birth.
Jaehaerys rose to his feet and descended from the Iron Throne, his face a mask of rage.
Tessarion, the Blue Queen, lasted until sunset.
Until that moment, Aegon II had believed his half-sister's cause to be hopeless.
The matter had been decided, so far as King Viserys was concerned; it was not an issue His Grace cared to revisit.
Just as the Conqueror's wives had before her, Alysanne Targaryen delighted in making such matches.
Her ladyship went pale at the sight of him, Mushroom tells us, saying, "The gods will curse us all for this."
 daughter, as Baelon had come before Rhaenys in 92 AC.
Those who actually encountered the monster did not live to describe him, howeverâ¦and none of the stories mentioned fire, which Jaehaerys took to mean that Balerion could not be to blame.
Yet Mushroom says there were many in the city who thought that cheap for carnal knowledge of a queen.
Huntress, horse-breaker, and archer without peer, Black Aly had little of a woman's softness about her.
The men of the Vale sank a third of the Targaryen ships and captured near as many, but when Queen Visenya descended upon them from the sky, their own ships burned.
The wealthiest of the great houses that had rallied to King Aegon II, the Hightowers remained in some ways the most dangerous, for they were capable of raising large new armies quickly from the streets of Oldtown, and with their own warships and those of their close kin, the Redwynes of the Arbor, they could float a significant fleet as well.
Another said,  "Meria  fought  like  a  woman,  with  lies  and  treachery  andwitchery."
King Viserys had grown extremely fat and red of face, and scarce had the strength to mount the steps to the Iron Throne.
When not aloft, Baelon and Alyssa spent every hour together, most oft in their bedchamber.
Lord Staunton's head was carried back to King's Landing and mounted above the Old Gateâ¦but it was the head of the dragon Meleys, drawn through the city on a cart, that awed the crowds of smallfolk into silence.
The maester at Casterly Rock who helped deliver the children tells us that afterward Princess Rhaena begged the prince her husband to take them all across the narrow sea to Tyrosh or Myr or Volantis, anywhere beyond their uncle's reach, for "I would gladly give up my own life to make you king, but I will not put our girls at risk."
When a fortnight came and went and then another, and still the king did not reappear at court, Alyssa announced her intention to return to Dragonstone, this time alone, to beg her children to come home.
Costayne died amidst the stony hills of Great Wyk, cut down by the hand of Arthur Goodbrother, and three-quarters of his ships were seized or sunk in those cold grey seas.
Long forewarned of the coming of Alyn Oakenfist, he had gathered his power to receive him.
Lord Rogar, the King's Hand, said, with some reluctance, that he would lead his own host across the Reach and disperse Moon's men by force of armsâ¦though it would mean pitting his stormlanders, and whatever other forces he might gather, against Lords Rowan and Oakheart and their knights and men- at-arms, as well as the Poor Fellows.
When Sly burst into thecommon room with cloak and egg in hand, shouting of his discovery, the traveler threw the dregs of his tankard into the innkeep's face, ripped his longsword from its sheath, and opened Buttercakes from neck to groin.
Other scholars, including Maester Ryben, the Citadel's foremost expert on banned, forbidden, fraudulent, and obscene texts, put the story down as no more than a bawdy tale of the sort known to excite the lust of young boys, bastards, whores, and the men who partake of their favors.
Rhaena Targaryen knew her history as well; the history of the Freehold of Valyria, writ in blood and fire.
Small wonder then that Lord Gunthor's widow was less than overjoyed when Her Grace appeared at her gates.
This task he entrusted to a knight of the Kingsguard, Ser Regis Groves, who set out from the city with half a hundred seasoned men.
Long and loud were the arguments in the inn beneath the sign reading "the Bloody Caltrops," as the lords discussed how this might best be accomplished.
In the years since, Waters had climbed high indeed, becoming Lord Commander of the Kingsguard over knights of better birth and far greater renown.
Even more grave were the tidings from the Vale, where Lady Jeyne Arryn had assembled fifteen hundred knights and eight thousand men- at-arms, and sent envoys to the Braavosi to arrange for ships to bring them down upon King's Landing.
With both the Lord Protector and the King's Hand absent, and King Aegon himself burned, bedridden, and lost in poppy dreams, it fell to his mother, the Queen Dowager, to see to the city's defenses.
A big man, burly and balding, Lord Strong enjoyed a formidable reputation as a battler.
His column moved through forests of dead trees where living woods had been just days before, as the riverlords set blazes all along his line of march.
King Jaehaerys and Princess Alysanne were the last to appear, descending from a bright sky on their dragons, Vermithor and Silverwing (the Dragonpit still lacked the great dome that would be its crowning glory, it must be recalled), their great leathern wings stirring up clouds of sand as they came down side by side, to the awe and terror of the gathered multitudes.
He and the queen reunited at Winterfell, after half a year apart.
And though his brother Aegon the Younger had fled and lived, all the joy had gone out of the boy; he would never forgive himself for leaping onto Stormcloud and abandoning his little brother to the enemy.
The next day, Maegor flew as well.
Drahar and his Lysene and Tyroshi co-admirals seemed to be vying with each other to see who was the greediest, men complained.
The Battle in the Gullet raged into the night north and south of Dragonstone, and remains amongst the bloodiest sea battles in all of history.
It is said that he died when his foot slipped on a coil of Hugh Hammer's entrails, but perhaps that detail is too perfectly ironic to be true.
In the riverlands, Ser Criston Cole abandoned Harrenhal, striking south along the western shore of the Gods Eye, with thirty-six-hundred men behind him (death, disease, and desertion had thinned the ranks that had ridden forth from King's Landing).
But Aegon was a boy, the princess ten years his elder.
Aegon granted the ruined castle of Harrenhal and its domains to Ser Quenton Qoherys, his master-at-arms on Dragonstone, but required him to accept Lord Edmyn Tully of Riverrun as his liege lord.
By the time Grand Maester Munkun came rushing to his aid, the Sea Snake was dead.
She evaded her as best she could, and Baelon laughed at her fury.
One small good came from it, for it helped to heal the rift between the king and his brother Viserys, who broke his stubborn silence to comfort His Grace in his grief, and sat with him by the queen's bedside.
His Grace gave the babe a pearl ring off his finger to play with, and told the twins the story of how their great-great- grandsire and namesake Jaehaerys had flown his dragon north to the Wall to defeat a vast host of wildlings, giants, and wargs.
Dusk was falling outside of Oldtown when Septon Moon retired to his tent for his evening meal, exhausted by a day of preaching.
The loss of both her dragon and her son left Rhaenyra Targaryen ashen and inconsolable, Mushroom tells us.
Jaehaerys also sent off Septon Mattheus, that fat and furious prelate who had fulminated so loudly against incestuous unions and the king's marriage.
Sad to say, other accounts tell us that Her Grace died without waking when Maester Kyrie opened her belly.
But on his swordbelt, he bore Blackfyreâ¦ his grandsire's sword, the sword of kings.
It served as a sharp reminder of the martial prowess of Prince Daemon and the power of Caraxes, the Blood Wyrm, and gave the queen a stronghold in the heart of Westeros, to which her supporters could rallyâ¦and Rhaenyra had many such in the lands watered by the Trident.
No dragons had been settled in the Dragonpit as yet, so that colossal edifice was chosen for the site of the tourney's grand melee, a clash of arms such as King's Landing had never seen before.
And thus did the rule of the regents come whimpering to an end, as the broken reign of the Broken King began.
Not long after, Rhaena made her first true friend in the person of her cousin Larissa Velaryon.
In the chaos that ensued, the northmen fought their way through ten times their own number to where Lord Ormund Hightower sat his warhorse beneath King Aegon's golden dragon and the banners of Oldtown and the Hightower.
Suddenly outnumbered, King Harren the Black took refuge in his supposedly impregnable stronghold.
Harren himself had devoted most of his long reign, close on forty years, to building a gigantic castle beside the Gods Eye, but with Harrenhal at last nearing completion, the ironborn would soon be free to seek fresh conquests.
Ser Gareth Long, master-at-arms at Starpike, was granted the same title at the Red Keep and tasked with training King Aegon for knighthood.
Queen Alyssa sent three; the formidable Septa Ysabel, and two wellborn novices of Alysanne's own age, Lyra and Edyth.
The Queen Regent and her councillors discussed the question of the king's marriage time and time again over most of a moon's turn, but came no closer to reaching a consensus.
Sour and suspicious by nature, and possessed of overweening pride, Unwin Peake was a most unhappy man by 134 AC.
Over them would sit a council of regency, consisting of Lady Jeyne Arryn of the Vale, Lord Corlys Velaryon of Driftmark, Lord Roland Westerling of the Crag, Lord Royce Caron of Nightsong, Lord Manfryd Mooton of Maidenpool, Ser Torrhen Manderly of White Harbor, and Grand Maester Munkun, newly chosen by the Citadel to take up Grand Maester Orwyle's chain of office.
Ser Rickard tumbled from the saddle and died upon the bridge, with blood bubbling from his lips and drowning his last words.
As his new Hand, he called upon Ser Otto Hightower, younger brother to Lord Hightower of Oldtown.
The year continued without further crisis or test as Jaehaerys and Alysanne settled in to rule.
Aegon's younger brother, Prince Viserys, had no way of escaping from the cog.
Ser Criston drew his longsword from its scabbard.
The arrival of Prince Daeron and his dragon reversed the tide of battle.
A wealth of dragon's eggs could be found beneath the Dragonmont, and several young hatchlings as well.
Despite the fool's misgivings, most observers seemed to feel that the reign of King Aegon III had begun on a hopeful note.
King Aegon III was still a boy, well shy of his thirteenth nameday, but in the days following the death of Ser Tyland Lannister he displayed a maturity beyond his years.
Whether Lord Alyn was a captive or a guest was never quite clear, even to his lordship himself, for his host was as changeable as the sea.
Viserys even talked of wedding Rhaenyra to the Prince of Dorne, as a way of bringing the Dornish into the realm.
The great beacon atop the Hightower guided Lady Baela and the fleet up Whispering Sound to the harbor, where Lyonel Hightower himself came forth to meet them and welcome them to his city.
No mother everloved a child more, Grand Maester Benifer once told her, before the Shivers carried him away.
Still in scarlet, she arrived at King's Landing a few days later, and gladly accepted appointment as the queen's own sworn shield.
Yet the king's will prevailed, as it must; the egg was sent to Dragonstone, and Prince Viserys refused to speak to King Aegon for a moon's turn.
Lord Gargon soon became infamous for turning up at every wedding celebrated within his domains so that he might enjoy the lord's right of the first night.
Lord Corlys also had half a dozen nephews, however, and the eldest of them, Ser Vaemond Velaryon, protested that the inheritance by rights should pass to himâ¦ on the grounds that Rhaenyra's sons were bastards sired by Harwin Strong.
The Velaryons had entrusted much of their gold to Lotho Rogare, and lost more than halftheir wealth in consequence.
Known as Rhaena of Pentos, for the city of her birth, she was no dragonrider, her hatchling having died some years before, but she brought three dragon's eggs with her to the Vale, where she prayed nightly for their hatching.
They would be wed in Tyrosh or Old Volantis, where her father's writ did not run, and no one would care that Ser Criston had betrayed his vows as a member of the Kingsguard.
Lord Velaryon regrouped the fleet off Crakehall, where the lady of the castle rowed out to meet him.
(Lord Strong, the King's Hand, argued that the prince should be put to death immediately as a traitor, but Septon Eustace reminded His Grace that no man is as accursed as the kinslayer.)
On his second voyage, Ser Corlys sailed even farther east, and became the first Westerosi ever to reach Asshai-by-the- Shadow, the bleak black city of the shadowbinders at the edge of the world.
A dozen lesser lords, bannermen and vassals to Dragonstone, sat at the black council as well: Celtigar of Claw Isle, Staunton of Rook's Rest, Massey of Stonedance, Bar Emmon of Sharp Point, and Darklyn of Duskendale amongst them.
King Aegon began to drown his fears in strongwine, Septon Eustace tells us.
Be they king's men or queen's men, stormlanders or seahorses, riverlords or gutter knights, highborn or low, common soldiers deferred to him as if they had been born to his service."
It is not our purpose here to recount the details of the private war Daemon Targaryen and Corlys Velaryon waged on the Stepstones.
Mushroom tells us that Willow Pound-Stone clutched the boy so tightly that she broke his back and crushed him to death.
In the aftermath of the wedding, Maegor declared Rhaena's daughter Aerea his lawful heir "until such time as the gods grant me a son," whilst sending her twin, Rhaella, to Oldtown to be raised as a septa.
How long King Maegor might have lingered at Oldtown cannot be known, for in the latter part of 43 AC another challenge to his throne arose.
The Tyroshi had been on the point of overwhelming him when Lys and Myr had made peace and launched a joint attack on Tyrosh, forcing the Archon to recall his ships and swords.
Pate of Longleaf was unhorsed and trampled, Ser Garibald Grey pierced by a crossbow bolt, then engulfed by dragonflame.
Ninety years old, blind, stooped, and feeble, but famously amiable, the new High Septon almost collapsed beneath the weight of the crystal crown when it was placed upon his headâ¦but when Maegor Targaryen appeared before him in the Starry Sept, he was only too pleased to bless him as king and anoint his head with holy oils, even if he did forget the words of the blessing.
The Stranger came for her on a rainy night, at the hour of the wolf.
During his trial, when asked what he had done with all the gold that he had stolen, Lysaro laughed and began to point to certain magisters in the assembly, saying, "I used it to bribe him, and him, and him, and him," picking out a dozen men before he could be silenced.
Instead building slowed to a halt, the inns emptied, and trade declined notably as merchants diverted their ships from King's Landing to Driftmark, Duskendale, Maidenpool, and other ports where they might evade taxation.
As the son of Lord Rogar by Queen Alyssa, he stood half-brother to Alysanne and Jaehaerys, and Daella knew and loved his sister, Jocelyn, from her years at court, which was thought to be much in his favor.
Mushroom tells us that the cog that Lord Manderly and his party sailed upon was called the Jolly Salt, but the mood aboard the ship was far from jolly as they beat north toward White Harbor.
The Lord of Casterly Rock wanted more than just a highborn guest, Queen Rhaena realized then.
The fourth (and last, for our purposes) of these remarkable women emerged from the twisted towers and blasted keeps of Harrenhal, that vast ruin beside the water of the Gods Eye.
Over his strenuous objections, King Aegon and Queen Daenera descended from the castle in their litter, accompanied by Lady Baela and her newborn daughter; her sister Lady Rhaena with her lord husband, Corwyn Corbray; Grand Maester Munkun; Septon Bernard; the regents Manfryd Mooton and Thaddeus Rowan; the knights of the Kingsguard; and many other notables eager to meet Lady Baela at the docks.
The "witch queen" of Harrenhal proved to be none other than Alys Rivers, the baseborn wet nurse who had been the prisoner and then the paramour of Prince Aemond Targaryen, and now claimed to be his widow.
When Lady Baela's sails were first seen across the waters of Blackwater Bay, with the rest of the Velaryon fleet appearing from the morning mists behind her, every bell in King's Landing commenced to toll.
Whilst riding from Aegon's High Hill to the Hill of Rhaenys, however, His Grace took note of the most lamentable state of his city.
Laughter and love ruled the Red Keep that nightâ¦whilst across Blackwater Bay, Lord Corlys the Sea Snake welcomed the king's brother, Prince Daemon, to a war council.
When Wat the Hewer was delivered to him, chained yet still defiant, Maegor took off his limbs with the giant's own axe, but commanded his maesters to keep the man alive "so he might attend my wedding."
Queen Alicent's riders got no farther than the gates, where more gold cloaks took them into custody.
The Faith of the Seven had been born in the hills of Andalos of old, and had crossed the narrow sea with the Andals.
His first task was a daunting one: to sit in judgment at the trials of those accused of poisoning Gaemon Palehair and plotting treason against the king.
In this, the Seven Kingdoms lagged well behind the Free City of Lys, where the collapse of the Rogare Bank had led inexorably to the utter ruin of the house that Lysandro the Magnificent had built.
Mushroom, at the queen's side in the Red Keep, says rather that it was Rhaenyra's Syrax that Ser Byron approached.
A curt missive arrived from Cregan Stark in Winterfell, suggesting that the North might look with disfavor on such a match.
Lord Stackspear loved to hawk, Lord Merryweather loved to feast, and Lord Grandison loved to sleep, and each man thought the other two were fools, but in the end it made no matter, for Torrhen Manderly proved to be an honest and able Hand, of whom it was rightly said that he was brusque and gluttonous, but fair.
That was not the only sorrow House Targaryen was to suffer in 73 AC.
"I want no part of this, but I will not have it said that Riverrun stood in the way of justice."
Though understandable, this proved in hindsight to be unfortunate, for had Lady Baela been allowed to fly she might have spied the fishing boat that was even then making its way around the island.
King Aegon seldom set foot outside the Red Keep after his coronation, and his little queen never left her own apartments, so for most of the past year, it had been Rhaena or Baela riding out to hunt or hawk, giving alms to the poor, receiving envoys and visiting lords with the King's Hand, serving as hostess at feasts (of which there were few), masques, and balls (of which there had been none as yet).
As Septon Barth observed, this was tantamount to throwing his crimes in the king's face.
Even in Dorne, where his writ had not extended, men wept and women tore their garments.
Born in the waning days of 114 AC, the boy was a large, strapping lad, with brown hair, brown eyes, and a pug nose.
In the end Jaehaerys made a far bolder choice, reaching across the narrow sea for his man.
The pact would be sealed by the marriage of Argilac's daughter to Orys Baratheon, Lord Aegon's childhood friend and champion.
Ser Trystane Fyre ("Truefyre," the name the boy had bestowed upon himself, being deemed presumptuous), and Ser Alfred Broome struck his head off with Blackfyre, the sword of Aegon the Conqueror.
From King's Landing came a raven bearing the queen's message to Manfryd Mooton, Lord of Maidenpool: he was to deliver her the head of the bastard girl Nettles, who had been judged guilty of high treason.
With House Bracken thus broken and defeated, the last of King Aegon's supporters in the riverlands lost heart and lay down their own swords as well.
It was about this time that a battered merchant cog named Nessaria came limping into the harbor beneath Dragonstone to make repairs and take on provisions.
She was thankful as well that year to have finally arranged a marriage for her eighthborn child, the Princess Daella.
When the Baratheon brothers and their levies finally set out for Storm's
When Alfred Broome drew his sword to slay her, Marston Waters wrenched the blade from his hand.
"All you can do tonight is go to bed," Queen Alysanne told her.
Three days before they were to sail, two Poor Fellows scaled the manse's walls and broke into the king's bedchamber.
And when Addam of Hull mounted Ser Laenor's dragon, Seasmoke, it seemed to prove the truth of his mother's claims.
Not to be outdone, a hedge knight named Ser Perkin the Flea crowned his own squire Trystane, a stripling of sixteen years, declaring him to be a natural son of the late King Viserys.
Only the intervention of the Sea Snake and Princess Rhaenys kept the boy from mounting his own dragon at once.
Half a heartbeat later, the dragons struck the lake, sending up a gout of water that was said to have been as tall as Kingspyre Tower.
At Winterfell, King Torrhen called his banners; given the vast distances in the North, he knew that assembling an army would take time.
He and the queen would go to Oldtown at once, he decided instead.
Aenys'sson 103â129 Viserys Igrandson of Jaehaerys129â131 Aegon IIeldest son of Viserys[Aegon II's ascent was disputed by his half-sister Rhaenyra, ten years his elder.
Fierce and fiery and beautiful, this strong-willed girl had no intention of giving up her place as the Lady of Oldtown and mistress of the Hightower.
Were the Hand and his minions responsible for these tragedies and misfortunes, or were they happenstance?
The Lord Protector, Leowyn Corbray, retired to his chambers when stricken and tried to cure himself with hot mulled wine.
But Lord Stark was no more inclined to listen to such talk than Aegon II and Queen Alicent had been.
Lord Mallister pronounced him wise beyond his years, whilst Lord Darry said he promised to be "the sort of king any lord should be proud to kneel to."
The Iron Throne was forged with fire and steel and terror, it is said, but once the throne had cooled, it became the seat of justice for all Westeros.
"I will grant you Dragonstone as your seat," he told her, "for there is no place more fitting for the blood of the dragon.
It was Ser Ryam Redwyne who discovered Ser Lucamore's transgressions and brought them to the attention of the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, who in turn brought them to the king.
Aemon is to be king, Baelon most like will be his Hand, Alyssa may be all her mother is and more, Vaegon is more learned than she is, Maegelle is holier, and Daellaâ¦when does a day go by when Daella is not in need of comfort?
Velaryon ships, along with those of another allied Valyrian house, the Celtigars of Claw Isle, dominated the middle reaches of the narrow sea, whilst the Targaryens ruled the skies with their dragons.
Jaehaerys pulled off his gloves and tucked them into his belt, then said, "My lords.
The Targaryen tradition of sibling marriage must never again be questioned by the Starry Sept.
"Alyssa Velaryon had survived the death of her husband and her two eldest sons, a daughter who perished in the cradle, years of terror under Maegor the Cruel, and a rift with her remaining children, but she could not survive this," Septon Barth would write, when he looked back upon her life.
Her appearance sent a ripple of shock through the yard, but the Kingsguard barred her from the hall until she changed into less revealing garb.)
When Kermit Tully pointed out that Storm's
Though Tyrosh was a slave city, he hated slavery, suggesting that perhaps he himself had come from bondage.
A bull of a man, nigh on seven feet tall, Largent was rumored to have once killed a warhorse with a single punch.
Though he could have made the journey in a few short days on Quicksilver, Aenys preferred to travel by land, accompanied by three hundred mounted knights and their retinues.
"Cheese knew the Red Keep better than the shape of his own cock,"Mushroom tells us.
For the rest of us, the Hand's words conjured visions of Old Valyria before the Doom, when dragonlord contended with dragonlord for supremacy.
These pets of hers included a comely young juggler, a blacksmith's apprentice whose muscles she admired, a legless beggar she took pity on, a conjurer of cheap tricks she took for an actual sorcerer, a hedge knight's homely squire, even a pair of young girls from a brothel, twins, "like us, Rhae."
No one paid Old Wyl any mind until he took it upon himself to teach some of Mother's younger girls to read.
Jaehaerys thus held his tongue and gave no hint of his misgivings save to a few close confidants.
Seven days of feasting followed, during which hundreds of lords great and small came to bend their knees and swear their swords to Jaehaerys.
Though he called a halt to work on the gargantuan statues of Prince Aemond and Prince Daeron that had been commissioned by Aegon II (not before the heads of the two princes had been carved), the Hand set hundreds of stonemasons, carpenters, and builders to work on the repair and restoration of the Dragonpit.
Once Volantis sued for peace and withdrew from the Disputed Lands, the Three Daughters had turned their gaze westward, sweeping over the Stepstones with their combined armies and fleets under thecommand of the Myrish prince admiral, Craghas Drahar, who earned the sobriquet Craghas Crabfeeder when he staked out hundreds of captured pirates on the wet sands, to drown beneath the rising tide.
Septons prayed for him, maesters attended him with potions and milk of the poppy, but Aegon slept nine hours out of every ten, waking only long enough to take some meagre nourishment before he slept again.
A raider named Sylas the Grim led three thousand wildlings against the Wall, overwhelming the black brothers at Queensgate and spreading out across the Gift until Lord Cregan Stark rode forth from Winterfell, joined with the Glovers of Deepwood Motte, the Flints and Norreys of the hills, and a hundred rangers from the Night's Watch to hunt them down and put an end to them.
He gave command of his host to Jon Mooton, Lord of Maidenpool, one of the first foes to come over to hiscause.
Princess Rhaenys was born on the seventh day of the seventh moon of the year, which the septons judged to be highly auspicious.
Elsewhere, Orys Baratheon led one thousand picked knights up the Boneway, whilst Aegon himself marched through the Prince's Pass at the head of an army thirty thousand strong, led by near two thousand mounted knights and three hundred lords and bannermen.
Over them Rhaenyra placed Ser Robert Quince, an able man grown old and fat.
Wasted and weak and wracked with pain as he was, Rogar Baratheon turned the Dornishman's attacks aside contemptuously, then clove him from shoulder to navel.
From there Aegon the Dragon would rule his realm, holding court from a great metal seat made from the melted, twisted, beaten, and broken blades of all his fallen foes, a perilous seat that would soon be known through all the world as the Iron Throne of Westeros.
Upon the accession of his brother to the Iron Throne, the prince petitioned to have his marriage set aside.
Lord Peake did not have a trusting nature, and all he had seen (and been a part of) at Tumbleton had convinced him that his enemies would bring him down if given half a chance.
Speaking for his Sworn Brothers, Ser Gyles Morrigen declared that Strong had dishonored all they stood for, and requested that he be put to death.
The annals of the Great Council of 101 were brought forth and examined, and note was made of which lords had spoken for Viserys, and which for Rhaenys, Laena, or Laenor.
Though Baela also announced her intent to marry Jace at once, no wedding was ever held.
Yet Aemond did not assume the style of king, but named himself only Protector of the Realm and Prince Regent.
Like her father, the girl was small at birth, but unlike him she proved to be a happy, healthy child, with lively lilac eyes and hair that shone like beaten silver.
Aegon had noted the absence of rain as well; the grass and wheat that surrounded the armies was tall and ripe for harvestâ¦and very dry.
There they were forced to their knees whilstPrince Aegon and his court looked on.
Once she learned the king was gone, the Clubfoot reasoned, Rhaenyra was sure to send men hunting after himâ¦but a boat leaves no trail upon the waves, and few hunters would ever think to look for Aegon on his sister's own island, in the very shadow of her stronghold.
"She smells of woodsmoke, not of flowers," Stark told Lord Cerwyn, said to be his closest friend.
The realm's new rulers found themselves divided on the question of what to do with the Dowager Queen Alicent, but elsewise all seemed in accord, and good fellowship reignedâ¦for the best part of a fortnight.
Though far from blind to his brother's flaws, he cherished his memories of the free-spirited, adventurous boy that Daemon had been.
He began by giving her kissing lessons, if Mushroom can be believed.
His sons would be ennobled, his daughters wed to lords, and he himself would have the honor of fighting beside the Prince of Dragonstone against the pretender Aegon II Targaryen and his treasonous supporters.
The border between innocent pranks, wanton mischief, and acts of malice is not always discerned by one so young, but there can be no doubt that the princess crossed it freely.
Rhaenyra herself wrapped her arms about her last living son, Aegon the Younger, clutching him fiercely to her bosom.
"The Mother Above has been so good to me, to bless me with so many babes, all bright and beautiful," Queen Alysanne declared in 73 AC, when it was announced that her daughter Maegelle would be joining the Faith as a novice.
Alysanne Targaryen died on Dragonstone on the first day of the seventh moon in 100 AC, a full century after Aegon's Conquest.
With none of the great lords of the realm being found suitable, Jaehaerys next turned to their lords bannermen.
Ruling in the name of her infant son (half a year after Second Tumbleton, she had given birth to a lusty dark-haired boy whom she proclaimed her late lord husband's trueborn heir, though it was far more likely that the boy had been sired by Bold Jon Roxton), Lady Sharis pulled down theburned shells of shops and houses, rebuilt the town walls, buried the dead, planted wheat and barley and turnips in the fields where the camps had been, and even had the heads of the dragons Seasmoke and Vermithor cleaned and mounted and displayed in the town square, where travelers paid good coin to view them (a penny for a look, a star to touch them).
Septon Eustace echoes the dwarf in part, but says it was Aemond alone who had become besotted with the Rivers woman, to such an extent that he could not bear the thought of leaving her.
Mushroom prefers "madness," but adds, "they called Aegon the Dragon mad when he spoke of conquering all Westeros."
In 62 AC, the lords of the Seven Kingdoms rejoiced when King Jaehaerys conferred upon his eldest the title Prince of Dragonstone, making him the acknowledged heir to the Iron Throne.
As a babe she did not so much cry as scream, and her ear-piercing wails became the terror of every maid in the Red Keep.
Septon Barth wrote years later.
Led by Ser Morgan Hightower, a younger brother of the Lord of Oldtown, two hundred Warrior's
While many still debated whether Prince Maegor or his niece, Rhaena, should have precedence in the order of succession, it seemed beyond question that Aegonwould follow his father, Aenys, just as Aenys would follow Aegon.
Sharako Lohar had taken a combined fleet of ninety Myrish, Lyseni, and Tyroshi warships from the Stepstones; twenty-eight survived to limp home, all but three crewed by Lyseni.
Words of these plans soon reached the ears of the Dowager Queen, filling her with terror.
From a hidden lair on the desolate eastern slopes of the Dragonmont, Aegon ventured forth each day at dawn, taking to the sky again for the first time since Rook's Rest, whilst the Two Toms and their cousin Marston Waters returned to the other side of the island to seek out men willing to help them take the castle.
The avarice of Craghas Crabfeeder and his partners in conquest soon turned feelings against them, however; the toll was raised again, and yet again, soon becoming so ruinous that merchants who had once paid gladly now sought to slip past the galleys of the Triarchy as once they had the pirates.
Rogar Baratheon never wed again.
The Winter Fever had no respect for gates or guards or castle walls, alas.
House Hoare died with him, and so too did the Iron Islands' hold on the riverlands.
From that hub, long wide streets sprung, straight as spears: the King's Way, the Gods' Way, the Street of the Sisters, Blackwater Way (or the Muddy Way, as the smallfolk soon renamed it).
Maester Norren, keeper of the Chronicles of Maidenpool, says that when his lordship read the queen's letter he was so shaken that he lost his voice.
When she reached her first nameday, still healthy if not strong, Queen Alysanne thanked the gods.
In those cities, far removed from the woes of Westeros and the power of the Triarchy, their welcome was less rapturous.
Septon Eustace tells us that His Grace accused the Grand Maester of disloyalty and spoke of having him thrown into a black cell "with your black friends."
And scarce had Lord Lefford halted to confront the foe in front of him when more enemies appeared to the south, where Longleaf the Lionslayer and a ragged band of survivors from the earlier battles had been joined by the Lords Bigglestone, Chambers, and Perryn.
The old dragon had stopped growing at last, but he was sluggish and heavy and hard to rouse, and hestruggled when Viserys urged him up into the air.
Though Lord and Lady Velaryon were eloquent and open-handed in their efforts on behalf of their son, the decision of the Great Council was never truly in doubt.
Here Mushroom's version seems most likely, for we know that nine days after Lord Staunton dispatched his plea for help, the sound of leathern wings was heard across the sea, and the dragon Meleys appeared above Rook's Rest.
For it was said that even as he awaited the arrival of his own daughter, Unwin Peake also set in motion sundry secret plots and plans designed to undermine, defame, distract, and besmirch those damsels he deemed his daughter's most likely rivals.
"Some problems cannot be solved by hitting them with a stick," Grand Maester Allar famously observed.
The fool himself so amused the Sealord that he received a handsome offer to remain in Braavos.
Indeed, until the reign of King Jaehaerys, the ancient right to the first night had been invoked mayhaps more oft on Dragonstone than anywhere else in the Seven Kingdoms, though Good Queen Alysanne would surely have been shocked to hear it.
Loyalty should be rewarded, and by making such a match the king would honor Aegon's memory, and the valor of those who foughtand died for him.
Gutted, with one wing torn from his body and the waters of the lake smoking about him, the Blood Wyrm found the strength to drag himself onto the lakeshore, expiring beneath the walls of Harrenhal.
And Rhaenyra nodded and said, "With your own tongue you admit I am your lawful queen.
Ser Lucamore, you swore a sacred vow before gods and men to defend me and mine with your own life, to obey me, fight for me, die for me if need be.
When Ser Orryn brandished a sword, Straw calmly informed him that twoscore of Lord Hightower's knights were on their way (a lie, as it happened), whereupon the Baratheons surrendered.
Thousands of Poor Fellows took to the roads, forcing travelers to declare whether they stood with "the gods or the abomination," and remonstrating outside castle gates until their lords came forth to denounce the Targaryen king.
With the former Hand and Queen Regent both wounded and silent, Lord Daemon Velaryon and the remaining members of the queen's council ruled the realm as best they could, "saying little and doing less" in the words of Grand Maester Benifer.
Only after the death of Princess Rhaenys did Lord Corlys at last feel able to bring his bastards safely forward.
When Lord Oakheart and Lord Rowan appeared before him with their levies, they came not to attack Moon, but to join him.
Jaehaerys was aware of his own shortcomings tooâshortcomings he intended to rectify before he sat the Iron Throne.
Strong winds pushed the Violande closer to the shores of Driftmark than the queen might have wished, and thrice she passed within hailing distance of the Sea Snake's warships, but Rhaenyra took care to keep well out of sight.
Even when Rhaenyra used the arts she had learned from her uncle Daemon, Cole would not be swayed.
And only Larys himself knew that the king, stripped of his finery and clad in a salt-stained fisherman's cloak, had been concealed amongst a load of codfish on a fishing skiff in the care of a bastard knight with kin on Dragonstone.
It was Queen Alyssa who broke the spell, through her tears.
Maegelle, twenty-five years of age and a septa, took leave from her sept to stay with her mother for the rest of that year, and Princess Gael, a sweet, shy child of seven, became the queen's constant shadow and support, even sharing her bed at night.
When Orwyle hastened back to his chambers, however, he found four gold cloaks waiting for him.
After a night of quiet celebration in the Red Keep, he rode forth the next day against Visenya's Hill and the "Cunny King," Gaemon Palehair.
Unwin Peake was determined to redress that, and restore House Peake to its former greatness.
Seasmoke's descent upon Riverrun had at last persuaded that reluctant warrior, Ser Elmo Tully, to call his banners for the queen, in defiance of the wishes of his bedridden grandsire, Lord Grover.
The snows lay deep upon the ground, a cold wind was howling from the north, and Lord Stark was in the midst of his preparations for the coming winter, yet he gave Jacaerys a warm welcome.
And yet it was to Archmaester Vaegon that the Old King turned now, summoning his last son to King's Landing.
Many fishermen still plied the waters of Blackwater Bay, for Dragonstone depended on the sea for sustenance; it would be a simple thing to deliver Cargyll to the fishing village under the castle.
Daenaera's smile transformed her face, men agreed; it was sweet and bold and mischievious, all at once.
No announcement had yet been made of Alysanne's betrothal, so it is not known how word of the decision reached her ears.
Grand Maester Orwyle tells us that Lord Beesbury was seized at the door by the command of Ser Otto Hightower and escorted to the dungeons.
The wedding of the King's Hand and the Queen Regent was to be as splendid as that of the widowed Queen Rhaena had been modest.
The ride, the queen decided, was as breathtaking a journey as she had ever experienced, "as exhilarating as it was cold, though the wind up there blows so strongly that I feared it was about to sweep us off the Wall."
Meanwhile, on the western shore of Blackwater Bay, word of battle and betrayal at Tumbleton had reached King's Landing.
Not until he was given the young dragon Quicksilver, a hatchling born that same year on Dragonstone, did Aenys Targaryen begin to thrive.
End, Oldtown, and Casterly Rock, my lord, but the men who held those seats were slain in battle, every one.
Construction would require more than a dozen years, but in the end "the queen's fountains" provided clean water for Kingslanders for many generations to come.
When Prince Viserys added his voice to Munkun's, the proposal was adopted.
Having thus demonstrated the power of Braavos, however, he was more than willing to be placated.
And in 119 AC, when Laena found she was with child again, Rhaenyra flew to Driftmark to attend her during the birth.
From there, Aegon and Rhaena returned to the westerlands to assemble an army.
Though the king did not wish Daemon to succeed him, he remained fond of his younger brother, and was quick to forgive his many offenses.
Princess Rhaena was fourteen years of age, a beautiful younggirl who stole the heart of every knight who saw her; Prince Aegon was eleven, Prince Viserys eight.
Jaehaerys himself no doubt shared some of these sentiments, but the young king had other reasons for remaining on Dragonstone.
The two knights died at dawn, kicking and writhing against the walls of the Red Keep as the nooses tightened round their necks.
From there they made their way to the Disputed Lands, where Ser Howard signed on to a free company called, with a singular lack of inspiration, the Free Company.
Dawn had come by the time the last of them had been led away.
Lord Rogar, thunderstruck at the king's words, looked up and said, "I am, Your Grace," in a voice thick with emotion.
This time the Queen in Chains put forth the notion that the realm might be divided; Rhaenyra would keep King's Landing and the crownlands, the North, the Vale of Arryn, all the lands watered by the Trident, and the isles.
Did Coryanne Wylde fail to bed the king?
Rather than attack by way of the Prince's Pass, he planned to come by sea.
To rectify these ills, King Jaehaerys in 52 AC promulgated the Widow's Law, reaffirming the right of the eldest son (or eldest daughter, where there was no son) to inherit, but requiring said heirs to maintain surviving widows in the same condition they had enjoyed before their husband's death.
"They are only children," Jaehaerys said when Alysanne brought the problem to his attention.
With the High Septon in Oldtown, too old and frail to journey to King's Landing, it fell to Septon Eustace to anoint King Aegon's brow with holy oils, and bless him in the seven names of god.
Queen Alysanne prayed daily for her niece Aerea and blamed herself for the child's flightâ¦but she blamed her sister more.
"No harm is to be done my lord husband, Prince Daemon of House Targaryen," Her Grace commanded.
It would be a mistake to believe that was the sole cause of the estrangement, however; the other weddings that had made 49 AC the Year of the Three Brides had also left scars.
After a long and difficult labor, she gave Prince Baelon a third son, a boy they named Aegon, after the Conqueror.
Though fiercely loyal to the Starks of Winterfell, they had brought their own gods with them from the south, and still worshipped the Seven and kept the traditions of knighthood.
All these defenses proved useless against Visenya Targaryen, who rode Vhagar's leathery wings above them all and landed in the Eyrie's inner courtyard.
Then as now, the Braavosi were a pragmatic people, for theirs is a city of escaped slaves where a thousand false gods are honored, but only gold is truly worshipped.
*It was a sadder king who returned to King's Landing from Storm's
The Storm King himself was thrown from his saddle.
Queen Alyssa, it will be recalled, had been Lord Daemon's sister, and his young niece Lianna had been amongst the women poisoned on Dragonstone.
The dance ended when Vermithor rose roaring into the sky.
The selection of the King's Hand was a matter of more import, and one that the lords assembled were unwilling to leave to the new regents.
The new tax served a dual purpose, His Grace explained to Grand Maester Benifer.
"This Vulture King is half-mad, and his followers are a rabble, undisciplined and unwashed," Lord Harmon Dondarrion wrote to the king.
Young Lord Rosby, whose father had taken his own life when King Maegor fell, turned up as well, sheepishly pleading for the young king's forgiveness, which Jaehaerys was pleased to grant.
Septon Bernard detailed Lord Rowan's alleged crimes: he had taken bribes in the form of gold and girls (exotic creatures from the Mermaid, says Mushroom, the younger the better), had sent Moredo Rogare to the Vale to dispossess Ser Arnold Arryn of his rightful inheritance, had conspired with Oakenfist to remove Unwin Peake as the King's Hand, had helped to loot the Rogare Bank of Lys, thereby defrauding and impoverishing many "good and leal men of Westeros of noble birth and high station," had appointed his own son to a command "for which he was manifestly unworthy," leading to the death of thousands in the Mountains of the Moon.
The Queen Regent feared their wroth, for she had vivid memories of all that had befallen her son Aegon and her daughter Rhaena when their marriage was announced.
Ser Borys, oft considered the most volatile and belligerent of the Baratheons, proved the calmest in this instance.
As the red stone towers rose, the king commanded the building of a castle within the castle, a fortified redoubt surrounded by a dry moat that would soon be known to all as Maegor's Holdfast.
It fell to Prince Viserys to make answer.
At the age of nine, however, Rhaena was presented with a hatchling from the pits of Dragonstone, and she and the young dragon she named Dreamfyre bonded instantly.
King Aenys embraced him before a cheering throng, and named him Hand of the King.
Unwilling to offend his fellow lords, Celtigar instead decided to impose new taxes on the smallfolk of King's Landing, who were conveniently close at hand.
The excitement occasioned by Oakenfist's return was palpable, however, so all the Hand could do was seethe.
Grand Maester Mellos suggested bringing in some younger man, and put forward several names, but His Grace chose familiarity, and recalled to court Ser Otto Hightower, the queen's father, who had filled the office before for both Viserys and the Old King.
From there she took ship across the narrow sea to Pentos.
In later years, the Citadel and the Starry Sept alike would call it the Doctrine of Exceptionalism.
In the end, Ser Arryk and Ser Erryk dealt each other mortal wounds, and died in one another's arms with tears upon their cheeks.
When Lord Cregan asked that cunning rogue if he had any final words, Ser Perkin declared that he wished to take the black.
Prudently, he had it put about that the marriage had been arranged by king and court, believing that it was Lady Baela's defiance that was the scandal rather than her choice ofspouse.
Septon Eustace suggests that Lady Mysaria, the White Worm, chose this night to tell Helaena of the death of her son Maelor, and the grisly manner of his passing, though what motive she would have had for doing so, beyond simple malice, is hard to fathom.
For this was to be a year when many of the long-simmering tensions and jealousies that had plagued the Seven Kingdoms finallycame to a boil, a year when many and more would have reason to wail and grieve and rend their garmentsâ¦
Shunning the king's wedding, they laid their plans in High Tide on the isle Driftmark.
She led the Kingsguard to a wine sink where the villain was discovered with a whore in his lap and three of Lord Rego's rings on his fingers.
Sheepstealer, a notably ugly "mud brown" dragon hatched when the Old King was still young, had a taste for mutton, swooping down on shepherd's flocks from Driftmark to the Wendwater.
The poison was given to me by Roggerio."
Ser Ulf gave himself over entirely to drunkenness, "drowning himself in wine and flesh."
Mushroom claims to have witnessed the murder of the king's food taster, a grossly fat man named Ummet, and asserts that he was forced to hide in a barrel of flour to escape the same fate, emerging the next night "floured from head to heels, so white the first serving girl to see me took me for Mushroom's ghost."
On Dragonstone he had Ser Merrell Bullock, commander of the castle garrison, his sons Ser Alyn and Ser Howard, a seasoned master-at- arms in Ser Elyas Scales, and his own Seven, the finest fighters in the realm.
Yet a day later, he discovered to his dismay that Baela had fled the castle by some secret means (later it was found she had climbed out a window, swapped clothes with a washerwoman, and walked out the front gate).
The likeness faded as the princess grew older, however; long-faced and skinny, Alyssa had little of her sister's beauty.
His intent, as he later revealed, was to provoke a short, victorious war with Tyrosh or Myr.
At forty-four years of age, the Dowager Queen had been thought to be well beyond her childbearing years, so her pregnancy was received as a miracle.
That morning she fed him a black ram, the largest in all Maidenpool, slitting the ram's throat herself.
There he remained for half a year, during which time he got Mysaria with child.
Yet Princess Rhaenyra continued to sit at the foot of the Iron Throne when her father held court, and His Grace began bringing her to meetings of the small council as well.
That fateful year 131 AC came to a close with the seas aflame both east and west of the Seven Kingdoms and blizzards descending onWinterfell and the North.
Aegon spent roughly half the year at his two seats, dividing his time between them.
The king had grossly misjudged the temper of the kingdom, the piety of his people, and the power of the High Septon's words.
And so it came to pass that the size of the Gift was doubled with a stroke.
Prince Aegon had heirs of his own now, the greens at court proclaimed happily.
Thus did His Grace continue up the hill to the very top, where the Shepherd himself was bound amongst the heads of the five dragons.
Many a time they flew together on their dragons, and the princess's she-dragon Syrax produced several clutches of eggs.
When that befell, his own successor would be a Hightower, the king assured Lord Donnel, provided his kin aligned themselves firmly with the Exceptionalistsduring Septon Alfyn's reign.
In his version, it was Princess Rhaenyra who went to Ser Criston, not him to her.
As the black council sat to consider how to strike back, a raven arrived from Harrenhal.
Savage Sam, that lord was called, and so he proved in the bloody battle that ensued, cutting down dozens of Dornishmen with his great Valyrian steel blade Heartsbane.
The worst death was reserved for Queen Alys herself, who was given over to her sister-wife Tyanna for torment.
Mooton's men swarmed him with swords and spears and axes, dealing him many grievous woundsâ¦yet each blow only seemed to enrage him further.
No king in Westeros was more feared than Black Harren, whose cruelty had become legendary all through the Seven Kingdoms.
Munkun (who, it must be remembered, wrote many years later) says this was because of her horror of kinslaying.
Lashing him across the face, Rhaena commanded him to leave her, declaring that she wanted to be alone.
The Nightfort was abandoned even before Deep Lake was completed, as the queen had wished.
Archmaesters can and do quibble about the numbers, but most agree that the population of Westeros north of Dorne doubled during the Conciliator's reign, whilst the population of King's Landing increased fourfold.
Jaehaerys did not make his decision lightly; he is known to have discussed the matter with his small council.
The amity and unity of purpose that had enabled Jaehaerys, his sisters, and their mother to topple Maegor the Cruel had begun to fray, as long-simmering resentments and divisions made themselves felt.
For all these reasons, king and court and city rejoiced at the prince's coming, and Lord Alyn Velaryon became more beloved than ever for delivering Viserys from his captivity in Lys.
Torrhen Stark, King in the North, had crossed the Neck and entered the riverlands, leading an army of savage northmen thirty thousand strong.
After the rejection of Grand Maester Orwyle's peace overtures the Hand redoubled his efforts, dispatching ravens to Winterfell and the Eyrie, to Riverrun, White Harbor, Gulltown, Bitterbridge, Fair Isle, and half a hundred other keeps and castles.
King Aegon gazed down on him, saying naught, but his brother was less reticent, commanding the Grand Maester to send forth "a thousand ravens" so the realm might know the king was being held a captive in his own castle.
Jaehaerys left it to his queen to deal with the three families.
It was just a game at the start, Pretty Peri said.
A fiery young maiden, freshly flowered, Lady Laena had inherited the beauty of a true Targaryen from her mother, Rhaenys, and a bold, adventurous spirit from her father, the Sea Snake.
Sons, he announced, as he dumped them out beneath the Iron Throneâ¦but it was widely believed that many of the grisly trophies belonged to simple crofters, fieldhands, and swineherds guilty of no crime but faith.
Lady Johanna even went so far as to propose an attack upon the Iron Islands themselves; she would provide as many swords and spears as might be required, Lord Velaryon need only deliver them to the isles.
His fist slammed against the table then, Benifer tells us.
Only when all this had been done to his satisfaction and his new men were in place did Jaehaerys instruct Grand Maester Benifer to dispatch a raven to Storm's
Rather than betray his fellow Caltrops, he let the squire fill his cup, drank deep, and asked for more.
All across the Seven Kingdoms, lords and smallfolk alike waited to see what kind of king he would be.
Lord Rego and his king both realized that the loans were a stopgap measure at best, however; they might slow the bleeding but they would not stanch the wound.
The shouts and screams of the struggle brought Alysanne's protectors running, for Ser Joffrey Doggett and Ser Gyles Morrigen had been guarding the entrance to the bathhouse, never dreaming that the danger lurked within.
Moved by the girl's tears, Queen Alysanne could do no more than promise to take the matter up with her mother.
When Rhaenyra asked why Ser Robert had not come to meet her, Ser Alfred replied that the queen would be seeing "our fat friend" at the castle.
The fool Mushroom, cruelly, says that whereas most dragons moved through the sky like eagles, Sunfyre had become no more than "a great golden fire-breathing chicken, hopping and fluttering from hill to hill."
The gonfaloniere Moreo Dagareon was slain by his own elite guards, and Matteno Orthys, a fervent worshipper of the goddess Pantera, was mauled and partly devoured by his prized shadowcat when its cage was unaccountably left open one night.
End, where it was expected that Borros Baratheon would give him a warm welcome.
Though Daemon Velaryon, as the Crown's lord admiral and master of ships, was in King's Landing with the regents, that did not prevent Jaehaerys and Alysanne from flying their dragons to Driftmark and touring his shipyards, escorted by his sons, Corwyn, Jorgen, and Victor.
And so they argued, shouting and shoving above the knight's corpse.
The task of defending the realm fell to the Lord Protector, Leowyn Corbray, the day-to-day tedium of rule to the blind Hand, Tyland Lannister.
]209â221 Aerys Isecond son of Daeron II (left no issue)
Two years past, Cregan Stark had made a promise to Prince Jacaerys.
Lord Hayford, Lord Merryweather, Lord Harte, Lord Buckler, Lord Caswell, and Lady Fell valued their sworn word more than their lives, and were beheaded each in turn, along with eight landed knights and twoscore servants and retainers.
When a septa in the crowd cried out, pleading for him to save the city, the Shepherd said, "Only the Mother's mercy can save you, but you drove your Mother from this city with your pride and lust and avarice.
This coronation took place two years after Aegon's Landing, well after all three of the majorbattles of the Wars of Conquest had been fought and won.
The High Septon continued to thunder, and all through the realm the lords in their halls spoke of the king's weakness.
For them some mercy may be warranted, but for youâ¦I will not have you near my lord, ser."
Munkun tells us that Orwyle gave a long and erudite reply, citing Andal law and the Great Council of 101.
She would go ahead as planned, alone, whilst the king played host to the Prince and Archon.
Lord Gunthor had lost his life in the queen's service, as had his uncle Steffon.
Benjicot Blackwood, the twelve-year-old Lord of Raventree, had come forth, as had the widowed Sabitha Frey, Lady of the Twins, with her father and brothers of House Vypren.
Flying above the western shore of the Gods Eye, well away from Ser Criston's line of march, he evaded the enemy host, crossed the Blackwater, then turned east, following the river downstream to King's Landing.
Once all is safely settled, if we have no further need of House Velaryon, we can always lend the Stranger a hand."
His Grace grieved for Prince Aemon until the end of his days, but the Old King never dreamed that Aemon's death in 92 AC would be like the hellhorns of Valyrian legend, bringing death and destruction down on all those who heard their sound.
A heady time, no doubt, but short-livedâ¦for when Lord Cregan Stark arrived before King's Landing with his northmen, the frolics ended, and the happy plans came crashing down.
Prince Aenys was so oft in his sire's company that his own instruction in the chivalric arts came largely from the knights of Aegon's Kingsguard, and sometimes the king himself.
Lord Rowan did what he could to alleviate these woes, commanding the Lannisters to withdraw from the Iron Islands, shipping food to the North, and summoning the Arryn claimants to King's Landing to present their cases to the regents, but his efforts were largely ineffectual.
Lady Elenda Baratheon, the widow of Storm's End, also took a new husband that year.
She flew above the pass, above the red sands and the white, and descended upon Vaith todemand its submission, only to find the castle empty and abandoned.
"My wife can fly, and so can I." And so saying, he slashed ineffectually at the nearest man, backed to the window behind him, and leapt out.
If his Hand was not able to settle the matter at hand amicably, however, His Grace would have no choice but to come himself on Vermithor for what Barth termed "vigorous discussions."
As the days passed, however, that very hospitality grew ever more disquieting to Rhaena Targaryen.
Assisted by Septa Lyra, who watched over the babe night and day, Elysar nursed the princess through a difficult first year, until finally it seemed as if she might survive.
Steffon Darklyn was burned to death whilst attempting to mount the dragon Seasmoke.
Rhaenyra's men found her rival's wife, the mad Queen Helaena, locked in her bedchamberâ¦but when they broke down the doors of the king's apartments, they discovered only "his bed, empty, and his chamberpot, full."
The most dire threat to the queen's rule proved to be within the city, however.
Others claim it was a little girl, trodden under by Ser Luthor's warhorse.
Once they had confirmed that Viserys was dead, Her Grace ordered his room sealed and placed under guard.
Nor was he reticent about recording even the most shocking and salacious rumors and accusations, though the bulk of The Reign of King Viserys, First of His Name, and the Dance of the Dragons That Came After remains a sober and somewhat ponderous history.
Her parents' pride and pleasure quickly turned to ash, however; the dragon that wriggled from the egg was a monstrosity, a wingless wyrm, maggot-white and blind.
And Alyn Oakenfist, that proud and headstrong youth, found he had no choice but to agree to sail his fleets around the southern end of Westeros to win back Fair Isle and end the menace of Lord Dalton Greyjoy and his ironmen.
According to Mushroom, this only served to deepen her resentment of her stepmother, Queen Alicent, who remained slender and graceful at half again her age.
Many and more have wondered at the seeming forebearance of the new Hand and his allies during this stalemate.
As Orwyle protested feebly, Rhaenyra's knights stripped his chain of office from his neck and forced him to his knees whilst the princess bestowed the chain upon her own man, Maester Gerardys, "a true and leal servant of the realm and its laws."
The love of the commons for Baelon the Brave was also cited.
Instead they fought with horns and claws and teeth, turning this way and that like bulls in a Flea Bottom rat pitâ¦but these bulls could breathe fire.
In Lys, ancient houses fell and many a highborn magister was cast down and ruined, whilst others rose up to seize the reins of power.
Two of Queen Jaehaera's maids grew feverish and succumbed, though the little queen herself remained hale and healthy.
It was there at Pinkmaiden that Aegon Targaryen, mounted on Quicksilver, descended from the sky todenounce his uncle as a tyrant and usurper, and call upon all honest men to rally to his banners.
"The queen found her true love on Fair Isle," Maester Smike wrote to the Citadel, "not with Androw, but with his sister, Lady Elissa."
"She went from denial to dismissal to quibbling to contrition to accusation to justification to defiance in the space of an hour, with stops at giggling and weeping along the way," Septon Barth would write.
If Mushroom is to be believed, he fathered two bastard children the same year as the twins: a boy on a girl whose maidenhood he won at auction on the Street of Silk, and a girl by one of his mother's maidservants.
On his thirteenth nameday in 25 AC, his mother, Queen Visenya, bestowed her own Valyrian steel blade, Dark Sister, upon himâ¦half a year before his marriage.
If Septon Barth's testimony is to be believed, a tear rolled down her cheek.
In the tourney itself, the blacks had much the better of it when Ser Criston Cole, wearing Princess Rhaenyra's favor, unhorsed all of the queen's champions, including two of her cousins and her youngest brother, Ser Gwayne Hightower.
The great castle on the Gods Eye was lightly held, and its castellan, a nephew of Lord Lucas and cousin to the late queen, opened his gates at the king's approach.
The fourth Lannister attack carried the fords, however; this time it was Lord Vance who fell, slain by Ser Adrian Tarbeck, who had taken command of the western host.
King Aegon nodded sullenlyâ¦but the tale got out, as such tales always do, and the unfortunate Lady Myrielle was soon known as Lady Turnips throughout the Seven Kingdoms.
Whichever man she married, Daella would have wealth and position.
As it happened, when word of Aegon's landing first reached Oldtown, the High Septon had locked himself within the Starry Sept for seven days and seven nights, seeking the guidance of the gods.
Of all of them, the only one the princess warmed to was Elissa Farman of Fair Isle, who told her tales of her adventures and promised to teach her how to sail.
Targaryen was a peaceful one, for the most part; such wars as he fought were few and short.
The age and infirmity of their commander, Lord Lefford, had slowed their march to a crawl, but as they neared the western shores of the Gods Eye, they found a huge new army athwart their path.
Thousands fled Oldtown that night, streaming from the city gates or taking ship for distant ports.
King Jaehaerys said in shock.
There had been some thought, after the tragic death of Princess Daenerys, that Aemon should wed Princess Alyssa, the eldest of his remaining sisters, but Queen Alysanne firmly put the thought aside.
End and one-time Hand of the King and Lord Protector of the Realm, died at Storm's
But there were guards on the south bank too, and they formed a wall against him.
A city of tents sprang up outside the walls of Harrenhal and along the lakeshore for leagues in each direction.
Afterward he donned his father's iron-and-ruby crown, and GrandMaester Gawen proclaimed him Aenys of House Targaryen, the First of His Name, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm.
The men he had bought voted with the rest to condemn him (and kept the bribes as well, for the magisters of Lys put avarice ahead of honor, as is well-known).
Any knight can make a knight, and when Ser Perkin began dubbing every sellsword, thief, and butcher's boy who flocked to Trystane's ragged banner, men and boys appeared by the hundreds to pledge themselves to his cause.
The four false kings who had arisen on the death of Aegon the Conqueror now seemed like so many posturing fools against the threat posed by this new rising, for these rebels believed themselves soldiers of the Seven, fighting a holy war against godless tyranny.
Even as she ran about the castle, talking more than her siblings Vaegon and Daella combined, she wanted her mother's milk, and raged and screamed whenever the queen dismissed another wet nurse.
That only served to bring a snarl to Rhaena's lips.
King Jaehaerys had great admiration for the city of Braavos, Barth told the Sealord; for that reason, he had not come himself, understanding as he did the Free City's bitter history with Valyria and its dragonlords.
As word of the unrest at King's Landing reached Prince Daeron's host, many younger lords grew anxious to advance upon the city at once.
Aemond Targaryen's mouth twisted in rage, and he turned oncemore to Lord Borros, asking for his leave.
Once relieved of his duties, Septon Eustace departed King's Landing for Stoney Sept, the town of his birth, wherehe devoted himself to the writing of his great (if somewhat turgid) work, The Reign of King Viserys, First of His Name, and the Dance of the Dragons That Came After.
"I could see the fire in her eyes," the maester said, "and for a moment I could see Faircastle burning, the white towers blackening and collapsing into the sea as flames leapt from every window and the dragon wheeled about again and again."
Unhorsed when his destrier was felled by arrows from Black Aly and her bowmen, he battled on afoot, cutting down countless men-at-arms, a dozen knights, and the Lords Mallister and Darry.
Thereafter he drank a cup of wine, summoned his steward to make arrangements for his wife's burial, and sent his brother Ser Garon to invite the king and queen to stay on for a feast in honor of his daughter.
As Ser Luthor Largent and his gold cloaks rode up Rhaenys's Hill with the queen's warrant, the doors of the Dragonpit were thrown openabove them, and Seasmoke spread his pale grey wings and took flight, smoke rising from his nostrils.
Jaehaerys and Alysanne met all the next day with Barth and Grand Maester Elysar, discussing what was to be done with the six sinners, particularly the princess.
As the Lannisters of Casterly Rock were still reluctant to openly espouse Prince Aegon's cause, his adherents gathered at Pinkmaiden Castle, seat of House Piper.
Meanwhile, back in Westeros, Princess Rhaenyra had given birth to a second son late in the year 115 AC.
On wings as black as pitch Balerion plunged through the night, and when the great towers of Harrenhal appeared beneath him, the dragon roared his fury and bathed them in black fire, shot through with swirls of red.
Queen Alyssa wanted time as well, though for a different reason.
One such said afterward that the flight of Tessarion and Seasmoke seemed more mating dance than battle.
The remark drew nervous titters even from Lord Peake's own handpicked men, Mushroom tells us, but the Hand was not amused.
]184â209 Daeron IIthe Good, Queen Naerys's son, by Aegon or Aemon [Daeron brought Dorne into the realm by wedding the Dornish princess Myriah.
His bastard son, Ser Tyler Hill, had fought with Prince Aegon under the Gods Eye.
He rose as Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, a king no more.
Instead, he said, they must move at once to make amends with Lord Corlys, so as to keep House Velaryon on their side.
For even as Jace laid his plans, a new threat was closing from the east.
Their leader, the woman known as Poxy Jeyne Poore, continued to elude the king until at last she was betrayed by three of her own followers, who received pardons and knighthoods as their reward.
At the age of thirteen, he records, Lord Wylde's younger daughter was indeed seduced and deflowered by a "surly lad" from the stables.
Jaehaerys Targaryen and his sons Aemon and Baelon had been waiting as well, and as Morion's fleet beat its way across the Sea of Dorne, the dragons Vermithor, Caraxes, and Vhagar fell on them from out of the clouds.
The talk is that he has joined up with the Vulture King, and is raiding his own people.
A handful of Drako Rogare's trading galleys learned of the house's fall in time to divert course to Volantis, but for every ship saved, nine were lost, together with their cargos and the Rogare wharves and storehouses.
Prince Viserys laughed at that (for King Aegon never laughed, to Mushroom's dismay) and said, "The Hand names the regent and the regent names the Hand, and round and round and round we danceâ¦ but you shall not pass, ser, nor shall you touch my wife.
If indeed there ever lived a Sara Snow, and if indeed the Prince of Dragonstone perchanced to dally with her, that is no more than other princes have done in the past, and will do on the morrow, but to talk of marriage is preposterous.
On Maiden's Day in the year 130 AC, the Citadel of Oldtown sent forth three hundred white ravens to herald the coming of winter, but Mushroom and Septon Eustace agree that this was high summer for Queen  Rhaenyra  Targaryen.
One of his younger sons served with the Warrior's Sons, and another had only recently taken vows as a septon.
Lord Rowan's chains were removed, and all his knights and serving menwere brought up from the dungeons into the sunlight.
She had seen more of the Seven Kingdoms than any queen before or since, slept in a hundred castles, charmed a hundred lords, made a hundred marriages.
When most of the survivors were safe inside the gates, Roddy the Ruin and his Winter Wolves sallied forth from a postern gate, screaming their terrifying northern war cries as they swept around the left flank of the attackers.
He gladly accepted a pardon for his past crimes, and reported that the Triarchy had collapsed.
Written there were the names of twenty men alleged to have given their seed to Queen Alys.
She had no fear of the Cannibal, she told Ser Robert.
Their encounter with the dragon was not the last peril encountered by Ser Robert's host.
It was said that Maegor had to put a dozen septons to death before he found one willing to perform the ceremony.
As for the rebel king himself, the man who called himself the Vulture King was taken alive and tied naked between two posts by Savage Sam Tarly.
When the vanguard of Lord Tully's host appeared before the walls of King's Landing two days later, Corlys Velaryon rode out to greet them with Prince Aegon somber at his side.
King Aegon flew Balerion to Highgarden to take counsel with his Warden of the South, but Theo Tyrell, the young lord, was most reluctant to contemplate another invasion of Dorne after the fate that had befallen his father.
"Fire for fire," Princess Meria is reported to have said.
Instead Lady Samantha mounted a warhorse and burst into the sept as His High Holiness was leading a prayer.
Some did so reluctantly, fearing that Jaehaerys might prove to be as weak and feckless a king as his fatherâ¦ but as Maegor had left no heirs of the body, there was no plausible rival around whom opposition might gather.
It had been long years since the Black Dread had last been seen in the skies above the city, and the sight filled many a Kingslander with dread, wondering if somehow Maegor the Cruel had returned from beyond the grave to mount him once again.
Only two days later, Lord Peake and Lord Bourney argued bitterly at a war council, until Peake drew his dagger and stabbed Bourney through the eye, declaring, "Once a turncloak, ever a turncloak," as Prince Daeron and Ser Hobert looked on, horror- struck.
To appease Lord Peake and his supporters, Gedmund Peake the Great-Axe was named lord admiral and master of ships (it was said that Oakenfist was more bemused than angry, and declared that the choice was a good one, as "Ser Gedmund loves paying for ships, I love sailing them").
His own father had been that Ser Vaemond beheaded by Queen Rhaenyra, but Daeron had been reconciled with Lord Alyn and had died fighting for him.
Prince Aegon drew his sword to chastise them and had to be restrained by his own knights, for the prince's party was greatly outnumbered.
To grant him equal honor with the other members of the council, the young king named him a lord.
As ever, the queen took the loss of a child hard, questioning whether or not it had been through some fault of her own that Prince Gaemon had failed.
Though Ulf the Sot had never tasted a wine he did not like, he was known to be partial to the sweeter vintages.
When he spied Lord Borros on his warhorse, the Shepherd pointed his stump at him and cursed him.
Her mother was a stranger to her, sometimes stern and sometimes shy, much given to brooding, and the women who surrounded her seemed to take little interest in Aerea.
Calling for a peace banner, King Aegon's Hand rode out to treat with them.
"Even had I wished to, my crew would not allow it," he told Lord Donnel in the Hightower.
Lord Redwyne had died in 89 AC, his son Ser Robert soon thereafter.
And in the westerlands, Aegon Targaryen, Prince of Dragonstone, and his wife, Princess Rhaena, remained defiant as well.
Prince Aegon, meanwhile, found himself confined to Maegor's Holdfast with no companions save the boy Gaemon Palehair.
No wedding half so magnificent had been celebrated in Westeros in living memory, and lords great and small from throughout the Seven Kingdoms and beyond gathered to be part of it.
He confirmed his mother's appointment of Lord Daemon Velaryon as Hand of the King, and retained Lord Corbray as the Commander of the City Watch.
The possession of Moon's mortal remains became itself a bone of contention between two of his would-be successors, the Poor Fellow known as Rob the Starvling and a certain Lorcas, called Lorcas the Learned, who boasted of having committed all of The Seven-Pointed Star to memory.
Later that same year, Visenya Targaryen appeared in the skies of Dorne, and Vhagar's fires were loosed upon Sunspear, Lemonwood, Ghost Hill, and the Tor.
Though it might well have been that there were no secrets between them during these bright days in the morning of the marriage, their union itself remained a secret to most of Westeros.
They had a great host, and three dragons besides, yet the queen had three dragons as well (as best they knew), and would have five once Prince Daemon returned with Nettles.
The small frail babe who had come into the world during that terrible Year of the Stranger had grown into a tall young girl of solemn mien, with large dark eyes and hair black as sin.
"There are still those amongst my brothers who do not love Your Grace," Barth pointed out.
Ser Criston wasted no time in proving his mettle.
After stopping at Pentos to take on supplies, Alys Westhill and her Sun Chaser had made their way to Tyrosh, with only the narrowest part of the narrow sea betwixt them and Estermont.
As Laena shrieked, Lord Oakenfist ripped the "dragon" off her, flung it to the floor, and hacked it into pieces.
Lysaro Rogare aspired to rule Lys, but had neither the cunning nor the patience to spend decades in the slow accumulation of wealth andpower, as his father Lysandro had.
Rhaena had grown fond of Lord Farman, and more than fond of his second son, Androw.
Shamed beyond endurance, Vaegon threw down his sword and ran from the yard, never to return.
Though bound to House Targaryen through marriage, the brothers were neither kings nor princes themselves, and their lordships were but empty courtesies, Lord Manderly and Grand Maester Munkun agreed; they would be tried and punished.
Dalton Greyjoy sent their heads to Casterly Rock afterward, calling it "payment for my uncle, though in truth he was a glutton and a drunkard, and the islands are well rid of him."
Spicetown was brutally sacked, the bodies of men, women, and children butchered in the streets and left as fodder for gulls and rats and carrion crows, its buildings burned.
On Dragonstone, the queen's beloved Septa Edyth perished.
Caraxes swiftly outdistanced the Sea Snake and his fleet, dropping down out of the sky on Tarth.
When Prince Maegor's turn came, Aenys drew him back to his feet, kissed his cheek, and said, "Brother, you need never kneel to me again.
The enmity between Queen Alicent and Princess Rhaenyra was passed on to their sons, and the queen's three boys, the Princes Aegon, Aemond, and Daeron, grew to be bitter rivals of their Velaryon nephews, resentful of them for having stolen what they regarded as their birthright: the Iron Throne itself.
Lord Tully's term upon the council during the regency had been undistinguished.
Like his brother Gaemon four years earlier, he was a small and sickly babe, and never thrived.
Some accounts say it was Ser Alfred Broome who had hold of her arm, others name the two Toms, Tanglebeard the father and Tangletongue the son.
As word of his death spread, the fleet he had assembled to meet Alyn Oakenfist began to dissolve, as captain after captain slipped away for home.
As soon as he grew old enough to walk, Baelon followed his brother, Aemon, everywhere, and tried his best to imitate him in everything he did.
The young admiral had no authority to consent to such "ruinous terms," Peake insisted; only the regents and the Hand were empowered to speak for the Iron Throne, not any "fool with a fleet."
Thousands more would die of starvation before the year was done, for the Lannisters also carried off many tons of stored grain and salt fish, and despoiled that which they could not carry.
By the time her pursuers caught up with her, she had already loosed Moondancer's chains and strapped a saddle onto her.
"Then I must convince him that what is best for his king is what is best for himself, his house, and Oldtown," said Jaehaerys.
"Three kings reigned over the city, each on his own hill, yet for their unfortunate subjects there was no law, no justice, no protection," says the True Telling.
Only when her head was on the block did he repent, when his maester reminded him that the girl's mother had been a Velaryon, the Sea Snake's own daughter.
Once the initial frost had thawed, his lordship took the queen hunting after elk and wild boar in the wolfswood, showed her the bones of a giant, and allowed her to rummage as she pleased through his modest castle library.
Across the island, near High Tide, another village was transformed into Spicetown, its wharves and piers crowded with ships from the Free Cities and beyond.
Singers say Ser Addam had flown from King's Landing to the Gods Eye, where he landed on the sacred Isle of Faces and took counsel with the Green Men.
Princess Daenerys had been Targaryen on both sides, with the blood of Old Valyria running pure through her veins, and those of Valyrian descent were not like other men.
Like the roaches they resembled, the worst of these fled before the light, retreating to hidey-holes and cellars to sleep off their drunks, divvy up their plunder, and wash the blood off their hands.
The shame that Lucamore the Lusty visited on the Kingsguard and the Crown was not the only difficulty Jaehaerys and Alysanne faced in73 AC.
True Telling tells us that sixteen men lost their lives during the Sowing.
The younger son of Lord Hornwood, a bannerman to Lord Stark, vanished with two companions whilst roistering in Flea Bottom.
Lord Rogar's men made short work of his own, but as the brothers came face-to-face, King Jaehaerys descended from the sky.
The plan, Grand Maester Benifer assures us, was Queen Alyssa'sâ¦but it was one that Lord Rogar assented to gladly, for he saw at once a way to twist it to his own ends.
Lord Jason Lannister had left six children when he died in battle: five daughters and one son, Loreon, a boy of four.
"The little prince is with the Mother Above now," Lyra told her, "and she will care for him better than we could ever hope to, here in this world of strife and pain."
Seasoned by countless border clashes with the Dornish and his recent victorious campaign against a new Vulture King, Lord Borros Baratheon wasted no time in restoring order to King's Landing.
After all they had endured with Daella, the king and queen must have been relieved to see how eagerly Saera took to the young men of the court, and they to her.
For the rest of that bloody year, the magisters and merchant princes of Lys performed a deadly dance, rising and falling almost fortnightly.
In the fullness of time, Cregan Stark would become known as the Old Man of the North, but the Lord of Winterfell was but one-and- twenty when Prince Jacaerys came to him in 129 AC.
A fortnight later, Alyn Velaryon and Baela Targaryen were married in the sept on Dragonstone.
The most intriguing report came from the hills of Andalos north of Pentos, where shepherds spoke in fearful tones of a monster on theprowl, devouring entire flocks and leaving only bloody bones behind.
Forewarned by the fate of the whores and their little king, the prophet had called upon his "barefoot army" to assemble around the Dragonpit, and defend the Hill of Rhaenys "with blood and iron."
Though it is said that her eldest daughter, the Lady Cassandra, wept bitter tears when she learned she was not to be a queen, Lady Elenda soon agreed to terms.
Curious, Lord Alyn agreed to listen, and the two men stepped out into the yard, where Drazenko leaned so close that his lordship said, "I feared he meant to kiss me."
The High and the Low omits these details, but tells us that Jaehaerys not only welcomed the girl into his bed, but also brought Queen Alysanne in to frolic with them in episodes most often associated with the infamous pleasure houses of Lys.
On Driftmark, the widowed Queen Alyssa proclaimed her own son Aegon the true king, but few heeded her call.
Was Balerion the monster believed to haunt the Velvet Hills of Andalos?
Queen Alicent was fettered at wrist and ankle with golden chains, though her stepdaughter spared her life "for the sake of our father, who loved you once."
An inch shy of six feet tall, Jocelyn would have towered over most of the lords of Westeros, but the Prince of Dragonstone had three inches on her.
The aged Sea Snake, "thunderous in his wroth," accused king and council of being "fools, liars, and oathbreakers," and stormed from the chamber.
Neither Septon Eustace nor Mushroom were deceived; Orwyle had served with Ser Tyland on Aegon II's green councils, and plainly old friendship and the memory of all they had endured played some part in the Hand's decision.
Tessario the Tiger chose to flee as well, but was taken in a dockside tavern near the River Gate as he was dickering with the captain of an Ibbenese whaler for passage to the Port of Ibben.
The older dragons had died during the intervening years, but Balerion lived on, growing ever larger, fiercer, and more willful.
Finally, in despair at reaching an agreement, Grand Maester Munkun proposed that three regents be chosen by lot.
Never a man of letters, he handed the queen's letter to his maester, who cracked the seal and whispered the message into his lordship's ear.
Lord Arryn was the oldest of the three contenders, however; at six- and-thirty, he was twenty years older than the princess, and a father besides, with four children left him by his late first wife.
True Telling says that the boy was torn limb from limb by the mob, but names no names.
Dragons were unnatural creatures, the Shepherd declared, demons summoned from the pits of the seven hells by the fell sorceries of Valyria, "that vile cesspit where brother lay with sister and mother with son, where men rode demons into battle whilst their women spread their legs for dogs."
For a girl such as her, only royalty would suffice, and in the year 22 AC she married Prince Aenys Targaryen, the unquestioned heir to the Iron Throne.
Hundreds of Poor Fellows had been hunted down and slain, their scalps delivered to the king's men for the bounty, but thousands more still roamed the woods and hedges and the wild places of the Seven Kingdoms, cursing the Targaryens with their every breath.
Compared to King's Landing, the island was a dull place, sleepy and quiet.
To replace him as master of laws, Jaehaerys named Albin Massey, Lord of Stonedance, who had been amongst the first men to seek him out on Dragonstone.
Racallio Ryndoon's ships had beenswept from the sea for the most part, but he still ruled Bloodstone, largest of the islands, and a few smaller rocks.
End, of the wounds he himself had taken during the battle, but his son Davos always said he died content, smiling at the rotting hands and feet that dangled in his tent like a string of onions.
Only the timely intervention of the Kingsguard saved Aenys from an ignoble death.
Lord Rogar had been married once before, but his wife had diedyoung, taken off by a fever less than a year after their wedding.
Meanwhile, word of the prince's clemency spread throughout the realm.
The ploy might well have worked, but Septa Karolyn, who had the door of the motherhouse that day, had a spine of steel and a suspicious nature.
The highborn descended on King's Landing from keeps and castles in every part of the Seven Kingdoms.
House Hoare had ruled the ironmen for long centuries, only to be extinguished in a single night when Aegon unleashed Balerion's fires on Harrenhal.
Ser Joffrey, who had taken upon himself the mantle of the Grand Captain of the Warrior's Sons, had announced his intention to restore that once-proud order to its former glory, and was recruiting knights to its banners.
Legend claimed the Vulture King had an impregnable mountain fastness, hidden in the clouds.
His own great nephew, Larys Strong, was Lord of Harrenhal and King Aegon's master of whisperers, he reminded the Prince Regent.
Jaehaerys continued his rigorous training regimen with the knights of his Kingsguard every morn, and devoted his evenings to poring over accounts of the reign of his grandsire Aegon the Conqueror, on which he wished to model his own rule.
she cried to the knights and squires and serving men who had seen her descend.
Even for a son of House Targaryen, there are always dangers in approaching a dragon, particularly an old, bad-tempered dragon who has recently lost her rider.
Grand Maester Munkun, drawing upon Orwyle, tells us that more than a hundred thousand smallfolk jammed into the Dragonpit, their cheers so loud they shook the very walls, whilst Mushroom says the stone benches were half-filled.
King Aegon kept them in his own chambers, but none yielded a dragon.
When her lord husband protested, Ser Jon cut him nigh in two with Orphan- Maker, saying, "She can make widows too," as he tore the gown from the weeping Lady Sharis.
Not long after the queen's court removed to King's Landing (whilst leaving Lady Baela on Dragonstone), Baela had been caught allowing a kitchen scullion to slip his hand inside her jerkin.
After the council meeting, King Aegon II was carried down to the yard by two strong squires.
"My lord, I did not know what it was for," Orwyle protested.
All King's Landing rejoiced when it was announced that Jaehaerys had also dismissed Edwell Celtigar as master of coin.
"Dark Sister was made for nobler tasks than slaughtering sheep," he is reported to have told the Lord of the Tides.
Understandably alarmed, the city magisters moved at once to seize the Rogare Bank, only to discover that naught remained but a hollow shell.
Lord Corlys lay in state beneath the Iron Throne for seven days.
End, had been made aware as well, and was waiting on Cape Wrath to give the Dornishmen a red welcome when they came ashore.
For the traveler's "son" was Maelor Targaryen, the younger son of King Aegon II, and the traveler was Ser Rickard Thorne of the Kingsguard, his sworn shield and protector.
And when it became known that Dreamfyre had produced a clutch of dragon eggs, a begging brother from the inland hills began to preach that Fair Isle would soon be overrun by dragons "devouring sheep and cows and men alike," unless a dragonslayer came forth to put an end to the scourge.
Armed with a spear and a shield of silvered steel and accompanied only by his squire, he set out to slay a dragon just as Serwyn did.
"Then some spicemonger in Pentos will find himself possessed of three very costly stones," Jaehaerys said.
Even Gareth Long, the Red Keep's despised master- at-arms, made note of a change.
Some of his followers had already slipped away when word of King Maegor's death and Prince Jaehaerys's ascension reached them.
On one point Mushroom, Septon Eustace, Grand Maester Runciter, and all our other sources concur: Ser Otto Hightower, the King's Hand, took a great dislike to the king's brother.
And so the prince agreed, and Lady Jeyne knelt before him, and bade her warriors to kneel, and all swore him their swords.
When the rest of the queen's party finally turned up at the castle gates, after struggling through trackless bogs and summer snows, the meat and mead flowed freely, despite the king's absence.
When told that Aemond and Ser Criston Cole had left King's Landing, it is said Prince Daemon laughed and said, "Past time," for he had long anticipated this moment.
(The oft-told tale that the arrival of the dragons caused the aged High Septon to soil his robes is likely only a calumny.)
For his first master-at-arms his mother chose Ser Gawen Corbray, as deadly a knight as could be found in all the Seven Kingdoms.
Only the intercession of Ser Harrold Darke persuaded Lady Meredyth to allow the queen within her walls at all (the Darkes were distant kin to the Darklyns, and Ser Harrold had once served as a squire to the late Ser Steffon), and only upon the condition that she would not remain for long.
The princess would have the Sea Snake and his fleets, Ser Otto judged, and like as not the other lords of the eastern shores as well: Lords Bar Emmon, Massey, Celtigar, and Crabb most like, perhaps even the Evenstar of Tarth.
When that proved insufficient to pay more than a tenth of the debts left by the bank's collapse, the Rogares themselves were sold into slavery, together with their children.
He told Rhaenyra that he had a ship waiting on the bay, and begged her to flee with him across the narrow sea.
We know the realm did not rise up against King Jaehaerys and Queen Alysanne in 51 AC as it had against Aegon and Rhaena ten years earlier.
But Argilac had grown older; his famous mane of black hair had gone grey, and his prowess at arms had faded.
Septon Eustace repeatsthe widespread rumor that Jeyne Arryn preferred the intimate companionship of other women, then goes on to say it was not true.
With hundreds of knights eager to compete for the honor of serving in the Kingsguard, the combats lasted seven full days.
Cognizant of all these threats, Queen Rhaenyra's Hand, old Lord Corlys Velaryon, suggested to Her Grace that the time had come to talk.
The regents were in agreement; Baela Targaryen could not be King Aegon's heir.
But Benifer could see that the king's words did not entirely please the queen, as he noted in his letters.
After his translator was slain during the battle in the streets, Moredo Rogare had great difficulty communicating with his own troops; the men did not understand his commands, and he did not understand their reports.
It was to them that Prince Jacaerys turned, at the urging of his fool, vowing that any man who could master a dragon would be granted lands and riches and dubbed a knight.
Instead he sent his acolyte with an urgent letter to the King's Hand.
Young Lord Stokeworth's castellan granted her hospitality, but only for a night.
The Tyrells of Highgarden followed, with all the power of the Reach.
The Two Betrayers scourged the town with whips of flame from one end to the other.
There would be no denunciation from the Starry Sept; whilst some amongst the Most Devout still bristled at the Targaryen tradition of sibling marriage, the present High Septon, Septon Moon's "High Lickspittle," was complaisant and cautious, not inclined to wake sleeping dragons.
His widow, Queen Alyssa, sang a dirge for him, and his own beloved Quicksilver set his pyre alight, though it was recorded that the dragons Vermithor and Silverwing added their own fire to hers.
From there His Grace visited Ashemark, the Crag, Kayce, Castamere, Tarbeck Hall, Lannisport and Casterly Rock, and Crakehall.
The very first of Rhaena's favorites, her cousin Larissa Velaryon, had been married to the second son of the Evenstar of Tarth, it may be recalled.
Comely was perhaps too generous a word for Prince Vaegon, who had the silver-gold hair and purple eyes of the Targaryens, but was long of face and round of shoulder even at ten, with a pinched sour cast to his mouth that made men suspect he had recently been sucking on a lemon.
When Ser Regis demanded to speak to their lord, a woman emerged to treat with him, with a child beside her.
Large and fierce, she had the black hair of her Baratheon mother and the pale violet eyes of her Targaryen father.
Battle was joined first in the Reach, at the town of Stonebridge.
On Old Wyk, under the bones of Nagga the Sea Dragon, the priests of the Drowned God placed a driftwood crown on the head of one of their own, the barefoot holy man Lodos, who proclaimed himself the living son of the Drowned God and was said to be able to work miracles.
They found him hanging from the battlements of the gatehouse beside Dragonstone's steward, captain of the guard, master-at-armsâ¦and the head and upper torso of Grand Maester Gerardys.
The Dance of the Dragons was done, and the melancholy reign of King Aegon III Targaryen had begun.
For a time, his sire had considered sending him to Oldtown to forge a maester's chain, until his own maester told him that the boy was simply not clever enough, and couldhardly read nor write.
But when the little queen wore the red-and-black of House Targaryen, the king would don a green cloak, so both colors would be seen wherever they might go.
At his queen's request, Lady Jennis Templeton traveled with the king to hold women's courts at Riverrun and Stoney Sept in her place.
Thus died the Lord of Air, his skull crushed by one of the very cobblestones he had helped the king lay down.
The Conquerors' first true test came from Lord Darklyn of Duskendale and Lord Mooton of Maidenpool, who joined their power and marched south with three thousand men to drive the invaders back into the sea.
The prince claimed for himself the style Protector of the Realm, and Rhaenyra named her eldest son, Jacaerys, the Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne.
Several of the more colorful competitors became favorites of the smallfolk, who cheered them raucously each time they fought.
Though not himself a godly man, the first Targaryen king always took care to court the support of the Faith and the High Septon of Oldtown.
Afraid that the boy would raise the alarm, Prince Aemond shouted at him to be quiet, then shoved him backward into a pile of dragon droppings.
He gave her pearls and silks and books and a jade tiara said once to have belonged to the Empress of Leng, read poems to her, dined with her, hawked with her, sailed with her, entertained her by making mock of the greens at court, the "lickspittles" fawning over Queen Alicent and her children.
"I have my own kingdom here," she said, when asked if she meant to return to Westeros.)
Rather than face Balerion's fires, the Eyrie's garrison seized the pretender and delivered him to Lord Royce, opening the Moon Door once again and serving Jonos the kinslayer as he had served his brother.
"When he looks at you, he sees the little girl you were, not the woman you've become," Daemon told his niece, "but I can teach you how to make him see you as a woman."
End and Casterly Rock, offering fair terms and pardonsâ¦after she had put an end to the usurper's brothers, who were in the field against her.
Few questioned his right to take his place at the side of the young king as Hand; some went so far as to whisper that it would be Rogar Baratheon who ruled the realm henceforth, for Jaehaerys was a boy and the son of a weak father, whilst his mother was only a woman.
Only once did Rhaena land Morning inside the Red Keep, however, for not even the best efforts of Prince Viserys could persuade his brother the king to come see his sister fly (though Queen Daenaera was so delighted with Morning that she was heard to say that she wanted a dragon of her own).
Unable to flee, Dreamfyre returned to the attack, savaging her tormenters until the sands of the pit were strewn with charred corpses, and the very air was thick with smoke and the smell of burned flesh, yet still the spears and arrows flew.
For this reason, lords and commons alike began to refer to Maegor as the Prince of Dragonstone.
Septon Eustace tells us that thousands left King's Landing afterward, until the Dowager Queen Alicent ordered the city gates closed and barred.
King Aegon II would soon stand naked before his enemies, all of the king's men knew.
In the space of five years, the gods had taken three of her daughters: Daella in 82 AC, Alyssa in 84 AC, Viserra in 87 AC.
Lady Elissa was with them as well, for she had no intention of remaining behind; her ship, the Maiden's Fancy, had been made ready for the crossing.
The Kingsguard might havedone the deed, though that would have required them to act in concert, as there were two knights posted at each door.
It was raining when the queen's party came ashore, and hardly a face was to be seen about the port.
The day of Aegon's Landing was celebrated by the king and his descendants, but the Conqueror actually dated the start of his reign from the day he was crowned and anointed in the Starry Sept of Oldtown by the High Septon of the Faith.
On the twentieth day of the ninth moon of 50 AC, Jaehaerys Targaryen reached his sixteenth nameday and became a man grown.
In the Gullet, all the dragons had been on their own side.
King Maegor let the poisons fester for almost half a year, so engrossed was he in the building of his Red Keep.
Lord Cregan took his head off with a single swift swing of Ice.
Many of the watchers slunk away, but one barefoot girl came forward, squeaking out a name.
Furious at the king's decree, the prince quit King's Landing, resigning from the City Watch.
d. She took her daughter Aereaâ¦and Blackfyre, stolen from the king's own scabbard as he slept.
Whilst placating Ser Orryn with the pretext of sending for the girl, she sent instead to the High Septon.
The murder of Sharako Lohar of Lys, the admiral who had presided over the Triarchy's disaster in the Gullet, proved to be the spark that engulfed the Three Daughters in flames, fanning the smoldering rivalries of Tyrosh, Lys, and Myr into open war.
ThatLord Moredo was a fearsome fighter, none could doubt; tall and stern, with white-blond hair and blazing blue eyes, he looked the very image of a warrior of Old Valyria, men said, and bore a longsword of Valyrian steel he called Truth.
The Lords of the Trident had no choice but to turn and meet him.
The fighting lasted well into the night, a bloody business and far less one-sided than Aegon's conquest of Harrenhal.
One of her eggs had been given to Rhaena, and it was said that the girl slept with it every night, and prayed for a dragon to match her sister's.
As Lord Corlys loved to sail, Laena loved to fly, and had claimed for her own no less a mount than mighty Vhagar, the oldest and largest of the Targaryen dragons since the passing of the Black Dread in 94 AC.
Summoned to the defense of Harrenhal, Tully declared for House Targaryen instead, raised the dragon banner over his castle, and rode forth with his knights and archers to join his strength to Aegon's.
He turnedto his son Baelon to replace him, and in 99 AC the Prince of Dragonstone became the King's Hand as well.
Once secure in his own person, the new Hand began bringing his own supporters, kin, and friends to court, in place of men and women whose loyalty was less assured.
Accordingly, His Grace ordered the construction of a ring of walls about King's Landing, as high and strong as those that protected Oldtown and Lannisport.
Meanwhile, Queen Alysanne's new ladies-in-waiting and companions had settled in on Dragonstone, and it soon became apparent that her mother's hope that these Wise Women might persuade the little queen that her marriage was unwise and impious had gone seriously awry.
The Hand sent her back to her rooms, posting guards at her door to make certain she remained there until the regents could convene.
Levies from Maidenpool, Darry, and Hayford swelled their numbers on the march, and once across the Trident they were joined by six hundred Freys and a thousand Blackwoods under Lord Benjicot himself, making them nine thousand strong entering the mountains.
And soon enough, the much-hoped-for result appeared, and Alyssa Targaryen grew great with child.
Visenya modeled their vows on those of the Night's Watch; like the black-cloaked crows of the Wall, the White Swords served for life, surrendering all their lands, titles, and worldly goods to live a life of chastity and obedience, with no reward but honor.
End, Queen Alyssa went with him, escorted by Ser Pate the Woodcock and a hundred men-at-arms to see them safe through the kingswood.
Daemon Targaryen returned to the castle just long enough to break his fast with Lord Mooton.
In that same hour, Lady Baela Targaryen was being spirited away to safety by agents of Lord Larys the Clubfoot.
Prince Aemond had no love for any of that ilk, and the haste with which the castellan had yielded Harrenhal to Daemon Targaryen convinced him the old man was a traitor.
When that failed to produce the desired result,Her Grace sent forth hunting parties of "knights inquisitor" to seek after the "traitors and villains" who had escaped her, and punish any man found to have assisted them.
As to the girl Nettles, "She is a common thing, with the stink of sorcery upon her," the queen declared.
It will be recalled that three of the seven knights who served as Maegor the Cruel's Kingsguard were dead; the remaining four had been sent to the Wall to take the black.
In 29 AC and again in 30 AC, Maegor accompanied Osmund Strong and Aethan Velaryon to the Stepstones to root out the Lysene pirate king Sargoso Saan, and fought in several bloody affrays, showing himself to be both fearless and deadly.
The murder of the last of her sons had turned Alicent's heart into a stone.
Bold Jon Roxton slew three before he was slain in turn.
They fought bravely for a time, but a withering rain of arrows from Lord Ormund's archers thinned their ranks, and a thunderous charge by his heavy horse broke them, sending the survivors running back toward the town walls.
So too were the men who had put the king's food taster Ummet to the sword (Mushroom himself gave evidence against them), together with those responsible for cutting down Tom Tangletongue and drowning his father in ale.
Finally he decided that he would wait nolonger for Lord Redwyne, and gave the order to sail.
Sweetberry and Pretty Peri stumbled over one another in their eagerness to confess.
Mushroom tells us that King Aegon III reacted to the decisions of his regents with a sullen silence, speaking only once, to protest the dismissal of Massey and Darklyn.
The Rogare Bank was paying rich returns on all the monies deposited with them, leading more and more lords to entrust the Lyseni with their gold.
Lord Peake could not have pushed the child from the window himself, to be sure, as he was elsewhere in the city when she diedâ¦but the Kingsguard posted at the queen's door that night was Mervyn Flowers, his bastard brother.
A different sort of chaos reigned in Tumbleton, sixty leagues to the southwest.
For Lord Confessor, Manderly tapped Maester Rowley, a fresh-faced youth newly arrived from Oldtown, where he had studied under Archmaester Sandeman, reputedly the wisest healer in the history of Westeros.
As soon as His Holiness was interred, the Most Devout would be assembling in the Starry Sept to choose his successor, and Jaehaerys knew that the peace of the realm depended on the new man continuing the policies of his predecessor.
Desperate to protect her people, Lady Johanna at last donned a man's mail to lead the men of Lannisport and Casterly Rock against the foe.
After ten years in service to the Iron Throne, Lord Rego had grown quite stout, and no longer chose to ride.
It will be remembered that this was also the year that Queen Rhaena died at Harrenhal.
The witch queen's minions hunted him all through the night before abandoning the chase.
Little has been written in the Common Tongue about this strange and extraordinary adventurer, Racallio Ryndoon, but in the Free Cities his life has been the subject of two scholarly studies and uncounted numbers of songs, poems, and vulgar romances.
When provisions inside the castle began to run low, he dispatched a raven to Dragonstone, pleading for succor.
 The  girls  becamehandmaids to Princess Rhaenyra, whilst their elder brother, Ser Harwin Strong, called Breakbones, was made a captain in the gold cloaks.
