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  FIRE & BLOOD

  GEORGE R. R. MARTIN

  -�\

  Banta1n Boc)ks

  New York

  Fire & Blood is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents are
  products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any
  resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is
  entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by George R. R. Martin Illustrations copyright © 2018
  by Penguin Random House LLC

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of Random
  House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  BANTAM BOOKS and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of
  Penguin Random House LLC.

  Portions of this book were previously published, some in an abridged
  form, as:

  “Conquest,” published in The World of Ice & Fire by George R. R.
  Martin, Elio M. García, Jr., and Linda Antonssen, copyright © 2014 by
  George R. R. Martin;

  “The Sons of the Dragon,” published in The Book of Swords (edited by
  Gardner Dozois), copyright © 2017 by George R. R. Martin;

  “The Princess and the Queen,” published in Dangerous Women (edited by
  George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois), copyright © 2013 by George R.
  R. Martin and Gardner Dozois;

  “The Rogue Prince,” published in Rogues (edited by George R. R. Martin
  and Gardner Dozois), copyright © 2014 by George R. R. Martin and
  Gardner Dozois.

Hardback ISBN 9781524796280

Ebook ISBN 9781524796297

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design by Virginia Norey, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: David G. Stevenson Cover illustration: Bastien Lecouffe
  Deharme

  v5.4

  ep

  Contents

  Cover Title Page Copyright

  Aegon’s Conquest

  Reign of the Dragon—The Wars of King Aegon I

  Three Heads Had the Dragon—Governance Under King Aegon I The Sons of
  the Dragon

  Prince into King—The Ascension of Jaehaerys I The Year of Thethree
  Brides—49 AC

  A Surfeit of Rulers

  A Time of Testing—The Realm Remade

  Birth, Death, and Betrayal Under King Jaehaerys I Jaehaerys and
  Alysanne—Their Triumphs and Tragedies

  The Long Reign—Jaehaerys and Alysanne—Policy, Progeny, and Pain

  Heirs of the Dragon—A Question of Succession

  The Dying of the Dragons—The Blacks and the Greens The Dying of the
  Dragons—A Son for a Son

  The Dying of the Dragons—The Red Dragon and the Gold The Dying of the
  Dragons—Rhaenyra Triumphant

  The Dying of the Dragons—Rhaenyra Overthrown

  The Dying of the Dragons—The Short, Sad Reign of Aegon II
  Aftermath—The Hour of the Wolf

  Under the Regents—The Hooded Hand

  Under the Regents—War and Peace and Cattle Shows Under the Regents—The
  Voyage of Alyn Oakenfist

  The Lysene Spring and the End of Regency

  Lineages and Family Tree The Targaryen Succession Dedication

  By George R. R. Martin About the Author About the Illustrator

  []

  []

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he maesters of the Citadel who keep the histories of Westeros have used
Aegon’s Conquest as their touchstone for the past three hundred years.
Births, deaths, battles, and other events are dated

either AC (After the Conquest) or BC (Before the Conquest).

True scholars know that such dating is far from precise. Aegon
Targaryen’s conquest of the Seven Kingdoms did not take place in a
single day. More than two years passed between Aegon’s landing and his
Oldtown coronation…and even then the Conquest remained incomplete, since
Dorne remained unsubdued. 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.

Even the start date is a matter of some misconception. 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. Not so. 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. This coronation took place two years after Aegon’s Landing,
well after all three of the major

battles of the Wars of Conquest had been fought and won. Thus it can be
seen that most of Aegon’s actual conquering took place from 2–1 BC,
Before the Conquest.

The Targaryens were of pure Valyrian blood, dragonlords of ancient
lineage. 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.

At its apex Valyria was the greatest city in the known world, the center
of civilization. Within its shining walls, twoscore rival houses vied
for power and glory in court and council, rising and falling in an
endless, subtle, oft savage struggle for dominance. 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. But
Lord Aenar’s maiden daughter Daenys, known forever afterward as Daenys
the Dreamer, had foreseen the destruction of Valyria by fire. And when
the Doom came twelve years later, the Targaryens were the only
dragonlords to survive.

Dragonstone had been the westernmost outpost of Valyrian power for two
centuries. 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. 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.

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.
Gaemon Targaryen, brother and husband to Daenys the Dreamer, followed
Aenar the Exile as Lord of Dragonstone, and became known as Gaemon the
Glorious. Gaemon’s son Aegon and his daughter Elaena ruled together
after his death. After them the lordship passed to their son Maegon, his
brother Aerys, and Aerys’s sons, Aelyx, Baelon, and Daemion. The last of
the three brothers was Daemion, whose son Aerion then succeeded to
Dragonstone.

  The Aegon who would be known to history as Aegon the Conqueror

and Aegon the Dragon was born on Dragonstone in 27 BC. He was the only
son, and second child, of Aerion, Lord of Dragonstone, and Lady Valaena
of House Velaryon, herself half Targaryen on her mother’s side. Aegon
had two trueborn siblings; an elder sister, Visenya, and a younger
sister, Rhaenys. 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. 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. It was said
by some that Aegon wed Visenya out of duty and Rhaenys out of desire.

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. The dragons Vhagar and Meraxes were younger,
hatched on Dragonstone itself.

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. 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. Plainly, Aegon’s interest in
Westeros long predated the events that drove him to war. As well, there
are reliable reports of Aegon and his sister Visenya visiting the
Citadel of Oldtown in their youth, and hawking on the Arbor as guests of
Lord Redwyne. He may have visited Lannisport as well; accounts differ.

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. The vast, cold, stony North
was ruled by the Starks of Winterfell. In the deserts of Dorne, the
Martell princes held sway. The gold-rich westerlands were ruled by the
Lannisters of Casterly Rock, the fertile Reach by the Gardeners of
Highgarden. The Vale, the Fingers, and the Mountains of the Moon
belonged to House Arryn…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.

From their great citadel, Storm’s 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.
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. 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. But
Argilac had grown older; his famous mane of black hair had gone grey,
and his prowess at arms had faded.

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.
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. Harren’s father had extended his
domains east to Duskendale and Rosby. 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.

No king in Westeros was more feared than Black Harren, whose cruelty had
become legendary all through the Seven Kingdoms. 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. 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.

Aegon Targaryen spurned the Storm King’s proposal. He had two wives, he
pointed out; he did not need a third. And the dower lands being offered
had belonged to Harrenhal for more than a generation. They were not
Argilac’s to give. 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.

  The Lord of Dragonstone countered with an offer of his own. He

would 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. The pact would be
sealed by the marriage of Argilac’s daughter to Orys Baratheon, Lord
Aegon’s childhood friend and champion.

These terms Argilac the Arrogant rejected angrily. 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.
The very suggestion enraged him. Argilac had the hands of Aegon’s envoy
cut off and returned to him in a box. “These are the only hands your
bastard shall have of me,” he wrote.

Aegon made no reply. Instead he summoned his friends, bannermen, and
principal allies to attend him on Dragonstone. Their numbers were small.
The Velaryons of Driftmark were sworn to House Targaryen, as were the
Celtigars of Claw Isle. From Massey’s Hook came Lord Bar Emmon of Sharp
Point and Lord Massey of Stonedance, both sworn to Storm’s End, but with
closer ties to Dragonstone. 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.

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. To the seven kings they flew, to the Citadel of Oldtown, to
lords both great and small. All carried the same message: from this day
forth there would be but one king in Westeros. Those who bent the knee
to Aegon of House Targaryen would keep their lands and titles. Those who
took up arms against him would be thrown down, humbled, and destroyed.

Accounts differ on how many swords set sail from Dragonstone with Aegon
and his sisters. Some say three thousand; others number them only in the
hundreds. 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.

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. Towers and forts
had crowned the three hills at various times, only to be thrown

down in one war or another. Now only broken stones and overgrown ruins
remained to welcome the Targaryens. Though claimed by both Storm’s 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
lords moreover who had little reason to love their nominal overlord,
Harren the Black.

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. Rosby yielded to Rhaenys and
golden-eyed Meraxes without a fight. At Stokeworth a few crossbowmen
loosed bolts at Visenya, until Vhagar’s flames set the roofs of the
castle keep ablaze. Then they too submitted.

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. Aegon sent
Orys Baratheon out to attack them on the march, whilst he descended on
them from above with the Black Dread. 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. 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. 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.

This perhaps would be an apt place to discuss the differing characters
of Aegon Targaryen and his sisters and queens.

Visenya, eldest of the three siblings, was as much a warrior as Aegon
himself, as comfortable in ringmail as in silk. She carried the Valyrian
longsword Dark Sister, and was skilled in its use, having trained beside
her brother since childhood. Though possessed of the silver-gold hair
and purple eyes of Valyria, hers was a harsh, austere beauty. Even those
who loved her best found Visenya stern, serious, and unforgiving; some
said that she played with poisons and dabbled in dark sorceries.

Rhaenys, youngest of the three Targaryens, was all her sister was not,
playful, curious, impulsive, given to flights of fancy. No true warrior,
Rhaenys loved music, dancing, and poetry, and supported many a singer,
mummer, and puppeteer. Yet it was said that Rhaenys

spent more time on dragonback than her brother and sister combined, for
above all things she loved to fly. She once was heard to say that before
she died she meant to fly Meraxes across the Sunset Sea to see what lay
upon its western shores. 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. 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.

Aegon Targaryen himself, strangely, was as much an enigma to his
contemporaries as to us. 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. His mount
was Balerion the Black Dread, but he flew only to battle or to travel
swiftly across land and sea. His commanding presence drew men to his
banners, yet he had no close friends, save Orys Baratheon, the companion
of his youth. Women were drawn to him, but Aegon remained ever faithful
to his sisters. 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
them…yet did not hesitate to take command when he found it necessary.
Though he dealt harshly with rebels and traitors, he was open-handed
with former foes who bent the knee.

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. 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. There they laid their swords at
his feet, and Aegon raised them up and confirmed them in their lands and
titles. To his oldest supporters he gave new honors. Daemon Velaryon,
Lord of the Tides, was made master of ships, in command of the royal
fleet. Triston Massey, Lord of Stonedance, was named master of laws,
Crispian Celtigar master of coin. And Orys Baratheon he proclaimed to be
“my shield, my stalwart, my strong right hand.” Thus Baratheon is
reckoned by the maesters the first King’s Hand.

Heraldic banners had long been a tradition amongst the lords of
Westeros, but such had never been used by the dragonlords of old

Valyria. 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. 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 cheer…but the smallfolk, the fishermen and fieldhands and
goodwives, shouted loudest of all.

The seven kings that Aegon the Dragon meant to uncrown were not
cheering, however. In Harrenhal and Storm’s End, Harren the Black and
Argilac the Arrogant had already called their banners. 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 Princess of Dorne dispatched a
raven to Dragonstone, offering to join Aegon against Argilac the Storm
King…but as an equal and ally, not a subject. 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. 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
whole realm waited anxiously to see where Aegon would move next.

  []

Within days of his coronation, Aegon’s armies were on the march again.
The greater part of his host crossed the Blackwater Rush, making south
for Storm’s End under the command of Orys Baratheon. Queen Rhaenys
accompanied him, astride Meraxes of the golden eyes and silver scales.
The Targaryen fleet, under Daemon Velaryon, left Blackwater Bay and
turned north, for Gulltown and the Vale. With

them went Queen Visenya and Vhagar. 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.

All three of the Targaryen thrusts faced fierce opposition. Lords Errol,
Fell, and Buckler, bannermen to Storm’s 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.
A hastily assembled Arryn fleet, augmented by a dozen Braavosi warships,
met and defeated the Targaryen fleet in the waters off Gulltown. Amongst
the dead was Aegon’s admiral, Daemon Velaryon. Aegon himself was
attacked on the south shore of the Gods Eye, not once but twice. 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.

In the end, though, Aegon’s enemies had no answer for his dragons. 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. 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. 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. Harren’s
longboats burned. So did Harren’s sons.

Aegon’s foes also found themselves plagued by other enemies. 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. 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.

Yet these were but minor vexations compared to what befell Harren the
Black. Though House Hoare had ruled the riverlands for three
generations, the men of the Trident had no love for their ironborn
overlords. 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 appetite

for gold. So now the riverlands rose against him, led by Lord Edmyn
Tully of Riverrun. 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. His defiance gave heart to the other riverlords. One by one,
the lords of the Trident renounced Harren and declared for Aegon the
Dragon. Blackwoods, Mallisters, Vances, Brackens, Pipers, Freys,
Strongs…summoning their levies, they descended on Harrenhal.

Suddenly outnumbered, King Harren the Black took refuge in his
supposedly impregnable stronghold. 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. Harren
barred his gates and settled down with his remaining sons and supporters
to withstand a siege.

Aegon of Dragonstone was of a different mind. 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.
Harren emerged to meet him; an old man and grey, yet still fierce in his
black armor. Each king had his banner bearer and his maester in
attendance, so the words that they exchanged are still remembered.

“Yield now,” Aegon began, “and you may remain as Lord of the Iron
Islands. Yield now, and your sons will live to rule after you. I have
eight thousand men outside your walls.”

“What is outside my walls is of no concern to me,” said Harren. “Those
walls are strong and thick.”

  “But not so high as to keep out dragons. Dragons fly.” “I built in
  stone,” said Harren. “Stone does not burn.”

  To which Aegon said, “When the sun sets, your line shall end.”

It is said that Harren spat at that and returned to his castle. Once
inside, he sent every man of his to the parapets, armed with spears and
bows and crossbows, promising lands and riches to whichever of them
could bring the dragon down. “Had I a daughter, the dragonslayer could
claim her hand as well,” Harren the Black proclaimed. “Instead I will
give him one of Tully’s daughters, or all three if he likes. Or he may

pick one of Blackwood’s whelps, or Strong’s, or any girl born of these
traitors of the Trident, these lords of yellow mud.” Then Harren the
Black retired to his tower, surrounded by his household guard, to sup
with his remaining sons.

As the last light of the sun faded, Black Harren’s men stared into the
gathering darkness, clutching their spears and crossbows. When no dragon
appeared, some may have thought that Aegon’s threats had been hollow.
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. Only then did
he descend, well inside the castle walls. 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.

Stone does not burn, Harren had boasted, but his castle was not made of
stone alone. Wood and wool, hemp and straw, bread and salted beef and
grain, all took fire. Nor were Harren’s ironmen made of stone. Smoking,
screaming, shrouded in flames, they ran across the yards and tumbled
from the wallwalks to die upon the ground below. And even stone will
crack and melt if a fire is hot enough. The riverlords outside the
castle walls said later that the towers of Harrenhal glowed red against
the night, like five great candles…and like candles, they began to twist
and melt as runnels of molten stone ran down their sides.

Harren and his last sons died in the fires that engulfed his monstrous
fortress that night. House Hoare died with him, and so too did the Iron
Islands’ hold on the riverlands. 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. The other
riverlords did homage as well, to Aegon as king and to Edmyn Tully as
their liege lord. 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.

South and east, the Storm King’s bannermen proved considerably more
loyal than King Harren’s. Argilac the Arrogant gathered a great host
about him at Storm’s End. The seat of the Durrandons was a mighty
fastness, its great curtain wall even thicker than the walls of

Harrenhal. It too was thought to be impregnable to assault. Word of King
Harren’s end soon reached the ears of his old enemy King Argilac,
however. 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 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. No stranger to battle, he would decide his own
fate, sword in hand. So Argilac the Arrogant rode forth from Storm’s End
one last time, to meet his foes in the open field.

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. 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.

As the armies came together, the stormlands proved true to their name. A
steady rain began to fall that morning, and by midday it had turned into
a howling gale. 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 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. So Argilac the Arrogant gave the command to attack, and the
battle known to history as the Last Storm began.

The fighting lasted well into the night, a bloody business and far less
one-sided than Aegon’s conquest of Harrenhal. 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. The stormlanders fared better when they sent their spearmen up
the hills on foot. Blinded by the rain, the invaders did not see them
climbing until it was too late, and the wet bowstrings of the archers
made their bows useless. One hill fell, and then another, and the fourth
and final charge of the Storm King and his knights broke through the
Baratheon center…only to come upon Queen Rhaenys and Meraxes. Even on
the ground, the dragon proved formidable. Dickon Morrigen and the
Bastard of Blackhaven,

commanding the vanguard, were engulfed in dragonflame, along with the
knights of King Argilac’s personal guard. The warhorses panicked and
fled in terror, crashing into riders behind them, and turning the charge
into chaos. The Storm King himself was thrown from his saddle.

Yet still Argilac continued to battle. 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. “Stand aside,” Baratheon
commanded. He dismounted, so as to meet the king on equal footing, and
offered the Storm King one last chance to yield. Argilac cursed him
instead. And so they fought, the old warrior king with his streaming
white hair and Aegon’s fierce, black-bearded Hand. 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.
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.

  []

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. Rather than bend the knee, the defenders of Storm’s End
would die to the last man, she promised when Queen Rhaenys flew Meraxes
into the castle to parley. “You may take my

castle, but you will win only bones and blood and ashes,” she
announced…but the soldiers of the garrison proved less eager to die.
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.

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. And afterward, to
honor the fallen king, he took the arms and words of the Durrandon for
his own. The crowned stag became his sigil, Storm’s End became his seat,
and Lady Argella his wife.

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. At Winterfell, King Torrhen called his
banners; given the vast distances in the North, he knew that assembling
an army would take time. 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. In her youth
Queen Sharra had been lauded as “the Flower of the Mountain,” the
fairest maid in all the Seven Kingdoms. 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. 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.

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. From Highgarden marched Mern IX of House Gardener, King of the
Reach, with a mighty host. 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. 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. “Our iron fist,” boasted King Mern. His
four sons rode beside him, and both of his young grandsons attended him
as squires.

  The Two Kings did not linger long at Goldengrove; a host of such

size must remain on the march, lest it eat the surrounding countryside
bare. The allies set out at once, marching north by northeast through
tall grasses and golden fields of wheat.

Advised of their coming in his camp beside the Gods Eye, Aegon gathered
his own strength and advanced to meet these new foes. 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. With the smaller host, however, Aegon
was able to move much more quickly than his foes. At the town of Stoney
Sept, both his queens joined him with their dragons—Rhaenys from Storm’s
End and Visenya from Crackclaw Point, where she had accepted many
fervent pledges of fealty from the local lords. Together the three
Targaryens watched from the sky as Aegon’s army crossed the headwaters
of the Blackwater Rush and raced south.

The two armies came together amongst the wide, open plains south of the
Blackwater, near to where the goldroad would run one day. The Two Kings
rejoiced when their scouts returned to them and reported Targaryen
numbers and dispositions. They had five men for every one of Aegon’s, it
seemed, and the disparity in lords and knights was even greater. And the
land was wide and open, all grass and wheat as far as the eye could see,
ideal for heavy horse. Aegon Targaryen would not command the high
ground, as Orys Baratheon had at the Last Storm; the ground was firm,
not muddy. Nor would they be troubled by rain. The day was cloudless,
though windy. There had been no rain for more than a fortnight.

King Mern had brought half again as many men to the battle as King
Loren, and so demanded the honor of commanding the center. His son and
heir, Edmund, was given the vanguard. King Loren and his knights would
form the right, Lord Oakheart the left. 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.

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. He gave command of his host to Jon Mooton, Lord
of Maidenpool, one of the first foes to come over to his

cause. The king himself intended to do his fighting from the sky, beside
his queens. Aegon had noted the absence of rain as well; the grass and
wheat that surrounded the armies was tall and ripe for harvest…and very
dry.

The Targaryens waited until the Two Kings sounded their trumpets and
started forward beneath a sea of banners. 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. 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. But by then Aegon and
his sisters were in the air.

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. Rhaenys and Visenya set fires upwind of the enemy and behind
them. The dry grasses and stands of wheat went up at once. The wind
fanned the flames and blew the smoke into the faces of the advancing
ranks of the Two Kings. The scent of fire sent their mounts into panic,
and as the smoke thickened, horse and rider alike were blinded. Their
ranks began to break as walls of fire rose on every side of them. 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.

  The Field of Fire, the battle was named afterward.

More than four thousand men died in the flames. Another thousand
perished by sword and spear and arrow. Tens of thousands suffered burns,
some so bad that they would remain scarred for life. King Mern IX was
amongst the dead, together with his sons, grandsons, brothers, cousins,
and other kin. One nephew survived for three days. When he died of his
burns, House Gardener died with him. King Loren of the Rock lived,
riding through a wall of flame and smoke to safety when he saw the
battle lost.

The Targaryens lost fewer than a hundred men. Queen Visenya took an
arrow in one shoulder, but soon recovered. As the dragons gorged
themselves on the dead, Aegon commanded that the swords of the slain be
gathered up and sent downriver.

  Loren Lannister was captured the next day. The King of the Rock

laid his sword and crown at Aegon’s feet, bent the knee, and did him
homage. 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. Lord Loren’s bannermen followed
his example, and so too did many lords of the Reach, those who had
survived the dragonfire.

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. He
found the castle in the hands of its steward, Harlan Tyrell, whose
forebears had served the Gardeners for centuries. Tyrell yielded up the
keys to the castle without a fight and pledged his support to the
conquering king. 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.

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. Torrhen Stark, King in the
North, had crossed the Neck and entered the riverlands, leading an army
of savage northmen thirty thousand strong. Aegon at once started north
to meet him, racing ahead of his army on the wings of Balerion, the
Black Dread. 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.

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.
Riverlords, westermen, stormlanders, men of the Reach…all had come. And
above their camp Balerion, Meraxes, and Vhagar prowled the sky in
ever-widening circles.

Torrhen’s scouts had seen the ruins of Harrenhal, where slow red fires
still burned beneath the rubble. The King in the North had heard many
accounts of the Field of Fire as well. He knew that the same fate might
await him if he tried to force a crossing of the river. Some of his
lords bannermen urged him to attack all the same, insisting that
northern valor would carry the day. Others urged him to fall back to
Moat Cailin and make his stand there on northern soil. The king’s
bastard brother Brandon Snow offered to cross the Trident alone

under cover of darkness, to slay the dragons whilst they slept.

King Torrhen did send Brandon Snow across the Trident. But he crossed
with three maesters by his side, not to kill but to treat. All through
the night messages went back and forth. The next morning, Torrhen Stark
himself crossed the Trident. 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. He rose as Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the
North, a king no more. From that day to this day, Torrhen Stark is
remembered as the King Who Knelt…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.

Now Aegon Targaryen and his queens parted company. Aegon turned south
once again, marching toward Oldtown, whilst his two sisters mounted
their dragons—Visenya for the Vale of Arryn and Rhaenys for Sunspear and
the deserts of Dorne.

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.
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. 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. “Mother, can I go
flying with the lady?” the boy king asked. No threats were spoken, no
angry words exchanged. The two queens smiled at one another and
exchanged courtesies instead. 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. 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. Thus did Visenya Targaryen bring the Vale of Arryn into her
brother’s realm.

Rhaenys Targaryen had no such easy conquest. A host of Dornish spearmen
guarded the Prince’s Pass, the gateway through the Red Mountains, but
Rhaenys did not engage them. She flew above the pass, above the red
sands and the white, and descended upon Vaith to

demand its submission, only to find the castle empty and abandoned. In
the town beneath its walls, only women and children and old men
remained. When asked where their lords had gone, they would only say,
“Away.” Rhaenys followed the river downstream to Godsgrace, seat of
House Allyrion, but it too was deserted. On she flew. 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.

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. Meria Martell was eighty years of age, the maesters
tell us, and had ruled the Dornishmen for sixty of those years. She was
very fat, blind, and almost bald, her skin sallow and sagging. Argilac
the Arrogant had named her “the Yellow Toad of Dorne,” but neither age
nor blindness had dulled her wits.

“I will not fight you,” Princess Meria told Rhaenys, “nor will I kneel
to you. Dorne has no king. Tell your brother that.”

“I shall,” Rhaenys replied, “but we will come again, Princess, and the
next time we shall come with fire and blood.”

“Your words,” said Princess Meria. “Ours are Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken.
You may burn us, my lady…but you will not bend us, break us, or make us
bow. This is Dorne. You are not wanted here. Return at your peril.”

  Thus queen and princess parted, and Dorne remained unconquered.

To the west, Aegon Targaryen met a warmer welcome. 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. Oldtown was also the center
of the Faith. 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.

  []

Yet when Aegon Targaryen and his host approached Oldtown, they found the
city gates open and Lord Hightower waiting to make his submission. 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. He took no nourishment
but bread and water, and spent all

his waking hours in prayer, moving from one altar to the next. And on
the seventh day, the Crone had lifted up her golden lamp to show him the
path ahead. 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.

Manfred Hightower, Lord of Oldtown, was a cautious lord and godly. One
of his younger sons served with the Warrior’s Sons, and another had only
recently taken vows as a septon. 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. Thus it was that no men
from Oldtown burned on the Field of Fire, though the Hightowers were
bannermen to the Gardeners of Highgarden. 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. (Some say that Lord
Hightower also offered up the hand of his youngest daughter, which Aegon
declined politely, lest it offend his two queens.)

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. (“Seven Kingdoms” was the style used, though
Dorne had not submitted. 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. Amongst those at
Aegon’s second coronation were the maesters and archmaesters of the
Citadel. 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.

Thus were the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros hammered into one great realm,
by the will of Aegon the Conqueror and his sisters.

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 king surprised them
all by proclaiming his intent to make his court in the

new 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. King’s Landing, the new town would be called. 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.

  []

  he long reign of King Aegon I Targaryen (1 AC–37 AC) was by and large
  a peaceful one…in his later years, especially. But before

the Dragon’s Peace, as the last two decades of his kingship were later

called 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.

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.

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. 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. 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. Steffon Sunderland renewed his fealty to the Eyrie, bent the
knee to Queen Visenya, and gave his sons over as

hostages for his good behavior, one to be fostered with the Manderlys,
the other with the Arryns. His sister, the deposed queen, was exiled and
imprisoned. After five years, her tongue was removed, and she spent the
remainder of her life with the silent sisters, tending to the noble
dead.

On the other side of Westeros, the Iron Islands were in chaos. 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.
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.

Not all ironborn accepted his claim, however. 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. Other claimants arose on Great Wyk,
Pyke, and Orkmont, and for more than a year their adherents battled one
another on land and sea. It was said that the waters between the islands
were so choked with corpses that krakens appeared by the hundreds, drawn
by the blood.

Aegon Targaryen put an end to the fighting. He descended on the islands
in 2 AC, riding Balerion. 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 ironmen, their numbers diminished by a
year of fratricidal war, put up little resistance…indeed, many hailed
the coming of the dragons. King Aegon slew Qhorin Volmark with
Blackfyre, but allowed his infant son to inherit his father’s lands and
castle. 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. When that failed to happen, Lodos filled his robes with
stones and walked into the sea, “to seek my father’s counsel.” Thousands
followed. Their bloated, crab- eaten bodies washed up on the shores of
Old Wyk for years to come.

Afterward, the issue arose as to who should rule the Iron Islands for
the king. It was suggested that the ironmen be made vassals of the
Tullys of Riverrun or the Lannisters of Casterly Rock. Some even urged
that they be given over to Winterfell. Aegon listened to each claim, but

in the end decided that he would allow the ironborn to choose their own
lord paramount. To no one’s surprise, they chose one of their own:
Vickon Greyjoy, Lord Reaper of Pyke. Lord Vickon did homage to King
Aegon, and the Dragon departed with his fleets.

Greyjoy’s writ extended only to the Iron Islands, however; he renounced
all claim to the lands House Hoare had seized upon the mainland. 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. 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.

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. So it was to Dorne that the Dragon next turned his attention.
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
negotiations continued for the best part of a year, but achieved
nothing.

The start of the First Dornish War is generally fixed at 4 AC, when
Rhaenys Targaryen returned to Dorne. This time she came with fire and
blood, just as she had threatened. 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. The denizens of the floating town took to the
river for refuge from the flames, so fewer than a hundred died in the
attack, and most of those from drowning rather than dragonfire. But
first blood had been shed.

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. 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 to

stand before them, even without Aegon and Balerion.

[]

No doubt he had the right of that, but the issue was never proved, for
the Dornishmen never offered battle. Instead they withdrew before King
Aegon’s host, burning their crops in the field and poisoning every well.
The invaders found the Dornish watchtowers in the Red

Mountains slighted and abandoned. 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. 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. 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.

It was the second year of autumn, and winter was thought to be close at
hand. In that season, the invaders hoped, the heat in the deserts would
be less, water more plentiful. But the Dornish sun proved unrelenting as
Lord Tyrell marched toward Hellholt. In such heat, men drink more, and
every waterhole and oasis in the army’s path had been poisoned. Horses
began to die, more every day, followed by their riders. The proud
knights discarded their banners, their shields, their very armor. 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.

Orys Baratheon’s attack fared little better. 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. Boulders rained down on the
Hand’s knights from above, the work of defenders the stormlanders never
saw. 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. When Lord Orys ordered his men to fall
back, a massive rockfall cut off their retreat. With no way forward and
no way back, the stormlanders were butchered like hogs in a pen. 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.

King Aegon himself had more success. 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. The Lord of the Tor had recently died, and
his steward surrendered without a fight. Farther east, Lord Toland of
Ghost Hill sent forth his champion to challenge the king to single
combat. Aegon accepted and slew the man, only to discover afterward

that he had not been Toland’s champion, but his fool. Lord Toland
himself was gone.

As was Meria Martell, the Princess of Dorne, when King Aegon descended
upon Sunspear on Balerion, to find his sister Rhaenys there before him.
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. 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. “The Yellow Toad has melted into the sands,” Queen Rhaenys
told King Aegon.

Aegon’s answer was a declaration of victory. 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. Rewards
were offered for their heads, particularly that of the Yellow Toad,
Princess Meria Martell. Lord Jon Rosby was named Castellan of Sunspear
and Warden of the Sands, to rule Dorne in the king’s name. Stewards and
castellans were named for all the other lands and castles the Conqueror
had taken. Then King Aegon and his host departed back the way they had
come, west along the foothills and through the Prince’s Pass.

They had hardly reached King’s Landing before Dorne erupted behind them.
Dornish spearmen appeared from nowhere, like desert flowers after a
rain. Skyreach, Yronwood, the Tor, and Ghost Hill were all recaptured
within a fortnight, their royal garrisons put to the sword. Aegon’s
castellans and stewards were allowed to die only after long torment. It
was said that the Dornish lords had a wager over who could keep their
captive alive the longest whilst dismembering them. Lord Rosby,
Castellan of Sunspear and Warden of the Sands, had a kinder end than
most. 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.

Soon only Lord Tyrell and his host remained. King Aegon had left Tyrell
behind when he departed. Hellholt, a strong castle on the river
Brimstone, was thought to be well situated to deal with any revolts. But
the river was sulfurous, and the fish taken from it made the

Highgardeners sick. House Qorgyle of Sandstone had never submitted, and
Qorgyle spearmen cut down Tyrell’s foraging parties and patrols whenever
they strayed too far west. The Vaiths of Vaith did the same to the east.
When word of the Defenestration of Sunspear reached the Hellholt, Lord
Tyrell gathered his remaining strength and set off across the sands. His
announced intention was to capture Vaith, march east along the river,
retake Sunspear and the shadow city, and punish Lord Rosby’s murderers.
But somewhere east of the Hellholt amidst the red sands, Tyrell and his
entire army disappeared. No man of them was ever seen again.

Aegon Targaryen was not a man to accept defeat. 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.

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. 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. The Wyls took
refuge in caves and tunnels beneath their mountains, however, and the
Widow-lover lived another twenty years.

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. “Fire for fire,” Princess
Meria is reported to have said.

This was not something the Targaryens would allow to go unanswered.
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.

In 9 AC, Visenya returned again, this time with Aegon himself flying
beside her, and Sandstone, Vaith, and the Hellholt burned.

The Dornish answer came the next year, when Lord Fowler led an army
through the Prince’s Pass and into the Reach, moving so swiftly

that 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. 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. A second Dornish army under Ser Joffrey
Dayne came down from Starfall and attacked the city. 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.
Ser Addam Hightower reached Nightsong only to find that Lord Fowler had
put the castle to the torch and its garrison to the sword. Lord Caron
and his wife and children had been carried back to Dorne as captives.
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.

Old Lord Manfred Hightower died soon after. Ser Addam succeeded his
father as the Lord of the High Tower, as Oldtown cried out for
vengeance. 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.

Once again the king unleashed his dragons against Dorne. Aegon himself
fell upon Skyreach, vowing to make the Fowler seat “a second Harrenhal.”
Visenya and Vhagar brought fire and blood to Starfall. And Rhaenys and
Meraxes returned once more to the Hellholt…where tragedy struck. The
Targaryen dragons, bred and trained to battle, had flown through storms
of spears and arrows on many occasions, and suffered little harm. The
scales of a full-grown dragon were harder than steel, and even those
arrows that struck home seldom penetrated enough to do more than enrage
the great beasts. 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. Meraxes did not
die at once, but came crashing to earth in mortal agony, destroying the
tower and a large section of the Hellholt’s curtain wall in her death
throes.

Whether Rhaenys Targaryen outlived her dragon remains a matter of
dispute. Some say that she lost her seat and fell to her death, others
that she was crushed beneath Meraxes in the castle yard. A few accounts
claim the queen survived her dragon’s fall, only to die a slow

death by torment in the dungeons of the Ullers. 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.

The next two years were the years of the Dragon’s Wroth. Every castle in
Dorne was burned thrice over, as Balerion and Vhagar returned time and
time again. The sands around the Hellholt were fused into glass in
places, so hot was Balerion’s fiery breath. The Dornish lords were
forced into hiding, but even that did not buy them safety. 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. Only two of the killers
lived to collect their rewards, however, and the Dornishmen took their
reprisals, repaying blood with blood. Lord Connington of Griffin’s 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.

Nor were the Targaryens themselves exempt. The king was attacked thrice,
and would have fallen on two of those occasions but for his guards.
Queen Visenya was set upon one night in King’s Landing. Two of her
escorts were slain before Visenya herself cut down the last attacker
with Dark Sister.

  []

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. 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. Afterward

they took turns raping Lady Alys and her handmaids, then carried them
off and sold them to a Myrish slaver.

By then Dorne was a smoking desert, beset by famine, plague, and blight.
“A blasted land,” traders from the Free Cities called it. Yet House
Martell still remained Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken, as their words avowed.
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. Visenya replied that she and her brother would be glad to
oblige the princess.

Age and ill health finally did what dragons and armies could not. In 13
AC, Meria Martell, the Yellow Toad of Dorne, died abed (whilst having
intimate relations with a stallion, her enemies insisted). Her son Nymor
succeeded her as Lord of Sunspear and Prince of Dorne. Sixty years old,
his health already failing, the new Dornish prince had no appetite for
further slaughter. 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. His own heir, his daughter Deria, led the embassy.

Prince Nymor’s peace proposals encountered strong opposition in King’s
Landing. Queen Visenya was hard set against them. “No peace without
submission,” she declared, and her friends on the king’s council echoed
her words. Orys Baratheon, who had grown bent and bitter in his later
years, argued for sending Princess Deria back to her father less a hand.
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.” 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.

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. The lords of his small council further cautioned that any
such peace could be seen as a sign of weakness and might encourage fresh
rebellions, which would then need to be put down. Aegon knew that the
Reach, the stormlands, and the marches had suffered grievously during
the fighting, and would neither forgive nor forget. Even in King’s
Landing, the king dared not let the Dornish

outside the Aegonfort without a strong escort, for fear that the
smallfolk of the city would tear them to pieces. For all these reasons,
Grand Maester Lucan wrote later, the king was on the point of refusing
the Dornish proposals and continuing the war.

It was then that Princess Deria presented the king with a sealed letter
from her father. “For your eyes only, Your Grace.”

King Aegon read Prince Nymor’s words in open court, stone-faced and
silent, whilst seated on the Iron Throne. When he rose afterward, men
said, his hand was dripping blood. 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. When
he returned the next morning, Aegon Targaryen agreed to the terms
proposed by Nymor. Soon thereafter he signed a treaty of eternal peace
with Dorne.

To this day, no one can say with certainty what might have been in
Deria’s letter. Some claim it was a simple plea from one father to
another, heartfelt words that touched King Aegon’s heart. Others insist
it was a list of all those lords and noble knights who had lost their
lives during the war. 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.

Grand Maester Clegg, who came to King’s Landing many years later,
concluded that Dorne no longer had the strength to fight. 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. It may be so…but no man will ever truly know.

  Thus ended the First Dornish War (4–13 AC).

The Yellow Toad of Dorne had done what Harren the Black, the Two Kings,
and Torrhen Stark could not; she had defeated Aegon Targaryen and his
dragons. Yet north of the Red Mountains, her tactics earned her only
scorn. “Dornish courage” became a mocking name for cowardice amongst the
lords and knights of Aegon’s kingdoms. “The toad hops into her hole when
threatened,” wrote one scribe. Another said, “Meria fought like a woman,
with lies and treachery and

witchery.” 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.

Their vengeance would need to wait for a future generation, and the
accession of a younger, more bloodthirsty king. Though he would sit the
Iron Throne for another twenty-four years, the Dornish conflict was
Aegon the Conqueror’s last war.

[]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. 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.

The reconciliation of the Seven Kingdoms to Targaryen rule was the
keystone of Aegon I’s policies as king. To this end, he made great
efforts to include men (and even a few women) from every part of the
realm in his court and councils. 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. 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.

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. Aegon’s
queens, Visenya and Rhaenys, took a special delight in arranging these
matches. Through their efforts, young

Ronnel 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. 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. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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.

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. Full as many of his days and
nights were spent on Dragonstone, the island citadel of his forebears.
The castle below the Dragonmont had ten times the room of the Aegonfort,
with considerably more comfort, safety, and history. 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. Aegon spent roughly half
the year at his two seats, dividing his time between them.

The other half he devoted to an endless royal progress, taking his court
from one castle to another, guesting with each of his great lords in
turn. 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 and

lords and ladies in his train. 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.

“It is better to forestall rebellions than to put them down,” Aegon
famously said, when asked the reason for his journeys. 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. The smallfolk needed to see their kings and
queens from time to time as well, the king added, and know that they
might have the chance to lay their grievances and concerns before him.

And so they did. 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. Six maesters
traveled with him, to answer any questions he might have on local law,
customs, and history, and to make note of such decrees and judgments as
His Grace might hand down. 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.

Each of the conquered kingdoms had its own laws and traditions. King
Aegon did little to interfere with those. He allowed his lords to
continue to rule much as they always had, with all the same powers and
prerogatives. The laws of inheritance and succession remained unchanged,
the existing feudal structures were confirmed, lords both great and
small retained the power of pit and gallows on their own land, and the
privilege of the first night wherever that custom had formerly
prevailed.

  []

Aegon’s chief concern was peace. Before the Conquest, wars between the
realms of Westeros were common. Hardly a year passed without someone
fighting someone somewhere. Even in those kingdoms said to be at peace,
neighboring lords oft settled their disputes at swordpoint. Aegon’s
accession put an end to much of that. Petty lords and landed knights
were now expected to take their disputes to their liege lords

and abide by their judgments. Arguments between the great houses of the
realm were adjudicated by the Crown. “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.”

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. 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. 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.

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. The
highest of those hills had become known as Aegon’s High Hill, and soon
enough the lesser hills were being called Visenya’s Hill and the Hill of
Rhaenys, their former names forgotten. 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. A new keep was erected, all of logs
and fifty feet high, with a cavernous longhall beneath it, and a
kitchen, made of stone and roofed with slate in case of fire, across the
bailey. Stables appeared, then a granary. A new watchtower was raised,
twice as tall as the older one. 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.

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. Much of the trade that had gone
through Maidenpool and Duskendale was now coming to King’s Landing. A
fish market sprung up along the riverside, a cloth market between the
hills. A customs house appeared. 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. Then a second sept, twice

as large and thrice as grand, was built atop Visenya’s Hill, with coin
sent by the High Septon. Shops and homes sprouted like mushrooms after a
rain. Wealthy men raised walled manses on the hillsides, whilst the poor
gathered in squalid hovels of mud and straw in the low places between.

No one planned King’s Landing. It simply grew…but it grew quickly. At
Aegon’s first coronation, it was still a village squatting beneath a
motte-and-bailey castle. By his second, it was already a thriving town
of several thousand souls. By 10 AC, it was a true city, almost as large
as Gulltown or White Harbor. By 25 AC, it had outgrown both to become
the third most populous city in the realm, surpassed only by Lannisport
and Oldtown.

Unlike its rivals, however, King’s Landing had no walls. 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.
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 cause…

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. 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. 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. The task of building them was
conferred upon Grand Maester Gawen and Ser Osmund Strong, the Hand of
the King. To honor the Seven, Aegon decreed that the city would have
seven gates, each defended by a massive gatehouse and defensive towers.
Work on the walls began the next year and continued until 26 AC.

Ser Osmund was the king’s fourth Hand. 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. When ransomed back, his lordship asked the king to be
relieved of his duties. “The King’s Hand should have a

hand,” he said. “I will not have men speaking of the King’s Stump.”
Aegon next called on Edmyn Tully, Lord of Riverrun, to take up the
Handship. Lord Edmyn served from 7–9 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. 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.

Grand Maester Gawen was the third in that office. Aegon Targaryen had
always kept a maester on Dragonstone, as his father and father’s father
had before him. 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. 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.

But the wisest and most learned men in the Seven Kingdoms were the
archmaesters of the Citadel, each of them the supreme authority in one
of the great disciplines. 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. Thus was the office of Grand Maester
created, at King Aegon’s request.

The first man to serve in that capacity was Archmaester Ollidar, keeper
of histories, whose ring and rod and mask were bronze. 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. To fill his place, the Conclave selected Archmaester Lyonce,
whose ring and rod and mask were yellow gold. 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.

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. He is

known to have consulted often with his various Grand Maesters, and his
own household maesters as well. On matters relating to taxation, debts,
and incomes, he sought the advice of his masters of coin. 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. More
than any of these, King Aegon relied upon the King’s Hand, and of course
upon his sisters, the Queens Rhaenys and Visenya.

Queen Rhaenys was a great patron to the bards and singers of the Seven
Kingdoms, showering gold and gifts on those who pleased her. Though
Queen Visenya thought her sister frivolous, there was a wisdom in this
that went beyond a simple love of music. 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. Thus was the Conquest made glorious to the
simple people, whilst Aegon the Dragon himself became a hero king.

Queen Rhaenys also took a great interest in the smallfolk, and had a
special love for women and children. Once, when she was holding court in
the Aegonfort, a man was brought before her for beating his wife to
death. The woman’s brothers wanted him punished, but the husband argued
that he was within his lawful rights, since he had found his wife abed
with another man. The right of a husband to chastise an erring wife was
well established throughout the Seven Kingdoms (save in Dorne). The
husband further pointed out that the rod he had used to beat his wife
was no thicker than his thumb, and even produced the rod in evidence.
When the queen asked him how many times he had struck his wife, however,
the husband could not answer, but the dead woman’s brothers insisted
there had been a hundred blows.

Queen Rhaenys consulted with her maesters and septons, then rendered her
decision. 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. As god has but seven faces, however, the punishment should
consist of only six blows (for the seventh blow would be for the
Stranger, and the Stranger is the face of death). Thus the first six
blows the man had struck had been lawful…but the

remaining ninety-four had been an offense against gods and men, and must
be punished in kind. From that day forth, the “rule of six” became a
part of the common law, along with the “rule of thumb.” (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.)

Queen Visenya did not share her sister’s love of music and song. 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. When he choked to death on a peach pit, the queen acquired an
ape and dressed it in Lord Monkeyface’s clothing. “The new one is
cleverer,” she was wont to say.

Yet there was darkness in Visenya Targaryen. To most of the world, she
presented the grim face of a warrior, stern and unforgiving. Even her
beauty had an edge to it, her admirers said. 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. Some even suggest that she might have been a kinslayer and a
kingslayer, though no proof has ever been offered to support such
calumnies.

It would be a cruel irony if true, for in her youth no one did more to
protect the king. Visenya twice wielded Dark Sister in Aegon’s defense
when he was set upon by Dornish cutthroats. Suspicious and ferocious by
turns, she trusted no one but her brother. 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. When Aegon refused, Visenya
grew furious. “Even with Blackfyre in your hand, you are only one man,”
she told him, “and I cannot always be with you.” 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.
“Your guards are slow and lazy,” she said. “I could have killed you as
easily as I cut you. You require better protection.” King Aegon,
bleeding, had no choice but to agree.

Many kings had champions to defend them. Aegon was the Lord of the Seven
Kingdoms; therefore, he should have seven champions, Queen Visenya
decided. Thus did the Kingsguard come into being; a brotherhood of seven
knights, the finest in the realm, cloaked and

armored all in purest white, with no purpose but to defend the king,
giving up their own lives for his if need be. 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.

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. Visenya would not hear of
it, however. To be a Kingsguard knight required more than just skill at
arms, she pointed out. She would not risk placing men of uncertain
loyalty about the king, regardless of how well they performed in a
melee. She would choose the knights herself.

The champions she selected were young and old, tall and short, dark and
fair. They came from every corner of the realm. Some were younger sons,
others the heirs of ancient houses who gave up their inheritances to
serve the king. One was a hedge knight, another bastard born. All of
them were quick, strong, observant, skilled with sword and shield, and
devoted to the king.

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. History has confirmed that Visenya Targaryen
chose well. Two of her original seven would die protecting the king, and
all would serve with valor to the end of their lives. Many brave men
have followed in their footsteps since, writing their names in the White
Book and donning the white cloak. The Kingsguard remains a synonym for
honor to this day.

Sixteen Targaryens followed Aegon the Dragon to the Iron Throne, before
the dynasty was at last toppled in Robert’s Rebellion. They numbered
amongst them wise men and foolish, cruel men and kind, good men and
evil. 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.

[]King Aegon I Targaryen took both of his sisters to wife. Rhaenys and
Visenya were dragonriders, with the silver-gold hair, purple eyes, and
beauty of true Targaryens. Elsewise, the two queens were as unlike each
other as any two women could be…save in one other respect. Each of them
gave the king a son.

Aenys came first. Born in 7 AC to Aegon’s younger wife, Rhaenys, the boy
was small at birth and sickly. He cried all the time, and it was said
that his limbs were spindly, his eyes small and watery, and that the
king’s maesters feared for his survival. He would spit out the nipples
of his wet nurse, and give suck only at his mother’s breasts, and rumors
claimed that he screamed for a fortnight when he was weaned. 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. And the prince was slow to grow as well. Not until he was given
the young dragon Quicksilver, a hatchling born that same year on
Dragonstone, did Aenys Targaryen begin to thrive.

Prince Aenys was three when his mother, Queen Rhaenys, and her dragon,
Meraxes, were slain in Dorne. Her death left the boy prince
inconsolable. He stopped eating, and even began to crawl as he had when
he was one, as if he had forgotten how to walk. His father

despaired 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 king kept his own counsel on these matters, so no man could
say what thoughts he might have entertained, but many great lords and
noble knights appeared at court with their maiden daughters, each more
comely than the last.

All such speculation ended in 11 AC, when Queen Visenya suddenly
announced that she was carrying the king’s child. A son, she proclaimed
confidently, and so he proved to be. The prince came squalling into the
world in 12 AC. 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 half-brothers were never close. Prince Aenys was the heir apparent,
and King Aegon kept him close by his side. As the king moved about the
realm from castle to castle, so did the prince. Prince Maegor remained
with his mother, sitting by her side when she held court. Queen Visenya
and King Aegon were oft apart in those years. 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. For this reason, lords and
commons alike began to refer to Maegor as the Prince of Dragonstone.

Queen Visenya put a sword into her son’s hand when he was three.
Supposedly the first thing he did with the blade was butcher one of the
castle cats, men said…though more like this tale was a calumny devised
by his enemies many years later. That the prince took to swordplay at
once cannot be denied, however. 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.

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. 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. Aenys would not disgrace himself in battle, his tutors told one
another, but no songs would ever be sung about his prowess.

  Such gifts as this prince possessed lay elsewhere. Aenys was a fine

singer himself, as it happened, with a strong sweet voice. He was
courteous and charming, clever without being bookish. He made friends
easily, and young girls seemed to dote on him, be they highborn or low.
Aenys loved to ride as well. His father gave him coursers, palfreys, and
destriers, but his favorite mount was his dragon, Quicksilver.

Prince Maegor rode as well, but showed no great love for horses, dogs,
or any animal. When he was eight, a palfrey kicked him in the stables.
Maegor stabbed the horse to death…and slashed half the face off the
stableboy who came running at the beast’s screams. The Prince of
Dragonstone had many companions through the years, but no true friends.
He was a quarrelsome boy, quick to take offense, slow to forgive,
fearsome in his wroth. His skill with weapons was unmatched, however. A
squire at eight, he was unhorsing boys four and five years his elder in
the lists by the time he was twelve, and battering seasoned men-at-arms
into submission in the castle yard. On his thirteenth nameday in 25 AC,
his mother, Queen Visenya, bestowed her own Valyrian steel blade, Dark
Sister, upon him…half a year before his marriage.

The tradition amongst the Targaryens had always been to marry kin to
kin. Wedding brother to sister was thought to be ideal. Failing that, a
girl might wed an uncle, a cousin, or a nephew, a boy a cousin, aunt, or
niece. This practice went back to Old Valyria, where it was common
amongst many of the ancient families, particularly those who bred and
rode dragons. The blood of the dragon must remain pure, the wisdom went.
Some of the sorcerer princes also took more than one wife when it
pleased them, though this was less common than incestuous marriage. 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.

This was not true in Westeros, where the power of the Faith went
unquestioned. 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. And the doctrines of the Faith, handed down
through centuries from Andalos itself, condemned the Valyrian marriage
customs as practiced by the Targaryens. 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 were

considered abominations in the sight of gods and men. With hindsight, it
can be seen that conflict between the Faith and House Targaryen was
inevitable. 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.

Familiarity is the father of acceptance, it is said. 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. 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.

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. Yet the
question of incestuous marriage remained, simmering below the courtesies
like poison. 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. The humbler members of the Faith—village septons, holy
sisters, begging brothers, Poor Fellows—still believed it sinful for
brother to lie with sister, or for a man to take two wives.

Aegon the Conqueror had fathered no daughters, however, so these matters
did not come to a head at once. The sons of the Dragon had no sisters to
marry, so each of them was forced to seek elsewhere for a bride.

Prince Aenys was the first to marry. 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. 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. King
Aegon’s own mother had been a Velaryon, so the marriage was reckoned one
of cousin to cousin.

  It soon proved both happy and fruitful. The following year, Alyssa

gave birth to a daughter. Prince Aenys named her Rhaena, in honor of his
mother. 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. It was written that King Aegon himself
wept the first time his granddaughter was placed in his arms, and
thereafter doted upon the child…mayhaps in some part because she
reminded him of his lost queen, Rhaenys, in whose memory she had been
named.

As the glad tidings of Rhaena’s birth spread across the land, the realm
rejoiced…save, perhaps, for Queen Visenya. 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. Queen Visenya proposed to settle the matter by betrothing the
infant Rhaena to Maegor, who had just turned eleven. Aenys and Alyssa
spoke against the match, however…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. 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). 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.

Thus it came to pass that in 25 AC, Maegor Targaryen, Prince of
Dragonstone, wed Lady Ceryse Hightower in the Starry Sept of Oldtown,
with the High Septon himself performing the nuptials. Maegor was
thirteen, the bride ten years his senior…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. “I made a son for House Targaryen last night,” he
proclaimed as he broke fast.

The son came the next year…but the boy, named Aegon after his grandsire,
was born to Lady Alyssa and fathered by Prince Aenys. Once again,
celebrations swept the Seven Kingdoms. The little prince was robust and
fierce and had “a warrior’s look about him,” declared his grandsire,
Aegon the Dragon himself. While many still debated whether Prince Maegor
or his niece, Rhaena, should have precedence in the order of succession,
it seemed beyond question that Aegon

would follow his father, Aenys, just as Aenys would follow Aegon.

In the years that followed, other children came one after the other to
House Targaryen…to the delight of King Aegon, if not necessarily that of
Queen Visenya. In 29 AC, Prince Aegon acquired a baby brother when
Alyssa gave Prince Aenys a second son, Viserys. In 34 AC, she gave birth
to Jaehaerys, her fourth child and third son. In 36 AC came another
daughter, Alysanne.

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 eldest daughter of Aenys
and Alyssa was a shy, dreamy child, who seemed to be more comfortable
with animals than other children. As a little girl, she often hid behind
her mother’s skirt or clung to her father’s leg in the presence of
strangers…but she loved to feed the castle cats, and always had a puppy
or two in the bed. 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.

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. With her dragon beside her, the princess
slowly began to grow out of her shyness; at the age of twelve she took
to the skies for the first time, and thereafter, though she remained a
quiet girl, no one dared to call her timid. Not long after, Rhaena made
her first true friend in the person of her cousin Larissa Velaryon. For
a time the two girls were inseparable…until Larissa was suddenly
recalled to Driftmark to be wed to the second son of the Evenstar of
Tarth. The young are nothing if not resilient, however, and the princess
soon found a new companion in the Hand’s daughter, Samantha Stokeworth.

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. If those tales be true, from those eggs came the dragons
Silverwing and Vermithor, whose names would be writ so large in the
annals of the years to come.

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 pushed

Maegor farther down in the line of succession, and there were still
those who claimed he stood behind Aenys’s daughters too. And all the
while Maegor himself remained childless, for Lady Ceryse did not quicken
in the years that followed their marriage.

On tourney ground and battlefield, however, Prince Maegor’s
accomplishments far exceeded those of his brother. 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. In the melee,
no man could stand before him. Afterward he was knighted on the field by
his father, who dubbed him with no less a blade than Blackfyre. At
ten-and-six, Maegor became the youngest knight in the Seven Kingdoms.

Other feats followed. 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. In 31 AC, he hunted down
and slew a notorious robber knight in the riverlands, the so-called
Giant of the Trident.

Maegor was not yet a dragonrider, however. 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. 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. Lady
Alyssa teased him about it one day in court, wondering aloud whether “my
good-brother is afraid of dragons.” Prince Maegor darkened in rage at
the jape, then replied coolly that there was only one dragon worthy of
him.

The last seven years of the reign of Aegon the Conqueror were peaceful
ones. 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. Prince
Aenys accompanied him on Quicksilver; Maegor remained on Dragonstone.
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. 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 aging

king remained at home, dividing his days between Dragonstone and King’s
Landing.

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. 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. 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.

It was certainly no fit abode for a great king. 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. This time, he decreed, he would build in stone. 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. (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.)

Aegon the Conqueror died of a stroke on Dragonstone in the 37th year
After the Conquest. His grandsons Aegon and Viserys were with him at his
death, in the Chamber of the Painted Table; the king was showing them
the details of his conquests. 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. The king was clad in battle armor, his
mailed hands folded over the hilt of Blackfyre. 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. Vhagar
supplied the flames to light the fire. Blackfyre was burned with the
king, but retrieved by Maegor afterward, its blade darker but elsewise
unharmed. No common fire can damage Valyrian steel.

The Dragon was survived by his sister Visenya; his sons, Aenys and
Maegor; and five grandchildren. Prince Aenys was thirty years of age at
his father’s death, Prince Maegor five-and-twenty.

Aenys had been at Highgarden on his progress when his father died, but
Quicksilver returned him to Dragonstone for the funeral. Afterward he
donned his father’s iron-and-ruby crown, and Grand

Maester 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 lords who had come to
Dragonstone to bid their king farewell knelt and bowed their heads. 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. We shall
rule this realm together, you and I.” Then the king presented his
father’s sword, Blackfyre, to his brother, saying, “You are more fit to
bear this blade than me. Wield it in my service, and I shall be
content.”

(This bequest would prove to be most unwise, as later events would
demonstrate. 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. From this date forward, however, he would
wield only Blackfyre, whilst Dark Sister hung on the walls of his
chambers on Dragonstone.)

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. 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. Nonetheless, thousands came to cheer King Aenys as he
claimed his father’s seat for his own.

  []

Thereafter His Grace set out for Oldtown to receive the blessing of the
High Septon. 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. Queen Alyssa rode beside
him, together with their three eldest children. Princess Rhaena was
fourteen years of age, a beautiful young

girl who stole the heart of every knight who saw her; Prince Aegon was
eleven, Prince Viserys eight. (Their younger siblings, Jaehaerys and
Alysanne, were deemed too young for such an arduous journey and remained
on Dragonstone.) After setting out from King’s Landing, the king’s party
made its way south to Storm’s End, then west across the Dornish Marches
to Oldtown, guesting at each castle on the way. His return would be by
way of Highgarden, Lannisport, and Riverrun, it was decreed.

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. 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. At Storm’s 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. She scarce seemed to eat, would
not hunt or hawk, and when pressed to sing—for she is said to have a
lovely voice—she refused rudely and returned to her chambers.” 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. 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.

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. Yet
even as Aenys was receiving the blessing of the Father of the Faithful,
others were casting doubt on his fitness to sit the Iron Throne.
Westeros required a warrior, they whispered to one another, and Maegor
was plainly the stronger of the Dragon’s two sons. Foremost amongst the
whisperers was the Dowager Queen Visenya Targaryen. “The truth is plain
enough,” she is reported to have said. “Even Aenys sees it. Why else
would he have given Blackfyre to my son? He knows that only Maegor has
the strength to rule.”

The new king’s mettle would be tested sooner than anyone could have
imagined. The Wars of Conquest had left scars throughout the realm. Sons
now come of age dreamed of avenging long-dead fathers. Knights
remembered the days when a man with a sword and a horse and a suit of
armor could slash his way to riches and glory. Lords

recalled a time when they did not need a king’s leave to tax their
smallfolk or kill their enemies. “The chains the Dragon forged can yet
be broken,” the discontented told one another. “We can win our freedoms
back, but now is the time to strike, for this new king is weak.”

The first stirrings of revolt were in the riverlands, amidst the
colossal ruins of Harrenhal. Aegon had granted the castle to Ser Quenton
Qoherys, his old master-at-arms. 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. 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. A more unwelcome wedding guest can
scarce be imagined. He also made free with the wives and daughters of
his own servants.

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. 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. 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).

  []

When word reached Riverrun, Lord Tully urged the king to mount
Quicksilver and descend on Harrenhal as his father had. 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. Only
when a thousand men were assembled did Aenys march…but when his men
reached Harrenhal, they found it empty but

for corpses. Harren the Red had put Lord Gargon’s servants to the sword
and taken his band into the woods.

By the time Aenys returned to King’s Landing the news had grown even
worse. 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. 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. 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. 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.

“This Vulture King is half-mad, and his followers are a rabble,
undisciplined and unwashed,” Lord Harmon Dondarrion wrote to the king.
“We can smell them coming fifty leagues away.” Not long after, that
selfsame rabble stormed and seized his castle of Blackhaven. The Vulture
King personally sliced off Dondarrion’s nose before putting Blackhaven
to the torch and marching away.

King Aenys knew these rebels had to be put down, but seemed unable to
decide where to begin. Grand Maester Gawen wrote that the king could not
comprehend why this was happening. The smallfolk loved him, did they
not? Jonos Arryn, this new Lodos, the Vulture King…had he wronged them?
If they had grievances, why not bring them to him? “I would have heard
them out.” His Grace spoke of sending messengers to the rebels, to learn
the reasons for their actions. Fearing that King’s Landing might not be
safe with Harren the Red alive and near, he sent Queen Alyssa and their
younger children to Dragonstone. 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. But when the ships were
about to sail, he countermanded the order, fearing that Stokeworth’s
departure would leave King’s Landing undefended. 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.

Whilst the king prevaricated, his lords took to the field. Some acted on
their own authority, others in concert with the Dowager Queen. 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. But when they demanded the
release of their rightful lord, Jonos Arryn sent his brother to them
through the Moon Door. Such was the sad end of Ronnel Arryn, who had
flown thrice about the Giant’s Lance on dragonback.

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 siege…until Prince Maegor appeared in the sky above,
astride Balerion. The Conqueror’s younger son had claimed a dragon at
last: none other than the Black Dread, the greatest of them all.

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.
Surrender saved the pretender’s followers from burning, but not from
death. After taking possession of the Eyrie, Prince Maegor executed them
to a man. 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. Hubert Arryn, a cousin to the dead brothers,
was installed as Lord of the Vale. As he had already sired six sons by
his lady wife, a Royce of Runestone, the Arryn succession was seen to be
secure.

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. Afterward he had the head of the priest king pickled in
brine and sent to King’s Landing. King Aenys was so pleased by the gift
that he offered Greyjoy any boon he might desire. This proved unwise.
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. King Aenys had no choice but to agree.

The largest and most threatening rebellion remained that of the Vulture
King along the Dornish Marches. 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. 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. So
large had his host become that the Vulture King made an ill-considered
decision and divided his strength. 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.

Both hosts met with disaster. Orys Baratheon, known now as Orys
One-Hand, rode forth from Storm’s End one last time, to smash the
Dornish beneath the walls of Stonehelm. When Walter Wyl was delivered
into his hands, wounded but alive, Lord Orys said, “Your father took my
hand. I claim yours as repayment.” So saying, he hacked off Lord
Walter’s sword hand. Then he took his other hand and both his feet as
well, calling them his “usury.” Strange to say, Lord Baratheon died on
the march back to Storm’s 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.

The Vulture King himself fared little better. 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. Meanwhile
Lord Samwell Tarly of Horn Hill suddenly appeared athwart the Dornish
line of march with several thousand knights and archers. 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 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. 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.”

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. The singers like to say that he was torn to pieces by the very
vultures from whom he took his style, but in truth he perished of thirst
and exposure, and the birds did not descend on him until well after he
was dead. (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.) 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 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. The
outlaw king did not die meekly. In his last fight, he slew the King’s
Hand, Lord Alyn Stokeworth, before being cut down by Stokeworth’s
squire, Bernarr Brune. 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. The greatest plaudits he bestowed on his own brother. On his
return to King’s Landing, Prince Maegor was hailed as a hero. King Aenys
embraced him before a cheering throng, and named him Hand of the King.
And when two young dragons hatched amidst the firepits of Dragonstone at
the end of that year, it was taken for a sign.

  But the amity between the Dragon’s sons did not long endure.

It may be that conflict was inevitable, for the two brothers had very
different natures. King Aenys loved his wife, his children, and his
people, and wished only to be loved in turn. Sword and lance had lost
whatever appeal they ever had for him. Instead His Grace dabbled in
alchemy, astronomy, and astrology, delighted in music and dance, wore
the finest silks, samites, and velvets, and enjoyed the company of
maesters, septons, and wits. His brother, Maegor, taller, broader, and
fearsomely strong, had no patience for any of that, but lived for war,
tourneys, and battle. 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. King Aenys sought
always to please; when faced with difficulties, he would answer

with soft words, whereas Maegor’s reply was ever steel and fire. Grand
Maester Gawen wrote that Aenys trusted everyone, Maegor no one. 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. Prince Maegor, on the other hand, was rigid as an iron rod,
unyielding, unbending.

Despite such differences, the sons of the Dragon continued to rule
together amicably for the best part of two years. 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. Perhaps it was this continued
proof of the queen’s fertility that drove Prince Maegor to do what he
did. 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.

The wedding was performed on Dragonstone, under the aegis of the Dowager
Queen Visenya. As the castle septon refused to officiate, Maegor and his
new bride were joined in a Valyrian rite, “wed by blood and fire.” The
marriage took place without the leave, knowledge, or presence of King
Aenys. When it became known, the two half-brothers quarreled bitterly.
Nor was His Grace alone in his wroth. Manfred Hightower, father of Lady
Ceryse, made protest to the king, demanding that Lady Alys be put aside.
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.” No true son or daughter of
the Seven would ever bow to such, he thundered.

Prince Maegor remained defiant. His father had taken both of his sisters
to wife, he pointed out; the strictures of the Faith might rule lesser
men, but not the blood of the dragon. 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.”

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. Prince
Maegor chose exile. In 40 AC he departed for Pentos, taking Lady Alys,
Balerion his dragon, and the sword Blackfyre with him. (It is said that
Aenys requested that his brother return Blackfyre, to which

Prince Maegor replied, “Your Grace is welcome to try and take her from
me.”) Lady Ceryse was left abandoned in King’s Landing.

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.
(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.) No doubt His Grace the king hoped the choice would
appease the Faith. If so, he was wrong. Septon Murmison could no more
heal the realm than he could make Ceryse Hightower fecund. The High
Septon continued to thunder, and all through the realm the lords in
their halls spoke of the king’s weakness. “How can he rule the Seven
Kingdoms when he cannot even rule his brother?” they said.

The king remained oblivious to the discontent in the realm. 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. The Red Keep, the people of King’s Landing named
it. Its building had become the king’s obsession. “My descendants shall
rule from here for a thousand years,” His Grace declared. 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.

The princess was eighteen, the prince fifteen. They had been close since
childhood, playmates when young. Though Aegon had never claimed a dragon
of his own, he had ascended into the skies more than once with his
sister, on Dreamfyre. 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. Three years of service as a squire had sharpened his prowess with
sword and axe, and he was widely regarded as the best young lance in all
the realm. Of late, many a young maiden had cast her eye upon the
prince, and Aegon was not indifferent to their charms. “If the prince is
not wed,” Grand Maester Gawen wrote the Citadel, “His Grace may soon
have a bastard grandchild to contend with.”

Princess Rhaena had many a suitor as well, but unlike her brother she
gave encouragement to none of them. She preferred to spend her days with
her siblings, her dogs and cats, and her newest favorite, Alayne Royce,
daughter to the Lord of Runestone…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. More often, though, Rhaena
took to the skies by herself. After her sixteenth nameday, the princess
declared herself a woman grown, “free to fly where I will.”

And fly she did. Dreamfyre was seen as far away as Harrenhal, Tarth,
Runestone, Gulltown. It was whispered (though never proved) that on one
of these flights Rhaena surrendered the flower of her maidenhead to a
lowborn lover. A hedge knight, one story had it; others named him a
singer, a blacksmith’s son, a village septon. In light of these tales,
some have suggested that Aenys might have felt a need to see his
daughter wed as soon as possible. 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.

Given the traditions and practices of House Targaryen, a match between
his two eldest children must have seemed the obvious course to King
Aenys. 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.

The storm that greeted the king’s announcement took them all by
surprise, though the warning signs had been plain enough for those with
the wit to read them. 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. From the Starry Sept
came a blistering condemnation, denouncing the marriage of brother to
sister as an obscenity. 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.

Aenys Targaryen was infamous for his indecision, yet here, faced with
the fury of the Faith, he stiffened and grew stubborn. The

Dowager 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. King Aenys did neither. Instead he
simply persisted.

On the day of the wedding, the streets outside the Sept of
Remembrance—built atop the Hill of Rhaenys, and named in honor of the
Dragon’s fallen queen—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. The wiser lords, perhaps expecting that,
had stayed away.

Those who did come to bear witness saw more than a wedding. At the feast
afterward, King Aenys compounded his misjudgment by granting the title
Prince of Dragonstone to his presumptive heir, Prince Aegon. A hush fell
over the hall at those words, for all present knew that title had
hitherto belonged to Prince Maegor. At the high table, Queen Visenya
rose and stalked from the hall without the king’s leave. 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.

Aenys Targaryen did not seem to comprehend the extent to which he had
roused the realm against him. Eager to win back the favor of the
smallfolk, he decreed that the prince and princess would make a royal
progress through the realm, no doubt thinking of the cheers that had
greeted him everywhere he went on his own progress. Wiser perhaps than
her father, Princess Rhaena asked his leave to bring her dragon,
Dreamfyre, with them, but Aenys forbade it. 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.

The king had grossly misjudged the temper of the kingdom, the piety of
his people, and the power of the High Septon’s words. From the first day
they set out, Aegon and Rhaena and their escort were jeered by crowds of
the Faithful wherever they went. At Maidenpool, not a single septon
could be found to pronounce a blessing at the feast Lord Mooton threw in
their honor. 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.

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. At one
village in the riverlands, several Poor Fellows went so far as to pelt
the royal couple with clods of dirt. 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. Yet that did not stop Princess
Rhaena from riding up to them to say, “You are fearless when facing a
girl on a horse, I see. The next time I come, I will be on a dragon.
Throw dirt on me then, I pray you.”

Elsewhere in the realm, matters went from bad to worse. 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. The High Septon’s reply was so venomous that
His Grace went pale when he read it. 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.

The Faithful were listening. 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.
The Warrior’s Sons began to fortify the Hill of Rhaenys, turning the
Sept of Remembrance into their citadel. 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. That proved a wise
precaution. Three days before they were to sail, two Poor Fellows scaled
the manse’s walls and broke into the king’s bedchamber. Only the timely
intervention of the Kingsguard saved Aenys from an ignoble death.

His Grace was trading Visenya’s Hill for Visenya herself. On Dragonstone
the Queen Dowager famously greeted him with, “You are a fool and a
weakling, nephew. Do you think any man would ever have dared speak so to
your father? You have a dragon. Use him. Fly to Oldtown and make this
Starry Sept another Harrenhal. Or give me leave, and let me roast this
pious fool for you.” Aenys would not hear of it. Instead he sent the
Queen Dowager to her chambers in Sea Dragon Tower and ordered her to
remain there.

By the end of 41 AC, much of the realm was deep in the throes of a
full-fledged rebellion against House Targaryen. 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.

Dozens of pious lords throughout the Seven Kingdoms took up the cry,
pulling down the king’s banners and declaring for the Starry Sept. 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. 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. In the westerlands, Prince
Aegon and Princess Rhaena were forced to abandon their progress and take
shelter in Crakehall castle. 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 coming of the new year found King Aenys still on Dragonstone, sick
with fear and indecision. 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. 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 time…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.” Three days later, the king was
dead.

Like his father, Aenys Targaryen, the First of His Name, was given over
to the flames in the yard at Dragonstone. His funeral was attended by
his sons Viserys and Jaehaerys, twelve and seven years of age
respectively, and his daughter Alysanne, five. 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.

Queen Visenya was not present. Within an hour of the king’s death, she
had mounted Vhagar and flown east across the narrow sea. When she
returned, Prince Maegor was with her, on Balerion.

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. 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.

Only Grand Maester Gawen dared object. 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 Iron Throne will go to the man who has the strength to seize
it,” Maegor replied. Whereupon he decreed the immediate execution of the
Grand Maester, taking off Gawen’s old grey head himself with a single
swing of Blackfyre.

Queen Alyssa and her children were not on hand to witness King Maegor’s
coronation. She had taken them from Dragonstone within hours of her
husband’s funeral, crossing to her lord father’s castle on nearby
Driftmark. When told, Maegor gave a shrug…then retired to the Chamber of
the Painted Table with a maester, to dictate letters to lords great and
small throughout the realm.

A hundred ravens flew within the day. The next day, Maegor flew as well.
Mounting Balerion, he crossed Blackwater Bay to King’s Landing,
accompanied by the Dowager Queen Visenya upon Vhagar. The return of the
dragons set off riots in the city, as hundreds tried to flee, only to
find the gates closed and barred. 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.
The Targaryens raised their standards atop Visenya’s Hill and called for
leal men to gather to them. Thousands did. Visenya Targaryen proclaimed
that her son Maegor had come to be their king. “A true king, blood of
Aegon the Conqueror, who was my brother, my husband, and my love. If any
man questions my son’s right to the Iron Throne, let him prove his claim
with his body.”

The Warrior’s Sons were not slow to accept her challenge. Down from the
Hill of Rhaenys they rode, seven hundred knights in silvered

steel led by their grand captain, Ser Damon Morrigen, called Damon the
Devout. “Let us not bandy words,” Maegor told him. “Swords will decide
this matter.” Ser Damon agreed; the gods would grant victory to the man
whose cause was just, he said. “Let each side have seven champions, as
it was done in Andalos of old. Can you find six men to stand beside
you?” For Aenys had taken the Kingsguard to Dragonstone, and Maegor
stood alone.

The king turned to the crowd. “Who will come and stand beside his king?”
he called. Many turned away in fear or pretended that they did not hear,
for the prowess of the Warrior’s Sons was known to all. But at last one
man offered himself: no knight, but a simple man-at-arms who called
himself Dick Bean. “I been a king’s man since I was a boy,” he said. “I
mean to die a king’s man.”

Only then did the first knight step forward. “This bean shames us all!”
he shouted. “Are there no true knights here? No leal men?” The speaker
was Bernarr Brune, the squire who had slain Harren the Red and been
knighted by King Aenys himself. His scorn drove others to offer their
swords. The names of the four Maegor chose are writ large in the history
of Westeros: Ser Bramm of Blackhull, a hedge knight; Ser Rayford Rosby;
Ser Guy Lothston, called Guy the Glutton; and Ser Lucifer Massey, Lord
of Stonedance.

The names of the seven Warrior’s Sons have likewise come down to us.
They were: Ser Damon Morrigen, called Damon 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. It is written that Damon the Devout led a prayer,
beseeching the Warrior to grant strength to their arms. Afterward the
Queen Dowager gave the command to begin. And the issue was joined.

Dick Bean died first, cut down by Lyle Bracken mere instants after the
combat began. Thereafter accounts differ markedly. One chronicler says
that when the hugely fat Ser Guy the Glutton was cut open, the remains
of forty half-digested pies spilled out. Another claims Ser Garibald of
the Seven Stars sang a paean as he fought. Several tell us that Lord
Massey hacked off the arm of Harry Horpe. In one account, Death’s Head
Harry tossed his battle-axe into his other hand and buried it between
Lord Massey’s eyes. Other chroniclers suggest Ser

Harys simply died. Some say the fight went on for hours, others that
most of the combatants were down and dying in mere moments. 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. Both of the Warrior’s Sons were badly wounded, and
His Grace had Blackfyre in his hand, but even so, it was a near thing.
Even as he fell, Ser Willam dealt the king a terrible blow to the head
that cracked his helm and left him insensate. Many thought Maegor dead
until his mother removed his broken helm. “The king breathes,” she said.
“The king lives.” The victory was his.

Seven of the mightiest of the Warrior’s Sons were dead, including their
commander, but more than seven hundred remained, armed and armored and
gathered about the crown of the hill. Queen Visenya commanded her son be
taken to the maesters. As the litter-bearers bore him down the hill, the
Swords of the Faith dropped to their knees in submission. The Dowager
Queen ordered them to return their fortified sept atop the Hill of
Rhaenys.

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. In the Sept of Remembrance, the Warrior’s Sons
prayed as well, and argued about their course. 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.

The Kingsguard arrived from Dragonstone in the nonce. 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. On Driftmark,
the widowed Queen Alyssa proclaimed her own son Aegon the true king, but
few heeded her call. 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.

In the Citadel of Oldtown, the archmaesters met in conclave to debate
the succession and choose a new Grand Maester. Thousands of Poor Fellows
streamed toward King’s Landing. Those from the west followed the hedge
knight Ser Horys Hill, those from the south a gigantic axeman called Wat
the Hewer. 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. Abandoning
their royal progess, they made their way to Casterly Rock, where Lord
Lyman Lannister offered them his protection. It was his wife, Lady
Jocasta, who first discerned that Princess Rhaena was with child, Lord
Lyman’s maester tells us.

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. Alys of House Harroway, Maegor Targaryen’s second wife, had
returned to Westeros…but not alone. With her sailed another woman, a
pale raven-haired beauty known only as Tyanna of the Tower. Some said
the woman was Maegor’s concubine. Others named her Lady Alys’s paramour.
The natural daughter of a Pentoshi magister, Tyanna was a tavern dancer
who had risen to be a courtesan. She was rumored to be a poisoner and
sorceress as well. Many queer tales were told about her…yet as soon as
she arrived, Queen Visenya dismissed her son’s maesters and septons and
gave Maegor over to Tyanna’s care.

The next morning, the king awoke, rising with the sun. 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. But the revels died away when Maegor mounted Balerion and
descended upon the Hill of Rhaenys, where seven hundred of the Warrior’s
Sons were at their morning prayers in the fortified sept. As dragonfire
set the building aflame, archers and spearmen waited outside for those
who came bursting through the doors. 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. Thus did the cream of the
Warrior’s Sons meet their fiery end. Though other chapters remained in
Oldtown, Lannisport, Gulltown, and Stoney Sept, the order would never
again approach its former strength.

King Maegor’s war against the Faith Militant had just begun, however. It
would continue for the remainder of his reign. The king’s first act upon
ascending the Iron Throne was to command the Poor Fellows swarming
toward the city to lay down their weapons, under penalty of proscription
and death. When his decree had no effect, His Grace commanded “all leal
lords” to take the field and disperse the Faith’s ragged hordes by
force. In response, the High Septon in Oldtown called upon “true and
pious children of the gods” to take up

arms in defense of the Faith, and put an end to the reign of “dragons
and monsters and abominations.”

