Daeron I Targaryen

Daeron I Targaryen, also called the Young Dragon, was the eighth king of the Targaryen dynasty to rule the Seven Kingdoms. He is known for his unsuccessful conquest of Dorne.
==Biography==
===Background===
Daeron I lived about a century and a half before the War of the Five Kings. He succeeded his father Aegon III to the throne. Daeron I is best known for his military campaign in Dorne, which had stubbornly resisted prior invasions by the Targaryens. In the process, Daeron lost 60,000 men, and ultimately his own life. Having fathered no heir, he was succeeded by his younger brother, Baelor I Targaryen, called "Baelor the Blessed".
===Game of Thrones: Season 4===
Tyrion mentions that Daeron I, the Young Dragon, is one of the kings analyzed in the classic book, The Lives of Four Kings.
==Quotes==
==Family==
==In the books==
In the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, Daeron I is the eldest son of King Aegon III Targaryen and his wife Queen Daenera Velaryon. He was crowned at the age of 14, becoming the eigth Targaryen king to sit the Iron Throne. Even though he was a king, Daeron I quickly proved himself as one of the finest warriors and generals in the history of Westeros. Later history and popular culture remembers him as the paragon "young warrior king". Jon Snow idolized him growing up. George R.R. Martin has described King Daeron as essentially the Alexander the Great of Westeros, in the sense that he was a young, preternaturally skilled genius at military tactics.So Spake Martin, November 1, 2005
While the Targaryens had conquered and unified six of the "Seven Kingdoms" during Aegon's Conquest, the dry desert region of Dorne had remained stubbornly independent for over a century. The Dornish accomplished this by resorting to guerrilla warfare, fleeing before the Targaryen dragons only to return and harass their supply lines as soon as the Targaryens withdrew their forces.
Seeing Dorne as unfinished business for the Targaryen dynasty, and a blight on their claims to complete mastery of Westeros, Daeron proclaimed that he would invade Dorne and bring it into the royal fold. However, his advisors and his uncle and Hand, Prince Viserys Targaryen, initially cautioned him against this course of action, since he was at a significant disadvantage: nearly all of the Targaryen dragons had been wiped out in the Dance of the Dragons two generations previously, and the last of them had died out during the reign of Daeron's father. Aegon the Conqueror, one of the greatest warriors of his time, along with his two sisters, Rhaenys and Visenya, were unable to conquer Dorne even with dragons. To this skepticism, King Daeron replied; "You have a dragon. He stands before you". The Young Dragon's tactics were brilliant, and his larger strategy was innovative: he feinted an invasion through the passes of the Red Mountains, luring all of the Dornish armies to the west. He then followed by sending the real invasion force, which is under the leadership of Alyn Velaryon, to make an amphibious landing at the mouth of the Greenblood River itself, at the doorstep of Sunspear. The Dornish were caught completely off guard and with their army on the other side of the central deserts, they were unable to aid one another. At Sunspear in 158 AC, the Prince of Dorne and forty of the most powerful Dornish lords bent the knee to King Daeron, allowing the Young Dragon to gain control of Dorne. Because of this, he succeeded where even Aegon the Conqueror had failed, and this achievement was considered all the more astonishing because he did not have dragons.
Unfortunately for Daeron, occupying Dorne proved to be far more difficult than conquering it. The Dornish settled into a long insurgency, repeatedly ambushing the occupying force and then retreating. Daeron lost far more men during the occupation than he did during the conquest itself: ten thousand men in the conquest of Dorne and another fifty thousand during the occupation. Ultimately, Lord Lyonel Tyrell, whom Daeron installed as governor of Dorne, was assassinated when the Dornish tricked him into a trap in which a hundred red scorpions were dumped on him, leading to a general insurrection. All that the Young Dragon had accomplished evaporated in a single fortnight, and King Daeron alongside three of his Kingsguard were killed while under a peace banner, which is merely a ploy for the Dornish to kill the king. The Young Dragon died young, at only 18 years of age, and after ruling for only four years. Dorne was to remain independent for another two generations, before later uniting with the Targaryen realm through peaceful marriage-alliance (a double-marriage pact in which Daeron's own first cousins, Daenerys and Daeron II, married the ruling Prince of Dorne and his younger sister).
Jon Snow idolizes the Young Dragon, as have many others, given that he is the type of young conqueror every youth hopes to be. His uncle Benjen's assessment of Daeron I is blunter: he dismisses Daeron's successes as "a conquest that lasted a summer", adding that he lost 10,000 men conquering Dorne and another 50,000 trying to hold it. He cautions Jon that the real moral of Daeron I's life is that despite winning on the battlefield he lost the war itself. This presages Robb Stark's own death under similar circumstances, despite never having lost a battle. Daeron I Targaryen was a great military leader, but not a great politician, nor particularly skilled at the day-to-day governance of the realm. Tyrion points out that Daeron's uncle and Hand of the King, the eventual Viserys II Targaryen, was the man really responsible for holding the realm together during Daeron's reign.
Daeron I was unmarried and died childless, so he was succeeded by his younger brother Baelor.
==Appearances==
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
==References==
===Notes===
==External links==
*
Category:Authors
Category:Crownlanders
Category:Individuals from Histories & Lore
Category:Individuals mentioned in Game of Thrones
Category:Kings of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men
Daeron I Targaryen
Daeron I Targaryen
de:Daeron I. Targaryen
es:Daeron I Targaryen
fr:Daeron I Targaryen
pl:Daeron I Targaryen
ru:Дейрон I Таргариен
zh:戴伦·坦格利安一世