Valaena Velaryon

## Lady of the Tides

**Lady Valaena Velaryon**  was the ruler of the island of Driftmark and the head of House Velaryon. She was also the maternal grandmother of Lady Cassana Baratheon of Dragonstone.

## Appearance

Valaena is slender and small, bent and wizened at her age, but with a certain timeless elegance and graceful bearing. She has pale seagreen eyes and white hair, always meticulously coiffed. A woman of wealth and expensive tastes, she favors silks and furs, and is always dripping with silver, diamonds, and pearls. Though she was known to be a beauty many decades ago, the years have left her a crone- something she obsesses over unhealthily, desperate for any cream or cosmetic that might return her stolen youth.

## History

   Valaena Velaryon was accustomed to losing family from an early age. The first to go was her mother, who perished giving birth to a stillborn boy. Next was her father, exiled to the Wall for his fierce loyalty to the wrong king, gone before she had even turned two years old. Finally, in the loss she felt most keenly, her older brother Monterys died of a sudden fever, leaving the nine-year-old girl heiress to the proudest of the Valyrian houses which had crossed the Narrow Sea centuries ago.

Raised at the feet of her great-grandmother Alysanne Velaryon, Valaena learned quickly the ruthlessness and determination necessary to succeed as a lady in her own right. She married to a quiet sailor, a scion of house from the reach, and produced three children, all of whom she had grand ambitions for. By the age of thirty, Valaena not only controlled her own island, but had invested heavily in a half-dozen shipping companies operating between the Free Cities and the eastern coast of Westeros, and was one of the wealthiest individuals in the southern kingdom. Her knack for finances and for making risky bets pay off drew great profits, and she was hardly shy about using the formidable Velaryon fleet to enforce the interests of her corporation in the Stepstones and in disputed waters. She regarded her business as her fourth child- and as the most beloved of them all.

Beneath the surface, however, there were other motivations to establishing a foothold across the Narrow Sea. House Velaryon had always owed their triumphs- and their failures- to the Targaryens, and though her father had been sword to Stannis Baratheon, Valaena was weaned on tales of dragons and fire and blood. As an adult, her formidable connections in the shipping industry were put to use in smuggling information- and in making contact between the monarchs of Yunkai and Mereen and the remaining loyalists in Westeros.

These years of information and planning culminated in the arrival of Aurion the Exile in 341 AC. Though House Velaryon was expected to defend the Blackwater Bay alongside the rest of the Royal Fleet and its ships impressed into their service, secret messages relayed between Velaryon dromonds sabotaged the defenders, confusing their orders and movements and leaving a gap open in the Baratheon lines at a crucial moment. The disaster passed as an accident, and the Targaryen victory was not attributed to Valaena's intercession. The Velaryon treachery, however, had an unforeseen result- Valaena's aging husband went down with his ship, caught and battered by the rams of the Volantene fleet. This cost Aurion any further support from his sole Westerosi ally, and Valaena swore a rather personal degree of vengeance.

Enraged by the death of her husband, Valaena turned her considerable skills in espionage to the service of the crown, becoming an interrogator of captives taken from among the Essosi forces. As quickly as she had learned sums as a child, she began to study the most precise methods of extracting pain and information, extending the games of power and persuasion she'd always engaged in to include blood and fear. The widow earned herself a grisly reputation among her enemies, one which has not fully deserted her today.

Her ambitions of restoring a forgotten dynasty to the crown had come to naught, and Valaena returned her focus to more legitimate business- though the flow of information, she found, remained as profitable as ever. Her favored son and heir, Laenor- who had distinguished himself bravely in the wake of the Battle of the Gullet and seemed innocent of his mother's machinations- became the practical head of the Velaryon fleet and of the logistical elements of trade across the Narrow Sea. Her *less* beloved offspring, Daemon, chafed at his brother's loyalty to their morally-bankrupt mother and swore off the entire family, fleeing to a life as a sellsail in the Free Cities. And her daughter, Aelora, managed to capture a prince as a husband- the thirdborn son of the king, Cortnay Baratheon.

In recent years, she has enjoyed a life of wealth and influence, touched only by brief tragedy. A freak storm took the lives of her firstborn son and his own heir, Laenor and Eryk, and now Valaena's focus has been shifted on making her*less* promising offspring fit to someday hold her fortune and title. This includes her bookish, sickly grandson Orys, a half-mad romantic with a gentle heart, his giggling pig of a sister, Maegelle, and her twin great-granddaughters, the beauties Rhaenys and Daenys Waters.

Valaena is known in King's Landing circles for her elegance, her cruelty, and her fantastic collection of mink stoles. She frequently cheats at cyvasse and is never shy about making her low opinion of all those around her known. The matriarch of House Velaryon may be aging and frail, but after sixty years of rule, she is a true force to be reckoned with.

## Important Events

* **297 AC**: Valaena is born to Lord Monford Velaryon and his wife.
* **299 AC**: Monford is exiled to the Wall for his support of Stannis Baratheon, leaving Valaena's six-year-old brother, Monterys, as lord.
* **306 AC**: Monterys Velaryon dies of a spring sickness. His sister inherits at nine years old, becoming Lady Valaena Velaryon.
* **316 AC**: Valaena's son and heir Laenor Velaryon is born.
* **317 AC**: Valaena's daughter Aelora is born.
* **324 AC**: Valaena's son Daemon is born.
* **330 AC**: Valaena invests in a successful shipping and import company which serves as a front organization for information passed between Targaryen exiles in Essos and loyalists in the southern kingdom.
* **341 AC**: The Battle of the Gullet - The Velaryon fleet is forced to serve the crown in ending the threat of a Targaryen claimant to the throne, and on Valaena's instructions successfully sabotages the battle to result in a Targaryen victory. However, her aging husband is killed in the process, embittering her against the Targaryen cause.
* **342 AC**: Newly widowed, Valaena takes up *hobbies*- the interrogation of Northern and Essosi captives of the War of the Exile.
* **369 AC**: The heir to Driftmark, Laenor Velaryon, and his son Eryk both perish at sea in a freak storm. Valaena's younger grandson Orys, formerly a novice of the Citadel, becomes her heir.
* **370 AC**: She passes away.

## Family

Lord Monford Velaryon (278 AC - 312? AC)

* Lord Monterys Velaryon (297 AC - 306 AC)
* **Lady Valaena Velaryon** (299 AC - 370 AC)
	+ Laenor Velaryon (316 AC - 369 AC)
		- Eryk Velaryon (340 AC - 369 AC)
			* Daenys Waters (355 AC - )
			* Rhaenys Waters (355 AC - )
		- Orys Velaryon (347 AC - )
		- Maegelle Velaryon (354 AC - )
	+ Aelora Velaryon (319 AC - )
	+ Daemon Velaryon (324 AC - )