[]

Battle was joined first in the Reach, at the town of Stonebridge. There
nine thousand Poor Fellows under Wat the Hewer found themselves caught
between six lordly hosts as they attempted to cross

the Mander. With half his men north of the river and half on the south,
Wat’s army was cut to pieces. His untrained and undisciplined followers,
clad in boiled leather, roughspun, and scraps of rusted steel, and armed
largely with woodsmen’s axes, sharpened sticks, and farm implements,
proved utterly unable to stand against the charge of armored knights on
heavy horses. 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. 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. The giant was
delivered to King’s Landing in chains.

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 Sons
from Stoney Sept, and the household knights and feudal levies of a dozen
rebel lords from the westerlands and riverlands. 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 army of the Faithful numbered twenty thousand men.

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. Even so, the battle
proved a savage struggle. The Fighting Fool slew two knights of the
Kingsguard before he himself was cut down by the Lord of Maidenpool. 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. 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. By nightfall victory was his, as the remaining Poor
Fellows threw down their axes and streamed away in all directions.

Triumphant, Maegor returned to King’s Landing to seat himself once more
upon the Iron Throne. 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.” Then His Grace announced his intent to

take Tyanna of Pentos as his third wife. 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. “Your one true
wife awaits you in the Hightower,” Myros said. The king heard him out in
silence, then descended from the throne, drew Blackfyre, and slew him
where he stood.

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. It was said that Maegor had to put a dozen septons to death
before he found one willing to perform the ceremony. Wat the Hewer,
limbless, was kept alive to witness the marriage.

King Aenys’s widow, Queen Alyssa, was present as well, with her younger
sons, Viserys and Jaehaerys, and her daughter Alysanne. 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. 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. 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.

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. And in the westerlands, Aegon Targaryen,
Prince of Dragonstone, and his wife, Princess Rhaena, remained defiant
as well.

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. 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. 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.

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.
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. 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. Queen Alyssa’s attendance at Maegor’s wedding
was trumpeted as proof that Aegon’s own mother had abandoned his cause.
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.”

And thus it was there at Casterly Rock that Princess Rhaena gave birth
to Aegon’s daughters, twins they named Aerea and Rhaella. From the
Starry Sept came another blistering proclamation. These children too
were abominations, the High Septon proclaimed; fruits of lust and
incest, accursed of the gods. 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.” But her words fell on stony ears and her tears were shed
in vain, for Prince Aegon was determined to claim his birthright.

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. 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. 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.

In that same year, Maegor made Lord Lucas Harroway, father of his wife
Queen Alys, his new Hand…but it was not the Hand who had the king’s ear.
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, Queen

Tyanna. “The mistress of whispers,” Tyanna was called, and “the king’s
raven,” for her black hair. 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.

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. Ser Horys Hill had escaped the
battle at Great Fork, but defeat and flight had tarnished him, and his
followers were few. The new leaders of the Poor Fellows were men like
Ragged Silas, Septon Moon, and Dennis the Lame, hardly distinguishable
from outlaws. 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 End all but impassable to honest travelers.

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. When Ser Joffrey
set out from Lannisport to seek the blessing of the High Septon, a
hundred men rode with him. 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. Elsewhere in the realm, other restless lords
and men of faith were gathering men as well, and plotting ways to bring
the dragons down.

None of this had gone unnoticed. 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. The Stars and Swords were outlawed;
membership in either order would henceforth be punishable by death. The
High Septon was commanded to deliver himself to the Red Keep, to stand
trial for high treason.

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. Many of the Faithful echoed his defiance. Some pious
lords did travel to King’s Landing to do homage and present hostages,
but more did not, trusting to their numbers and the

strength of their castles to keep them safe.

King Maegor let the poisons fester for almost half a year, so engrossed
was he in the building of his Red Keep. It was his mother who struck
first. The Dowager Queen mounted Vhagar and brought fire and blood to
the riverlands as once she had to Dorne. In a single night, the seats of
House Blanetree, House Terrick, House Deddings, House Lychester, and
House Wayn were set aflame. 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. Lastly he descended upon the seat of House Doggett,
reducing it to ash. The fires claimed the lives of Ser Joffrey’s father,
mother, and young sister, along with their sworn swords, serving men,
and chattel. As pillars of smoke rose all through the westerlands and
the riverlands, Vhagar and Balerion turned south. 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.

Thousands fled Oldtown that night, streaming from the city gates or
taking ship for distant ports. Thousands more took to the streets in
drunken revelry. “This is a night for song and sin and drink,” men told
one another, “for come the morrow, the virtuous and the vile burn
together.” Others gathered in septs and temples and ancient woods to
pray they might be spared. In the Starry Sept, the High Septon railed
and thundered, calling down the wroth of the gods upon the Targaryens.
The archmaesters of the Citadel met in conclave. The men of the City
Watch filled sacks with sand and pails with water to fight the fires
they knew were coming. Along the city walls, crossbows, scorpions,
spitfires, and spear-throwers were hoisted onto the battlements in hopes
of bringing down the dragons when they appeared. Led by Ser Morgan
Hightower, a younger brother of the Lord of Oldtown, two hundred
Warrior’s Sons spilled forth from their chapterhouse to defend His High
Holiness, surrounding the Starry Sept with a ring of steel. Atop the
Hightower, the great beacon fire turned a baleful green as Lord Martyn
Hightower called his banners. Oldtown waited for the dawn, and the
coming of the dragons.

And the dragons came. Vhagar first, as the sun was rising, then
Balerion, just before midday. 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. The Dowager Queen Visenya was the first to learn the news.
Sometime during the blackest hour of that long and dreadful night, the
High Septon had died.

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. More than once he had preached for a day and a night
without taking sleep or nourishment. His sudden death shocked the city
and dismayed his followers. Its causes are debated to this day. 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. Others claim the Seven
struck him down for the sin of pride, for heresy, treason, and
arrogance.

[]

Many and more remain certain he was murdered…but by whom? 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). 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). 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). 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.

The truth will likely never be known…but the swift reaction of Lord
Martyn when word reached him at the Hightower is beyond dispute. At once
he dispatched his own knights to disarm and arrest the Warrior’s Sons,
amongst them his own brother. The city gates were opened, and Targaryen
banners raised along the walls. 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.

It required but a single ballot. Almost as one, the wise men and women
of the Faith turned to a certain Septon Pater. 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 head…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.

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. To the captive Swords of the Warrior’s Sons, a
choice was given. 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. Those who refused could die as martyrs to
their faith. Three-quarters of the captives chose to take the black. The
remainder died. 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 rest of the condemned were beheaded by their
own former brothers-in-arms. Of all their number, only one man received
a full royal pardon: Ser Morgan Hightower.

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. The Seven had no more need of warriors,
proclaimed His High Holiness; henceforth the Iron Throne would protect
and defend the Faith. King Maegor granted the surviving

members of the Faith Militant till year’s end to surrender their weapons
and give up their rebellious ways. 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.

  The new High Septon did not demur, nor did the Most Devout.

During his time at Oldtown, the king was also reconciled with his first
wife, Queen Ceryse, the sister of his host, Lord Hightower. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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. With so few followers, Aegon dared not
seat himself upon the Iron Throne, for he knew he could not hold it.
They were there for Rhaena’s Dreamfyre…and so the prince might claim his
father’s dragon, Quicksilver. In this bold endeavor, they were aided by
friends in Maegor’s own court who had grown weary of the king’s
cruelties. 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.

From there, Aegon and Rhaena returned to the westerlands to assemble an
army. 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. 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.
It was there at Pinkmaiden that Aegon Targaryen, mounted on Quicksilver,
descended from the sky to

denounce his uncle as a tyrant and usurper, and call upon all honest men
to rally to his banners.

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. 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. 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. 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.

Though their ranks included seasoned commanders and puissant knights, no
great lords had rallied to Prince Aegon’s cause…but Queen Tyanna,
mistress of whisperers, wrote to warn Maegor that Storm’s End, the
Eyrie, Winterfell, and Casterly Rock had all been in secret
communication with his brother’s widowed queen, Alyssa. Before declaring
for the Prince of Dragonstone, they wished to be convinced he might
prevail. Prince Aegon required a victory.

Maegor denied him that. From Harrenhal came forth Lord Harroway, from
Riverrun Lord Tully. Ser Davos Darklyn of the Kingsguard marshalled five
thousand swords in King’s Landing and struck out west to meet the
rebels. Up from the Reach came Lord Peake, Lord Merryweather, Lord
Caswell, and their levies. 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.
Lord Corbray advised him to engage each foe separately before they could
join their powers, but Aegon was loath to divide his strength. Instead
he chose to march on toward King’s Landing.

Just south of the Gods Eye, he found Davos Darklyn’s 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. Prince Aegon

commanded a charge, hoping to break through the Kingslanders before the
other loyalists fell upon his flanks, and mounted Quicksilver to lead
the attack himself. 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.

  King Maegor had come.

For the first time since the Doom of Valyria, dragon contended with
dragon in the sky, even as battle was joined below.

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. Then the Black Dread fell upon her
from above, his jaws closing round her neck as he ripped one wing from
her body. Screaming and smoking, the young dragon plunged to earth, and
Prince Aegon with her.

The battle below was nigh as brief, if bloodier. Once Aegon fell, the
rebels saw their cause was doomed and ran, discarding arms and armor as
they fled. But the loyalist armies were all around them, and there was
no escape. By day’s end, two thousand of Aegon’s men had died, against a
hundred of the king’s. Amongst the dead were Lord Alyn Tarbeck, Denys
Snow the Bastard of Barrowton, Lord Ronnel Vance, Ser Willam Whistler,
Melony Piper and three of her brothers… and the Prince of Dragonstone,
Aegon the Uncrowned of House Targaryen. The only notable loss amongst
the loyalists was Ser Davos Darklyn of the Kingsguard, slain at the
hands of Lord Corbray with Lady Forlorn. Half a year of trials and
executions followed. 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.

  []

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. Whether that was by his command or her own choice is
still debated to this day. All that is known for certain is that Rhaena
remained at Pinkmaiden Castle with her daughters when Aegon marched…and
with her, Dreamfyre. Would the addition of a second

dragon to the prince’s host have made a difference when battle was
joined? We shall never know…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.

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. “Will you not weep?” she was
asked, to which she replied, “I do not have the time for tears.”
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. 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. Instead the victorious king returned to the Red Keep,
where he grimly set about getting himself an heir.

The 44th year After the Conquest was a peaceful one compared to what had
gone before…but the maesters who chronicled those times wrote that the
smell of blood and fire still hung heavy in the air. 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 queens…or perhaps
because of it. 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. “Maegor the Cruel,” he was called, and
“kinslayer” as well, though it was death to say either in his hearing.

In Oldtown, the ancient High Septon died, and another was raised up in
his place. Though he spoke no word against the king or his queens, the
enmity between King Maegor and the Faith endured. 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. One band even crowned their own High Septon, in
the person of a bearded brute named Septon Moon. And a few Warrior’s
Sons still endured, led by Ser Joffrey Doggett, the Red Dog of the
Hills. Outlawed and condemned, the order no longer had the strength to
meet the king’s

men 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.” Their first victim was Ser Morgan Hightower, late of their
order, cut down and butchered on the road to Honeyholt. 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. 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.

On Dragonstone, the Dowager Queen Visenya had grown thin and haggard,
the flesh melting from her bones. Queen Alyssa remained on the island as
well, with her son Jaehaerys and her daughter Alysanne, prisoners in all
but name. Prince Viserys, the eldest surviving son of Aenys and Alyssa,
was summoned to court by His Grace. A promising lad of fifteen years,
beloved of the commons, Viserys was made squire to the king…with a
Kingsguard knight for a shadow, to keep him well away from plots and
treasons.

For a brief while in 44 AC, it seemed as if the king might soon have
that son he desired so desperately. Queen Alys announced she was with
child, and the court rejoiced. 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 Jeyne and
Hanna. Maegor insisted that his other wives serve his pregnant queen as
well.

During the third moon of her confinement, however, Lady Alys began to
bleed heavily from the womb and lost the child. 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. “This cannot be my son!” he
roared in anguish. 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.

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. The child was not his seed. 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. On the nights

when 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. Maegor
refused to believe. He told Tyanna she was a jealous witch, and barren,
throwing the Grand Maester’s head at her. “Spiders do not lie,” the
mistress of the whisperers replied. She handed the king a list.

Written there were the names of twenty men alleged to have given their
seed to Queen Alys. Old men and young, handsome men and homely ones,
knights and squires, lords and servants, even grooms and smiths and
singers; the King’s Hand had cast a wide net, it seemed. The men had
only one thing in common: all were men of proven potency known to have
fathered healthy children.

Under torture, all but two confessed. One, a father of twelve, still had
the gold paid him by Lord Harroway for his services. 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.
Dragged from her bed, Queen Alys saw her sisters killed before her eyes
as they tried to protect her. Her father, inspecting the Tower of the
Hand, was flung from its roof to smash upon the stones below. Harroway’s
sons, brothers, and nephews were taken as well. 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. The twenty names
on Queen Tyanna’s list soon joined them, and then another dozen men,
named by the first twenty.

The worst death was reserved for Queen Alys herself, who was given over
to her sister-wife Tyanna for torment. Of her death we will not speak,
for some things are best buried and forgotten. 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. After her death, the
queen’s body was cut into seven parts, and her pieces mounted on spikes
above the seven gates of the city, where they remained until they
rotted.

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. 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. 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 any

drop of Harroway blood. Then he marched to Lord Harroway’s Town on the
Trident and did the same there.

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. Nonetheless, many ambitious king’s men coveted Black
Harren’s mighty seat, with its broad and fertile lands…so many that King
Maegor grew weary of their entreaties, and decreed that Harrenhal should
go to the strongest of them. 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. Ser Walton Towers emerged victorious,
and Maegor named him Lord of Harrenhal…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. 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.

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. 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 Silverwing…to
where, no man could say. They had even gone so far as to steal Dark
Sister as they fled.

His Grace ordered his mother’s body burned, her bones and ashes interred
beside those of the Conqueror. Then he sent his Kingsguard to seize his
squire, Prince Viserys. “Chain him in a black cell and question him
sharply,” Maegor commanded. “Ask him where his mother has gone.”

“He may not know,” protested Ser Owen Bush, a knight of Maegor’s
Kingsguard. “Then let him die,” the king answered famously. “Perhaps the
bitch will turn up for his funeral.”

Prince Viserys did not know where his mother had gone, not even when
Tyanna of Pentos plied him with her dark arts. After nine days of
questioning, he died. His body was left out in the ward of the Red Keep
for a fortnight, at the king’s command. “Let his mother come and claim
him,” Maegor said. But Queen Alyssa never appeared, and at last His
Grace consigned his nephew to the fire. The prince was fifteen years

old when he was killed, and had been much loved by smallfolk and lords
alike. The realm wept for him.

In 45 AC, construction finally came to an end on the Red Keep. 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 revels
lasted for three days. 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. Their bones were interred beneath the castle that
they had built.

Not long after the completion of the castle, Queen Ceryse was stricken
with a sudden illness and passed away. 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. As the tale went, the
queen had struggled, Ser Owen’s knife had slipped, and the queen’s
throat had been slit. Though never proven, this story was widely
believed at the time; today, however, most maesters believe it to be a
slander concocted by the king’s enemies to further blacken his repute.
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.

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. In their place, he decreed, a great stone
“stable for dragons” would be erected, a lair worthy of Balerion,
Vhagar, and their get. Thus commenced the building of the Dragonpit.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it proved difficult to find builders,
stonemasons, and laborers to work on the project. 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.

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. 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 refused

to take the black. 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.

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.
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 king had anticipated this, however, and his men were ready for
the attack. The rescuers were surrounded and slaughtered. 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. This time he proved less fortunate.

Elsewhere in the realm, however, the tide of the times had begun to turn
against the king. Smallfolk and lords alike had come to despise him for
his many cruelties, and many began to give help and comfort to his
enemies. 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. 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. Neither
Casterly Rock nor Riverrun seemed inclined to move against him. Dennis
the Lame and Ragged Silas remained at large, and wherever they roamed,
smallfolk helped keep them safe. Knights and men-at-arms sent out to
bring them to justice oft vanished.

In 46 AC, King Maegor returned to the Red Keep with two thousand skulls,
the fruits of a year of campaigning. They were the heads of Poor Fellows
and Warrior’s Sons, he announced, as he dumped them out beneath the Iron
Throne…but it was widely believed that many of the grisly trophies
belonged to simple crofters, fieldhands, and swineherds guilty of no
crime but faith.

The coming of the new year found Maegor still without a son, not even a
bastard who might be legitimized. Nor did it seem likely that Queen
Tyanna would give him the heir that he desired. Whilst she continued to
serve His Grace as mistress of whisperers, the king no

longer sought her bed.

It was past time for him to take a new wife, Maegor’s counselors
agreed…but they parted ways on who that wife should be. 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. Alton Butterwell, master of coin, offered his widowed sister, a
stout woman with seven children. Though admittedly no beauty, he argued,
her fertility had been proved beyond a doubt. The King’s Hand, Lord
Celtigar, had two young maiden daughters, thirteen and twelve years of
age respectively. He urged the king to take his pick of them, or marry
both if he preferred. Lord Velaryon of Driftmark advised Maegor to send
for his niece Rhaena, the widow of Aegon the Uncrowned. By taking her to
wife, Maegor could unite their claims, prevent any fresh rebellions from
gathering around her, and acquire a hostage against any plots her
mother, Queen Alyssa, might foment.

King Maegor listened to each man in turn. Though in the end he scorned
most of the women they put forward, some of their reasons and arguments
took root in him. He would have a woman of proven fertility, he decided,
though not Butterwell’s fat and homely sister. He would take more than
one wife, as Lord Celtigar urged. Two wives would double his chances of
getting a son; three wives would triple it. And one of those wives
should surely be his niece; there was wisdom in Lord Velaryon’s counsel.
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. Taking Aenys’s daughter to wife would weaken
any claims put forward by her younger siblings.

After the death of her husband and her flight to Fair Isle, Rhaena
Targaryen had acted quickly to protect her daughters. 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
Kingdoms…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. Instead, she dyed their hair, changed their
names, and sent them from her, entrusting them to certain powerful
allies, who would see them fostered in good homes by worthy men who
would have no inkling of their true identities. Even their mother must
not know where the girls were going, the princess insisted; what she

did not know she could not reveal, even under torture.

No such escape was possible for Rhaena Targaryen herself. Though she
could change her name, dye her hair, and garb herself in a tavern
wench’s roughspun or the robes of a septa, there was no disguising her
dragon. 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.

Dragons are not easily hidden. 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. And there she rested, reading, praying,
wondering how long she would be given before her uncle sent for her.
Rhaena never doubted that he would, she said afterward; it was a
question of when, not if.

The summons came sooner than she would have liked, though not as soon as
she might have feared. There was no question of defiance. That would
only bring the king down on Fair Isle with Balerion. Rhaena had grown
fond of Lord Farman, and more than fond of his second son, Androw. She
would not repay their kindness with fire and blood. She mounted
Dreamfyre and flew to the Red Keep, where she learned that she must
marry her uncle, her husband’s killer. And there as well Rhaena met her
fellow brides, for this was to be a triple wedding.

Lady Jeyne of House Westerling had been married to Alyn Tarbeck, who had
died with Prince Aegon in the Battle Beneath the Gods Eye. A few months
later, she had given her late lord a posthumous son. 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.

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. Though only nineteen, Lady
Elinor had already given Bolling three sons when the king’s eye fell
upon her. 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.
Though Bolling protested his innocence, he was found guilty and beheaded
the same day. King Maegor gave his widow seven days to mourn, in honor
of the gods, then summoned her to tell her

they would marry.

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. The High Septon took ship at
Oldtown, sailing to King’s Landing to perform the marriage rites. On a
warm spring day in the 47th year After the Conquest, Maegor Targaryen
took three wives in the ward of the Red Keep. 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.

  []

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.
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. “You were foolish to think you

could hide them from me,” Tyanna told the princess. Rhaena bowed her
head and spoke her vows in a voice as cold as ice.

Many queer and contradictory stories are told of the night that
followed, and with the passage of so many years it is difficult to
separate truth from legends. Did the three Black Brides share a single
bed, as some claim? It seems unlikely. Did His Grace visit all three
women during the night and consummate all three unions? Perhaps. Did
Princess Rhaena attempt to kill the king with a dagger concealed beneath
her pillows, as she later claimed? Did Elinor Costayne scratch the
king’s back to bloody ribbons as they coupled? Did Jeyne Westerling
drink the fertility potion that Queen Tyanna supposedly brought her, or
throw it in the older woman’s face? Was such a potion ever mixed or
offered? The first account of it does not appear until well into the
reign of King Jaehaerys, twenty years after both women were dead.

This we know. 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. His nephew Jaehaerys, the rightful heir by all the laws of the
Seven Kingdoms, was expressly disinherited in the same decree. 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. Queen Elinor’s elder
boys were similarly disposed of, one to the Eyrie, one to Highgarden.
The queen’s youngest babe was turned over to a wet nurse, as the king
found the queen’s nursing irksome.

Half a year later, Edwell Celtigar, the King’s Hand, announced that
Queen Jeyne was with child. Hardly had her belly begun to swell when the
king himself revealed that Queen Elinor was also pregnant. 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. 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. Nor did
the mother long survive the child.

Maegor was cursed, men said. 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 privy parts were poisoned,

his seed full of worms, the gods would never grant him a living son. Or
so the whispers ran. 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. 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. It would be the same with Elinor Costayne’s whelp, she
promised.

It is said that the king slew her himself, cutting out her heart with
Blackfyre and feeding it to his dogs. But even in death, Tyanna of the
Tower had her revenge, for it came to pass just as she had promised. 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.

That was in the 48th year After the Conquest, the sixth year of King
Maegor’s reign, and the last year of his life. No man in the Seven
Kingdoms could doubt that the king was accursed now. What followers
still remained to him began to melt away, evaporating like dew in the
morning sun. 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. 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. When Lord Oakheart and Lord Rowan appeared before him with their
levies, they came not to attack Moon, but to join him. Lord Celtigar
resigned as King’s Hand, and returned to his seat on Claw Isle. Reports
from the Dornish Marches suggested that the Dornishmen were gathering in
the passes, preparing to invade the realm.

The worst blow came from Storm’s End. 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. 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. A hundred banner lords and stormland
knights cheered the proclamation. Prince Jaehaerys was fourteen years
old when he

claimed the throne; a handsome youth, skilled with lance and longbow,
and a gifted rider. More, he rode a great bronze-and-tan beast called
Vermithor, and his sister Alysanne, a maid of twelve, commanded her own
dragon, Silverwing. “Maegor has only one dragon,” Lord Rogar told the
stormlords. “Our prince has two.”

And soon three. When word reached the Red Keep that Jaehaerys was
gathering his forces at Storm’s End, Rhaena Targaryen mounted Dreamfyre
and flew to join him, abandoning the uncle she had been forced to wed.
She took her daughter Aerea…and Blackfyre, stolen from the king’s own
scabbard as he slept.

King Maegor’s response was sluggish and confused. 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. 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. 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.

Lord Velaryon of Driftmark was amongst the first to declare for
Jaehaerys. As the Velaryons were the realm’s traditional admirals,
Maegor woke to find he had lost the entire royal fleet. The Tyrells of
Highgarden followed, with all the power of the Reach. The Hightowers of
Oldtown, the Redwynes of the Arbor, the Lannisters of Casterly Rock, the
Arryns of the Eyrie, the Royces of Runestone…one by one, they came out
against the king.

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. Yet they
commanded scarce four thousand men amongst them all, and only one in ten
of those were knights.

Maegor brought them together in the Red Keep one night to discuss his
plan of battle. 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. His
Grace ordered Hayford beheaded on the spot and continued

the war council with his lordship’s head mounted on a lance behind the
Iron Throne. All day the lords made plans, and late into the night. It
was the hour of the wolf when at last Maegor allowed them to take their
leave. The king remained behind, brooding on the Iron Throne as they
departed. Lord Towers and Lord Rosby were the last to see His Grace.

Hours later, as dawn was breaking, the last of Maegor’s queens came
seeking after him. Queen Elinor found him still upon the Iron Throne,
pale and dead, his robes soaked through with blood. His arms had been
slashed open from wrist to elbow on jagged barbs, and another blade had
gone through his neck to emerge beneath his chin.

  []

Many to this day believe it was the Iron Throne itself that killed him.
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. Some say it was the queen herself who
forced him down onto those barbs and blades, to avenge the murder of her
first husband. The Kingsguard might have

done the deed, though that would have required them to act in concert,
as there were two knights posted at each door. It might also have been a
person or persons unknown, entering and leaving the throne room through
some hidden passage. The Red Keep has its secrets, known only to the
dead. It might also be that the king tasted despair in the dark watches
of the night and took his own life, twisting the blades as needed and
opening his veins to spare himself the defeat and disgrace that surely
awaited him.

The reign of King Maegor I Targaryen, known to history and legend as
Maegor the Cruel, lasted six years and sixty-six days. 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. He died childless,
and left no heir of his body.

[]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. 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.”
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.

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 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.

Even his claim to the Iron Throne was not wholly beyond question.
Although Jaehaerys was the only surviving son of King Aenys I, his older
brother Aegon had claimed the kingship before him. Aegon the Uncrowned
had died at the Battle Beneath the Gods Eye whilst trying

to unseat his uncle Maegor, but not before taking to wife his sister
Rhaena and siring two daughters, the twins Aerea and Rhaella. 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.

The sex of the twins weighed against them, however, as did their age;
the girls were but six at Maegor’s death. 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. 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.

Some suggested that Rhaena herself might have the strongest claim to the
crown, as the firstborn child of King Aenys and Queen Alyssa. 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. Her sex told
against her, however. “This is not Dorne,” Lord Rogar Baratheon said
when the notion was put to him, “and Rhaena is not Nymeria.” 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.

Prince Jaehaerys was still a year and a half shy of manhood when he
first ascended the Iron Throne. 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. Let it not be
thought, however, that Jaehaerys was merely a figurehead. Right from the
first, the boy king insisted upon having a voice in all decisions made
in his name.

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. By the time Maegor was
found dead upon the Iron Throne, most of the great houses of the

realm and many lesser lords had abandoned him…but most is not all. 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. Others who had rallied to his banners included the Lords
Stokeworth, Massey, Harte, Bywater, Darklyn, Rollingford, Mallery, Bar
Emmon, Byrch, Staunton, and Buckwell.

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. Buckwell and
Rollingford took ship for Pentos, whilst most of the others fled to
their own castles and strongholds. 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. 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.

“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.” 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. In the black cells they were soon joined by the
King’s Justice, the Lord Confessor, the Chief Gaoler, the Commander of
the City Watch, and the four knights of the Kingsguard who had remained
beside King Maegor.

A fortnight later, Lord Rogar Baratheon and Queen Alyssa arrived at
King’s Landing with their host, and hundreds more were seized and
imprisoned. 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. 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.

  []

With the dungeons of the Red Keep full to bursting, the question arose
as to what should be done with the prisoners. 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.
Such was the course urged by Queen Alyssa. 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. “When my boy Viserys
was tortured and slain, these men stood by silently and spoke no word of
protest,” she said. “Why should we listen to them now?”

Against her fury stood Lord Rogar Baratheon, Hand of the King and
Protector of the Realm. 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. Lord Rogar would have no choice but to
march on their castles one by one and winkle each man out of his
stronghold with steel and fire. “It can be done, but at what cost?” he
asked. “It would be a bloody business, one that might harden hearts
against us.” Let Maegor’s men stand trial and confess their treason, the
Protector urged. Those found guilty of the worst crimes could be put to
death; for the remainder, let them tender hostages to ensure their
future loyalty, and surrender some of their lands and castles.

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. Though only ten-and-four, the boy king
proved from the first that he would not be content to sit by meekly
whilst others ruled in his name. 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. “There will be no trials,
no torture, and no executions,” he announced to them. “The realm must
see that I am not my uncle. I shall not begin my reign by bathing in
blood. Some came to my banners early, some late. Let the rest come now.”

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. 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. Only his sister Rhaena dared say him nay. “They will cheer you
as the crown is placed upon your head,” she said, “as once they cheered
our uncle, and before him our father.”

In the end, the question rested with the regent…and whilst Queen Alyssa
desired vengeance for her own sake, she was loath to go against her
son’s wishes. “It would make him seem weak,” she is reported to have
said to Lord Rogar, “and he must never seem weak. That was his father’s
downfall.” And thus it was that most of Maegor’s men were spared.

In the days that followed, the dungeons of King’s Landing were emptied.
After being given food and drink and clean raiment, the captives were
escorted to the throne room seven at a time. 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. It
must not be thought that the accused escaped without punishment,
however. Lords and knights alike were compelled to send a son to court
to serve the king and stand as hostages; from those who had no sons, a
daughter was required. The wealthiest of Maegor’s lords surrendered
certain lands as well, Towers, Darklyn, and Staunton amongst them.
Others purchased their pardons with gold.

  []

The royal clemency did not extend to all. 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. Their heads were delivered to Queen
Alyssa, together with the hands they had dared raise against the blood
of the dragon. Her Grace pronounced herself “well pleased” with the
tokens.

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. (Ser Maladon, it should be noted, insisted the whole
tale was a fabrication, and said Queen Ceryse died of “shrewishness.” 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.)

Five of Maegor’s Seven yet survived. 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. “I will have no oathbreakers at my
court,” he proclaimed. All five Kingsguard were therefore sentenced to

death…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. 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.

The fifth Kingsguard, Ser Harrold Langward, demanded a trial by battle.
Jaehaerys granted his wish and offered to face Ser Harrold himself in
single combat, but in this he was overruled by the Queen Regent. Instead
a young knight from the stormlands was sent forth as the Crown’s
champion. Ser Gyles Morrigen, the man chosen, was a nephew to Damon the
Devout, the Grand Captain of the Warrior’s Sons, who had led them in
their Trial of Seven against Maegor. 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.

Meanwhile, word of the prince’s clemency spread throughout the realm.
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. Some did so reluctantly, fearing that Jaehaerys might
prove to be as weak and feckless a king as his father… but as Maegor had
left no heirs of the body, there was no plausible rival around whom
opposition might gather. 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.
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. Even his mother, Queen Alyssa, is reported to have called
Jaehaerys “the best of my three sons.”

It must not be thought that the reconciliation of the lords brought
peace to Westeros overnight. King Maegor’s efforts to exterminate the
Poor Fellows and the Warrior’s Sons had set many pious men and women
against him, and against House Targaryen. 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. Ragged Silas and Dennis the Lame commanded roving bands of Poor
Fellows who came and went like

wraiths, vanishing into the greenwood whenever threatened. 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. 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.

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. A massive hulk of a man, Moon had been
blessed with a thunderous voice and an imposing physical presence.
Though his Poor Fellows had proclaimed him “the true High Septon,” this
septon (if indeed he was such) was no picture of piety. 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.

Barefoot, bearded, and possessed of immense fervor, the “Poorest Fellow”
could speak for hours, and often did…and what he spoke about was sin. “I
am a sinner,” were the words with which Septon Moon began every sermon,
and so he was. 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. Such was the ignorance and folly
of his followers that this tale became widely believed; husbands began
to offer him their wives and mothers their daughters. 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. A touch with the head of
these talismans was believed to bestow prosperity and good fortune.

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. Though Lord Hightower had closed his gates against Septon Moon and
his followers and refused to allow them

entrance to his city, he showed no eagerness to take up arms against
them, despite repeated entreaties from His High Holiness. 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. His
reluctance earned him the name Lord Donnel the Delayer from the maesters
of the Citadel.

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. Before that could happen, however,
Septon Moon and his ragged horde must needs be dealt with, so the prince
could travel safely to Oldtown. 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 that…but no more than a few hundred in
a host that numbered close to five thousand. “What can the death of one
dragon matter when another rises up to take its place?” Septon Moon
declared to his throng. “Westeros will not be clean again until all the
Targaryens have been slain or driven back into the sea.” 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. (And every night he sinned anew.)

Across the realm in King’s Landing, Jaehaerys and his counselors
considered how to rid the realm of this scourge. 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. 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. 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 arms…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. “Like as not, we will win,” the Protector said, “but not
without cost.”

Mayhaps the gods were listening, for even as the king and council argued
in King’s Landing the problem was resolved in a most

unexpected way. Dusk was falling outside of Oldtown when Septon Moon
retired to his tent for his evening meal, exhausted by a day of
preaching. 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.
They knew what sort of help the woman required; the sort that would put
a babe inside her belly.

A short time passed, during which the men outside the tent heard only
occasional gusts of laughter from Septon Moon, inside. But then,
suddenly, there was a groan, and a woman’s shriek, followed by a bellow
of rage. 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. Septon Moon himself
followed a moment later, naked, roaring, and drenched in blood. He was
holding his neck, and blood was leaking between his fingers and dripping
down into his beard from where his throat had been slit open.

It is said that Moon staggered through half the camp, lurching from
campfire to campfire in pursuit of the doxy who had cut him. Finally
even his great strength failed him; he collapsed and died as his
acolytes pressed around him, wailing their grief. Of his slayer there
was no sign; she had vanished into the night, never to be seen again.
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 way…but the hunt came up empty. Septon
Moon’s own guards could not even agree on what his killer had looked
like.

The guards did recall that the woman had brought a flagon of wine with
her as a gift for the septon. 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. All four were dead before noon. The wine had been laced
with poison.

In the aftermath of Moon’s death, the ragged host that he had led to
Oldtown began to disintegrate. Some of his followers had already slipped
away when word of King Maegor’s death and Prince Jaehaerys’s ascension
reached them. Now that trickle became a flood.

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. 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. The Poor Fellows especially were no
respectors of nobility…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.

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.
Lorcas claimed to have had a vision that Moon would yet deliver Oldtown
into the hands of his followers, even after death. 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.

Fewer than a hundred men joined in the attack, however, and most of them
died beneath a rain of arrows, spears, and stones before they got within
a hundred yards of the city walls. Those who did reach the walls were
drenched in boiling oil or set afire with burning pitch, Lorcas the
Learned himself amongst them. 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. Tanned and stuffed, it
would later be presented to the High Septon in the Starry Sept as a
gift.

The abortive attack proved to be the last gasp of Septon Moon’s crusade.
Lord Rowan decamped within the hour, with all his knights and
men-at-arms. Lord Oakheart followed the next day. 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). 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.

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. 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. Plainly she was but a
catspaw…but whose? 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? Some came to believe that the woman was one of the Faceless Men,
the infamous guild of sorcerer-assassins from Braavos. 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.

Wiser men and those more familiar with the ways of the Faceless Men give
this theory little credence. The very clumsiness of Moon’s murder speaks
against it being their work, for the Faceless Men take great care to
make their killings appear as natural deaths. It is a point of pride
with them, the very cornerstone of their art. Slitting a man’s throat
and leaving him to stagger forth into the night screaming of murder is
beneath them. Most scholars today believe that the killer was no more
than a camp follower, acting at the behest of either Lord Rowan or Lord
Oakheart, or mayhaps the both of them. 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 Targaryen…and, indeed, both men would soon return
to Oldtown, penitent and obedient, to bend the knee before Prince
Jaehaerys at his coronation.

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. The High Septon—the High Lickspittle that Septon Moon had
hoped to displace—anointed the young king himself, and placed his father
Aenys’s crown upon his head. Seven days of feasting followed, during
which hundreds of lords great and small came to bend their knees and
swear their swords to Jaehaerys. 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 Citadel…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.
Doggett had arrived in the

company of Lord and Lady Tully of Riverrun…not in chains, as most might
have expected, but with a safe conduct bearing the king’s own seal.

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. When Ser Joffrey and Lady Lucinda urged him to undo his uncle
Maegor’s decrees and reinstate the Swords and Stars, Jaehaerys refused
firmly. “The Faith has no need of swords,” he declared. “They have my
protection. The protection of the Iron Throne.” He did, however, rescind
the bounties that Maegor had promised for the heads of Warrior’s Sons
and Poor Fellows. “I shall not wage war against my own people,” he said,
“but neither shall I tolerate treason and rebellion.”

  []

“I rose against your uncle just as you did,” replied the Red Dog of the
Hills, defiant.

“You did,” Jaehaerys allowed, “and you fought bravely, no man can deny.
The Warrior’s Sons are no more and your vows to them are at an end, but
your service need not be. I have a place for you.” And with

these words, the young king shocked the court by offering Ser Joffrey a
place by his side as a knight of the Kingsguard. 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 it…but
instead the knight went to one knee, bowed his head, and laid his blade
at Jaehaerys’s feet. It is said that there were tears upon his cheeks.

Nine days after the coronation, the young king departed Oldtown for
King’s Landing. Most of his court traveled with him in what became a
grand pageant across the Reach…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. 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.

Yet a curious thing befell Queen Rhaena’s girls after the king’s
coronation, it was observed. The twins had ever been mirror images of
each other in appearance, but not in temperament. 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. “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.

That was before Maegor’s fall and Jaehaerys’s coronation, however.
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. Though nothing was ever proved, it was
widely believed that someone—Queen Rhaena herself, mayhaps, or her
mother, Queen Alyssa—had used the occasion of the king’s coronation to
switch the twins. 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.

  []

All reports agree that the king’s return from Oldtown to King’s Landing
was a triumph. Ser Joffrey rode by his side, and all along the route
they were hailed by cheering throngs. 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. This Jaehaerys
granted them, on the condition that they agreed to journey north and
join the Night’s Watch at the Wall. Hundreds swore to do so, amongst
them no less a personage than Rob the Starvling. “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.”

  []

he 49th year after Aegon’s Conquest gave the people of Westeros a
welcome respite from the chaos and conflict that had gone before. It
would be a year of peace, plenty, and marriage, remembered in the annals
of the Seven Kingdoms as the Year of the

Three Brides.

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. There,
in a small swift ceremony under the sky, Rhaena Targaryen wed Androw
Farman, the second son of the Lord of Fair Isle. It was the groom’s
first marriage, the bride’s third. Though twice widowed, Rhaena was but
twenty-six. Her new husband, just ten-and-seven, was notably younger, a
comely and amiable youth said to be utterly besotted with his new wife.

Their wedding was presided over by the groom’s father, Marq Farman, Lord
of Fair Isle, and conducted by his own septon. Lyman Lannister, Lord of
Casterly Rock, and his wife, Jocasta, were the only great lords in
attendance. 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. The remainder of the guests were bannermen and household
knights sworn to either House Farman or

House Lannister. 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.

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 leave…the Crown in this instance being himself, as the young
king’s Hand. 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.
(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.) 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.

Whilst Rhaena Targaryen was celebrating her marriage on Fair Isle, back
in King’s Landing King Jaehaerys and his mother, the Queen Regent, were
busy selecting the councillors who would help them rule the realm for
the next two years. Conciliation remained their guiding principle, for
the divisions that had so recently torn Westeros apart were far from
healed. 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. His mother agreed.

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. 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. 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.
Command of the City Watch, the largest armed force in

King’s Landing, the king entrusted to Qarl Corbray, Lord of Heart’s
Home, who had fought beside Aegon the Uncrowned beneath the Gods Eye.
Above them all stood Rogar Baratheon, Lord of Storm’s End and Hand of
the King.

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. 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.

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 End. Orys had been a bastard brother to Aegon
the Conqueror and his most trusted commander. After slaying Argilac the
Arrogant, last of the Durrandon, he had taken Argilac’s daughter to
wife. Lord Rogar could thus claim that both the blood of the dragon and
that of the storm kings of old flowed in his veins. No swordsman, his
lordship preferred to wield a double-bladed axe in battle…an axe, he oft
said, “large and heavy enough to cleave through a dragon’s skull.”

Those were dangerous words during the reign of Maegor the Cruel, but if
Rogar Baratheon feared Maegor’s wroth, he hid it well. 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. 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.

That dream fate denied him. Instead of a kingslayer, Lord Rogar became a
kingmaker, delivering to Prince Jaehaerys the Iron Throne. 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. And when it was
announced that Lord Rogar and Queen Alyssa were to marry, the whispers
grew louder…for what is a queen’s lord husband, if not a king?

  Lord Rogar had been married once before, but his wife had died

young, taken off by a fever less than a year after their wedding. 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.
Writing some years later, Septon 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. He was angry that neither his
mother nor her suitor had sought his leave as well, Barth said…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. Jaehaerys thus held
his tongue and gave no hint of his misgivings save to a few close
confidants.

The Hand was admired for his courage, respected for his strength, feared
for his military prowess and skill at arms. The Queen Regent was loved.
So beautiful, so brave, so tragic, women said of her. 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.

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. 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. 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. There was never any true
question of whom she would wed, however. 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.

Theirs was a happy and fruitful marriage. Prince Aenys was a gentle and
attentive husband, warm-natured, generous, and never unfaithful. 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.

  In the years that followed, she saw her husband’s reign crumble and

turn to ash, as enemies rose up all around him. In 42 AC he died, a
broken man and despised, only five-and-thirty years of age. The queen
scarce had time to grieve for him before his brother seized the throne
that rightly belonged to her eldest son. She saw her son rise up against
his uncle and die, together with his dragon. A short while later, her
second son followed him to the funeral pyre, tortured to death by Tyanna
of the Tower. 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.

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. 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.

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 High
Septon himself would perform the marriage rites, on the seventh day of
the seventh moon of the new year. 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
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.

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. 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. 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. Lords Arryn, Corbray, and
Royce represented the Vale, Lords Selmy, Dondarrion, and Tarly the
Dornish Marches. 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 Archon of

Tyrosh crossed the narrow sea himself with his maiden daughter, as did
no fewer than twenty-two magisters from the Free City of Pentos. All
brought handsome gifts to bestow on the Hand and Queen Regent; the most
lavish came from those who had only lately been Maegor’s men, and from
Rickard Rowan and Torgen Oakheart, who had marched with Septon Moon.

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. 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. Nor did His Grace deny them
that opportunity. 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. 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.

There, it is said, he encouraged each man to speak freely and share his
views on the problems of the realm and how they might best be overcome.
“He is not his father’s son,” Lord Royce told his maester afterward;
grudging praise mayhaps, but praise all the same. Lord Vance of
Wayfarer’s Rest was heard to say, “He listens well, but says little.”
Rickard Rowan found Jaehaerys gentle and soft-spoken, Kyle Connington
thought him witty and good-humored, Morton Caron cautious and shrewd.
“He laughs often and freely, even at himself,” Jon Mertyns said
approvingly, but Alec Hunter thought him stern, and Torgen Oakheart
grim. 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 most profound praise came from Brandon Stark, Lord of
Winterfell, who said, “I see his grandsire in him.”

The King’s Hand attended none of these audiences, but it should not be
thought that Lord Rogar was an inattentive host. The hours his lordship
spent with his guests were devoted to other pursuits, however. He hunted
with them, hawked with them, gambled with them, feasted with them, and
“drank the royal cellars dry.” 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 lords

and famous knights.

The most notorious of his lordship’s entertainments occurred two days
before the ceremony, however. 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.
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. The Lysene maidens were meant to make up for
that lack. 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.

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. 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. Though she had only recently turned
thirteen, the young princess rose to the challenge brilliantly, all
agreed. For seven days and seven nights, she broke her fast with one
group of highborn ladies, dined with a second, supped with a third. She
showed them the wonders of the Red Keep, sailed with them on Blackwater
Bay, and rode with them about the city.

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. 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.” 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.
Her eyes were blue rather than purple, her hair a mass of honey-colored
curls. No man ever questioned her wits.

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 Alysanne

dribbling mother’s milk on Valyrian scrolls as she tried to read whilst
suckling at her wet nurse’s teat. 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 her…for that wise man esteemed her even more than her
husband, whom he served for so long. 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.

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. (Some observers put the
count even higher.) 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. “Never has there been such a glory in all the
annals of Westeros,” wrote Grand Maester Benifer. 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 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.
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. (The oft-told tale that the arrival of the dragons
caused the aged High Septon to soil his robes is likely only a calumny.)

Of the ceremony itself, and the feast and bedding that followed in due
course, we need say little. 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. Notwithstanding his purported
exertions two nights prior, it is reliably reported that Lord Rogar
performed his husbandly duties with vigor, cheered on by his

drunken brothers.

Seven days of tourney followed the wedding, and kept the gathered lords
and the people of the city enthralled. The tilts were as hard- fought
and thrilling as had been seen in Westeros in many a year, all
agreed…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.

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 their places, King Jaehaerys had thus far
named only Ser Gyles Morrigen and Ser Joffrey Doggett. 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?
“Maegor had old men, lickspittles, cravens, and brutes about him,” she
declared. “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. Let them win their cloaks with deeds of arms, whilst all
the realm looks on.”

King Jaehaerys was quick to second his mother’s notion, but with a
practical twist of his own. Sagely, the young king decreed that his
would-be protectors should prove their prowess afoot, not in the joust.
“Men who would do harm to their king seldom attack on horseback with
lance in hand,” His Grace declared. 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.

With hundreds of knights eager to compete for the honor of serving in
the Kingsguard, the combats lasted seven full days. Several of the more
colorful competitors became favorites of the smallfolk, who cheered them
raucously each time they fought. One such was the Drunken Knight, Ser
Willam Stafford, a short, stout, big-bellied man who always appeared so
intoxicated that it was a wonder he could stand, let alone fight. The
commons named him “the Keg o’ Ale,” and sang “Hail, Hail, Keg o’ Ale”
whenever he took the field. Another favorite of the commons was the Bard
of Flea Bottom, Tom the Strummer, who mocked his foes with ribald songs
before each bout. The slender mystery knight known only as the Serpent
in Scarlet also

had a great following; when finally defeated and unmasked, “he” proved
to be a woman, Jonquil Darke, a bastard daughter of the Lord of
Duskendale.

In the end, none of these would earn a white cloak. The knights who did,
though less madcap, proved themselves second to none in valor, chivalry,
and skill at arms. Only one was the scion of a lordly house; Ser Lorence
Roxton, from the Reach. 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. 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.

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.” 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.

Jaehaerys the Conciliator would sit the Iron Throne for fifty-five
years, and many a knight would wear a white cloak in his service during
that long reign, more than any other monarch could boast. But it was
rightly said that never did any Targaryen possess a Kingsguard who could
equal the boy king’s first Seven.

The War for the White Cloaks marked the end of the festivities of what
soon became known as the Golden Wedding. As the visitors took their
leaves to wend their way home to their own lands and keeps, all agreed
that it had been a magnificent event. 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. 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. Happiest of all were the city’s
innkeeps, taverners, brewers, merchants, cutpurses, whores, and brothel
keepers, all of whom had profited mightily from the coin the

visitors brought to the city.

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.

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 Jaehaerys…and, to a lesser extent, for his sister Princess
Alysanne. So long as the boy king remained unwed and without issue, the
daughters of his sister Rhaena would remain his heirs…but Aerea and
Rhaella were still children, and, it was felt by many, manifestly unfit
for the crown.

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. Though none dared speak of it, it was plain that discord had
arisen between the two queens, for the daughter had neither attended her
mother’s wedding nor invited her to her own. And there were some who
went further and whispered that Rhaena was a sorceress, who had used the
dark arts to murder Maegor upon the Iron Throne. Therefore it was
incumbent upon King Jaehaerys to marry and beget a son as soon as
possible.

The question of who the young king might marry was less easily resolved.
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.

In this, however, his lordship found himself opposed by his own wife,
Queen Alyssa. The smallfolk of Westeros would never accept a foreign
girl with dyed tresses as their queen, she argued, no matter how
delightful her accent. 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. 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. Let Jaehaerys
wed a Vance, a Corbray, a Westerling, or a Piper, she urged. Loyalty
should be rewarded, and by making such a match the king would honor
Aegon’s memory, and the valor of those who fought

and died for him.

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. 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.

With the King’s Hand, the Queen Regent, and the Grand Maester so
divided, other councillors felt emboldened to put forward candidates of
their own. Prentys Tully, the royal justiciar, nominated a younger
sister of his own wife, Lucinda, famed for her piety. Such a choice
would surely please the Faith. Daemon Velaryon, the lord admiral,
suggested that Jaehaerys might marry the widowed Queen Elinor, of House
Costayne. 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. Queen Elinor’s proven fertility
was another point in her favor, he argued. Lord Celtigar had two unwed
daughters, and had famously offered Maegor his choice of them; now he
offered the same girls again for Jaehaerys. Lord Baratheon was having
none of it. “I have seen your daughters,” Rogar said to Celtigar. “They
have no chins, no teats, and no sense.”

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. Jaehaerys himself was not privy to
these debates. On this Queen Alyssa and Lord Rogar agreed. 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. 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.

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. 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. Their
father, King Aenys, would certainly have wished for

them to marry, and once that would have been their mother’s wish as
well…but the horrors she had witnessed since her husband’s death had
persuaded Queen Alyssa to think elsewise. 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. 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. “We dare not ride
that road again,” she is reported to have said, more than once.

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. 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. Many regarded him as a near certainty to be chosen as the
next High Septon.

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.
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.

“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, and…dare I say…there are other Moons out there. Given all that
has occurred, to marry brother to sister at this juncture would be seen
as a grievous affront to the pious, and I fear for what might happen.”

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. The princess was three-and-ten years of age, and
had recently celebrated her first flowering, so it was thought desirable
to see her wed as soon as possible. Though still far apart as regarded a
suitable match for the king, the council settled swiftly on a

partner 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.

Thus it was settled by the Queen Regent and the King’s Hand and their
lords councillors and advisors. 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.

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 Benifer
suspected a servant, for many such had come and gone whilst the lords
debated in the queen’s solar. 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. Years
later, when these events had passed into legend, the smallfolk would
tell each other that “rats in the walls” had overheard the lords talking
and rushed to the princess with the news.

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. We know
only what she did. Another girl might have wept or raged or run pleading
to her mother. In many a sad song, maidens forced to wed against their
will throw themselves from tall towers to their deaths. Princess
Alysanne did none of these things. Instead she went directly to
Jaehaerys.

The young king was as displeased as his sister at the news. “They will
be making wedding plans for me as well, I do not doubt,” he deduced at
once. Like his sister, Jaehaerys did not waste time with reproaches,
recriminations, or appeals. Instead he acted. Summoning his Kingsguard,
he instructed them to sail at once for Dragonstone, where he would meet
them shortly. “You have sworn me your swords and your obedience,” he
reminded his Seven. “Remember those vows, and speak no word of my
departure.”

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.
Reportedly the first words the young king spoke upon

landing were, “I have need of a septon.”

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. 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. He was more than familiar with the Targaryen tradition of
sibling marriage, and when he heard the king’s command, he assented at
once.

The Kingsguard arrived from King’s Landing by galley a few days later.
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. Septon Oswyck
performed the marriage rites; though the old man’s voice was thin and
tremulous, no part of the ceremony was neglected. The seven knights of
the Kingsguard stood witness to the union, their white cloaks snapping
in the wind. 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.

A modest feast followed the ceremony, and many toasts were drunk to the
health of the boy king and his new queen. 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.

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.

Jaehaerys and Alysanne met them inside the castle gates, holding hands.
It is said that Queen Alyssa wept when she saw them. “You foolish
children,” she said. “You know not what you’ve done.”

[]

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. “They shall curse your incest from the
Dornish Marches to the Wall, and every pious son of the Mother and the
Father shall denounce you as the sinners you are.” The septon’s face
grew red and swollen as he raved, Benifer tells us, and spittle sprayed
from his lips.

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. He showed it
then. When Septon Mattheus finally paused for a breath, the king said,
“I will accept chastisement from Her Grace my mother, but not from you.
Hold your tongue, fat man. If another word passes your lips, I will have
them sewn shut.”

  Septon Mattheus spoke no more.

Lord Rogar was not so easily cowed. Blunt and to the point, he asked
only if the marriage had been consummated. “Tell me true, Your Grace.
Was there a bedding? Did you claim her maidenhead?”

  “No,” the king replied. “She is too young.”

At that Lord Rogar smiled. “Good. You are not wed.” He turned to the
knights who had accompanied him from King’s Landing. “Separate these
children, gently if you please. Escort the princess to Sea Dragon Tower
and keep her there. His Grace shall accompany us back to the Red Keep.”

But as his men moved forward, the seven knights of Jaehaerys’s
Kingsguard stepped up and drew their swords. “Come no closer,” warned
Ser Gyles Morrigen. “Any man who lays a hand upon our king and queen
shall die today.”

Lord Rogar was dismayed. “Sheath your steel and move aside,” he
commanded. “Have you forgotten? I am the King’s Hand.”

“Aye,” old Sour Sam answered, “but we’re the Kingsguard, not the Hand’s
guard, and it’s the lad who sits the chair, not you.”

Rogar Baratheon bristled at Ser Samgood’s words, and answered, “You are
seven. I have half a hundred swords behind me. A word from me and they
will cut you to pieces.”

“They might kill us,” replied young Pate the Woodcock, brandishing his
spear, “but you will be the first to die, m’lord, you have my word upon
that.”

What might have happened next no man can say, had not Queen Alyssa
chosen that moment to speak. “I have seen enough death,” she said. “So
have we all. Put up your swords, sers. What is done is done, and now we
all must needs live with it. May the gods have mercy on the realm.” She
turned to her children. “We shall go in peace. Let no man speak of what
happened here today.”

“As you command, Mother.” King Jaehaerys pulled his sister closer and
put his arm around her. “But do not think that you shall unmake this
marriage. We are one now, and neither gods nor men shall part us.”

“Never,” his bride affirmed. “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.” And with that she raised herself
onto her toes and lifted her face to the king, and he kissed her full
upon the lips whilst all looked on.^(*)

  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. Dragonstone would remain their refuge and their
residence for the remainder of Jaehaerys’s minority. 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. They flew together as well, all around the
Dragonmont and oft as far as Driftmark.

If servants’ tales may be believed, the king and his new queen slept
naked and shared many long and lingering kisses, abed and at table and
at many other times throughout the day, yet never consummated their
union. Another year and a half would pass before Jaehaerys and Alysanne
would finally join as man and woman.

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. “Aegon
had no secrets from Rhaenys and Visenya, and I have none from Alysanne,”
he said.

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. 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. Nor was any announcement made to the realm
at large. 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.

The Lord of Storm’s End wanted time. 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. So long as
their marriage remained unconsummated, he believed, a chance remained.
Best then to keep the wedding secret, so it might be

undone without anyone being the wiser.

Queen Alyssa wanted time as well, though for a different reason. What is
done is done, she had said at the gates of Dragonstone, and so she
believed…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.

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.

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.

  * Or so the confrontation at the gates of Dragonstone was set down by
  Grand Maester Benifer, who was there to witness it. 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. 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. 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.

[]All men are sinners, the Fathers of the Faith teach us. Even the
noblest of kings and the most chivalrous of knights may find themselves
overcome by rage and lust and envy, and commit acts that shame them and
tarnish their good names. And the vilest of men and the wickedest of
women likewise may do good from time to time, for love and compassion
and pity may be found in even the blackest of hearts. “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. Know that if you would rule over the kingdoms of men.”

Seldom was the truth of his words seen as clearly as during the 50th
year after Aegon’s Conquest. 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. 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. Yet
unbeknownst to all but a few, storm clouds were gathering on the
horizon, and faintly in the distance wise men could hear a rumble of
thunder.

  A realm with two kings is like a man with two heads, the smallfolk

are wont to say. In 50 AC, the realm of Westeros found itself blessed
with one king, a Hand, and three queens, as in King Maegor’s day…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.

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. 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. And far
to the west on Fair Isle, with the whole width of Westeros separating
her from both mother and sister, was Alyssa’s eldest daughter, the
dragonrider Rhaena Targaryen, widow of Prince Aegon the Uncrowned. In
the westerlands, riverlands, and parts of the Reach, men were already
calling her the Queen in the West.

Two sisters and a mother, the three queens were bound by blood and grief
and suffering…and yet between them lay shadows old and new, growing
darker by the day. 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 the remainder of the regency the boy king and his
little queen would find themselves deeply at odds with the King’s Hand
and the Queen Regent, in a rivalry that would continue into Jaehaerys’s
own reign and threaten to plunge the Seven Kingdoms back into war.^(*1)

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. 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.

Lord Rogar had never asked Jaehaerys for leave to wed his mother, an
omission the boy king took for a sign of disrespect. 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. Jaehaerys

also felt he should have been consulted about his sister Rhaena’s
marriage, though he felt that slight less keenly. Queen Alyssa, for her
part, was deeply hurt that she had neither been advised of nor invited
to Rhaena’s wedding on Fair Isle.

Away in the west, Rhaena Targaryen nursed her own grievances. 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. 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. 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). She was the firstborn, she reminded those who would
listen, and had been a dragonrider before any of her siblings, yet all
of them and “even my own mother” had conspired to pass her over.

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. 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. And in songs, as ever, love conquers all. The
truth, we submit, is a deal less simple. Queen Alyssa’s misgivings about
the match grew out of genuine concern for her children, the Targaryen
dynasty, and the realm as a whole. Nor were her fears without
foundation.

Lord Rogar Baratheon’s motives were less selfless. 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. 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. Lest we think
too harshly of him, however, we would do well to remember Septon Barth’s
words. 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 we

must remember that even as we look at the darkest year of his life.

In the immediate aftermath of his confrontation with Jaehaerys, Lord
Rogar could think of little else but the humiliation he had suffered.
His lordship’s first impulse was to return to Dragonstone with more men,
enough to overwhelm the castle garrison and resolve the situation by
force. 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.” When Lord Tully pointed out that
Jaehaerys could simply close the gates of Dragonstone against them, Lord
Rogar was undeterred. “Let him. I can take the castle by storm if need
be.” In the end only Queen Alyssa could reach his lordship through his
wroth and dissuade him from this folly. “My love,” she said softly, “my
children ride dragons, and we do not.”

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. 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.

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. 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. Lord Rogar angrily forbade it.
“If you go crawling back to him, the boy will never listen to you
again,” he said. “He has put his own desires ahead of the good of the
realm, and that cannot be allowed. Do you want him to end as his father
did?” And so the queen bent to his will and did not go.

“That Queen Alyssa wished to do the right thing, no man should doubt,”
Septon Barth wrote years later. “Sad to say, however, she oft seemed at
a loss as to what that thing might be. She desired above all to be
loved, admired, and praised, a yearning she shared with King Aenys, her
first husband. A ruler must sometimes do things that are necessary but
unpopular, however, though he knows that opprobrium and censure must
surely follow. These things Queen Alyssa could

seldom bring herself to do.”

Days passed and turned to weeks and thence to fortnights, whilst hearts
hardened and men grew more resolute on both sides of Blackwater Bay. 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. 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. 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. 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 concerned…so long as
it remained secret. Until the union was consummated, it could still
easily be set aside.

This would prove to be a vain hope, as we know now, but to Rogar
Baratheon in 50 AC it seemed possible. For a time he must surely have
drawn encouragement from the king’s own silence. Jaehaerys had moved
swiftly to marry Alysanne, but having done the deed he seemed in no
great haste to announce it. He certainly had the means to do so, had he
so desired. Maester Culiper, still spry at eighty, had been serving
since Queen Visenya’s day, and was ably assisted by two younger
maesters. Dragonstone had a full complement of ravens. At a word from
Jaehaerys, his marriage could have been proclaimed from one end of the
realm to the other. He did not speak that word.

Scholars have debated ever since as to the reasons for his silence. Was
he repenting a match made in haste, as Queen Alyssa would have wished?
Had Alysanne somehow offended him? Had he grown fearful of the realm’s
response to the marriage, recalling all that had befallen Aegon and
Rhaena? Was it possible that Septon Mattheus’s dire prophecies had
shaken him more than he cared to admit? Or was he simply a boy of
fifteen who had acted rashly with no thought to the consequences, only
to find himself now at a loss as to how to proceed?

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. Young or old, this was a king who never acted without
thinking. To this writer it seems plain that Jaehaerys was not

repenting his marriage and had no intention of undoing it. He had chosen
the queen he wanted and would make the realm aware of that in due
course, but at a time of his own choosing, in a manner best calculated
to lead to acceptance: when he was a man grown and a king ruling in his
own right, not a boy who had wed in defiance of his regent’s wishes.

The young king’s absence from court did not go unnoticed for long. 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.
To curtail the rumors, Queen Alyssa put out word that His Grace was
resting and reflecting on Dragonstone, the ancient seat of his house…but
as more time passed, with still no sign of Jaehaerys, lords and
smallfolk alike began to wonder. Was the king ill? Had he been made a
prisoner, for reasons yet unknown? 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.

Queen Alysanne, for her part, was in no haste to return to court. “Here
I have you to myself, day and night,” she told Jaehaerys. “When we go
back, I shall be fortunate to snatch an hour with you, for every man in
Westeros will want a piece of you.” For her, these days on Dragonstone
were an idyll. “Many years from now when we are old and grey, we shall
look back upon these days and smile, remembering how happy we were.”

Jaehaerys himself no doubt shared some of these sentiments, but the
young king had other reasons for remaining on Dragonstone. 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. 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. “I had one father,” he said to Maester
Culiper during those days on Dragonstone, “I do not require a second.”
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.

Jaehaerys was aware of his own shortcomings too—shortcomings he intended
to rectify before he sat the Iron Throne. His father, King Aenys, had
been slighted as weak, in part because he was not the warrior that his
brother Maegor was. Jaehaerys was determined that no man would ever
question his own courage or skill at arms. 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. 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. From
sunrise till noon he worked with them, honing his skills with sword and
spear and mace and axe whilst his new queen looked on.

It was a hard and brutal regimen. Each bout ended only when the king
himself or his opponent declared him dead. 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. His foes began a contest, wagering with one another to see which
of them could kill the king the most. (The victor, we are told, was
young Ser Pate the Woodcock, whose darting spear purportedly gave His
Grace fits.) 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.”

  []

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? The realm is at peace.” The young king only smiled
and replied, “The realm was at peace when my grandsire died, but
scarcely had my father climbed onto the throne than foes rose up on
every side. They were testing him, to learn if he was strong or weak.
They will test me as well.”

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. For it was his worth
as a man, and his love for his little queen, that were to be put to the
test.

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. 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. To the
relief of her parents, she displayed none of the timidity that had
afflicted her elder sister, Rhaena, as a small child. Neither did she
exhibit the willful and stubborn temperament of Rhaena’s daughter Aerea.

As a princess of the royal household, Alysanne would of course have had
servants and companions from an early age. 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. Later a maester would have taught her to
read and write and do sums, and a septa would have instructed her in
piety, deportment, and the mysteries of the Faith. Girls of common birth
would have served as her maids, washing her clothing and emptying her
chamberpot, and in good time she would certainly have taken ladies of a
like age and noble blood as companions, to ride and play and sew with.

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. 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.

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 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. 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.
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.

No reliable accounts of Princess Alysanne’s life after the escape
survive to this day. 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 End at the head of an army, whilst
Alysanne, Jaehaerys, and their sister, Rhaena, descended on King’s
Landing with their dragons.

  Undoubtedly Princess Alysanne had handmaids and companions in

the days that followed Maegor’s death. Their names and particulars have
not come down to us, unfortunately. We do know that none of them came
with the princess when she and Jaehaerys fled the Red Keep on their
dragons. Aside from the seven knights of the Kingsguard and the castle
garrison, cooks, stablehands, and other servants, the king and his bride
were unattended on Dragonstone.

That was hardly proper for a princess, let alone for a queen. Alysanne
must have her household, and in that her mother, Alyssa, saw an
opportunity to undermine, and mayhaps undo, her marriage. 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 plan,
Grand Maester Benifer assures us, was Queen Alyssa’s…but it was one that
Lord Rogar assented to gladly, for he saw at once a way to twist it to
his own ends.

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. Queen Alyssa sent three; the formidable Septa Ysabel, and
two wellborn novices of Alysanne’s own age, Lyra and Edyth. 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. With her came her
younger sister, Ella of House Broome, a modest maid whose name had
briefly been offered as a match for Jaehaerys. Lord Celtigar’s
daughters, so recently scorned by the Hand as being chinless,
breastless, and witless, were included as well. (“We had as well get
some use of them,” Lord Rogar supposedly told their father.) 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.

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. Septa Ysabel, the novices Edyth and
Lyra, and the deeply pious Lady Lucinda and her sister had a further
charge. It was the hope of the Queen Regent that these fiercely
righteous women might impress upon Alysanne, and mayhaps even Jaehaerys,
that for brother to lie with sister was an abomination in the eyes of
the Faith. “The children” (as Alyssa persisted in calling the king and
queen) were not evil, only young and

willful; suitably instructed, they might see the error of their ways and
repent their marriage before it tore the realm apart. Or so she prayed.

Lord Rogar’s motives were baser. Unable to rely on the loyalty of the
castle garrison or the knights of the Kingsguard, the Hand needed eyes
and ears on Dragonstone. All that Jaehaerys and Alysanne said and did
was to be reported back to him, he made clear to Lady Lucinda and the
others. He was especially anxious to learn if and when the king and
queen intended on consummating their marriage. That, he stressed, must
be prevented.

  And mayhaps there was more.

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. 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.

  The book in question is known under various titles, amongst them Sins
  of the Flesh, The High and the Low, A Wanton’s Tale, and The
  Wickedness of Men, but all versions bear the subtitle A Caution for
  Young Girls. 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.

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 Lys…before ultimately
returning to Oldtown and the Faith. 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 lascivious details of the author’s erotic adventures need not

concern us here. Our only interest is in the early part of her sordid
tale, the story of her youth…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.

We have no way to ascertain the veracity of her story, nor even whether
she was in truth the author of this infamous book (some argue plausibly
that the text is the product of several hands, for the style of the
prose varies greatly from episode to episode). Lady Coryanne’s early
history, however, is confirmed in the accounts of the maester who served
at the Rain House during her youth. At the age of thirteen, he records,
Lord Wylde’s younger daughter was indeed seduced and deflowered by a
“surly lad” from the stables. 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.”

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. The boy was sent away soon
after birth, to Storm’s End, where he would be fostered by one of the
castle stewards and his barren wife.

The bastard boy was born in 48 AC, according to the maester’s journals.
Lady Coryanne was carefully watched afterward, but few beyond the walls
of the Rain House knew of her shame. 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. “In the Red Keep, they will take you
for a maiden.” 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. There she found a
certain great lord awaiting her arrival.

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.

Over the years and centuries, as the book was copied and recopied, many
changes and emendations crept into the text. 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. Such
septons, septas, and holy sisters as copy and illuminate books for

the Faith oft strike out or alter any passages they believe to be
offensive, obscene, or theologically unsound. 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. 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). Lacking the rigor of maesters, such scribes
oft feel free to “improve” on the texts they are copying. (Mummers in
particular are prone to this.)

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
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. 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. 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. In A Wanton’s Tale and The
Wickedness of Men, however, the man is Lord Rogar himself.

All these versions agree on what happened next. Dismissing Lady
Coryanne’s father and brother, the lord commanded the girl to disrobe so
he might inspect her. “He ran his hands over every part of me,” she
wrote, “and bade me turn this way and that and bend and stretch and open
my legs to his gaze, until at last he pronounced himself satisfied.”
Only then did the man reveal the purpose of the summons that had brought
her to King’s Landing. 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.

“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. Once His Grace tastes your charms he may come
to his senses and abandon this folly of a marriage. He may

even choose to keep you afterward, who can say? There can be no question
of marriage, of course, but you would have jewels, servants, whatever
you might want. There are rich rewards in being a king’s bedwarmer. If
Alysanne should discover you abed together, so much the better. She is a
prideful girl and would be quick to abandon an unfaithful spouse. 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.”^(*2)

Can we put any credence in this tale? At this late date, so far removed
from the events in question, with all the principals long dead, there is
no way to be certain. Beyond the testimony of the girl herself, we have
no source to verify that this meeting by the ferry ever took place. And
if some Baratheon did indeed meet privily with Coryanne Wylde before she
reached King’s Landing, we cannot know what words he might have spoken
to her. He could as easily have simply been instructing her in her
duties as a spy and tattle, as the other girls had been instructed.

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. 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. “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.”

Mayhaps. Yet there are certain things that we do know beyond a doubt
that may allow us to draw our own conclusions. 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. 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. We know that
Coryanne Wylde was amongst the maids who were sent to Dragonstone as
companions for Queen Alysanne…a singularly curious choice, if a
lady-in-waiting was all she was meant to be, for

scores of other young girls of noble birth and suitable age were also
available, girls whose maidenheads were intact and whose virtue was
beyond reproach.

“Why her?” many have asked in the years since. Did she have some special
gift, some particular charm? If so, no one remarked on it at the time.
Could Lord Rogar or Queen Alyssa have been indebted to her lord father
or lady mother for some past favor or kindness? We have no record of it.
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.^(*3)

Court 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. 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. Her fears were unfounded.
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.

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.

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. 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.

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. 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. 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 could

hardly read nor write. Later, when asked why she had chosen such an
unpromising spouse, Rhaena Targaryen replied, “He was kind to me.”

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. 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. 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
queen found her true love on Fair Isle,” Maester Smike wrote to the
Citadel, “not with Androw, but with his sister, Lady Elissa.”

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. Sharp of wit and sharper of tongue, she loved horses, dogs,
and hawks. She was a fine singer and a skilled archer, but her great
love was sailing. 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. As a child, it was said that she spent more time
at sea than upon the land. Her father’s crews used to laugh to see her
climbing the rigging like a monkey. 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.
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.

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. In Rhaena Targaryen, however, she found a like-
minded companion, and in her the queen found a new confidant. 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.”
Androw Farman, Rhaena’s new husband, was admitted to their circle from
time to time, but never so often as to

be taken for a fifth head. 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).

It would be a mistake to regard Queen Rhaena’s time at Faircastle as an
idyll, however. Not everyone welcomed her presence, by any means. 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. The continued presence of
Dreamfyre on the island was also creating problems. 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.” Others, however, were made anxious by the presence of the great
beast, especially as she grew larger…and hungrier. Feeding a growing
dragon is no small thing. 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. Lord Farman sent forth knights to
seize the man and silence him, but not before thousands had heard his
prophecies. Though the preacher died in the dungeons under Faircastle,
his words lived on, filling the ignorant with fear wherever they were
heard.

Even within the walls of Lord Farman’s own seat, Queen Rhaena had
enemies, chief amongst them his lordship’s heir. 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. 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. 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. 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. Nor did he appreciate
the manner in which the Four-Headed Beast had somehow become the center
of court life at

Faircastle, whilst his lord father and himself were increasingly
disregarded. In that he was well justified. 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.

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. 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. And with his passing, Ser Franklyn became the Lord of
Fair Isle.

He wasted little time. 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 are not wanted
here,” he told her. “You are not welcome here. Take your dragon with
you, and your friends, and my little brother, who would surely piss his
breeches if he were made to stay. But do not presume to take my sister.
She will remain here, and she will be wed to a man of my choosing.”

Franklyn Farman did not lack for courage, as Maester Smike wrote in a
letter to the Citadel. He did lack for sense, however, and in that
moment he did not seem to realize how close he stood to death. “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.”

Rhaena Targaryen was the blood of the dragon, and far too proud to
linger long where she was not wanted. 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.” When Androw, flushed with anger, offered to face his
brother in single combat, the queen quickly dissuaded him. “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 from

Westeros.” Lyman Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock, had sheltered her
before, she reminded him. Queen Rhaena was confidant that he would
welcome her again.

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. 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. When the queen’s party
reached the docks, however, they found Ser Franklyn waiting for them.
The rest of them could go, and good riddance, he announced, but his
sister would remain on Fair Isle to be wed.

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. 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. Oblivious to their
mood, his lordship attempted to seize his sister…whereupon the onlookers
rushed forward, overwhelming his men before they could draw their
blades. 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. Elissa Farman and the rest of the queen’s friends boarded Maiden’s
Fancy untouched and set sail for Lannisport.

Lyman Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock, had given Rhaena and her husband
Aegon the Uncrowned refuge when Maegor the Cruel was demanding their
heads. His bastard son, Ser Tyler Hill, had fought with Prince Aegon
under the Gods Eye. 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. 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. 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. There they lingered for more
than a moon’s turn, enjoying the hospitality of the wealthiest house in
all of Westeros.

As the days passed, however, that very hospitality grew ever more
disquieting to Rhaena Targaryen. 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. 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 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.” 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. 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. When that ploy proved unsuccessful,
Lord Lyman offered to buy the eggs outright for a staggering sum of
gold.

The Lord of Casterly Rock wanted more than just a highborn guest, Queen
Rhaena realized then. Beneath the warmth of his veneer, he was too
cunning and too ambitious to settle for so little. 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. And he wanted dragons. With
dragonriders of their own, the Lannisters would be the equals of the
Targaryens. “They were kings once,” she reminded Sam Stokeworth. “He
smiles, but he was raised on tales of the Field of Fire; he will not
have forgotten.” Rhaena Targaryen knew her history as well; the history
of the Freehold of Valyria, writ in blood and fire. “We cannot remain
here,” she confided to her dear companions.

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.

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. Coin, or rather the lack of coin, was the
Crown’s most pressing problem. King Maegor’s wars had been ruinously
expensive, exhausting the royal treasury. To refill his coffers

Maegor’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. Nor had the situation improved with the ascension of Jaehaerys.
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. 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.

Edwell Celtigar, Lord of Claw Isle, had been an ineffectual Hand for
Maegor the Cruel. Given a second chance under the regency, he proved to
be an equally ineffectual master of coin. 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. Port fees were
tripled, certain goods were to be taxed both coming into and out of the
city, and new levies were asked of innkeeps and builders.

None of these measures had the desired effect of filling up the treasury
vaults. 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. (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.) The new levies did,
however, serve to make Lord Celtigar loathed throughout the city. Lord
Rogar and Queen Alyssa received their share of opprobrium as well.
Another casualty was the Dragonpit; the Crown no longer had the funds to
pay the builders, and all work on the great dome ceased.

Storms were gathering to both north and south as well. With Lord Rogar
occupied in King’s Landing, the Dornishmen had grown bold, raiding more
frequently into the marches, even troubling the stormlands. 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.

Even more dire was the situation in the North. Brandon Stark, Lord of
Winterfell, had died in 49 AC, not long after his return from the

Golden Wedding; the journey, the northmen said, had asked too much of
him. 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.

The rebels were former Poor Fellows and Warrior’s 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. 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.

Their uprising proved short-lived. For every man of the Night’s Watch
who joined their rebellion, ten remained true to their vows. 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. When word reached Sable
Hall, the rebels there fled beyond the Wall in hopes of making common
cause with the wildlings. 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. His surviving men
carried him back to Castle Black in pieces.

As for Ser Raymund Mallery and the other deserters, the wildlings gave
them a cold welcome. Rebels or no, the free folk had no use for crows.
Ser Raymund’s head was delivered to Eastwatch half a year later. When
asked what had befallen the rest of his men, the wildling chieftan
laughed and said, “We ate them.”

Brandon Stark’s second son, Alaric, became the Lord of Winterfell. He
would rule the North for twenty-three years, an able man though a stern
one…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.

Far removed from the troubles in the North, King Jaehaerys and Queen
Alysanne remained in their self-imposed exile from the court,

but they were anything but idle. 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.
Dragonstone’s three maesters assisted him in these inquiries, as did the
queen.

As the days passed, more and more visitors made their way to Dragonstone
to talk with the king. 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. 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. 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. 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. Lord Velaryon’s reply was blunt. “No,” he said. The Hand took this
as a further sign of disrespect.

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. 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. “He will be a great king,” she told Septa Ysabel, Lady
Lucinda, and the others, “and I will be a great 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.

Lord Rogar’s own plan to drive Jaehaerys and Alysanne apart fared no
better. The young king and his queen were to spend their lives

together, 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.

Did Coryanne Wylde fail to bed the king? Is it possible that she never
made the attempt? Is the whole tale of the meeting at the inn mayhaps a
fiction? Any of these are possible. The author of A Caution for Young
Girls would have it otherwise, but here that infamous text becomes even
more unreliable, splintering off into half a dozen contradictory
versions of events, each more vulgar than the last.

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. Instead we are offered an assortment of lewd
adventures, a veritable feast of filth. A Wanton’s Tale insists that
Lady Coryanne not only bedded the king, but also all seven members of
the Kingsguard. 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 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.

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. 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. Instead of attempting to undo the king’s marriage, therefore, she
took it upon herself to help make it a success by educating His Grace in
the art of giving and receiving carnal pleasure, so that he might not
prove incapable when the time came to bed his young wife.