"Brother," Lady Rhaena said to Aegon, "if it please you, we have brought your new queen."
Amidst the stews of Flea Bottom, Prince Daemon's go-between found suitable instruments.
The riverlords outside the castle walls said later that the towers of Harrenhal glowed red against the night, like five great candlesâ¦and like candles, they began to twist and melt as runnels of molten stone ran down their sides.
Moreover, Princess Rhaenys was with child when her father died.
The acolytes of Yndros could supposedly transform themselves from male to female and female to male through the act of love, and whispers went about that her ladyship oft availed herself of this ability at twilight orgies, so she might visit the brothels on the Street of Silk as a man.
Daeron Targaryen was in his tent asleep when the attack began.
Across the narrow sea, Lys itself was prospering under the "velvet tyranny" of Lysandro Rogare, who had taken on himself the style ofFirst Magister for Life.
Since taking her leave of Lyman Lannister and Casterly Rock, Rhaena Targaryen and her traveling court had made their own royal progress of sorts, visiting the Marbrands of Ashemark, the Reynes of Castamere, the Leffords at the Golden Tooth, the Vances at Wayfarer'sRest, and finally the Pipers of Pinkmaiden.
"When I rose against my uncle Maegor, two of his Kingsguard abandoned him to fight for me," Jaehaerys responded.
"Kingsguard serve for life," the boy said, to which Lord Peake replied, "Only when they have been properly appointed, Your Grace."
Lysaro's brothers and sisters claimed to have played no part in the despoiling of the bank, but many doubted their claims of innocence.
If this betrayal by one she had loved wounded Rhaena Targaryen she hid it well, but there was no hiding her fury.
To lighten their evenings, Her Grace also brought her favorite fool, the Goodwife, with his puppets.
It was said by some that Aegon wed Visenya out of duty and Rhaenys out of desire.
Thereafter she made her way overland to Braavos, whose shipwrights were far famed, but Rhaena Targaryen and Princess Aerea had no notion of her final destination.
Yet if the dragon kings are considered solely on the basis of their legacies, the laws and institutions and improvements they left behind, the name of King Aegon I belongs near the top of the list, in peace as well as war.
Loyal to the end, the Unsullied died to a man fighting to protect himâ¦but only twenty remained with him (Lysaro had taken one hundred when he fled from Lys, but had been forced to sell most of them along the way), and they soon found themselves hemmed in and surrounded in the confused, bloody fighting by the docks.
Though the Great Council of 101 had ruled against his claim, the Velaryon boy remained a grandson of Prince Aemon Targaryen of hallowed memory, a great-grandson of the Old King himself.
Since the days of Old Valyria, it had ever been the custom of House Targaryen to burn their dead, rather than consigning their remains to the ground.
When His Grace greeted Lady Myrielle by name and said not only, "It was good of you to come, my lady," but also, "I am pleased you like the doll," her father surely took heart, believing that all his careful scheming had borne fruit.
It fell to the queen herself to choose between her consort and her Hand.
Queen Daenaera, blushing prettily and stammering just a little, hung about his neck a heavy golden chain studded with sapphires, "b-blue as the sea where my lord has won his victories."
When the Shepherd's lambs smashed through the doors (the towering main gates, sheathed in bronze and iron, were too strong to assault, but the building had a score of lesser entrances) and came clambering through windows, the Dragonkeepers were overwhelmed, and soon slaughtered.
Across the realm in Oldtown, the High Septon was loud in his denunciations of "the abomination and his whores," whilst the king's first wife, Ceryse of House Hightower, continued to insist that she was Maegor's only lawful queen.
She was not without humor, however, and for many years kept her own fool, a hirsute hunchback called Lord Monkeyface whose antics amused her greatly.
And afterward, to honor the fallen king, he took the arms and words of the Durrandon for his own.
Jonos Arryn, this new Lodos, the Vulture Kingâ¦had he wronged them?
His Grace's litter-bearers were amongst them, along with the king's herald, the keeper of the royal wine cellars, and the serving man whose task it was to make certain the king's flagon was always full.
The crowds that lined the streets to cheer the royal couple were significantly smaller than those who had come out for Aegon and Jaehaera, for the Winter Fever had carried off almost a fifth of the population of King's Landing, but those who did brave the day's bitter winds and snow flurries were delighted with their new queen, charmed by her happy waves, flushed cheeks, and shy, sweet smiles.
The best free companies are bound bycontract to Lys, Myr, or Tyrosh.
After lingering in Winterfell for another fortnight, they made their way to Torrhen's Square and thence to Barrowton, where Lord Dustin showed them the barrow of the First King and staged somewhat of a tourney in their honor, though it was a poor thing compared to the tourneys of the south.
The prince helped his woman down from Vhagar's back, then turned to face his uncle.
Princess Rhaenyra took to the birthing bed once more, and gave her uncle Daemon a second son, named Viserys after his grandsire.
He ordered the great gates of the Red Keep barred as well, to keep the disease from king and court.
The dragonseeds Ulf White and Hugh Hammer had gone over to the enemyâ¦but were they the only traitors in their midst?
He had come so far, and surely knew that safety lay only thirty leagues farther on, where Lord Hightower sat encamped beneath the walls of Longtable.
So his guards put themselves between the princelings and escorted Lucerys Velaryon from the Round Hall, back to the castle yard where his dragon, Arrax, was hunched down in the rain, awaiting his return.
End, where Garon Baratheon and young Lord Boremund would see to their upbringing.
And so it was that the tilts that followed his mother's wedding yielded pride of place to the wild melees and bloody duels the maesters would dub the War for the White Cloaks.
Yet Peake fought on with stubborn valor, and near the end, for half a heartbeat, the gods gave him his chance when the last of the guards somehow got his hand around Sandoq's sword, and ripped it from the Shadow's grasp before he went tumbling off the bridge.
"Atop the Hill of Rhaenys, the Dragonpit wore a crown of yellow fire, burning so bright it seemed as if the sun was rising.
At the town of Stoney Sept, both his queens joined him with their dragonsâRhaenys from Storm's
Torrhen's scouts had seen the ruins of Harrenhal, where slow red fires still burned beneath the rubble.
When Lord Corbray answered, "Baela flew a dragon, Rhaena only has the hatchling," Roland Westerling replied, "Baela's dragon brought down our late king.
Ormund Hightower lay dead, along with his cousin Ser Bryndon, the foremost knight of Oldtown.
The tenuous claims of nine lesser competitors were considered and discarded (one such, a hedge knight who put himself forward as a natural son of King Jaehaerys himself, was seized and imprisoned when the king exposed him as a liar).
Queen Visenya proposed to settle the matter by betrothing the infant Rhaena to Maegor, who had just turned eleven.
Innkeeps were required to pay one silver stag for each bed in their inns.
As a confidant and confessor to King Viserys and his queens, Eustace was well placed to know much and more of what went on.
Therefore, let a command be sent at once to Maidenpool, but only for the eyes of Lord Mooton.
Screaming and smoking, the young dragon plunged to earth, and Prince Aegon with her.
*1 It should be noted, lest we be charged with omission, that there was a fourth queen in Westeros in 50 AC.
He had nothing against women, Lord Borros went on to say; he loved his girls, a daughter is a precious thingâ¦but a son, ahhhâ¦should the gods ever grant him a son of his own blood,
Aegon had made the seven kingdoms one with fire and blood, but after celebrating his sixtieth nameday in 33 AC, he turned instead to brick and mortar.
The accord between the Faith and the Iron Throne continued all through the reign of Aegon I. From 11 AC to 37 AC, six High Septons wore the crystal crown; His Grace remained on good terms with each of them, calling at the Starry Sept each time he came to Oldtown.
The king was angry and unyielding, for his shame was deeply felt, and he could not forget Saera's taunting words about his uncle's wives.
Though innocent of high treason, murder, and conspiracy, they still stood accused of fraud and theft; the collapse of the Rogare Bank had led to the ruination of thousands, in Westeros as well as Lys.
And so perished the Red Kraken of Pyke on the eve of his greatest battleâ¦slain not by the sword of a foe, but by his own dagger, in the hand of one of his own wives.
On Dragonstone, the Dowager Queen Visenya had grown thin and haggard, the flesh melting from her bones.
Many of the men who had survived the Battle on the Kingsroad had made their way back to Storm's
Though Princess Daella desperately wished to nurse her child, she had no milk, and a wet nurse was sent for.
When Prince Aegon snatched up Ser Harrold's sword, Ser Alfred knocked the blade aside contemptuously.
The right of a husband to chastise an erring wife was well established throughout the Seven Kingdoms (save in Dorne).
Preparations for the king's nameday celebrations and the royal progress to follow consumed all of the attention of the Hand and the three regents in the days that followed.
By the time the hue and cry went up, she was halfway across Blackwater Bay, having hired a fisherman to carry her to Driftmark.
Suffice it to say that whilst the Red Kraken had proved a valuable ally to the blacks during the Dance, the coming of peace demonstrated that the ironmen had no more regard for them than for the greens.
but when her chance came, in 85 AC, she seized it, fleeing from the motherhouse in the dead of night and making her way down to the docks.
When Ser Damon assured him that no one was going to laugh at him, the messenger said, "Don't come again unless you mean to bend your knees, she says.
From that day on, he never called her anything but âwhore,' until finally the girl decided that if she must be called a whore she would live as one, and made her way to Mole's Town.
To press that claim, the Archon of Tyrosh called up Racallio Ryndoon, the flamboyant captain-general who had once commanded the Triarchy's forces against Daemon Targaryen.
Viserys had their tongues removed for this insolence, though he let them keep their heads.
Fanned by strong winds and fed by dry grasses, the blaze had raged for three days and three nights, engulfing half a dozen villages and one free company, the Adventurers, who found themselves trapped between the onrushing flames and a Tyroshi host under the command of the Archon himself.
With Rhaena's death, Jaehaerys granted Harrenhal and all its lands and incomes to Ser Bywin Strong, the brother of Ser Lucamore Strong of his Kingsguardand a renowned knight in his own right.
With House Gardener extinguished, Aegon the Conqueror had granted Highgarden and the rule of the Reach to House Tyrell, the former royal stewards.
Upon his arrival, Alaric Stark led His Grace down to the crypts below the castle to show him his brother's tomb.
The bloody struggle for the Iron Throne knownas the Dance of the Dragons, fought from 129â131 AC, had its rootshalf a century earlier, during the longest and most peaceful reign that any of the Conqueror's descendants ever enjoyed, that of Jaehaerys I Targaryen, the Conciliator.
Unlike his sister Rhaena, Jaehaerys Targaryen was not a man given to making threats, but he had his own ways of making his disapproval felt.
Mushroom, upon hearing a report of his words, dubbed the fight the Butcher's Ball, and so it has been known ever since.
With the hindsight of history to guide us, we can look back and see that all the portents were there, ominous signs of difficult days ahead, but even the archmaesters of the Conclave saw none of that as they reflected on the year about to end.
In A Caution for Young Girls, this lad is described as a handsome boy her own age, but the maester's account differs, painting the seducer as a pox-scarred varlet of thirty years distinguished only by a "male member as stout as a stallion's."
Any children born of such a union would be "abominations in the sight of gods and men," the Father of the Faithful proclaimed, in a declaration that was read by ten thousand septons throughout the Seven Kingdoms.
Elsewise, Septon Eustace tells us, the king received the decrees "courteously" and thanked Lord Peake for his wisdom, as "I am still a boy, as your lordship knows, and in want of instruction in these matters."
Purple was his favorite color (hinting at the possibility of a tie to Braavos), and most accounts of him make mention of long curling purple hair, oft streaked with orange.
On Dragonstone, young Alyn Velaryon was demanding the release of Lord Corlys (this much was true), and threatening to descend upon King's Landing with his ships if the old man was harmed (half-true).
Just as the queen had expected, they welcomed her now, and when the rest of her party landed in Lannisport, the Lannisters took them in as well.
Addam of Hull, dragonseed and bastard, becameAddam Velaryon, heir to Driftmark.
All three chronicles agree on one particular: the first blood shed in the Dance of the Dragons belonged to Lord Lyman Beesbury, master of coin and lord treasurer of the Seven Kingdoms.
Thus passed the last living creature from the days of Aegon's Conquest, as dusk and darkness swallowed Black Harren's accursed seat.
"On no account can Prince Daemon be allowed to ascend to the Iron Throne," the Hand wrote his brother, Lord of Oldtown.
The sight of the queen's dragons in the sky above took the heart out of the opposition, and King Aegon's remaining loyalists hid or fled or bent the knee.
Hours later, as dawn was breaking, the last of Maegor's queens came seeking after him.
And the sheep she fed to Sheepstealer to bind him to herâ¦how would she have come by those, if not by lifting her skirts for some shepherd?
By playing each bank against the others, the Lord of Air negotiated as favorable terms as might be hoped for.
Those difficulties were exacerbated by the growing unpopularity of the Lord of Air, Rego Draz.
The Chronicles of Maidenpool tell us Lord Mooton made so bold as to suggest that the dragonriders divide their search, so as to cover twice the ground.
End with her infant son, but sent her daughters Cassandra, Ellyn, and Floris to represent House Baratheon.
Having sired no children by either of his wives, he commanded his maester to draft a will and confession, wherein he absolved his brothers Borys, Garon, and Ronnal of having played any role in his wrongdoing, begged for mercy for his youngest brother, Orryn, and named Ser Borys as heir to Storm's
If the Targaryens dared to send dragons against him, he would fill the air with bolts and kill them all.
All his life Prince Aegon had been considered the heir presumptive to the Iron Throne, but now, suddenly, he found himself reviled by the pious and abandoned by many he had thought to be his leal friends.
Despite his youth, the boy lord had refused to delegate authority to older men.
Long before any man had reason to doubt her innocence, the question of selecting a suitable consort for Rhaenyra had been of concern to King Viserys and his council.
Upon their return to King's Landing, Lord Rogar instructed all those who had accompanied them to Dragonstone to speak no word of what had transpired there, if they wished to keep their tongues.
The enigma that is Larys Strong the Clubfoot has vexed students of history for generations, and is not one we can hope to unravel here.
Mushroom tells us that the Tiger was on the point of giving a fourth name, mayhaps the true name, when he expired.
Lord Rodrik wept as well, and begged the queen's permission to bury his precious princess in the Vale, but Alysanne refused.
When the Hand and the Queen Regent had made their departure,the king and his young bride closed the castle gates and returned to their chambers.
Then Harren the Black retired to his tower, surrounded by his household guard, to sup with his remaining sons.
Argilac had the hands of Aegon's envoy cut off and returned to him in a box.
Jaehaerys took every blow on his shield, however, contenting himself with defense whilst the younger man wore himself out.
By the time he arrived in Oldtown, so many knights and squires and freeriders had joined him that his numbers had swollen to two thousand.
Thereafter Queen Alicent kept to the Red Keep, whilst the princess spent her days on Dragonstone, attended by her ladies, Mushroom, and her champion, Ser Harwin Strong.
Wines from the Arbor flowed like water at their feasts, the halls and yards of Dragonstone rang with laughter, and the women of the court dazzled in pearls and diamonds.
"He grows larger every day," Jaehaerys said as he scratched the great wyrm under his jaw.
Nor had the common folk of the city forgotten the cruel murder of Prince Jaehaerys by Blood and Cheese, and the terrible death of Prince Maelor at Bitterbridge.
King Viserys and Queen Aemma hosted many a feast and tourney, and lavished gold, offices,and honors on their favorites.
Half of every year was still given over to a royal progress, but now it was Prince Aenys and his wife, Lady Alyssa, who journeyed from castle to castle, whilst the agingking remained at home, dividing his days between Dragonstone and King's Landing.
The grandson of a hedge knight, Ser Lucas was a patient teacher who soon became a favorite with Prince Viserys, and even won a certain grudging respect from King Aegon.
Given the amount of traffic that came and went from King's Landing every day, the gate tax proved to be highly lucrative, bringing in more than enough coin to meet the needâ¦but at considerable cost to Rego Draz himself, as the grumbling against him increased tenfold.
Detaching his Lady Baela from the fleet, he sailed her into Bloodstone beneath a parley flag, to try to arrange free passage for his ships through Ryndoon's waters.
A lord's widow, be she a second, third, or later wife, could no longer be driven from his castle, nor deprived of her servants, clothing, and income.
The wedding guests came ostensibly to celebrate the union of Rogar Baratheon and the Dowager Queen, but they had other reasons for attendance, it should not be doubted.
Lord Bar Emmon went so far as to suggest that mayhaps the time had come to bend their knees to Aegon II.
Three were young septons; cunning Septon Baldrick, learned Septon Rollo, and fierce old Septon Alfyn, who had lost his legs years before and was carried everywhere in a litter.
Against Vhagar alone she might have had some chance, but against Vhagar and Sunfyre together, doom was certain.
It was only then that the princess came to realize that she was not there to answer for Tom Turnip, but for more shameful sins.
He considered his brother as well, until he recalled Prince Daemon's previous stints onthe small council.
He was a miserable fighter, and he had a gift for making everyone around him miserable as well, even Baelon the Brave.
"Any man can be killed," declared Ser Hobert Hightower, "but what of the dragons?"
Hostages in all but name, they spent their uncle's reign being shuttled between Driftmark, Dragonstone, and King's Landing at the will of others, until Visenya's death in 44 AC offered Queen Alyssa an opportunity to escape, a chance she seized with alacrity, fleeing Dragonstone with Jaehaerys, Alysanne, and the blade Dark Sister.
Driven by desperation, Clegg suggested, Prince Nymor might have threatened that, should his peace be refused, he would engage the Faceless Men of Braavos to kill King Aegon's son and heir, Queen Rhaenys's boy, Aenys, then but six years old.
Princess Maegelle was ten years of age, and eager to take the vows.
(Bernard did live, and spent the rest of his life as a scribe, copying holy books at the Starry Sept under a vow of silence.)
The peace talks dragged on far longer than anticipated, for the acrimony between the two Free Cities ran deeper than Jaehaerys had known.
Grand Maester Greydon, who wrote the definitive history of the Kingdom of the Three Daughters fifty years later, described it as "thirty-three horses, each pulling in his own direction."
As King Viserys had no living son, Daemon regarded himself as the rightful heir to the Iron Throne, and coveted the title Prince of Dragonstone, which His Grace refused to grant himâ¦but by the end of year 105 AC, he was known to his friends as the Prince of the City and to the smallfolk as Lord Flea Bottom.
That task done, Alyssa and the other ladies took their leave of the royal bedchamber, but Alys remained, joining the king and his newest wife in a night of carnal lust.
Summoning Ser Otto to the throne room, he tore the chain of office from his neck and tossed it to Ser Criston Cole.
Grand Maester Orwyle, it seemed, had experienced a change of heart as regarded taking the black.
"White Harbor is not unsympathetic to your mother's plight," Manderly declared.
Jaehaerys died so often that the men of the garrison made a game of it, shouting "The king is dead" every time he fell, and "Long live the king" when he struggled to his feet.
It cannot be said Jaehaerys avoided conflict entirely, for that would be beyond the power of any earthly king, but such wars as he fought were short, victorious, and contested largely at sea or on distant soil.
First to pay that price were the captive lords languishing in the dungeons under the Red Keep, men who had once sworn to defend the rights of Princess Rhaenyra and still stubbornly refused to bend the knee to King Aegon.
King Aegon III Targaryen wed Lady Daenaera on the last day of the 133rd year since Aegon's Conquest.
The heads of Lord Larys Strong and Ser Gyles Belgrave were mounted on either side of the Red Keep's gates.
The king's bastard brother Brandon Snow offered to cross the Trident aloneunder cover of darkness, to slay the dragons whilst they slept.
End at the head of an army, whilst Alysanne, Jaehaerys, and their sister, Rhaena, descended on King's Landing with their dragons.
White had a greater prize in mind: he desired no less a seat than Highgarden, declaring that the Tyrells had played no part in the Dance, and therefore should be attainted as traitors.
Both of these were put to question by the Lord Confessor, and finally declared innocent (though the boy died under questioning and the girl lost a hand for theft).
(Amongst those thus enslaved was Lady Johanna Swann, a fifteen-year-old niece of the Lord of Stonehelm.
She was the ideal choice, the Hand declared; the same age as the king, "a lovely girl, andcourteous," born of one of the noblest houses in the realm, schooled by septas to read, write, and do sums.
Meanwhile, thousands of Poor Fellows still haunted the roads and wild places of the Reach, the Trident, and the Vale; though they would never again assemble in large numbers to face the king in open battle, the Stars fought on in smaller ways, falling upon travelers and swarming over towns, villages, and poorly defended castles, slaying the king's loyalists wherever they found them.
With the realm at peace, and spring in full flower, Lord Torrhen Manderly decided that King Aegon and Queen Daenaera should make a royal progress to mark his coming of age.
One evening, after a day in which Jaehaerys had been severely tested and battered, Maester Culiper said to him, "Your Grace, why do you punish yourself so harshly?
Aemma Arryn, the daughter of Lord Rodrik and Princess Daella, came into the world a fortnight early, after a long and troubled labor.
I've heard he sired a bastard in the Reach, and another here in King's Landing."
Though commanding far fewer men, the two Alans harassed him day and night, raiding his camps, murdering his scouts, setting fires in his line of march.
Though Lady Johanna's wish to put every ironman to the sword was frustrated, no man could doubt that the Lannisters had paid their debt by the time the fight was done.
"As for my half-brothers and my sweet sister, Helaena," she announced, "they have been led astray by the counsel of evil men.
Meanwhile, the smallfolk of Fair Isle and such knights as still remained on the island rose up in red rebellion.
Nonetheless, Lord Oakenfist got fresh casks of water, enough food to see them through to Oldtown and the Arbor, and charts showing the deadly whirlpools that lurked along the southern coast of Dorne.
Her mother had been carried off by the Winter Fever; her father had died in the Stepstones when his True Heart went down.
Eustace does not believe this was wholly fortuitous; the king's death had been anticipated for some time, he argues, and Queen Alicent and her party, the so-called greens, had taken care to instruct all of Viserys's guards and servants in what to do when the day came.
"The first night is an offense against the King's Peace," the queen concluded.
But here confusion arises, for Munkun says it was Vhagar that Swann meant to kill, to put an end to Prince Aemond's raidsâ¦but it must be remembered that Munkun draws largely on Grand Maester Orwyle for his version of events, and Orwyle was in the dungeons when these things occurred.
Septon Eustace suggests that "the Mother moved him to mercy that night," though Lord Cregan did not worship the Seven.
This concluded the last of the treason trials, but the dungeons beneath the Red Keep had not as yet been emptied.
And every time a child went missing, the ignorant would look at one another and talk of Saagael's insatiable thirst for blood.
The son came the next yearâ¦but the boy, named Aegon after his grandsire, was born to Lady Alyssa and fathered by Prince Aenys.
When word of this got back to the king (legend says that it was the whore sitting in Daemon's lap who informed on him, but evidence suggests it was actually one of his drinking companions, a captain in the gold cloaks eager for advancement), Viserys became livid.
Ummet, the king's food taster whose murder Mushroom claims to have seen, seems a more likely candidate.)
Had she been a boy she would surely have been sent to the Citadel to forge a maester's chain, Septon Barth would say of herâ¦for that wise man esteemed her even more than her husband, whom he served for so long.
High above the city the queen and her prince consort came together, circling over Aegon's High Hill.
Rising, he took aim on theEvenstar a hundred yards below, and loosed his bolt.
Helaena's daughter, Jaehaera, could be made his own ward, and in due time be married to Prince Aegon the Younger, binding the two halves of House Targaryen together once again.
Celtigar urged the princess to fly against King's Landing at once, and reduce the city to ash and bone.
Meanwhile, the tedium of rule was left largely to the king's small council and his Hand.
With his passing, a great hole was torn in the tattered fabric of the Seven Kingdoms.
King Jaehaerys saw through Lady Elissa's false name at once, and immediately sent ravens to Lord Donnel in Oldtown, commanding him to take this woman into custody and deliver her to the Red Keep for questioning.
Sons spilled forth from their chapterhouse to defend His High Holiness, surrounding the Starry Sept with a ring of steel.
Behind his walls, his lordship could only watch as his fields and woods and villages were burned, his sheep and cattle and smallfolk put to the sword.
It is said that Maegor was seated on the Iron Throne with the head of the Grand Maester in his hands when Queen Tyanna came to tell him he had been deceived.
From there the prince went on to show his niece how best to touch a man to bring him pleasure, an exercise that sometimes involved Mushroom himself and his alleged enormous member.
The task of building them was conferred upon Grand Maester Gawen and Ser Osmund Strong, the Hand of the King.
Flowers would never have pushed the queen out that window, the dwarf claims, but he might well have stood aside to allow someone else to enter her room, if that someone were known to himâ¦ someone, mayhaps, like Tessario the Thumb, or one of the Fingers.
Nor was His Grace strong enough for a long journey across the realm to Red Lake, through regions infested with traitors, rebels, and broken men.
Like his brother, Jace, Luke had brown eyes and a healthy head of brown hair, rather than the silver-gilt hair of Targaryen princelings, but he was a large and lusty lad, and King Viserys was delighted with him when the child was presented at court.
The next morning some local fisherfolk took their boats around the Dragonmont and returned to report seeing the burned and broken remains of a dead dragon at the mountain's base.
This we do know: Cregan Stark and Jacaerys Velaryon reached an accord, and signed and sealed the agreement that Grand Maester Munkun calls "the Pact of Ice and Fire" in his True Telling.
The same road should be continued north of the city, from the Rush to the Trident and beyond, straight along the Green Fork and through the Neck, then across the wild trackless North to Winterfell and the Wall.
Dawn was breaking over the city before Queen Alicent dispatched the Kingsguard to bring her sons Aegon and Aemond to the council.
His words rang across the inner ward, and in that moment, the broken boy Aegon III seemed every inch a king.
Queen Elinor's proven fertility was another point in her favor, he argued.
His High Holiness had been a leal servant to the gods and a staunch friend to the Iron Throne, it was only right that they be there to see him laid to rest.
Lord Walton pursued them, but two days north in the snows of the haunted forest, he and his men were set upon by giants.
It was written afterward that Walton Stark slew two of them before he was dragged from his saddle and torn apart.
Lord Rogar did not get the second son that he had prayed for.
Grand Maester Munkun tells us that the southron host numbered more than twenty thousand as it crept upriver, almost a tenth of them mounted knights.
When Lady Elissa came to say her farewells, the princess wept and clung to her leg, pleading with her to stay, or failing that, to take her along.
The loss of King's Landing and the Iron Throne had enraged him, and when word of the Fishfeed reached Harrenhal, the Lord Protector had almost strangled the squire who delivered the news.
Yet Rhaenyra knew him at once, and said, "Dear brother.
Five continued to insist upon their innocence, declaring that they had truly believed the treason to be Lord Rowan's, and thus had joined the plot to save His Grace from the Lyseni who meant to kill him.
Yet neither Waters nor any of the other knights and lords present in the yard spoke a word of protest as King Aegon II delivered his half- sister to his dragon.
By the time Aenys returned to King's Landing the news had grown even worse.
His words, and those of the king, horrified Lord Velaryon.
By the end of 131 AC, Septon Eustace tells us, a "grey calm" had settled over King's Landing and the crownlands.
In that same year, Maegor made Lord Lucas Harroway, father of his wife Queen Alys, his new Handâ¦but it was not the Hand who had the king's ear.
The daughters of Fredo and Lysaro Rogare would soon find themselves back in the Perfumed Garden where they had played as children, but as bed slaves, not proprietors.
Lean and handsome and growing taller every year, Aegon was said by many to be the very image of his grandsire at the same age.
At this the princess's will gave way.
"Lady Myrielle is a delightful girl, and I have no doubt that she would make a splendid queen," he told the Hand, "but we must be concerned with appearances, my lord.
Queen Alys announced she was with child, and the court rejoiced.
Lady Aemma had suffered severalmiscarriages and the death of one son in the cradle over the course of her marriage (some maesters felt she had been married and bedded too young), but she had also given birth to a healthy daughter, Rhaenyra (born 97 AC).
Yet in many ways King's Landing was still little more than an army camp that had swollen to grotesque size: dirty, reeking, unplanned, impermanent.
*In King's Landing, the long reign of Jaehaerys I Targaryen began in earnest.
Many of their stories have been collected in Archmaester Abelon's mammoth When Women Ruled: Ladies of the Aftermath.
Septon Eustace tells us that the Kinslayer was determined that this should be his victory; he had no wish to share the glory with his brothers, nor any other man.
Shunning castles and cities, Rhaena and her dragon were glimpsed flying over the Fingers and the Mountains of the Moon, the misty green forests of Cape Wrath, the Shield Islands, and the Arborâ¦but nowhere did she seek out human company.
"The boy in the belly," the unborn child who had been the subject of so much debate, proved to be a girl when born in 93 AC.
There (as Mushroom put it so memorably many years later) they found themselves face-to-face with "a dead man and a dying dragon."
Down in the black cells, Ser Perkin's men even found King Aegon's former master of coin, Ser Tyland Lannister, still aliveâ¦though Rhaenyra's torturers had blinded him, pulled out his fingernails and toenails, cut off his ears, and relieved him of his manhood.
The bells began to ring on the tenth day of the third moon of 129 AC, tolling the end of a reign.
King Argilac, last of the Durrandon, had arrested this decline for a time, turning back a Dornish invasion whilst still a boy, crossing the narrow sea to join the great alliance against the imperialist "tigers" of Volantis, and slaying Garse VII Gardener, King of the Reach, in the Battle of Summerfield twenty years later.
Maegor himself settled on a different explanation, and sent Ser Owen Bush and Ser Maladon Moore to seize Queen Tyanna and deliver her to the dungeons.
Barth tells us that Jaehaerys was opposed to the marriage; the young king felt that his Hand was overreaching himself, motivated more by a desire for power and position than a true affection for his mother.
Their roars echoed across the Gods Eye as the two grappled and tore at one another, dark against a blood-red sky.
Harren and his last sons died in the fires that engulfed his monstrous fortress that night.
With the Crown's gold once more secure, Ser Tyland set aside a million golden dragons as loans for lords whose holdings had been destroyed during the Dance.
Ser Corwyn Corbray departed Duskendale at the same time to join his brother on the march.
In his grief and fury, King Aegon II commanded that all the city's ratcatchers be taken out and hanged, and this was done.
Lady Baela stayed with Moondancer all the way down.
When Aegon protested that Lord Corlys, Lord Larys, and Ser Perkin were friends, the Lord of Winterfell replied that false friends were more dangerous to a king than any foe, that the Snake, the Clubfoot, and the Flea had saved him only to make use of him, so they might rule Westeros in his name.
Less than a fortnight later, as Septon Murmison was crossing the city in his litter, a group of Poor Fellows came swarming from an alley and hacked him to pieces with their axes.
Their first victim was Ser Morgan Hightower, late of their order, cut down and butchered on the road to Honeyholt.
(Mushroom also claims that Vermax left a clutch of dragon's eggs at Winterfell, which is equally absurd.
Each man took a wound from the other, it was said, but in the end the last of the Durrandon got his wish, and died with a sword in his hand and a curse on his lips.
Foremost amongst them were his half-sisters, Baela and Rhaena, who reminded the prince that he would have lost an ear and perhaps more if Lord Corlys had not acted as he did.
Viserys I Targaryen had a generous, amiable nature, and was well loved by his lords and smallfolk alike.
Alysanne made him the court singer, the first of many who would hold that office in the decades to come.
Queen Alysanne accompanied him for part of his travels, but not all; she had not yet recovered her full strength after childbirth, and the grief that followed.
Baela's time on Dragonstone had been more troubled, ending with fire and blood.
The worst blow came from Storm's
When Hightower denounced him as a turncloak, Ser Luthor laughed.
The instrument the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard chose for the king's vengeance was his Sworn Brother, Ser Arryk Cargyll.
Four knights of the Kingsguard accompanied the young king to the council chambers.
The present occupant of that holy office, whom Septon Moon had derided as the High Lickspittle, was cautious and complaisant, so there was little to no danger of any marriage being denounced from Oldtown so long as he continued to speak for the Seven from his seat in the Starry Sept.
Daella became seasick crossing Blackwater Bay, however, and on her return complained that "he likes his boats better than he likes me."
"And what of my half-brothers?" Rhaenyra demanded, when the Sea Snake put this plan before her.
It was said the screams of the burning men could be heard throughout the city, and a pall of smoke lingered over King's Landing for days.
And there are still others who hold them all blameless and lay the High Septon's death at the door of another rumored sorceress, the Dowager Queen Visenya Targaryen.
His son and heir, another Brandon, burned the yards where they were built, and was known as Brandon the Burner forevermore.
Alys Rivers flew with him, her long hair streaming black behind her, her belly swollen with child.
He first came to the attention of the court when he won the melee held at Maidenpool in honor of King Viserys's accession.
His Grace's open-handedness was legendary, and the Red Keep became a place of song and splendor.
(Amongst those who witnessed the meeting was Ser Byron Swann, second son of Lord of Stonehelm in the Dornish Marches, who would have his own small part to play later in the Dance.)
Also, with the passage of time Queen Rhaena grew ever more resentful that her own claim to the Iron Throne, and that of her daughters, had been disregarded in favor of that of "my baby brother" (as she was wont to call Jaehaerys).
Jaehaerys had received his sister in his solar, with only Grand Maester Benifer present to bear witness to what was said.
Aegon himself placed the crown upon the head of his child bride.
She sent men to Driftmark, only to learn that Lady Elissa had sailed to Pentos.
King Viserys at first refused to believe a word of it, until Prince Daemon confirmed the tale was true.
And in the event that both of them were "found wanting, for whatever obscure reason," Lady Sam helpfully appended the names of thirty-one other nubile maidens from Houses Hightower, Redwyne, Tarly, Ambrose, Florent, Cobb, Costayne, Beesbury, Varner, and Grimm who might be suitable as queens.
The arrival of Ser Steffon Darklyn, late of Aegon's Kingsguard, was an occasion of much joy on Dragonstone, especially when it was learned that he and his fellow loyalists ("turncloaks," Ser Otto would name them, when offering a reward for their capture) had brought the stolen crown of King Jaehaerys the Conciliator.
And like some vast beast with ten thousand legs, the lambs began to move, shoving and pushing, waving their torches, brandishing swords and knives and other, cruder weapons, walking and running through the streets and alleys toward the Dragonpit.
At Castle Black the queen saw her first wildlings.
Behind the walls of the Red Keep, the Dowager Queen Alicent and Lord Larys Strong had offered the SeaSnake his freedom, a full pardon for his treasons, and a place on the king's small council if he would bend his knee to Aegon II as his king and deliver them the swords and sails of Driftmark.
He was careful with his coin, but not niggardly; he was not humorless at all, though his humor had an edge to it, sharp as a knife; his sons and daughter and the people of Winterfell seemed to love him well enough.
More than two years passed between Aegon's landing and his Oldtown coronationâ¦and even then the Conquest remained incomplete, since Dorne remained unsubdued.
Arrax fell, broken, to be swallowed by the storm-lashed waters of the bay.
A few of the other drinkers drew swords and daggers of their own, but none were knights, and Ser Rickard cut his way through them.
The aged Septon Oswyck, who had performed the wedding rites for Jaehaerys and Alysanne, kept the sept on Dragonstone, but a young lady of royal birth required one of her own sex to see to her religious instruction.
Ulf White was inside Tumbleton, sleeping off a night of drinking at an inn called the Bawdy Badger that he had taken for his own.
Many and more at Queen Rhaenyra's court must surely have suspected the same.
Elissa Farman and the rest of the queen's friends boarded Maiden's Fancy untouched and set sail for Lannisport.
"No man ever feared Ser Hobert's sword," Mushroom says of him, "but his wine cup wasdeadlier than Valyrian steel."
"Here I have you to myself, day and night," she told Jaehaerys.
Last of the three, and least in many eyes, was Rodrik Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie and Protector of the Vale.
Many assume, wrongly, that the reign of King Aegon I Targaryen began on the day he landed at the mouth of the Blackwater Rush, beneath the three hills where the city of King's Landing would eventually stand.
Prince Lucerys recalled his promise to his mother.
Lord Jasper Wylde, master of laws, known amongst the smallfolk as "Ironrod," completed the council.
The doors to the throne room were thrown open, and the daughters of Prince Daemon entered upon a blast of winter air.
In the village commons at Crossed Elms, another of the ghastly feasts was found.
On the far side of Cobbler's Square, the Shepherd was bundled away by his acolytes.
With the North already in the grip of winter, the journey took thrice as long as expected.
In 101 AC Prince Baelon complained of a stitch in his side whilst hunting in the kingswood.
His body was left out in the ward of the Red Keep for a fortnight, at the king's command.
Each had already received a summons from King's Landing, demanding they present themselves at the Red Keep to swear oaths of loyalty to the new king.
Though her own children had all been stillborn, the milk that flowed so abundantly from the breasts of Alys Rivers had nourished countless babes born of other women at Harrenhal.
2 Certain copies of A Wanton's Tale include an additional amorous episode wherein Lord Rogar himself has carnal knowledge of the girl "all through the night," but these are almost certainly a later addition by some lustful scribe or depraved pander.
King Mern had brought half again as many men to the battle as King Loren, and so demanded the honor of commanding the center.
*By all rights, the year 122 AC should have been a joyous one for House Targaryen.
Though he and Aemon were a comfort to the king and queen in their time of grief, along with Aemon's wife, the Lady Jocelyn, and their daughter, Rhaenys, it was to her own remaining daughters that Alysanne turned for solace.
Glad cries rang down the field as word of the king's death spread, and one by one the Lord of the Trident and their allies came forward to bend their knees before Prince Aegon and hail him as their king.
A household knight of relatively low birth, Correy was known to have a lord's tastes and a peasant's purse, and was given to extravagant wagering besides, which lends a certain credence to the fool's version of events.
But the child, when he came early the following year, would prove to be robust and healthy, a big red-faced boy born with a fuzz of jet-black hair and "a squall that could be heard from Dorne to the Wall."
Princess Rhaenyra wanted Maester Gerardys, who had long served her on Dragonstone, elevated to replace Mellos; it was only his healing skills that had saved the king's life when Viserys cut his hand on the throne, she claimed.
Ravens went forth to Driftmark and Dragonstone to announce the accordâ¦and not a day too soon, for they found young Alyn Velaryon gathering his ships for an attack on Dragonstone, and King Aegon II preparing once again to behead his cousin Baela.
End was still held by Lord Borros Baratheon, no friend of the queen.
As for the king, the new Grand Maester went on, "Aegon shows little interest in his wife, or any other girl.
Her father, inspecting the Tower of the Hand, was flung from its roof to smash upon the stones below.
"Ser Marston," he said, "this man is my Hand and innocent of treason.
Once joined by Lord Stark and his bannermen, the black brothers retook Rimegate and hanged the oathbreakers, save for Ser Olyver himself, who was beheaded by Lord Stark with his celebrated blade Ice.
Born a bastard in a brothel,"King Cunny" had reigned briefly over his kingdom on a hill during the Moon of Madness, seen his mother put to death, and served Aegon III as cupbearer, whipping boy, and friend.
The Dragon was survived by his sister Visenya; his sons, Aenys and Maegor; and five grandchildren.
Henceforth, it was decreed, a bride's maidenhead would belong only to her husband, whether joined before a septon or a heart tree, and any man, be he lord or peasant, who took her on her wedding night or any other night would be guilty of the crime of rape.
Drazenko perished first, choking to death upon a piece of bacon.
The queen pressed on toward Duskendale.
The queen scarce had time to grieve for him before his brother seized the throne that rightly belonged to her eldest son.
When none of the Grand Maester's cures proved efficacious, the Dowager Queen took charge of the king's care, and Aenys seemed to improve for a timeâ¦only to suffer a sudden collapse when word reached him that thousands of Poor Fellows had surrounded Crakehall, where his son and daughter were reluctant "guests."
Ser Raynard Ruskyn became Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, whilst Ser Adrian Thorne was chosen to command the gold cloaks.
The fool had grown fond of the big northman, it would seem, and had eagerly accepted his offer of a place at White Harbor rather than remain with a king who seldom smiled and never laughed.
After the coronation, the remaining Kingsguard escorted Aegon to his mount, a splendid creature with gleaming golden scales and pale pink wing membranes.
When Aegon learned that his half-sister would be returning on the Violande, he commanded Ser Alfred Broome to prepare a "suitable welcome" for her homecoming.
In the final moments of the fight, Ser Criston knocked Dark Sister from Prince Daemon's hand with his morningstar, to the delight of His Grace and the fury of the prince.
She was so sorry, she told the queen, she had never wanted to be bad, Stinger made her and Saera said she was a craven, so she showed them, but now she was with child and she did not know who the father was, and what was she to do?
In Grand Maester Munkun's account, the words are Orwyle's, spoken softly, no more than a quibble.
Arguments between the great houses of the realm were adjudicated by the Crown.
Prince Aemon followed a few hours later, after bidding farewell to Lady Jocelyn and their daughter, Rhaenys.
It was past time for him to take a new wife, Maegor's counselors agreedâ¦but they parted ways on who that wife should be.
Whilst the dynasty survived, the end of the fighting saw Targaryen power much diminished, and the world's last dragons vastly reduced in number.
Twelve days of smooth sailing out of Westeros, the Sun Chaser and her two companions were as far south as the Summer Islands, according to their best calculations, and farther west than any ship had sailed beforeâ¦or any ship that had returned to tell of it, at least.
More and more highborn lords from the westerlands and beyond were visiting Fair Isle, Maester Smike noted, but when they came it was to have audience with the Queen in the West, not with the minor lordling of a small isle and his son.
Twelve years before the Doom of Valyria (114 BC), Aenar Targaryen sold his holdings in the Freehold and the Lands of the Long Summer, and moved with all his wives, wealth, slaves, dragons, siblings, kin, and children to Dragonstone, a bleak island citadel beneath a smoking mountain in the narrow sea.
Alysanne remained in the Red Keep, presiding over council meetings in the king's absence, and holding audience from a velvet seat at the base of the Iron Throne.
Knighted for valor after the Battle of the Honeywine by Bold Jon Roxton, he had died only six days later in a meaningless skirmish with a band of broken men he stumbled on whilst scouting.
Eustace Hightower's voyage home would prove to be nigh as perilous as his voyage out had been.
Their wedding was as lavish a spectacle as the Seven Kingdoms had seen since the coronation of Aegon II in the Dragonpit.
Oakenfist was still a young man in 133 AC, and young men are not known for their patience.
Glimpsed every few years, a dragon was a wonder and a terror to behold, and it was true that some of the Fair Islanders took pride in having "a dragon of our own."
A common myth, oft heard amongst the ignorant, claims that Aegon Targaryen had never set foot upon the soil of Westeros until the day he set sail to conquer it, but this cannot be truth.
Though near exhaustion, he went next to the yard and loosed Vermithor, then flew to Dragonstone to tell them there was no need for the hatchling after all.
At the Fishfeed he had famously wept at the sight of so many dead, yet he did not flinch from battle afterward, but rather sought it out.
With their commander dead and many of the City Watch stricken and shivering, the streets and alleys of King's Landing fell prey to lawlessness and license.
He turned to Grand Maester Benifer then, and commanded that ravens be sent forth to every castle in the Seven Kingdoms.
A raven was duly sent to Storm's
Prentys Tully, the royal justiciar, nominated a younger sister of his own wife, Lucinda, famed for her piety.
Though outnumbered ten to one, the queen's garrison might still have resisted, but Ser Garth chose instead to strike Rhaenyra's banners, open his gates, and trust to the mercy of the foe.
Queen Alicent asked one day at court.
"She sparkled," Mushroom says, "and when she smiled, the singers in the galley rejoiced, for they knew that here at last was a maid worthy of a song."
Helaena Targaryen, sister, wife, and queen to King Aegon II and mother of his children, threw herself from her window in Maegor's Holdfast to die impaled upon the iron spikes that lined the dry moat below.
On its island, protected by the Sea Snake's ships and its high Valyrian walls, Dragonstone seemed unassailable, so the garrison Her Grace left to defend it was small, made up largely of men judged to be of little other use: greybeards and green boys, the halt and slow and crippled, men recovering from wounds, men of doubtful loyalty, men suspected of cowardice.
The seven knights of the Kingsguard stood witness to the union, their white cloaks snapping in the wind.
Aemon had won his spurs at seventeen, so Baelon must needs do the same at sixteen, traveling across the Reach to Old Oak, where Lord Oakheart was celebrating the birth of a son with seven days of jousting.
That a pact was reached at all was considered somewhat of a miracle, and largely due to the king's veiled hint that Westeros itself might enter the war if an accord was not reached
Having outlived all of his children and suffered the betrayal of his nephews and cousins, the Sea Snake seemed more than eager to accept these newfound grandsons.
In the great tourney at Riverrun in 28 AC, Maegor unhorsed three knights of the Kingsguard in successive tilts before falling to the eventual champion.
Septon Barth was more reflective, as he observed the princess at the age of twelve in 79 AC.
Three septons traveling with His Grace declared Poxy Jeyne a witch, and Maegor ordered her to be burned alive in a field beside the Wendwater.
Visenya Targaryen did not allow the town to be sacked, but she did not hesitate to claim its riches, greatly swelling the coffers of the Conquerors.
Deep in the heart of Dragonstone, however, as he was making his way to the royalapartments, the gods brought him face-to-face with Ser Erryk himself, who knew at once what his brother's presence meant.
In many of the accounts that have come down to us, we are told that Queen Alyssa woke from her sleep before the maester could begin.
a squire asked when the foe appeared, for they showed no arms but the queen's.
His father Tom Tanglebeard was absent from the castle, but they found him in a tavern on Eel Alley.
A western route to the silks and spices of Yi Ti and Leng could mean incalculable riches for the man who found itâ¦if the sphere of the world was as small as these wise men suggested.
In 62 AC, at the age of seven, Aemon was formally anointed Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne.
Amongst the competitors were Queen Alicent's siblings, five Sworn Brothers of the Kingsguard, Breakbones, and the groom's favorite, Ser Joffrey Lonmouth, known as the Knight of Kisses.
His was the last notable death of 54 AC, but there was still more ill to come in that terrible Year of the Stranger.
The snows were already deep beyond the Neck, the cold winds rising; in keeps and castles and humble villages throughout the North, the great and small alike prayed to their carved wooden god- trees that this winter might be short.
Pretty Falena Stokeworth, a vivacious girl of eight who had sometimes played at dolls with the little queen, took a tumble down the serpentine steps and broke her leg, whilst Lady Buckler and both her daughters drowned when the boat that was carrying them across the Blackwater foundered and sank.
He also resented her friendship with his sister, Elissa; instead of encouraging her in what he regarded as her wild, willful ways, Ser Franklyn thought the queen should be enjoining her to do her duty to her house by making an appropriate marriage and producing children.
Did his flames start the fire that swept across the Disputed Lands?
Long betrothed to Prince Jacaerys, she refused to leave him, insisting that she would fight beside him on her own dragonâ¦though Moondancer was too small to bear her weight.
Still later, the fool reports, Aegon the Elder took offense when Jacaerys asked his wife, Helaena, for a dance.
Ser Luthor Largent, the most fearsome of the "leal five," was made the new commander of the gold cloaks.
Cregan Stark led his much- diminished host north along the kingsroad within a fortnight of the coronation; three days later, Lord Blackwood and Lady Alysanne set out for Raventree, with a thousand of Stark's northerners as a tail.
"If we do this," Grand Maester Orwyle cautioned the council, according to the True Telling, "it must surely lead to war.
Not long after, Prince Viserys thrilled the court by announcing that the Lady Larra was with child.
It was written that King Aegon himself wept the first time his granddaughter was placed in his arms, and thereafter doted upon the childâ¦mayhaps in some part because she reminded him of his lost queen, Rhaenys, in whose memory she had been named.
The third wife, whose children were the youngest (one still on her breast), would be sent down to Storm's
To this very day, some assert that Ser Marston Waters was no more than a catspaw, a simple honest knight used and deceived by men more subtle than himself, whilst others argue that Waters was part of the plot from the beginning, but turned upon his fellows when he sensed the tide turning against them.
Seven of their number, famous knights and the sons of lords, were given the honor of having King Maegor himself remove their heads with Blackfyre.
The prince paled at the sight of Lady Rhaena's dragon, Morning, and commanded the northmen guarding him to "get that wretched creature out of my sight."
Maester Norren writes that "the prince and his bastard girl" supped together every night, broke their fast together every morning, slept in adjoining bedchambers, that the prince "doted upon the brown girl as a man might dote upon his daughter," instructing her in "common courtesies" and how to dress and sit and brush her hair, that he made gifts to her of "an ivory-handled hairbrush, a silvered looking glass, a cloak of rich brown velvet bordered in satin, a pair of riding boots of leather soft as butter."
"She was not old enough or strong enough to bear a child," she told His Grace back at King's Landing.
Hungry, weary, wounded, they drifted home alone or in small groups, and Lord Borros Baratheon's widow, the Lady Elenda, had only to look at them to realize they had lost their taste for battle.
Lord Alyn was thus confronted with a simple choice; he must needs fight his way past "Queen Racallio" (as the Archon had named him) or treat with him.
Prince Aemond, despite the loss of his eye, had become a proficient and dangerous swordsman under the tutelage of Ser Criston Cole, but remained a wild and willful child, hot-tempered and unforgiving.
King Aegon read Prince Nymor's words in open court, stone-faced and silent, whilst seated on the Iron Throne.
Even so, there were those who murmured that the Hand had risen above himself, that he had brought his daughter to court with this in mind.
Aerea Targaryen was still well shy of her thirteenth nameday on the morning she slipped from her mother's castle.
The loss of so many of her dear friends and companions had plunged her into a black melancholy, and even the mention of Androw Farman's name provoked her to fits of rage.
His High Holiness was (mayhaps fortunately, for both the child and the realm) asleep, but his steward (a former knight, who had been a captain in the Warrior's Sons until they were abolished) was awake and wary.
The Battle of the Gullet soon followed, and when no word was heard of the young prince afterward, he was presumed dead.
It was never good when the king received you whilst seated on the Iron Throne.
The crude motte-and- bailey fort that Aegon had thrown up so quickly was neither large enough nor grand enough to house the king and his court, and had begun to expand even before the Conquest was complete.
Upon hearing the horn, however, the men of Rosby, Stokeworth, and Hayford let fall the king's golden dragons and remained unmoving, the rabble from King's Landing scattered like geese, and the knights of Duskendale went over to the foe, attacking the stormlanders in the rear.
Grand Maester Benifer suggested a match with the proud and lovely Lady of Starfall, Clarisse Dayne, in the hopes of detaching her lands and house from Dorne.
Trade had withered away to nothing, war continued in the west, famine and fever ruled much of the North, and to the south the Dornishmen were growing bolder and more troublesome.
The queen was able to visit for a time with her daughter Rhaella, so like and yet so unlike her twin, and it can be hoped that she found some balm for her pain there.
The years had taken their toll on him, and those who knew him well said that he was never the same after his daughter Saera had disgraced and then abandoned him.
After he sent "that boy" down to the halls of the Drowned God at the bottom of the sea, the Red Kraken proclaimed, he would take his own fleet back the way that Oakenfist had come, raise his banner over the Shields, sack Oldtown and Sunspear, and claim Driftmark for his own.
"Whenever the Wolf of the North stalked into a room, Bloody Ben would recall that he was but three- and-ten, whilst Lord Tully and his brother blustered and stammered and flushed red as their hair."
Lysandro drowned when his opulent barge sank whilst carrying him from his Perfumed Garden back to his palace.
The Kingsguard arrived from King's Landing by galley a few days later.
Wheatley was the artist on the comic book adaptation of the film Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and contributed illustrations to The World of Ice & Fire.
Nor would Queen Rhaenyra sleep until she claimed her father's seat.
Albin Massey, Rego Draz, and Septon Barth had all shown themselves to be men of great ability, earning the king's trust and gratitude.
But Aegon Targaryen took Balerion up high, through the clouds, up and up until the dragon was no bigger than a fly upon the moon.
Some say that she lost her seat and fell to her death, others that she was crushed beneath Meraxes in the castle yard.
"The princess might well have intended to fly to King's Landing, just as her mother suspected.
And thus Queen Alysanne departed King's Landing and flew to Dragonstone on her dragon Silverwing.
Screaming curses, the Shepherd's flock attacked with knives and stones, even teeth, swarming over the City Watch and around their flanks, attacking from behind, flinging tiles down from roofs and balconies.
Rhaenyra herself presided, seated between her uncle and husband, Prince Daemon, and her trusted counselor, Maester Gerardys.
Septon Eustace was the first brought up, and the first released; there was no proof against him.
"Let each side have seven champions, as it was done in Andalos of old.
Jason Lannister had assembled a formidable host in the western hills; a thousand armored knights, and seven times as many archers and men- at-arms.
Ser Tyland Lannister was named master of coin in place of the late Lord Beesbury, and acted at once to seize the royal treasury.
If Ser Mervyn had killed the queen, he would have done it with a pillow, the fool insistsâ¦before suggesting a far more sinister and likely possibility.
Targaryen returned to King's Landing alone, on the wings of his dragon, Vermithor.
As he took to his bed, surrounded by maesters, the issue arose as to who should succeed him as Lord of the Tides andMaster of Driftmark should the sickness claim him.
And on the seventh day, the Crone had lifted up her golden lamp to show him the path ahead.
Queen Alyssa remained on the island as well, with her son Jaehaerys and her daughter Alysanne, prisoners in all but name.
Weary of the Stepstones, and free at last of his "bronze bitch," Daemon Targaryen asked Lord Corlys for his daughter's hand in marriage.
Lucinda Penrose (she who had been attacked whilst hawking before the Maiden's Day Ball) admitted to wanting Daenaera dead, saying, "If my nose had not been slit, it would be her serving me, not me serving her.
No doubt he had the right of that, but the issue was never proved, for the Dornishmen never offered battle.
In the aftermath of the bloodletting, men began to say that Harrenhal was cursed, for every lordly house to hold it had come to a bad and bloody end.
Benifer and the rest of the council awaited the king's coming in the inner yard of the Red Keep, cloaked and hooded against the rain.
Thrice he swept over the city, each time lower than before, giving every man and boy and barefoot wench in King's Landing a chance to wave and shout and marvel.
Grand Maester Benifer, who had prepared her for the funeral pyre, looked half dead himself, Lord Redwyne confided to his sons.
"Lie to us again, and it will go very much the worse for you," King Jaehaerys told his daughter.
Though her husband was dead, Lady Larissa had borne him a daughter, who had only recently been wed to the elderly Lord Estermont.
In the early days after the queen's flight, the Shepherd was by far the most powerful of the city's three "kings," but as the nights passed, the number of his followers continued to dwindle.
Even those who loved her best found Visenya stern, serious, and unforgiving; some said that she played with poisons and dabbled in dark sorceries.
As Aemond One-Eye looked up in terror, fumbling with the chains that bound him to his saddle, Daemon ripped off his nephew's helm and drove the sword down into his blind eye, so hard the point came out the back of the young prince's throat.
In 55 AC she took particular pride in betrothals she arranged for two of the Wise Women who had served in her household since Dragonstone: Lady Jennis Templeton would wed Lord Mullendore of Uplands, whilst Lady Prunella Celtigar was joined in marriage to Uther Peake, Lord of Starpike, Lord of Dunstonbury, and Lord of Whitegrove.
As alteration followed alteration over the years, it became ever more difficult to ascertain which was the original text, to the extent that even maesters at the Citadel cannot agree as to the title of the book, as has been noted.
Though Harren the Black and his sons perished in those flames, Qhorin Volmark of Harlaw, whose grandmother had been a younger sister of Harren's grandsire, declared himself the rightful heir "of the black line," and assumed the kingship.
A score of the queen's own household knights offered themselves as dragonriders, amongst them the Lord Commander of her Queensguard, Ser Steffon Darklyn, along with squires, scullions, sailors, men-at-arms, mummers, and two maids.
The Dowager Queen was nowhere to be seen, though as Jaehaera's grandmother, Alicent Hightower ought to have been present.
The City Watch was placed under the command of Ser Lucas Leygood, the son of one of the Caltrops who had died at Tumbleton.
The High Septon came from Oldtown to bless the assembly.
One of its prongs found purchase between two scales, and was driven deep by the dragon's own considerable speed.
Lastly he descended upon the seat of House Doggett, reducing it to ash.
Breakbones, as he was called, was heir to Harrenhal, and said to be the strongest man in the Seven Kingdoms.
His Grace might rule the Seven Kingdoms, men whispered, but he himself was ruled by the three queens: his mother, Queen Visenya; his paramour, Queen Alys; and the Pentoshi witch, QueenTyanna.
The old gods were still worshipped in the North and the Drowned God in the Iron Islands, but in the rest of the realm there was a single god with seven faces, and his voice upon this earth was the High Septon of Oldtown.
At the end of his remarks, he announced that he and the queen would remain in Oldtown until the new High Septon had been chosen "so we might askfor his blessing."
It was war as Aegon the Conqueror and his sisters had once waged it, fought with dragonflame, as Vhagar descended from the autumn sky again and again to lay waste to the lands and villages and castles of the riverlords.
Grand Maester Orwyle sat in his councils, and the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard had placed the crown upon his princely head.
Only Ser Loreth Lansdale moved quickly enough to strike a blow in thequeen's defense, cutting down the first two men who came at him before being slain himself.
Those who did reach the walls were drenched in boiling oil or set afire with burning pitch, Lorcas the Learned himself amongst them.
Late that year, 60 AC, she was delivered of her fifth child, a daughter she named Alyssa after her mother.
In Gulltown, Moredo Rogare moved swiftly, yielding up his command to Alyn Oakenfist and taking ship for Braavos.
The army of the Faithful numbered twenty thousand men.
Once seen as his brother's heir, he had fallen far down in the line of succession, and neither the greens nor the blacks had a place for himâ¦but House Velaryon was powerful enough to defy both parties with impunity.
Ser Criston sat on his white horse shouting, "Aim for the rider," through the smoke and flame.
"Sister," he called down from a balcony.
The child was named Lucerys (Luke for short).
End and Harrenhal, the river mouth was undefended, and the closest castles were held by lesser lords of no great power or military prowess, and
As he climbed Aegon's High Hill with his banner-bearer and household shields, he saw the ragged banners of the squire Trystane hauled down from the gatehouse battlements, and the golden dragon banner of King Aegon II raised in their stead.
The city had grown quickly in the sixty-two years since Aegon's Conquest, and a few rude roads had sprung up with it, narrow dusty tracks that followed the shore up to Stokeworth, Rosby, and Duskendale, or cut through the hills to Maidenpool.
Princess Rhaena was thirteen when her little sister was born, but Grand Maester Gawen observed that "the girl delighted so in the babe that one might think she was the mother herself."
The war in the Iron Islands came to an end, and Lord Cregan Stark of Winterfell borrowed a huge sum from the Iron Bank of Braavos to buy food and seed for his starving smallfolk.
Those who were fortunate spoke of glimpsing her on the castle battlements, or seeing her coming and going on her dragon, for Rhaena continued to ride Dreamfyre until the end, just as she had in the beginning.
"No," the queen was heard to say, "I forbid it, I forbid it," but even as she spoke her dragon flapped up from the yard, perched for half a heartbeat atop the castle battlements, then launched herself into the night with the queen's son clinging to her back, a sword in hand.
The sons of Lord Tully of Riverrun, Lord Tyrell of Highgarden, Lord Oakheart of Old Oak, and Lord Tarly of Horn Hill paid court to the princess, as did the Hand's eldest son, Ser Harwin Strong.
To this writer it seems plain that Jaehaerys was notrepenting his marriage and had no intention of undoing it.
End to join them, whilst Ser Hobert wished to fall back to the Reach to replenish their fast-dwindling supplies.
And yet you sent them to the Wall in their hundreds and their thousands, so many that the Night's Watch was hard-pressed to feed themâ¦and when the worst of them rose up, the oathbreakers you had sent us, it cost my brother's life to put them down."
The lords of Maidenpool had erected a great stone bathhouse around the pool many centuries before, and given it over to an order of holy sisters.
Grand Maester Orwyle had testified that he gave the poison to his lordship, and Ser Perkin the Flea swore that he had been the Clubfoot's man, acting entirely on his orders, but Lord Larys would neither confirm nor deny the accusations.
When Alysanne expressed the wish to see some of the other forts along the Wall, the First Ranger Benton Glover led her west atop the Wall, past Snowgate to the Nightfort, where they made their descent and spent the night.
His horses struggled on the stony slopes of the narrow, twisting passes, but many balked completely when they reached the steepest sections of the road, where the Dornish had chiseled steps into the mountains.
The matter came to a head in 73 AC.
Yet the greatest threat to Rhaenyra's reign was not Aemond One- Eye, but his younger brother, Prince Daeron the Daring, and the great southron army led by Lord Ormund Hightower.
Seduced and abandoned by a traveling singer, the princess had given birth to a stillborn son, then, overwhelmed by grief, walked into the waters of Blackwater Bay and drowned.
The sight of the Targaryen banners flapping sodden above his own hills enraged him, and the battle-seasoned old warrior did not fail to note that the rain was blowing from the south, into the faces of the Targaryen men on their hills.
He might easily have remained King's Hand for years, or even claimed the regency until young Aegon came of age, but the south held no interest for him.
By the time Maegor was found dead upon the Iron Throne, most of the great houses of therealm and many lesser lords had abandoned himâ¦but most is not all.
Whilst Lord Corlys had been old and frail, his sudden death had nonetheless served as a grim reminder that any man could die at any time, even seemingly healthy young kings like Aegon III.
One such, Ser Roger Corne, made so bold as to knock the crown off Hammer's head.
In Westeros my wit is wasted capering for a king who never smiles, but in Braavos they would love meâ¦too well, I fear.
Trade flourished as well, as ships from Tyrosh, Myr, Pentos, Braavos, and especially Lys crowded the docks along the Blackwater, offloading silks and spices, Myrish lace, jade from Qarth, ivory from Sothoryos, and many other strange and wondrous things from the ends of the earth, including luxuries seldom seen in the Seven Kingdoms before.
Across the width of Westeros, another struggle for succession brokeout late in the year 134, when Lady Jeyne Arryn, the Maiden of the Vale, died at Gulltown of a cold that had settled in her chest.
Lyman Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock, and his wife, Jocasta, were the only great lords in attendance.
When Dowager Queen Alicent was informed of her daughter's passing, she rent her garments and pronounced a dire curse upon her rival.
Kermit Tully, Lord of Riverrun, was their liege lord, and nominally commander of their hostâ¦but it must be remembered that his lordship was but nineteen years of age, and "green as summer grass," as the northmen might say.
The king was weary of war, all men agreed, but granting the Dornishmen peace without submission would be tantamount to saying that his beloved sister Rhaenys had died in vain, that all the blood and death had been for naught.
It was the hour of the wolf, the darkest time of the night, when it fell to Ser Ryam Redwyne of the Kingsguard to rouse the king and queen from their sleep to tell them that their daughter had been found dead in an alley at the foot of Aegon's High Hill.
Alone of the four dragons on the field that day, Seasmoke had a rider.
Twenty war galleys of House Hightower followed, commanded by Ser Leo Costayne, a grizzled seafarer known as the Sea Lion.
Queen Rhaena's first thought was that she had flown to King's Landing; the princess had made no secret of her wish to return to court.
As the new year dawned, all across the realm plans were being made to mark a half century of Targaryen rule over Westeros with feasts, fairs, and tourneys.
Aegon seemed to have only one companion he cared about.
Six thousand of the queen's men formed up to face Lord Hightower in the field, under the command of Ser Garibald Grey.
Crashing through the thin ranks of defenders into the ruins of the Dragonpit, they found the prophet amongst the dragon heads (now far gone in rot), surrounded by a ring of torches, still preaching of doom and devastation.
This time, he told his brother Aemon, he was praying for a girl.
The Hand was admired for his courage, respected for his strength, feared for his military prowess and skill at arms.
One name was never mentioned, though it hung over the Red Keep like a cloud.
House Targaryen had ruled Dragonstone for more than two hundred years, since Lord Aenar Targaryen first arrived from Valyria with his dragons.
Daemon Velaryon, Lord of the Tides, was made master of ships, in command of the royal fleet.
Unchained and riderless, Syrax might have easily flown away from the madness.
Though only forty years of age, Vaegon was pale and frail, a bookish man devoted to alchemy, astronomy, mathematics, and other arcane arts.
In 131 AC, as his reign began, he was a boy of ten; tall for his age, it was said, with "silver hair so pale that it was almost white, and purple eyes so dark that they were almost black."
Lord Corlys raised a new castle on the far side of the island.
Though Toron Greyjoy remained upon the Seastone Chair when his defenders beat off the Lannister assault upon the walls of Pyke, his half-brother Rodrik was taken and brought back to Casterly Rock, where Lady Johanna had him gelded and made him her son's fool.
At Cobbler's Square the sounds of the riot could be heard from every quarter.
Maesters and other scholars writing of this time oft take their cue from Munkun and speak of the Moon of the Three Kings (other scholars prefer the Moon of Madness), but this is a misnomer, as the Shepherd never claimed kingship, styling himself a simple son of the Seven.
The new king had little love and less trust for any of his brother's children, and he had his mother, the Dowager Queen Visenya, to enforce his will.
Ser Malentine was slain during the attempt; his brother captured.
Her own preference was to look to the houses who had risen in support of Aegon the Uncrowned in the Battle Beneath the Gods Eye.
When that failed to happen, Lodos filled his robes with stones and walked into the sea, "to seek my father's counsel."
The new year was but a fortnight old when news of the first of the three weddings came out of the west, from Fair Isle by the Sunset Sea.
When one man grasped his horse's bridle, Thorne took his arm off at the shoulder and rode on.
As for the boys, Prince Aemond said later that he lost an eye and gained a dragon that day, and counted it a fair exchange.
It all fell to pieces when Daella learned that the Blackwoods kept the old gods, and she would be expected to say her vows before a weirwood.
Then a second sept, twiceas large and thrice as grand, was built atop Visenya's Hill, with coin sent by the High Septon.
The big Braavosi ship was very fast when the wind was in her sails, and the Hightowers had difficulties keeping pace.
Only Mushroom saw Prince Joffrey go sulking off (if his Testimony can be believed)â¦and Mushroom had been told to hold his tongue.
On Driftmark, the town of Hull experienced a rebirth.
He journeyed thrice to the Iron Islands (twice to Pyke and once to Great Wyk), spent a fortnight at Sisterton in 19 AC, and visited the North six times, holding court thrice in White Harbor, twice at Barrowton, and once at Winterfell on his very last royal progress in 33 AC.
She departed Fair Isle that very night, taking wing for Casterly Rock upon Dreamfyre after instructing her husband and companions to follow her by ship, "with all those who might love me."
In the Vale, young King Ronnel had to contend with a rebellion on the Three Sisters, when the Sistermen renounced all allegiance to the Eyrie and proclaimed Lady Marla Sunderland their queen.
"Daenerys will be cross with me," Alysanne said, as she put the princeling to her breast.
Armed with Dark Sister, the prince made short work of his rival, and wed Lady Laena Velaryon a fortnight later, abandoning his hardscrabble kingdom on the Stepstones.
Ser Marston Waters of the Kingsguard seemed discomfited by His Grace's attendance, however, and Lord Peake took it for a rebuke.
His words were dutiful, but there was no warmth to them, and it had been years since Alysanne had last seen his face.
Should the princess reign, he remindedthem, Jacaerys Velaryon would rule after her.
Brandon Stark, the ailing Lord of Winterfell, made the long journey down from the North with his sons Walton and Alaric, attended by a dozen fierce northern bannermen and thirty Sworn Brothers of the Night's Watch.
Alys Rivers was at least forty years of age during the Dance of the Dragons, that much is known; Mushroom makes her even older.
Queen Alicent's captors had slain her guards and were thus condemned to death, but an impassioned plea from Lady Baela herself spared her rescuers from a similar fate, though they too had bloodied their swords by cutting down the king's menposted at her door.
Of all the men ever to sit the Iron Throne, he remains perhaps the most enigmatic: a shadowy monarch who said little and did less, and lived alife steeped in grief and melancholy.
Surrender saved the pretender's followers from burning, but not from death.
The warmth of her reception at White Harbor was not to be duplicated at the ancient seat of the Kings in the North, where Alaric Stark and his sons alone emerged to greet her when her dragon landed before his castle gates.
Septon Moon never refused such offers, and after a time some of the hedge knights and men-at-arms amongst his rabble began to paint images of the "Cock o' the Moon" on their shields, and a brisk trade grew up in clubs, pendants, and staffs carved to resemble Moon's member.
If it please you, sires, I would ask you to accept Jocelyn and her cousins as wards, to be raised here at court beside your own sons and daughters.
Thereafter any misbehavior, laziness, or truculence on King Aegon's part resulted in punishment for his friend.
Never one to make a show of her emotions, the Queen in the East received the news stone-faced.
Mayhaps that moved Lord Ormund, for her ladyship's young sons and daughter were spared and sent in chains to Oldtown.
Harrenhal passed to his eldest son, though its domains were much diminished, as the king granted Lord Harroway's Town to Lord Alton Butterwell, and the rest of the Harroway holdings to Lord Darnold Darry.
So halting was this speech, so slurred the words, that some upon the battlements thought his lordship must be drunk, until Mushroom pointed out that all his teeth were missing.
After a dozen names had been put forward and bandied about, the choice finally fell to Ser Myles Smallwood, Lord of Acorn Hall in the riverlands, who had fought for the king's brother, Aegon, beneath the Gods Eye, battled Wat the Hewer at Stonebridge, and ridden with the late Lord Stokeworth to bring Harren the Red to justice during the reign of King Aenys.
Mushroom tells us that Ser Laenor spent every hour of those days at his bedside and wept bitterly when the Stranger claimed him.
We who have the honor of serving with your lordship know that you love His Grace as if he were your own son, and do all you do for him and for the realm, but others may imply that you chose your daughter for more ignoble reasonsâ¦for power, or the glory of House Peake."
Beneath its great dome, forty huge undervaults had been carved from the bones of the Hill of Rhaenys in a great ring.
After the frustrations of his Dornish War, the king accepted the continued independence of Dorne, and flew to Sunspear on Balerion on the tenth anniversary of the peace accords to celebrate a "feast of friendship" with Deria Martell, the reigning Princess of Dorne.
When the day appointed for her execution came, three hundred of her followers, Poor Fellows and peasants all, burst from the woods to rescue her.
The smallfolk loved Baelon the Brave, and the lords of the realm saw him as his brother's obvious successor.
It is said that Harren spat at that and returned to his castle.
"We do not have the strength to oppose such a host, sire," Lord Larys told the boy, "but perhaps words can succeed where swords must fail.
Aegon's intervention took Ser Amaury aback, Mushroom tells us, but after a moment's hesitation he said, "Your Grace is still a boy.
(The husband was taken to the foot of the Hill of Rhaenys, where he was given ninety-four blows by the dead woman's brothers, using rods of lawful size.)
Thus persuaded, Jaehaerys gave hisassent, a raven took wing, and within the fortnight, Lord Myles was on his way to King's Landing.
Aegon flew above the ranks of his foes upon Balerion, through a storm of spears and stones and arrows, swooping down repeatedly to bathe his foes in flame.
The screams were coming from Tom Turnip, who was lurching helplessly in circles trying to escape from half a dozen naked whores, whilst the patrons of the house laughed uproariously and shouted on the harlots.
As the city's septs rang their bells to signal the end of the old year and the coming of the new, King Aegon II proceeded along the street (thereafter known as Shepherd's Way, rather than Hill Street as before) in his litter, whilst his knights rode to either side, setting their torches to the captive lambs to light his way.
"I shall," Rhaenys replied, "but we will come again, Princess, and the next time we shall come with fire and blood."
Queen Rhaenys accompanied him, astride Meraxes of the golden eyes and silver scales.
"Staunton sent to you, yet you left it to my wife to answer and forbade your sons to join her."
Oldtown waited for the dawn, and the coming of the dragons.
One-eyed, bald, and almost toothless, the knight called Sour Sam looked as gaunt as a fencepost, but in battle he displayed the quickness of a man half his age, and a vicious skill honed through long decades of battles great and small.
Septon Eustace, who served in the royal sept in the Red Keep during much of this time, and later rose to the ranks of the Most Devout, set down the most detailed history of this period.
When Septon Barth and Grand Maester Benifer concurred with Lord Rego's words, the king dispatched a raven to Dragonstone.
Elsewhere in the realm, 72 AC also marked the end of an era in the North with the passing of Alaric Stark, Lord of Winterfell.
Seeing Queen Ceryse return to court, old and bitter and childless, Alys Harroway had begun to fear that the same fate awaited her unless she gave the king a son, so she had turned to her lord father, the Hand of the King.
Aegon took his hand as he breathed his last.
Some protested their innocence, whilst others claimed, as Ser Marston had, that theyhad acted from the honest belief that Thaddeus Rowan and the Lyseni were the traitors.
Moondancer eluded Sunfyre's flames, eluded his jaws, darted beneath his grasping claws, then came around and raked the larger dragon from above, opening a long smoking wound down his back and tearing at his injured wing.
Daemon soon took up again with old companions from the gold cloaks, and returned to the establishments along the Street of Silk where he had been such a valued patron.
She desired above all to be loved, admired, and praised, a yearning she shared with King Aenys, her first husband.
Rhaenyra made the boy her cupbearer, so he might never be far from her side.
"Spare the boy," Lord Thaddeus pleaded, and they didâ¦ but not until Flowers had cut off one of the lad's ears, "to teach him not to bare steel to the Kingsguard."
She had been a beautiful child, all men agreed, the daughter of the mighty Aethan Velaryon, Lord of the Tides, and his lady wife Alarra of House Massey.
Ser Bryndon Hightower, Lord Ormund's cousin, put himself between the northman and his liege, taking off the Ruin's shield arm at the shoulder with one terrible blow of his longaxeâ¦yet the savage Lord of Barrowton fought on, slaying both Ser Bryndon and Lord Ormund before he died.
Septon Bernard argued from his Faith; the Lyseni and their queer foreign gods had no place in the Seven Kingdoms.
For every man of the Night's Watch who joined their rebellion, ten remained true to their vows.
When seen the next day, Hard Hugh was wearing a crown of black iron, to the fury of Prince Daeron and his trueborn lords and knights.
In the Iron Islands, a savage struggle for power followed upon the death of the Red Kraken.
Leaving Dragonstone unmolested, the southern squadron fell upon the shores of Driftmark, landing men at Spicetown and sending fire ships into the harbor to set ablaze the ships coming out to meet them.
Two years later, she produced a daughter for the king, Helaena; in 110 AC, she bore him a second son, Aemond, who was said to be half the size of his elder brother, but twice as fierce.
Loudest amongst these traitors was Ser Alan Beesbury, Lord Lyman's heir, who was demanding the release of his grandsire from the dungeon, where most believed the former master of coin to be confined.
So many lords, both great and small, had perished during the Dance of the Dragons that the Citadel rightly names this time the Winter of the Widows.
One chronicler says that when the hugely fat Ser Guy the Glutton was cut open, the remains of forty half-digested pies spilled out.
Moreover, the twice-widowed queen had come to loathe King's Landing and the court, and wished only to return to Fair Isle, where she had found a measure of peace before her uncle had made her one of his Black Brides.
Nothing at all could be proved against his brother Roggerio, but Lord Manderly sentenced him to seven lashes all the same.
With both the riverlands and stormlands now under the control of Aegon the Dragon and his allies, the remaining kings of Westeros saw plainly that their own turns were coming.
"We have told the world that Princess Aerea died of a fever, and that is broadly true, but it was a fever such as I have never seen before and hope never to see again.
The bells are always rung to announce the death of a king, someone should see to that, and of course we must begin to make our preparations for Queen Rhaenyra's coronationâ"
"It is a good match," he told her, before explaining the importance of drawing the North closer to the Iron Throne.
Lord Bartimos himself fought his way to the stables, only to find all his horses dead or stolen.
Fewer than four hundred remained of the five thousand that Septon Moon had brought to Oldtown when Lord Donnel the Delayer at last bestirred himself and rode forth in force to slaughter the stragglers.
Some say that His High Holiness took his own life, in what was either the act of a craven afraid to face the wroth of King Maegor, or a noble sacrifice to spare the goodfolk of Oldtown from dragonfire.
The prospect of a child warmed Lord Rogar's heart, however, and he cast off his anger and repented of his infidelities to stay by his wife's side.
A great feast was held at the Hightower to celebrate their reconciliation; the revels even included a bedding and a "second consummation," so all men would know this to be a true and loving union.
One Dornish knight, brought before Queen Visenya as a captive, insisted that Meria Martell would sooner see her people dead than slaves to House Targaryen.
Wary, he commanded that the Dornish red be set aside for later, and insisted Ser Hobert share the Arbor gold with him.
When he took a knee before the Iron Throne, he had trouble rising back to his feet, and required the help of a Kingsguard to stand.
Their queen's misgivings thus confirmed, Rogar Baratheon and the other lords put aside all consideration of Princess Alysanne as a bride for her brother Jaehaerys.
"If the child is a boy, His Grace will never live long enough to sire an heir of his own body," Peake said to Marston Waters once, in Mushroom's presence.
Two of his Kingsguard vanished one night, to go over to Jaehaerys, and Ser Owen Bush was found dead outside a brothel, his member stuffed into his mouth.
Born in 67 AC, three years after Daella, Saera had all the couragethat her sister lacked, along with a voracious hungerâ¦for milk, for food, for affection, for praise.
That took the heart from him, says Mushroom, but even then the youth did not plead his innocence nor beg for mercy, but asked only that he might be made a knight before he died.
Ser Tyland had a far more pressing concern in 132 AC: the matter of succession.
Thus was the Conquest made glorious to the simple people, whilst Aegon the Dragon himself became a hero king.
(Lord Wylde's unbending attitudes on matters of law earned him this sobriquet, Septon Eustace says.
In the space of three days, hundreds of reavers suffered ends as cruel, bloody, and sudden as those they had inflicted on their prey, until only Faircastle remained in the ironborn hands.
When the king pointed out that he had guardsmen around him, Visenya drew Dark Sister and slashed him across the cheek so quickly the guards had no time to react.
Ser Medrick Manderly had agreed to take the men bound for the Wall as far as White Harbor on his galley North Star.
Aegon II had suffered his first defections the night before, when Ser Steffon Darklyn of the Kingsguard had slipped from the city with his squire, two stewards,and four guardsmen.
Less than a fortnight after the queen and Androw Farman had celebrated the first anniversary of their union, however, Lord Marq died suddenly at his own table, choking to death upon a fish bone at the age of six-and-forty.
Mushroom tells us that Hammer celebrated by beating one of the queen's household knights to death in a brothel on the Street of Silkwhen the two men quarreled over the maidenhood of a young virgin, whilst White rode drunkenly through the alleys of Flea Bottom, clad in naught but his golden spurs.
The Targaryens also brokered many marriages between noble houses from the far ends of the realm, in hopes that such alliances would help tie the conquered lands together and make the seven kingdoms one.
King Viserys would not hear of it, however, and reminded his daughter that Prince Daemon already had a wife.
This would prove to be a vain hope, as we know now, but to Rogar Baratheon in 50 AC it seemed possible.
We shall return to these four princelings, and the woes they visited upon their mother and their father, in due time, but for the nonce let us take a step back to 68 AC, not long after the birth of Princess Saera, when the king and queen announced the betrothal of their firstborn son, Aemon, Prince of Dragonstone, to Jocelyn Baratheon of Storm's
Lotho Rogare was arrested by Ser Lucas Leygood and his gold cloaks as he attempted to depart King's Landing; all his letters and ledgers were seized, along with every scrap of gold and silver remaining in the vaults atop Visenya's Hill.
"A dragon in one's courtyard does wonders to resolve one's doubts," Ser Elmo is reported to have said.
The only notable loss amongst the loyalists was Ser Davos Darklyn of the Kingsguard, slain at the hands of Lord Corbray with Lady Forlorn.
Once in the air, Syrax twisted beneath him, fighting to be free of this unfamiliar rider.
No hatchling for her, no, not her, she had to have the Black Dread.
Jaehaerys had her taken back to her own chambers and given milk of the poppy to help her sleep.
None of the offices through which Lysandro exercised his dominion over Lys were hereditary.
The immediate need for gold was resolved by Rego Draz, the new master of coin, who reached out to the Iron Bank of Braavos and its rivals in Tyrosh and Myr to arrange not one but three substantial loans.
It was bad weather for flying, even for a dragon, and Arrax was struggling to stay aloft when Prince Aemond mounted Vhagar and went after him.
Coming second from his mother's womb, a few heartbeats after his twin brother, Jason, had denied him the glory of lordship and the gold of Casterly Rock, leaving him to make his own place in the world.
And when two young dragons hatched amidst the firepits of Dragonstone at the end of that year, it was taken for a sign.
Rogar Baratheon could not yield as gracefully, however, and his wife's words woke in him a fury.
"Not even the tears of a dragon could melt the frozen heart of Cregan Stark, men said rightly," Mushroom tells us, "but when Lady Baela brandished a sword and declared that she would cut off the hand of any man who sought to harm the men who had saved her, the Wolf of Winterfell smiled for all to see, and allowed that if her ladyship was so fond of these dogs, he would permit her to keep them."
Skyreach, Yronwood, the Tor, and Ghost Hill were all recaptured within a fortnight, their royal garrisons put to the sword.
At a stroke, the Crown's debt had been cut in half.
Did Elinor Costayne scratch the king's back to bloody ribbons as they coupled?
I will serve as your Hand until such time as his guilt or innocence can be proved."
The gold-rich westerlands were ruled by the Lannisters of Casterly Rock, the fertile Reach by the Gardeners of Highgarden.
Daemon spent long hours in her company, enthralling her with tales of his journeys and battles.
No men were allowed to enter the premises, so when the queen slipped into the sacred waters, she was attended only by her ladies-in-waiting, maids, and septas (Edyth and Lyra, who had served beside Septa Ysabel as novices, had both recently sworn their vows to become septas, consecrated in the Faith and devoted to the queen).
Several tell us that Lord Massey hacked off the arm of Harry Horpe.
Not long after Jaehaerys and Alysanne returned from Maidenpool and the queen took to her bedchamber, tidings of the most wondrous and unexpected sort came forth from Storm's
The coming of the new year found King Aenys still on Dragonstone, sick with fear and indecision.
"You died in the battle," Bold Jon replied, drawing Orphan-Maker and thrusting deep into Hammer's belly, before opening the bastard from groin to throat.
Whether he was conceived of a first night I cannot say, but Lord Aerion was his father, that was well-known.
Mushroom, our wise fool, observes that there are certain doors best not opened, for "you never know what might come through."
Here and there throughout the realm a few stubborn loyalists still flew Aegon II's golden dragon, but they were of little significance; the Dance was done, the others all agreed, it was time to make the peace and set the realm to rights.
"You need her as a Dornishman needs a pit viper," Jaehaerys said.
Scorpions were cranked upward to loose ironbolts of the sort that had once felled Meraxes in Dorne.
King Aegon II did not die, though his burns brought him such pain that some say he prayed for death.
The first man to serve in that capacity was Archmaester Ollidar, keeper of histories, whose ring and rod and mask were bronze.
The duel that followed was utterly one-sided, all the accounts agree; the prince cut the old man to pieces, then fed his corpse to Vhagar.
A three-foot-tall dwarf possessed of an enormous head (and, he avers, an even more enormous member), Mushroom wasthought feeble-minded, so kings and lords and princes did not scruple to hide their secrets from him.
And of course there were many who refused to believe that Jaehaera had taken her own life.
And Rhaenys and Meraxes returned once more to the Hellholtâ¦where tragedy struck.
Aegon Targaryen quickly threw up a log-and-earth palisade around the highest of the three hills, and dispatched his sisters to secure the submission of the nearest castles.
The men bringing in the harvest burned or fled as the crops went up in flame, and Castle Darry was consumed in a firestorm.
She had lost two sons to Maegor the Cruel, and a coldness lay between her and her oldest daughter; she could not bear the thought of being forever estranged from the two children who remained to her.
It is said that Baratheon unchained her with his own hands, wrapped his cloak around her, poured her wine, and spoke to her gently, telling her of her father's courage and the manner of his death.
Thus it can be seen that most of Aegon's actual conquering took place from 2â1 BC, Before the Conquest.
Last came the three most prominent prisoners, the ones that the mob had been waiting for: yet another "Shepherd Reborn," the captain of a Pentoshi merchantman who had been accused and found guilty of bringing the Winter Fever from Sisterton to King's Landing, and the former Grand Maester Orwyle, a convicted traitor and a deserter from the Night's Watch.
Rhaenyra heard these terms in stony silence, then asked Orwyle if he remembered her father, King Viserys.
In a lavish ceremony at King's Landing, hundreds of lords did obeisance to the Realm's Delight as she sat at her father's feet at the base of the Iron Throne, swearing to honor and defend her right of succession.
Bambarro Bazanne died in the Disputed Lands in 132 AC when the sellsword company he was leading against Tyrosh turned against him over a matter of back pay.
Thereupon Lord Mooton sent for the captain of his guard, his brother, and his champion, Ser Florian Greysteel.
The queen had visited Brandon's Gift, the lands south of the Wall that Brandon the Builder had granted to the Watch for their support and sustenance.
Grand Maester Orwyle was less fortunate, for he had confessed under torture to having given the poison to theClubfoot.
"All the lands are taken, all the castles occupied," Rhaena replied, "but there is one I have a claim toâ¦a better claim than your own, brother.
The reign of the Young King, as the commons called him upon his ascent, was peaceful and prosperous.
The widowed Lady Caswell, whose lord husband had been beheaded by Aegon II at King's Landing when he refused to renounce the queen, had closed her castle gates, turning away even anointed knights and lords when they came to her seeking refuge.
This time, at Ser Tyland's insistence, the girl herself was made a part of the discussions.
But Queen Alyssa never appeared, and at last His Grace consigned his nephew to the fire.
Vhagar's flames reduced Old Willow and White Willow to ash, and Hogg Hall to blackened stone.
Though bastard born, he had achieved knighthood and a modest place in the retinue of King Aegon II, but his rise would likely have ended there if not for his kinship to certain fisherfolk on Dragonstone, which led Larys Strong to choose him above a hundred better knights to hide the king during Rhaenyra's ascendancy.
Like his father, Aenys Targaryen, the First of His Name, was given over to the flames in the yard at Dragonstone.
That omission would prove to be of great importance when Lord Rogar and Queen Alyssa arrived belatedly from King's Landing in a war galley, accompanied by a dozen knights, forty men-at-arms, Septon Mattheus, and Grand Maester Benifer, whose letters give us the most complete accounting of what transpired.
I had fled to Pentos when Maegor died, frightened of what fate awaited me under his successors, and for an instant as I stood there in the damp I wondered whether I had been a fool to return."
As he had no daughters, Baela would be the unquestioned mistress of his castle.
In truth the weight of Lord Celtigar's exactions fell heaviest on merchants and traders.
The patrons of the brothel were driven into the street, many of them naked (Mushroom was amongst those so rousted, by his own admission), whilst Lord Roggerio was marched at spearpoint through a jeering crowd.
A singular failure as a squire, he had never become a knight, having none of the martial skills of his lord father and elder brother.
Lord Rowan's enemies at courtâamongst them many of the men who owed their offices to Unwin Peakeâwere quick to say that this was proof of what they had been whispering for half a year, that Thaddeus Rowan had sold himself to Oakenfist and the Rogares.
The Lord of the Tides and his lady were still in mourning for their beloved daughter when the Stranger came again, to carry off their son.
It was on Greenshield, in Lord Chester's hall, that Princess Rhaenys told him of her plans to marry, and received the king's blessing.
King Aegon always took care to honor the Faith, confirming its traditional rights and privileges, exempting its wealth and property from taxation, and affirming that septons, septas, and other servants of the Seven accused of wrongdoing could only be tried by the Faith's own courts.
She named the child Laena after her mother.
"Gladly, sire," said Manderly in a voice that Grand Maester Munkun would later call a growl.
The next morning, he set off for King's Landing, accompanied only by six of his oldest knights, men who had known him since childhood.
Afterward, Mushroom tells us, Princess Rhaenyra sat vigil with him over Lady Laena's corpse, and comforted him in his grief.
On the Iron Throne, Queen Rhaenyra grew pale and faint, and ordered the city gates closed and barred; hencefoth, no one was to be allowed to enter or leave King's Landing.
Aegon II had run short of patience with his grandfather's prevarications.
"And all at the cost of three stones," Barth told the king.
She fled back to the Twins soon afterâ¦but her prize captive, the witch woman Alys Rivers, escaped with Prince Aemond.
House Darklyn had been amongst Rhaenyra's strongest supporters, but the cost of that loyalty had been high.
They point to the fact that he returned to King's Landing without a single dragon's egg.
Mayhaps the Mother Above looked down on Queen Alysanne in her grief and took pity on her broken heart.
No plausible explanation for the selection of Coryanne Wylde has ever been offered, save for the simple, ugly answer proferred by A Caution for Young Girls: she was sent to Dragonstone not for Alysanne, but for Jaehaerys.*3Court records indicate that Septa Ysabel, Lady Lucinda, and the other women chosen for Alysanne Targaryen's household boarded the trading galley Wise Woman at dawn on the seventh day of the second moon of 50 AC, and left for Dragonstone on the morning tide.
"These are foul times," Lord Mooton said, "and it is a foul choice this queen has given me.
Neither of the Two Betrayers seemed eager to help Prince Daeron press an attack on King's Landing.
When Queen Alysanne held her in her arms for the first time, she was heard to call the little girl "our queen to be."
It was her Valyrian blood that saved her, Maester Anselm suggested; ailments that carried off ordinary men in a matter of hours could not prevail against the blood of the dragon.
Barth's scheme was costly, beyond a doubt, and Rego Draz and King Jaehaerys balked at the expenseâ¦until Queen Alysanne served each of them a tankard of river water at the next council meeting, and dared them to drink of it.
An old friend, and old adversary, returned to King's Landing in 61 AC, when Lord Rogar Baratheon rode up from Storm's
In Valyria before the Doom, wise men wrote, a thousand gods were honored, but none were feared, so few dared to speak against these customs.
The king's army was already running short of food and fodder by the time they emerged from the Prince's Pass to face the Dornish sands.
His High Holiness proposed a different bride for Maegor: his own niece, Ceryse Hightower, maiden daughter to the Lord of Oldtown, Manfred Hightower (not to be confused with his grandsire of the same name).
This new son of House Targaryen had been anointed into the Faith, but soon enough the city heard that his mother meant to have him blessed by her own gods as well, and rumors of obscene ceremonies in the Mermaid and blood sacrifice in Maegor's Holdfast began to be heard on the streets of King's Landing.
(Some say that Lord Hightower also offered up the hand of his youngest daughter, which Aegon declined politely, lest it offend his two queens.)
When Rhaena next emerged from her chambers to take a meal, however, she rejected the notion out of hand.
The last few maidens were brought forward hurriedly to do their turns, but the king's desire to put an end to the parade was so palpable that poor Henrietta Woodhull was sobbing as she curtsied.
The boy was diligent, his instructors agreed, and did not want for courage, but he lacked his sire's size and strength, and was never more than adequate as a fighter, even when the king pressed Blackfyre into his hands, as he did from time to time.
In 75 AC, the Red Keep was the site of another splendid wedding, as the Spring Prince took to bride the eldest of his sisters, Princess Alyssa.
Some felt the order had no choice but to accept Maegor as king, since the gods had blessed him with victory; others insisted that they were bound by oath to obey the High Septon and fight on.
Alysanne decreed that Ser Lucamore's sons might join their father on the Wall, if they wished.
Aemond had the support of Ser Criston Cole, the Hand, and that of Ser Tyland Lannister, but Grand Maester Orwyle urged him to send word to Storm's
Unbeknownst to all, it was the jester who ruled them now, an invisible king in motley."
For the remainder of his minority, King Aegon III took little part in the rule of his realm, save for fixing his signature and seal upon such papers as Lord Peake presented him.
The Hightowers of Oldtown, the Redwynes of the Arbor, the Lannisters of Casterly Rock, the Arryns of the Eyrie, the Royces of Runestoneâ¦one by one, they came out against the king.
In the eyes of many, the Great Council of 101 AC thereby established an iron precedent on matters of succession: regardless of seniority, the Iron Throne of Westeros could not pass to a woman, nor through a woman to her male descendants.
That enormous beast, the Black Dread, the most fearsome dragon ever to soar through the skies of Westeros, returned to King's Landing with half-healed scars that no man recalled ever having seen before, and a jagged rent down his left side almost nine feet long, a gaping red wound from which his blood still dripped, hot and smoking.
Both of the young princes attended, together with their sister Alyssa, and competed in the squire's melee.
Here she could visit with the dragons as often as she liked; the hatchlings, the young drakes, her mother's Dreamfyreâ¦and greatest of them all, Balerion and Vhagar, huge and ancient and sleepy, but still terrifying when they woke and stirred and spread their wings.
Much as the king was tempted to reach out to one of them, he knew the realm would never accept another Pentoshi.
Hardly had the last stone been set on the Red Keep when Maegor commanded that the ruins of the Sept of Remembrance be cleared from the top of Rhaenys's Hill, and with them the bones and ashes of the Warrior's Sons who had perished there.
Borros Baratheon scorned that course as weakness; he would defeat these traitors in the field, he declared to king and council.
Ser Otto also reached out to Dorne, whose ruling prince, Qoren Martell, had once warred against Prince Daemon in the Stepstones, but Prince Qoren spurned his offer.
With Lord Borros dead and Olyvar an infant, Dornish incursions into the stormlands had grown more numerous, and the outlaws of the kingswood were proving troublesome.
When Septon Mattheus finally paused for a breath, the king said, "I will accept chastisement from Her Grace my mother, but not from you.
"If he dies without an heir, we shall dance again, however much we may mislike the music," Lord Manfryd Mooton warned his fellow regents.
Passing over Ser Marston Waters, second in command of the Kingsguard, His Grace bestowed white cloaks upon Ser Robin Massey and Ser Robert Darklyn and made Massey Lord Commander.
Only five of the white cloaks were in King's Landing at the time of Viserys's death; Ser Criston himself, Ser Arryk Cargyll, Ser Rickard Thorne, Ser Steffon Darklyn, and Ser Willis Fell.
Rhaena Targaryen had come to make amends to her mother.
His brother Lotho, short a hand, was taken up by Lady Samantha, the paramour of Lord Lyonel Hightower, and returned with her to Oldtown.
The scholar must confine himself to known fact, and what we know is that Ser Addam flew far and fast, descending on castles great and small whose lords were loyal to the queen, to piece together an army.
Rhaenys and Visenya set fires upwind of the enemy and behind them.
The garrison, composed in large part of the Red Kraken's close companions and brothers-in-battle, held out stubbornly under the sly Alester Wynch and the roaring giant Gunthor Goodbrother, until the latter slew the former in a quarrel over Lord Farman's daughter Lysa, one of the salt widows.
When Prince Joffrey pleaded with his mother to let him ride forth with their own knights and those from White Harbor, the queen refused.
By that time, he had become close to Lady Sam as well as to Lord Lyonel, though whether he had any part in the writing of her infamous letter remains a matter of conjecture.
Though the High Septon's funeral rites were the purported reason for their visit, His High Holiness had already been interred in the crypts beneath the Starry Sept by the time the king and queen arrived.
the Valyrian steel blade called Lady Forlorn that was the pride of his house.
The lords assembled had favored the male claimant over the female by twenty to one, but there had been dissenters, and those same houses were most like to lend Princess Rhaenyra their support should it come to war.
Thereafter His Grace set out for Oldtown to receive the blessing of the High Septon.
Men japed that the falcon on Isembard's arms was made of gold, and he soon became known as the Gilded Falcon.
The baseborn Alyn of Hull, now Alyn Velaryon, had been the Sea Snake's chosen heir, but his succession was not uncontested.
When Prince Aegon had decided to wear the iron-and-ruby crown of his namesake, the Conqueror, Queen Alicent had ordered Viserys's crown locked away, but the steward entrusted with the task had made off with it instead.
The Shepherd drank deep of the anger, proclaiming that the day of doom was nigh at hand, just as he had foretold, and calling down the wroth of the gods upon "this unnatural queen who sits bleeding on the Iron Throne, her whore's lips glistening and red with the blood of her sweet sister."
Having originated in the Reach centuries before, they had found refuge near the mouth of the White Knife when rivals drove them from their rich lands along the Mander.
No harm need come to Jaehaerys.
Upon arrival, Lord Mooton and his companions marveled at the Titan, and were taken to the fabled Arsenal to witness the building of a warship, completed in a single day.
"He drinks a deal," Maester Culiper wrote to the Citadel, "and hasbeen known to spend entire days in the Chamber of the Painted Table, moving painted w
The Poor Fellows especially were no respectors of nobilityâ¦and the reluctance of Lords Rowan and Oakheart to commit their knights and men-at-arms to an assault on the walls of Oldtown had made them suspicious of the two lords.
Targaryens had purple eyes and hair of gold and silver, they ruled the sky on dragons, the doctrines of the Faith and the prohibitions against incest did not apply to themâ¦and they did not get sick.
Beloved daughter of Lady Jocelyn Baratheon and Prince Aemon Targaryen, faithful wife to Lord Corlys Velaryon, mother and grandmother, the Queen Who Never Was lived fearlessly, and diedamidst blood and fire.
When the king insisted that he would have the protection of the Hightower, uneasy glances were exchanged.
Thus it was determined that his mother, the Dowager Queen Alyssa, would act as regent for him, whilst Lord Rogar served as his Hand and the Protector of the Realm.
It was the seventh blow, the Stranger's blow, that slew the dragon, crashing through scale and bones into the beast's brainâ¦if Eustace is to be believed.
Princess Alyssa was brought to bed again in 84 AC.
With the dungeons of the Red Keep full to bursting, the question arose as to what should be done with the prisoners.
Orys Baratheon himself was spared, along with a dozen other lords thought worth the ransom, but they found themselves captives of Wyl of Wyl, the savage mountain lord called Widow-lover.
Donnel Hightower came up from Oldtown with a hundred knights and seventy-seven of the Most Devout, escorting His High Holiness the High Septon, whilst Lyman Lannister brought three hundred knights from Casterly Rock.
They had thought it would be funny to see old Turnip do the deed, Red Roy admitted.
Before the Shivers ran its course that winter, kittens were selling for as much as destriers.
He took his leave of King's Landing that very night, crossing the Blackwater Rush with his brother Orryn.
Aerea had loved the excitement of the Red Keep, with lords and ladies and envoys from queer foreign lands coming and going, knights training in the yards every morning, singers and mummers and fools capering by night, and all the clangor and color and tumult of King's Landing just beyond the walls.
He remained in the yard where he had fallen, feeding on the carcass of Moondancer, and later on sheep slaughtered for him by the garrison.
He could not raise his hand against the lord for peril of his life, so instead he raised it against his wife.
The confused four-sided war that followed had the effect of closing the southern end of the narrow sea to trade, cutting off King's Landing, Duskendale, Maidenpool, and Gulltown from commerce with the east.
She had taken them from Dragonstone within hours of her husband's funeral, crossing to her lord father's castle on nearby Driftmark.
, she relieved him of his command and expelled him from Dragonstone, together with his son Ser Alyn, and a dozen other men she found suspicious.
The natural daughter of a Pentoshi magister, Tyanna was a tavern dancer who had risen to be a courtesan.
At the feast that followed Aemon's investiture as Prince of Dragonstone, the queen sat Lady Jocelyn next to him, and the two young people were observed talking and laughing together through the evening, to the exclusion of all others.
Their captain, a Volantene adventurer named Tessario, had tiger stripes tattooed across his face and back, the marks of a slave soldier.
Lyman Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock, had sheltered her before, she reminded him.
In the quiet of the Red Keep's library, the king began work on what was to be one of the most significant of his achievements.
Tanned and stuffed, it would later be presented to the High Septon in the Starry Sept as a gift.
So the torches were lit in the throne room, and the queen climbed the iron steps and seated herself where King Viserys had sat before her, and the Old King before him, and Maegor and Aenys and Aegon the Dragon in days of old.
No two chronicles agree on how many men and women died that night beneath the Dragonpit's great dome: two hundred or two thousand, be that as it may.
Some have suggested that rivalry with Lord Manfryd Redwyne, who had replaced him as lord admiral, played a part in Lord Daemon's decision, but this seems a petty aspersion to cast at a man who served so ably and so long.
Departing Oldtown, Dreamfyre took the queen northward, first to Highgarden, then to Crakehall and Casterly Rock, whose lords had welcomed her in days gone by.
"When Our Father's Feast was done and the mob before the gates dispersed, the King's Hand was well satisfied," wrote Septon Eustace, who would depart for Stoney Sept the next day.
The Lads knew Lord Corlys Velaryon only by reputation, but that reputation was formidable.
The boy (named Baelon, after the king's father) survived her only by a day, leaving king and court bereftâ¦save perhaps for Prince Daemon, who was observed in a brothel on the Street of Silk, making drunken japes with his highborn cronies about the "heir for a day."
The rest of the council was all in favor of the proposal, and King Jaehaerys allowed that a tourney might indeed give the smallfolk something to cheer, "and help us forget our woes."
Grand Maester Mellos writes only that Ser Laenor was killed by one of his own household knights after a quarrel.
Sharako's warships swept in with the rising sun behind them.
That was far in the future, however; in 49 AC, Alysanne was but a girl of thirteen years, yet all the chronicles agree that she made a powerful impression on those who met her.
Wearing her token, the young Lord Commander of the Kingsguard defeated all challengers, fighting in a black fury.
Her flesh grew darker and darker and then began to crack, until her skin resembled nothing so much, Seven save me, as pork cracklings.
The old year ended and a new year began, but there were few celebrations anywhere in Westeros to mark the coming of the 60th year since Aegon's Conquest.
"In this dark hour, I became the queen's counselor, setting aside my fool's sceptre and pointed hat to lend her all my wisdom and compassion.
Familiar names were bandied once again: Lannister, Velaryon,Hightower, houses built on gold as much as steel.
Before an hour had passed, the King's Gate and the Lion Gate were open as well.
Hardly had one child departed the Red Keep than another arrived, however, for it appeared that the Mother Above was not yet done blessing Alysanne Targaryen.
Above them all stood Rogar Baratheon, Lord of Storm's
Atop Aegon's High Hill, King Jaehaerys ordered the gates of the Red Keep closed and barred, and doubled the watch on the castle walls.
"The Dying of the Dragons" would be altogether more fitting, but tradition, time, and Grand Maester Munkun have burned the more poetic usage into the pages of history, so we must dance along with the rest.
A strong-willed, bold- tongued, fiery young girl, Aerea delighted in the attention that came with being a queen-in-waiting, and was not pleased to find herself displaced by the newborn princess.
One wit named Rhaenyra "King Maegor with teats," and for a hundred years thereafter "Maegor's Teats" was a common curse amongst Kingslanders.
There Aegon divided his forces, sending Lord Tyrell south against Uthor Uller, Lord of the Hellholt, whilst he himself turned eastward, to besiege Lord Fowler in his mountain fastness Skyreach.
Even as Vhagar's claws raked her belly open and Vhagar's own teeth ripped away a wing, Caraxes bit deeper, worrying at the wound as the lake rushed up below them with terrible speed.
Throwing down their spears and shields, the Dornish broke and ran, making for the distant mountains, but the marcher lords rode after them and cut them down,in what became known after as "the Vulture Hunt."
The little queen and two Kingsguard met them at the harbor as they disembarked, and Alysanne welcomed each of them with glad smiles and gifts.
In 40 AC he departed for Pentos, taking Lady Alys, Balerion his dragon, and the sword Blackfyre with him.
The coming of the new year found Maegor still without a son, not even a bastard who might be legitimized.
No man in that cellar doubted that Roxton was speaking of himself.
(There was one knight of the Kingsguard within the holdfast, but Ser Raynard Ruskyn was a prisoner, having been overwhelmed and wounded by the Lyseni at the very start of the king's defiance.)
Some men began to talk of a "Maiden's Day curse," whilst others wiser in the ways of power saw unseen hands at work and held their tongues.
Wiser perhaps than her father, Princess Rhaena asked his leave to bring her dragon, Dreamfyre, with them, but Aenys forbade it.
The steep, narrow steps of the Iron Throne proved impossible for him as well; henceforth, the restored king must needs hold court from a carved, cushioned wooden seat at the base of the true throne, with a blanket across his twisted, shattered legs.
Though the "reborn" Shepherd had been taken by the gold cloaks and relieved of his tongue, others had risen in his place to preach of how the King's Hand practiced the forbidden arts, drank baby's blood, and was besides "a monster who hides his twisted face from gods and men."
Now he lifted his eyes beyond the city walls, to the fields and hills and bogs that stretched from the Dornish Marches to the Gift.
Mayhaps there is some truth in that assertion, but another possibility, first put forward by Lord Farman's maester, may cut closer to the bone.
The royal fleet tripled in size during the years he served the Old King as master of ships.
Ale, mead, and wine all featured in the evening's frolics, and Viserra partook eagerly.
Aegon himself was attacked on the south shore of the Gods Eye, not once but twice.
The Cannibal, as he knew well, was black as coal.
(These calumnies were never proved, though Mushroom repeats them in his Testimony and goes so far as to claim that reading was not the only service Lady Alicent performed for the Old King in his bedchamber.)
Rhaena remained at the Red Keep all the while, sometimes raging, sometimes shaking, drinking sweetwine to sleep.
One of the castle septas asked Samantha Stokeworth whether the queen's marriage to Androw Farman had ever been consummated, and if so, who had witnessed the bedding.
Ser Gyles Belgrave, the Kingsguard knight commanding his escort, testified afterward that His Grace seemed unusually fatigued as he was helped into the litter, his face "grey and ashen, sagging," yet instead of asking to be carried back to his chambers, he told Ser Gyles to take him to the castle sept.
The sun and moon were spheres, as any man with eyes could see; reason suggested that the world must be a sphere as well, and centuries of study had convinced the archmaesters of the Conclave there could be no doubt of that.
Lord Rogar was clad head to heel in cloth-of-gold beneath an antlered halfhelm, whilst his bride wore a greatcloak sparkling with gemstones, with the three-headed dragon of House Targaryen and the silver seahorse of the Velaryons facing one another on a divided field.
Yet their betrayals would have counted for little, had not Ser Ulf White and Ser Hugh Hammer also chosen this moment to change their allegiance.
Through their efforts, youngRonnel Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie, took a daughter of Torrhen Stark of Winterfell to wed, whilst Loren Lannister's eldest son, heir to Casterly Rock, married a Redwyne girl from the Arbor.
There on the shores of Shipbreaker Bay, Lord Rogar Baratheon proclaimed young Jaehaerys Targaryen to be the true and lawful king of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, and Prince Jaehaerys named Lord Rogar Protector of the Realm and Hand of the King.
Though the king was happy in his queen, and the realm happy with their marriage, Jaehaerys had not been wrong when he foresaw that he would face a time of testing.
The Crown's gold was divided into four parts.
TheWatch should abandon it, she said, and build a smaller castle farther to the east.
The Sea Snake proposed to let the Faith take charge of Dowager Queen Alicent and Queen Helaena, so that they might spend the remainder of their lives in prayer and contemplation.
(Five other men followed him as Kings of the Narrow Sea, until the brief and bloody history of that savage sellsword "kingdom" ended for good and all.)
Rhaenys and Visenya were dragonriders, with the silver-gold hair, purple eyes, and beauty of true Targaryens.
Carried back to King's Landing in a closed litter to hide the extent of his injuries, His Grace did not rise from his bed for the rest of the year.
Little and less need be said of the return of Rhaena Targaryen from Estermont after her daughter's death.
Ser Harrold Darke urged her to seek refuge with Lady Arryn in the Vale, whilst Ser Medrick Manderly tried to persuade her to accompany him and his brother Ser Torrhen back to White Harbor, but Her Grace refused them both.
By itself, the royal fleet lacked the strength to break the Sea Snake's chokehold on the Gullet, and King Aegon's overtures to Dalton Greyjoy of Pyke had thus far failed to win the Iron Islands to his side.
Thrice bereft, Ser Walter had fathered sixteen children by his previous wives, thirteen of whom still lived.
Alysanne was stubborn and persistent and she had a way of bringing the king around to her own point of view, no matter how far apart they had been at the start.
This did not sit well with Joffrey, who was determined to prove himself in battle.
On the eve of Smith's Day, Larra of Lys gave Prince Viserys a second son, a large and lusty boy that the prince named Aemon.
"Lord Rowan is forty years my senior, bald as a stone, with a belly that weighs more than I do," she purportedly told the King's Hand.
His little brother, Prince Daeron, was the most popular of the queen's sons, as clever as he was courteous, and most comely as well.
The king's first progress was meant to be a modest one, commencing with the crownlands north of King's Landing and proceeding only as far as the Vale of Arryn.
Three of Lord Rowan's cousins and one of his nephews were also arrested, along with twoscore grooms, servants, and knights retainer in his service.
After seizing the septon's body from Rob the Starvling, this "learned" fool strapped it atop a destrier, naked, bloody, and rotting, to storm the gates of Oldtown.
A host of Dornish spearmen guarded the Prince's Pass, the gateway through the Red Mountains, but Rhaenys did not engage them.
Not all of these eggs hatched, but many did, and it became customary for the fathers and mothers of newborn princelings to place a dragon's egg in their cradles, following a tradition that Princess Rhaena had begun many years before; the children so blessed invariably bonded with the hatchlings to become dragonriders.
Her son Nymor succeeded her as Lord of Sunspear and Prince of Dorne.
None of this was known on Westeros at the time, however, and soon enough King Jaehaerys had a fresh concern.
Gaemon's blood and Gaemon's tears reached the king as none of Gareth Long's words ever had, and His Grace's improvement was soon marked by every man who watched him in the castle yard, but the king's mislike of his teacher only deepened.
There, in his grandsire's high hall with a cup of wine in hand, Ser Eustace Hightower told his tale.
Prince Daemon sheathed his sword, saying, âYou are a bad maester, but a good man,' after which he bade me leave them, commanding me to âspeak no word of this to lord nor love until themorrow.' "
If the rebels could flaunt a dragon and the loyalists could not, Queen Alicent pointed out, smallfolk might see their foes as more legitimate.
Though nothing was ever proved, it was widely believed that someoneâQueen Rhaena herself, mayhaps, or her mother, Queen Alyssaâhad used the occasion of the king's coronation to switch the twins.
She agreed as well to restore that portion of the royal treasury that Tyland Lannister had sent west for safekeeping, providing that Ser Tyland himself was granted pardon.
Thrilled by the news of Prince Aemon's birth, thousands of smallfolk lined the streets outside the Red Keep when Jaehaerys and Alysanne returned to King's Landing a moon's turn later, in hopes of getting a glimpse of the new heir to the Iron Throne.
As the stormlanders proceeded from the east, Simon Dondarrion, Lord of Blackhaven, led a small host of marcher knights into the mountains from the west, to seal off escape from that side.
"I had one father," he said to Maester Culiper during those days on Dragonstone, "I do not require a second."
His progress began with a stay at Harrenhal as a guest of its new lord, the nine-year- old Maegor Towers.
After slaying Argilac the Arrogant, last of the Durrandon, he had taken Argilac's daughter to wife.
It had been hoped that the news of Maegor's death would be sufficient to persuade Moon's followers to disperse, and some had done just thatâ¦but no more than a few hundred in a host that numbered close to five thousand.
Though Cregan Stark had no personal history with the SeaSnake, for good or ill, he knew that Lord Corlys had served Rhaenyra as Queen's Hand, that she had imprisoned him on suspicion of treason, that he had been freed by Aegon II and accepted a seat upon his councilâ¦only, it would seem, to help bring about his death by poison.
The resettled northmen not only strengthened the riverlords who welcomed them, particularly House Tully and House Blackwood, but also helped revive and spread the worship of the old gods south of the Neck.
Far from shrieking at the sight of him, as Daella had, Saera said she might like to marry him too.
Late that year, a dreadful contagion swept across the Three Sisters.
All through the turmoil of Maegor's ascension, King Aenys's son and the princess, his wife, had remained at Casterly Rock, where Rhaena grew great with child.
To replace the men who had died during the Winter Fever and the Moon of Madness, the Hand bestowed gold cloaks on five hundred of his own men.
The singers tell us that Ser Erryk said, "I love you, brother," as he unsheathed his blade, and that Ser Arryk replied, "And I you, brother," as he drew his own.
As for Lady Alys Westhill, born Elissa of House Farman, where her adventure ended we cannot say.
Rogar Baratheon was elated at the prospect of another son, however, and foresaw no difficulties.
As there was too much work for one sword alone, Tessario the Thumb and his Fingers were tasked with aiding him.
Their discipline had grown lax (drunkenness was endemic in the camp, Grand Maester Munkun says, and disease had taken root as well), the death of Lord Ormund Hightower had left them without a leader, and the lords who wished to command in his place were at odds with one another.
Lord Corlys did not share Ser Laenor's erotic predispositions, he points out, and the Hull shipyards were like unto a second home to him, whereas his son visited them less frequently.
Instead he whispered something in the admiral's ear, a secret that changed the course of Westerosi history.
The next year, the Kingdom of the Three Daughters dispatched a fresh invasion force under the command of a devious Tyroshi captain named Racallio Ryndoon, surely one of the most curious and flamboyant rogues in the annals of history, and Dorne joined the war in alliance with the Triarchy.
Two of Rhaena's former favorites, Samantha Stokeworth and Alayne Royce, made their way to Fair Isle in some haste to stand with the widowed queen, together with the groom's high-spirited sister, the Lady Elissa.
One bore the name of Tess.
Balerion's shadow swept across the yards and halls of the Red Keep as he came down, his huge wings buffeting the air, to land in the inner ward by Maegor's Holdfast.
In the Citadel of Oldtown, the archmaesters met in conclave to debate the succession and choose a new Grand Maester.
Aegon next called on Edmyn Tully, Lord of Riverrun, to take up the Handship.
Boulders rained down on the Hand's knights from above, the work of defenders the stormlanders never saw.
That year a trader from the Summer Islands came to court.
King Maegor celebrated its completion by feasting the builders and workmen who had labored on the castle, sending them wagonloads of strongwine and sweetmeats, and whores from the city's finest brothels.
The Dragonpit was chosen as the site.
King's Landing grew up around Aegon and his court, on and about the three great hills that stood near the mouth of the Blackwater Rush.
In 108 AC, when at last he came face-to-face with Craghas Crabfeeder, he slew him single-handed and cut off his head with Dark Sister.
This time he even calledon Fair Isle, for the despised Lord Franklyn was safely in his grave.
By the time she took her leave, two of her ladies-in-waiting had been betrothed to his lordship's younger sons and a third to a nephew; his eldest daughter and three nieces, meanwhile, had been added to the queen's own party, with the understanding that they would travel south with her and there be pledged to suitable lords and knights of the king's court.
Was it the noise and fire that drew her to the Hill of Rhaenys, the roars and screams of the dying dragons, the smell of burning flesh?
But Grand Maester Mellos dismissed this concern out of hand.
After questioning every man who had access tothe dragons closely, Ser Merrell was convinced that Lady Elissa had made off with them.
Yet however these dragonriders spent their nights, it is a certainty that their days were spent prowling the skies, hunting after Prince Aemond and Vhagar without success.
Lacking a true king, all important decisions in this three-headed "kingdom" were decided by the High Council.
The two men had been quarreling loudly before blades were drawn, merchants at the fair told Lord Velaryon when he came to collect his son's body.
After taking possession of the Eyrie, Prince Maegor executed them to a man.
Afterward, Lord Arryn took his princess back to the Eyrie.
He reached Harrenhal a day after Cole, and that night celebrated a great victory; Daemon and "his river scum" had fled rather than face his wroth, Aemond proclaimed.
The first account of it does not appear until well into the reign of King Jaehaerys, twenty years after both women were dead.
When word reached Riverrun, Lord Tully urged the king to mount Quicksilver and descend on Harrenhal as his father had.
Let this be said of Ser Amaury Peake: his dying did not disgrace the Kingsguard.
Note was taken, and thereafter it became the custom to refer to "greens" and "blacks" when talking of the queen's party and the party of the princess, respectively.
In the great hall at Sunspear, he gathered together what dignitaries remained and told them that Dorne was now part of the realm, that henceforth they would be his leal subjects, that their former lords were rebels and outlaws.
And when the old man would have stormed out sword in hand to exact a bloody vengeance, Lord Larys soothed him with soft words and smiles.
"You come too late, my lord," the Sea Snake told him, "for the war is done, and the king is dead."
There was nothingweak about him, nothing indecisive, as his sister Rhaena and Grand Maester Benifer witnessed then, when the king went on to say, "Should the dragons turn up, anywhere from here to Yi Ti, we will demand their return.
The High Septon of Oldtown performed the rites himself, and a deafening roar went up from the smallfolk when His High Holiness declared the prince and princess one.
Princess Rhaenyra was also enamored of her uncle, for Daemon was ever attentive to her.
Thus did King Aegon II win the ancestral seat of House Targaryen, but the price he paid for it was dire.
"I would have hanged him," he wrote to Ser Gedmund, "but I am loath to waste good hempen rope on a bean."
Alysanne Targaryen, in her grief, blamed herself and Lord Arryn and the Eyrie's maester for their parts in her daughter's demiseâ¦but most of all, she blamed Jaehaerys.
The amity between Her Grace and her stepdaughter had proved short- lived, for both Rhaenyra and Alicent aspired to be the first lady of the realmâ¦and though the queen had given the king not one but two male heirs, Viserys had done nothing to change the order of succession.
Outlawed and condemned, the order no longer had the strength to meet the king'smen in open battle, so the Red Dog sent them out in the guise of hedge knights, to hunt and slay Targaryen loyalists and "traitors to the Faith."
Blunt and to the point, he asked only if the marriage had been consummated.
When told, Maegor gave a shrugâ¦then retired to the Chamber of the Painted Table with a maester, to dictate letters to lords great and small throughout the realm.
No harm was done, for Aemon's howls soon brought Lady Larra running to disarm and discipline her elder son.
The queen's own beloved Septa Edyth arrived to assume the place of Rhaena's much lamented Septa Maryam.
When Ser Marston Waters of the Kingsguard blocked their path and demanded they dismount, Lady Baela slashed him across the cheek with her riding crop.
Ser Garth the Harelip, captain of the gold cloaks at the Dragon Gate, was charged with the defense of the castle, a task for which the Harelip proved to have little appetite.
Many a conflicting tale is told of the death of the queen's dragon.
Have you given any thought as to how she got to Lys?
The city gates were opened, and Targaryen banners raised along the walls.
As a bastard born of a whore, Gaemon counted for little in the court, so when Ser Gareth asked Lord Peake to make the lad the king's whipping boy, the Hand was pleased to do so.
Alyn Oakenfist enjoyed the hospitality of the Hightower, explored the ancient wynds and ways of Oldtown, and visited the Citadel, where he spent days poring over ancient charts and studying dusty Valyrian treatises about warship design and tactics for battle at sea.
Together the three Targaryens watched from the sky as Aegon's army crossed the headwaters of the Blackwater Rush and raced south.
The personable and handsome boy king had moved amongst the people of King's Landing so freely, seemingly delighting in mingling with them, that this sudden disappearance seemed unlike him.
"Let Daemon play at war," His Grace is reported to have said, "it keeps him out of trouble."
"No knight of the Kingsguard should outlive his king when that king dies by violence," Stark declared.
As she stood before the king that Maiden's Day, clad in pale white silk, Myrish lace, and pearls, her long hair shining in the torchlight and her cheeks flush with excitement, Daenaera was but six years old, yet so beautiful she took the breath away.
It was even said that Larra herself could transform into a cat, to prowl the gutters and rooftops of the city.
How can my words tell of the grief that swept the Seven Kingdoms then, of the pain felt by King Jaehaerys and Queen Alysanne, of Lady Jocelyn's empty bed and bitter tears, and the way Princess Rhaenys wept to know that her father would never hold the child she was carrying?
The Dowager Queen wept tears of joy.
To restore their fortunes, Lord Alyn assembled a large fleet of merchantmen, with a dozen of his war galleys to guard them, intending to sail to Old Volantis by way of Pentos, Tyrosh, and Lys, visiting Dorne on the way home.
A dozen ships set sail from Dragonstone, carrying the queen's ladies, her "beloved fool" Mushroom, and her son Aegon the Younger.
The Lady Meredith was in no fit shape to sail, but with the help of a tow from three boats off the Sun Chaser she was able to make the safety of the islands.
Lord Edmyn served from 7â9 AC, but when his wife died in childbed, he decided that his children had more need of him than the realm, and begged leave to return to the riverlands.
The boldest tongue belonged to a Dornishwoman, Moriah Qorgyle ofSandstone, who rose from her curtsy smiling and said, "Your Grace, why not climb down from there and kiss me?"
Forty years of age, she perished in the Motherhouse of Maris on its stony island in the harbor of Gulltown, wrapped in the arms of Jessamyn Redfort, her "dear companion."
As the younger boys scrambled back away from him, bloody and bruised, the prince began to mock them, laughing and calling them "the Strongs."
The rats play when the cat is gone, but my son Aemond will return with fire and blood."
By the time the stableboys finally arrived to pull apart the combatants, the prince was writhing on the ground, howling in pain, and Vhagar was roaring as well.
A long summer, plentiful harvests, and peace and prosperity both at home and abroad helped to blunt the edge of the discontent, however, and as the year drew to a close, Queen Alysanne brought the king splendid news.
Elsewhere his scouts came across a ghastly tableaux where armored corpses sat beneath the trees in rotting raiment, in a grotesque mockery of a feast.
So Prince Aegon was manacled at neck, wrist, and ankle, and led down to the dungeons under Dragonstone.
On the ninth, SerCorlys took her back to Qarth, laden with enough gold to buy twenty more ships and load them all with saffron, pepper, nutmeg, elephants, and bolts of the finest silk.
Even as the king's ships were beating their way north, envoys from Pentos and Tyrosh called upon His Grace in the Red Keep.
In 42 AC he died, a broken man and despised, only five-and-thirty years of age.
A few bolts glanced off the scales of the dragons, and one punched through Vhagar's wing, but none of them found any vulnerable spots as the dragons swooped and banked and loosed great blasts of fire.
Septa Lyra, her confidant since her days on Dragonstone, assured her that she was not to blame.
As had been feared, he was plainly unhappy that King Jaehaerys had not deigned to accompany her, and confessed to being uncertain how to entertain a queen.
In a brothel on the Street of Silk, the whores raised up their own king, a pale-haired boy of four named Gaemon, supposedly a bastard of the missing King Aegon II.
Legend tells us that whilst crossing the Mander at Bitterbridge, he passed Septon Barth coming in the other direction.
The wing all but torn from his body by Meleys jutted at an awkward angle, whilst fresh scars along his back still smoked and bled when he moved.
Almost a hundred years old and as large as the two young dragons put together, the bronze dragon with the great tan wings was in a rage as he took flight, with blood smoking from a dozen wounds.
To oversee the design and construction of the new castle, he named the King's Hand, Lord Alyn Stokeworth (Ser Osmund Strong had died the previous year), and Queen Visenya.
Queen Alysanne remained in Oldtown.
"A blasted land," traders from the Free Cities called it.
Undoubtedly Princess Alysanne had handmaids and companions inthe days that followed Maegor's death.
Half-blind, and maddened by a dozen lesser wounds, Dreamfyre spread her wings and flew straight up at the great dome above in a last desperate attempt to break into the open sky.
His head had been returned to one of Lord Rego's agents in Pentos.
Together with his lordship's brothers Garon and Ronnal, they had made their way back from Storm's
As they passed the mouth of the Mander, the men of the Shield Islands sent forth their own galleys to join them: three ships each from Greyshield and Southshield, four from Greenshield, six from Oakenshield.
Three small islands, even the largest of them a third the size of Dragonstone, that was nothing.
The great tourney held at King's Landing in 98 AC to celebrate the fiftieth year of King Jaehaerys's reign surely gladdened the queen's heart as well, for most of her surviving children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren returned to share in the feasts and celebrations.
She required men who shared her dream, and such were not easily found, even in Oldtown.
Though a dozen hatchlings had been born amidst the fires of Dragonstone in the later years of Aegon's reign, and were offered to the prince, he refused them all.
During that same fateful year, Ser Criston Cole was appointed to the Kingsguard to fill the place created by the death of the legendary Ser Ryam Redwyne.
One band even crowned their own High Septon, in the person of a bearded brute named Septon Moon.
Lady Lysara was deprived of her gold, gems, and gowns, Lady Marra of her books.
At Merrydown Dell, thirty men and three hundred sheep died by dragonflame.
With his maester, his sister Alysanne, and a handful of young knights by his side, Jaehaerys climbed the Iron Throne and summoned his lords to attend him.
Recall, if you will, that Balerion was the largest and oldest of the three dragons that King Aegon and his sisters rode to conquest.
The Vaiths of Vaith did the same to the east.
Sheepstealer had vanished with the girl Nettles, but was thought to be somewhere in Crackclaw Point or the Mountains of the Moon.
We do know that none of them came with the princess when she and Jaehaerys fled the Red Keep on their dragons.
The youngest boy was still at her breast when Ser Theo was arrested by the Kingsguard and charged with conspiring with Queen Alyssa to murder the king and place the boy Jaehaerys on the Iron Throne.
Whereupon the prince turned to the king his brother and said, "Gaemon was as guilty as the rest of usâ¦ of nothing," and the dwarf Mushroom called down, "Lord Rowan, was it you who poisoned King Viserys?"
And the Maiden of the Vale had set sail from Gulltown, with Lady Rhaena Targaryen and her dragon (true).
The reign of King Maegor I Targaryen, known to history and legend as Maegor the Cruel, lasted six years and sixty-six days.
She had fled Dragonstone as dawn broke, stealing into the yards and claiming a dragon for her own.
Sandoq the Shadow had come from Lys with Lady Larra, a gift from her father the Magister Lysandro.
Peace reigned over King's Landing for the remainder of that year, marred only by the death of Manfryd Mooton, Lord of Maidenpool and the last of King Aegon's original regents.
The palace he had bequeathed to his daughter Lysara was seized, together with the manses of his other children, and all their furnishings.
Ser Tyland Lannister, the blind master of coin, proposed to sail to Lys or Tyrosh and engage one or more sellsword companies (Aegon II did not lack for coin, as Ser Tyland had placed three-quarters of the Crown's wealth safely in the hands of Casterly Rock, Oldtown, and the Iron Bank of Braavos before Queen Rhaenyra seized the city and the treasury).
It was a small ceremony in the sept at Dragonstone, attended only by close friends and kin; larger crowds made the princess desperately uncomfortable.
Here and there Poor Fellows appeared, gaunt unwashed fellows with long beards and great axes, to beg for the same clemency that had been granted the Red Dog.
She would rain down fire and death upon Aegon and all those who supported him, she told the black council, and either tear him from the Iron Throne or die in the attempt.
Gaemon decreed that girls should henceforth be equal with boys in matter of inheritance, that the poor be given bread and beer in times of famine, that men who had lost limbs in war must afterward be fed and housed by whichever lord they had been fighting for when the loss took place.
The Dornish "victory" (if victory it was) was seen to be dishonorable, and the survivors of the fight, and the sons and brothers of those who had fallen, promised one another that another day would come, and with it a reckoning.
Whilst awaiting his coming, Jaehaerys used the time to call at Bandallon, Three Towers, Uplands, and Honeyholt.
That was all it was, a wave, a monster of a wave, but all my men were screaming âKraken, kraken!'
The Velaryon fleet lingered overlong in Whispering Sound, waiting for Lord Redwyne and his promised galleys.
The youngest of Queen Alicent's sons, he had grown up in the shadow of his elder brothers, and was more used to following commands than giving them.
Only half a year before he might have returned to Westeros, he was stabbed to death by a whore in a Myrish gambling den.
The prince's mother, Queen Alyssa, and his sister Alysanne stood beside him as Jaehaerys unsheathed Dark Sister and vowed to end the reign of his usurping uncle.
Queen Alicent went at once to the king's bedchamber, accompanied by Ser Criston Cole, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.
The prince taught the girl to wash, Norren says, and the maidservants who fetched their bath water said he oft shared a tub with her, "soaping her back or washing the dragon stink from her hair, both of them as naked as their namedays."
According to the dwarf, it was Ser Criston Colethat the princess yearned for, not Prince Daemon, but Ser Criston was a true knight, noble and chaste and mindful of his vows, and though he was in her company day and night, he had never so much as kissed her, nor made any declaration of his love.
Their departure came not a day too soonâ¦for word of Alys Westhill and her desperate search for a crew had finally reached King's Landing.
There Queen Alicent received the glad news that her grandaughter Jaehaera, the only surviving child of her son Aegon and daughter Helaena, had been delivered safely to Storm's
Afterward his remains were carried back to Driftmark aboard the Mermaid's Kiss, captained by Marilda of Hull with her son Alyn.
He first crossed the narrow sea at the age of six, sailing to Pentos with an uncle.
Ser Arryk Cargyll led His Grace into the torchlit throne room, where Aegon II mounted the steps of the Iron Throne before a thousand lords and knights.
They voted new honors for Oakenfist, confirmed the legitimacy of Prince Viserys's marriage to Lady Larra, agreed to pay her father the ransom in ten annual payments, and moved a vastly greater sum of gold from Braavos to Lys.
"The smallfolk of the city woke as if from a bad dream," Septon Eustace wrote, "and like sinners waking cold and sober after a night of drunken debauchery and revel, they turned away in shame, hiding their faces from one another and hoping to forget."
Quince was a steadfast supporter of the queen, all agree, but some of the men under him were less leal, harboring certain resentments and grudges for old wrongs, real or imagined.
Riders galloped through the night to holdings closer to hand, to summon their lords and ladies to court to do fealty to King Aegon.
A canny trader and daring captain, by 130 AC Marilda of Hull owned seven ships, and her bastard sons were always serving on one or the other.
There were, to be sure, good years and bad years, but it was rightly said that under Jaehaerys and his queen the good years were twice as good as the bad years were bad.
Faced with such a clamor from their own bannermen, the castellan, steward, and mother of the young Lord Tyrell of Highgarden, acting as regents for the boy, suddenly thought better of their support for King Aegon, and decided House Tyrell would take no part in this struggle.
Ser Otto sent word to the magisters,promising exclusive trading rights at King's Landing if they would clear the Gullet of the Sea Snake's ships and open the sea lanes once again.
But His Grace, perhaps mindful of his mother's death in Dorne, instead commanded Tully to summon his banners and lingered at Riverrun as they gathered.
Many other grievous losses were suffered by both sides in what became known as the Battle of the Burning Millâ¦and when the Brackens finally broke and fled back unto their own lands under the command of Ser Amos's bastard half-brother, Ser Raylon Rivers, it was only to find that Stone Hedge had been taken in their absence.
As a maester, chained and sworn to serve, Munkun did not feel it was his place to pass judgment on high lords and anointed knights, however, so the accused traitors languished in the dungeons, awaiting a new Hand.
Prince Aemond had no taste for such delays, however.
For surely it was his dread hand behind the ill chance that brought the two princelings together at Storm's
By way of proof he brought his mother, an aged innkeep's daughter who said that she had once been raped by Maegor.
That return hinged upon the Velaryons of Driftmark, however.
Daemon Velaryon and Qarl Corbray advocated a show of force, though Lord Daemon wished to send his fleet, whilst Lord Qarl offered to lead an army.
On the appointed day Ser Criston Cole placed the iron-and-ruby crown of Aegon the Conqueror upon the brow of the eldest son of King Viserys and Queen Alicent, proclaiming him Aegon of House Targaryen, Second of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm.
None of this was of great concern to the queen and her familiars so long as Marq Farman ruled in Faircastle, for his lordship was an amiable and good-natured man who loved all his children, his wayward daughter and weakling son included, and loved Rhaena Targaryen for loving them as well.
re vast and ships small, and none of Lord Donnel's vessels could match the Sun Chaser for speed when the wind was in her sails.
A fortnight later, Lord Rogar Baratheon and Queen Alyssa arrived at King's Landing with their host, and hundreds more were seized and imprisoned.
One struck the Autumn Moon and split her mast from the crow's nest down to the deck.
Amongst those in attendance were his sisters, Rhaena and Alysanne; his young nieces, Aerea and Rhaella; his mother, the Queen Regent Alyssa; the King's Hand, Rogar Baratheon; Ser Gyles Morrigen, the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard; Grand Maester Benifer; the assembled archmaesters of the Citadelâ¦and one man no one could have expected to see: Ser Joffrey Doggett, the Red Dog of the Hills, self-proclaimed Grand Captain of the outlawed Warrior's Sons.
at- arms made up the rest of Dragonstone's garrison.
The next day when the sun rose, Blackbean woke Ser Gedmund to inform him that the Lord of the Tides was gone.
Though attempts were made to wake Ulf White from his drunken slumber, he proved impossible to rouse.
Some said they flew to Valyria, in defiance of the curse that hung over that smoking wasteland, to search out the secrets of the dragonlords of the old Freehold.
His leal subjects in the west had long been troubled by reavers from the Iron Islands, the young king declared, and who better to bring peace to the Sunset Sea than his new admiral?
Lord Donnel's scribes scribbled as he spoke, and within days the story had spread all over Westeros, by messenger, bard, and raven.
On one point Lord Cregan remained adamant, however; the king's killers must not go unpunished.
Though Lord Alaric Stark had commanded that half of every harvest be preserved and put aside against the coming winter, not all his bannermen had obeyed.
The Blood Wyrm slammed into the older dragon with terrible force.
To the west, Aegon Targaryen met a warmer welcome.
When he stumbled from the dragon's lair with his cloak aflame, only his brother's swift action saved his life.
Grand Maester Benifer exchanged a glance with Prentys Tully, the master of laws.
He had fought for Queen Rhaenyra during the Dance, and had done so ably and with valor.
The king spoke to him gently, it was said, and even praised the leal service of his daughters to Queen Alysanne on Dragonstone, going so far as to name them "two treasures."
But when Ser Amaury Peake approached Maegor's Holdfast with a dozen men-at-arms, he found Viserys Targaryen himself upon the drawbridge, a battleaxe in hand.
When Aegon refused, Visenya grew furious.
The Sun Chaser departed Oldtown on the twenty-third day of the third moon of 56 AC, making her way down Whispering Sound for the open seas in company with Ser Norman Hightower's Autumn Moon and Ser Eustace Hightower's Lady Meredith.
Barefoot, bearded, and possessed of immense fervor, the "Poorest Fellow" could speak for hours, and often didâ¦and what he spoke about was sin.
Clad in her queenly raiment, which grew shabbier and more threadbare by the day, Elinor of House Costayne would travel the Reach giving eloquent testimony to the evil of her late king and the goodness of his successors.
Borys was in Myr for a time, and later in Volantis, doing gods know whatâ¦
The Princess of Dragonstone remained his acknowledged heir, with half the lords of Westeros sworn to defend her rights.
Snow and ice and cold made Vermax ill-tempered, it is said, so the prince did not linger long amongst the northmen, but many a curious tale came out of that short sojourn.
Another favorite of the commons was the Bard of Flea Bottom, Tom the Strummer, who mocked his foes with ribald songs before each bout.
As king, he put great trust in his small council and his sisters, leaving much of the day- to-day governance of the realm to themâ¦yet did not hesitate to take command when he found it necessary.
AtOldtown the High Septon himself could no doubt be persuaded to give the king and queen his blessing, and Lord Lyonel and Lady Sam would welcome the chance to show the king that the splendors of their city far outshone those of King's Landing.
Triumphant, Maegor returned to King's Landing to seat himself once more upon the Iron Throne.
Lord Peake could boast descent from a long line of famous warriors, and had a hundred knights and nine hundred men-at-arms beneath his banners.
In his Testimony, Mushroom says Tessario the Thumb gave him a choice between "silver or steel," and "to my shame, I bade him sheath his dagger and seized that sweet fat purse."
Word reached King's Landing that Ser Joffrey Doggett had been seen entering Riverrun, not as a captive but as a guest of Lord Tully.
If Rhaenyra were intent on murder, surely it would have been the Dowager Queen Alicent flung down onto the spikes.
So as the power of the Shepherd waned on the Hill of Rhaenys, the power of King Trystane Truefyre (as he now styled himself) waxed atop Aegon's High Hill.
Ser Tyland Lannister was given to the torturers instead, in hopes of recovering some of the Crown's treasure.
Oftimes, to the horror of her lord father and lady mother, she spoke of her desire to take a ship beyond the western horizon to learn what strange and wondrous lands might lie on the far side of the Sunset Sea.
In their travels throughout the realm, the Seven Speakers talked of Queen Alysanne, her piety, her generosity, and her love for the king, her brotherâ¦but for those septons, begging brothers, and pious knights and lords who challenged them by citing passages from The Seven-Pointed Star or the sermons of High Septons past, they had a ready answer, one that Jaehaerys himself had crafted in King's Landing, ably assisted by Septon Oswyck and (especially) Septon Barth.
It is rarely used south of the Neck, I am told, but its continued existence is a lordly prerogative that some of my more truculent subjects would be loath to surrender.
Kermit Tully and Benjicot Blackwood were spurned for the same reason.
He dismounted, so as to meet the king on equal footing, and offered the Storm King one last chance to yield.
At the Bloody Gate, the entrance to the Vale, the survivors found food, warmth, and welcomeâ¦but Ser Joffrey Arryn, the Knight of the Bloody Gate and Lady Jeyne Arryn's chosen successor, saw at once that the crossing had left Blackwood's men unfit for battle.
In the face of so much tumult, Lord Unwin was forced to think again.
The twenty names on Queen Tyanna's list soon joined them, and then another dozen men, named by the first twenty.
Moredo commanded his sister's guards, whilst Lotho set about establishing a branch of the Rogare Bank atop Visenya's Hill.
When Lord Baratheon's foot came crashing into the fray, the shield wall swayed and staggered back, and seemed as if it might breakâ¦until the wood to the left of the road erupted with shouts and screams, and hundreds more rivermen burst from the trees, led by that mad boy Benjicot Blackwood, who would this day earn the name Bloody Ben, by which he would be known for the rest of his long life.
Never fond of Lady Baela, he now had reason to mislike her sister Rhaena as well; both of them, he was convinced, were working against him, mostlike at the behest of Baela's husband, the insolent and rebellious Oakenfist.
Lord Celtigar set out at once to redress the problem; to do so, he restored the selfsame taxes that his ancestor Lord Edwell had once enacted during the regency of Jaehaerys I and piled on many a new levy besides.
Maegor Targaryen and Tyanna of the Tower were wed atop the Hill of Rhaenys, amidst the ashes and bones of the Warrior's Sons who had died there.
Criston Cole had sprung his trap, and Rhaenys had come snatching at the bait.
Baelon, a seasoned knight of thirty-five, was better suited for rule than the eighteen-year-old Princess Rhaenys or her unborn babe (who might or might not be a boy, whereas Prince Baelon had already sired two healthy sons, Viserys and Daemon).
In the Vale, Lord Allard Royce of Runestone assembled twoscore loyal bannermen and marched against the Eyrie, easily defeating the supporters of the self-styled King of Mountain and Vale.
A malign enchantress who bathed in the blood of virgins to preserve her youth, Mushroom would have us believe.
We glimpsed fisherfolk from time to time, and once a great dark ship that could only have been a whaler out of Ib.
On Driftmark, the Sea Snake's ships set sail from Hull and Spicetown to close the Gullet, choking off trade to and from King's Landing.
The eldest daughter of Aenys and Alyssa was a shy, dreamy child, who seemed to be more comfortable with animals than other children.
All across the realm, bells in every sept sang a dolorous song.
d Oldtown were solidly behind King Aegon, and His Grace had the Arbor tooâ¦but elsewhere in the south, other lords were declaring for Rhaenyra, amongst them Lord Costayne of Three Towers, Lord Mullendore of Uplands, Lord Tarly of Horn Hill, Lord Rowan of Goldengrove, and Lord Grimm of Greyshield.
Ser Gyles Morrigen, the man chosen, was a nephew to Damon the Devout, the Grand Captain of the Warrior's
Septon Barth said it best.
Notwithstanding his purported exertions two nights prior, it is reliably reported that Lord Rogar performed his husbandly duties with vigor, cheered on by hisdrunken brothers.
He wanted pardons not only for himself, but for all those who had fought for Queen Rhaenyra, and demanded further that Aegon the Younger be given Princess Jaehaera's hand in marriage, so the two of them might jointly be proclaimed King Aegon's heirs.
Plans for a second royal progress had already been made and announced before the queen's condition became known.
Being lowborn and unworthy of the sword, Essie and the Dornish whore Sylvenna Sand were hanged from the battlements of the Red Keep, together with twenty-seven other members of "King" Gaemon's court, an ill-favored assortment of thieves, drunkards, mummers, beggars, whores, and panders.
When his young niece Rhaena, in only her twelfth year, took to the sky astride Dreamfyre, Maegor's failure became the talk of King's Landing.
King Maegor gave his widow seven days to mourn, in honor of the gods, then summoned her to tell herthey would marry.
On the isle of Driftmark, Daemon Velaryon's eldest son became a father for the first time when his lady wife presented him with a handsome, healthy boy.
The gods in their caprice chose to keep Queen Rhaena and her betrayer ignorant of one another, however, and the Sun Chaser passed through the Stepstones without incident.
"Are traitors," said Ironrod, "and must die a traitor's death."
After the third time, he was disemboweled and dangled before Sunfyre so the dragon might feast upon his legs and innards, but the king commanded that enough of the Grand Maester be saved so "he might greet my sweet sister on her return."
When the raven came to summon her to King's Landing, her lady mother told her sternly that she was never to speak of her child or her sin.
Tumbleton was never to recover; though later Footlys would attempt to rebuild atop the ruins, their "new town" would never be a tenth the size of the old, for the smallfolk said the very ground was haunted.
King Viserys did seem to recover some of his old vigor once the newGrand Maester arrived at court.
Septon Eustace tells us of one occasion when Aegon entered the Tower of the Hand and found Ser Otto writing another letter, whereupon he knocked the inkpot into his grandsire's lap, declaring, "Thrones are won with swords, not quills.
Septon Eustace says her teeth were crooked, her nose scarred where it had once been slit for thieving.
In 59 AC, however, Corlys Velaryon was a boy of six, dreaming of the sea, so we must leave him and turn back once again to the end of autumn in that fateful year, when the skies darkened, the winds rose, and winter came again to Westeros.
Elsewise, King's Landing returned to its customary tranquillity for the best part of two yearsâ¦until 113 AC, when Princess Rhaenyra turned sixteen, took possession of Dragonstone as her own seat, and married.
The first omen of the dark times to come was seen on Driftmark, when the dragon's egg presented to Laena Velaryon upon her birth quickened and hatched.
Drawing his dagger, the Clubfoot drew it across his palm.
Lord Mooton's men, safely upwind of the conflagration, waited with their bows and spears, and made short work of the burned and burning men who came staggering from the inferno.
And if you should get with child again, you and the babe would be well taken care of, and your father and mother will be richly rewarded for your service to the Crown.
Alyssa bore him five strong, healthy children, two daughters and three sons (a sixth child, another daughter, died in her cradle shortly after birth), and when his sire died in 37 AC, the crown passed to Aenys, and Alyssa became his queen.
Harren's ironborn grandsire, Harwyn Hardhand, had taken the Trident from Argilac's grandsire, Arrec, whose own forebears had thrown down the last of the river kings centuries earlier.
The king himself might have shared these views originally, but the death of his sister Rhaenys and her dragon, Meraxes, in 10 AC and the attacks upon his own person undoubtedly gave him causeâ¦
"The castle has five colossal towers," the king pointed out, "and the Towers boy occupies part of one.
Whilst he had collected the heads of hundreds of Stars and Swords, hundreds more remained at large, and tens of thousands of lesser lords, landed knights, and smallfolk sheltered them, fed them, and gave them aid and comfort wherever they could.
Many thought Maegor dead until his mother removed his broken helm.
"When my boy Viserys was tortured and slain, these men stood by silently and spoke no word of protest," she said.
In Sea Dragon Tower, in the maester's chambers under the rookery, they discovered Maester Anselm dead, with a dagger between his shoulder blades.
When Lord Burley explained that there were no women on the Wall, she persistedâ¦until finally, with great reluctance, he had her escorted to a village south of the Wall that the black brothers called Mole's Town.
When the lovers were discovered abed together by Ser Arryk Cargyll of the Kingsguard and brought before the king, Rhaenyra insisted she was in love with her uncle and pleaded with her father for leave to marry him.
"That was a good day," Queen Alysanne would say with a sad smile, through the years that remained to her.
Inevitably, word of her efforts came to the attention of the Lord of the Hightower.
To that extent they share your guilt, as does whatever drunken septon you found to marry you.
Though exceptionally learned, Ollidar was also exceptionally old, and he passed from this world less than a year after taking up the mantle of Grand Maester.
However loudly the mob might cheer for Oakenfist, their bold young hero's rash attack had left the realm in an untenable position.
Lord Manderly gave him the choice of taking the black, or having his right hand removed as if he were a common thief.
Since Aemon's death, he always drank a cup or three of honeyed wine at night to help him sleep.
And all of them had ties to one man: Unwin Peake, Lord of Starpike, Lord of Dunstonbury, Lord of Whitegrove, once Hand of the King."
Though the dragons were dead and the queen fled, such was the power of the Iron Throne that the commons still looked to the Red Keep when hungry or afraid.
The knights of the Kingsguard at once descended to the Red Keep's kitchens and took a dozen cooks, bakers, scullions, and serving girls into custody, delivering them to George Graceford, the Lord Confessor.
Whilst it is true that determining the sex of a living dragon is a nigh on impossible task, no other source mentions Vermax producing so much as a single egg, so it must be assumed that he was male.
Everywhere they went, however, huge crowds turned out for a glimpse of Vhagar and Caraxes.
Ser Ryam Redwyne again emerged as champion.
Lord Oakheart sent a raven, suggesting that the Dornish girl be sold into "the meanest brothel in King's Landing, till every beggar in the city has had his pleasure of her."
Ninety warships swept from the Stepstones under the banners of the Three Daughters, bending their oars for the Gulletâ¦and as chance and the gods would have it, the Pentoshi cog Gay Abandon, carrying two Targaryen princes, sailed straight into their teeth.
Laughter rang through the night and spirits were high until the racers reached the foot of Aegon's High Hill, where Viserra's palfrey collided with one of her companions.
On the western shores of Blackwater Bay, meanwhile, the Moon of the Three Kings came to a sudden end when an army appeared outside the walls of King's Landing.
King Aenys was so pleased by the gift that he offered Greyjoy any boon he might desire.
Androw Farman was no longer the lad that Rhaena had married five years earlier on Fair Isle, when he was ten-and-seven.
For the entire year of 89 AC, the king remained on the move.
That was where Sweetberry broke down, and began to sob and tear at her dressing gown.
"He bound the land together, and made of seven kingdoms, one," read the words on the plinth of the OldKing's monument that stands at the Citadel of Oldtown.
Mushroom would have us believe that the lightning was flashing to the east and a heavy rain falling as Lucerys leapt off his dragon, his mother's message clutched in his hand.
In the end, the brown dragon was brought to heel by the cunning and persistence of a "small brown girl" of six-and-ten, who delivered him a freshly slaughtered sheep every morning, until Sheepstealer learned to accept and expect her.
She concluded by suggesting that perhaps King Aegon should marry both of them, "one to rule beside him, as Queen Alysanne did King Jaehaerys, and one to bed and breed."
I saw the Autumn Moon founder with my own eyes.
Should they join their strength to that of the riverlords assembling at Harrenhal with Prince Daemon, even the strong walls of King's Landing might not be able to withstand them, Ser Criston warned the new Prince Regent.
Instead the council accepted his resignation with alacrity, and appointed the bluff, honest, and well- regarded Lord Thaddeus Rowan in his place.
Having taken a dozen castles and secured the mouth of the Blackwater Rush on both sides of the river, he commanded the lords he had defeated to attend him.
And thus that dreadful year 120 AC ended as it begun, with a woman laboring in childbirth.
He proposed to strike the riverlands from both east and west, and thus force the Lords of the Trident to fight on two fronts at once.
Though Aegon had never claimed a dragon of his own, he had ascended into the skies more than once with his sister, on Dreamfyre.
He flew at Aemond once again, but the older boy began pummeling him savagelyâ¦until Luke, coming to the rescue of his brother, drew his dagger and slashed Aemond across the face, taking out his right eye.
Angry Poor Fellows tore the camp apart for a day and a night in search of her, knocking over tents, seizing dozens of women, and beating any man who tried to stand in their wayâ¦but the hunt came up empty.
The tourney that Lord Redwyne had proposed to celebrate the completion of the Dragonpit was finally held at midyear.
Others declare that Borros appeared to be relishing the moment, for it pleased his vanity to have both king and queen seeking his support.
Command of the City Watch, the largest armed force inKing's Landing, the king entrusted to Qarl Corbray, Lord of Heart's Home, who had fought beside Aegon the Uncrowned beneath the Gods Eye.
As Rhaenyra preferred to keep her sons by her side, that duty fell to Addam Velaryon.
"Drops of blood fell to the floor as she went past, and wise men looked at one another, though none dared speak the truth aloud: the Iron Throne had spurned her, and her days upon it would be few.
Surrender did not save him; His Grace put the entire garrison to the sword, along with every man, woman, and child he found to have anydrop of Harroway blood.
It is said that Jacaerys Velaryon leapt free and clung to a piece of smoking wreckage for a few heartbeats, until some crossbowmen on the nearest Myrish ship began loosing quarrels at him.
"Only the Mother's mercy saved me," he writes, though it seems more likely that Ser Perkin did not wish to provoke the enmity of the Faith.
When the king demanded to know why he was not with his wife, the Lord of Storm's
The king and queen stopped twice along the way, once at Bitterbridge and once at Highgarden, resting overnight and taking counsel with their lords.
Nor would he simply demand gold from the lords of the realm, as Maegor had.
At the very time when unity was most desperately required, the lords around King Aegon II found themselves deeply divided, and unable to agree on how best to deal with the gathering storm.
Whatever the reason, Ser Criston and Prince Aemond decided to part ways.
Full as many of his days and nights were spent on Dragonstone, the island citadel of his forebears.
Ser Vaemond's sons Daemion and Daeron took their claim to the council in King's Landing.
To be certain of that, he forbade fishing in the waters beneath the Dragonmont's eastern face, where the vanquished dragon's body lay rotting.
He commanded that a road be cut through it, to connect King's Landing with Storm's
Worn out from childbirth, travel, and grief, she grew thin and frail after Aemon's death.
The Hogs Head was the first building put to the torch.
Pate the Pig Boy was not amongst them, it should be said; the three men that Alysanne had selected were great lords or the sons of great lords.
End, when the dragon Arrax raced before a gathering storm to deliver Lucerys Velaryon to the safety of the castle yard, only to find Aemond Targaryen there before him.
"Perhaps he sensed his end was near," Septon Eustace wrote, "and wished to pray for forgiveness for his sins."
Once clad in white, Ser Arryk should be able to move freely about Dragonstone, Ser Criston suggested; any guards who chanced to encounter him would surely mistake him for his brother.
End, and Lord Baratheon dispatched a messenger by ship to Bloodstone, where Prince Daemon was still struggling to defend his meagre kingdom against the men of the Triarchy and their Dornish allies.
Connington was given a choice between a lifetime in the Night's Watch or ten years of exile.
On her back rode the youngest of Queen Alicent's three sons, Daeron Targaryen, fifteen, Lord Ormund's squire, that same gentle and soft- spoken lad who had once been milk brother to Prince Jacaerys.
Queen Alyssa's household knights and servants were dismissed, together with the servants and companions of her children, and Jaehaerys and Alysanne were made wards of their great-aunt, the fearsome Visenya.
Sailors unable to return to their ships attacked the River Gate and fought a pitched battle with the City Watch.
Then His Grace announced his intent totake Tyanna of Pentos as his third wife.
During this time King Aegon II also commanded that the Dragonpitbe restored and rebuilt, commissioned two huge statues of his brothers Aemond and Daeron (he decreed they should be larger than the Titan of Braavos, and covered in gold leaf), and held a public burning of all the decrees and proclamations issued by the "dayfly kings" Trystan Truefyre and Gaemon Palehair.
Ravens were dispatched to Driftmark offering House Velaryon pardon for all its past offenses if Alyn of Hull would present himself on Dragonstone and swear allegianceâ¦but until and unless an answer was received, it would be folly for Aegon II to try to cross the bay by ship and risk capture.
Mount and fly their wild kin, and we will number twelve, even without Stormcloud," Princess Rhaenys pointed out.
He was not wrong, though his first trial, when it came, was to be of a very different nature, one that no amount of training in the yards of Dragonstone could possibly have prepared him for.
He also proclaimed that the holy men and women of the Faith, and all their lands and possessions, were to be exempt from taxation, and affirmed the right of the Faith's own courts to try and sentence any septon, Sworn Brother, or holy sister accused of malfeasance.
"Would that I could write that the smallfolk returned to their homes and hovels to fast andpray and beg forgiveness for their own sins, but that would be far from the truth.
King's Landing mourned for a few days before life resumed as before, and that was the end of it.
So it came to pass that Lord Mooton returned to King's Landing with peace in hand, but at a grievous cost.
We came here to be free of Old Valyria, and your Targaryens are Valyrian to the bone.
The coolness between the king's wife and the king's daughter was plain for all to see; even envoys from the Free Cities made note of it in letters sent back to Pentos, Braavos, and Old Volantis.
Grand Maester Benifer said, "You are speaking of waging war across the narrow sea, Your Grace.
He urged the queen to offer pardons to Lords Baratheon, Hightower, and Lannister if they would bend their knees, swear fealty, and offer hostages to the Iron Throne.
Neither Rhaena Targaryen's fruitless wanderings nor the storm of ravens Grand Maester Benifer sent forth had turned up any word of the princess or the dragon, beyond the usual lies, mistakes, and delusions.
The lords and knights who came were largely westermen and riverlords; the Lords Tarbeck, Roote, Vance, Charlton, Frey, Paege, Parren, Farman, and Westerling were amongst them, together with Lord Corbray of the Vale, the Bastard of Barrowton, and the fourth son of the Lord of Griffin's Roost.
Prince Aemond had kept Vhagar with the main column throughout the march, thinking that his uncle might attempt to attack them on Caraxes.
The Flea also freed all the prisoners found in the dungeons below the castle, amongst themGrand Maester Orwyle and the Sea Snake, Lord Corlys Velaryon.
Grand Maester Benifer wrote afterward that the meeting between the boy king and the outlaw knight "set the table" for all of Jaehaerys's reign to follow.
On the fourth ballot, the Most Devout broke tradition, choosing a man who was not one of their own number.
When His Grace ordered Mooton to repeat what he had said about the princess, he blushed and stammered and claimed the watchmen had misheard.
But though many thousands died in the Gullet, Viserys Targaryen was not one of them.
Sons were badly wounded, and His Grace had Blackfyre in his hand, but even so, it was a near thing.
When the other claimants proved intransigent and refused to accept his ruling, Ser Corwyn imprisoned the Gilded Falcon and his sons and executed Eldric Arryn, yet somehow Ser Eldric's mad father, Ser Arnold, eluded him and fled to Runestone, where he had served as a squire in his boyhood.
A hastily assembled Arryn fleet, augmented by a dozen Braavosi warships, met and defeated the Targaryen fleet in the waters off Gulltown.
The hip shattered at Rook's Rest had left Aegon bent and twisted, his once-handsome features had grown puffy from milk of the poppy, and burn scars covered half his body.
"The wyverns of Sothoryos are oft taken for dragons by men who have never seen a dragon."
And so he did for the best part of two years, setting down the lengthy history of the reigns of Viserys I and Aegon II that would later prove to be such an invaluable source for his successor's True Telling.
It was only through Queen Alysanne's good offices that they ever found accord.
Not quite the words that innocent young maidens dream of hearing, perhaps, but Myrielle took the gift as a token of affection, and her father was most pleased."
As 62 AC drew near its end, the king looked ahead to the year dawning, and all the years beyond, and began to make plans for a project that would transform the Seven Kingdoms.
How better to show that Maegor's supporters had been forgiven than by taking one of his Black Brides to queen, mayhaps even adopting her three sons by her first marriage.
Ser Amaury was sworn to protect you, to give his own life for yours if need be.
He removed the heads of the Pentoshi and the false Shepherd with his headsman's axe, but Grand Maester Orwyle was granted the honor of dying by the sword, in view of his age, high birth, and long service.
Lord Borros Baratheon called his banners and assembled near six thousand men at Storm's
Ser Horys Hill had escaped the battle at Great Fork, but defeat and flight had tarnished him, and his followers were few.
His splendid son Ser Medrick, the finest knight in the North, survived him by only four days before succumbing to the same affliction.
Yet though the Golden Wedding was the most lavish and far-famed of the nuptials of 49 AC, the third of the marriages made in that fateful year would prove to be the most significant.
It was Ser Otto who convinced Viserys to remove Prince Daemon as master of coin, and then as master of laws, actions the Hand soon came to regret.
Therefore his lordship had prudently ended his "shipyard trysts" with Mouse after Alyn's birth, commanding her to keep her boys far from court.
The Sea Snake sent seven of his warships with them as escort, to see that they reached Pentos safely.
Prince Jacaerys was as yet unmarried and childless, but it was assumed that he would sire children of his own once his mother sat the Iron Throne.
In support of this claim, they cited her sudden disappearance, the way she seemed to "melt into the night" after the murder, and the fact that Septon Moon's guards could not agree on what she looked like.
Lady Sharis Footly, the widow of Tumbleton, achieved a different sort of fame by her efforts to restore that shattered town.
As Commander of the City Watch, with two thousand men under his command, Daemon waxed more powerful than ever.
By the time the king emerged, Lord Graceford had named his names, many of the traitors had been seized, others had fled, and Marston Waters, Mervyn Flowers, and Lucas Leygood were dead.
A noble house with a storied Valyrian lineage, the Velaryons had come to Westeros even before the Targaryens, if their family histories can be believed, settling in the Gullet on the low-lying and fertile isle of Driftmark (so named for the driftwood that the tides brought daily to its shores) rather than its stony, smoking neighbor, Dragonstone.
To the astonishment of every woman at the court, save mayhaps the queen, Princess Daella chose Lord Rodrik to be her husband.
"The Andals never practiced the first night in Andalos," Grand Maester Benifer said.
One remained: Silverwing, Good Queen Alysanne's mount in days of old, had taken to the sky as the carnage began, circling the battlefield for hours, soaring on the hot winds rising fromthe fires below.
And now unfortunately we must give some consideration to a certain distasteful book that first appeared in the Seven Kingdoms some forty years after the events presently being discussed.
As the knight took his leave, the king turned to Corlys Velaryon.
Those who bent the knee to Aegon of House Targaryen would keep their lands and titles.
"No man can claim to be oppressed by these taxes," Jaehaerys explained to the small council.
Lord Cameron, the Evenstar of Tarth, had fallen back into the spine of mountains that ran down the center of his island, and established a camp in a hidden valley from which he could look down on the Myrish movements below.
King Maegor himself departed King's Landing, assembling a strong force of knights and men-at-arms and marching on Harrenhal to complete the destruction of House Harroway.
"Each maid seemed lovelier than the last," Mushroom says in hisTestimony, "sparkling and spinning in their silks and jewels, they made a dazzling sight as they made their way to the throne room.
Then King Aegon III bade the admiral rise with the words, "We are glad to have you safe home, my brother."
Alaric Stark was best left in Winterfell; a stubborn man by all reports, stern and hard- handed and unforgiving, he would make for an uncomfortable presence at the council table.
During the Conquest, Aegon and his sisters each had a maester serving them, and afterward the king sometimes employed as many as half a dozen to deal with all the matters brought before him.
Escorted by twelve Velaryon war galleys, they sailed upon a battered old trading cog named Mouse, owned and captained by Marilda of Hull.
It was he who took Rhaenyra's innocence, shedding her maiden's blood upon the sword of his manhoodâ¦according to Mushroom, who claims to have found them in bed at break of day.
Every inn and stable in King's Landing was soon full, whilst outside the walls a city of tents and pavilions arose for those unable to find accomodations.
Shoving aside the other onlookers, he lifted the princess in his arms and carried her across the castle to Grand Maester Benifer.
That same year, across Blackwater Bay, the Sea Snake was stricken by a sudden fever.
Legend has it that Dreamfyre had broken free of two of her chains at Queen Helaena's death.
In the Vale he had been an able lord, strong but just, affable, open-handed, loved by the smallfolk and his lords bannermen alike.
There were ominous stirrings along the Dornish Marches too, for Dorne had a new ruler in the person of AliandraMartell, a brazen girl of ten-and-seven who fancied herself "the new Nymeria" and had every young lord south of the Red Mountains vying for her affections.
That mislike turned to hatred when the Volantene slew Ser Robin Massey, one of the young knights that Aegon had wished to name to his Kingsguard, in a quarrel over a horse both men wished to buy.
Beneath the dark, salt-stained walls of Castle Driftmark three modest fishing villages grew together into a thriving town called Hull, for the rows of ship hulls that could always be seen below the castle.
Even as the fighting in the Vale of Arryn continued, the promise of the Lysene Spring suffered another grievous blow hundreds of leagues to the south, with the near-simultaneous demise of Lysandro the Magnificent in Lys and his brother Drazenko in Sunspear.
Septon Eustace, a witness to what followed, tells us that Queen Alicent attempted to treat with her stepdaughter.
The king changed the color of the dragonon his banners from red to gold, to celebrate the brilliant golden scales of his dragon, Sunfyre, whilst the queen quartered the Targaryen arms with those of House Arryn and House Velaryon, in honor of her lady mother and her first husband, respectively.
King Aegon was enjoying a quiet supper in his solar with his little queen, Daenaera, and his friend Gaemon Palehair and the dwarf was entertaining them with a silly song about a bear that drank too much, when the bastard boy began to complain of a cramping in his gut.
Stymied at every turn, Her Grace finally returned to King's Landing, to the arms of King Jaehaerys and the merry laughter of her own daughter, Princess Daenerys.
Aegon the Usurper had won the allegiance of the Lannisters of Casterly Rock, and Lord Tyrell of Highgarden was a mewling boy in swaddling clothes whose mother, acting as his regent, would most like align the Reach with her over-mighty bannermen, the Hightowersâ¦but the rest of the realm's great lords had yet to declare.
He was rightly regarded as one of the finest knights in Westeros, though his savagery in the field and his harshness toward defeated foes was oft remarked upon as well.
Great lords and common tradesmen alike spoke of the beauties and wonders to be found behind the Mermaid's carved and painted doorsâ¦ including, some said, an actual mermaid.
The three lords they brought before Ser Robert Redwyne, their commander.
Steffon Sunderland renewed his fealty to the Eyrie, bent the knee to Queen Visenya, and gave his sons over ashostages for his good behavior, on
Many of Lord Cregan's northmen saw this as an opportunity.
Mushroom (who had much love for the queen) tells a different tale.
The how and when and why of what has become known as the Treasons of Tumbleton remain a matter of much dispute, and the truth of all that happened will likely never be known.
The girl Nettles was young, beyond a doubt (though perhaps not as young as those the prince had debauched in his youth), but it seems doubtful that she was a true maiden.
The Lannister host was shattered and slaughtered, but at such cost that young Ben Blackwood, the boy Lord of Raventree, wept when he saw the heaps of the dead.
The queen's own child followed in due course.
One who hoped to tame him (after his quest for Grey Ghost proved fruitless) was Alyn of Hull.
These edicts were almost certainly the work of a Dornish whore named Sylvenna Sand, reputedly the paramour of the little king's mother Essie, if Mushroom is to be believed.
Viserys returned the crown and kissed Daemon on both cheeks, welcoming him home, and the lords and commons sent up a thunderous cheer as the sons of the Spring Prince were reconciled.
(Mushroom adds that her ladyship ended with a cheeky postscript that said, "I know some pretty boys as well, should His Grace be so inclined, but I fear they could not give him heirs," but none of the other chronicles mention this affrontry, and her ladyship's letter has been lost.)
Though armies marched and met in savage battle, much of the slaughter took place on water, andâ¦especiallyâ¦in the air, as dragon fought dragon with tooth and claw and flame.
Widespread famine was reported in the North, and the Winter Fever descended on Barrowton, the first time it had ever traveled so far inland.
Henceforth, Celtigar decreed, traitors, rebels, and murderers would be beheaded within the Dragonpit, and their corpses fed to the queen's dragons.
As Quince struggled to rise from his bed, Broome drove a spear into his huge pale belly.
I Targaryen would prove to be as restless a king as ever sat the Iron Throne.
"Elissa had no love for dragons," she told the king.
High Tide was one of the few places in the Seven Kingdoms where the king's brother could be confident he would not be turned away.
The Grand Maester paused, then said, "Vaegon is no maesterâ¦but he could well have the makings of an archmaester in him.
The smallfolk of King's Landing were pleased as well; their boy king seemed to have every sign of being a just, merciful, and chivalrous ruler, and his Hand, Lord Rogar, was as open-handed as he was bold in battle.
The great port city of Oldtown was especially hard hit, losing a quarter of its population.
In 35 AC, Aegon moved with all his court back to Dragonstone and gave orders that the Aegonfort be torn down, so that a new castle might be raised in its place.
As her husband, he said, his place was at Rhaena's side, to give her comfort.
Vermithor was feasting on the flesh, tearing loose great chunks of meat with each bite, but when the king approached with Lord Rogar, the dragon raised his head and gazed at them with eyes like pools of molten bronze.
Nonetheless, to be certain, he sent a dozen men across the narrow sea to Pentos to try to hunt down this beast, led by Ser Willam the Wasp of his Kingsguard.
Urged on by his mother, the Queen Dowager Alicent, Aegon II was determined to exact vengeance upon those who had betrayed and deposed him.
When Lysara Rogare protested, "I did not know," Magister Tigaro Moraqos replied, "You should have," and the mob roared its approval.
Aegon's accession put an end to much of that.
A rainstorm dampened Balerion's fires but could not quench them entirely, and amidst smoke and screams King Maegor descended again and again to serve his foes with flame.
It must not be thought that the reconciliation of the lords brought peace to Westeros overnight.
Though he remained determined to wed his daughter Myrielle to the king, he had to do so in a way that would not provoke the lords whose support he needed.
Munkun says the prince did not wish to wed until the war was over, whilstMushroom claims Jacaerys was already married to Sara Snow, the mysterious bastard girl from Winterfell.
The Lord of the Tor had recently died, and his steward surrendered without a fight.
His Grace also grasps a truth that Queen Rhaena does not, however; the threat is most effective when left unspoken.
Vermithor carried him across Westeros to the Golden Tooth, where the rest of his retinue caught up with him.
Lady Darla Deddings saw her brother Davos stabbed through the eye when he tried to defend her from three drunken ostlers intent on raping her.
His Grace ordered his mother's body burned, her bones and ashes interred beside those of the Conqueror.
Yet as Ser Marston grasped it, Ser Mervyn seized his wrist, drew a dagger with his other hand, and plunged it into Waters's belly.
The abortive attack proved to be the last gasp of Septon Moon's crusade.
He announced his intention to wed Lady Alicent of House Hightower, the clever and lovely eighteen-year-old daughter of the King's Hand, the girl who had read to King Jaehaerys as he lay dying.
Roggerio closed his brothel, selling off the building, the carpets, drapes, beds, and other furnishings, even the parrots and the monkeys, using the coin thus gained to buy himself a ship, a great cog he named the Mermaid's Daughter.
Though the preacher died in the dungeons under Faircastle, his words lived on, filling the ignorant with fear wherever they were heard.
Three of Belgrave's Sworn Brothers had been present at King Aegon's death and were similarly condemned, though their complicity in the plot could not be proved (the three Kingsguard who were not in the city were judged innocent).
When Lord Ulf went to sleep, never to awaken, Ser Hobert lurched to his feet and tried to make himself retch, but too late.
Meanwhile, the Warrior's Sons had chosen a new grand captain in the person of Ser Joffrey Doggett, the Red Dog of the Hills, who was determined to restore the order to its former glory.
In the early morning hours of the fifth day of the 130th year since Aegon's Conquest, battle was joined.
""Bastard blood, shed at war," Alicent replied.
Septon Moon's own guards could not even agree on what his killer had looked like.
Though his Poor Fellows had proclaimed him "the true High Septon," this septon (if indeed he was such) was no picture of piety.
Maester Culiper, still spry at eighty, had been serving since Queen Visenya's day, and was ably assisted by two younger maesters.
Prince Daemon named the girls Baela (after his father) and Rhaena (after her mother).
The firstVulture King had commanded armies, leading thousands of men into battle.
Where the Boneway crossed the river Wyl, Dornish archers suddenly appeared as the column was making its way across a bridge, and arrows rained down by the thousands.
Lord Peake was known to have shared his predecessor's concerns about the succession.
A few leal men-at- arms were killed; the rest agreed to join Harren, who declared himself Lord of Harrenhal and King of the Rivers (not being ironborn, he did not claim the islands).
Mysaria was the name she went by, though her rivals and enemies called her Misery, the White Worm.
Mushroom asserts that Helaena was with child after her days and nights of being sold for a common whore, but this explanation is only as creditable as his tale of the Brothel Queens, which is to say, not creditable at all.
Seldom was the truth of his words seen as clearly as during the 50th year after Aegon's Conquest.
Shrykos was the first dragon to succumb, slain by a woodsman known as Hobb the Hewer, who leapt onto her neck, driving his axe down into the beast's skull as Shrykos roared and twisted, trying to throw him off.
Lord Velaryon of Driftmark advised Maegor to send for his niece Rhaena, the widow of Aegon the Uncrowned.
Grand Maester Orwyle, free of the dungeons and once more adorned with his chain of office, gives us a detailed look inside the restored green council during this troubled time, when fear and suspicion held sway even within the Red Keep.
Taking Aenys's daughter to wife would weaken any claims put forward by her younger siblings.
After three days of delirium, Lady Laena passed from this mortal coil.
But when at last she approached her white knight, using all she had learned, Ser Criston was horrified and spurned her.
It was he who brought back Ser Lorent's body, to keepthe rioters from despoiling it).
Tumbleton went up in flame: shops, homes, septs, people, all.
Did the boy king himself send her forth, or was she mayhaps an agent of his Hand, Rogar Baratheon, or his mother, the Queen Regent?
Meleys was dead, broken by the fall and ripped to pieces upon the ground.
Work on the walls began the next year and continued until 26 AC.
As the lady now known as Alys Westhill took leave of the Titan of Braavos, life in King's Landing continued as before.
Nor were they freed until they had agreed topay a heavy ransom, and provide the Crown with suitable hostages.
King Jaehaerys knows this, just as his grandsire Aegon did; the power is always there, and with it the threat.
Lord Mooton of Maidenpool, Lady Darklyn of Duskendale, and Lord Blackwood of Raventree sent urgent messages to the queen, begging her to send them dragons to defend their holdings.
Unwisely, his route took him through the reeking heart of Flea Bottom, the foulest and most lawless district of the city.
A hush fell then, Grand Maester Benifer tells us, and when the Red Dog drew his longsword there were some who feared he might be about to attack the king with itâ¦
The Lads shrank in his presence, Mushroom says.
Thus did twenty-three knights of the king's household fight with sword and mace and lance amidst the blood-soaked streets of Lord Harroway's Town.
(Some argue that only Ser Gyles himself could have done so, but it would be unthinkable for a knight of the Kingsguard to take the life of the king he had sworn to protect.
The dragonflame had burned so hot that the king's armor had melted into his flesh.
Silverwing at last report had departed the desolation at Tumbleton for the Reach, and was said to have made her lair on a small, stony isle in the middle of Red Lake.
Furthermore, accounts left us by contemporaries suggest that Princess Aerea was a timid child when young, much given to tears and bed-wetting, whilst Rhaella, the bolder and more robust of the pair, was a novice serving at the Starry Sept and promised to the Faith.
For years to come, Roggerio sailed up and down the narrow sea, selling spiced wine, exotic viands, and carnal pleasure to the denizens of great ports and humble fishing villages alike.
He would never again touch upon the fate of Princess Aerea in any of his writings, and even these words would be sealed away amongst his privy papers, to remain undiscovered for almost a hundred years.
High above the town, Nettles turned her dragon toward the Bay of Crabs, and vanished in the morning mists, never to be seen again at court or castle.
Gaemon's son Aegon and his daughter Elaena ruled together after his death.
Caraxes hissed again, filling the air with flame, and Vhagar answered with a roar.
It is said that many years later, when King Aegon IV was in his cups, someone raised the matter in his presence.
His most famous voyages were those he made on the ship that he designed and built himself, the Sea Snake.
Vexing as the issue of the king's marriage was to Queen Alyssa and Lord Rogar, it must not be thought that it was the only matter that concerned them during their regency.
"Men who would do harm to their king seldom attack on horseback with lance in hand," His Grace declared.
The truth of that was proved in 73 AC, when Baelon the Brave followed his brother into knighthood.
With rivals dying all around him, Lysaro first moved to secure his own person by buying one thousand Unsullied from the slavers of Astapor.
My lord, my love, you reconciled with the lords who fought for your uncle, you forgave the men who rode with Septon Moon, you reconciled with the Faith, and with Lord Rogar when he tried to tear us apart and put Aerea on your throne, surely you can find some way to reconcile with your own daughter."
So as not to offend Lord Rowan, the regents offered him a place amongst them, and the office of justiciar and master of laws.
The suspected turncloak Addam Velaryon had fled before he could be put to the question.
"Like as not, we will win," the Protector said, "but not without cost."
The seven kings that Aegon the Dragon meant to uncrown were not cheering, however.
He began his reign by sending a delegation to King's Landing, to return the skull of the dragon Meraxes and offer King Aegon terms of peace.
Septon Eustace and Grand Maester Munkun both assert that Prince Daeron was sickened by all he saw and commanded Ser Hobert Hightower to put a stop to it, but Hightower's efforts proved as ineffectual as the man himself.
The northmen numbered two thousand, Frey commanded two hundred knights and thrice as many foot, Rivers brought three hundred archers to the fray.
It was only when the watchers on the roof heard Syrax roar that the prince's absence was noted.
When Lord Velaryon's terms were put to Lyonel Hightower, it is said, the young lord ripped the parchment from his maester's hand and tore it into shreds, swearing to write his reply in the Sea Snake's blood.
Whoever or whatever he might have been, this one-handed Shepherd rose up like some malign spirit, calling down doom and destruction on Queen Rhaenyra to all who came to hear.
During the course of his long reign, Jaehaerys would spend more days and nights guesting with one lord or another, or holding audience in some market town or village, than at Dragonstone and the Red Keep combined.
Lysaro expired in the seventh hour of the first day of his scourging.
The queen's suspicion fell upon Grand Maester Gerardys as well, for like the Sea Snake he had defended the dragonseeds.
For that insolence, Aegon had the Shepherd's tongue torn out with hot pincers, then condemned him and his "treasonous followers" to death by fire.
The riverlords who had broken Aegon II's last army at the Battle of the Kingsroad marched to King's Landing prepared for battle.
Ithe Beloved, the Blessed; septon and king, second son of Aegon III171â172 Viserys IIyounger brother of Aegon III172â184 Aegon IVthe Unworthy, eldest son of Viserys[His younger brother, Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, was champion and some say lover to Queen Naerys.
Sentence
The Westeros that Aegon the Conqueror had found had consisted of seven kingdoms in truth and not just name, each with its own laws, customs, and traditions.
Helaena's end had been mercifully swift; one of the spikes took her through the throat and she died without a sound.
Three of the "silent five" had died during the Dance, fighting for Aegon II against Rhaenyraâ¦but two survived, together with Ser Vaemond's sons, and all came forward now, insisting that they had more right to Driftmark than "this bastard of Hull, whose mother was a mouse."
Did Princess Rhaena attempt to kill the king with a dagger concealed beneath her pillows, as she later claimed?
Or he maypick one of Blackwood's whelps, or Strong's, or any girl born of these traitors of the Trident, these lords of yellow mud."
"Westeros will not be clean again until all the Targaryens have been slain or driven back into the sea."
As a princess of the royal household, Alysanne would of course have had servants and companions from an early age.
No words of King Aenys could heal the wound his brother's words thus opened, and many pious lords throughout the Seven Kingdoms condemned the marriage, and began to speak openly of "Maegor's Whore."
Near dawn, Jaehaerys bolted to his feet shouting that a dragon was needed, that his daughter must have a dragon, and ravens took wing for Dragonstone, instructing the Dragonkeepers there to bring a hatchling to the Red Keep at once.
All this the court and kingdom might have come to accept in time, had Lady Larra not also insisted upon keeping her own gods.
Three arrows flew across the field, striking Cole in belly, neck, and breast.
Then he gave Blood a grin, and the hulking swordsman slew PrinceJaehaerys, striking off the boy's head with a single blow.
His own brother Borys was heard to say that Rogar dreamed of facing King Maegor in single combat and cutting him down with his axe.
Garth the Harelip was dragged before him and beheaded, along with twenty other knights still loyal to the queen, amongst them Ser Harmon of the Reeds, the Iron-Banger, who had been one of the Seven Who Rode.
He was more than familiar with the Targaryen tradition of sibling marriage, and when he heard the king's command, he assented at once.
In due time, the Conclave bestowed the chain of office upon Archmaester Orwyle, one of their own.
Roggerio Rogare had banned him from the Mermaid for striking one of his whores, so he had demanded the brothel and Roggerio's manhood for his price, and these things had been promised to him.
Her Spring Prince visited her as often as he could and always won a smile from her, but Baelon was the Prince of Dragonstone, Hand of the King, forever coming and going, sitting at his father's side at council, treatingwith the lords.
It was upon the twenty-second day of the fifth moon of the year 130AC when the dragons danced and died above the Gods Eye.
Alyssa Targaryen had a warrior's heart in a woman's body, and her strength failed her.
Caraxes lived long enough to crawl back onto the land.
Bowing to the inevitable, he mounted the Iron Throne and said, "For the good of his people, His Grace must take another wife, though no woman will ever replace our beloved Jaehaera in his heart.
(Ser Amos Bracken, who had won that duel, followed his lord father when House Bracken declared for Aegon.)
Three days later, King Jaehaerys summoned Prince Vaegon to his solar to tell him that he would be taking ship for Oldtown in a fortnight.
"At what cost?" Princess Rhaenyra wondered.
Faircastle fell to Dalton Greyjoy, and with it Fair Isle's last resistance to the ironborn.
Lord Vickon did homage to King Aegon, and the Dragon departed with his fleets.
Lord Samwell Blackwood, who had once lost a duel for her favor, raised her banners over Raventree.
With her daughter lost to her and her dearest friends and favorites in the grave, it should not be surprising that Rhaena sought solace with a companion of her childhood.
There the whispers soon were flying, just as they had when Queen Helaena died in similar fashion.
High Tide was built of the same pale stone as the Eyrie, its slender towers crowned with roofs of beaten silver that flashed in the sun.
Before we relate what happened afterward, let us turn our gaze briefly to Fair Isle, where Rhaena Targaryen, the "Queen in the West," resided with her new husband and a court of her own.
Aegon III had no children, nor any living siblings (so far as it was known), and any man with eyes could see that the king was not like to get an heir from his little queen.
Tom Tangletongue was surprised in the castle yards as he was leaving the stables, and beheaded forthwith.
Lord Harlan Tyrell, the Warden of the South, was heard to say that they had more than enough power to smash any Dornish army that tried tostand before them, even without Aegon and Balerion.
Borys Baratheon died at the king's feet, from a cut to his neck that near took his head off.
Only a year apart in age, the prince and princess seemed well matched as babes, and the king and queen assumed that the two of them would eventually marry.
"He is a fool," Princess Saera answered, with a shrug.
And truly, with Vhagar dead at last, the oldest and largest living dragon in all Westeros was Vermithor, once the mount of the Old King, now that of Hard Hugh the bastard.
"I do not have these eggs, of course," the Sealord said.
His lordship had left instructions that the babe was to be named Aegon if a boy, in honor of the king.
Racallio Ryndoon fled south to the Basilisk Isles with his remaining supporters; Lys, Tyrosh, and Myr divided the Disputed Lands; and the Dornish took dominion over most of the Stepstones.
And Sunfyre, that splendid golden beast, had one wing half torn from his body, whilst his royal rider had suffered broken ribs, a broken hip, and burns that covered half his body.
"I built in stone," said Harren.
With so few followers, Aegon dared not seat himself upon the Iron Throne, for he knew he could not hold it.
Queen Alyssa's misgivings about the match grew out of genuine concern for her children, the Targaryen dynasty, and the realm as a whole.
The son of a common blacksmith, Hammer was a huge man, with hands so strong that he was said to be able to twist steel bars into torcs.
Plainly, Aegon's interest in Westeros long predated the events that drove him to war.
No banners flew above the blackened towers and ruined keeps of Harrenhal when Prince Daemon descended from the sky to claim the castle for his own.
When the queen expressed regret that she had never had the pleasure of meeting Lady Stark, the northman said, "She was a Mormont of Bear Isle, and nolady by your lights, but she took an axe to a pack of wolves when she was twelve, killed two of them, and sewed a cloak from their skins.
Nor could Lord Torrhen be said to have had much regard for the king, whom he referred to as"that sullen boy" when writing to his daughter in White Harbor.
No ship can sail as swiftly as a dragon flies, he reasoned; mayhaps Vermithor could find her where Lord Hightower's ships could not.
Aegon the Uncrowned had died at the Battle Beneath the Gods Eye whilst tryingto unseat his uncle Maegor, but not before taking to wife his sister Rhaena and siring two daughters, the twins Aerea and Rhaella.
King Maegor's army was of like size, however, and His Grace had almost twice as much armored horse, as well as a large contingent of longbowmen, and the king himself riding Balerion.
When they saw how few they were, and realized that no great lords were coming to join them, many lost heart, and Lord Hayford went so far as to urge His Grace to abdicate and take the black.
It had been two years since Princess Alyssa had died, yet Baelon had shown no interest in any other woman.
Then Lady Sharra sent for the three crowns (her own regent's coronet, her son's small crown, and the Falcon Crown of Mountain and Vale that the Arryn kings had worn for a thousand years), and surrendered them to Queen Visenya, along with the swords of her garrison.
The rioting began amidst the alleys and wynds of Flea Bottom, as men and women poured from the wine sinks, rat pits, and pot shops by the hundreds, angry, drunken, and afraid.
By late afternoon she seemed to be in pain, so Lord Blackwood summoned his best archer, a longbowman known as Billy Burley, who took up a position a hundred yards away (beyond the range of the dying dragon's fires) and sent three shafts into her eye as she lay helpless on the ground.
Yet House Martell still remained Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken, as their words avowed.
Princess Daenerys shared their delight, though she told her mother in firm terms that she wanted a little sister.
* Initially both claimants to the Iron Throne flew the three-headed dragon of House Targaryen, red on black, but by the end of 129 AC, both Aegon and Rhaenyra had introduced variations to distinguish their own supporters from their foes.