This tale could well be as fanciful as the others, but it has a certain
sweetness to it that has led some scholars to allow that it might,
mayhaps, have happened. Lewd fables are not history, however, and
history has only one sure thing to tell us about Lady Coryanne of House
Wylde, the putative author of A Caution for Young Girls. On the
fifteenth day of the sixth moon of 50 AC, she departed Dragonstone

under the cover of night in the company of Ser Howard Bullock, the
younger son of the commander of the castle garrison. A married man, Ser
Howard left his wife behind him, though he took most of her jewelry. A
fishing boat carried him and Lady Coryanne to Driftmark, where they took
ship for the Free City of Pentos. 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. He would die in
Myr three years later, not in battle but in a fall from his horse after
a night of drinking. Alone and penniless, Coryanne Wylde moved on to the
next of the trials, tribulations, and erotic adventures recounted in her
book. We need hear no more of her.

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. Piety
and lust had both proved unable to break the bond between Jaehaerys
Targaryen and his Alysanne.

Moreover, word of the king’s marriage had begun to spread. 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.
Rogar Baratheon might talk of tearing out tongues, but he was helpless
against the whispers that spread throughout the land…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.

“It is done,” the Queen Regent told her councillors when she realized
the truth at last. “It is done and cannot be undone, Seven save us. We
must needs live with it, and we must use all our powers to protect them
from what may come.” 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.

Rogar Baratheon could not yield as gracefully, however, and his wife’s
words woke in him a fury. In front of Grand Maester Benifer, Septon
Mattheus, Lord Velaryon, and the rest, he spoke to her contemptuously.
“You are weak,” he declared, “as weak as your first husband was, as weak
as your son. Sentiment may be forgiven in a mother, but not in a regent,
and never in a king. We were fools to

crown Jaehaerys. He thinks only of himself, and he will be a worse king
than his father was. Thank the gods that it is not too late. We must act
now and put him aside.”

A hush fell over the chamber at those words. 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. Only
then did the other lords find their tongues. “Have you taken leave of
your senses?” asked Lord Velaryon. Lord Corbray, Commander of the City
Watch, shook his head and said, “My men will never stand for it.” Grand
Maester Benifer exchanged a glance with Prentys Tully, the master of
laws. Lord Tully said, “Do you mean to claim the Iron Throne for
yourself, then?”

This Lord Rogar denied vehemently. “Never. Do you take me for a usurper?
I want only what is best for the Seven Kingdoms. No harm need come to
Jaehaerys. We can send him to Oldtown, to the Citadel. He is a bookish
boy, a maester’s chain will suit him.”

  “Then who shall sit the Iron Throne?” demanded Lord Celtigar.
  “Princess Aerea,” Lord Rogar answered at once. “There is a fire in

her Jaehaerys does not have. She is young, but I can continue as her

Hand, shape her, guide her, teach her all she must know. She has the
stronger claim, her mother and father were King Aenys’s first and
secondborn, Jaehaerys was fourth.” His fist slammed against the table
then, Benifer tells us. “Her mother will support her. Queen Rhaena. And
Rhaena has a dragon.”

Grand Maester Benifer recorded what followed. “A silence fell, though
the same words were on the lips of us all: ‘Jaehaerys and Alysanne have
dragons too.’ Qarl Corbray had fought in the Battle Beneath the Gods
Eye, had witnessed the terrible sight of dragon fighting dragon. For the
rest of us, the Hand’s words conjured visions of Old Valyria before the
Doom, when dragonlord contended with dragonlord for supremacy. It was an
awful vision.”

It was Queen Alyssa who broke the spell, through her tears. “I am the
Queen Regent,” she reminded them. “Until my son shall come of age, all
of you serve at my pleasure. Including the Hand of the King.” When she
turned to her lord husband, Benifer tells us that her eyes looked as
hard and dark as obsidian. “Your service no longer pleases me, Lord
Rogar. Leave us and return to Storm’s End, and we need

never speak again of your treason.”

Rogar Baratheon looked at her incredulously. “Woman. You think you can
dismiss me? No.” He laughed. “No.”

That was when Lord Corbray rose to his feet and drew his sword, the
Valyrian steel blade called Lady Forlorn that was the pride of his
house. “Yes,” he said, and laid the blade upon the table, its point
toward Lord Rogar. Then and only then did his lordship realize that he
had gone too far, that he stood alone against every man in the room. Or
so Benifer tells us.

His lordship said no further word. 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. He
took his leave of King’s Landing that very night, crossing the
Blackwater Rush with his brother Orryn. There he lingered for six days,
whilst his brother Ronnal assembled their knights and men-at- arms for
the march home.

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. When the Baratheon brothers and their levies finally set out for
Storm’s End, they had barely half as many men as had marched with them
two years before to topple Maegor. The rest, it would seem, preferred
the alleys and inns and temptations of the great city to the rainy
woods, green hills, and moss-covered cottages of the stormlands. “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.

One of those lost was Aerea Targaryen. 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 them…only
to find that Queen Alyssa had stolen a march on them. The girl was
already gone, and her servants knew not where. It would be learned later
that Lord Corbray had removed her, at the Queen Regent’s command.
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. She was eight
years old and loved horses; years later, she would say that this was the
happiest time of her life.

  Sad to say, there was to be little happiness for Queen Alyssa in the

years to come. 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. “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. “It shattered her.”

Contemporary reports from Grand Maester Benifer agree. 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. 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.

It would be pleasant to report that Rogar Baratheon, once back at
Storm’s End, reflected on the error of his ways, repented his mistakes,
and became a chastened man. Sadly, that was not his lordship’s nature.
He was a man who knew not how to yield. The taste of defeat was like
bile in the back of his throat. In war, he would boast, he would ne’er
lay down his axe whilst life remained in his body…and this matter of the
king’s marriage had become a war to him, one he was determined to win.
One last folly remained to him, and he did not shrink from it.

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. When questioned, Ser Orryn
would say only that Lord Rogar had urgent need of the girl at Storm’s
End. 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. Whilst placating Ser Orryn with the pretext of sending for the
girl, she sent instead to the High Septon. 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.

In place of a frightened girl, the Baratheon men found themselves
confronted by thirty armed septons under the command of the

steward, Casper Straw. 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. Under
questioning, Ser Orryn confessed the entire plot: he was to deliver the
girl to Storm’s End, where Lord Rogar planned to force her to confess
that she was the actual Princess Aerea, not Rhaella. Then he meant to
name her queen.

The Father of the Faithful, a man as gentle as he was weak of will,
heard Orryn Baratheon’s confession and forgave him. 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. 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 End
by imprisoning Lord Rogar’s own brother. “Let him come and try to prise
him free,” he said when his maester worried about how the former Hand
might react. “His own wife took his hand and cut his balls off, and soon
enough the king will have his head.”

Across the width of Westeros, Rogar Baratheon fumed and raged when he
learned of his brother’s failure and imprisonment…but he did not call
his banners, as many had feared. Instead he fell into despair. “I am
done,” he told his own maester glumly. “It is the Wall for me, if the
gods are good. If not, the boy will have my head and make a gift of it
to his mother.” 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 End. “All I did and all I tried to do
was for the good of the realm and the Iron Throne,” he ended.

His lordship would not have long to wait to know his fate. The regency
was almost at an end. 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.

On the twentieth day of the ninth moon of 50 AC, Jaehaerys Targaryen
reached his sixteenth nameday and became a man grown.

By the laws of the Seven Kingdoms, he was now old enough to rule in his
own right, with no further need of a regent. All across the Seven
Kingdoms, lords and smallfolk alike waited to see what kind of king he
would be.

  *1 It should be noted, lest we be charged with omission, that there
  was a fourth queen in Westeros in 50 AC. 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. 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. 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. Fate, and King Jaehaerys, had other plans for
  her, as we shall relate later. Suffice it to say that Queen Elinor
  played no role in the events of 50 AC.

  *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.

  *3 It is said that many years later, when King Aegon IV was in his
  cups, someone raised the matter in his presence. 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. This infamous suggestion has taken root
  amongst the smallfolk, but it is unsupported by proof of any sort and
  may be safely dismissed.

[]King Jaehaerys I Targaryen returned to King’s Landing alone, on the
wings of his dragon, Vermithor. 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. Queen Alysanne did not accompany him.
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.

The day was not an auspicious one, Grand Maester Benifer tells us. The
skies were grey, and a persistent drizzle had fallen half the morning.
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.
Elsewhere about the castle, knights and squires and stableboys and
washerwomen and scores of other functionaries went about their daily
chores, pausing from time to time to glance up at the sky. 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.

Jaehaerys did not land at once. 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. Only then did he bring
Vermithor down in the yard before Maegor’s Holdfast, where the lords
were waiting.

“He had changed since last I saw him,” Benifer records. “The stripling
who had flown to Dragonstone was gone, and in his place was a man grown.
He was taller than before by several inches, and his chest and arms had
filled out. His hair was flowing loose about his shoulders, and a fine
golden down covered his cheeks and chin, where before he had been
clean-shaved. Eschewing all kingly raiment, he wore salt-stained
leathers, garb fit for hunting or riding, with only a studded jack to
protect him. But on his swordbelt, he bore Blackfyre… his grandsire’s
sword, the sword of kings. Even sheathed, the blade could be mistaken
for no other. A shiver of fear went through me when I saw that sword. Is
there a warning there? I wondered, as the dragon settled to the ground,
smoke rising from between his teeth. 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.”

The young king—a boy no longer—soon dispelled his Grand Maester’s fear.
As he slid gracefully from Vermithor’s back, he smiled. “It was as if
the sun had broken through the clouds,” reported Lord Tully. The lords
bowed before him, several going to their knees. Across the city, bells
began to ring in celebration. Jaehaerys pulled off his gloves and tucked
them into his belt, then said, “My lords. We have work to do.”

One luminary had not been present in the yard to greet the king: his
mother, Queen Alyssa. It fell to Jaehaerys to seek her out in Maegor’s
Holdfast, where she had secluded herself. 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. The Dowager Queen, a regent no more, was
present for the welcoming feast that evening, and at numerous other
court functions in the days beyond that, but no longer did she have a
seat at council sessions. “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 young king began his realm by remaking the council, keeping some men
and replacing others who had proved unequal to their tasks. 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. Lord Tully
was thanked for his service, reunited with his wife, Lady Lucinda, and
sent home to Riverrun. 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. 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. A twisted spine condemned
him to walk with a limp, but as he said famously, “I do not limp when I
read, nor when I write.” 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. It marked the first
time the admiralty had gone to any man not of House Velaryon.

All King’s Landing rejoiced when it was announced that Jaehaerys had
also dismissed Edwell Celtigar as master of coin. 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.” The daughters would remain with the queen thereafter, but
Lord Celtigar himself left for Claw Isle at once. And with him went his
taxes, every one of them struck down by royal decree three days into the
young king’s rule.

  []

Finding a suitable man to take Lord Edwell’s place as master of coin
proved to be no easy task. Several of his advisors urged King Jaehaerys
to appoint Lyman Lannister, supposedly the richest lord in Westeros, but
Jaehaerys was disinclined. “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. He looked longer at certain

cousins 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. In the
end Jaehaerys made a far bolder choice, reaching across the narrow sea
for his man.

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. Sick of their scorn, Draz gladly answered the king’s call,
moving his family, friends, and vast fortune to Westeros. To grant him
equal honor with the other members of the council, the young king named
him a lord. As he was a lord without lands, sworn men, or a castle,
however, some wit about the castle dubbed him “the Lord of Air.” The
Pentoshi was amused. “If I could tax air, I would be a lord indeed.”

Jaehaerys also sent off Septon Mattheus, that fat and furious prelate
who had fulminated so loudly against incestuous unions and the king’s
marriage. Mattheus did not take his dismissal well. “The Faith will look
askance at any king who thinks to rule without a septon by his side,” he
announced. Jaehaerys had a ready answer. “We shall have no lack of
septons. Septon Oswyck and Septa Ysabel will remain with us, and there
is a young man coming from Highgarden to see to our library. His name is
Barth.” Mattheus was dismissive, declaring that Oswyck was a doddering
fool and Ysabel a woman, whilst he had no knowledge of Septon Barth.
“Nor of many other things,” the king replied. (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.)

Mattheus departed four days later for Oldtown. Too corpulent to sit a
horse, he traveled in a gilded wheelhouse, attended by six guardsmen and
a dozen servants. Legend tells us that whilst crossing the Mander at
Bitterbridge, he passed Septon Barth coming in the other direction.
Barth was alone, riding on a donkey.

The young king’s changes went well beyond the nobles who sat upon his
council. 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 in

time, 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. 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. 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).

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 End, summoning Lord Rogar Baratheon back to the city.

The arrival of the king’s letter set Lord Rogar and his brothers at
odds. Ser Borys, oft considered the most volatile and belligerent of the
Baratheons, proved the calmest in this instance. “The boy will have your
head if you do as he bids,” he said. “Go to the Wall. The Night’s Watch
will take you.” Garon and Ronnal, the younger brothers, urged defiance
instead. Storm’s End was strong as any castle in the realm. If Jaehaerys
meant to have his head, let him come and take it, they said. Lord Rogar
only laughed at that. “Strong?” he said. “Harrenhal was strong. No. I
will see Jaehaerys first and explain myself. I can take the black then
if I choose, he will not deny me that.” 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.

The king received him seated on the Iron Throne with his crown upon his
head. 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. Elsewise the throne room was
empty. Lord Rogar’s footsteps echoed as he made the long walk from the
doors to the throne, Grand Maester Benifer tells us. “His lordship’s
pride was well-known to the king,” he wrote. “His Grace had no wish to
wound him further by forcing him to humble himself before the entire
court.”

Humble himself he did, however. The Lord of Storm’s End fell to one
knee, bowed his head, and laid his sword at the base of the throne.
“Your Grace,” he began, “I am here as you commanded. Do as you will

with me. I ask only that you spare my brothers and House Baratheon. All
that I did, I did—”

“—for the good of the realm as you saw it.” Jaehaerys raised a hand to
silence Lord Rogar before he could say further. “I know what you did,
and what you said, and what you planned. I believe you when you say you
meant no harm to my person or to my queen…and you are not wrong, I would
make a splendid maester. But I hope to make an even better king. Some
men say that we are now enemies. I would sooner think of us as friends
who disagreed. When my mother came to you seeking refuge, you took us
in, at great risk to yourself. You could have easily clapped us in
chains and made a gift of us to my uncle. Instead you swore your sword
to me and called your banners. I have not forgotten.

“Words are wind,” Jaehaerys went on. “Your lordship…my dear friend…spoke
of treason, but committed none. You wished to undo my marriage, but you
could not do so. You suggested placing Princess Aerea upon the Iron
Throne in my place, but here I sit. You did send your brother to remove
my niece Rhaella from her motherhouse, true… but for what purpose?
Perhaps you only wished to have her for a ward, lacking any child of
your own.

“Treasonous actions deserve punishment. Foolish words are another
matter. If you truly desire to go to the Wall, I will not stop you. The
Night’s Watch needs men as strong as you. But I would sooner you remain
here, in my service. I would not sit upon this throne if not for you,
all the realm knows that. And I still have need of you. The realm has
need of you. When the Dragon died and my father donned the crown, he was
beset on all sides by would-be kings and rebel lords. The same may
befall me, and for the same reason…to test my resolve, my will, my
strength. My mother believes that godly men throughout the realm will
rise against me when my marriage is made known. Mayhaps so. To meet
these tests, I need good men around me, warriors willing to fight for
me, to die for me…and for my queen, if need be. Are you such a man?”

Lord Rogar, thunderstruck at the king’s words, looked up and said, “I
am, Your Grace,” in a voice thick with emotion.

“Then I pardon your offenses,” King Jaehaerys said, “but there will be
certain conditions.” His voice grew stern as he listed them. “You will
never speak another word against me or my queen. From this day

forth, you shall be her loudest champion and suffer no word to be spoken
against her in your presence. Furthermore, I cannot and will not suffer
my mother to be disrespected. She will return with you to Storm’s End,
where you will live as husband and wife once again. In word and deed you
will show her only honor and courtesy. Can you abide by these
conditions?”

  “Gladly,” said Lord Rogar. “Might I ask…what of Orryn?”

That gave the king pause. “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. The Wall is forever, so
instead I will sentence them to ten years of exile. They can sell their
swords in the Disputed Lands, or sail to Qarth to make their fortunes,
it matters not to me…if they survive, and commit no further crimes, in
ten years’ time they can come home. Are we agreed?”

“We are,” Lord Rogar responded. “Your Grace is more than just.” Then he
asked if the king would require hostages of him, as a surety of his
future loyalty. Three of his brothers had young children who could be
sent to court, he pointed out.

In answer, King Jaehaerys descended the Iron Throne and bade Lord Rogar
follow him. He led his lordship from the hall to the inner ward where
Vermithor was being fed. A bull had been slaughtered for his morning
meal and lay upon the stones charred and smoking, for dragons always
burn their meat before consuming it. 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. “He grows larger every day,”
Jaehaerys said as he scratched the great wyrm under his jaw. “Keep your
nieces and your nephews, my lord. Why would I need hostages? I have your
word, that is all that I require.” But Grand Maester Benifer heard the
words he did not speak. “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.”

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. Four days later, when Lord

Rogar departed to return to Storm’s 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.^(*)

[]

In King’s Landing, the long reign of Jaehaerys I Targaryen began in
earnest. The young king faced a score of problems when he assumed

the 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. Both questions
needed to be dealt with, and quickly.

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. By
playing each bank against the others, the Lord of Air negotiated as
favorable terms as might be hoped for. 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.

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. Only taxes could accomplish that. Lord Celtigar’s
taxes would not serve; Jaehaerys had no interest in raising port fees or
bleeding innkeeps. Nor would he simply demand gold from the lords of the
realm, as Maegor had. Too much of that, and the lords would rise up.
“Nothing is so costly as putting down rebellions,” the king declared.
The lords would pay, but of their own free will; he would tax the things
they wanted, fine and costly things from across the sea. 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. 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. “We are taxing all the things that
made me rich,” Lord Rego japed.

“No man can claim to be oppressed by these taxes,” Jaehaerys explained
to the small council. “To avoid them, a man need only forgo his pepper,
his silk, his pearls, and he need not pay a groat. The men who want
these things desire them desperately, however. How else to flaunt their
power and show the world what wealthy men they are? They may squawk, but
they will pay.”

The spice and silk taxes were not the end of it. King Jaehaerys also
brought forth a new law on crenellations. Any lord who wished to build

a new castle or expand and repair his existing seat would need to pay a
hefty price for the privilege. The new tax served a dual purpose, His
Grace explained to Grand Maester Benifer. “The larger and stronger a
castle, the more its lord is tempted to defy me. You would think they
might learn from Black Harren, but too many do not know their history.
This tax will discourage them from building, whilst those who must build
regardless can replenish our treasury whilst they empty theirs.”

Having done what he could to repair the Crown’s finances, His Grace
turned his attention to the other great matter awaiting him. At long
last, he sent for his queen. 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. The rest of her
household followed by ship. 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.

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. Forty
thousand had witnessed his mother marry Lord Rogar. A thousand came
together in the Red Keep to see Jaehaerys take his sister Alysanne to
wife again. This time it was Septon Barth who pronounced them man and
wife, beneath the Iron Throne.

Lord Rogar Baratheon and the Dowager Queen Alyssa were amongst those
standing witness this time. Together with his lordship’s brothers Garon
and Ronnal, they had made their way back from Storm’s End to attend the
ceremony. But it was another wedding guest who excited the most talk:
the Queen in the West had come as well. Borne on the wings of Dreamfyre,
Rhaena Targaryen had flown in to see her siblings wed… and to visit her
daughter Aerea.

Bells rang throughout the city as the rites were concluded, and a flight
of ravens took wing to every corner of the realm to proclaim “this happy
union.” The king’s second wedding differed from his first in one other
crucial respect; it was followed by a bedding. 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. 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.
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.

With secrecy finally at an end, the king and his court waited to see how
the realm would respond. Jaehaerys had concluded that the violent
opposition that had greeted his brother Aegon’s marriage had several
causes. 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. 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. 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.

  []

None of these conditions applied to Jaehaerys and Alysanne. 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. The
Swords and Stars had been broken and outlawed; only at the Wall,

where two thousand former Poor Fellows now wore the black cloaks of the
Night’s Watch, did they have sufficient numbers to be troublesome, were
they so inclined. And King Jaehaerys was not about to repeat his
brother’s mistake. He and his queen meant to see the land they ruled, to
learn its needs firsthand, to meet his lords and take their measure, to
let themselves be seen by the smallfolk, and to hear their griefs in
turn…but wherever they went, it would be with their dragons.

For all these reasons, Jaehaerys believed that the realm would accept
his marriage…but he was not a man to trust in chance. “Words are wind,”
he told his council, “but wind can fan a fire. My father and my uncle
fought words with steel and flame. We shall fight words with words, and
put out the fires before they start.” And so saying, His Grace sent
forth not knights and men-at-arms, but preachers. “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.

Seven went forth at his command; three men and four women. In place of
swords and axes, they were armed only with their wits, their courage,
and their tongues. Many a tale would be told of their travels, and their
exploits would become legends (growing vastly larger in the process, as
is the way of legends). 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. 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. In later years, giving up all claims to nobility, she
would join the Faith, rising eventually to become Mother Elinor at the
great motherhouse in Lannisport.

The names of the other six who went forth to speak for Jaehaerys would
in time become nigh as famous as the queen’s. 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. The women the young king chose were no less extraordinary.
Septa Ysabel had been won over by Queen Alysanne whilst serving her on
Dragonstone. Diminutive Septa Violante was renowned for her skills as a
healer. Everywhere she went, it was said, she performed miracles. From
the Vale came Mother

Maris, who had taught generations of orphan girls at a motherhouse on an
island in Gulltown’s harbor.

In their travels throughout the realm, the Seven Speakers talked of
Queen Alysanne, her piety, her generosity, and her love for the king,
her brother…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. In later years, the Citadel
and the Starry Sept alike would call it the Doctrine of Exceptionalism.

Its basic tenet was simple. The Faith of the Seven had been born in the
hills of Andalos of old, and had crossed the narrow sea with the Andals.
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. All this the Exceptionalists
affirmed, but with this caveat: the Targaryens were different. Their
roots were not in Andalos, but in Valyria of old, where different laws
and traditions held sway. A man had only to look at them to know that
they were not like other men; their eyes, their hair, their very
bearing, all proclaimed their differences. And they flew dragons. 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.

“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. He
made the lion and the aurochs as well, both noble beasts, but certain
gifts he gave to one and not the other, and the lion cannot live as an
aurochs, nor an aurochs as a lion. For you to bed your sister would be a
grievous sin, ser…but you are not the blood of the dragon, no more than
I am. What they do is what they have always done, and it is not for us
to judge them.”

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 septon smiled and replied, “Go to Dragonstone and claim a

dragon. If you can do that, ser, I will marry you and your sister
myself.”

[]

Here is a quandary every student of history must face. When looking back
upon the things that happened in years past, we can say, this and this
and this were the causes of what occurred. When looking back on things
that did not happen, however, we have only surmise. 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. The why of it is a good
deal less certain. The High Septon’s silence spoke loudly, no doubt, and
the lords and common folk alike were weary of war…but if words have
power, wind or no, surely the Seven Speakers played a part as well.

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. 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.

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’s

Rest, and finally the Pipers of Pinkmaiden. No matter where she turned,
the same problems arose. “They are all warm at first,” she told her
brother, when she met with him after his wedding, “but it does not last.
Either I am unwelcome or too welcome. They murmur of the cost of keeping
me and mine, but it is Dreamfyre who excites them. Some fear her, more
want her, and it is those who trouble me most. They lust for dragons of
their own. That I will not give them, but where am I to go?”

  “Here,” the king suggested. “Return to court.”

“And live forever in your shadow? I need a seat of my own. A place where
no lord may threaten me, banish me, or trouble those I have taken under
my protection. I need lands, men, a castle.”

  “We can find you lands,” the king said, “build you a castle.”

“All the lands are taken, all the castles occupied,” Rhaena replied,
“but there is one I have a claim to…a better claim than your own,
brother. I am the blood of the dragon. I want my father’s seat, the
place where I was born. I want Dragonstone.”

To that King Jaehaerys had no answer, promising only to take the matter
under consideration. 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.

After reflecting on the matter, His Grace met with his sister again. “I
will grant you Dragonstone as your seat,” he told her, “for there is no
place more fitting for the blood of the dragon. But you shall hold the
island and the castle by my gift, not by right. Our grandsire made seven
kingdoms into one with fire and blood, I cannot and will not make them
two by carving you off a separate kingdom of your own. You are a queen
by courtesy, but I am king, and my writ runs from Oldtown to the
Wall…and on Dragonstone as well. Are we of one mind on this, sister?”

“Are you so uncertain of that iron seat that you must needs have your
own blood bend the knee to you, brother?” Rhaena threw back at him. “So
be it. Give me Dragonstone and one thing more, and I shall trouble you
no further.”

  “One thing more?” Jaehaerys asked.

  “Aerea. I want my daughter restored to me.”

“Done,” the king said…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. The consequences of this
decision would not be known for years to come, however. For the nonce it
was done, and the Queen in the West at a stroke became the Queen in the
East.

The year continued without further crisis or test as Jaehaerys and
Alysanne settled in to rule. If certain members of the small council
were taken aback when the queen began to attend their meetings, they
voiced their objections only to one another…and soon not even that, for
the young queen proved to be wise, well-read, and clever, a welcome
voice in any discussion.

Alysanne Targaryen had happy memories of her childhood before her uncle
Maegor seized the crown. During the reign of her father, Aenys, her
mother, Queen Alyssa, had made the court a splendid place, filled with
song, spectacle, and beauty. Musicians, mummers, and bards competed for
her favor and that of the king. 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. 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.”

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. 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. Alysanne made him the court singer, the first of many who would
hold that office in the decades to come. 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 seen

without his wooden “children,” a pair of cleverly carved puppets who
said ribald, shocking things.

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.

  * Ser Orryn Baratheon never did return to Westeros. 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. 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. 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.
  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.
  He was killed soon afterward in the Disputed Lands, during a battle
  with the Men of Valor. We have no knowledge of the fate of his wife
  and daughter.

[]Jaehaerys I Targaryen would prove to be as restless a king as ever sat
the Iron Throne. 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. “I mean for them
to see me,” Jaehaerys declared, when announcing his first royal progress
late in 51 AC. Many more were to follow in the years and decades to
come. 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. And oft as not, Alysanne was with him, her silvery dragon
soaring beside his great beast of burnished bronze.

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. Whilst undeniably grand to behold, such processions created many
difficulties for the lords honored by royal visits. So many men were
difficult to house and feed, and if the king wished to go hunting,
nearby woods would be overrun. 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 was resolved to do things differently. No more than one

hundred men would accompany him on any progress; twenty knights, the
rest men-at-arms and servants. “I do not need to ring myself about with
swords so long as I ride Vermithor,” he said. Smaller numbers also
allowed him to visit smaller lords, those whose castles had never been
large enough to host Aegon. His intent was to see and be seen at more
places, but stay at each a shorter time, so as never to become an
unwelcome guest.

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. Jaehaerys wanted Alysanne with him, but as Her Grace was
with child, he was concerned that their journeys not be too taxing. They
began with Stokeworth and Rosby, then moved north along the coast to
Duskendale. 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. Only women and girls were welcome at these audiences; highborn
or low, they were encouraged to come forward and share their fears,
concerns, and hopes with the young queen.

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. The town of 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. 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. 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. 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).

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 Alysanne…but there are always some who will not be
moved, and amongst the sisters who tended Jonquil’s

Pool were three such women, whose hearts were hard with hate. They told
one another that their holy waters would be polluted forever were the
queen allowed to bathe in them whilst carrying the king’s “abomination”
in her belly. Queen Alysanne had only slipped out of her clothing when
they fell upon her with daggers they had concealed within their robes.

Blessedly, the attackers were no warriors, and they had not taken the
courage of the queen’s companions into account. Naked and vulnerable,
the Wise Women did not hesitate, but stepped between the attackers and
their lady. 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. 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.

The Kingsguard made short work of the attackers, slaying two out of hand
whilst keeping the third alive for questioning. When encouraged, she
revealed that half a dozen others of their order had helped plan the
attack, whilst lacking the courage to wield a blade. Lord Mooton hanged
the guilty, and might have hanged the innocent as well, save for Queen
Alysanne’s intervention.

Jaehaerys was furious. Their visit to the Vale was postponed; instead
they returned to the safety of Maegor’s Holdfast. Queen Alysanne would
remain within until her child was born, but the experience had shaken
her and set her to pondering. “I need a protector of mine own,” she told
His Grace. “Your Seven are leal men and valiant, but they are men, and
there are places men cannot go.” The king could not disagree. 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. Still in scarlet, she arrived at King’s
Landing a few days later, and gladly accepted appointment as the queen’s
own sworn shield. In time, she would be known about the realm as the
Scarlet Shadow, so closely did she guard her lady.

  []

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 End. Queen Alyssa was with
child. 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. In Oldtown, the High Septon himself

proclaimed it was a blessing from the gods, “a gift from the Mother
Above to a mother who had suffered much, and bravely.”

Amidst the joy, there was concern as well. 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. 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. 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. “I cannot suffer that again,” she told her lord husband. “It
would rip my heart apart.” 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.” Lord Rogar, who had long ago put aside any
hopes of having children by Alyssa, named his son Boremund.

The gods give grief as well as joy. 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. All the realm gave thanks, and no one
more so than Jaehaerys. But the young prince had come too early. Small
and frail, he died three days after birth. So bereft was Queen Alysanne
that the maesters feared for her life as well. Forever after, she blamed
her son’s death on the women who attacked her at Maidenpool. Had she
been allowed to bathe in the healing waters of Jonquil’s Pool, she would
say, Prince Aegon would have lived.

Discontent lay heavy upon Dragonstone as well, where Rhaena Targaryen
had established her own small court. As they had with Jaehaerys before
her, neighboring lords began to seek her out, but the Queen in the East
was not her brother. Many of her visitors were received coldly, others
turned away without an audience.

Queen Rhaena’s reunion with her daughter Aerea had not gone well,
either. The princess had no memory of her mother, and the queen no
knowledge of her child, nor any fondness for the children of others.
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. She had loved the attention lavished on

her as the heir to the Iron Throne as well. Great lords, gallant
knights, bedmaids, washerwomen, and stableboys alike had praised her,
loved her, and vied for her favor, and she had been the leader of a pack
of young girls of both high and low birth who had terrorized the castle.

All that had been taken from her when her mother carried her off to
Dragonstone against her wishes. Compared to King’s Landing, the island
was a dull place, sleepy and quiet. 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. 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. 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. Lady Elissa was no happier on
Dragonstone than Aerea herself, however; she missed her wide western
seas and spoke often of returning to them. “Take me with you,” Princess
Aerea would say when she did, and Elissa Farman would laugh.

Dragonstone did have one thing King’s Landing largely lacked: dragons.
In the great citadel under the shadow of the Dragonmont, more dragons
were being born every time the moon turned, or so it seemed. 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. “Choose one and make him yours,” the queen
urged the princess, “and one day you will fly.” There were older dragons
in the yards as well, and beyond the walls wild dragons that had escaped
the castle made their lairs in hidden caves on the far side of the
mountain. Princess Aerea had known Vermithor and Silverwing during her
time at court, but she had never been allowed too close to them. Here
she could visit with the dragons as often as she liked; the hatchlings,
the young drakes, her mother’s Dreamfyre…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.

In the Red Keep, Aerea had loved her horse, her hounds, and her friends.
On Dragonstone, the dragons became her friends…her only friends, aside
from Elissa Farman…and she began to count the days until she could mount
one and fly far, far away.

  King Jaehaerys finally made his progress through the Vale of Arryn

in 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. 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. Still, by her good offices, the betrothal of Lady Prudence
Celtigar to Lord Grafton of Gulltown was arranged. 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.

Men oft speak today of Queen Alysanne’s laws, but this usage is sloppy
and incorrect. Her Grace had no power to enact laws, issue decrees, make
proclamations, or pass sentences. It is a mistake to speak of her as we
might speak of the Conqueror’s queens, Rhaenys and Visenya. The young
queen did, however, wield enormous influence over King Jaehaerys, and
when she spoke, he listened…as he did upon their return from the Vale of
Arryn.

It was the plight of widows throughout the Seven Kingdoms that the
women’s courts had made Alysanne aware of. In times of peace especially,
it was not uncommon for a man to outlive the wife of his youth, for
young men most oft perish upon the battlefield, young women in the
birthing bed. Be they of noble birth or humble, men left bereft suchwise
would oft after a time take second wives, whose presence in the
household was resented by the children of the first wife. Where no bonds
of affection existed, upon the man’s own death his heirs could and did
expel the widow from the home, reducing her to penury; in the case of
lords, the heirs might simply strip away the widow’s prerogatives,
incomes, and servants, reducing her to little more than a boarder.

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. 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 same law, however, also forbade men from
disinheriting their children by a first wife in order to bestow their
lands, seat, or property upon a later wife or her own children.

Building was the king’s other concern that year. Work continued on the
Dragonpit, and Jaehaerys oft visited the site to see the progress with
his own eyes. 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. King’s Landing had grown too fast, with manses and shops and
hovels and rat pits springing up like mushrooms after a hard rain. The
streets were close and dark and filthy, with buildings so close to one
another that men could clamber from one window to another. The wynds
coiled about like drunken snakes. Mud, manure, and nightsoil were
everywhere.

“Would that I could empty the city, knock it down, and build it all
anew,” the king told his council. Lacking that power, and the coin such
a massive undertaking would have required, Jaehaerys did what he could.
Streets were widened, straightened, and cobbled where possible. The
worst styes and hovels were torn down. A great central square was carved
out and planted with trees, with markets and arcades beneath. 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). 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.

The cost of rebuilding the city was not inconsequential, and put further
strain upon the Crown’s treasury. Those difficulties were exacerbated by
the growing unpopularity of the Lord of Air, Rego Draz. In a short time,
the Pentoshi master of coin had become as widely loathed as his
predecessor, though for different reasons. He was said to be corrupt,
taking the king’s gold to fatten his own purse, a charge Lord Rego
treated with derision. “Why should I steal from the king? I am twice as
rich as he is.” He was said to be godless, for he did not worship the
Seven. 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. “She is all the god I need,” was
all he would say upon the matter. 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. Most of all, he was resented for his wealth, which he did not
deign to conceal but flaunted with his silken robes, ruby rings, and
gilded palanquin.

  That Lord Rego Draz was an able master of coin even his enemies

could not deny, but the challenge of paying for the completion of the
Dragonpit and the rebuilding of King’s Landing strained even his
talents. 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. Additional fees were assessed for horses, mules,
donkeys, and oxen, and wagons and carts were taxed heaviest of all.
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 need…but at considerable cost to Rego Draz
himself, as the grumbling against him increased tenfold.

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.
Her Grace was once again with child. This time, she vowed, no enemies
would come near her. Plans for a second royal progress had already been
made and announced before the queen’s condition became known. Though
Jaehaerys decided at once that he would remain by his wife’s side until
the babe was born, Alysanne would not have it. He must go, she insisted.

And so he did. The coming of the new year saw the king taking to the sky
again on Vermithor, this time for the riverlands. His progress began
with a stay at Harrenhal as a guest of its new lord, the nine-year- old
Maegor Towers. From there he and his retinue moved on to Riverrun, Acorn
Hall, Pinkmaiden, Atranta, and Stoney Sept. 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. 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.

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. 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 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 Corlys

better as the Sea Snake.

The queen’s own child followed in due course. 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. The king was at
Stoney Sept when word reached him. He mounted Vermithor and flew back to
King’s Landing at once. 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. The realm
delighted in the little princess as well…everywhere, that is, save on
Dragonstone.

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). 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.

Her mother, Queen Rhaena, likely shared these feelings, but she held her
tongue and spoke no word of it even to her closest confidants. She had
trouble enough in her own hall at the time, for a rift had opened
between her and her beloved Elissa Farman. 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. Rhaena
denied her request. “I could not bear for you to leave me,” she said,
but Lady Elissa heard only, “No.”

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. 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.

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.
He was an old man and had been failing for some time, but his passing
cast a pall over the court all the same. At a time when the

Queen 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. At the king’s
request, his remains were interred on Dragonstone, where he had served
so long and so faithfully.

The Red Keep was still in mourning when the next blow fell, though at
the time it seemed an occasion for joy. A raven from Storm’s End
delivered an astonishing message: Queen Alyssa was once again with
child, at the age of forty-six. “A second miracle,” Grand Maester
Benifer proclaimed when he told the king the news. Septon Barth, who had
taken on Oswyck’s duties after his death, was more doubtful. 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. Rogar Baratheon was elated at the prospect of another
son, however, and foresaw no difficulties. His wife had given birth to
seven children, he insisted. Why not an eighth?

On Dragonstone, problems of another sort were coming to a head. Lady
Elissa Farman could suffer life upon the island no more. She had heard
the sea calling, she told Queen Rhaena; it was time for her to take her
leave. Never one to make a show of her emotions, the Queen in the East
received the news stone-faced. “I have asked you to stay,” she said. “I
will not beg. If you would go, go.” Princess Aerea had none of her
mother’s restraint. 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. “I want to be with you,” Aerea said, “I
want to sail the seas and have adventures.” Lady Elissa shed a tear as
well, we are told, but she pushed the princess away gently and told her,
“No, child. Your place is here.”

Elissa Farman departed for Driftmark the next morning. From there she
took ship across the narrow sea to Pentos. 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. The
queen believed she had gone no farther than Driftmark. Lady Elissa had
good reason for wanting more distance between her and the queen,
however. 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. Three dragon eggs were
missing, and days of searching had not turned them up. After questioning
every man who had access to

the dragons closely, Ser Merrell was convinced that Lady Elissa had made
off with them.

If this betrayal by one she had loved wounded Rhaena Targaryen she hid
it well, but there was no hiding her fury. She commanded Ser Merrell to
question the grooms and stableboys more sharply. When the questioning
proved fruitless, 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. 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. His denials only goaded her to more rage, until their shouts
could be heard echoing through the halls of Dragonstone. She sent men to
Driftmark, only to learn that Lady Elissa had sailed to Pentos. She sent
men to Pentos, but there the trail went cold.

Only then did Rhaena Targaryen mount Dreamfyre to fly to the Red Keep
and inform her brother of what had transpired. “Elissa had no love for
dragons,” she told the king. “It was gold she wanted, gold to build a
ship. She will sell the eggs. They are worth—”

“—a fleet of ships.” Jaehaerys had received his sister in his solar,
with only Grand Maester Benifer present to bear witness to what was
said. “If those eggs should hatch, there will be another dragonlord in
the world, one not of our own house.”

  “They may not hatch,” Benifer said. “Not away from Dragonstone.

The heat…it is known, some dragon eggs simply turn to stone.”

“Then some spicemonger in Pentos will find himself possessed of three
very costly stones,” Jaehaerys said. “Elsewise…the birth of three young
dragons is not a thing that can easily be kept secret. Whoever has them
will want to crow. We must have eyes and ears in Pentos, Tyrosh, Myr,
all the Free Cities. Offer rewards for any word of dragons.”

  “What do you mean to do?” his sister Rhaena asked him.

“What I must. What you must. Do not think to wash your hands of this,
sweet sister. You wanted Dragonstone and I gave it to you, and you
brought this woman there. This thief.”

The long reign of Jaehaerys I Targaryen was a peaceful one, for the most
part; such wars as he fought were few and short. Let no man mistake
Jaehaerys for his father, Aenys, however. There was nothing

weak 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. They were stolen from us, they are ours by right. If that demand
should be denied, then we must needs go and get them. Take them back if
we can, kill them if not. No hatchlings can hope to stand against
Vermithor and Dreamfyre.”

  “And Silverwing?” asked Rhaena. “Our sister—” “—had no part in this. I
  will not put her at risk.”

The Queen in the East smiled then. “She is Rhaenys, and I am Visenya. I
have never thought otherwise.”

Grand Maester Benifer said, “You are speaking of waging war across the
narrow sea, Your Grace. The costs—”

“—must needs be borne. I will not allow Valyria to rise again. Imagine
what the triarchs of Volantis would do with dragons. Let us pray it
never comes to that.” With that His Grace ended the audience, cautioning
the others not to speak of the missing eggs. “No one must know of this
but we three.”

It was too late for such cautions, though. On Dragonstone, the theft was
common knowledge, even amongst the fisherfolk. And fisherfolk, as is
known, sail to other islands, and thus the whispers spread. Benifer,
acting through the Pentoshi master of coin, who had agents in every
port, reached out across the narrow sea as the king had
commanded…“paying good coin to bad men” (in the words of Rego Draz) for
any news of dragon eggs, dragons, or Elissa Farman. 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 reasons…but every rumor of the dragon eggs proved worthless.

We know now that Lady Elissa made her way to Braavos after Pentos,
though not before taking on a new name. 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. Under that
name, she secured an audience with the Sealord of Braavos. The Sealord’s
menagerie was far famed, and he was glad to buy the dragon eggs. The
gold she received in return she entrusted to the Iron Bank, and used it
to finance the building of the Sun Chaser, the ship

she had dreamed of for many a year.

None of this was known on Westeros at the time, however, and soon enough
King Jaehaerys had a fresh concern. In the Starry Sept of Oldtown, the
High Septon had collapsed whilst ascending a flight of steps to his
bedchamber. He was dead before he reached the bottom. All across the
realm, bells in every sept sang a dolorous song. The Father of the
Faithful had gone to join the Seven.

The king had no time for prayer or grieving, though. 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. 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. 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. He had no hope of being chosen. They would need
another candidate, one more acceptable to his brothers of the Faith.

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. 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.

Rego Draz suggested that some well-placed bribes might produce the
desired result. “Spread enough gold amongst these Most Devout and they
will choose me,” he japed, “though I would not want the job.” 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.
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. Septon Barth,
Grand Maester Benifer, and Queen Alysanne were horrified by all these
proposals, and the king rejected them out of hand. He and the queen
would go to Oldtown at once, he decided instead. 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.

  The only way to reach Oldtown in time was by dragon.

All the lords of the council, even Septon Barth, were made uneasy by the
thought of the king and queen alone in Oldtown. “There are still those
amongst my brothers who do not love Your Grace,” Barth pointed out. Lord
Daemon agreed, and reminded Jaehaerys of what had befallen the queen at
Maidenpool. When the king insisted that he would have the protection of
the Hightower, uneasy glances were exchanged. “Lord Donnel is a schemer
and a sulker,” said Manfryd Redwyne. “I do not trust him. Nor should
you. He does what he thinks best for himself, his house, and Oldtown,
and cares not a fig for anyone or anything else. Not even for his king.”

“Then I must convince him that what is best for his king is what is best
for himself, his house, and Oldtown,” said Jaehaerys. “I believe I can
do that.” So he ended the discussion and gave orders for their dragons
to be brought forth.

Even for a dragon, the flight from King’s Landing to Oldtown is a long
one. The king and queen stopped twice along the way, once at
Bitterbridge and once at Highgarden, resting overnight and taking
counsel with their lords. The lords of the council had insisted that
they take some protection at the very least. Ser Joffrey Doggett flew
with Alysanne, and the Scarlet Shadow, Jonquil Darke, with Jaehaerys, so
as to balance the weight each dragon carried.

The unexpected arrival of Vermithor and Silverwing at Oldtown brought
thousands to the streets to point and stare. No word of their coming had
been sent ahead, and there were many in the city who were frightened,
wondering what this might portend…none, mayhaps, more than Septon
Mattheus, who turned pale when he was told. 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.

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.
Jaehaerys gave a eulogy nonetheless, addressing a huge crowd of septons,
maesters, and smallfolk in the plaza. 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 ask

for his blessing.” As Archmaester Goodwyn wrote afterward, “The
smallfolk cheered, the maesters nodded sagely, and the septons looked at
one another and thought on dragons.”

[]

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. We have no certain knowledge of what

words passed between them and their host, for their discussions took
place behind closed doors without even a maester present. Years later,
however, King Jaehaerys told Septon Barth all that occurred, and Barth
set down a summary for the sake of history.

The Hightowers of Oldtown were an ancient family, powerful, wealthy,
proud…and large. It had long been their custom for the younger sons,
brothers, cousins, and bastards of the house to join the Faith, where
many had risen high over the centuries. 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. It was Lord Donnel’s desire that one of them become
High Septon.

King Jaehaerys did not care which house His High Holiness derived from,
or whether he was of low or noble birth. His only concern was that the
new High Septon be an Exceptionalist. The Targaryen tradition of sibling
marriage must never again be questioned by the Starry Sept. He wanted
the new Father of the Faithful to make Exceptionalism an official
doctrine of the Faith. 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, so…

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. 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. Four ballots were required. Septon
Mattheus led on the first, as anticipated, but lacked the votes
necessary to secure the crystal crown. Thereafter his numbers dwindled
on every ballot, whilst other men rose up.

On the fourth ballot, the Most Devout broke tradition, choosing a man
who was not one of their own number. 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. 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. When that befell, his own successor
would be a Hightower, the king assured Lord Donnel, provided his kin
aligned themselves firmly with the Exceptionalists

during Septon Alfyn’s reign.

Thus was the bargain struck, if Septon Barth’s account can be believed.
Barth himself did not question it, though he rued the corruption that
made the Most Devout so easy to manipulate. “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.

No one was more astonished by the selection of Septon Alfyn than Septon
Alfyn himself, who was at Ashford when word reached him. Traveling by
litter, it took him more than a fortnight to reach Oldtown. Whilst
awaiting his coming, Jaehaerys used the time to call at Bandallon, Three
Towers, Uplands, and Honeyholt. He even flew Vermithor to the Arbor,
where he sampled some of that island’s choicest wines. Queen Alysanne
remained in Oldtown. The silent sisters hosted her in their motherhouse
for a day of prayer and contemplation. Another day she spent with the
septas who cared for the city’s sick and destitute. 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.” 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.

Afterward she feasted the assembled archmaesters in their own dining
hall, and even presumed to lecture them. “If I had not become queen, I
might have liked to be a maester,” she told the Conclave. “I read, I
write, I think, I am not afraid of ravens…or a bit of blood. There are
other highborn girls who feel the same. Why not admit them to your
Citadel? If they cannot keep up, send them home, the way you send home
boys who are not clever enough. If you would give the girls a chance,
you might be surprised by how many forge a chain.” The archmaesters,
loath to gainsay the queen, smiled at her words and bobbed their heads
and assured Her Grace that they would consider her proposal.

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 King

Jaehaerys and Queen Alysanne at a solemn public ceremony. 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. Visits at Horn Hill, Nightsong, and Blackhaven followed.

Queen Alysanne found the last especially congenial. 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. So taken with him
was the queen that the party lingered longer at Blackhaven than they had
intended. They were still there when a raven reached them from Storm’s
End with dire tidings; their mother, Queen Alyssa, was at the point of
death.

Once more Vermithor and Silverwing took to the skies, to bring the king
and queen to their mother’s side as quickly as possible. The remainder
of the royal party would follow overland by way of Stonehelm, Crow’s
Nest, and Griffin’s Roost, under the command of Ser Gyles Morrigen, Lord
Commander of the Kingsguard.

The great Baratheon stronghold of Storm’s 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. 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. A
maester, a midwife, and three bedmaids were in attendance on her, each
grimmer than the last. Jaehaerys discovered Lord Rogar seated outside
the chamber door, drunk and despairing. When the king demanded to know
why he was not with his wife, the Lord of Storm’s End growled, “The
Stranger’s in that room. I can smell him.”

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. “She was screaming so,” one of the servants
added. “Every bit o’ food we give her comes back up, and she’s having
awful pain.”

  “She was not due,” Queen Alysanne said, in tears. “Not yet.”

  “Not for a moon’s turn,” confirmed the midwife. “This is no labor,

m’lords. Something’s tore inside her. Babe’s dying, or will be dead
soon. The mother’s too old, she’s no strength to push, and the babe’s
twisted around…it’s no good. They’ll be gone by first light, both o’
them. Begging your pardons.”

Maester Kyrie did not disagree. Milk of the poppy would relieve the
queen’s pain, he said, and he had a strong draught prepared…but it could
kill Her Grace as easily as help her, and would almost certainly kill
the child inside her. When Jaehaerys asked what could be done, the
maester said, “For the queen? Nothing. She is beyond my power to save.
There is a chance, a slight chance, that I could save the child. To do
so I would need to cut the mother open and remove the child from her
womb. The babe might live, or not. The woman will die.”

His words set Queen Alysanne to weeping. The king said only, “The woman
is my mother, and a queen,” in a heavy tone. 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. “She is your wife,” King Jaehaerys reminded Lord Rogar. “It is for
you to say the words.”

Lord Rogar, we are told, could not bear to look upon his wife. Nor could
he find the words until the king took him roughly by the arm and shook
him. “Save my son,” Rogar told the maester. Then he wrenched free and
fled the room again. Maester Kyrie bowed his head and sent for his
blades.

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. Though
wracked by pain and violent convulsions, she cried tears of joy to see
her children there. When Alysanne told her what was about to happen,
Alyssa gave her assent. “Save my babe,” she whispered. “I will go to see
my boys again. The Crone will light my way.” It is pleasant to believe
these were the queen’s last words. Sad to say, other accounts tell us
that Her Grace died without waking when Maester Kyrie opened her belly.
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.

Lord Rogar did not get the second son that he had prayed for. The child
was a girl, born so small and weak that midwife and maester alike did
not believe she would survive. She surprised them both, as she would
surprise many others in her time. Days later, when he had finally
recovered himself enough to consider the matter, Rogar

Baratheon named his daughter Jocelyn.

First, however, his lordship had to contend with a more contentious
arrival. 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 End. He had
scented the approach of another dragon. Moments later Dreamfyre
descended, silver crests flashing along her back as her pale blue wings
beat against the red dawn sky. Rhaena Targaryen had come to make amends
to her mother.

She came too late; Queen Alyssa was gone. Though the king told her she
did not need to look upon their mother’s mortal remains, Rhaena
insisted, ripping away the bedclothes that covered her to gaze upon the
maester’s work. After a long time she turned away to kiss her brother on
the cheek and embrace her younger sister. 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. “Where is Rogar?” she asked.

She found him below in his great hall with his young son, Boremund, in
his lap, surrounded by his brothers and his knights. Rhaena Targaryen
pushed through all of them to stand over him, and began to curse him to
his face. “Her blood is on your hands,” she raged at him. “Her blood is
on your cock. May you die screaming.”

Rogar Baratheon was outraged by her accusations. “What are you saying,
woman? This is the will of the gods. The Stranger comes for all of us.
How could it be my doing? What did I do?”

“You put your cock in her. She gave you one son, that should have been
enough. Save my wife, you should have said, but what are wives to men
like you?” Rhaena reached out and grabbed his beard and pulled his face
to hers. “Hear this, my lord. Do not think to wed again. Take care of
the whelps my mother gave you, my half-brother and half- sister. See
that they want for nothing. Do that, and I will let you be. If I should
hear even a whisper of your taking some other poor maid to wife, I will
make another Harrenhal of Storm’s End, with you and her inside it.”

When she had stormed from the hall, back to her dragon in the yard, Lord
Rogar and his brothers shared a laugh. “She is mad,” he declared. “Does
she think to frighten me? Me? I did not fear the wroth of Maegor

the Cruel, should I fear hers?” 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.^(*)

It was a sadder king who returned to King’s Landing from Storm’s End.
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. 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.

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. All this must needs be dealt with, and
deal with it he did.

Queen Alysanne found a different answer. Having lost a mother, she found
solace in a daughter. 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.
“She is in a great hurry, this one,” her wet nurse told the queen. The
little princess was a happy child, endlessly curious and utterly
fearless, a delight to all who knew her. 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. “She is so clever, she will be
reading to me before long,” she told the king. “She is going to be a
great queen, I know it.”

The Stranger was not yet done with House Targaryen in that cruel year of
54 AC, however. Across Blackwater Bay on Dragonstone, Rhaena Targaryen
had found new griefs awaiting her when she returned from Storm’s End.
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 women

of Rhaena’s court with such charming names as “Ser Stupid,” “Lord
Pigface,” and “Lady Farts-a-Lot.”

Her Grace’s husband, Androw Farman, though less vocal and openly
defiant, was no less angry. When word first reached Dragonstone that
Queen Alyssa was failing, Androw had announced that he would accompany
his wife to Storm’s End. As her husband, he said, his place was at
Rhaena’s side, to give her comfort. The queen had refused him, however,
and not gently. A loud argument had preceded her departure, and Her
Grace was heard to say, “The wrong Farman ran away.” Her marriage, never
passionate, had become a mummer’s farce by 54 AC. “And not an
entertaining one,” Lady Alayne Royce observed.

Androw Farman was no longer the lad that Rhaena had married five years
earlier on Fair Isle, when he was ten-and-seven. The comely stripling
had become puffy-faced, round-shouldered, and fleshy. Never well
regarded by other men, he had found himself forgotten and ignored by
their lordly hosts during Rhaena’s wanderings in the west. Dragonstone
proved to be no better. His wife was still a queen, but no one mistook
Androw for a king, or even a lord consort. Though he sat at Queen
Rhaena’s side during meals, he did not share her bed. That honor went to
her friends and favorites. His own bedchamber was in an altogether
different tower from hers. The gossips at court said the queen told him
that it was better that they slept apart, so he need not be disturbed if
he should find some pretty maid to warm his bed. There is no indication
that he ever did.

His days were as empty as his nights. Though he had been born upon an
island and now lived upon another, Androw did not sail or swim or fish.
A failed squire, he had no skill with sword nor axe nor spear, so when
the men of the castle garrison trained each morning in the yard, he kept
to his bed. 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.
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 drinks a deal,” Maester Culiper wrote to the Citadel, “and has

been known to spend entire days in the Chamber of the Painted Table,
moving painted wooden soldiers about the map. Queen Rhaena’s companions
are wont to say he is planning his conquest of Westeros. They do not
mock him to his face for her sake, but they titter at him behind his
back. The knights and men-at-arms pay him no mind whatsoever, and the
servants obey him or not, as they please, with no fear of his
displeasure. The children are the cruelest, as children often are, and
none half so cruel as the Princess Aerea. She once emptied a chamberpot
upon his head, not for anything he did, but because she was wroth with
her mother.”

Androw Farman’s discontent on Dragonstone only grew worse after his
sister’s departure. 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. When the queen dismissed Ser Merrell Bullock, Androw had
asked her to appoint him commander of the castle garrison in Bullock’s
place. Her Grace had been breaking her fast with four of her
ladies-in-waiting at the time. The women burst into laughter at his
request, and after a moment the queen had laughed as well. When Rhaena
flew to King’s Landing to inform King Jaehaerys of the theft, Androw had
offered to accompany her. His wife refused him scornfully. “What would
that serve? What could you possibly do but fall off the dragon?”

Queen Rhaena’s denial of his wish to go with her to Storm’s End was but
the latest and the last in a long string of humiliations for Androw
Farman. By the time Rhaena returned from her mother’s deathbed, he was
well past any desire to comfort her. Sullen and cold, he sat silent at
meals and avoided the queen’s company elsewise. If Rhaena Targaryen was
troubled by his sulks, she gave little sign of it. 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.

Whatever peace they helped her find proved short-lived. 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. A
darkness settled over the ancient fortress, a gloomy place even in
summer; even the dragons seemed to feel the damp. And as the year waned,
the sickness came to Dragonstone.

It was not the sweating sickness, nor the shaking sickness, nor
greyscale, Maester Culiper pronounced. The first sign was a bloody
stool, followed by a terrible cramping in the gut. There were a number
of diseases that could be the cause, he told the queen. Which of those
might be to blame he never determined, for Culiper himself was the first
to die, less than two days after he began to feel ill. Maester Anselm,
who took his place, thought his age to blame. Culiper had been closer to
ninety than to eighty, and not strong.

Cassella Staunton was the next to succumb, however, and she was but
four-and-ten. 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. All three died the same night, within hours
of one another.

Rhaena Targaryen herself remained untouched, though her friends and dear
companions were being felled one by one. 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. Males also seemed largely immune to this queer plague. Aside
from Maester Culiper, only women were struck down. The men of
Dragonstone, be they knights, scullions, stableboys, or singers,
remained healthy.

Queen Rhaena ordered the gates of Dragonstone closed and barred. As yet
there was no sickness beyond her walls, and she meant for it to stay
that way, to protect the smallfolk. 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 King’s Hand did as commanded, though not without
grief, for his own young niece was amongst the women still on
Dragonstone.

Lianna Velaryon died even as her uncle’s galleys were pushing off from
Driftmark. Maester Anselm had purged her, bled her, and covered her with
ice, all to no avail. She died in Rhaena Targaryen’s arms, convulsing as
the queen wept bitter tears.

“You weep for her,” Androw Farman said when he saw the tears on his
wife’s face, “but would you weep for me?” His words woke a fury in the
queen. Lashing him across the face, Rhaena commanded him to leave her,
declaring that she wanted to be alone. “You shall be,” Androw said. “She
was the last of them.”

Even then, so lost was the queen in her grief that she did not realize
what had happened. 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. Reading over Maester
Anselm’s accounts, Lord Rego furrowed his brow and said, “Sickness? This
is no sickness. A weasel in the guts, dead in a day…this is the tears of
Lys.”

  “Poison?” King Jaehaerys said in shock.

“We know more of such things in the Free Cities,” Draz assured him. “It
is the tears, never doubt it. The old maester would have seen it soon
enough, so he had to die first. That is how I would do it. Not that I
would. Poison is…dishonorable.”

  “Only women were struck down,” objected Lord Velaryon. “Only women got
  the poison, then,” said Rego Draz.

When Septon Barth and Grand Maester Benifer concurred with Lord Rego’s
words, the king dispatched a raven to Dragonstone. Once Rhaena Targaryen
read his words, she had no doubt. Summoning the captain of her guards,
she commanded that her husband be found and brought to her.

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. In
Sea Dragon Tower, in the maester’s chambers under the rookery, they
discovered Maester Anselm dead, with a dagger between his shoulder
blades. With the gates closed and barred, there was no way to leave the
castle save by dragon. “My worm of a husband does not have the courage
for that,” Rhaena declared.

  []

Androw Farman was located at last in the Chamber of the Painted Table, a
longsword clutched in his grasp. He made no attempt to deny the
poisonings. Instead he boasted. “I brought them cups of wine, and they
drank. They thanked me, and they drank. Why not? A cupbearer, a serving
man, that’s how they saw me. Androw the sweet. Androw the jape. What
could I do, but fall off the dragon? Well, I could have done a

lot of things. I could have been a lord. I could have made laws and been
wise and given you counsel. I could have killed your enemies, as easily
as I killed your friends. I could have given you children.”

Rhaena Targaryen did not deign to reply to him. Instead she spoke to her
guards, saying, “Take him and geld him, but staunch the wound. I want
his cock and balls fried up and fed to him. Do not let him die until he
has eaten every bite.”

“No,” Androw Farman said, as they moved around the Painted Table to
grasp him. “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. His flight was a short one: downward, to his death. Afterward
Rhaena Targaryen had his body hacked to pieces and fed to her dragons.

His was the last notable death of 54 AC, but there was still more ill to
come in that terrible Year of the Stranger. 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.

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.
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. 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. Let us rather take his lordship at his word and
accept that his advancing age and a desire to spend his remaining days
with his children and grandchildren on Driftmark were the cause of his
departure.

Jaehaerys’s first thought was to look to the other members of his
council for Lord Daemon’s successor. Albin Massey, Rego Draz, and Septon
Barth had all shown themselves to be men of great ability, earning the
king’s trust and gratitude. None, however, seemed wholly suitable.
Septon Barth was suspected of having greater loyalty to the Starry Sept
than to the Iron Throne. Moreover, he was of very low birth; the great
lords of the realm would never allow the son of a blacksmith to speak
with the king’s voice. Lord Rego was a godless

Pentoshi and an upjumped spicemonger, and his birth was, if anything,
even lower than Septon Barth’s. Lord Albin, with his limp and twisted
back, would strike the ignorant as somehow sinister. “They look at me
and see a villain,” Massey himself told the king. “I can serve you
better from the shadows.”

There could be no question of bringing back Rogar Baratheon nor any of
King Maegor’s surviving Hands. Lord Tully’s term upon the council during
the regency had been undistinguished. 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. 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. 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. 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. It would be unthinkable to
bring an ironman to King’s Landing, of course.

With none of the great lords of the realm being found suitable,
Jaehaerys next turned to their lords bannermen. It was thought desirable
that the Hand be an older man, whose experience would balance the king’s
youth. 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.
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.

Justly famed for his courage, Lord Myles wore the scars of a dozen
savage fights upon his face and body. 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. Thus persuaded, Jaehaerys gave his

assent, a raven took wing, and within the fortnight, Lord Myles was on
his way to King’s Landing.

Queen Alysanne played no part in the selection of the King’s Hand.
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.

Rhaena Targaryen was not a woman easily comforted, however. 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. 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. When the queen
refused to go, Rhaena retreated to her own chambers and barred the
doors, emerging only to eat…and that less and less often.

Left to her own devices, Alysanne Targaryen set about restoring a
modicum of order to Dragonstone. A new maester was sent for and
installed, a new captain appointed to take charge of the castle
garrison. The queen’s own beloved Septa Edyth arrived to assume the
place of Rhaena’s much lamented Septa Maryam.

Shunned by her sister, Alysanne turned to her niece, but there too she
encountered rage and rejection. “Why should I care if they’re all dead?
She’ll find new ones; she always does,” Princess Aerea told the queen.
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.” Alysanne’s love
for her own daughter provoked the princess to anger as well. “Why should
she be queen? I should be queen, not her.” It was then that Aerea broke
down into tears at last, pleading with Alysanne to take her back with
her to King’s Landing. “Lady Elissa said that she would take me, but she
went away and forgot me. I want to come back to court, with the singers
and the fools and all the lords and knights. Please take me with you.”

Moved by the girl’s tears, Queen Alysanne could do no more than promise
to take the matter up with her mother. When Rhaena next emerged from her
chambers to take a meal, however, she rejected the notion out of hand.
“You have everything and I have nothing. Now you

would take my daughter too. Well, you shall not have her. You have my
throne, content yourself with that.” 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
princess refused to speak to Queen Alysanne after that. 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.

As the Year of the Stranger neared its end, work on the Dragonpit was
all but complete. 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. 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. “Let
us put our sorrows behind us and begin the new year with pagaentry and
celebration,” Redwyne argued. 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 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.”

All such preparations were thrown into disarray by the sudden and
unexpected arrival of Rhaena Targaryen from Dragonstone. “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 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 source
of her fury was soon known. Princess Aerea was gone. She had fled
Dragonstone as dawn broke, stealing into the yards and claiming a dragon
for her own. And not just any dragon.

“Balerion!” Rhaena exclaimed. “She took Balerion, the mad child. No
hatchling for her, no, not her, she had to have the Black Dread.
Maegor’s dragon, the beast that slew her father. Why him, if not to pain
me? What did I give birth to? What kind of beast? I ask you, what did I
give birth to?”

“A little girl,” Queen Alysanne said, “she is just an angry little
girl.” But Septon Barth and Grand Maester Benifer tell us that Rhaena
did not seem to hear her. She was desperate to know where her “mad
child” might have fled. Her first thought had been King’s Landing, Aerea
had been so eager to return to court…but if she was not here, where?

“We will learn that soon enough, I suspect,” King Jaehaerys said, as
calm as ever. “Balerion is too big to hide or pass unnoticed. And he has
a fearsome appetite.” He turned to Grand Maester Benifer then, and
commanded that ravens be sent forth to every castle in the Seven
Kingdoms. “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. Rhaena remained at the Red Keep
all the while, sometimes raging, sometimes shaking, drinking sweetwine
to sleep. Princess Daenerys was so frightened by her aunt that she cried
whenever she came into her presence. After seven days Rhaena declared
that she could no longer sit here idle. “I need to find her. If I cannot
find her, at least I can look.” So saying, she mounted Dreamfyre and was
gone.

Neither mother nor daughter was seen or heard from again during what
little remained of that cruel year.

  * Rogar Baratheon never wed again.

  []

he accomplishments of King Jaehaerys I Targaryen are almost too many to
enumerate. 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. 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. “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. “His

Grace was a wiser man than that.”

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. Lannisport, Gulltown, Duskendale, and White Harbor grew as
well, though not to the same extent.

With fewer men marching off to war, more remained to work the land.
Grain prices fell steadily throughout his reign, as more acres came
under the plough. Fish became notably cheaper, even for common men, as
the fishing villages along the coasts grew more prosperous and more
boats put to sea. New orchards were planted everywhere from the Reach to
the Neck. Lamb and mutton became

more plentiful and wool finer as shepherds increased the size of their
flocks. Trade increased tenfold, despite the vicissitudes of wind,
weather, and wars and the disruptions they caused from time to time. The
crafts flourished as well; farriers and blacksmiths, stonemasons,
carpenters, millers, tanners, weavers, felters, dyers, brewers,
vintners, goldsmiths and silversmiths, bakers, butchers, and
cheesemakers all enjoyed a prosperity hitherto unknown west of the
narrow sea.

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. Storms there were, and ill winds, and
bitter winters, but when men look back today upon the Conciliator’s
reign it is easy to mistake it for one long green and gentle summer.

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. The wounds left by the cruel year that had gone before, the
Year of the Stranger, were as yet too raw…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.

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. Lord Donnel and the High Septon each received her
courteously, but neither had any help to offer. 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. 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.”

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. Nowhere had a dragon been seen, save for
her own; not even a whisper of Princess Aerea had been heard. Thence
Rhaena returned to Fair Isle, to face Lord Franklyn Farman once again.
The years had not made his lordship any fonder of the queen, nor any
wiser in how he chose to speak to her. “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 your

daughter. I cannot claim to know the princess, but I would say she is
well rid of you, as was Fair Isle. If she turns up here we shall see her
off, just as we did her mother.”

“You do not know Aerea, that much is true,” Her Grace responded. “If she
does indeed find her way to these shores, my lord, you may find she is
not as forbearing as her mother. Oh, and I wish you luck if you should
try to ‘see off’ the Black Dread. Balerion quite enjoyed your brother,
by now he may desire another course.”

After Fair Isle, history loses track of Rhaena Targaryen. She would not
return to King’s Landing or Dragonstone for the rest of the year, nor
present herself at the seat of any lord in the Seven Kingdoms. We have
fragmentary reports of Dreamfyre being seen as far north as the
barrowlands and the banks of the Fever River, and as far south as the
Red Mountains of Dorne and the canyons of the Torrentine. 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 Arbor…but nowhere did she seek out
human company. Instead she sought the wild, lonely places, windswept
moors and grassy plains and dismal swamps, cliffs and crags and mountain
glens. Was she still hunting for some sign of her daughter, or was it
simply solitude she desired? We shall never know.

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. The accounts
of Rhaena’s confrontation with Lord Farman on Fair Isle had appalled the
king and his lords alike. “Is she mad, to speak so to a lord in his own
hall?” Lord Smallwood said. “Had it been me, I would have had her tongue
out.” To which the king replied, “I hope you would not truly be so
foolish, my lord. Whatever else she may be, Rhaena remains the blood of
the dragon, and my sister, whom I love.” His Grace did not take issue
with Lord Smallwood’s point, it should be noted, only with his words.

Septon Barth said it best. “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. King Jaehaerys knows
this, just as his grandsire Aegon did; the power is always there, and
with it the threat. His Grace also grasps a truth that Queen Rhaena does
not, however; the threat is most effective when left unspoken. The lords
of the realm are proud men all, and little is gained by shaming

them. A wise king will always let them keep their dignity. Show them a
dragon, aye. They will remember. Speak openly of burning down their
halls, boast of how you fed their own kin to your dragons, and you will
only inflame them and set their hearts against you.”

Queen Alysanne prayed daily for her niece Aerea and blamed herself for
the child’s flight…but she blamed her sister more. 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. 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. As the days went by and
the moon turned and turned again, the king began to fear that his niece
was dead. “Balerion is a willful beast, and not one to be trifled with,”
he told the council. “To leap upon his back, never having flown before,
and take him up…not to fly about the castle, no, but out across the
water…like as not he threw her off, poor girl, and she lies now at the
bottom of the narrow sea.”

Septon Barth did not concur. Dragons were not vagabond by nature, he
pointed out. More oft than not, they find a sheltered spot, a cave or
ruined castle or mountaintop, and nest there, going forth to hunt and
thence returning. Once free of his rider, Balerion would surely have
returned to his lair. 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. The queen
concurred. “If the girl were dead, I would know it. She is still alive.
I feel it.”

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. Reports soon began to come in from
all up and down the narrow sea. Most proved useless, as with the dragon
eggs; rumors, lies, and false sightings, concocted for the sake of a
reward. Some were third- or fourth-hand, others with such paucity of
detail that they amounted to little more than “I may have seen a dragon.
Or something big, with wings.”

The most intriguing report came from the hills of Andalos north of
Pentos, where shepherds spoke in fearful tones of a monster on the

prowl, devouring entire flocks and leaving only bloody bones behind. Nor
were the shepherds themselves spared should they chance to stumble on
this beast, for this creature’s appetite was by no means limited to
mutton. Those who actually encountered the monster did not live to
describe him, however…and none of the stories mentioned fire, which
Jaehaerys took to mean that Balerion could not be to blame. 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.

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. 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. 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. When
one Braavosi asked her if she meant to sail to Yi Ti, Lady Elissa
laughed and said, “I may…but not by the route you think.”

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. “Go
with care, my lady,” he told her, “but go. Men are hunting you, all up
and down the narrow sea. Questions are being asked, rewards are being
offered. I would not care for you to be found in Braavos. We came here
to be free of Old Valyria, and your Targaryens are Valyrian to the bone.
Sail far. Sail fast.”

As the lady now known as Alys Westhill took leave of the Titan of
Braavos, life in King’s Landing continued as before. Unable to locate
his lost niece, Jaehaerys Targaryen proceeded as he always would in
times of trouble, and gave himself over to his labors. 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. With the able assistance of Septon
Barth, Grand Maester Benifer, Lord Albin Massey, and Queen Alysanne—a
foursome His Grace dubbed “my even smaller council”— Jaehaerys set out
to codify, organize, and reform all the kingdom’s laws.

  []

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. Even within those kingdoms, there had been considerable
variance from place to place. As Lord Massey would write, “Before there
were seven kingdoms, there were eight. Before that nine, then ten or
twelve or thirty, and back and back. We speak of the

Hundred 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.”

Oft as not, the laws changed as well. 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. After thousands
of years, the result was such a mass of contradictory precedents that
every lord possessed of the power of pit and gallows (and some who were
not) felt free to rule however he might wish on any case that came
before his seat.

Confusion and disorder were offensive to Jaehaerys Targaryen, and with
the help of his “smaller council,” he set out to “clean the stables.”
“These Seven Kingdoms have one single king. It is time they had a single
law as well.” A task so monumental would not be one year’s work, or
ten’s; simply gathering, organizing, and studying the existing laws
would require two years, and the reforms that followed would continue
for decades. 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.

The king’s labors would continue for many years to come, the queen’s for
nine turns of the moon. Early that same year, King Jaehaerys and the
people of Westeros were thrilled to learn that Queen Alysanne was once
again with child. Princess Daenerys shared their delight, though she
told her mother in firm terms that she wanted a little sister. “You
sound a queen already, laying down the law,” her mother told her,
laughing.

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. Just as the Conqueror’s wives had before her, Alysanne
Targaryen delighted in making such matches. 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. Both were considered exceptional matches for the
ladies in question, and a

triumph for the queen.

The tourney that Lord Redwyne had proposed to celebrate the completion
of the Dragonpit was finally held at midyear. 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. 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.

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. Seventy-seven knights
took part, in eleven teams. The competitors began ahorse, but once
unhorsed continued on foot, battling with sword, mace, axe, and
morningstar. When all the teams but one had been eliminated, the
surviving members of the final team turned on one another, until only a
single champion remained.

Though the participants bore only blunted tourney weapons, the battles
were hard-fought and bloody, to the delight of the crowds. Two men were
killed, and more than twoscore wounded. 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. 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. 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- arms at Casterly Rock. 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.

Soon after the conclusion of the tourney, Queen Alysanne left King’s
Landing for Dragonstone, there to await the birth of her child. The loss
of Prince Aegon after only three days of life still weighed heavily upon

Her Grace. Rather than subject herself to the rigors of travel or the
demands of life at court, the queen sought the quiet of the ancient seat
of her house, where her duties would be few. 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. 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. To lighten their
evenings, Her Grace also brought her favorite fool, the Goodwife, with
his puppets.

There were some at court who had misgivings about the queen’s desire to
remove herself to Dragonstone. The island was damp and gloomy at the
best of times, and in autumn strong winds and storms were common. 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. Queen Alysanne dismissed these concerns
as foolishness. “The king and I were so happy on Dragonstone,” she told
the doubters. “I can think of no better place for our child to be born.”

Another royal progress had been planned for 55 AC, this time to the
westerlands. 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. Vermithor carried him across Westeros to the Golden Tooth, where
the rest of his retinue caught up with him. From there His Grace visited
Ashemark, the Crag, Kayce, Castamere, Tarbeck Hall, Lannisport and
Casterly Rock, and Crakehall. Notable by its omission was Fair Isle.
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.

The king returned from the west a moon’s turn before the queen was due,
so he might be at her side when she delivered. The child came precisely
when the maesters had said he would; a boy, clean-limbed and healthy,
with eyes as pale as lilac. His hair, when it came in, was pale as well,
shining like white gold, a color rare even in Valyria of old. Jaehaerys
named him Aemon. “Daenerys will be cross with me,” Alysanne said, as she
put the princeling to her breast. “She was most insistent on wanting a
sister.” Jaehaerys laughed at that and said, “Next time.” That night, at
Alysanne’s suggestion, he placed a dragon’s

egg in the prince’s cradle.

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. Hearing their chants and
cheers, the king finally mounted the ramparts of the castle’s main gate
and raised the boy over his head for all to see. Then, it was said, a
roar went up so loud that it could be heard across the narrow sea.

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. Here she decided to linger for a time. 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. Though her husband was
dead, Lady Larissa had borne him a daughter, who had only recently been
wed to the elderly Lord Estermont. Rather than remain on Tarth or return
to Driftmark, the widow had chosen to stay with her daughter on
Greenstone after the wedding. 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. 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.

It would have surprised (and enraged) the queen to know that another
former favorite was passing close to her at that very moment. 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. 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. 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. Alys Westhill discharged her hirelings on Lys, taking on fresh
water and provisions before turning west and setting sail for Oldtown.

  Winter came to Westeros in 56 AC, and with it grim news out of

Essos. The men that King Jaehaerys had sent to investigate the great
beast prowling the hills north of Pentos were all dead. Their commander,
Ser Willam the Wasp, had engaged a guide in Pentos, a local who claimed
to know where the monster lurked. 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. Though they had given a good account of
themselves, the numbers were against them, and in the end they were
overwhelmed and slain. Ser Willam had been the last to fall, it was
said. His head had been returned to one of Lord Rego’s agents in Pentos.

“There is no monster,” Septon Barth concluded after hearing the sad
tale, “only men stealing sheep, and telling tales to frighten other men
away.” 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. So the matter was put to rest, and
the fate of Ser Willam the Wasp was inscribed in the White Book of the
Kingsguard. To fill his place, Jaehaerys awarded a white cloak to Ser
Lucamore Strong, the victor of the great melee in the Dragonpit.

More news soon came from Lord Rego’s agents across the water. 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. Septon Barth dismissed the account
at once. “A wyvern, beyond a doubt,” he declared. “The wyverns of
Sothoryos are oft taken for dragons by men who have never seen a
dragon.”

Of far more interest to the king and council was the great fire that had
swept across the Disputed Lands a fortnight past. 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. Most had
chosen to die upon Tyroshi spears rather than be burned alive. Not a man
of them had survived.

The source of the fire remained a mystery. “A dragon,” Ser Myles
Smallwood declared. “What else could it be?” Rego Draz remained
unconvinced. “A lightning strike,” he suggested. “A cookfire. A drunk

with a torch looking for a whore.” The king agreed. “If this were
Balerion’s doing, he would surely have been seen.”

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. 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. She was proposing to do what only a
handful of the boldest mariners had ever dared attempt before, to sail
beyond the sunset in search of lands undreamed of, and she did not want
men aboard who might lose heart, rise up against her, and force her to
turn back. She required men who shared her dream, and such were not
easily found, even in Oldtown.

Then as now, ignorant smallfolk and superstitious sailors clung to the
belief that the world was flat and ended somewhere far to the west. Some
spoke of walls of fire and boiling seas, some of black fogs that went on
forever, some of the very gates of hell. Wiser men knew better. 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. 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.

The same accord did not exist as regards the size of the world. Even
amongst the archmaesters of the Citadel, there was deep division on that
question. Some believed the Sunset Sea to be so vast that no man could
hope to cross it. 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. A western route to the silks and spices of Yi Ti and Leng
could mean incalculable riches for the man who found it…if the sphere of
the world was as small as these wise men suggested.

Alys Westhill did not believe it was. 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.” Not for her the
merchant’s dream of reaching Ulthos and Asshai by sailing west. Hers was
a bolder vision. Between Westeros and the far eastern shores of Essos
and Ulthos, she believed, lay other lands and other seas

waiting to be discovered: another Essos, another Sothoryos, another
Westeros. Her dreams were full of sundering rivers and windswept plains
and towering mountains with their shoulders in the clouds, of green
islands verdant in the sun, of strange beasts no man had tamed and queer
fruits no man had tasted, of golden cities shining underneath strange
stars.

She was not the first to dream this dream. 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. He took them west himself, never to return. His son and heir,
another Brandon, burned the yards where they were built, and was known
as Brandon the Burner forevermore. 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. Their
captain built a tower and a beacon there, took the name of Farwynd, and
called his seat the Lonely Light. His descendants lived there still,
clinging to rocks where seals outnumbered men fifty to one. Even the
other ironmen considered the Farwynds mad; some named them selkies.

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. Alys Westhill did not
intend to voyage in their wake. She would sail her Sun Chaser on a more
southerly course, seeking warm blue waters and the steady winds she
believed would carry her across the Sunset Sea. But first she had to
have a crew.

Some men laughed at her, whilst others called her mad, or cursed her to
her face. “Strange beasts, aye,” one rival captain told her, “and like
as not, you’ll end up in the belly of one.” 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. Slowly she began to gather willing
hands.

Inevitably, word of her efforts came to the attention of the Lord of the
Hightower. Lord Donnel’s grandsons Eustace and Norman, both noted
mariners in their own right, were sent to question her…and clap

her in fetters if they felt it prudent. Instead both men signed on with
her, pledging their own ships and crews to her mission. After that,
sailors clambered over one another in their haste to join her crew. If
the Hightowers were going, there were fortunes to be had. 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.

Their departure came not a day too soon…for word of Alys Westhill and
her desperate search for a crew had finally reached King’s Landing. 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. The birds
came too late, however…or mayhaps, as some suggest even to this day,
Donnel the Delayer delayed again. 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. Seas are 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.

When word of her escape reached the Red Keep, the king pondered long and
hard on chasing after Elissa Farman himself. No ship can sail as swiftly
as a dragon flies, he reasoned; mayhaps Vermithor could find her where
Lord Hightower’s ships could not. The very notion terrified Queen
Alysanne, however. Even dragons cannot stay aloft forever, she pointed
out, and such charts as existed of the Sunset Sea showed neither islands
nor rocks to rest upon. Grand Maester Benifer and Septon Barth
concurred, and against their opposition, His Grace reluctantly put the
idea aside.

The thirteenth day of the fourth moon of 56 AC dawned cold and grey,
with a blustery wind blowing from the east. Court records tell us that
Jaehaerys 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.
It was a contentious meeting. 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. 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 banker, for his part, denied all.

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. Septon Barth was in the
library, Grand Maester Benifer in his rookery. 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.

All of them would long remember what they were doing when they heard the
blast of a horn ringing through the morning air. “The sound of it ran
down my spine like a cold knife,” the queen would say later, “though I
could not have said why.” In a lonely watchtower overlooking the waters
of Blackwater Bay, a guard had glimpsed dark wings in the distance and
sounded the alarum. He sounded the horn again as the wings grew larger,
and a third time when he saw the dragon plain, black against the clouds.

  Balerion had returned to King’s Landing.

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. Alas, the rider clinging to his neck
was not a dead king but a dying child.

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. Scarcely had he touched the ground than Princess
Aerea slid from his back. Even those who had known her best during her
years at court scarce recognized the girl. She was near enough to naked
as to make no matter, her clothing no more than rags and tatters
clinging to her arms and legs. Her hair was tangled and matted, her
limbs as thin as sticks. “Please!” she cried to the knights and squires
and serving men who had seen her descend. Then, as they came rushing
toward her, she said, “I never,” and collapsed.

Ser Lucamore Strong had been at his post on the bridge across the dry
moat surrounding Maegor’s Holdfast. Shoving aside the other onlookers,
he lifted the princess in his arms and carried her across the castle to
Grand Maester Benifer. Later he would tell anyone who would listen that
the girl was flushed and burning with fever, her skin so hot he could
feel it even through the enameled scale of his armor. She had blood in
her eyes as well, the knight claimed, and “there was something

inside her, something moving that made her shudder and twist in my
arms.” (He did not tell these tales for long, though. The next day, King
Jaehaerys sent for him and commanded him to speak no more of the
princess.)

The king and queen were sent for at once, but when they reached the
maester’s chambers, Benifer denied them entry. “You do not want to see
her like this,” he told them, “and I would be remiss if I allowed you
any closer.” Guards were posted at the door to keep servants away as
well. Only Septon Barth was admitted, to administer the rites for the
dying. 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. Whilst hundreds crowded into the
Red Keep’s sept to pray for her, Jaehaerys and Alysanne kept vigil
outside the maester’s door. The sun had set and the hour of the bat was
at hand when Barth emerged to announce that Aerea Targaryen was dead.

The princess was consigned to the flames the very next day at sunrise,
her body wrapped in fine white linen from head to toe. Grand Maester
Benifer, who had prepared her for the funeral pyre, looked half dead
himself, Lord Redwyne confided to his sons. The king announced that his
niece had died of a fever and asked the realm to pray for her. King’s
Landing mourned for a few days before life resumed as before, and that
was the end of it.

Mysteries remained, however. Even now, centuries later, we are no closer
to knowing the truth.

More than forty men have served the Iron Throne as Grand Maester. Their
journals, letters, account books, memoirs, and court calendars are our
single best record of the events they witnessed, but not all of them
were equally diligent. Whereas some left us volumes of letters full of
empty words, never failing to note what the king ate for supper (and
whether he enjoyed it), others set down no more than a half-dozen
missives a year. 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. 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. Fortunately, Septon Barth was not so reticent, and it is to
his

own account we must now turn.

Barth wrote, “It has been three days since the princess perished, and I
have not slept. I do not know that I shall ever sleep again. The Mother
is merciful, I have always believed, and the Father Above judges each
man justly…but there was no mercy and no justice in what befell our poor
princess. How could the gods be so blind or so uncaring as to permit
such horror? Or is it possible that there are other deities in this
universe, monstrous evil gods such as the priests of Red R’hllor preach
against, against whose malice the kings of men and the gods of men are
naught but flies?

“I do not know. I do not want to know. If this makes me a faithless
septon, so be it. 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 dying…not the king, nor the queen, nor her mother, nor even the
archmaesters of the Citadel…but the memories will not leave me, so I
shall set them down here. Mayhaps by the time they are found and read,
men will have gained a better understanding of such evils.

“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 girl was burning. Her skin was flushed and
red and when I laid my hand upon her brow to learn how hot she was, it
was as if I had thrust it into a pot of boiling oil. There was scarce an
ounce of flesh upon her bones, so gaunt and starved did she appear, but
we could observe certain…swellings inside her, as her skin bulged out
and then sunk down again, as if…no, not as if, for this was the truth of
it…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. We told the king, as we must
surely tell her mother, that Aerea never spoke, but that is a lie. I
pray that I shall soon forget some of the things she whispered through
her cracked and bleeding lips. I cannot forget how oft she begged for
death.

“All the maester’s arts were powerless against her fever, if indeed we
can call such a horror by such a commonplace name. The simplest way to
say it is that the poor child was cooking from within. Her flesh grew
darker and darker and then began to crack, until her skin resembled
nothing so much, Seven save me, as pork cracklings. Thin tendrils of
smoke issued from her mouth, her nose, even, most obscenely, from

her nether lips. By then she had ceased to speak, though the things
within her continued to move. Her very eyes cooked within her skull and
finally burst, like two eggs left in a pot of boiling water for too
long.

“I thought that was the most hideous thing that I should ever see, but I
was quickly disabused of the notion, for a worse horror was awaiting me.
That came when Benifer and I lowered the poor child into a tub and
covered her with ice. The shock of that immersion stopped her heart at
once, I tell myself…if so, that was a mercy, for that was when the
things inside her came out…

  []

“The things…Mother have mercy, I do not know how to speak of them…they
were…worms with faces…snakes with hands…twisting, slimy, unspeakable
things that seemed to writhe and pulse and squirm as they came bursting
from her flesh. Some were no bigger than my little finger, but one at
least was as long as my arm…oh, Warrior protect me, the sounds they
made…

“They died, though. I must remember that, cling to that. Whatever they
might have been, they were creatures of heat and fire, and they did not
love the ice, oh no. One after another they thrashed and writhed and
died before my eyes, thank the Seven. I will not presume to give them
names…they were horrors.”

The first part of Septon Barth’s account ends there. But some days later
he returned and resumed:

“Princess Aerea is gone, but not forgotten. The Faithful pray for her
sweet soul every morn and every night. Outside the septs, the same
questions are on every lip. The princess was missing for more than a
year. Where could she have gone? What could have happened to her? What
brought her home? Was Balerion the monster believed to haunt the Velvet
Hills of Andalos? Did his flames start the fire that swept across the
Disputed Lands? Could the Black Dread have flown as far as Astapor to be
the ‘dragon’ in the pit? No, and no, and no. These are fables.

“If we put aside such distractions, however, the mystery remains. Where
did Aerea Targaryen go after fleeing Dragonstone? 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. When that proved wrong, Rhaena
next looked to Fair Isle and Oldtown. Both made sense after a fashion,
but Aerea was not to be found at either place, nor anywhere in Westeros.
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. 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. Yet Lord
Rego’s agents and informers could find no hint of her across the narrow
sea…nor even a whisper of her dragon. Why?

“Though I can offer no certain proof, I can suggest an answer. It seems
to me that we have all been asking the wrong question. Aerea Targaryen
was still well shy of her thirteenth nameday on the morning she slipped
from her mother’s castle. Though no stranger to dragons, she had never
ridden one before…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. Driven as she was by her
conflicts with her mother, mayhaps she simply wanted

a beast larger and more fearsome than Queen Rhaena’s Dreamfyre. 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). Regardless of her reasons, the choice was made.

“The princess might well have intended to fly to King’s Landing, just as
her mother suspected. 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. Whatever her plans, they did
not matter. It is one thing to leap upon a dragon and quite another to
bend him to your will, particularly a beast as old and fierce as the
Black Dread. From the very start we have asked, Where did Aerea take
Balerion? We should have been asking, Where did Balerion take Aerea?

“Only one answer makes sense. Recall, if you will, that Balerion was the
largest and oldest of the three dragons that King Aegon and his sisters
rode to conquest. Vhagar and Meraxes had hatched on Dragonstone.
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.
The older dragons had died during the intervening years, but Balerion
lived on, growing ever larger, fiercer, and more willful. 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.

“And that is where he took the poor doomed child clinging to his back.
If she went willingly I would be most surprised, but she had neither the
knowledge nor the force of will to turn him.

“What befell her on Valyria I cannot surmise. Judging from the condition
in which she returned to us, I do not even care to contemplate it. The
Valyrians were more than dragonlords. They practiced blood magic and
other dark arts as well, delving deep into the earth for secrets best
left buried and twisting the flesh of beasts and men to fashion
monstrous and unnatural chimeras. For these sins the gods in their wroth
struck them down. Valyria is accursed, all men agree, and even the
boldest sailor steers well clear of its smoking bones…but we would be
mistaken to believe that nothing lives there now. The things we found
inside Aerea Targaryen live there now, I

would submit…along with such other horrors as we cannot even begin to
imagine. I have written here at length of how the princess died, but
there is something else, something even more frightening, that requires
mention:

“Balerion had wounds as well. 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.

“The lords of Westeros are proud men, and the septons of the Faith and
the maesters of the Citadel in their own ways are prouder still, but
there is much and more of the nature of the world that we do not
understand, and may never understand. Mayhaps that is a mercy. The
Father made men curious, some say to test our faith. It is my own
abiding sin that whenever I come upon a door I must needs see what lies
upon the farther side, but certain doors are best left unopened. Aerea
Targaryen went through such a door.” Septon Barth’s account ends there.
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. 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.”
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.

It is likely that Septon Barth discussed his suspicions with the king as
well. 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. The king’s own
subjects were likewise forbidden from visiting Valyria, under pain of
death.

Not long thereafter Balerion became the first of the Targaryen dragons
to be housed in the Dragonpit. Its long brick-lined tunnels, sunk deep
into the hillside, had been fashioned after the manner of

caves, and were five times as large as the lairs on Dragonstone. Three
younger dragons soon joined the Black Dread under the Hill of Rhaenys,
whilst Vermithor and Silverwing remained at the Red Keep, close to their
riders. 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. 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.

Little and less need be said of the return of Rhaena Targaryen from
Estermont after her daughter’s death. By the time the raven reached Her
Grace at Greenstone, the princess had already died and been burned. Only
ashes and bones remained for her mother when Dreamfyre delivered her to
the Red Keep. “It would seem that I am doomed to always come too late,”
she said. 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. “She hated Dragonstone,” she reminded His
Grace. “She wanted to fly.” And so saying, she took her child’s ashes
high into the sky on Dreamfyre, and scattered them upon the winds.

It was a melancholy time. Dragonstone was still hers if she wanted it,
Jaehaerys told his sister, but Rhaena refused that as well. “There is
nothing there for me now but grief and ghosts.” When Alysanne asked if
she would return to Greenstone, Rhaena shook her head. “There’s a ghost
there as well. A kinder ghost, but no less sad.” The king suggested that
she remain with them at court, even offering her a seat on his small
council. That made his sister laugh. “Oh, brother, you sweet man, I fear
you would not like any counsel I might offer.” Then Queen Alysanne took
her sister’s hand in hers and said, “You are still a young woman. If you
like, we could find some kind and gentle lord who would cherish you as
we do. You could have other children.” That only served to bring a snarl
to Rhaena’s lips. She snatched her hand away from the queen’s and said,
“I fed my last husband to my dragon. If you make me take another, I may
eat him myself.”

The place where King Jaehaerys settled his sister Rhaena in the end was
mayhaps the most unlikely seat of all: Harrenhal. 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 to

his last surviving son, named after the late king. 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. In a castle built
to house thousands, Towers dwelt alone but for a cook and three elderly
men-at-arms. “The castle has five colossal towers,” the king pointed
out, “and the Towers boy occupies part of one. You can have the other
four.” Rhaena was amused by that. “One will suffice, I am sure. I have a
smaller household than he does.” When Alysanne reminded her that
Harrenhal too was said to have ghosts, Rhaena shrugged. “They are not my
ghosts. They will not trouble me.”

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. Curiously,
we are told, in time Rhaena and Maegor Towers came to forge a friendship
of sorts. After his death in 61 AC, Rhaena took his servants into her
own household and continued to maintain them until her own death.

Rhaena Targaryen died in 73 AC, at fifty years of age. 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. Her hair of gold and silver turned
white before the end, and the smallfolk of the riverlands feared her as
a witch. 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.
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.

When she died, King Jaehaerys ordained that she be burned at Harrenhal
and her ashes interred there. “My brother Aegon died at the hands of our
uncle in the Battle Beneath the Gods Eye,” His Grace said at her funeral
pyre. “His wife, my sister Rhaena, was not with him at the battle, but
she died that day as well.” 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 Kingsguard

and a renowned knight in his own right.

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.

In 57 AC, Jaehaerys and his queen found cause to rejoice again when the
gods blessed them with another son. Baelon, he was named, after one of
the Targaryen lords who had ruled Dragonstone before the Conquest,
himself a second son. 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. 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.

Prince Aemon was two when his brother was born, Princess Daenerys four.
The two were little alike. 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. Mud-spattered and
grass-stained, she was a trial to her mother and her maids alike, for
they were forever losing track of her. Prince Aemon, on the other hand,
was a very serious boy, cautious, careful, and obedient. 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?”

As the children grew, Grand Maester Benifer watched them closely. 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. He need not have been concerned. Save mayhaps for twins,
no brothers could ever have been closer than the sons of Jaehaerys
Targaryen. 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. 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. He made his own sword from a stick and rushed
into the yard anyway to begin whacking at his brother, reducing their
master-at-arms to helpless laughter.

  Thereafter Baelon went everywhere with his stick-sword, even to

bed, to the despair of his mother and her maids. 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. “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.

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.” Grand Maester Benifer noted something else, however.
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. “Daenerys is older,” she would remind His Grace.
“She is first in line; she should be queen.” The king would never
disagree, except to say, “She shall be queen, when she and Aemon marry.
They will rule together, just as we have.” But Benifer could see that
the king’s words did not entirely please the queen, as he noted in his
letters.

Returning once again to 57 AC, that was also the year wherein Jaehaerys
dismissed Lord Myles Smallwood as Hand of the King. Though undoubtedly a
leal man, and well-intentioned, his lordship had shown himself to be
ill-suited to the small council. As he himself would say, “I was made to
sit a horse, not a cushion.” An older king and wiser, this time His
Grace told his council that he did not intend to waste a fortnight
hashing over half a hundred names. This time he would have the Hand he
wanted: Septon Barth. When Lord Corbray reminded the king of Barth’s low
birth, Jaehaerys shrugged off his objections. “If his father beat out
swords and shod horses, so be it. A knight needs his sword, a horse
needs shoes, and I need Barth.”

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. He was
accompanied by Ser Gyles Morrigen and six guardsmen, but only Septon
Barth took part in the discussions. The purpose of his mission was a
grave one: war or peace. 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. 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.”
When the Sealord inquired as to what

the matter at hand might be, the septon gave him a sad smile and said,
“Is that how this must be played? We are speaking of three eggs. Need I
say more?”

The Sealord said, “I admit to nothing. If I was in possession of such
eggs, however, it could only be because I purchased them.”

  “From a thief.”

“How shall that be proved? Has this thief been seized, tried, found
guilty? Braavos is a city of laws. Who is the rightful owner of these
eggs? Can they show me proof of ownership?”

  “His Grace can show you proof of dragons.”

That made the Sealord smile. “The veiled threat. Your king is most
adroit at that. Stronger than his father, more subtle than his uncle.
Yes, I know what Jaehaerys could do to us, if he chose. Braavosi have a
long memory, and we remember the dragonlords of old. There are certain
things that we might do to your king as well, however. Shall I
enumerate? Or do you prefer the threat veiled?”

  “However it please your lordship.”

“As you will. Your king could burn my city down to ash, I do not doubt.
Tens of thousands would die in dragonflame. Men, women, and children. I
do not have the power to wreak that sort of destruction upon Westeros.
Such sellswords as I might hire would flee before your knights. My
fleets could sweep yours from the sea for a time, but my ships are made
of wood, and wood burns. However, there is in this city a certain…guild,
let us say…whose members are very skilled at their chosen profession.
They could not destroy King’s Landing, nor fill its streets with
corpses. But they could kill…a few. A well-chosen few.”

  “His Grace is protected day and night by the Kingsguard.”

“Knights, yes. Such as the man who waits for you outside. If indeed he
is still waiting. What would you say if I were to tell you that Ser
Gyles is already dead?” When Septon Barth began to rise, the Sealord
waved him back to his seat. “No, please, no need to rush away. I said
what if. I did consider it. They are most skilled, as I said. Had I done
so, however, you might have acted unwisely, and many more good people
might have died. That is not my desire. Threats make me uncomfortable.
Westerosi may be warriors, but we Braavosi are traders. Let us trade.”

  Septon Barth settled back down. “What do you offer?”

“I do not have these eggs, of course,” the Sealord said. “You cannot
prove elsewise. If I did have them, however…well, until they hatch, they
are but stones. Would your king begrudge me three pretty stones? Now, if
I had three…chickens…I might understand his concern. I do admire your
Jaehaerys, though. He is a great improvement on his uncle, and Braavos
does not wish to see him so unhappy. So instead of stones, let me
offer…gold.”

  And with that the real bargaining began.

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.
They point to the fact that he returned to King’s Landing without a
single dragon’s egg. This is true.

What he did bring back was not of inconsiderable value, however. At the
Sealord’s urging, the Iron Bank of Braavos forgave the entire remaining
principal of its loan to the Iron Throne. At a stroke, the Crown’s debt
had been cut in half. “And all at the cost of three stones,” Barth told
the king.

“The Sealord had best hope that they remain stones,” Jaehaerys said. “If
I should hear so much as a whisper of…chickens…his palace will be the
first to burn.”

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. 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.

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. King’s Landing in its present state could not
compare to Oldtown, nor even Lannisport, let alone the splendid Free
Cities across the narrow sea. His Grace was determined that it should.
Accordingly, he set out plans for a series of drains and sewers, to
carry the city’s offal and nightsoil under the streets to the river.

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. The river water was muddy, and the king’s new
sewers would soon make it worse; the waters of the Blackwater Bay were
brackish at the best of times, and salty at the worst. Whilst the king
and his court and the city’s highborn drank ale and mead and wine, these
foul waters were oft the only choice for the poor. To address the
problem, Barth proposed sinking wells, some inside the city proper and
others to the north, beyond the walls. A series of glazed clay pipes and
tunnels would carry the fresh water into the city, where it would be
stored in four huge cisterns and made available to the smallfolk from
public fountains in certain squares and crossroads.

Barth’s scheme was costly, beyond a doubt, and Rego Draz and King
Jaehaerys balked at the expense…until Queen Alysanne served each of them
a tankard of river water at the next council meeting, and dared them to
drink of it. The water went undrunk, but the wells and pipes were soon
approved. 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.

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. 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. This time, he decreed, his Kingsguard, servants, and
retainers would go ahead of him, to make things ready for his arrival.
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.

The gods and the Free Cities had other plans, however. Even as the
king’s ships were beating their way north, envoys from Pentos and Tyrosh
called upon His Grace in the Red Keep. The two cities had been at war
for three years and were now desirous of making peace, but could not
agree on where they might meet to discuss terms. 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.
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 intermediary

between them, and guarantee the terms of any resulting treaty.

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. Queen Alysanne provided the
solution. She would go ahead as planned, alone, whilst the king played
host to the Prince and Archon. Jaehaerys could join her at Winterfell as
soon as the peace had been concluded. And so it was agreed.

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. It was the first time any of
them had seen a dragon. The size of the crowds surprised even their
lord. “I had not known there were so many smallfolk in the city,”
Theomore Manderly is reported to have said. “Where did they all come
from?”

The Manderlys were unique amongst the great houses of the North. 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. 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. 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. 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.

Lord Manderly entertained the queen lavishly. 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.
Manderly also staged a small tourney in the queen’s honor, to show the
prowess of his knights. 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. Delighted by the girl’s

daring, 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.

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.

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. 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. 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. Even Theomore Manderly, who was his bannerman, had not disagreed;
Stark was well respected in the North, he said, but not loved. Lord
Manderly’s fool had put it elsewise. “Methinks Lord Alaric has not moved
his bowels since he was twelve.”

Her reception at Winterfell did nothing to disabuse the queen’s fears as
to what she might expect from House Stark. 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.” He then proceeded
to declare that he did not want her dragon inside his walls. “I’ve not
seen Harrenhal, but I know what happened there.” Her knights and ladies
he would receive when they got here, “and the king too, if he can find
the way,” but they should not overstay their welcome. “This is the
North, and winter is coming. We cannot feed a thousand men for long.”
When the queen assured him that only a tenth that number would be
coming, Lord Alaric grunted and said, “That’s good. Fewer would be even
better.” 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. “If you are expecting balls and masques and
dances, you have come to the wrong place.”

Lord Alaric had lost his wife three years earlier. 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 no

lady 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. She
gave me two strong sons as well, and a daughter as sweet to look upon as
any of your southron ladies.”

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. “We keep the old gods in the North,” he told
the queen. “When my boys take a wife, they will wed before a heart tree,
not in some southron sept.”

Alysanne Targaryen did not yield easily, however. 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. 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. Even a lord as stern and
flinty as Alaric Stark found himself helpless before Queen Alysanne’s
stubborn charm. He allowed that he would think on what she said, and
raise the matter with his sons.

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. 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. 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. He even deigned to approach Silverwing, though
warily. 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 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.

Things were not going as well at King’s Landing, meanwhile. The peace
talks dragged on far longer than anticipated, for the acrimony between
the two Free Cities ran deeper than Jaehaerys had known. When His Grace
attempted to strike a balance, both sides accused him of favoring the
other. Whilst the Prince and the Archon dickered, fights

began to break out between their men across the city, in inns, brothels,
and wine sinks. A Pentoshi guardsman was set upon and killed, and three
nights later the Archon’s own galley was set afire where she was docked.
The king’s departure was delayed and delayed again.

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. 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).

Her first sight of the Wall from above took Alysanne’s breath away, Her
Grace would later tell the king. 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 Sons before those orders were
abolished, but Lord Stark sent ravens ahead to warn of her coming, and
the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, Lothor Burley, assembled eight
hundred of his finest men to receive her. That night the black brothers
feasted the queen on mammoth meat, washed down with mead and stout.

As dawn broke the next day Lord Burley took Her Grace to the top of the
Wall. “Here the world ends,” he told her, gesturing at the vast green
expanse of the haunted forest beyond. Burley was apologetic for the
quality of the food and drink presented to the queen, and the rudeness
of the accommodations at Castle Black. “We do what we can, Your Grace,”
the Lord Commander explained, “but our beds are hard, our halls are
cold, and our food—”

  “—is nourishing,” the queen finished. “And that is all that I require.

It will please me to eat as you do.”

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.” 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. “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. Never before has she refused
to take me where I wished to go. I

laughed about it when I came down again, so the black brothers would not
realize anything was amiss, but it troubled me then and it troubles me
still.”

At Castle Black the queen saw her first wildlings. 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.
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. “All but those three,” her escort said, pointing out three
prisoners who had already lost their ears. “We’ll take the heads off
those three. They been caught once already.” 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. “Most don’t, though,” he added.

Three of the brothers had been singers before taking the black, and they
took turns playing for Her Grace at night, regaling her with ballads,
war songs, and bawdy barracks tunes. Lord Commander Burley himself took
the queen into the haunted forest (with a hundred rangers riding
escort). 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. 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.” The Nightfort itself she found grim and
sinister. “It is so huge the men seem dwarfed by it, like mice in a
ruined hall,” she told Jaehaerys, “and there is a darkness there…a taste
in the air…I was so glad to leave that place.”

It must not be thought that the queen’s days and nights at Castle Black
were entirely taken up with such idle pursuits. 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.

“Above all else, a queen must know how to listen,” Alysanne Targaryen
often said. At Castle Black, she proved those words. She listened, she
heard, and she won the eternal devotion of the men of the Night’s Watch
by her actions. 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. The

Watch should abandon it, she said, and build a smaller castle farther to
the east. Lord Burley could not disagree…but the Night’s Watch lacked
the coin to build new castles, he said. Alysanne had anticipated that
objection. She would pay for the castle herself, she told the Lord
Commander, and pledged her jewels to cover the cost. “I have a good many
jewels,” she said.

It would take eight years to raise the new castle, which would bear the
name of Deep Lake. Outside its main hall, a statue of Alysanne Targaryen
stands to this very day. The Nightfort was abandoned even before Deep
Lake was completed, as the queen had wished. Lord Commander Burley also
renamed Snowgate castle in her honor, as Queensgate.

Queen Alysanne also wished to listen to the women of the North. When
Lord Burley explained that there were no women on the Wall, she
persisted…until finally, with great reluctance, he had her escorted to a
village south of the Wall that the black brothers called Mole’s Town.
She would find women there, his lordship said, though most of them would
be harlots. The men of the Night’s Watch took no wives, he explained,
but they remained men all the same, and some felt certain needs. 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.

Back in King’s Landing, the Archon of Tyrosh, the Prince of Pentos, and
Jaehaerys I Targaryen of Westeros finally put their seals to “A Treaty
of Eternal Peace.” 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. (The
aftermath would prove even less successful than the negotiations. 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.) Only then was King
Jaehaerys free to fly north with Vermithor. He and the queen reunited at
Winterfell, after half a year apart.

The king’s time at Winterfell began on an ominous note. Upon his
arrival, Alaric Stark led His Grace down to the crypts below the castle
to show him his brother’s tomb. “Walton lies down here in darkness in

no small part thanks to you. Stars and Swords, the leavings of your
seven gods, what are they to us? 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 them…and when the worst of them rose up, the
oathbreakers you had sent us, it cost my brother’s life to put them
down.”

[]

  “A grievous price,” the king agreed, “but that was never our intent.

You have my regrets, my lord, and my gratitude.”

  “I would sooner have my brother,” Lord Alaric answered darkly.

Lord Stark and King Jaehaerys would never be fast friends; the shade of
Walton Stark remained between them to the end. It was only through Queen
Alysanne’s good offices that they ever found accord. 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. “It
is not enough,” she told the king. “The soil is thin and stony, the
hills unpopulated. The Watch lacks for coin, and when winter comes they
will lack for food as well.” The answer she proposed was a New Gift, a
further strip of land south of Brandon’s Gift.

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. “I
have no doubt that you can persuade them, Lord Alaric,” the queen said.
And finally, charmed by her as ever, Alaric Stark agreed that, aye, he
could. And so it came to pass that the size of the Gift was doubled with
a stroke.

Little more need be said of the time Queen Alysanne and King Jaehaerys
spent in the North. 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. From there Vermithor and Silverwing bore
Jaehaerys and Alysanne back again to King’s Landing. 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.

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. 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.

“There was a girl there,” the queen said, “no older than I am as I sit
before you now. A pretty girl, but not, I think, as pretty as she was.
Her

father was a blacksmith, and when she was a maid of fourteen years, he
gave her hand in marriage to his apprentice. She was fond of the boy,
and he of her, so the two of them were duly wed…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. He carried her off to
his tower and enjoyed her, and the next morning his men returned her to
her husband.

“But her maidenhead was gone, together with whatever love the apprentice
boy had borne her. He could not raise his hand against the lord for
peril of his life, so instead he raised it against his wife. When it
became plain that she was carrying the lord’s child, he beat it out of
her. From that day on, he never called her anything but ‘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. There she dwells until
this day, a sad child, ruined…but all the while, in other villages,
other maids are being wed, and other lords are claiming their first
night.

“Hers was the worst story, but not the only one. At White Harbor, at
Mole’s Town, at Barrowton, other women spoke of their first nights as
well. I never knew, my lords. Oh, I knew of the tradition. 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 them…”

“Dragonseeds, they call them,” Jaehaerys said with obvious reluctance.
“It is not a thing to boast of, but it has happened, mayhaps more often
than we would care to admit. Such children are cherished, though. Orys
Baratheon himself was a dragonseed, a bastard brother to our grandsire.
Whether he was conceived of a first night I cannot say, but Lord Aerion
was his father, that was well-known. Gifts were given…”

“Gifts?” the queen said in a voice sharp with derision. “I see no honor
in any of this. I knew such things happened hundreds of years ago, I
confess it, but I never dreamed that the custom endured so strongly to
this day. Mayhaps I did not want to know. I closed my eyes, but that
poor girl in Mole’s Town opened them. The right of the first night! Your
Grace, my lords, it is time we put an end to this. I beg you.”

A silence fell after the queen had finished speaking, Grand Maester
Benifer tells us. The lords of the small council shifted awkwardly in
their seats and exchanged glances, until finally the king himself spoke

up, sympathetic but reluctant. What the queen proposed would be
difficult, Jaehaerys said. Lords grew troublesome when kings began
taking things that they regarded as their own. “Their lands, their gold,
their rights…”

“…their wives?” Alysanne finished. “I remember our wedding, my lord. If
you had been a blacksmith and me a washerwoman and some lord had come to
claim me and take my maidenhead the day we took our vows, what would you
have done?”

  “Killed him,” Jaehaerys said, “but I am not a blacksmith.”

“If, I said,” the queen persisted. “A blacksmith is still a man, is he
not? What man but a coward would stand by meekly whilst another man has
his way with his wife? We do not want blacksmiths killing lords,
surely.” She turned to Grand Maester Benifer and said, “I know how
Gargon Qoherys died. Gargon the Guest. How many more such instances have
there been, I wonder?”

“More than I would care to say,” Benifer allowed. “They are not oft
spoken of, for fear that other men might do the same, but…”

“The first night is an offense against the King’s Peace,” the queen
concluded. “An offense against not only the maid, but her husband as
well…and the wife of the lord, never forget. What do those highborn
ladies do whilst their lords are out deflowering maidens? Do they sew?
Sing? Pray? Were it me, I might pray my lord husband fell off his horse
and broke his neck coming home.”

King Jaehaerys smiled at that, but it was plain that he was becoming
increasingly uncomfortable. “The right of the first night is an ancient
one,” he argued, though with no great passion, “as much a part of
lordship as the right of pit and gallows. 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. You
are not wrong, my love, but sometimes it is best to let a sleeping
dragon lie.”

“We are the sleeping dragons,” the queen threw back. “These lords who
love their first nights are dogs. Why must they slake their lust on
maidens who have only just pledged their love to other men? Have they no
wives of their own? Are there no whores in their domains? Have they lost
the use of their hands?”

  The justiciar Lord Albin Massey spoke up then, saying, “There is

more to the first night than lust, Your Grace. The practice is an
ancient one, older than the Andals, older than the Faith. It goes back
to the Dawn Age, I do not doubt. The First Men were a savage race, and
like the wildings beyond the Wall, they followed only strength. Their
lords and kings were warriors, mighty men and heroes, and they wanted
their sons to be the same. If a warlord chose to bestow his seed upon
some maid on her wedding night, it was seen as…a sort of blessing. And
if a child should come of the coupling, so much the better. The husband
could then claim the honor of raising a hero’s son as his own.”

“Mayhaps that was so, ten thousand years ago,” the queen replied, “but
the lords claiming the first night now are no heroes. You have not heard
the women speak of them. I have. Old men, fat men, cruel men, poxy boys,
rapers, droolers, men covered with scabs, with scars, with boils, lords
who have not washed in half a year, men with greasy hair and lice. These
are your mighty men. I listened to the girls, and none of them felt
blessed.”

“The Andals never practiced the first night in Andalos,” Grand Maester
Benifer said. “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.”

Septon Barth spoke then, turning to the king. “Sire, if I may be so
bold, I believe Her Grace has the right of this. 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. We are not those
men, and it is past time we put an end to this evil. It stands against
every ideal of chivalry. Our knights swear to protect the innocence of
maidens…save for when the lord they serve wishes to despoil one, it
would seem. We swear our marriage vows before the Father and the Mother,
promising fidelity until the Stranger comes to part us, and nowhere in
The Seven-Pointed Star does it say that those promises do not apply to
lords. You are not wrong, Your Grace, some lords will surely grumble at
this, especially in the North…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. I know the Faithful will be pleased. His High Holiness will
let his voice be heard, never doubt it.”

When Barth had finished speaking, Jaehaerys Targaryen threw up his
hands. “I know when I am beaten. Very well. Let it be done.”

  And so it came to pass that the second of what the smallfolk named

Queen Alysanne’s Laws was enacted: the abolition of the lord’s ancient
right to the first night. 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.

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. 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. The wispy beard and mustache that His Grace had
cultivated early in his reign had become a handsome golden beard, shot
through with silver. His unshorn hair he wore in a thick braid that fell
almost to his waist. Tall and handsome, Jaehaerys moved with an easy
grace, be it on the dance floor or in the training yard. 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. In his sister he had a queen
even more beloved than he was. “Good Queen Alysanne,” the smallfolk
called her, from Oldtown to the Wall. The gods had blessed the two of
them with three strong children, two splendid young princes and a
princess who was the darling of the realm.

In their decade of rule, they had known grief and horror, betrayal and
conflict, and the death of loved ones, but they had weathered the storms
and survived the tragedies and emerged stronger and better from all they
had endured. Their accomplishments were undeniable; the Seven Kingdoms
were at peace, and more prosperous than they had been in living memory.

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. 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. On the
field, the highlight of the competition was the brilliance of Ser Ryam
Redwyne, the youngest son of Lord Manfryd Redwyne of the Arbor,
Jaehaerys’s lord admiral and master of ships. In successive tilts, Ser
Ryam unhorsed Ronnal Baratheon, Arthor Oakheart, Simon Dondarrion, Harys
Hogg (Harry the Ham, to the commons), and two Kingsguard knights,
Lorence Roxton and Lucamore Strong. When the young gallant trotted up to
the royal box and crowned Good Queen

Alysanne as his queen of love and beauty, the commons roared their
approval.

The leaves in the trees had begun to turn russet and orange and gold,
and the ladies of the court wore gowns to match. 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. 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. Theomore
Manderly came down from the North. 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. The High Septon was too ill to
come, but he sent his newest septa, Rhaella, who had been Targaryen,
still shy, but smiling. 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.

It was a time for warm embraces, for smiles, for toasts and
reconciliations, for renewing old friendships and making new ones, for
laughter and kisses. It was a good time, a golden autumn, a time of
peace and plenty.

  But winter was coming.

[]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. Her
sails were patched and ragged and salt-stained, her paint faded and
flaking, the banner streaming from her mast so sun- bleached as to be
unrecognizable. Not until she was tied up at dock was she finally
recognized in her sorry state. She was the Lady Meredith, last seen
departing Oldtown almost three years earlier to cross the Sunset Sea.

As her crew began to disembark, throngs of merchants, porters, whores,
seamen, and thieves gaped in shock. Nine of every ten men coming ashore
were black or brown. Ripples of excitement ran up and down the docks.
Had the Lady Meredith indeed crossed the Sunset Sea? Were the peoples of
the fabled lands of the far west all dark- skinned as Summer Islanders?

Only when Ser Eustace Hightower himself emerged did the whispers die.
Lord Donnel’s grandson was gaunt and sun-burned, with lines on his face
that had not been there when he sailed. A handful of Oldtown men were
with him, all that remained of his original crew. One of his grandsire’s
customs officers met him on the dock and a quick exchange ensued. The
Lady Meredith’s crew did not simply look like Summer Islanders; they
were Summer Islanders, hired on in Sothoryos (“at

ruinous wages,” Ser Eustace complained) to replace the men he’d lost. He
would require porters, the captain said. His holds were bulging with
rich cargo…but not from lands beyond the Sunset Sea. “That was a dream,”
he said.

Soon enough Lord Donnel’s knights turned up, with orders to escort him
to the Hightower. There, in his grandsire’s high hall with a cup of wine
in hand, Ser Eustace Hightower told his tale. Lord Donnel’s scribes
scribbled as he spoke, and within days the story had spread all over
Westeros, by messenger, bard, and raven.

The voyage had begun as well as he could have hoped, Ser Eustace said.
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. The big Braavosi ship was very fast when
the wind was in her sails, and the Hightowers had difficulties keeping
pace. “The Seven were smiling on us, at the start. We had the sun by day
and the moon by night, and as sweet a wind as man or maid could hope
for. We were not entirely alone. We glimpsed fisherfolk from time to
time, and once a great dark ship that could only have been a whaler out
of Ib. And fish, so many fish…some dolphins swam beside us, as if they
had never seen a ship before. We all thought that we were blessed.”

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
before…or any ship that had returned to tell of it, at least. 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. And if any man of them was disquieted that
they had not seen a bird for the past four days, he held his tongue.

The gods hate man’s arrogance, the septons teach us, and The
Seven-Pointed Star says that pride goes before a fall. 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. “We lost the wind first,” Ser Eustace told his
grandfather’s court. “For almost a fortnight there was not so much as a
breeze, and the ships moved only so far as we could tow them. It was
discovered that a dozen casks of meat on Autumn Moon were crawling with
maggots. A small enough thing by itself, but an ill omen. The wind

finally returned one day near sunset, when the sky turned red as blood,
but the look of it set men to muttering. I told them it boded well for
us, but I lied. Before morning the stars were gone and the wind began to
howl, and then the ocean rose.”

That was the first storm, Ser Eustace said. Another followed two days
later, and then a third, each worse than the one before. “The waves rose
higher than our masts, and there was thunder all around, and lightning
such as I had never seen before, great cracking bolts that burned the
eyes. One struck the Autumn Moon and split her mast from the crow’s nest
down to the deck. In the midst of all that madness, one of my hands
screamed that he had seen arms rising from the water, the last thing any
captain needs to hear. We had lost all sight of Sun Chaser by then, all
that remained was my lady and the Moon. The sea was washing over our
decks with every rise and fall, and men were being swept over the side,
clinging uselessly to lines. I saw the Autumn Moon founder with my own
eyes. One moment she was there, broken and burning, but there. Then a
wave rose up and swallowed her and I blinked and she was gone, quick as
that. That was all it was, a wave, a monster of a wave, but all my men
were screaming ‘Kraken, kraken!’ and not a word I said would ever
disabuse them.

“I will never know how we survived that night, but we did. The next
morning the sea was calm again, the sun was shining, and the water was
so blue and innocent a man might never know that under it my brother
floated, dead with all his men. Lady Meredith was in sad shape, sails
torn, masts splintered, nine men amongst the missing. We said prayers
for the lost and set about making what repairs we could… and that
afternoon, our crow’s eye saw sails in the distance. It was Sun Chaser,
come back to find us.”

Lady Westhill had done more than simply survive the storm. She had found
land. 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. Lady Alys made toward it and came upon three small islands. “A
mountain attended by two hills,” as she put it. 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.

  The two battered ships sheltered off the islands for more than a

fortnight, making repairs and replenishing their stores. 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. Since there
were three of them, she named them Aegon, Rhaenys, and Visenya. The
islands were uninhabited, but springs and streams were plentiful, so the
voyagers were able to fill their casks with all the fresh water they
required. There were wild pigs as well, and huge, sluggish grey lizards
as big as deer, and trees heavy with nuts and fruit.

After sampling some of those, Eustace Hightower declared that they had
no need to go any farther. “This is discovery enough,” he said. “We have
spices here I have never tasted, and these pink fruits…we have our
fortunes here, in our hands.”

Alys Westhill was incredulous. Three small islands, even the largest of
them a third the size of Dragonstone, that was nothing. The true wonders
lay farther west. There might be another Essos just beyond the horizon.

“Or there might be another thousand leagues of empty ocean,” Ser Eustace
replied. And though Lady Alys cajoled and pleaded and wove webs of words
in the air, she could not move him. “Even had I wished to, my crew would
not allow it,” he told Lord Donnel in the Hightower. “To a man, they
were convinced they had seen a giant kraken pull Autumn Moon beneath the
sea. Had I given the command to sail on, they would have fed me to the
waves and found another captain.”

So the voyagers had parted ways as they left the islands. Lady Meredith
turned back east for home, whilst Alys Westhill and her Sun Chaser
pressed on westward, chasing the sun. Eustace Hightower’s voyage home
would prove to be nigh as perilous as his voyage out had been. There
were more storms to be weathered, though none as terrible as the one
that had claimed his brother’s ship. The prevailing winds were against
them, forcing them to tack and tack again. 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. A few days later, they encountered a pod of
leviathans. One of them, a huge white bull larger than a ship, had
slammed into Lady Meredith of a purpose, and cracked her hull. Afterward
Ser Eustace had changed course, making for the Summer Islands, which he
figured to be their nearest landfall. They were farther south than he
had realized, however, and ended up missing the islands entirely and
fetching up instead upon the

coast of Sothoryos.

“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. There were fortunes to be had there as well, though, and we
were not blind to that. Emeralds, gold, spices, aye, all that and more.
Strange creatures…monkeys that walk like men, men that howl like
monkeys, wyverns, basilisks, a hundred different sorts of snakes.
Deadly, all of them. Some of my men just vanished of a night. The ones
who didn’t began to die. One was bitten by a fly, a little prick upon
his neck, nothing to fear. Three days later his skin was sloughing off,
and he was bleeding from his ears and cock and arse. Drinking salt water
will make a man mad, every sailor knows that, but the freshwater is no
safer in that place. There are worms in it, almost too small to see, if
you swallowed them they laid their eggs inside you. And the
fevers…hardly a day went by when half my men were fit to work. We all
would have perished, I think, but some Summer Islanders passing by came
on us. They know that hell better than they let on, I think. With their
help, I was able to get Lady Meredith to Tall Trees Town, and from there
to home.”

  There ended his tale, and his great adventure.

As for Lady Alys Westhill, born Elissa of House Farman, where her
adventure ended we cannot say. The Sun Chaser vanished into the west,
still searching for the lands beyond the Sunset Sea, and was never seen
again.

  Except…

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 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. 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. There he
lost his love and half his crew, if the tales be true…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.

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.

The winter of 59–60 AC was an exceptionally cruel one, all those who
survived it agreed. The North was hit first and hardest, as crops died
in the field, streams froze, and bitter winds came howling over the
Wall. 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. As their larders and granaries emptied, famine
spread across the land, and old men bade farewell to their children and
went out into the snow to die so their kin might live. Harvests failed
in the riverlands, the westerlands, and the Vale as well, and even down
into the Reach. Those who had food began to hoard, and all across the
Seven Kingdoms the price of bread began to rise. The price of meat rose
even faster, and in the towns and cities, fruits and vegetables all but
disappeared.

  And then the Shivers came, and the Stranger walked the land.

The maesters knew the Shivers. They had seen its like before, a century
ago, and the course of the contagion was written in their books. It was
believed to have come to Westeros from across the sea, from one of the
Free Cities or lands more distant still. Port cities and harbor towns
always felt the hand of the disease first and hardest. 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. 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. Before the Shivers ran its course that
winter, kittens were selling for as much as destriers.

The marks of the disease were well-known. It began simply enough, with a
chill. Victims would complain of being cold, throw a fresh log on the
fire, huddle under a blanket or a pile of furs. Some would call for hot
soup, mulled wine, or, against all reason, beer. Neither blankets nor
soups could stay the progress of the pestilence. Soon the shivering
would begin; mild at first, a trembling, a shudder, but inexorably
growing worse. Gooseprickles would march up and down the victim’s

limbs like conquering armies. By then the afflicted would be shivering
so violently that their teeth would chatter, and their hands and feet
would begin to convulse and twitch. When the victim’s lips turned blue
and he began to cough up blood, the end was nigh. Once the first chill
was felt, the course of the Shivers was swift. Death could come within a
day, and no more than one victim in every five recovered.

All this the maesters knew. What they did not know is where the Shivers
came from, how to stop it, or how to cure it. Poultices were tried, and
potions. Hot mustards and dragon peppers were suggested, and wine spiced
with snake venom that made the lips go numb. The afflicted were immersed
in tubs of hot water, some heated almost to the point of boiling. Green
vegetables were said to be a cure; then raw fish; then red meat, the
bloodier the better. Certain healers dispensed with the meat, and
advised their patients to drink blood. Various smokes and inhalations of
burning leaves were tried. One lord commanded his men to build fires all
around him, surrounding himself with walls of flame.

In the winter of 59 AC, the Shivers entered from the east, and moved
across Blackwater Bay and up the Blackwater Rush. Even before King’s
Landing, the islands off the crownlands felt the chill. Edwell Celtigar,
Maegor’s one-time Hand and the much despised master of coin, was the
first lord to die. His son and heir followed him to grave three days
later. Lord Staunton died at Rook’s Rest, and then his wife. Their
children, frightened, sealed themselves inside their bedchambers and
barred the doors, but it did not save them. On Dragonstone, the queen’s
beloved Septa Edyth perished. 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. Lord Bar Emmon, Lord Rosby,
Lady Jirelle of Maidenpool…the bells tolled for them all, and many
lesser men and women besides.

All across the Seven Kingdoms, the noble and humble alike were struck
down. The old and the young were most at risk, but men and women in the
prime of their lives were not spared. The roll of those taken included
the greatest of lords, the noblest of ladies, the most valiant of
knights. Lord Prentys Tully died shivering in Riverrun, followed a day
later by his Lady Lucinda. Lyman Lannister, the mighty Lord of Casterly
Rock, was taken, together with sundry other lords of the westerlands;
Lord Marbrand of Ashemark, Lord Tarbeck of Tarbeck Hall, Lord Westerling
of the Crag. At Highgarden, Lord Tyrell

sickened but survived, only to perish, drunk, in a fall from his horse
four days after his recovery. 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.

The great port city of Oldtown was especially hard hit, losing a quarter
of its population. 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. Nor was his grandsire,
Lord of the Hightower. Donnel the Delayer could not delay death. He died
shivering. So did the High Septon, twoscore of the Most Devout, and
fully a third of the archmaesters, maesters, acolytes, and novices at
the Citadel.

In all the realm, no place was as sorely afflicted as King’s Landing was
in 59 AC. Amongst the dead were two knights of the Kingsguard, old Ser
Sam of Sour Hill and the good-hearted Ser Victor the Valiant, along with
three lords of the council, Albin Massey, Qarl Corbray, and Grand
Maester Benifer himself. 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. (“An act of
singular courage or singular stupidity,” his sardonic successor would
observe. “I would not have lasted three days under Maegor.”)

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.
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. Shops were looted, women raped, men robbed and
killed for no crime but walking down the wrong street at the wrong time.
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.

Amidst the chaos, His Grace would lose another of his lords, not to the
Shivers but to ignorance and hate. 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. The Pentoshi preferred his
own manse on the Street of Silk, with the Dragonpit looming above him
atop the Hill of Rhaenys. There he could entertain

his concubines without suffering the disapproval of the court. After ten
years in service to the Iron Throne, Lord Rego had grown quite stout,
and no longer chose to ride. Instead he moved from manse to castle and
back again in an ornate gilded palanquin. Unwisely, his route took him
through the reeking heart of Flea Bottom, the foulest and most lawless
district of the city.

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. Some were drunk and all were hungry—the
piglet had escaped them—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. One wore a sword. Three had knives. The rest snatched up stones
and sticks and swarmed the palanquin, driving off Lord Rego’s bearers
and spilling his lordship onto the ground. Onlookers said he screamed
for help in words none of them could understand.

When his lordship raised his hands to ward off the blows raining down on
him, gold and gemstones glittered on every finger, and the attack grew
more frenzied still. A woman shouted, “He’s Pentoshi. Them’s the
bastards brung the Shivers here.” 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. Thus died the Lord of Air, his skull crushed by one of the
very cobblestones he had helped the king lay down. Even then, his
assailants were not done with him. Before they ran, they ripped off his
fine clothes and cut off all his fingers to lay claim to his rings.

When word reached the Red Keep, Jaehaerys Targaryen himself rode forth
to claim the body, surrounded by his Kingsguard. 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.” The street was full of the curious, come out to see their king
or gaze upon the bloody corpse of the Pentoshi moneychanger. Jaehaerys
wheeled his horse about and shouted at them. “I would have the name of
the men who did this. Speak now, and you will be well rewarded. Hold
your tongues, and you will lose them.” Many of the watchers slunk away,
but one barefoot girl came forward, squeaking out a name.

The king thanked her, and commanded her to show his knights where this
man might be found. 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. Under torture, he soon gave up the names of the
other attackers, and they were taken one and all. One of their number
claimed to have been a Poor Fellow, and cried out that he wished to take
the black. “No,” Jaehaerys told him. “The Night’s Watch are men of
honor, and you are lower than rats.” Such men as these were unworthy of
a clean death by sword or axe, he ruled. Instead they were hung from the
walls of the Red Keep, disemboweled, and left to twist until they died,
their entrails swinging loose down to their knees.

The girl who had led the king to the killers had a kinder fate. Taken in
hand by Queen Alysanne, she was plunged into a tub of hot water for a
scrubbing. Her clothes were burned, her head was shaved, and she was fed
hot bread and bacon. “There is a place for you in the castle, if you
want it,” Alysanne told her when her belly was full. “In the kitchens or
the stables, as you wish. Do you have a father?” The girl gave a shy nod
and admitted that she did. “He was one o’ them bellies you cut open. The
poxy one, wi’ the stye.” Then she told Her Grace that she wanted to work
in the kitchens. “That’s where they keeps the bread.”

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. A year before great bonfires had been lit in public squares
and men and women had danced around them, drinking and laughing, whilst
bells rang in the new year. One year later the fires were consuming
corpses, and the bells were tolling out the dead. 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.

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. 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.

It was the hour of the owl when Queen Alysanne was awoken by her
daughter shaking her gently by the arm. “Mother,” Princess Daenerys
said, “I’m cold.”

There is no need to dwell on all that followed. Daenerys Targaryen was
the darling of the realm, and all that could be done for any man was
done for her. There were prayers and poultices, hot soups and scalding
baths, blankets and furs and hot stones, nettle tea. 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.
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. 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. 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.

None of it mattered. A day and a half after she had woken her mother
from sleep complaining of feeling cold, the little princess was dead.
The queen collapsed in the king’s arms, shaking so violently that some
feared she had the Shivers too. Jaehaerys had her taken back to her own
chambers and given milk of the poppy to help her sleep. 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.
On his return to King’s Landing, he drank a cup of dreamwine and sent
for Septon Barth. “How could this happen?” he demanded. “What sin did
she commit? Why would the gods take her? How could this happen?” But
even Barth, that wise man, had no answers for him.

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. 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. 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. 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 them…and they did not get sick.

  Since Aenar the Exile first staked his claim to Dragonstone, that had

been known. 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. There was fire in the
blood of the dragon, it was reasoned, a purifying fire that burned out
all such plagues. It was unthinkable that a pureborn princess should die
shivering, as if she were some common child.

  And yet she had.

Even as they mourned for her and the sweet soul she had been, Jaehaerys
and Alysanne must also have been confronting that awful realization.
Mayhaps the Targaryens were not so close to gods as they had believed.
Mayhaps, in the end, they too were only men.

When the Shivers finally ran its course, King Jaehaerys went back to his
labors with a sadder heart. His first task was a grim one: replacing all
the friends and councillors he had lost. Lord Manfryd Redwyne’s eldest
son, Ser Robert, was named to command the City Watch. 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.
The able Albin Massey, his bent-backed justiciar, was not so easily
replaced. 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.

The Citadel had already sent him Benifer’s successor, the sharp- tongued
Grand Maester Elysar. Twenty years younger than the man whose chain he
donned, Elysar had never had a thought he didn’t feel the need to share.
Some claimed that the Conclave had sent him to King’s Landing to be rid
of him.

Jaehaerys hesitated longest when it came to selecting his new lord
treasurer and master of coin. Rego Draz, however despised, had been a
man of great ability. “I am tempted to say you do not find such men
lying about in the streets, but if truth be told, we are more like to
find one there than sitting in some castle,” the king told his council.
The Lord of Air had never married, but he did have three bastard sons
who had learned his business at his knee. Much as the king was tempted
to reach out to one of them, he knew the realm would never accept
another Pentoshi. “It must needs be a lord,” he concluded gloomily.
Familiar names were bandied once again: Lannister, Velaryon,

Hightower, houses built on gold as much as steel. “They are all too
proud,” Jaehaerys said.

It was Septon Barth who first proposed a different name. “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.”

Lord Redwyne was incredulous. “The Tyrells are dolts,” he said. “I am
sorry, Your Grace, they are my liege lords, but…the Tyrells are dolts,
and Lord Bertrand was a sot as well.”

“That is as it may be,” Septon Barth admitted. “Lord Bertrand is in his
grave now, however, and I am speaking of his son. Martyn is young and
eager, but I will not vouch for the quality of his wits. His wife,
however, is a Fossoway girl, the Lady Florence, who has been counting
apples since she learned to walk. 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. Should we appoint her husband, she would
come to court as well, I do not doubt.”

“Alysanne would like that,” the king said. “She enjoys the company of
clever women.” The queen had not been attending council since the death
of Princess Daenerys. Mayhaps Jaehaerys hoped that this would help bring
her back to him again. “Our good septon has never led us wrong. Let us
try the dolt with the clever wife, and hope that my leal smallfolk do
not beat his head in with a cobblestone.”

The Seven take and the Seven give. Mayhaps the Mother Above looked down
on Queen Alysanne in her grief and took pity on her broken heart. The
moon had not turned twice since Princess Daenerys’s death when Her Grace
learned that she was once again carrying a child. With winter holding
the realm in its icy grip, the queen once again chose caution and
retired to Dragonstone for her lying in. Late that year, 60 AC, she was
delivered of her fifth child, a daughter she named Alyssa after her
mother. “An honor Her Grace would have appreciated more had she been
alive,” observed the new Grand Maester, Elysar…though not in the king’s
hearing.

Winter broke not long after the queen gave birth, and Alyssa proved to
be a lively, healthy child. As a babe she was so like her late sister,
Daenerys, that the queen oft wept to behold her, remembering the

child she had lost. The likeness faded as the princess grew older,
however; long-faced and skinny, Alyssa had little of her sister’s
beauty. Her hair was a dirty blond tangle with no hint of silver to
evoke the dragonlords of old, and she had been born with mismatched
eyes, one violet, the other a startling green. Her ears were too big and
her smile lopsided, and when she was six playing in the yard a whack
across the face from a wooden sword broke her nose. It healed crooked,
but Alyssa did not seem to care. By that age, her mother had come to
realize that it was not Daenerys that she took after, but Baelon.

Just as Baelon had once followed Aemon everywhere, Alyssa trailed after
Baelon. “Like a puppy,” the Spring Prince complained. Baelon was two
years younger than Aemon, Alyssa nearly four years younger than him…“and
a girl,” which made it far worse in his eyes. The princess did not act
like a girl, however. She wore boy’s clothes when she could, shunned the
company of other girls, preferred riding and climbing and dueling with
wooden swords to sewing and reading and singing, and refused to eat
porridge.

An old friend, and old adversary, returned to King’s Landing in 61 AC,
when Lord Rogar Baratheon rode up from Storm’s End to deliver three
young girls to court. Two were the daughters of his brother Ronnal, who
had died shivering together with his wife and sons. The third was Lady
Jocelyn, his lordship’s own daughter by Queen Alyssa. 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.

Rogar Baratheon’s own hair had gone grey, however, and the years had
taken their toll of the old King’s Hand. His face was pale and lined,
and he had grown so gaunt that his clothes hung loose upon him, as if
they had been cut for a much larger man. 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.

He had come to ask a boon, Lord Rogar told the king and queen. Lady
Jocelyn would soon be celebrating her seventh nameday. “She has never
known a mother. My brother’s wives looked after her as much as they were
able, but they favored their own children as mothers will, and now both
of them are gone. 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.”

“It would be our honor and our pleasure,” Queen Alysanne replied.
“Jocelyn is our own sister, we have not forgotten. Our blood.”

Lord Rogar seemed much relieved. “I would ask you to look after my son
as well. Boremund will remain at Storm’s End, in the charge of my
brother Garon. He is a good boy, a strong boy, and he will be a great
lord in time, I do not doubt, but he is only nine. As Your Graces know,
my brother Borys left the stormlands some years ago. He grew sour and
angry after Boremund was born, and things went from bad to worse between
us. Borys was in Myr for a time, and later in Volantis, doing gods know
what…but now he has turned up in Westeros again, in the Red Mountains.
The talk is that he has joined up with the Vulture King, and is raiding
his own people. Garon is an able man, and leal, but he never was a match
for Borys, and Boremund is but a boy. I fear for what may befall him,
and the stormlands, when I am gone.”

That took the king aback. “When you are gone? Why should you be gone?
Where do you mean to go, my lord?”

Lord Rogar’s answering smile showed a glimpse of his old ferocity. “Into
the mountains, Your Grace. My maester says that I am dying. I believe
him. Even before the Shivers there was pain. It has gotten worse since.
He gives me milk of the poppy, and that helps, but I use only a little.
I would not sleep away what life remains to me. Nor would I die abed,
bleeding out of my arse. I mean to find my brother Borys and deal with
him, and with this Vulture King as well. A fool’s errand, Garon calls
it. He is not wrong. But when I die, I want to die with my axe in my
hand, screaming a curse. Do I have your leave, Your Grace?”

Moved by his old friend’s words, King Jaehaerys rose and descended from
the Iron Throne to clap Lord Rogar by the shoulder. “Your brother is a
traitor, and this vulture—I will not call him king—has vexed our marches
long enough. You have my leave, my lord. And more than that, you have my
sword.”

The king was true to his word. 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. The smallfolk
of the time called it Lord Rogar’s War, and that name is far more apt.
Whilst the Lord of Storm’s End led five hundred men into the mountains,
Jaehaerys Targaryen took to the air, on Vermithor. “He calls himself a
vulture,” the king said, “but he does not fly. He hides. He should call
himself the gopher.” He was not wrong. The first

Vulture King had commanded armies, leading thousands of men into battle.
The second was no more than an upjumped raider, the minor son of a minor
house with a few hundred followers who shared his taste for robbery and
rape. He knew the mountains well, however, and when pursued he would
simply disappear, to reappear at will. Men who came hunting him did so
at their peril, for he was skilled at ambuscade as well.

None of his tricks availed him against a foe who could hunt him from
above, however. Legend claimed the Vulture King had an impregnable
mountain fastness, hidden in the clouds. Jaehaerys found no secret lair,
only a dozen rude camps scattered here and there. One by one, Vermithor
flamed them all, leaving the Vulture only ashes to return to. 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. Yet still they came on, undaunted. 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. 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.

In the end, they found their foes. Borys Baratheon did not know the
mountain’s hidden ways as the Dornish did, so he was the first to be
cornered. Lord Rogar’s men made short work of his own, but as the
brothers came face-to-face, King Jaehaerys descended from the sky. “I
would not have you named a kinslayer, my lord,” His Grace told his
former Hand. “The traitor is mine.”

Ser Borys laughed to hear it. “Rather name me a kingslayer than him a
kinslayer!” he shouted, as he rushed the king. But Jaehaerys had
Blackfyre in hand, and he had not forgotten the lessons he had learned
in the yard on Dragonstone. Borys Baratheon died at the king’s feet,
from a cut to his neck that near took his head off.

  []

The Vulture King’s turn came the new full moon. Brought to bay in a
burned lair where he had hoped to find refuge, he resisted to the end,
showering the king’s men with spears and arrows. “This one is mine,”
Rogar Baratheon told His Grace when the mountain king was led before
them in fetters. At his command, the outlaw’s chains were struck off and
he was given a spear and shield. Lord Rogar faced him with his axe. “If
he kills me, let him go free.”

The Vulture proved sadly unequal to that task. 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.

When it was done, Lord Rogar seemed weary. “It seems I will not die with
axe in hand after all,” he told the king sadly. Nor did he. Rogar
Baratheon, Lord of Storm’s End and one-time Hand of the King and Lord
Protector of the Realm, died at Storm’s End half a year later, in the
presence of his maester, his septon, his brother Ser Garon, and his son
and heir, Boremund.

Lord Rogar’s War had lasted less than half a year, begun and won
entirely in 61 AC. With the Vulture King eliminated, raiding fell off
sharply along the Dornish Marches for a time. As accounts of the
campaign spread through the Seven Kingdoms, even the most martial of
lords gained a new respect for their young king. Any lingering

doubts had been dispelled; Jaehaerys Targaryen was not his father,
Aenys. For the king himself, the war was healing. “Against the Shivers I
was helpless,” he confessed to Septon Barth. “Against the Vulture, I was
a king again.”

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.

Prince Aemon was seven years of age, a boy as tall and handsome as he
was modest. He still trained every morning in the yard with Prince
Baelon; the two brothers were fast friends, and evenly matched. Aemon
was taller and stronger, Baelon quicker and fiercer. Their contests were
so spirited that they oft drew crowds of onlookers. Serving men and
washerwomen, household knights and squires, maesters and septons and
stableboys, they would gather in the yard to cheer on one prince or the
other. 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. 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.

That same year, the gods blessed Jaehaerys and Alysanne with yet another
child, a daughter they named Maegelle. 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. Now it was
Alyssa’s turn to bristle at having “the baby” clinging to her skirts.
She evaded her as best she could, and Baelon laughed at her fury.

We have already touched upon several of Jaehaerys’s achievements. 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. He had given King’s Landing cobblestones,
cisterns, and fountains. 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.

“My lords,” he told the council, “when the queen and I go forth on our
progresses, we go on Vermithor and Silverwing. When we look down from
the clouds, we see cities and castles, hills and swamps,

rivers and streams and lakes. We see market towns and fishing villages,
old forests, mountains, moors, and meadows, flocks of sheep and fields
of grain, old battlefields, ruined towers, lichyards and septs. There is
much and more to see in these Seven Kingdoms of ours. Do you know what I
do not see?” The king slapped the table hard. “Roads, my lord. I do not
see roads. I see some ruts, if I fly low enough. I see some game trails,
and here and there a footpath by a stream. But I do not see any proper
roads. My lords, I will have roads!”

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. 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. Even the children of the forest had paths
they followed, when they moved from place to place beneath their trees.

  []

Yet the roads as they existed were abysmal. Narrow, muddy, rutted,
crooked, they wandered through hills and woods and over streams without
plan or purpose. Only a handful of those streams were bridged. River
fords were often guarded by men-at-arms who demanded coin or kind for
the right to cross. Some of the lords whose lands the roads passed
through maintained them after a fashion, but

many more did not. A rainstorm would wash them out. Robber knights and
broken men preyed upon the travelers who used them. Before Maegor, the
Poor Fellows would provide a certain amount of protection to common folk
upon the roads (when they were not robbing them themselves). After the
destruction of the Stars, the realm’s byways became more dangerous than
ever. Even great lords traveled with an escort.

To correct all these ills in a single reign would have been impossible,
but Jaehaerys was determined to make a start. King’s Landing, it must be
remembered, was very young as cities go. 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. Not surprisingly, few roads of any note begin or end in
modest fishing villages. 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. Aside from that,
there was nothing. No roads connected the king’s seat with the great
castles and cities of the land. King’s Landing was a port, far more
accessible by sea than land.

That was where Jaehaerys would begin. The wood south of the river was
old forest, dense and overgrown; fine for hunting, poor for travel. He
commanded that a road be cut through it, to connect King’s Landing with
Storm’s End. 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. The kingsroad, the smallfolk named it—the longest and most
costly of Jaehaerys’s roads, the first begun, the first completed.

Others followed: the roseroad, the ocean road, the river road, the
goldroad. Some had existed for centuries, in ruder form, but Jaehaerys
would remake them beyond all recognition, filling ruts, spreading
gravel, bridging streams. Other roads his men created anew. 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 Tyrell—aided and
abetted by his clever wife, “the apple counter”—proved almost as able as
the Lord of Air had been. Mile by mile, league by league, the roads
grew, for decades to come. “He bound the land together, and made of
seven kingdoms, one,” read the words on the plinth of the Old

King’s monument that stands at the Citadel of Oldtown.

Mayhaps the Seven smiled on his work as well, for they continued to
bless Jaehaerys and Alysanne with children. In 63 AC the king and queen
celebrated the birth of Vaegon, their third son and seventh child. A
year later came another daughter, Daella. Three years hence, Princess
Saera came into the world, red-faced and squalling. Another princess
arrived in 71 AC, when the queen gave birth to her tenth child and sixth
daughter, the beautiful Viserra. 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.

Prince Vaegon was as unlike his elder brothers as night to day. Never
robust, he was a quiet boy with wary eyes. Other children, and even some
of the lords of the court, found him sour. Though no coward, he took no
pleasure in the rough play of the squires and pages, or the heroics of
his father’s knights. He preferred the library to the yard, and could
oft be found there reading.

Princess Daella, the next oldest, was delicate and shy. Easily
frightened and quick to cry, she did not speak her first word until she
was almost two…and even thereafter she was tongue-tied more oft than
not. 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.

Princess Saera, three years younger, was a trial from the very start;
tempestuous, demanding, disobedient. The first word she spoke was no,
and she said it often and loudly. She refused to be weaned until past
the age of four. 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.
“Seven save us,” Alysanne whispered to the king one night, “when I look
at her I see Aerea.” Fierce and stubborn, Saera Targaryen thrived upon
attention and sulked when she did not receive it.

The youngest of the four, Princess Viserra, had a will of her own as
well, but she never screamed and certainly never cried. Sly was one word
used to describe her. Vain was another. Viserra was beautiful, all men
agreed, blessed with the deep purple eyes and silver-gold hair of a

true Targaryen, with flawless white skin, fine features, and a grace
that was somehow eerie and unsettling in one so young. When one
stammering young squire told her she was a goddess, she agreed.

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 End. 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.
“Alyssa is for Baelon,” she declared. “She has been following him around
since she could walk. They are as close as you and I were at their age.”

Two years later, in 70 AC, Aemon and Jocelyn were joined in a ceremony
that rivaled the Golden Wedding for its splendor. 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. Prince Aemon was one year younger at
fifteen, but all agreed that they made a handsome couple. 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. “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.

In 72 AC, a tourney was held at Duskendale in honor of young Lord
Darklyn’s wedding to a daughter of Theomore Manderly. Both of the young
princes attended, together with their sister Alyssa, and competed in the
squire’s melee. Prince Aemon emerged victorious, in part by dint of
hammering his brother into submission. Later he distinguished himself in
the lists as well, and was awarded his knight’s spurs in recognition of
his skills. He was seventeen years of age. 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.
His mount was blood-red Caraxes, fiercest of all the young dragons in
the Dragonpit. The Dragonkeepers, who knew the denizens of the pit
better than anyone, called him the Blood Wyrm.

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. Both of the strong
sons he had once boasted of had died before him, so it fell to his
grandson Edric to succeed him.

Wherever Prince Aemon went, whatever Prince Aemon did, Prince Baelon
would not be far behind, as the wags at court oft observed. The truth of
that was proved in 73 AC, when Baelon the Brave followed his brother
into knighthood. 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. Arrayed as a mystery knight and calling himself the Silver
Fool, the young prince overthrew Lord Rowan, Ser Alyn Ashford, both
Fossoway twins, and Lord Oakheart’s own heir, Ser Denys, before falling
to Ser Rickard Redwyne. After helping him to his feet, Ser Rickard
unmasked him, bade him kneel, and knighted him on the spot.

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. Never one to be overshadowed, he had long
since chosen the dragon he wished to mount, and now he claimed her.
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.

“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. “It is only fitting that I give one back.” Princess
Maegelle was ten years of age, and eager to take the vows. A quiet,
studious girl, she was said to read from The Seven-Pointed Star every
night before sleep.

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. 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. This
time, however, the child came early, after a long

and difficult labor that exhausted the queen, and made her maesters fear
for her life. Gaemon was a scrawny thing as well, barely half the size
his brother Vaegon had been at birth ten years earlier. The queen
eventually recovered, though sad to say the child did not. Prince Gaemon
died a few days into the new year, not quite three moons old.

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. Septa Lyra, her confidant since her days on Dragonstone, assured
her that she was not to blame. “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.”

That was not the only sorrow House Targaryen was to suffer in 73 AC. It
will be remembered that this was also the year that Queen Rhaena died at
Harrenhal.

Near year’s end, a shameful revelation came to light that shocked both
court and city. 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. Worse, he had
taken not one but three wives, keeping each woman ignorant of the other
two and fathering no fewer than sixteen children on the three of them.

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. Jaehaerys and Alysanne had been especially fond of Lucamore Strong
and were mortified to learn that he had played them both for fools.

His brothers of the Kingsguard were even angrier. 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. 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.

When dragged before the Iron Throne, Ser Lucamore fell to his knees,
confessed his guilt, and begged the king for mercy. Jaehaerys might well
have granted him same, but the errant knight made the

fatal error of appending “for the sake of my wives and children” to his
plea. As Septon Barth observed, this was tantamount to throwing his
crimes in the king’s face.

“When I rose against my uncle Maegor, two of his Kingsguard abandoned
him to fight for me,” Jaehaerys responded. “They might well have
believed they would be allowed to keep their white cloaks once I’d won,
perhaps even be honored with lordships and a higher place at court. I
sent them to the Wall instead. I wanted no oathbreakers around me, then
or now. 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. You also swore to take no wife, father no children, and
remain chaste. If you could shrug aside the second vow so easily, why
should I believe that you would honor the first?”

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. You dishonored your marriage vows as well, not once but thrice.
None of these women are lawfully wed, so these children I see behind you
are bastards one and all. They are the true innocents in this, ser. 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. To that extent they share your guilt, as does whatever
drunken septon you found to marry you. For them some mercy may be
warranted, but for you…I will not have you near my lord, ser.”

There was no more to be said. 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. “The Night’s Watch will require vows from you as well,” His Grace
warned. “See that you keep them, or the next thing you lose shall be
your head.”

Jaehaerys left it to his queen to deal with the three families. Alysanne
decreed that Ser Lucamore’s sons might join their father on the Wall, if
they wished. The two oldest boys chose to do so. The girls would be
accepted as novices by the Faith, if that was their desire. Only one
elected that path. The other children were to remain with their mothers.
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 the

Lord of Harrenhal not half a year earlier. The second wife and her
offspring would go to Driftmark, to be fostered by Daemon Velaryon, Lord
of the Tides. The third wife, whose children were the youngest (one
still on her breast), would be sent down to Storm’s End, where Garon
Baratheon and young Lord Boremund would see to their upbringing. None
were ever again to call themselves Strong, the queen decreed; from this
day they would bear the bastard names Rivers, Waters, and Storm. “For
that gift, you may thank your father, that hollow knight.”

The shame that Lucamore the Lusty visited on the Kingsguard and the
Crown was not the only difficulty Jaehaerys and Alysanne faced in

73 AC. Let us pause now for a moment, and consider the vexing question
of their seventh- and eighthborn children, Prince Vaegon and Princess
Daella.

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
struggle would torment her for years, bring about no end of conflict
between her and the children (her daughters in particular), drive her
and the king apart, and in the end bring her so much grief and pain that
for a time Her Grace contemplated renouncing her marriage to spend the
rest of her life with the silent sisters.

The frustrations started with Vaegon and Daella. 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. Their
older siblings Baelon and Alyssa had become inseparable, and plans were
already being made for them to wed. Why not Vaegon and Daella as well?
“Be sweet to your little sister,” King Jaehaerys told the prince when he
was five. “One day she will be your Alysanne.”

As the children grew, however, it became apparent that the two of them
were not ideally suited. There was no warmth between them, as the queen
saw plainly. Vaegon tolerated his sister’s presence, but never sought it
out. Daella seemed frightened of her sour, bookish brother, who would
sooner read than play. The prince thought the princess stupid; she
thought him mean. “They are only children,” Jaehaerys said when Alysanne
brought the problem to his attention. “They will warm to one another in
time.” They never did. If anything, their

mutual dislike only deepened.

The matter came to a head in 73 AC. Prince Vaegon was ten years old and
Princess Daella nine when one of the queen’s companions, new to the Red
Keep, teasingly asked the two of them when they would be married. Vaegon
reacted as if he had been slapped. “I would never marry her,” the boy
said, in front of half the court. “She can barely read. She should find
some lord in need of stupid children, for that’s the only sort he will
ever have of her.”

Princess Daella, as might be expected, burst into tears and fled the
hall, with her mother, the queen, rushing after her. It fell to her
sister Alyssa, at thirteen three years Vaegon’s elder, to pour a flagon
of wine over his head. Even that did not make the prince repent. “You
are wasting Arbor gold,” was all he said before stalking from the hall
to change his clothing.

Plainly, the king and queen concluded afterward, some other bride must
needs be found for Vaegon. Briefly, they considered their younger
daughters. Princess Saera was six years old in 73 AC, Princess Viserra
only two. “Vaegon has never looked twice at either one of them,”
Alysanne told the king. “I am not sure he is aware that they exist.
Perhaps if some maester wrote about them in a book…”

“I shall tell Grand Maester Elysar to commence tomorrow,” the king
japed. Then he said, “He is only ten. He does not see girls, no more
than they see him, but that will change soon. He is comely enough, and a
prince of Westeros, third in line to the Iron Throne. In a few more
years maidens will be fluttering around him like butterflies and
blushing if he deigns to look their way.”

The queen was unconvinced. 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. As his mother, Her Grace was mayhaps blind to
these flaws, but not to his nature. “I fear for any butterfly that comes
fluttering round Vaegon. He is like to squash it flat beneath a book.”

“He spends too much time in the library,” Jaehaerys said. “Let me speak
to Baelon. We will get him out into the yard, put a sword in his hand
and a shield on his arm, that will set him right.”

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. It
did not set him right. Vaegon hated it. He was a miserable fighter, and
he had a gift for making everyone around him miserable as well, even
Baelon the Brave.

Baelon persisted for a year, at the king’s insistence. “The more he
drills, the worse he looks,” the Spring Prince confessed. 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. The
princess had not forgotten the incident of the Arbor gold. 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. Shamed beyond endurance, Vaegon threw down his sword and ran
from the yard, never to return.

We shall return to Prince Vaegon, and his sister Daella, in due course,
but let us turn now to a joyful event. 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. Princess
Rhaenys was born on the seventh day of the seventh moon of the year,
which the septons judged to be highly auspicious. Large and fierce, she
had the black hair of her Baratheon mother and the pale violet eyes of
her Targaryen father. As the firstborn child of the Prince of
Dragonstone, many hailed her as next in line for the Iron Throne after
her father. When Queen Alysanne held her in her arms for the first time,
she was heard to call the little girl “our queen to be.”