It would be the same with Elinor Costayne's whelp, she promised.
Borros Baratheon, on hearing of the queen's death, had left his newly pregnant wife and four daughters to strike north through the kingswood with six hundred knights and four thousand foot.
The later volumes of his Testimony, filled with colorful accounts of his life in White Harbor, his sojourn at the court of the Sealord of Braavos, his voyage to the Port of Ibben, and his years amongst the mummers of the Lisping Lady, are valuable in their own right, though less useful to our purpose hereâ¦so, sadly, the little man with the foul tongue must pass from our story.
It was the king's custom to bring one of his queens with him wherever he traveled, whilst the other remained at Dragonstone or King's Landing, oft as not seated on the Iron Throne, ruling on whatever matters came before her.
His son Walton succeeded him, and when a sudden rebellion broke out in 50 AC amongst the men of the Night's Watch at Rimegate and Sable Hall, he gathered his strength and rode to the Wall to join the leal watchmen in putting them down.
Hugo Vance, the young lord of Wayfarer's Rest, had come, with three hundred of his own men plus Black Trombo's Myrish sellswords.
This practice went back to Old Valyria, where it was common amongst many of the ancient families, particularly those who bred and rode dragons.
Soon the Aegonfort was threatening to burst out of its walls, so a new palisade was raised, enclosing more of the hilltop, creating space enough for a barracks, an armory, a sept, and a drum tower.
The realm delighted in the little princess as wellâ¦everywhere, that is, save on Dragonstone.
For Jaehaerys and Alysanne, however, the death of their beloved daughter must have seemed especially cruel, for it struck at the very heart of the Doctrine of Exceptionalism.
Accordingly, Jaehaerys reached out to the Lord of Claw Isle, Edwell Celtigar, who had been Hand of the King under Maegor, and recalled him to King's Landing to serve as lord treasurer and master of coin.
The watchmen rescued the hapless fool and escorted him back to the Red Keep.
All these calumnies reached the king's ears, some from Mushroom's own lips, for the fool confesses to having been paid "handsomely" to poison Aegon III against these maids and others.
When the king offered to have the ashes interred on Dragonstone, beside those of King Aegon and the other dead of House Targaryen, Rhaena refused.
One of them, a huge white bull larger than a ship, had slammed into Lady Meredith of a purpose, and cracked her hull.
The men of the Night's Watch were as thunderstruck by the queen's dragon as the people of White Harbor had been, though the queen herself noted that Silverwing "does not like this Wall."
When Queen Alicent demured, wondering aloud how Lord Corlys could possibly be won back after all that had been said that day, Lord Strong replied, "That task you may leave to me, Your Grace.
The blood drained from the queen's cheeks when she beheld the bodies, but young Prince Aegon was the first to realize what they meant.
The entire Velaryon fleet had slipped off during the night.
Attacked from three sides, the westermen were driven back foot by foot into the waters of the Gods Eye.
A short, bloody fight was waged at the River Gate, where thirteen Hightower knights and a hundred men-at-arms drove off the gold cloaks and held out for nigh on eight hours against attacks from both within and without the city, but their heroics were in vain, for Rhaenyra's soldiers poured in through the other six gates unmolested.
Oakenfist would command the fleet himself, whilst his wife, Lady Baela, went to Dragonstone to comfort her widowed twin (and incidentally make certain that Lady Rhaena did not attempt to avenge her husband's death herself on Morning).
Ser Addam succeeded his father as the Lord of the High Tower, as Oldtown cried out for vengeance.
Their bloody three-way fight had been raging for half a year when Ser Leo Costayne descended upon them with his fleet, landing thousands of Lannister swords and spears on Pyke, Great Wyk, and Harlaw.
Eustace Hightower, who had returned alive from Alys Westhill's ill-fated voyage across the Sunset Sea, survived once again, but his wife and children were not as fortunate.
As they had with Jaehaerys before her, neighboring lords began to seek her out, but the Queen in the East was not her brother.
In the years that followed her first flowering, Daella Targaryen drew the eye of many a young lordling, as expected.
The Hand's impassioned protests and the Grand Maester's cool caution both proved to be in vain.
Maidenhood became her, and Saera truly came into her own after her first flowering.
At Acorn Hall the westermen were checked briefly when Lord Joseth Smallwood sallied forth to join Lord Piper and the remnants of his defeated host, but Piper died in the battle that ensued (felled when his heart burst at the sight of his favorite grandson's head upon a spear, Mushroom says), and Smallwood fell back inside his castle.
At his command, the three were immediately put in chains, though some of the prince's party called for them to be executed on the spot.
Ser Otto in turn spoke of the prince's courage, whilst Alicent's children and Rhaenyra's greeted one another with kisses and broke bread together at table.
And so one-eyed Aemond the Kinslayer took up the iron-and-ruby crown of Aegon the Conqueror.
Ser Robert delivered them to the king, ignoring Stinger's threats and Connington's clumsy attempt to bribe him.
The Warrior's Sons seized the gates of King's Landing, giving them control over who might enter and leave the city, and drove the workmen from the unfinished Red Keep.
But scarce had he taken wing when he heard shouts and saw his men below pointing to where Balerion the Black Dread had appeared in the southern sky.
When it became known that Lord Corlys languished in a dungeon under the Red Keep, they began to abandon her cause by the hundreds.
One-eyed Prince Aemond, nineteen, was found in the armory, donning plate and mail for his morning practice in the castle yard.
Days passed and turned to weeks and thence to fortnights, whilst hearts hardened and men grew more resolute on both sides of Blackwater Bay.
Yet the greatest threat was in the south, where Septon Moon and his followers camped beneath the walls of Oldtown, defended by Lord Oakheart and Lord Rowan and their knights.
When Aemon was given his first wooden sword to begin his training in arms, Baelon was judged to be too young to join him, but that did not stop him.
The Pentoshi preferred his own manse on the Street of Silk, with the Dragonpit looming above him atop the Hill of Rhaenys.
Those who heard him preach, like those who would later record his infamy, knew him only as the Shepherd.
In the waning days of 129 AC, the young princes boarded the cog Gay AbandonâAegon with Stormcloud, Viserys clutching his eggâto set sail for Essos.
He was said to be a mongrel, an assertion he could not deny, for all Pentoshi are part Andal and part Valyrian, mixed with the stock of slaves and older peoples long forgotten.
When the Brackens gathered a strong force to strike back, Lord Samwell Blackwood surprised them on the march, taking them unawares as they camped beneath a riverside mill.
Some tried to hide behind their shields, but neither oak nor iron could withstand dragon's breath.
Neither Aegon nor his brother, Aemond, had ever been much loved by the people of the city, and many Kingslanders had welcomed the queen's returnâ¦but love and hate are two faces of the same coin, as fresh heads began appearing daily upon the spikes above the city gates, accompanied by ever more exacting taxes, the coin turned.
They would be greatly outnumbered by the forces of the Three Daughtersâ¦but the prince would also bring to battle the fires of his dragon, Caraxes, the Blood Wyrm.
So grievous was the slaughter that the Mander ran red for twenty leagues, and thereafter the town and castle where the battle had been fought became known as Bitterbridge.
His hair, when it came in, was pale as well, shining like white gold, a color rare even in Valyria of old.
The king, rightly, had no trust in Septon Mattheus, who would surely have betrayed their plans, but the sept on Dragonstone was tended by an old man named Oswyck, who had known Jaehaerys and Alysanne since their births, and instructed them in the mysteries of the Seven throughout their childhood.
Faced with a choice between "a dead father, cold in the ground, and a living woman, warm and willing in his arms, the boy showed surprising sense for one so highborn, and chose love over honor," says Mushroom.
Make no mistake, should Rhaenyra ever sit the Iron Throne, it will be Lord Flea Bottom who rules us, a king consort as cruel and unforgiving as Maegor ever was.
They scorned the Seven, ignored the feast days, mocked the holy books, showed no reverence to septon or septa, worshipped trees.
A few squatters had found shelter in the castle's deep vaults and undercellars, but the sound of Caraxes's wings sent them fleeing.
The king heard him out in silence, then descended from the throne, drew Blackfyre, and slew him where he stood.
Prince Daemon fell in love with Laena, the singers would have us believe.
When Ser Perkin protested that he had been pardoned for those crimes, Lord Stark replied, "Not by me."
Rhaenyra's own claim to the Iron Throne was a special case, the Sea Snake insisted; her father had named her as his heir.
Prince Gaemon died a few days into the new year, not quite three moons old.
His bones would rest at Raventree Hall for eight years, but in 138 AC his brother, Alyn, would have them returned to Driftmark and entombed in Hull, the town of his birth.
Even before dismounting to bend the knee, Lord Alaric looked askance at Her Grace's clothing and said, "I hope you brought something warmer than that."
The candlemaker's daughter Robin, if she ever existed, was driven off.
The "new Nymeria" had just celebrated her eighteenth nameday, and was reportedly much taken with the young, handsome, dashing "Hero of the Stepstones," the bold admiral who had humbled the Braavosi.
The fourthborn son of Rhaenyra Targaryen, and her eldest by her uncle and second husband, Prince Daemon Targaryen, Aegon came to the Iron Throne in 131 AC and reigned for twenty-six years, until his death of consumption in 157 AC.
It may well be that Alys Westhill and the Hightowers celebrated too loudly and too early, there in the ocean deeps, for soon after that the grand voyage began to go badly wrong.
Borys Baratheon did not know the mountain's hidden ways as the Dornish did, so he was the first to be cornered.
Maesters came and went, septons and septas prayed, the king commanded that a hundred new ratcatchers be hired at once, and offered a silver stag for every dead rat, grey or black.
His wife never so much as made the attempt, so lost was Helaena in her own grief and madness.
A shyer maid might have been abashed by that, but Alyssa Targaryen was as bawdy a wench as any barmaid in King's Landing, as she herself was fond of boasting.
It was then thought that mayhaps she would make her way back to the Red Keep, to beg pardon from her father.
The King's Hand did as commanded, though not without grief, for his own young niece was amongst the women still on Dragonstone.
Prince Viserys did not know where his mother had gone, not even when Tyanna of Pentos plied him with her dark arts.
"The first law of the land shall be the King's Peace," King Aegon decreed, "and any lord who goes to war without my leave shall be considered a rebel and an enemy of the Iron Throne."
Lady Johanna herself emerged from Casterly Rock to present Oakenfist with a seahorse wrought in gold and other tokens of Lannister esteem.
Rhaenyra rejected her stepmother's proposal with scorn.
"A true king, blood of Aegon the Conqueror, who was my brother, my husband, and my love.
Aegon's castellans and stewards were allowed to die only after long torment.
"This is not Dorne," Lord Rogar Baratheon said when the notion was put to him, "and Rhaena is not Nymeria."
The sailor had coiled his end of the chain about the mast, and the weight of the ship and the power of Vermax's wings tore a long jagged gash in the dragon's belly.
Jaehaerys the Conciliator is rightly honored in the annals of the Seven Kingdoms for his calm demeanor and even temper, but let no man think that the fire of the Targaryens did not burn in his veins.
Maegor the Cruel had slain his own nephew Aegon, and had been cursed thereafter, until he bled his life away upon his stolen throne.
Once as tall and golden-haired and dashing as his twin, the late Lord Jason, Ser Tyland had been left so disfigured by the queen's torturers that ladies new to court had been known to faint at the sight of him.
No lord, no knight, not even a magister, Rego Draz was a merchant, trader, and money-changer who had risen from nothing to become the richest man in Pentos, only to find himself shunned by his fellow Pentoshi and denied a seat in the council of magisters because of his low birth.
Huge rewards were posted for information leading to the capture of "the usurper styling himself Aegon II"; his daughter, Jaehaera; his son Maelor; the "false knights" Willis Fell and Rickard Thorne; and Larys Strong the Clubfoot.
Lady Jocelyn of House Baratheon, Rhaenys's mother, was also angered, as was her formidable brother, Boremund, Lord of Storm's
Queen Rhaenys was a great patron to the bards and singers of the Seven Kingdoms, showering gold and gifts on those who pleased her.
Lannisport, Gulltown, Duskendale, and White Harbor grew as well, though not to the same extent.
Ever since, the men of the City Watch have been known as "gold cloaks."
Laws was enacted: the abolition of the lord's ancient right to the first night.
His grandsire had died upon that battlefield together with his eldest son, and it had been left to him to bring their corpses home to Fair Isle.
After hours of blood and clangor, however, the last man left standing was a strapping young knight from the riverlands, a broad-shouldered blond bull called Ser Lucamore Strong.
Men who knew him were unsurprised when he gave shelter to Queen Alyssa and her children after their flight from King's Landing, and when he was the first to proclaim Prince Jaehaerys king.
The greater part of his host crossed the Blackwater Rush, making south for Storm's
Many regarded him as a near certainty to be chosen as the next High Septon.
With knighthood now achieved, the prince wasted no time becoming a dragonrider as well, ascending into the sky for the first time not long after his return to King's Landing.
Her long absence from King's Landing was for the good, however, for the king and his council were growing ever more vexed with her.
Aemond fought back, breaking Luke's nose with a punch, then wrenching the sword from Joff's hands and cracking it across the back of Jace's head, driving him to his knees.
"Name him Corlys, after mygrandsire," Lord Alyn told her.
Someone on the small council had sent word to themâ¦and Larys Clubfoot was Breakbones's brother, and thus an uncle to Rhaenyra's bastards.
When he beheaded one of his own men accused of spying for the Tyroshi, Racallio presented Lord Alyn with the head as a token of their fellowship, but the very next day he accused his lordship of being in the Archon's hire himself.
When Orys Baratheon came down the muddy hill with his own men, he found the old king holding off half a dozen men, with as many corpses at his feet.
After Lord Walys Mooton's ill-fated attack drove him from the field of ash and bone outside Rook's Rest, history loses sight of Sunfyre for more than half a year (certain tales told in the halls of the Crabbs and Brunes suggest the dragon might have taken refuge in the dark piney woods and caves of Crackclaw Point for some of that time).
Jaehaerys wheeled his horse about and shouted at them.
Lord Rodrik, true to his word, was a kind and caring husband who never failed to pamper and protect the bride he called "my precious princess."
A violent struggle for succession was likely no matter who the Old King named to succeed him.
Septon Eustace would have usbelieve that their hearts had been touched by a mother's love for her son.
Addam Velaryon remained aloft, flying Seasmoke around the city walls, the beat of his dragon's wide leathern wings a caution to those below that any defiance would be met with fire.
(The king had him lay hands on Lady Ceryse's belly every night, in the hopes that his brother might repent his folly if his lawful wife could be made fertile, but the lady soon grew weary of the nightly ritual and departed King's Landing for Oldtown, where she rejoined her father in the Hightower.)
Lord Velaryon might have captured a score of Braavosi ships and an elephant, but he had not taken Bloodstone, nor any of the other Stepstones; the knights and men-at- arms such a conquest would have required had been aboard the larger ships of the royal fleet that he abandoned off the shores of Tarth.
It will be recalled that Queen Alyssa had been no more pleased by her eldest daughter's third marriage than by the one her son would soon make, though Rhaena's marriage was of less consequence.
All carried the same message: from this day forth there would be but one king in Westeros.
Even the appearance of Tessarion across the field did not dismay them, for they knew they had two dragons of their ownâ¦but when Vermithor and Silverwing climbed into the sky and loosed their fires upon Tumbleton, those cheers changed to screams.
No such rescuers came for Lord Bartimos Celtigar, whose walled manse was defended only by six guardsmen and a few hastily armed servants.
"There is no monster," Septon Barth concluded after hearing the sad tale, "only men stealing sheep, and telling tales to frighten other men away."
To be a Kingsguard knight required more than just skill at arms, she pointed out.
Certain septons even went so far as to suggest that the missive was ensorceled, that it had been written by the Yellow Toad before her death, using a vial of Queen Rhaenys's own blood for ink, so that the king would be helpless to resist its malign magic.
Lady Meredith was in sad shape, sails torn, masts splintered, nine men amongst the missing.
"Cast off your silks and satins, and clothe your nakedness in roughspun robes," he told his followers.
Daenerys wanted her kitten, and her kitten was brought to her, though as her shivering grew more violent it squirmed from her grasp and scratched her hand.
The destruction of Racallio Ryndoon's pirate kingdom had been Lord Peake's objective; instead, Racallio appeared to have emerged stronger than ever.
That Lotho used his bank and Roggerio his brothel to win friends to their cause goes without saying.
The last bedside visited by Aegon III was that of Ser Tyland Lannister.
From the Summer Isles appeared three tall black princes in feathered cloaks, whose splendor was a wonder to behold.
This campaign proved a grave mistake, for it only served to harden the hearts of the late queen's men against the king.
A fishing boat carried him and Lady Coryanne to Driftmark, where they took ship for the Free City of Pentos.
When Lord Qoherys died in a fall from his horse in 9 AC, his title passed to his grandson Gargon, a fat and foolish man with an unseemly appetite for young girls who became known as Gargon the Guest.
The maester there chose seven (in honor of the gods) that he deemed most promising, and sent them to King's Landing.
Daenerys Targaryen was the darling of the realm, and all that could be done for any man was done for her.
Benifer did what he could for the stricken princess, giving her milk of the poppy and immersing her in a tub of ice to bring her fever down, but his efforts were to no avail.
But you have descended on us from the sky, as Queen Visenya once did during the Conquest, and I was powerless to halt you.
King Viserys commanded him to return the egg, send his whore away, and return to his lawful wife, or else be attainted as a traitor.
On the Red Fork, Lord Jason Lannister found himself facing the Lord of Pinkmaiden, old Petyr Piper, and the Lord of Wayfarer's Rest, Tristan Vance.
Prince Aemon was shy around the dragons at first, Benifer observed, but not so Baelon, who reportedly smote Balerion on the snout the first time he entered the Dragonpit.
In the riverlands, raiders out of Raventree, flying Rhaenyra's banners,* crossed into the lands of House Bracken, burning crops, driving off sheep and cattle, sacking villages, and despoiling every sept they came on (the Blackwoods were one of the last houses south of the Neck who still followed the old gods).
Alyssa Royce told him she had come all the way from Runestone to be with him today.
As the singers tell it, Lord Roderick was bloody from head to heel as he came on, with splintered shield and cracked helm, yet so drunk with battle that he did not even seem to feel his wounds.
Every day Septon Moon went forth to denounce the sins of House Targaryen and the Lickspittle who permitted their abominations, whilst inside Oldtown the true Father of the Faithful had become a virtual prisoner in his own palace, unable to set forth outside the confines of the Starry Sept.
Only Darklyn and Staunton had the courage to remain with Lord Towers to yield up the Red Keep when Prince Jaehaerys and his sisters, Rhaena and Alysanne, descended upon the castle on their dragons.
It is said that the king slew her himself, cutting out her heart with Blackfyre and feeding it to his dogs.
Borne on the wings of Dreamfyre, Rhaena Targaryen had flown in to see her siblings wedâ¦ and to visit her daughter Aerea.
As Prince Aegon had not yet ridden a dragon, the king feared that the lords and commons might think his son unmanly if they saw his wife on dragonback and him upon a palfrey.
Lady Arryn sent a waspish note from the Vale.
Lord Armen Peake and his sons had perished on the Field of Fire beside King Mern and his.
And in the Starry Sept at Oldtown, the High Septon went even further, denouncing Maegor's marriage as sin and fornication, and calling the prince's new bride "this whore of Harroway."
She would pay for the castle herself, she told the Lord Commander, and pledged her jewels to cover the cost.
He commanded the Grand Maester to send forth his ravens, summoning all his leal lords and bannermen to gather at King's Landing, only to find that Benifer had taken ship for Pentos.
Though still a half year shy of manhood, Lord Blackwood by this time had as much experience of war as men four times his age.
The Queen in Chains was chained again and taken to the dungeons, there to await the pleasure of the new king.
Lady Perianne jumped back in then to say that afterward it was Stinger who did the training for all of them.
It was no common blade that his lordship held, but one forged of Valyrian steel: Orphan-Maker, last seen in the hands of Bold Jon Roxton as he laid about at Hard Hugh Hammer's men in a yard at Tumbleton.
The first death of 54 AC came within days of the celebrations that marked the coming of the new year, as Septon Oswyck passed in his sleep.
Accordingly, King Jaehaerys named the prince his justiciar and master of laws in place of Rodrik Arryn.
Lotho bought men with gold, Roggerio seduced them with perfumed flesh, Moredo frightened them into submission with steel.
Whilst the king prevaricated, his lords took to the field.
When the ship heeled over and sank, Vermax sank with her.
At the River Gate, Ser Perkin feasted his gutter knights on stolen food and led them down the riverfront, looting wharves and warehouses and any ship that had not put to sea, even as Wat the Tanner led his own mob of howling ruffians against the Gate of the Gods.
Nowhere had a dragon been seen, save for her own; not even a whisper of Princess Aerea had been heard.
The tavernkeepers of the city waxed fat and happy for a time, as did the whores of Flea Bottom, and their sisters in the fine houses along the Street of Silk, though the common people complained about the noise and stink.
Plainly, the king and queen concluded afterward, some other bride must needs be found for Vaegon.
"We do not have the strength to take King's Landing by storm," Prince Daemon said, "no more than our foes could hope to capture Dragonstone.
Mushroom, as always, favors the most sinister theory, suggesting that Prince Daemon paid Qarl Correy to dispose of Princess Rhaenyra's husband, arranged for a ship to carry him away, then cut his throat and fed him to the sea.
Lady Rhaena and her twin sister, Baela, became the darlings of the city overnight.
Those who asked, "What of the ruling of the Great Council of 101?" found their words falling on deaf ears.
It was with spells that she bound a dragon to her, and she has done the same with my lord husband."
We shall never knowâ¦though it has been pointed out, and rightly, that Princess Rhaena was no warrior, and Dreamfyre was younger and smaller than Quicksilver, and certainly no true threat to Balerion the Black Dread.
Chroniclers in King's Landing report that Queen Alyssa was deeply offended by her exclusion from her daughter's wedding, and that relations between mother and child were never as warm afterward, whereas Lord Rogar Baratheon was furious that Rhaena had dared remarry without the Crown's leaveâ¦the Crown in this instance being himself, as the young king's Hand.
No one truly believed that the woman who attempted to poison the "sinful septon" and ended by cutting his throat was acting on her own.
As neither man could read nor write, we shall never know what drove the Two Betrayers (as history has named them) to do what they did.
With the coming of spring, it was thought that the high road through the Mountains of the Moon would once again be passable.
Though the story had no truth in it, soon it was on every pair of lips in King's Landing.
The Queen Regent Alyssa was forty-two years old, and thought to be past her child-bearing years; the Lord of Storm's End, ten years her junior.
When someone asked if the reward was the same whether the boy was alive or dead, Willow Pound-Stone clutchedMaelor tighter and said no one was going to hurt her new son.
Three days later, in the Starry Sept, His High Holiness himself anointed Aegon with the seven oils, placed a crown upon his head, and proclaimed him Aegon of House Targaryen, the First of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm.
Her husband, Corlys Velaryon, was so wroth that he gave up his admiralty and his place on the small council and took his wife back to Driftmark.
"Your one true wife awaits you in the Hightower," Myros said.
Westeros could not hope to prevail in a sea war against Braavos, Lord Unwin knew.
She never fully recovered from Aegon's birth, and died within the year at only four-and-twenty.
In the high passes, Aegon's vanguard found its way barred by a wall of sheep carcasses, shorn of all wool and too rotted to eat.
And thus it was that three ships set sail from King's Landing for White Harbor, where he and the queen were to make their first stop.
Even in the North, King Torrhen Stark of Winterfell sat with his lords bannermen and counselors late into the night, discussing what was to be done about this would-be conqueror.
The surviving half, believing that the disease had come to their shores on a whaler from the Port of Ibben, rose up and butchered every Ibbenese sailor they could lay hands on, setting fire to theirships.
He burned the letter and never spoke of it again, but that night he mounted Balerion and flew off across the waters of Blackwater Bay, to Dragonstone upon its smoking mountain.
The questioning was carried out swiftly and secretly, so Lord Harroway and Queen Alys had no inkling of the king's suspicions until the Kingsguard burst in on them.
In Oldtown, the High Septon himselfproclaimed it was a blessing from the gods, "a gift from the Mother Above to a mother who had suffered much, and bravely."
Aegon sent Orys Baratheon out to attack them on the march, whilst he descended on them from above with the Black Dread.
Two hundred feet above Flea Bottom, Prince Joffrey slid from the dragon's back and plunged to the earth.
Though his half-sister was dead, she still had supporters in the field who must needs be dealt with before His Grace could hope to sit the Iron Throne again.
Some say their quarry was the king himself, but Aegon was accompanied by the Kingsguard wherever he went, and even Cheese knew of no way in and out of Maegor's Holdfast save over the drawbridge that spanned the dry moat and its formidable iron spikes.
Thinking that he might be of a bookish disposition, Maester Culiper tried to interest him in the treasures of Dragonstone's library, the ponderous tomes and Old Valyrian scrolls that had fascinated King Jaehaerys, only to discover that the queen's husband could not read.
A second battle followed three days later, when the rivermen regrouped under a hedge knight named Ser Harry Penny.
*When the Hand and the Queen Regent had made their departure,the king and his young bride closed the castle gates and returned to their chambers.
That such a tale was told in the wine sinks and pot shops of King's Landing cannot be doubted, but it may be that its provenance was later, when King Aegon II was seeking justification for the cruelty of his own acts.
Your Prince Daemon used his first wife most cruelly, it is trueâ¦but notwithstanding your mother's poor taste in consorts, she remains our rightful queen, and mine own blood besides, an Arryn on her mother's side.
The Archon ofTyrosh crossed the narrow sea himself with his maiden daughter, as did no fewer than twenty-two magisters from the Free City of Pentos.
On his return to Tyrosh, the Archon was heard to say that King's Landing was a "reeking sore" not fit to be called a city, whilst the magisters of Pentos were so unhappy with the terms that they sacrificed their prince to their queer gods, as is the custom of that city.)
"I could sometimes make the lady laugh, though she did not understand more than a few words of our tongue," the fool says, "but the Shadow's playing always made her weep, and strange to say she liked that better."
Grand Maester Munkun believes the horror of seeing Ser Thoron and Ser Denys die drove her to the act, but if the young queen knew the two men it could only have been as gaolers, and there is no evidence that she was a witness to their hanging.
But the Evenstar's camp was not as hidden as he hoped, and the smoke from the dragon's fires drew the eyes of a pair of Myrish scouts who were creeping through the heights unawares.
The Dance of the Dragons is the flowery name bestowed upon the savage internecine struggle for the Iron Throne of Westeros fought between two rival branches of House Targaryen during the years 129 to131 AC.
Courted by both claimants to the Iron Throne, the Red Kraken had made his choice.
The Seven Kingdoms had no fiercer champion of Exceptionalism than Alfyn, but he was the oldest of the Seven Speakers, and legless besides; it seemed likely the Stranger would seek him out sooner rather than later.
The king's time at Winterfell began on an ominous note.
Grand Maester Orwyle was the newest member of the council, and was thought to favor neither blacks nor greens.
At the feast afterward, four-year-old Rickon, Lord Cregan's son by his first wife, sang a song for his new stepmother.
"The false king and the whore queen shall be cast down with all their works, and their demon beasts shall perish from the earth," the Shepherd thundered.
Her first sight of the Wall from above took Alysanne's breath away, Her Grace would later tell the king.
In this bold endeavor, they were aided by friends in Maegor's own court who had grown weary of the king's cruelties.
Deal with Driftmark in due course, when your foes are vanquished and your tide is at the full.
Two of her escorts were slain before Visenya herself cut down the last attacker with Dark Sister.
It took half the night for Barth himself to persuade His Grace of the folly of his choice; he was too young, too little known, too unorthodox in his opinions, not even one of the Most Devout.
When King Maegor came to see the stillbirth, he was horrified to find the boy a monster, with twisted limbs, a huge head, and no eyes.
By the dwarf's account, Daemon Targaryen had come to love the small brown bastard girl, and had taken her into his bed.
Never before or since in the history of the Seven Kingdoms have so many women wielded so much power, ruling in the place of their slain husbands, brothers, and fathers, for sons in swaddling clothes or still on the teat.
The court chronicles tell us that as the young prince slid from the back of Vermithor, these "three leal lords" bent their knees before him to lay their swords at his feet, hailing him as king.
The Lyseni became especially loathed, for they claimed more than coin from passing ships, taking off women, girls, and comely young boys to serve in their pleasure gardens and pillow houses.
Viserra was beautiful, all men agreed, blessed with the deep purple eyes and silver-gold hair of atrue Targaryen, with flawless white skin, fine features, and a grace that was somehow eerie and unsettling in one so young.
After the Dornishmen swarmed in from the shadow city to retake the castle, he was bound hand and foot, dragged to the top of the Spear Tower, and thrown from a window by none other than the aged Princess Meria herself.
She took part in drunken horse races along the Street of the Sisters, engaged in moonlight swims across the Blackwater Rush (whose powerful currents had been known to drown many a strong swimmer), drank with the gold cloaks in their barracks, wagered coin and sometimes clothing in the rat pits of Flea Bottom.
(The selfsame tale is told of the foot torn off Prince Joffrey's leg in Flea Bottom, which makes the veracity of both suspect, unless we are meant to believe that all feet are possessed of malign powers.)
The Wolf Pack, commanded by Hallis Hornwood, called Mad Hal, and Timotty Snow, the Bastard of Flint's Finger, was made up entirely of northmen, whilst the Stormbreakers, financed and led by Ser Oscar Tully, included men from every part of Westeros.
But the revels died away when Maegor mounted Balerion and descended upon the Hill of Rhaenys, where seven hundred of the Warrior's
You are not wrong, Your Grace, some lords will surely grumble at this, especially in the Northâ¦but all the maids will thank us for it, and all the husbands and the fathers and the mothers, just as the queen has said.
The septon's face grew red and swollen as he raved, Benifer tells us, and spittle sprayed from his lips.
"It will be a progress such as the realm has not seen in more than a century," Grand Maester Munkun told His Grace.
Prince Aemond had become the terror of the Trident, descending from the sky to rain fire and death upon the riverlands, then vanishing, only to strike again the next day fifty leagues away.
There, before the eyes of gods and men, they renounced their allegiance to Maegor and did homage to his nephew Jaehaerys from their knees, whereupon the young king bade each man rise, granted him pardon, and restored his lands and titles.
"Only women got the poison, then," said Rego Draz.
Neither septons nor silent sisters were summoned to the bedchamber where King Viserys lay, swollen and rotting.
Lysene swords guarded her night and day, under the command of her brother Moredo and a towering mute from the fighting pits of Meereen called Sandoq the Shadow.
She so enchanted Alysanne that for a time Her Grace even began to eschew council sessions, preferring to spend her days playing with her daughter and reading her the stories that her own mother had once read to her.
Saera crumbled then, and the words came tumbling out one after another in a rush, a flood that left the princess almost breathless.
Sentiment may be forgiven in a mother, but not in a regent, and never in a king.
The Queen Regent stared at her lord husband in horror and then, as if to prove that he had spoken truly, began to weep, her tears running silent down her cheeks.
georgerrmartin.com Facebook.com/GeorgeRRMartinofficial Twitter: @GRRMspeakingAbout the IllustratorDOUG WHEATLEY is a comic book artist, concept designer, and illustrator who has worked on such properties and characters as Star Wars, Aliens, Superman, The Incredible Hulk, and Conan the Barbarian to name just a few.
Then Maegor himself took wing, flying Balerion to the westerlands, where he burned the castles of the Broomes, the Falwells, the Lorches, and the other "pious lords" who had defied his summons.
With his pale green eyes, coal black hair, and easy charm, Cole soon became a favorite of all the ladies at courtâ¦not the least amongst them Rhaenyra Targaryen herself.
When the princess heard his words, she rushed toward him, crying, "Father, Father!"
At Casterly Rock, Lady Johanna Lannister set aside her war with the ironmen long enough towrite the Hand and point out that her daughters Cerelle and Tyshara were maidens of noble birth and marriageable age.
"This is not Dorne," Lord Rogar Baratheon said when the notion was put to him, "and Rhaena is not Nymeria."
The child had not been due for another turn of the moon, but the tidings from King's Landing had driven the princess into a black fury, and her rage seemed to bring on the birth, as if the babe inside her were angry too, and fighting to get out.
Yet even her confession paled besidethat of Lady Priscella Hogg, a sad and somewhat simple girl of fourteen, stout and short and plain of face, who had somehow conceived the notion that Prince Viserys would marry her if only Larra of Lys were dead.
When pressed for reasons, his lordship cited a distaste for shedding pious blood, but many claimed the real reason was his unwillingness to offer battle to Lords Oakheart and Rowan, who had granted Moon their protection.
Only the poor and humble would ever see the halls of the gods, he declared; lords and knights and rich men would be cast down in their pride and avarice to hell.
When Prince Baelon finally appeared, he found her drunk and naked in his bed and sent her on her way.
Four of the five accepted this clemency and departed for the Wall; along with Ser Olyver and Ser Raymund, the turncloaks, went Ser Jon Tollett and Ser Symond Crayne.
Buckwell and Rollingford took ship for Pentos, whilst most of the others fled to their own castles and strongholds.
Grand Maester Benifer and I have agreed to tell no one all of what we saw and experienced in his chambers as that poor child lay dyingâ¦not the king, nor the queen, nor her mother, nor even the archmaesters of the Citadelâ¦but the memories will not leave me, so I shall set them down here.
Queen Alysanne stayed beside the princess for the rest of her confinement, sitting by her bedside, reading her to sleep at night, and comforting her fears.
Gold cloaks from the Dragon Gate, obedient to the queen's command, issued forth from their barracks to defend the hill, but found themselves unable to cut through the mobs, and turned back, whilst the messenger sent to the Old Gate never arrived.
Lord Follard became enamored of a Braavosi courtesan and elected to remain close to her rather than return to Westeros, Ser Herman Rollingford was killed in a duel by a bravo who took offense at the color of his doublet, and Ser Denys Harte supposedly engaged the services of the mysterious Faceless Men to kill a rival back in King's Landing, Mushroom asserts.
Ser Torrhen lost a quarter of his men fighting his way back to the Red Keepâ¦yet escaped lightly compared to Ser Lorent Marbrand, who led a hundred knights and men-at-arms into Flea Bottom.
Some speak of an unnamed spearman, "a blood-soaked giant" who leapt from the Dragonpit's broken dome onto the dragon's back.
That was when Lord Corbray rose to his feet and drew his sword,
How the battle of wills between Queen Alysanne and her headstrong fifteen-year-old daughter might finally have resolved will never be known.
In the final years of his reign, as his health failed, Viserys left ever more of the governance of the realm to his Hand and small council.
It does appear that certain of those who flooded into the town, fleeing before LordHightower's army, were actually part of that army, sent ahead to infiltrate the ranks of the defenders.
Three years hence, Princess Saera came into the world, red-faced and squalling.
decided that the King's Hand should be informed of this new alignment amongst the warring cities.
It might even be that certain promises were made to them in this regard, possibly through Lord Larys the Clubfoot or one of his agents, though this remains unproven and unprovable.
The new-made Lord Quenton had two strong sons and a plump grandson to assure the succession, but as his first wife had been carried off by spotted fever three years earlier, he further agreed to take one of Lord Tully's daughters as his bride.
All three of the Targaryen thrusts faced fierce opposition.
Lady Jocelyn at sixteen years old was one of the great beauties of the realm; a long-legged, full-breasted maid with thick straight hair that fell to her waist, black as a raven's wing.
Then his grief turned to fury, and he ordered the immediate execution of the midwife and septas who had charge of the queen's care, and Grand Maester Desmond as well, sparing only Alys's sisters.
Though it had always been their custom to wed brother to sister and cousin to cousin, young blood runs hot, and it was not unknown for men of the house to seek their pleasures amongst the daughters (and even the wives) of their subjects, the smallfolk wholived in the villages below the Dragonmont, tillers of the land and fishers of the sea.
But beforethe Dragon's Peace, as the last two decades of his kingship were latercalled by the maesters of the Citadel, came the Dragon's wars, the last of which was as cruel and bloody a conflict as any ever fought in Westeros.
He spoke of Rhaenyra's wanton ways and the infamy of her husband.
The Seven had no more need of warriors, proclaimed His High Holiness; henceforth the Iron Throne would protect and defend the Faith.
In this regard Benifer ranks near the top, and his letters and journals provide us with detailed accounts of all that he saw, did, and witnessed whilst in service to King Jaehaerys and his uncle Maegor before him.
The burns he'd suffered at Rook's Rest had left scars that covered half his body.
Jaehaerys raised a hand to silence Lord Rogar before he could say further.
But when his inquisitors asked who had made this promise, Tessario had no answer but a grinâ¦a grin that turned into a grimace, and thence a scream, when he was asked again under torture.
"I would sooner the rest of us did not die with him," declared Ser Elmo Tully, his grandson.
After setting out from King's Landing, the king's party made its way south to Storm's
On the morning after the battle, the Conquerors of Tumbleton looked out from the town walls to find their foes gone.
Though the lusts of men and the cruelty of women can never be gainsaid, we put no credence in Mushroom here.
"The Sowing of the Seeds," Munkun names the triumphs and tragedies that ensued (crediting the notion to Jacaerys himself, not Mushroom).
A dragonrider since the age of thirteen, she insisted upon arriving for the wedding on Meley
Defeat seemed imminentâ¦until a shadow swept across the battlefield, and a terrible roar resounded overhead, slicing through the sound of steel on steel.
Jaehaerys was determined that no man would ever question his own courage or skill at arms.
Only nine, he had never flown beforeâ¦and would never fly again, for Stormcloud had been terribly wounded as he fled the Gay Abandon, arriving with the stubs of countless arrows embedded in his belly, and a scorpion bolt through his neck.
"Let it be on your head, Stark," Kermit Tully said.
Lord Rupert Falwell, famed as the Fighting Fool, led the ranks of the pious who had answered the High Septon's call; with him rode Ser Lyonel Lorch, Ser Alyn Terrick, Lord Tristifer Wayn, Lord Jon Lychester, and many other puissant knights.
The Hand even went so far as to dismiss Septon Eustace, bringing in a younger man, Septon Bernard, to tend to the spiritual needs of the court and supervise His Grace's religious and moral instruction.
Queen Alyssa in particular had no doubt whatsoever about whom her son would choose to marry were the choice left to him: her youngest daughter, his sister the Princess Alysanne.
Hundreds fled in terror from her flamesâ¦but hundreds more, drunk or mad or possessed of the Warrior's own courage, pushed through to the attack.
He formally repudiated the pact that Alyn Oakenfist had signed to secure the release of Prince Viserys, on the grounds that the agreement had been made not with the Free City of Lys, but with House Rogare, which could no longer be said to exist.
As for the king's own views, all the chronicles agree that King Viserys hated dissension.
As for the girl, though she might be dirty and ill-favored, she had fought valiantly in the Battle of the Gullet.
The women of Winterfell were taken by the queen's charms as well, once they grew to know her; Her Grace became particularly close with Lord Alaric's daughter, Alarra.
When pressed by the king, Prince Aemond said it was his brother Aegon who had told him they were Strongs, and Prince Aegon said only, "Everyone knows.
One other man also lost his head: Ser Maladon Moore, a Kingsguard knight, who was accused of having held Ceryse Hightower, Maegor's first queen, whilst his Sworn Brother, Ser Owen Bush, removed her tongue, during which Her Grace's struggles caused the blade to slip, bringing about her death.
Queen Alysanne took great pride in arranging marriages, and had put together hundreds of fruitful unions for lords and ladies from one end of the realm to another, but never had she faced so much difficulty as she did whilst searching for mates for her four younger children.
The identity of the man who met Coryanne Wylde in the inn by the ferry, if indeed such a meeting ever took place, is another matter of contention.
King Jaehaerys finally made his progress through the Vale of Arrynin 52 AC, calling at Gulltown, Runestone, Redfort, Longbow Hall, Heart's Home, and the Gates of the Moon before flying Vermithor up the Giant's Lance to the Eyrie, as Queen Visenya had done during the Conquest.
The Maiden of the Vale promised aid as well, when she replied from her winter castle, the Gates of the Moonâ¦but with the mountain passes closed by snow, her knights would need to come by sea.
Franklyn Farman did not lack for courage, as Maester Smike wrote in a letter to the Citadel.
Not until both boys had sworn solemn oaths upon a copy of The Seven-Pointed Star would Her Grace consent to using them as her envoys.
With Ser Corwyn's death in the Vale, only Lord Rowan and Grand Maester Munkun remained as regents.
Legend has it that during the Age of Heroes, Serwyn of the Mirror Shield slew the dragon Urrax by crouching behind a shield so polished that the beast saw only his own reflection.
Only the bridge remained untouched, as it was required to cross the Mander.
The maesters of the Citadel who keep the histories of Westeros have used Aegon's Conquest as their touchstone for the past three hundred years.
"Aye, Princess Rhaenys is kin to me and mine, some great-aunt I never knew was married to her father, but the both of them are dead, and Rhaenyraâ¦she's not Rhaenys, is she?"
Unlike Alysanne, she was delicate as well, in ways the queen had never been.
By then Ser Horys Hill had reached the Great Fork of the Blackwater with an even larger host; close on thirteen thousand Poor Fellows, their ranks stiffened by the addition of two hundred mounted Warrior's
To ascertain there would be no repetition of Princess Aerea's escape on Balerion, the king decreed that all the dragons should be guarded night and day, regardless of where they laired.
The girl might well have thought the Free Cities to be beyond her mother's grasp, and Queen Alysanne in particular seemed convinced that Aerea was fleeing her mother as much as Dragonstone itself.
A short while later, her second son followed him to the funeral pyre, tortured to death by Tyanna of the Tower.
With Lord Corlys came his wife, Princess Rhaenys, five-and-fifty, her face lean and lined, her black hair streaked with white, yet fierce and fearless as she had been at two-and-twenty.
mon the Devout, Grand Captain of the Warrior's Sons; Ser Lyle Bracken; Ser Harys Horpe, called Death's Head Harry; Ser Aegon Ambrose; Ser Dickon Flowers, the Bastard of Beesbury; Ser Willam the Wanderer; and Ser Garibald of the Seven Stars, the septon knight.
No further dissent was heard after the death of Lord Beesbury.
A great whale of a man, as famed for his corpulence as for the magnificence of his robes, Mattheus claimed descent from the Gardener kings of old, who had once ruled the Reach from their seat at Highgarden.
The Vale, the Fingers, and the Mountains of the Moon belonged to House Arrynâ¦but the most belligerent kings of Aegon's time were the two whose realms lay closest to Dragonstone, Harren the Black and Argilac the Arrogant.
Aegon listened to each claim, butin the end decided that he would allow the ironborn to choose their own lord paramount.
The rising sun would find her flapping listlessly across the field, feeding on the burned remains of horses, men, and oxen.
Soon after he wed Lady Arra Norrey, a beloved companion since childhood, only to have her die in 128 AC whilst giving birth to a son and heir, whom Cregan named Rickon after his father.
She sailed her own boat around Fair Isle at the age of four-and-ten, and by the time she was twenty she had voyaged as far north as Bear Island and as far south as the Arbor.
And so the Dance began, as the princess called a council of her own.
But now voices on the black council were raised to question Ser Addam's loyalty.
Ser Criston urged a withdrawal to the south, where Aegon's support was strongest, but the prince refused, saying "Only a craven runs from traitors."
Ser Vaemond's younger cousins fled to King's Landing with his wife and sons, there to cry for justice and place their claims before the king and queen.
The twins battled for the best part of an hour, Grand Maester Munkun says; the clash of steel on steel woke half of the queen's court, but the onlookers could only stand by helplessly and watch, for no man there could tell which brother was which.
On his tomb is engraved a single word: LOYAL.
King Aenys loved his wife, his children, and his people, and wished only to be loved in turn.
For three days she lost herself in the Citadel's great library, emerging only to attend lectures on the Valyrian dragon wars, leechcraft, and the gods of the Summer Isles.
"Lady Daenaera of House Velaryon," boomed out the herald, somewhat hoarsely, "daughter of the late andlamented Daeron of that house and his lady wife, Hazel of House Harte, also departed, a ward of Lady Baela of House Targaryen and Alyn the Oakenfist of House Velaryon, Lord Admiral, Master of Driftmark, and Lord of the Tides."
The humbler members of the Faithâvillage septons, holy sisters, begging brothers, Poor Fellowsâstill believed it sinful for brother to lie with sister, or for a man to take two wives.
Princess Rhaenyra would remain on Dragonstone until she had recovered her strength.
(Lannisport and Oldtown, the other great cities of the realm, were also included in Lord Celtigar's new taxes, but there the decrees had less effect, largely because Casterly Rock and the Hightower ignored them and made no effort to collect.)
In the end, though, Aegon's enemies had no answer for his dragons.
And the dower lands being offered had belonged to Harrenhal for more than a generation.
Lord Kermit Tully and his knights returned to Riverrun, whilst his brother Ser Oscar set sail with his Stormbreakers for Tyrosh and the Disputed Lands.
Even after the end of the right of the first night, certain Targaryens continued to dally with the daughters of innkeeps and the wives of fishermen, so seeds and the sons of seeds were plentiful on Dragonstone.
Queen Alysanne dismissed these concerns as foolishness.
Hubert Arryn, a cousin to the dead brothers, was installed as Lord of the Vale.
When the Shivers finally ran its course, King Jaehaerys went back to his labors with a sadder heart.
The Evenstar had already sent a raven to King's Landing, so Peake decreed that the fleet would remain at Tarth until a reply was received.
Once more Vermithor and Silverwing took to the skies, to bring the king and queen to their mother's side as quickly as possible.
Septon Eustace claims that Rhaenyra knew her father would never approve of the match, so she wed in haste to make certain he could not prevent the marriage.
Ser Morgan Hightower did the deed at the command of his lord brother, some say (and Ser Morgan was seen entering and leaving the High Septon's privy chambers that night).
She mounted Dreamfyre and flew to the Red Keep, where she learned that she must marry her uncle, her husband's killer.
On the day after his father's funeral, he summoned Rhaena to his great hall (he would not deign to go to her), and commanded her to remove herself from his island.
"You always were a bloody fool, Victor," Ser Gareth said, when his longsword was placed into his hand.
Traders from Oldtown and the Arbor oft sailed as far as Qarth in search of spice, silk, and other treasures, but Corlys Velaryon and the Sea Snake were the first to go beyond, passing through the Jade Gates to Yi Ti and the isle of Leng, returning with so rich a load of silk and spice that he doubled the wealth of House Velaryon in a stroke.
(The Hand would have preferred a longer betrothal, but the regents felt it prudent for Rhaena to wed quickly, in the event that her sister was already with child.)
And though Hard Hugh Hammer had died, and his dreams of kingship with him, the second Betrayer remained.
Harren's father had extended his domains east to Duskendale and Rosby.
"Princess Rhaena had many a suitor as well, but unlike her brother she gave encouragement to none of them.
Her second son, Lucerys, would be recognized as the rightful heir to Driftmark, and the lands and holdings of House Velaryon; her boys by Prince Daemon, Aegon the Younger and Viserys, would be given places of honor at court, the former as the king's squire, the latter as his cupbearer.
Lord Rogar, who was known to harbor thoughts of extending the power of the Iron Throne across the narrow sea to Essos, put forward the notion of forging an alliance with Tyrosh by wedding Jaehaerys to the Archon's daughter, a comely girl of fifteen years who had charmed all at the wedding with her wit, her flirtatious manner, and her blue-green hair.
Aegon first attempted to win the Dornishmen with words, dispatching a delegation of high lords, maesters, and septons to Sunspear to treat with Princess Meria Martell, the so-called Yellow Toad of Dorne, and persuade her of the advantages of joining her realm to his.
Their father, Prince Daemon, had made many friends in the Free City of Pentos during his visits there, so Jacaerys reached across the narrow sea to the prince of that city, who agreed to foster the two boys until Rhaenyra had secured the Iron Throne.
From his knees, Ser Amaury staggered back to his feet and charged his unarmed foe.
Balerion alone had come to the island with Aenar the Exile and Daenys the Dreamer, the youngest of the five dragons they brought with them.
In the end, more than a thousand northmen accompanied Black Aly and her nephew Lord Benjicot when they returned to the riverlands after the royal wedding.
Septon Eustace (who had no love for the queen) tells us Rhaenyra laughed when she beheld the ruin of Sunfyre the Golden.
As the Arryn fleet had largely been destroyed during the Conquest, the king commanded his Warden of the North, Torrhen Stark of Winterfell, to end the Sistermen's Rebellion, and a northern army departed from White Harbor on a fleet of hired Braavosi galleys, under the command of Ser Warrick Manderly.
Aegon Targaryen had always kept a maester on Dragonstone, as his father and father's father had before him.
Later, when asked why she had chosen such an unpromising spouse, Rhaena Targaryen replied, "He was kind to me."
And from below, stones and spears and arrows flew at him from the hands of the Shepherd's blood-soaked lambs, maddening the dragon evenfurther.
Far from relenting, the Shepherd of the Faithful addressed Aenys as "King Abomination," declaring him a pretender and a tyrant, with no right to rule the Seven Kingdoms.
"Within a moon's turn of being crowned," Grand Maester Benifer wrote, "King Jaehaerys had reconciled the Iron Throne to the Faith and put an end to the bloodshed that had troubled the reigns of his uncle and father."
If she were still alive by the time they reached the gate, Ser Perkin promised, she would be spared and allowed to go.
Gaemon decreed that husbands who beat their wives should themselves be beaten, irrespective of what the wives had done to warrant such chastisement.
In his native city, Tyrosh, his name remains anathema to men and women of good blood to this very day, whilst being revered by thieves, pirates, whores, drunkards, and their ilk.
Word of Rhaenyra's coronation reached the Red Keep the next day, to the great displeasure of Aegon II.
He commanded only a fifth as many men as the Two Kings, and much of his strength was made up of men sworn to the riverlords, whose loyalty to House Targaryen was of recent vintage, and untested.
Lord Ormund had only recently taken a second wife when the Dance began, his first having died some years before in childbed.
There had been some concern how the queen might be received at Castle Black, for many of the black brothers had been Poor Fellows and Warrior's
A lavish coronation was planned for the boy, to be followed by his wedding to the Princess Jaehaera.
The huge indemnity demanded by the Sealord so depleted the royal treasury that Lord Peake soon found it necessary to borrow from the Iron Bank of Braavos just so the Crown might pay its debts, and that in turn required him to reinstate certain of Lord Celtigar's taxes that Ser Tyland Lannister had abolished, which angered lords and merchants alike and weakened his support amongst the smallfolk.
Yet without proof, none of this would have been damningâ¦if not for what the Hand did afterward.
In the years that followed, other children came one after the other to House Targaryenâ¦to the delight of King Aegon, if not necessarily that of Queen Visenya.
The largest castle ever raised in Westeros, Harrenhal boasted five gargantuan towers, an inexhaustible source of fresh water, huge subterranean vaults well stocked with provisions, and massive walls of black stone higher than any ladder and too thick to be broken by any ram or shattered by a trebuchet.
I Targaryen broke his fast with an envoy of the Iron Bank of Braavos, who had come to collect the annual payment on the Crown's loan.
When she sent word to King's Landing, Jaehaerys acted at once, commanding Lord Velaryon to send forth his galleys to make certain no one escaped to spread the pestilence beyond the island.
"The snows are falling in the North," he announced, "and my place is at Winterfell."*1
In the days of the Hundred Kingdoms, many petty kings had claimed dominion over the river mouth, amongst them the Darklyn kings of Duskendale, the Masseys of Stonedance, and the river kings of old, be they Mudds, Fishers, Brackens, Blackwoods, or Hooks.
Though their favors cost ten times as much as any otherbrothel dared to charge, Roggerio never lacked for customers.
Massey had been forging a maester's chain at the Citadel only three years earlier, when a fever had carried off both his older brothers and his lord father.
Seasmoke was first to die, when Vermithor locked his teeth into his neck and ripped his head off.
The king's half-witted fool, Tom Turnip, was the victim of many of her japes, and her unwitting catspaw for others.
Viserys never claimed another dragon after Balerion's death, nor did he have much taste for the joust, the hunt, or swordplay, whereas Prince Daemon excelled in these spheres, and seemed all that his brother was not: lean and hard, a renowned warrior, dashing, daring, more than a little dangerous.
Ser Criston Cole was not amongst them, having gone over entirely to the queen's party, the greens, but the massive and redoubtable Breakbones (or Brokenbones, as Mushroom had it) filled his place, becoming the foremost of the blacks, ever at Rhaenyra's side at feast and ball and hunt.
The Stranger was not yet done with House Targaryen in that cruel year of 54 AC, however.
The prince and princess entered King's Landing in a wagon pulled by mules, but when they made their departure it was on dragonback, flying side by side.
His colleagues would have none of it, however, Lord Peake insisting that the former regents had given up their places on the council by departing King's Landing.
Even more gravely, Baela had a taste for unsuitable companions.
Of late, many a young maiden had cast her eye upon the prince, and Aegon was not indifferent to their charms.
That was the last known sighting of Sheepstealer and his rider, Nettles, recorded in the annals of Westerosâ¦though the wildlings of the mountains still tell tales of a "fire witch" who once dwelled in a hidden vale far from any road or village.
From High Tide, he sent a raven to his brother in King's Landing, informing His Grace of the birth of his nieces and begging leave to present the girls at court to receive his royal blessing.
Whereupon he set out for King's Landing to claim the Sea Snake's place amongst the regents.
Lord Corbray advised him to engage each foe separately before they could join their powers, but Aegon was loath to divide his strength.
After the death of her husband and her flight to Fair Isle, Rhaena Targaryen had acted quickly to protect her daughters.
As Archmaester Goodwyn wrote afterward, "The smallfolk cheered, the maesters nodded sagely, and the septons looked at one another and thought on dragons.
Lord Celtigar had two unwed daughters, and had famously offered Maegor his choice of them; now he offered the same girls again for Jaehaerys.
Even as they mourned for her and the sweet soul she had been, Jaehaerys and Alysanne must also have been confronting that awful realization.
And soon another tale was told as well, one that claimed Queen Rhaenyra had the prince's head delivered to his mother, Queen Helaena, in a chamberpot.
Instead Prince Aemond struck at Stonyhead, in the foothills of the Mountains of the Moon; at Sweetwillow on the Green Fork and Sallydance on theRed Fork; he reduced Bowshot Bridge to embers, burned Old Ferry and Crone's Mill, destroyed the motherhouse at Bechester, always vanishing back into the sky before the hunters could arrive.
On the nightswhen the king was sharing a bed with Queen Ceryse or Queen Tyanna, Lucas Harroway sent men to his daughter's bed to get her with child.
Many of the other seeds and seekers who aspired to ride upon Sheepstealer's back ended in Sheepstealer's belly instead.
In the Starry Sept, the High Septon railed and thundered, calling down the wroth of the gods upon the Targaryens.
Elinda Massey, youngest and gentlest of Rhaenyra's ladies-in-waiting, supposedly gouged out her own eyes at the sight, whilst the queen's son Aegon the Younger watched in horror, unable to move.
Prince Joffrey was but elevenâ¦but Jacaerys, Prince of Dragonstone, was on the cusp of his fifteenth nameday.
When Ser Joffrey and Lady Lucinda urged him to undo his uncle Maegor's decrees and reinstate the Swords and Stars, Jaehaerys refused firmly.
Together with her two youngest children, Alyssa was made a prisoner in all but name of the man who had brought about the death of her sons, and was made to bear witness when her eldest daughter was forced into marriage to that same monster.
Each man was given one final chance to swear fealty to His Grace; only Lord Butterwell, Lord Stokeworth, and Lord Rosby chose to do so.
He stepped outside again, pulled Rogar Baratheon to his feet, and dragged him back into the birthing chamber, where he bade the maester repeat what he had just said.
The second wife and her offspring would go to Driftmark, to be fostered by Daemon Velaryon, Lord of the Tides.
The Prince of Dragonstone fell to his knees and grasped the crossbow bolt, as if to pull it from his throat, but his strength was gone.
The scant writings she left behind show that even as a child Elissa Farman was convinced the world was "far larger and far stranger than the maesters imagine."
With Septon Eustace and Grand Maester Orwyle languishing in dungeons (where Orwyle had begun writing his confessions, the text that would provide Munkun with the foundation on which he would build his monumental True Telling), only Mushroom remains to take us beyond the court chronicles and royal edicts.
Dalton Greyjoy had never taken a rock wife, so his only heirs were two young sons born of the salt wives he had left on Pyke, three sisters, and several cousins, each more grasping and ambitious than the last.
The night was black and overcast, the torches so numerous that "it was as if all the stars had come down from the sky to storm the Dragonpit," the fool says.
Septon Oswyck performed the marriage rites; though the old man's voice was thin and tremulous, no part of the ceremony was neglected.
Wat's followers poured out into the countryside, streaming up the kingsroad behind Lord Celtigar's rotting headâ¦toward where, not even Wat seemed certain.
From this date forward, however, he would wield only Blackfyre, whilst Dark Sister hung on the walls of his chambers on Dragonstone.)
It was whispered (though never proved) that on one of these flights Rhaena surrendered the flower of her maidenhead to a lowborn lover.
When word reached court, Grand Maester Munkun went himself to examine some of those afflicted, to ascertain whether this was indeed the Winter Fever and not some lesser illness.
The fate of Lady Larra's brothers Lotho and Roggerio remained to be decided.
Ser Gyles and the litter bearers had no notion aught was amiss until they reached the sept, and the curtains did not open.
The Myrmen did have some strength at sea, so the Sea Snake would first need to bring the Velaryon fleet south, to protect Lord Boremund as he crossed to Tarth with his stormlanders, to join with the Evenstar's own levies.
Though the years had thickened the body that had been so lithe and lissome, Prince Daemon remained in her thrall, and called upon her every eveningâ¦with Queen Rhaenyra's apparent blessing.
Then he raised his right arm and jabbed the stump of his missing hand at Rhaenys's Hill behind him, at the Dragonpit black against the stars.
In his haste to be away before he could be stopped, the prince had vaulted onto Syrax without benefit of saddle or whip.
It would be a year of peace, plenty, and marriage, remembered in the annals of the Seven Kingdoms as the Year of theThree Brides.
Having been driven from Fair Isle and disowned by her brother Lord Franklyn, she took on a bastard name of her own devising, calling herself Alys Westhill.
When she did not appear there either, the king wondered if she might not flee to her former friends, so Jonah Mooton and his wife, Perianne, were told to keep watch for her at Maidenpool.
As a writer-producer, he has worked on The Twilight Zone, Beauty and the Beast, and various feature films and pilots that were never made.
When the sails of the Sea Snake's ships were seen to the east in Blackwater Bay, making for the river, the bells of every sept in the city began to ring, and mobs surged through the streets, looting as they went.
Manfryd Mooton was bedridden, still recovering his strength after his battle with the fever, and asked that any decisions be postponed until Lady Jeyne Arryn and Lord RoyceCaron could be summoned back from the Vale and the Dornish Marches to take part in the deliberations.
Despite such differences, the sons of the Dragon continued to rule together amicably for the best part of two years.
And so it came to pass that the second of what the smallfolk namedQueen Alysanne's
Those gold cloaks who had been accused and taken (a number had escaped) chose to emulate Ser Gareth and Lord Graceford, taking the black in preference to losing their heads.
Once taken, Lysaro was sent downriver to Volantis, where the Triarchs offered him to his brother Drako, for a certain price.
Alysanne, shaken by all the losses they had suffered, withdrew more and more from the governance of the realm, and seldom came to council meetings any longer, but Jaehaerys still had his faithful Septon Barth, and his sons.
Larra Rogare had taken up residence in the Red Keep with her husband, yet in her heart she remained a lady of Lys.
She was confined to a tower cell instead, with Jonquil Darke guarding her day and night, even in the privy.
Roggerio, the youngest, opened an opulent Lysene pillow house called the Mermaid beside the River Gate, and filled it with parrots from the Summer Islands, monkeys from Sothoryos, and a hundred exotic girls (and boys) from every corner of the earth.
Legend tells us that in one small village, the quick-witted Septon Baldrick was confronted by a burly hedge knight, once a Poor Fellow, who said, "Aye, and if I want to fuck my sister too, do I have your leave?"
The laurel fell to the Septon Alfyn, who had crossed the Reach a dozen times in his litter on behalf of Jaehaerys and his queen.
Once safely behind the walls of the Dun Fort, overlooking the harbor, Rhaenyra commanded Lady Darklyn's maester to send word to Grand Maester Gerardys on Dragonstone, asking that a ship be sent at once to take her home.
For the best part of a year, the people of Fair Isle watched the east in dread, fearing the sight of Balerion's dark wings, but Maegor never came.
Others blamed one of the little queen's companions, Lady Cassandra Baratheon.
Nine days after the coronation, the young king departed Oldtown for King's Landing.
The town was sacked, the ships in the harbor set afire, Lord Darklyn beheaded.
Thereafter Ser Criston always wore her favor in the lists and became a fixture at her side during feasts and frolics.
A lord should know the land he rules, the Conqueror later told his son Aenys, and through his travels Aegon learned much and more about the Seven Kingdoms and its peoples.
With the submission of the Three Sisters and the Iron Islands, all of Westeros south of the Wall was now ruled by Aegon Targaryen, save Dorne alone.
Thus did Lord Corlys and his wife, the Princess Rhaenys, arrive at Harrenhal in high state, using the wealth and influence of House Velaryon to persuade the lords assembled that their son, Laenor, should be recognized as heir to the Iron Throne.
"He can take the black and spend his days at the Wall," His Grace decreed, "or else give up his manhood and serve me as a eunuch.
"I want the knights protecting my son to be the finest to be found anywhere in Westeros, true honest men whose loyalty and courage is unquestioned.
Others dug pits and tunnels under their hovels, dark dank holes where they hoped to hide whilst the city burned (Grand Maester Munkun tells us that many of the hidden passageways and secret subcellars under King's Landing date from this time).
In 8 AC, a very dry year, Dornish raiders crossed the Sea of Dorne on ships provided by a pirate king from the Stepstones, attacking half a dozen towns and villages along the south shore of Cape Wrath and setting fires that spread through half the rainwood.
Not since the reign of King Viserys had there been a ball of any sort in King's Landing, and this would be a ball like none other.
The names of the four Maegor chose are writ large in the history of Westeros:
Lord Graceford was seized by the Kingsguard and dragged away to the very dungeon he himself had ruled when he awoke that day.
Denied any part of the incomes of Fair Isle by her brother Lord Franklyn, Elissa asked the Dowager Queen for gold sufficient to build a new ship in the shipyards of Driftmark, a large, swift vessel meant to sail the Sunset Sea.
This time it was Septon Barth who pronounced them man and wife, beneath the Iron Throne.
Though still far apart as regarded a suitable match for the king, the council settled swiftly on apartner for the princess; she would be married on the seventh day of the new year, to Orryn Baratheon, the youngest of Lord Rogar's brothers.
The fall of Harrenhal to Prince Daemon came as a great shock to His Grace, Munkun tells us.
Unbeknownst to King Aegon, the Hand, or the Queen Dowager, he had allies at court as well, even on the green councilâ¦and one other go- between, a special friend he trusted utterly, who knew the wine sinks and rat pits that festered in the shadow of the Red Keep as well as Daemon himself once had, and moved easily through the shadows of the city.
And thus it was there at Casterly Rock that Princess Rhaena gave birth to Aegon's daughters, twins they named Aerea and Rhaella.
On the ninth day of the twelfth moon of 130 AC, the magnificent golden dragon that had been King Aegon's glory died in the outer yard of Dragonstone where he had fallen.
Many thought her to be of that same ilk as Sabitha Frey, for they were oft in one another's company, and had been known to share a tent whilst on the march.
And it was said afterward that the little king flew thrice about the summit of the Giant's Lance, and landed to find himself a little lord.
Order had replaced chaos, and if the Three Daughters demanded a toll of any ship passing through their waters, that seemed a small price to pay to be rid of the pirates.
After retaking the castle, Lord Mooton led his bravest men to the field of ashes west of the castle, to put an end to the dragon Sunfyre.
Desperate for coin and allies, he sold the boy to a certain magister of that city named Bambarro Bazanne, in return for Viserys's weight in gold and a promise of support.
His tenure in King's Landing had left a legacy of mistrust behind it, and Jaehaerys could neither forgive nor forget his words at the gates of Dragonstone.
The Princess of Dorne dispatched a raven to Dragonstone, offering to join Aegon against Argilac the Storm Kingâ¦but as an equal and ally, not a subject.
"Aegon had no secrets from Rhaenys and Visenya, and I have none from Alysanne," he said.
There, upon a canopied bed in Maegor's Holdfast in the Red Keep of King's Landing, the marriage of Jaehaerys Targaryen and his sister Alysanne was consummated at long last, sealing their union for all time before the eyes of gods and men.
She could no longer serve as she once had, as a partner to the king in his labors, and the court was full of strangers whose names Alysanne could not quite recall.
Then the White Worm raised her eyes and said in a soft voice, "The girl has already betrayed you, my queen.
Ser Gedmund Peake and the royal fleet had been recalled from Tarth to the Gullet, to guard the entrance to Blackwater Bay should the Braavosi seek to retaliate against King's Landing, but other ports and cities all up and down the narrow sea remained vulnerable, so the King's Hand dispatched fellow regent Lord Manfryd Mooton to Braavos to treat with the Sealord and return his elephant.
Winter broke not long after the queen gave birth, and Alyssa proved to be a lively, healthy child.
Broken by the loss of one son, Rhaenyra Targaryen seemed to find new strength after the loss of a second.
Five thousand men set out up the kingsroad, under the command of Ser Robert Rowan, Lord Thaddeus's eldest son.
So wroth was His Grace at what he saw that Ser Joffrey Doggett would say afterward, "When I looked upon his face, for a moment it was as if I were looking at his uncle."
As she confided to the old friends and favorites she had gathered around her, Queen Rhaena neither understood nor shared her mother's affection for Rogar Baratheon.
Manderly also staged a small tourney in the queen's honor, to show the prowess of his knights.
Ser Rickard's corpse, wrapped in his white cloak, Lady Caswell sent back to King's Landing, together with Prince Maelor's head.
When Johanna Lannister attempted to build a new fleet of warships to take the battle to the ironmen, the Red Kraken descended on her shipyards and put them to the torch, and made off with another hundred women in the nonce.
Lady Alys was triumphant; here was land farther to the west than any land had ever been known to be, islands that existed on no known chart.
The subsequent murder of the disgraced admiral brought the tensions and rivalries amongst the Three Daughters to the surface, and long-simmering resentments flared into violence with a series of murders that soon led to open war.
In Flea Bottom and along the Street of Silk where whores and panders plied their trade, men and women of low birth and lower morals took a wicked pleasure in the fall of an anointed knight, and made bawdy japes about "Ser Lucamore the Lusty," but no laughter was heard in the Red Keep.
A raven must needs be sent to Dragonstone at once to inform Princess Rhaenyra of her father's passing.
In this instance, at the least, Lysene justice proved to be considerably harsher than that of the Seven Kingdoms.
And when a Rowan girl in Rhaenys's service found herself with child by a scullion, the queen found a knight to marry her in White Harbor, and another in Lannisport who was willing to take on her bastard as a fosterling.
They alone of all the men in the world had been given the power to tame those fearsome beasts, once the Doom had come to Valyria.
Far from welcoming her sister and whatever solace she might bring, Rhaena thrice tried to send her away, even going so far as to scream at Her Grace in view of half the castle.
As Septon Eustace led the doomed men in prayer, beseeching the Mother to have mercy on their souls, rain began to fall.
Those who doubted the paternity of Rhaenyra's sons whispered that the eggs would never hatch, but the birth in turn of three young dragons gave the lie to their words.
Another claims Ser Garibald of the Seven Stars sang a paean as he fought.
Her Grace agreed to accept the king's other wives, to treat them with respect and honor and speak no further ill against them, whilst Maegor swore to restore to Ceryse all the rights, incomes, and privileges due her as his wedded wife and queen.
Her lady mother had been fertile, so there was no reason to think that Myrielle would not give His Grace strong sons.
Very quickly Ser Tyland achieved an unspoken dominance over Leowyn Corbray, of whom Mushroom says, "He was thick of neck and thick of wit, but never have I known a man to fart so loudly."
The Dowager Queen Alicent of House Hightower, second wife of King Viserys I and mother to his sons, Aegon, Aemond, and Daeron, and his daughter Helaena, died on the same night as Lord Westerling, after confessing her sins to her septa.
West of Harrenhal, fighting continued in the riverlands as the Lannister host slogged onward.
Her courage did help inspire her westermen, however, for the raiders were soon routed and Kayce was saved.
The pirates of the Stepstones, the sellsails of Myr, and the corsairs of the Pepper Coast became less troublesome for a time, and Mara Martell became the Princess of Dorne.
Another account tells us that a sailor in the crow's nest of a Myrish galley cast a grapnel as Vermax was swooping through the fleet.
Others relate how a knight named Ser Warrick Wheaton slashed a wing from Syrax with a Valyrian steel sword (Lamentation, most like).
Faced with ruin, he fled Lys in the dead of night with three bed slaves, six servants, and a hundred of his Unsullied, abandoning his wife, his daughters, and his palace.
In Tyrosh, he was known totoss gold coins to beggars.
Later that same year, Benjicot Blackwood, Lord of Raventree, led a retinue up the kingsroad to Winterfell, to stand witness at the marriage of his aunt Alysanne to Lord Cregan Stark.
So as not to pass through any of the city gates, where they might be seen and remembered, Lord Larys led them out through some secret passage of Maegor the Cruel, of which only he had knowledge.
"Grey and gold they was, flashing in the sun," one man saidâ¦and now, in defiance of Ser Robert's prohibition, the two Toms were intent on delivering their "cousins" to the stony strand where the dead dragon sprawled burned and broken, so they might seek after his slayer.
It was decided that the council would be held at Harrenhal, the largest castle in the realm.
For a short while it seemed as if a betrothal might be in the offing, and Queen Alysanne and Lord Blackwood even began to discuss wedding plans.
Whilst the hunters crept toward one another, Jaehaerys watched them from the sky, moving them about as once he had moved toy armies in the Chamber of the Painted Table.
He would rule the North for twenty-three years, an able man though a stern oneâ¦but for a long while he had no good to say of King Jaehaerys, for he blamed the king's clemency for his brother Walton's death, and was oft heard to say that His Grace should have beheaded Maegor's men rather than sending them to the Wall.
The taxes on silk, spice, and crenellations alone could not answer, so Lord Rego reluctantly imposed a new levy: a gate fee, required of anyone entering or leaving the city, collected by the guards on the city's gates.
"No peace without submission," she declared, and her friends on the king's council echoed her words.
Whereupon he removed his chain of office and set it on the council table.
Most days, he preferred to leave matters of state to his Hand, Ser Otto Hightower.
By then Dorne was a smoking desert, beset by famine, plague, and blight.
That was proved when two of the Sea Snake's sworn swords, Ser Denys Woodwright and Ser Thoron True, cut their way into the dungeons to free their lord.
More than any of these, King Aegon relied upon the King's Hand, and of course upon his sisters, the Queens Rhaenys and Visenya.
When Walter Wyl was delivered into his hands, wounded but alive, Lord Orys said, "Your father took my hand.
Their dragons would be with them, of course, but beyond the Neck the distances were great and the roads poor, and the king had grown tired of flying ahead and waiting for his escort to catch up.
So thick was the miasma of mistrust in the Red Keep that Aegon III did not leave Maegor's Holdfast for six more days after his brother Viserys unravelled Lord Rowan's false confession.
The city's magisters and merchant princes began to demand the return of their deposits; a few at first, then more and more, until a river of gold was pouring from Lysaro's vaultsâ¦a river that soon enough ran dry.
From the Twins rode Ser Forrest Frey, the very same "Fool Frey" who had once begged for Rhaenyra's hand, now grown into a most puissant knight.
Not long after, that selfsame rabble stormed and seized his castle of Blackhaven.
Lord Hightower's banners toppled, and the townsfolk gave a great cheer, thinking the tide of battle turned.
"Run back to Driftmark, I'd venture," he said.
The twice-widowed Queen Elinor of House Costayne, who had found King Maegor dead upon the Iron Throne, had departed King's Landing after Jaehaerys's ascent.
To take charge of the serving girls and maids of Alysanne's household, she dispatched Lady Lucinda Tully, the wife of the Lord of Riverrun, whose fierce piety was renowned through all the land.
When she returned, Prince Maegor was with her, on Balerion.
Hightower's host had crossed the Mander and was advancing slowly on King's Landing, smashing the queen's loyalists
Albin Massey, the bent-backed master of laws, wondered if Septon Mattheus might suffer the same fate as the High Septon who had made such trouble for Aenys and Maegor; a sudden, mysterious death.
Though he quaked and thundered and called down maledictions upon "this harlot on a horse," in the end the High Septon had no choice but to relent.
When Ser Joffrey set out from Lannisport to seek the blessing of the High Septon, a hundred men rode with him.
Bold Jon Roxton became enamored of the beautiful Lady Sharis Footly, the wife of the Lord of Tumbleton, and claimed her as a "prize of war."
The fleet set sail at mid-year, led by Oakenfist in a galley he named Bold Marilda after his mother.
The men and women of their retinue had a more arduous journey home, traveling overland from Barrowton back to White Harbor and taking ship from there.
He was accompanied by Ser Gyles Morrigen and six guardsmen, but only Septon Barth took part in the discussions.
Nor was the damage confined to Lys.
Lord Donnel's grandsons Eustace and Norman, both noted mariners in their own right, were sent to question herâ¦and clapher in fetters if they felt it prudent.
Rego Draz, however despised, had been a man of great ability.
The men who had seized the Queen Dowager upon the serpentine steps had worn the seahorse badge of House Velaryon, whilst those who had freed Lady Baela Targaryen from her imprisonment had been in service to Lord Larys Strong.
When he demanded to know her purpose, Lady Sam replied that whilst he had forbidden her to set foot in the sept, he had said naught about her horse's hooves.
The princess had not forgotten the incident of the Arbor gold.
Septon Barth described the boy as a "plump and pleasant lad, who laughed more than any babe I've ever known, and nursed so lustily he drank his wet nurse dry."
When Queen Visenya placed a Valyrian steel circlet, studded with rubies, on her brother's head and Queen Rhaenys hailed him as, "Aegon, First of His Name, King of All Westeros, and Shield of His People," the dragons roared and the lords and knights sent up a cheerâ¦but the smallfolk, the fishermen and fieldhands and goodwives, shouted loudest of all.
We all would have perished, I think, but some Summer Islanders passing by came on us.
Jaehaerys made a point of landing on all four Shields.
At first it was widely assumed that the Hand had ordered their arrest.
Like his father, who had sided with the majority at the Great Council of 101, he did not believe it was a woman's place to rule over men.
Through them (and Lord Grandison, whose lands and keep were also of the stormlands), it was arranged for Lady Cassandra to wed a minor knight named Ser Walter Brownhill, who ruled a few hides of land on Cape Wrath from a castle oft described as being made of "mud and tree roots."
At the high table, Queen Visenya rose and stalked from the hall without the king's leave.
Ser Otto Hightower, who had been amongst the first of those foes, reached across the narrow sea to another of the prince's enemies, the Kingdom of the Three Daughters.
She was brought to bed during the seventh moon of 53 AC, and this time she gave birth to a strong and healthy child, a girl she named Daenerys.
Though the first night was greatly resented elsewhere, as Queen Alysanne had learned in her women's counsels, such feelings were muted upon Dragonstone, where Targaryens were rightly regarded as being closer to gods than the common run of men.
Lord Aegon and his sisters took counsel with them, and visited the castle sept to pray to the Seven of Westeros as well, though he had never before been accounted a pious man.
Throughout the first century of Targaryen rule, so many Lords of the Tides served on the small council as master of ships that the office was widely seen as almost hereditary.
Lord Stark decreed that it should be buried separately in a pauper's field, but before that could be done, it disappeared.
She chose Ser Steffon Connington, second son of the Lord of Griffin's Roost.
This feast was served to us by the Hand, and 'twas he who gorged upon it."
In 22 AC, he wed the Lady Alyssa, the maiden daughter of the Lord of the Tides, Aethan Velaryon, King Aegon's lord admiral and master of ships.
Lord Redwyne's eldest son, Ser Robert, showed his prowess with a lance against the best the realm had to offer, whilst his brother Rickard won the squire's tourney and was knighted on the field by the king himself, but the champion's laurels went to the gallant and handsome Ser Simon Dondarrion of Blackhaven, who won the love of the commons and queen alike when he crowned Princess Daenerys as his queen of love and beauty.
But at last one man offered himself: no knight, but a simple man-at-arms who called himself Dick Bean.
Though much weakened by his ordeal, King Viserys soon resumed the rule.
Led by Prince Daemon on Caraxes, a strong host made up of Darrys, Rootes, Pipers, and Freys had captured the castle by storm in the absence of so much of House
Drako Rogare escaped to Volantis on one of his galleys whilst his sister Marra fled to the temple of Yndros in man's garb and there claimed sanctuary, but all their siblings were seized and put on trial, even the bastards.
Confusion and disorder were offensive to Jaehaerys Targaryen, and with the help of his "smaller council," he set out to "clean the stables."
Shunned and forgotten since Daemon Targaryen and his nephew Aemond had met there for their final flight, Black Harren
Some sought the Grey Ghost, but could not find him, for he was ever an elusive creature.
Lady Baratheon's father, Royce Caron, Lord of Nightsong and Marshal of the Marches, escorted the girls to the city, and would remain with them as their guardian.
It was from her that Lord Oakenfist learned that Dorne had joined the Daughters' War, making alliance with Tyrosh and Lys against Racallio Ryndoonâ¦and it was at her court at Sunspear, during the Maiden's Day feast (the very day that a thousand maidens were parading before Aegon III in King's Landing), that his lordship was approached by a certain Drazenko Rogare, one of the envoys that Lys had sent to Aliandra's court, who begged a private word.
When word of the battle reached the west and Princess Rhaena learned that both her husband and her friend Lady Melony had fallen, it is said she heard the news in a stony silence.
When the combat began, Stinger rushed hard at His Grace, seeking to overwhelm him with the speed and strength of youth, making the spiked ball whirl and dance and sing.
The Braavosi landed Lord Leowyn Corbray at Duskendale, with half the power that Lady Arryn had sent down from the Vale; the other half disembarked at Maidenpool under his brother, Ser Corwyn Corbray.
With Ormund Hightower besieging Longtable some thirty leagues to the southwest, Bitterbridge was crowded with men and women fleeing before his advancing host.
As Tyraxes turned, his chains fouled, entangling him in a web of steel that fatally limited his movement.
Sick of their scorn, Draz gladly answered the king's call, moving his family, friends, and vast fortune to Westeros.
His chest pains had grown so severe that he could no longer climb a flight of steps, and had to be carried about the Red Keep in a chair.
Strange to say, Lord Baratheon died on the march back to Storm's
Queen Alysanne looked back on the short-lived glories of her father's court fondly, however, and made it her purpose to make the Red Keep glitter as it never had before, buying tapestries and carpets from Free Cities and commissioning murals, statuary, and tilework to decorate the castle's halls and chambers.
The child was smaller and less robust than his brother, Aegon, and his Velaryon half-brothers, but proved to be a most precocious childâ¦though, somewhat ominously, the dragon's egg placed in his cradle never hatched.
Princess Daenerys and the Princes Aemon and Baelon shared the royal box with their mother and father, and reveled in the cheers of the crowd.
All such speculation ended in 11 AC, when Queen Visenya suddenly announced that she was carrying the king's child.
When he fell, the smallfolk found a new favorite in the upjumped squire Ser Harys Hogg, whose house name and pig's head helm earned him the style of Harry the Ham.
He looked longer at certaincousins and uncles of Donnel Hightower, for the wealth of Oldtown derived from trade rather than the ground, but the uncertain loyalties of Donnel the Delayer when faced with Septon Moon gave him pause.
Her line was ancient, proud, and rich, her mother esteemed as a great beauty, her grandsire amongst the oldest and closest friends of Aegon the Dragon and his queens.
Foremost of the Caltrops (though this was notwidely known), and one of only three still living, Lord Unwin had proved at Tumbleton that he was no man to trifle with.
Others have put forth the notion that Larys Clubfoot might have been responsible; with his father and elder brother dead, Larys Strong became the Lord of Harrenhal.
In their place, he decreed, a great stone "stable for dragons" would be erected, a lair worthy of Balerion, Vhagar, and their get.
The mission to Braavos proved eventful in other ways as well.
They had run so short of food within the holdfast that Queen Daenaera cried herself to sleep at night, and two of her ladies were so weak from hunger that they had to be helped across the moat.
It was about this same time that one of the more curious incidents of the Dance of the Dragons occurred.
She was not the first to be presented (that honor went to the daughter of the Prince of Pentos), nor the last (Henrietta Woodhull, daughter of a landed knight from the Paps).
It is said that he and his wife quarreled before the voyage, for Lady Baela was of the blood of the dragon and quick to anger, and had heard too much talk from her lord husband about Princess Aliandra of Dorne.
Instead he sent the Hand with but a few hundred men to hunt down Harren the Red, and decided he would summon a great council to discuss how best to put down the other rebels.
Men called him Tessario the Tiger to his face, which pleased him; behind his back, they called him Tessario the Thumb, the mocking sobriquet that Mushroom had bestowed upon him.
Septon Barth was suspected of having greater loyalty to the Starry Sept than to the Iron Throne.
Lord Larys's remains were given over to the silent sisters; years later, his bones would find their final resting place at Harrenhalâ¦save for his clubfoot.
To correct all these ills in a single reign would have been impossible, but Jaehaerys was determined to make a start.
Only Septon Barth was admitted, to administer the rites for the dying.
Ser Tyland Lannister, Ser Marston Waters, and Ser Julian Wormwood had been dispatched across the narrow sea to seek after sellswords in Pentos, Tyrosh, and Myr, but none had yet returned.
Instead they withdrew before King Aegon's host, burning their crops in the field and poisoning every well.
Vermithor's size and weight were too much for Seasmoke to contend with, Lord Blackwood told Grand Maester Munkun many years later, and he would surely have torn the silver-grey dragon to piecesâ¦if Tessarion had not fallen from the sky at that very moment to join the fight.
"If any man in Westeros should so much as glimpse Balerion or my niece, I want to know at once."The ravens flew, but there was no word of Princess Aerea that day, or the day after, or the day after that.
She herself was of that blood on her mother's side, and the late Lord Boremund had always been the staunchest of friends.
With Sunfyre wounded near Rook's Rest and unable to fly, and Tessarion with Prince Daeron in Oldtown, only two mature dragons remained to defend King's Landingâ¦and Dreamfyre's rider, Queen Helaena, spent her days in darkness, weeping, and surely could not be counted as a threat.
Never wed, Lady Jeyne had reigned over the Vale since the death of her father and elder brothers at the hands of the Stone Crows of the hills when she was three.
Those who sat at the black council counted themselves loyalists, but knew full well that King Aegon II would name them traitors.
Reports had reached the court that Corlys Velaryon was massing ships and men on Driftmark to "defend the rights" of his son, Laenor, whilst Daemon Targaryen, a hot-tempered and quarrelsome young man of twenty, had gathered his own band of sworn swords in support of his brother, Viserys.
Lord Unwin Peake and a somewhat reluctant Hobert Hightower summoned eleven other lords and landed knights to a secret council in the cellar of a Tumbleton inn, to discuss what might be done to curb the arrogance of the baseborn dragonriders.
The new Hand of the King departed within days of his elevation, taking ship for Braavos to consult with the Sealord and the Iron Bank.
(Septon Eustace suggests somewhat waspishly that Her Grace's own hungers were slaked largely with sweetmeats, cakes, and lamprey pie, as Rhaenyra grew ever more stout during her days in King's Landing.)
To the relief of her parents, she displayed none of the timidity that had afflicted her elder sister, Rhaena, as a small child.
In 13 AC, Meria Martell, the Yellow Toad of Dorne, died abed (whilst having intimate relations with a stallion, her enemies insisted).
And so Lysaro Rogare was returned to Lys, chained to an oar in the belly of a Volantene slave ship.
"Lord Thaddeus sold your realm to Lys and must answer for it.
Though twenty years younger than Lady Elenda, Connington had proved his valor during Lord Borros's campaign against the Vulture King, and was said to be as fierce as he was handsome.
No man can truly know what Borros Baratheon was feeling at that moment.
For six days King's Landing trembled on the edge of a sword.
When Alysanne told her what was about to happen, Alyssa gave her assent.
Ladies Baela and Rhaena, riding just behind the royal litter, were greeted with exuberant cheers as well.
The vows of the Kingsguard include obedience, I thought."
And withthese words, the young king shocked the court by offering Ser Joffrey a place by his side as a knight of the Kingsguard.
Emerging at last from Casterly Rock, Aegon the Uncrowned and his wife, Rhaena, raced across the riverlands with a handful of companions and entered the city concealed beneath sacks of corn.
(In later years, several other men would take the title Vulture King, but whether they were of the same blood as the first, no man can say.)
A better choice, he felt, would be a daughter of one of the great houses that had taken little or no part in the battles between uncle and nephew; a Tyrell, a Hightower, an Arryn.
Aegon had two trueborn siblings; an elder sister, Visenya, and a younger sister, Rhaenys.
Scarcely had he touched the ground than Princess Aerea slid from his back.
(Lord Massey's famous remark, that the king required three persons to replace Septon Mattheus in order to balance the scales, was likely uttered shortly after, assuming it was uttered at all.)
His long service with the garrison allowed him to advise the king's men on Dragonstone's strengths and weaknesses, which guards could be bribed or won over, and which must needs be killed or imprisoned.
As she sent Orwyle and the other envoys on their way, Rhaenyra said, "Tell my half-brother that I will have my throne, or I will have his head."
During his minority, his uncle Bennard had ruled the North as regent, but in 124 AC Cregan turned sixteen, only to find his uncle slow to surrender his power.
It marked the first time the admiralty had gone to any man not of House Velaryon.
Prince Viserys was present throughout, often accompanied by his wife, the Lady Larra, her belly swelling with their second child, and their son Aegon with his wet nurse.
"She is overly fond of boys," the castellan wrote Baela's father, Prince Daemon, after that incident, "and should be married soon, lest she surrender her virtue to someone unworthy of her."
Once free of his rider, Balerion would surely have returned to his lair.
Meria Martell was eighty years of age, the maesters tell us, and had ruled the Dornishmen for sixty of those years.
Whatever the truth, the "surly lad" was gelded and sent to the Wall as soon as his deed was known, whilst Lady Coryanne was confined to her chambers to give birth to his baseborn son.
Cold and hunger carried off a third of the Night's Watch, and when thousands of wildlings walked across the frozen seaeast of the Wall, hundreds more of the black brothers perished in battle.
Every day he preached anew, calling upon Lord Hightower to deliver Oldtown to him, calling upon the High Lickspittle to leave the Starry Sept and face the wroth of the Poor Fellows he had betrayed, calling upon the smallfolk of the realm to rise up.
The princess had female favorites as well: Perianne Moore and Alys Turnberry, two maids of her own age, became her dearest friends.
The Hand sent an angry reproach, to which Lord Dalton replied, "The women of the west prefer men of iron to cowardly lions, it would seem, for they jump into the sea and plead with us to take them."
The old Prince of Dorne had died, and his son, Morion Martell, had succeeded him in Sunspear.
but instead the knight went to one knee, bowed his head, and laid his blade at Jaehaerys's feet.
The Old King and Good Queen Alysanne ruled together until her death in 100 AC (aside from two periods of estrangement, known as the First and Second Quarrels), and produced thirteen children.
The servant ran to inform Queen Alicent, whose apartments were on the floor below the king's.
All agree that great deeds were done and mighty blows exchanged, until the end found Maegor Targaryen standing alone against Damon the Devout and Willam the Wanderer.
He too was spared, for the Night's Watch needs men of the quill as well as men of the sword.
When he returned to King's Landing with his brother's corpse, the smallfolk lined the streets screaming his name and hailing him as a hero.
And so it was that the princess was at her good-sister's side on the third day of that accursed year 120 AC, the Year of the Red Spring.
If Mushroom may be trusted,the choice of vessel was deliberate.
Though Aegon had designated King's Landing as his royal seat and installed the Iron Throne in the Aegonfort's smoky longhall, he spent no more than a quarter of his time there.
but each account differed from the next, there was no agreement on where they got the poison, and none of the captives correctly named the dish that had been poisoned, so Lord Rowan reluctantly dismissed their confessions as "not fit to wipe my arse with."
"If you like him so much, Mother, you should marry him," she said, before running to her father to complain.
As a dragon ages, its scales thicken and grow harder, affording even more protection, even as its flames burn hotter and fiercer (where the flames of a hatchling can set straw aflame, the flames of Balerion or Vhagar in the fullness of their power could and did melt steel and stone).
Peace had returned, his troublesome brother was across the narrow sea, and a great new castle had begun to rise atop Aegon's High Hill: built all in pale red stone, the king's new seat would be larger and more lavish than Dragonstone, with massive walls and barbicans and towers capable of withstanding any enemy.
So long as he was in the girl's thrall, Prince Daemon could not be relied upon, Her Grace went on.
End, Orys Baratheon's maester went so far as to write, "The princess did not seem to want to be there, nor did she approve of anything she saw or heard.
As the heir apparent to the Iron Throne, it was felt desirable that he take a greater role in the governance of the realm as a member of the king's council.
The building of so many leagues of road would continue throughout the rest of Jaehaerys's reign and into the reign of his successor, but it started that day in the council chambers of the Red Keep.
The Wars of Conquest had left scars throughout the realm.
To this the Grand Maester made no answer.
Short and balding, with a kettle belly, Arryn was not the man most maidens dream of, Queen Alysanne admitted, "but he is the sort you asked for, a kind and gentle man, and he says that he has loved our little girl for years.
An axe split Ser Harrold Darke's head before his sword could clear its scabbard, and Ser Adrian Redfort was stabbed through the back with a spear.
(The dwarf Mushroom suggests a more sinister scenario, whereby Queen Alicent hurried King Viserys on his way with a pinch of poison in his hippocras.
The second son of Lord Farman, not even the heir, Androw was said to be a handsome boy with pale blue eyes and long flaxen hair, but he was nine years younger than the queen, and even at his own father's court there were those who scorned him as "half a girl" himself, for he was soft of speech and gentle of nature.
This Jaehaerys granted them, on the condition that they agreed to journey north and join the Night's Watch at the Wall.
When Rhaenyra visited the Trident in 112, the sons of Lord Bracken and Lord Blackwood fought a duel over her, and a younger son of House Frey made so bold as to ask openly for her hand (Fool Frey, he was called thereafter).
The tale reached Dragonstone only when Prince Aegon arrived desperately clinging to the neck of his dragon, Stormcloud.
"It is always winter now," he said to Septon Barth one night, when he had drunk too much.
Aegon not only agreed to spare the Sea Snake, but went so far as to restore him to his offices and honors, including a place on the small council.
A century later, the Peakes still held three castles, and their lands were wide and well-peopled, if not particularly rich, but no longer did they command pride of place amongst the bannermen of Highgarden.
But Lord Aenar's maiden daughter Daenys, known forever afterward as Daenys the Dreamer, had foreseen the destruction of Valyria by fire.
Even as a little girl, Viserra had been the most beautiful of the queen's daughters.
Sixteen Targaryens followed Aegon the Dragon to the Iron Throne, before the dynasty was at last toppled in Robert's Rebellion.