In breeding, as in so much else, Baelon the Brave was not far behind his
brother Aemon. 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. The bride was fifteen, the groom eighteen. 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. 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. “I mounted him and took him for a ride,” she declared the
morning after the bedding, “and I

mean to do the same tonight. I love to ride.”

Nor was her brave prince the only mount the princess was to claim that
year. Like her brothers before her, Alyssa Targaryen meant to be a
dragonrider, and sooner rather than later. Aemon had flown at seventeen,
Baelon at sixteen. Alyssa meant to do it at fifteen. According to the
tales set down by the Dragonkeepers, it was all that they could do to
persuade her not to claim Balerion. “He is old and slow, Princess,” they
had to tell her. “Surely you want a swifter mount.” In the end they
prevailed, and Princess Alyssa ascended into the sky upon Meleys, a
splendid scarlet she-dragon, never before ridden. “Red maidens, the two
of us,” the princess boasted, laughing, “but now we’ve both been
mounted.”

The princess was seldom long away from the Dragonpit after that day.
Flying was the second sweetest thing in the world, she would oft say,
and the very sweetest thing could not be mentioned in the company of
ladies. 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.

Meanwhile, the problem of their brother Vaegon persisted, to the queen’s
frustration. The king had not been entirely wrong about the butterflies.
As the years passed and Vaegon matured, young ladies at the court began
to pay him some attention. 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.
But he took no special notice of any of them either. Books remained his
only passion: history, cartography, mathematics, languages. 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 prince kept the
book, but showed no change in behavior.

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. “Do you think mayhaps Vaegon might have the
makings of a maester?”

“No,” Elysar replied bluntly. “Can you see him instructing some lord’s
children how to read and write and do simple sums? Does he

keep a raven in his chamber, or any sort of bird? Can you imagine him
removing a man’s crushed leg, or delivering a baby? All these are
required of a maester.” The Grand Maester paused, then said, “Vaegon is
no maester…but he could well have the makings of an archmaester in him.
The Citadel is the greatest repository of knowledge in the known world.
Send him there. Mayhaps he will find himself in the library. That, or
he’ll get so lost amongst the books that you never need to concern
yourselves with him again.”

His words struck home. 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. “The Citadel will take charge of you,” His Grace said.
“It is for you to determine what becomes of you.” The prince responded
curtly, as was his wont. “Yes, Father. Good.” Afterward Jaehaerys told
the queen that he thought Vaegon had almost smiled.

Prince Baelon had not ceased smiling since his marriage. When not aloft,
Baelon and Alyssa spent every hour together, most oft in their
bedchamber. 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. And soon enough, the much-hoped-for result appeared, and
Alyssa Targaryen grew great with child. In 77 AC she gave her brave
prince a son they named Viserys. 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.” 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. Afterward
she claimed Viserys giggled the whole while.

Bearing and delivering a child may be a joy for a young woman of
ten-and-seven, like the Princess Alyssa, but it is quite another matter
for one of forty, like her mother, Queen Alysanne. The joy was therefore
not entirely unalloyed when Her Grace was found to be pregnant once
again. Prince Valerion was born in 77 AC, after another troubled labor
that saw Alysanne confined to her bed for half a year. Like his brother
Gaemon four years earlier, he was a small and sickly babe, and never
thrived. Half a dozen wet nurses came and went to no avail. In 78 AC,
Valerion died, a fortnight short of his first nameday. The queen took
his passing with resignation. “I am forty-two years old,” she told the
king. “You must be content with the children I have given you. I am more
suited to be a grandmother than a mother now, I

fear.”

King Jaehaerys did not share her certainty. “Our mother, Queen Alyssa,
was forty-six when she gave birth to Jocelyn,” he pointed out to Grand
Maester Elysar. “The gods may not be done with us.”

He was not wrong. The very next year, the Grand Maester informed Queen
Alysanne that she was once more with child, to her surprise and dismay.
Princess Gael was born in 80 AC, when the queen was forty- four. 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. Nor did she.
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. When she reached her first nameday,
still healthy if not strong, Queen Alysanne thanked the gods.

She was thankful as well that year to have finally arranged a marriage
for her eighthborn child, the Princess Daella. With Vaegon settled,
Daella had been next in line, but the tearful princess presented an
entirely different sort of problem. “My little flower,” was how the
queen described her. Like Alysanne herself, Daella was small—on her
toes, she stood five feet two inches—and there was a childish aspect to
her that led everyone who met her to think she was younger than her age.
Unlike Alysanne, she was delicate as well, in ways the queen had never
been. Her mother had been fearless; Daella always seemed to be afraid.
She had a kitten that she loved until he scratched her; then she would
not go near a cat. The dragons terrified her, even Silverwing. The
mildest scolding would reduce her to tears. 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. His black skin had made her
take him for a demon.

Cruel though her brother Vaegon’s words had been, there was some truth
to them. Daella was not clever, even her septa had to admit. She learned
to read after a fashion, but haltingly, and without full comprehension.
She could not seem to commit even the simplest prayers to memory. She
had a sweet voice, but was afraid to sing; she always got the words
wrong. She loved flowers, but was frightened of gardens; a bee had
almost stung her once.

Jaehaerys, even more than Alysanne, despaired of her. “She will not even
speak to a boy. How is she to marry? 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.” The queen always
rose to her defense. “Daella is sweet and kind and gentle. She has such
a tender heart. Give me time, and I will find a lord to cherish her. Not
every Targaryen needs to wield a sword and ride a dragon.”

In the years that followed her first flowering, Daella Targaryen drew
the eye of many a young lordling, as expected. She was a king’s
daughter, and maidenhood had only made her prettier. Her mother was at
work as well, arranging matters in every way she could to place suitable
marriage prospects before the princess.

At thirteen Daella was sent to Driftmark to meet Corlys Velaryon, the
grandson to the Lord of the Tides. Ten years her elder, the future Sea
Snake was already a celebrated mariner and captain of ships. Daella
became seasick crossing Blackwater Bay, however, and on her return
complained that “he likes his boats better than he likes me.” (She was
not wrong in that.)

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. By year’s end Daella had
decided she hated all of them.

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. 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. 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. 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. “They don’t believe in
the gods,” she told her mother, horrified. “I’d go to hell.”

Her sixteenth nameday was fast approaching, and with it her womanhood.
Queen Alysanne was at her wit’s end, and the king had lost his patience.
On the first day of the 80th year since Aegon’s

Conquest, he told the queen he wanted Daella wed before the year’s end.
“If she wants I can find a hundred men and line them up before her
naked, and she can pick the one she likes,” he said. “I would sooner she
wed a lord, but if she prefers a hedge knight or a merchant or Pate the
Pig Boy, I am past the point of caring, so long as she picks someone.”

“A hundred naked men would frighten her,” Alysanne said, unamused.

  “A hundred naked ducks would frighten her,” the king replied.

“And if she will not wed?” the queen asked. “Maegelle says the Faith
will not want a girl who cannot read her prayers.”

“There are still the silent sisters,” said Jaehaerys. “Must it come to
that? Find her someone. Someone gentle, as she is. A kind man, who will
never raise his voice or his hand to her, who will speak to her sweetly
and tell her she is precious and protect her…against dragons and horses
and bees and kittens and boys with boils and whatever else she fears.”

  “I shall do my best, Your Grace,” Queen Alysanne promised.

In the end it did not require a hundred men, naked or clothed. 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. 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.
Whichever man she married, Daella would have wealth and position.

Boremund Baratheon was the most imposing of the candidates. At
eight-and-twenty, the Lord of Storm’s End was the image of his father,
brawny and powerful, with a booming laugh, a great black beard, and a
mane of thick black hair. 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.

Ser Tymond Lannister was the wealthiest contender, heir to Casterly Rock
and all its gold. 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. The princess would be well protected in Casterly

Rock; there was no castle more impregnable in all Westeros. Weighed
against Lannister gold and Lannister beauty, however, was Ser Tymond’s
own reputation. He was overly fond of women, it was said, and even more
fond of wine.

Last of the three, and least in many eyes, was Rodrik Arryn, Lord of the
Eyrie and Protector of the Vale. 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. In the Vale he had been an able lord, strong but
just, affable, open-handed, loved by the smallfolk and his lords
bannermen alike. 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.

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. 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.
I know he will protect her.”

To the astonishment of every woman at the court, save mayhaps the queen,
Princess Daella chose Lord Rodrik to be her husband. “He seems good and
wise, like Father,” she told Queen Alysanne, “and he has four children!
I’m to be their new mother!” What Her Grace thought of that outburst is
not recorded. Grand Maester Elysar’s account of the day says only, “Gods
be good.”

Theirs would not be a long betrothal. As the king had wished, Princess
Daella and Lord Rodrik were wed before year’s end. It was a small
ceremony in the sept at Dragonstone, attended only by close friends and
kin; larger crowds made the princess desperately uncomfortable. Nor was
there a bedding. “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.

Afterward, Lord Arryn took his princess back to the Eyrie. “My children
need to meet their new mother, and I want to show the Vale to Daella.
Life is slower there, and quieter. She will like that. I swear to you,
Your Grace, she will be safe and happy.”

And so she was, for a time. The eldest of Lord Rodrik’s four children
from his first wife was a daughter, Elys, three years older than her new
stepmother. The two of them clashed from the first. Daella doted on the
three younger children, however, and they seemed to adore her in turn.
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.”
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.

Prince Aemon reached his twenty-sixth nameday in 81 AC, and had proved
himself more than able in both war and peace. 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.
Accordingly, King Jaehaerys named the prince his justiciar and master of
laws in place of Rodrik Arryn.

“I will leave the making of law to you, brother,” Prince Baelon
declared, whilst drinking to Prince Aemon’s appointment. “I would sooner
make sons.” 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 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.

In the Vale, however, her sister Daella was not doing near as well.
After a year and a half of marriage, a different sort of message arrived
at the Red Keep by raven. It was very short, and written in Daella’s own
uncertain hand. “I am with child,” it said. “Mother, please come. I am
frightened.”

Queen Alysanne was frightened too, once she read those words. She
mounted Silverwing within days and flew swiftly to the Vale, alighting
first in Gulltown before proceeding on to the Gates of the Moon, and
then skyward to the Eyrie. It was 82 AC, and Her Grace arrived three
moons before Daella was due to give birth.

Though the princess professed delight that her mother had come, and
apologized for sending her such a “silly” letter, her fear was palpable.
She burst into tears for the slightest reason, and sometimes for no
reason at all, Lord Rodrik said. His daughter Elys was

dismissive, telling Her Grace, “You would think she was the first woman
ever to have a baby,” but Alysanne was concerned. Daella was so
delicate, and she was carrying very heavy. “She is such a small girl for
such a big belly,” she wrote the king. “I would be frightened too, if I
were her.”

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. “It will be fine,” she told her daughter, half a
hundred times. “She will be a girl, wait and see. A daughter. I know it.
Everything will be fine.”

She was half right. Aemma Arryn, the daughter of Lord Rodrik and
Princess Daella, came into the world a fortnight early, after a long and
troubled labor. “It hurts,” the princess screamed through half the
night. “It hurts so much.” But it is said she smiled when her daughter
was laid against her breast.

Everything was far from fine, however. Childbed fever set in soon after
birth. Though Princess Daella desperately wished to nurse her child, she
had no milk, and a wet nurse was sent for. As her fever rose, the
maester decreed that she might not even hold her babe, which set the
princess to weeping. She wept until she fell asleep, but in her sleep
she kicked wildly and tossed and turned, her fever rising ever higher.
By morning she was gone. She was eighteen years of age.

Lord Rodrik wept as well, and begged the queen’s permission to bury his
precious princess in the Vale, but Alysanne refused. “She was the blood
of the dragon. She will be burned, and her ashes interred on Dragonstone
beside her sister Daenerys.”

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. The gods hold us all in their hands, and
life and death are theirs to give and take away, but men in their pride
look for others to blame. Alysanne Targaryen, in her grief, blamed
herself and Lord Arryn and the Eyrie’s maester for their parts in her
daughter’s demise…but most of all, she blamed Jaehaerys. If he had not
insisted that Daella wed, that she pick someone before year’s end… what
harm would it have done for her to stay a little girl for another year
or two or ten? “She was not old enough or strong enough to bear a
child,” she told His Grace back at King’s Landing. “We ought never have
pushed her into marriage.”

  It is not recorded how the king replied.

The 83rd year after Aegon’s Conquest is remembered as the year of the
Fourth Dornish War…better known amongst the smallfolk as Prince Morion’s
Madness, or the War of the Hundred Candles. The old Prince of Dorne had
died, and his son, Morion Martell, had succeeded him in Sunspear. 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. Determined to
avenge this stain on Dornish honor, the prince planned his own invasion
of the Seven Kingdoms.

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. Rather than attack by way of
the Prince’s Pass, he planned to come by sea. He would assemble his
hosts at Ghost Hill and the Tor, load them on ships, and sail them
across the Sea of Dorne to take the stormlanders by surprise. If he was
defeated or driven back, so be it…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.
(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.)

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. Though it took him the best part of a
year, eventually the ships came straggling in, and the prince and his
spearmen were loaded aboard. 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. Every ship in
his fleet was therefore manned with crossbowmen and equipped with
massive scorpions of the sort that had felled Meraxes. If the Targaryens
dared to send dragons against him, he would fill the air with bolts and
kill them all.

The folly of Prince Morion’s plans cannot be overstated. His hopes of
taking the Iron Throne unawares were laughable, for a start. Not only

did 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. A few coins changing hands was all it took. By the
time Morion set sail, the king had known of his attack for half a year.

Boremund Baratheon, Lord of Storm’s End, had been made aware as well,
and was waiting on Cape Wrath to give the Dornishmen a red welcome when
they came ashore. He would never have the chance. 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. 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. 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. One by one the ships went up in
gouts of flame. They were still burning when the sun went down, “like a
hundred candles floating on the sea.” 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.

The Fourth Dornish War was fought and won in a single day. 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. Back in King’s Landing, King Jaehaerys and his sons
received a riotous welcome. Even Aegon the Conqueror had never won a war
without losing a man.

Prince Baelon had another cause for celebration as well. His wife,
Alyssa, was again with child. This time, he told his brother Aemon, he
was praying for a girl.

Princess Alyssa was brought to bed again in 84 AC. After a long and
difficult labor, she gave Prince Baelon a third son, a boy they named
Aegon, after the Conqueror. “They call me Baelon the Brave,” the prince
told his wife at her bedside, “but you are far braver than me. I would
sooner fight a dozen battles than do what you’ve just done.” Alyssa
laughed at him. “You were made for battles, and I was made for this.
Viserys and Daemon and Aegon, that’s three. As soon as I am well, let’s
make another. I want to give you twenty sons. An army of

your own!”

It was not to be. Alyssa Targaryen had a warrior’s heart in a woman’s
body, and her strength failed her. She never fully recovered from
Aegon’s birth, and died within the year at only four-and-twenty. Nor did
Prince Aegon long survive her. He perished half a year later, still shy
of his first nameday. 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.

  []

And now, I fear, we must turn our attention to one of the most troubling
and distasteful chapters in the long reign of King Jaehaerys and Queen
Alysanne: the matter of their ninthborn child, the Princess Saera.

  Born in 67 AC, three years after Daella, Saera had all the courage

that her sister lacked, along with a voracious hunger…for milk, for
food, for affection, for praise. 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. “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.
“Seven save us all when she is older. The Dragonkeepers had best lock up
the dragons.” He had no notion how prophetic those words would be.

Septon Barth was more reflective, as he observed the princess at the age
of twelve in 79 AC. “She is the king’s daughter, and well aware of it.
Servants see to her every need, though not always as quickly as she
might like. Great lords and handsome knights show her every courtesy,
the ladies of the court defer to her, girls of her own age vie with one
another to be her friends. All of this Saera takes as her due. If she
were the king’s firstborn, or better still his only child, she would be
well content. Instead she finds herself the ninthborn, with six living
siblings who are older than her and even more adored. 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
Daella…when does a day go by when Daella is not in need of comfort? And
whilst she is being soothed, Saera is being ignored. Such a fierce
little thing she is, they say, she has no need of comfort. They are
wrong in that, I fear. All men need comfort.”

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. 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.
She was forever sneaking cats into her sister Daella’s bedchamber,
knowing that she was frightened of them. Once she filled Daella’s
chamberpot with bees. She slipped into White Sword Tower when she was
ten, stole all the white cloaks she could find, and dyed them pink. At
seven, she learned when and how to steal into the kitchens to make off
with cakes and pies and other treats. Before she was eleven, she was
stealing wine and ale instead. By twelve, she was like as not to arrive
drunk when summoned to the sept for prayer.

The king’s half-witted fool, Tom Turnip, was the victim of many of her
japes, and her unwitting catspaw for others. Once, before a great feast
where many lords and ladies were to be in attendance, she

persuaded Tom that it would be much funnier if he performed naked. It
was not well received. 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. “She is an evil child,” her septa said of her afterward.
Princess Saera had half a dozen septas and as many bedmaids before she
turned thirteen.

This is not to say that the princess was without her virtues. Her
maesters affirmed that she was very clever, as bright as her brother
Vaegon in her own way. She was certainly pretty, taller than her sister
Daella and not half so delicate, and as strong and quick and spirited as
her sister Alyssa. When she wanted to be charming, it was hard to resist
her. 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). Queen Alysanne was far less
gullible, however, and Septon Barth tells us that Saera’s sisters all
misliked her to various degrees.

Maidenhood became her, and Saera truly came into her own after her first
flowering. 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. 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.” That year a trader from the Summer
Islands came to court. Far from shrieking at the sight of him, as Daella
had, Saera said she might like to marry him too.

By fifteen she had put such idle fantasies aside. Why dream of distant
monarchs when she could have as many squires, knights, and likely lords
as she desired? Dozens danced attendance on her, but three soon emerged
as favorites. 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. The princess had female
favorites as well: Perianne Moore and Alys Turnberry, two maids of her
own age, became her dearest friends. Saera called them Pretty Peri and
Sweetberry. For more than a year, the three maids and the three young
lords were inseparable at every feast and ball. They hunted and hawked
together too, and once

sailed across Blackwater Bay to Dragonstone. When the three lords rode
at rings or crossed swords in the yards, the three maids were there to
cheer them on.

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. They would not need to scour the realm to find
a match for Saera, when three such promising young men were here at
hand. Queen Alysanne was less convinced. “Saera is clever, but not
wise,” she told the king. 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. “And I do not like this Stinger.
I’ve heard he sired a bastard in the Reach, and another here in King’s
Landing.”

Jaehaerys remained unconcerned. “It is not as if Saera were ever alone
with any of them. There are always people about, serving men and maids,
grooms and men-at-arms. What mischief can they get up to with so many
eyes around them?”

  He did not like the answer, when it came.

One of Saera’s japes was their undoing. 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. 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. Jonah Mooton, Red Roy Connington, and
Stinger Beesbury were amongst those patrons, each one drunker than the
last. They had thought it would be funny to see old Turnip do the deed,
Red Roy admitted. Then Jonah Mooton laughed and said the jape had all
been Saera’s notion, and what a funny girl she was.

The watchmen rescued the hapless fool and escorted him back to the Red
Keep. The three lords they brought before Ser Robert Redwyne, their
commander. Ser Robert delivered them to the king, ignoring Stinger’s
threats and Connington’s clumsy attempt to bribe him.

“It is never pleasant to lance a boil,” Grand Maester Elysar wrote of
the affair. “You never know how much pus will come out, or how badly it
will smell.” The pus that burst forth from the Blue Pearl would smell
very badly indeed.

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. They
confessed to making off with Tom Turnip and bringing him to the Blue
Pearl. None of them said a word concerning Princess Saera. When His
Grace ordered Mooton to repeat what he had said about the princess, he
blushed and stammered and claimed the watchmen had misheard. Jaehaerys
finally ordered the three lordlings taken to the dungeons. “Let them
sleep in a black cell tonight, mayhaps they will tell a different tale
come morning.”

It was Queen Alysanne, knowing how close Lady Perianne and Lady Alys had
been to the three lords, who suggested that they be questioned as well.
“Let me speak with them, Your Grace. If they see you up on the throne
glaring down at them, they will be so frightened they will never say a
word.”

The hour was late, and her guardsmen found both girls asleep, sharing a
bed in Lady Perianne’s chambers. The queen had them brought before her
in her solar. Their three young lords were in the dungeons, she told the
girls. If they did not wish to join them, they would tell the truth. It
was all she needed to say. Sweetberry and Pretty Peri stumbled over one
another in their eagerness to confess. Before long both of them were
weeping and pleading for forgiveness. Queen Alysanne let them plead,
never saying a word. She listened, as she had done before at a hundred
women’s courts. Her Grace knew how to listen.

It was just a game at the start, Pretty Peri said. “Saera was teaching
Alys how to kiss, so I asked if she would teach me too. The boys train
at fighting every morning, why shouldn’t we train at kissing? That’s
what girls are meant to do, isn’t it?” Alys Turnberry agreed. “Kissing
was sweet,” she said, “and one night we started kissing with our clothes
off, and that was scary but exciting. We took turns pretending we were
boys. We never meant to be wicked, we were only playing. 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. That’s how it began with Roy and Jonah and
Stinger.” Lady Perianne jumped back in then to say that afterward it was
Stinger who did the training for all of them. “He has two bastards,” she
whispered. “One in the Reach, and one right here on the Street of Silk.
Her mother is a whore at the Blue Pearl.”

That was the only mention of the Blue Pearl. “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.”

“Where were your septas during all of this?” the queen demanded when she
had heard them out. “Where were your maids? And the lords, they would
have been attended. Where were their grooms, their men-at-arms, their
squires and serving men?”

Lady Perianne was confused by the question. “We told them to wait
without,” she said, in the tone of one explaining that the sun rises in
the east. “They’re servants, they do what you tell them. The ones who
knew, they knew to keep quiet. Stinger said he’d have their tongues out
if they talked. And Saera is smarter than the septas.”

That was where Sweetberry broke down, and began to sob and tear at her
dressing gown. 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?

“All you can do tonight is go to bed,” Queen Alysanne told her. “On the
morrow we shall send a septa to you, and you can make confession of your
sins. The Mother will forgive you.”

“My mother won’t,” said Alys Turnberry, but she went as she was told.
Lady Perianne helped her sobbing friend back to her room.

When the queen told him what she had learned, King Jaehaerys could
scarce credit a word of it. Guards were sent forth, and a succession of
squires, grooms, and maids were dragged before the Iron Throne for
questioning. Many of them wound up in the dungeons with their masters,
once their answers had been heard. Dawn had come by the time the last of
them had been led away. Only then did the king and queen send for
Princess Saera.

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. It was never good when the
king received you whilst seated on the Iron Throne. The great hall was
almost empty when she was brought in. Only Grand Maester Elysar and
Septon Barth had been summoned to bear witness. They

spoke 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.

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. 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. “I told them to do it, but I never thought they would,”
she said lightly. “That must have been so funny, Turnip dancing with the
whores.”

  “Not for Tom,” said King Jaehaerys from the Iron Throne.

“He is a fool,” Princess Saera answered, with a shrug. “Fools are meant
to be laughed at, where is the harm in that? Turnip loves it when you
laugh at him.”

“It was a cruel jape,” said Queen Alysanne, “but just now there are
other matters that concern me more. I have been speaking with your…
ladies. Are you aware that Alys Turnberry is with child?”

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. For a moment
Saera was at a loss for words, but only for a moment. Then she gasped
and said, “My Sweetberry? Truly? She…oh, what has she done? Oh, my sweet
little fool.” If Septon Barth’s testimony is to be believed, a tear
rolled down her cheek.

Her mother was not moved. “You know perfectly well what she has done.
What all of you have done. We will have the truth from you now, child.”
And when the princess looked to her father, she found no comfort there.
“Lie to us again, and it will go very much the worse for you,” King
Jaehaerys told his daughter. “Your three lords are in the dungeons, you
ought know, and what you say next may determine where you sleep
tonight.”

Saera crumbled then, and the words came tumbling out one after another
in a rush, a flood that left the princess almost breathless. “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. “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
not

how 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. She took my breath away, this
girl. There was never a mummer in all the land who gave such a
performance, but by the end she was exhausted and afraid, and her mask
slipped.”

“What have you done?” the king said, when at last the princess ran out
of words. “Seven save us, what have you done? Have you given one of
these boys your maidenhead? Tell me true.”

“True?” said Saera. It was in that moment, with that word, that the
contempt came out. “No. I gave it to all three. They all think they were
the first. Boys are such silly fools.”

Jaehaerys was so horrified he could not speak, but the queen kept her
composure. “You are very proud of yourself, I see. A woman grown, and
nearly seven-and-ten. I am sure you think you have been very clever, but
it is one thing to be clever and another to be wise. What do you imagine
will happen now, Saera?”

“I will be married,” the princess said. “Why shouldn’t I be? You were
married at my age. I shall be wedded and bedded, but to whom? Jonah and
Roy both love me, I could take one of them, but they are both such boys.
Stinger does not love me, but he makes me laugh and sometimes makes me
scream. I could marry all three of them, why not? Why should I have just
one husband? The Conqueror had two wives, and Maegor had six or eight.”

She had gone too far. Jaehaerys rose to his feet and descended from the
Iron Throne, his face a mask of rage. “You would compare yourself

to Maegor? Is that who you aspire to be?” His Grace had heard enough.
“Take her back to her bedchamber,” he told his guards, “and keep her
there until I send for her again.”

When the princess heard his words, she rushed toward him, crying,
“Father, Father!” but Jaehaerys turned his back on her, and Gyles
Morrigen caught her by the arm and wrenched her away. She would not go
of her own accord, so the guards were forced to drag her from the hall,
wailing and sobbing and calling for her father.

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. 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. 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. “She is no longer my daughter,” he said
more than once.

Queen Alysanne could not find it in her heart to be so harsh, however.
“She is our daughter,” she told the king. “She must be punished, yes,
but she is still a child, and where there is sin there can be
redemption. 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.”

Her Grace’s words were soft and gentle, and Jaehaerys was moved by them,
Septon Barth tells us. 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. Given time, she might have
softened his stance on Saera as well.

She would not have that time. That very night, Princess Saera sealed her
fate. Instead of remaining in her rooms as she had been instructed, she
slipped away whilst visiting the privy, donned a washerwoman’s robes,
stole a horse from the stables, and escaped the castle. 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.

Alysanne wept when she heard, for she knew her cause was hopeless.
Jaehaerys was hard as stone. “Saera with a dragon,” was all he had to
say. “Would she have taken Balerion as well, I wonder?” This time the
princess was not allowed to return to her own chambers. She was confined
to a tower cell instead, with Jonquil Darke guarding her day and night,
even in the privy.

Hasty marriages were arranged for her sisters in sin. Perianne Moore,
who was not pregnant, was wed to Jonah Mooton. “You played a part in her
ruin, you can be a part of her redemption,” the king told the young
lordling. The marriage proved to be a success, and in time the two
became the lord and lady of Maidenpool. Alys Turnberry, who was
pregnant, presented a harder case, as Red Roy Connington refused to
marry her. “I will not pretend Stinger’s bastard is my son, nor make him
the heir to Griffin’s Roost,” he told the king, defiant. 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. Afterward she was married to
Dunstan Pryor, the Lord of Pebble, an island off the Fingers.

Connington was given a choice between a lifetime in the Night’s Watch or
ten years of exile. 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. 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 harshest punishment was reserved for Braxton Beesbury, the proud
young knight called Stinger. “I could geld you and send you to the
Wall,” Jaehaerys told him. “That was how I served Ser Lucamore, and he
was a better man than you. I could take your father’s lands and castle,
but there would be no justice in that. He had no part in what you did,
no more than your brothers did. We cannot have you spreading tales about
my daughter, though, so we mean to take your tongue. And your nose as
well, I think, so you may not find the maids quite so easy to beguile.
You are far too proud of your skill with sword and lance, so we will
take that away from you as well. We shall break your arms and legs, and
my maesters will make certain that they heal crookedly. You will live
the rest of your sorry life as a cripple. Unless…”

  “Unless?” Beesbury was as white as chalk. “Is there a choice?”

“Any knight accused of wrongdoing has a choice,” the king reminded him.
“You can prove your innocence at hazard of your body.”

“Then I choose trial by combat,” Stinger said. He was by all accounts an
arrogant young man, and sure of his skill at arms. 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?”

“This old man,” announced Jaehaerys Targaryen. “The one whose daughter
you seduced and despoiled.”

They met the next morning at dawn. The heir to Honeyholt was nineteen
years of age, the king forty-nine, but still far from an old man.
Beesbury armed himself with a morningstar, thinking mayhaps that
Jaehaerys would be less accustomed to defending himself against that
weapon. The king bore Blackfyre. Both men were well armored and carried
shields. 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. Jaehaerys took every blow on
his shield, however, contenting himself with defense whilst the younger
man wore himself out. Soon enough the time arrived when Braxton Beesbury
could scarce lift his arm, and then the king moved to the attack. Even
the best of mail is hard-pressed to turn Valyrian steel, and Jaehaerys
knew where every weak point could be found. Stinger was bleeding from
half a dozen wounds when he finally fell. Jaehaerys kicked his shattered
shield away, opened the visor of his helm, laid Blackfyre’s point
against his eye, and drove it deep.

Queen Alysanne did not attend the duel. She told the king she could not
bear the thought that he might die. Princess Saera watched from the
window of her cell. Jonquil Darke, her gaoler, made certain that she did
not turn away.

A fortnight later, Jaehaerys and Alysanne gave another of their
daughters over to the Faith. 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. She would be a novice,
it was announced, with the silent sisters.

Septon Barth, who knew the king’s mind better than most, would later
maintain the sentence was meant to be a lesson. No one could mistake
Saera for her sister Maegelle, least of all her father. She would

never be a septa, much less a silent sister, but she required
punishment, and it was thought that a few years of silent prayer, harsh
discipline, and contemplation would be good for her, that it would set
her on the path to redemption.

That was not a path that Saera Targaryen cared to walk, however. The
princess endured the silence, the cold baths, the scratchy roughspun
robes, the meatless meals. She submitted to having her head shaved and
being scrubbed with horsehair brushes, and when she was disobedient, she
submitted to the cane as well. All this she suffered, for a year and a
half…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 an older sister came upon her during her escape, she knocked the
woman down a flight of steps and leapt over her to the door.

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. It was then
thought that mayhaps she would make her way back to the Red Keep, to beg
pardon from her father. 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.
The truth did not come out until a year later, when the former princess
was seen in a Lysene pleasure garden, still clad as a novice. Queen
Alysanne wept to hear it. “They have made our daughter into a whore,”
she said. “She always was,” the king replied.

Jaehaerys Targaryen celebrated his fiftieth nameday in 84 AC. 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. He had grown thinner, almost gaunt, and there was more
grey than gold in his beard now, and in his hair. For the first time men
were calling him “the Old King” rather than “the Conciliator.” 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.
“If there is another war,” he told the two of them, “it will be for you
to fight it. I have my roads to finish.”

“He was better with roads than with daughters,” Grand Maester Elysar
would write later, in his customary waspish style.

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. 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. 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 Alysanne was very fond of
him as well, remembering the warm welcome he had given her during her
first visit to the North.

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. She had a different man in mind. Even as a
little girl, Viserra had been the most beautiful of the queen’s
daughters. Great lords, famous knights, and callow boys had danced
attendance on her all her life, feeding her vanity until it became a
raging fire. Her great delight in life was playing one boy off against
the other, goading them into foolish quests and contests. 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.
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.

No squire was ever going to win Viserra, Queen Alysanne knew; not her
heart, and certainly not her maidenhead. She was far too sly a child to
go down the same path as her sister Saera. “She has no interest in
kissing games, nor boys,” the queen told Jaehaerys. “She plays with them
as she used to play with her puppies, but she would no more lie with one
than with a dog. She aims much higher, our Viserra. I have seen the way
she preens and prances around Baelon. That is the husband she desires,
and not for love of him. She wants to be the queen.”

Prince Baelon was fourteen years older than Viserra, twenty-nine to her
fifteen, but older lords had married younger maids, as she well knew. It
had been two years since Princess Alyssa had died, yet Baelon had shown
no interest in any other woman. “He married one sister, why not
another?” Viserra told her closest friend, the empty-headed

Beatrice Butterwell. “I am much prettier than Alyssa ever was, you saw
her. She had a broken nose.”

If the princess was intent on marrying her brother, the queen was
equally determined to prevent it. Her answer was Lord Manderly and White
Harbor. “Theomore is a good man,” Alysanne told her daughter, “a wise
man, with a kind heart and a good head on his shoulders. His people love
him.”

The princess was not persuaded. “If you like him so much, Mother, you
should marry him,” she said, before running to her father to complain.
Jaehaerys offered her no solace. “It is a good match,” he told her,
before explaining the importance of drawing the North closer to the Iron
Throne. Marriages were the queen’s domain in any case, he said; he never
interfered in such matters.

Frustrated, Viserra next turned to her brother Baelon in hopes of
rescue, if court gossip can be believed. Slipping past his guards into
his bedchamber one night, she disrobed and waited for him, making free
with the prince’s wine whilst she lingered. When Prince Baelon finally
appeared, he found her drunk and naked in his bed and sent her on her
way. 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.

How the battle of wills between Queen Alysanne and her headstrong
fifteen-year-old daughter might finally have resolved will never be
known. 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.”

Her companions were all men, two minor lordlings and four young knights,
all green as spring grass and eager for Viserra’s favor. 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. Ale, mead, and wine all featured in the evening’s
frolics, and Viserra partook eagerly.

  At some point, near to midnight, the princess and her remaining

companions (several of the knights having become insensible from drink)
decided to race back to the castle. A wild ride through the streets of
the city ensued, with Kingslanders scrambling out of the way to avoid
being run down and trampled. 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. The knight’s mare
lost her footing and fell, breaking his leg beneath her. The princess
was thrown from the saddle headfirst into a wall. Her neck was broken.

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.

Despite their differences, the loss of Princess Viserra was devastating
to the queen. 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.
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. 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.

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. The queen took strength from
their presence…but even so, more and more she found her thoughts turning
to the daughter who was not with her. 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. Saera was still in Lys,
she knew from their reports, still at the pleasure garden. 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.

It was her grief over the loss of Princess Viserra that finally drove
the queen to approach Jaehaerys about Saera once again. She brought
Septon Barth along with her, to speak on the virtues of forgiveness and

the healing properties of time. Only when Barth had finished did Her
Grace mention Saera’s name. “Please,” she begged the king, “it is time
to bring her home. She has been punished enough, surely. She is our
daughter.”

Jaehaerys would not be moved. “She is a Lyseni whore,” His Grace
replied. “She opened her legs for half my court, threw an old woman down
the steps, and tried to steal a dragon. What more do you require? Have
you given any thought as to how she got to Lys? She had no coin. How do
think she paid for her passage?”

The queen cringed at the harshness of his words, but still she would not
yield. “If you will not bring Saera home for love of her, bring her home
for love of me. I need her.”

“You need her as a Dornishman needs a pit viper,” Jaehaerys said. “I am
sorry. King’s Landing has sufficient whores. I do not wish to hear her
name again.” With those words, he rose to leave, but at the door he
halted and turned back. “We have been together since we were children. I
know you as well as you know me. Right now you are thinking that you do
not need my leave to bring her home, that you can take Silverwing and
fly to Lys yourself. What would you do then, visit her in her pleasure
garden? Do you imagine she will fly into your arms and beg forgiveness?
She is more like to slap your face. And what will the Lyseni do, if you
try and make off with one of their whores? She has value to them. How
much do you think it costs to lay with a Targaryen princess? At best
they will demand a ransom for her. At worst they may decide to keep you
too. What will you do then, shout for Silverwing to burn their city
down? Would you have me send Aemon and Baelon with an army, to see if
they can prise her free? You want her, yes, I hear you, you need her…but
she does not need you, or me, or Westeros. She is dead. Bury her.”

Queen Alysanne did not fly to Lys, but neither did she ever quite
forgive the king for the words he spoke that day. Plans had been under
way for some time for the two of them to make another progress the
following year, returning to the westerlands for the first time in
twenty years. Shortly after their falling out, the queen informed
Jaehaerys that he should go alone. She was going back to Dragonstone,
alone, to grieve for their dead daughters.

And so it was that Jaehaerys Targaryen flew to Casterly Rock and the
other great seats of the west alone in 88 AC. This time he even called

on Fair Isle, for the despised Lord Franklyn was safely in his grave.
The king was gone far longer than had been originally intended; he had
roadworks to inspect, and he found himself making unplanned stops at
smaller towns and castles, delighting many a petty lord and landed
knight. Prince Aemon joined him at certain castles, Prince Baelon at
others, but neither could persuade him to return to the Red Keep. “It
has been too long since I have seen my kingdom and listened to my
people,” His Grace told them. “King’s Landing will do well enough in
your hands, and your mother’s.”

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. 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. 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.”

For the entire year of 89 AC, the king remained on the move. At
Highgarden, he was joined for a time by his granddaughter, Princess
Rhaenys, who flew to his side on Meleys, the Red Queen. Together they
visited the Shield Islands, where the king had never been before.
Jaehaerys made a point of landing on all four Shields. 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. “You could not
have chosen a better man,” he said.

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. Ser Ryam Redwyne again emerged as champion.

The maesters of that time referred to the estrangement betwixt the king
and queen as the Great Rift. The passage of time, and a subsequent
quarrel that was near as bitter, gave it a new name: the First Quarrel.
That is how it is known to this day. We shall speak of the Second
Quarrel in good time.

  It was Septa Maegelle who bridged the Rift. “This is foolish, Father,”

she said to him. “Rhaenys is to be married next year, and it should be a
great occasion. She will want all of us there, including both you and
Mother. The archmaesters call you the Conciliator, I have heard. It is
time that you conciliated.”

The scolding had the desired effect. A fortnight later, King Jaehaerys
returned at last to King’s Landing, and Queen Alysanne returned from her
own self-imposed exile on Dragonstone. What words passed between them we
can never know, but for a good while afterward they were once again as
close as they had been before.

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.

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. “Only you could have
won me away from the sea,” he told the princess. “I came back from the
ends of the earth for you.”

Rhaenys, at six-and-ten, was a fearless young beauty, and more than a
match for her mariner. A dragonrider since the age of thirteen, she
insisted upon arriving for the wedding on Meleys, the Red Queen, the
magnificent scarlet she-dragon that had once borne her aunt Alyssa. “We
can go back to the ends of the earth together,” she promised Ser Corlys.
“But I’ll get there first, as I’ll be flying.”

“That was a good day,” Queen Alysanne would say with a sad smile,
through the years that remained to her. She was fifty-four that year,
but sad to say, she did not have many good days left.

It is not within the scope of this history to chronicle the endless
wars, intrigues, and rivalries of the Free Cities of Essos, save where
they impinge upon the fortunes of House Targaryen and the Seven
Kingdoms. One such time occurred during the years 91–92 AC, during what
is known as the Myrish Bloodbath. We shall not trouble you with details.
Suffice it to say that in the city of Myr two rival factions vied for
supremacy. There were assassinations, riots, poisonings, rapes,
hangings, torture, and sea battles before one side emerged supreme. The
losing faction, driven from the city, tried to establish themselves
first upon the Stepstones, only to be hounded from there as well when

the Archon of Tyrosh made common cause with a league of pirate kings. In
their desperation, the Myrmen next turned to the island of Tarth, where
their landings took the Evenstar by surprise. In a short time they had
taken the entire eastern side of the island.

By that time the Myrish were little more than pirates themselves, a
ragged band of rogues. Neither the king nor his council felt it would
require much to drive them back into the sea. Prince Aemon would lead
the assault, it was decided. 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. Their combined strength would be
more than sufficient to retake all of Tarth from the Myrish pirates. And
if there proved to be unexpected difficulties, Prince Aemon would have
Caraxes. “He does love to burn,” the prince said.

Lord Corlys and his fleet set sail from Driftmark on the ninth day of
the third moon of 92 AC. Prince Aemon followed a few hours later, after
bidding farewell to Lady Jocelyn and their daughter, Rhaenys. The
princess had just learned she was expecting, else she would have
accompanied her sire on Meleys. “Into battle?” the prince said. “As if I
would ever have permitted that. You have your own battle to fight. Lord
Corlys will want a son, I am sure, and I would like a grandson.”

Those were the last words he would ever speak to his daughter. Caraxes
swiftly outdistanced the Sea Snake and his fleet, dropping down out of
the sky on Tarth. 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. Prince Aemon met him there, and the two made
plans together, whilst Caraxes devoured half a dozen goats.

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. One of them recognized the
Evenstar as he strode through the camp at dusk, talking with Prince
Aemon. The men of Myr are indifferent sailors and feeble soldiers; their
weapons of choice are dirk, dagger, and crossbow, preferably poisoned.
One of the Myrish scouts wound his crossbow now, behind the rocks where
he was hidden. Rising, he took aim on the

Evenstar a hundred yards below, and loosed his bolt. Dusk and distance
made his aim less certain, and the bolt missed Lord Cameron…and struck
Prince Aemon, standing at his side.

The iron bolt punched through the prince’s throat and out the back of
his neck. 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. Aemon Targaryen died struggling to speak, drowned on his own
blood. He was thirty-seven years old.

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? Far easier
to speak of Prince Baelon’s wroth, and how he came down upon Tarth on
Vhagar, howling for vengeance. The Myrish ships burned as Prince
Morion’s ships had burned nine years earlier, and when the Evenstar and
Lord Boremund descended on them from the mountains, they had nowhere to
fly. They were cut down by the thousands and left to rot along the
beaches, so every wave that washed ashore for days was tinged with pink.

Baelon the Brave played his part in the slaughter, with Dark Sister in
his hand. 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. But it is said that when he saw his mother again, he fell into her
arms and wept. “I slew a thousand of them,” he said, “but it will not
bring him back.” And the queen stroked his hair and said, “I know, I
know.”

Seasons came and went in the years that followed. There were hot days
and warm days and days when the salt wind blew bracing off the sea,
there were fields of flowers in the spring, and bountiful harvests, and
golden autumn afternoons, all across the realm the roads crept onward,
and new bridges spanned old streams. The king took no pleasure in any of
it, so far as men could tell. “It is always winter now,” he said to
Septon Barth one night, when he had drunk too much. Since Aemon’s death,
he always drank a cup or three of honeyed wine at night to help him
sleep.

In 93 AC, Prince Baelon’s sixteen-year-old son, Viserys, entered the
Dragonpit and claimed Balerion. The old dragon had stopped growing at
last, but he was sluggish and heavy and hard to rouse, and he

struggled when Viserys urged him up into the air. The young prince flew
thrice around the city before landing again. 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.

Less than a year later, Balerion was gone. “The last living creature in
all the world who saw Valyria in its glory,” wrote Septon Barth. Barth
himself died four years later, in 98 AC. Grand Maester Elysar preceded
him by half a year. Lord Redwyne had died in 89 AC, his son Ser Robert
soon thereafter. 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? Do I know them?”

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.

The last years of Alysanne Targaryen were sad and lonely ones. In her
youth, Good Queen Alysanne had loved her subjects, lords and commons
alike. She had loved her women’s courts, listening, learning, and doing
what she could to make the realm a kinder place. 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. She had
loved music, had loved to dance, had loved to read. And oh, how she had
loved to fly. Silverwing had carried her to Oldtown, to the Wall, and to
a thousand places in between, and Alysanne saw them all as few others
ever would, looking down from above the clouds.

All these loves were lost to her in the last decade of her life. “My
uncle Maegor was cruel,” Alysanne was heard to say, “but age is
crueler.” Worn out from childbirth, travel, and grief, she grew thin and
frail after Aemon’s death. Climbing hills became a trial to her, and in
95 AC she slipped and fell on the serpentine steps, breaking her hip.
Thereafter she walked with a cane. Her hearing began to fail as well.
Music was lost to her, and when she tried to sit in council meetings
with the king she could no longer understand half of what was said. She
was far too unsteady to fly. Silverwing last carried her into the sky in
93 AC. When she came to earth again and climbed painfully from her
dragon’s back, the queen wept.

  More than all of these, she had loved her children. No mother ever

loved a child more, Grand Maester Benifer once told her, before the
Shivers carried him away. In the last days of her life, Queen Alysanne
reflected on his words. “He was wrong, I think,” she wrote, “for surely
the Mother Above loved my children more. She took so many of them away
from me.”

“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. The Shivers took Daenerys at the age
of six. A crossbow slew Prince Aemon. Alyssa and Daella died in
childbed, Viserra drunk in the street. 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.

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. A sweet-natured girl, but frail and somewhat
simpleminded, she remained with the queen long after her other children
had grown and gone, but in 99 AC she vanished from court, and soon
afterward it was announced that she had died of a summer fever. Only
after both her parents were gone did the true tale come out. 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.

Some say that Alysanne never recovered from that loss, for her Winter
Child alone had been a true companion during her declining years. 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. Vaegon was an archmaester at the Citadel. A cold
and distant son, he had grown to be a cold and distant man. He wrote, as
a son ought. His words were dutiful, but there was no warmth to them,
and it had been years since Alysanne had last seen his face.

Only Baelon the Brave remained near her till the end. 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, treating

with the lords. “You will be a great king, even greater than your
father,” Alysanne told him the last time they were together. She did not
know. How could she know?

After the death of Princess Gael, King’s Landing and the Red Keep became
unbearable to Alysanne. 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. 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. The Old
King would join her there when he could. “How is it that I am the Old
King now, but you are still the Good Queen?” he asked her once. Alysanne
laughed. “I am old as well, but I am still younger than you.”

Alysanne Targaryen died on Dragonstone on the first day of the seventh
moon in 100 AC, a full century after Aegon’s Conquest. She was
sixty-four years old.

  []

  []

  he seeds of war are oft planted during times of peace. So has it been
  in Westeros. The bloody struggle for the Iron Throne known

as the Dance of the Dragons, fought from 129–131 AC, had its roots

half 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.

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. Four of them—two sons
and two daughters—grew to maturity, married, and produced children of
their own. Never before or since had the Seven Kingdoms been blessed (or
cursed, in the view of some) with so many Targaryen princelings. 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.

This was not apparent in the early years of Jaehaerys’s reign, for in
Prince Aemon and Prince Baelon His Grace had the proverbial “heir and a
spare,” and seldom has the realm been blessed with two more able
princes. In 62 AC, at the age of seven, Aemon was formally anointed
Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne. Knighted

at seventeen, a tourney champion at twenty, he became his father’s
justiciar and master of laws at six-and-twenty. 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.” Nor was Baelon Targaryen any less
accomplished. The younger prince earned his knighthood at sixteen, and
was wed at eighteen. Though he and Aemon enjoyed a healthy rivalry, no
man doubted the love that bound them. The succession appeared solid as
stone.

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. 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. 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. It was a popular decree. The
smallfolk loved Baelon the Brave, and the lords of the realm saw him as
his brother’s obvious successor.

[]

But Prince Aemon had a child: his daughter, Rhaenys, born in 74 AC, had
grown into a clever, capable, and beautiful young woman. In 90 AC, at
the age of sixteen, she had wed the king’s admiral and master

of ships, Corlys of House Velaryon, Lord of the Tides, known as the Sea
Snake after the most famous of his many ships. Moreover, Princess
Rhaenys was with child when her father died. By granting Dragonstone to
Prince Baelon, King Jaehaerys was not only passing over Rhaenys, but
also (possibly) her unborn son.

The king’s decision was in accord with well-established practice. Aegon
the Conqueror had been the first Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, not his
sister Visenya, two years his elder. 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. Jaehaerys did not
make his decision lightly; he is known to have discussed the matter with
his small council. Undoubtedly he consulted Septon Barth, as he did on
all important matters, and the views of Grand Maester Elysar were given
much weight. All were in accord. 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). The love of the commons for Baelon the Brave was also cited.

Some dissented. Rhaenys herself was the first to raise objection. “You
would rob my son of his birthright,” she told the king, with a hand upon
her swollen belly. 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. Lady Jocelyn of House Baratheon, Rhaenys’s
mother, was also angered, as was her formidable brother, Boremund, Lord
of Storm’s End.

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. “A ruler needs a good
head and a true heart,” she famously told the king. “A cock is not
essential. If Your Grace truly believes that women lack the wit to rule,
plainly you have no further need of me.” And thus Queen Alysanne
departed King’s Landing and flew to Dragonstone on her dragon
Silverwing. She and King Jaehaerys remained apart for two years, the
period of estrangement recorded in the histories as the Second Quarrel.

The Old King and the Good Queen were again reconciled in 94 AC by the
good offices of their daughter, Septa Maegelle, but never reached

accord on the succession. 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
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. Her mother named her
Laena. The next year, Rhaenys gave her a brother, Laenor. 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.

In the last years of her life, the gods dealt Queen Alysanne many cruel
blows, as has previously been recounted. Her Grace knew joys as well as
sorrows during the same years, however, chief amongst them her
grandchildren. There were weddings as well. 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). 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.

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.
Not since the Doom of Valyria had so many dragons been seen in one place
at one time, it was truly said. 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.

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. 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. “Some problems cannot be solved by hitting them with a stick,”
Grand Maester Allar famously observed. His Grace had no choice but to
remove Ser Ryam after only a year in office. He turned

to his son Baelon to replace him, and in 99 AC the Prince of Dragonstone
became the King’s Hand as well. 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.
The realm would be well ruled when Baelon Targaryen sat the Iron Throne,
lords and common folk agreed.

It was not to be. In 101 AC Prince Baelon complained of a stitch in his
side whilst hunting in the kingswood. The pain worsened when he returned
to the city. His belly swelled and hardened, and the pain grew so severe
it left him bedridden. 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. 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. After opening the corpse, Grand Maester Runciter put down the
cause of death as a burst belly.

All the Seven Kingdoms wept for Brave Baelon, and none more so than King
Jaehaerys. This time, when he lit his son’s funeral pyre, he did not
even have the comfort of his beloved wife beside him. The Old King had
never been so alone. And now again His Grace faced a nettlesome dilemma,
for once more the succession was in doubt. With both of the heirs
apparent dead and burned, there was no longer a clear successor to the
Iron Throne…but that was not to say there was any lack of claimants.

Baelon had sired three sons by his sister Alyssa. Two, Viserys and
Daemon, still lived. 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. The claims of
Princess Rhaenys and her daughter, Laena Velaryon, were put forward once
again…and even if they were to be passed over on account of their sex,
Rhaenys’s son, Laenor, faced no such impediment. Laenor Velaryon was
male, and could claim descent from Jaehaerys’s elder son, whilst
Baelon’s boys were descended from the younger.

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. Known to history as Vaegon the Dragonless, his very

existence had been largely forgotten by most of the Seven Kingdoms.
Though only forty years of age, Vaegon was pale and frail, a bookish man
devoted to alchemy, astronomy, mathematics, and other arcane arts. Even
as a boy, he had never been well-liked. Few considered him a viable
choice to sit the Iron Throne.

And yet it was to Archmaester Vaegon that the Old King turned now,
summoning his last son to King’s Landing. What passed between them
remains a matter of dispute. Some say the king offered Vaegon the throne
and was refused. Others assert that he only sought his counsel. 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. A violent struggle for succession was likely no matter who the
Old King named to succeed him. No doubt that was why His Grace seized
eagerly on the solution offered by Archmaester Vaegon.

King Jaehaerys announced his intent to convene a Great Council, to
discuss, debate, and ultimately decide the matter of succession. 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. Let the claimants make their cases before the
assembled lords, His Grace decreed. He would abide by the council’s
decision, whomever they might choose.

  []

It was decided that the council would be held at Harrenhal, the largest
castle in the realm. No one knew how many lords would come, since no
such council had ever been held before, but it was thought prudent to
have room for at least five hundred lords and their tails. More than a
thousand lords attended. It took half a year for them to assemble (a few
arrived even as the council was breaking up). Even

Harrenhal could not contain such multitudes, for each lord was
accompanied by a retinue of knights, squires, grooms, cooks, and serving
men. Tymond Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock, brought three hundred men
with him. Not to be outdone, Lord Matthos Tyrell of Highgarden brought
five hundred.

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. The
Evenstar of Tarth was there, and the Lord of the Lonely Light. 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. Even the Dornishmen were represented; the Prince of Dorne
sent his daughter and twenty Dornish knights to Harrenhal as observers.
The High Septon came from Oldtown to bless the assembly. Merchants and
tradesmen descended upon Harrenhal by the hundreds. Hedge knights and
freeriders came in hopes of finding work for their swords, cutpurses
came seeking after coin, old women and young girls came seeking after
husbands. Thieves and whores, washerwomen and camp followers, singers
and mummers, they came from east and west and north and south. A city of
tents sprang up outside the walls of Harrenhal and along the lakeshore
for leagues in each direction. For a time Harrenton was the fourth city
in the realm; only Oldtown, King’s Landing, and Lannisport were larger.

No fewer than fourteen claims were duly examined and considered by the
lords assembled. From Essos came three rival competitors, grandsons of
King Jaehaerys through his daughter Saera, each sired by a different
father. One was said to be the very image of his grandsire in his youth.
Another, a bastard born to a triarch of Old Volantis, arrived with bags
of gold and a dwarf elephant. The lavish gifts he distributed amongst
the poorer lords undoubtedly helped his claim. The elephant proved less
useful. (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. “I
have my own kingdom here,” she said, when asked if she meant to return
to Westeros.) 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. There was as well a

strapping red-haired man-at-arms who claimed to be a bastard son of
Maegor the Cruel. By way of proof he brought his mother, an aged
innkeep’s daughter who said that she had once been raped by Maegor. (The
lords were prepared to believe the fact of rape, but not that the act
had gotten her with child.)

The Great Council deliberated for thirteen days. 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).
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. Viserys was the Old King’s
grandson, Laenor his great-grandson. The principle of primogeniture
favored Laenor, the principle of proximity Viserys. Viserys had also
been the last Targaryen to ride Balerion…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.

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. Moreover, Viserys was a man of twenty-four, Laenor a boy of
seven. 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.

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. 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. Though never dragonriders, the
Velaryons had for centuries remained the oldest and closest allies of
the Targaryens. The sea was their element, not the sky. 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.

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.

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. 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. He first crossed the narrow sea at the age
of six, sailing to Pentos with an uncle. Thereafter Corlys made such
voyages every year. Nor did he travel as a passenger; he climbed masts,
tied knots, scrubbed decks, pulled oars, caulked leaks, raised and
lowered sails, manned the crow’s nest, learned to navigate and steer.
His captains said they had never seen such a natural sailor.

At age sixteen, he became a captain himself, taking a fishing boat
called the Cod Queen from Driftmark to Dragonstone and back. In the
years that followed, his ships grew larger and swifter, his voyages
longer and more dangerous. He took ships around the bottom of Westeros
to visit Oldtown, Lannisport, and Lordsport on Pyke. He sailed to Lys,
Tyrosh, Pentos, and Myr. 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. 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.

His most famous voyages were those he made on the ship that he designed
and built himself, the Sea Snake. 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. 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.

  In the end the Sea Snake made nine voyages. On the ninth, Ser

Corlys 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. 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.

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.
The seat of House Velaryon was Castle Driftmark, a dark, grim place,
always damp and often flooded. Lord Corlys raised a new castle on the
far side of the island. 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. When the morning and evening tides rolled in, the
castle was surrounded by the sea, connected to Driftmark proper only by
a causeway. To this new castle, Lord Corlys moved the ancient Driftwood
Throne (a gift from the Merling King, according to legend).

The Sea Snake built ships as well. The royal fleet tripled in size
during the years he served the Old King as master of ships. Even after
giving up that office, he continued to build, turning out merchantmen
and trading galleys in place of warships. 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. 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. 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.

Lord Corlys was an ambitious man. 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. Though he had accomplished much
and more in life, he was seldom satisfied, the men who knew him best
would say. 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. His
sons and daughters would soar through the skies, Lord Corlys expected,
and one day one of them would sit the

Iron Throne.

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. But now, it seemed, the
wheel had turned again, and the wrong could be righted. 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. In these efforts they were joined by the Lord of
Storm’s End, Boremund Baratheon (great-uncle to Rhaenys and
great-great-uncle to the boy Laenor), by Lord Stark of Winterfell, Lord
Manderly of White Harbor, Lord Dustin of Barrowton, Lord Blackwood of
Raventree, Lord Bar Emmon of Sharp Point, Lord Celtigar of Claw Isle,
and others.

They were nowhere near enough. 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. By a lopsided
margin, the lords assembled chose Viserys Targaryen as the rightful heir
to the Iron Throne. Though the maesters who tallied the votes never
revealed the actual numbers, it was said afterward that the vote had
been more than twenty to one.

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. Storm’s End and Driftmark accepted the decision, if grudgingly;
the vote had been so overwhelming that even Laenor’s father and mother
saw that they could not hope to prevail. 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.

Of the last years in the reign of King Jaehaerys, little and less need
be said. 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. As his new Hand, he called upon Ser Otto Hightower,
younger brother to Lord Hightower of Oldtown. Ser Otto brought his wife
and children to court with him, and served King Jaehaerys faithfully for
the years remaining to him. As the Old King’s

strength and wits began to fail, he was oft confined to his bed. 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. 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.

[]

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. 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. His
remains were burned in the Dragonpit, his ashes interred with Good Queen
Alysanne’s on Dragonstone. All of Westeros mourned. Even in Dorne, where
his writ had not extended, men wept and women tore their garments.

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. At the time of his ascent, King Viserys was
twenty-six years old. 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).
Lady Aemma had suffered several

miscarriages 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). The new king and his queen both doted on the girl, their
only living child.

Many consider the reign of King Viserys I to represent the apex of
Targaryen power in Westeros. Beyond a doubt, there were more lords and
princes claiming the blood of the dragon than at any period before or
since. 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. There were more dragons than ever before as well, and several
of the she-dragons were regularly producing clutches of eggs. 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.

  []

Viserys I Targaryen had a generous, amiable nature, and was well loved
by his lords and smallfolk alike. The reign of the Young King, as the
commons called him upon his ascent, was peaceful and prosperous. His
Grace’s open-handedness was legendary, and the Red Keep became a place
of song and splendor. King Viserys and Queen Aemma hosted many a feast
and tourney, and lavished gold, offices,

and honors on their favorites.

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.” 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. At seven, she became a dragonrider, taking to the sky on the
young dragon she named Syrax, after a goddess of old Valyria. At eight,
the princess was placed into service as a cupbearer…but for her own
father, the king. At table, at tourney, and at court, King Viserys
thereafter was seldom seen without his daughter by his side.

Meanwhile, the tedium of rule was left largely to the king’s small
council and his Hand. 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. 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.

The greatest of his rivals was Daemon Targaryen, the king’s ambitious,
impetuous, moody younger brother. 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. Though he had wed the Lady of Runestone in 97 AC, during the
Old King’s reign, the marriage had not been a success. Prince Daemon
found the Vale of Arryn boring (“In the Vale, the men fuck sheep,” he
wrote. “You cannot fault them. 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. Upon the accession of his brother to the Iron Throne, the
prince petitioned to have his marriage set aside. 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 103– 104, and master of
laws for half a year in 104.

Governance bored this warrior prince, however. He did better when King
Viserys made him Commander of the City Watch. 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 golden

cloaks that they might wear with pride. Ever since, the men of the City
Watch have been known as “gold cloaks.”

Prince Daemon took eagerly to the work of the gold cloaks, and oft
prowled the alleys of King’s Landing with his men. That he made the city
more orderly no man could doubt, but his discipline was a brutal one. He
delighted in cutting off the hands of pickpockets, gelding rapists, and
slitting the noses of thieves, and slew three men in street brawls
during his first year as commander. Before long, the prince was
well-known in all the low places of King’s Landing. He became a familiar
sight in wine sinks (where he drank for free) and gambling pits (where
he always left with more coin than when he entered). Though he sampled
countless whores in the city’s brothels, and was said to have an
especial fondness for deflowering maidens, a certain Lysene dancing girl
soon became his favorite. Mysaria was the name she went by, though her
rivals and enemies called her Misery, the White Worm.

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 him…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. 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 Rhaenyra was also enamored of her uncle, for Daemon was ever
attentive to her. Whenever he crossed the narrow sea upon his dragon, he
brought her some exotic gift on his return. The king had grown soft and
plump over the years. 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.

And here we must digress to say a word about our sources, for much of
what happened in the years that followed happened behind closed doors,
in the privacy of stairwells, council rooms, and bedchambers, and the
full truth of it will likely never be known. 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. For the rest, we must
look to accounts written decades later by the children and

grandchildren of those caught up in the events of these times; lords and
knights reporting events witnessed by their forebears, third-hand
recollections of aged serving men relating the scandals of their youth.
Whilst these are undoubtedly of use, so much time passed between the
event and the recording that many confusions and contradictions have
inevitably crept in. Nor do these remembrances always agree.

Unfortunately, this is also true of the two accounts by firsthand
observers that have come down to us. 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. As a confidant and confessor to King Viserys and his queens,
Eustace was well placed to know much and more of what went on. 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.

[]

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. A
three-foot-tall dwarf possessed of an enormous head (and, he avers, an
even more enormous member), Mushroom was

thought feeble-minded, so kings and lords and princes did not scruple to
hide their secrets from him. 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. 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. Fortunately for us, a few escaped
his fires.

Septon Eustace and Mushroom do not always agree upon particulars, and at
times their accounts are considerably at variance with one another, and
with the court records and the chronicles of Grand Maester Runciter and
his successors. Yet their tales do explain much and more that might
otherwise seem puzzling, and later accounts confirm enough of their
stories to suggest that they contain at least some portion of truth. The
question of what to believe and what to doubt remains for each student
to decide.

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. 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. As Commander of the City
Watch, with two thousand men under his command, Daemon waxed more
powerful than ever. “On no account can Prince Daemon be allowed to
ascend to the Iron Throne,” the Hand wrote his brother, Lord of Oldtown.
“He would be a second Maegor the Cruel, or worse.” It was Ser Otto’s
wish (then) that Princess Rhaenyra succeed her father. “Better the
Realm’s Delight than Lord Flea Bottom,” he wrote. Nor was he alone in
his opinion. Yet his party faced a formidable hurdle. If the precedent
set by the Great Council of 101 was followed, a male claimant must
prevail over a female. In the absence of a trueborn son, the king’s
brother would come before the king’s daughter, as Baelon had come before
Rhaenys in 92 AC.

As for the king’s own views, all the chronicles agree that King Viserys
hated dissension. Though far from blind to his brother’s flaws, he
cherished his memories of the free-spirited, adventurous boy that Daemon
had been. His daughter was his life’s great joy, he often said, but a
brother is a brother. Time and time again he strove to make

peace between Prince Daemon and Ser Otto, but the enmity between the two
men roiled endlessly beneath the false smiles they wore at court. When
pressed upon the matter, King Viserys would only say that he was certain
his queen would soon present him with a son. And in

105 AC, he announced to the court and small council that Queen Aemma was
once again with child.

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. 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. He first came to the attention of the court when he won the melee
held at Maidenpool in honor of King Viserys’s accession. 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. Afterward, he gave the seven- year-old Princess
Rhaenyra the victor’s laurel and begged for her favor to wear in the
joust. In the lists, he defeated Prince Daemon once again, and unhorsed
both of the celebrated Cargyll twins, Ser Arryk and Ser Erryk of the
Kingsguard, before falling to Lord Lymond Mallister.

With his pale green eyes, coal black hair, and easy charm, Cole soon
became a favorite of all the ladies at court…not the least amongst them
Rhaenyra Targaryen herself. 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. His Grace indulged her in
this, as in so much else. Thereafter Ser Criston always wore her favor
in the lists and became a fixture at her side during feasts and frolics.

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. A big man, burly and balding, Lord Strong enjoyed a formidable
reputation as a battler. Those who did not know him oft took him for a
brute, mistaking his silences and slowness of speech for stupidity. This
was far from the truth. 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. He was literate and learned, his knowledge of the
laws of the Seven Kingdoms exhaustive. Thrice-wed and thrice a widower,
the Lord of Harrenhal brought two maiden daughters and two sons to court
with him. The girls became

handmaids to Princess Rhaenyra, whilst their elder brother, Ser Harwin
Strong, called Breakbones, was made a captain in the gold cloaks. The
younger boy, Larys the Clubfoot, joined the king’s confessors.

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 boy (named Baelon, after the king’s father) survived her only by a
day, leaving king and court bereft…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.” 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. His Grace had finally had a surfeit
of his ungrateful brother and his ambitions.

Once his mourning for his wife and son had run its course, the king
moved swiftly to resolve the long-simmering issue of the succession.
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. 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.

Prince Daemon was not amongst them, however. Furious at the king’s
decree, the prince quit King’s Landing, resigning from the City Watch.
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. There he remained for half a year, during which time he
got Mysaria with child.

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. 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. 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 “bronze

bitch.” But Mysaria lost her child during a storm on the narrow sea.
When word reached Prince Daemon he spoke no syllable of grief, but his
heart hardened against the king, his brother. Thereafter he spoke of
King Viserys only with disdain, and began to brood day and night on the
succession.

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. Grand Maester Runciter was the first to urge His Grace to
remarry, even suggesting a suitable choice: the Lady Laena Velaryon, who
had just turned twelve. 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.
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. 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. And Laena
would surely make a splendid queen.

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.
In this instance, however, His Grace had his own notion, and no amount
of argument would sway him from his course. He would marry again,
yes…but not to a twelve-year-old girl, and not for reasons of state.
Another woman had caught his eye. 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.

The Hightowers of Oldtown were an ancient and noble family, of
impeccable lineage; there could be no possible objection to the king’s
choice of bride. 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. 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. (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.)
In the Vale, Prince Daemon reportedly

whipped the serving man who brought the news to him within an inch of
his life. Nor was the Sea Snake pleased when word reached Driftmark.
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. Only Lady Laena herself
seemed untroubled. “Her ladyship shows far more interest in flying than
in boys,” the maester at High Tide wrote to the Citadel.

When King Viserys took Alicent Hightower to wife in 106 AC, House
Velaryon was notable for its absence. Princess Rhaenyra poured for her
stepmother at the feast, and Queen Alicent kissed her and named her
“daughter.” The princess was amongst the women who disrobed the king and
delivered him to the bedchamber of his bride. Laughter and love ruled
the Red Keep that night…whilst across Blackwater Bay, Lord Corlys the
Sea Snake welcomed the king’s brother, Prince Daemon, to a war council.
The prince had suffered all he could stand of the Vale of Arryn,
Runestone, and his lady wife. “Dark Sister was made for nobler tasks
than slaughtering sheep,” he is reported to have told the Lord of the
Tides. “She has a thirst for blood.” But it was not rebellion that the
prince had in mind; he saw another path to power.

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. Of themselves the isles were of little worth, but
placed as they were, they controlled the sea lanes to and from the
narrow sea, and merchant ships passing through those waters were often
preyed on by their inhabitants. Still, for centuries such depredations
had remained no more than a nuisance.

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. 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). 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 the

command 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.

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. 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.

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. Drahar and his Lysene and Tyroshi co-admirals seemed to
be vying with each other to see who was the greediest, men complained.
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. (Amongst those thus
enslaved was Lady Johanna Swann, a fifteen-year-old niece of the Lord of
Stonehelm. 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. Alas, her tale, however fascinating, has no bearing upon our
present history.)

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. 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. Shunning the king’s wedding,
they laid their plans in High Tide on the isle Driftmark. Lord Velaryon
would command the fleet, Prince Daemon the army. They would be greatly
outnumbered by the forces of the Three Daughters…but the prince would
also bring to battle the fires of his dragon, Caraxes, the Blood Wyrm.

It is not our purpose here to recount the details of the private war
Daemon Targaryen and Corlys Velaryon waged on the Stepstones. Suffice it
to say that the fighting began in 106 AC. Prince Daemon had little
difficulty assembling an army of landless adventurers and second

sons, and won many victories during the first two years of the conflict.
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.

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. 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 head…but their “kingdom”
was far from secure. 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. Fighting resumed.

[]

Though the Stepstones were engulfed in blood and fire, King Viserys and
his court remained unperturbed. “Let Daemon play at war,” His Grace is
reported to have said, “it keeps him out of trouble.” Viserys was a man
of peace, and during these years King’s Landing was an endless round of
feasts, balls, and tourneys, where mummers and singers heralded the
birth of each new Targaryen princeling. Queen

Alicent had soon proved to be as fertile as she was pretty. In 107 AC,
she bore the king a healthy son, naming him Aegon, after the Conqueror.
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.

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. 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. “Ser Criston
protects the princess from her enemies, but who protects the princess
from Ser Criston?” Queen Alicent asked one day at court. 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 realm…and
though the queen had given the king not one but two male heirs, Viserys
had done nothing to change the order of succession. The Princess of
Dragonstone remained his acknowledged heir, with half the lords of
Westeros sworn to defend her rights. Those who asked, “What of the
ruling of the Great Council of 101?” found their words falling on deaf
ears. The matter had been decided, so far as King Viserys was concerned;
it was not an issue His Grace cared to revisit.

Still, questions persisted, not the least from Queen Alicent herself.
Loudest amongst her supporters was her father, Ser Otto Hightower, Hand
of the King. 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. “This Hand will not hector me,” His Grace
proclaimed.

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. Against them was pitted the
“party of the princess.” King Viserys loved both his wife and daughter,
and hated conflict and contention. He strove all his days to keep the
peace between his women, and to please both with gifts and gold and
honors. So long as he lived and ruled and kept the balance, the feasts
and tourneys continued as before, and peace prevailed throughout the
realm…though there were some, sharp-eyed, who observed the dragons of
one party snapping and spitting flame at the dragons of the other party
whenever they chanced to pass near each other.

In 111 AC, a great tourney was held at King’s Landing on the fifth
anniversary of the king’s marriage to Queen Alicent. At the opening
feast, the queen wore a green gown, whilst the princess dressed
dramatically in Targaryen red and black. 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
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.

[]

Yet one was there who wore neither green nor black, but rather gold and
silver. Prince Daemon had at last returned to court. 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 grounds…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.
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. Amongst those cheering
loudest was Princess Rhaenyra, who was thrilled at the return of her
favorite uncle and begged him to stay awhile.

This much is known. As to what happened afterward, here we must look to
our more dubious chroniclers. Prince Daemon did remain at King’s Landing
for half a year, that is beyond dispute. He even resumed his seat on the
small council, according to Grand Maester Runciter, but neither age nor
exile had changed his nature. 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. 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.

Princess Rhaenyra was a different matter. Daemon spent long hours in her
company, enthralling her with tales of his journeys and battles. 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. He praised her beauty, declaring her to be the fairest maid in
all the Seven Kingdoms. Uncle and niece began to fly together almost
daily, racing Syrax against Caraxes to Dragonstone and back.

Here is where our sources diverge. 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. Of the cause of the quarrel,
he does not speak. Others assert that it was at Queen Alicent’s urging
that Viserys sent Daemon away. But Septon Eustace and Mushroom tell
another tale…or rather, two such tales, each different from the other.
Eustace, the less salacious of the two, writes that Prince Daemon
seduced his niece the princess and claimed her maidenhood. 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.
King Viserys would not hear of it, however, and reminded his daughter
that Prince Daemon already had a wife. In his wroth, he confined his
daughter to her chambers, told his brother to depart, and commanded both
of them never to speak of what had happened.

The tale as told by Mushroom is far more depraved, as is oft the case
with his Testimony. According to the dwarf, it was Ser Criston Cole

that 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. “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.”

He began by giving her kissing lessons, if Mushroom can be believed.
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. 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. 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.

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. But when
at last she approached her white knight, using all she had learned, Ser
Criston was horrified and spurned her. The whole tale soon came out, in
no small part thanks to Mushroom himself. King Viserys at first refused
to believe a word of it, until Prince Daemon confirmed the tale was
true. “Give the girl to me to wife,” he purportedly told his brother.
“Who else would take her now?” Instead King Viserys sent him into exile,
never to return to the Seven Kingdoms on pain of death. (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.)

Of the aftermath, these things are certain. Daemon Targaryen returned to
the Stepstones and resumed his struggle for those barren storm-swept
rocks. Grand Maester Runciter and Ser Harrold Westerling both died in
112 AC. 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 to

take up the Grand Maester’s chain and duties. Elsewise, King’s Landing
returned to its customary tranquillity for the best part of two
years…until 113 AC, when Princess Rhaenyra turned sixteen, took
possession of Dragonstone as her own seat, and married.

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. Great lords and dashing knights fluttered
around her like moths around a flame, vying for her favor. 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). In the
west, Ser Jason Lannister and his twin, Ser Tyland, vied for her during
a feast at Casterly Rock. 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. Breakbones, as he was called, was heir to Harrenhal, and
said to be the strongest man in the Seven Kingdoms. Viserys even talked
of wedding Rhaenyra to the Prince of Dorne, as a way of bringing the
Dornish into the realm.

Queen Alicent had her own candidate: her eldest son, Prince Aegon,
Rhaenyra’s half-brother. But Aegon was a boy, the princess ten years his
elder. Moreover, the two half-siblings had never gotten on well. “All
the more reason to bind them together in marriage,” the queen argued.
Viserys did not agree. “The boy is Alicent’s own blood,” he told Lord
Strong. “She wants him on the throne.”

The best choice, king and small council finally agreed, would be
Rhaenyra’s cousin Laenor Velaryon. 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. Such a match would unite and strengthen the royal bloodline,
and regain the Iron Throne the friendship of the Sea Snake with his
powerful fleet.

One objection was raised: Laenor Velaryon was now nineteen years of age,
yet had never shown any interest in women. Instead he surrounded himself
with handsome squires of his own age, and was said to prefer their
company. But Grand Maester Mellos dismissed this concern out of hand.
“What of it?” he said. “I do not like the taste of fish, but when fish
is served, I eat it.” Thus was the match decided.

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. “My
half-brothers would be more to his taste,” she told the king. (The
princess always took care to refer to Queen Alicent’s sons as half-
brothers, never as brothers.) And though His Grace reasoned with her,
pleaded with her, shouted at her, and called her an ungrateful daughter,
no words of his could budge her…until the king brought up the question
of succession. What a king had done, a king could undo, Viserys pointed
out. She would wed as he commanded, or he would make her half-brother
Aegon his heir in place of her. At this the princess’s will gave way.
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.

And here again our sources differ. That night, Septon Eustace reports,
Ser Criston Cole slipped into the princess’s bedchamber to confess his
love for her. He told Rhaenyra that he had a ship waiting on the bay,
and begged her to flee with him across the narrow sea. 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. His prowess with sword and morningstar was such that he did
not doubt he could find some merchant prince to take him into service.
But Rhaenyra refused him. She was the blood of the dragon, she reminded
him, and meant for more than to live out her life as the wife of a
common sellsword. And if he could set aside his Kingsguard vows, why
would marriage vows mean any more to him?

Mushroom tells a very different tale. In his version, it was Princess
Rhaenyra who went to Ser Criston, not him to her. She found him alone in
White Sword Tower, barred the door, and slipped off her cloak to reveal
her nakedness underneath. “I saved my maidenhead for you,” she told him.
“Take it now, as proof of my love. It will mean little and less to my
betrothed, and perhaps when he learns that I am not chaste he will
refuse me.”

Yet for all her beauty, her entreaties fell on deaf ears, for Ser
Criston was a man of honor and true to his vows. Even when Rhaenyra used
the arts she had learned from her uncle Daemon, Cole would not be
swayed. Scorned and furious, the princess donned her cloak again and

swept out into the night…where she chanced to encounter Ser Harwin
Strong, returning from a night of revelry in the stews of the city.
Breakbones had long desired the princess, and lacked Ser Criston’s
scruples. It was he who took Rhaenyra’s innocence, shedding her maiden’s
blood upon the sword of his manhood…according to Mushroom, who claims to
have found them in bed at break of day.

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.

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. 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). The bride was seventeen years old, the groom
twenty, and all agreed that they made a handsome couple. The wedding was
celebrated with seven days of feasts and jousting, the greatest tourney
in many a year. 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. When
Rhaenyra bestowed her garter on Ser Harwin, her new husband laughed and
gave one of his own to Ser Joffrey.

Denied Rhaenyra’s favor, Criston Cole turned to Queen Alicent instead.
Wearing her token, the young Lord Commander of the Kingsguard defeated
all challengers, fighting in a black fury. 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. 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. Borne bloody from
the field, Ser Joffrey died without recovering consciousness six days
later. Mushroom tells us that Ser Laenor spent every hour of those days
at his bedside and wept bitterly when the Stranger claimed him.