"Her Grace had been betrayed so often, by so many, that she was quick to believe the worst of any man," Septon Eustace writes.
"The children" (as Alyssa persisted in calling the king and queen) were not evil, only young andwillful; suitably instructed, they might see the error of their ways and repent their marriage before it tore the realm apart.
The people who lived through it called it the Lysene Springâ¦for spring was indeed a part of it.
Ser Addam Velaryon had been forewarned in time to make his escape.
The lords of the Trident, having more to lose, were not so quick to move, but soon enough they too began to throw their lots in with the queen.
As Her Grace grew great with child, just across Blackwater Bay by the Gullet another woman was delivered of another child whose birth, whilst less noted, would in time be of great significance to the lands of Westeros and the seas that lay beyond.
Incest was denounced as a vile sin, whether between father and daughter, mother and son, or brother and sister, and the fruits of such unions wereconsidered abominations in the sight of gods and men.
Queen Alysanne was at her wit's end, and the king had lost his patience.
Coal black, with baleful green eyes, the Cannibal had made his lair on Dragonstone even before the coming of the Targaryens, some smallfolk claimed.
Be he a high lord or common headsman, seldom had any man faced so many executions as Cregan Stark did that morning in the rain.
And though Lady Alys cajoled and pleaded and wove webs of words in the air, she could not move him.
As tireless as he was fearless, he preached all night and well into the following day, his angry voice ringing across Cobbler's Square.
Then Viserys of House Targaryen, the First of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm, closed his eyes and went to sleep.
When word reached the Red Keep that Jaehaerys was gathering his forces at Storm's
The Old King and the Good Queen were again reconciled in 94 AC by the good offices of their daughter, Septa Maegelle, but never reachedaccord on the succession.
Lucinda Penrose was set upon by outlaws whilst hawking along Blackwater Bay, not half a day's ride from the castle.
Oldtown's walls proved too strong for the Dornish to overcome, but Dayne burned fields, farms, and villages for twenty leagues around the city, and slew Lord Hightower's younger son, Garmon, when the boy led a sortie against him.
For lord admiral and master of ships, His Grace turned to Manfryd Redwyne, Lord of the Arbor, who came to court with his young sons Robert, Rickard, and Ryam, squires all.
Given time, she might have softened his stance on Saera as well.
"Neither of the trulls knew the slightest thing concerning poor Tom Turnip, as irony would have it," Grand Maester Elysar would write afterward, "but they knew a great deal about certain other things, none of which had been their fault."
Alysanne must have her household, and in that her mother, Alyssa, saw an opportunity to undermine, and mayhaps undo, her marriage.
He wished to marry Cassandra Baratheon at once, for "she will give me strong sons, worthy of the Iron Throne."
"He laughs often and freely, even at himself," Jon Mertyns said approvingly, but Alec Hunter thought him stern, and Torgen Oakheart grim.
The losing faction, driven from the city, tried to establish themselves first upon the Stepstones, only to be hounded from there as well whenthe Archon of Tyrosh made common cause with a league of pirate kings.
"He will die soon enough in any case," replied Lord Larys Strong.
Mushroom tells us there were two men on Dragonstone that night who drank to the slaughter in a smoky tavern beneath the castle: the dragonriders Hugh the Hammer and Ulf the White, who had flown Vermithor and Silverwing into battle and lived to boast of it.
Ironrod followed him to the block, still insisting that by law a king's son must come before his daughter.
Six knights and twoscore men-at-arms perished trying to slay his dragon, whilst Lady Sabitha Frey only saved herself from the flames by hiding in a privy.
Many lords of the Vale rallied to his banners, insisting that long-established laws of inheritance could not be put aside by "the whim of a dying woman."
Baelon had sired three sons by his sister Alyssa.
In Mushroom's account, this was done after her lady mother had her tongue removed, but that grisly detail can be safely discounted.
A good portion of the gold that the Sealord had paid for her stolen dragon's eggs reposed safely in the vaults of the Iron Bank of Braavos, however, and with such wealth behind her, Lady Alys was able to tempt sailors by paying thrice the wages other captains could offer.
Alton Celtigar, Lord of Claw Isle, replaced Tully, serving ably as Hand until his death from natural causes in 17 AC, after which the king named Ser Osmund Strong.
Lords Celtigar and Velaryon had their seats on islands; as Aegon II had no strength at sea, they were beyond the reach of his wroth.
In 29 AC, Prince Aegon acquired a baby brother when Alyssa gave Prince Aenys a second son, Viserys.
Ser Luthor Largent, commander of the gold cloaks, was ennobled.
The rest of the night was spent making plans for the new king's coronation (it must be done quickly, all agreed), and drawing up lists of possible allies and potential enemies, should Princess Rhaenyra refuse to accept King Aegon's ascension.
Prince Daemon raised a cup to Ser Otto Hightower and thanked him for his leal service as Hand.
Dornish Marches to the Wall, doting fathers and proud mothers looked at their nubile daughters and wondered if she might be the one, and every highborn maid in Westeros began to primp and sew and curl her hair, thinking, "Why not me?
After the death of Queen Rhaenyra, he had urged Aegon II to put her son Aegon to death as well, and certain blacks hated him for that.
Though only nine at the time, Aegon came from a long line of warriors and heroes and had been raised on stories of their bold deeds and daring exploits, none of which included fleeing from a battle whilst abandoning your little brother to death.
When pressed upon the matter, King Viserys would only say that he was certain his queen would soon present him with a son.
Only when told that he was being sent to defend the Vale against King Aegon's dragons did his brother grudgingly consent to go.
End, the Storm Kings of House Durrandon had once ruled the eastern half of Westeros, from Cape Wrath to the Bay of Crabs, but their powers had been dwindling for centuries.
Though blind and maimed, he suffered no more than exhaustion almost to the lastâ¦but as cruel fate would have it, when the worst was past and new cases of the Winter Fever had dropped away to almost nothing, a morning came when Ser Tyland commanded his serving man to close a window.
The oldest of the three heads of the dragon, Visenya was to outlive both of her siblings, and it was rumored that in her later years, when she could no longer wield a sword, she delved into the dark arts, mixing poisons and casting malign spells.
We cannot know, no more than we can know why Syrax chose to descend upon the Shepherd's mobs, rending them with tooth and claw and devouring dozens, when she might as easily have rained fire on them from above, for in the sky no man could have harmed her.
His wife and children were sold into slavery, and his furnishings, clothing, books, and other valuables, including the captive princeling, passed into the hands of another nobleman, Lysandro Rogare.
The boy king and his little queen remained on Dragonstone, awaiting the day when Jaehaerys would take the rule of the Seven Kingdoms in his own hands.
In the copies entitled Sins of the Flesh and The High and the Low (which tend to be the older versions, and the shortest), the man at the inn is indentified as Ser Borys Baratheon, eldest of Lord Rogar's four brothers.
Only the middle son, Prince Aemond, remained dragonless, but His Grace had hopes of rectifying that, and had put forward the notion that perhaps the court might sojourn at Dragonstone after the funeral.
On her knees, weeping, Helaena named her youngest, Maelor.
The pus that burst forth from the Blue Pearl would smell very badly indeed.
Still, by her good offices, the betrothal of Lady Prudence Celtigar to Lord Grafton of Gulltown was arranged.
Fifteen thousand men had joined the rebellion as Aegon the Uncrowned began his march across the riverlands to stake his claim to the Iron Throne, led by the prince himself on King Aenys's beloved dragon, Quicksilver.
"As an instrument of conquest, however, our army leaves something to be desired," Prince Daemon observed sourly.
When Androw, flushed with anger, offered to face his brother in single combat, the queen quickly dissuaded him.
The Tyrells had taken no part in the Dance (ruled as they were by a little lord in swaddling clothes), but now at last they bestirred themselves, forbidding Lord Lyonel to raise a host or go to war without their leave.
The longer the queen stayed, the more Lord Alaric warmed to her, and in time Alysanne came to realize that not everything that was said of him was true.
Just as a stone thrown into a pond will send out ripples in all directions, the evil that Androw Farman had wrought would spread across the land, touching and twisting the lives of others long after the dragons were done feasting on his blackened, smoking remains.
Five dragons remained: Prince Joffrey's Tyraxes, Addam Velaryon's pale grey Seasmoke, the young dragons Morghul and Shrykos, bound to Princess Jaehaera (fled) and her twin, Prince Jaehaerys (dead)â¦and Dreamfyre, beloved of Queen Helaena.
The Shadow made a dance of it, the fool says; betwixt each fresh wound he dealt Ser Amaury, he would kill one of his remaining minions before turning back to the white knight.
By mid-morning Spicetown was burning, whilst Myrish and Tyroshi troops battered at the very doors of High Tide.
It was said that the queen wept for joy at the sight of her, for in her face and form she was the very image of her sister, Aerea, grown older.
So smitten was Prince Jacaerys with this creature, a bastard daughter of the late Lord Rickon Stark, that he lay with her of a night.
Though the Crown had been flush with gold upon the passing of King Viserys, Aegon II had seized the treasury along with the crown, and his master of coin, Tyland Lannister, had shipped off three-quarters of the late king's wealth "for safekeeping."
And there were still certain houses that had never accepted the Seven, no more than the northmen had, the Blackwoods in the riverlands chief amongst them, and mayhaps as many as a dozen more.
Sunfyre, it is said, did not seem at first to take any interest in the offering, until Broome pricked the queen's breast with his dagger.
When the prince demanded to know why he was not free to come and go, Stark replied that it was for his own safety.
Gaemon Targaryen, brother and husband to Daenys the Dreamer, followed Aenar the Exile as Lord of Dragonstone, and became known as Gaemon the Glorious.
Viserys Targaryen was so striking that it is said Lysandro Rogare contemplated putting him to work as a courtesanâ¦until the boy identified himself.
From the first day they set out, Aegon and Rhaena and their escort were jeered by crowds of the Faithful wherever they went.
Sunfyre's scales still shone like beaten gold in the sunlight, but as he sprawled across the fused black Valyrian stone of the yard, it was plain to see he was a broken thing, he who had been the most magnificent dragon ever to fly the skies of Westeros.
Alys of House Harroway, Maegor Targaryen's second wife, had returned to Westerosâ¦but not alone.
A slander so vile could only have been the work of Larys Strong, the dwarf assertsâ¦for the Clubfoot had never left King's Landing (as would soon be revealed), but only slipped into its shadows, from whence hecontinued to plot and whisper.
"They were skeletons in skins, armed with stone axes and wooden clubs," Ben Blackwood said later, "but so hungry and so desperate that they could not be deterred, no matter how many we killed."
He also ordered the construction of three hugefortified granaries, in King's Landing, Lannisport, and Gulltown, and the purchase of sufficient grain to fill them.
The fishing village where Aegon had first landed had grown into a sprawling, stinking city of a hundred thousand souls by that time; only Oldtown and Lannisport were larger.
Ser Gyles Morrigen, the king's champion and sworn shield, announced that Jaehaerys would be pleased to grant audience to any lord or landed knight who wished to meet with him, and sixscore accepted his invitation.
In the end they prevailed, and Princess Alyssa ascended into the sky upon Meleys, a splendid scarlet she-dragon, never before ridden.
When Ser Torrhen Manderly led his northmen down the Hook, they found Fishermonger's Square and River Row swarming with Ser Perkin's gutter knights.
At the top of that tower, beneath only the maester's cell and the rookery, Alysanne and Jaehaerys found their mother asleep in a bed that stank of urine, drenched in sweat and gaunt as a crone, save for her swollen belly.
As he had already sired six sons by his lady wife, a Royce of Runestone, the Arryn succession was seen to be secure.
And the boy prince Aemond Targaryenbecame a dragonrider, circling twice around the towers of High Tide before coming down again.
A somewhat more plausible tale is told in Sins of the Flesh, wherein Coryanne Wylde does indeed lure King Jaehaerys into her bed, only to find him fumbling, uncertain, and over-hasty, as many boys of his age are known to be when first abed with a maid.
Despairing and fearful, Her Grace walked the castle battlements of Duskendale weeping, growing ever more grey and haggard.
It was decided that Jace, being the older of the two, would take the longer, more dangerous task, flying first to the Eyrie to treat with the Lady of the Vale, then to White Harbor to win over Lord Manderly, and lastly to Winterfell to meet with Lord Stark.
Ser Otto brought his wife and children to court with him, and served King Jaehaerys faithfully for the years remaining to him.
At Stokeworth a few crossbowmen loosed bolts at Visenya, until Vhagar's flames set the roofs of the castle keep ablaze.
At table, at tourney, and at court, King Viserys thereafter was seldom seen without his daughter by his side.
It is now commonly accepted that Sharako's death was a personal matter; the arrogant admiral was slain by one of his rivals for the favor of a courtesan known as the Black Swan.
The archmaesters of the Citadel are also suspected, though whether they made use of the dark arts, an assassin,or a poisoned scroll is still a matter of some debate (messages went back and forth between the Citadel and the Starry Sept all night).
Lord Peake declared that the boy should be proclaimed as Prince of Dragonstone at once; others, believing Aegon II dead, wished to crown him king.
Though Lysandro's children could not inherit his offices, his palace went to his daughter Lysara, his ships to his son Drako, his pillow house to his son Fredo, his library to his daughter Marra.
Three days later, whilst Gedmund Great-Axe and his royal fleet still lingered off the coast of Tarth waiting on a raven, battle was joined amongst the rocks, sea stacks, and tangled waterways of the Stepstones.
Whenever Ser Gareth spoke to him too loudly or too harshly, the king would simply throw down his sword and shield and walk away.
All three accounts agree that the ploy that won undying fame for Serwyn of the Mirror Shield brought only death for Ser Byron Swann.
King Mern himself led the charge against the center on his golden stallion, his son Gawen beside him with his banner, a great green hand upon a field of white.
"We keep the old gods in the North," he told the queen.
Viserys named the child Aegon after his brother, the king, and placed a dragon's egg inside his cradle, as had become the custom with all trueborn children of House Targaryen.
And there as well Rhaena met her fellow brides, for this was to be a triple wedding.
On the days when Queen Daenaera wore green, it was decided, Aegon would be clad in his customary black.
Five were judged sympathetic to Prince Aegon's cause when questioned.
The gods had been good to them and granted them victory, and now the woman who had been Alyssa of House Velaryon was to be given a second chance at happiness with a new husband.
Oakenfist displayed considerably more caution on his return to the Stepstones than he had on his previous visit.
She had heard the sea calling, she told Queen Rhaena; it was time for her to take her leave.
Aegon the Younger, eldest of Rhaenyra's two sons by Prince Daemon, commanded the young dragon Stormcloud, though he had yet to mount him; his little brother, Viserys, went everywhere with his egg.
"Both of them are broken," Grand Maester Munkun declared in a letter to the Conclave.
Given the uncertainty that surrounded their marriage and the fraught nature of the king's relationship with his mother, Queen Alyssa, and the lords of the council, it was thought prudent that she remain on Dragonstone for a time, with her Wise Women and the rest of the Kingsguard.
All these deaths were recorded faithfully by Septon Eustace, who takes care to give us the inspiring last words of every great lord and noble lady.
A thousand came together in the Red Keep to see Jaehaerys take his sister Alysanne to wife again.
Indeed, Septon Eustace tells us, the troubled knight visited the Red Keep's sept on the night he was to sail, to pray for forgiveness to our Mother Above.
Were the king to sire an heir of his own body, that calamity might be avertedâ¦but before that could happen, Jaehaera had to be removed so Aegon could remarry.
Lacking a graceful means to rid himself of the embarrassment, but unwilling to proceed with the marriage, Lord Corlys had repeatedly postponed the wedding.
Even so, he did as he was bid, bringing together sixty war galleys, thirty longships, and more than a hundred cogs and great cogs to meet the royal fleet as it swept out from King's Landing.
And Aegon II lived the rest of his life in great painâ¦though to his honor, when Grand Maester Gerardys offered him milk of the poppy, he refused.
"You are wasting Arbor gold," was all he said before stalking from the hall to change his clothing.
Given the turmoil at King's Landing, Ser Tyler Norcross said, Tessarion alone should be enough to allow them to retake the Iron Throne.
Laenor's wish to name the child Joffrey was overruled by his father, Lord Corlys.
Thousands of years before the Conquest, when the Kings of Winter still reigned in the North, Brandon the Shipwright had built an entire fleet of ships to cross the Sunset Sea.
End and Visenya from Crackclaw Point, where she had accepted many fervent pledges of fealty from the local lords.
The tradition amongst the Targaryens had always been to marry kin to kin.
His ironmen could not hope to breach Casterly Rock once Lady Johanna had barred her gates, but they seized three-quarters of the ships in the harbor, sank the rest, then swarmed over the walls of Lannisport to sack the city, making off with uncounted wealth and more than six hundred women and girls, including Lord Jason's favorite mistress and natural daughters.
The rest of King's Landing remained in chaos.
Construction had been completed on eight of the ten great warships commissioned by Ser Tyland, so the Hand resolved to begin by opening the narrow sea to trade once more.
Jaehaerys Targaryen celebrated his fiftieth nameday in 84 AC.
Unlike their father and mother, Baelon and Alyssa did not wait to consummate their union; the bedding that followed their wedding feast was the source of much ribald humor in the days that followed, for the young bride's sounds of pleasure could be heard all the way to Duskendale, men said.
Meanwhile, the problem of their brother Vaegon persisted, to the queen's frustration.
Though Princess Rhaenyra had been proclaimed her father's successor, there were many in the realm, at court and beyond it, who still hoped that Viserys might father a male heir, for the Young King was not yet thirty.
The Dance split the Seven Kingdoms in two, as lords, knights, and smallfolk declared for one side or the other and took up arms against one another.
Seventy-nine years of age, he had served four kings and a queen, sailed to the ends of the earth, raised House Velaryon to unprecedented levels of wealth and power, married a princess who might have been a queen, fathered dragonriders, built towns and fleets, proved his valor in times of war and his wisdom in times of peace.
His flight jerked to a violent end, Vermax went down smoking and screaming, clawing at the water.
The Corbrays, Hunters, Craynes, and Redforts rallied in support of Lady Jeyne's chosen heir, Ser Joffrey Arryn, whilst the Royces of Runestone and Ser Arnold, the Mad Heir, were joined by the Templetons, Tolletts, Coldwaters, and Duttons, along with the lords of the Fingers and Three Sisters.
It was the hour of the wolf when at last Maegor allowed them to take their leave.
When Rhaenyra bestowed her garter on Ser Harwin, her new husband laughed and gave one of his own to Ser Joffrey.
"Tell every man you meet of Alysanne's kindness, her sweet and gentle nature, and her love for all the people of our kingdom, great and small," the king charged them.
Jaehaerys granted his wish and offered to face Ser Harrold himself in single combat, but in this he was overruled by the Queen Regent.
The hour was late, and her guardsmen found both girls asleep, sharing a bed in Lady Perianne's chambers.
Gaemon Palehair, his six-year-old cupbearer and food taster, not only shared all of the king's meals, but oft accompanied him to the yard, as Ser Gareth did not fail to note.
Finally the Braavosi put into the harbor below the Dragonmont on the eventide.
Munkun and Eustace tell us she was sired by Lord Lyonel Strong in his callow youth, making her a natural half-sister to his sons Harwin (Breakbones) and
Shorn of his hair and beard and chain of office and going by the name Old Wyl, he had earned his bread by sweeping, scrubbing, inspecting patrons of the house for pox, and mixing moon tea and potions of tansy and pennyroyal for Mother's "daughters" to rid themselves of unwanted children.
At twenty, he was nearer to Daella's own age, and thought to be one of the handsomest men in all the realm; lithe and slender, with long golden mustachios and hair of the same hue, always clad in silk and satin.
As such, he had expected to be named as castellan when Rhaenyra went forth to seize the Iron Throneâ¦but Ser Alfred's sullen disposition and sour manner inspired neither affection nor trust, Mushroom tells us, so the queen had passed him over in favor of the more affable Ser Robert Quince.
The moon turned and turned again, and in the black of night Queen Elinor too was delivered of a malformed and stillborn child, an eyeless boy born with rudimentary wings.
Ser Gareth Long was a skilled swordsman but a stern taskmaster, renowned at Starpike for his harshness toward the boys he instructed.
When the Old King visited us so long ago, he spoke of the wrong that had been done to us and promised to make redress.
Ser Tyland did not deny this, though he pointed out that the office of King's Justice had yet to be filled, and as a blind man he was a poor choice to swing the sword himself.
All this pleased King Jaehaerys, but none of it pleased him half so much as the gift that Queen Alysanne gave him several moons later, when she told him she was with child.
Many turned away in fear or pretended that they did not hear, for the prowess of the Warrior's
King Jaehaerys himself and his sister Alysanne rejoiced at the tidings, dispatching gifts and congratulations to Fair Isle and commanding that the Red Keep's bells be rung in celebration.
A buxom maid with blue-green hair and a winsome manner, Ser Orryn's wife soon gave him a daughter, though there was some doubt whether the girl was truly his, for like many women of the Free Cities she was free with her favor.
As pillars of smoke rose all through the westerlands and the riverlands, Vhagar and Balerion turned south.
A sudden storm blew up as the fleet was making its way past the drylands west of Salt Shore, scattering the ships and sinking two.
Alysanne Targaryen, the youngest child of King Aenys and Queen Alyssa, had been little known amongst the lords and ladies of the realm before then.
She had flown with the others, fought as bravely, burned and killed as they had, but her face was black with smoke and streaked with tears when she returned to Dragonstone.
Yet a curious thing befell Queen Rhaena's girls after the king's coronation, it was observed.
As the years passed and Vaegon matured, young ladies at the court began to pay him some attention.
Orys Baratheon, who had grown bent and bitter in his later years, argued for sending Princess Deria back to her father less a hand.
Septon Moon declared to his throng.
The Grand Maester said that they had no proof of any disloyalty on the parts of Nettles and Ser Addam; the path of wisdomwas to seek such proof before making any judgments.
When the Hand and the regents ruled against them, they wisely chose to accept the decision and be reconciled with Lord Alyn, who rewarded them with lands on Driftmark on the condition that they contribute ships to his fleet.
Joffrey had run to get his brothers when Aemond took to the sky, and both Jace and Luke had come to his call.
The discussion that followed lasted nigh unto dawn, Grand Maester Munkun tells us.
One by one they were dragged out into the castle ward, where the King's Justice awaited them with his axe.
And thus Lord Cregan Stark, Hand of the Uncrowned King, declared the Lords Velaryon and Strong to be guilty of murder, regicide, and high treason, and decreed that they must pay for their crimes with their lives.
The King's Hand remained Ser Otto Hightower, father of the queen and uncle to the Lord of Oldtown.
King Aenys was still on his progress, guesting with Lord Tully of Riverrun on his way back to King's Landing, when the father of a maid whom Lord Qoherys had "honored" opened a postern gate at Harrenhal to an outlaw who styled himself Harren the Red and claimed to be a grandson of Harren the Black.
Taken, the queen's despised master of coin was bound to a post and tortured until he revealed where all his wealth was hidden.
In 57 AC, Jaehaerys and his queen found cause to rejoice again when the gods blessed them with another son.
The Dance of the Dragons entered a new stage after the death of Lucerys Velaryon in the stormlands and the murder of Prince Jaehaerys before his mother's eyes in the Red Keep.
The Targaryens had been marrying brother to sister for centuries, of course, and Jaehaerys and Alysanne had grown up expecting to wed, just as their elder siblings Aegon and Rhaena had.
One brought Rhaenyra's letter to the dais, where his lordship sat upon the throne of the storm kings of old.
There, whilst the king viewed Lord Darklyn's boatyards and enjoyed an afternoon of fishing, the queen held the first of her women's courts, which were to become an important part of every royal progress to come.
Perhaps if some maester wrote about them in a bookâ¦""I shall tell Grand Maester Elysar to commence tomorrow," the king japed.
After kissing her cheeks, the mother knelt before the daughter, bowed her head, and said, "My Queen."
Ravens flew to every corner of the realm, summoning lords and landed knights of doubtful loyalty to King's Landing to bend the knee, swear homage, and deliver a son or daughter as a hostage for their obedience.
And that night, Queen Rhaenyra's quartered banners were taken down from where they flew above the gates of Maidenpool, and the golden dragons of King Aegon II raised in their stead.
Alton Butterwell, master of coin, offered his widowed sister, a stout woman with seven children.
Her maesters affirmed that she was very clever, as bright as her brother Vaegon in her own way.
All the great and lesser lords of Westeros would be invited to attend, together with maesters from the Citadel of Oldtown, and septas and septons to speak for the Faith.
"Sire," he said, "this progress would do much and more to win you the love of the smallfolk."
Three of them were shoved off the docks into the water, whilst Lord Franklyn himself was thrown into a ship's hold full of fresh-caught cod.
For a few days it was feared that Storm's End might suffer the same fate as Harrenhal, for Argilac's daughter Argella barred her gates at the approach of Orys Baratheon and the Targaryen host, and declared herself the Storm Queen.
It was on Prince Vaegon's fifteenth nameday in 78 AC, a year short of his manhood, that Jaehaerys and Alysanne broached the obvious solution to the Grand Maester.
"It will do the lad some good to get out of this bloody castle," he declared, in Mushroom's hearing.
Afterward Jaehaerys and Alysanne retired to the bedchamber where Aegon the Conqueror had once slept beside his sister Rhaenys, but in view of the bride's youth there was no bedding ceremony, and the marriage was not consummated.
Whenever Aegon made so bold as to ask a question, Munkun tells us, the Hand would bristle and accuse him of wasting the council's time, or inform him that such weighty matters were beyond the understanding of a child.
Even Rhaena's handmaids and companions had found excuses to absent themselves, save for her friend Alayne Royce and a former favorite, Melony Piper, who arrived at Lannisport with her brothers to swear the loyalty of their house.
"A skinny brown girl on a skinny brown dragon," writes Munkun in his True Telling (though he never saw her).
I cannot claim to know the princess, but I would say she is well rid of you, as was Fair Isle.
Rosby yielded to Rhaenys and golden-eyed Meraxes without a fight.
A silence fell after the queen had finished speaking, Grand Maester Benifer tells us.
His Grace wept, and gave orders that his cousin Lady Baela be brought up from the dungeons and put to death.
Dick Bean died first, cut down by Lyle Bracken mere instants after the combat began.
That same year, the gods blessed Jaehaerys and Alysanne with yet another child, a daughter they named Maegelle.
"I will not pretend Stinger's bastard is my son, nor make him the heir to Griffin's Roost," he told the king, defiant.
Brandon the Shipwright and the ironborn who came after him had both sailed the northern seas, where monstrous krakens, sea dragons, and leviathans the size of islands swam through cold grey waters, and the freezing mists hid floating mountains made of ice.
His return would be by way of Highgarden, Lannisport, and Riverrun, it was decreed.
Only ashes and bones remained for her mother when Dreamfyre delivered her to the Red Keep.
The prisoners weremarched or dragged out to the square before the Red Keep's gates, where thousands of Kingslanders gathered to see them receive their due.
On the twenty-second day of the ninth moon of 133 AC, Jaehaera of House Targaryen, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms and the last surviving child of King Aegon II, perished at the age of ten.
Ser Tyland saw the sense in the septon's counselâ¦but there were perils as well.
His nephew Jaehaerys, the rightful heir by all the laws of the Seven Kingdoms, was expressly disinherited in the same decree.
"He's either brave or mad, that one," old Sour Sam observed, and from that day forth the Spring Prince was also known as Baelon the Brave.
With his brother Aemond slain as well, the greens found themselves kingless and leaderless.
Some came to believe that the woman was one of the Faceless Men, the infamous guild of sorcerer-assassins from Braavos.
Whatever the reason, the prince shocked the realm and the king both when he suddenly announced that Lady Ceryse was barren, and he had therefore taken a second wife in Alys Harroway, daughter of the new Lord of Harrenhal.
As for the Kingsguard, Lord Rogar reminded the council that the White Swords had sworn to lay down their lives for the king and "I shall be pleased to give them that honor."
At seven-and-thirty, the Sea Snake was already hailed as the greatest seafarer Westeros had ever known, but with his nine great voyages behind him, he had come home to marry and make a family.
Betrayals and betrothals followed, until an accord was reached between Lord Borros, Lord Larys, and Queen Alicent, with Grand Maester Orwyle as witness.
Never well regarded by other men, he had found himself forgotten and ignored by their lordly hosts during Rhaena's wanderings in the west.
The young queen did, however, wield enormous influence over King Jaehaerys, and when she spoke, he listenedâ¦as he did upon their return from the Vale of Arryn.
Afterward, the issue arose as to who should rule the Iron Islands for the king.
As well, she commanded Grand Maester Orwyle to send ravens to "all our leal lords," summoning them to the defense of their true king.
Ser Tymond Lannister was the wealthiest contender, heir to Casterly Rock and all its gold.
These conflicts came to a boil when Tumbleton learned belatedly of Aemond Targaryen's death at Harrenhal.
The marriage proved to be a success, and in time the two became the lord and lady of Maidenpool.
Some put it down to simple mischance, whilst others muttered that Black Harren's seat was cursed and brought only doom to any man who held it.
"* Initially both claimants to the Iron Throne flew the three-headed dragon of House Targaryen, red on black, but by the end of 129 AC, both Aegon and Rhaenyra had introduced variations to distinguish their own supporters from their foes.
From the west came Lady Johanna Lannister and her father, Roland Westerling, Lord of the Crag; from the south, twoscore Hightowers from Oldtown, led by Lord Lyonel and the redoubtable Lady Samantha, his father's widow.
And even as blood flowed in the alleys of Flea Bottom, another battle raged round the Dragonpit above, atop the Hill of Rhaenys.
The confession left King Aegon III bereft of speech.
The Lord of Storm's End fell to one knee, bowed his head, and laid his sword at the base of the throne.
He spoke a dozen dialects of Valyrian, suggesting that he was highborn, but he was infamously foul- mouthed too, suggesting that he came from the gutters.
*When the ravens brought word of the battle back to the Red Keep, the green council hurriedly convened.
Rego Draz had never taken up residence in the Red Keep, though there was ample room for him there, and the king had made the offer many times.
In 74 AC, King Jaehaerys and Queen Alysanne were blessed again by the gods when Prince Aemon's wife, the Lady Jocelyn, presented them with their first grandchild.
He stroked his beard, scowled at Lucerys Velaryon, and said, "And if I do as your mother bids, which one of my daughters will you marry, boy?"
It is written that Damon the Devout led a prayer, beseeching the Warrior to grant strength to their arms.
The most infamous act of that bloody age occurred in 12 AC, when Wyl of Wyl, the Widow-lover, arrived uninvited at the wedding of Ser Jon Cafferen, heir to Fawnton, to Alys Oakheart, daughter to the Lord of Old Oak.
Orys Baratheon, known now as Orys One-Hand, rode forth from Storm's
Her Grace had never completely recovered from the birth of her son Boremund, he cautioned; he questioned whether she still had strength enough to carry a child to term.
"Maegor the Cruel," he was called, and "kinslayer" as well, though it was death to say either in his hearing.
Bowing her head in defeat, Queen Alicent surrendered the keys to the castle and ordered her knights and men-at-arms to lay down their swords.
Kingslanders athwart his path, sitting on high ground behind a wall of spears, even as scouts reported Lords Merryweather and Caswell advancing from the south, and Lords Tully and Harroway from the north.
Rhaena, the thirteen-year-old daughter of Prince Daemon by Laena Velaryon, was chosen to accompany him.
A brave boy, Trystane was at first defiant when dragged before the Iron Throne, until he saw Ser Perkin the Flea standing with the king.
He had intended to fly to Dragonstone, he told his father afterward, but he did not think the Black Dread had the strength for it.
The Kingsguard and a company of retainers had joined the king and queen as well by that point, so His Grace decided to return by way of the Dornish Marches and the stormlands.
In the winter of 59 AC, the Shivers entered from the east, and moved across Blackwater Bay and up the Blackwater Rush.
Prince Aemond had already departed, flying Vhagar.
There were, to be sure, other lords and famous knights amongst the host that Corlys Velaryon confronted outside the Gate of the Gods that day in 131 AC, all of them older and some of them wiser than Bloody Ben Blackwood and the brothers Tully, yet somehow the three youths had emerged from the Muddy Mess as the undoubted leaders.
This was the crown King Viserys had worn, and the Old King Jaehaerys before him.
Far closer by blood was Lady Jeyne's first cousin, Ser Arnold Arryn, who had twice attempted to depose her.
If indeed Jaehaera Targaryen was murdered (and there is no shred ofproof of that), it was surely done at the behest of the only truly plausible culprit: Unwin Peake, Lord Regent, Lord of Starpike, Lord of Dunstonbury, Lord of Whitegrove, Protector of the Realm, and Hand of the King.
He was killed soon afterward in the Disputed Lands, during a battle with the Men of Valor.
By tradition, there was always a knight of the Kingsguard posted at the queen's door.
"If it should fall to me to don his mantle, His Grace of course would have my support in any choice he might make," Septon Mattheus assured the Queen Regent and her advisors, "but not all of my brethren are so inclined, andâ¦dare I sayâ¦there are other Moons out there.
Meanwhile, she and her lord husband still had a realm to rule for the best part of a year, until Jaehaerys attained his sixteenth nameday and took the power into his own hands.
Sunfyre was coiled in a ball when the queen and her party first beheld him.
Let it not be forgotten: in his youth, Daemon Targaryen had been the "Prince of the City," his face and laugh familiar to every cutpurse, whore, and gambler in Flea Bottom.
Ser Otto Hightower, who had served three kings as Hand, was the first traitor to be beheaded.
Traveling by litter, it took him more than a fortnight to reach Oldtown.
Not onlydid Jaehaerys have spies in Morion's own court, and friends amongst the shrewder Dornish lords, but the pirates of the Stepstones, the sellsails of Myr, and the corsairs of the Pepper Coast are none of them famed for their discretion.
The High Septon was commanded to deliver himself to the Red Keep, to stand trial for high treason.
More than two- thirds of the men who had ridden south with Lord Dustin were dead or wounded.
Prince Aegon's slow-moving host found armies closing from all sides; each smaller than their own force, but so many that the young prince (still but seventeen) did not know where to turn.
She was to be sent to Dragonstone, a supposed maid, to serve as one of Queen Alysanne's companions, but once there she was to use her wiles and her body to beguile the king into bed.
Some, he feared, might well be innocent men imprisoned by his uncle (in this Jaehaerys proved sadly correct, though many of those captives had gone quite mad during their years in darkness, and could not be released).
With a hundred knights and five hundred men-at-arms of the royal household, augmented by three times as many hardened sellswords, Ser Criston marched on Rosby and Stokeworth, whose lords had only recently repented of their allegiance to the queen, commanding them to prove their loyalty by adding their power to his own.
The murder of Lord Beesbury at the green council was not yet widely known; most believed his lordship to be languishing in some dungeon.
Both were cravens, he tells us; it was only when they saw Lord Ormund's host with spearpoints glittering in the sun and its line of march stretching back for long leagues that they decided to join him rather than oppose him.
End, for House Baratheon had always been staunch in support of the claims of Princess Rhaenys and her children.
Ser Arryk was dead before the first guards arrived, but Ser Erryk took four days to die of his gut wound, screaming in horrible pain and cursing his traitor brother all the while.
Lady Alyssa teased him about it one day in court, wondering aloud whether "my good-brother is afraid of dragons."
Though Munkun's exhaustive history was not written until a generation later, and drew on many different sorts of materials, including maesters' chronicles, memoirs, stewards' records, and interviews with one hundred forty-seven surviving witnesses to the great events of these times, his account of the inner workings of the court relies upon the confessions of Grand Maester Orwyle, as set down before his execution.
Their accomplishments were undeniable; the Seven Kingdoms were at peace, and more prosperous than they had been in living memory.
Once satisfied of their well-being, the former queen reclaimed her youngest boy and repaired to her father's seat at Three Towers in the Reach, where she declared she would live quietly for the remainder of her life.
In the later years of his reign, and during the reign of his successor, he was called the Old King, for obvious reasons, but Jaehaerys was a young and vigorous man for far longer than he was an aged and feeble one, and more thoughtful scholars speak of him reverently as "the Conciliator."
Exceptâ¦Many years later, Corlys Velaryon, the boy born on Driftmark in 53 AC, would take his ship the Sea Snake on nine great voyages, sailing farther than any man of Westeros had ever sailed before.
On his voyage round Dorne to Lannisport, he sailed a Braavosi war galley of two hundred oars, captured in the Stepstones and renamed the Lady Baela after his young wife.
The remainder of the host, hedge knights and Poor Fellows and camp followers and tradesmen, streamed away in all directions (looting and pillaging every farm, village, and holdfast in their path as they went).
Seven blows did Hobb deliver with his legs locked roundthe dragon's neck, and each time his axe came down he roared out the name of one of the Seven.
And Septon Eustace tells us that His Grace sat Jace upon his knee atop the Iron Throne as he was holding court, and was heard to say, "One day this will be your seat, lad."
"The stripling who had flown to Dragonstone was gone, and in his place was a man grown.
When the regent of the Vale rushed out to confront her, with a dozen guards at her back, she found Visenya with Ronnel Arryn seated on her knee, staring at the dragon, wonder- struck.
Borros Baratheon perished fighting.
Elsewhere on the field, Tessarion threw herself into the air, shrieking and spitting flame, and Addam Velaryon turned Seasmoke to meet her.
In 50 AC, the realm of Westeros found itself blessed with one king, a Hand, and three queens, as in King Maegor's dayâ¦but whereas Maegor's queens had been consorts, subservient to his will, living and dying at his whim, each of the queens of the half-century was a power in her own right.
The coldness in his tone took every man in the room aback, Grand Maester Munkun would write years later.
The new lord had brought only half a dozen men with him, however, and he had seriously misjudged the love the smallfolk bore his sister, particularly the sailors, shipwrights, fisherfolk, porters, and other denizens of the dockside districts, many of whom had known her since she was a small girl.
"Our death," answered Ser Criston Cole, for these foes were fresh, better fed, better horsed, better armed, and they held the high ground, whilst his own men were stumbling, sick, and dispirited.
Whereupon he decreed the immediate execution of the Grand Maester, taking off Gawen's old grey head himself with a single swing of Blackfyre.
Other notables who joined the melee included Ser Alyn Bullock, late of Dragonstone, Rogar Baratheon's brothers Ser Borys, Ser Garon, and Ser Ronnal, an infamous hedge knight called Ser Guyle the Cunning, and Ser Alastor Reyne, champion of the westerlands and master-at-
Androw Farman was located at last in the Chamber of the Painted Table, a longsword clutched in his grasp.
Two were the daughters of his brother Ronnal, who had died shivering together with his wife and sons.
Thus did peace return to King's Landing, after a fashion.
King Aegon's master of whisperers, Larys Strong the Clubfoot, fared much better.
The ship carrying the young princeling had survived the battle and limped back home to Lys, where Viserys found himself a captive of the grand admiral of the Triarchy, Sharako Lohar.
As the Year of the Stranger neared its end, work on the Dragonpit was all but complete.
He sent word to his two queens as well, and to all the lords and knights who had bent the knee to him after Harrenhal and the Field of Fire.
Garon is an able man, and leal, but he never was a match for Borys, and Boremund is but a boy.
The guards did recall that the woman had brought a flagon of wine with her as a gift for the septon.
Word of King Harren's end soon reached the ears of his old enemy King Argilac, however.
Rather than see them come to harm, Ser Raylon yielded.
At the Red Keep, the brothel keeper and the banker both were imprisoned in the Tower of the Hand; their kinship to Prince Viserys's wife spared them the horrors of the black cells, for the nonce.
Septon Barth spoke then, turning to the king.
Before the eyes of gods and men, the Queen Dowager granted him and his a royal pardon, and restored him to his old place on the small council, as admiral and master of ships.
His wife, the formidable Lady Jocasta of House Tarbeck, had befriended Rhaena during her time at the Rock and had been the first to discern that she was with child.
As they entered the apartments, Helaena was holding his little hand and calling out her mother's name.
Theyspoke for the Citadel and the Starry Sept, and the king felt a need for their guidance, but there were things like to be said that day that his other lords need never know.
Admitted through a postern gate by a treacherous servant, the Wyl attackers slew Lord Oakheart and most of the wedding guests, then made the bride look on as they gelded her husband.
For the remainder of her regency, she left the rule of the Seven Kingdoms to Lord Daemon, and took no further part in public life.
Queen Alicent had taken up residence there after the death of King Viserys, when her son Aegon moved into Maegor's Holdfast with his own queen.
The Dowager Queen mounted Vhagar and brought fire and blood to the riverlands as once she had to Dorne.
And so the tale was told, even by Septon Eustace in his accountof these dark days, and so the singers sang for many years thereafter.
The old queen was determined that her young half-sister should not live to revel in her downfall, so she had sent Ser Luthor Largent to seize Helaena with his huge rough hands and fling her from the window onto the spikes below.
Meanwhile, the seeds Jacaerys Velaryon had planted on his flight north had begun to bear fruit, and men were gathering at White Harbor, Winterfell, Barrowton, Sisterton, Gulltown, and the Gates of the Moon.
I have seen the way she preens and prances around Baelon.
When word reached Sable Hall, the rebels there fled beyond the Wall in hopes of making common cause with the wildlings.
There were some at court who had misgivings about the queen's desire to remove herself to Dragonstone.
This he showed for the first time at the Aegonfort, the crude wood- and-earth castle he had raised atop what would henceforth and forever be known as Aegon's High Hill.
He said, "Septon Eustace should be summoned to perform the last rites and pray for the king's soul.
"Her Grace had as well commanded them to halt the Blackwater in its flow," says Mushroom.
Soon thereafter the lords began to depart, each to their own seat, and life resumed as before in King's Landing under the new regents and King's Handâ¦though more the latter than the former.
"I am a sinner," were the words with which Septon Moon began every sermon, and so he was.
King Jaehaerys had not attended the council, but when word of their verdict reached him, His Grace thanked the lords for their service and gratefully conferred the style Prince of Dragonstone upon his grandson Viserys.
In the great wood south of the Blackwater, the king's forces hunted down scores of Poor Fellows who had taken refuge there, sending many to the Wall and hanging those who refusedto take the black.
That night, at Alysanne's suggestion, he placed a dragon'segg in the prince's cradle.
Yet for all her beauty, her entreaties fell on deaf ears, for Ser Criston was a man of honor and true to his vows.
Luke's young brother Joffrey (Jace was still away on his mission north) swore a terrible oath of vengeance against Prince Aemond and Lord Borros.
Half the riders lost their horses as the column struggled through howling snowstorms, and thrice Lord Blackwood's carts were attacked by bands of outlaws, who carried off much of the column's food and all the wedding gifts.
Maegor showered both women with gifts and honors, and granted new lands and offices to their fathers, brothers, and uncles, but his joy proved to be short-lived.
His funeral was attended by his sons Viserys and Jaehaerys, twelve and seven years of age respectively, and his daughter Alysanne, five.
The Hand took this as a further sign of disrespect.
Mayhaps the Seven smiled on his work as well, for they continued to bless Jaehaerys and Alysanne with children.
Ser Otto being a prudent man, however, he took care to name his own son Ser Gwayne Hightower (the queen's brother) as Largent's second, instructing him to keep a wary eye on Ser Luthor for any signs of disloyalty.
Though smaller than his brother, Aemon, at birth, the new babe was louder and lustier, and his wet nurses complained that they had never known a child to suck so hard.
Finding the watchmen ill-armed and clad in oddments and rags, Daemon equipped each man with dirk, short sword, and cudgel, armored them in black ringmail (with breastplates for the officers) and gave them long goldencloaks that they might wear with pride.
"Let us put our sorrows behind us and begin the new year with pagaentry and celebration," Redwyne argued.
All the lords of the council, even Septon Barth, were made uneasy by the thought of the king and queen alone in Oldtown.
"And my wife, Lady Larra," he shouted down, "was she a part of this plot too, my lord?"
Having just turned five, the boy was spared on account of his youth and made a ward of the Crown.
In Flea Bottom, men still speak of a candlemaker's daughter named Robin who cradled the broken prince in her arms and gave him comfort as he died, but there is more of legend than of history in that tale.
The former Grand Maester was even provided with quill, ink, and parchment, so that he might continue his confessions.
A few matters were still under discussion when King Aegon's nameday dawned at last.
Ben Blackwood questioned the haste of it; Aegon should have been allowed half a year at least to mourn his little queen.
Winter came to Westeros in 56 AC, and with it grim news out ofEssos.
Jaehaerys had moved swiftly to marry Alysanne, but having done the deed he seemed in no great haste to announce it.
For all these reasons, Grand Maester Lucan wrote later, the king was on the point of refusing the Dornish proposals and continuing the war.
Its long brick-lined tunnels, sunk deep into the hillside, had been fashioned after the manner ofcaves, and were five times as large as the lairs on Dragonstone.
And Ulf laughed and said, "Fie on that.
Hewould take the dower lands being offered if Argilac would also cede Massey's Hook and the woods and plains from the Blackwater south to the river Wendwater and the headwaters of the Mander.
There was Silverwing, Good Queen Alysanne's mount of old; Seasmoke, the pale grey beast that had been the pride and passion of Ser Laenor Velaryon; hoary old Vermithor, unridden since the death of King Jaehaerys.
But the  river  was  sulfurous,  and  the  fish  taken  from  it  made  theHighgardeners sick.
In King's Landing, however, Queen Alicent grew most wroth when she learned the babe had been named Aegon, taking that for a slight against her own son Aegonâ¦which, according to The Testimony of Mushroom, it most certainly was.
Though he never served his father as Hand of the King, that was only because that office was occupied by Septon Barth, the Old King's most trusted friend and "companion of my labors."
Most of these were gutter knights, sellswords, masterless men-at-arms, and scum of the streets who had been granted their dubious knighthood by Ser Perkin the Flea during the turmoil.
Lord Rogar's footsteps echoed as he made the long walk from the doors to the throne, Grand Maester Benifer tells us.
Moreover, King Jaehaerys still had one surviving son: Vaegon, an archmaester at the Citadel, holder of the ring and rod and mask of yellow gold.
And all across the realm, lords called their banners, and armies gathered andbegan to march.
Though the wet nurse was twice his age (thrice, if we put our trust in Mushroom), Prince Aemond had taken her into his bed as a prize of war soon after taking Harrenhal, seemingly preferring her to all the other women of the castle, including many pretty maids of his own years.
Their roots were not in Andalos, but in Valyria of old, where different laws and traditions held sway.
His Grace had reached the age of three- and-forty, and had grown quite stout.
Battle turned to rout in half a heartbeat, as King Aegon's last army shattered.
His first had been Lord Orys Baratheon, his bastard half-brother and companion of his youth, but Lord Orys was taken captive during the Dornish War and suffered the loss of his sword hand.
The City Watch was re-formed under the command of Ser Perkin the Flea to enforce the curfew, whilst Lord Borros and his stormlanders manned the city's gates and battlements.
Broome proved more than willing to betray his queen in return for a promise of lordship, lands, and gold should Aegon II regain the throne.
The northman Roderick Dustin laughed at these words, saying, "That's why we come.
The most unlikely of these would-be dragonriders was Mushroom himself, whose Testimony speaks at length of his attempt to mount old Silverwing, judged to be the most docile of the masterless dragons.
The northmen would burn the city's septs and force King's Landing to return to the worship of the old gods, septons declared.
Lady Samantha was the daughter of Lord Donald Tarly of Horn Hill and Lady Jeyne Rowan of Goldengrove, both houses that had taken up arms for the queen during the Dance.
The girl had witnessed the murder of her twin brother at the hands of Blood and Cheese.
In one account, Death's Head Harry tossed his battle-axe into his other hand and buried it between Lord Massey's eyes.
Later, far more cruelly, she told him that if he climbed the Iron Throne he could be king, but the fool was clumsy at the best of times and prone to tremors, and the throne sliced his arms and legs to pieces.
Reports from the Dornish Marches suggested that the Dornishmen were gathering in the passes, preparing to invade the realm.
"A thousand shrieks and shouts echoed across the city, mingling with the dragon's roar," he tells us.
In constant pain during the last half year of his life, Aegon seemed to take pleasure only in contemplating his forthcoming marriage.
Maegor was thirteen, the bride ten years his seniorâ¦but the lords who bore witness to the bedding all agreed that the prince made a lusty husband, and Maegor himself boasted that he had consummated the marriage a dozen times that night.
Alyssa herself was fearful, mindful of the last babe she had borne to King Aenys, the little girl Vaella who had died in the cradle.
Vexed and angry, King Aenys gave his brother a choice: put Alys Harroway aside and return to Lady Ceryse, or suffer five years of exile.
She had loved the attention lavished onher as the heir to the Iron Throne as well.
The voice belonged to the youngest of his half-nephews, Joffrey Velaryon, a boy of three.
Some captains protested that they had already paid the required duties, taxes, and tariffs, and even producedpapers as proof, but Lord Celtigar dismissed their claims.
The same was true at King's Landing, where dozens of gallant young lords competed for her smiles, artists begged leave to draw or paint her, and the city's finest dressmakers sought the honor of making her gowns.
The others were women of the west, taken during his conquests, amongst them two of the late Lord Farman's daughters, the widow of the Knight of Kayce, even a Lannister (a Lannister of Lannisport, not a Lannister of Casterly Rock).
Princess Helaena was breaking her fast with her children when the Kingsguard came to herâ¦but when asked the whereabouts of Prince Aegon, her brother and husband, she said only, "He is not in my bed, you may be sure.
Queen Alysanne said she did not care, and so it came to pass that she held her women's court amongst the whores and strumpets of Mole's Town"¦and there heard certain tales that would change the Seven Kingdoms forever.
The prince still had friends in the low places of King's Landing, and followers amongst the gold cloaks.
Lady Elissa had been twice betrothed, once at twelve and once at sixteen, but she had frightened off both boys, as her own father admitted ruefully.
After the wedding, when the tourney began, Lord Rogar was present for every tilt and every melee, surrounded by a lively and oft drunken coterie of great lordsand famous knights.
Prudently, the prince and his new bride took themselves far from Westeros soon after the wedding, crossing the narrow sea on their dragons.
Rhaenyra's flight from King's Landing had been beset with difficulty.
The Clubfoot promised that Ser Perkin and his gutter knights would join the stormlanders in restoring King AegonII to the Iron Throne, on the condition that all of them save the pretender Trystane would be pardoned for any and all offenses, including high treason, rebellion, robbery, murder, and rape.
But that would have meant bringing the princess and her sons back to King's Landing, where more conflict with the queen and her own brood would have been inevitable.
Lord Peake replied that victory would be a dealmore certain with Vermithor and Silverwing.
"Some part of the king had died with his brother in the Gullet," wrote Munkun.
To win her favor for a joust, she made admiring squires swim the Blackwater Rush, climb the Tower of the Hand, or set free all the ravens in the rookery.
"Lord Borros, I have brought you a message from my mother, the queen."
As the false knight's wives and children wept or cursed or stood in silence, Jaehaerys commanded that Ser Lucamore be gelded forthwith, then clapped in irons and sent off to the Wall.
As the firstborn child of the Prince of Dragonstone, many hailed her as next in line for the Iron Throne after her father.
Songs are sung of Prince Joffrey's last flight as well.
wherever and whenever they encountered them, and forcing every lord who bent the knee to add their strength to his own.
Mayhaps the gods were listening, for even as the king and council argued  in  King's  Landing  the  problem  was  resolved  in  a  mostunexpected way.
Vermithor, the Old King's own dragon, bent his neck to a blacksmith's bastard, a towering man called Hugh the Hammer or Hard Hugh, whilst a pale-haired man-at-arms named Ulf the White (for his hair) or Ulf the Sot (for his drinking) mounted Silverwing, beloved of Good Queen Alysanne.
Balked and angry, Ser Luthor returned at once to the Red Keep, where he burst into the Tower of the Hand and laid rough hands on the aged Lord Corlys, accusing him of treachery.
Grand Maester Orwyle was returned to his cell, to await execution.
Ser Simon protested his innocence, insisting that he was a true and loyal servant of the Crown.
All this changed when King Aenys died on Dragonstone and his brother, Maegor, returned from across the narrow sea to seize the Iron Throne.
The 49th year after Aegon's Conquest gave the people of Westeros a welcome respite from the chaos and conflict that had gone before.
The gowns she wore all came from Lys, even her smallclothes; her father's ships delivered the latest Lysene fashions to her thrice a year.
Down from the Hill of Rhaenys they rode, seven hundred knights in silveredsteel led by their grand captain, Ser Damon Morrigen, called Damon the Devout.
Three other girls of noble birth made up the remainder of the company, one each from the Vale, the stormlands, and the Reach: Jennis of House Templeton, Coryanne of House Wylde, and Rosamund of House Ball.
From Highgarden marched Mern IX of House Gardener, King of the Reach, with a mighty host.
And the victors at the Wailing Willows, returning across the lake to Harrenhal, were ill prepared when Balerion fell upon them out of the morning sky.
Every morning Jaehaerys trained with them in the castle yard, shouting at them to come at him harder, to press him, harry him, and attack him in every way they knew.
In 90 AC, at the age of sixteen, she had wed the king's admiral and masterof ships, Corlys of House Velaryon, Lord of the Tides, known as the Sea Snake after the most famous of his many ships.
The passage of time, and a subsequent quarrel that was near as bitter, gave it a new name: the First Quarrel.
There they lingered for more than a moon's turn, enjoying the hospitality of the wealthiest house in all of Westeros.
The City Watch had come in strength, five hundred men clad in black ringmail, steel caps, and long golden cloaks, armed with short swords, spears, and spiked cudgels.
When word of her escape reached the Red Keep, the king pondered long and hard on chasing after Elissa Farman himself.
Mushroom demurs: one man at least was thrilled by the decrees, for Dragonstone and Driftmark lay quite close to one another, and this proximity would allow Daemon Targaryen ample opportunity to comfort his niece, Princess Rhaenyra, unbeknownst to the king.
(It is reliably reported that Lord Cregan Stark was also offered a place amongst the regents, but refused.
Arthor Celtigar, a boy of fifteen, made a brave stand in a doorway, sword in hand, and kept the howling mob at bay for a few momentsâ¦ until a treacherous serving girl let the rioters in through a back way.
As the riverlords rode through the city, smallfolk cheered them from rooftops and balconies, and pretty girls scampered forward to shower their saviors with kisses (like mummers in a farce, says Mushroom, suggesting all this had been devised by Larys Strong).
Ser Robert Quince had blamed the Cannibalâ¦ but Tom Tangletongue, a stammerer who heard more than he said, had plied the Volantenes with ale, making note of all the times they mentioned the attacker's golden scales.
Other chroniclers make the number as high as twelve thousand, or as low as six, but in all these cases, it seems plain that the queen's men were greatly outnumbered by Lord Hightower's.
The night before she was to set sail, she was summoned to the Sealord's Palace, where the Sealord served her herring, beer, and caution.
We have wandered decades ahead of our tale, however, for the Stranger did not come for Rhaena Targaryen until 73 AC, and much and more was to pass in King's Landing and the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros before that, for both good and ill.
One by one, the remainder of King Maegor's adherents dismissed their hosts, left their castles, and made the journey to King's Landing to swear fealty.
Others urged him to fall back to Moat Cailin and make his stand there on northern soil.
To this day, no one can say with certainty what might have been in Deria's letter.
As Ser Medrick had been childless, this had a further calamitous consequence, in that the lordship devolved upon his brother Ser Torrhen, who was thence forced to give up his place on the council of regents to take up the rule of White Harbor.
Only a few took note of the King's Hand farther back, with "his face as grim as death."
Cregan Stark had stepped down as Hand of the King and announced his intention to return to Winterfell, but before hecould take his leave of the south he faced a thorny problem.
"It was as if the sun had broken through the clouds," reported Lord Tully.
Harren emerged to meet him; an old man and grey, yet still fierce in his black armor.
The most disturbing possibility was advanced by none other than Grand Maester Mellos, who muses that the king himself might have given the command.
The Lady Meredith's crew did not simply look like Summer Islanders; they were Summer Islanders, hired on in Sothoryos ("atruinous wages," Ser Eustace complained) to replace the men he'd lost.
On a warm spring day in the 47th year After the Conquest, Maegor Targaryen took three wives in the ward of the Red Keep.
Once, before a great feast where many lords and ladies were to be in attendance, shepersuaded Tom that it would be much funnier if he performed naked.
A year later, in 115 AC, there came a tragic mishap, of the sort that shapes the destiny of kingdoms: the "bronze bitch" of Runestone, Lady Rhea Royce, fell from her horse whilst hawking and cracked her skull upon a stone.
Not even the Dowager Queen seemed to know where they had gone, and Luthor Largent swore none had passed through the city gates.
The exiled Braavosi betrothed remained an impediment, but not for long; Daemon mocked him to his face so savagely the boy had no choice but to call him to defend his words with steel.
Lord Larys Strong, master of whisperers, then spoke for the first and only time.
With their own fleet destroyed, they remained vulnerable should the ironmen return under the Red Kraken's successor, whoever he might be.
The winds and raging seas that had separated her Sun Chaser from the Hightowers had driven her westward, and when the dawn broke, her man in the crow's nest had espied birds circling a hazy mountain peak on the horizon.
It is oft said that the Red Keep has no secrets, that there are rats in the walls who hear everything and whisper in the ears of sleepers by night.
Princess Saera, who was not quite seventeen, departed King's Landing for Oldtown, where her sister Septa Maegelle was to take charge of her instruction.
Lucas Leygood loved swaggering about in his gold cloak, and could drink and fight and fuck with the best of them, but he was no plotter.
And Seasmoke, who had once borne Laenor Velaryon, took onto his back a boy of ten-and-five known as Addam of Hull, whose origins remain a matter of dispute amongst historians to this day.
For all these reasons, Laenor's claim was generally regarded as the weaker, but the boy's mother and father were such powerful and influential figures that it could not be dismissed entirely.
Though none doubted that Aegon Targaryen was the final authority in all matters relating to the governance of the realm, his sisters Visenya and Rhaenys remained his partners in power throughout his reign.
Ser Arryk was intimately familiar with the ancient seat of House Targaryen, having visited there often during the reign of King Viserys.
Instead Bernard was gelded and condemned to walk barefoot from King's Landing to Oldtown with his manhood hung about his neck.
("We had as well get some use of them," Lord Rogar supposedly told their father.)
In King's Landing, they witnessed the king's justice at first hand, and were urged to think of themselves as leal subjects of one great realm, not as westermen or stormlanders or northmen.
At Highgarden, he was joined for a time by his granddaughter, Princess Rhaenys, who flew to his side on Meleys, the Red Queen.
Old Lord Merryweather was the next to die, followed by Lord Peake's son and heir, Davos Darklyn's aged father, even Blind Jon Hogg.
Ser Laenor preferred the comforts of High Tide, where he soon found a new favorite in a household knight named Ser Qarl Correy.
The great host encamped about the walls of Tumbleton outnumbered the attackers, but they had been too long in one place.
Moon's murder removed the last major obstacle to the accession of Jaehaerys Targaryen to the Iron Throne, but from that day to this,debate has raged as to who was responsible for his death.
Her mother, Queen Rhaena, likely shared these feelings, but she held her tongue and spoke no word of it even to her closest confidants.
He had no need of his brothers or their dragons, he declared; Aegon was too badly hurt, Daeron too young.
The start of the First Dornish War is generally fixed at 4 AC, when Rhaenys Targaryen returned to Dorne.
"The mistress of whispers," Tyanna was called, and "the king's raven," for her black hair.
own Winterfell (if not stronger) and would not fall easily (if at all), and young Ben Blackwood echoed him and said, "Half your men will die, Lord Stark," the grey-eyed Wolf of Winterfell replied, "They died the day we marched, boy."
As she was led away, King Aegon summoned his young cupbearer, Gaemon Palehair.
In his last fight, he slew the King's Hand, Lord Alyn Stokeworth, before being cut down by Stokeworth's squire, Bernarr Brune.
He took the Summer Maid to Volantis and the Summer Isles, and the Ice Wolf north to Braavos, Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, and Hardhome before turning into the Shivering Sea for Lorath and the Port of Ibben.
Roost was killed whilst hunting, Lord Mertyns of Mistwood poisoned with his whole household by a cask of Dornish wine, Lord Fell smothered in a brothel in King's Landing.
In the end, the question rested with the regentâ¦and whilst Queen Alyssa desired vengeance for her own sake, she was loath to go against her son's wishes.
"The Citadel will take charge of you," His Grace said.
Nor did she wish to put her newborn son, Olyver, at risk, for that little lord at her breast was the future of House Baratheon.
"Chain him in a black cell and question him sharply," Maegor commanded.
The tilts were as hard- fought and thrilling as had been seen in Westeros in many a year, all agreedâ¦but it was the battles fought afoot with sword and spear and axe that truly excited the passions of the crowd on this occasion, and for good reason.
Lord Caron and his wife and children had been carried back to Dorne as captives.
"Yield, ser," called the Lord of Riverrun to the Lord of Storm's
Ser Marston Waters, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, dubbed him a knight.
Prince Maegor remained with his mother, sitting by her side when she held court.
Given the number of copies known to exist (hundreds, though as many more were burned by Baelor the Blessed), the scribes responsible were most likely septons expelled from the Faith for drunkenness, theft, or fornication, failed students who left the Citadel without a chain, hired quills from the Free Cities, or mummers (the worst of all).
The Shepherd's rats were armed with spears, longaxes, spiked clubs, and half a hundred other kinds of weapons, including both longbows and crossbows.
Far easier to speak of Prince Baelon's wroth, and how he came down upon Tarth on Vhagar, howling for vengeance.
Most terrible of all, his lordship was accused of having plotted with the three Rogares to poison King Aegon and his queen, so as to place Prince Viserys on the Iron Throne with Larra of Lys as his queen.
Thus did Visenya Targaryen bring the Vale of Arryn into her brother's realm.
Whilst Prince Aegon had escaped on his dragon, Stormcloud, Prince Viserys had been taken.
Abandoning the stolen treasures, he scooped up his "son," fled to the stables, stole a horse, and burst from the inn, hell-bent for the old stone bridge and the south side of the Mander.
By tradition, he would have been expected to wed only his older sister, Visenya; the inclusion of Rhaenys as a second wife was unusual, though not without precedent.
Back in King's Landing, King Jaehaerys and his sons received a riotous welcome.
She snatched her hand away from the queen's and said, "I fed my last husband to my dragon.
A hush fell over the hall at those words, for all present knew that title had hitherto belonged to Prince Maegor.
Manyclutched torches, and by nightfall the Shepherd stood amidst a ring of fire.
"It would be better if the Seven themselves would choose their Voice on earth, but when the gods are silent, lords and kings will make themselves heard," he wrote, and added that both Alfyn and Lord Donnel's brother, who succeeded him, were more worthy of the crystal crown than Septon Mattheus could ever have been.
Half a heartbeat later, the gates of Harrenhal burst open, and a swarm of howling riders charged forth.
Angrily, Her Grace reminded Lord Corlys that she had twice proposed terms of peace to Rhaenyra, only to have her overtures rejected with scorn.
"If the prince is not wed," Grand Maester Gawen wrote the Citadel, "His Grace may soon have a bastard grandchild to contend with.
Fourmasted, she carried as much sail as the swan ships of the Summer Isles, but with a broader beam and deeper hull that would allow her to store sufficient provisions for longer voyages.
Caraxes dove down upon Vhagar with a piercing shriek that was heard a dozen miles away, cloaked by the glare of the setting sun on Prince Aemond's blind side.
At the Starry Sept, he received the blessing of the High Septon, who traced a seven-pointed star upon his brow in holy oil, and sent him forth to bring down the Warrior's wroth upon the ironmen and their Drowned God.
Its location athwart the Gullet gave its lords a stranglehold on Blackwater Bay and enabled both the Targaryens and their close allies, the Velaryons of Driftmark (a lesser house of Valyrian descent) to fill their coffers off the passing trade.
Yet after the death of Aegon II, he had remained to serve Aegon III, and certain greens hated him for that.
Far removed from the troubles in the North, King Jaehaerys and Queen Alysanne remained in their self-imposed exile from the court,
As armies marched and swords were sharpened, Lord Cregan Stark sat within the Red Keep, conducting his inquiries into the murder of King Aegon II even as he planned his campaign against the dead king's remaining supporters.
On the first of those voyages, he sailed beyond the Jade Gates, to Yi Ti and the isle of Leng, and returned with such a wealth of spice and silk and jade that House Velaryon became, for a time, the wealthiest house in all the Seven Kingdoms.
Perhaps she thought the boy was too young to understand, or perhaps it was because the older boy, Jaehaerys, was King Aegon's firstborn son and heir, next in line to the Iron Throne.
Lord Rosby, Castellan of Sunspear and Warden of the Sands, had a kinder end than most.
"The Iron Throne will go to the man who has the strength to seize it," Maegor replied.
The squire king began by repealing Queen Rhaenyra's unpopular taxes and dividing the coin in the royal treasury amongst his own followers.
"This Hand is not blind, nor veiled, nor crippled," he announced before king and court.
Or so the tale is told by Septon Eustace.
Yet none of this suggested that Flowers was the sort of monster who could take a sleeping child from her bed and throw her to a grisly death.
Rhaenys herself was the first to raise objection.
The goodness of the little queen, the silence of the Starry Sept, and the exhortations of the Seven Speakers had won over most of the Faithful for Jaehaerys and his Alysanneâ¦but there are always some who will not be moved, and amongst the sisters who tended Jonquil'sPool were three such women, whose hearts were hard with hate.
The Queen Regent resolved to dispatch to Dragonstone a carefully selected company of companions and servants to see to the young queen's needs.
The Lannisters were embroiled in their war against the Red Kraken, the Hightowers had lost too many men and had no capable commanders, little Lord Tyrell's mother wrote to say that she had reason to doubt the loyalty of her son's bannermen, and "being a mere woman, am not myself fit to lead a host to war."
Though King's Landing boasted massive walls and stout towers, they had been designed to repel attacks from outside the city, not from within its walls.
King Jaehaerys also brought forth a new law on crenellations.
Ser Willis Fell, the sole survivor of the Kingsguard of King Viserys's time, was made Lord Commander of the White Swords, with Ser Marston Waters as his second.
The coming of the new year saw the king taking to the sky again on Vermithor, this time for the riverlands.
When word of her flight reached King's Landing, it was assumed that Saera would be hiding somewhere in Oldtown, but Lord Hightower's men combed the city door to door, and no trace was found of her.
All of his older brothers having perished in King Maegor's wars, Maegor Towers was the last of his line, and sickly and impoverished as well.
Mushroom names him "theDead Shepherd," for he claims the man was as pale and foul as a corpse fresh-risen from its grave.
End, the Eyrie, Winterfell, and Casterly Rock had all been in secret communication with his brother's widowed queen, Alyssa.
Hammer posed a greater danger, for of late he was surrounded day and night by lickspittles, camp followers, and sellswords eager for his favor.
Looking back now with the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to say that Jaehaerys and Alysanne had the right of it in the conflicts that arose during the last year of their mother's regency, and to cast Queen Alyssa and Lord Rogar as villains.
"Amongst the smallfolk there are always men of a lascivious character who delight in tales of great lords and noble knights despoiling maidens," Ryben wrote, "for this persuades them that their betters share their own base lusts."
(Strangely, in her final hours Queen Alicent spoke often of the Old King, but never of her husband, King Viserys.)
Although Jaehaerys was the only surviving son of King Aenys I, his older brother Aegon had claimed the kingship before him.
This misapprehension lasted only a few hours, for that very evening Lord Rowan himself joined the Rogares in captivity.
As a boy, Aegon had worshipped his three elder half-brothers, but it was Viserys who shared his bedchamber, his lessons, and his games.
They were six days' march from King's Landing, moving down the kingsroad, when Lord Borros Baratheon led his stormlanders forth to meet them, his strength bolstered by levies from Stokeworth, Rosby, Hayford, and Duskendale, along with two thousand men and boys from the stews of Flea Bottom, hastily armed with spears and iron pot helms.
In the Vale, Rhaena had enjoyed a life of comfort and privilege as Lady Jeyne's ward.
(Gold was ever a sore point for Unwin Peake, whose own house was land poor, rich in stone and soil and pride, yet chronically short of coin.)
After helping him to his feet, Ser Rickard unmasked him, bade him kneel, and knighted him on the spot.
Though large parts of Harren's great folly were in ruins, the castle's towering curtain walls still made it as formidable a stronghold as any in the riverlandsâ¦but Aegon the Dragon had proved it vulnerable from the sky.
Three hundred sets of eyes looked on as Prince Daemon Targaryen placed the Old King's crown on the head of his wife, proclaiming her Rhaenyra of House Targaryen, First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men.
It is in the nature of smallfolk to follow where their lords lead, and Lord Ormund's would-be successors had themselves fallen victim to avarice, bloodlust, and pride.
No word of their coming had been sent ahead, and there were many in the city who were frightened, wondering what this might portendâ¦none, mayhaps, more than Septon Mattheus, who turned pale when he was told.
Not every Targaryen needs to wield a sword and ride a dragon."
Of the last years in the reign of King Jaehaerys, little and less need be said.
His men had helped to drive Criston Cole fromHarrenhal by hunting down his foragers, he had commanded the center at Second Tumbleton, and during the Muddy Mess he had led the flank attack from the woods that had broken Lord Baratheon's stormlanders and won the day.
Eschewing all kingly raiment, he wore salt-stained leathers, garb fit for hunting or riding, with only a studded jack to protect him.
"He may not know," protested Ser Owen Bush, a knight of Maegor's Kingsguard.
Nor could he be gainsaid, for until Aegon II rose from his bed to take up his sword again, the regency and rule were Aemond's.
Some claim it was a simple plea from one father to another, heartfelt words that touched King Aegon's heart.
The names of the other six who went forth to speak for Jaehaerys would in time become nigh as famous as the queen's.
Later, singers would tell of how she thrice lifted Vermithor's wing with her nose, as if to make him fly again, but this is most like a fable.
She was still sixteen when she gave birth to Addam in 114 AC, and barely eighteen when Alyn followed in 115.
His Grace was nine-and-sixty years of age, and had reigned over the Seven Kingdoms since coming to the Iron Throne at the age of fourteen.
Afterward, the girl who remained at Oldtown devoted herself to prayer and study, and never again required chastisement, whereas the girl who returned to King's Landing proved to be lively, quick-witted, and adventurous, and was soon spending half her days in the kennels, the stables, and the dragon yards.
If he had not insisted that Daella wed, that she pick someone before year's endâ¦ what harm would it have done for her to stay a little girl for another year or two or ten?
Riverrun had no defense against dragonfire, he pointed out to his own sons, and both sides in this fight rode dragons.
Time and time again he strove to makepeace between Prince Daemon and Ser Otto, but the enmity between the two men roiled endlessly beneath the false smiles they wore at court.
Prince Daemon had at last returned to court.
In 107 AC, she bore the king a healthy son, naming him Aegon, after the Conqueror.
He proved more robust than his predecessor, serving the realm until 12 AC, when he slipped in the mud, broke his hip, and died soon thereafter, whereupon Grand Maester Gawen was elevated.
Munkun says that this was because of his respect for the older man, whilst Mushroom suggests that the two men had become rivals for the affections of the wet nurse Alys Rivers, who had used love potions and philtres to inflame their passions.
Assembling a ragtag fleet of fishing boats and cogs beneath the walls of Feastfires, she loaded a hundred knights and three thousand men-at-arms aboard, and sent them out to sea under the cover of darkness to retake Fair Isle from the ironmen.
The most grievous losses were suffered by the northmen, for the Winter Wolves had begged the honor of leading the attack, and had charged five times into the ranks of Lannister spears.
There amidst the stinks of Flea Bottom, a battle was waged in the mud and blood for possession of Prince Joffrey's body.
Therefore, Lord Stark would have been well within his rights to pay no heed to the prince's commands and proceed with the execution of Corlys Velaryon.
"Mayhaps the whore will die in childbirth," Queen Alicent is reported to have said (according to Mushroom).
To this new castle, Lord Corlys moved the ancient Driftwood Throne (a gift from the Merling King, according to legend).
Orwyle, mayhaps hopeful of a royal pardon, hurriedly sent the ravens on their way.
The most immediate threat, however, was that posed by the men of the Trident.
Androw Farman was not to be found in his bedchamber nor the queen's, nor the great hall, nor the stables, nor the sept, nor Aegon's Garden.
Daemon Targaryen returned to the Stepstones and resumed his struggle for those barren storm-swept rocks.
There he would soon be joined by Larys Strong the Clubfoot, Grand Maester Orwyle, Ser Perkin the Flea, and Septon Eustace, along with half a hundred others, both highborn and low, that Stark found cause to mistrust.
The 83rd year after Aegon's Conquest is remembered as the year of the Fourth Dornish Warâ¦better known amongst the smallfolk as Prince Morion's Madness, or the War of the Hundred Candles.
Imprisoned after his second failed rebellion, Ser Arnold was now quite mad after long years in the Eyrie's sky cells and the dungeons under the Gates of the Moonâ¦but his son Ser Eldric Arryn was sane, shrewd, and ambitious, and came forward now to press his father's claim.
On the night of Lord Rogar's dismissal, Ser Ronnal Baratheon and a dozen of his men forced their way into her chambers in the Red Keep, intending to take her with themâ¦only to find that Queen Alyssa had stolen a march on them.
Rhaenys Targaryen had no such easy conquest.
Yet Queen Rhaenyra did not act at once, but rather sent for Mysaria, the harlot and dancing girl who was her mistress of whisperers in all but name.
And Lord Cregan, a widower these past three years, had responded in kind.
Whether Rhaenys Targaryen outlived her dragon remains a matter of dispute.
When she came to earth again and climbed painfully from her dragon's back, the queen wept.
In the Starry Sept of Oldtown, the High Septon had collapsed whilst ascending a flight of steps to his bedchamber.
The lords of the great houses held the key to victory, Daemon insisted; their bannermen and vassals would follow where they led.
Whatever the truth, Ser Marston did as the king had commanded.
Prince Daemon circled the towers of the Red Keep before bringing Caraxes down in the outer ward.
King Aegon had leapt from the saddle when the dragons were still twenty feet from the ground, shattering both legs.
But in 39 AC, Queen Alyssa gave King Aenys yet another heir, a girl she named Vaella, who sadly died in the cradle not long after.
The queen had sent a raven fromDuskendale to give notice of her coming, and found an escort waiting as she disembarked with her son Aegon, her ladies, and three Queensguard knights (the gold cloaks who had ridden with her from King's Landing stayed at Duskendale, whilst the Manderlys remained aboard the Violande, bound for White Harbor).
It was a Tyroshi captain who first realized whom he had, Munkun writes, but the admiral of the fleet, Sharako Lohar of Lys, soon relieved him of his prize.
Such was the course urged by Queen Alyssa.
Chief amongst them, in the view of most students of history, are the long periods of peace and prosperity that marked his time upon the Iron Throne.
The sands around the Hellholt were fused into glass in places, so hot was Balerion's fiery breath.
When he had gone, Maester Norren went to his lord to say, "Take the chain from my neck and bind my hands with it.
Though he would do some cruel, foolish, and evil things during his last year as Hand, he was not a cruel or evil man at heart, nor even a fool; he had been a hero once, and wemust remember that even as we look at the darkest year of his life.
And that was just what he did, for later that same year Princess Alyssa bore her Spring Prince a second son, who was given the name Daemon.
His denials only goaded her to more rage, until their shouts could be heard echoing through the halls of Dragonstone.
Triston Massey, Lord of Stonedance, was named master of laws, Crispian Celtigar master of coin.
Blood barred the door and slew the queen's guardsman, whilst Cheese appeared to snatch up Maelor.
]131â157 Aegon IIIthe Dragonbane, Rhaenyra's son[The last of the Targaryen dragons died during the reign of Aegon III.]157â161 Daeron Ithe Young Dragon, the Boy King, eldest son of Aegon III [Daeron conquered Dorne, but was unable to hold it, and died young.
When Corbray drew on LadyForlornâwhether to strike at Royce or merely threaten him will never be knownâa crossbowman on Runestone's battlements loosed a quarrel and pierced him through the breast.
At the moment of her death, across the city atop the Hill of Rhaenys, her dragon, Dreamfyre, rose suddenly with a roar that shook the Dragonpit, snapping two of the chains that bound her.
Harren barred his gates and settled down with his remaining sons and supporters to withstand a siege.
The young prince's coronation and his mother's Golden Wedding had both been splendid affairs that had done much to win him the love of lords and smallfolk alike, but all that had come at a cost.
Half the wine still remained in the flagon when the tent was searched, and four of the Poor Fellows shared it as the sun was coming up, after carrying the corpse of their prophet back to his own bed.
'Twas in this dark hour that there rose up in Cobbler's Square a certain itinerant brother, a barefoot scarecrow of a man in a hair shirt and roughspun breeches, filthy and unwashed and smelling of the sty, with a begging bowl hung round his neck on a leather thong.
The singers tell us that the old prince survived the fall and afterward made his way back to the girl Nettles, to spend the remainder of his days at her side.
Familiar with such sights by now, Ser Criston's outriders grimaced and rode past, paying no heed to the rotting deadâ¦until the corpses sprang up and fell upon them.
No doubt Ser Hobert hoped to sip the sour red whilst Lord Ulf quaffed down the Arbor gold.
So smitten was she by the charms of the man she called "my white knight" that Rhaenyra begged her father to name Ser Criston her own personal shield and protector.
All efforts at reconciliation having failed, the Dance of the Dragons now began in earnest.
The perilous passage through the pirate-infested waters of the Stepstones lay ahead, and Lady Alys was hiring crossbowmen and sellswords to see her safely through the straits to open water, as many a prudent captain did.
At the time of his ascent, King Viserys was twenty-six years old.
They went instead to Oldtown, to Casterly Rock, to Riverrun, to Highgarden, and to many other lords and knights whom Queen Alicent had cause to think might be sympathetic to her son.
Bastard born himself, Ser Mervyn was regarded by most a dutiful, if not especially heroic, member of the Kingsguard; neither champion nor hero, but a seasoned soldier and a fair hand with a longsword, a leal man who did as he was told.
The new levies did, however, serve to make Lord Celtigar loathed throughout the city.
And all the while Maegor himself remained childless, for Lady Ceryse did not quicken in the years that followed their marriage.
When Jace pointed out that Stormcloud had never been ridden, that Moondancer was but a hatchling, that Tyraxes was far away in the Vale with Prince Joffrey, and demanded to know where Mushroom proposed to find more dragons, the dwarf tells us he laughed and said, "Under the sheets and in the woodpiles, wherever you Targaryens spilled your silver seed."
Worse, reports had reached his lordship that a host equal in size to his own was descending on the Mander, led by Thaddeus Rowan, Lord of Goldengrove.
Past them lay the barren coasts of Dorne, where Lord Alyn was not like to find safe harbor.
"He is traitor thrice over," Queen Alicent said.
From Lannisport came five hundred men under the banner of a bastard son of Lyman Lannister, Ser Tyler Hill, by which ploy the cunning Lord of Casterly Rock lent supporters to the young prince whilst still keeping his own hands clean, should Maegor prevail.
House Tully was unique amongst the great houses of Westeros.
At age sixteen, he became a captain himself, taking a fishing boat called the Cod Queen from Driftmark to Dragonstone and back.
When Lady Caswell appeared on the ramparts of her castle to ask for the same terms Lady Merryweather had received, Hightower let Prince Daeron give the answer: "You shall receive the same terms you gave my nephew Maelor."
Prince Viserys was a lively, likely young lad, possessed of great charm and boundless vitality.
When Aegon's knights unfurled his great silken battle standard, with a red three-headed dragon breathing fire upon a black field, the lords took it for a sign that he was now truly one of them, a worthy high king for Westeros.
Furious at the refusal of the Arryn claimants to come to King's Landing and submit their dispute to the judgment of the regents, Lord Thaddeus Rowan sent a thousand men to Gulltown under the command of his fellow regent, Ser Corwyn Corbray, to restore the King's Peace and settle the matter of succession.
Lastly King Aegon II turned his attention to the Shepherd.
From Winterfell came Lord Ellard Stark, from Riverrun Lord Grover Tully, from the Vale Yorbert Royce, regent and protector for young Jeyne Arryn, Lady of the Eyrie.
Lord Corbray, Commander of the City Watch, shook his head and said, "My men will never stand for it."
(Ser Otto Hightower brought one hundred cats into the Red Keep to take their place.)
The trials and triumphs of the Velaryon fleet as it made its way around "the arse of Westeros" (as Lord Alyn was wont to call it) could fill a mighty tome all by themselves.
Jaehaera had been a frightened child, and from the day she donned her crown she had hidden herself away inside the Red Keep, yet the smallfolk of the city remembered her wedding, and how brave and beautiful the little girl had seemed, and so they wept, and wailed, and tore their clothes, and crowded into septs and taverns and brothels, to seek for whatever solace they could find.
Whilst some would have been lost to Sandoq and the other Lyseni, even the Shadow would surely have been overwhelmed in the end.
The next occurred at High Tide after Ser Laenor's funeral, when king and court made the journey to Driftmark to bear witness at his pyre, many on the backs of their dragons.
Finally the Hand and the council of regency decided to grant Lady Baela's hand in marriage to Thaddeus Rowan, Lord of Goldengrove.
"I do not think you would lie to my face," she told Gerardys, "but I cannot have men around me that I do not trust implicitly, and when I look at you now all I can recall is how you prated at me about the Nettles girl."
Finally, in 126 AC, Cregan Stark rose up, imprisoned Bennard and his three sons, and took the rule of the North into his own hands.
"Oh, I could not bear that, I should die of shame," the princess had told her husband to be, and Lord Rodrik had acceded to her wishes.
By day's end, Lord Rowan was retreating north with the remnants of his host, Tom Flowers lay dead and burned amongst the reeds, the two Alans had been taken captive, and Lord Costayne was dying from a wound given him by Bold Jon Roxton's black blade, the Orphan-Maker.
Fearing for her sons, Queen Alicent went to the Iron Throne upon her knees, to plead for peace.
Donnel Hightower, who had rightly been named Donnel the Delayer for his reluctance to take the field against Septon Moon and his followers, seemed to have no fear of offending Storm's
Lord Rogar, who had long ago put aside any hopes of having children by Alyssa, named his son Boremund.
Jaehaerys and Alysanne met them inside the castle gates, holding hands.
For Aegon's day was done, though he had yet to grasp it.
After that, those who remained defiant would find a bounty on their heads: a gold dragon for the head of any unrepentant Warrior's Son, a silver stag for the "lice- ridden" scalp of a Poor Fellow.
Ser Arryk came ashore without hindrance, donned his armor and white cloak, and had no trouble gaining entrance to the castle in the guise of his twin brother, just as Criston Cole had planned.
The Sun Chaser vanished into the west, still searching for the lands beyond the Sunset Sea, and was never seen again.
We told the king, as we must surely tell her mother, that Aerea never spoke, but that is a lie.
Early that same year, King Jaehaerys and the people of Westeros were thrilled to learn that Queen Alysanne was once again with child.
Then Stark's men burst into the council chambers, disarmed the guardsmen at the door, pulled the aged Sea Snake from his chair, and dragged him to the dungeons.
Ser Tyland pointed out that many of the lords who had sworn to defend the succession of Princess Rhaenyra were long dead.
Yet the conquest of the west remained incomplete, so King Aegon parted from his sisters and marched at once for Highgarden, hoping to secure its surrender before some other claimant could seize it for his own.
Before that could happen, however, Septon Moon and his ragged horde must needs be dealt with, so the prince could travel safely to Oldtown.
A short time passed, during which the men outside the tent heard only occasional gusts of laughter from Septon Moon, inside.
Daemon Targaryen was nine-and-forty at his death; Prince Aemond had only turned twenty.
Thousands more cheered Lord Rogar and Queen Alyssa in the streets as their procession made its way across the city, attended by hundreds of knights on caparisoned palfreys, and columns of septas ringing bells.
Like the queen they so despised, the Shepherd's "lambs" were looking to the sky with dread, fearing that King Aegon's dragons would arrive before the night was out, with an army close behind them.
Arguments can and have been made for all these explanations, but in light of what we know now about Jaehaerys I Targaryen, they ultimately ring hollow.
Ser Ulf's ambitions must be accounted modest when compared to those of his fellow turncloak, Hugh Hammer.
Instead, he had led them into a trap, and somewhere in the Velvet Hills of Andalos, Ser Willam and his men had been set upon by brigands.
The septon smiled and replied, "Go to Dragonstone and claim adragon.
His High Holiness responded from the Starry Sept, commanding the king to present himself in Oldtown to beg the forgiveness of the gods for his sins and cruelties.
To that King Jaehaerys had no answer, promising only to take the matter under consideration.
Against all advice, his mother clapped the boy in swaddling clothes, strapped him to her chest, and took him aloft on Meleys when he was nine days old.
The wounds left by the enmity between the Conqueror's sons, Aenys and Maegor, were still fresh in the minds of many older lords, and Benifer worried lest these two boys likewise turn on one another to bathe the realm in blood.
The Lannisters and the Arryns alike ignored his decrees, and far too little food arrived at White Harbor to alleviate the famine.
Farman and his sons were ransomed back to Casterly Rock for their weights in silver.
A year later, he married the Archon's daughter, the very maid his brother Rogar had hoped to wed to King Jaehaerys as a means of securing an alliance between the Iron Throne and the Free City.
The Warrior's Sons held the city walls, the pits and piles of what would be the Red Keep, and the Hill of Rhaenys, where they had made the Sept of Remembrance their own fortress.
His purpose, he declared, was to put an end to the rogue Racallio Ryndoon and his piratical kingdom and establish a presence upon Bloodstone, to ensure that never again could the narrow sea be closed.
"You came here as a craven and a traitor," Prince Aemond answered.
His journeys finally ended in Oldtown, where he visited with his daughter Septa Maegelle, was blessed by the High Septon and feasted by the Conclave, and enjoyed a tourney staged in his honor by Lord Hightower.
To add savor to the stew, he also promised to cede the Stepstones to the Three Daughters, though in truth the Iron Throne had never claimed those isles.
The dungeons under the Red Keep had swallowed up so many men suspected of disloyalty that even the High Septon had begun to wonder at these disappearances, and sent word from the Starry Sept of Oldtown asking after some of the missing.
Whilst Lord Unwin declared himself delighted by the return of the king's brother, he was furious at the price Oakenfist had agreed to pay for him.
The Dornish answer came the next year, when Lord Fowler led an army through the Prince's Pass and into the Reach, moving so swiftlythat he was able to burn a dozen villages and capture the great border castle Nightsong before the marcher lords realized the foe was upon them.
Tom Tangletongue carried her to the maester.
As the litter-bearers bore him down the hill, the Swords of the Faith dropped to their knees in submission.
Men traduced by Broome opened a postern gate during the hour of ghosts to allow Ser Marston Waters, Tom Tangletongue, and their men to slip into the castle unobserved.
She found him alone in White Sword Tower, barred the door, and slipped off her cloak to reveal her nakedness underneath.
And across the realm, obedient to his command, Jason Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock, poured down out of the western hills, descending with all his power upon the Red Fork and the heart of the riverlands.
Jaehaerys I Targaryen ascended the Iron Throne in 48 AC at the age of fourteen and would rule the Seven Kingdoms for the next fifty- five years, until his death of natural causes in 103 AC.
The accounts of the raid greatly troubled the king, who realized that King's Landing would be similarly vulnerable to any enemy shrewd enough to fall upon the city when he and Visenya were elsewhere.
When word of the attack reached Oldtown, Lord Hightower sent his son Addam with a strong force to retake Nightsong, but the Dornish had anticipated just that thing.
Though barely a man grown, and bastard born as well, he was wed to the king's half-sister, had all the power and wealth of House Velaryon at his command, and had just become the darling of the smallfolk.
Moreover, Lord Rogar and Queen Alyssa both feared what might befall the realm should Rhaena Targaryen return from the west to act as regent for a daughter.
The Lord of the Tides made a gift of his elephant to King Aegon III as he took his leave of King's Landing.
The Maiden of the Vale had arrived from Gulltown, bringing her own ward, the Lady Rhaena Targaryen, with a dragon on her shoulder.
Septon Eustace says she fell at her father's knees and begged for his forgiveness, Mushroom that she spat in her father's face, but both agree that in the end she consented to be married.
Meanwhile, muddy roads and rainstorms slowed the pace of Aemond's advance, for his host was made up largely of foot, with a long baggage train.
"The boy will remain a threat so long as he draws breath," Lannister declared.
Nettles was no more than ten-and-seven, Prince Daemon nine-and-forty, yet the power young maidens exert over older men is well-known.
Though his japes could not dispell the king's gloom, they delightedGaemon Palehair, so Aegon oft summoned him for the boy's sake.
Her Sun Chaser had come to port in the last days of autumn, yet still she lingered at dockside as Lady Alys searched for a crew to sail her.
No one was more astonished by the selection of Septon Alfyn than Septon Alfyn himself, who was at Ashford when word reached him.
Yet when Aegon Targaryen and his host approached Oldtown, they found the city gates open and Lord Hightower waiting to make his submission.
Daemon Targaryen was too old and seasoned a battler to sit idly by and let himself be penned up inside walls, even walls as massive as Harrenhal's.
One hundred sixty leagues to the north, other dragons soared above the Trident, where Prince Daemon Targaryen and the small brown girl called Nettles were hunting Aemond One-Eye without success.
Though the portrait did finally reach him, it is not known whether Aegon Targaryen ever replied to her proposal; he had two queens already, and Sharra Arryn was by then a faded flower, ten years his elder.
Those who renounced their allegiance to the order would be permitted to travel to the Wall and live out their days as brothers of the Night's Watch.
Early in 135 AC, the Conclave sent forth its white ravens from Oldtown to herald the end of one of the longest and cruelest winters that the Seven Kingdoms had ever known.
Beneath the walls of Castle Goldengrove, seat of House Rowan, he met Loren I Lannister, King of the Rock, leading his own host down from the westerlands.
Riding Meraxes, the queen descended out of a clear blue sky and set the Planky Town ablaze, the fires leaping from boat to boat until the whole mouth of the Greenblood was choked with burning flotsam, and the pillar of smoke could be seen as far away as Sunspear.
He further commanded that the dungeons beneath the Red Keep be cleaned and emptied out, and that all the prisoners found in the black cells be brought up into the sun, bathed, and allowed to make appeal.
Let us speak no more of the Brothel Queens, therefore, and return once more to the dragons as they flew to battle.
In 34 AC, she gave birth to Jaehaerys, her fourth child and third son.
(A jape went about the court that King Aegon had given Visenya charge of building the Red Keep so he would not have to endure her presence on Dragonstone.)
Thusaugmented, Cole's host advanced upon the walled harbor town of Duskendale, where they took the defenders by surprise.
Yet even before Lord Unwin had ascended the Iron Throne, he had sent a raven to Starpike summoning his daughter to the city.
The king surprised them all by proclaiming his intent to make his court in thenew town already rising upon the three hills at the mouth of the Blackwater Rush, where he and his sisters had first set foot on the soil of Westeros.
Then Queen Alysanne spoke up, saying, "You made a mockery of your oaths as a knight of the Kingsguard, but those were not the only vows you broke.
The return of his brother from the dead worked a wondrous change in Aegon III, Munkun tells us.
"I need a dragon," Aegon II said when he was told.
Unchained, they were kept beyond the town walls, free to fly and hunt as they would; Silverwing and Vermithor oft coiled about one another in the fields south of Tumbleton, whilst Tessarion slept and fed in Prince Daeron's camp to the west of the town, not a hundred yards from his pavilion.
As others closed about her she took wing, circling the cavernous interior of the Dragonpit and swooping down to attack the men below.