King Viserys was most wroth as well; a joyous celebration had become the
occasion of grief and recrimination. It was said that Queen Alicent did
not share his displeasure, however; soon after, she asked that Ser
Criston Cole be made her personal protector. 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.

[]

Ser Laenor returned to Driftmark thereafter, leaving many to wonder if
his marriage had ever been consummated. The princess remained at court,
surrounded by her friends and admirers. 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. Her husband raised no
objections. Ser Laenor preferred the comforts of High Tide, where he
soon found a new favorite in a household knight named Ser Qarl Correy.

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. Septon Eustace says they shared a bed no more than a dozen
times. Mushroom concurs, but adds that Qarl Correy oft shared that bed
as well; it aroused the princess to watch the

men disporting with one another, he tells us, and from time to time the
two would include her in their pleasures. Yet Mushroom contradicts
himself, for elsewhere in his Testimony he claims that the princess
would leave her husband with his lover on such nights, and seek her own
solace in the arms of Harwin Strong.

Whatever the truth of these tales, it was soon announced that the
princess was with child. Born in the waning days of 114 AC, the boy was
a large, strapping lad, with brown hair, brown eyes, and a pug nose.
(Ser Laenor had the aquiline nose, silver-white hair, and purple eyes
that bespoke his Valyrian blood.) Laenor’s wish to name the child
Joffrey was overruled by his father, Lord Corlys. Instead the child was
given a traditional Velaryon name: Jacaerys (friends and brothers would
call him Jace).

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, Daeron…whose coloring, unlike that of Jace,
testified to his dragon blood. By royal command, the infants Jacaerys
Velaryon and Daeron Targaryen shared a wet nurse until weaned. It was
said that the king hoped to prevent any enmity between the two boys by
raising them as milk brothers. If so, his hopes proved to be sadly
forlorn.

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. She lingered for nine days before finally feeling well
enough to leave her bed…only to collapse and die within an hour of
rising. A raven was duly sent to Storm’s 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. Daemon flew at once for the Vale. “To
put my wife to rest,” he said, though more like it was in the hopes of
laying claim to her lands, castles, and incomes. 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.

Flying back to the Stepstones afterward, Prince Daemon landed at
Driftmark to make a courtesy call upon his erstwhile partner in

conquest, the Sea Snake, and his wife, the Princess Rhaenys. 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. 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. Laena had
been betrothed from the age of twelve to a son of the Sealord of
Braavos…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. Lacking a graceful means to rid
himself of the embarrassment, but unwilling to proceed with the
marriage, Lord Corlys had repeatedly postponed the wedding.

Prince Daemon fell in love with Laena, the singers would have us
believe. Men of a more cynical bent believe the prince saw her as a way
to check his own descent. 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 him…but House Velaryon was powerful enough to
defy both parties with impunity. Weary of the Stepstones, and free at
last of his “bronze bitch,” Daemon Targaryen asked Lord Corlys for his
daughter’s hand in marriage.

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. 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.
(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.)

Prince Daemon knew that his brother would not be pleased when he heard
of his marriage. Prudently, the prince and his new bride took themselves
far from Westeros soon after the wedding, crossing the narrow sea on
their dragons. 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. Mushroom himself reports this as fact
in his Testimony, but we have abundant evidence that the truth was less
romantic. Prince Daemon and Lady Laena flew first to Pentos, where they
were feted by the city’s prince. The Pentoshi feared the growing power
of the Triarchy to the south,

and saw Daemon as a valuable ally against the Three Daughters. From
there, they crossed the Disputed Lands to Old Volantis, where they
enjoyed a similar warm welcome. Then they flew up the Rhoyne, to visit
Qohor and Norvos. In those cities, far removed from the woes of Westeros
and the power of the Triarchy, their welcome was less rapturous.
Everywhere they went, however, huge crowds turned out for a glimpse of
Vhagar and Caraxes.

The dragonriders were once again in Pentos when Lady Laena learned she
was with child. 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.

Meanwhile, back in Westeros, Princess Rhaenyra had given birth to a
second son late in the year 115 AC. The child was named Lucerys (Luke
for short). Septon Eustace tells us that both Ser Laenor and Ser Harwin
were at Rhaenyra’s bedside for his birth. 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.

These feelings were not shared by his queen. “Do keep trying,” Queen
Alicent told Ser Laenor, according to Mushroom, “soon or late, you may
get one who looks like you.” And the rivalry between the greens and
blacks grew deeper, finally reaching the point where the queen and the
princess could scarce suffer each other’s presence. 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. Her husband, Ser Laenor, was said to visit “frequently.”

In 116 AC, in the Free City of Pentos, Lady Laena gave birth to twin
daughters, Prince Daemon’s first trueborn children. Prince Daemon named
the girls Baela (after his father) and Rhaena (after her mother). The
babes were small and sickly, alas, but both had fine features,
silver-white hair, and purple eyes. When they were half a year old, and
stronger, the girls and their mother sailed to Driftmark, whilst Daemon
flew ahead with both dragons. 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. Though his Hand and small council argued heatedly

against it, Viserys consented, for the king still loved the brother who
had been the companion of his youth. “Daemon is a father now,” he told
Grand Maester Mellos. “He will have changed.” Thus were the sons of
Baelon Targaryen reconciled for the second time.

In 117 AC, on Dragonstone, Princess Rhaenyra bore yet another son. Ser
Laenor was at last permitted to name a child after his fallen friend,
Ser Joffrey Lonmouth. 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 whispering began
again. Amongst the greens, it was an article of faith that the father of
Rhaenyra’s sons was not her husband, Laenor, but her champion, Harwin
Strong. Mushroom says as much in his Testimony and Grand Maester Mellos
hints at it, whilst Septon Eustace raises the rumors only to dismiss
them.

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. By royal decree, each of the
Velaryon boys was presented with a dragon’s egg whilst in the cradle.
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. The hatchlings were named Vermax, Arrax,
and Tyraxes. 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.”

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. 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.

The sins of the fathers are oft visited on the sons, wise men have said;
and so it is for the sins of mothers as well. 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.
Though all six boys attended the same feasts, balls, and revels,

and sometimes trained together in the yard under the same master-at-
arms and studied under the same maesters, this enforced closeness only
served to feed their mutual mislike, rather than binding them together
as brothers.

Whilst Princess Rhaenyra misliked her stepmother, Queen Alicent, she
became fond and more than fond of her good-sister Lady Laena. With
Driftmark and Dragonstone so close, Daemon and Laena oft visited with
the princess, and her with them. Many a time they flew together on their
dragons, and the princess’s she-dragon Syrax produced several clutches
of eggs. 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. Jacaerys was four and Lucerys three, the
girls two. And in 119 AC, when Laena found she was with child again,
Rhaenyra flew to Driftmark to attend her during the birth.

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. 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 desired—but the babe
was twisted and malformed, and died within the hour. Nor did his mother
long survive him. 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. 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.
Sadly, Maester Gerardys came too late. After three days of delirium,
Lady Laena passed from this mortal coil. She was but twenty-seven.
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. Her
strength failed her on the tower steps, however, and it was there she
collapsed and died. Her husband, Prince Daemon, carried her back to her
bed. Afterward, Mushroom tells us, Princess Rhaenyra sat vigil with him
over Lady Laena’s corpse, and comforted him in his grief.

Lady Laena’s death was the first tragedy of 120 AC, but it would not be
the last. For this was to be a year when many of the long-simmering
tensions and jealousies that had plagued the Seven Kingdoms finally

came to a boil, a year when many and more would have reason to wail and
grieve and rend their garments…though none more than the Sea Snake, Lord
Corlys Velaryon, and his noble wife, Princess Rhaenys, she who might
have been a queen.

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.
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. 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.
Correy had fled by then, wounding several men who tried to hinder him.
Some claimed a ship had been waiting for him offshore. He was never seen
again.

The circumstances of the murder remain a mystery to this day. Grand
Maester Mellos writes only that Ser Laenor was killed by one of his own
household knights after a quarrel. 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.
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. 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. 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.

Even this was not the end of the tragedies that would mark that dreadful
year. 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. (So many dragons were present
that Septon Eustace wrote that Driftmark had become the new Valyria.)

The cruelty of children is known to all. Prince Aegon Targaryen was
thirteen, Princess Helaena eleven, Prince Aemond ten, and Prince

Daeron six. Both Aegon and Helaena were dragonriders. Helaena now flew
Dreamfyre, the she-dragon who had once carried Rhaena, Maegor the
Cruel’s “Black Bride,” whilst her brother Aegon’s young Sunfyre was said
to be the most beautiful dragon ever seen upon the earth. Even Prince
Daeron had a dragon, a lovely blue she-dragon named Tessarion, though he
had yet to ride. 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. A wealth of dragon’s eggs could be found beneath the
Dragonmont, and several young hatchlings as well. Prince Aemond could
have his choice, “if the lad is bold enough.”

Even at ten, Aemond Targaryen did not lack for boldness. The king’s gibe
stung, and he resolved not to wait for Dragonstone. What did he want
with some puny hatchling, or some stupid egg? Right there at High Tide
was a dragon worthy of him: Vhagar, the oldest, largest, most terrible
dragon in the world.

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. His father and mother would never allow him to
go near Vhagar, Aemond knew, much less try to ride her. 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. The prince had hoped to mount Vhagar
in secrecy, but as he crept up to the dragon a boy’s voice rang out.
“You stay away from her!”

The voice belonged to the youngest of his half-nephews, Joffrey
Velaryon, a boy of three. Always an early riser, Joff had sneaked down
from his bed to see his own young dragon, Tyraxes. 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. As Joff began to
bawl, Aemond raced to Vhagar and clambered up onto her back. Later he
would say that he was so afraid of being caught that he forgot to be
frightened of being burned to death and eaten.

Call it boldness, call it madness, call it fortune or the will of the
gods or the caprice of dragons. Who can know the mind of such a beast?
We do know this: Vhagar roared, lurched to her feet, shook
violently…then snapped her chains and flew. And the boy prince Aemond
Targaryen

became a dragonrider, circling twice around the towers of High Tide
before coming down again.

  But when he landed, Rhaenyra’s sons were waiting for him.

Joffrey had run to get his brothers when Aemond took to the sky, and
both Jace and Luke had come to his call. The Velaryon princelings were
younger than Aemond—Jace was six, Luke five, Joff only three— but there
were three of them, and they had armed themselves with wooden swords
from the training yard. Now they fell on him with a fury. 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. As the younger boys scrambled back away from him, bloody
and bruised, the prince began to mock them, laughing and calling them
“the Strongs.” Jace at least was old enough to grasp the insult. He flew
at Aemond once again, but the older boy began pummeling him
savagely…until Luke, coming to the rescue of his brother, drew his
dagger and slashed Aemond across the face, taking out his right eye. 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.

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. Queen Alicent
demanded that one of Lucerys Velaryon’s eyes should be put out, for the
eye he had cost Aemond. 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.” To so name them
was tantamount to saying they were bastards, with no rights of
succession…and that she herself was guilty of high treason. 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. Just
look at them.”

  []

King Viserys finally put an end to the questioning, declaring he would
hear no more. No eyes would be put out, he decreed…but should
anyone—“man or woman or child, noble or common or royal”—mock his
grandsons as “Strongs” again, their tongues would be pulled out with hot
pincers. His Grace further commanded his wife and daughter to kiss and
exchange vows of love and affection. But their false smiles and empty
words deceived no one but the king. 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.

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. Henceforth Ser Erryk Cargyll of
the Kingsguard would serve as her sworn shield, whilst Breakbones
returned to Harrenhal.

These rulings pleased no one, Septon Eustace writes. 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.

  Though Viserys I would reign for nine more years, the bloody seeds

of the Dance of the Dragons had already been planted, and 120 AC was the
year when they began to sprout. The next to perish were the elder
Strongs. 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. Shortly after their arrival, a fire
broke out in the tower where they were sleeping, and both father and son
were killed, along with three of their retainers and a dozen servants.

The cause of the fire was never determined. 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. Many suspected the blaze
was set intentionally. Mushroom suggests that the Sea Snake was behind
it, as an act of vengeance against the man who had cuckolded his son.
Septon Eustace, more plausibly, suspects Prince Daemon, removing a rival
for Princess Rhaenyra’s affections. 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. The most
disturbing possibility was advanced by none other than Grand Maester
Mellos, who muses that the king himself might have given the command. 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. 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.

Lord Strong had been the King’s Hand, and Viserys had come to rely upon
his strength and counsel. His Grace had reached the age of three-
and-forty, and had grown quite stout. He no longer had a young man’s
vigor, and was afflicted by gout, aching joints, back pain, and a
tightness in the chest that came and went and oft left him red-faced and
short of breath. The governance of the realm was a daunting task; the
king needed a strong, capable Hand to shoulder some of his burdens.
Briefly he considered sending for Princess Rhaenyra. Who better to rule
with him than the daughter he meant to succeed him on the Iron Throne?
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. He considered his brother as well, until he
recalled Prince Daemon’s previous stints on

the small council. 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.

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. The princess was twenty-three,
Prince Daemon thirty-nine.

King, court, and commons were all outraged by the news. 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. The
marriage had been performed on Dragonstone, suddenly and secretly.
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. Mushroom puts forward a different reason: the princess was
once again with child and did not wish to birth a bastard.

And thus that dreadful year 120 AC ended as it begun, with a woman
laboring in childbirth. Princess Rhaenyra’s pregnancy had a happier
outcome than Lady Laena’s had. As the year waned, she brought forth a
small but robust son, a pale princeling with dark purple eyes and pale
silvery hair. She named him Aegon. Prince Daemon had at last a living
son of his own blood…and this new prince, unlike his three half-
brothers, was plainly a Targaryen.

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 Aegon…which, according to The Testimony of Mushroom, it most
certainly was.^(*)

By all rights, the year 122 AC should have been a joyous one for House
Targaryen. Princess Rhaenyra took to the birthing bed once more, and
gave her uncle Daemon a second son, named Viserys after his grandsire.
The child was smaller and less robust than his brother, Aegon, and his
Velaryon half-brothers, but proved to be a most precocious child…though,
somewhat ominously, the dragon’s egg placed in his cradle never hatched.
The greens took that for an ill omen, and were not shy about saying as
much.

Later that same year, King’s Landing celebrated a wedding as well.
Following the ancient tradition of House Targaryen, King Viserys wed his
son Aegon the Elder to his daughter Helaena. 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 bride, his sister, was but thirteen.
Though plumper and less striking than most Targaryens, Helaena was a
pleasant, happy girl, and all agreed she would make a fine mother.

And so she did, and quickly. 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. Prince Aegon had heirs of his own
now, the greens at court proclaimed happily. A dragon’s egg was placed
in the cradle of each child, and two hatchlings soon came forth. Yet all
was not well with these new twins. Jaehaera was tiny and slow to grow.
She did not cry, she did not smile, she did none of the things a babe
was meant to do. Her brother, whilst larger and more robust, was also
less perfect than was expected of a Targaryen princeling, boasting six
fingers on his left hand, and six toes upon each foot.

A wife and children did little to curb the carnal appetites of Prince
Aegon the Elder. 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. And in 127 AC, Princess Helaena gave birth to his second
son, who was given a dragon’s egg and the name Maelor.

Queen Alicent’s other sons had been growing older as well. 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. 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. When he turned
twelve in 126 AC, Daeron was sent to Oldtown to serve as cupbearer and
squire to Lord Hightower.

That same year, across Blackwater Bay, the Sea Snake was stricken by a
sudden fever. As he took to his bed, surrounded by maesters, the issue
arose as to who should succeed him as Lord of the Tides and

Master of Driftmark should the sickness claim him. With both his
trueborn children dead, by law his lands and titles should pass to his
eldest grandson, Jacaerys…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. 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 him… on the
grounds that Rhaenyra’s sons were bastards sired by Harwin Strong. The
princess was not slow in answering this charge. She dispatched Prince
Daemon to seize Ser Vaemond, had his head removed, and fed his carcass
to her dragon, Syrax.

Even this did not end the matter, however. 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. King Viserys had grown
extremely fat and red of face, and scarce had the strength to mount the
steps to the Iron Throne. His Grace heard them out in a stony silence,
then ordered their tongues removed, every one. “You were warned,” he
declared, as they were being dragged away. “I will hear no more of these
lies.”

Yet as he was descending, His Grace stumbled and reached out to right
himself, and sliced his left hand open to the bone on a jagged blade
protruding from the throne. 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. 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.

Though much weakened by his ordeal, King Viserys soon resumed the rule.
To celebrate his recovery, a feast was held on the first day of 127 AC.
The princess and the queen were both commanded to attend, with all their
children. In a show of amity, each woman wore the other’s color and many
declarations of love were made, to the king’s great pleasure. Prince
Daemon raised a cup to Ser Otto Hightower and thanked him for his leal
service as Hand. 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. Or so the court chronicles record.

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 eyes…and strength. “I have never known anyone so strong as my
sweet nephews,” he ended. “So let us drain our cups to these three
strong boys.” Still later, the fool reports, Aegon the Elder took
offense when Jacaerys asked his wife, Helaena, for a dance. Angry words
were exchanged, and the two princes might have come to blows if not for
the intervention of the Kingsguard. 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.

After the loss of his fingers, Viserys I never sat upon the Iron Throne
again. 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).

Death visited the court again a short time later, when Grand Maester
Mellos collapsed one night whilst he was climbing the serpentine steps.
His had always been a moderating voice in council, forever urging calm
and compromise whenever issues arose between the blacks and the greens.
To the king’s distress, however, the passing of the man he called “my
trusted friend” only served to provoke a fresh dispute between the
factions.

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. Queen Alicent, however, insisted that the princess and her
maester had mutilated His Grace unnecessarily. Had they not “meddled,”
she claimed, Grand Maester Mellos would surely have saved the king’s
fingers as well as his life. She urged the appointment of one Maester
Alfador, presently in service at the Hightower. Viserys, beset from both
sides, chose neither, reminding both the princess and the queen that the
choice was not his to make. The Citadel of Oldtown chose the Grand
Maester, not the Crown. In due time, the Conclave bestowed the chain of
office upon Archmaester Orwyle, one of their own.

  King Viserys did seem to recover some of his old vigor once the new

Grand Maester arrived at court. 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.
But such recoveries proved short-lived, and gout, chest pains, and
shortness of breath continued to trouble the king. 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. 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 King’s Hand remained Ser Otto Hightower, father of the queen and
uncle to the Lord of Oldtown. Grand Maester Orwyle was the newest member
of the council, and was thought to favor neither blacks nor greens. The
Lord Commander of the Kingsguard remained Ser Criston Cole, however, and
in him Rhaenyra had a bitter foe. The aged Lord Lyman Beesbury was
master of coin, in which capacity he had served almost uninterrupted
since the Old King’s day. The youngest councillors were the lord admiral
and master of ships, Ser Tyland Lannister, brother to the Lord of
Casterly Rock, and the Lord Confessor and master of whisperers, Larys
Strong, Lord of Harrenhal. Lord Jasper Wylde, master of laws, known
amongst the smallfolk as “Ironrod,” completed the council. (Lord Wylde’s
unbending attitudes on matters of law earned him this sobriquet, Septon
Eustace says. 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.)

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. 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. By the second moon of the year, His Grace had lost all
appetite and was ruling the realm from his bed… when he felt strong
enough to rule at all. Most days, he preferred to leave matters of state
to his Hand, Ser Otto Hightower. On Dragonstone, meanwhile, Princess
Rhaenyra was once again great with child. She too took to her bed.

  []

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. The twins,
Jaehaerys and Jaehaera, were six years old, their brother, Maelor, only
two. 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. Though the children had heard
the story a dozen times before, they listened attentively. Afterward the
king sent them away, pleading weariness and a tightness in his chest.
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.

He never woke. He was fifty-two years old, and had reigned over most of
Westeros for twenty-six years.

  Then the storm broke, and the dragons danced.

  * Hereafter, to avoid confusing the two princes, we will refer to
  Queen Alicent’s son as Aegon the Elder and Princess Rhaenyra’s son as
  Aegon the Younger.

  []

he 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 to

131 AC. To characterize the dark, turbulent, bloody doings of this
period as a “dance” strikes us as grotesquely inappropriate. No doubt
the phrase originated with some singer. “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.

There were two principal claimants to the Iron Throne upon the death of
King Viserys I Targaryen: his daughter Rhaenyra, the only surviving
child of his first marriage, and Aegon, his eldest son by his second
wife. Amidst the chaos and carnage brought on by their rivalry, other
would-be kings would stake claims as well, strutting about like mummers
on a stage for a fortnight or a moon’s turn, only to fall as swiftly as
they had arisen.

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. Even House Targaryen itself was divided, when the kith,
kin, and children of each of the claimants became embroiled in the
fighting. Over the two years of struggle, a terrible toll was taken on
the

great lords of Westeros, together with their bannermen, knights, and
smallfolk. Whilst the dynasty survived, the end of the fighting saw
Targaryen power much diminished, and the world’s last dragons vastly
reduced in number.

The Dance was a war unlike any other ever fought in the long history of
the Seven Kingdoms. Though armies marched and met in savage battle, much
of the slaughter took place on water, and…especially…in the air, as
dragon fought dragon with tooth and claw and flame. It was a war marked
by stealth, murder, and betrayal as well, a war fought in shadows and
stairwells, council chambers and castle yards with knives and lies and
poison.

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 body was discovered by a serving man at the
hour of the bat, when it was the king’s custom to take a cup of
hippocras. The servant ran to inform Queen Alicent, whose apartments
were on the floor below the king’s.

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. 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 dwarf Mushroom suggests a more sinister scenario, whereby Queen
Alicent hurried King Viserys on his way with a pinch of poison in his
hippocras. 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.)

Queen Alicent went at once to the king’s bedchamber, accompanied by Ser
Criston Cole, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. Once they had confirmed
that Viserys was dead, Her Grace ordered his room sealed and placed
under guard. The serving man who had found the king’s body was taken
into custody, to make certain he did not spread the tale. Ser Criston
returned to White Sword Tower and sent his brothers of the Kingsguard to
summon the members of the king’s small council. It was the hour of the
owl.

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. 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. 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.

The council convened in the queen’s apartments within Maegor’s Holdfast.
Many accounts have come down to us of what was said and done that night.
By far the most detailed and authoritative of them is Grand Maester
Munkun’s The Dance of the Dragons, A True Telling. 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. 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 decisions…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.
Munkun’s True Telling therefore paints his predecessor in perhaps too
favorable a light.

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. Grand Maester Munken dubs this gathering “the green council” in
his True Telling.

  []

Grand Maester Orwyle opened the meeting by reviewing the customary tasks
and procedures required at the death of a king. He said, “Septon Eustace
should be summoned to perform the last rites and pray for the king’s
soul. A raven must needs be sent to Dragonstone at once to inform
Princess Rhaenyra of her father’s passing. Mayhaps Her Grace the queen
would care to write the message, so as to soften these sad tidings with
some words of condolence? 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 coronation—”

Ser Otto Hightower cut him off. “All this must needs wait,” he declared,
“until the question of succession is settled.” 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. 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.

“Until our new queen is crowned,” someone said. In Grand Maester
Munkun’s account, the words are Orwyle’s, spoken softly, no more than a
quibble. But Mushroom and Septon Eustace insist it was Lord Beesbury who
spoke up, and in a waspish tone.

  “King,” insisted Queen Alicent. “The Iron Throne by rights must pass

to His Grace’s eldest trueborn son.”

The discussion that followed lasted nigh unto dawn, Grand Maester Munkun
tells us. Mushroom and Septon Eustace concur. In their accounts, only
Lord Beesbury spoke on behalf of Princess Rhaenyra. 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. (Grand Maester Orwyle’s account differs only in that
he puts many of these arguments into his own mouth rather than
Beesbury’s, but subsequent events suggest that was not so, as we shall
see.)

But these words fell on ears made of stone. Ser Tyland pointed out that
many of the lords who had sworn to defend the succession of Princess
Rhaenyra were long dead. “It has been twenty-four years,” he said. “I
myself swore no such oath. I was a child at the time.” 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. Ser Otto reminded them that Rhaenyra’s husband was none
other than Prince Daemon, and “we all know that one’s nature. 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. My own head will be the first cut off, I do not doubt, but
your queen, my daughter, will soon follow.”

Queen Alicent echoed him. “Nor will they spare my children,” she
declared. “Aegon and his brothers are the king’s trueborn sons, with a
better claim to the throne than her brood of bastards. Daemon will find
some pretext to put them all to death. Even Helaena and her little ones.
One of these Strongs put out Aemond’s eye, never forget. He was a boy,
aye, but the boy is the father to the man, and bastards are monstrous by
nature.”

  Ser Criston Cole spoke up. Should the princess reign, he reminded

them, Jacaerys Velaryon would rule after her. “Seven save this realm if
we seat a bastard on the Iron Throne.” He spoke of Rhaenyra’s wanton
ways and the infamy of her husband. “They will turn the Red Keep into a
brothel. No man’s daughter will be safe, nor any man’s wife. Even the
boys…we know what Laenor was.”

It is not recorded that Lord Larys Strong spoke a word during this
debate, but that was not unusual. Though glib of tongue when need be,
the master of whisperers hoarded his words like a miser hoarding coins,
preferring to listen rather than talk.

“If we do this,” Grand Maester Orwyle cautioned the council, according
to the True Telling, “it must surely lead to war. The princess will not
meekly stand aside, and she has dragons.”

“And friends,” Lord Beesbury declared. “Men of honor, who will not
forget the vows they swore to her and her father. I am an old man, but
not so old that I will sit here meekly whilst the likes of you plot to
steal her crown.” And so saying, he rose to go.

  As to what happened next, our sources differ.

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.
Confined to a black cell, he would in time perish of a chill whilst
awaiting trial.

Septon Eustace tells it elsewise. In his account, Ser Criston Cole
forced Lord Beesbury back into his seat and opened his throat with a
dagger. 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.

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.

No further dissent was heard after the death of Lord Beesbury. 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. 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 she would be to move. “Mayhaps the whore will die in
childbirth,” Queen Alicent is reported to have said (according to
Mushroom).

No ravens flew that night. No bells rang. Those servants who knew of the
king’s passing were sent to the dungeons. 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. “Do
them no violence, unless they resist,” Ser Otto Hightower commanded.
“Such men as bend the knee and swear fealty to King Aegon shall suffer
no harm at our hands.”

  “And those who will not?” asked Grand Maester Orwyle. “Are traitors,”
  said Ironrod, “and must die a traitor’s death.”

Lord Larys Strong, master of whisperers, then spoke for the first and
only time. “Let us be the first to swear,” he said, “lest there be
traitors here amongst us.” Drawing his dagger, the Clubfoot drew it
across his palm. “A blood oath,” he urged, “to bind us all together,
brothers unto death.” And so each of the conspirators slashed their
palms and clasped hands with one another, swearing brotherhood. Queen
Alicent alone amongst them was excused from the oath, on account of her
womanhood.

Dawn was breaking over the city before Queen Alicent dispatched the
Kingsguard to bring her sons Aegon and Aemond to the council. (Prince
Daeron, the youngest and gentlest of her children, was in Oldtown,
serving as Lord Hightower’s squire.)

One-eyed Prince Aemond, nineteen, was found in the armory, donning plate
and mail for his morning practice in the castle yard. “Is Aegon king?”
he asked Ser Willis Fell, “or must we kneel and kiss the old whore’s
cunny?” Princess Helaena was breaking her fast with her children when
the Kingsguard came to her…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. Feel free to search beneath the blankets.”

Prince Aegon was “at his revels,” Munkun says in his True Telling,
vaguely. 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 twelve

pleasured his member with her mouth. Let us put that ugly picture down
to Mushroom being Mushroom, however, and consider instead the words of
Septon Eustace.

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. Moreover, the prince at first refused to be a
part of his mother’s plans. “My sister is the heir, not me,” he says in
Eustace’s account. “What sort of brother steals his sister’s
birthright?” Only when Ser Criston convinced him that the princess must
surely execute him and his brothers should she don the crown did Aegon
waver. “Whilst any trueborn Targaryen yet lives, no Strong can ever hope
to sit the Iron Throne,” Cole said. “Rhaenyra has no choice but to take
your heads if she wishes her bastards to rule after her.” It was this,
and only this, that persuaded Aegon to accept the crown that the small
council was offering him, insists our gentle septon.

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. Five were judged sympathetic to Prince Aegon’s cause when
questioned. The other two, along with their commander, were deemed
untrustworthy, and found themselves in chains. Ser Luthor Largent, the
most fearsome of the “leal five,” was made the new commander of the gold
cloaks. A bull of a man, nigh on seven feet tall, Largent was rumored to
have once killed a warhorse with a single punch. 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.

Ser Tyland Lannister was named master of coin in place of the late Lord
Beesbury, and acted at once to seize the royal treasury. The Crown’s
gold was divided into four parts. 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. The remaining wealth was to
be used for bribes and gifts, and to hire sellswords if needed. 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 his

allegiance.

A day passed, then another. Neither septons nor silent sisters were
summoned to the bedchamber where King Viserys lay, swollen and rotting.
No bells rang. Ravens flew, but not to Dragonstone. 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.

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. 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. 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. All were lesser
powers, save for the Velaryons. The northmen were a greater concern:
Winterfell had spoken for Rhaenys at Harrenhal, as had Lord Stark’s
bannermen, Dustin of Barrowton and Manderly of White Harbor. 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.

The greatest danger was deemed to be Storm’s End, for House Baratheon
had always been staunch in support of the claims of Princess Rhaenys and
her children. Though old Lord Boremund had died, his son Borros was even
more belligerent than his father, and the lesser storm lords would
surely follow wherever he led. “Then we must see that he leads them to
our king,” Queen Alicent declared. Whereupon she sent for her second
son.

Thus it was not a raven who took flight for Storm’s End that day, but
Vhagar, oldest and largest of the dragons of Westeros. On her back rode
Prince Aemond Targaryen, with a sapphire in the place of his missing
eye. “Your purpose is to win the hand of one of Lord Baratheon’s
daughters,” his grandsire Ser Otto told him, before he flew. “Any of the
four will do. Woo her and wed her, and Lord Borros will deliver the
stormlands for your brother. Fail—”

  “I will not fail,” Prince Aemond blustered. “Aegon will have Storm’s

End, and I will have this girl.”

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. 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. 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. Prince Aegon had grown weary of secrecy. “Am I a king
or no?” he demanded of his mother. “If I am king, then crown me.”

The bells began to ring on the tenth day of the third moon of 129 AC,
tolling the end of a reign. 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 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.” 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.”

Meanwhile, hurried preparations were made for the coronation. The
Dragonpit was chosen as the site. Under its mighty dome were stone
benches sufficient to seat eighty thousand, and the pit’s thick walls,
strong roof, and towering bronze doors made it defensible, should
traitors attempt to disrupt the ceremony.

  []

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. His mother, Queen Alicent,
beloved of the smallfolk, placed her own crown upon the head of her
daughter, Helaena, Aegon’s wife and sister. After kissing her cheeks,
the mother knelt before the daughter, bowed her head, and said, “My
Queen.”

How many came to see the crowning remains a matter of dispute. 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. 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.

A few of those in attendance, with sharper eyes than most, might have
noticed that there were but four white cloaks in attendance on the new
king, not five as heretofore. 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. 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. They brought with them a stolen crown: a band of yellow
gold ornamented with seven gems of different colors. This was the crown
King Viserys had worn, and the Old King Jaehaerys before him. 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.

After the coronation, the remaining Kingsguard escorted Aegon to his
mount, a splendid creature with gleaming golden scales and pale pink
wing membranes. “Sunfyre” was the name given this dragon of the golden
dawn. Munkun tells us the king flew thrice around the city before
landing inside the walls of the Red Keep. 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. Shouts rang through
the hall.

On Dragonstone, no cheers were heard. 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. 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. The princess shrieked
curses all through her labor, calling down the wrath of the gods upon
her half-brothers and their mother, the queen, and detailing the
torments she would inflict upon them before she would let them die. 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!”

When the babe at last came forth, she proved indeed a monster: a
stillborn girl, twisted and malformed, with a hole in her chest where
her heart should have been, and a stubby, scaled tail. Or so Mushroom
describes her. The dwarf tells us that it was he who carried the little
thing to the yard for burning. 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. “She was my only daughter, and they killed
her. They stole my crown and murdered my daughter, and they

shall answer for it.”

And so the Dance began, as the princess called a council of her own.
“The black council,” the True Telling names that gathering on
Dragonstone, setting it against the “green council” of King’s Landing.
Rhaenyra herself presided, seated between her uncle and husband, Prince
Daemon, and her trusted counselor, Maester Gerardys. Her three sons were
present with them, though none had reached the age of manhood (Jace was
fourteen, Luke thirteen, Joffrey eleven). Two Kingsguard stood with
them: Ser Erryk Cargyll, twin to Ser Arryk, and the westerman, Ser
Lorent Marbrand.

Thirty knights, a hundred crossbowmen, and three hundred men-at- arms
made up the rest of Dragonstone’s garrison. That had always been deemed
sufficient for a fortress of such strength. “As an instrument of
conquest, however, our army leaves something to be desired,” Prince
Daemon observed sourly.

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. But the greatest lord to pledge his strength to
the princess was Corlys Velaryon of Driftmark. 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. Mayhaps the Seven have
preserved me for this one last fight.” 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. “The Queen Who Never Was,” Mushroom calls her. (“What
did Viserys ever have that she did not? A little sausage? Is that all it
takes to be a king? Let Mushroom rule, then. My sausage is thrice the
size of his.”)

Those who sat at the black council counted themselves loyalists, but
knew full well that King Aegon II would name them traitors. 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.
All their hosts combined could not match the power the Hightowers alone
could field. Aegon’s greens enjoyed other advantages as well. Oldtown,
King’s Landing, and Lannisport were the largest and richest cities in
the realm; all three were held by greens. Every visible symbol of
legitimacy belonged to Aegon. He sat the Iron Throne. He

lived in the Red Keep. 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. Grand Maester Orwyle sat in his councils,
and the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard had placed the crown upon his
princely head. And he was male, which in the eyes of many made him the
rightful king, his half-sister the usurper.

Against all that, Rhaenyra’s advantages were few. Some older lords might
yet recall the oaths they had sworn when she was made Princess of
Dragonstone and named her father’s heir. 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. Many a young lord and noble knight had
sought her favor then…though how many would still fight for her, now
that she was a woman wed, her body aged and thickened by six
childbirths, was a question none could answer. 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. And her consort, Prince Daemon, tried and tempered
in the Stepstones, had more experience of warfare than all their foes
combined. Last, but far from least, Rhaenyra had her dragons.

  “As does Aegon,” Maester Gerardys pointed out.

“We have more,” said Princess Rhaenys, the Queen Who Never Was, who had
been a dragonrider longer than all of them. “And ours are larger and
stronger, but for Vhagar. Dragons thrive best here on Dragonstone.” She
enumerated for the council. King Aegon had his Sunfyre. A splendid
beast, though young. Aemond One-Eye rode Vhagar, and the peril posed by
Queen Visenya’s mount could not be gainsaid. Queen Helaena’s mount was
Dreamfyre, the she-dragon who had once borne the Old King’s sister
Rhaena through the clouds. 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. “That makes four dragons of fighting size,”
said Rhaenys. 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.

Against that, Prince Daemon had Caraxes and Princess Rhaenyra Syrax,
both huge and formidable beasts. Caraxes especially was fearsome, and no
stranger to blood and fire after the Stepstones.

Rhaenyra’s three sons by Laenor Velaryon were all dragonriders; Vermax,
Arrax, and Tyraxes were thriving, and growing larger every year. 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. Rhaenys’s own
she-dragon, Meleys the Red Queen, had grown lazy, but remained fearsome
when roused. Prince Daemon’s twins by Laena Velaryon might yet be
dragonriders too. Baela’s dragon, the slender pale green Moondancer,
would soon be large enough to bear the girl upon her back…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. 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.

Moreover, six other dragons made their lairs in the smoky caverns of the
Dragonmont above the castle. 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. And behind the mountain dwelled three wild
dragons, never claimed nor ridden by any man, living or dead. The
smallfolk had named them Sheepstealer, Grey Ghost, and the Cannibal.
“Find riders to master Silverwing, Vermithor, and Seasmoke, and we will
have nine dragons against Aegon’s four. Mount and fly their wild kin,
and we will number twelve, even without Stormcloud,” Princess Rhaenys
pointed out. “That is how we shall win this war.”

Lords Celtigar and Staunton agreed. Aegon the Conqueror and his sisters
had proved that knights and armies could not stand against fire and
blood. Celtigar urged the princess to fly against King’s Landing at
once, and reduce the city to ash and bone. “And how will that serve us,
my lord?” the Sea Snake demanded of him. “We want to rule the city, not
burn it to the ground.”

“It will never come to that,” Celtigar insisted. “The usurper will have
no choice but to oppose us with his own dragons. Our nine must surely
overwhelm his four.”

“At what cost?” Princess Rhaenyra wondered. “My sons would be riding
three of those dragons, I remind you. And it would not be nine against
four. I will not be strong enough to fly for some time yet. And

who is to ride Silverwing, Vermithor, and Seasmoke? You, my lord? I
hardly think so. It will be five against four, and one of their four
will be Vhagar. That is no advantage.”

Surprisingly, Prince Daemon agreed with his wife. “In the Stepstones, my
enemies learned to run and hide when they saw Caraxes’s wings or heard
his roar…but they had no dragons of their own. It is no easy thing for a
man to be a dragonslayer. But dragons can kill dragons, and have. Any
maester who has ever studied the history of Valyria can tell you that. I
will not throw our dragons against the usurper’s unless I have no other
choice. There are other ways to use them, better ways.” Then the prince
laid his own strategies before the black council. Rhaenyra must have a
coronation of her own, to answer Aegon’s. Afterward they would send out
ravens, calling on the lords of the Seven Kingdoms to declare their
allegiance to their true queen.

“We must fight this war with words before we go to battle,” the prince
declared. The lords of the great houses held the key to victory, Daemon
insisted; their bannermen and vassals would follow where they led. 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 Hightowers…but the rest of the realm’s
great lords had yet to declare.

“Storm’s End will stand with us,” Princess Rhaenys said. She herself was
of that blood on her mother’s side, and the late Lord Boremund had
always been the staunchest of friends.

Prince Daemon had good reason to hope that the Maid of the Vale might
bring the Eyrie to their side as well. 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. But
the ironmen were notoriously fickle, and Dalton Greyjoy loved blood and
battle; he might easily be persuaded to support the princess.

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. Which left only the riverlords, a
notoriously quarrelsome lot ruled over, in name at least, by House Tully
of Riverrun. “We have friends in the riverlands,” the prince said,
“though not all of them dare show their colors yet. We need a place
where they can gather, a toehold on the mainland large

enough to house a sizable host, and strong enough to hold against
whatever forces the usurper can send against us.” He showed the lords a
map. “Here. Harrenhal.”

And so it was decided. Prince Daemon would lead the assault on
Harrenhal, riding Caraxes. Princess Rhaenyra would remain on Dragonstone
until she had recovered her strength. The Velaryon fleet would close off
the Gullet, sallying forth from Dragonstone and Driftmark to block all
shipping entering or leaving Blackwater Bay. “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. But Aegon is a green
boy, and green boys are easily provoked. Mayhaps we can goad him into a
rash attack.” The Sea Snake would command the fleet, whilst Princess
Rhaenys flew overhead to keep their foes from attacking their ships with
dragons. Meanwhile, ravens would go forth to Riverrun, the Eyrie, Pyke,
and Storm’s End, to gain the allegiance of their lords.

Then up spoke the queen’s eldest son, Jacaerys. “We should bear those
messages,” he said. “Dragons will win the lords over quicker than
ravens.” His brother Lucerys agreed, insisting that he and Jace were
men, or near enough to make no matter. “Our uncle calls us Strongs, but
when the lords see us on dragonback they will know that for a lie. Only
Targaryens ride dragons.” 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. Even young Joffrey chimed in,
offering to mount his own dragon, Tyraxes, and join his brothers.

Princess Rhaenyra forbade that; Joff was but eleven. But Jacaerys was
fourteen, Lucerys thirteen; bold and handsome lads, skilled in arms, who
had long served as squires. “If you go, you go as messengers, not as
knights,” she told them. “You must take no part in any fighting.” 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. 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. Luke’s mission would be shorter and
safer; he was to fly to Storm’s End, where it was expected that Borros
Baratheon would give him a warm welcome.

A hasty coronation was held the next day. 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. 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. 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.

Her first act as queen was to declare Ser Otto Hightower and Queen
Alicent traitors and rebels. “As for my half-brothers and my sweet
sister, Helaena,” she announced, “they have been led astray by the
counsel of evil men. 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.”

Word of Rhaenyra’s coronation reached the Red Keep the next day, to the
great displeasure of Aegon II. “My half-sister and my uncle are guilty
of high treason,” the young king declared. “I want them attainted, I
want them arrested, and I want them dead.”

Cooler heads on the green council wished to parley. “The princess must
be made to see that her cause is hopeless,” Grand Maester Orwyle said.
“Brother should not war against sister. Send me to her, that we may talk
and reach an amicable accord.”

Aegon would not hear of it. 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.” But when the two queens—his
mother, Queen Alicent, and his wife, Queen Helaena— spoke in favor of
Orwyle’s proposal, the truculent king gave way reluctantly. 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.

  The terms offered by the king were generous, Munkun declares in

his True Telling. If the princess would acknowledge him as king and make
obeisance before the Iron Throne, Aegon II would confirm her in her
possession of Dragonstone, and allow the island and castle to pass to
her son Jacaerys upon her death. 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. Pardons would be granted to
those lords and knights who had conspired treasonously with her against
their true king.

Rhaenyra heard these terms in stony silence, then asked Orwyle if he
remembered her father, King Viserys. “Of course, Your Grace,” the
maester answered. “Perhaps you can tell us who he named as his heir and
successor,” the queen said, her crown upon her head. “You, Your Grace,”
Orwyle replied. And Rhaenyra nodded and said, “With your own tongue you
admit I am your lawful queen. Why then do you serve my half-brother, the
pretender?”

Munkun tells us that Orwyle gave a long and erudite reply, citing Andal
law and the Great Council of 101. Mushroom claims he stammered and
voided his bladder. Whichever is true, his answer did not satisfy
Princess Rhaenyra.

“A Grand Maester should know the law and serve it,” she told Orwyle.
“You are no Grand Maester, and you bring only shame and dishonor to that
chain you wear.” 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.” 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.”

Long after the Dance was done, the singer Luceon of Tarth would compose
a sad ballad called “Farewell, My Brother,” still sung today. The song
purports to relate the last meeting between Ser Arryk Cargyll and his
twin, Ser Erryk, as Orwyle’s party was boarding the ship that would
carry them back to King’s Landing. Ser Arryk had sworn his sword to
Aegon, Ser Erryk to Rhaenyra. In the song, each brother tries to
persuade the other to change sides; failing, they exchange declarations
of love and part, knowing that when next they meet it will

be as enemies. It is possible that such a farewell did indeed take place
that day on Dragonstone; however, none of our sources make mention of
such.

Aegon II was two-and-twenty, quick to anger and slow to forgive.
Rhaenyra’s refusal to accept his rule enraged him. “I offered her an
honorable peace, and the whore spat in my face,” he declared. “What
happens next is on her own head.”

  What happened next was war.

  []

[]Aegon had been proclaimed king in the Dragonpit, Rhaenyra queen on
Dragonstone. All efforts at reconciliation having failed, the Dance of
the Dragons now began in earnest.

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. 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.

  Let us turn first to Harrenhal.

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 riverlands…but Aegon the Dragon had proved it vulnerable from the
sky. With its lord, Larys Strong, away in King’s Landing, the castle was
but lightly garrisoned. 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. 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. The castle smallfolk became his captives as well, amongst
them a wet nurse named Alys Rivers.

Who was this woman? A serving wench who dabbled in potions and spells,
says Munkun. A woods witch, claims Septon Eustace. A malign enchantress
who bathed in the blood of virgins to preserve her youth, Mushroom would
have us believe. Her name suggests bastard birth… but we know little of
her father, and less of her mother. 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 Larys (the Clubfoot).
But Mushroom insists that she was much older, that she was wet nurse to
both boys, perhaps even to their father a generation earlier.

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. Was she in truth a witch who lay with
demons, bringing forth dead children as payment for the knowledge they
gave her? Was she a simpleminded slattern, as Eustace believes? A wanton
who used her poisons and potions to bind men to her, body and soul?

Alys Rivers was at least forty years of age during the Dance of the
Dragons, that much is known; Mushroom makes her even older. All agree
that she looked younger than her years, but whether this was simple
happenstance, or achieved through her practice of the dark arts, men
continue to dispute. 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.

The sudden, bloodless fall of Black Harren’s seat was counted a great
victory for Queen Rhaenyra and her blacks. 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 rally…and Rhaenyra had many such in the lands
watered by the Trident. 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. 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.

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. 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. Lord Samwell Blackwood, who had once lost a duel for her favor,
raised her banners over Raventree. (Ser Amos Bracken, who had won that
duel, followed his lord father when House Bracken declared for Aegon.)
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. (The
Vances of Atranta took the other path, and trumpeted their allegiance to
the young king.) Petyr Piper, the grizzled Lord of Pinkmaiden, spoke for
many when he said, “I swore her my sword. I’m older now, but not so old
that I’ve forgotten the words I said, and it happens I still have the
sword.”

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. He had favored the rights
of the male claimant in 101, and the years had not changed his views.
Lord Grover insisted that Riverrun would fight for young King Aegon. Yet
no such word went forth. The old lord was bedridden and would not live
much longer, Riverrun’s maester had declared. “I would sooner the rest
of us did not die with him,” declared Ser Elmo Tully, his grandson.
Riverrun had no defense against dragonfire, he pointed out to his own
sons, and both sides in this fight rode dragons. And so whilst Lord
Grover thundered and fulminated from his deathbed, Riverrun barred its
gates, manned its walls, and held its silence.

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. The Maiden of the Vale, Lady
Jeyne Arryn, was five-and-thirty, twenty years his senior. 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.

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. Septon Eustace repeats

the widespread rumor that Jeyne Arryn preferred the intimate
companionship of other women, then goes on to say it was not true. In
this instance, we must be grateful for Grand Maester Munkun’s True
Telling, for he alone confines himself to the High Hall of the Eyrie,
rather than its bedchambers.

“Thrice have mine own kin sought to replace me,” Lady Jeyne told Prince
Jacaerys. “My cousin Ser Arnold is wont to say that women are too soft
to rule. I have him in one of my sky cells, if you would like to ask
him. Your Prince Daemon used his first wife most cruelly, it is true…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. In this world of men, we women must band together. The Vale and
its knights shall stand with her…if Her Grace will grant me one
request.” When the prince asked what that might be, she answered,
“Dragons. I have no fear of armies. Many and more have broken themselves
against my Bloody Gate, and the Eyrie is known to be impregnable. But
you have descended on us from the sky, as Queen Visenya once did during
the Conquest, and I was powerless to halt you. I mislike feeling
powerless. Send me dragonriders.”

And so the prince agreed, and Lady Jeyne knelt before him, and bade her
warriors to kneel, and all swore him their swords.

Then on Jacaerys soared, north across the Fingers and the waters of the
Bite. 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.

Here the prince faced a shrewder bargainer. “White Harbor is not
unsympathetic to your mother’s plight,” Manderly declared. “Mine own
forebears were despoiled of their birthright when our enemies drove us
into exile on these cold northern shores. 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. 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.”

Prince Jacaerys knew what was being asked of him. 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’s

brother Joffrey once the war was over.

Finally Vermax carried Jacaerys Velaryon to Winterfell, to treat with
its formidable young lord, Cregan Stark.

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. Cregan had come into his lordship
at thirteen upon the death of his father, Lord Rickon, in 121 AC. 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. Relations between the two grew strained, as the young lord
chafed under the limits imposed upon him by his father’s brother.
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. 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.

Autumn was well advanced when the Prince of Dragonstone came to
Winterfell. 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. 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.

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. They drank together,
hunted together, trained together, and swore an oath of brotherhood,
sealed in blood. This seems more credible than Septon Eustace’s version,
wherein the prince spends most of his visit attempting to persuade Lord
Cregan to give up his false gods and accept the worship of the Seven.

But we turn to Mushroom to find the tales other chronicles omit, nor
does he fail us now. His account introduces a young maiden, or “wolf
girl” as he dubs her, with the name of Sara Snow. 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. 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 the

prince had taken her for his wife. 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.

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. 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. 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.

(Mushroom also claims that Vermax left a clutch of dragon’s eggs at
Winterfell, which is equally absurd. 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. Septon Barth’s speculation that the dragons change sex
at need, being “as mutable as flame,” is too ludicrous to consider.)

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. Like many such pacts, it was
to be sealed with a marriage. Lord Cregan’s son, Rickon, was a year old.
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. 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 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. 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.

Had his brother’s “shorter, safer” flight gone as well, much bloodshed
and grief might well have been averted.

The tragedy that befell Lucerys Velaryon at Storm’s End was never
planned, on this all of our sources agree. The first battles in the
Dance of the Dragons were fought with quills and ravens, with threats
and promises, decrees and blandishments. The murder of Lord Beesbury at
the green council was not yet widely known; most believed his lordship
to be languishing in some dungeon. Whilst sundry familiar faces were no
longer seen about court, no heads had appeared above the castle gates,
and many still hoped that the question of succession might be resolved
peaceably.

The Stranger had other plans. For surely it was his dread hand behind
the ill chance that brought the two princelings together at Storm’s 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.

Borros Baratheon was a man of much different character than his father.
“Lord Boremund was stone, hard and strong and unmoving,” Septon Eustace
tells us. “Lord Borros was the wind that rages and howls and blows this
way and that.” Prince Aemond had been uncertain what sort of welcome he
would receive when he set out, but Storm’s End welcomed him with feasts
and hunts and jousting.

Lord Borros proved more than willing to entertain his suit. “I have four
daughters,” he told the prince. “Choose any one you like. Cass is
oldest, she’ll be first to flower, but Floris is prettier. And if it’s a
clever wife you want, there’s Maris.”

Rhaenyra had taken House Baratheon for granted for too long, his
lordship told Aemond. “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 Rhaenyra…she’s not Rhaenys, is she?” He had nothing
against women, Lord Borros went on to say; he loved his girls, a
daughter is a precious thing…but a son, ahhh…should the gods ever grant
him a son of his own blood, Storm’s End would pass to him, not to his
sisters. “Why should the Iron Throne be any different?” And with a royal
marriage in the offing…Rhaenyra’s cause was lost, she would see that
when she learned that she had lost Storm’s End, he would tell her so
himself…bow down to your brother, aye, it’s for the best, his girls
would fight with each other sometimes, the way girls do, but he saw to
it they always made peace afterward…

  We have no record of which daughter Prince Aemond finally decided

on (though Mushroom tells us that he kissed all four, to “taste the
nectar of their lips”), save that it was not Maris. Munkun writes that
the prince and Lord Borros were haggling over dates and dowries on the
morning Lucerys Velaryon appeared. Vhagar sensed his coming first.
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. Even Arrax quailed
before that sound, we are told, and Luke plied his whip freely as he
forced him down.

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. 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. (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.)
So here for once we need not rely entirely on Grand Maester Munkun,
Mushroom, and Septon Eustace. None of them were present at Storm’s End,
but many others were, so we have no shortage of firsthand accounts.

“Look at this sad creature, my lord,” Prince Aemond called out. “Little
Luke Strong, the bastard.” To Luke he said, “You are wet, bastard. Is it
raining or did you piss youself in fear?”

Lucerys Velaryon addressed himself only to Lord Baratheon. “Lord Borros,
I have brought you a message from my mother, the queen.”

“The whore of Dragonstone, he means.” 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. One
brought Rhaenyra’s letter to the dais, where his lordship sat upon the
throne of the storm kings of old.

No man can truly know what Borros Baratheon was feeling at that moment.
The accounts of those who were there differ markedly one from the other.
Some say his lordship was red-faced and abashed, as a man might be if
his lawful wife found him abed with another woman. Others declare that
Borros appeared to be relishing the moment, for it pleased his vanity to
have both king and queen seeking his support.

Mushroom (who was not there) says he was drunk. Septon Eustace (who was
not there) says he was fearful.

Yet all the witnesses agree on what Lord Borros said and did. 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. A frown
stole across Lord Borros’s face. 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?” He gestured at the four girls.
“Pick one.”

Prince Lucerys could only blush. “My lord, I am not free to marry,” he
replied. “I am betrothed to my cousin Rhaena.”

“I thought as much,” Lord Borros said. “Go home, pup, and tell the bitch
your mother that the Lord of Storm’s End is not a dog that she can
whistle up at need to set against her foes.” And Prince Lucerys turned
to take his leave of the Round Hall.

But Prince Aemond drew his sword and said, “Hold, Strong. First pay the
debt you owe me.” Then he tore off his eye patch and flung it to the
floor, to show the sapphire beneath. “You have a knife, just as you did
then. Put out your eye, and I will let you leave. One will serve. I
would not blind you.”

Prince Lucerys recalled his promise to his mother. “I will not fight
you. I came here as an envoy, not a knight.”

“You came here as a craven and a traitor,” Prince Aemond answered. “I
will have your eye or your life, Strong.”

At that Lord Borros grew uneasy. “Not here,” he grumbled. “He came as an
envoy. I want no blood shed beneath my roof.” 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.

And there it might have ended, but for the girl Maris. The secondborn
daughter of Lord Borros, less comely than her sisters, she was angry
with Aemond for preferring them to her. “Was it one of your eyes he
took, or one of your balls?” Maris asked the prince, in tones sweet as
honey. “I am so glad you chose my sister. I want a husband with all his
parts.”

  Aemond Targaryen’s mouth twisted in rage, and he turned once

more to Lord Borros, asking for his leave. 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 his knights moved aside as Prince Aemond
rushed to the doors.

Outside the storm was raging. Thunder rolled across the castle, the rain
fell in blinding sheets, and from time to time great bolts of blue-
white lightning lit the world as bright as day. 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. Had the sky been calm,
Prince Lucerys might have been able to outfly his pursuer, for Arrax was
younger and swifter…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. Watchers on the castle walls saw distant blasts of
flame, and heard a shriek cut the thunder. Then the two beasts were
locked together, lightning crackling around them. Vhagar was five times
the size of her foe, the hardened survivor of a hundred battles. If
there was a fight, it could not have lasted long.

Arrax fell, broken, to be swallowed by the storm-lashed waters of the
bay. His head and neck washed up beneath the cliffs below Storm’s End
three days later, to make a feast for crabs and seagulls. 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. Some say Vhagar snatched Lucerys
off his dragon’s back and swallowed him whole. It has even been claimed
that the prince survived his fall, swam to safety, but lost all memory
of who he was, spending the rest of his days as a simpleminded
fisherman.

  []

The True Telling gives all these tales the respect they deserve…which is
to say, none. Lucerys Velaryon died with his dragon, Munkun insists.
This is undoubtedly correct. The prince was thirteen years of age. His
body was never found. And with his death, the war of ravens and envoys
and marriage pacts came to an end, and the war of fire and blood began
in earnest.

Aemond Targaryen…who would henceforth be known as Aemond the Kinslayer
to his foes…returned to King’s Landing, having won the support of
Storm’s End for his brother Aegon, and the undying enmity of Queen
Rhaenyra. If he thought to receive a hero’s welcome, he was
disappointed. Queen Alicent went pale when she heard what he had done,
crying, “Mother have mercy on us all.” Nor was Ser Otto pleased. “You
only lost one eye,” he is reported to have said. “How could you be so
blind?” The king himself did not share their concerns, however. 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.”

On Dragonstone, Queen Rhaenyra collapsed when told of Luke’s death.
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. Only the intervention of the Sea Snake and Princess Rhaenys kept
the boy from mounting his own dragon at once. (Mushroom would have us
believe he played a part as well.) As the black council sat to consider
how to strike back, a raven arrived from Harrenhal. “An eye for an eye,
a son for a son,” Prince Daemon wrote. “Lucerys shall be avenged.”

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. The prince still had friends in the
low places of King’s Landing, and followers amongst the gold cloaks.
Unbeknownst to King Aegon, the Hand, or the Queen Dowager, he had allies
at court as well, even on the green council…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. To this pale
stranger he reached out now, by secret ways, to set a terrible vengeance
into motion.

Amidst the stews of Flea Bottom, Prince Daemon’s go-between found
suitable instruments. 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 other was a ratcatcher in the Red Keep. Their
true names are lost to history. They are remembered (would that they
were not!) as Blood and Cheese.

  “Cheese knew the Red Keep better than the shape of his own cock,”

Mushroom tells us. The hidden doors and secret tunnels that Maegor the
Cruel had built were as familiar to the ratcatcher as to the rats he
hunted. Using a forgotten passageway, Cheese led Blood into the heart of
the castle, unseen by any guard. 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.

The Tower of the Hand was less secure. The two men crept up through the
walls, bypassing the spearmen posted at the tower doors. Ser Otto’s
rooms were of no interest to them. Instead they slipped into his
daughter’s chambers, one floor below. 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. Once inside, Cheese
bound and gagged the Dowager Queen whilst Blood strangled her bedmaid.
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.

Blind to her danger, the queen appeared as dusk was settling over the
castle, accompanied by her three children. Jaehaerys and Jaehaera were
six, Maelor two. As they entered the apartments, Helaena was holding his
little hand and calling out her mother’s name. Blood barred the door and
slew the queen’s guardsman, whilst Cheese appeared to snatch up Maelor.
“Scream and you all die,” Blood told Her Grace. Queen Helaena kept her
calm, it is said. “Who are you?” she demanded of the two. “Debt
collectors,” said Cheese. “An eye for an eye, a son for a son. We only
want the one, t’ square things. Won’t hurt the rest o’ you fine folks,
not one lil’ hair. Which one you want t’ lose, Your Grace?”

Once she realized what he meant, Queen Helaena pleaded with the men to
kill her instead. “A wife’s not a son,” said Blood. “It has to be a
boy.” Cheese warned the queen to make a choice soon, before Blood grew
bored and raped her little girl. “Pick,” he said, “or we kill them all.”
On her knees, weeping, Helaena named her youngest, Maelor. 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. “You hear that, little boy?” Cheese
whispered to Maelor. “Your momma wants you dead.” Then he gave Blood a
grin, and the hulking swordsman slew Prince

Jaehaerys, striking off the boy’s head with a single blow. The queen
began to scream.

Strange to say, the ratcatcher and the butcher were true to their word.
They did no further harm to Queen Helaena or her surviving children, but
rather fled with the prince’s head in hand. A hue and cry went up, but
Cheese knew the secret passageways as the guards did not, and the
killers made their escape. 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. Under torture, he confessed
that he had been taking it to Harrenhal, to collect his reward from
Prince Daemon. He also gave up a description of the whore he claimed had
hired them: an older woman, foreign by her talk, cloaked and hooded,
very pale. The other harlots called her Misery.

After thirteen days of torment, Blood was at last allowed to die. 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. 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. In his grief and fury, King Aegon II
commanded that all the city’s ratcatchers be taken out and hanged, and
this was done. (Ser Otto Hightower brought one hundred cats into the Red
Keep to take their place.)

Though Blood and Cheese had spared her life, Queen Helaena cannot be
said to have survived that fateful dusk. Afterward she would not eat,
nor bathe, nor leave her chambers, and she could no longer stand to look
upon her son Maelor, knowing that she had named him to die. 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. Aegon
and his wife slept separately thereafter, and Queen Helaena sank deeper
and deeper into madness, whilst the king raged, and drank, and raged.

  []

he 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. For both the blacks and the greens, blood
called to blood for vengeance. And all across the realm, lords called
their banners, and armies gathered and

began to march.

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).

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. In the fight that followed, the mill
was put to the torch, and men fought and died for hours bathed in the
red light of the flames. 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. 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 or

mere family legend cannot be known.

Many other grievous losses were suffered by both sides in what became
known as the Battle of the Burning Mill…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. 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 Bracken’s
strength. Lord Humfrey Bracken and his remaining children had been made
captive, along with his third wife and baseborn paramour. Rather than
see them come to harm, Ser Raylon yielded. 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.

Yet it must not be thought that the green council was sitting idle. Ser
Otto Hightower had been busy as well, winning over lords, hiring
sellswords, strengthening the defenses of King’s Landing, and
assiduously seeking after other alliances. 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. Riders galloped through the night to holdings closer
to hand, to summon their lords and ladies to court to do fealty to King
Aegon. 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. “Dorne has danced with dragons before,”
he said. “I would sooner sleep with scorpions.”

Yet Ser Otto was losing the trust of his king, who mistook his efforts
for inaction, and his caution for cowardice. 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.
Spill blood, not ink.”

The fall of Harrenhal to Prince Daemon came as a great shock to His
Grace, Munkun tells us. Until that moment, Aegon II had believed his
half-sister’s cause to be hopeless. Harrenhal left His Grace feeling
vulnerable for the first time. The subsequent defeats at the Burning
Mill and Stone Hedge came as further blows, and made the king realize

that his situation was more perilous than it had seemed. These fears
deepened as ravens returned from the Reach, where the greens had
believed themselves strongest. House Hightower and Oldtown were solidly
behind King Aegon, and His Grace had the Arbor too…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.

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. 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. King Aegon began to
drown his fears in strongwine, Septon Eustace tells us. 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.

Other blows followed: the Vale, White Harbor, Winterfell. The Blackwoods
and the other riverlords streamed toward Harrenhal and Prince Daemon’s
banners. The Sea Snake’s fleets closed Blackwater Bay, and every morning
King Aegon had merchants whining at him. His Grace had no answer for
their complaints, beyond another cup of strongwine. “Do something,” he
demanded of Ser Otto.

The Hand assured him that something was being done; he had hatched a
plan to break the Velaryon blockade. 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. The prince had made more foes than
friends during the course of his adventures. 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.

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. The
combined fleets of Tyrosh, Lys, and Myr would be more than a match for
the Velaryons, however. 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.
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 Triarchy was never quick to move, however. Lacking a true king, all
important decisions in this three-headed “kingdom” were decided by the
High Council. Eleven magisters from each city made up its membership,
every man of them intent on demonstrating his own sagacity, shrewdness,
and importance, and winning every possible advantage for his own city.
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.” Even issues as timely as
war, peace, and alliance were subject to endless debate…and the High
Council was not even in session when Ser Otto’s envoys arrived.

The delay did not sit well with the young king. Aegon II had run short
of patience with his grandfather’s prevarications. Though his mother,
the Dowager Queen Alicent, spoke up in Ser Otto’s defense, His Grace
turned a deaf ear to her pleading. Summoning Ser Otto to the throne
room, he tore the chain of office from his neck and tossed it to Ser
Criston Cole. “My new Hand is a steel fist,” he boasted. “We are done
with writing letters.”

Ser Criston wasted no time in proving his mettle. “It is not for you to
plead for support from your lords, like a beggar pleading for alms,” he
told Aegon. “You are the lawful king of Westeros, and those who deny it
are traitors. It is past time they learned the price of treason.”

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. One by one they were dragged out into the castle ward, where
the King’s Justice awaited them with his axe. 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. 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. Their heads were mounted on spikes above the

city’s gates.

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.” It took all of the green council to dissuade him. Ser Criston
Cole urged a different course. The pretender princess had made use of
stealth and treachery to kill Prince Jaehaerys, Cole said; let them do
the same. “We will pay the princess back in her own bloody coin,” he
told the king. The instrument the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard chose
for the king’s vengeance was his Sworn Brother, Ser Arryk Cargyll.

Ser Arryk was intimately familiar with the ancient seat of House
Targaryen, having visited there often during the reign of King Viserys.
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. From there he
could make his own way to the queen. And Ser Arryk and his brother Ser
Erryk were twins, identical in all respects; not even their fellows of
the Kingsguard could tell the two apart, both Mushroom and Septon
Eustace assert. 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.

Ser Arryk did not undertake this mission happily. 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. 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.

The true purpose of Ser Arryk’s mission remains a matter of some
contention. 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.”

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. Deep in the heart of
Dragonstone, however, as he was making his way to the royal

apartments, the gods brought him face-to-face with Ser Erryk himself,
who knew at once what his brother’s presence meant. 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.

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. 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.

Mushroom’s account is shorter, saltier, and altogether nastier. The
fight lasted only moments, our fool says. There were no declarations of
brotherly love; each Cargyll denounced the other as a traitor as they
clashed. 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. 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.

For obvious reasons, singers and storytellers have shown a marked
preference for the tale as told by Munkun. Maesters and other scholars
must make their own determination as to which version is more likely.
All that Septon Eustace says upon the matter is that the Cargyll twins
slew each other, and there we must leave it.

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. 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. Those black lords whose lands were on the mainland enjoyed no
such protection, however.

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. Thus

augmented, Cole’s host advanced upon the walled harbor town of
Duskendale, where they took the defenders by surprise. The town was
sacked, the ships in the harbor set afire, Lord Darklyn beheaded. His
household knights and garrison were given the choice between swearing
their swords to King Aegon or sharing their lord’s fate. Most chose the
former.

Rook’s Rest was Ser Criston’s next objective. Forewarned of their
coming, Lord Staunton closed his gates and defied the attackers. 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. When provisions inside the castle began to run low, he dispatched
a raven to Dragonstone, pleading for succor.

The bird arrived as Rhaenyra and her blacks were mourning Ser Erryk and
debating the proper response to “Aegon the Usurper’s” latest attack.
Though shaken by this attempt on her life (or the lives of her sons),
the queen was still reluctant to attack King’s Landing. Munkun (who, it
must be remembered, wrote many years later) says this was because of her
horror of kinslaying. Maegor the Cruel had slain his own nephew Aegon,
and had been cursed thereafter, until he bled his life away upon his
stolen throne. Septon Eustace claims Rhaenyra had “a mother’s heart”
that made her reluctant to risk the lives of her remaining sons.
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.

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. The Red Queen, she was called, for the scarlet scales that
covered her. The membranes of her wings were pink, her crest, horns, and
claws bright as copper. And on her back, in steel and copper armor that
flashed in the sun, rode Rhaenys Targaryen, the Queen Who Never Was.

Ser Criston Cole was not dismayed. Aegon’s Hand had expected this,
counted on it. Drums beat out a command, and archers rushed forward,
longbowmen and crossbowmen both, filling the air with arrows and
quarrels. Scorpions were cranked upward to loose iron

bolts of the sort that had once felled Meraxes in Dorne. Meleys suffered
a score of hits, but the arrows only served to make her angry. She swept
down, spitting fire to right and left. Knights burned in their saddles
as the hair and hide and harness of their horses went up in flames.
Men-at-arms dropped their spears and scattered. Some tried to hide
behind their shields, but neither oak nor iron could withstand dragon’s
breath. Ser Criston sat on his white horse shouting, “Aim for the
rider,” through the smoke and flame. Meleys roared, smoke swirling from
her nostrils, a stallion kicking in her jaws as tongues of fire engulfed
him.

Then came an answering roar. Two more winged shapes appeared: the king
astride Sunfyre the Golden, and his brother Aemond upon Vhagar. Criston
Cole had sprung his trap, and Rhaenys had come snatching at the bait.
Now the teeth closed round her.

Princess Rhaenys made no attempt to flee. With a glad cry and a crack of
her whip, she turned Meleys toward the foe. Against Vhagar alone she
might have had some chance, but against Vhagar and Sunfyre together,
doom was certain. The dragons met violently a thousand feet above the
field of battle, as balls of fire burst and blossomed, so bright that
men swore later that the sky was full of suns. The crimson jaws of
Meleys closed round Sunfyre’s golden neck for a moment, till Vhagar fell
upon them from above. All three beasts went spinning toward the ground.
They struck the ground so hard that stones fell from the battlements of
Rook’s Rest half a league away.

Those closest to the dragons did not live to tell the tale. Those
farther off could not see for the flame and smoke. It was hours before
the fires guttered out. But from those ashes, only Vhagar rose unharmed.
Meleys was dead, broken by the fall and ripped to pieces upon the
ground. 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. His left arm was the worst.
The dragonflame had burned so hot that the king’s armor had melted into
his flesh.

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. 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 died

amidst blood and fire. She was fifty-five years old.

Eight hundred knights and squires and common men lost their lives that
day as well. Another hundred perished not long after, when Prince Aemond
and Ser Criston Cole took Rook’s Rest and put its garrison to death.
Lord Staunton’s head was carried back to King’s Landing and mounted
above the Old Gate…but it was the head of the dragon Meleys, drawn
through the city on a cart, that awed the crowds of smallfolk into
silence. 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 did not die, though his burns brought him such pain that
some say he prayed for death. 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. 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. None was allowed to disturb his rest,
save his mother the Queen Dowager and his Hand, Ser Criston Cole. His
wife never so much as made the attempt, so lost was Helaena in her own
grief and madness.

  []

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. In the early
days he fed himself upon the burned carcasses of the slain. When those
were gone, the men Ser Criston had left behind to guard him brought him
calves and sheep.

“You must rule the realm now, until your brother is strong enough to
take the crown again,” the King’s Hand told Prince Aemond. Nor did Ser
Criston need to say it twice, writes Eustace. And so one-eyed Aemond the
Kinslayer took up the iron-and-ruby crown of Aegon the Conqueror. “It
looks better on me than it ever did on him,” the prince proclaimed. Yet
Aemond did not assume the style of king, but named himself only
Protector of the Realm and Prince Regent. Ser Criston Cole remained Hand
of the King.

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.
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.

The tidings from the south were ominous as well. 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. 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. Farther south, Lord Costayne had issued forth from Three
Towers to fall upon Hightower’s baggage train. 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. Lord Ormund
had therefore decided he could not proceed without support from King’s
Landing. “We have need of your dragons,” he wrote.

Supremely confident in his own prowess as a warrior and the might of his
dragon, Vhagar, Aemond was eager to take the battle to the foe. “The
whore on Dragonstone is not the threat,” he said. “No more than Rowan
and these traitors in the Reach. The danger is my uncle. Once Daemon is
dead, all these fools flying our sister’s banners will run back to their
castles and trouble us no more.”

East of Blackwater Bay, Queen Rhaenyra was also faring badly. The death
of her son Lucerys had been a crushing blow to a woman already broken by
pregnancy, labor, and stillbirth. When word reached

Dragonstone that Princess Rhaenys had fallen, angry words were exchanged
between the queen and Lord Velaryon, who blamed her for his wife’s
death. “It should have been you,” the Sea Snake shouted at Her Grace.
“Staunton sent to you, yet you left it to my wife to answer and forbade
your sons to join her.” 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.

“Only I could lighten Her Grace’s heart,” Mushroom claims in his
Testimony. “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. Unbeknownst to all, it was the jester who ruled them now, an
invisible king in motley.”

These are large claims for a small man, and ones not borne out by any of
our other chroniclers, no more than by the facts. Her Grace was far from
alone. Four living sons remained to her. “My strength and my
consolation,” the queen called them. Aegon the Younger and Viserys,
Prince Daemon’s sons, were nine and seven, respectively. Prince Joffrey
was but eleven…but Jacaerys, Prince of Dragonstone, was on the cusp of
his fifteenth nameday.

It was Jace who came to the fore now, late in the year 129 AC. Mindful
of the promise he had made to the Maiden of the Vale, he ordered Prince
Joffrey to fly to Gulltown with Tyraxes. Munkun suggests that Jace’s
desire to keep his brother far from the fighting was paramount in this
decision. This did not sit well with Joffrey, who was determined to
prove himself in battle. Only when told that he was being sent to defend
the Vale against King Aegon’s dragons did his brother grudgingly consent
to go. Rhaena, the thirteen-year-old daughter of Prince Daemon by Laena
Velaryon, was chosen to accompany him. 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.

Lady Rhaena’s twin, Baela, remained on Dragonstone. Long betrothed to
Prince Jacaerys, she refused to leave him, insisting that she would
fight beside him on her own dragon…though Moondancer was too small to
bear her weight. Though Baela also announced her intent to marry Jace at
once, no wedding was ever held. Munkun says the prince did not wish to
wed until the war was over, whilst

Mushroom claims Jacaerys was already married to Sara Snow, the
mysterious bastard girl from Winterfell.

The Prince of Dragonstone also had a care for the safety of his half-
brothers, Aegon the Younger and Viserys, aged nine and seven. 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. In the waning days of 129 AC, the
young princes boarded the cog Gay Abandon—Aegon with Stormcloud, Viserys
clutching his egg—to set sail for Essos. The Sea Snake sent seven of his
warships with them as escort, to see that they reached Pentos safely.

Prince Jacaerys soon brought the Lord of the Tides back into the fold by
naming him the Hand of the Queen. Together he and Lord Corlys began to
plan an assault upon King’s Landing.

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 Landing…and Dreamfyre’s rider, Queen Helaena, spent her
days in darkness, weeping, and surely could not be counted as a threat.
That left only Vhagar. 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.

Mushroom was less certain. “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.” 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.”

House Targaryen had ruled Dragonstone for more than two hundred years,
since Lord Aenar Targaryen first arrived from Valyria with his dragons.
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 who

lived in the villages below the Dragonmont, tillers of the land and
fishers of the sea. 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.

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. 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. These happy bastards were said to have been “born of
dragonseed,” and in time became known simply as “seeds.” 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.

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. 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.

Not all those who came forward in answer to the prince’s call were
seeds, nor even the sons or grandsons of seeds. 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
Sowing of the Seeds,” Munkun names the triumphs and tragedies that
ensued (crediting the notion to Jacaerys himself, not Mushroom). Others
prefer “the Red Sowing.”

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. One of the
dwarf’s more amusing tales, it ends with Mushroom running across the
ward of Dragonstone with the seat of his pantaloons on fire, and nigh
drowning when he leapt into a well to quench the flames.

Unlikely, to be sure…but it does provide a droll moment in what was
otherwise a ghastly business.

Dragons are not horses. They do not easily accept men upon their backs,
and when angered or threatened, they attack. Munkun’s True Telling tells
us that sixteen men lost their lives during the Sowing. Three times that
number were burned or maimed. Steffon Darklyn was burned to death whilst
attempting to mount the dragon Seasmoke. Lord Gormon Massey suffered the
same fate when approaching Vermithor. 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. As his
sons struggled to staunch the wound, the Cannibal descended on them,
drove off Sheepstealer, and devoured father and sons alike.

Yet Seasmoke, Vermithor, and Silverwing were accustomed to men and
tolerant of their presence. Having once been ridden, they were more
accepting of new riders. 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. 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.

Addam and his brother, Alyn (one year younger), had been born to a woman
named Marilda, the pretty young daughter of a shipwright. A familiar
sight about her father’s shipyards, the girl was better known as Mouse,
for she was “small, quick, and always underfoot.” She was still sixteen
when she gave birth to Addam in 114 AC, and barely eighteen when Alyn
followed in 115. Small and quick as their mother, these bastards of Hull
were both silver of hair and purple of eye, and soon proved to have “sea
salt in their blood” as well, growing up in their grandsire’s shipyard
and going to sea as ship’s boys before the age of eight. 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. 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.

That Addam and Alyn were dragonseed no man who looked upon them could
doubt, though their mother steadfastly refused to name their father.
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.

They had his look, it was true, and Ser Laenor had been known to visit
the shipyard in Hull from time to time. Nonetheless, many on Dragonstone
and Driftmark were skeptical of Marilda’s claim, for Laenor Velaryon’s
disinterest in women was well remembered. None dared name her liar,
however…for it was Laenor’s own father, Lord Corlys himself, who brought
the boys to Prince Jacaerys for the Sowing. 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. And
when Addam of Hull mounted Ser Laenor’s dragon, Seasmoke, it seemed to
prove the truth of his mother’s claims.

It should not surprise us, therefore, that Grand Maester Munkun and
Septon Eustace both dutifully assert Ser Laenor’s parentage…but
Mushroom, as ever, dissents. 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. 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.
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. Therefore his lordship had prudently ended his
“shipyard trysts” with Mouse after Alyn’s birth, commanding her to keep
her boys far from court. Only after the death of Princess Rhaenys did
Lord Corlys at last feel able to bring his bastards safely forward.

In this instance, it must be said, the tale told by the fool seems more
likely than the versions offered by septon and maester. Many and more at
Queen Rhaenyra’s court must surely have suspected the same. If so, they
held their tongues. 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. When Prince
Jacaerys added his voice to the request, the queen complied. Addam of
Hull, dragonseed and bastard, became

Addam Velaryon, heir to Driftmark.

Yet that did not write an end to the Red Sowing. More, and worse, was
yet to come, with dire consequences for the Seven Kingdoms.

Dragonstone’s three wild dragons were less easily claimed than those
that had known previous riders, yet attempts were made upon them all the
same. 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. He seldom harmed the
shepherds, unless they attempted to interfere with him, but had been
known to devour the occasional sheep dog. Grey Ghost dwelt in a smoking
vent high on the eastern side of the Dragonmont, preferred fish, and was
most oft glimpsed flying low over the narrow sea, snatching prey from
the waters. A pale grey- white beast, the color of morning mist, he was
a notably shy dragon who avoided men and their works for years at a
time.

The largest and oldest of the wild dragons was the Cannibal, so named
because he had been known to feed on the carcasses of dead dragons, and
descend upon the hatcheries of Dragonstone to gorge himself on newborn
hatchlings and eggs. Coal black, with baleful green eyes, the Cannibal
had made his lair on Dragonstone even before the coming of the
Targaryens, some smallfolk claimed. (Grand Maester Munkun and Septon
Eustace both found this story most unlikely, as do

I.) Would-be dragontamers had made attempts to ride him a dozen times;
his lair was littered with their bones.

  []

None of the dragonseeds were fool enough to disturb the Cannibal (any
who were did not return to tell their tales). Some sought the Grey
Ghost, but could not find him, for he was ever an elusive creature.
Sheepstealer proved easier to flush out, but he remained a vicious, ill-
tempered beast, who killed more seeds than the three castle dragons
together. One who hoped to tame him (after his quest for Grey Ghost
proved fruitless) was Alyn of Hull. Sheepstealer would have none of him.
When he stumbled from the dragon’s lair with his cloak aflame, only his
brother’s swift action saved his life. Seasmoke drove the wild dragon
off as Addam used his own cloak to beat out the flames. Alyn Velaryon
would carry the scars of the encounter on his back and legs for the rest
of his long life. Yet he counted himself fortunate, for he lived. Many
of the other seeds and seekers who aspired to ride upon Sheepstealer’s
back ended in Sheepstealer’s belly instead.

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. Munkun sets down the name of this unlikely
dragonrider as Nettles. Mushroom tells us the girl was a bastard of
uncertain birth called Netty, born to a dockside whore. By any name, she
was black-haired, brown-eyed, brown-skinned, skinny, foul-mouthed,
fearless…and the first and last rider of the dragon

Sheepstealer.

Thus did Prince Jacaerys achieve his goal. For all the death and pain it
caused, the widows left behind, the burned men who would carry their
scars until the day they died, four new dragonriders had been found. As
129 AC drew to a close, the prince prepared to fly against King’s
Landing. The date he chose for the attack was the first full moon of the
new year.

Yet the plans of men are but playthings to the gods. For even as Jace
laid his plans, a new threat was closing from the east. The schemes of
Otto Hightower had borne fruit; meeting in Tyrosh, the High Council of
the Triarchy had accepted his offer of alliance. Ninety warships swept
from the Stepstones under the banners of the Three Daughters, bending
their oars for the Gullet…and as chance and the gods would have it, the
Pentoshi cog Gay Abandon, carrying two Targaryen princes, sailed
straight into their teeth.

The escorts sent to protect the cog were sunk or taken; the Gay Abandon
captured. The tale reached Dragonstone only when Prince Aegon arrived
desperately clinging to the neck of his dragon, Stormcloud. The boy was
white with terror, Mushroom tells us, shaking like a leaf and stinking
of piss. Only nine, he had never flown before…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. He died within the hour, hissing as the
hot blood gushed black and smoking from his wounds.

Aegon’s younger brother, Prince Viserys, had no way of escaping from the
cog. A clever boy, he hid his dragon’s egg and changed into ragged,
salt-stained clothing, pretending to be no more than a common ship’s
boy, but one of the real ship’s boys betrayed him, and he was made a
captive. 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.

The Lysene admiral divided his fleet for the attack. One pincer was to
enter the Gullet south of Dragonstone, the other to the north. In the
early morning hours of the fifth day of the 130th year since Aegon’s
Conquest, battle was joined. Sharako’s warships swept in with the rising
sun behind them. Hidden by the glare, they took many of Lord Velaryon’s
galleys unawares, ramming some and swarming aboard

others with ropes and grapnels. 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. By mid-morning Spicetown was burning, whilst
Myrish and Tyroshi troops battered at the very doors of High Tide.

When Prince Jacaerys swept down upon a line of Lysene galleys on Vermax,
a rain of spears and arrows rose up to meet him. The sailors of the
Triarchy had faced dragons before whilst warring against Prince Daemon
in the Stepstones. No man could fault their courage; they were prepared
to meet dragonflame with such weapons as they had. “Kill the rider and
the dragon will depart,” their captains and commanders had told them.
One ship took fire, and then another. Still the men of the Free Cities
fought on…until a shout rang out, and they looked up to see more winged
shapes coming around the Dragonmont and turning toward them.

It is one thing to face a dragon, another to face five. As Silverwing,
Sheepstealer, Seasmoke, and Vermithor descended upon them, the men of
the Triarchy felt their courage desert them. The line of warships
shattered, as one galley after another turned away. The dragons fell
like thunderbolts, spitting balls of fire, blue and orange, red and
gold, each brighter than the next. Ship after ship burst asunder or was
consumed by flames. Screaming men leapt into the sea, shrouded in fire.
Tall columns of black smoke rose up from the water. All seemed lost…all
was lost…

Several differing tales were told afterward of how and why the dragon
fell. 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. 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. One of its prongs found purchase between two scales, and was
driven deep by the dragon’s own considerable speed. 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. The dragon’s shriek of rage was heard as far off as Spicetown,
even through the clangor of battle. His flight jerked to a violent end,
Vermax went down smoking and screaming, clawing at the water. Survivors
said he struggled to rise, only to crash headlong into a burning galley.
Wood splintered, the

mast came tumbling down, and the dragon, thrashing, became entangled in
the rigging. When the ship heeled over and sank, Vermax sank with her.

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. The prince was struck
once, and then again. More and more Myrmen brought crossbows to bear.
Finally one quarrel took him through the neck, and Jace was swallowed by
the sea.

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. 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. 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. But that is
outside the scope of this tale.

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. 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. The town would
never be rebuilt. High Tide was put to the torch as well. 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. The
Velaryon fleet lost almost a third of its strength. Thousands died. Yet
none of these losses were felt so deeply as that of Jacaerys Velaryon,
Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne.

Rhaenyra’s youngest son seemed lost as well. In the confusion of battle,
none of the survivors seemed quite certain which ship Prince Viserys had
been on. Men on both sides presumed him dead, drowned or burned or
butchered. 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.
It is written that when the Sea Snake was congratulated on his victory,
the old man said, “If this be victory, I pray

I never win another.”

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. “We are knights now,
truly,” Hard Hugh declared. And Ulf laughed and said, “Fie on that. We
should be lords.”

The girl Nettles did not share their celebrations. 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. 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.

A fortnight later, in the Reach, Ormund Hightower found himself caught
between two armies. 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. 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. Defeat seemed imminent…until a shadow
swept across the battlefield, and a terrible roar resounded overhead,
slicing through the sound of steel on steel. A dragon had come.

The dragon was Tessarion, the Blue Queen, cobalt and copper. 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.

The arrival of Prince Daeron and his dragon reversed the tide of battle.
Now it was Lord Ormund’s men attacking, screaming curses at their foes,
whilst the queen’s men fled. 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. 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 the

Daring.” The prince modestly replied, “My lord is kind to say so, but
the victory belongs to Tessarion.”

On Dragonstone, an air of despondence and defeat hung over the black
court when the disaster on the Honeywine became known to them. Lord Bar
Emmon went so far as to suggest that mayhaps the time had come to bend
their knees to Aegon II. The queen would have none of it, however. Only
the gods truly know the hearts of men, and women are full as strange.
Broken by the loss of one son, Rhaenyra Targaryen seemed to find new
strength after the loss of a second. Jace’s death hardened her, burning
away her fears, leaving only her anger and her hatred. Still possessed
of more dragons than her half- brother, Her Grace now resolved to use
them, no matter the cost. 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.

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.
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. Summoning his bannermen and council, the prince announced his
intent to bring the battle to his uncle and chastise the rebellious
riverlords.

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. 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. 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. The two armies
would converge on Harrenhal to crush the “traitors of the Trident”
between them. 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.

Not all the members of the green council favored the prince’s bold
stroke. 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 End and add the power of House Baratheon to

his 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.” 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.

Prince Aemond had no taste for such delays, however. He had no need of
his brothers or their dragons, he declared; Aegon was too badly hurt,
Daeron too young. Aye, Caraxes was a fearsome beast, savage and cunning
and battle-tested…but Vhagar was older, fiercer, and twice as large.
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.

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. 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. “Sixteen days’
march to Harrenhal,” he proclaimed. “On the seventeenth, we will feast
inside Black Harren’s hall, whilst my uncle’s head looks down from my
spear.” 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.
The Lords of the Trident had no choice but to turn and meet him.

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. 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. 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. A murder of ravens took flight from the twisted
towers of Harrenhal.

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. Though the westermen outnumbered their foes, the riverlords knew
the ground. Thrice the Lannisters tried to force the crossing, and
thrice they were driven back; in the last attempt, Lord Jason was dealt
a mortal wound at the hand of a grizzled squire, Pate

of Longleaf. (Lord Piper himself knighted the man afterward, dubbing him
Longleaf the Lionslayer.) 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. 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. The ranks of the riverlords shattered, and the westermen
came swarming across the Red Fork by the thousands.

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. Courted by both claimants to the
Iron Throne, the Red Kraken had made his choice. 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.

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. Through piney woods and
mist-shrouded hills they hastened, to Rook’s Rest, where their sudden
appearance took the garrison by surprise. 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.

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. Dragons are awkward creatures on
the ground, and his torn wing left the great golden wyrm unable to take
to the air. The attackers expected to find the beast near death. Instead
they found him sleeping, but the clash of swords and thunder of horses
soon roused him, and the first spear to strike him provoked him to fury.
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. Thrice he rose,
and thrice fell back to earth. Mooton’s men swarmed him with swords and
spears and axes, dealing him many grievous wounds…yet each blow only
seemed to enrage him further. The number of the dead reached threescore
before the survivors fled.

Amongst the slain was Walys Mooton, Lord of Maidenpool. When his body
was found a fortnight later by his brother Manfryd, naught remained but
charred flesh in melted armor, crawling with maggots. 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. Sunfyre was gone. Nor were there tracks, as surely
there would have been had the dragon dragged himself away. Sunfyre the
Golden had taken wing again, it seemed… but to where, no living man
could say.

Meanwhile, Prince Daemon Targaryen himself hastened south on the wings
of his dragon, Caraxes. 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. 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. High above the city the queen and
her prince consort came together, circling over Aegon’s High Hill.

The sight of them incited terror in the streets of the city below, for
the smallfolk were not slow to realize that the attack they had dreaded
was at last at hand. Prince Aemond and Ser Criston had denuded King’s
Landing of defenders when they set forth to retake Harrenhal… 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.
The young dragons had never been ridden, and Dreamfyre’s rider, Queen
Helaena, was a broken woman; the city had as well been dragonless.

  []

Thousands of smallfolk streamed out the city gates, carrying their
children and worldly possessions on their backs, to seek safety in the
countryside. 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). Rioting broke out
in Flea Bottom. 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. Dozens died before the gold cloaks could restore the peace.

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. 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.

As well, she commanded Grand Maester Orwyle to send ravens to “all our
leal lords,” summoning them to the defense of their true king. When
Orwyle hastened back to his chambers, however, he found four gold cloaks
waiting for him. One man muffled his cries as the others beat and bound
him. With a bag pulled over his head, the Grand

Maester was escorted down to the black cells.

Queen Alicent’s riders got no farther than the gates, where more gold
cloaks took them into custody. 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 Keep…for the rank and file of the City Watch still loved
Daemon Targaryen, the Prince of the City who had commanded them of old.

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.
When Hightower denounced him as a turncloak, Ser Luthor laughed. “Daemon
gave us these cloaks,” he said, “and they’re gold no matter how you turn
them.” 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.

For all the vaunted strength of its walls, King’s Landing fell in less
than a day. 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.
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.

One by one the dragons made their descent. Sheepstealer lighted atop
Visenya’s Hill, Silverwing and Vermithor on the Hill of Rhaenys, outside
the Dragonpit. Prince Daemon circled the towers of the Red Keep before
bringing Caraxes down in the outer ward. 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. 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.

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. The master of whisperers had

somehow contrived to disappear). Septon Eustace, a witness to what
followed, tells us that Queen Alicent attempted to treat with her
stepdaughter. “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.” But Queen Rhaenyra rejected
the proposal with scorn. “Do you mistake me for Mushroom?” she asked.
“We both know how this council would rule.” Then she bade her stepmother
choose: yield or burn.

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.
“The city is yours, Princess,” she is reported to have said, “but you
will not hold it long. The rats play when the cat is gone, but my son
Aemond will return with fire and blood.”

Rhaenyra’s men found her rival’s wife, the mad Queen Helaena, locked in
her bedchamber…but when they broke down the doors of the king’s
apartments, they discovered only “his bed, empty, and his chamberpot,
full.” Aegon II had fled. 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. Not even the Dowager Queen seemed
to know where they had gone, and Luthor Largent swore none had passed
through the city gates.

[]

There was no way to spirit away the Iron Throne, however. Nor would
Queen Rhaenyra sleep until she claimed her father’s seat. 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.
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.

Septon Eustace tells us that the ceremony went on all through that
night. It was well past dawn when Rhaenyra Targaryen rose and made her
descent. “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. “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.”

  * 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. The king changed the color of the
  dragon

  on 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.

  []

ven 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 swept

eastward.

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. A second
battle followed three days later, when the rivermen regrouped under a
hedge knight named Ser Harry Penny. This unlikely hero died soon after,
whilst slaying Adrian Tarbeck. Once more the Lannisters prevailed,
cutting down the rivermen as they fled. 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.

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. At
their head rode the Lord of Barrowton, Roderick Dustin, a warrior so old
and hoary men called him Roddy the Ruin. His host was

made up of grizzled greybeards in old mail and ragged skins, every man a
seasoned warrior, every man ahorse. They called themselves the Winter
Wolves. “We have come to die for the dragon queen,” Lord Roderick
announced at the Twins, when Lady Sabitha Frey rode out to greet them.

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. 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. After nineteen days on the march, they
reached Harrenhal…and found the castle gates open, with Prince Daemon
and all his people gone.

Prince Aemond had kept Vhagar with the main column throughout the march,
thinking that his uncle might attempt to attack them on Caraxes. 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. Small wonder then that when word of the fall
of King’s Landing reached him, the prince felt thrice the fool. His fury
was fearsome to behold.

First to suffer for it was Ser Simon Strong. 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.
Ser Simon protested his innocence, insisting that he was a true and
loyal servant of the Crown. His own great nephew, Larys Strong, was Lord
of Harrenhal and King Aegon’s master of whisperers, he reminded the
Prince Regent. These denials only inflamed Aemond’s suspicions. The
Clubfoot was a traitor as well, he decided. How else would Daemon and
Rhaenyra have known when King’s Landing was most vulnerable? Someone on
the small council had sent word to them…and Larys Clubfoot was
Breakbones’s brother, and thus an uncle to Rhaenyra’s bastards.

Aemond commanded that Ser Simon be given a sword. “Let the gods decide
if you speak truly,” he said. “If you are innocent, the Warrior will
give you the strength to defeat me.” 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. Nor did Ser Simon’s grandsons long
outlive him. One by one, every man and boy with Strong blood in his
veins was dragged forth and put to death, until the heap made of

their heads stood three feet tall.

Thus did the flower of House Strong, an ancient line of noble warriors
boasting descent from the First Men, come to an ignoble end in the ward
at Harrenhal. No trueborn Strong was spared, nor any bastard
save…oddly…Alys Rivers. 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.

West of Harrenhal, fighting continued in the riverlands as the Lannister
host slogged onward. 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.

Roddy the Ruin and his Winter Wolves had joined with Forrest Frey, Lord
of the Crossing, and Red Robb Rivers, known as the Bowman of Raventree.
The northmen numbered two thousand, Frey commanded two hundred knights
and thrice as many foot, Rivers brought three hundred archers to the
fray. 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.

Caught between these two foes, Lefford hesitated to move against either,
for fear of the other falling on his rear. Instead he put his back to
the lake, dug in, and sent ravens to Prince Aemond at Harrenhal, begging
his aid. 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.

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. With their numbers augmented by these fresh levies, the
queen’s men agreed that the time had come to attack. “Best make an end
to these lions before the dragons come,” said Roddy the Ruin.

The bloodiest land battle of the Dance of the Dragons began the next
day, with the rising of the sun. In the annals of the Citadel it is
known

as the Battle by the Lakeshore, but to those men who lived to tell of
it, it was always the Fishfeed.

Attacked from three sides, the westermen were driven back foot by foot
into the waters of the Gods Eye. Hundreds died there, cut down whilst
fighting in the reeds; hundreds more drowned as they tried to flee. By
nightfall two thousand men were dead, amongst them many notables,
including Lord Frey, Lord Lefford, Lord Bigglestone, Lord Charlton, Lord
Swyft, Lord Reyne, Ser Clarent Crakehall, and Ser Emory Hill, the
Bastard of Lannisport. 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 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. More than two- thirds of the men who had ridden south
with Lord Dustin were dead or wounded.

Fighting continued elsewhere in the realm as well, though those clashes
were smaller than the great battle by the Gods Eye. 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. Lord Borros Baratheon called his
banners and assembled near six thousand men at Storm’s End, with the
avowed intent of marching on King’s Landing… only to lead them south
into the mountains instead. 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. 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.

At Harrenhal, Aemond Targaryen and Criston Cole debated how best to
answer the queen’s attacks. 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. Only blackened fields and burned
villages remained within sight of the castle’s massive walls, and those
foraging parties that ventured farther did not return.

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.” 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. Only the
intercession of his bedmate Alys Rivers had saved the boy’s life. Prince
Aemond favored an immediate attack upon King’s Landing. None of the
queen’s dragons were a match for Vhagar, he insisted.

  []

Ser Criston called that folly. “One against six is a fight for fools, My
Prince,” he declared. Let them march south, he urged once more, and join
their strength to Lord Hightower’s. Prince Aemond could reunite with his
brother Daeron and his dragon. King Aegon had escaped Rhaenyra’s grasp,
this they knew, surely he would reclaim Sunfyre and join his brothers.
And perhaps their friends inside the city might find a

way to free Queen Helaena as well, so she could bring Dreamfyre to the
battle. Four dragons could perhaps prevail against six, if one was
Vhagar.

Prince Aemond refused to consider this “craven course.” As regent for
his brother, he might have commanded the Hand’s obedience, yet he did
not. 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. 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.

Whatever the reason, Ser Criston and Prince Aemond decided to part ways.
Cole would take command of their host and lead them south to join Ormund
Hightower and Prince Daeron, but the Prince Regent would not accompany
them. Instead he meant to fight his own war, raining fire on the
traitors from the air. Soon or late, “the bitch queen” would send a
dragon or two out to stop him, and Vhagar would destroy them. “She dare
not send all her dragons,” Aemond insisted. “That would leave King’s
Landing naked and vulnerable. Nor will she risk Syrax, or that last
sweet son of hers. Rhaenyra may call herself a queen, but she has a
woman’s parts, a woman’s faint heart, and a mother’s fears.”

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. Ser Luthor Largent, commander of the gold cloaks, was
ennobled. Ser Lorent Marbrand was installed as Lord Commander of the
Queensguard, and charged with finding six worthy knights to serve beside
him. 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.” Freed from those same dungeons
that swallowed Orwyle, the surviving black lords and knights were
rewarded with lands, offices, and honors.

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. 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.

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.” Her own father was less fortunate. Ser Otto Hightower, who
had served three kings as Hand, was the first traitor to be beheaded.
Ironrod followed him to the block, still insisting that by law a king’s
son must come before his daughter. Ser Tyland Lannister was given to the
torturers instead, in hopes of recovering some of the Crown’s treasure.

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. Their deaths left her with a
nettlesome problem of succession, however. As it happened, each of the
“faithless friends” left a daughter; Rosby’s was a maid of twelve,
Stokeworth’s a girl of six. 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.

But the Queen’s Hand argued against this, for both girls had younger
brothers. Rhaenyra’s own claim to the Iron Throne was a special case,
the Sea Snake insisted; her father had named her as his heir. Lords
Rosby and Stokeworth had done no such thing. 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.

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. 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.

Mushroom tells us that Hammer celebrated by beating one of the queen’s
household knights to death in a brothel on the Street of Silk

when 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. These are the sorts of tales that Mushroom loves
to tell, and their veracity cannot be ascertained…but beyond a doubt,
the people of King’s Landing soon grew to despise both of the queen’s
new-made knights.

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. 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. Rhaenyra had dire need of such a man, for she found
herself in desperate need of coin. 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.”
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.
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.

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. Taxes on wine and ale were doubled, port fees tripled. Every
shopkeeper within the city walls was assessed a fee for the right to
keep his doors open. Innkeeps were required to pay one silver stag for
each bed in their inns. The entry and exit fees that the Lord of Air had
once assessed were brought back and tripled. A tax on property was
decreed; rich merchants in their manses or beggars in hovels, all must
pay, depending on how much land they took up. “Not even whores are
safe,” the smallfolk told each other. “The cunt tax will be next, and
then the tail tax. The rats must pay their share.”

In truth the weight of Lord Celtigar’s exactions fell heaviest on
merchants and traders. When the Velaryon fleet had closed the Gullet, a
great many ships found themselves trapped at King’s Landing. The queen’s
new master of coin now assessed heavy fees on all such before he would
allow them to sail. Some captains protested that they had already paid
the required duties, taxes, and tariffs, and even produced

papers as proof, but Lord Celtigar dismissed their claims. “Paying coin
to the usurper is proof of naught but treason,” he said. “It does not
decrease the duties owed to our gracious queen.” Those who refused to
pay, or lacked the means, had their ships and cargoes seized and sold.

Even executions became a source of coin. Henceforth, Celtigar decreed,
traitors, rebels, and murderers would be beheaded within the Dragonpit,
and their corpses fed to the queen’s dragons. All were welcome to bear
witness to the fate that awaited evil men, but each must pay three
pennies at the gates to be admitted.

Thus did Queen Rhaenyra replenish her coffers, at grievous cost. 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 return…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. 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. One wit named Rhaenyra
“King Maegor with teats,” and for a hundred years thereafter “Maegor’s
Teats” was a common curse amongst Kingslanders.

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. A dozen ships set sail from Dragonstone, carrying the queen’s
ladies, her “beloved fool” Mushroom, and her son Aegon the Younger.
Rhaenyra made the boy her cupbearer, so he might never be far from her
side. 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. (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.) 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.

Even the White Worm came to court; the Lysene harlot Mysaria emerged
from the shadows to take up residence in the Red Keep. 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 the

mighty as well. 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 evening…with Queen Rhaenyra’s apparent blessing. “Let Daemon
slake his hungers where he will,” she is reported to have said, “and we
shall do the same.” (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.)

In the fullness of her victory, Rhaenyra Targaryen did not suspect how
few days remained to her. 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. 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.

With Ormund Hightower besieging Longtable some thirty leagues to the
southwest, Bitterbridge was crowded with men and women fleeing before
his advancing host. 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. South of the
river the cookfires of the broken men could be seen through the trees by
night, whilst the town sept sheltered hundreds of wounded. Every inn was
full, even the Hogs Head, a dismal sty of a hostelry. So when a man
appeared from the north with a staff in one hand and a small boy on his
back, the innkeep had no room for him…until the traveler pulled a silver
stag from his purse. Then the innkeep allowed that he and his son might
bed down in his stables, provided he first mucked them out. The traveler
agreed, setting aside his pack and cloak as he went to work with spade
and rake amidst the horses.

The avarice of innkeeps, landlords, and their ilk is well-known. 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. As the traveler worked up a sweat, Buttercakes offered to
slake his thirst with a tankard of ale. 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. Sly found no coin within, but what

he did find was far more precious…a heavy cloak of fine white wool
bordered in snowy satin, wrapped about a dragon’s egg, pale green with
sworls of silver. 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.

[]

  Ben Buttercakes got no joy from his deceit. When Sly burst into the

common 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. 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.
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. 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.

Thirty leagues had as well been thirty thousand, alas, for the road
across the Mander was closed, and Bitterbridge belonged to Queen
Rhaenyra. A hue and cry went up. Other men took horse in pursuit of
Rickard Thorne, shouting, “Murder, treason, murder.”

Hearing the shouts, the guards at the foot of the bridge bade Ser
Rickard halt. Instead he tried to ride them down. When one man grasped
his horse’s bridle, Thorne took his arm off at the shoulder and rode on.
But there were guards on the south bank too, and they formed a wall
against him. 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. Prince Maelor clung to him, shrieking.

It was the crossbows that finally brought him down. One bolt took him in
the arm, the next through the throat. Ser Rickard tumbled from the
saddle and died upon the bridge, with blood bubbling from his lips and
drowning his last words. 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.

  []

Having slain the knight and seized the boy, however, the mob did not
know what to do with their prize. Queen Rhaenyra had offered a great
reward for his return, some recalled, but King’s Landing was long
leagues away. Lord Hightower’s army was much closer. Perhaps he would
pay even more. When someone asked if the reward was the same whether the
boy was alive or dead, Willow Pound-Stone clutched

Maelor tighter and said no one was going to hurt her new son. (Mushroom
tells us the woman was a monster thirty stone in weight, simpleminded
and half-mad, who’d earned her name pounding clothes clean in the
river.) 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. The crossbowman whose bolt had slain Ser Rickard Thorne made a
claim as well. And so they argued, shouting and shoving above the
knight’s corpse.

With so many present on the bridge, it is not surprising that we have
many differing accounts of what befell Maelor Targaryen. Mushroom tells
us that Willow Pound-Stone clutched the boy so tightly that she broke
his back and crushed him to death. Septon Eustace does not so much as
mention Willow, however. In his account, the town butcher hacked the
prince into six pieces with his cleaver, so all those fighting over him
could have a piece. Grand Maester Munkun’s True Telling says that the
boy was torn limb from limb by the mob, but names no names.

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. Her ladyship went
pale at the sight of him, Mushroom tells us, saying, “The gods will
curse us all for this.” 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. Ser
Rickard’s corpse, wrapped in his white cloak, Lady Caswell sent back to
King’s Landing, together with Prince Maelor’s head. The dragon’s egg she
sent to Lord Hightower at Longtable, in the hopes it might assuage his
wroth.

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.
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 no announcement of the boy’s death was made, word of his demise
nonetheless spread throughout the city. 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. Though the story had no
truth in it, soon it was on every pair of lips in King’s Landing.
Mushroom puts this down as the Clubfoot’s work. “A man who gathers
whispers can spread them just as

well.”

Beyond the city walls, fighting continued throughout the Seven Kingdoms.
Faircastle fell to Dalton Greyjoy, and with it Fair Isle’s last
resistance to the ironborn. The Red Kraken claimed four of Lord Farman’s
daughters as salt wives and gave the fifth (“the homely one”) to his
brother Veron. Farman and his sons were ransomed back to Casterly Rock
for their weights in silver. 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.

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.” Her ladyship could only watch as Bitterbridge was sacked. The
Hogs Head was the first building put to the torch. Inns, guild halls,
storehouses, the homes of the mean and the mighty, dragonflame consumed
them all. Even the sept was burned, with hundreds of wounded still
within. Only the bridge remained untouched, as it was required to cross
the Mander. The people of the town were put to the sword if they tried
to fight or flee, or were driven into the river to drown.

Lady Caswell watched from her walls, then commanded that her gates be
thrown open. “No castle can be held against a dragon,” she told her
garrison. When Lord Hightower rode up, he found her standing atop the
gatehouse with a noose about her neck. “Have mercy on my children,
lord,” she begged, before throwing herself down to hang. Mayhaps that
moved Lord Ormund, for her ladyship’s young sons and daughter were
spared and sent in chains to Oldtown. The men of the castle garrison
received no mercy but the sword.

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). Prince Aemond had already departed,
flying Vhagar.

The castle stood empty no more than three days before Lady Sabitha Frey
swooped down to seize it. Inside she found only Alys Rivers, the wet
nurse and purported witch who had warmed Prince Aemond’s bed

during his days at Harrenhal, and now claimed to be carrying his child.
“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. “I can feel his
fires licking at my womb.”

Nor was her babe the only fire kindled by Aemond Targaryen. No longer
tied to castle or host, the one-eyed prince was free to fly where he
would. 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. House Darry was the first to know the prince’s wroth.
The men bringing in the harvest burned or fled as the crops went up in
flame, and Castle Darry was consumed in a firestorm. 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. Three days later, it was
Lord Harroway’s Town left smoking. Lord’s Mill, Blackbuckle, Buckle,
Claypool, Swynford, Spiderwood…Vhagar’s fury fell on each in turn, until
half the riverlands seemed ablaze.

Ser Criston Cole faced fires as well. As he drove his men south through
the riverlands, smoke rose up before him and behind him. Every village
that he came to he found burned and abandoned. 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. In every brook
and pool and village well, he found death: dead horses, dead cows, dead
men, swollen and stinking, befouling the waters. 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. 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.

Four days out of Harrenhal, the attacks began. Archers hid amongst the
trees, picking off outriders and stragglers with their longbows. Men
died. Men fell behind the rear guard and were never seen again. Men
fled, abandoning their shields and spears to fade into the woods. Men
went over to the enemy. In the village commons at Crossed Elms, another
of the ghastly feasts was found. Familiar with such sights by now, Ser
Criston’s outriders grimaced and rode past, paying no heed to the
rotting dead…until the corpses sprang up and fell upon them. A dozen
died before they realized it had all been a ploy, the work (as was

learned later) of a Myrish sellsword in the service of Lord Vance, a
former mummer called Black Trombo.

All this was but prelude, for the Lords of the Trident had been
gathering their forces. 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. Above their heads flew Queen Rhaenyra’s banners. “Who are they?”
a squire asked when the foe appeared, for they showed no arms but the
queen’s.

“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.

Calling for a peace banner, King Aegon’s Hand rode out to treat with
them. Three came down from the ridge to meet him. Chief amongst them was
Ser Garibald Grey in his dented plate and mail. Pate of Longleaf was
with him, the Lionslayer who had cut down Jason Lannister, together with
Roddy the Ruin, bearing the scars he had taken at the Fishfeed. “If I
strike my banners, do you promise us our lives?” Ser Criston asked the
three of them.

“I made my promise to the dead,” Ser Garibald replied. “I told them I
would build a sept for them out of traitors’ bones. I don’t have near
enough bones yet, so…”

Ser Criston answered, “If there is to be battle here, many of your own
will die as well.” The northman Roderick Dustin laughed at these words,
saying, “That’s why we come. Winter’s here. Time for us to go. No better
way to die than sword in hand.”

Ser Criston drew his longsword from its scabbard. “As you will it. We
can begin here, the four of us. One of me against the three of you. Will
that be enough to make a fight of it?”

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.
Three arrows flew across the field, striking Cole in belly, neck, and
breast. “I’ll have no songs about how brave you died, Kingmaker,”
declared Longleaf. “There’s tens o’ thousands dead on your account.” He
was speaking to a corpse.

The battle that followed was as one-sided as any in the Dance. 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.
With Ser Criston dead upon the ground, the men who had followed him from
Harrenhal lost heart. They broke and fled, casting aside their shields
as they ran. Their foes came after, cutting them down by the hundreds.
Afterward Ser Garibald was heard to say, “Today was butchery, not
battle.” Mushroom, upon hearing a report of his words, dubbed the fight
the Butcher’s Ball, and so it has been known ever since.

It was about this same time that one of the more curious incidents of
the Dance of the Dragons occurred. 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.
By this ruse, the hero crept close enough to drive a spear through the
dragon’s eye, earning the name by which we know him still. That Ser
Byron Swann, second son of the Lord of Stonehelm, had heard this tale we
cannot doubt. 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.

But here confusion arises, for Munkun says it was Vhagar that Swann
meant to kill, to put an end to Prince Aemond’s raids…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. Mushroom, at the queen’s side in the Red Keep, says rather
that it was Rhaenyra’s Syrax that Ser Byron approached. 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 Sunfyre…but this
is certainly mistaken, since Sunfyre’s whereabouts were unknown at this
time. All three accounts agree that the ploy that won undying fame for
Serwyn of the Mirror Shield brought only death for Ser Byron Swann. The
dragon—whichever one it was—stirred at the knight’s approach and
unleashed his fire, melting the mirrored shield and roasting the man
crouched behind it. Ser Byron died screaming.

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. Despite the disaffection of the

Kingslanders, the city and crown were hers. Across the narrow sea, the
Triarchy had begun to tear itself to pieces. The waves belonged to House
Velaryon. Though snows had closed the passes 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. Other fleets brought warriors from
White Harbor, led by Lord Manderly’s own sons, Medrick and Torrhen. On
every hand Queen Rhaenyra’s power swelled whilst King Aegon’s dwindled.

Yet no war can be counted as won whilst foes remain unconquered. 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. Aegon’s
daughter, Jaehaera, was likewise at large. Larys Strong the Clubfoot,
the most enigmatic and cunning member of the green council, had
vanished. Storm’s End was still held by Lord Borros Baratheon, no friend
of the queen. 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.

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. Vhagar’s flames reduced
Old Willow and White Willow to ash, and Hogg Hall to blackened stone. At
Merrydown Dell, thirty men and three hundred sheep died by dragonflame.
The Kinslayer then returned unexpectedly to Harrenhal, where he burned
every wooden structure in the castle. 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. She fled back
to the Twins soon after…but her prize captive, the witch woman Alys
Rivers, escaped with Prince Aemond. As word of these attacks spread,
other lords looked skyward in fear, wondering who might be next. 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.

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.

Hightower’s host had crossed the Mander and was advancing slowly on
King’s Landing, smashing the queen’s loyalists wherever and whenever
they encountered them, and forcing every lord who bent the knee to add
their strength to his own. Flying Tessarion ahead of the main column,
Prince Daeron had proved invaluable as a scout, warning Lord Ormund of
enemy movements. Oft as not, the queen’s men would melt away at the
first glimpse of the Blue Queen’s wings. 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.

Cognizant of all these threats, Queen Rhaenyra’s Hand, old Lord Corlys
Velaryon, suggested to Her Grace that the time had come to talk. 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. 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.
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. “And what of my half-brothers?”
Rhaenyra demanded, when the Sea Snake put this plan before her. “What of
this false king Aegon, and the kinslayer Aemond? Would you have me
pardon them as well, they who stole my throne and slew my sons?”

“Spare them, and send them to the Wall,” Lord Corlys answered. “Let them
take the black and live out their lives as men of the Night’s Watch,
bound by sacred vows.”

“What are vows to oathbreakers?” Queen Rhaenyra demanded. “Their vows
did not trouble them when they took my throne.”

Prince Daemon echoed the queen’s misgivings. Giving pardons to rebels
and traitors only sowed the seeds for fresh rebellions, he insisted.
“The war will end when the heads of the traitors are mounted on spikes
above the King’s Gate, and not before.” Aegon II would be found in time,
“hiding under some rock,” but they could and should bring the war to
Aemond and Daeron. The Lannisters and Baratheons should be destroyed as
well, so their lands and castles might be given to men who had proved
more loyal. Grant Storm’s End to Ulf White and Casterly Rock to Hard
Hugh Hammer, the prince proposed…to the

horror of the Sea Snake. “Half the lords of Westeros will turn against
us if we are so cruel as to destroy two such ancient and noble houses,”
Lord Corlys said.

It fell to the queen herself to choose between her consort and her Hand.
Rhaenyra decided to steer a middle course. She would send envoys to
Storm’s End and Casterly Rock, offering fair terms and pardons…after she
had put an end to the usurper’s brothers, who were in the field against
her. “Once they are dead, the rest will bend the knee. Slay their
dragons, that I might mount their heads upon the walls of my throne
room. Let men look upon them in the years to come, that they might know
the cost of treason.”

King’s Landing must not be left undefended, to be sure. Queen Rhaenyra
would remain in the city with Syrax, and her sons Aegon and Joffrey,
whose persons could not be put at risk. 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. Addam Velaryon, the Sea
Snake’s heir, would also remain in the city, with Seasmoke. Three
dragons should suffice for the defense of King’s Landing; the rest would
be going into battle.

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. Ulf White and Hard Hugh Hammer would fly to
Tumbleton, some fifty leagues southwest of King’s Landing, the last leal
stronghold between Lord Hightower and the city, to assist in the defense
of the town and castle and destroy Prince Daeron and Tessarion. Lord
Corlys suggested that mayhaps the prince might be taken alive and held
as hostage. But Queen Rhaenyra was adamant. “He will not remain a boy
forever. Let him grow to manhood, and soon or late he will seek to
revenge himself upon my own sons.”

Words of these plans soon reached the ears of the Dowager Queen, filling
her with terror. Fearing for her sons, Queen Alicent went to the Iron
Throne upon her knees, to plead for peace. 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. To Aegon II would
go the stormlands, the westerlands, and the Reach, to be ruled from
Oldtown.

Rhaenyra rejected her stepmother’s proposal with scorn. “Your sons might
have had places of honor at my court if they had kept faith,” Her Grace
declared, “but they sought to rob me of my birthright, and the blood of
my sweet sons is on their hands.”

[]

“Bastard blood, shed at war,” Alicent replied. “My son’s sons were
innocent boys, cruelly murdered. How many more must die to slake your
thirst for vengeance?”

The Dowager Queen’s words only fanned the fire of Rhaenyra’s wroth. “I
will hear no more lies,” she warned. “Speak again of bastardy, and I
will have your tongue out.” Or so the tale is told by Septon Eustace.
Munkun says the same in his True Telling.

Here again Mushroom differs. The dwarf would have us believe that
Rhaenyra ordered her stepmother’s tongue torn out at once, rather than
merely threatening this. It was only a word from Lady Misery that stayed
her hand, the fool insists; the White Worm proposed another, crueler
punishment. 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. The price was high; a golden dragon for Queen Alicent,
three dragons for Queen Helaena, who was younger and more beautiful. Yet
Mushroom says there were many in the city who thought that cheap for
carnal knowledge of a queen. “Let them

remain there until they are with child,” Lady Misery is purported to
have said. “They speak of bastards so freely, let them each have one for
their very own.”

Though the lusts of men and the cruelty of women can never be gainsaid,
we put no credence in Mushroom here. 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. It must be remembered
that the dwarf told his stories long years after the events that he
related, and might have misremembered. Let us speak no more of the
Brothel Queens, therefore, and return once more to the dragons as they
flew to battle. Caraxes and Sheepstealer went north, Vermithor and
Silverwing southwest.

On the headwaters of the mighty Mander stood Tumbleton, a thriving
market town and the seat of House Footly. 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. The arrival of a strong force of riverlords swelled their
numbers further, and stiffened their resolve. 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.

All told, the forces gathered under Queen Rhaenyra’s banners at
Tumbleton numbered near nine thousand, according to the True Telling.
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. No doubt the arrival of the
dragons Vermithor and Silverwing with their riders was most welcome by
the defenders of Tumbleton. Little could they know the horrors that
awaited them.

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. It does appear that certain of
those who flooded into the town, fleeing before Lord

Hightower’s army, were actually part of that army, sent ahead to
infiltrate the ranks of the defenders. Beyond question, two of the
Blackwater men who had joined the riverlords on their march south— Lord
Owain Bourney and Ser Roger Corne—were secret supporters of King Aegon
II. 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.

Most of what we know of these men comes from Mushroom. The dwarf is not
reticent in his assessment of the low character of these two
dragonriders, painting the former as a drunkard and the latter as a
brute. 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. Yet neither man had hesitated to face storms of
spears and arrows off Driftmark. It may be that it was the thought of
attacking Tessarion that gave them pause. In the Gullet, all the dragons
had been on their own side. This too may be possible…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.

Others suggest it was avarice, not cowardice, that led White and Hammer
to betrayal. Honor meant little and less to them; it was wealth and
power they lusted for. After the Gullet and the fall of King’s Landing,
they had been granted knighthood…but they aspired to be lords and
scorned the modest holdings bestowed on them by Queen Rhaenyra. 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. Then Storm’s End and Casterly Rock were dangled before them,
but these rewards as well the ungrateful queen had denied them.

No doubt they hoped that King Aegon II might reward them better, should
they help return the Iron Throne to him. 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. 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.

Of the Battle of Tumbleton we know much and more, however. Six thousand
of the queen’s men formed up to face Lord Hightower in the field, under
the command of Ser Garibald Grey. 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. There Red Robb Rivers and
his bowmen stood, covering the retreat with their own longbows.

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. 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.

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. 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 longaxe…yet the savage Lord of Barrowton fought on,
slaying both Ser Bryndon and Lord Ormund before he died. Lord
Hightower’s banners toppled, and the townsfolk gave a great cheer,
thinking the tide of battle turned. Even the appearance of Tessarion
across the field did not dismay them, for they knew they had two dragons
of their own…but when Vermithor and Silverwing climbed into the sky and
loosed their fires upon Tumbleton, those cheers changed to screams.

  It was the Field of Fire writ small, Grand Maester Munkun wrote.

Tumbleton went up in flame: shops, homes, septs, people, all. Men fell
burning from gatehouse and battlements, or stumbled shrieking through
the streets like so many living torches. Outside the walls, Prince
Daeron swooped down upon Tessarion. Pate of Longleaf was unhorsed and
trampled, Ser Garibald Grey pierced by a crossbow bolt, then engulfed by
dragonflame. The Two Betrayers scourged the town with whips of flame
from one end to the other.

Ser Roger Corne and his men chose that moment to show their true colors,
cutting down defenders on the town gates and throwing them

open to the attackers. Lord Owain Bourney did the same within the
castle, driving a spear through the back of Ser Merrell the Bold.

[]

The sack that followed was as savage as any in the history of Westeros.
Tumbleton, that prosperous market town, was reduced to ash and embers.
Thousands burned, and as many died by drowning as they tried to swim the
river. Some would later say they were the fortunate ones, for no mercy
was shown the survivors. Lord Footly’s men threw down their swords and
yielded, only to be bound and beheaded. Such townswomen as survived the
fires were raped repeatedly, even girls as young as eight and ten. Old
men and boys were put to the sword, whilst the dragons fed upon the
twisted, smoking carcasses of their victims. 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.

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. They had based
themselves at Maidenpool, at the invitation of Lord Manfryd Mooton, who
lived in terror of Vhagar descending on his town. Instead Prince Aemond
struck at Stonyhead, in the foothills of the Mountains of the Moon; at
Sweetwillow on the Green Fork and Sallydance on the

Red 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. Vhagar never
lingered, nor did the survivors oft agree on which way the dragon had
flown.

Each dawn Caraxes and Sheepstealer flew from Maidenpool, climbing high
above the riverlands in ever-widening circles in hopes of espying Vhagar
below…only to return defeated at dusk. 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. Prince Daemon refused.
Vhagar was the last of the three dragons that had come to Westeros with
Aegon the Conqueror and his sisters, he reminded his lordship. Though
slower than she had been a century before, she had grown nigh as large
as the Black Dread of old. Her fires burned hot enough to melt stone,
and neither Caraxes nor Sheepstealer could match her ferocity. Only
together could they hope to withstand her. And so he kept the girl
Nettles by his side, day and night, in sky and castle.

Yet was fear of Vhagar the only reason Prince Daemon kept Nettles close
to him? Mushroom would have us believe it was not. By the dwarf’s
account, Daemon Targaryen had come to love the small brown bastard girl,
and had taken her into his bed.

How much credence can we give the fool’s testimony? 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. Daemon Targaryen was not a
faithful consort to the queen, we know. Even our normally reticent
Septon Eustace writes of his nightly visits to Lady Mysaria, whose bed
he oft shared whilst at court…with the queen’s blessing, purportedly.
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.

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. 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 of

bread. And the sheep she fed to Sheepstealer to bind him to her…how
would she have come by those, if not by lifting her skirts for some
shepherd? Nor could Netty truly be called pretty. “A skinny brown girl
on a skinny brown dragon,” writes Munkun in his True Telling (though he
never saw her). Septon Eustace says her teeth were crooked, her nose
scarred where it had once been slit for thieving. Hardly a likely
paramour for a prince, one would think.

Against that we have The Testimony of Mushroom…and in this case, the
Chronicles of Maidenpool as set down by Lord Mooton’s maester. 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.” 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.”

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. 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. So let us leave them for the nonce, and turn our gaze
briefly across Blackwater Bay.

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 had been returning from Pentos to Old Volantis when a
storm drove her off course, her crew said…but to this common song of
peril at sea, the Volantenes added a queer note. As Nessaria beat
westward, the Dragonmont loomed up before them, huge against the setting
sun…and the sailors spied two dragons fighting, their roars echoing off
the sheer black cliffs of the smoking mountain’s eastern flanks. In
every tavern, inn, and whorehouse along the waterfront the tale was
told, retold, and embroidered, till every man on Dragonstone had heard
it.

Dragons were a wonder to the men of Old Volantis; the sight of two in
battle was one the men of Nessaria would never forget. Those born and
bred on Dragonstone had grown up with such beasts…yet even so, the
sailors’ story excited interest. 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. From
the color of its wings and scales, the carcass was that of Grey Ghost.
The dragon lay in two pieces, and had been torn apart and partially
devoured.

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. Most agreed,
for the Cannibal had been known to attack smaller dragons in the past,
though seldom so savagely. 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. “If we
do not trouble him, the Cannibal will not trouble us,” he declared. 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.

His decree did not satisfy his restless charge, Baela Targaryen, Prince
Daemon’s daughter by his first wife, Laena Velaryon. At ten- and-four,
Baela was a wild and willful young maiden, more boyish than ladylike,
and very much her father’s daughter. Though slim and short of stature,
she knew naught of fear, and lived to dance and hawk and ride. As a
younger girl she had oft been chastised for wrestling with squires in
the yard, but of late she had taken to playing kissing games with them
instead. 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. Ser
Robert, outraged, had sent the boy to the block to have the offending
hand removed. Only the girl’s tearful intercession had saved him.

“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.” Even more than boys,
however, Lady Baela loved to fly. 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.

Always eager for adventure, the girl now proposed to find the truth of
what had happened on the other side of the mountain for herself. She had
no fear of the Cannibal, she told Ser Robert. Moondancer was younger and
faster; she could easily outfly the other dragon. But the castellan
forbade her taking any such risk. The garrison was given strict
instructions; Lady Baela was not to leave the castle. When caught
attempting to defy his command that very night, the angry maiden was
confined to her chambers.

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. Aboard was an aged
fisherman called Tom Tanglebeard, his son Tom Tangletongue, and two
“cousins” from Driftmark, left homeless when Spicetown was destroyed.
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. “Grey
and gold they was, flashing in the sun,” one man said…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.

Meanwhile, on the western shore of Blackwater Bay, word of battle and
betrayal at Tumbleton had reached King’s Landing. It is said the Dowager
Queen Alicent laughed when she heard. “All they have sowed, now shall
they reap,” she promised. 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. “I will have no
turncloaks stealing into my city to open my gates to rebels,” she
proclaimed. Lord Ormund’s host could be outside their walls by the
morrow or the day after; the betrayers, dragon- borne, could arrive even
sooner than that.

This prospect excited Prince Joffrey. “Let them come,” the boy
announced, flush with the arrogance of youth and eager to avenge his
fallen brothers. “I will meet them on Tyraxes.” Such talk alarmed his
mother. “You will not,” she declared. “You are too young for battle.”
Even so, she allowed the boy to remain as the black council discussed
how best to deal with the approaching foe.

  Six dragons remained in King’s Landing, but only one within the

walls of the Red Keep: the queen’s own she-dragon, Syrax. A stable in
the outer ward had been emptied of horses and given over for her use.
Heavy chains bound her to the ground. Though long enough to allow her to
move from stable to yard, the chains kept her from flying off riderless.
Syrax had long grown accustomed to chains; exceedingly well-fed, she had
not hunted for years.

The other dragons were kept in the Dragonpit. Beneath its great dome,
forty huge undervaults had been carved from the bones of the Hill of
Rhaenys in a great ring. Thick iron doors closed these man- made caves
at either end, the inner doors fronting on the sands of the pit, the
outer opening to the hillside. Caraxes, Vermithor, Silverwing, and
Sheepstealer had made their lairs there before flying off to battle.
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)…and Dreamfyre,
beloved of Queen Helaena. It had long been the custom for at least one
dragonrider to reside at the pit, so as to be able to rise to the
defense of the city should the need arise. As Rhaenyra preferred to keep
her sons by her side, that duty fell to Addam Velaryon.

But now voices on the black council were raised to question Ser Addam’s
loyalty. The dragonseeds Ulf White and Hugh Hammer had gone over to the
enemy…but were they the only traitors in their midst? What of Addam of
Hull and the girl Nettles? They had been born of bastard stock as well.
Could they be trusted?

Lord Bartimos Celtigar thought not. “Bastards are treacherous by
nature,” he said. “It is in their blood. Betrayal comes as easily to a
bastard as loyalty to trueborn men.” He urged Her Grace to have the two
baseborn dragonriders seized immediately, before they too could join the
enemy with their dragons. Others echoed his views, amongst them Ser
Luthor Largent, Commander of her City Watch, and Ser Lorent Marbrand,
Lord Commander of her Queensguard. Even the two White Harbor men, that
fearsome knight Ser Medrick Manderly and his clever, corpulent brother
Ser Torrhen, urged the queen to mistrust. “Best take no chances,” Ser
Torrhen said. “If the foe gains two more dragons, we are lost.”

Only Lord Corlys and Grand Maester Gerardys spoke in defense of the
dragonseeds. The Grand Maester said that they had no proof of any
disloyalty on the parts of Nettles and Ser Addam; the path of wisdom

was to seek such proof before making any judgments. Lord Corlys went
much further, declaring that Ser Addam and his brother, Alyn, were “true
Velaryons,” worthy heirs to Driftmark. As for the girl, though she might
be dirty and ill-favored, she had fought valiantly in the Battle of the
Gullet. “As did the two betrayers,” Lord Celtigar countered.

The Hand’s impassioned protests and the Grand Maester’s cool caution
both proved to be in vain. The queen’s suspicions had been aroused. “Her
Grace had been betrayed so often, by so many, that she was quick to
believe the worst of any man,” Septon Eustace writes. “Treachery no
longer had the power to surprise her. She had come to expect it, even
from those she loved the most.”

It might be so. 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. 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. Then the White Worm raised her eyes and said in a soft voice, “The
girl has already betrayed you, my queen. Even now she shares your
husband’s bed, and soon enough she will have his bastard in her belly.”

Then Queen Rhaenyra grew most wroth, Septon Eustace writes. 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. “Question him
sharply, and we will learn if he is true or false, beyond a doubt.” As
to the girl Nettles, “She is a common thing, with the stink of sorcery
upon her,” the queen declared. “My prince would ne’er lay with such a
low creature. You need only look at her to know she has no drop of
dragon’s blood in her. It was with spells that she bound a dragon to
her, and she has done the same with my lord husband.” So long as he was
in the girl’s thrall, Prince Daemon could not be relied upon, Her Grace
went on. Therefore, let a command be sent at once to Maidenpool, but
only for the eyes of Lord Mooton. “Let him take her at table or abed and
strike her head off. Only then shall my prince be freed.”

And thus did betrayal beget more betrayal, to the queen’s undoing. 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 open

above them, and Seasmoke spread his pale grey wings and took flight,
smoke rising from his nostrils. Ser Addam Velaryon had been forewarned
in time to make his escape. 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. Nor did
the old man deny it. Bound and beaten, but still silent, he was taken
down into the dungeons and thrown into a black cell to await trial and
execution.

The queen’s suspicion fell upon Grand Maester Gerardys as well, for like
the Sea Snake he had defended the dragonseeds. Gerardys denied having
any part in Lord Corlys’s betrayal. 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. “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.”

All the while tales of the slaughter at Tumbleton were spreading through
the city…and with them, terror. King’s Landing would be next, men told
one another. Dragon would fight dragon, and this time the city would
surely burn. Fearful of the coming foe, hundreds tried to flee, only to
be turned back at the gates by the gold cloaks. Trapped within the city
walls, some sought shelter in deep cellars against the firestorm they
feared was coming, whilst others turned to prayer, to drink, and the
pleasures to be found between a woman’s thighs. By nightfall, the city’s
taverns, brothels, and septs were full to bursting with men and women
seeking solace or escape, and trading tales of horror.

’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. A thief he had
been, for where his right hand should have been was only a stump covered
by ragged leather. 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. Where he came from we
cannot know. Even his name is lost to history. Those who heard him
preach, like those who would later record his infamy, knew him only as
the Shepherd. Mushroom names him “the

Dead Shepherd,” for he claims the man was as pale and foul as a corpse
fresh-risen from its grave.

[]

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. As tireless as he was fearless, he
preached all night and well into the following day, his angry voice
ringing across Cobbler’s Square.

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.” 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. “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. All those who stood with them would die as well.
Only by cleansing King’s Landing of dragons and their masters could
Westeros hope to avoid the fate of Valyria.

Each hour his crowds grew. A dozen listeners became a score and then a
hundred, and by break of dawn thousands were crowding into the square,
shoving and pushing as they strained to hear. Many

clutched torches, and by nightfall the Shepherd stood amidst a ring of
fire. Those who tried to shout him down were savaged by the crowd. Even
the gold cloaks were driven off when forty of them attempted to clear
the square at spearpoint.

A different sort of chaos reigned in Tumbleton, sixty leagues to the
southwest. 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.
Ormund Hightower lay dead, along with his cousin Ser Bryndon, the
foremost knight of Oldtown. His sons remained back at the Hightower a
thousand leagues away, and were green boys besides. And whilst Lord
Ormund had dubbed Daeron Targaryen “Daeron the Daring” and praised his
courage in battle, the prince was still a boy. 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. The most senior
Hightower remaining with the host was Ser Hobert, another of Lord
Ormund’s cousins, hitherto entrusted only with the baggage train. 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.

Lord Unwin Peake, Ser Jon Roxton the Bold, and Lord Owain Bourney
stepped forward as well. 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. Jon Roxton was as feared for his black
temper as for his black blade, the Valyrian steel sword called
Orphan-Maker. Lord Owain the Betrayer insisted that his cunning had won
them Tumbleton, that only he could take King’s Landing. None of the
claimants was powerful and respected enough to curb the bloodlust and
avarice of the common soldiers. Whilst they squabbled over precedence
and plunder, their own men joined freely in the orgy of looting, rape,
and destruction.

The horrors of those days cannot be gainsaid. 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. Without a
strong lord to restrain them, even good men can turn to beasts. So was
it here. Bands of soldiers wandered drunkenly through the streets
robbing every home and shop, and slaying any man who tried to stay their
hands. Every woman was fair prey for their lust, even crones and

little girls. Wealthy men were tortured unto death to force them to
reveal where they had hidden their gold and gems. Babes were torn from
their mothers’ arms and impaled upon the points of spears. Holy septas
were chased naked through the streets and raped, not by one man but by a
hundred; silent sisters were violated. Even the dead were not spared.
Instead of being given honorable burial, their corpses were left to rot,
fodder for carrion crows and wild dogs.

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. 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. 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.” 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. 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.

Yet the worst crimes were those committed by the Two Betrayers, the
baseborn dragonriders Hugh Hammer and Ulf White. Ser Ulf gave himself
over entirely to drunkenness, “drowning himself in wine and flesh.”
Mushroom says he raped three maidens every night. Those who failed to
please were fed to his dragon. The knighthood that Queen Rhaenyra had
conferred on him did not suffice. Nor was he surfeit when Prince Daeron
named him Lord of Bitterbridge. 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.

Ser Ulf’s ambitions must be accounted modest when compared to those of
his fellow turncloak, Hugh Hammer. 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. Though largely untrained in the art of
war, his size and strength made him a fearsome foe. His weapon of choice
was the warhammer, with which he delivered crushing, killing blows. In
battle he rode Vermithor, once the

mount of the Old King himself; of all the dragons in Westeros, only
Vhagar was older or larger.

For all these reasons, Lord Hammer (as he now styled himself) began to
dream of crowns. “Why be a lord when you can be a king?” he told the men
who began to gather round him. And talk was heard in camp of a prophecy
of ancient days that said, “When the hammer shall fall upon the dragon,
a new king shall arise, and none shall stand before him.” 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.

Neither of the Two Betrayers seemed eager to help Prince Daeron press an
attack on King’s Landing. 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. Lord Peake
preferred to delay any advance until Lord Baratheon could bring up his
power from Storm’s End to join them, whilst Ser Hobert wished to fall
back to the Reach to replenish their fast-dwindling supplies. None
seemed concerned that their army was shrinking every day, melting away
like morning dew as more and more men deserted, stealing off for home
and harvest with all the plunder they could carry.

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. 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. “No
harm is to be done my lord husband, Prince Daemon of House Targaryen,”
Her Grace commanded. “Send him back to me when the deed is done, for we
have urgent need of him.”

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. Nor did it return to him until he had drunk three cups of wine.
Thereupon Lord Mooton sent for the captain of his guard, his brother,
and his champion, Ser Florian Greysteel. He bade his maester to remain
as well. When all had assembled, he read to them the letter and asked
them for their counsel.

“This thing is easily done,” said the captain of his guard. “The prince
sleeps beside her, but he has grown old. Three men should be enough to
subdue him should he try to interfere, but I will take six to be

certain. Does my lord wish this done tonight?”

“Six men or sixty, he is still Daemon Targaryen,” Lord Mooton’s brother
objected. “A sleeping draught in his evening wine would be the wiser
course. Let him wake to find her dead.”

“The girl is but a child, however foul her treasons,” said Ser Florian,
that old knight, grey and grizzled and stern. “The Old King would never
have asked this of any man of honor.”

“These are foul times,” Lord Mooton said, “and it is a foul choice this
queen has given me. The girl is a guest beneath my roof. If I obey,
Maidenpool shall be forever cursed. If I refuse, we shall be attainted
and destroyed.”

To which his brother answered, “It may be we shall be destroyed whatever
choice we make. The prince is more than fond of this brown child, and
his dragon is close at hand. A wise lord would kill them both, lest the
prince burn Maidenpool in his wroth.”

“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. I should be doubly cursed.” Thereupon he sighed and said,
“Would that I had never read this letter.”

  And up spoke Maester Norren, saying, “Mayhaps you never did.” What was
  said after that the Chronicles of Maidenpool do not tell us.

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. “Weary after a long day of fruitless
flight, they were sharing a simple meal of boiled beef and beets when I
entered, talking softly with each other, of what I cannot say. The
prince greeted me politely, but as he read I saw the joy go from his
eyes, and a sadness descended upon him, like a weight too heavy to be
borne. When the girl asked what was in the letter, he said, ‘A queen’s
words, a whore’s work.’ Then he drew his sword and asked if Lord
Mooton’s men were waiting outside to take them captive. ‘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. ‘Forgive me, My Prince,’ I said. ‘I have broken my maester’s
vows.’ Prince Daemon sheathed his sword, saying, ‘You are a bad maester,
but a good man,’ after which he bade me leave them, commanding me to
‘speak no word of this to lord nor love until the

morrow.’ ”

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. It was her custom to feed him each day before she flew;
dragons bend easier to their rider’s will when full. That morning she
fed him a black ram, the largest in all Maidenpool, slitting the ram’s
throat herself. Her riding leathers were stained with blood when she
mounted her dragon, Maester Norren records, and “her cheeks were stained
with tears.” 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. 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.

Daemon Targaryen returned to the castle just long enough to break his
fast with Lord Mooton. “This is the last that you will see of me,” he
told his lordship. “I thank you for your hospitality. Let it be known
through all your lands that I fly for Harrenhal. If my nephew Aemond
dares face me, he shall find me there, alone.”

Thus Prince Daemon departed Maidenpool for the last time. When he had
gone, Maester Norren went to his lord to say, “Take the chain from my
neck and bind my hands with it. You must needs deliver me to the queen.
When I gave warning to a traitor and allowed her to escape, I became a
traitor as well.” Lord Mooton refused. “Keep your chain,” his lordship
said. “We are all traitors here.” 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.

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. A few squatters had found shelter in the castle’s deep vaults and
undercellars, but the sound of Caraxes’s wings sent them fleeing. When
the last of them was gone, Daemon Targaryen walked the cavernous halls
of Harren’s seat alone, with no companion but his dragon. Each night at
dusk he slashed the heart tree in the godswood to mark the passing of
another day. Thirteen marks can be

seen upon that weirwood still; old wounds, deep and dark, yet the lords
who have ruled Harrenhal since Daemon’s day say they bleed afresh every
spring.

On the fourteenth day of the prince’s vigil, a shadow swept over the
castle, blacker than any passing cloud. All the birds in the godswood
took to the air in fright, and a hot wind whipped the fallen leaves
across the yard. Vhagar had come at last, and on her back rode the
one-eyed Prince Aemond Targaryen, clad in nightblack armor chased with
gold.

He had not come alone. Alys Rivers flew with him, her long hair
streaming black behind her, her belly swollen with child. Prince Aemond
circled twice about the towers of Harrenhal, then brought Vhagar down in
the outer ward, with Caraxes a hundred yards away. The dragons glared
balefully at each other, and Caraxes spread his wings and hissed, flames
dancing across his teeth.

The prince helped his woman down from Vhagar’s back, then turned to face
his uncle. “Nuncle, I hear you have been seeking us.”

  “Only you,” Daemon replied. “Who told you where to find me?”

“My lady,” Aemond answered. “She saw you in a storm cloud, in a mountain
pool at dusk, in the fire we lit to cook our suppers. She sees much and
more, my Alys. You were a fool to come alone.”

  “Were I not alone, you would not have come,” said Daemon. “Yet you
  are, and here I am. You have lived too long, Nuncle.”

“On that much we agree,” Daemon replied. 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. Daemon
left his own chains dangling. Caraxes hissed again, filling the air with
flame, and Vhagar answered with a roar. As one the two dragons leapt
into the sky.

Prince Daemon took Caraxes up swiftly, lashing him with a steel- tipped
whip until they disappeared into a bank of clouds. 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 hour was late, the sun
was close to setting, and the lake was calm, its surface

glimmering like a sheet of beaten copper. Up and up she soared,
searching for Caraxes as Alys Rivers watched from atop Kingspyre Tower
in Harrenhal below.

[]

The attack came sudden as a thunderbolt. 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.

The Blood Wyrm slammed into the older dragon with terrible force. Their
roars echoed across the Gods Eye as the two grappled and tore at one
another, dark against a blood-red sky. So bright did their flames burn
that fisherfolk below feared the clouds themselves had caught fire.
Locked together, the dragons tumbled toward the lake. The Blood Wyrm’s
jaws closed about Vhagar’s neck, her black teeth sinking deep into the
flesh of the larger dragon. 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.

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. In his hand
was Dark Sister, the sword of Queen Visenya. 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.
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.

Neither man nor dragon could have survived such an impact, the
fisherfolk who saw it said. Nor did they. Caraxes lived long enough to
crawl back onto the land. 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. Vhagar’s carcass plunged to the lake floor, the hot blood
from the gaping wound in her neck bringing the water to a boil over her
last resting place. 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.

That Prince Daemon died as well we cannot doubt. His remains were never
found, but there are queer currents in that lake, and hungry fish as
well. 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. Such stories make for charming songs, but poor
history. Even Mushroom gives the tale no credence, nor shall we.

  It was upon the twenty-second day of the fifth moon of the year 130

AC when the dragons danced and died above the Gods Eye. Daemon Targaryen
was nine-and-forty at his death; Prince Aemond had only turned twenty.
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. Thus passed the last living creature from the days of Aegon’s
Conquest, as dusk and darkness swallowed Black Harren’s accursed seat.
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.

[]Back in King’s Landing, Queen Rhaenyra was finding herself ever more
isolated with every new betrayal. The suspected turncloak Addam Velaryon
had fled before he could be put to the question. His flight had proved
his guilt, the White Worm murmured. Lord Celtigar concurred and proposed
a punishing new tax on any child born out of wedlock. Such a tax would
not only replenish the Crown’s coffers, but might also rid the realm of
thousands of bastards.

Her Grace had more pressing concerns than her treasury, however. By
ordering the arrest of Addam Velaryon, she had lost not only a dragon
and a dragonrider, but her Queen’s Hand as well…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. When it became known that Lord Corlys
languished in a dungeon under the Red Keep, they began to abandon her
cause by the hundreds. 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. Nor could those who remained be trusted. 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. Their plans
were betrayed to Lady Misery by a whore Ser Thoron had been bedding, and

the would-be rescuers were taken and hanged.

The two knights died at dawn, kicking and writhing against the walls of
the Red Keep as the nooses tightened round their necks. That very day,
not long after sunset, another horror visited the queen’s court. 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. She was but
one-and-twenty.

After half a year of captivity, why should Aegon’s queen choose this
night to end her life? 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. 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. 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.

Maesters may argue about the truth of such assertions…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.
Queen Helaena had been murdered, the whispers went, as her sons had been
before her. Prince Daeron and his dragons would soon be at the gates,
and with them the end of Rhaenyra’s reign. 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.

Whence came this poisonous calumny, one might ask (for a calumny it most
certainly is)? Grand Maester Munkun places it at the door of the
Shepherd, for thousands heard him decry both crime and queen. But did he
originate the lie, or was he merely giving echo to words heard from
other lips? The latter, Mushroom would have us believe. A slander so
vile could only have been the work of Larys Strong, the dwarf
asserts…for the Clubfoot had never left King’s Landing (as would soon be
revealed), but only slipped into its shadows, from whence he

continued to plot and whisper.

Could Helaena’s death have been murder? Possibly…but it seems unlikely
Queen Rhaenyra was behind it. Helaena Targaryen was a broken creature
who posed no threat to Her Grace. Nor do our sources speak of any
special enmity between them. If Rhaenyra were intent on murder, surely
it would have been the Dowager Queen Alicent flung down onto the spikes.
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.

All the same, the rumor of Queen Helaena’s “murder” was soon on the lips
of half King’s Landing. That it was so quickly believed shows how
utterly the city had turned against their once-beloved queen. Rhaenyra
was hated; Helaena had been loved. 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. Helaena’s end had
been mercifully swift; one of the spikes took her through the throat and
she died without a sound. 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. When Dowager Queen Alicent was informed of her daughter’s passing,
she rent her garments and pronounced a dire curse upon her rival.

  That night King’s Landing rose in bloody riot.

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. From there the rioters spread
throughout the city, shouting for justice for the dead princes and their
murdered mother. Carts and wagons were overturned, shops looted, homes
plundered and set afire. Gold cloaks attempting to quell the
disturbances were set upon and beaten bloody. No one was spared, of high
birth or low. Lords were pelted with rubbish, knights pulled from their
saddles. 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. Sailors unable to return to their ships attacked the River
Gate and fought a pitched battle with the City Watch. It took Ser Luthor
Largent and four hundred spears to disperse them. By then the gate had
been hacked half to pieces and a hundred

men were dead or dying, a quarter of them gold cloaks.

No such rescuers came for Lord Bartimos Celtigar, whose walled manse was
defended only by six guardsmen and a few hastily armed servants. When
rioters came swarming over the walls, these dubious defenders threw down
their weapons and ran, or joined the attackers. 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 moments… until a treacherous serving girl
let the rioters in through a back way. The brave lad was slain by a
spear thrust through the back. Lord Bartimos himself fought his way to
the stables, only to find all his horses dead or stolen. Taken, the
queen’s despised master of coin was bound to a post and tortured until
he revealed where all his wealth was hidden. 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.

At Cobbler’s Square the sounds of the riot could be heard from every
quarter. 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.” 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. Now it is the Stranger who comes. On a dark horse with burning
eyes he comes, a scourge of fire in his hand to cleanse this pit of sin
of demons and all who bow before them. Listen! Can you hear the sound of
burning hooves? He comes! He comes!!”

The crowd took up the cry, wailing, “He comes! He comes!!” as a thousand
torches filled the square with pools of smoky yellow light. Soon enough
the shouts died away, and through the night the sound of iron hooves on
cobblestones grew louder. “Not one Stranger, but five hundred,” Mushroom
says in his Testimony.

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. They formed up on the south side of the
square, behind a wall of shields and spears. At their head rode Ser
Luthor Largent upon an armored warhorse, a longsword in his

hand. The mere sight of him was enough to send hundreds streaming away
into the wynds and alleys and side streets. Hundreds more fled when Ser
Luthor ordered the gold cloaks to advance.

Ten thousand remained, however. The press was so thick that many who
might gladly have fled found themselves unable to move, pushed and
shoved and trod upon. Others surged forward, locked arms, and began to
shout and curse, as the spears advanced to the slow beat of a drum.
“Make way, you bloody fools,” Ser Luthor roared at the Shepherd’s lambs.
“Go home. No harm will come to you. Go home. We only want this
Shepherd.”

Some say the first man to die was a baker, who grunted in surprise when
a spearpoint pierced his flesh and he saw his apron turning red. Others
claim it was a little girl, trodden under by Ser Luthor’s warhorse. A
rock came flying from the crowd, striking a spearman on the brow. Shouts
and curses were heard, sticks and stones and chamber pots came raining
down from rooftops, an archer across the square began to loose his
shafts. A torch was thrust at a watchman, and quick as that his golden
cloak was burning.

On the far side of Cobbler’s Square, the Shepherd was bundled away by
his acolytes. “Stop him,” Ser Luthor shouted. “Seize him! Stop him!” He
spurred his horse, cutting his way through the throng, and his gold
cloaks followed, discarding their spears to draw swords and cudgels. The
Shepherd’s followers were screaming, falling, running. Others produced
weapons of their own, dirks and daggers, mauls and clubs, broken spears
and rusted swords.

  []

The gold cloaks were large men, young, strong, disciplined, well armed
and well armored. For twenty yards or more their shield wall held, and
they cut a bloody road through the crowd, leaving dead and dying all
around them. But they numbered only five hundred, and ten thousand had
gathered to hear the Shepherd. One watchman went down, then another.
Suddenly smallfolk were slipping through the

gaps in the line. 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.

Battle turned to riot turned to slaughter. Surrounded on all sides, the
gold cloaks found themselves hemmed in and swept under, with no room to
wield their weapons. Many died on the points of their own swords. Others
were torn to pieces, kicked to death, trampled underfoot, hacked apart
with hoes and butcher’s cleavers. Even the fearsome Ser Luthor Largent
could not escape the carnage. 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.

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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

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. The surviving gold cloaks had retreated to
their barracks, whilst gutter knights, mummer kings, and mad prophets
ruled the streets. 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 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 to

restore some semblance of order to the streets north and east of
Rhaenys’s Hill. 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 rest of King’s Landing remained in chaos. 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 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. The remainder of the “Mudfoot” garrison had gone over to Ser
Perkin. Ser Torrhen lost a quarter of his men fighting his way back to
the Red Keep…yet escaped lightly compared to Ser Lorent Marbrand, who
led a hundred knights and men-at-arms into Flea Bottom. Sixteen
returned. Ser Lorent, Lord Commander of the Queensguard, was not amongst
them.

By evenfall, Rhaenyra Targaryen found herself sore beset on every side,
her reign in ruins. “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. At dawn, a hundred men attended her in the
throne room, but one by one they slipped away or were dismissed, until
only her sons and I remained with her. ‘My faithful Mushroom,’ Her Grace
called me, ‘would that all men were true as you. I should make you my
Hand.’ When I replied that I would sooner be her consort, she laughed.
No sound was ever sweeter. It was good to hear her laugh.”

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. 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. It was he
who brought back Ser Lorent’s body, to keep

the rioters from despoiling it).

Though the fool Mushroom does not figure in Septon Eustace’s account of
the Last Day, nor in Munkun’s True Telling, both speak of the queen’s
sons. Aegon the Younger was ever at his mother’s side, yet seldom spoke
a word. Prince Joffrey, ten-and-three, donned squire’s armor and begged
the queen to let him ride to the Dragonpit and mount Tyraxes. “I want to
fight for you, Mother, as my brothers did. Let me prove that I am as
brave as they were.” His words only deepened Rhaenyra’s resolve,
however. “Brave they were, and dead they are, the both of them. My sweet
boys.” And once more, Her Grace forbade the prince to leave the castle.

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.

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). 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. 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. 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. Those who remained, many wounded,
were easily overcome. Wat’s followers poured out into the countryside,
streaming up the kingsroad behind Lord Celtigar’s rotting head…toward
where, not even Wat seemed certain.

Before an hour had passed, the King’s Gate and the Lion Gate were open
as well. The gold cloaks at the first had fled, whilst the “lions” at
the other had thrown in with the mobs. Three of the seven gates of
King’s Landing were open to Rhaenyra’s foes.

The most dire threat to the queen’s rule proved to be within the city,
however. At nightfall, the Shepherd had appeared once more to resume his
preaching in Cobbler’s Square. The corpses from last night’s fighting
had been cleared away during the day, we are told, but not before they
had been looted of their clothes and coin and other

valuables, and in some cases of their heads as well. 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. The crowd, Septon Eustace says, was twice as large and
thrice as fearful as the night before. 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. No longer believing that the queen could protect
them, they looked to their Shepherd for salvation.

But that prophet answered, “When the dragons come, your flesh will burn
and blister and turn to ash. Your wives will dance in gowns of fire,
shrieking as they burn, lewd and naked underneath the flames. And you
shall see your little children weeping, weeping till their eyes do melt
and slide like jelly down their faces, till their pink flesh falls black
and crackling from their bones. The Stranger comes, he comes, he comes,
to scourge us for our sins. Prayers cannot stay his wroth, no more than
tears can quench the flame of dragons. Only blood can do that. Your
blood, my blood, their blood.” 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. “There the demons dwell, up there.
Fire and blood, blood and fire. This is their city. If you would make it
yours, first must you destroy them. If you would cleanse yourself of
sin, first must you bathe in dragon’s blood. For only blood can quench
the fires of hell.”

From ten thousand throats a cry went up. “Kill them! Kill them!” 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. Some thought better and slipped away to
home, but for every man who left, three more appeared to join these
dragonslayers. By the time they reached the Hill of Rhaenys, their
numbers had doubled.

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 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.

  As soon as word had reached her that the Shepherd’s savage flock

was 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 dragons…but with the city in
such turmoil, it was far from certain that the riders had won through.
Even if they had, what loyal gold cloaks remained were too few to have
any hope of success. “Her Grace had as well commanded them to halt the
Blackwater in its flow,” says Mushroom. When Prince Joffrey pleaded with
his mother to let him ride forth with their own knights and those from
White Harbor, the queen refused. “If they take that hill, this one will
be next,” she said. “We will need every sword here to defend the
castle.”

  “They will kill the dragons,” Prince Joffrey said, anguished.

“Or the dragons will kill them,” his mother said, unmoved. “Let them
burn. The realm will not long miss them.”

  “Mother, what if they kill Tyraxes?” the young prince said.

The queen did not believe it. “They are vermin. Drunks and fools and
gutter rats. One taste of dragonflame and they will run.”

At that the fool Mushroom spoke up, saying, “Drunks they may be, but a
drunken man knows not fear. Fools, aye, but a fool can kill a king.
Rats, that too, but a thousand rats can bring down a bear. I saw it
happen once, down there in Flea Bottom.” This time Queen Rhaenyra did
not laugh. Bidding her fool to hold his tongue or lose it, Her Grace
turned back to the parapets. Only Mushroom saw Prince Joffrey go sulking
off (if his Testimony can be believed)…and Mushroom had been told to
hold his tongue.

It was only when the watchers on the roof heard Syrax roar that the
prince’s absence was noted. That was too late. “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. “After him!” Rhaenyra shouted.
“All of you, every man, every boy, to horse, to horse, go after him.
Bring him back, bring him back, he does not know. My son, my sweet, my
son…”

Seven men did ride down from the Red Keep that night, into the madness
of the city. Munkun tells us they were men of honor, duty bound to obey
their queen’s commands. Septon Eustace would have us

believe that their hearts had been touched by a mother’s love for her
son. Mushroom names them dolts and dastards, eager for some rich reward,
and “too dull to believe that they might die.” For once it may be that
all three of our chroniclers have the truth of it, at least in part.

Our septon, our maester, and our fool do agree upon their names. 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.
Six squires, eight gold cloaks, and twenty men-at-arms rode with the
seven champions as well, but their names, alas, have not come down to
us.

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. Certain of those songs even have some
truth to them, but it is beyond our purview to recount them here. Songs
are sung of Prince Joffrey’s last flight as well. Some singers can find
glory even in a privy, Mushroom tells us, but it takes a fool to speak
the truth. Though we cannot doubt the prince’s courage, his act was one
of folly.