End will stand with us," Princess Rhaenys said.
The three-headed alliance of Braavos, Pentos, and Lorath had lost one of its heads with the withdrawal of the Lorathi, but the Pentoshi sellswords now held all the Stepstones not in the hands of Racallio's men, and the Braavosi warships owned the waters between.
Spring is ever a season of hope, rebirth, and renewal, and the spring of 135 AC was no different.
When they reached Harrenhal, Lord Lucas Harroway refused to admit them to his castle unless they agreed to acknowledge his daughter Alys as their uncle's true and lawful wife.
Queen Alyssa's attendance at Maegor's wedding was trumpeted as proof that Aegon's own mother had abandoned his cause.
He was said to be corrupt, taking the king's gold to fatten his own purse, a charge Lord Rego treated with derision.
Even the richest lord would oft find himself impoverished by the time the king departed, his cellars drunk dry of wine, his larders empty, and half his maidservants with bastards in their bellies.
Jaehaerys discovered Lord Rogar seated outside the chamber door, drunk and despairing.
He left Breakbones with a broken collarbone and a shattered elbow (prompting Mushroom to name him "Brokenbones" thereafter), but it was the Knight of Kisses who felt the fullest measure of his wroth.
Should the throne pass to Lady Baela, Lord Rowan would make the perfect consort, supporting her with all his strength and wisdom without seeking to dominate her or usurp her rightful place as ruler.
Could Lord Rogar or Queen Alyssa have been indebted to her lord father or lady mother for some past favor or kindness?
If Prince Aegon had truly been the king, by law his eldest daughter, Aerea, stood his heir, and might therefore claim to be the rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdomsâ¦but Aerea and her sister, Rhaella, were barely a year old, and Rhaena knew that to trumpet such claims would be tantamount to condemning them to death.
The governance of the realm was a daunting task; the king needed a strong, capable Hand to shoulder some of his burdens.
His reluctance earned him the name Lord Donnel the Delayer from the maesters of the Citadel.
Daella doted on the three younger children, however, and they seemed to adore her in turn.
In return, she asked only that the Iron Throne "command Lord Greyjoy to crawl back to his islands, restore Fair Isle to its rightful lords, and free all the women he has carried off, or at the least all those of noble birth."
The sun had set and the hour of the bat was at hand when Barth emerged to announce that Aerea Targaryen was dead.
If the whispers heard about court afterward were true, his lordship supposedly plucked the flowers of four of the girls before exhaustion and drink did him in; his brothers, nephews, and friends did for the other three, along with twoscore older beauties who had sailed with them from Lys.
Westeros required a warrior, they whispered to one another, and Maegor was plainly the stronger of the Dragon's two sons.
The same choice was made by the surviving Fingersâ¦but Ser Victor Risley, once the King's Justice, stood upon his right as an anointed knight to demand a trial by battle "that I may prove my innocence by wager of my body, in the sight of gods and men."
When the queen told him what she had learned, King Jaehaerys could scarce credit a word of it.
Though years would need to pass before Morning grew large enough to be ridden to war, the news of her birth nonetheless was of great concern to the green council.
For a moment even Torrhen Manderly lost his tongue.
When Ser Mervyn Flowers entered the council chambers to take his lordship into custody, Tessario the Tiger ordered his men to stand aside.
"Like a puppy," the Spring Prince complained.
Years later, however, King Jaehaerys told Septon Barth all that occurred, and Barth set down a summary for the sake of history.
The most profound praise came from Brandon Stark, Lord of Winterfell, who said, "I see his grandsire in him."
Many a queer god is worshipped in Pentos, but Draz was known to keep but one, a small household idol like unto a woman great with child, with swollen breasts and a bat's head.
Though Prince Daeron was not present at the council, the Caltrops (as the conspirators became known) were loath to proceed without his consent and blessing.
At once he dispatched his own knights to disarm and arrest the Warrior's Sons, amongst them his own brother.
She was fifteen, the same age as the prince, and shared his silvery hair and purple eyes as well, for the Velaryons were an ancient family descended from Valyrian stock.
Lady Johanna agreed to all the Sea Snake's terms, promising to come herself to King's Landing to do obeisance to the new king on his coronation, and deliver two daughters to the Red Keep, to serve as companions to the new queen (and as hostages to ensure her future loyalty).
Queen Alicent was outraged by Lord Velaryon's "arrogance," Munkun tells us, especially his demand that Queen Rhaenyra's Aegon be named as heir to her own Aegon.
Before the septon's corpse had even begun to stink, a dozen rivals had come forward to claim his mantle, and fights began to break out amongst their respective followers.
Even as King's Landing fell to Rhaenyra Targaryen and her dragons, Prince Aemond and Ser Criston Cole were advancing on Harrenhal, whilst the Lannister host under Adrian Tarbeck swepteastward.
Soon thereafter Thaddeus Rowan once more took up residence in the Tower of the Handâ¦but it was plain to all that his lordship was in no fit state to resume his duties as the Hand of the King.
Even in King's Landing, the king dared not let the Dornishoutside the Aegonfort without a strong escort, for fear that the smallfolk of the city would tear them to pieces.
Even such lords as might have balked at a woman ruling over them were willing to accept her as their liege, secure in the knowledge that she had Rogar Baratheon standing beside her, and the young king less than a year away from his sixteenth nameday.
"Move aside, in the king's name," Broome demanded.
That is the version preferred by Munkun's True Telling, and by us.
We must abide by primogeniture, as the Great Council ruled in 101.
The king had his own candidate for the crystal crown: Septon Barth, who had come to oversee the Red Keep's library, only to become one of his most trusted advisors.
Queen Visenya put a sword into her son's hand when he was three.
Ser Tyland acted immediately, commanding the gold cloaks to close the city and see that no one entered or left until the fever had run its course.
The would-be dragonslayers easily drove off the cordon of guards who had been left to feed, serve, and protect the dragon, but Sunfyre himself proved more formidable than expected.
After nineteen days on the march, they reached Harrenhalâ¦and found the castle gates open, with Prince Daemon and all his people gone.
Alysanne's love for her own daughter provoked the princess to anger as well.
Both were on hand the next day to bear witness as Ser Perkin's gangling squire Trystane mounted the Iron Throne.
When Lord Hightower rode up, he found her standing atop the gatehouse with a noose about her neck.
So did the High Septon, twoscore of the Most Devout, and fully a third of the archmaesters, maesters, acolytes, and novices at the Citadel.
Quicksilver, a quarter the size of Balerion, was no match for the older, fiercer dragon, and her pale white fireballs were engulfed and washed away in great gouts of black flame.
Whereas Rhaella was said to be a bold and willful child and a terror to the septas who had been given charge of her, Aerea had been known as a shy, timid creature, much given to tears and fears.
Having no wish to suffer the fate of Black Harren, its elderly castellan Ser Simon Strong (uncle to the late Lord Lyonel, great-uncle to Lord Larys) was quick to strike his banners when Caraxes lighted atop Kingspyre Tower.
We speak of theHundred Kingdoms of the Heroes, when there were actually ninety- seven at one time, one hundred thirty-two at another, and so on, the number forever changing as wars were lost and won and sons followed fathers."
She was little, this was true; slim and slight of frame, Alysanne was oft described as pretty but seldom as beautiful, though she was born of a house renowned for beauty.
For on the third day of 133 AC, Winter Fever arrived in King's Landing.
Even the White Worm came to court; the Lysene harlot Mysaria emerged from the shadows to take up residence in the Red Keep.
On his return to King's Landing, Prince Maegor was hailed as a hero.
Thus perished Aegon of House Targaryen, the Second of His Name, firstborn son of King Viserys I Targaryen and Queen Alicent of House Hightower, whose reign proved as brief as it was bitter.
The Shivers took Daenerys at the age of six.
No lord had the right to put another lord to death, so it was first necessary for Prince Aegon to make Lord Stark the King's Hand, with full authority to act in his name.
A score of possible candidates for Lady Baela's hand were considered by the regents.
The castle stood empty no more than three days before Lady Sabitha Frey swooped down to seize it.
Against that we have The Testimony of Mushroomâ¦and in this case, the Chronicles of Maidenpool as set down by Lord Mooton's maester.
The birds came too late, howeverâ¦or mayhaps, as some suggest even to this day, Donnel the Delayer delayed again.
Undoubtedly he consulted Septon Barth, as he did on all important matters, and the views of Grand Maester Elysar were given much weight.
None of these conditions applied to Jaehaerys and Alysanne.
Queen Alicent's brother Ser Gwayne Hightower, second in command of the gold cloaks, rushed to the stables, intending to sound the warning; he was seized, disarmed, and dragged before his commander, Luthor Largent.
White Harbor fared better, for its port allowed food to be brought in from the south, but prices rose so high that good men began to sell themselves into bondage to slave traders from across the sea so their wives and children might eat, whilst worse men sold their wives and children.
His commanding presence drew men to his banners, yet he had no close friends, save Orys Baratheon, the companion of his youth.
She even went so far as to summon her husband, Androw Farman, demanding to know if he had been complicit in his sister's crime.
Her sister, Lady Baela, meanwhile returned to Driftmark with Lord Alyn and their daughter.
"Then I choose trial by combat," Stinger said.
"You stood beside me when the dragon ate my mother," Aegon answered.
Both were dressed in gowns of soft black velvet with rubies at their throats, and the three-headed dragon of House Targaryen on their cloaks.
Rather than remain on Tarth or return to Driftmark, the widow had chosen to stay with her daughter on Greenstone after the wedding.
And so whilst Lord Grover thundered and fulminated from his deathbed, Riverrun barred its gates, manned its walls, and held its silence.
Some claimed a crossbowman put an iron bolt through his eye, but this version seems suspiciously similar to the way Meraxes met her end, long ago in Dorne.
His Grace was much dismayed by the quarrel with his brother, Mushroom tells us, but what happened next left him bereft and devastated.
With her sailed another woman, a pale raven-haired beauty known only as Tyanna of the Tower.
The new High Septon formally dissolved both the Warrior's Sons and the Poor Fellows, commanding their remaining members to lay down their arms in the name of the gods.
You suggested placing Princess Aerea upon the Iron Throne in my place, but here I sit.
But as Meraxes banked above the Hellholt, a defender atop the castle's highest tower triggered a scorpion, and a yard-long iron bolt caught the queen's dragon in the right eye.
All that the boy could do was stand and stare, with such despair upon his face that Mushroom feared His Grace might be about to leap from the battlements onto the spikes below, to rejoin his first queen.
More troubling was the case of Lady Elinor of House Costayne, the wife of Ser Theo Bolling, a landed knight who had fought for the king in his last campaign against the Poor Fellows.
The king, the little queen, the young princeâ¦they were only children, blind to what was happening about them, whilst the Kingsguard and the gold cloaks and even the King's Hand had been bought and sold.
The offices of King's Hand and Protector of the Realm, previously separate, were now combined, and filled by none other than Unwin Peake himself.
Sharra Arryn had strengthened the defenses of Gulltown, moved a strong host to the Bloody Gate, and tripled the size of the garrisons in Stone, Snow, and Sky, the waycastles that guarded the approach to the Eyrie.
Lord Rogar and Queen Alyssa received their share of opprobrium as well.
The North was hit first and hardest, as crops died in the field, streams froze, and bitter winds came howling over the Wall.
And in the 19th year After the Conquest, word reached Westeros of a daring raid in the Summer Isles, where a pirate fleet had sacked Tall Trees Town and carried off a thousand women and children as slaves, along with a fortune in plunder.
She does not appear again in the annals of the realm until the final days of Maegor's bloody reign, when her mother and Lord Rogar rode forth from Storm's
And if his uncle emerged from behind the castle walls to oppose them, as he surely must, Vhagar would overcome Caraxes, and Prince Aemond would return to the city with Prince Daemon's head.
There he lost his love and half his crew, if the tales be trueâ¦and there as well, in Asshai's harbor, he glimpsed an old and much weathered ship that he would swear forevermore could only have been Sun Chaser.
"Even with Blackfyre in your hand, you are only one man," she told him, "and I cannot always be with you."
"Let him come and try to prise him free," he said when his maester worried about how the former Hand might react.
She could have returned to the Red Keep, left the city entirely, taken wing for Dragonstone.
Septon Eustace claims the queen's fall began at an inn called the Hogs Head in the town of Bitterbridge on the north bank of the Mander, near the foot of the old stone bridge that gave the town its name.
In his Testimony, the fool puts forth the notion that "the little mice" had been sired not by the Sea Snake's son, but by the Sea Snake himself.
Even from beyond the borders of the realm the great and mighty came; the Prince of Dorne sent his sister, the Sealord of Braavos a son.
The boy, the queen, and her ladies were marched at spearpoint through the gates of Dragonstone to the castle ward.
No doubt they hoped that King Aegon II might reward them better, should they help return the Iron Throne to him.
Their commander, Ser Willam the Wasp, had engaged a guide in Pentos, a local who claimed to know where the monster lurked.
So long as the boy king remained unwed and without issue, the daughters of his sister Rhaena would remain his heirsâ¦but Aerea and Rhaella were still children, and, it was felt by many, manifestly unfit for the crown.
"She wants what she wants and she wants it now," Grand Maester Elysar wrote of the princess in 69 AC, when she was only two.
Though neither dared desert Moon whilst he lived, the alacrity with which the two lords abandoned his cause after his death suggests that their grievance had been with Maegor, not with House Targaryenâ¦and, indeed, both men would soon return to Oldtown, penitent and obedient, to bend the knee before Prince Jaehaerys at his coronation.
Let it not be thought that there were no roads in Westeros before his reign; hundreds of roads crisscrossed the land, many dating back thousands of years to the days of the First Men.
Tarbeck and a hundred picked knights stripped off their heavy armor and swam the river upstream of the battle, then circled about to take Lord Vance's lines from the rear.
He isknown to have consulted often with his various Grand Maesters, and his own household maesters as well.
Were the peoples of the fabled lands of the far west all dark- skinned as Summer Islanders?
On the Lady Meredith and Autumn Moon, casks of Arbor gold were breached to toast the accomplishment; on Sun Chaser, the sailors drank a spiced honey wine from Lannisport.
After the death of her daughter Aerea, she never again visited King's Landing or Dragonstone, nor played any part in the ruling of the realm, though she did fly to Oldtown once a year to visit with her remaining daughter, Rhaella, a septa at the Starry Sept.
Aegon had been proclaimed king in the Dragonpit, Rhaenyra queen on Dragonstone.
All we know for certain is that by the time Lady Caswell and her knights appeared to chase off the mob, the prince was dead.
A frown stole across Lord Borros's face.
That night King's Landing rose in bloody riot.
"Yes," he said, and laid the blade upon the table, its point toward Lord Rogar.
The amiable and well-loved Ser Lucamore Strong of the Kingsguard, a favorite of the smallfolk, was found to have been secretly wed, despite the vows that he had sworn as a White Sword.
Less than a fortnight later, Lord Manderly took ship for White Harbor with a small entourage of sworn swords and servantsâ¦amongst them Mushroom.
The princess refused to speak to Queen Alysanne after that.
If Maegor were to be counted as usurper, then his entire reign was unlawful and those who had supported him were guilty of treason and must needs be put to death.
For that reason, and on account of their sex, Lord Manderly and the regents chose to show them mercy.
Together with the men who had accompanied him to Oldtown, he crossed to the Free City of Tyrosh, where he took service with the Archon.
Mayhaps so, for when Princess Saera came before her father, she appeared to know all that had happened at the Blue Pearl, and be not the least abashed.
Across that selfsame narrow sea, unbeknownst to King's Landing, the shipwrights of Braavos had completed work on the carrack Sun Chaser, the dream Elissa Farman had purchased with her stolen dragon's eggs.
Though her mother, Lady Elendra, was not well enough to attend the trials, she had sent three of her son's bannermen to speak for Storm's End.
At her command, Sly the stableboy and Willow Pound-Stone were hanged from the center span of the old bridge, along with the man who had owned the horse Ser Rickard had stolen from the inn, who was (wrongly) thought to have assisted Thorne's escape.
His wife, Lady Jocasta, suggested privately that one or more of the eggs would make a fine gift, if Her Grace should wish to show her gratitude to House Lannister for taking her in.
She was fond of the boy, and he of her, so the two of them were duly wedâ¦but scarcely had they said their vows than their lord came down upon the wedding with his men-at-arms to claim his right to her first night.
Even the highest born amongst them were denied the honor of dying by sword; traitors deserved only a rope, Maegor decreed, so the captured knights were hanged naked from the walls of the Eyrie, kicking as they strangled slowly.
Both bride and groom were children; Aegon III was now eleven, Jaehaera only eight.
Afterward he was knighted on the field by his father, who dubbed him with no less a blade than Blackfyre.
Oakenfist gave him the three least seaworthy ships in his fleet, an alliance writ on parchment and signed in maester's ink, and the promise of a kiss from Lady Baela, should the "Queen" visit them on Driftmark.
She showed them the wonders of the Red Keep, sailed with them on Blackwater Bay, and rode with them about the city.
The late queen's ladies-in-waiting, being of noble birth, were given cells in Sea Dragon Tower, there to await ransom.
That night, under cover of darkness, King Jaehaerys and Princess Alysanne mounted their dragons, Vermithor and Silverwing, and departed the Red Keep for the ancient Targaryen citadel below the Dragonmont.
"Dornish courage" became a mocking name for cowardice amongst the lords and knights of Aegon's kingdoms.
The rest of Viserys's treasure had been entrusted to the Hightowers of Oldtown, the Lannisters of Casterly Rock, and the Iron Bank of Braavos, and was beyond the queen's grasp.
Before he left White Harbor a compact was drawn up and signed, by the terms of which Lord Manderly's youngest daughter would be wed to the prince'sbrother Joffrey once the war was over.
It was well past dawn when Rhaenyra Targaryen rose and made her descent.
Queen Visenya was set upon one night in King's Landing.
The bloodiest land battle of the Dance of the Dragons began the next day, with the rising of the sun.
A man who claimed to be the Shepherd reborn rose up from the gutters, calling down destruction on the godless northerners.
"Your Grace does us wrong to think we mean him harm," Ser Marston said, as the corpses of the men Sandoq had slain were brought up from the moat.
There she sought out her cousin, the Lord of the Tides, and poured out her woes to him.
The most senior Hightower remaining with the host was Ser Hobert, another of Lord Ormund's cousins, hitherto entrusted only with the baggage train.
Alysanne Targaryen had happy memories of her childhood before her uncle Maegor seized the crown.
They began with Stokeworth and Rosby, then moved north along the coast to Duskendale.
End to Ulf White and Casterly Rock to Hard Hugh Hammer, the prince proposedâ¦to thehorror of the Sea Snake.
"We are sworn to obey the king, sire, this is so," replied Ser Marston, "and when you are a man grown, my brothers and I will gladly fallupon our swords should you command that of us.
Whenever lords and council members traveled to Dragonstone to consult with the young king, as they did from time to time, Jaehaerys received them in the Chamber of the Painted Table where his grandsire had once planned his conquest of Westeros, with Alysanne ever by his side.
House Qorgyle of Sandstone had never submitted, and Qorgyle spearmen cut down Tyrell's foraging parties and patrols whenever they strayed too far west.
Septa Maegelle, that gentle soul, died in 96 AC, her arms and legs turned to stone by greyscale, for she had spent her last years nursing those afflicted with that horrible condition.
Though justly renowned for his prowess as a warrior, Ser Gedmund had little knowledge or experience of ships, however, so his lordship also summoned the notorious sellsail Ned Bean (called Blackbean, for his thick black beard) to serve as the Great-Axe's second-in-command and advise him on all matters nautical.
Even as a lad, Aegon smiled seldom and laughed less, says Mushroom, and though he could be graceful and courtly at need, there was a darkness within him that never went away.
"Spread enough gold amongst these Most Devout and they will choose me," he japed, "though I would not want the job."
When word of these meetings reached Lord Rogar in King's Landing he grew furious and went so far as to ask Lord Daemon if the Velaryon fleet could be used to prevent these "lords lickspittle" from crawling to Dragonstone to curry favor with the boy king.
"Good Queen Alysanne," the smallfolk called her, from Oldtown to the Wall.
Mushroom was amongst those watching with Queen Rhaenyra on the roof of Maegor's Holdfast.
Contemptuous of his half-sister Rhaenyra, Aemond One-Eye saw a greater threat in his uncle Prince Daemon and the great host he had gathered at Harrenhal.
By year's end, many at court had begun to whisper that it was not the regents who ruled the realm, but rather the moneychangers of Lys.
Septon Barth dismissed the account at once.
End growled, "The Stranger's in that room.
Once, in the halls of the Red Keep, Daella had encountered a prince from the Summer Isles in his feathered cloak, and squealed in terror.
Her grueling labor had drained all of Lady Laena's strength, and grief weakened her still further, making her helpless before the onset of childbed fever.
The undistinguished history of House Tully had only been exacerbated by the character of its last two lordsâ¦but now the gods had brought a younger generation of Tullys to the fore, a pair of proud young men determined to prove themselves, Lord Kermit as a ruler and Ser Oscar as a warrior.
Guards were sent forth, and a succession of squires, grooms, and maids were dragged before the Iron Throne for questioning.
Ser Tyland Lannister, recently returned from Myr, was made Hand of the King, whilst Lord Leowyn Corbray was named Protector of the Realm.
Silvario Pendaerys was stabbed through the eye leaving the Temple of Trade, whilst his brother Pereno was garroted in a pillow house as a slave girl pleasured him with her mouth.
Lords Piper and Deddings, seated together atop a low rise, burned with their squires, servants, and sworn shields when the Bronze Fury chanced to take note of them.
To him gathered Benjicot Blackwood of Raventree, already a seasoned warrior at three-and-ten; his fierce young aunt, Black Aly, with three hundred bows; Lady Sabitha Frey, the merciless and grasping Lady of the Twins; Lord Hugo Vance of Wayfarer's Rest; Lord Jorah Mallister of Seagard; Lord Roland Darry of Darry; aye, and even Humfrey Bracken, Lord of Stone Hedge, whose house had hitherto supported King Aegon's cause.
On Dragonstone the Queen Dowager famously greeted him with, "You are a fool and a weakling, nephew.
Though Hammer's ambition was unseemly in one born so low, the bastard undeniably possessed some Targaryen blood and had proved himself fierce in battle and open-handed to those who followed him, displaying the sort of largesse that draws men to leaders as a corpse draws flies.
Prince Aemond and Ser Criston had denuded King's Landing of defenders when they set forth to retake Harrenhalâ¦ and the Kinslayer had taken Vhagar, that fearsome beast, leaving only Dreamfyre and a handful of half-grown hatchlings to oppose the queen's dragons.
End, surprised the advance elements of Orys Baratheon's host as they were crossing the Wendwater, cutting down more than a thousand men before fading back into the trees.
His Grace demanded to know if the Iron Bank had financed the building of the ship, and whether they had any knowledge of the stolen dragon eggs.
The young are nothing if not resilient, however, and the princess soon found a new companion in the Hand's daughter, Samantha Stokeworth.
Ser Alfredhimself led the men who burst into the castellan's chambers to surprise Ser Robert Quince.
Ser Tyler Hill, Lord Lyman's comely bastard son, was openly scornful of Androw, even whilst doing all he could to ingratiate himself to Rhaena herself, regaling her with tales of his exploits at the Battle Beneath the Gods Eye and showing her the scars he had taken there "in your Aegon's service."
He was found in White Sword Tower in a pool of his own blood and carried to Grand Maester Munkun, who examined him and pronounced the wound mortal.
The wisdom of Lord Rogar's approach was plain to most of the young king's other supporters, yet his views might not have prevailed had not Jaehaerys himself taken a hand.
The principle of primogeniture favored Laenor, the principle of proximity Viserys.
The death of their king took all heart out of the stormlanders, and as the word spread that Argilac had fallen, his lords and knights threw down their swords and fled.
In many a sad song, maidens forced to wed against their will throw themselves from tall towers to their deaths.
Some had existed for centuries, in ruder form, but Jaehaerys would remake them beyond all recognition, filling ruts, spreading gravel, bridging streams.
Had the sky been calm, Prince Lucerys might have been able to outfly his pursuer, for Arrax was younger and swifterâ¦but the day was "as black as Prince Aemond's heart," says Mushroom, and so it came to pass that the dragons met above Shipbreaker Bay.
Lady Rhaena of House Targaryen, brave Baela's twin, had brought a dragon's egg with her to the Valeâ¦an egg that had proved fertile, bringing forth a pale pink hatchling with black horns and crest.
Maegor's headsman, gaolers, and confessors were all adjudged to be guilty of abetting Tyanna of the Tower in the torture and death of Prince Viserys, who had so briefly been Maegor's heir and hostage.
The Two Betrayers felt the need of a king as wellâ¦but Daeron Targaryen was not the king they wanted.
Unlike his Sworn Brothers, Ser Gyles refused the chance to exchange his white cloak for black.
He must surely have known what Vhagar's presence meant, so it would have come as no surprise when Aemond Targaryen confronted him in the Round Hall, before the eyes of Lord Borros, his four daughters, septon, and maester, and twoscore knights, guards, and servants.
Though the riverlords lost less than a hundred men, whilst cutting down more than a thousand of the men from Oldtown and the Reach, Second Tumbleton could not be accounted a complete victory for the attackers, as they failed to take the town.
In the case of A Caution for Young Girls, such "improvements" largely consisted of adding ever more episodes of depravity and changing the existing episodes to make them even more disturbing and lascivious.
As they fell, Moondancer struck at Sunfyre's neck repeatedly, tearing out mouthfuls of flesh, whilst the elder dragon sank his claws into her underbelly.
It was said afterward that as the hull went down, the Cannibal swept overhead, his great black wings spread in a last salute.
Aegon the Conqueror had been the first Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, not his sister Visenya, two years his elder.
Rogar Baratheon might talk of tearing out tongues, but he was helpless against the whispers that spread throughout the landâ¦and even across the narrow sea, where the magisters of Pentos and the sellswords of the Free Company were doubtless entertained by the tales Coryanne Wylde had to tell.
As the one-handed prophet shrieked his curses at "the vile queen" in the Red Keep, a hundred severed heads looked up at him, swaying atop tall spears and sharpened staffs.
Lady Perianne and Lady Alys were pretty, vapid, empty-headed little fools from what she had seen of them, whilst Connington and Mooton were callow boys.
The longbows on the hill shot the horses out from under Lord Borros's knights as they charged, bringing down so many that less than half his riders ever reached the shield wall.
Lyonel Hightower capitulated, agreeing to all the terms put forth by Lord Corlys, including the return of the Crown's gold (to the fury of his cousin, Ser Myles Hightower, who had stolen a good part of that gold, though that tale need not concern us here).
It was said of him that he had been the victor of a hundred fights in the death pits of Meereen, that he had once torn out the throat of a foe with his teeth after his sword had shattered, that he drank the blood of the men he killed, that in the pits he had slain lions, bears, wolves, and wyverns with no weapon but the stones he found upon the sands.
All the Seven Kingdoms wept for Brave Baelon, and none more so than King Jaehaerys.
In the Red Keep of King's Landing sat the Queen Regent Alyssa, widow of the late King Aenys, mother to his son Jaehaerys, and wife to the King's Hand, Rogar Baratheon.
Aegon was anointed with the seven oils by Septon Bernard in the royal sept, and the bells of the city rang in celebration of his birth.
Eschewing the great hall and the majesty of the Iron Throne, the young king entertained the lords in the intimacy of his solar, attended only by Ser Gyles, a maester, and a few servants.
Eustace, the less salacious of the two, writes that Prince Daemon seduced his niece the princess and claimed her maidenhood.
Maegor stabbed the horse to deathâ¦and slashed half the face off the stableboy who came running at the beast's screams.
The prince still had friends in King's Landing, and word of his nephew's plans had reached him even before Aemond had set out.
The first ripple was felt in the king's own small council, when Lord Daemon Velaryon announced his desire to step down as Hand of the King.
"Kill the old snake and we lose the young one," the Clubfoot said, "and all those fine swift ships of theirs as well."
The terms offered by the king were generous, Munkun declares inhis True Telling.
Rather than pursue, Ser Addam returned at once to Oldtown to relieve the city, but Ser Joffrey and his army had melted back into the mountains as well.
Across the narrow sea, the Triarchy had begun to tear itself to pieces.
Ser Tyland thought well enough of him to offer him my sister's hand in marriage, so I know he can be trusted."
Septon Moon himself followed a moment later, naked, roaring, and drenched in blood.
Dragonstone had been the westernmost outpost of Valyrian power for two centuries.
Once again the king unleashed his dragons against Dorne.
A quiet, studious girl, she was said to read from The Seven-Pointed Star every night before sleep.
End led five hundred men into the mountains, Jaehaerys Targaryen took to the air, on Vermithor.
"Seldom have so many men rushed so eagerly onto their funeral pyres," Grand Maester Munkun wrote, "but a madness was upon them."
Only then did the man reveal the purpose of the summons that had brought her to King's Landing.
Prince Daeron's dragon was Tessarion, with her wings dark as cobalt and her claws and crest and belly scales as bright as beaten copper.
Cregan had come into his lordship at thirteen upon the death of his father, Lord Rickon, in 121 AC.
He and his queen and their children attended sunset services at the castle sept, repaired to Maegor's Holdfast for a modest meal, and then retired to bed.
The crimson jaws of Meleys closed round Sunfyre's golden neck for a moment, till Vhagar fell upon them from above.
One of them recognized the Evenstar as he strode through the camp at dusk, talking with Prince Aemon.
With her came her younger sister, Ella of House Broome, a modest maid whose name had briefly been offered as a match for Jaehaerys.
Not even women were exempt; those ladies of noble birth who had attended the Black Brides were arrested as well, together with a score of lowborn trulls named as Maegor's whores.
The eggs that Dreamfyre had laid on Fair Isle had all hatched once on Dragonstone, and Rhaena Targaryen had made certain that her daughter made their acquaintance.
Their plans were betrayed to Lady Misery by a whore Ser Thoron had been bedding, andthe would-be rescuers were taken and hanged.
Yet in the end they differed but little from many of the other lords and ladies of Aegon III's court, all of them pursuing power and wealth in their own ways.
Vhagar, older and much the larger, was also slower, made ponderous by her very size, and ascended more gradually, in ever widening circles that took her and her rider out over the waters of the Gods Eye.
The king's elder sister, Rhaena, had chosen not to attend the nuptials, preferring to remain on Fair Isle with her own new husband and her court, and the Queen Regent Alyssa was busy with preparations for the wedding, so the task of playing hostess to the wives, daughters, and sisters of the great and mighty fell to Alysanne.
Shunned by her sister, Alysanne turned to her niece, but there too she encountered rage and rejection.
During the reign of her father, Aenys, her mother, Queen Alyssa, had made the court a splendid place, filled with song, spectacle, and beauty.
In all the realm, no place was as sorely afflicted as King's Landing was in 59 AC.
"When they came to Westeros and swept away the kingdoms of the First Men, they found the tradition in place and chose to let it remain, just as they did the godswoods."
Moreover, in the confusion that followed the death of the Queen Dowager, Queen Alyssa and her children had made their escape from Dragonstone, with the dragons Vermithor and Silverwingâ¦to where, no man could say.
It purports to be the testimony of a young maid of noble birth who surrendered her virtue to a groom in her lord father's castle, gave birth to a child out of wedlock, and thereafter found herself partaking of every sort of wickedness imaginable during a long life of sin, suffering, and slavery.
Prince Aemond had been uncertain what sort of welcome he would receive when he set out, but Storm's
When Lord Corbray reminded the king of Barth's low birth, Jaehaerys shrugged off his objections.
A few, sad tosay, did turn to outlawry and met evil ends, but for the most part, Lady Alysanne's matchmaking was a great success.
None of them said a word concerning Princess Saera.
The other riverlords did homage as well, to Aegon as king and to Edmyn Tully as their liege lord.
There was as well astrapping red-haired man-at-arms who claimed to be a bastard son of Maegor the Cruel.
Henceforth Ser Erryk Cargyll of the Kingsguard would serve as her sworn shield, whilst Breakbones returned to Harrenhal.
When he was not on a royal progress, Aegon would return to King's Landing and the Aegonfort, whilst Visenya and her son remained on Dragonstone.
Torreo Haen was poisoned with his wife, his mistress, his daughters (one being the maid whose wisp of a gown had caused such scandal at the Maiden's Day Ball), siblings, and supporters at the feast he held to celebrate his elevation to first magister.
She and King Jaehaerys remained apart for two years, the period of estrangement recorded in the histories as the Second Quarrel.
On Dragonstone, an air of despondence and defeat hung over the black court when the disaster on the Honeywine became known to them.
He and his eunuch guards were captured in the town of Volon Therys on the Rhoyne, as they were waiting for a boat to carry them across the river.
Woo her and wed her, and Lord Borros will deliver the stormlands for your brother.
"Your purpose is to win the hand of one of Lord Baratheon's daughters," his grandsire Ser Otto told him, before he flew.
The best known claims that the prince stumbled from his pavilion with his nightclothes afire, only to be cut down by the Myrish sellsword Black Trombo, who smashed his face in with a swing of his spiked morningstar.
How much of this can be believed is a question the honest historian cannot hope to answer, but it is worth noting that King Baelor the Blessed decreed that every copy of Mushroom's chronicle should be burned.
Vhagar never lingered, nor did the survivors oft agree on which way the dragon had flown.
Though the attackers bypassed Dragonstone, no doubt believing that the ancient Targaryen stronghold was too strong to assault, they exacted a grievous toll on Driftmark.
The First Men were a savage race, and like the wildings beyond the Wall, they followed only strength.
The Hand then set out to restore the kingdom's trade and begin the process of rebuilding.
The Dragonkeepers, who knew the denizens of the pit better than anyone, called him the Blood Wyrm.
Whereupon, fearing her uncle's wroth, she gathered up her daughters, Aerea and Rhaella, and fled farther, first to Lannisport and then across the sea to Fair Isle, where the new lord Marq Farman (whose father and elder brother had both perished in the battle, fighting for Prince Aegon) gave her sanctuary and swore no harm would come to her beneath his roof.
Thus were the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros hammered into one great realm, by the will of Aegon the Conqueror and his sisters.
Many in Westeros would gladly have seen Lotho and Roggerio Rogare suffer the same dire fate as Lysaro, for the collapse of the Rogare bank had impoverished great lords and humble tradesmen alikeâ¦but even those who most despised them could offer no shred of proof that either had known of their brother's depredations in Lys, or had benefited from his plundering in any way.
Rhaena loved to dance; Baela lived to rideâ¦and to fly, though that had been taken from her when her dragon died.
Lord Mooton hanged the guilty, and might have hanged the innocent as well, save for Queen Alysanne's intervention.
His face pale, he stood and removed the golden brooch that Queen Alyssa had given him as a token of his office, flung it at her contemptuously, and strode from the room.
The Mallisters of Seagard had a prouder lineage, the Mootons of Maidenpool were far wealthier, and Harrenhal, even cursed and blasted and in ruins, remained a more formidable castle than Riverrun, and ten times the size besides.
It was thought desirable that the Hand be an older man, whose experience would balance the king's youth.
In war, he would boast, he would ne'er lay down his axe whilst life remained in his bodyâ¦and this matter of the king's marriage had become a war to him, one he was determined to win.
(Eustace says nothing of this in his own account of Aegon's final days.)
"I will leave the making of law to you, brother," Prince Baelon declared, whilst drinking to Prince Aemon's appointment.
Queen Rhaenyra would remain in the city with Syrax, and her sons Aegon and Joffrey, whose persons could not be put at risk.
That Lord Rego Draz was an able master of coin even his enemiescould not deny, but the challenge of paying for the completion of the Dragonpit and the rebuilding of King's Landing strained even his talents.
(Princess Saera herself was still alive and well in Volantis, and only thirty-four years of age; her own claim was clearly superior to those of any of her bastard sons, but she did not choose to press it.
Fierce and stubborn, Saera Targaryen thrived upon attention and sulked when she did not receive it.
Rhaena Targaryen died in 73 AC, at fifty years of age.
Chief amongst them were Ser Jon Roxton, Ser Roger Corne, and Lord Unwin Peakeâ¦but Ser Hobert Hightower counseled caution, and the Two Betrayers refused to join any attack unless their own demands were met.
The Sea Snake was determined to put an end to the Triarchy's rule over the Stepstones, and in Daemon Targaryen he found a willing partner, eager for the gold and glory that victory in war would bring him.
Aegon Targaryen put an end to the fighting.
By law, both the Hand and the Lord Protector were subject to the authority of the council of regents, but as the days passed and the moon turned and turned again, the regents convened less and less often, whilst the tireless, blind, hooded Tyland Lannister gathered more and more power to himself.
Yet it was Grand Maester Munkun who put an end to the debate when he said, "My lords, it makes no matter.
Ser Addam Hightower reached Nightsong only to find that Lord Fowler had put the castle to the torch and its garrison to the sword.
Lady Elenda, the widow of Lord Borros, remained at Storm's
Baela's dragon, the slender pale green Moondancer, would soon be large enough to bear the girl upon her backâ¦and though her sister Rhaena's egg had hatched a broken thing that died within hours of emerging from the egg, Syrax had recently produced another clutch.
but Jaehaerys turned his back on her, and Gyles Morrigen caught her by the arm and wrenched her away.
Ser Bramm of Blackhull, a hedge knight; Ser Rayford Rosby; Ser Guy Lothston, called Guy the Glutton; and Ser Lucifer Massey, Lord of Stonedance.
"This city is a nest of vipers," Lord Cregan told him.
Visenya twice wielded Dark Sister in Aegon's defense when he was set upon by Dornish cutthroats.
Though Queen Visenya thought her sister frivolous, there was a wisdom in this that went beyond a simple love of music.
One of them, the boy Ben Blackwood, carried with him the broken body of Ser Addam Velaryon, found dead beside his dragon.
"Theomore is a good man," Alysanne told her daughter, "a wise man, with a kind heart and a good head on his shoulders.
Only Lord Corlys and Grand Maester Gerardys spoke in defense of the dragonseeds.
Aegon I Targaryen was a warrior of renown, the greatest Conqueror in the history of Westeros, yet many believe his most significant accomplishments came during times of peace.
With the Mud Gate in the hands of her foes, and all the ships along the river burned or sunk, Rhaenyra and a small band of followers slipped out through the Dragon Gate, intending to make their way up the coast to Duskendale.
Most agreed, for the Cannibal had been known to attack smaller dragons in the past, though seldom so savagely.
Down the Neck came Cregan Stark, Lord of Winterfell, with a great host at his back (Septon Eustace speaks of "twenty thousand howling savages in shaggy pelts," though Munkun lowers that to eight thousand in his True Telling), even as the Maiden of the Vale sent off her own army from Gulltown: ten thousand men, under the command of Lord Leowyn Corbray and his brother Ser Corwyn, who bore the famous Valyrian blade called Lady Forlorn.
"He spends too much time in the library," Jaehaerys said.
The youngest champion, Pate the Woodcock, fought with a spear instead of a sword, and some questioned whether he was a knight at all, but he proved so skillful with his chosen weapon that Ser Joffrey Doggett settled the matter by dubbing the lad himself, whilst hundreds cheered.
When her infamously niggardly uncle refused to pay the ransom, she was sold to a pillow house, where she rose to become the celebrated courtesan known as the Black Swan, and ruler of Lys in all but name.
So had his children, the six-year- old Princess Jaehaera and two-year-old Prince Maelor, along with Willis Fell and Rickard Thorne of the Kingsguard.
In a lonely watchtower overlooking the waters of Blackwater Bay, a guard had glimpsed dark wings in the distance and sounded the alarum.
In the end, in return for a very sizable indemnity, Braavos forgave Lord Velaryon's "unwarranted transgression," agreed to dissolve her alliance with Tyrosh and break all ties with Racallio Ryndoon, and ceded the Stepstones to the Iron Throne (since the islands were held by Ryndoon and the Pentoshi at this time, theSealord had in effect sold something that he did not own, but this was not unusual in Braavos).
Unless he did, the king's half-sisters remained his nearest kin, but Lord Peake was not about to allow a woman to ascend the Iron Throne, after having so recently fought and bled to prevent that very thing.
All along the route the smallfolk appeared by the hundreds and thousands to hail their new king and queen and cheer the young princes and princess.
Once the first chill was felt, the course of the Shivers was swift.
The agreement with the Iron Bank would have great impact for all the people of the realm over the coming years and decades, though the extent of that was not immediately apparent.
His mother, Essie, who had presumed to style herself Lady Esselyn during her son's brief reign, confessed under torture that Gaemon's father was not the king, as she had previously claimed, but rather a silver-haired oarsman off a trading galley from Lys.
Knights burned in their saddles as the hair and hide and harness of their horses went up in flames.
After sampling some of those, Eustace Hightower declared that they had no need to go any farther.
Rewarding his own loyalists and excluding Maegor's men and the Faithful from power would only exacerbate the wounds and give rise to new grievances, the young king reasoned.
The Lysene maidens were meant to make up for that lack.
It would be a mistake to underestimate the influence of Jaehaerys Targaryen himself during the years of his regency, for despite his youth the boy king had a seat at most every council (but not all, as will be told shortly) and was never shy about letting his voice be heard.
And her consort, Prince Daemon, tried and tempered in the Stepstones, had more experience of warfare than all their foes combined.
Aenys and Alyssa spoke against the match, howeverâ¦and when word reached the Starry Sept, the High Septon sent a raven, warning the king that such a marriage would not be looked upon with favor by the Faith.
We know very little about the childhood of Alysanne Targaryen; as the fifthborn child of King Aenys and Queen Alyssa, and a female, observers at court found her of less interest than her older siblings who stood higher in the line of succession.
Whilst hundreds crowded into the Red Keep's sept to pray for her, Jaehaerys and Alysanne kept vigil outside the maester's door.
The 44th year After the Conquest was a peaceful one compared to what had gone beforeâ¦but the maesters who chronicled those times wrote that the smell of blood and fire still hung heavy in the air.
A massive hulk of a man, Moon had been blessed with a thunderous voice and an imposing physical presence.
Once the new High Septon reached Oldtown, stood his vigil in the Starry Sept, and had been duly anointed and consecrated to the Seven, forsaking his earthly name and all earthly ties, he blessed KingJaehaerys and Queen Alysanne at a solemn public ceremony.
Instead he put his back to the lake, dug in, and sent ravens to Prince Aemond at Harrenhal, begging his aid.
"I mean for them to see me," Jaehaerys declared, when announcing his first royal progress late in 51 AC.
She had appealed time and time again to Aegon III's Hand, her late lord husband's twin, for aid against the reavers, but none had been forthcoming.
Ser Otto Hightower had continued in that office, serving the grandson as he had the grandsire; an able man, all agreed, though many found him proud, brusque, and haughty.
In her youth Queen Sharra had been lauded as "the Flower of the Mountain," the fairest maid in all the Seven Kingdoms.
So it came to pass that when King Aegon II flew Sunfyre over Dragonmont's smoking peak and made his descent, expecting to make a triumphant entrance into a castle safely in the hands of his own men, with the queen's loyalists slain or captured, up to meet him rose Baela Targaryen, Prince Daemon's daughter by the Lady Laena, as fearless as her father.
Orys Baratheon was a baseborn half-brother to Lord Aegon, it was whispered, and the Storm King would not dishonor his daughter by giving her hand to a bastard.
When the Dragon died and my father donned the crown, he was beset on all sides by would-be kings and rebel lords.
Supported by two of his Kingsguard, King Aegon rose from his cushions, tottered to the pole where the prophet had been chained, and set him aflame with his own hand.
Dressed in the rags of a common girl of the lowest order, with her silver-gold hair dyed a muddy brown, Princess Aerea would spend the rest of the regency working in a stable near the King's Gate.
True to his resolve, the prince rode forth from the Gate of the Gods within a fortnight, at the head of a host four thousand strong.
Grand Maester Elysar, never a slave to propriety, confessed to having given the prince a volume of erotic drawings, thinking mayhaps that pictures of naked maidens comporting with men and beasts and one another might kindle Vaegon's interest in the charms of women.
The lords who had come to Dragonstone to bid their king farewell knelt and bowed their heads.
Lord Loren's bannermen followed his example, and so too did many lords of the Reach, those who had survived the dragonfire.
Cassandra had once been betrothed to Aegon II and was "well prepared to serve as queen," she wrote.
Aerea Targaryen went through such a door."
Yet something about Hightower's mannerâhe was sweating and stammering and too hearty by half, the squire who served them testified laterâpricked White's suspicions.
By royal decree, each of the Velaryon boys was presented with a dragon's egg whilst in the cradle.
"Every man and maid and child in the stormlands is my hostage, whilst I ride him, His Grace said without saying," wrote Benifer, "and Lord Rogar heard him plain."
Queen Sharra of the Vale, regent for her son Ronnel, took refuge in the Eyrie, looked to her defenses, and sent an army to the Bloody Gate, gateway to the Vale of Arryn.
It was subsequent to this that Barth began the researches and investigations that would ultimately lead him to write Dragons, Wyrms, and Wyverns: Their Unnatural History, a volume that the Citadel would condemn as "provocative but unsound" and that Baelor the Blessed would order expunged and destroyed.
At that time Duskendale was the principal Westerosi port on the narrow sea, and had grown fat and wealthy from the trade that passed through its harbor.
With him rode Clement Celtigar, old Lord Bartimos's son and heir, and Lady Staunton, the widow of Rook's Rest.
She died in Rhaena Targaryen's arms, convulsing as the queen wept bitter tears.
When their hosts closed around him on the banks of the river Honeywine, attacking front and rear at once, Lord Hightower saw his lines crumble.
The attack caught the Braavosi unawares, with their grand admiral and twoscore of his captains feasting on Bloodstone with Racallio Ryndoon and the envoys from Tyrosh.
"Seven save us," Alysanne whispered to the king one night, "when I look at her I see Aerea."
The sex of the twins weighed against them, however, as did their age; the girls were but six at Maegor's death.
Queen Rhaenys consulted with her maesters and septons, then rendered her decision.
The winter of 59â60 AC was an exceptionally cruel one, all those who survived it agreed.
Drazenko's ties to Sunspear and Lysandro's to the Iron Throne made the Rogares the princes of Lys in all but name.
"The king and I were so happy on Dragonstone," she told the doubters.
Lady Perianne was confused by the question.
Maris asked the prince, in tones sweet as honey.
Queen Alicent had reluctantly agreed to the betrothal of her granddaughter to Rhaenyra's son, but she had done so without the king's consent.
Yet the Shepherd was not yet triumphant, for the queen's own dragon remained alive and freeâ¦and as the burned and bloody survivors of the carnage in the pit came stumbling from the smoking ruins, Syrax descended upon them from above.
A murder of ravens took flight from the twisted towers of Harrenhal.
Sadly, Lord Elmo himself had expired on the march after drinking some bad water, after only nine-and-forty days as Lord of Riverrun, but the lordship had passed to his eldest son, Ser Kermit Tully, a wild and headstrong youth eager to prove himself as a warrior.
There Red Robb Rivers and his bowmen stood, covering the retreat with their own longbows.
The King's Hand, Lord Celtigar, had two young maiden daughters, thirteen and twelve years of age respectively.
During his nine voyages on the Sea Snake, he was forever wanting to press onward, to go where none had gone before and see what lay beyond the maps.
"Vaegon has never looked twice at either one of them," Alysanne told the king.
How the prince and his bastard girl spent their last night beneath Lord Mooton's roof is not recorded, but as dawn broke they appeared together in the yard, and Prince Daemon helped Nettles saddle Sheepstealer one last time.
The smallfolk saw Oakenfist as a hero, his lordship knew, the man who had humbled the proud Sealord of Braavos and the Red Kraken of Pyke, whilst he himself was resented and reviled.
"They were skeletons in skins, armed with stone axes and wooden clubs," Ben Blackwood said later, "but so hungry and so desperate that they could not be deterred, no matter how many we killed."
Rowan set out for his seat at Goldengrove, promising to return to King's Landing once he had recovered his health, but he died upon the road in the company of two of his sons.
A warrior to the bone, Rogar had once dreamed of facing Maegor the Cruel in single combat, and could not stomach being shamed by a lad of fifteen years.
King Aegon III sat atop the Iron Throne, clad in black with a golden circlet round his head and a gold chain at his throat, as the maidens paraded beneath him one by one.
We can be reasonably certain that Lord Rogar knew of her shame; not only was he Lord Morgan's liege, but the child was placed in his own household.
It was the Shepherd himself who directed his followers to break through the "back door."
The first of the rebels proved to be the last as well, but Harren the Red was at last brought to bay in a village west of the Gods Eye.
But her words fell on stony ears and her tears were shed in vain, for Prince Aegon was determined to claim his birthright.
If murder was indeed the cause of her demise, however, for all these reasons, the man behind it could only have been Lord Unwin Peake.
"Lord Manderly," King Aegon said, in the sudden stillness, "pray tell me how old I am, if you would be so good."
Grand Maester Munkun suggests he might have been a Poor Fellow; though that order had long been outlawed, wandering Stars still haunted the byways of the Seven Kingdoms.
One objection was raised: Laenor Velaryon was now nineteen years of age, yet had never shown any interest in women.
Even in the winter town, beneath the very walls of Winterfell, the northmen fell to eating dogs and horses.
He lost three ships in the Stepstones (one, sadly, was the True Heart, captained by his cousin Daeron, who perished when she sank), whilst sinking more than thirty and capturing six galleys, eleven cogs, eighty-nine hostages, vast amounts of food, drink, arms, and coin, and an elephant meant for the Sealord's menagerie.
The Faceless Men of Braavos were widely believed to have been responsible for the killings; no more subtle assassins were known to exist anywhere in the wide world.
Queen Rhaena's reunion with her daughter Aerea had not gone well, either.
On the day of the wedding, the streets outside the Sept of Remembranceâbuilt atop the Hill of Rhaenys, and named in honor of the Dragon's fallen queenâwere lined with Warrior's Sons in gleaming silver armor, making note of each of the wedding guests as they passed by, afoot, ahorse, or in litters.
He found the castle in the hands of its steward, Harlan Tyrell, whose forebears had served the Gardeners for centuries.
Childbirth exacted a toll on the princess; the weight that Rhaenyra gained during her pregnancies never entirely left her, and by the time her youngest boy was born, she had grown stout and thick of waist, the beauty of her girlhood a fading memory, though she was but twenty years of age.
He must have felt duty bound to protect them, though surely he knew in his heart that his Seasmoke could not match the older dragon.
Aliandra Martell, Princess of Dorne, came out to meet with him, accompanied by a dozen of her current favorites and suitors.
Then the Black Dread fell upon her from above, his jaws closing round her neck as he ripped one wing from her body.
"I have seen your daughters," Rogar said to Celtigar.
Though never formally constituted as a Great Council, the gathering of the lords in 136 AC was the largest assembly of nobles in the Seven Kingdoms since the Old King had summoned the lords of the realm to Harrenhal in 101 AC.
Had she been allowed to bathe in the healing waters of Jonquil's Pool, she would say, Prince Aegon would have lived.
When the disease crossed the Bite to White Harbor, the prayers of the septons and the potions of the maesters proved equally powerless against it.
Borne bloody from the field, Ser Joffrey died without recovering consciousness six days later.
When told of Graceford's accusation, Ser Mervyn said, "You will be wanting my steel," drawing his longsword from its sheath and offering its hilt to Marston Waters.
In Oldtown, the ancient High Septon died, and another was raised up in his place.
Seeking peace, she returned once more to Dragonstone, where she had spent the happiest days of her life with Jaehaerys, between their first and second marriages.
Kermit Tully declared the betrothal "presumptuous."
The ashes of the bonfires lit in celebration of the new year had scarce grown cold before the people of King's Landing began asking questions.
And oft as not, Alysanne was with him, her silvery dragon soaring beside his great beast of burnished bronze.
Yet all the witnesses agree on what Lord Borros said and did.
In the Reach, Lord Hightower and his ward, Prince Daeron the Daring, continued to win victories, enforcing the submission of the Rowans of Goldengrove, the Oakhearts of Old Oak, and the Lords of the Shield Islands, for none dared face Tessarion, the Blue Queen.
To which Aegon said, "When the sun sets, your line shall end."
Thrice Argilac the Arrogant led his knights against the Baratheon positions, but the slopes were steep and the rains had turned the ground soft and muddy, so the warhorses struggled and foundered, and the charges lost all cohesion and momentum.
End has but a single tower, the massive drum tower raised by Durran Godsgrief during the Age of Heroes to stand against the wroth of the storm god.
When brought before the Iron Throne for judgment, the prophet refused to repent his crimes or admit to treason, but thrust the stump of his missing hand at the king and told His Grace, "We shall meet in hell before this year is done," the same words he had spoken to Borros Baratheon upon his capture.
Some will say that Ser Marston's reluctance was simple cowardice, that he feared to face the blade of the Lysene giant Sandoq.
Oldtown would provide twenty warships for the fleet, Hightower promised, and his good friend Lord Redwyne of the Arbor would send thirty.
The next day, Lord Velaryon returned to Lady Baela and gave the command to raise sailâ¦for Lys.
Prince Aemon was one year younger at fifteen, but all agreed that they made a handsome couple.
A stronger force would be required to root them out of Harrenhal, they concluded as that "peaceful" year of 132 AC came to its end.
"Let themremain there until they are with child," Lady Misery is purported to have said.
When at last Maegor returned to King's Landing to seat himself again upon the Iron Throne, he was greeted with the news that his mother, Queen Visenya, had died.
Other port towns shared in the bounty; Duskendale, Maidenpool, Gulltown, and White Harbor saw their trade expand as well, as did Oldtown to the south, and even Lannisport upon the sunset sea.
And so the Two Toms and their "cousins" (a half- truth, as only Ser Marston shared their blood, being the bastard son ofTom Tanglebeard's sister by the knight who took her maidenhead) set sail in their small boat to seek out Grey Ghost's killer.
He commanded his Hand, Lord Alyn Stokeworth, to take a fleet and army to the Vale to put down Jonos Arryn and restore his brother Ronnel to the lordship.
Dusk and distance made his aim less certain, and the bolt missed Lord Cameronâ¦and struck Prince Aemon, standing at his side.
Robed in fire and smoke, blind and bleeding, Moondancer beat her wings desperately as she tried to break away, but all her efforts did was slow their fall.
Maegor's supporters, who seemed more numerous every day, were not shy in saying that Aegon was "his father's son," suggesting that they saw in him the same weakness that had brought down King Aenys.
As Lys suffered a series of shattering defeats in the Daughters' War, however, these plans went awry.
Others whispered that the Lord of Winterfell had a wildling wife, that he threw his enemies into a pit of wolves to watch them be devoured.
Once the marriage had been annulled, his lordship reasoned, it would be as if it had never happened so far as most of Westeros was concernedâ¦so long as it remained secret.
Lord Graceford had named Ser Marston as one of the conspirators as well, insisting that "that bloody turncloak" had been with them from the start, a charge Waters was no longer able to dispute.
In 93 AC, Prince Baelon's sixteen-year-old son, Viserys, entered the Dragonpit and claimed Balerion.
Prince Daemon knew that his brother would not be pleased when he heard of his marriage.
Lamb and mutton becamemore plentiful and wool finer as shepherds increased the size of their flocks.
"Lord Alyn might have shipped the king home aboard Lord Aethan's Glory or Morning Tide or even Spicetown Girl, but he wanted him seen to be creeping into the city on a mouse," the dwarf says.
Prince Daemon took Caraxes up swiftly, lashing him with a steel- tipped whip until they disappeared into a bank of clouds.
In 114 AC, Rhaenyra Targaryen, Princess of Dragonstone, took to husband Ser Laenor Velaryon (knighted a fortnight before the wedding, since it was deemed necessary the prince consort be a knight).
Lords Rosby and Stokeworth, blacks who had gone green to avoid the dungeons, attempted to turn black again, but the queen declared that faithless friends were worse than foes and ordered their "lying tongues" be removed before their executions.
Ser Amaury's men did not lack for courage, and some lived long enough to strike blows of their own, but the Shadow, always moving, caught their blades upon his shield, then used that shield to shove them backward, off the bridge onto the hungry iron spikes below.
Had they not "meddled," she claimed, Grand Maester Mellos would surely have saved the king's fingers as well as his life.
Queen Jaehaera's claim was as strong as the king's, and stronger in the minds of some, but the notion of placing that sweet, simple, frightened child on the Iron Throne was madness, all agreed.
His smile, it was said, could warm the heart of any maiden in the Seven Kingdoms; his frown could make a man's blood run cold.
The three drunken lords had sobered somewhat by the time the king confronted them from atop the Iron Throne, and put up a bold front.
"I am the king," His Grace reminded them, "and I never chose Ser Marston for my Hand."
As Ser Alfred Broome crossed the drawbridge to Maegor's Holdfast, where Prince Aegon was being held, he found Ser Perkin the Flea and six of his gutter knights barring his way.
Nor should it be forgotten that during his youth, every brothel keeper in King's Landing knew that Lord Flea Bottom took an especial delight in maidens, and kept aside the youngest, prettiest, and more innocent of their new girls for him to deflower.
For more than half a year the city had lived in fear of Ormund Hightower's advancing hostâ¦but when the assault came, it came not from Oldtown by way of Bitterbridge and Tumbleton, but up the kingsroad from Storm's End.
He had been married for a decade to a cousin, Lady Aemma of House Arryn, herself a granddaughter of the Old King and Good Queen Alysanne through her mother, the late Princess Daella (d. 82 AC).
She turned to Grand Maester Benifer and said, "I know how Gargon Qoherys died.
Since first riding her dragon Moondancer into the sky not half a year past, she had flown every day, ranging freely to every part of Dragonstone and even across the sea to Driftmark.
On Maiden's Day we shall have a ball, the like of which King's Landing has not seen since the days of King Viserys.
Amongst those cheering loudest was Princess Rhaenyra, who was thrilled at the return of her favorite uncle and begged him to stay awhile.
Marston Waters was confirmed as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, whilst Darklyn and Massey were commanded to surrender their white cloaks, so that Ser Marston might bestow them on knights of his own choosing.
Atop the Hightower, the great beacon fire turned a baleful green as Lord Martyn Hightower called his banners.
"Then we must see that he leads them to our king," Queen Alicent declared.
"It is plain to see that Aegon's affection for Gaemon Palehair was born of his desire to replace the little brother
Driven as she was by her conflicts with her mother, mayhaps she simply wanteda beast larger and more fearsome than Queen Rhaena's Dreamfyre.
When Aegon III retreated back into silence, solitude, and a brooding passivity, his Hand was pleased to ignore him, save on certain formal occasions when his presence was required.
Where Rhaena delighted in being the center of court life, Baela bristled at praise, and seemed to take pleasure in mocking and tormenting the suitors who fluttered around her like moths.
Lord Farman sent forth knights to seize the man and silence him, but not before thousands had heard his prophecies.
 Maidenpool was far famed for the sweetwater pool where legend had it that Florian the Fool had first glimpsed Jonquil bathing during the Age of Heroes.
On the headwaters of the mighty Mander stood Tumbleton, a thriving market town and the seat of House Footly.
Had Jaehaerys and Alysanne returned to King's Landing in time to celebrate the new year, as Queen Alyssa prayed ("They will come to their senses and repent this folly," she told the council), reconciliation might have been possible, but that did not happen.
The Hand had sent the rash young admiral around the whole of Westeros to rid the court of him, yet here he was about to descend on them once more, "dripping with undeserved acclaim" and mayhaps vast wealth as well.
But Mysaria lost her child during a storm on the narrow sea.
Princess Alysanne did none of these things.
Only two of the killers lived to collect their rewards, however, and the Dornishmen took their reprisals, repaying blood with blood.
Afterward Lord Unwin Peake offered a thousand golden dragons to any knight of noble birth who could claim Silverwing.
In the North, Queen Alysanne grew restless with waiting, and decided to take her leave of Winterfell for a time and visit the men of the Night's Watch at Castle Black.
Once, when she was holding court in the Aegonfort, a man was brought before her for beating his wife to death.
His Grace did not take issue with Lord Smallwood's point, it should be noted, only with his words.
Though he had wed the Lady of Runestone in 97 AC, during the Old King's reign, the marriage had not been a success.
Lord Stark could not confine them to the castle, as he had Prince Aegon, and he soon learned that he could not control them either.
It was his own surmise that, given the lack of any sightings of Balerion in Westeros, Princess Aerea had likely flown him east across the narrow sea, to the vast fields of Essos.
To a man, each of them insisted that they had been acting on Ser Perkin's orders.
If Rhaena Targaryen was troubled by his sulks, she gave little sign of it.
Queen Alicent had commanded Larys Clubfoot to learn his true name, so that she might bathe in the blood of his wife and children, but our sources do not say if this occurred.
Nor was the mistress of whisperers, Lady Mysaria of Lys, spared on account of her sex.
When they demanded to be allowed to see "our beloved brother," Lady Arryn gave them her support, and the Wolf of Winterfell yielded ("somewhat grudgingly," says Mushroom).*2The False Dawn had come and gone, and now the Hour of the Wolf (as Grand Maester Munkun names it) was waning too.
The king's dragon, Sunfyre, too huge and heavy to be moved, and unable to fly with his injured wing, remained in the fields beyond Rook's Rest, crawling through the ashes like some great golden wyrm.
Be they knights, squires, stewards, septons, or serving men, the charge against them was the same; they were accused of having aided and abetted Maegor Targaryen in usurping the Iron Throne and in all the crimes, cruelties, and misrule that followed.
Some of his lords bannermen urged him to attack all the same, insisting that northern valor would carry the day.
Alys Westhill discharged her hirelings on Lys, taking on fresh water and provisions before turning west and setting sail for Oldtown.
Armed with the Valyrian steel blade Blackfyre, he was counted amongst the greatest warriors of his age, yet he took no pleasure in feats of arms, and never rode in tourney or melee.
Even young Joffrey chimed in, offering to mount his own dragon, Tyraxes, and join his brothers.
There the battered hull of the ancient Sea Snake was floated once again and towed out into the deep waters east of Dragonstone, where Corlys Velaryon was buried at sea aboard the very ship that had given him hisname.
Aegon had granted the castle to Ser Quenton Qoherys, his old master-at-arms.
Half a year later, Edwell Celtigar, the King's Hand, announced that Queen Jeyne was with child.
The courtesy with which Lord Alyn treated Lady Sam warmed Lord Lyonel to him immediately, and the two youths struck up a fast friendship that did much to put all the oldenmities between the blacks and greens to rest.
Their captain built a tower and a beacon there, took the name of Farwynd, and called his seat the Lonely Light.
It was only a word from Lady Misery that stayed her hand, the fool insists; the White Worm proposed another, crueler punishment.
Soon after, Jacaerys Velaryon was flying north upon his dragon, Vermax, his brother Lucerys south on Arrax, whilst Prince Daemon flew Caraxes to the Trident.
It was Princess Rhaena, legend says, who put a dragon's egg in Princess Alysanne's cradle, just as she had for Prince Jaehaerys two years earlier.
Surprisingly, Prince Daemon agreed with his wife.
"If he survives, His High Holiness may make what use of him he will," the Hand decreed.
A dozen died before they realized it had all been a ploy, the work (as waslearned later) of a Myrish sellsword in the service of Lord Vance, a former mummer called Black Trombo.
When word first reached Dragonstone that Queen Alyssa was failing, Androw had announced that he would accompany his wife to Storm's
The turncloaks in his midst had put their plans in motion the moment they learned of Lord Baratheon's defeat upon the kingsroad.
The Most Devout had given him the High Septon he desired, the Doctrine of Exceptionalism would be a tenet of the Faith, and he had reached an accord with the powerful Hightowers of Oldtown, but these victories had turned to ashes in his mouth with the death of his mother.
"You do not need to like her," Lord Peake replied, "you need only wed her, bed her, and father a son on her."
The princess had been most loath to be parted from her dragon, Dreamfyre, and her latest favorite, Melony Piper, a red-haired maiden from the riverlands.
Thrice the Lannisters tried to force the crossing, and thrice they were driven back; in the last attempt, Lord Jason was dealt
Prince Joffrey, ten-and-three, donned squire's armor and begged the queen to let him ride to the Dragonpit and mount Tyraxes.
At the time, however, his death was seen as a political killing, and the Myrish were suspected.
Daella's death tore the heart out of the queen, but as we look back, it is plain to see that it was also the first hint of the rift that would open between her and her king.
Dressed in the robes of a penitent and accompanied only by a handmaid and one leal man-at-arms, she made her way to the Eyrie in the Vale of Arryn to visit the eldest of her three sons by Ser Theo Bolling, and thence to Highgarden in the Reach, where her second son had been fostered to Lord Tyrell.
She had trouble enough in her own hall at the time, for a rift had opened between her and her beloved Elissa Farman.
With him came the war fleets of the Arbor, Highgarden, and Lannisport, and even a few longships from Bear Island dispatched by Torrhen Stark.
"The girl must be wed, and soon," he told the King's Hand, "else I fear that she may bring dishonor down upon House Targaryen, and shame His Grace, her brother."
Though other chapters remained in Oldtown, Lannisport, Gulltown, and Stoney Sept, the order would never again approach its former strength.
Prince Aemond circled twice about the towers of Harrenhal, then brought Vhagar down in the outer ward, with Caraxes a hundred yards away.
He followed that with a general cancellation of debt, raised threescore of his gutter knights to the ranks of the nobility, and answered "King" Gaemon's promise of free bread and beer for the starving by granting the poor the right to take rabbits, hares, and deer from the kingswood as well (though not elk nor boar).
Many a singer has made many a song of the Ride of the Seven, and many a tale has been told of the perils they faced as they fought their way across the city, whilst King's Landing burned around them and the alleys of Flea Bottom ran red with blood.
Queen Alysanne's silvery she-dragon had accepted a second rider, Borros Baratheon pointed out.
Only the arrival of Princess Rhaenyra from Dragonstone turned the tide, for with her came her own healer, Maester Gerardys, who acted swiftly to remove two fingers from His Grace's hand to save his life.
Three years Androw's elder, Elissa Farman shared her brother's blue eyes and long flaxen hair, but elsewise she was as unlike him as a sibling could be.
For all the castle knew that the princes Jace and Joff had been eager to fly with Princess Rhaenys to Rook's Rest with their own dragons.
For the first time since the Doom of Valyria, dragon contended with dragon in the sky, even as battle was joined below.
Archmaester Vaegon was ruled out on account of his vows and Princess Rhaenys and her daughter on account of their sex, leaving the two claimants with the most support: Viserys Targaryen, eldest son of Prince Baelon and Princess Alyssa, and Laenor Velaryon, the son of Princess Rhaenys and grandson of Prince Aemon.
Jaehaerys wanted Alysanne with him, but as Her Grace was with child, he was concerned that their journeys not be too taxing.
Piety and lust had both proved unable to break the bond between Jaehaerys Targaryen and his Alysanne.
The Velaryon princelings were younger than AemondâJace was six, Luke five, Joff only threeâ but there were three of them, and they had armed themselves with wooden swords from the training yard.
The Grand Defiance, a towering Braavosi dromond of four hundred oars, fought her way past half a dozen smaller Velaryon warships to gain the open sea, only to find Lord Alyn himself bearing down on her.
Prince Aenys named her Rhaena, in honor of his mother.
The Braavosi landed Lord Leowyn Corbray at Duskendale, with half the power that Lady Arryn had sent down from the Vale; the other half disembarked at Ma
The fires claimed the lives of Ser Joffrey's father, mother, and young sister, along with their sworn swords, serving men, and chattel.
Two years later, in 70 AC, Aemon and Jocelyn were joined in a ceremony that rivaled the Golden Wedding for its splendor.
When Maegor appeared on the walls of the Red Keep, standing between Alys Harroway and Tyanna of Pentos, the crowds cheered wildly, and the city erupted in celebration.
On Dragonstone, Queen Rhaenyra collapsed when told of Luke's death.
The king received him seated on the Iron Throne with his crown upon his head.
In 117 AC, on Dragonstone, Princess Rhaenyra bore yet another son.
Daemon Velaryon, the lord admiral, suggested that Jaehaerys might marry the widowed Queen Elinor, of House Costayne.
King Aegon also desired to avenge the murder of his heir by Blood and Cheese by means of an attack on Dragonstone, descending on the island citadel on dragonback to seize or slay his half-sister and her "bastard sons."
The proprietor of the Hogs Head, a scoundrel who went by the name Ben Buttercakes, wondered if there might be more silver stags where there had been one.
Just as she had when carrying Princess Daenerys, the queen refused to let the king cancel or postpone the trip, and sent him forth alone.
Aemond Targaryenâ¦who would henceforth be known as Aemond the Kinslayer to his foesâ¦returned to King's Landing, having won the support of Storm's
On the third day of the third moon of 129 AC, Princess Helaena brought her three children to visit with the king in his chambers.
King Argilac's lords bannermen urged him to delay his attack until the next day, in hopes the rain would pass, but the Storm King outnumbered the Conquerors almost two to one, and had almost four times as many knights and heavy horses.
The city gaols were crowded to bursting, and even the deep dungeons below the Red Keep were near full.
As the King's Hand, he was empowered to speak with the king's voice, even to sit the Iron Throne in the king's absence.
Guardsmen walking the battlements of the castle's mighty curtain walls clutched their spears in sudden terror when she woke with a roar that shook the very foundations of Durran's Defiance.
Her Grace's words were soft and gentle, and Jaehaerys was moved by them, Septon Barth tells us.
Doggett had arrived in thecompany of Lord and Lady Tully of Riverrunâ¦not in chains, as most might have expected, but with a safe conduct bearing the king's own seal.
She got halfway across the city, to the Hill of Rhaenys, but as she tried to enter the Dragonpit, she was found and taken by the Dragonkeepers and returned to the Red Keep.
Nor did the once-gentle prince hesitate when Lord Unwin Peake presented him with warrants for the execution of Hard Hugh Hammer and Ulf White, but eagerly affixed his seal.
Much of the trade that had gone through Maidenpool and Duskendale was now coming to King's Landing.
Queen Visenya commanded her son be taken to the maesters.
All such preparations were thrown into disarray by the sudden and unexpected arrival of Rhaena Targaryen from Dragonstone.
I Dreamsongs: Volume IIA Song for Lya and Other Stories Songs of Stars and Shadows SandkingsSongs the Dead Men Sing NightflyersTuf Voyaging Portraits of His ChildrenQuartetEdited by George R. R. MartinNew Voices in Science Fiction, Volumes 1â4
His brother Oscar, who had slain three men during the Muddy Mess and been knighted on the battlefield afterward, was still greener, and cursed with the sort of prickly pride so common in second sons.
At the town of Stoney Sept, Septon Moon denounced King Maegor's wedding plans, and hundreds of townfolk cheered wildly, but few others dared to raise their voices against His Grace.
Rather than make use of the royal fleet commanded by Ser Gedmund Peake the Great-Axe, his predecessor's uncle, the Hand turned to House Velaryon for the required ships.
If the precedent set by the Great Council of 101 was followed, a male claimant must prevail over a female.
The harshest punishment was reserved for Braxton Beesbury, the proud young knight called Stinger.
Mushroom remained behind, along with other members of the court, amongst them Lady Misery and Septon Eustace.
Curiously, we are told, in time Rhaena and Maegor Towers came to forge a friendship of sorts.
Inside she found only Alys Rivers, the wet nurse and purported witch who had warmed Prince Aemond's bedduring his days at Harrenhal, and now claimed to be carrying his child.
Lady Myrielle brought the doll with her when she made her own appearance at the ball, cradling it in her arms as if it were a babe.
And above their camp Balerion, Meraxes, and Vhagar prowled the sky in ever-widening circles.
Larys Strong the Clubfoot, the most enigmatic and cunning member of the green council, had vanished.
By the time Morion set sail, the king had known of his attack for half a year.
The next blow fell far from King's Landing, in the Vale of Arryn, when Ser Corwyn Corbray ruled that Lady Jeyne's will must prevail and declared Ser Joffrey Arryn the rightful Lord of the Eyrie.
The eldest champion was a grizzled hedge knight named Samgood of Sour Hill, a scarred and battered man of three-and-sixty who claimed to have fought in a hundred battles "and never you mind on what side, that's for me and the gods to know."
Queen Rhaenys also took a great interest in the smallfolk, and had a special love for women and children.
Queen Alicent went pale when she heard what he had done, crying, "Mother have mercy on us all."
Gulltown and the Eyrie, Harrenhal, Riverrun, Lannisport and Casterly Rock, Crakehall, Old Oak, Highgarden, Oldtown, the Arbor, Horn Hill, Ashford, Storm's End, and Evenfall Hall had the honor of hosting His Grace many times, but Aegon could and would turn up almost anywhere, sometimes with as many as a thousand knights andlords and ladies in his train.
The Lannisters had to be counted amongst Rhaenyra's enemies as well, though with Lord Jason dead, the greater part of the chivalry of the west slain or scattered at the Fishfeed, and the Red Kraken harrying Fair Isle and the west shore, Casterly Rock was in considerable disarray.
When Her Grace suggested that she would be pleased to help arrange marriages for his sons to the daughters of great southern lords, Lord Stark refused brusquely.
All five Kingsguard were therefore sentenced todeathâ¦but at the urging of Princess Alysanne, it was agreed that they might be spared if they would exchange their white cloaks for black by joining the Night's Watch.
The king was clad in battle armor, his mailed hands folded over the hilt of Blackfyre.
When he did, the "Queen" was so delighted with him that he sent two of his wives to Oakenfist's bedchamber that night.
But Mushroom and Septon Eustace insist it was Lord Beesbury who spoke up, and in a waspish tone.
A glimpse of the king in all his power, mounted on Balerion the Black Dread and attended by hundreds of knights glittering in silk and steel, did much to instill loyalty in restless lords.
Aenys had been at Highgarden on his progress when his father died, but Quicksilver returned him to Dragonstone for the funeral.
There was scarce an ounce of flesh upon her bones, so gaunt and starved did she appear, but we could observe certainâ¦swellings inside her, as her skin bulged out and then sunk down again, as ifâ¦no, not as if, for this was the truth of itâ¦there were things inside her, living things, moving and twisting, mayhaps searching for a way out, and giving her such pain that even the milk of the poppy gave her no surcease.
Septon Eustace, who stood witness to the meeting, tells us that the Lord of Winterfell "gazed upon the old Lord of the Tides with eyes as grey and cold as a winter storm, and said, âBy whose hand and at whose word, I wonder?'
Tyraxes, Shrykos, and Morghul killed scores, there can be little doubt, but Dreamfyre slew more than all three of them combined.
By the time Alyn Oakenfist reached the throne room, the young king had somehow vanished.
Both perished in the war between them, called by singers the Dance of the Dragons.
Lord Alaric had a flinty reputation; a hard man, people said, stern and unforgiving, tight-fisted almost to the point of being niggardly, humorless, joyless, cold.
Lysandro was the patriarch of a rich and powerful banking and trading dynasty whose bloodlines could be traced back to Valyria before the Doom.
Thereafter Baelon went everywhere with his stick-sword, even tobed, to the despair of his mother and her maids.
Her father had seen to it that she came before the king late in the first hour, far enough back so he could not be accused of giving her pride of place, but far enough forward so King Aegon would still be reasonably fresh.
As accounts of the campaign spread through the Seven Kingdoms, even the most martial of lords gained a new respect for their young king.
The affection between Rhaena and Aegon was well- known, and neither raised any objection to the marriage; indeed, there is much to suggest that both had been anticipating just such a partnership since they had first played together in the nurseries of Dragonstone and the Aegonfort.
Yet even with such forebears, Corlys Velaryon was a man apart, a man as brilliant as he was restless, as adventurous as he was ambitious.
Casterly Rock, Highgarden, and Oldtown had beenslow to reply to the king's demand for more armies.
He might even take Lady Baela for a salt wife, the Lord of the Iron Islands told his captains, laughing.
Though House Hoare had ruled the riverlands for three generations, the men of the Trident had no love for their ironborn overlords.
"That will lose us any hope of taking Racallio by surprise," argued Alyn Velaryon, but Ser Gedmund proved adamant.
Once surrounded by these protectors, Lysaro secured his selection as gonfaloniere, winning the commons with lavish entertainments and the magisters with bribes larger than any of them had ever seen before.
Manfred Hightower, father of Lady Ceryse, made protest to the king, demanding that Lady Alys be put aside.
With no natural barriers to anchor the Targaryen line, the Two Kings meant to sweep around Aegon on both flanks, then take him in the rear, whilst their "iron fist," a great wedge of armored knights and high lords, smashed through Aegon's center.
Black Aly, the Maiden of the Vale, the Three Widows, the Dragon Twins, 'twas them who brought the bloodshed to an end, and not with swords or poison, but with ravens, words, and kisses."
Abandoning their royal progess, they made their way to Casterly Rock, where Lord Lyman Lannister offered them his protection.
Afterward, King Viserys tried to make a peace, requiring each of the boys to tender an apology to his rivals on the other side, but these courtesies did not appease their vengeful mothers.
Their joy was not shared by the King's Hand, however.
This wealth Ser Corlys put to good use when his aged grandsire died at the age of eight-and-eighty, and the Sea Snake became Lord of the Tides.
(Almost all that we know of the myriad marvels of the Mermaid comes to us from Mushroom, who alone amongst our chroniclers is willing to confess to visiting the brothel himself on many occasions and partaking of its many pleasures in sumptuously appointed rooms.)
On the fifth day of his illness, Prince Baelon died in his bedchamber in the Tower of the Hand, with his father sitting beside him, holding his hand.
Ser Rickard Thorne was commanded to deliver two-year-old Prince Maelor to Lord Hightower.
Alysanne Targaryen and her dragon, Silverwing, departed Dragonstone within an hour of his summons, after having been apart from the king for nigh on half a year.
One lord commanded his men to build fires all around him, surrounding himself with walls of flame.
"Thrice I flew Silverwing high above Castle Black, and thrice I tried to take her north beyond the Wall," Alysanne wrote to Jaehaerys, "but every time she veered back south again and refused to go.
And though His Grace had no objection to Lord Donnel's brother, nor the rest of his ilk, none of them had yet spoken on the issue, soâ¦After hours of discussion, an understanding was reached, and sealed with a great feast wherein Lord Donnel praised the wisdom of the king, whilst making him acquainted with his brothers, uncles, nephews, nieces, and cousins.
The most influential of those was plainly the Sea Snake, whose wealth, experience, and alliances made him the first amongst equals.
If he fails me, if any of these Braavosi pass the Gullet, your precious Lady Baela shall lose some parts as well."
Then Saera dared me to kiss a real boy, and I dared Peri to do the same, and both of us dared Saera, but she said she would do us one better, she would kiss a man grown, a knight.
The smell of blood roused the dragon, who sniffed at Her Grace, then bathed her in a blast of flame, so suddenly that Ser Alfred's cloak caught fire as he leapt away.
Instead Lord Unwin Peake scowled down at him from atop the Iron Throne, and said, "You fool, you thrice-damned fool.
To secure the prince, his lordshipagreed that the Iron Throne would pay a ransom of one hundred thousand golden dragons, agree not to take up arms against House Rogare or its interests for a hundred years, entrust the Rogare Bank of Lys with such funds as were presently held by the Iron Bank of Braavos, grant lordships to three of Lysandro's younger sons, andâ¦ above allâ¦swear upon his honor that the marriage between Viserys Targaryen and Larra Rogare would not be set aside, for any cause.
From both sides men closed in, red-faced and shouting, brandishing swords and axes and thrusting with long spears, as Thorne turned this way and that, wheeling his stolen mount in circles, seeking some way through their ranks.
In 77 AC she gave her brave prince a son they named Viserys.
Lady Rhaena, at the age of nineteen, was flying her dragon, Morning, for the first time.
And the Aegonfort, which had spread halfway down Aegon's High Hill by that time, was as ugly a castle as any in the Seven Kingdoms, a great confusion of wood and earth and brick that had long outgrown the old log palisades that were its only walls.
Reading over Maester Anselm's accounts, Lord Rego furrowed his brow and said, "Sickness?
Though his castle was small and modest compared to the great halls of the realm, Lord Dondarrion was a splendid host and his son Simon played the high harp as well as he jousted, and entertained the royal couple by night with sad songs of star-crossed lovers and the fall of kings.
We know now that Lady Elissa made her way to Braavos after Pentos, though not before taking on a new name.
The true tale of how Jaehaera Targaryen met her end will never be known.
The king and queen were not the only parents to lose a child to the Shivers; thousands of others, highborn and low, knew the same pain that winter.
Some say Vhagar snatched Lucerys off his dragon's back and swallowed him whole.
Septon Murmison, the King's Hand, was expelled from the Faith in punishment for performing the forbidden nuptials, whereupon Aenys himself took quill in hand to write to the High Septon, asking that His High Holiness restore "my good Murmison," and explaining the long history of brother-sister marriages in old Valyria.
White Harbor, Gulltown, Maidenpool, and Duskendale had been afflicted, each in turn; there were reports that Braavos was being ravaged as well.
Six other noble lords accompanied him, along with threescore knights, guardsmen, servants, scribes, and septons, six singersâ¦and Mushroom, who supposedly hid in a wine cask to escape the gloom of the Red Keep and "find a place where men remembered how to laugh."
The last thing the Hand desired was war with Braavos, richest and most powerful of the Nine Free Cities.
The stormy marriage would prove to be the one made on Dragonstone, as the years would prove.
Yet even this did not long mollify the King's Hand, for less than a fortnight later, the leading elements of the Velaryon fleet returned to King's Landing bearing a cryptic message: Oakenfist had sent them on ahead whilst he set sail for Lys to secure "a treasure beyond price."
Shortly thereafter, Baela Velaryon was brought to childbed and delivered of a healthy baby girl.
Dorne had not boasted any strength at sea since Nymeria burned her ten thousand ships, but Prince Morion did have gold, and he found willing allies in the pirates of the Stepstones, the sellsails of Myr, and the corsairs of the Pepper Coast.
Thus did matters stand in King's Landing late in the year 105 AC, when Queen Aemma was brought to bed in Maegor's Holdfast and died whilst giving birth to the son that Viserys Targaryen had desired for so long.
(The Vances of Atranta took the other path, and trumpeted their allegiance to the young king.)
Over the two years of struggle, a terrible toll was taken on thegreat lords of Westeros, together with their bannermen, knights, and smallfolk.
"We were there for a full year," he told his grandsire, "trying to make Lady Meredith seaworthy again, for the damage was greater than we'd thought.
Prince Baelon was a lusty lad, for those same shrieks of pleasure that had echoed through the halls of the Red Keep on the night of their bedding were heard many another night in the years that followed.
Though Maiden's Day was yet three moons away, his lordship wanted Myrielle at court, in hopes that she might befriend and beguile the king, and thus be chosen on the night of the ball.
"His Grace is protected day and night by the Kingsguard."
When Lady Meredyth made it plain that the queen had overstayed her welcome, Rhaenyra was forced to sell her crown to raise the coin to buy passage on a Braavosi merchantman, the Violande.
It is likely that Septon Barth discussed his suspicions with the king as well.
When battle threatened, he would throw the bones to choose which god to placate with a sacrifice.
Before the year was out, he would sail for Tyrosh, flush with Braavosi gold, to hire ships and swords for an attack on Lys.
In The Testimony of Mushroom, the fool says plainly what few dared say at the time: that there must surely have been another conspirator, lord and master of the rest, the man who set all this in motion from afar, using the others as his catspaws.
"Have you taken leave of your senses?" asked Lord Velaryon.
Though Jaehaerys had hoped for another son to follow him upon the Iron Throne, it was plain that he doted on his daughter from the moment he first took her in his arms.
Hasty marriages were arranged for her sisters in sin.
Plainly, the aging Storm King meant to establish the Targaryens along the Blackwater as a buffer between his own lands and those of Harren the Black.
Ser Raymund's head was delivered to Eastwatch half a year later.
The fleet sailed through the Stepstones.
It is said that Moon staggered through half the camp, lurching from campfire to campfire in pursuit of the doxy who had cut him.
When Jaehaerys asked what could be done, the maester said, "For the queen?
It might have been her thought to seek out her twin sister in Oldtown, or to go seeking after Lady Elissa Farman, who had once promised to take her adventuring.
Obedient to his uncle's entreaties, Lord Ormund Hightower had issued forth from Oldtown with a thousand knights, a thousand archers, three thousand men-at-arms, and uncounted thousands of camp followers, sellswords, freeriders, and rabble, only to find himself set upon by Ser Alan Beesbury and Lord Alan Tarly.
Aegon III was seen about the court more often than had been his wont, and even left the castle on three occasions to show his bride such sights as the city offered (though he refused to take her to the Dragonpit, where Lady Rhaena's young dragon, Morning, made her lair).
Nonetheless, many ambitious king's men coveted Black Harren's mighty seat, with its broad and fertile landsâ¦so many that King Maegor grew weary of their entreaties, and decreed that Harrenhal should go to the strongest of them.
As the Hand of the King, he would be the most powerful man in the realm until Aegon III came of ageâ¦but at the crux he hesitated, weighed down by his vows and his own bastard's honor.
Even the most fervent of Maegor's supporters were won over once they met Jaehaerys, for he was all a prince should be; fair-spoken, open-handed, and as chivalrous as he was courageous.
Did Jeyne Westerling drink the fertility potion that Queen Tyanna supposedly brought her, or throw it in the older woman's face?
The Storming of the Dragonpit was done.
"Make way, you bloody fools," Ser Luthor roared at the Shepherd's lambs.
Silk would be taxed, and samite; cloth-of-gold and cloth-of-silver; gemstones; Myrish lace and Myrish tapestries; Dornish wines (but not wines from the Arbor); Dornish sand steeds; gilded helms and filigreed armor from the craftsmen of Tyrosh, Lys, and Pentos.
"She has no interest in kissing games, nor boys," the queen told Jaehaerys.
Lord Staunton died at Rook's Rest, and then his wife.
Stinger said he'd have their tongues out if they talked.
They would be accompanied by Ser Willis Fell, together with his "precious charge," the eight-year-old Princess Jaehaera, the last living child of King Aegon II and the new king's bride-to-be.
She urged the appointment of one Maester Alfador, presently in service at the Hightower.
The Testimony of Mushroom claims Ser Criston found the young king-to-be drunk and naked in a Flea Bottom rat pit, where two guttersnipes with filed teeth were biting and tearing at each other for his amusement whilst a girl who could not have been more than twelvepleasured his member with her mouth.
"The queen wept when they told her how Ser Lorent died," Mushroom testifies, "but she raged when she learned that Maidenpool had gone over to the foe, that the girl Nettles had escaped, that her own beloved consort had betrayed her, and she trembled when Lady Mysaria warned her against the coming dark, that this night would be worse than the last.
A groom was found abed with Tyshara Lannister not long after the ball had been announced; though Lady Tyshara claimed the lad had climbed in her window uninvited, Grand Maester Munkun's examination revealed her maidenhead was broken.
Lord Rowan decamped within the hour, with all his knights and men-at-arms.
Rhaenyra had taken House Baratheon for granted for too long, his lordship told Aemond.
Gunthor Royce, known in the Vale as the Bronze Giant, was an old man, as stubborn as he was fearless; when Ser Corwyn arrived to winkle Ser Arnold out of his sanctuary, Lord Gunthor donned his ancient bronze armor and rode out to confront him.
From that day to this day, Torrhen Stark is remembered as the King Who Kneltâ¦but no northman left his burned bones beside the Trident, and the swords Aegon collected from Lord Stark and his vassals were not twisted nor melted nor bent.
Milk of the poppy would relieve the queen's pain, he said, and he had a strong draught preparedâ¦but it could kill Her Grace as easily as help her, and would almost certainly kill the child inside her.
Though never officially seated with the queen's small council, the woman now known as Lady Misery became the mistress of whisperers in all but name, with eyes and ears in every brothel, alehouse, and pot shop in King's Landing, and in the halls and bedchambers of themighty as well.
That Ser Byron Swann, second son of the Lord of Stonehelm, had heard this tale we cannot doubt.
A place where no lord may threaten me, banish me, or trouble those I have taken under my protection.
I closed my eyes, but that poor girl in Mole's
Grand Maester Elysar preceded him by half a year.
Aegon II would be found in time, "hiding under some rock," but they could and should bring the war to Aemond and Daeron.
Nor was the town of Tumbleton reprieved.
"You come late to the feast," Prince Jaehaerys reportedly told them, though in a mild tone, "and these same blades helped slay my brother Aegon beneath the Gods Eye."
By this time, even blind beggars in the alleys of Flea Bottom knew that Alysanne and Jaehaerys had been wed, but for the sake of propriety the king and queen slept separately for a moon's turn, whilst preparations were made for their second wedding.
It would be learned later that Lord Corbray had removed her, at the Queen Regent's command.
Her Grace also held a women's court at Gulltown, and a second at the Gates of the Moon; what she heard and learned would change the laws of the Seven Kingdoms.
Rhaena Targaryen pushed through all of them to stand over him, and began to curse him to his face.
As Tom Tangletongue and his ruffians smashed down the door of Lady Baela's bedchamber to take her prisoner, the girl slipped out her window, scrambling across rooftops and down walls until she reached the yard.
When Prince Daemon sent forth his call to arms, they rose up all along the rivers, knights and men-at-arms and humble peasants who yet remembered the Realm's Delight, so beloved of her father, and the way she smiled and charmed them as she made her progress through the riverlands in her youth.
But Queen Rhaenyra rejected the proposal with scorn.
Bloody Ben Blackwood, Kermit Tully, Sabitha Frey, and their brothers-in-victory were preparing to resume their advance upon the city, and only a few days behind them came Lord Cregan Stark and his northmen.
In the last years of her life, the gods dealt Queen Alysanne many cruel blows, as has previously been recounted.
Patricia Redwyne went her one better by declaring that her party had traveled from the Arbor, and had thrice been forced to beat back attacks by outlaws.
The queen's knights at last reclaimed the boy's remains, save for his missing foot, though three of the seven fell in the fighting.
Aegon the Conqueror died of a stroke on Dragonstone in the 37th year After the Conquest.
Orys took up a strong position on the hills south of Bronzegate, and dug in there on the high ground to await the coming of the stormlanders.
Lord Humfrey Bracken and his remaining children had been made captive, along with his third wife and baseborn paramour.
Morever, Alysanne was only two years younger than her brother, and the two children had always been close and strong in their affection and regard for one another.
Jaehaerys kicked his shattered shield away, opened the visor of his helm, laid Blackfyre's point against his eye, and drove it deep.
He did, however, admit to delivering Tyanna of the Tower to King Maegor's hands and standing witness as he slew her, so he had a queen's blood on his hands regardless.)
Aegon III had never shown any carnal interest in either of his queens (understandably in the case of Queen Daenaera, who was yet a child), but Viserys had already consummated his own marriage, as he confided proudly to Grand Maester Munkun during the feast held to welcome him home.
At the opening feast, the queen wore a green gown, whilst the princess dressed dramatically in Targaryen red and black.
As word of the fall of the Houseof Rogare reached Westeros, lords and merchants alike soon realized the coin they had entrusted to the House of Rogare was lost.
Like thousands of other women before her, Queen Alysanne wished to bathe in Jonquil's pool, whose waters were said to have amazing healing properties.
Far from being a joy and a comfort to her as Daenerys was to Alysanne, her own daughter Aerea had become a terror, a willful wild child who defied her septa, her mother, and her maesters alike, abused her servants, absented herself from prayers, lessons, and meals without leave, and addressed the men and womenof Rhaena's court with such charming names as "Ser Stupid," "Lord Pigface," and "Lady Farts-a-Lot."
By twelve, she was like as not to arrive drunk when summoned to the sept for prayer.
In 9 AC, Visenya returned again, this time with Aegon himself flying beside her, and Sandstone, Vaith, and the Hellholt burned.
On a later voyage, he and the Ice Wolf headed north once more, searching for a rumored passage around the top of Westeros, but finding only frozen seas and icebergs big as mountains.
But upon learning of her lord's death in battle, Lady Baratheon named the child Olyver, after her own father.
And everywhere that Rhaena went came Morning, her young dragon, oft as not coiled about her shoulders like a stole.
The notion did not please Lord Alaric; though a strong friend to the Night's Watch, he knew that the lords who presently held the lands in question would object to them being given away without their leave.
Alysanne wept when she heard, for she knew her cause was hopeless.
One, a father of twelve, still had the gold paid him by Lord Harroway for his services.
To no one's surprise, they chose one of their own: Vickon Greyjoy, Lord Reaper of Pyke.
Septon Eustace tells us that the golden dragon devoured the queen in six bites, leaving only her left leg below the shin "for the Stranger."
The Velaryon fleet lost almost a third of its strength.
Sporadic attempts to bring the Dornishmen into the realm continued all through King Aegon's reign and well into the reigns of his sons, making it impossible to fix a precise end date for the Wars of Conquest.
Hearing the cries, Munkun writes, some wept whilst others cheered, but most of the smallfolk stared in silence, confused and wary, and now and again a voice cried out, "Long live our queen."
Alyssa and Daella died in childbed, Viserra drunk in the street.
Instead the victorious king returned to the Red Keep, where he grimly set about getting himself an heir.
At the king's request, his remains were interred on Dragonstone, where he had served so long and so faithfully.
The next day Lord Corlys Velaryon, the Sea Snake, knelt before Queen Alicent as she sat upon the lower steps of the Iron Throne, as proxy for her son, and there pledged the king his loyalty and that of his house.
Half of the Braavosi ships were taken, burned, or sunk whilst still at anchor or tied to a dock, others as they raised sail and tried to get under way.
Queen Alicent alone amongst them was excused from the oath, on account of her womanhood.
Grand Maester Benifer (newly returned from his self-imposed exile in Pentos) wrote that he was "learned as a maester and pious as a septon," and whilst some of that may be discounted as flattery, there was truth to it as well.
Septon Eustace does not note the incident at all in his own chronicle, but years later, in a letter, suggests this dragonslayer hoped to kill Sunfyreâ¦but this is certainly mistaken, since Sunfyre's whereabouts were unknown at this time.
Flying back to the Stepstones afterward, Prince Daemon landed at Driftmark to make a courtesy call upon his erstwhile partner inconquest, the Sea Snake, and his wife, the Princess Rhaenys.
She will be burned, and her ashes interred on Dragonstone beside her sister Daenerys."
In this, as in the matter of Aegon's betrothal to Myrielle Peake, Lord Unwin found himself overruled by the other regents.
Determined to avenge this stain on Dornish honor, the prince planned his own invasion of the Seven Kingdoms.
Rhaena reached out and grabbed his beard and pulled his face to hers.
King Aegon I Targaryen took both of his sisters to wife.
"My mother won't," said Alys Turnberry, but she went as she was told.
Queen Alyssa had surrendered her own maidenhood many years before to Aenys Targaryen, so there could be no question of Lord Rogar deflowering her on their wedding night.
Lordship had fallen to him early, when his father Lord Samwell Blackwood had been slain by Ser Amos Bracken at the Battle of the Burning Mill.
Ulf White, it will be recalled, wished to be granted the great castle of Highgarden with all its lands and incomes, whilst Hard Hugh Hammer desired nothing less than a crown for himself.
Had Baelon ever taken the Iron Throne, Viserys would have followed him without question, but the crown prince's tragic death at the age of four-and-forty muddied the succession.
When she had sent Lord Corlys to the dungeons she had lost her fleet, and she had fled King's Landing in terror of her life, without so much as a coin.
The tent flap was thrown open and the woman burst out, half-naked and barefoot, and dashed away wide-eyed and terrified before any of the Poor Fellows could think to stop her.
The second version is more or less the same, save that the prince was killed with a sword, not a morningstar, and his slayer was not Black Trombo, but some unknown man-at-arms who like as not did not even realize whom he had killed.
After a moon's turn, with Lord Rowan showing little or no signs of improvement, Grand Maester Munkun persuaded the king to relieve him of his office.
His sons and daughters would soar through the skies, Lord Corlys expected, and one day one of them would sit theIron Throne.
Since Queen Visenya had previously gifted her son with Dark Sister, Prince Maegor now possessed both of the ancestral Valyrian steel swords of House Targaryen.
He had slain his nephew, made war against the Faith and the High Septon, defied the gods, committed murder and incest, adultery and rape.
His Grace's long absence from King's Landing had not gone unnoticed by his nephew, and Prince Aegon was quick to seize his chance.
The entry and exit fees that the Lord of Air had once assessed were brought back and tripled.
Fresh from their victory at the Butcher's Ball came Ser Garibald Grey and Longleaf the Lionslayer, with the head of Ser Criston Cole upon a spear, Red Robb Rivers and his archers, the last of the Winter Wolves, and a score of landed knights and petty lords whose lands lay along the banks of the Blackwater, amongst them such men of note as Moslander of Yore, Ser Garrick Hall of Middleton, Ser Merrell the Bold, and Lord Owain Bourney.
"By whose authority?" demanded Aegon.
When King Viserys took Alicent Hightower to wife in 106 AC, House Velaryon was notable for its absence.
The lords and knights of Oldtown and the Reach were offended by the arrogance of the Betrayer's claim, however, and none more so than Prince Daeron Targaryen himself, who grew so wroth that he threw a cup of wine into Hard Hugh's face.
"The last living creature in all the world who saw Valyria in its glory," wrote Septon Barth.
It was the Queen Regent, Alyssa, who first put forward the idea that the remaining five vacancies be filled through test of arms, and what better occasion for it than the wedding, when knights from all over the realm would gather?
Lady Rhaena's twin, Baela, remained on Dragonstone.
In the confusion of battle, none of the survivors seemed quite certain which ship Prince Viserys had been on.
Disinheriting their sons in favor of their daughters would overturn centuries of law and precedent, and call into question the rights of scores of other lords throughout Westeros whose own claims might be seen as inferior to those of elder sisters.
Elissa Farman departed for Driftmark the next morning.
And yet in all of Benifer's writings there is not a single word to be found concerning the return of Aerea Targaryen and her stolen dragon to King's Landing, nor the death of the young princess.
Targaryens did not die of pox or the bloody flux, they were not afflicted with redspots or brownleg or the shaking sickness, they would not succumb to wormbone or clotted lung or sourgut or any of the myriad pestilences and contagions that the gods, for reasons of their own, see fit to loose on mortal men and women.
The marriage would do much and more to tie the realm together by uniting one of the great houses of the North to the Iron Throne, the king declared.
Moreover, at the time of Queen Helaena's death, we have abundant proof that Ser Luthor Largent, the purported killer, was eating with three hundred of his gold cloaks at the barracks by the Gate of the Gods.
The great dome in place at last, the massive bronze gates hung, the cavernous edifice dominated the city from the crown of Rhaenys's Hill, second only to the Red Keep upon Aegon's High Hill.
By that age, her mother had come to realize that it was not Daenerys that she took after, but Baelon.
When Rhaena flew to King's Landing to inform King Jaehaerys of the theft, Androw had offered to accompany her.
The dragons did not, in the end, fight, though there was much hissing and snapping as Rhaena flung herself off Dreamfyre and stormed into Maegor's Holdfast, shouting for her brother and her sister.
The gold she received in return she entrusted to the Iron Bank, and used it to finance the building of the Sun Chaser, the shipshe had dreamed of for many a year.
The first of the wives, with her children, was given over to the charge of Lucamore's brother Bywin, who had been raised to be theLord of Harrenhal not half a year earlier.
This may well be believed, for the thrust was delivered with such force that the spear went out Ser Robert's back, through the featherbed and straw mattress, and into the floor beneath.
Wherever Prince Aemon went, whatever Prince Aemon did, Prince Baelon would not be far behind, as the wags at court oft observed.
In addition, he had acquitted himself well in King's Landing; sensible, knowledgeable, good humored, he was regarded as a great asset to the council.
Then Queen Alysanne took her sister's hand in hers and said, "You are still a young woman.
Ser Marston Waters stood witness as well, clad in a white cloak, for King Aegon had named him to his Kingsguard for his valor.
Aside from Lady Rhaena's hatchling, only three living dragons remained in all of Westeros.
All the treasures the Sea Snake had brought back from the east were consumed by fire, his servants cut down as they tried to flee the flames.
Jon Roxton was as feared for his black temper as for his black blade, the Valyrian steel sword called Orphan-Maker.
Jaehaerys as yet had neither been crowned nor anointed, and was still shy of his majority; his pronouncement therefore had no legal force, nor did he have the authority to overrule his council and regent.
On the last day of the year, two hundred forty-one "barefoot lambs," the Shepherd's most fervid and devoted followers, were covered with pitch and chained to poles along the broad cobbled thoroughfare that ran eastward from Cobbler's Square up to the Dragonpit.
Under torture, he confessed that he had been taking it to Harrenhal, to collect his reward from Prince Daemon.
The princess surely knew that something was amiss when the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and the Commander of the City Watch appeared together to escort her to the throne room.
Androw Farman, Rhaena's new husband, was admitted to their circle from time to time, but never so often as tobe taken for a fifth head.
The castle smallfolk became his captives as well, amongst them a wet nurse named Alys Rivers.
"He would cut you to pieces, my love," she told him, "and were I to be thrice widowed, men would name me a witch or worse and hound me fromWesteros."
Though it was summer and the Wall was weeping, the chill of the ice could still be felt whenever the wind blew, and every gust would make the dragon hiss and snap.
On tourney ground and battlefield, however, Prince Maegor's accomplishments far exceeded those of his brother.
After defeating the Volantenes in the Battle of the Borderland, the three victorious cities had entered into an "eternal alliance," and formed a strong new power: the Triarchy, better known in Westeros as the Kingdom of the Three Daughters (as each of the Free Cities considered itself a daughter of Valyria of old), or, more rudely, the Kingdom of the Three Whores (though this "kingdom" was without a king, being governed by a council of thirty-three magisters).
Lianna Velaryon died even as her uncle's galleys were pushing off from Driftmark.
The Faith had condoned, or at the very least ignored, the marriage of the Conqueror and his sisters, but it was not willing to do the same for their grandchildren.
Lord Tully said, "Do you mean to claim the Iron Throne for yourself, then?"
Yet in King's Landing, whilst accompanying her young nephew Benjicot at court and council, she had met Cregan Stark and conceived a liking for the stern northman.
The Grand Maester was judged to be complicit and sentenced to death.
The Pentoshi feared the growing power of the Triarchy to the south,and saw Daemon as a valuable ally against the Three Daughters.
Any maester who has ever studied the history of Valyria can tell you that.
Lady Elissa had been his closest friend, mayhaps his only friend, Culiper observed, and despite his tearful denials, Rhaena found it hard to accept that he had played no role in the matter of her dragon eggs.
They did no further harm to Queen Helaena or her surviving children, but rather fled with the prince's head in hand.
Bertrand Tyrell, the Lord of Highgarden, was known to be a drunkard, whose unruly bastard sons would bring disgrace down on the Crown if turned loose upon King's Landing.
Why else would he have given Blackfyre to my son?
The Aegon who would be known to history as Aegon the Conquerorand Aegon the Dragon was born on Dragonstone in 27 BC.
The voyage had begun as well as he could have hoped, Ser Eustace said.
Jaehaerysalso felt he should have been consulted about his sister Rhaena's marriage, though he felt that slight less keenly.
A day and a night of labor left Laena Velaryon pale and weak, but finally she gave birth to the son Prince Daemon had so long desiredâbut the babe was twisted and malformed, and died within the hour.
There, before the eyes of tens of thousands, Lord Alyn Oakenfist beheld his daughter, Laena, for the first time.
A thousand years later, ironmen sailing out from Great Wyk were blown off course onto a cluster of rocky islands eight days' sail to the northwest of any known shore.
Another raven took wing for Driftmark, this time with a threat: unless Alyn of Hull presented himself within a fortnight to do homage to his rightful liege, his cousin the Lady Baela would lose her head.
The Lysene admiral divided his fleet for the attack.
When Lord Alyn shouted to his rowers to back them off, the sea rushed into the gaping wound the Queen had made, and the Grand Defiance went down in mere moments, "and with it, the Sealord's swollen pride."
During the Dance of the Dragons, Lord Unwin had been amongst the fiercest of the greens, leading forth a thousand swords and spears to keep Aegon II on the Iron Throne.
The arrival of the king's letter set Lord Rogar and his brothers at odds.
The maesters who labor at the Citadel copying books are rigorously trained to reproduce the original word for word, but few mundane scribes are so disciplined.
King Jaehaerys sent forth his Kingsguard and his household knights to restore order, but they were too few, and he soon had no choice but to call them back.
Lady Coryanne's early history, however, is confirmed in the accounts of the maester who served at the Rain House during her youth.
Nonetheless, thousands came to cheer King Aenys as he claimed his father's seat for his own.
Lord Rogar himself was suspicious of Daemon Velaryon, the lord admiral, a prideful man who might well have believed that the Baratheons were overreaching themselves in hopes of displacing the Lords of the Tide as the second house in the realm.
Hidden by the glare, they took many of Lord Velaryon's galleys unawares, ramming some and swarming aboardothers with ropes and grapnels.
King Aegon also issued decrees regularizing customs, duties, and taxes throughout the realm, whereas previously every port and every petty lord had been free to exact however much they could from tenants, smallfolk, and merchants.
King Maegor listened to each man in turn.
"Our mother, Queen Alyssa, was forty-six when she gave birth to Jocelyn," he pointed out to Grand Maester Elysar.
The Red Keep was still in mourning when the next blow fell, though at the time it seemed an occasion for joy.
Though the Sea Snake had grown old, he liked to say that he was clinging to life "like a drowning sailor clinging to the wreckage of a sunken ship.
Aemon Targaryen died struggling to speak, drowned on his own blood.
Alys Turnberry, who was pregnant, presented a harder case, as Red Roy Connington refused to marry her.
When the day of the wedding finally arrived, more than forty thousand smallfolk ascended the Hill of Rhaenys to the Dragonpit to bear witness to the union of the Queen Regent and the Hand.
Lady Coryanne was carefully watched afterward, but few beyond the walls of the Rain House knew of her shame.
"You were foolish to think youcould hide them from me," Tyanna told the princess.
At a time when theQueen Regent, the King's Hand, and the Faith had all opposed the marriage of Jaehaerys and Alysanne, Oswyck had agreed to perform the rites for them, and his courage had not been forgotten.
Viserys denied the request, but did allow Daemon to return to court, where he sat on the small council, serving as master of coin from 103â 104, and master of laws for half a year in 104.
As dawn broke the next day Lord Burley took Her Grace to the top of the Wall.
All this was done so neatly, swiftly, and quietly that the people of King's Landing had little or no inkling of what was happening behind the walls of the Red Keep.
In 97, the Good Queen saw Baelon's second son, Daemon, take to wife Lady Rhea of House Royce, heir to the ancient castle of Runestone in the Vale.
On his return to King's Landing, he drank a cup of dreamwine and sent for Septon Barth.
Others had started this war, Lord Cregan was heard to say, but he meant to finish it, to continue south and destroy all that remained of the greens who had placed Aegon II on the Iron Throne and fought to keep him there.
King and court remained entirely ignorant of the marriage until a raven from the Rock brought word, days after the wedding feast and the bedding that sealed the match.
The groom was fifteen years of age; a lazy and somewhat sulky boy, Septon Eustace tells us, but possessed of more than healthy appetites, a glutton at table, given to swilling ale and strongwine and pinching and fondling any serving girl who strayed within his reach.
The Kingmaker, Ser Criston Cole, had been brought down, but somewhere in the realm Aegon II, the king he had made, remained alive and free.
Other men took horse in pursuit of Rickard Thorne, shouting, "Murder, treason, murder."
In the chaos that had followed the discovery of Maegor's body, Lord Rosby drank a cup of hemlock to join his king in death.
In the Iron Islands, Goren Greyjoy, Lord Reaper of Pyke, brought "King" Lodos (Second of That Name) to a similar swift end, marshalling a hundred longships to descend on Old Wyk and Great Wyk, where the pretender's followers were most numerous, and putting thousands of them to the sword.
Conspicuous omissions from the council included Kermit Tully, Unwin Peake, Sabitha Frey, Thaddeus Rowan, Lyonel Hightower, Johanna Lannister, and Benjicot Blackwood, but Septon Eustace insists that only Lord Peake was truly angered by his exclusion.)
Prince Nymor's peace proposals encountered strong opposition in King's Landing.
Eager to prove his house's loyalty to the new king, Ser Gyles made short work of the elderly Ser Harrold, and was named Lord Commander of Jaehaerys's Kingsguard soon after.
Mushroom tells us that this famous maiden was in truth a highborn harlot with a voracious appetite for men, and gives us a salacious tale of how she offered Prince Jacaerys the allegiance of the Vale only if he could bring her to her climax with his tongue.
Eight rapers were gelded, then marched naked to the riverside with their genitals hung about their necks, to be put aboard ships for the Wall.
At nightfall, the Shepherd had appeared once more to resume his preaching in Cobbler's Square.
Regardless of the truth of that surmise, at eighteen Rhaena was certainly of an age to marry, three years older than her mother and father had been when they were wed.
Maester Anselm had purged her, bled her, and covered her with ice, all to no avail.
Delighted by the girl'sdaring, Alysanne summoned her own sworn shield, Jonquil Darke, and the wildling and the Scarlet Shadow dueled spear against sword whilst the northmen roared in approval.
Long simmering, the conflict burst into the open on the third day of the third moon of 129 AC, when the ailing, bedridden King Viserys I Targaryen closed his eyes for a nap in the Red Keep of King's Landing and died without waking.
His death is generally accounted as the end of the Second Dornish War, though that is somewhat of a misnomer, since no Dornish lords ever took the field, and Princess Deria continued to vilify the Vulture King until his end and took no part in his campaigns.
The dragon's shriek of rage was heard as far off as Spicetown, even through the clangor of battle.
Neither prayer, sermons, nor readings from The Seven-Pointed Star could shake Alysanne Targaryen's conviction that the gods had meant her to marry her brother Jaehaerys, to be his confidant and helpmate and the mother of his children.
The High Septon's silence spoke loudly, no doubt, and the lords and common folk alike were weary of warâ¦but if words have power, wind or no, surely the Seven Speakers played a part as well.
Uncle and niece began to fly together almost daily, racing Syrax against Caraxes to Dragonstone and back.
A man "as stout as he was slow," Hobert Hightower had lived sixty years without distinguishing himself, yet now he presumed to take command of the host by right of his kinship to Queen Alicent.
Then Septa Maryam sickened, and Alayne Royce, and even big, boisterous Sam Stokeworth, who liked to boast that she had never been sick a day in her life.
Even the shadow city outside the walls of Sunspear was half-deserted, and none of those who remained would admit to any knowledge of the whereabouts of the Dornish lords and princess.
Aboard was an aged fisherman called Tom Tanglebeard, his son Tom Tangletongue, and two "cousins" from Driftmark, left homeless when Spicetown was destroyed.
Still the men of the Free Cities fought onâ¦until a shout rang out, and they looked up to see more winged shapes coming around the Dragonmont and turning toward them.
The very next year, the Grand Maester informed Queen Alysanne that she was once more with child, to her surprise and dismay.
Ser Amaury found his show of defiance more amusing than threatening.
The eldest of the "Four Storms," Lady Cassandra had been briefly betrothed to King Aegon II during the last year of his life (and possibly to his brother Aemond One-Eye before that).
Thus commenced the building of the Dragonpit.
Grand Maester Desmond confined Her Grace to her bed as she grew great with child, and took charge of her care, assisted by two septas, a midwife, and the queen's sisters
When the High Septon told him of the vision vouchsafed him by the Crone, Lord Hightower determined that he would not oppose the Conqueror by force of arms.
Though a dozen birds took wing, not one ever reached the prince; Red Robb Rivers, said to be the finest archer in all Westeros, took them down on the wing.
During her final hour, it is said, Lady Laena rose from her bed, pushed away the septas praying over her, and made her way from her room, intent on reaching Vhagar that she might fly one last time before she died.
Whatever the truth, the death of his first wife left Maegor with but a single queen, the black-haired, black-hearted Pentoshi woman Tyanna, mistress of the spiders, who was hated and feared by all.
Mushroom tells us that the Sea Snake grumbled at this, insisting that the three boys were Velaryons, yet he smiled as he said it, with pride in his voice.
Where did Aerea Targaryen go after fleeing Dragonstone?
Meanwhile, a very different story was playing out to the east, where Jacaerys Velaryon descended upon the Eyrie on his young dragon, Vermax, to win the Vale of Arryn for his mother.
Munkun tells us the king flew thrice around the city before landing inside the walls of the Red Keep.
On the seventh day of the 59th year after Aegon's Conquest, a battered ship came limping up the Whispering Sound to the port of Oldtown.
Androw rode passably well, and from time to time would have a horse saddled so he might trot about the yard, but he never passed beyond the gates to explore the Dragonmont's rocky paths or the far side of the island, nor even the fishing village and docks beneath the castle.
He even flew Vermithor to the Arbor, where he sampled some of that island's choicest wines.
The Stepstones, the chain of rocky islands between Dorne and the Disputed Lands of Essos, had long been a haunt of outlaws, exiles, wreckers, and pirates.
A second Dornish army under Ser Joffrey Dayne came down from Starfall and attacked the city.
At Rosby, she found the castle gates barred at her approach, by the command of the young woman whose claim she had passed over in favor of a younger brother.
In 129 AC, it will be recalled that Queen Rhaenyra had sent her two youngest sons to Pentos to keep them from harm's way, only to have the ship taking them across the narrow sea sail into the teeth of a war fleet from the Triarchy.
(As it happened, the youngest of Lord Rogar's brothers remained unwed as of 49 AC, and his lordship had two nephews by another brother who were also of a suitable age and lineage to be considered potential mates for a Targaryen widow, facts which might well explain both the Hand's anger and the secrecy with which Queen Rhaena wed.)
Ser Marston had several hundred men within the Red Keep, and Ser Lucas Leygood's gold cloaks numbered more than two thousand.
King Perceon's son Gwayne took Lord Lorimar's daughter as his bride as well, making her the seventh Peake maiden to sit beneath the Green Hand as Queen of All the Reach.
When Ormund Hightower fell at Tumbleton, Lord Unwin believed command of his host should have come to him, but this was denied him by scheming rivals.
The babe was named Corlys, after the great-great-uncle who had served so nobly as the Lord Commander of the first Kingsguard, but in the years to come the people of Westeros would come to know this new Corlysbetter as the Sea Snake.
In 116 AC, in the Free City of Pentos, Lady Laena gave birth to twin daughters, Prince Daemon's first trueborn children.
The trouble might have ended there, with talk, but soon thereafter a series of disasters befell the realm and royal family, each following hard upon the heels of the other, until even men who mocked the gods, like Mushroom, beganto question whether the Seven had turned against House Targaryen and the Seven Kingdoms in their wroth.
King Viserys, doubtless pleased to be rid of his troublesome brother, supported his efforts with regular infusions of gold, and by 109 AC Daemon Targaryen and his army of sellswords and cutthroats controlled all but two of the islands, and the Sea Snake's fleets had taken firm control of the waters between.
Richard Rodden had taken an arrow to the neck and would die the next day.
Out in the Sunset Sea, the longships of the Red Kraken fell upon Fair Isle, sweeping from one end of the island to the other whilst Lord Farman sheltered behind his walls sending out pleas for help that never came.
She listened, she heard, and she won the eternal devotion of the men of the Night's Watch by her actions.
All the great lords of Westeros, and many lesser lords and landed knights, relied upon maesters trained in the Citadel of Oldtown to serve their households as healers, scribes, and counselors, to breed and train the ravens who carried their messages (and write and read those messages for lords who lacked those skills), help their stewards with the household accounts, and teach their children.
There were even some who whispered that it was Queen Rhaena who had somehow contrived to free the realm from Maegor the Cruel, though by what means she might have arranged his death after fleeing King's Landing on her dragon, Dreamfyre, has never been successfully established.
If he was defeated or driven back, so be itâ¦but before he went, he swore to burn a hundred towns and raze a hundred castles, so the stormlanders might know that they could never again march into the Red Mountains with impunity.
With both his trueborn children dead, by law his lands and titles should pass to his eldest grandson, Jacaerysâ¦but since Jace would presumably ascend the Iron Throne after his mother, Princess Rhaenyra urged her good- father to name instead her second son, Lucerys.
Amidst the chaos that followed, Magister Bambarro thought it prudent to keep his prize hidden away for the nonce, lest the boy be wrestedaway by one of his fellow Lyseni, or rivals from another city.
If we discount the tales of certain sorcerers and mountebanks (as we should), he is mayhaps the only living creature in the world that knew Valyria before the Doom.
Tens of thousands packed the streets cheering Aegon and Jaehaera as they were carried in an open litter up to the Red Keep, where the prince was crowned with a circlet of yellow gold, simple and unadorned, and proclaimed Aegon of House Targaryen, the Third of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, and Lord of the Seven Kingdoms.
These are the names of Aegon's Seven, as written in the White Book of the Kingsguard: Ser Richard Roote; Ser Addison Hill, Bastard of Cornfield; Ser Gregor Goode; Ser Griffith Goode, his brother; Ser Humfrey the Mummer; Ser Robin Darklyn, called Darkrobin; and Ser Corlys Velaryon, Lord Commander.
Lord Mallister pronounced him wise beyond his years, whilst Lord Darry said he promised to be "the sort of king any lord should be proud to kneel to."
Archmaester Crey, writing at the Citadel in the last years of King Jaehaerys's long reign, believed that the meeting at the inn was a clumsy calumny intended to blacken the name of Lord Rogar, and went so far as to attribute the lie to Ser Borys Baratheon himself, who quarreled bitterly with his brother in later life.
It fell to her sister Alyssa, at thirteen three years Vaegon's elder, to pour a flagon of wine over his head.
At the other end of the Street of the Sisters, Gaemon Palehair's queerkingdom blossomed atop Visenya's Hill.
We had lost all sight of Sun Chaser by then, all that remained was my lady and the Moon.
Ellyn Baratheon asked His Grace if he liked her gown (her sister later put it about that her question was, "Do you like my breasts?"
Another casualty was the Dragonpit; the Crown no longer had the funds to pay the builders, and all work on the great dome ceased.
Aemond One-Eye rode Vhagar, and the peril posed by Queen Visenya's mount could not be gainsaid.
Not long after the completion of the castle, Queen Ceryse was stricken with a sudden illness and passed away.
During the Conquest, it was Velaryon ships that carried Aegon's soldiers across Blackwater Bay, and later formed the greater part of the royal fleet.
Instead King Viserys sent him into exile, never to return to the Seven Kingdoms on pain of death.
Through thecity's darkest days, Ser Tyland had remained in the Tower of the Hand, striving day and night against the Stranger.
Lord Borros found the city walls unmanned, the gates undefended, the streets and squares empty save for corpses.
Ser Walton Towers emerged victorious, and Maegor named him Lord of Harrenhalâ¦but the melee had been a savage affray, and Ser Walton did not live long enough to enjoy his lordship, dying of his wounds within the fortnight.
It must not be thought that the queen's days and nights at Castle Black were entirely taken up with such idle pursuits.
Long leagues to the north, in a castle overlooking the Bay of Crabs, another lord found himself sliding down a sword's edge as well.
He praised her beauty, declaring her to be the fairest maid in all the Seven Kingdoms.
Though born within a decade of one another, it would be hard to conceive of four siblings so different from one another as these younger children of Jaehaerys and Alysanne.
Moreover, six other dragons made their lairs in the smoky caverns of the Dragonmont above the castle.
Afterward Ser Eustace had changed course, making for the Summer Islands, which he figured to be their nearest landfall.
Those with fewer mouths to feed fared better in the dark days, so it had long been the custom in the North for old men, younger sons, the unwed, the childless, the homeless, and the hopeless to leave hearth and home when the first snows fell, so that their kin might live to see another spring.
She was here for the Iron Throne, she reminded Lord Burley, and many an afternoon was spent with him and his officers discussing the wildlings, the Wall, and the needs of the Watch.
Unlike his uncle Maegor, he was not prone to bursts of rage, but he was more than capable of anger, and he would never forget nor forgive his deliberate exclusion from the council meetings wherein his marriage and that of his sister were being discussed.
What might have happened next no man can say, had not Queen Alyssa chosen that moment to speak.
The queen explained the king's command to Daella gently but firmly, and offered her a choice of three suitors, each of whom was eager for her hand.
Most of those attending came from the crownlands, the riverlands, the stormlandsâ¦and the Vale, where Lord Oakenfist and Bloody Ben Blackwood had at last forced the Gilded Falcon, the Mad Heir, the Bronze Giant, and all their supporters to bend the knee and do homage to Joffrey Arryn as their liege (Gunthor Royce, Quenton Corbray, and Isembard Arryn were amongst those accompanying Lord Alyn to the gathering, along with Lord Arryn himself).
Lord Lyonel had studied at the Citadel as a youth, earning six links of his chain before deciding that a maester's life was not for him.
The news of this monstrous dragonbirth and its bloody aftermath were greatly troubling to King Aegon, and soon led to angry words between His Grace and his brother.
Aegon the Conqueror had fathered no daughters, however, so these matters did not come to a head at once.
Though he sat at Queen Rhaena's side during meals, he did not share her bed.
Queen Alysanne said she did not care, and so it came to pass that she held her women's court amongst the whores and strumpets of Mole's Townâ¦and there heard certain tales that would change the Seven Kingdoms forever.
More rivermen turned up the next day, led by Ser Garibald Grey, Lord Jon Charlton, and the new Lord of Raventree, the eleven-year-old Benjicot Blackwood.
Blackfyre was burned with the king, but retrieved by Maegor afterward, its blade darker but elsewise unharmed.
As the 58th year after Aegon's Conquest drew to a close, King Jaehaerys celebrated the tenth anniversary of his coronation at the Starry Sept of Oldtown.
A cloud of ravens rose from the Red Keep, summoning the poisoned king's remaining loyalists in Oldtown, the Reach, Casterly Rock, and Storm's
Even on Dragonstone, long Queen Rhaenyra's seat and stronghold, they found many who misliked the queen for reasons both good and ill.
From there he and his retinue moved on to Riverrun, Acorn Hall, Pinkmaiden, Atranta, and Stoney Sept.
A fortnight later, in the Reach, Ormund Hightower found himself caught between two armies.
At the center of the merriment, cherished and adored by all, was their only surviving child, Princess Rhaenyra, the little girl the court singers dubbed "the Realm's Delight."
And here the tale grows even more tangled, for the identity of the man at the inn is a matter of some dispute, even amongst those who accept A Caution for Young Girls to contain a modicum of truth.
Scores of new ships were built and launched, and Lord Oakenfist's mother greatly expanded her own trading fleets, and began work on a palatial manse overlooking the harbor that Mushroom dubbed the Mouse House.
With the Grand Maester's support (Munkun would later come to rue his acquiescence), Unwin Peake then set aside all of the king's appointments and arrangements, on the grounds that no boy of twelve had the judgment to decide such weighty matters himself.
Though the Wars of Conquest were said to have ended when Aegon was crowned and anointed by the High Septon in the Starry Sept of Oldtown, not all of Westeros had yet submitted to his rule.
If the ironmen prevailed, the power of House Velaryon would be broken for good and all, and Lord Peake need never again suffer the insolence of the boy called Oakenfist.
The Targaryens waited until the Two Kings sounded their trumpets and started forward beneath a sea of banners.
Some have put forward the suggestion that the widowed queen took Androw for her husband in part to repay his father for that kindness, for Lord Farman, himself a second son who had never expected to rule, was known to have great fondness for Androw, despite his deficiences.
Born in 7 AC to Aegon's younger wife, Rhaenys, the boy was small at birth and sickly.
No doubt that was why His Grace seized eagerly on the solution offered by Archmaester Vaegon.
Sharis Footly, widow of Tumbleton, made so bold as to nominate herself.
"The Old King would never have asked this of any man of honor."
Unwilling to risk the king's wroth, his lordship dispatched a dozen of his own swiftest ships to chase down Alys Westhill and his grandsons, but one by one they straggled back to port, defeated.
It was a different sort of music that Sandoq the Shadow played at the gates of Maegor's Holdfast, as Ser Amaury's guardsmen rushed at him with sword and spear.
Cassandra Baratheon's high birth spared her the same punishment; she was, after all, the late Lord Borros's eldest child and sister to the present Lord of Storm's End, and had once been betrothed to King Aegon II.
Save perhaps for Good Queen Alysanne, the wife of King Jaehaerys I, no other queen in the history of the Seven Kingdoms ever exercised as much influence over policy as the Dragon's sisters.
No similar gesture was made to Alyn Velaryon, but of course there was no question of such a boy of his years, and of such uncertain lineage, serving as lord admiral.
Whilst his brothers, Roggerio and Lotho, were both fluent in the Common Tongue, Moredo's grasp of the language was limited at best, and the wisdom of putting a Lyseni in command of an army of Westerosi knights was widely questioned.
""He was better with roads than with daughters," Grand Maester Elysar would write later, in his customary waspish style.
On the morning the North Star was to sail, however, a count of the condemned revealed a man was missing.
Ser Willam had been the last to fall, it was said.
Upon seeing that resistance was hopeless, the Dowager Queen Alicent emerged from Maegor's Holdfast with her father, Ser Otto Hightower; Ser Tyland Lannister; and Lord Jasper Wylde the Ironrod (Lord Larys Strong was not with them.
Several of the regents, outraged, urged Ser Tyland to appeal to the High Septon for an annulment, but the Hand's own response was one of bemused resignation.
Most of what King's Landing knew of northmen they had learned from Ser Medrick Manderly and his brother Ser Torrhen; courtly men, well-spoken, handsomely clad, well disciplined, and godly.
Lady Jeyne of House Westerling had been married to
During that long night, Septon Eustace tells us, the Shepherd held sway over half the city, whilst strange lords and kings of misrule squabbled o'er the rest.
Nor would Flowers have felt the need to ask their business with the little queen, not if they said they came at the Hand's behest.
As Argilac the Arrogant gathered his swords at Storm's End, pirates from the Stepstones descended on the shores of Cape Wrath to take advantage of their absence, and Dornish raiding parties came boiling out of the Red Mountains to sweep across the marches.
Hundreds of men gathered round Wat the Tanner, who rode through the streets on a white horse, brandishing Lord Celtigar's severed head and bloody genitals and declaring an end to all taxes.
Alysanne did not choose these companions for herself; they were selected for her by her mother, Queen Alyssa, and they came and went with some frequency, to ascertain that the princess did not grow too fond of any of them.
âI came alone,' I told him, then foreswore myself, declaring falsely that neither his lordship nor any other man of Maidenpool knew what was written on the parchment.
Lord Donnel's grandson was gaunt and sun-burned, with lines on his face that had not been there when he sailed.
Whilst King's Landing quailed in terror, the foes they feared had yet to advance a foot toward the city, for King Aegon's loyalists found themselves leaderless, beset by division, conflict, and doubt.
Many thought that King Aegon would make Oldtown his royal seat after the wars were done, whilst others thought he would rule from Dragonstone, the ancient island citadel of House Targaryen.
The death of her son Lucerys had been a crushing blow to a woman already broken by pregnancy, labor, and stillbirth.
Lord Jon Rosby was named Castellan of Sunspear and Warden of the Sands, to rule Dorne in the king's name.
Purportedly she ended her life as a septa in the Starry Sept, where she set down this story of her life to warn other young maids not to do as she had done.
The War for the White Cloaks marked the end of the festivities of what soon became known as the Golden Wedding.
Yet nowhere on that field of ashes, littered with the bodies of brave men and the burned and bloated carcasses of a hundred horses, did Lord Manfryd find King Aegon's dragon.
She had been returning from Pentos to Old Volantis when a storm drove her off course, her crew saidâ¦but to this common song of peril at sea, the Volantenes added a queer note.
Given the traditions and practices of House Targaryen, a match between his two eldest children must have seemed the obvious course to King Aenys.
At the king's command, the chain that Princess Rhaenyra had torn from Grand Maester Orwyle's neck and given to Gerardys was now used to hang him.
Ultimately he succeeded, though Racallio kept him for more than a fortnight in his sprawling wooden fortress on Bloodstone.
Cowed, they gave way, and agreed to join their own power to Lord Stark's when he marched against Storm's
Burley was apologetic for the quality of the food and drink presented to the queen, and the rudeness of the accommodations at Castle Black.
When Septon Mattheus attempted to send word of the match to the High Septon and Most Devout in Oldtown, Grand Maester Benifer burned his letter rather than dispatch a raven, on orders from the Hand.
TheDowager Queen Visenya advised him that he had but two choices; he must abandon the marriage and find new matches for his son and daughter or mount his dragon, Quicksilver, to fly to Oldtown to burn the Starry Sept down around the High Septon's head.
Lord Alyn was anxious to take on provisions and depart on his long voyage home, but the westermen were loath to see him go.
A modest sept opened on the Blackwater, in the hull of an old cog, followed by a stouter one of daub-and-wattle on the shore.
He looked about at the seven Kingsguard standing beneath the Iron Throne in their long white cloaks and shining scale, and said, "Which of these old men do you mean for me to fight?"
So ravens were sent to Dragonstone, where the eggs of the Targaryen dragons, some so old they had turned to stone, were kept under guard in undervaults and cellars.
Some called him craven for keeping Westeros out of the Daughters' War and doing so little to curb the Greyjoys in the west.
Neither seemed to have the makings of a queen; their own mother, Queen Rhaena, conceded as much when she agreed that the crown should go to her brother Jaehaerys rather than her daughters.
The widowed queen was even compelled to join the other ladies of the court in disrobing His Grace and escorting him to the nuptial chamber to consummate his marriage, a bedding ceremony presided over by the king's second wife, Alys Harroway.
"I had hoped my lady sister might come home to do her duty once she fled from you," Lord Franklyn said, "but we have had no word of her, nor of yourdaughter.
Lord Borros led the charge himself, forming his knights into a wedge and thundered down the road at the heart of the foe, where the silver trout of Riverrun floated on its blue and red banner beside the quartered arms of the dead queen.
Half a dozen men (and one woman) would later claim to have dealt the dragon the mortal blow (like his master, Tyraxes suffered further indignity even in death, as the Shepherd's followers sliced the membranes from his wings and tore them into ragged strips to fashion dragonskin cloaks).
The next day, outside the smoking ruins of Harrenhal, King Aegon accepted an oath of fealty from Edmyn Tully, Lord of Riverrun, and named him Lord Paramount of the Trident.
When she was found some years later, after the end of the Dance of the Dragons, Prince Aemond's armored bones remained chained to her saddle, with Dark Sister thrust hilt-deep through his eye socket.
With Driftmark and Dragonstone so close, Daemon and Laena oft visited with the princess, and her with them.
"And as her lord husband Prince Daemon escorted her from the hall, cuts were seen upon Her Grace's legs and the palm of her left hand," wrote Eustace.
At Castle Darry, he was joined by Ser Damon Darry with a like number.
Munkun refers to this period as the Rogare Ascendency, but that term was only ever used at Oldtown, amongst the maesters and archmaesters of the Citadel.
With the somber young king and his stern Hand looking down from the battlements, the King's Justice set to work.
Harren the Red had put Lord Gargon's servants to the sword and taken his band into the woods.
Ser Criston's vanguard fought and won a short, sharp battle against Ser Oswald Wode and the Lords Darry and Roote on the lakeshore, but met no other opposition.
"I have the dragon's bastard in me," the woman said, as she stood naked in the godswood with one hand upon her swollen belly.
Through piney woods and mist-shrouded hills they hastened, to Rook's Rest, where their sudden appearance took the garrison by surprise.
Amongst those he named were the late Ser Amaury Peake and Ser Mervyn Flowers of the Kingsguard, Tessario the Tiger, Septon Bernard, Ser Gareth Long, Ser Victor Risley, Ser Lucas Leygood of the gold cloaks with six of the seven captains of the city gates, and even three of the queen's ladies.
With the city, castle, and throne in her possession, defended by no fewer than six dragons, Rhaenyra felt secure enough to send for her sons.
Mayhaps his lordship thought he could bend his fellow regents to his will by threatening to resign as King's Hand.
On the fifteenth day of the sixth moon of 50 AC, she departed Dragonstoneunder the cover of night in the company of Ser Howard Bullock, the younger son of the commander of the castle garrison.
Caught between these two foes, Lefford hesitated to move against either, for fear of the other falling on his rear.
To take his place upon the council, Lord Rowan turned to Ser Corwyn Corbray, Lady Rhaena's husband.
Jaehaerys gave a eulogy nonetheless, addressing a huge crowd of septons, maesters, and smallfolk in the plaza.
End his lady wife gave birth to the sonand heir that Lord Borros had so long desired.
On the twenty-eighth day after the Trial of Seven, a ship arrived from Pentos upon the evening tide, carrying two women and six hundred sellswords.
A feast was held to celebrate, and all rejoiced at the birth of this new princeâ¦save mayhaps for his year-and-a-half-old brother, Aegon, who was discovered hitting the babe with the dragon's egg that had been placed inside the cradle.
Flying Tessarion ahead of the main column, Prince Daeron had proved invaluable as a scout, warning Lord Ormund of enemy movements.
Only then was King Jaehaerys free to fly north with Vermithor.
The Queen Regent, no less than her husband, wished to have the king's rash marriage undone, for she was convinced that word of it would once again set the Faith against the Crown.
But Prince Aemon had a child: his daughter, Rhaenys, born in 74 AC, had grown into a clever, capable, and beautiful young woman.
And when it was announced that Lord Rogar and Queen Alyssa were to marry, the whispers grew louderâ¦for what is a queen's lord husband, if not a king?
Three moons before she was due, Queen Jeyne was brought to bed by a sudden onset of labor pains, and was delivered of a stillborn child as monstrous as the one Alys Harroway had birthed, a legless and armless creature possessed of both male and female genitalia.
Queen Alysanne's travels began in the city of White Harbor, where tens of thousands of northerners turned out to cheer her and gape at Silverwing with awe, and a bit of terror.
One of the chief pillars of support for Rhaenyra's claim was her consort, yet Prince Daemon represented one of her greatest weaknesses as well.
Yet was fear of Vhagar the only reason Prince Daemon kept Nettles close to him?
Sandoq tore Viserys's battleaxe from the wood where the prince had buried it and split Ser Amaury's head and helm in half from crest to gorget.
The justiciar Lord Albin Massey spoke up then, saying, "There ismore to the first night than lust, Your Grace.
Though forbidden to leave the grounds of Bambarro's manse, he had his own suite of rooms, shared meals with the magister and his family, had tutors to instruct him in languages, literature, mathematics, history, and music, even a master-at-arms to teach him swordsmanship, at which art he soon excelled.
The silent sisters were sent for, to prepare the corpse for burning, and riders went forth on pale horses to spread the word to the people of King's Landing, crying "King Viserys is dead, long live King Aegon."
Saera was still in Lys, she knew from their reports, still at the pleasure garden.
When Ser Criston left the lake behind, striking out overland for the Blackwater, he found them waiting atop a stony ridge; three hundred mounted knights in armor, as many longbowmen, three thousand archers, three thousand ragged rivermen with spears, hundreds of northmen brandishing axes, mauls, spiked maces, and ancient iron swords.
With winter holding the realm in its icy grip, the queen once again chose caution and retired to Dragonstone for her lying in.
"Flush with victory, they wanted more," he writes in the True Telling.
Septa Edyth was slashed across the face, Prudence Celtigar stabbed through the shoulder, whilst Rosamund Ball took a dagger in the belly that, three days later, proved to be the death of her, but none of the murderous blades touched the queen.
To the end he clung to the boy he had sworn to defend, until a washerwoman called Willow Pound-Stone tore the weeping prince from his arms.
Silverwing last carried her into the sky in 93 AC.
There the Pentoshi queen made a full confession, even as the king's torturers readied their implements: she had poisoned Jeyne Westerling's child in the womb, just as she had Alys Harroway's.
At that moment Aegon III himself stepped from the holdfast gate to stand beside his brother.
If House Velaryon would send its ships to Gulltown, Lady Jeyne wrote, she would dispatch an army to Duskendale at once.
It is written that the young king and queen were seldom apart during that time, sharing every meal, talking late into the night of the green days of their childhood and the challenges ahead, fishing and hawking together, mingling with the island's smallfolk in dockside inns, reading to one another from dusty leatherbound tomes they found in the castle library, taking lessons together from Dragonstone's maesters ("for we still have much to learn," Alysanne is said to have reminded her husband), praying beside Septon Oswyck.
King's Landing was an endless round of feasts, balls, and tourneys, where mummers and singers heralded the birth of each new Targaryen princeling.
On the fourth day Grand Maester Munkun appeared together with Ser Marston.
From the very start we have asked, Where did Aerea take Balerion?
Alysanne Targaryen, ever desirous of binding the Seven Kingdoms closer together, saw an opportunity in Lord Theomore's famously large family, and promptly set about arranging marriages.
Though Prince Joffrey was known to her by sight and scent, a familiar presence whose fumbling at her chains excited no alarm, the great yellow she-dragon wanted no part of him astride her.
Only then did Rhaena Targaryen mount Dreamfyre to fly to the Red Keep and inform her brother of what had transpired.
Aegon knew that the Reach, the stormlands, and the marches had suffered grievously during the fighting, and would neither forgive nor forget.
Seven days after the body of the little queen was consigned to the flames, Lord Unwin paid a call upon the grieving king, accompanied by Grand Maester Munkun, Septon Bernard, and Marston Waters of the Kingsguard.
It was always intended that Lady Larra should die together with her brothers, he said, so Viserys would be free to take a proper Westerosi queen.
So firm was she in her belief, and so gentle and kindly and loving in all else, that the septa and the other Wise Women found they could not condemn her, and with every passing day they clove more to her side.
Yet it must be said that he served Rhaenyra's son well and faithfully as Hand.
During the third moon of her confinement, however, Lady Alys began to bleed heavily from the womb and lost the child.
On her deathbed, her ladyship dictated a last testament, naming her cousin Ser Joffrey Arryn as her heir.
He lighted briefly at Sisterton, where Lord Borrell and Lord Sunderland did obeisance to him and pledged him the support of the Three Sisters, then flew on to White Harbor, where Lord Desmond Manderly met with him in his Merman's Court.
Such was the sad end of Ronnel Arryn, who had flown thrice about the Giant's Lance on dragonback.
When the septon had completed his recitation, Ser Marston Waters said, "Lord Rowan has confessed to all these crimes," and beckoned to the Lord Confessor, George Graceford, to bring the prisoner forward.
And the pious would oppose the girl bitterly, for it was known that the Tyroshi kept not the Seven, but worshipped Red R'hllor, the Patternmaker, three-headed Trios, and other queer gods.
The men that King Jaehaerys had sent to investigate the great beast prowling the hills north of Pentos were all dead.
Others argued it might be no wider than the Summer Sea where it stretched from the Arbor to Great Moraq; a tremendous distance, to be sure, but one that a bold captain might hope to navigate with the right ship.
Lord Regent or no, Unwin Peake was not so mad as to imagine he could safely harm the hero of the Stepstones.
End, they had barely half as many men as had marched with them two years before to topple Maegor.
Queen Rhaenyra had offered a great reward for his return, some recalled, but King's Landing was long leagues away.
Some might think it queer for Lord Peake to send off the largest fleet in the Seven Kingdoms whilst war with Braavos threatened.
Whether King Viserys was ever informed of these incidents we do not know, but Princess Rhaenyra and her sons returned to their own seat on Dragonstone the next morning.
His mother, irrepressible as ever, took the babe into the sky on Meleys within a fortnight of his birth, just as she had done with his brother, Viserys.
Marq Ambrose suggested that they take the city first, then dispose of White and Hammer after victory had been secured, but Richard Rodden insisted such a course would be dishonorable.
Princess Aerea had known Vermithor and Silverwing during her time at court, but she had never been allowed too close to them.
Travelers who turned up at the gates of Harrenhal in hope of hospitality were given bread and salt and the privilege of a night's shelter during those years, but not the honor of the queen's company.
After them the lordship passed to their son Maegon, his brother Aerys, and Aerys's sons, Aelyx, Baelon, and Daemion.
An envoy from the Iron Bank of Braavos, sent to Oldtown to treat with Martyn Hightower, the new Lord of the Hightower and voice of Oldtown (his father, Lord Manfred, having died a few moons earlier), wrote home to say that the High Septon was "the true king of Westeros, in all but name."
The gates of King's Landing were strengthened at his command, so they might better be able to resist attacks from within the city walls as well as without.
Septon Eustace tells us that a "strange euphoria" took hold of King's Landing; Mushroom simply says that "half the city was drunk."
Ser Medrick Manderly, leading a hundred White Harbor men, did the same for the area northeast of Aegon's High Hill, down to the Iron Gate.
The Westeros of Aegon's youth was divided into seven quarrelsome kingdoms, and there was hardly a time when two or three of these kingdoms were not at war with one another.
Before Aegon the Conqueror and his sisters had come ashore from Dragonstone, only a modest fishing village stood on the three hills where the Blackwater Rush flowed into Blackwater Bay.
Her husband, Prince Daemon, carried her back to her bed.
Then he left the battlements, and no words of Marston Waters could induce him to return that day, or the next, or the next.
Prince Daemon proposed that the former be wed to Hard Hugh the blacksmith's son (who had taken to calling himself Hugh Hammer), the latter to Ulf the Sot (now simply Ulf White), keeping their lands black whilst suitably rewarding the seeds for their valor in battle.
By taking the girl to wife, the king could heal the rift that had grown up between the Iron Throne and Driftmark, Runciter pointed out.
(It is said that Aenys requested that his brother return Blackfyre, to whichPrince Maegor replied, "Your Grace is welcome to try and take her from me.")
Prince Baelon had another cause for celebration as well.
At their head rode the Lord of Barrowton, Roderick Dustin, a warrior so old and hoary men called him Roddy the Ruin.
His Grace seemed to take a new interest in his studies, and Mushroom was oft summoned to entertain the king and queen at supper ("The sound of the queen's laughter was like music to this fool, so sweet that even the king was known to smile").
Sabitha Frey would host them at the Twins, they would call upon Lord Benjicot at Raventree Hall, and of course if they visited the Blackwoods they must needs spend the same amount of time with the Brackens.
The feasters were men who had fallen in the Fishfeed, skulls grinning under rusted helms as their green and rotted flesh sloughed off their bones.
But if indeed the Faceless Men had done these deeds, at whose bidding had they acted?
In 5 AC, King Aegon, feeling that the realm might benefit from such wisdom, asked the Conclave to send him one of their own number to advise and consult with him on all matters relating to the governance of the realm.
But somewhere east of the Hellholt amidst the red sands, Tyrell and his entire army disappeared.
The smallfolk of King's Landing, who not a year before had slaughtered every dragon in the city, now became rapturous at the sight of one.
In the Sept of Remembrance, the Warrior's Sons prayed as well, and argued about their course.
She found consolation in her ladies instead, in old friends like Samantha Stokeworth and Alayne Royce, and newer companions like her cousin Lianna Velaryon, Lord Staunton's pretty daughter Cassella, and young Septa Maryam.
"Sandoq is no beast," he answered from the battlements.
For a time Harrenton was the fourth city in the realm; only Oldtown, King's Landing, and Lannisport were larger.
Dreamfyre was a slender, pale blue she-dragon with silvery markings who had already produced two clutches of eggs, and Rhaena had been riding her since the age of twelve.
Maids had brushed her hair and drawn her baths, whilst singers composed odes to her beauty and knights jousted for her favor.
Whether or not the fever had been born in the dark forests of Ib and brought to Westeros by a whaler, as the Sistermen believed, it was assuredly moving from port to port.
Shouts rang through the hall.
Viserys had granted him the authority to rule over the Seven Kingdoms, and "until such time as our new king is crowned," that rule would continue.
Racallio overran the islands in a trice and put the reigning King of the Narrow Sea to deathâ¦only to decide to claim his crown for himself, betraying the Archon and his native city.
All of these tellings overlook the presence of the castle garrison, however; such records as have come down to us indicate that twenty archers and as many guardsmen were stationed on Dragonstone at this time, under the command of Ser Merrell Bullock and his sons Alyn and Howard.
And whilst he would always remain grateful to Rogar Baratheon for helping him to the Iron Throne, Jaehaerys did not intend to be ruled by him.
The final line in the history of the woeful reign of King Aegon II Targaryen had been written.
Vermithor had been flying no more than twenty feet above the battle when Seasmoke slammed into him from above, driving him shrieking into the mud.
By the time they reached the Hill of Rhaenys, their numbers had doubled.
A creature of immense appetites, a glutton and a drunkard renowned for his lechery, Moon lay each night with a different woman, impregnating so many of them that his acolytes began to say that his seed could make a barren woman fertile.
No true son or daughter of the Seven would ever bow to such, he thundered.
An even larger expense loomed ahead; Lord Rogar was determined to complete work on the Dragonpit before handing the city and the kingdom over to Jaehaerys, but the funds were lacking.
Prince Aenys was thirty years of age at his father's death, Prince Maegor five-and-twenty.
The king recognized and appreciated the virtues of the Hand, but he was aware of his flaws as well, flaws that had become very apparent in the days leading up to the Golden Wedding, when Jaehaerys himself had sat in audience with the lords of the realm whilst Lord Rogar was hunting, drinking, and deflowering maidens.
His wife, the beautiful young woman who had walked arm in arm with him from the Lady Baela, was nineteen, seven years his senior.
From Winterfell, Cregan Stark wrote to say that he would bring a host south as soon as he could, but warned that it would take some time to gather his men "for my realms are large, and with winter upon us, we must needs bring in our last harvest, or starve when the snows come to stay."
"The city was his, to do with as he wished," Septon Eustace says.
Grand Maester Munkun, who served him for a good part of his reign, calls him the Broken King, which fits him even better.
With their own wedding now safely behind them, the Queen Regent and the King's Hand next turned their attention to finding a suitable match for King Jaehaerysâ¦and, to a lesser extent, for his sister Princess Alysanne.
Even before Vhagar's wings were sighted, Lord Hightower's men were rousting the Most Devout from their beds and marching them to the Starry Sept at spearpoint to choose a new High Septon.
The young king faced a score of problems when he assumedthe rule of the Seven Kingdoms, but two loomed larger than all the rest: the treasury was empty and the Crown's debt was mounting, and his "secret" marriage, which grew less secret with every passing day, sat like a jar of wildfire on a hearth, waiting to explode.
After the destruction of the Stars, the realm's byways became more dangerous than ever.
It might have been thought that Moon's men would turn to the two lords amongst them for leadership, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Could the Black Dread have flown as far as Astapor to be the âdragon' in the pit?
The youngest of the four, Princess Viserra, had a will of her own as well, but she never screamed and certainly never cried.
Elsewhere in the realm, Lord Walys Mooton led a hundred knights out of Maidenpool to join with the half-wild Crabbs and Brunes of Crackclaw Point and the Celtigars of Claw Isle.
Though only six when her father came to the Iron Throne, Rhaenyra Targaryen was a precocious child, bright and bold and beautiful as only one of dragon's blood can be beautiful.
This too may be possibleâ¦though both Vermithor and Silverwing were older and larger than Prince Daeron's dragon, and would therefore have been more likely to prevail in any battle.
Saddest of all was the loss of Princess Gael, the Winter Child, born in 80 AC when Queen Alysanne was forty-four and thought to be well past her childbearing years.
All that remained was for Aegon III to put his seal to it, which he did without demur the next morning before retreating once again to the solitary splendor of his chambers.
That first day she circled once around the city before returning to the Dragonpit, but every day thereafter she grew bolder and flew farther.
Hundreds swore to do so, amongst them no less a personage than Rob the Starvling.
Lord Borros led his knights up the hill from the west, whilst Ser Perkin and his gutter knights climbed the steeper southern slope from Flea Bottom.
"Best make an end to these lions before the dragons come," said Roddy the Ruin.
Unridden since the death of the Dowager Queen Visenya twenty-nine years before, the great she-dragon Vhagar spread her wings, roared, and launched herself once more into the skies, carrying the Spring Prince across Blackwater Bay to Dragonstone to surprise his brother Aemon and Caraxes.
Cassandra Baratheon confessed that she had often shared her bed with Ser Mervyn Flowers, and sometimes at Ser Mervyn's behest with Tessario the Tiger, "but only when he asked it of me."
In 45 AC, construction finally came to an end on the Red Keep.
Baelon the Brave played his part in the slaughter, with Dark Sister in his hand.
King Aegon II had not been seen nor heard from since the fall of King's Landing to his half-sister Rhaenyra, and there were many who feared that the queen had put him secretly to death, concealing the corpse so as not to be condemned as a kinslayer.
Munkun says they did so willingly, convinced that the wolf lord had the right of it.
Ser Damon agreed; the gods would grant victory to the man whose cause was just, he said.
A fortnight after her departure, Ser Merrell Bullock, still commander of the castle garrison, brought three terrified grooms and the keeper of the dragon yard into Rhaena's presence.
And so the Clubfoot was dispatched across the river under a flag of truce, accompanied by Grand Maester Orwyle and the Dowager Queen Alicent.
From the Vale came MotherMaris, who had taught generations of orphan girls at a motherhouse on an island in Gulltown's harbor.
Jaehaerys chose the Lord Commander of his Kingsguard to take his place, but Ser Ryam Redwyne was no Septon Barth, and his undoubted prowess with a lance proved of little use to him as Hand.
"Let us together summon a great council, as the Old King did in days of old," said the Dowager Queen, "and lay the matter of succession before the lords of the realm."
Munkun's True Telling says that Cregan and Jacaerys took a liking to each other, for the boy prince reminded the Lord of Winterfell of his own younger brother, who had died ten years before.
Unwin Peake, Lord Regent and Hand of the King, draped an admiral's golden chain about his neck and presented him with a silver replica of the Queen Rhaenys as a token of his victory.
No man in the Seven Kingdoms could doubt that the king was accursed now.
Perianne Moore, who was not pregnant, was wed to Jonah Mooton.
So unlike King Aegon was he that a few even dared suggest that His Grace was not the boy's true sire, that Aenys was some bastard born of one of Queen Rhaenys's many handsome favorites, the son of a singer or a mummer or a mime.
His second son had been fostered on the Arbor, where he served Lord Redwyne as page and squire, but at the age of twelve he had drowned in a sailing mishap.
Rodrik Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie and Defender of the Vale, was a boy of ten, having come untimely into his lordship after the deaths of his uncle Lord Darnold and his sire Ser Rymond at the hands of the wildling raiders they had unwisely pursued into the Mountains of the Moon.
The thought that the crown might pass to "the whelp of a wanton and a bastard" was more than Lord Unwin Peake was prepared to stomach.
The Wind Our Steed were the words of the Farmans of Fair Isle, who had sailed the western seas since the Dawn Age, and Lady Elissa embodied them.
Instead of a kingslayer, Lord Rogar became a kingmaker, delivering to Prince Jaehaerys the Iron Throne.
From that day to this, the tale has been a favorite of lovesick maidens and their squires throughout the Seven Kingdoms, and many a bard has sung of the valor of the Kingsguard, seven men in white cloaks who faced down half a hundred.
His Grace supposedly laughed and stated his conviction that if Lord Rogar were no fool he would have instructed all of the maidens sent to Dragonstone in 50 AC to bed the young king, since the Hand could not have known which of them Jaehaerys would prefer.
Afterward Rhaena Targaryen had his body hacked to pieces and fed to her dragons.
"Graceford was cruel but not clever, Long had courage but no cunning, Risley was a sot, Bernard a pious fool, the Thumb a bloody Volantene, worse than the Lyseni.
Myles Smallwood, the King's Hand, urged the king to punish Pentos for the outrage, but Jaehaerys was unwilling to make war upon an entire city for the crimes of some outlaws.
Though no record of it exists in any court chronicle, tales told by servants and repeated for many years thereafter amongst the smallfolk claim that Lord Rogar's brothers had brought seven virgins across the narrow sea from the finest pleasure houses of Lys.
With Lord Rogar gone, Queen Alyssa named her brother Daemon Velaryon as Hand of the King, dispatched a raven to Dragonstone to tell her son Jaehaerys some (but not all) of what had occurred, and then retired to her chambers in Maegor's Holdfast.
In this, however, his lordship found himself opposed by his own wife, Queen Alyssa.
Aside from the council, they told no one of what had transpired on Dragonstone, and Lord Rogar commanded the men who had accompanied them to speak no word of what they had seen, at the penalty of losing their tongues.
It is widely believed (though never proved) that Bambarro's intent was to wait out the Dance of the Dragons, and then either ransom Prince Viserys back to his mother (should Rhaenyra emerge triumphant) or sell his head to his uncle (should Aegon II prove the victor).
This king was stern, this king was merciful, this one looked to The Seven-Pointed Star for guidance, this one held to the ancient laws of the First Men, this one ruled by whim, t'other went one way when sober and another when drunk.
As the Old King'sstrength and wits began to fail, he was oft confined to his bed.
The rest of them could go, and good riddance, he announced, but his sister would remain on Fair Isle to be wed.
Still weak from her labor, she could not come to the city herself for the coronation, she wrote, but she would send her own lord father to do homage in her stead, and three of her daughters to serve as hostages.
Alicent could not even be trusted in the company of the little queen; when last allowed to share a meal with Her Grace, she had told Jaehaera to cut her husband's throat whilst he was sleeping, which set the child to screaming.
For lord admiral and master of ships, the young king turned to his uncle Daemon Velaryon, Lord of the Tides, Queen Alyssa's brother and one of the first great lords to abandon Maegor the Cruel.
Whilst the knights of the Kingsguard were seeking after Queen Alicent's sons, other messengers summoned the Commander of the City Watch and his captains (there were seven, each commanding one of the city gates) to the Red Keep.
Many a battle and skirmish had already been fought in the lands watered by the Trident, and there was scarce a keep or village that had not paid its due in bloodâ¦but Addam Velaryon was relentless and determined and glib of tongue, and the riverlords knew much andmore of the horrors that had befallen Tumbleton.
Even issues as timely as war, peace, and alliance were subject to endless debateâ¦and the High Council was not even in session when Ser Otto's envoys arrived.
Lord Tully, Lord Blackwood, Lord Hightower (as yet unwed, though he had taken his father's widow as a paramour) were all put forth, as were a number of less likely choices, including Dalton Greyjoy (the Red Kraken boasted of having a hundred salt wives, but had never taken a rock wife), a younger brother of the Princess of Dorne, and even that rogue Racallio Ryndoon.
Aegon the Conqueror had famously said that the smallfolk needed to see their kings and queens from time to time, so they might lay their griefs and grievances before them.
Lord Unwin even bequeathed Tessario and his Fingers to his successor; the king had his guards, he declared, and so must the Hand.
The conflict had caused serious disruption to trade upon the narrow sea, to the extent that King Jaehaerys had offered both cities his help in ending their hostilities.
The condemned had drawn lots to see who would be the first to die, and the choice had fallen on Ser Perkin the Flea.
Four of the Targaryen dragons lay dead, though at hideous cost.
A body believed to be Rhaenys Targaryen was later found beside the carcass of her dragon, but it was so blackened that no one could be sure it was her.
Like stray dogs, she brought them home with her to the Red Keep, insisting that they be given positions in the castle, or be made part of her own retinue.
Maester Kyrie bowed his head and sent for his blades.
Prince Aenys was the heir apparent, and King Aegon kept him close by his side.
In the third alternative, the brave boy known as Daeron the Daring did not even make it out at all, but died when his burning pavilion collapsed upon him.
He wanted an alliance with the Iron Throne, possibly through marriage between her and his bastard, or one of his trueborn sons; some union that would raise the Lannisters up past the Hightowers, the Baratheons, and the Velaryons to be the second house in the realm.
Finally the queen's flight took her to Sunspear, the ancient seat of House Martell, where she found the Princess of Dorne waiting in her abandoned castle.
By the time Kermit Tully came upon him, Lord Borros was dead upon his feet, bareheaded (he had ripped off his dented helm), bleeding from a score of wounds, scarce able to stand.
With the infallibility of hindsight, we now look back through the centuries and say the Dance was done, but this seemed less certain to those who lived through its dark and dangerous aftermath.
That was many years later, however, after Aegon III had come of ageand taken the rule of the Seven Kingdoms into his own hand.
Cruel though her brother Vaegon's words had been, there was some truth to them.
Which left only the riverlords, a notoriously quarrelsome lot ruled over, in name at least, by House Tully of Riverrun.
The marriage had been performed on Dragonstone, suddenly and secretly.
It is written that his sister Lysara and brother Fredo were amongst those who availed themselves of the whip, whilst other Lyseni placed wagers on the hour of his death.
In truth, there were only two claimants the realm was like to accept: the king's half-sisters Baela and Rhaena Targaryen, Prince Daemon's twin daughters by his first wife, Lady Laena Velaryon.
Twenty-two lesser personages were also found to have played some part in King Aegon's murder.
Ulf White had woken from his drunken sleep to find himself the last dragonrider, and possessed of the last dragon.
Age, and some uncomfortable discussions with his father and his brothers, had taught the prince the rudiments of courtesy, and he did not squash any of the girls, to the queen's relief.
Prince Viserys, the eldest surviving son of Aenys and Alyssa, was summoned to court by His Grace.
When Lord Orys ordered his men to fall back, a massive rockfall cut off their retreat.
a mortal wound at the hand of a grizzled squire, Pateof Longleaf.
The remainder of the guests were bannermen and household knights sworn to either House Farman orHouse Lannister.
Prentys Tully, Lord of Riverrun, was summoned to court to serve as master of laws; with him came his redoubtable wife, the Lady Lucinda, far famed for her piety.
At fourteen, she kept company with Denys Swann, Simon Staunton, Gerold Templeton, and Ellard Crane, all promising squires of her own age, but Staunton tried to make her drink wine and Crane kissed her on the lips without her leave, reducing her to tears.
Several years had passed since the king had last made a progress, so plans were laid in 58 AC for Jaehaerys and Alysanne to make their first visit to Winterfell and the North.
"It is a poor king who wages battle against his own lords and leaves his own kingdom burned, bloody, and strewn with corpses," Septon Barth would write.
At Highgarden, Lord Tyrellsickened but survived, only to perish, drunk, in a fall from his horse four days after his recovery.
"Lord Donnel is a schemer and a sulker," said Manfryd Redwyne.
She would of course wed whomever the king and council wished, she allowed, though "it would please me if he was not so old he could not give me children, nor so fat that he would crush me when we are abed.
Clad for court, it was said, Lord Benjicot was very much a boy, tall for his age but slight of build, with a sensitive face and a shy, self-effacing manner; clad in mail-and-plate, Bloody Ben was an altogether different man, and one who had seen more of the battlefield at thirteen than most men do in their entire lives.
At the behest of the Dowager Queen, they took command of the thousands of Targaryen loyalists in the city and surrounded the Hill of Rhaenys.
Whilst no one ever questioned Visenya's fidelity to her brother-husband, Rhaenys surrounded herself with comely young men, and (it was whispered) even entertained some in her bedchambers on the nights when Aegon was with her elder sister.
Ser Laenor was at last permitted to name a child after his fallen friend, Ser Joffrey Lonmouth.
None of the dragonseeds were fool enough to disturb the Cannibal (any who were did not return to tell their tales).
Thirty leagues had as well been thirty thousand, alas, for the road across the Mander was closed, and Bitterbridge belonged to Queen Rhaenyra.
By ordering the arrest of Addam Velaryon, she had lost not only a dragon and a dragonrider, but her Queen's Hand as wellâ¦and more than half the army that had sailed from Dragonstone to seize the Iron Throne was made up of men sworn to House Velaryon.
"Gladly," said Lord Rogar.
Ten years earlier, however, the Free Cities of Lys, Myr, and Tyrosh had put aside their ancient enmities to make common cause in a war against Volantis.
It was King Aegon's intent to continue his march south and enforce the submission of Oldtown, the Arbor, and Dorne, but whilst at Highgarden word of a new challenge came to his ears.
Her three sons were present with them, though none had reached the age of manhood (Jace was fourteen, Luke thirteen, Joffrey eleven).
This was a council of which Septon Eustace heartily approved, "six strong men and one wise woman, seven to rule us here on earth as the Seven Above rule all men from their heaven."
Borros Baratheon then offered to bring the king the old man's head, and Aegon II was on the point of giving consent when Lord Larys Strong spoke up, reminding them that young Alyn Velaryon, the Sea Snake's heir, remained beyond their reach on Driftmark.
At one village in the riverlands, several Poor Fellows went so far as to pelt the royal couple with clods of dirt.
Ser Otto Hightower, as methodical a man as ever served as Hand, wanted more time to make preparations, but Queen Alicent knew they could delay no longer.
Though the matter never came before the small council, later that same year Jaehaerys issued a royal edict forbidding any ship suspected of having visited the Valyrian islands or sailed the Smoking Sea from landing at any port or harbor in the Seven Kingdoms.
Forever after, she blamed her son's death on the women who attacked her at Maidenpool.
When the ashes had cooled enough to allow men to enter the castle safely, the swords of the fallen, many shattered or melted or twisted into ribbons of steel by dragonfire, were gathered up and sent back to the Aegonfort in wagons.
Joffrey, not quite three-and-ten, was eager to prove himself a warrior, but when told that Tyraxes was needed to help his mother hold the Red Keep in the event of an attack, the boy swore solemnly to do so.
Septon Barth, who had taken on Oswyck's duties after his death, was more doubtful.
Jaehaerys had but recently reached an understanding with Donnel Hightower, but still did not entirely trust the man, no more than he did Lyman Lannister.
After the funeral rites had been completed, the new king and his entourage sailed to King's Landing, where the Iron Throne still stood amidst mounds of rubble and mud.
Then up spoke Septon Mattheus, his voice thunderous as he berated the king and queen and prophesized that this abomination would once more plunge all of Westeros into war.
Prince Valerion was born in 77 AC, after another troubled labor that saw Alysanne confined to her bed for half a year.
By a lopsided margin, the lords assembled chose Viserys Targaryen as the rightful heir to the Iron Throne.
Now it was Lord Ormund's men attacking, screaming curses at their foes, whilst the queen's men fled.
That night they raised a peace banner, threw open the castle gate, and delivered Lady Argella gagged, chained, and naked to the camp of Orys Baratheon.
On a warm spring night in 84 AC, shouts and screams from a brothel called the Blue Pearl drew the notice of two men of the City Watch.
At last the prayer concluded, and Lord Cregan Stark unsheathed Ice, the Valyrian greatsword that was the pride of his house, for the savage custom of the North decreed that the man who passed the sentence must also wield the sword, that their blood might be upon his hands alone.
Prince Daemon had good reason to hope that the Maid of the Vale might bring the Eyrie to their side as well.
Lady Rhaena proved to be as tractable as her sister had been willful.
Rhaena never doubted that he would, she said afterward; it was a question of when, not if.
Dozens of pious lords throughout the Seven Kingdoms took up the cry, pulling down the king's banners and declaring for the Starry Sept.
After opening the corpse, Grand Maester Runciter put down the cause of death as a burst belly.
What a king had done, a king could undo, Viserys pointed out.
The war would drag on for another seven years, though after 6 AC the fighting degenerated into an endless bloody series of atrocities, raids, and retaliations, broken up by long periods of inactivity, a dozen short truces, and numerous murders and assassinations.
As wolves and ravens fed upon the bodies of the slain, Ormund Hightower feasted Prince Daeron on aurochs and strongwine, and dubbed him a knight with the storied Valyrian longsword Vigilance, naming him "Ser Daeron theDaring."
Aegon had never ridden a dragon, they pointed out, whereas Maegor had claimed Balerion, and the prince's own bride, Princess Rhaena, had been flying Dreamfyre since the age of twelve.
When Lys and Myr went to war, Tyrosh seized the opportunity to assert its dominion over the Stepstones.
Another, a bastard born to a triarch of Old Volantis, arrived with bags of gold and a dwarf elephant.
Each night he summoned one of his wives to his bed, yet still he remained childless, with no heir but for the sons and daughters of his brother, Aenys.
Lord Stark had marched south with a great host, made up in large part of men unwanted and unneeded in the North, whose return would bring great hardship and mayhaps even death for the loved ones they had left behind.
She would wed as he commanded, or he would make her half-brother Aegon his heir in place of her.
(The princess always took care to refer to Queen Alicent's sons as half- brothers, never as brothers.)
Lady Darry and her younger children survived by taking shelter in vaults under the keep, but her lord husband and his heir died on their battlements, together with twoscore of his sworn swords and bowmen.
Perhaps for that reason, it was this coronation, rather than the Aegonfort crowning on the day of Aegon's landing, that became fixed as the start of Aegon's reign.
Of all the lords of Westeros, none suffered so much from these practices as Corlys Velaryon, Lord of the Tides, whose fleets had made him as wealthy and powerful as any man in the Seven Kingdoms.
When not on duty, he was fond of wine, says Mushroom, who was known to have drunk with him.
Lord Ormund had therefore decided he could not proceed without support from King's Landing.
The king's own subjects were likewise forbidden from visiting Valyria, under pain of death.
With Ser Criston dead upon the ground, the men who had followed him from Harrenhal lost heart.
Sons who had accepted clemency from the boy king, led by Ser Olyver Bracken and Ser Raymund Mallery, the two turncloak knights who had served in Maegor's Kingsguard before abandoning him for Jaehaerys.
Others claim the Seven struck him down for the sin of pride, for heresy, treason, and arrogance.
It was Grand Maester Benifer who spoke loudest against such a course, pointing out that the sincerity of their commitment to peace and reconciliation might be doubted if they were seen to favor those who had fought for Aegon over those who had remained with Maegor.
"That makes four dragons of fighting size," said Rhaenys.
Fighting continued in the west through the first three years of the boy king's reign, as Lady Johanna of Casterly Rock continued to resist the depredations of Dalton Greyjoy's ironborn in the name of her son, young Lord Loreon.
Edwell Celtigar, Maegor's one-time Hand and the much despised master of coin, was the first lord to die.
Aegon would surely seek the support of Pyke, he judged; only with the support of the Iron Islands could Aegon hope to surpass the strength of House Velaryon at sea.
Her Grace began to make plans for a lavish celebration to mark Joffrey's formal installation as Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne.
Bound by battle, the three had become so inseparable that their men began referring to them collectively as "the Lads."
"Or there might be another thousand leagues of empty ocean," Ser Eustace replied.
Amongst the last to die was their leader, who proved to be Ser Horys Hill, the bastard hedge knight who had escaped the carnage at the Great Fork three years earlier.
Though the narrow sea lay between them, the two Rogares died within a day of each other, both under suspicious circumstances.
Late in the year 45 AC, King Maegor took the field once again to continue his war against the outlawed remnants of the Faith Militant, leaving Queen Tyanna to rule King's Landing together with the new Hand, Lord Edwell Celtigar.
No living dragon could match Vhagar for size or ferocity, but Jace reasoned that if Vermax, Syrax, and Caraxes were to descend on King's Landing, even "that hoary old bitch" would be unable to withstand them.
With the setting of the sun, the vermin of King's Landing emerged once more from their rat pits, hidey-holes, and cellars, in even greater numbers than the night before.
The dragon's egg she sent to Lord Hightower at Longtable, in the hopes it might assuage his wroth.
Whichever maid King Aegon chose would reign over Westeros for a lifetime.
And the doctrines of the Faith, handed down through centuries from Andalos itself, condemned the Valyrian marriage customs as practiced by the Targaryens.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the dying Lord Jason and his bannermen, fleets of longships from the Iron Islands fell upon the shores of Lannister's domains, led by Dalton Greyjoy of Pyke.
Many of those whose lands and castles were near King's Landing and the crownlands had stood with Maegor until the very hour of his death, amongst them the Lords Rosby and Towers, the last men to see the king alive.
Moved by his old friend's words, King Jaehaerys rose and descended from the Iron Throne to clap Lord Rogar by the shoulder.
King Viserys was most wroth as well; a joyous celebration had become the occasion of grief and recrimination.
Even within the walls of Lord Farman's own seat, Queen Rhaena had enemies, chief amongst them his lordship's heir.
Ser Gareth Long, first and foremost of those who had named Risley part of the plot, was duly brought back to court to face him.
He wanted Baela back at court as well.
The autumn harvests had been good, Lord Rego's taxes were bringing in a steady stream of coin, trade was on the increase; paying for the tourney would not be a concern, and the event would bring thousands of visitors, and their purses, to King's Landing.
The lords of his council were present, and Ser Joffrey Doggett and Ser Lorence Roxton of the Kingsguard stood at the base of the throne in their white cloaks and enameled scale.
Lord Commander Burley himself took the queen into the haunted forest (with a hundred rangers riding escort).
Then the old prince bade Caraxes bend his neck, and climbed stiffly onto his back, whilst the young prince kissed his woman and vaulted lightly onto Vhagar, taking care to fasten the four short chains between belt and saddle.
"She smells of woodsmoke, not of flowers," Stark told Lord Cerwyn, said to be his closest friend.
Most often Tom Tangletongue performed this task for him, we are told; at other times certain knights of the household took the place of dishonor, and thrice Mushroom himself was pressed into service.
The Vulture proved sadly unequal to that task.
And on her back, in steel and copper armor that flashed in the sun, rode Rhaenys Targaryen, the Queen Who Never Was.
When asked what had befallen the rest of his men, the wildling chieftan laughed and said, "We ate them."
Septon Eustace goes so far as to suggest that Sunfyre sensed Aegon's desperate need.
Mushroom charges Ser Criston with his lordship's death as well, but in his version Cole grasped the old man by the back of his collar and flung him out a window, to die impaled upon the iron spikes in the dry moat below.
Aegon Targaryen dismissed all such proposals; Princess Deria had come as an envoy under a banner of peace and would suffer no harm under his roof, he vowed.
What remained of Aegon's court had gathered in the hall, amongst them Lord Larys Strong the Clubfoot, Grand Maester Orwyle, Ser Perkin the Flea, Mushroom, Septon Eustace, Ser Gyles Belgrave and four other Kingsguard, and sundry lesser lords and household knights.
Following the ancient tradition of House Targaryen, King Viserys wed his son Aegon the Elder to his daughter Helaena.
"The king is dead, long live the king," Lord Corlys said, as he yielded up the city to their mercy.
Lady Baela remained on Driftmark with Lord Alyn's second child growing inside her.
Rioting broke out in Flea Bottom.
The marriage took place without the leave, knowledge, or presence of King Aenys.
Aegon the Younger was ever at his mother's side, yet seldom spoke a word.
Most of his court traveled with him in what became a grand pageant across the Reachâ¦but his sister Rhaena stayed with them only as far as Highgarden, where she mounted her dragon, Dreamfyre, to return to Fair Isle and Lord Farman's castle above the sea, taking her leave not only of the king, but of her daughters.
King Aegon's own mother had been a Velaryon, so the marriage was reckoned one of cousin to cousin.
He even resumed his seat on the small council, according to Grand Maester Runciter, but neither age nor exile had changed his nature.
Though the good septon admits Prince Aegon was with a paramour when he was found, he insists the girl was the daughter of a wealthy trader, and well cared for besides.
During the fortnight leading up to Maiden's Day, the dwarf tells us, Lord Unwin had arranged for Myrielle to share half a dozen suppers with the king.
When he choked to death on a peach pit, the queen acquired an ape and dressed it in Lord Monkeyface's clothing.
In a voice as cold as ice, she commanded Ser Luthor Largent to take twenty gold cloaks to the Dragonpit and arrest Ser Addam Velaryon.
Most notably of all, House Tully had joined the war.
The court was still rejoicing over the birth of the princess's child when her stepmother, Queen Alicent, also went into labor, delivering Viserys his third son, Daeronâ¦whose coloring, unlike that of Jace, testified to his dragon blood.
Across the sea, the Daughters' War finally reached its end.
She spoke with rats and spiders, it was said, and all the vermin of King's Landing came to her by night to tell tales of any fool rash enough to speak against the king.
Viserys, beset from both sides, chose neither, reminding both the princess and the queen that the choice was not his to make.
He would have a woman of proven fertility, he decided, though not Butterwell's fat and homely sister.
But as the girl made her way to the city, escorted by her father and a brother, they stopped for the night at an inn on the south bank of the Blackwater Rush, beside the ferry landing.
By that time Peake's army, the remnants of the great host that Prince Daeron and Lord Ormund Hightower had led all the way from Oldtown, was falling to pieces, as deserters fled Tumbleton by the score with all the plunder they could carry.
All three siblings had shown themselves to be dragonlords before they wed. Of the five dragons who had flown with Aenar the Exile from Valyria, only one survived to Aegon's day: the great beast called Balerion, the Black Dread.
Too many men had witnessed the confrontation at the castle gates, and the lords who had called at Dragonstone afterward had not failed to notice Alysanne's presence at the king's side, or the obvious affection between them.
Mushroom claims that Prince Lucerys's corpse washed up as well, and tells us that Prince Aemond cut out his eyes and presented them to Lady Maris on a bed of seaweed, but this seems excessive.
When the Baratheon vanguard was seen across the Blackwater Rush, the Shepherd commanded his followers to rush the river to keep Lord Borros from coming ashore.
"Elsewiseâ¦the birth of three young dragons is not a thing that can easily be kept secret.
With hindsight, it can be seen that conflict between the Faith and House Targaryen was inevitable.
Nor were words the only means by which Lord Unwin sought to win his secret war for the king's heart, if the whispers can be believed.
They had five men for every one of Aegon's, it seemed, and the disparity in lords and knights was even greater.
(Their younger siblings, Jaehaerys and Alysanne, were deemed too young for such an arduous journey and remained on Dragonstone.)
For Lord Unwin Peake, this seemed yet another humiliating rebuke.
The rest of the Red Keep was in the hands of Ser Marston Waters and his Kingsguard, whilst beyond the castle walls Ser Lucas Leygood and his gold cloaks kept a firm grip on King's Landing.
Lord Baratheon answered with a curse, saying, "I'd sooner dance in hell than wear your chains."
Ser Otto sent word to his nephew, Lord Ormund Hightower, beseeching him to use the power of Oldtown to put down this rash of rebellions in the Reach.
Within moments of taking the governance of the Seven Kingdoms into his own hands, King Aegon III had made an enemy of a man who had been amongst his most leal and devoted servants.
With half his men north of the river and half on the south, Wat's army was cut to pieces.
He put a hand upon Ser Alfred's shoulderâ¦then shoved him hard, sending him staggering off the drawbridge onto the iron spikes below, where he writhed and twisted for two days as he died.
Even that was thought to be too gentle a course by Ser Tyland Lannister, who argued for the immediate execution of Prince Aegon the Younger.
Once more it fell to Corlys Velaryon, Lord of the Tides, to plead for peace, pardon, and reconciliation.
On Driftmark, Daemon Velaryon, Lord of the Tides, recovered after being at the point of death, but his second son and three of his daughters were borne away.
It was Rego Draz, the king's Pentoshi master of coin, who first gave voice to suspicion when Jaehaerys assembled his small council to discuss the deaths on Dragonstone.
To address the problem, Barth proposed sinking wells, some inside the city proper and others to the north, beyond the walls.
His mother, Queen Alicent, beloved of the smallfolk, placed her own crown upon the head of her daughter, Helaena, Aegon's wife and sister.
The Prince of Dragonstone also had a care for the safety of his half- brothers, Aegon the Younger and Viserys, aged nine and seven.
His Grace was but thirty-five years of age, but it was said that he looked like a man of sixty, and Grand Maester Gawen reported that he oft took to his bed with loose bowels and stomach cramps.
But the ironmen were notoriously fickle, and Dalton Greyjoy loved blood and battle; he might easily be persuaded to support the princess.
Rhaenys, youngest of the three Targaryens, was all her sister was not, playful, curious, impulsive, given to flights of fancy.
As the king's herald announced the name and lineage of each candidate, the girl would curtsy, the king would nod down at them, and then it would be time for the next girl to be presented.
The two armies came together amongst the wide, open plains south of the Blackwater, near to where the goldroad would run one day.
Though the guilt of rats was never proved to the satisfaction of the Citadel, suddenly every house in the Seven Kingdoms, from the grandest castle to the humblest hut, required a cat.
This modest Targaryen host put ashore at the mouth of the Blackwater Rush, on the northern bank where three wooded hills rose above a small fishing village.
The younger Tom, as handy with a tankard as he was clumsy with a net, had spent a deal of time buying drinks for Volantene sailors and listening to their accounts of the dragons they had seen fighting.
When his body was found a fortnight later by his brother Manfryd, naught remained but charred flesh in melted armor, crawling with maggots.
A third claimant emerged in the person of one Isembard Arryn, patriarch of the Gulltown Arryns, a still more distant branch of that great house.
Their uncle Maegor's taking of a second wife in 39 AC, in defiance of both the High Septon and his own brother, King Aenys, had shattered the delicate understanding between the Iron Throne and the Starry Sept, so the marriage of Aegon and Rhaena had been seen as a further outrage.
In retaliation, King Aegon himself descended on the mountain fastnesses of the Wyls with Balerion, and reduced half a dozen of their keeps and watchtowers to heaps of molten stone.
With Ser Gareth Long upon the Wall, the Red Keep had need of a new master-at-arms.
King Aegon III stood atop the gatehouse battlements throughout the Feast of Our Father Above, and never spoke nor looked away from the bloodletting below.
Yet the brothers were no more than puppets in the hands of Lady Larra; it was her and her queer Lysene gods who held their strings.
Her dismissal of her husband as the Hand of the King had destroyed any affection that Lord Rogar might ever have felt for her; from that day forth, their marriage was a ruined castle, an empty shell haunted by ghosts.
Though he treated Queen Alicent with all the courtesy due her station, there was no warmth between them, and men said that the prince was notably cool toward her children, especially his nephews, Aegon and Aemond, whose birth had pushed him still lower in the order of succession.
As the sunlight glittered on the silver-gold hair beneath, King Aegon III began to weep, throwing himself upon this boy in a fierce embrace.
The Iron Bank of Braavos was suspected, as was the Archon of Tyrosh, Racallio Ryndoon, and various merchant princes and magisters of Lys known to have chafed under the "velvet tyranny" of Lysandro the Magnificent.
Spices would be taxed heaviest of all; peppercorns, cloves, saffron, nutmeg, cinnamon, and all the other rare seasonings from beyond the Jade Gates, already more costly than gold, would become still costlier.
Then with a flamboyant gesture, Lord Alyn summoned forth the treasure he had brought from Lys.
"Jaehaerys is a man-maid like as not, and besotted with his sister," this man supposedly told her, "but Alysanne is but a child and you are a woman any man would want.
A great scandal ensued when the young lord then announced his intention to marry his father's widow, and the reigning High Septon ultimately forbade the marriage as a form of incest, but even that could not keep these young lovers apart.
The answer she proposed was a New Gift, a further strip of land south of Brandon's Gift.
The remainder of the "Mudfoot" garrison had gone over to Ser Perkin.
Under questioning, Ser Orryn confessed the entire plot: he was to deliver the girl to Storm's
They had his look, it was true, and Ser Laenor had been known to visit the shipyard in Hull from time to time.
Nor could House Arryn be relied upon, for the Eyrie was presently ruled by a woman, Lady Jeyne, the Maiden of the Vale, whose own rights might be called into question should Princess Rhaenyra be put aside.
As Silverwing, Sheepstealer, Seasmoke, and Vermithor descended upon them, the men of the Triarchy felt their courage desert them.
If Oldtown took up arms against Aegon the Dragon, His High Holiness saw, the city would surely burn, and the Hightower and the Citadel and the Starry Sept would be cast down and destroyed.
Though Grand Maester Mellos washed the cut out with boiled wine and bound up the hand with strips of linen soaked in healing ointments, fever soon followed, and many feared the king might die.
Lord Corlys's seat upon the council of regents had already been offered to an older and more seasoned man:Unwin Peake, Lord of Starpike, Lord of Dunstonbury, Lord of Whitegrove.
At the foot of the Iron Throne they reined up.
Princess Aerea had none of her mother's restraint.
The Blood Wyrm's jaws closed about Vhagar's neck, her black teeth sinking deep into the flesh of the larger dragon.
Prince Aemond strode forward and made to snatch the letter from Lucerys's hand, but Lord Borros roared a command and his knights intervened, pulling the princelings apart.
The sons of the Dragon had no sisters to marry, so each of them was forced to seek elsewhere for a bride.
Queen Alyssa and Lord Rogar continued to hold the reins of power in King's Landing, searching for a way to undo the king's marriage and avert the calamity they were certain was to come.
The streets of King's Landing were empty, especially by night, the alleyways were deep in snow, and icicles hung down from the rooftops, long as spears.
His wife was still a queen, but no one mistook Androw for a king, or even a lord consort.
The old warrior king roared that he did not intend to die as Harren had, cooked inside his own castle like a suckling pig with an apple in his mouth.
He led his lordship from the hall to the inner ward where Vermithor was being fed.
Still unable to walk, His Grace was brought through the River Gate in a closed litter, and carried up Aegon's High Hill to the Red Keep through a silent city, past deserted streets, abandoned homes, and looted shops.
One was Orwyle, whose gaolers freed him from his cell after many other maesters had been laid low by the fever.
As the king had wished, Princess Daella and Lord Rodrik were wed before year's end.
but as more time passed, with still no sign of Jaehaerys, lords and smallfolk alike began to wonder.
Ser Laenor Velaryon, husband to the Princess Rhaenyra and the putative father of her children, was slain whilst attending a fair in Spicetown, stabbed to death by his friend and companion Ser Qarl Correy.
(Grand Maester Munkun and Septon Eustace both found this story most unlikely, as doI.) Would-be dragontamers had made attempts to ride him a dozen times; his lair was littered with their bones.
In Oldtown, relations between the High Septon and Lord Ormund's widow, the Lady Sam, continued to worsen when she ignored His High Holiness's command to remove herself from her stepson's bed and take vows as a silent sister as penace for her sins.
The young monarch, who had celebrated his fifth nameday only two days previous, was carried back to the Red Keep slung over the back of a horse, chained and weeping.
The following morning, as the sun rose, Jaehaerys Targaryen, the First of His Name, took to wife his sister Alysanne in the great yard at Dragonstone, before the eyes of gods and men and dragons.
But Jacaerys was fourteen, Lucerys thirteen; bold and handsome lads, skilled in arms, who had long served as squires.
The size of the crowds surprised even their lord.
To all of this Lord Alyn Velaryon had agreed, and affixed his sign and seal.
Jaehaerys himself had followed his usurping uncle Maegor on the Iron Throne, though had the order of birth alone ruled, his sister Rhaena had a better claim.
Most of the knights and young lordlings who had set out with them on their ill-fated progress had abandoned them, rushing off to King's Landing to bend their knees to Maegor.
The daughters would remain with the queen thereafter, but Lord Celtigar himself left for Claw Isle at once.
The Lord of Dragonstone countered with an offer of his own.
Harren the Black had driven thousands to their deaths in the building of his great castle of Harrenhal, plundering the riverlands for materials, and beggaring lords and smallfolk alike with his appetitefor gold.
In 7 AC, Orys Baratheon and the other lords who had been taken captive on the Boneway were ransomed back to King's Landing for their weight in gold, but on their return it was found that the Widow- lover had lopped off each man's sword hand, so they might never again take up swords against Dorne.
Rhaenys followed the river downstream to Godsgrace, seat of House Allyrion, but it too was deserted.
End would die to the last man, she promised when Queen Rhaenys flew Meraxes into the castle to parley.
Frustrated, Viserra next turned to her brother Baelon in hopes of rescue, if court gossip can be believed.
Vhagar had come at last, and on her back rode the one-eyed Prince Aemond Targaryen, clad in nightblack armor chased with gold.
The former was written by Ser Russell Stillman, who squired for his lordship as a youth and was later knighted by him before losing a leg during Oakenfist's fifth voyage, the latter by a woman known only as Rue, who may or may not have been a septa, and may or may not have become one of his lordship's paramours.
Harvests failed in the riverlands, the westerlands, and the Vale as well, and even down into the Reach.
Summer had given way to autumn and leaves were falling all across the Seven Kingdoms, a new Vulture King had emerged in the Red Mountains, the sweating sickness had broken out on the Three Sisters, and Tyrosh and Lys were edging toward a war that would almost certainly engulf the Stepstones and disrupt trade.
Aenys Targaryen did not seem to comprehend the extent to which he had roused the realm against him.
Others, of a morecynical bent, countered that it might have been jealousy over the child growing inside of Lady Baela that drove her to the act.
Though Black Harren's seat was too strong to be taken by storm, and the riverlords dared not lay siege for fear of Vhagar, the king's men were running short of food and fodder, and losing men and horses to hunger and sickness.
Copies of this book still pass from hand to hand in the low places of Westeros, and may oft be found in certain brothels (those catering to patrons able to read) and the libraries of men of low morals, where they are best kept under lock and key, hidden from the eyes of maidens, goodwives, children, and the chaste and pious.
When Prince Jacaerys added his voice to the request, the queen complied.
The sack that followed was as savage as any in the history of Westeros.
Instead the Hand claimed acurious failure of memory, insisting that he could not recall who had been black and who green, whilst demonstrating a dogged loyalty to the son of the very queen who had sent him to the torturers.
Queen Alysanne had only slipped out of her clothing when they fell upon her with daggers they had concealed within their robes.
The wedding itself was said to be splendid, however; Black Aly and her wolf pledged their troth before the heart tree in Winterfell's icy godswood.
In 31 AC, he hunted down and slew a notorious robber knight in the riverlands, the so-called Giant of the Trident.
A gentle, selfless, and sweet-natured girl, and exceedingly bright, she soon attached herself to her sister Alyssa in much the same way that Prince Baelon had attached himself to Prince Aemon, though not entirely as happily.
Aerea Targaryen had once been thought to be wild and willful, given to acts of disobedience, but Princess Saera's girlhood made Aerea seem a model of decorum by comparison.
Princess Saera was six years old in 73 AC, Princess Viserra only two.
A man of three-and-fifty, as tireless as he was fearless, and to all appearances in robust good health, this High Septon had been renowned for his strength.
Septon Eustace, writing on these events some years later, points out that the manservant delivered his dire tidings directly to the queen, and her alone, without raising a general alarum.
The fires of Essos were far from the mind of the woman calling herself Alys Westhill in Oldtown; her eyes were fixed upon the other horizon, on the storm-lashed western seas.
Such hopes were quelled when Queen Tyanna appeared, escorting two young girls with silver hair and purple eyes, clad in the red and black of House Targaryen.
"It is done," the Queen Regent told her councillors when she realized the truth at last.
And when Lord Cregan bade his men haul the Flea onto his feet, the other prisoners saw the road to deliverance, and echoed his request.
Queen Elinor found him still upon the Iron Throne, pale and dead, his robes soaked through with blood.
Prince Baelon was greatly distraught as well, wondering if he should have spoken to his sister less brusquely the night he found her naked in his bed.
No word of farewell was spoken betwixt man and maid, but as Sheepstealer beat his leathery brown wings and climbed into the dawn sky, Caraxes raised his head and gave a scream that shattered every window in Jonquil's Tower.
Jaehaerys was oft brusied and bloody by evening, to Alysanne's distress, but his prowess improved so markedly that near the end of his time on Dragonstone, old Ser Elyas himself told him, "Your Grace, you will never be a Kingsguard, but if by some sorcery your uncle Maegor himself were to rise from the grave, my coin would be on you."
By the time the raven reached Her Grace at Greenstone, the princess had already died and been burned.
Brown of hair and eye, with a broad, freckled face and crooked teeth that made her shy with her smiles, Lady Turnips was four-and-ten, one year older than Aegon.
Prince Daemon found the Vale of Arryn boring ("In the Vale, the men fuck sheep," he wrote.
None of this could be accomplished in a night; work would continue for years, even decades, but it was the year 52 AC when it began, by the king's command.
Cole's favorite weapon was the morningstar, and the blows he rained down on Ser Laenor's champion cracked his helm and left him senseless in the mud.
At her command, men from the City Watch combed Flea Bottom until they found Tom the Strummer, whose mocking songs had amused king and commons alike during the War for the White Cloaks.
The dawn of the year 43 AC found King Maegor in King's Landing, where he had taken personal charge of the construction of the Red Keep.
Lucerys Velaryon died with his dragon, Munkun insists.
Instead a young knight from the stormlands was sent forth as the Crown's champion.
So the matter was put to rest, and the fate of Ser Willam the Wasp was inscribed in the White Book of the Kingsguard.
The unexpected arrival of Vermithor and Silverwing at Oldtown brought thousands to the streets to point and stare.
As always he was guarded by his Poor Fellows, huge strapping axemen with unshorn beards, but when a comely young woman presented herself at the septon's tent with a flagon of wine that she wished to give to His Holiness in return for his help, they admitted her at once.
The Eyrie was impregnable to any conventional assault, so "King" Jonos and his die-hard followers spat down defiance at the loyalists, and settled in for a siegeâ¦until Prince Maegor appeared in the sky above, astride Balerion.
And there Aegon might have remained, hidden yet harmless, dulling his pain with wine and hiding his burn scars beneath a heavy cloak, had Sunfyre not made his way to Dragonstone.
Then Storm's End and Casterly Rock were dangled before them, but these rewards as well the ungrateful queen had denied them.
Though the king had spent less time with his cupbearer after his brother's return to Westeros, Gaemon Palehair's death nonetheless left Aegon inconsolable.
A northern maid named Barba Bolton, daughter of the Dreadfort, said, "If you send me home, Your Grace, send me home with food, for the snows are deep and your people are starving."
Unable to locate his lost niece, Jaehaerys Targaryen proceeded as he always would in times of trouble, and gave himself over to his labors.
One luminary had not been present in the yard to greet the king: his mother, Queen Alyssa.
For all the vaunted strength of its walls, King's Landing fell in less than a day.
One day, mayhaps in an attempt to spur Vaegon into making more of an effort, he brought his sister Alyssa to the yard, shining in man's mail.
And as the year waned, the sickness came to Dragonstone.
With the Dragonpit still largely in ruins, the wedding of Prince Aegon and Princess Jaehaera was celebrated out of doors, at the top of Visenya's Hill, where towering grandstands were erected so the men and women of the nobility might sit in comfort and enjoy an unobstructed view.
Though he could not as yet read, he loved being read to, and Queen Alysanne, laughing, was oft heard to say that his first word had been, "Why?"
All that history tells us is that three dragons fought amidst the mud and blood and smoke of Second Tumbleton.
Shouts rang out, and the Dornish filled the air with scorpion bolts, but firing at a dragon is one thing, and killing it quite another.
Finding Princess Aerea gone, he sent a rider to Oldtown to demand the head of her twin sister, Rhaella, to punish their mother for her betrayal, but Lord Hightower imprisoned his messenger instead.
Mushroom concurs, but adds that Qarl Correy oft shared that bed as well; it aroused the princess to watch themen disporting with one another, he tells us, and from time to time the two would include her in their pleasures.
Her escort, forty strong, was commanded by Ser Alfred Broome, one of the men left behind when Rhaenyra had launched her attack upon King's Landing.
The corpse of King Aegon II was consigned to the flames, in the hopes that all the ills and hatreds of his reign might be burned away with his remains.
The immediate cause of the tension was the king's sudden and secret marriage to his sister, which had taken the Hand and the Queen Regent unawares and thrown their own plans and schemes into disarray.
And Addam Velaryon, lately Addam of Hull, sought out the Sea Snake after the battle; what they spoke to each other even Mushroom does not say.
Jaehaera was a lonely child, prone to weeping and somewhat simpleminded, yet she had seemed content in her own chambers with her maids and ladies, her kittens and her dolls.
"Not for Tom," said King Jaehaerys from the Iron Throne.
And with his passing, Ser Franklyn became the Lord of Fair Isle.
Gaemon was a scrawny thing as well, barely half the size his brother Vaegon had been at birth ten years earlier.
On his return to King's Landing, Baelon was hailed as a hero by cheering throngs, and embraced by his father the king, who named him Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne.
At his command, his men forced Ser Roger to the ground, whereupon the blacksmith's bastard nailed not one but three horseshoes to the knight's skull.
Lyonel Strong, Lord of Harrenhal and Hand of the King, accompanied his son and heir Ser Harwin on his return to the great, half-ruined castle on the lakeshore.
Septon Moon appeared once more, leading thousands of the Faithful on a march across the Reach to Oldtown, with the announced intent of bearding the Lickspittle in the Starry Sept to demand that he denounce "the Abomination on the Iron Throne," and lift his ban on the military orders.
The plotters agreed that it would be a simple matter to dispose of White, who was drunk more oft than not and had never shown any great prowess at arms.
Septon Mattheus led on the first, as anticipated, but lacked the votes necessary to secure the crystal crown.
Having elevated Ser Marston Waters to command of the Kingsguard, Lord Peake now prevailed upon him to confer white cloaks on two of his own kin, his nephew Ser Amaury Peake of Starpike, and his bastard brother Ser Mervyn Flowers.
The Wyls took refuge in caves and tunnels beneath their mountains, however, and the Widow-lover lived another twenty years.
In the days that followed, Munkun made several further appeals, assuring Aegon and Viserys that all that had been done was lawful, Ser Marston went from pleas to threats to bargaining, and Septon Bernard was brought forth to pray loudly for the Crone to light the king's way back to wisdom, all to no avail.
The kingsroad, the smallfolk named itâthe longest and most costly of Jaehaerys's roads, the first begun, the first completed.
Viserys Targaryen was so striking that it is said Lysandro Rogare contemplated putting him to work as a courtesan"¦until the boy identified himself.
Whilst he marched west against Nightsong and Horn Hill with half the Dornish power, the other half went east to besiege Stonehelm, seat of House Swann, under the command of Lord Walter Wyl, the son of the Widow-lover.
In Lys, Lysandro the Magnificent declared a day of feasting in honor of his grandson.
End, she found herself of little account in King's Landing, and bitterly resented having to care for the weepy, feeble-witted child queen whom she blamed for all her woes.
At the Starry Sept, the High Septon anointed Aenys Targaryen as his predecessor had once anointed his father, and presented him with a crown of yellow gold with the faces of the Seven inlaid in jade and pearl.
When Willam Stackspear suggested that perhaps she was part of the reward the Volantene had been promised, Lady Cassandra burst into tears.
Even the two White Harbor men, that fearsome knight Ser Medrick Manderly and his clever, corpulent brother Ser Torrhen, urged the queen to mistrust.
IâXXIICo-edited with Gardner Dozois
And so she didâ¦though Quince's charred corpse was burned beyond all recognition when they came upon it.
Not long after Ser Criston donned his white cloak, King Viserys invited Lyonel Strong, Lord of Harrenhal, to join the small council as master of laws.
The final tilt, wherein the Kingsguard knights Ser Ryam Redwyne and Ser Clement Crabb broke thirty lances against each other before King Jaehaerys proclaimed them co-champions, was declared to be the finest display of jousting ever seen in Westeros.
At ten-and-six, Maegor became the youngest knight in the Seven Kingdoms.
Lady Elissa had good reason for wanting more distance between her and the queen, however.
Little of this would have been apparent to Jaehaerys himself as the bells of King's Landing rang to usher in the 55th year since Aegon's Conquest.
Below the hills, wharves and storehouses were rising along the riverbanks, and merchants from Oldtown and the Free Cities were tying up beside the longships of the Velaryons and Celtigars, where only a few fishing boats had previously been seen.
What will you do then, shout for Silverwing to burn their city down?
Perhaps hoping to sway Aegon with her beauty, she sent him a portrait and offered herself to him in marriage, provided he named her son Ronnel as his heir.
Instead, screams echoed through the halls and stairwells of Sea Dragon Tower, down from the queen's apartments where Rhaenyra Targaryen strained and shuddered in her third day of labor.
Though the bounty for the head of a Warrior's Son was a golden dragon, the smallfolk and peasants of the realm hid and protected them, remembering what they had been.
King's Landing had grown too fast, with manses and shops and hovels and rat pits springing up like mushrooms after a hard rain.
Septa Edyth and Septa Lyra remained by Alysanne's side, together with a dozen fresh young maidens chosen from amongst a hundred who coveted the distinction of serving as a companion to the queen.
Law and tradition were on his side, Grand Maester Munkun admitted when the Hand brought his grievances to the councilâ¦but the king and the smallfolk felt otherwise, and it would have been the height of folly to repudiate Lord Alyn's pact.
If either of the twins produced a son, to be sure, the boy would at once become first in the order of successionâ¦but Lady Rhaena's pregnancy had ended in miscarriage, which left only the child growing inside Lady Baela on Driftmark.
Joffrey Velaryon was as big and red-faced and healthy as his brothers, but like them he had brown eyes, brown hair, and features that some at court called "common."
The Queen Dowager favored caution as well, urging her son to wait until his brother the king and his dragon, Sunfyre the Golden, were healed, so they might join the attack.
of Kisses where the child king had his seat
North of the Blackwater, the riverlands were ruled by the bloody hand of Harren the Black of House Hoare, King of the Isles and the Rivers.
The Lord Paramount of the Trident, Grover Tully, had been an old man even at the Great Council of 101, where he spoke for Prince Viserys; though now failing, he was no less stubborn.
For those seeking the details of the voyage, Maester Bendamure's Six Times to Sea: Being an Account of the Great Voyages of Alyn Oakenfist remains the most complete and authoritative source, though the vulgar accounts of Lord Alyn's life called Hard as Oak and Bastard Born are colorful and engrossing in their ways, albeit unreliable.
Thousands crowded onto the city walls to cheer the hero, just as they had at Lannisport half a year before, whilst thousands more rushed out the River Gate to line the shores.
Having arrived at King's Landing with the expectation that they would need to besiege the city or take it by storm, they were delighted (if surprised) to have it presented to them as on a gilded platterâ¦and to learn that Aegon II was dead (though Benjicot Blackwood and his aunt both expressed disquiet about the manner of his death, for poison was regarded as a coward's weapon, and lacking in honor).
Atop Aegon's High Hill, the squire now calling himself King Trystane Truefyre stood on the battlements with Larys Strong and Ser Perkin the Flea, gazing at the swelling ranks of stormlanders.
Prince Aemon reached his twenty-sixth nameday in 81 AC, and had proved himself more than able in both war and peace.
A few days after Lord Stark stepped down as the King's Hand, Ser Marston Waters returned alone from Lys, whence he had been sent to hire sellswords.
"Then the Hand's fingers closed about his throat," says Mushroom.
The Storm King's approach was no surprise to Orys Baratheon and his men; Queen Rhaenys, flying Meraxes, had witnessed Argilac's departure from Storm's End and was able to give the Hand a full accounting of the enemy's numbers and dispositions.
At Bandallon, when Lord Blackbar's youngest daughter was so bold as to seat herself in his lap and attempt to feed him a grape, he brushed her hand aside and said, "Forgive me, but I have a queen, and no taste for paramours."
Thousands of smallfolk streamed out the city gates, carrying their children and worldly possessions on their backs, to seek safety in the countryside.
Marriages had long been the means by which the great houses of Westeros bound themselves together, a reliable method of forging alliances and ending disputes.
If the others were wise, he told the queen, they would take the loss of their ears as a lesson and keep to their side of the Wall.
Little more need be said of the time Queen Alysanne and King Jaehaerys spent in the North.
His mother placed it on his head, and the lords and knights gathered there knelt as he proclaimed himself Maegor of House Targaryen, First of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm.
Hundreds of ravens flew back and forth across the Seven Kingdoms as every lord and landed knight in Westeros begged the honor of a royal visit.
Dragged from her bed, Queen Alys saw her sisters killed before her eyes as they tried to protect her.
Septa Ysabel, the novices Edyth and Lyra, and the deeply pious Lady Lucinda and her sister had a further charge.
The prince was fifteen yearsold when he was killed, and had been much loved by smallfolk and lords alike.
"You weep for her," Androw Farman said when he saw the tears on his wife's face, "but would you weep for me?"
Outside the walls, Prince Daeron swooped down upon Tessarion.
Whence came this poisonous calumny, one might ask (for a calumny it most certainly is)?
"One against six is a fight for fools, My Prince," he declared.
"To a man, they were convinced they had seen a giant kraken pull Autumn Moon beneath the sea.
Runciter, the new Grand Maester only recently arrived from the Citadel after Allar was felled by a stroke, was able to bring the prince's fever down somewhat and give him some relief from agony with milk of the poppy, but his condition continued to worsen.
Mindful of the promise he had made to the Maiden of the Vale, he ordered Prince Joffrey to fly to Gulltown with Tyraxes.
Born the son of a steward in service to Lord Dondarrion of Blackhaven, Ser Criston was a comely young knight of three-and-twenty years.
Called upon to entertain during those long awkward meals, Mushroom tells us that King Aegon said little as they ate, but "seemed more comfortable with Lady Turnips than he had ever been with Queen Jaehaera.
Her fears were fanned by Septon Mattheus; once away from Jaehaerys, and secure in the knowledge that his lips would not be sewn shut, the septon found his tongue again, and spoke of little else but how "all decent folk" would condemn the king's incestuous union.
Neither Daemon's wife nor Rhaenyra's husband had been dead even half a year; to wed again so soon was an insult to their memories, His Grace declared angrily.
In 86 AC, Queen Alysanne announced the betrothal of her daughter Viserra, fifteen years of age, to Theomore Manderly, the fierce old Lord of White Harbor.
All their probing proved to no avail, however, and when Lord Torrhen asked bluntly whether Lady Clarice had been complicit, all three of the condemned women could only shake their heads.
By law, the Seastone Chair passed to the eldest of his salt sons, but the boy Toron was not yet six and his mother, as a salt wife, could not hope to act as regent for him as a rock wife might have.
He still trained every morning in the yard with Prince Baelon; the two brothers were fast friends, and evenly matched.
A familiar sight about her father's shipyards, the girl was better known as Mouse, for she was "small, quick, and always underfoot."
Queen Alyssa, for her part, was deeply hurt that she had neither been advised of nor invited to Rhaena's wedding on Fair Isle.
Stinger was bleeding from half a dozen wounds when he finally fell.
The king remained behind, brooding on the Iron Throne as they departed.
For all these reasons, the realm suffered a terrible blow on the sixth day of the third moon of 132 AC, when Corlys Velaryon, Lord of the Tides, collapsed whilst ascending the serpentine steps in the Red Keep of King's Landing.
It is known, however, that he dispatched letters to his own lady wife on Driftmark whilst at the Hightower.
To celebrate his recovery, a feast was held on the first day of 127 AC.
Aenys Targaryen was infamous for his indecision, yet here, faced with the fury of the Faith, he stiffened and grew stubborn.
Oakenfist's "treasure" was Viserys Targaryen, the king's lost brother, the youngest son of Queen Rhaenyra and Prince Daemon, presumed dead since the Battle of the Gullet, and missing for nigh unto five years.
For the nonce it was done, and the Queen in the West at a stroke became the Queen in the East.
Though shaken by this attempt on her life (or the lives of her sons), the queen was still reluctant to attack King's Landing.
In the 90th year after Aegon's Conquest, the king and queen shared one of their last good times together, as they celebrated the wedding of their eldest grandchild, Princess Rhaenys, to Corlys Velaryon of Driftmark, Lord of the Tides.
In her youth, Good Queen Alysanne had loved her subjects, lords and commons alike.
Lord Daemon agreed, and reminded Jaehaerys of what had befallen the queen at Maidenpool.
In response, the High Septon in Oldtown called upon "true and pious children of the gods" to take uparms in defense of the Faith, and put an end to the reign of "dragons and monsters and abominations."
Many of the Faithful echoed his defiance.
Nor would she suffer to be parted from Prince Aegon, her last living son; day and night, the boy remained by her side, "like a small pale shadow."
Too late, the Braavosi tried to turn to face her attacker, but the huge dromond was ponderous in the water and slow to answer, and Queen Rhaenys struck her broadside with every oar churning water.
"The girl is wild, willful, and wanton, as we feared," Ser Willis Fell declared mournfully, "and now she has tied herself to Lord Corlys's upjumped bastard.
Even House Targaryen itself was divided, when the kith, kin, and children of each of the claimants became embroiled in the fighting.
Thereafter, though he joined his wife for important court events where his presence was expected, Ser Laenor spent most of his days apart from the princess.
One of them had offered to show the princess parts of the city that she had never seen: the pot shops and rat pits of Flea Bottom, the inns along Eel Alley and River Row where the serving wenches danced on tables, the brothels on the Street of Silk.
"My worm of a husband does not have the courage for that," Rhaena declared.
In battle he rode Vermithor, once themount of the Old King himself; of all the dragons in Westeros, only Vhagar was older or larger.
But Longleaf the Lionslayer said, "I'll want three more," and up on the ridge Red Robb Rivers and two of his archers raised their longbows.
"The war will end when the heads of the traitors are mounted on spikes above the King's Gate, and not before."
On Old Wyk, the priest-king Lodos, purported son of the Drowned God, called upon the krakens of the deep to rise and drag down the invaders' ships.
Not long thereafter, Rhaenyra set sail for Driftmark on the Sea Snake, accompanied by her handmaids (two of them the daughters of the Hand and sisters to Ser Harwin), the fool Mushroom, and her new champion, none other than Breakbones himself.
Nor had the situation improved with the ascension of Jaehaerys.
Long before her mother was brought to term, Queen Alysanne was also delivered of a son, a boy she named Aegon, to honor both the Conqueror and her lost and much lamented brother, the uncrowned prince.
On certain formal occasions, His Grace would be brought out to sit the Iron Throne or welcome an envoy, but elsewise he was little seen inside the Red Keep, and never beyond its walls.
Our only interest is in the early part of her sordid tale, the story of her youthâ¦for the alleged author of A Caution for Young Girls is none other than Coryanne Wylde, one of the girls sent to Dragonstone as a companion to the little queen.
Many of the queen's companions on the rooftop fled, the dwarf tells us, fearing that the fires would soon engulf the entire city, even the Red Keep atop Aegon's High Hill.
As was Meria Martell, the Princess of Dorne, when King Aegon descended upon Sunspear on Balerion, to find his sister Rhaenys there before him.
Her sister Rhaena's penchant for showering an unseemly amount of affection and attention on a succession of favorites, some of whom were considered less than suitable, had been the source of much whispering at court, and the queen did not want Alysanne to be the subject of similar rumors.
"His trueborn son and heir," Alys Rivers spat back, "and the rightful king of Westeros."
High in the mountains, the unthinkable happened one night as Lord Robert and his men huddled about their campfires.
The last of the three brothers was Daemion, whose son Aerion then succeeded to Dragonstone.
Sitting athwart the Gullet, Driftmark was closer to the narrow sea than Duskendale or King's Landing, so Spicetown soon began to usurp much of the shipping that would elsewise have made for those ports, and House Velaryon grew ever richer and more powerful.
There are those even today who will insist that Septon Barth was made a fool of by the Sealord, that he was lied to, cheated, and humiliated.
In answer, King Jaehaerys descended the Iron Throne and bade Lord Rogar follow him.
Disappointment had turned her sour, her detractors said; once her father's heir at Storm's
Both of the strong sons he had once boasted of had died before him, so it fell to his grandson Edric to succeed him.
Prince Aenys was the unquestioned heir to the Iron Throne, all agreed, but now an issue arose as to whether Prince Maegor remained second in the line of succession, or should be considered to have fallen to third behind the newborn princess.
It was the hour of the owl when Queen Alysanne was awoken by her daughter shaking her gently by the arm.
The gold cloaks at the Old Gate and the Dragon Gate sallied forth under the command of their captains, Ser Balon Byrch and Ser Garth the Harelip, and by midday had managed torestore some semblance of order to the streets north and east of Rhaenys's Hill.
Those from the west followed the hedge knight Ser Horys Hill, those from the south a gigantic axeman called Wat the Hewer.
"It is never pleasant to lance a boil," Grand Maester Elysar wrote of the affair.
Prince Daemon and Lady Laena flew first to Pentos, where they were feted by the city's prince.
Queen Alicent demanded that one of Lucerys Velaryon's eyes should be put out, for the eye he had cost Aemond.
Yet this "fire-breathing chicken" crossed the waters of Blackwater Bayâ¦for it was Sunfyre that the sailors on the Nessaria had seen attacking Grey Ghost.
Let them march south, he urged once more, and join their strength to Lord Hightower's.
When the young gallant trotted up to the royal box and crowned Good QueenAlysanne as his queen of love and beauty, the commons roared their approval.
Lord Thaddeus was a bluff, hearty, cheerful man, well-liked and well-respected, a doting husband and a good father to his sons.
Disregarding the precedents set by King Jaehaerys in 92 and the Great Council in 101, Viserys declared his daughter, Rhaenyra, to be his rightful heir, and named her Princess of Dragonstone.
Only when he was certain that the defenders would offer him no harm did he signal for his wife the queen to descend upon Syrax.
"This one is mine," Rogar Baratheon told His Grace when the mountain king was led before them in fetters.
It was a time for celebration and celebrate they did, with a tourney at King's Landing on the anniversary of the king's coronation.
"Lord Rowan has been removed from office.
"I shall command Lord Hightower to free your brother Ser Orryn and the men who went with him to Oldtown," Jaehaerys said, "but I cannot allow them to go unpunished.
Oldtown, King's Landing, and Lannisport were the largest and richest cities in the realm; all three were held by greens.
The realm that Jaehaerys inherited was impoverished, war-torn, lawless, and riven with division and mistrust, whilst the new king himself was a green boy with no experience of rule.
He took ships around the bottom of Westeros to visit Oldtown, Lannisport, and Lordsport on Pyke.
Though in great pain, the king did not retreat to his bedchamber again, nor avail himself of dreamwine or milk of the poppy, but immediately set to pronouncing judgment upon the three "dayfly kings" who had ruled King's Landing during the Moon of Madness.
Thus perished the last Strong, and a proud and ancient house came to its end.
There beneath the shadow of the empty Iron Throne (for King Aegon did not choose to come to court), the lords attempted to choose new regents to rule until His Grace could come of age.
It was Lord Larys Strong the Clubfoot, who spirited the king and his children out of the city when the queen's dragons first appeared in the skies above King's Landing.
Would the addition of a seconddragon to the prince's host have made a difference when battle was joined?
Whereas previously she had fended off the boy's halting advances, now Lady Sam (as she would be known for many a year) yielded to them, allowing him to seduce her, and afterward promising to marry himâ¦but only if he would make peace, "for I would surely die of grief should I lose another husband."
Then King Aegon and his host departed back the way they had come, west along the foothills and through the Prince's Pass.
Sometime during the blackest hour of that long and dreadful night, the High Septon had died.
That came when Benifer and I lowered the poor child into a tub and covered her with ice.
Another offer of alliance came from the boy king of the Eyrie, Ronnel Arryn, whose mother asked for all the lands east of the Green Fork of the Trident for the Vale's support against Black Harren.
Though he spoke no word against the king or his queens, the enmity between King Maegor and the Faith endured.
Viserys was well treated during his captivity.
But Viserys's claim derived from his father, Laenor's from his mother, and most lords felt that the male line must take precedence over the female.
(The madness of this plan can be seen in the fact that there are neither a hundred towns nor a hundred castles on Cape Wrath, nor even a third that number.)
Though Viserys I would reign for nine more years, the bloody seedsof the Dance of the Dragons had already been planted, and 120 AC was the year when they began to sprout.
A new order of guards was created for this purpose: the Dragonkeepers, seventy-seven strong and clad in suits of gleaming black armor, their helms crested by a row of dragon scales that continued, diminishing, down their backs.
Lord Velaryon was still at Oldtown when word of Queen Jaehaera's death reached the city, followed within a few short days by the announcement of the king's betrothal to Myrielle Peake.
The council convened in the queen's apartments within Maegor's Holdfast.
The seat of House Velaryon was Castle Driftmark, a dark, grim place, always damp and often flooded.
Blessedly, the attackers were no warriors, and they had not taken the courage of the queen's companions into account.
The next day, King Jaehaerys sent for him and commanded him to speak no more of the princess.)
Maegor was alive when Rosby and Towers left the throne room, they argue, and the guards at the doors swore that no one entered afterward, until Queen Elinor made her discovery.
At seven, she became a dragonrider, taking to the sky on the young dragon she named Syrax, after a goddess of old Valyria.
None dared name her liar, howeverâ¦for it was Laenor's own father, Lord Corlys himself, who brought the boys to Prince Jacaerys for the Sowing.
Queen Visenya persuaded her son to spare some of the rebellious lords, but even those who kept their lives lost lands and titles and were forced to give up hostages.
In the west, Lady Johanna Lannister hoped to follow her victory at Kayce by striking another blow against the Red Kraken.
A suspected Poor Fellow who preached that the Seven sent the Winter Fever to punish House Targaryen for incest had his tongue removed.
Prince Jaehaerys was still a year and a half shy of manhood when he first ascended the Iron Throne.
Lord Prentys Tully died shivering in Riverrun, followed a day later by his Lady Lucinda.
We have of course the chronicles laid down by Grand Maester Runciter and his successors, and many a court document as well, all the royal decrees and proclamations, but these tell only a small part of the story.
All we know is that the maester, a young man of two-and-twenty,found Prince Daemon and the girl Nettles at their supper that night, and showed them the queen's letter.
Peake had opened a queen's door for his daughter, but other lords had daughters too (as well as sisters, nieces, cousins, and even the odd widowed mother or maiden aunt) and before the door could close they all came pushing through, insisting that their own blood would make a better royal consort than Lady Turnips.
Rhaella, a novice sworn to the Faith, had remained at the Starry Sept, whilst her twin, Aerea, continued on with the king to the Red Keep, where she was to serve as a cupbearer and companion to the Princess Alysanne.
Mushroom (who was hundreds of leagues away) has suggested that perhaps one of the men on the walls was skilled in the use of a sling.
Under that name, she secured an audience with the Sealord of Braavos.
Queen Visenya brokered a double wedding between House Blackwood and House Bracken, rivals whose history of enmity went back centuries, matching a son of each house with a daughter of the other to seal a peace between them.
In the riverlands, the aged and bedridden Lord Grover Tully had finally died (of apoplexy from having his house fight against the rightful king at Second Tumbleton, Mushroom says), and his grandson Elmo, now at last the Lord of Riverrun, had called the lords of the Trident to war once more, lest he suffer the same fate as Lords Rosby, Stokeworth, and Darklyn.
Yet neither man had hesitated to face storms of spears and arrows off Driftmark.
Since Aenar the Exile first staked his claim to Dragonstone, that hadbeen known.
A great feast was to be held that night in the throne room, and the ancient Guild of Alchemists had promised displays of pyromancy such as the realm had never seen.
The princess would be well protected in CasterlyRock; there was no castle more impregnable in all Westeros.
Princess Rhaenys, his wife, had the fiery temperament of many Targaryens, Mushroom says, and would not have taken kindly to her lord husband fathering bastards on a girl half her age, and a shipwright's daughter besides.
The sudden, bloodless fall of Black Harren's seat was counted a great victory for Queen Rhaenyra and her blacks.
Between him and King's Landing lay the isle of Driftmark, the whole breadth of Blackwater Bay, and scores of prowling Velaryon warships.
"There is a place for you in the castle, if you want it," Alysanne told her when her belly was full.
That was the only mention of the Blue Pearl.
Only twenty years of age, Ser Glendon had been Lord Commander of the Queensguard for less than a day.
Gulltown and House Grafton remained staunch in its support of the Gilded Falcon, despite his captivity.
The hidden doors and secret tunnels that Maegor the Cruel had built were as familiar to the ratcatcher as to the rats he hunted.
When they took their case before the sick and failing Viserys, they made the grievous mistake of questioning the legitimacy of his daughter's children.
Jordan Towers, one of the last lords to remain faithful to Maegor the Cruel, had died of a congestion of the chest, and Black Harren's vast ruin had passed tohis last surviving son, named after the late king.
For once, the council remained adamant, defying the Hand's wishes.
Down from the Lady Baela emerged a pale young woman of surpassing beauty, arm in arm with a richly clad boy near the king's own age, his features hidden beneath the cowl of his embroidered cloak.
Each time His Grace frowned, shifted in his seat, or gave another weary nod, the likelihood of his choosing Lady Turnips increased, Lord Unwin reasoned."
Though Jaehaerys had forbidden it, Alysanne had defied his edict and secretly engaged agents to keep watch over her wayward child across the narrow sea.
A grateful King Aenys conferred knighthood on Brune, and rewarded Davos Baratheon, Samwell Tarly, No-Nose Dondarrion, Ellyn Caron, Allard Royce, and Goren Greyjoy with gold, offices, and honors.
To the horror of his Kingsguard, Aegon spent his days visiting the sick, and often sat with them for hours, sometimes holding their hands in his own, or soothing their fevered brows with cool, damp cloths.
(Though Greyjoy was not quite three years older than his foe, he never called him anything but "that boy.")
Nor was Peake a stranger to conspiracy, having once planned the murder of two dragonriders under the sign of the Bloody Caltrops.
Upon his death his corpse was burned in the yard of the Red Keep, his ashes interred afterward on Dragonstone beside those of his mother.
Legend tells us that Lord Rogar awaited their coming in the selfsame inn beside the ferry where he, or his brother Borys, had met with Coryanne Wylde.
Ser Addam Velaryon had come to prove his loyalty by destroying the Two Betrayers and their dragons, and here was one beneath him, attacking the men who had joined him for this fight.
The accused turncloak Addam Velaryon, born Addam of Hull, had saved King's Landing from the queen's foesâ¦at the cost of his own life.
After the loss of his fingers, Viserys I never sat upon the Iron Throne again.
"That makes four dragons of fighting size," said Rhaenys.
Ser Gyles Morrigen brought forth two good knights to join the Kingsguard, and His Grace duly presented Ser Ryam Redwyne and Ser Robin Shaw with white cloaks.
Though sworn to chastity, he seldom slept alone save in his cell at White Sword Tower; despite being somewhat ill-favored, he had a rough charm that washerwomen and serving girls responded to, and when in his cups would even boast of having bedded certain highborn ladies.
The true circumstances of her demise will likely never be known, but Rhaenys Targaryen, sister and wife to King Aegon I, perished at the Hellholt in Dorne in the 10th year After the Conquest.
Princess Saera had half a dozen septas and as many bedmaids before she turned thirteen.
Though shattered by his loss, Baelon took solace in the two strong sons that she had left him, Viserys and Daemon, and never ceased to honor the memory of his sweet lady with the broken nose and mismatched eyes.
Though her knights beat off the attackers, Ser Balon Byrch was felled by an arrow, and Ser Lyonel Bentley, a young knight of the Queensguard, suffered a blow to the head that cracked his helm.
Climbing hills became a trial to her, and in 95 AC she slipped and fell on the serpentine steps, breaking her hip.
The North was too remote to be of much import in the fight, the council judged; by the time the Starks gathered their banners and marched south, the war might well be over.
In front of Grand Maester Benifer, Septon Mattheus, Lord Velaryon, and the rest, he spoke to her contemptuously.
Amongst the novices she met was her niece Rhaella, whom Her Grace pronounced a learned and devout young woman "though much given to stammers and blushes."
Visenya Targaryen proclaimed that her son Maegor had come to be their king.
If a man admired something of his, be it a pair of boots, an emerald ring, or a wife, Racallio would press it on him as a gift.
Within an hour of the king's death, she had mounted Vhagar and flown east across the narrow sea.
Barely a year later, in 123 AC, the fourteen-year-old princess gave birth to twins, a boy she named Jaehaerys and a girl called Jaehaera.
To replace his brother as Hand, King Aenys turned to Septon Murmison, a pious cleric said to be able to heal the sick by the laying on of hands.
"And Gaemon Palehair, 'twas he who put the poison in the tart, I'll venture," Viserys went on glibly.
"She is frightened of horses, dogs, boys with loud voices, men with beards, and dancing, and she is terrified of dragons," Grand Maester Benifer wrote when Aerea first came to court.
Long after the Dance was done, the singer Luceon of Tarth would compose a sad ballad called "Farewell, My Brother," still sung today.
Rogar Baratheon's own hair had gone grey, however, and the years had taken their toll of the old King's Hand.
Grand Maester Elysar tells me that His Grace did indeed speak to Prince Baelon, who dutifully took his brother under his wing, marched him out into the yard, put a sword into his hand and a shield upon his arm.
Even from across the sea they came; the Prince of Pentos sent a daughter, the Archon of Tyrosh a sister, and the daughters of ancient houses set sail from Myr and even Old Volantis (though, sadly, none of the Volantene girls ever arrived at King's Landing, being carried off by corsairs from the Basilisk Isles on the way).
Without the strong hand of a king to guide them, some lords gave vent to old grievances, and the half-healed wounds of the Dance began to bleed afresh.
Beyond the walls of King's Landing, however, the woes that had afflicted the realm these past two years had only worsened.
No newborn was ever more robust than Maegor Targaryen, maesters and midwives agreed; his weight at birth was almost twice that of his elder brother.
The prince came squalling into the world in 12 AC.
It must be recalled that the Hightowers, as rich and powerful as they were, were bannermen sworn to House Tyrell of Highgarden, where his lordship's brother Garmund was a page.
Lord Celtigar seemed well suited for the office: staunch and unwavering in his support of the queen, he was unrelenting, incorruptible, and ingenious, all agreed, and very wealthy in the bargain.
Together with Alayne Royce and Samantha Stokeworth, two of Rhaena's oldest friends, they became nigh inseparable, a court within the court that Ser Franklyn Farman, Lord Marq's elder son, dubbed "the Four-Headed Beast."
Had he grown fearful of the realm's response to the marriage, recalling all that had befallen Aegon and Rhaena?
To balance Eustace, we have The Testimony of Mushroom, based upon the verbal account of the court fool (set down by a scribe who failed to append his name) who at various times capered for the amusement of King Viserys, Princess Rhaenyra, and both Aegons, the Second and Third.
Grand Maester Munkun places it at the door of the Shepherd, for thousands heard him decry both crime and queen.
In place of a frightened girl, the Baratheon men found themselves confronted by thirty armed septons under the command of thesteward, Casper Straw.
"Mother, forgive me," Joffrey supposedly said with his last breathâ¦though men still argue whether he was speaking of his mother, the queen, or praying to the Mother Above.
Even before the others reached White Harbor, King Jaehaerys had called together his council in the Red Keep, to consider an entreaty from his queen.
The garrison at the Gate of the Gods was especially weak, as their captain and a third of their number had died with Ser Luthor Largent in Cobbler's Square.
To curtail the rumors, Queen Alyssa put out word that His Grace was resting and reflecting on Dragonstone, the ancient s
All of his offspring partook of the wealth represented by the Rogare Bank.
Though Oakenfist easily swept aside the Gilded Falcon's sellsails to capture the harbor at Gulltown, the attackers lost hundreds of men taking the port walls by storm, and thrice as many during the house-to-house fighting that followed.
A married man, Ser Howard left his wife behind him, though he took most of her jewelry.
Only three remained in King's Landing: Lord Peake, Lord Mooton, and Grand Maester Munkun, who came rushing back inside the Red Keep the moment Ser Robert Darklyn commanded that its gates be opened once again.
The Warrior's Sons began to fortify the Hill of Rhaenys, turning the Sept of Remembrance into their citadel.
Yet the largest retinue was that accompanying Lord Unwin Peake, who brought a thousand of his own men and five hundred sellswords.
When commanded to cease his raiding, Greyjoy continued as before.
Several of the traitors had blood ties to the former Hand, whilst others owed him their positions.
A rumor went around the court that Her Grace had given offense to the king with a shrewish remark, so he had commanded Ser Owen to remove her tongue.
From White Harbor came a raven from Lord Torrhen, speaking of past marriage pacts between the dragon and the merman "broken by cruel chance," and suggesting that King Aegon might put things aright by taking a Manderly for his bride.
The castle's garrison and servants looked on as well, together with a good part of the smallfolk of the fishing village that huddled below Dragonstone's mighty curtain walls.
Even men who had fought against him during the Dance spoke up for him nowâ¦some out of affection for the old man, no doubt, others from concern for what his young heir, Alyn, might do should his beloved grandsire (or sire) be put to death.
Just how long these lessons continued Mushroom does not say, but unlike Septon Eustace, he insists that Princess Rhaenyra remained a maiden, for she wished to preserve her innocence as a gift for her beloved.
Some made their way to Cobbler's Square to join the throngs gathered round the Shepherd, whilst others slipped through postern gates or over the walls, intent on making their way back to Driftmark.
In his account, Ser Criston Cole forced Lord Beesbury back into his seat and opened his throat with a dagger.
From all we know of the Cannibal, he would have been more apt to eat the corpse than salute it.)
Though slower than she had been a century before, she had grown nigh as large as the Black Dread of old.
The High Septon himself would perform the marriage rites, on the seventh day of the seventh moon of the new year.
When Alysanne asked if she would return to Greenstone, Rhaena shook her head.
With Vaegon settled, Daella had been next in line, but the tearful princess presented an entirely different sort of problem.
Where the Greenblood met the sea, Rhaenys came upon the Planky Town, where hundreds of poleboats, fishing skiffs, barges, houseboats, and hulks sat baking in the sun, joined together with ropes and chains and planks to make a floating city, yet only a few old women and small children appeared to peer up at her as Meraxes circled overhead.
The first name he gave was that of Marston Waters, but on further questioning he named George Graceford, and still later Mervyn Flowers.
Grand Maester Orwyle opened the meeting by reviewing the customary tasks and procedures required at the death of a king.
Even his mother, Queen Alyssa, is reported to have called Jaehaerys "the best of my three sons."
No record survives of what Alysanne Targaryen said or thought when first she learned that she was to be wed to a youth ten years her senior, whom she scarcely knew and (if rumor can be believed) did not like.
Jonah Mooton was the heir to Maidenpool, Red Roy Connington was the fifteen-year-old Lord of Griffin's Roost, and Braxton Beesbury, called Stinger, was a nineteen- year-old knight, the finest lance in the Reach, and the heir to Honeyholt.
Had Lady Larra and her brothers been Westerosi, they might have been admired and celebrated, but their foreign birth,foreign ways, and foreign gods made them objects of mistrust and suspicion instead.
Valyria is accursed, all men agree, and even the boldest sailor steers well clear of its smoking bonesâ¦but we would be mistaken to believe that nothing lives there now.
"She never did it, they were lying, it never happened, how could they believe that, it was just a game, it was just a jape, who said that, that was nothow it happened, everyone likes kissing, she was sorry, Peri started it, it was such fun, no one was hurt, no one ever told her kissing was bad, Sweetberry had dared her, she was so ashamed, Baelon used to kiss Alyssa all the time, once she started she did not know how to stop, she was afraid of Stinger, the Mother Above had forgiven her, all the girls were doing it, the first time she was drunk, she had never wanted to, it was what men wanted, Maegelle said the gods forgave all sins, Jonah said he loved her, the gods had made her pretty, it was not her fault, she would be good from now on, it will be as if it never happened, she would marry Red Roy Connington, they had to forgive her, she would never kiss a man again or do any of those other things, it wasn't her who was with child, she was their daughter, she was their little girl, she was a princess, if she were queen she would do as she liked, why wouldn't they believe her, they never loved her, she hated them, they could whip her if they wanted but she would never be their slave.
The institution of the king's small council did not come into its full bloom until the reign of King Jaehaerys the Conciliator, but that is not to suggest that Aegon I ruled without the benefit of counsel.
The feigned princes who appeared during the reign of Aegon III, using his name, have been conclusively shown to be imposters.
Princess Jaehaera, a sweet and simple girl of six, was put in the charge of Ser Willis Fell, who swore to bring her safely to Storm's
And when the Doom came twelve years later, the Targaryens were the only dragonlords to survive.
"The queen has forbidden any harm to come to him," Lord Mooton reminded them, "and murdering two guests in their beds is twice as foul as murdering one.
Mushroom tells us that Queen Daenaera's ladies donned mail and took up spears to help make it appear that King Aegon had more defenders than he did, but this ruse could not have fooled Ser Marston and his men for long, if indeed it fooled them at all.
Yet the Hand held back, continuing his attempts to end the "secret siege" (as this confrontation would later become known) with words, when swords would most likely have brought it to a swift conclusion.
As the days passed, more and more visitors made their way to Dragonstone to talk with the king.
With the considerable help of the Gilded Falcon, Isembard Arryn, Manderly enacted a major reform of the taxes, providing more income for the Crown and some relief for those who could prove they had suffered losses from the plundering of the Rogare Bank.
Gerardys denied having any part in Lord Corlys's betrayal.
She brought Septon Barth along with her, to speak on the virtues of forgiveness andthe healing properties of time.
Meanwhile, King's Landing experienced a period of prosperity such as it had not seen in many years, in no small part thanks to House Rogare of Lys.
Even our normally reticent Septon Eustace writes of his nightly visits to Lady Mysaria, whose bed he oft shared whilst at courtâ¦with the queen's blessing, purportedly.
The queen died of a wasting illness in 100 AC, at the age of four-and-sixty, still insisting that her granddaughter Rhaenys and her children had been unfairly cheated of their rights.
The next year, Rhaenys gave her a brother, Laenor.
With his death, the flames of war sprang up anew across the Vale of Arryn.
The little prince was robust and fierce and had "a warrior's look about him," declared his grandsire, Aegon the Dragon himself.
"Lacking tongues with which to make their appeal, they preferred to argue with swords," says Mushroom.
It might also have been a desire to tame the beast that had slain her father and his own dragon (though Princess Aerea had never known her father, and it is hard to know what feelings she might have had about him and his death).
Slimy with mud, twisting amongst the bones of countless sheep, Sunfyre writhed and coiled like a serpent, his tail lashing, sending blasts of golden flame at his attackers as he struggled to fly.
In 36 AC came another daughter, Alysanne.
Lord Tully was thanked for his service, reunited with his wife, Lady Lucinda, and sent home to Riverrun.
When dragged before the Iron Throne, Ser Lucamore fell to his knees, confessed his guilt, and begged the king for mercy.
Septon Eustace provides us with the killer's name and declares jealousy the motive for the slaying; Laenor Velaryon had grown weary of Ser Qarl's companionship and had grown enamored of a new favorite, a handsome young squire of six-and-ten.
Many brave men have followed in their footsteps since, writing their names in the White Book and donning the white cloak.
Lady Meredith turned back east for home, whilst Alys Westhill and her Sun Chaser pressed on westward, chasing the sun.
King Aegon came but thrice, on the days that judgment waspronounced upon Gareth Long, George Graceford, and Septon Bernard; he showed no interest in the rest, and never asked about their fates.
Lady Floris, another of his lordship's daughters, was to be betrothed to Larys Strong.
When the ragged bands encamped about Crakehall left to join their fellows on the march,Prince Aegon and Princess Rhaena were finally able to depart.
Though Lyman Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock, stood firm when Maegor demanded that Aegon and his sister be returned to King's Landing "in chains, if need be," even he would not go so far as to pledge his sword to the youth who now found himself being called "the pretender" and "Aegon the Uncrowned."
"A king should have a Hand of his own choosing," said Aegon III, rising to his feet.
Morion had been weaned on the tales of past Dornish glory, and like many young Dornish lords he had seen the sun-mottled bones of the dragon Meraxes at the Hellholt.
Alone and penniless, Coryanne Wylde moved on to the next of the trials, tribulations, and erotic adventures recounted in her book.
Then the king presented his father's sword, Blackfyre, to his brother, saying, "You are more fit to bear this blade than me.
Queen Alicent rose to the challenge, closing the gates of castle and city, sending the gold cloaks to the walls, and dispatching riders on swift horses to find Prince Aemond and fetch him back.
When the Velaryon fleet had closed the Gullet, a great many ships found themselves trapped at King's Landing.
Instead of selling the prince's favors, he married him to his youngest daughter, the Lady Larra Rogare, who would become known in the histories of Westeros as Larra of Lys.
Petyr Piper, the grizzled Lord of Pinkmaiden, spoke for many when he said, "I swore her my sword.
Even here on this distant isle there were Poor Fellows, angered that Lord Marq, like his father before him, had given support and sanctuary to one they regarded as an enemy of the Faith.
It would be good for the boy to see the lands he ruled, the Hand reasoned, to show himself to his people.
Meanwhile, Prince Daemon Targaryen himself hastened south on the wings of his dragon, Caraxes.
"A silence fell, though the same words were on the lips of us all: âJaehaerys and Alysanne have dragons too.'
"The king had as well been made of wax," observed Septon Eustace.
North of the Golden Tooth, the Red Dog of the Hills, Ser Joffrey Doggett, moved between the westerlands and riverlands at will, with the support and connivance of Lady Lucinda, the pious wife of the Lord of Riverrun.
So bereft was Queen Alysanne that the maesters feared for her life as well.
There had been a time when she had been well loved by highborn and commons alike, when they had cheered her as the Realm's Delight.
Aegon's queens, Visenya and Rhaenys, took a special delight in arranging these matches.
Though Lord Hightower had closed his gates against Septon Moon and his followers and refused to allow thementrance to his city, he showed no eagerness to take up arms against them, despite repeated entreaties from His High Holiness.
Lord Corlys suggested that mayhaps the prince might be taken alive and held as hostage.
He boasted proudly that The Seven-Pointed Star was the only book he had ever read, and many questioned even that, for he had never been known to quote from that holy tome, and no man had ever seen him read nor write.
The heads of the five dragons that his followers had slain had been set up on posts, and every night the Shepherd would appear amongst them to preach.
Her captors wore the seahorse of House Velaryon upon their doublets, and though they slew the two men guarding her, they did no harm to the Dowager Queen herself, nor to her ladies.
To mark its completion and celebrate the arrival of the new Hand, Lord Redwyne proposed to the king that they stage a great tourney, the largest and grandest the realm had seen since the Golden Wedding.
"We have more," said Princess Rhaenys, the Queen Who Never Was, who had been a dragonrider longer than all of them.
Upon his death at Tumbleton, his lands and title passed to his eldest son,Lyonel, a youth of fifteen on the cusp of manhood.
The king's shrewd master of coin, Rego Draz, pored over the Crown's debts and incomes carefully after Septon Barth's return, and concluded that the coin that would previously have had to be sent to Braavos could now be safely diverted to a project the king had long wished to undertake at home: further improvements to King's Landing.
The Dornishmen, Ser Gyles Yronwood, was pulled from his horse and bludgeoned to death, whilst Ser Willam Royce was felled by a man who leapt down from a rooftop to land upon his back (his famed sword, Lamentation, was torn from his hand and carried off, never to be found again).
Septon Eustace was with him when he died, as was the boy king that he had served.
Other rumors claimed the Lannisters were on the march, the Hightowers were on the march, Ser Marston Waters had landed with ten thousand sellswords from Lys and Old Volantis (all without truth).
"A hand for a head," said Black Aly, grinningâ¦for Mushroom tells us this was her intent all along.
And high in the Red Mountains of Dorne, a pretender called the Vulture King appeared and called on all true Dornishmen to avenge the evils visited on Dorne by the Targaryens.
To fill his place, Jaehaerys awarded a white cloak to Ser Lucamore Strong, the victor of the great melee in the Dragonpit.
Royal decrees also issued forth from atop Aegon's High Hill, where Ser Perkin's catspaw Trystane sat the Iron Throne, but those were of a very different nature.
Jon Piper, Lord of Pinkmaiden, had pledged his sword to the prince, but it was widely believed that it was his fiery sister Melony, Rhaena's girlhood friend, who won him to the cause.
When word reachedDragonstone that Princess Rhaenys had fallen, angry words were exchanged between the queen and Lord Velaryon, who blamed her for his wife's death.
By that time, the queen's absence had been noticed, and His Grace would oft find himself seated next to some lissome maid or handsome widow at feasts, or riding beside them when hawking or hunting, but he took no notice of any of them.
By the end of 41 AC, much of the realm was deep in the throes of a full-fledged rebellion against House Targaryen.
Others, including the queen and myself, took this to mean that the princess had flown east, not west, and would be found somewhere in Essos.
Suffice it to say that her dying took the best part of a fortnight, and that Maegor himself was present for all of it, a witness to her agony.
In the Iron Islands, another priest king had walked out of the sea, announcing himself to be Lodos the Twice- Drowned, the son of the Drowned God, returned at last from visiting his father.
Thus were the sons of Baelon Targaryen reconciled for the second time.
The longer he served, the more imperious Ser Otto became, it was said, and many great lords and princes came to resent his manner and envy him his access to the Iron Throne.
During the hour of the wolf he can oft be found standing by a window, gazing up at the stars, but when I presented him with Archmaester Lyman's
Of the Lyseni who had come to Westeros with Lady Larra, only Sandoq the Shadow and six more remained at her side, the rest having gone with her brother Moredo to the Vale.
Afterward, the king's knights moved in and put all the workmen to the sword, to prevent them from ever revealing the Red Keep's secrets.
Though the Targaryens had continued their traditional practice of marrying brother to sister, uncle to niece, and cousin to cousin wherever possible, there had also been important matches outside the royal family, the fruit of which would play important roles in the war to come.
Kingdoms of the Sky, he showed no interest.
The journey went without incident until the king and queen reached Maidenpool, where they were to be the guests of Lord and Lady Mooton for a fortnight before sailing across the Bay of Crabs to Wickenden, Gulltown, and the Vale.
There were those, chiefly from the Reach, who urged that Unwin Peake be asked to serve as Hand once more, but they were quickly shouted down when Prince Viserys declared that his brotherwould prefer a younger man, "and one less like to fill his court with traitors."
Twice the dragon flew at the Dragonpit's great bronze gates, only to find them closed and barred and defended by ranks of spears.
Hellholt, a strong castle on the river Brimstone, was thought to be well situated to deal with any revolts.
Another Lord Hightower, counseled by another High Septon, had opened the gates of Oldtown during the Conquest, but now it seemed as if the greatest and most populous city in Westeros must surely burn.
Seven were brought forth, one an innkeep who had been killing certain of his guests (those he judged would not be missed) and stealing their valuables since the Old King's time.
The king himself marched northwest, to the Gods Eye and Harrenhal, the gargantuan fortress that was the pride and obsession of King Harren the Black.
Lord Alyn required fresh water and provisions for his ships, whilst Princess Aliandra required services of a more intimate nature.
Ser Marston unsheathed his sword and went to one knee, saying, "I swear upon my sword in the sight of gods and men that none shall do you harm whilst I stand beside you."
At fifteen, her mother took her across the riverlands to Raventree (in a wheelhouse, as Daella was afraid of horses), where Lord Blackwood entertained Queen Alysanne lavishly whilst his son paid court to the princess.
Septon Eustace claims Rhaenyra had "a mother's heart" that made her reluctant to risk the lives of her remaining sons.
Yet here is where the Great Code of Septon Barth (who in the end would contribute thrice as much as any other man to the Books of Law that resulted) began, in that autumn year of 55 AC.
On the seventh day of the seventh moon of the 131st year after Aegon's Conquest, a date deemed sacred to the gods, the High Septon of Oldtown pronounced the marriage vows as Prince Aegon the Younger, eldest son of Queen Rhaenrya by her uncle Prince Daemon, wed Princess Jaehaera, the daughter of Queen Helaena by her brother King Aegon II, thereby uniting the two rival branches of House Targaryen and ending two years of treachery and carnage.
Instead the lords turned to the northman, Torrhen Manderly, Lord of White Harborâ¦a man unknown to many of them, but for that very reason without enemies south of the Neck (save perhaps for Unwin Peake, whose memory was long).
But the Dornish sun proved unrelenting as Lord Tyrell marched toward Hellholt.
When those were gone, the men Ser Criston had left behind to guard him brought him calves and sheep.
Finding a suitable man to take Lord Edwell's place as master of coin proved to be no easy task.
The brigands pulled his lordship from his bed and dragged him to the castle godswood, where Harren sliced off his genitals and fed them to a dog.
Mushroom, who knew both men well, says Ser Alfred misliked and resented Ser Robert.
How better to do that than by retaking Tumbleton from the Two Betrayers, whose treason had stained him?
And Prince Lucerys turned to take his leave of the Round Hall.
The celebrations would include a great tourney, seven days of feasts and frolics, and even a mock sea battle to be fought in the waters of Blackwater Bay.
By royal command, the infants Jacaerys Velaryon and Daeron Targaryen shared a wet nurse until weaned.
There upon the south bank of the Trident, he knelt, laid the ancient crown of the Kings of Winter at Aegon's feet, and swore to be his man.
Tymond Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock, brought three hundred men with him.
Tumbleton's walls were still intact, and once the king's men had fallen back inside and closed their gates, the queen's forces had no way to make a breach, lacking both siege equipment and dragons.
And thus it was that Lord Manfred rode forth to greet Aegon the Dragon as he approached, and to offer up his sword, his city, and his oath.
Two of Rogar Baratheon's nieces were amongst those so honored, along with daughters and sisters of the Lords Arryn, Vance, Rowan, Royce, and Dondarrion, and even a woman of the North, Mara Manderly, daughter to Lord Theomore of White Harbor.
Yet every time she sat the Iron Throne, its cruel blades drew fresh blood from her hands and arms and legs, a sign that all could read.
Though many lords and knights sought her favor, the princess had eyes only for Ser Criston Cole, the young champion of the Kingsguard and her constant companion.
Not all the members of the green council favored the prince's bold stroke.
His lordship used the pretext of Dornish incursions into the stormlands to justify this, but many and more were heard to whisper that it was the dragons ahead, not the Dornishmen behind, that prompted his change of heart.
A southron lord might or might not have honored his request, but the Starks are of the North, where the needs of the Night's Watch are held in high regard.
As her condition steadily worsened, despite the best efforts of Driftmark's young maester, Prince Daemon flew to Dragonstone and brought back Princess Rhaenyra's own maester, an older and more experienced man renowned for his skills as a healer.
Back in King's Landing, King Aegon's master of whisperers, Larys Strong the Clubfoot, had drawn up a list of all those lords who gathered on Dragonstone to attend Queen Rhaenyra's coronation and sit on her black council.
On the third day of the third moon of that year, the people of King's Landing woke to a sight that had not been seen since the dark days of the Dance: a dragon in the skies above the city.
When one Braavosi asked her if she meant to sail to Yi Ti, Lady Elissa laughed and said, "I mayâ¦but not by the route you think."
The queen had taken her best men with her to King's Landing.
The callow boy that the High Septon had crowned that day was long gone; his place had been taken by a man of four-and-twenty who was every inch a king.
Familiarity is the father of acceptance, it is said.
Unwilling to dishonor the white cloak he wore by ordering an attack upon the king he had sworn to protect, SerMarston eschewed ladders, grapnels, and assault, and continued to put his trust in reasoned words (and perhaps in hunger, for the supplies within the holdfast could not last much longer).
Both made sense after a fashion, but Aerea was not to be found at either place, nor anywhere in Westeros.
Lord Rogar could thus claim that both the blood of the dragon and that of the storm kings of old flowed in his veins.
d and the Lord Protector were subject to the authority of the council of regents, but as the days passed and the moon turned and turned again, the regents convened less and less often, whilst the tireless, blind, hooded Tyland Lannister gathered more and more power to himself.
Dawn was breaking and Queen Alyssa's body was not yet cold when Vermithor raised his head from where he had been coiled sleeping in the yard, and gave out with a roar that woke half of Storm's
Lord Commander Burley also renamed Snowgate castle in her honor, as Queensgate.
All this the Lord of the Tides brought back to Westeros, along with the name that he would carry for the rest of his long life: Oakenfist.
In the Reach, Lady Merryweather yielded Longtable to Lord Ormund Hightower; true to his word, his lordship did no harm to her or hers, though he did strip her castle of its wealth and every scrap of food, feeding his thousands with her grain as he broke his camp and marched on to Bitterbridge.
Again he sailed along the parched, dry coasts of Dorne, this time beating eastward.
Denied Rhaenyra's favor, Criston Cole turned to Queen Alicent instead.
Lord Manderly decreed that they should be put aboard the next ship to White Harbor, from whence they could be taken to the Wall.
But when the two queensâhis mother, Queen Alicent, and his wife, Queen Helaenaâ spoke in favor of Orwyle's proposal, the truculent king gave way reluctantly.
Lord Oakenfist had refused to be a part of House Lannister's vengeance upon the ironmen, but the old Sea Lion proved more amenable to Lady Johanna's entreatiesâ¦swayed, mayhaps, by her promise to marry him if he delivered the Iron Islands to her son's rule.
At their head rode Ser Luthor Largent upon an armored warhorse, a longsword in hishand.
Even Arrax quailed before that sound, we are told, and Luke plied his whip freely as he forced him down.
Thereafter refusing to wed, the Lord of the Hightower and Defender of Oldtown kept the Lady Sam by his side as his paramour for the next thirteen years, fathering six children on her, and finally taking her as his wife when a new High Septon came to power in the Starry Sept and reversed the ruling of his predecessor.*1
Such letters as Daella sent her mother (letters largely written for her by Lord Rodrik's younger daughter, Amanda) spoke glowingly of how happy she was, how beautiful the Vale, how much she loved her lord's sweet sons, how everyone in the Eyrie was so kind to her.
When Alysanne reminded her that Harrenhal too was said to have ghosts, Rhaena shrugged.
The Mootons of Maidenpool, the Pipers of Pinkmaiden Castle, the Rootes of Harroway, the Darrys of Darry, the Mallisters of Seagard, and the Vances of Wayfarer's Rest all announced their support for Rhaenyra.
Every ship in his fleet was therefore manned with crossbowmen and equipped with massive scorpions of the sort that had felled Meraxes.
"Lady Elissa said that she would take me, but she went away and forgot me.
Prince Maegor rode as well, but showed no great love for horses, dogs, or any animal.
"An honor Her Grace would have appreciated more had she been alive," observed the new Grand Maester, Elysarâ¦though not in the king's hearing.
Everything below his ribs was gone, and the Grand Maester's entrails dangled down from within his torn belly like so many burned black snakes.
Knights and men-at-arms sent out to bring them to justice oft vanished.
Yet despite these rumors, observers at court could not fail to note that the king spent ten nights with Rhaenys for every night with Visenya.
Even after Ser Otto had returned to Oldtown, a "queen's party" still existed at court; a group of powerful lords friendly to Queen Alicent and supportive of the rights of her sons.
Yet there was no shred of proof, then or now, though the Sea Snake offered a reward of ten thousand golden dragons for any man who could lead him to Ser Qarl Correy, or deliver the killer to a father's vengeance.
"No mother should ever have to burn her child," the queen had said at the funeral pyre of her son Valerion, but of the thirteen children she bore to King Jaehaerys, only three of them would survive her, Aegon, Gaemon, and Valerion died as babes.
He went first to Dragonstone, taking his paramour Mysaria with him upon the back of his dragon Caraxes, the lean red beast the smallfolk called the Blood Wyrm.
"I never lost so many men in battle as I did to the fleshpots and alehouses of King's Landing," Lord Rogar would say bitterly.
Rhaena bowed her head and spoke her vows in a voice as cold as ice.
Yet queen's men had remained, even after the queen herself was dead, and "Aegon is reduced to bones and ashes."
They struck the ground so hard that stones fell from the battlements of Rook's Rest half a league away.
Their refusal won them no love from the pious, only a cold wet night in tents beneath the towering walls of Black Harren's mighty castle.
Soon thereafter he signed a treaty of eternal peace with Dorne.
The young prince, just shy of manhood, remained at Crakehall half a realm away, trapped in a castle surrounded by Poor Fellows and pious peasants, most of whom considered him an abomination.
Queen Alysanne would remain within until her child was born, but the experience had shaken her and set her to pondering.
Once she took six boys to the Dragonpit and told them she would give her maidenhead to whoever put his head in a dragon's mouth, but the gods were good that day and the Dragonkeepers put an end to that.
The Red Keep's cavernous throne room hosted the greatest of the lords and the most distinguished of the visitors from across the sea; lesser lords, together with their knights and men-at-arms, celebrated in the yards and smaller halls of the castle, whilst the smallfolk of King's Landing made merry in a hundred inns, wine sinks, pot shops, and brothels.
In the name of her son, "our true king, Aegon, Second of His Name," Queen Alicent proclaimed a curfew, making it unlawful to be on the city streets after dark.
Though he stopped short of openly declaring himself King of the Iron Isles, Dalton Greyjoy paid little heed to any of the edicts coming from the Iron Throne during these yearsâ¦mayhaps because the king was a boy, and his Hand a Lannister.
The smallfolk were quiet, the Winter Fever had receded, Queen Jaehaera hid in seclusion in her chambers, King Aegon trained in the yard by morning and stared at the stars by night.
He was literate and learned, his knowledge of the laws of the Seven Kingdoms exhaustive.
She found him below in his great hall with his young son, Boremund, in his lap, surrounded by his brothers and his knights.
Maegor's court had been a grim, dark place, and the regency had offered little change, for the memories of King Aenys's time were painful to his widow, whilst Lord Rogar was of a martial temperament and once declared mummers to be of less use than monkeys, for "they both prance about, tumble, caper, and squeal, but if a man is hungry enough, he can eat a monkey."
The denunciation thus provoked had lit a fire across the land, and the Swords and Stars had taken up the torches, along with a score of pious lords who feared the gods more than their king.
Bloody Ben, as his men had taken to calling him, was only thirteen, an age at which most highborn boys are still squires, grooming their master's horses and scouring the rust from their mail.
His Grace had no choice but to remove Ser Ryam after only a year in office.
As the traveler worked up a sweat, Buttercakes offered to slake his thirst with a tankard of ale.
Lord Corlys and his fleet set sail from Driftmark on the ninth day of the third moon of 92 AC.
Jaehaerys had widened and straightened the streets of the city, and put down cobblestones where previously there had been mud, but much and more remained to be done.
Lord Unwin Peake came to the Handship determined to demonstrate his strength and rectitude.
Another princess arrived in 71 AC, when the queen gave birth to her tenth child and sixth daughter, the beautiful Viserra.
Their pride and pomp and power became the talk of King's Landing.
With the Sea Snake a "guest" of Trystane Truefyre in King's Landing and Ser Addam dead at Tumbleton, command of the Velaryon fleets now rested with Addam's brother, Alyn, the younger son of Mouse, the shipwright's daughter, a boy of fifteenâ¦but would he be friend or foe?
One part was entrusted to the care of the Iron Bank of Braavos for safekeeping, another sent under strong guard to Casterly Rock, a third to Oldtown.
At a word from Jaehaerys, his marriage could have been proclaimed from one end of the realm to the other.
Lord Fowler, Lord Vaith, Lady Toland, and four successive Lords of the Hellholt were murdered, one after the other, for the Iron Throne had offered a lord's ransom in gold for the head of any Dornish lord.
Meanwhile Lord Samwell Tarly of Horn Hill suddenly appeared athwart the Dornish line of march with several thousand knights and archers.
Brandon Stark, Lord of Winterfell, had died in 49 AC, not long after his return from theGolden Wedding; the journey, the northmen said, had asked too much of him.
It must be noted that Mushroom was not in King's Landing the night the king died, but rather on Dragonstone, in service with Princess Rhaenyra.)
They reported that the fighting on the islands had largely died away, with a resurgent Racallio Ryndoon holding Bloodstone and all the isles to the south, whilst Pentoshi sellswords in the hire of the Archon of Tyrosh controlled those rocks to the north and east.
Septon Eustace feared for his own life.
Roaring and screaming, urged on by horns and drums, the Gardeners and Lannisters charged through a storm of arrows down unto their foes, sweeping aside the Targaryen spearmen, shattering their ranks.
"Every man and maid and child in the stormlands is my hostage, whilst I ride him, His Grace said without saying," wrote Benifer, "and Lord Rogar heard him plain."
When they were half a year old, and stronger, the girls and their mother sailed to Driftmark, whilst Daemon flew ahead with both dragons.
Even before King's Landing, the islands off the crownlands felt the chill.
"A wife's not a son," said Blood.
Thrice-wed and thrice a widower, the Lord of Harrenhal brought two maiden daughters  and  two  sons  to  court  with  him.
Defeat had left Sharako in disgrace, however, and the Lyseni soon found himself besieged by enemies old and new, eager to bring him down.
On the morning of the twelfth day of the secret siege, Thaddeus Rowan was brought forth in chains to confess to his offenses.
At the feast that followed the end of the tourney, Lord Rogar Baratheon appeared with his children, Boremund and Jocelyn, to be warmly embraced by the king and queen.
Both lords were slain in the one-sided battle that followed; Darklyn's son and Mooton's brother thereafter yielded up their castles and swore their swords to House Targaryen.
His three sisters and the men they had married seized Toron Greyjoy, the boy upon the Seastone Chair, and put his mother to death, whilst his cousins joined with the lords of Harlaw and Blacktyde to raise up Toron's half-brother Rodrik, and the men of Great Wyk rallied to a pretender called Sam Salt, who claimed to be descended of the black line.
The Queen's prow smashed into the side of the great Braavosi ship "like a great oaken fist," one observer wrote later, splintering her oars, crashing through her planks and hull, toppling her masts, cutting the massive dromond almost in two.
The Targaryen dragons, bred and trained to battle, had flown through storms of spears and arrows on many occasions, and suffered little harm.
We had the sun by day and the moon by night, and as sweet a wind as man or maid could hope for.
Confused and shaken, Torrhen Manderly prised his considerable bulk out of the chair at the head of the council table, with an uneasy glance at Sandoq the Shadow.
They would not need to scour the realm to find a match for Saera, when three such promising young men were here at hand.
It was still morning, though, when King Aegon entered the council chambers where Lord Torrhen and the regents were debating whether or not to include Tumbleton on the progress.
In their mail shirts and shaggy fur cloaks, their features hidden behind thick tangles of beard, they swaggered through the city like so many armored bears, says Mushroom.
Against her fury stood Lord Rogar Baratheon, Hand of the King and Protector of the Realm.
Or so his words have come down to us, from Orwyle by way of Munkun.
"The realm might have been better served had it been Lord Alyn's mother at that table rather than Lord Alyn," Mushroom observes, rightly.
Even as these adventurers prepared to take their leave of King's Landing, others were arriving from every point of the compass for Prince Aegon's coronation and the royal wedding.
Viserys had also been the last Targaryen to ride Balerionâ¦though after the death of the Black Dread in 94 AC he never mounted another dragon, whereas the boy Laenor had yet to take his first flight upon his young dragon, a splendid grey-and-white beast he named Seasmoke.
These are the sorts of tales that Mushroom loves to tell, and their veracity cannot be ascertainedâ¦but beyond a doubt, the people of King's Landing soon grew to despise both of the queen's new-made knights.
His leap from Sunfyre's back at Dragonstone had broken his right leg in two places, and shattered the bones in his left.
White Harbor would give the king and queen a welcome such as they had never seen, Lord Manderly promised.
Thereafter he shunned the throne room, preferring to hold court in his solar, and later in his bedchamber, surrounded by maesters, septons, and his faithful fool Mushroom, the only man who could still make him laugh (says Mushroom).
Seldom has any town or city in the history of the Seven Kingdoms been subject to as long or as cruel or as savage a sack as Tumbleton after the Treasons.
Lord Lyman himself began to express an unseemly interest in the three dragon eggs that the queen had brought from Fair Isle, wondering how and when they might be expected to hatch.
There his eye fell upon Lord Corlys's daughter, Laena, a maid of two-and-twenty, tall, slender, and surpassingly lovely (even Mushroom was taken with her beauty, writing that she "was almost as pretty as her brother"), with a great mane of silver-gold ringlets that fell down past her waist.
"The Night's Watch will require vows from you as well," His Grace warned.
It did not prove necessary to subject the Lord Confessor to torment; the sight of the instruments was all that was required for him to give up the names of the other conspirators.
Pushed too far on the matter, in 109 AC Viserys stripped Ser Otto of his chain of office and named in his place the taciturn Lord of Harrenhal, Lyonel Strong.
Together the Two Kings commanded the mightiest host ever seen in Westeros: an army fifty-five thousand strong, including some six hundred lords great and small and more than five thousand mounted knights.
Septa Amarys, who had been given charge of her religious and moral instruction, despaired of her, and even Septon Eustace could not seem to curb her wild ways.
The horrors he had witnessed had a profound affect upon the septon, however, exciting the very hunger for knowledge he called "my own abiding sin."
A few days later, the queen convened her women's court in Lord Manderly's own hall, a thing hitherto unheard of in the North, and more than two hundred women and girls gathered to share their thoughts, concerns, and grievances with Her Grace.
But whilst Aegon and Viserys relished in the cheers of the crowds and the feasts and frolics put on at every castle to entertain the new monarch and his family, Princess Rhaena reverted to her former shyness.
Lords Errol, Fell, and Buckler hid in their familiar forests until Queen Rhaenys unleashed Meraxes and a wall of fire swept through the woods, turning the trees to torches.
When it was done, Lord Rogar seemed weary.
King Aegon himself, when asked, put forward his cupbearer, Gaemon Palehair, reminding the regents that the boy had "been a king before."
Morghul, it is written, was slain by the Burning Knight, a huge brute of a man in heavy armor who rushed headlong into the dragon's flame with spear in hand, thrusting its point into the beast's eye repeatedly even as the dragonflame melted the steel plate that encased him and devoured the flesh within.
Hundreds and then thousands buckled on their swordbelts and donned their mail, or grabbed a pitchfork or a hoe and a crude wooden shield, and began to make their way to Harrenhal to fight for Viserys's little girl.
When all his men were dead or dying, a dozen of Lord Hightower's boldest knights rode forth from a sally port, seized Septon Moon's body, and removed his head.
None of these measures had the desired effect of filling up the treasury vaults.
When the queen assured him that only a tenth that number would be coming, Lord Alaric grunted and said, "That's good.
Queen Alysanne was very fond of him as well, remembering the warm welcome he had given her during her first visit to the North.
As the king's brother, Viserys was the undisputed heir apparent, ahead of any child born to Baela Velaryon or Rhaena Corbray, or the twins themselves.
We do know that the younger daughter of Morgan Wylde, Lord of the Rain House, was deflowered at an early age and gave birth to a bastard boy.
Even on Dragonstone, there are stories of men of mine own house, Targaryens, who have made free with the wives of fisherfolk and serving men, and sired children on themâ¦""Dragonseeds, they call them," Jaehaerys said with obvious reluctance.
What passed between mother and son when they came face-to-face for the first time since the confrontation on Dragonstone no man can say, but we are told that the queen's face was red and puffy from weeping when she appeared a short time later on the king's arm.
At fourteen, she told the king she meant to marry the Prince of Dorne, or perhaps the King Beyond the Wall, so she could be a queen "like Mother."
Ser Regis laughed at this, saying, "I do not kneel to bastards, much less the baseborn whelp of a kinslayer and a milk cow."
Ser Willam the Wasp of the Kingsguard, who had served at Acorn Hall, swore there was no finer, fiercer, or more leal lord in all the Seven Kingdoms, and Prentys Tully and the redoubtable Lady Lucinda, his liege lords, had naught but praise for Smallwood as well.
Justly famed for his courage, Lord Myles wore the scars of a dozen savage fights upon his face and body.
All that is known for a certainty is that on a rainy, windswept night at Faircastle, as the longships gathered below, Lord Dalton had his pleasure of her, and afterward, as he slept, Tess slipped his dagger from its sheath and opened his throat from ear to ear, then threw herself naked and bloody into the hungry sea below.
The dead girl had been named Visenya, Princess Rhaenyra announced the next day, when milk of the poppy had blunted the edge of her pain.
War had lasted less than half a year, begun and won entirely in 61 AC.
Then a tanner called Wat announced that his lordship had failed to pay his "cock tax," and must yield his manhood to the Crown as forfeit.
Baelon, he was named, after one of the Targaryen lords who had ruled Dragonstone before the Conquest, himself a second son.
As his sons struggled to staunch the wound, the Cannibal descended on them, drove off Sheepstealer, and devoured father and sons alike.
It was very short, and written in Daella's own uncertain hand.
King Aegon III did not once appear to sit the Iron Throne during the trials of the brothers, but Prince Viserys came every day to sit beside his wife.
She burst into tears for the slightest reason, and sometimes for  no  reason  at  all,  Lord  Rodrik  said.
His was no easy task, for his immediate predecessors had undone much of what the Conqueror had built, Aenys through weakness and indecision, Maegor with his bloodlust and cruelty.
The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard remained Ser Criston Cole, however, and in him Rhaenyra had a bitter foe.
He wanted the new Father of the Faithful to make Exceptionalism an official doctrine of the Faith.
He made a clean sweep of dozens of lesser offices as well, replacing the Keeper of the Keys, the chief steward of the Red Keep and all his understewards, the harbormaster of King's Landing (and intime, the harbormasters of Oldtown, Maidenpool, and Duskendale as well), the Warden of the King's Mint, the King's Justice, the master-at- arms, kennelmaster, master of horse, and even the castle ratcatchers.
The king and queen were sent for at once, but when they reached the maester's chambers, Benifer denied them entry.
Lord Roderick raised a warhorn to his lips and sounded the charge, and the queen's men came screaming down the ridge, led by the Winter Wolves on their shaggy northern horses and the knights on their armored destriers.
Prince Joffrey's Tyraxes retreated back into his lair, we are told, roasting so many would-be dragonslayers as they rushed after him that its entrance was soon made impassable by their corpses.
A short, savage battle was fought at the Gate of the Gods when men came for Lucas Leygood, leaving nine dead, amongst them Leygood himself.
That very day, not long after sunset, another horror visited the queen's court.
Moreover, His Grace did not approve of the match; as he would later confess to Septon Barth, he valued Lord Rogar as a counselor and friend, but he did not need a second father, and thought his own judgment, temperament, and intelligence to be superior to his Hand's.
Weighed against Lannister gold and Lannister beauty, however, was Ser Tymond's own reputation.
"It would be a grave mistake for Westeros to become embroiled in the endless quarrels of the Free Cities," he told the council of regents.
In the great citadel under the shadow of the Dragonmont, more dragons were being born every time the moon turned, or so it seemed.
Ser Joffrey had served her loyally for the past ten years as Knight of the Bloody Gate, defending the Vale against the savage wildlings of the hills.
And across Blackwater Bay, in the Gullet, Lord Leowyn Corbray stood at the prow of a Braavosi cog and watched a line of Velaryon warships haul down the golden dragon of the second Aegon and raise in its place the red dragon of the first, the banner that all the Targaryen kings had flown until the Dance began.
Though Black Aly was no man's queen of love and beauty, her fearlessness, stubborn strength, and bawdy tongue struck a chord for the Lord of Winterfell, who soon began to seek out her company in hall and yard.
Septon Eustace, who loved her little, says rather that she smiled, and commanded that the head be burned, "for he was the blood of the dragon."
Though forbidden to wed, their passion for one another had become common knowledge by this time, and so great a scandal that the High Septon refused to travel with them, arriving three days later in the company of the Lords Redwyne, Costayne, and Beesbury.
One of these Strongs put out Aemond's eye, never forget.
Lord Rogar faced him with his axe.
And so matters stood in Westeros as the Year of the Three Brides drew to an end, and gave way to a new year, the 50th since Aegon's Conquest.
In the end, however, the final authority throughout this period rested with his mother, the Queen Regent, and the Hand, a redoubtable man in his own right.
Mushroom, who loved the queen well, tells us that Rhaenyra wept when Maelor's small head was placed before her as she sat the Iron Throne.
His lordship had been failing for some time, never truly having regained his strength after the Winter Fever, so his passing excited little comment.
Her riding leathers were stained with blood when she mounted her dragon, Maester Norren records, and "her cheeks were stained with tears."
Ben Buttercakes got no joy from his deceit.
It was his wife, Lady Jocasta, who first discerned that Princess Rhaena was with child,
"During their time in Oldtown, Jaehaerys and Alysanne slept in Lord Donnel's own apartments at the top of the Hightower, with all of Oldtown spread out below.
Ser Erryk Cargyll (twin to Ser Arryk) and Ser Lorent Marbrand, with Princess Rhaenyra on Dragonstone, remained unaware and uninvolved as their brothers-in-arms went forth into the night to rouse the members of the small council from their beds.
It was believed to have come to Westeros from across the sea, from one of the Free Cities or lands more distant still.
It was only when her mother, Queen Alyssa, sent for Lady Melony to join them on the progress that Rhaena finally put aside her sullenness to join the celebrations.
Before the men of Prince Daeron's army even knew they were in a battle, the enemy was amongst them, cutting them down as they staggered from their tents, as they were saddling their horses, struggling to don their armor, buckling their sword belts.
Lord Massey of Stonedance was the first to appear, but Lord Staunton of Rook's Rest, Lord Darklyn of Duskendale, and Lord Bar Emmon of Sharp Point came hard on his heels, followed by the Lords Harte, Rollingford, Mooton, and Stokeworth.
Beyond question, two of the Blackwater men who had joined the riverlords on their march southâ Lord Owain Bourney and Ser Roger Corneâwere secret supporters of King Aegon II.
The gods blessed Alyssa herself with the deep purple eyes and shining silvery hair of Old Valyria, and gave her charm and wit and kindness as well, and as she grew suitors flocked around her from every corner of the realm.
The queen's flight brought no peace to King's Landing.
It was her grief over the loss of Princess Viserra that finally drove the queen to approach Jaehaerys about Saera once again.
His foot advanced behind them, beneath King Aegon's golden dragon.
It was a proposal that neither the king nor his council felt he could refuse, but it would mean postponing His Grace's planned progress to the North, and there was concern that the notoriously prickly Lord of Winterfell might take that for a slight.
Wood splintered, themast came tumbling down, and the dragon, thrashing, became entangled in the rigging.
Lord Corlys went much further, declaring that Ser Addam and his brother, Alyn, were "true Velaryons," worthy heirs to Driftmark.
For though none knew it at the time, the Clubfoot went directly to Sea Snake when the council was dismissed, and told him of the king's intent to grant him all he had requested and murder him later, when the war was done.
Baela Targaryen, when informed of the match, did not share their pleasure.
Ser Tyland felt he had no choice but to confine the Queen Dowager to her own apartments in Maegor's Holdfast; a gentle imprisonment, but imprisonment nonetheless.
The truth will likely never be knownâ¦but the swift reaction of Lord Martyn when word reached him at the Hightower is beyond dispute.
"There stands the future of the realm," Ser Gyles Morrigen said when he beheld the two of them side by side, the dark lady and the pale prince.
Soon after the conclusion of the tourney, Queen Alysanne left King's Landing for Dragonstone, there to await the birth of her child.
The Red Kraken claimed four of Lord Farman's daughters as salt wives and gave the fifth ("the homely one") to his brother Veron.
Much of the finished work was now undone or changed, new builders and workmen were brought in, and secret passages and tunnels crept through the depths of Aegon's High Hill.
The windfinally returned one day near sunset, when the sky turned red as blood, but the look of it set men to muttering.
The site would be the half- completed Dragonpit, still open to the sky, whose rising tiers of stone benches would allow for tens of thousands to observe the nuptials.
"The time for hiding is done," King Aegon II declared.
In time, she would be known about the realm as the Scarlet Shadow, so closely did she guard her lady.
Lords came from every corner of the realm, from the Dornish Marches to the shadow of the Wall, from the Three Sisters to the Iron Islands.
Aegon Targaryen drew his own men up in a rough crescent bristling with spears and pikes, with archers and crossbowmen just behind and light cavalry on either flank.
"The Tyrells of Highgarden are descended from stewards," he reminded the king, "but the Reach is broader than the westerlands, with a different sort of wealth, and young Martyn Tyrell might prove a useful addition to this council."
Lords Fell and Buckler, falling back before the approaching host (Lord Errol had been killed), had sent him word of Queen Rhaenys and her dragon.
The king was easily influenced, Gawen observed, swaying this way and that like a reed in the wind, like as not to heed whichever counselor last had his ear.
Ser Otto's precocious fifteen-year-old daughter, Alicent, became his constant companion, fetching His Grace his meals, reading to him, helping him to bathe and dress himself.
As it happened, each of the "faithless friends" left a daughter; Rosby's was a maid of twelve, Stokeworth's a girl of six.
"Done," the king saidâ¦mayhaps too hastily, for it must be remembered that Aerea Targaryen, a girl of eight, was his own acknowledged successor, heir apparent to the Iron Throne.
When questioned, Ser Orryn would say only that Lord Rogar had urgent need of the girl at Storm's
Ser Criston Cole was named the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard in Ser Harrold's place, and the archmaesters of the Citadel sent Maester Mellos to the Red Keep totake up the Grand Maester's chain and duties.
Maegor descended on Dragonstone only long enough to claim the crown; not the ornate golden crown Aenys had favored, with its images of the Seven, but the iron crown of their father set with its blood-red rubies.
Unsurprisingly, the Sea Snake was bitterly disappointed when Prince Aemon died and King Jaehaerys bypassed Aemon's daughter, Rhaenys, in favor of his brother, Baelon the Spring Prince.
Wary of the ever-shifting alliances and studied treacheries of the Free Cities, he sent scouts ahead in the guise of fishing boats and merchantmen to discover whatawaited him.
"I offered her an honorable peace, and the whore spat in my face," he declared.
Mushroom tells us the girl was a bastard of uncertain birth called Netty, born to a dockside whore.
Brandon Stark's second son, Alaric, became the Lord of Winterfell.
Septon Moon, the "High Septon" raised up by the Poor Fellows against the man in Oldtown they called the High Lickspittle, roamed the riverlands and Reach at will, drawing huge crowds whenever he emerged from the woods to preach against the king.
Yet still Argilac continued to battle.
Known to history as Vaegon the Dragonless, his veryexistence had been largely forgotten by most of the Seven Kingdoms.
The original sentence of death that Lord Stark had pronounced on him must apply, the regents agreed.
It was Jace who came to the fore now, late in the year 129 AC.
King, court, and commons were all outraged by the news.
Yet late in the evening, after King Viserys had departed (for His Grace still tired easily), Mushroom tells us that Aemond One-Eye rose to toast his Velaryon nephews, speaking in mock admiration of their brown hair, brown eyesâ¦and strength.
Androw's father had been kind to her as well, offering her refuge on Fair Isle after the Battle Beneath the Gods Eye, when her uncle, King Maegor, was demanding her capture and the Poor Fellows of the realm were denouncing her as a vile sinner and her daughters as abominations.
On the first day of the 80th year since Aegon'sConquest, he told the queen he wanted Daella wed before the year's end.
When they demanded to be allowed to see "our beloved brother," Lady Arryn gave them her support, and the Wolf of Winterfell yielded ("somewhat grudgingly," says Mushroom).*2
Soft lead balls, when slung with sufficient force, have been known to cause the sort of explosive effect that Groves's men saw and attributed to sorcery.
"The Hand of the King," said the white knight.
The battle that followed was as one-sided as any in the Dance.
Others point to the Lady Patrice Hightower, Lord Martyn's maiden aunt and a reputed witch (who did indeed seek an audience with His High Holiness at dusk, though he was alive when she departed).
She dispatched Prince Daemon to seize Ser Vaemond, had his head removed, and fed his carcass to her dragon, Syrax.
Unwin Peake made a sterner Hand; brusque and hard, he showed little patience with the young monarch, treating him "more like a sulky boy than like a king" in Mushroom's words, and making no effort to involve His Grace in the day-to-day rule of his kingdom.
The Old King sometimes mistook her for one of his daughters, calling her by their names; near the end, he grew certain she was his daughter Saera, returned to him from beyond the narrow sea.
Yet it would all be undone in a trice by the king's half-sisters, the very twins whose succession Unwin Peake had been so determined to prevent.
But before Ser Tyland could organize such an assault, or even consider who might take Ser Regis's place in Aegon's Seven, a threat far worse than any "witch queen" descended on the city.
Only the intercession of his bedmate Alys Rivers had saved the boy's life.
The lands along the Trident were full of widows, she reminded Lord Stark; women, many burdened with young children, who had sent their husbands off to fight with one lord or another, only for them to fall in battle.
By the time they reached the Bloody Gate, a third of them had perished in a wildling attack or died from cold or hunger.
When it came, the fall of Dragonstone took less than an hour.
In their accounts, only Lord Beesbury spoke on behalf of Princess Rhaenyra.
Rogar Baratheon was untouched by the Shivers, and his son and daughter by Queen Alyssa were stricken but recovered, yet his brother Ser Ronnal died, and the wives of both his brothers.
Yet as Kingsguard, sworn to obey king and commander, he had no choice in honor but to make his way to Dragonstone, clad in the salt-stained garb of a simple fisherman.
When word of the Defenestration of Sunspear reached the Hellholt, Lord Tyrell gathered his remaining strength and set off across the sands.
Indeed, many amongst the Most Devout had expected the High Septon to speak out against Aegon and his sisters during the Conquest, and were most displeased when the Father of the Faithful instead counseled Lord Hightower against opposing the Dragon, and even blessed and anointed him at his second coronation.
Grand Maester Orwyle was sent to the dungeons, and Her Grace wrote the Citadel to inform them that her "leal servant" Gerardys was henceforth "the only true Grand Maester."
Though each of his new queens was garbed and cloaked in the colors of her father's house, the people of King's Landing called them "the Black Brides," for all were widows.
They had hardly reached King's Landing before Dorne erupted behind them.
Before long, the prince was well-known in all the low places of King's Landing.
Taken in hand by Queen Alysanne, she was plunged into a tub of hot water for a scrubbing.
When he returned the next morning, Aegon Targaryen agreed to the terms proposed by Nymor.
Having remade the council, reconciled Lord Rogar and Queen Alyssa, and imposed new taxes to restore the Crown's coffers, he was faced with what would prove to be his thorniest problem yet: his sister Rhaena.
Every castle in Dorne was burned thrice over, as Balerion and Vhagar returned time and time again.
In the waning days of 130 AC, King Aegon II returned at last to King's Landing, accompanied by Ser Marston Waters, Ser Alfred Broome, the Two Toms, and Lady Baela Targaryen (still in chains, for fear she might attack the king if freed).
Those were dangerous words during the reign of Maegor the Cruel, but if Rogar Baratheon feared Maegor's wroth, he hid it well.
When Rhaena expressed regret that she had not been a better mother, the novice Rhaella embraced her and said, "I have had the best mother any child could wish for, the Mother Above, and you are to thank for her."
Many queer tales were told about herâ¦yet as soon as she arrived, Queen Visenya dismissed her son's maesters and septons and gave Maegor over to Tyanna's care.
Thus perished Joffrey Velaryon, Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne, the last of Queen Rhaenyra's sons by Laenor Velaryonâ¦or the last of her bastards by Ser Harwin Strong, depending on which truth one chooses to believe.
One of the fighters (though no knight) was revealed to be a woman, a wildling girl who had been captured by rangers north of the Wall and given to one of Lord Manderly's household knights to foster.
Once Aegon fell, the rebels saw their cause was doomed and ran, discarding arms and armor as they fled.
The king's men had taken care to send guards to secure the stable where the castle dragons had been kept, but Baela had grown up in Dragonstone, and knew ways in and out that they did not.
The Dance was a war unlike any other ever fought in the long history of the Seven Kingdoms.
Having split off from their noble kin during the reign of King Jaehaerys, the Gulltown Arryns had gone into trade and grown rich.