We shall not pretend to any understanding of the bond between dragon and
dragonrider; wiser heads have pondered that mystery for centuries. We do
know, however, that dragons are not horses, to be ridden by any man who
throws a saddle on their back. Syrax was the queen’s dragon. She had
never known another rider. 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. In his haste to be away before he could be stopped, the
prince had vaulted onto Syrax without benefit of saddle or whip. His
intent, we must presume, was either to fly Syrax into battle or, more
likely, to cross the city to the Dragonpit and his own Tyraxes. Mayhaps
he meant to loose the other pit dragons as well.

Joffrey never reached the Hill of Rhaenys. Once in the air, Syrax
twisted beneath him, fighting to be free of this unfamiliar rider. And
from below, stones and spears and arrows flew at him from the hands of
the Shepherd’s blood-soaked lambs, maddening the dragon even

further. Two hundred feet above Flea Bottom, Prince Joffrey slid from
the dragon’s back and plunged to the earth.

Near a juncture where five alleys came together, the prince’s fall came
to its bloody end. He crashed first onto a steep-pitched roof before
rolling off to fall another forty feet amidst a shower of broken tiles.
We are told that the fall broke his back, that shards of slate rained
down about him like knives, that his own sword tore loose of his hand
and pierced him through the belly. 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. “Mother, forgive me,” Joffrey supposedly said
with his last breath…though men still argue whether he was speaking of
his mother, the queen, or praying to the Mother Above.

Thus perished Joffrey Velaryon, Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the
Iron Throne, the last of Queen Rhaenyra’s sons by Laenor Velaryon…or the
last of her bastards by Ser Harwin Strong, depending on which truth one
chooses to believe.

The mob was not long in falling on his corpse. The candlemaker’s
daughter Robin, if she ever existed, was driven off. Looters tore the
boots from the prince’s feet and the sword from his belly, then stripped
him of his fine, bloodstained clothes. Others, still more savage, began
ripping at his body. Both of his hands were cut off, so the scum of the
street might claim the rings on his fingers. 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.
There amidst the stinks of Flea Bottom, a battle was waged in the mud
and blood for possession of Prince Joffrey’s body.

  []

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. 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). 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. As the flames
licked at his back, his horse reared in terror and threw him, and the
mob swarmed over him, tearing him to pieces. Only twenty years of age,
Ser Glendon had been Lord Commander of the Queensguard for less than a
day.

And even as blood flowed in the alleys of Flea Bottom, another battle
raged round the Dragonpit above, atop the Hill of Rhaenys.

Mushroom was not wrong: swarms of starving rats do indeed bring down
bulls and bears and lions, when there are enough of them. No matter how
many the bull or bear might kill, there are always more, biting at the
great beast’s legs, clinging to its belly, running up its back. So it
was that night. The Shepherd’s rats were armed with spears, longaxes,
spiked clubs, and half a hundred other kinds of weapons, including both
longbows and crossbows.

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. 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. Though their swords drank deep of the blood of the
attackers, the numbers were against them. 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.

Mayhaps the attackers hoped to take the dragons within whilst they
slept, but the clangor of the assault made that impossible. Those who
lived to tell tales afterward speak of shouts and screams, the smell of
blood in the air, the splintering of oak-and-iron doors beneath crude
rams and the blows of countless axes. “Seldom have so many men rushed so
eagerly onto their funeral pyres,” Grand Maester Munkun wrote, “but a
madness was upon them.” There were four dragons housed within the
Dragonpit. By the time the first of the attackers came pouring out onto
the sands, all four were roused, awake, and angry.

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. For every man who perished, ten suffered burns and yet
survived. Trapped within the pit, hemmed in by walls and dome and bound
by heavy chains, the dragons could not fly away, or use their wings to
evade attacks and swoop down on their foes. Instead they fought with
horns and claws and teeth, turning this way and that like bulls in a
Flea Bottom rat pit…but these bulls could breathe fire. “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. One by one, they did.”

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.
Seven blows did Hobb deliver with his legs locked round

the dragon’s neck, and each time his axe came down he roared out the
name of one of the Seven. It was the seventh blow, the Stranger’s blow,
that slew the dragon, crashing through scale and bones into the beast’s
brain…if Eustace is to be believed.

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.

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. But it must be
recalled that each of these man-made caves had two entrances, one
fronting onto the sands of the pit, the other opening onto the hillside.
It was the Shepherd himself who directed his followers to break through
the “back door.” Hundreds did, howling through the smoke with swords and
spears and axes. As Tyraxes turned, his chains fouled, entangling him in
a web of steel that fatally limited his movement. 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 last of the four pit dragons did not die so easily. Legend has it
that Dreamfyre had broken free of two of her chains at Queen Helaena’s
death. The remaining bonds she burst now, tearing the stanchions from
the walls as the mob rushed her, then plunging into them with tooth and
claw, ripping men apart and tearing off their limbs even as she loosed
her terrible fires. As others closed about her she took wing, circling
the cavernous interior of the Dragonpit and swooping down to attack the
men below. Tyraxes, Shrykos, and Morghul killed scores, there can be
little doubt, but Dreamfyre slew more than all three of them combined.

Hundreds fled in terror from her flames…but hundreds more, drunk or mad
or possessed of the Warrior’s own courage, pushed through to the attack.
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 even

punched through her scales. Whenever she lighted, men swarmed to the
attack, driving her back into the air. Twice the dragon flew at the
Dragonpit’s great bronze gates, only to find them closed and barred and
defended by ranks of spears.

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. The end came when a crossbow bolt
nicked one of the dragon’s eyes. 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.
Already weakened by blasts of dragonflame, the dome cracked under the
force of impact, and a moment later half of it came tumbling down,
crushing both dragon and dragonslayers under tons of broken stone and
rubble.

The Storming of the Dragonpit was done. Four of the Targaryen dragons
lay dead, though at hideous cost. Yet the Shepherd was not yet
triumphant, for the queen’s own dragon remained alive and free…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.

  []

Mushroom was amongst those watching with Queen Rhaenyra on the roof of
Maegor’s Holdfast. “A thousand shrieks and shouts echoed across the
city, mingling with the dragon’s roar,” he tells us. “Atop the Hill of
Rhaenys, the Dragonpit wore a crown of yellow fire, burning so bright it
seemed as if the sun was rising. Even the queen trembled as she watched,
the tears glistening on her cheeks. Never have I seen a

sight more terrible, more glorious.”

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. Others took themselves to the castle sept
to pray for deliverance. Rhaenyra herself wrapped her arms about her
last living son, Aegon the Younger, clutching him fiercely to her bosom.
Nor would she loose her hold upon him…until that dread moment when Syrax
fell.

Unchained and riderless, Syrax might have easily flown away from the
madness. The sky was hers. She could have returned to the Red Keep, left
the city entirely, taken wing for Dragonstone. 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? 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. We can only report what happened, as Mushroom, Septon Eustace, and
Grand Maester Munkun have set it down for us.

Many a conflicting tale is told of the death of the queen’s dragon.
Munkun credits Hobb the Hewer and his axe, though this is almost
certainly mistaken. Could the same man truly have slain two dragons on
the same night and in the same manner? Some speak of an unnamed
spearman, “a blood-soaked giant” who leapt from the Dragonpit’s broken
dome onto the dragon’s back. Others relate how a knight named Ser
Warrick Wheaton slashed a wing from Syrax with a Valyrian steel sword
(Lamentation, most like). 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.

Possibly all these worthies (save Hobb) played some role in the dragon’s
demise…but the tale most oft heard in King’s Landing named the Shepherd
himself as the dragonslayer. 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. 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. And so the tale was told, even by Septon Eustace in his account

of these dark days, and so the singers sang for many years thereafter.

The loss of both her dragon and her son left Rhaenyra Targaryen ashen
and inconsolable, Mushroom tells us. Attended only by the fool, she
retreated to her chambers whilst her counselors conferred. King’s
Landing was lost, all agreed; they must needs abandon the city.
Reluctantly, Her Grace was persuaded to leave the next day, at dawn.
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. 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.

Mushroom remained behind, along with other members of the court, amongst
them Lady Misery and Septon Eustace. 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. 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. 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.

The Flea proved to have no mercy. 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. Nor was the mistress of whisperers, Lady
Mysaria of Lys, spared on account of her sex. Taken whilst attempting to
flee, the White Worm was whipped naked through the city, from the Red
Keep to the Gate of the Gods. If she were still alive by the time they
reached the gate, Ser Perkin promised, she would be spared and allowed
to go. She made it only half that distance, dying on the cobblestones
with hardly a patch of her pale white skin left upon her back.

Septon Eustace feared for his own life. “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. The Flea also freed all the
prisoners found in the dungeons below the castle, amongst them

Grand Maester Orwyle and the Sea Snake, Lord Corlys Velaryon. Both were
on hand the next day to bear witness as Ser Perkin’s gangling squire
Trystane mounted the Iron Throne. So too was the Queen Dowager, Alicent
of House Hightower. Down in the black cells, Ser Perkin’s men even found
King Aegon’s former master of coin, Ser Tyland Lannister, still
alive…though Rhaenyra’s torturers had blinded him, pulled out his
fingernails and toenails, cut off his ears, and relieved him of his
manhood.

King Aegon’s master of whisperers, Larys Strong the Clubfoot, fared much
better. The Lord of Harrenhal emerged intact from wherever he had been
hiding. 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.”

The queen’s flight brought no peace to King’s Landing. “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. “No man’s home was safe, nor any maiden’s virtue.” This chaos
endured for more than a moon’s turn.

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. Yet it
cannot be denied that he held sway over tens of thousands from the ruins
of the Dragonpit.

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. With the dragons dead and the threat of immolation no longer
imminent, the prophet turned his wroth upon the highborn and wealthy.
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. “Cast off your silks and satins, and clothe
your nakedness in roughspun robes,” he told his followers. “Throw away
your shoes, and walk barefoot through the world, as the Father made
you.” Thousands obeyed. But thousands more turned away, and each night
the crowds that came to hear the prophet grew smaller.

  At the other end of the Street of the Sisters, Gaemon Palehair’s queer

kingdom blossomed atop Visenya’s Hill. The court of this four-year-old
bastard king was made up of whores, mummers, and thieves, whilst gangs
of ruffians, sellswords, and drunkards defended his “rule.” One decree
after another came down from the House of Kisses where the child king
had his seat, each more outrageous than the last. 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. Gaemon decreed that
husbands who beat their wives should themselves be beaten, irrespective
of what the wives had done to warrant such chastisement. 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.

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. The squire king began by repealing Queen Rhaenyra’s
unpopular taxes and dividing the coin in the royal treasury amongst his
own followers. 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). All the while, Ser
Perkin the Flea was recruiting scores of surviving gold cloaks to
Trystane’s banner. 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.

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. “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.” 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. 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.

Much and more was happening at Tumbleton as well, and it is there we
must next turn our gaze. 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. Chief amongst them were Ser Jon Roxton, Ser Roger
Corne, and Lord Unwin Peake…but Ser Hobert Hightower counseled caution,
and the Two Betrayers refused to join any attack unless their own
demands were met. 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.

These conflicts came to a boil when Tumbleton learned belatedly of
Aemond Targaryen’s death at Harrenhal. 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. With his brother Aemond slain as well, the greens found
themselves kingless and leaderless. Prince Daeron stood next in the line
of succession. 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.

The Two Betrayers felt the need of a king as well…but Daeron Targaryen
was not the king they wanted. “We need a strong man to lead us, not a
boy,” declared Hard Hugh Hammer. “The throne should be mine.” 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. A dragon.”
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. Vermithor was thrice the size of
Prince Daeron’s she-dragon Tessarion. No man who glimpsed them together
could fail to see that Vermithor was a far more fearsome beast.

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. They were
the worst sort of men, to be sure: sellswords, robber knights, and like
rabble, men of tainted blood and uncertain birth who loved battle for
its own sake and lived for rapine and plunder. Many had heard the
prophecy that the hammer would smash

the dragon, and took it to mean that Hard Hugh’s triumph was
foreordained.

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. 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. I think your father did not beat you often enough.
Take care I do not make up for his lack.” The Two Betrayers took their
leave together, and began to make plans for Hammer’s coronation. 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.

One such, Ser Roger Corne, made so bold as to knock the crown off
Hammer’s head. “A crown does not make a man a king,” he said. “You
should wear a horseshoe on your head, blacksmith.” It was a foolish
thing to do. Lord Hugh was not amused. 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. When Corne’s friends
tried to intervene, daggers were drawn and swords unsheathed, leaving
three men dead and a dozen wounded.

That was more than Prince Daeron’s loyalist lords were prepared to
suffer. 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 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. Hammer posed a
greater danger, for of late he was surrounded day and night by
lickspittles, camp followers, and sellswords eager for his favor. It
would serve them little to kill White and leave Hammer alive, Lord Peake
pointed out; Hard Hugh must needs die first. 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.

“Any man can be killed,” declared Ser Hobert Hightower, “but what of the
dragons?” Given the turmoil at King’s Landing, Ser Tyler Norcross said,
Tessarion alone should be enough to allow them to retake the Iron
Throne. Lord Peake replied that victory would be a deal

more certain with Vermithor and Silverwing. 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. “We cannot ask these men to shed blood with us, then kill
them.” Bold John Roxton settled the dispute. “We kill the bastards now,”
he said. “Afterward, let the bravest of us claim their dragons and fly
them into battle.” No man in that cellar doubted that Roxton was
speaking of himself.

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. 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. 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.

Men may plot and plan and scheme, but they had best pray as well, for no
plan made by man has ever withstood the whims of the gods above. Two
days later, on the very day the Caltrops planned to strike, Tumbleton
woke in the black of night to screams and shouts. Outside the town
walls, the camps were burning. Columns of armored knights were pouring
in from north and west, wreaking slaughter, the clouds were raining
arrows, and a dragon was swooping down upon them, terrible and fierce.

  Thus began the Second Battle of Tumbleton.

The dragon was Seasmoke, his rider Ser Addam Velaryon, determined to
prove that not all bastards need be turncloaks. How better to do that
than by retaking Tumbleton from the Two Betrayers, whose treason had
stained him? 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. 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.

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 blood…but Addam Velaryon was relentless and determined and
glib of tongue, and the riverlords knew much and

more of the horrors that had befallen Tumbleton. By the time Ser Addam
was ready to descend on Tumbleton, he had near four thousand men at his
back.

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. 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. Hugo Vance, the young lord of Wayfarer’s
Rest, had come, with three hundred of his own men plus Black Trombo’s
Myrish sellswords.

Most notably of all, House Tully had joined the war. 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. “A dragon in one’s courtyard does
wonders to resolve one’s doubts,” Ser Elmo is reported to have said.

The great host encamped about the walls of Tumbleton outnumbered the
attackers, but they had been too long in one place. 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. So intent were they
upon their own conflicts and rivalries that they had all but forgotten
their true foes. Ser Addam’s night attack took them completely unawares.
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.

Most devastating of all was the dragon. Seasmoke came swooping down
again and yet again, breathing flame. A hundred tents were soon afire,
even the splendid silken pavilions of Ser Hobart Hightower, Lord Unwin
Peake, and Prince Daeron himself. Nor was the town of Tumbleton
reprieved. Those shops and homes and septs that had been spared the
first time were engulfed in dragonflame.

Daeron Targaryen was in his tent asleep when the attack began. 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. Hard Hugh

Hammer was within the town walls as well, in bed with the widow of a
knight slain during the first battle. All three dragons were outside the
town, in fields beyond the encampments.

Though attempts were made to wake Ulf White from his drunken slumber, he
proved impossible to rouse. Infamously, he rolled under a table and
snored through the entire battle. Hard Hugh Hammer was quicker to
respond. 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. His men rushed to obey, even as Seasmoke set the stables
ablaze. But Lord Jon Roxton had claimed Lord Footly’s bedchamber along
with Lord Footly’s wife, and was already in the yard.

When he spied Hard Hugh, Roxton saw his chance, and said, “Lord Hammer,
my condolences.” Hammer turned, glowering. “For what?” he demanded. “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.

A dozen of Hard Hugh’s men came running in time to see him die. Even a
Valyrian steel blade like Orphan-Maker little avails a man when it is
one against ten. Bold Jon Roxton slew three before he was slain in turn.
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.

Three conflicting accounts exist as to the manner of death of Prince
Daeron Targaryen. 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. This version was the one preferred by Black
Trombo, who told it far and wide. 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. 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.
That is the version preferred by Munkun’s True Telling, and by us.^(*)

In the sky above, Addam Velaryon could see the battle turning into a
rout below him. Two of the three enemy dragonriders were dead, but he
would have had no way of knowing that. He could doubtless see the

enemy dragons, however. 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.

Dragons are creatures of fire and blood, and all three roused as the
battle bloomed around them. 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. They paid for that folly with their
lives. Elsewhere on the field, Tessarion threw herself into the air,
shrieking and spitting flame, and Addam Velaryon turned Seasmoke to meet
her.

A dragon’s scales are largely (though not entirely) impervious to flame;
they protect the more vulnerable flesh and musculature beneath. 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). 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.

  The battle between Tessarion and Seasmoke was different.

History calls the struggle between King Aegon II and his half-sister
Rhaenyra the Dance of the Dragons, but only at Tumbleton did the dragons
ever truly dance. Tessarion and Seasmoke were young dragons, nimbler in
the air than their older kin. Time and time again they rushed one
another, only to have one or the other veer away at the last instant.
Soaring like eagles, stooping like hawks, they circled, snapping and
roaring, spitting fire, but never closing. 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.
Meanwhile, Seasmoke rolled and banked and looped. One instant he would
be below his foe, and suddenly he would twist in

the sky and come around behind her. Higher and higher the two dragons
flew, as hundreds watched from the roofs of Tumbleton. One such said
afterward that the flight of Tessarion and Seasmoke seemed more mating
dance than battle. Perhaps it was.

  The dance ended when Vermithor rose roaring into the sky.

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. Riderless, he knew
not friend from foe, so he loosed his wroth on all, spitting flame to
right and left, turning savagely on any man who dared to fling a spear
in his direction. One knight tried to flee before him, only to have
Vermithor snatch him up in his jaws, even as his horse galloped on.
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.

  An instant later, Seasmoke fell upon him.

Alone of the four dragons on the field that day, Seasmoke had a rider.
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. 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.

This was no dance, but a fight to the death. 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. Men and boys ran in
terror or were crushed as the two dragons rolled and tore at one
another. Tails snapped and wings beat at the air, but the beasts were so
entangled that neither was able to break free. Benjicot Blackwood
watched the struggle from atop his horse fifty yards away. 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 pieces…if Tessarion had not
fallen from the sky at that very moment to join the fight.

Who can know the heart of a dragon? Was it simple bloodlust that drove
the Blue Queen to attack? Did the she-dragon come to help one of the
combatants? If so, which? Some will claim that the bond

between a dragon and dragonrider runs so deep that the beast shares his
master’s loves and hates. But who was the ally here, and who the enemy?
Does a riderless dragon know friend from foe?

We shall never know the answers to those questions. All that history
tells us is that three dragons fought amidst the mud and blood and smoke
of Second Tumbleton. Seasmoke was first to die, when Vermithor locked
his teeth into his neck and ripped his head off. Afterward the bronze
dragon tried to take flight with his prize still in his jaws, but his
tattered wings could not lift his weight. After a moment he collapsed
and died. Tessarion, the Blue Queen, lasted until sunset. Thrice she
tried to regain the sky, and thrice failed. 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.

By dusk, the fighting was done. 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.
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. Even so, they
wreaked great slaughter on their confused and disorganized foes, fired
their tents, burned or captured almost all their wagons, fodder, and
provisions, made off with three-quarters of their warhorses, slew their
prince, and put an end to two of the king’s dragons.

At moonrise the riverlords abandoned the field to the carrion crows,
fading back into the hills. One of them, the boy Ben Blackwood, carried
with him the broken body of Ser Addam Velaryon, found dead beside his
dragon. 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. On his tomb is engraved a
single word: LOYAL. Its ornate letters are supported by carvings of a
seahorse and a mouse.

  []

On the morning after the battle, the Conquerors of Tumbleton looked out
from the town walls to find their foes gone. The dead were strewn all
around the city, and amongst them sprawled the carcasses of three
dragons. 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 from

the fires below. Only after dark did she descend, to land beside her
slain cousins. 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. The rising sun would find her flapping listlessly
across the field, feeding on the burned remains of horses, men, and
oxen.

Eight of the thirteen Caltrops lay dead, amongst them Lord Owen
Fossoway, Marq Ambrose, and Bold Jon Roxton. Richard Rodden had taken an
arrow to the neck and would die the next day. Four of the plotters
remained, amongst them Ser Hobert Hightower and Lord Unwin Peake. And
though Hard Hugh Hammer had died, and his dreams of kingship with him,
the second Betrayer remained. Ulf White had woken from his drunken sleep
to find himself the last dragonrider, and possessed of the last dragon.

“The Hammer’s dead, and your boy as well,” he is purported to have told
Lord Peake. “All you got left is me.” When Lord Peake asked him his
intentions, White replied, “We march, just how you wanted. You take the
city, I’ll take the bloody throne, how’s that?”

The next morning, Ser Hobert Hightower called upon him, to thrash out
the details of their assault upon King’s Landing. He brought with him
two casks of wine as a gift, one of Dornish red and one of Arbor gold.
Though Ulf the Sot had never tasted a wine he did not like, he was known
to be partial to the sweeter vintages. No doubt Ser Hobert hoped to sip
the sour red whilst Lord Ulf quaffed down the Arbor gold. Yet something
about Hightower’s manner—he was sweating and stammering and too hearty
by half, the squire who served them testified later—pricked White’s
suspicions. Wary, he commanded that the Dornish red be set aside for
later, and insisted Ser Hobert share the Arbor gold with him.

History has little good to say about Ser Hobert Hightower, but no man
can question the manner of his death. Rather than betray his fellow
Caltrops, he let the squire fill his cup, drank deep, and asked for
more. Once he saw Hightower drink, Ulf the Sot lived up to his name,
putting down three cups before he began to yawn. The poison in the wine
was a gentle one. When Lord Ulf went to sleep, never to awaken, Ser
Hobert lurched to his feet and tried to make himself retch, but too
late. His heart stopped within the hour. “No man ever feared Ser
Hobert’s sword,” Mushroom says of him, “but his wine cup was

deadlier than Valyrian steel.”

Afterward Lord Unwin Peake offered a thousand golden dragons to any
knight of noble birth who could claim Silverwing. Three men came forth.
When the first had his arm torn off and the second burned to death, the
third man reconsidered. 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. Bowing to defeat, Lord
Unwin summoned his lords and serjeants and ordered a retreat.

The accused turncloak Addam Velaryon, born Addam of Hull, had saved
King’s Landing from the queen’s foes…at the cost of his own life. Yet
the queen knew nothing of his valor. Rhaenyra’s flight from King’s
Landing had been beset with difficulty. 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. Young Lord
Stokeworth’s castellan granted her hospitality, but only for a night.
“They will come for you,” he warned the queen, “and I do not have the
power to resist them.” Half of her gold cloaks deserted on the road, and
one night her camp was attacked by broken men. 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. He perished raving the following day.
The queen pressed on toward Duskendale.

House Darklyn had been amongst Rhaenyra’s strongest supporters, but the
cost of that loyalty had been high. Lord Gunthor had lost his life in
the queen’s service, as had his uncle Steffon. Duskendale itself had
been sacked by Ser Criston Cole. Small wonder then that Lord Gunthor’s
widow was less than overjoyed when Her Grace appeared at her gates. 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.

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. Three ravens flew, the town chronicles assert…

yet as the days passed, no ship appeared. Nor did any reply return from
Gerardys on Dragonstone, to the queen’s fury. Once again she began to
question her Grand Maester’s loyalty.

The queen had better fortune elsewhere. 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 northman promised the queen
ten thousand men, “younger and fiercer than my Winter Wolves.” The
Maiden of the Vale promised aid as well, when she replied from her
winter castle, the Gates of the Moon…but with the mountain passes closed
by snow, her knights would need to come by sea. If House Velaryon would
send its ships to Gulltown, Lady Jeyne wrote, she would dispatch an army
to Duskendale at once. If not, she must needs hire ships from Braavos
and Pentos, and for that she would need coin.

Queen Rhaenyra had neither gold nor ships. 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. Despairing and
fearful, Her Grace walked the castle battlements of Duskendale weeping,
growing ever more grey and haggard. She could not sleep and would not
eat. 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.”

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. 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. She was
adamant on returning to Dragonstone. There she would find dragon’s eggs,
she told her loyalists; she must have another dragon, or all was lost.

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. Finally the Braavosi put into the harbor below the
Dragonmont on the eventide. The queen had sent a raven from

Duskendale 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 raining when the queen’s party came ashore, and hardly a face was
to be seen about the port. Even the dockside brothels appeared dark and
deserted, but Her Grace took no notice. 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. Little did the
queen know that she was about to suffer her last and most grievous
treachery.

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. Broome was the most senior of the knights at Dragonstone,
having joined the garrison during the reign of the Old King. As such, he
had expected to be named as castellan when Rhaenyra went forth to seize
the Iron Throne…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. 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.

And so she did…though Quince’s charred corpse was burned beyond all
recognition when they came upon it. Only by his size did they know him,
for Ser Robert had been enormously fat. They found him hanging from the
battlements of the gatehouse beside Dragonstone’s steward, captain of
the guard, master-at-arms…and the head and upper torso of Grand Maester
Gerardys. 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.

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.
“Mother, flee,” he shouted, but too late.

Ser Alfred’s men fell upon the queen’s protectors. 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. Only Ser
Loreth Lansdale moved quickly enough to strike a blow in the

queen’s defense, cutting down the first two men who came at him before
being slain himself. With him died the last of the Queensguard. When
Prince Aegon snatched up Ser Harrold’s sword, Ser Alfred knocked the
blade aside contemptuously.

The boy, the queen, and her ladies were marched at spearpoint through
the gates of Dragonstone to the castle ward. There (as Mushroom put it
so memorably many years later) they found themselves face-to-face with
“a dead man and a dying dragon.”

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. 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. Sunfyre was coiled in a ball
when the queen and her party first beheld him. As he stirred and raised
his head, huge wounds were visible along his neck, where another dragon
had torn chunks from his flesh. On his belly were places where scabs had
replaced scales, and where his right eye should have been was only an
empty hole, crusted with black blood.

  One must ask, as Rhaenyra surely did, how this had come to pass.

We now know much and more that the queen did not. 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.

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. 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.

It was Lord Larys who decreed the fugitives should part company as well,
so that even if one were taken, the others might win free. Ser Rickard
Thorne was commanded to deliver two-year-old Prince Maelor to Lord
Hightower. 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
End. Neither knew where the other was bound, so neither could betray the
other if captured.

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. Once she learned the king was gone, the Clubfoot
reasoned, Rhaenyra was sure to send men hunting after him…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. All this Grand Maester Orwyle had from Lord Strong’s own
lips, Munkun tells us.

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. We may ask what drew him back
to the Dragonmont, for many have. Was the wounded dragon, with his
half-healed broken wing, driven by some primal instinct to return to his
birthplace, the smoking mountain where he had emerged from his egg? Or
did he somehow sense the presence of King Aegon on the island, across
long leagues and stormy seas, and fly there to rejoin his rider? Septon
Eustace goes so far as to suggest that Sunfyre sensed Aegon’s desperate
need. But who can presume to know the heart of a dragon?

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). Though his
torn wing had mended enough for him to fly, it had healed at an ugly
angle, and it remained weak. Sunfyre could no longer soar, nor remain in
the air for long, but must needs struggle to fly even short distances.
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.”

Yet this “fire-breathing chicken” crossed the waters of Blackwater
Bay…for it was Sunfyre that the sailors on the Nessaria had seen
attacking Grey Ghost. Ser Robert Quince had blamed the Cannibal… 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. The Cannibal, as he knew well, was black as
coal. And so the Two Toms and their “cousins” (a half- truth, as only
Ser Marston shared their blood, being the bastard son of

Tom Tanglebeard’s sister by the knight who took her maidenhead) set sail
in their small boat to seek out Grey Ghost’s killer.

The burned king and the maimed dragon each found new purpose in the
other. 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. Even on Dragonstone,
long Queen Rhaenyra’s seat and stronghold, they found many who misliked
the queen for reasons both good and ill. 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 queen had taken her best men with her to King’s Landing. 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. Over them Rhaenyra placed Ser Robert Quince, an able man
grown old and fat.

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. Prominent amongst them was Ser
Alfred Broome. 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. 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.

When it came, the fall of Dragonstone took less than an hour. 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. 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 Alfred

himself led the men who burst into the castellan’s chambers to surprise
Ser Robert Quince. As Quince struggled to rise from his bed, Broome
drove a spear into his huge pale belly. Mushroom, who knew both men
well, says Ser Alfred misliked and resented Ser Robert. 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.

Only in one respect did the plan go awry. 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. 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. By the time her pursuers caught up with her, she had
already loosed Moondancer’s chains and strapped a saddle onto her.

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.

Moondancer was a young dragon, pale green, with horns and crest and
wingbones of pearl. Aside from her great wings, she was no larger than a
warhorse, and weighed less. She was very quick, however, and Sunfyre,
though much larger, still struggled with a malformed wing and had taken
fresh wounds from Grey Ghost.

They met amidst the darkness that comes before the dawn, shadows in the
sky lighting the night with their fires. 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. Watchers below said
that Sunfyre lurched drunkenly in the air, fighting to stay aloft,
whilst Moondancer turned and came back at him, spitting fire. 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.
Like as not, the young dragon was blinded in that instant, yet still she
flew on, slamming into Sunfyre in a tangle of wings and

claws. 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. 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.

The watchers in the yard scrambled for safety as the dragons slammed
into the hard stone, still fighting. On the ground, Moondancer’s
quickness proved of little use against Sunfyre’s size and weight. The
green dragon soon lay still. The golden dragon screamed his victory and
tried to rise again, only to collapse back to the ground with hot blood
pouring from his wounds.

King Aegon had leapt from the saddle when the dragons were still twenty
feet from the ground, shattering both legs. Lady Baela stayed with
Moondancer all the way down. Burned and battered, the girl still found
the strength to undo her saddle chains and crawl away as her dragon
coiled in her final death throes. When Alfred Broome drew his sword to
slay her, Marston Waters wrenched the blade from his hand. Tom
Tangletongue carried her to the maester.

Thus did King Aegon II win the ancestral seat of House Targaryen, but
the price he paid for it was dire. Sunfyre would never fly again. 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. And
Aegon II lived the rest of his life in great pain…though to his honor,
when Grand Maester Gerardys offered him milk of the poppy, he refused.
“I shall not walk that road again,” he said. “Nor am I such a fool as to
drink any potion you might prepare for me. You are my sister’s
creature.”

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. He was not given the quick end of a hard fall and a broken neck,
but rather a slow strangulation, kicking as he gasped for air. Thrice,
when he was almost dead, Gerardys was let down and allowed to catch a
breath, only to be hauled up again. 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.”

  Not long after, as the king lay in the Stone Drum’s great hall, his

broken legs bound and splinted, the first of Queen Rhaenyra’s ravens
arrived from Duskendale. 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.

All of this is known to us now. None of this was known to the queen when
she stepped ashore into her brother’s trap.

Septon Eustace (who had no love for the queen) tells us Rhaenyra laughed
when she beheld the ruin of Sunfyre the Golden. “Whose work is this?” he
has her saying. “We must thank him.” Mushroom (who had much love for the
queen) tells a different tale. In his account, Rhaenyra says, “How has
it come to this?” Both accounts agree that the next words were spoken by
the king. “Sister,” he called down from a balcony. Unable to walk, or
even stand, he had been carried there in a chair. 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. Yet Rhaenyra knew him at once, and said, “Dear brother. I had
hoped that you were dead.”

  “After you,” Aegon answered. “You are the elder.”

“I am pleased to know that you remember that,” Rhaenyra answered. “It
would seem we are your prisoners…but do not think that you will hold us
long. My leal lords will find me.”

“If they search the seven hells, mayhaps,” the king made answer, as his
men tore Rhaenyra from her son’s arms. 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. Ser Marston Waters
stood witness as well, clad in a white cloak, for King Aegon had named
him to his Kingsguard for his valor.

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. 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. 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. 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.

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.”
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. 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. She was thirty-three years of age.

  []

Ser Alfred Broome argued for killing Prince Aegon as well, but King
Aegon forbade it. Only ten, the boy might yet have value as a hostage,
he declared. 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. So Prince Aegon was manacled at neck, wrist,
and ankle, and led down to the dungeons under Dragonstone.

The late queen’s ladies-in-waiting, being of noble birth, were given
cells in Sea Dragon Tower, there to await ransom.

“The time for hiding is done,” King Aegon II declared. “Let the ravens
fly that the realm may know the pretender is dead, and their true king
is coming home to reclaim his father’s throne.”

  * 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. The feigned princes who appeared
  during the reign of Aegon III, using his name, have been conclusively
  shown to be imposters.

  []

he time for hiding is done,” King Aegon II declared on Dragonstone,
after Sunfyre had feasted on his sister. “Let the ravens fly that the
realm may know the pretender is dead, and their

true king is coming home to reclaim his father’s throne.”

Yet even true kings may find some things more easily proclaimed than
accomplished. The moon would wax and wane and wax again before Aegon II
took his leave of Dragonstone.

Between him and King’s Landing lay the isle of Driftmark, the whole
breadth of Blackwater Bay, and scores of prowling Velaryon warships.
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 fifteen…but would he be friend or foe? His brother
had died fighting for the queen, but that same queen had made their lord
a captive and was herself dead. 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 allegiance…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.

  Nor did His Grace wish to sail to King’s Landing. In the days

following his half-sister’s death, the king still clung to the hope that
Sunfyre might recover enough strength to fly again. Instead the dragon
only seemed to weaken further, and soon the wounds in his neck began to
stink. Even the smoke he exhaled had a foul smell to it, and toward the
end he would no longer eat.

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. His Grace wept, and gave orders that
his cousin Lady Baela be brought up from the dungeons and put to death.
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. 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.

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. For more than half a year the city had lived in fear
of Ormund Hightower’s advancing host…but when the assault came, it came
not from Oldtown by way of Bitterbridge and Tumbleton, but up the
kingsroad from Storm’s End. 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.

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. But only hundreds now came to listen to this beggar
who’d once preached to tens of thousands, and few obeyed. 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. “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. Send me to parley with them.” And so
the Clubfoot was dispatched across the river under a flag of truce,
accompanied by Grand Maester Orwyle and the Dowager Queen Alicent.

The Lord of Storm’s End received them in a pavilion on the edge of the
kingswood, as his men felled trees to build rafts for the river

crossing. 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 End by Ser Willis
Fell of the Kingsguard. The Dowager Queen wept tears of joy.

Betrayals and betrothals followed, until an accord was reached between
Lord Borros, Lord Larys, and Queen Alicent, with Grand Maester Orwyle as
witness. The Clubfoot promised that Ser Perkin and his gutter knights
would join the stormlanders in restoring King Aegon

II 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. Queen Alicent agreed
that her son King Aegon would make Lady Cassandra, Lord Borros’s eldest
daughter, his new queen. Lady Floris, another of his lordship’s
daughters, was to be betrothed to Larys Strong.

The problem posed by the Velaryon fleet was discussed at some length.
“We must bring the Sea Snake into this,” Lord Baratheon is reported to
have said. “Perhaps the old man would like a new young wife. I have two
daughters not yet spoken for.”

“He is traitor thrice over,” Queen Alicent said. “Rhaenyra could never
have taken King’s Landing but for him. His Grace my son will not have
forgotten. I want him dead.”

“He will die soon enough in any case,” replied Lord Larys Strong. “Let
us make our peace with him now, and make what use of him we can. Once
all is safely settled, if we have no further need of House Velaryon, we
can always lend the Stranger a hand.”

And so it was agreed, most shamefully. The envoys returned to King’s
Landing, and the stormlanders soon followed, crossing the Blackwater
Rush without incident. Lord Borros found the city walls unmanned, the
gates undefended, the streets and squares empty save for corpses. 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. Queen Alicent herself emerged from the Red Keep
to bid him welcome, with Ser Perkin the Flea beside her. “Where is the
pretender?” Lord Borros asked, as he dismounted in the outer ward.
“Taken and in chains,” replied Ser Perkin.

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 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. Columns of armored
knights climbed the hill from three directions, riding down the street
scum, sellswords, and drunkards who had gathered round the little king
and putting them to rout. 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. 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.”

The Shepherd’s turn came the next night. 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.” But the Shepherd’s star had fallen. Fewer than
three hundred came in answer to his call, and many of those fled when
the assault began. 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. 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. When he spied Lord
Borros on his warhorse, the Shepherd pointed his stump at him and cursed
him. “We shall meet in hell before this year is done,” the begging
brother proclaimed. Like Gaemon Palehair, he was taken alive and carried
back to the Red Keep bound in chains.

Thus did peace return to King’s Landing, after a fashion. 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. 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. Pulled down from their three
hills, the three false “kings” languished in the dungeons, awaiting the
true king’s return. That return hinged upon the Velaryons of Driftmark,
however. Behind the walls of the Red Keep, the Dowager Queen Alicent and
Lord Larys Strong had offered the Sea

Snake 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. The old man had
proved to be surprisingly intractable, however. “My knees are old and
stiff and do not bend easily,” Lord Corlys responded, before setting
forth terms of his own. 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. “The realm
has been split asunder,” he said. “We must needs join it back together.”
Lord Baratheon’s daughters did not interest him, but he wanted Lady
Baela freed at once.

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. She had suffered the loss of two of her three sons and
her only daughter during the Dance, and could not bear the thought that
any of her rival’s sons should live. Angrily, Her Grace reminded Lord
Corlys that she had twice proposed terms of peace to Rhaenyra, only to
have her overtures rejected with scorn. 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.

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.
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. Ravens went forth to Driftmark and
Dragonstone to announce the accord…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.

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). Escorted by twelve Velaryon war galleys, they
sailed upon a battered old trading cog named Mouse, owned and captained
by Marilda of Hull. If Mushroom may be trusted,

the choice of vessel was deliberate. “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. “Lord Alyn was an insolent boy and did not love his
king.”

The king’s return was far from triumphant. 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. 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 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. The squire was the first to
face his wroth, and was sentenced to die for high treason. 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. 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. This boon King Aegon granted, whereupon Ser
Marston Waters dubbed the lad (his fellow bastard) 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.

The fate of the Cunny King, Gaemon Palehair, was kinder. Having just
turned five, the boy was spared on account of his youth and made a ward
of the Crown. 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. 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.

Lastly King Aegon II turned his attention to the Shepherd. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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. 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.

“Rhaenyra the Pretender was gone, her dragons dead, the mummer kings all
fallen, and yet the realm knew not peace,” Septon Eustace wrote soon
after. 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 away…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.

Alas, the king was not of a forgiving mind. Urged on by his mother, the
Queen Dowager Alicent, Aegon II was determined to exact vengeance upon
those who had betrayed and deposed him. He started with the crownlands,
sending forth his own men and the stormlanders of Borros Baratheon
against Rosby, Stokeworth, and Duskendale and the surrounding keeps and
villages. 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. Nor were
they freed until they had agreed to

pay a heavy ransom, and provide the Crown with suitable hostages.

This campaign proved a grave mistake, for it only served to harden the
hearts of the late queen’s men against the king. Reports soon reached
King’s Landing of warriors gathering in great numbers at Winterfell,
Barrowton, and White Harbor. 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. 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.

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 them would come a dragon. Lady Rhaena of House
Targaryen, brave Baela’s twin, had brought a dragon’s egg with her to
the Vale…an egg that had proved fertile, bringing forth a pale pink
hatchling with black horns and crest. Rhaena named her Morning.

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. If the rebels could flaunt a dragon and the loyalists
could not, Queen Alicent pointed out, smallfolk might see their foes as
more legitimate. “I need a dragon,” Aegon II said when he was told.

Aside from Lady Rhaena’s hatchling, only three living dragons remained
in all of Westeros. Sheepstealer had vanished with the girl Nettles, but
was thought to be somewhere in Crackclaw Point or the Mountains of the
Moon. The Cannibal still haunted the eastern slopes of the Dragonmont.
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.

Queen Alysanne’s silvery she-dragon had accepted a second rider, Borros
Baratheon pointed out. “Why not a third? Claim the dragon and your crown
is secure.” But Aegon II was as yet unable to walk or stand, much less
mount and ride a dragon. 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.

That answer was no answer, plainly. “Not Silverwing,” His Grace
declared. “I will have a new Sunfyre, prouder and fiercer than the
last.” 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. The maester there chose seven (in
honor of the gods) that he deemed most promising, and sent them to
King’s Landing. King Aegon kept them in his own chambers, but none
yielded a dragon. Mushroom tells us His Grace sat on a “large purple and
gold egg” for a day and a night, hoping to hatch it, “but it had as well
been a purple and gold turd for all the good it did.”

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. 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.

  The Sea Snake favored reconciliation, pardon, and peace.

Borros Baratheon scorned that course as weakness; he would defeat these
traitors in the field, he declared to king and council. All he required
was men; Casterly Rock and Oldtown should be commanded to raise fresh
armies at once.

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).

Lord Velaryon saw such efforts as futile. “We do not have the time.
Children sit in the seats of power at Oldtown and Casterly Rock. We will
find no more help there. The best free companies are bound by

contract to Lys, Myr, or Tyrosh. Even if Ser Tyland could prise them
loose, he could not bring them here in time. My ships can keep the
Arryns from our door, but who will stop the northmen and the lords of
the Trident? They are already on the march. We must make terms. His
Grace should absolve them of all their crimes and treasons, proclaim
Rhaenyra’s Aegon his heir, and marry him at once to Princess Jaehaera.
It is the only way.”

The old man’s words fell upon deaf ears, however. 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. Aegon II had other
ideas. He wished to marry Cassandra Baratheon at once, for “she will
give me strong sons, worthy of the Iron Throne.” Nor would he allow
Prince Aegon to wed his daughter, and perhaps sire sons who might muddy
the succession. “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. The choice is his, but he shall have no children. My sister’s
line must end.”

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. “The
boy will remain a threat so long as he draws breath,” Lannister
declared. “Remove his head, and these traitors will be left with neither
queen nor king nor prince. The sooner he is dead, the sooner this
rebellion will end.” His words, and those of the king, horrified Lord
Velaryon. The aged Sea Snake, “thunderous in his wroth,” accused king
and council of being “fools, liars, and oathbreakers,” and stormed from
the chamber.

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.

“Kill the old snake and we lose the young one,” the Clubfoot said, “and
all those fine swift ships of theirs as well.” Instead, he said, they
must move at once to make amends with Lord Corlys, so as to keep House
Velaryon on their side. “Give him his betrothal, Your Grace,” he urged
the king. “A betrothal is not a wedding. Name Young Aegon your heir. A
prince is not a king. Look back at the history and count how many heirs
never lived to sit the throne. Deal with Driftmark in due course, when
your foes are vanquished and your tide is at the full. That

day is not yet come. We must bide our time and speak to him gently.”

Or so his words have come down to us, from Orwyle by way of Munkun.
Neither Septon Eustace nor the fool Mushroom was present at the council.
Yet Mushroom speaks of it all the same, saying, “Was there ever a man as
devious as the Clubfoot? Oh, he would have made a splendid fool, that
one. The words dripped from his lips like honey from a comb, and never
did poison taste so sweet.”

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.
Where did his true loyalty lie? What was he about? He wove his way all
through the Dance of the Dragons, on this side and that side, vanishing
and reappearing, yet somehow always surviving. How much of what he said
and did was ruse, how much was real? Was he just a man who sailed with
the prevailing wind, or did he know where he was bound when he set out?
So may we ask, but none will answer. The last Strong keeps his secrets.

We do know that he was sly, secretive, yet plausible and pleasant when
need be. His words swayed the king and council in their course. 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. His lordship will listen to
me, I daresay.”

[]

And so he did. 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. 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. “There is a better way,” he said, counseling
patience. And thus did he spin his webs of deceit and betrayal, setting
each against the other.

Whilst plots and counterplots swirled around him, and enemies closed in
from every side, Aegon II remained oblivious. The king was not a well
man. The burns he’d suffered at Rook’s Rest had left scars that covered
half his body. Mushroom says they had rendered him impotent as well. Nor
could he walk. His leap from Sunfyre’s back at Dragonstone had broken
his right leg in two places, and shattered the bones in his left. The
right had healed well, Grand Maester Orwyle records; not so the left.
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. The
king would not hear of it, however. Instead he was carried hither and
yon by litter. Only toward the end did he regain the strength to walk
with the aid of a crutch, dragging his bad leg behind him.

In constant pain during the last half year of his life, Aegon seemed to
take pleasure only in contemplating his forthcoming marriage. Even the
capers of his fools never made him laugh, we are told by Mushroom, the
foremost of those fools…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.” 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. 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. After these sessions, the
fool says, the king would weep for shame and summon Septon Eustace to
grant him absolution. (Eustace says nothing of this in his own account
of Aegon’s final days.)

  During this time King Aegon II also commanded that the Dragonpit

be 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.

Meanwhile, his enemies were on the march. 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.

The most immediate threat, however, was that posed by the men of the
Trident. Near six thousand of them had gathered at Riverrun when Elmo
Tully called his banners. 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. 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.

The two armies came together two days from the city, at a place where
the kingsroad passed between a wood and a low hill. It had been raining
heavily for days, and the grass was wet, the ground soft and muddy. Lord
Borros was confident of victory, for his scouts had told him that the
rivermen were led by boys and women. It was nigh unto dusk when he spied
the enemy, yet he ordered an immediate attack… though the road ahead was
a solid wall of shields, and the hill to its right bristled with
archers. 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. His foot advanced behind them, beneath
King Aegon’s golden dragon.

  The Citadel names the clash that followed the Battle of the

Kingsroad. The men who fought it named it the Muddy Mess. By any name,
the last battle of the Dance of the Dragons would prove to be a
one-sided affair. 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. Those that did
found their ranks disordered, their wedge broken, their horses slipping
and struggling in the soft mud. Though the stormlanders wreaked great
havoc with lance and sword and longaxe, the riverlords held firm, as new
men stepped up to fill the place of those who fell. When Lord
Baratheon’s foot came crashing into the fray, the shield wall swayed and
staggered back, and seemed as if it might break…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.

Lord Borros himself was still ahorse in the middle of the carnage. When
he saw the battle slipping away, his lordship bade his squire sound his
warhorn, signaling his reserve to advance. 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. Battle turned to rout in
half a heartbeat, as King Aegon’s last army shattered.

Borros Baratheon perished fighting. 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. 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. “Yield, ser,”
called the Lord of Riverrun to the Lord of Storm’s End, “the day is
ours.” Lord Baratheon answered with a curse, saying, “I’d sooner dance
in hell than wear your chains.” Then he charged…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. The Lord of
Storm’s End died in the mud along the kingsroad, his sword still in his
hand.^(*)

When the ravens brought word of the battle back to the Red Keep, the
green council hurriedly convened. All of the Sea Snake’s warnings had
proved true. Casterly Rock, Highgarden, and Oldtown had been

slow to reply to the king’s demand for more armies. When they did, they
offered excuses and prevarications in the place of promises. 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.” 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.

King Aegon II would soon stand naked before his enemies, all of the
king’s men knew. 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. The Braavosi fleet carrying the Arryn host had departed
Gulltown and was sailing toward the Gullet, where only young Alyn
Velaryon stood in its way…and the loyalty of Driftmark could not be
relied upon.

“Your Grace,” the Sea Snake said, when the rump of the once proud green
council had assembled, “you must surrender. The city cannot endure
another sack. Save your people and save yourself. If you abdicate in
favor of Prince Aegon, he will allow you to take the black and live out
your life with honor on the Wall.”

  “Will he?” King Aegon said. Munkun tells us he sounded hopeful.

His mother entertained no such hope. “You fed his mother to your
dragon,” she reminded her son. “The boy saw it all.”

  The king turned to her desperately. “What would you have me do?” “You
  have hostages,” the Queen Dowager replied. “Cut off one of the

boy’s ears and send it to Lord Tully. Warn them he will lose another

part for every mile they advance.”

“Yes,” Aegon II said. “Good. It shall be done.” He summoned Ser Alfred
Broome, who had served him so well on Dragonstone. “Go and see to it,
ser.” As the knight took his leave, the king turned to Corlys Velaryon.
“Tell your bastard to fight bravely, my lord. If he fails me, if any of
these Braavosi pass the Gullet, your precious Lady Baela shall lose some
parts as well.”

  The Sea Snake did not plead, or curse, or threaten. He nodded stiffly,

rose, and took his leave. 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.

For Aegon’s day was done, though he had yet to grasp it. The turncloaks
in his midst had put their plans in motion the moment they learned of
Lord Baratheon’s defeat upon the kingsroad.

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. “Move aside, in the king’s name,” Broome
demanded.

“We have a new king now,” answered Ser Perkin. He put a hand upon Ser
Alfred’s shoulder…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.

In that same hour, Lady Baela Targaryen was being spirited away to
safety by agents of Lord Larys the Clubfoot. Tom Tangletongue was
surprised in the castle yards as he was leaving the stables, and
beheaded forthwith. “He died as he had lived, stammering,” says
Mushroom. His father Tom Tanglebeard was absent from the castle, but
they found him in a tavern on Eel Alley. When he protested that he was
“just a simple fisherman, come to have an ale,” his captors drowned him
in a cask of same.

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. Even within the castle itself, no alarum went up.
Those who had been marked down for death were killed, whilst the rest of
the court went about their business, undisturbed and unawares. Septon
Eustace tells us that twenty-four men were killed, whilst Munkun’s True
Telling says twenty-one. 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.” (This smells of
story. Why would the plotters wish to kill a fool?)

  Queen Alicent was arrested on the serpentine steps as she made her

way back to her chambers. 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.
The Queen in Chains was chained again and taken to the dungeons, there
to await the pleasure of the new king. By then the last of her sons was
already dead.

After the council meeting, King Aegon II was carried down to the yard by
two strong squires. There he found his litter waiting, as was customary;
his withered leg made steps too difficult for him, even with a crutch.
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. “Perhaps he sensed his end was near,” Septon
Eustace wrote, “and wished to pray for forgiveness for his sins.”

A cold wind was blowing. As the litter set off, the king closed the
curtains against the chill. Inside, as always, was a flagon of sweet
Arbor red, Aegon’s favorite wine. The king availed himself of a small
cup as the litter crossed the yard.

Ser Gyles and the litter bearers had no notion aught was amiss until
they reached the sept, and the curtains did not open. “We are here, Your
Grace,” the knight said. No answer came, but only silence. 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. “There was blood
upon his lips,” the knight said. “Elsewise he might have been sleeping.”

Maesters and common men alike still debate which poison was used, and
who might have put it in the king’s wine. (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. Ummet, the king’s food taster whose murder Mushroom claims to
have seen, seems a more likely candidate.) 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.

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. He had lived
four-and-twenty years and reigned for two.

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. “The king is dead,” the Sea Snake
announced gravely, “long live the king.”

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.

[]

The war was over (though the peace that followed would soon prove to be
far from peaceful).

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.

The Dance of the Dragons was done, and the melancholy reign of King
Aegon III Targaryen had begun.

  * As the gods would have it, seven days later at Storm’s End his lady
  wife gave birth to the son

  and heir that Lord Borros had so long desired. His lordship had left
  instructions that the babe was to be named Aegon if a boy, in honor of
  the king. But upon learning of her lord’s death in battle, Lady
  Baratheon named the child Olyver, after her own father.

  []

he smallfolk of the Seven Kingdoms speak of King Aegon III Targaryen as
Aegon the Unlucky, Aegon the Unhappy, and (most often) the Dragonbane,
when they remember him at all. All these names are apt. Grand Maester
Munkun, who served him for a good part of his reign, calls him the
Broken King, which fits him even better. 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 a

life steeped in grief and melancholy.

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. He took two wives and fathered five children (two
sons and three daughters), yet seemed to find little joy in either
marriage or fatherhood. In truth, he was a singularly joyless man. He
did not hunt or hawk, rode only for travel, drank no wine, and was so
disinterested in food that he often had to be reminded to eat. Though he
permitted tourneys, he took no part in them, either as competitor or
spectator. As a man grown, he dressed simply, most oft in black, and was
known to wear a hair shirt under the velvets and satins required of a
king.

  That was many years later, however, after Aegon III had come of age

and taken the rule of the Seven Kingdoms into his own hand. 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.” 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.

[]

The circumstances under which the boy king began his reign were far from
auspicious. The riverlords who had broken Aegon II’s last army at the
Battle of the Kingsroad marched to King’s Landing prepared for battle.
Instead Lord Corlys Velaryon and Prince Aegon rode forth to meet them
under a peace banner. “The king is dead, long live the king,” Lord
Corlys said, as he yielded up the city to their mercy.

Then as now, the riverlords were a fractious, quarrelsome lot. Kermit
Tully, Lord of Riverrun, was their liege lord, and nominally commander
of their host…but it must be remembered that his lordship was but
nineteen years of age, and “green as summer grass,” as the northmen
might say. 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.

House Tully was unique amongst the great houses of Westeros. Aegon the
Conqueror had made them the Lords Paramount of the Trident, yet in many
ways they continued to be overshadowed by many of their own bannermen.
The Brackens, the Blackwoods, and the Vances all ruled wider domains and
could field much larger armies, as could the upstart Freys of the Twins.
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. The undistinguished history of House Tully had
only been exacerbated by the character of its last two lords…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.

Riding beside them, from the banks of the Trident to the gates of King’s
Landing, was an even younger man: Benjicot Blackwood, Lord of Raventree.
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. 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. Despite his
youth, the boy lord had refused to delegate authority to older men. 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. His men
had helped to drive Criston Cole from

Harrenhal 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. 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.

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. Bound by battle,
the three had become so inseparable that their men began referring to
them collectively as “the Lads.”

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.

The Lads knew Lord Corlys Velaryon only by reputation, but that
reputation was formidable. 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 platter…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). 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.

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). The gold cloaks

lined the streets, lowering their spears as the Lads rode by. 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. 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. Orwyle spoke
for them, hailing the riverlords as deliverers.

Elsewhere in the crownlands and along the narrow sea, the dead king’s
remaining loyalists were yielding too. 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. Both towns welcomed the Arryn hosts with
feasts and flowers. Stokeworth and Rosby fell bloodlessly, hauling down
the golden dragon of Aegon II to raise the red dragon of Aegon III.
Dragonstone’s garrison proved more stubborn, barring their gates and
vowing defiance. They held out for three days and two nights. 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.

Septon Eustace tells us that a “strange euphoria” took hold of King’s
Landing; Mushroom simply says that “half the city was drunk.” 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.
Thousands climbed Aegon’s High Hill to hear Prince Aegon proclaim that
peace was at hand. A lavish coronation was planned for the boy, to be
followed by his wedding to the Princess Jaehaera. 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 End to King’s Landing to
do homage to their new monarch. Safe conducts were given, full pardons
promised. 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 reigned…for the best part of a
fortnight.

The “False Dawn,” Grand Maester Munkun names it in his True Telling. A
heady time, no doubt, but short-lived…for when Lord Cregan Stark arrived
before King’s Landing with his northmen, the frolics ended, and the
happy plans came crashing down. The Lord of

Winterfell was twenty-three, only a few years older than the Lords of
Raventree and Riverrun…yet Stark was a man and they were boys, as all
those who saw them together seemed to sense. The Lads shrank in his
presence, Mushroom says. “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.”

King’s Landing had welcomed the riverlords and their men with feasts and
flowers and honors. Not so the northmen. There were more of them, for a
start: a host twice as large as those the Lads had led, and with a
fearsome repute. 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. 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. The Winterfell men did not even honor the true
gods, Septon Eustace notes with horror. They scorned the Seven, ignored
the feast days, mocked the holy books, showed no reverence to septon or
septa, worshipped trees.

Two years past, Cregan Stark had made a promise to Prince Jacaerys. Now
he had come to make good his pledge, though Jace and the queen his
mother were both dead. “The North remembers,” Lord Stark declared when
Prince Aegon, Lord Corlys, and the Lads bid him welcome. “You come too
late, my lord,” the Sea Snake told him, “for the war is done, and the
king is dead.” 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, ‘By whose hand
and at whose word, I wonder?’ For the savages had come for blood and
battle, as we would all learn shortly, to our sorrow.”

The good septon was not wrong. 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. He would reduce Storm’s End
first, then cross the Reach to take Oldtown. Once the Hightower had
fallen, he would take his wolves north along the shores of the Sunset
Sea to visit Casterly Rock.

  “A bold plan,” Grand Maester Orwyle said cautiously, when he heard

it. Mushroom prefers “madness,” but adds, “they called Aegon the Dragon
mad when he spoke of conquering all Westeros.” When Kermit Tully pointed
out that Storm’s End, Oldtown, and Casterly Rock were as strong as
Stark’s 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.”

Like the Winter Wolves before them, most of the men who had marched
south with Lord Cregan Stark did not expect to see their homes again.
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. 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. Victory was secondary to the men of
these winter armies; they marched for glory, adventure, plunder, and
most of all, a worthy end.

Once more it fell to Corlys Velaryon, Lord of the Tides, to plead for
peace, pardon, and reconciliation. “The killing has gone on too long,”
the old man said. “Rhaenyra and Aegon are dead. Let their quarrel die
with them. You speak of taking Storm’s End, Oldtown, and Casterly Rock,
my lord, but the men who held those seats were slain in battle, every
one. Small boys and suckling babes sit in their places now, no threat to
us. Grant them honorable terms, and they will bend the knee.”

But Lord Stark was no more inclined to listen to such talk than Aegon II
and Queen Alicent had been. “Small boys become large men in time,” he
replied, “and a babe sucks down his mother’s hate with his mother’s
milk. Finish these foes now, or those of us not in our graves in twenty
years will rue our folly when those babes strap on their father’s swords
and come seeking after vengeance.”

Lord Velaryon would not be moved. “King Aegon said the same and died for
it. Had he heeded our counsel and offered peace and pardon to his foes,
he might be sitting with us here today.”

“Is that why you poisoned him, my lord?” asked the Lord of Winterfell.
Though Cregan Stark had no personal history with the Sea

Snake, 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 council…only,
it would seem, to help bring about his death by poison. “Small wonder
you are called the Sea Snake,” Lord Stark went on. “You may slither this
way and that way but, oh, your fangs are venomous. Aegon was an
oathbreaker, a kinslayer, and a usurper, yet still a king. When he would
not heed your craven’s counsel, you removed him as a craven would,
dishonorably, with poison…and now you shall answer for it.”

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. 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. “I was myself tempted to return to my cask of
flour,” Mushroom says, “but thankfully I proved too small for the wolf
to notice.”

Not even the Lads were spared Lord Cregan’s wroth, though they were
ostensibly his allies. “Are you babes in swaddling clothes, to be
cozened by flowers and feasts and soft words?” Stark berated them. “Who
told you the war was done? The Clubfoot? The Snake? Why, because they
wish it done? Because you won your little victory in the mud? Wars end
when the defeated bend the knee and not before. Has Oldtown yielded? Has
Casterly Rock returned the Crown’s gold? You say you mean to marry the
prince to the king’s daughter, yet she remains at Storm’s End, beyond
your reach. So long as she remains free and unwed, what is to stop
Baratheon’s widow from crowning the girl queen, as Aegon’s heir?”

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.” 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. Yet queen’s men had remained, even after
the queen herself was dead, and “Aegon is reduced to bones and ashes.”

The Lads found themselves overmatched. Cowed, they gave way, and agreed
to join their own power to Lord Stark’s when he marched against Storm’s
End. Munkun says they did so willingly, convinced that the wolf lord had
the right of it. “Flush with victory, they wanted more,” he writes in
the True Telling. “They hungered for more glory, for the fame that young
men dream of that can only be won in battle.” Mushroom takes a more
cynical view, and suggests that the young lordlings were simply
terrified of Cregan Stark.

The result was the same. “The city was his, to do with as he wished,”
Septon Eustace says. “The northman had taken it without drawing a sword
or loosing an arrow. 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.”

For six days King’s Landing trembled on the edge of a sword. 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. Rumors swept the city, one after the other. 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. The northmen would burn the city’s septs and force
King’s Landing to return to the worship of the old gods, septons
declared. 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.

The mood of euphoria had vanished; once more, fear ruled the city
streets. A man who claimed to be the Shepherd reborn rose up from the
gutters, calling down destruction on the godless northerners. Though he
looked nothing like the first Shepherd (he had two hands, for a start),
hundreds flocked to hear him speak. 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. Even the highborn were not safe in the
more unsavory parts of the city. The younger son of Lord Hornwood, a
bannerman to Lord Stark, vanished with two companions whilst roistering
in Flea Bottom. They were never found and may have ended in a bowl of
brown, if Mushroom can

be believed.

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. Ser Corwyn Corbray departed
Duskendale at the same time to join his brother on the march. With him
rode Clement Celtigar, old Lord Bartimos’s son and heir, and Lady
Staunton, the widow of Rook’s Rest. 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). 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). And the Maiden of the Vale had set sail from Gulltown, with Lady
Rhaena Targaryen and her dragon (true).

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. Prince Aegon, meanwhile, found himself confined to
Maegor’s Holdfast with no companions save the boy Gaemon Palehair. When
the prince demanded to know why he was not free to come and go, Stark
replied that it was for his own safety. “This city is a nest of vipers,”
Lord Cregan told him. “There are liars, turncloaks, and poisoners in
this court who would murder you as quick as they did your uncle to
secure their own power.” 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.

  []

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. 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. “The great lords would have given us another two years
of war,” the fool declares in his Testimony, “it was the women who made
the peace. 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.”

The seeds cast into the wind by Lord Corlys Velaryon during the False
Dawn had taken root and borne sweet fruit. One by one the ravens
returned, bearing answers to the old man’s peace offers.

Casterly Rock was the first to respond. Lord Jason Lannister had left
six children when he died in battle: five daughters and one son, Loreon,
a boy of four. Rule in the west had therefore passed to his widow, Lady
Johanna, and her father, Roland Westerling, Lord of the Crag. With the
Red Kraken’s longships still menacing their coasts, the Lannisters were
more concerned with defending Kayce and retaking

Fair Isle than with renewing the struggle for the Iron Throne. 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). 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. 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.”

Many of the men who had survived the Battle on the Kingsroad had made
their way back to Storm’s End afterward. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

Last to respond was Oldtown. 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. 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.
Oldtown had the power to renew the war; all that was lacking was the
will.

Lord Ormund had only recently taken a second wife when the Dance began,
his first having died some years before in childbed. 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 second son,
Martyn, was a squire to Lord Redwyne on the Arbor; the third was
fostering at Highgarden as a companion to Lord Tyrell and cupbearer to
his lady mother. All three were children of Lord Ormund’s first
marriage. 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.

His lord father’s young widow had other notions, however. 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. 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. 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. 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
him…but only if he would make peace, “for I would surely die of grief
should I lose another husband.”

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.
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). 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.
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)

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. “Other voices were making themselves heard as

well, gentler voices that echoed softly through the halls of the Red
Keep,” says Mushroom. The Maiden of the Vale had arrived from Gulltown,
bringing her own ward, the Lady Rhaena Targaryen, with a dragon on her
shoulder. 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. Lady Rhaena and her twin sister, Baela, became the darlings of
the city overnight. 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. 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)

The False Dawn had come and gone, and now the Hour of the Wolf (as Grand
Maester Munkun names it) was waning too. The situation and the city were
both slipping from the hands of Cregan Stark. 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. 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.

On one point Lord Cregan remained adamant, however; the king’s killers
must not go unpunished. Unworthy as King Aegon II might have been, his
murder was high treason, and those responsible must answer for it. So
fierce was his demeanor, so unyielding, that the others gave way before
him. “Let it be on your head, Stark,” Kermit Tully said. “I want no part
of this, but I will not have it said that Riverrun stood in the way of
justice.”

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. This was done. Lord Cregan did all the
rest, whilst the others stood aside. He did not presume to sit the Iron
Throne, but on a simple wooden bench beneath it. One by one the men
suspected of having played a part in the poisoning of King Aegon II were
brought before him.

Septon Eustace was the first brought up, and the first released; there
was no proof against him. Grand Maester Orwyle was less fortunate, for
he had confessed under torture to having given the poison to the

Clubfoot. “My lord, I did not know what it was for,” Orwyle protested.
“Nor did you ask,” Lord Stark replied. “You did not wish to know.” The
Grand Maester was judged to be complicit and sentenced to death.

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. “No knight of the Kingsguard should
outlive his king when that king dies by violence,” Stark declared. 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).

Twenty-two lesser personages were also found to have played some part in
King Aegon’s murder. 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. All were marked down for death. 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. 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. To a man, each of them insisted that they had
been acting on Ser Perkin’s orders.

Of the Flea’s own guilt there could be no doubt. “Once a turncloak, ever
a turncloak,” Lord Cregan said. “You rose up in rebellion against your
lawful queen and helped drive her from this city to her death, raised up
your own squire in her place, then abandoned him to save your worthless
hide. The realm will be a better place without you.” When Ser Perkin
protested that he had been pardoned for those crimes, Lord Stark
replied, “Not by me.”

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. 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 men

posted at her door. “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.”

The last to face the Judgment of the Wolf (as Munkun dubs these
proceedings in the True Telling) were the two great lords at the heart
of the conspiracy: Larys Strong the Clubfoot, Lord of Harrenhal, and
Corlys Velaryon, the Sea Snake, Master of Driftmark and Lord of the
Tides.

Lord Velaryon did not attempt to deny his guilt. “What I did, I did for
the good of the realm,” the old man said. “I would do the same again.
The madness had to end.” Lord Strong proved less forthcoming. 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 Lord Stark asked if he had anything to say in
his own defense, he said only, “When was a wolf ever moved by words?”
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.

Larys Strong had always been a man who went his own way, kept his own
counsel, and changed allegiances as other men changed cloaks. Once
condemned, he stood friendless; not a voice was raised in his defense.
It was quite otherwise with Corlys Velaryon, however. The old Sea Snake
had many friends and admirers. Even men who had fought against him
during the Dance spoke up for him now…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. When Lord
Stark proved unyielding, some of them sought to circumvent him by
appealing to the king to be, Prince Aegon himself. 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. “Words are wind,” says The Testimony of Mushroom, “but a strong
wind can topple mighty oaks, and the whispering of pretty girls can
change the

destiny of kingdoms.” 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.

The prince was but ten years of age, however, and not yet a king.
Uncrowned, and not yet anointed as king, His Grace’s decrees carried no
weight in law. Even after his coronation, he would remain subject to a
regent or regency council until his sixteenth nameday. 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. He
chose not to do so, a decision that has intrigued scholars ever since.
Septon Eustace suggests that “the Mother moved him to mercy that night,”
though Lord Cregan did not worship the Seven. Eustace further suggests
that the northman was loath to provoke Alyn Velaryon, fearing his
strength at sea, but this seems singularly at odds with all we know of
Stark’s character. A new war would not have dismayed him; indeed, at
times he seemed to seek it.

It is Mushroom who provides the most lucid explanation for this
surprising leniency in the Wolf of Winterfell. 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.

“A lean tall creature was this wench,” says the dwarf, “thin as a whip
and flat-chested as a boy, but long of leg and strong of arm, with a
mane of thick black curls that tumbled down past her waist when loosed.”
Huntress, horse-breaker, and archer without peer, Black Aly had little
of a woman’s softness about her. 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. 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.

And Lord Cregan, a widower these past three years, had responded in
kind. 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. “She smells of woodsmoke, not of flowers,” Stark told Lord Cerwyn,
said to be his closest friend.

  And so when Lady Alysanne came to ask that he let the prince’s edict

stand, he listened. “Why would I do that?” Lord Stark purportedly asked
when she had made her plea.

  “For the realm,” she answered.

  “It is better for the realm that traitors die,” he said. “For the
  honor of our prince,” said she.

“The prince is a child. He ought not have meddled in this. 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.”

“For the sake of peace,” said Lady Alysanne, “for all those who will
surely die should Alyn Velaryon seek vengeance.”

  “There are worse ways to die. Winter has come, my lady.”

“For me, then,” said Black Aly. “Grant me this boon, and I shall never
ask another. Do this, and I shall know that you are as wise as you are
strong, as kind as you are fierce. Give me this, and I shall give you
whatever you may choose to ask of me.”

Mushroom says Lord Cregan scowled at that. “What if I ask you for your
maidenhead, my lady?”

“I cannot give you what I do not have, my lord,” she answered. “I lost
my maidenhead in the saddle when I was three-and-ten.”

“Some would say that you squandered on a horse a gift that by rights
should have belonged to your future husband.”

“Some are fools,” Black Aly answered, “and she was a good horse, better
than most husbands I have seen.”

Her answer pleased Lord Cregan, who laughed aloud and said, “I shall try
to remember that, my lady. Aye, I’ll grant your boon.”

  “And in return?” she asked.

“All I ask is all of you, forever,” the Lord of Winterfell said
solemnly. “I claim your hand in marriage.”

“A hand for a head,” said Black Aly, grinning…for Mushroom tells us this
was her intent all along. “Done.” And it was.

The morning of the executions dawned grey and wet. All those condemned
to die were brought up from the dungeons in chains to the Red Keep’s
outer ward. There they were forced to their knees whilst

Prince Aegon and his court looked on.

[]

As Septon Eustace led the doomed men in prayer, beseeching the Mother to
have mercy on their souls, rain began to fall. “It rained so hard, and
Eustace droned on so long, that we began to fear the prisoners might
drown before their heads could be cut off,” says Mushroom. 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.

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. Yet it came
undone in a trice. The condemned had drawn lots to see who would be the
first to die, and the choice had fallen on Ser Perkin the Flea. When
Lord Cregan asked that cunning rogue if he had any final words, Ser
Perkin declared that he wished to take the black. 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.

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.

“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.” 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. Even
Grand Maester Orwyle joined the desperate chorus. He too was spared, for
the Night’s Watch needs men of the quill as well as men of the sword.

Only two men died that day. One was Ser Gyles Belgrave, of the
Kingsguard. Unlike his Sworn Brothers, Ser Gyles refused the chance to
exchange his white cloak for black. “You were not wrong, Lord Stark,” he
said when his turn came. “A knight of the Kingsguard should not outlive
his king.” Lord Cregan took his head off with a single swift swing of
Ice.

Next (and last) to die was Lord Larys Strong. When asked if he wished to
take the black, he said, “No, my lord. I’ll be going to a warmer hell,
if it please you…but I do have one last request. When I am dead, hack
off my clubfoot with that great sword of yours. I have dragged it with
me all through life, let me be free of it in death at least.” This boon
Lord Stark granted him.

Thus perished the last Strong, and a proud and ancient house came to its
end. Lord Larys’s remains were given over to the silent sisters; years
later, his bones would find their final resting place at Harrenhal…save
for his clubfoot. Lord Stark decreed that it should be buried separately
in a pauper’s field, but before that could be done, it disappeared.
Mushroom tells us it was stolen and sold to some sorcerer, who used it
in the casting of his spells. (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 heads of Lord Larys Strong and Ser Gyles Belgrave were mounted on
either side of the Red Keep’s gates. The other condemned were returned
to their cells to languish until arrangements could be made to send them
to the Wall. The final line in the history of the woeful reign of King
Aegon II Targaryen had been written.

  []

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. 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.
“The snows are falling in the North,” he announced, “and my place is at
Winterfell.”

  *1 This is the tale as Mushroom tells it, in any case. Munkun’s True
  Telling ascribes a different cause to Lord Lyonel’s change of heart,
  however. 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. 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. Should he
  disobey, his brother would pay for that defiance with his life…for
  every ward is also a hostage, as a wise man once said. Or so Grand
  Maester Munkun avers.

  *2 The meeting did not go as well as the twins might have hoped,
  however. 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.”

  []

  regan Stark had stepped down as Hand of the King and announced his
  intention to return to Winterfell, but before he

could take his leave of the south he faced a thorny problem.

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.
Legend (and Mushroom) tells us that it was Lady Alysanne who suggested
an answer. 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. With winter at hand, strong backs and willing hands would be
welcome in many a hearth and home.

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. “A wolf for every widow,” Mushroom japed, “he will warm
her bed in winter, and gnaw her bones come spring.” Yet hundreds of
marriages were made at the so-called Widow Fairs held at Raventree,
Riverrun, Stoney Sept, the Twins, and Fairmarket. Those northmen who did
not wish to marry instead swore their swords to lords both great and
small as guards and men-at-arms. A few, sad to

say, did turn to outlawry and met evil ends, but for the most part, Lady
Alysanne’s matchmaking was a great success. 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.

Other northerners chose to seek new lives and fortunes across the narrow
sea. 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. He gladly accepted a pardon for his past crimes, and
reported that the Triarchy had collapsed. On the point of war, the Three
Daughters were hiring free companies as fast as they could form, at
wages he could not hope to match. Many of Lord Cregan’s northmen saw
this as an opportunity. Why return to a land gripped by winter to freeze
or starve when there was gold to be had across the narrow sea? Not one
but two free companies were birthed as a result. 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.

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. 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. 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.

Lady Elenda, the widow of Lord Borros, remained at Storm’s End with her
infant son, but sent her daughters Cassandra, Ellyn, and Floris to
represent House Baratheon. (Maris, the fourth daughter, had joined the
silent sisters, Septon Eustace informs us. In Mushroom’s account, this
was done after her lady mother had her tongue removed, but that grisly
detail can be safely discounted. The persistent belief that the silent
sisters are tongueless is no more than a myth; it is piety that keeps
the sisters silent, not red-hot pincers.) 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.

Alyn Velaryon came ashore as well, and the Manderly brothers returned
once more from White Harbor with a hundred knights in blue-green cloaks.
Even from across the narrow sea they came, from Braavos and Pentos, all
three of the Daughters, Old Volantis. From the Summer Isles appeared
three tall black princes in feathered cloaks, whose splendor was a
wonder to behold. 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. A great deal of drinking and fornication
took place, claims Mushroom; a great deal of prayer and fasting and good
works, reports Septon Eustace. 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.

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. “If only blood can wash out blood,
King’s Landing was full of the unwashed,” says Mushroom. Yet there was
less fighting in the streets than most expected, with only three men
killed. Mayhaps the lords of the realm had finally grown weary of war.

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. The day was cold but sunny, Septon Eustace records. It was the
seventh day of the seventh moon of the 131st year after Aegon’s
Conquest, a most auspicious date. 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. 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.
Aegon himself placed the crown upon the head of his child bride.

  Though a solemn boy, the new king was undeniably handsome, lean

of face and form, with silver-white hair and purple eyes, whilst the
queen was a beautiful child. Their wedding was as lavish a spectacle as
the Seven Kingdoms had seen since the coronation of Aegon II in the
Dragonpit. All that was lacking were dragons. There would be no
triumphal flight around the city walls for this king, no majestic
descent upon the castle yard. And the more observant made note of
another absence. The Dowager Queen was nowhere to be seen, though as
Jaehaera’s grandmother, Alicent Hightower ought to have been present.

As he was still but ten years of age, the new king’s first act was to
name the men who would protect and defend him, and rule for him until he
came of age. 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. As both men were considered greens,
the remaining places in the Kingsguard were filled with blacks. Ser
Tyland Lannister, recently returned from Myr, was made Hand of the King,
whilst Lord Leowyn Corbray was named Protector of the Realm. The former
had been a green, the latter a black. 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.

(It is reliably reported that Lord Cregan Stark was also offered a place
amongst the regents, but refused. 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.)

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.” Mushroom was less
impressed. “Seven regents were six too many,” he said. “Pity our poor
king.” Despite the fool’s misgivings, most observers seemed to feel that
the reign of King Aegon III had begun on a hopeful note.

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 one

to return to their own seats of power. Amongst the first to flee were
the Three Widows, after bidding tearful farewells to the daughters, son,
siblings, and cousins who would remain to serve the new king and queen
as companions and hostages. 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. 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. 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.

There was one who did not depart as planned, however. Ser Medrick
Manderly had agreed to take the men bound for the Wall as far as White
Harbor on his galley North Star. From there they were to proceed
overland to Castle Black. On the morning the North Star was to sail,
however, a count of the condemned revealed a man was missing. Grand
Maester Orwyle, it seemed, had experienced a change of heart as regarded
taking the black. Bribing one of his guards to loose his fetters, he had
changed into a beggar’s rags and disappeared into the stews of the city.
Unwilling to linger any longer, Ser Medrick sentenced the guard who had
freed Orwyle to take his place, and the North Star sought the sea.

By the end of 131 AC, Septon Eustace tells us, a “grey calm” had settled
over King’s Landing and the crownlands. Aegon III sat the Iron Throne
when required, but elsewise was little seen. 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. 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. To spare them, the
Hand took to wearing a silken hood over his head on formal occasions.
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.

Ser Tyland’s wits remained sharp, however. He might have been expected
to have emerged from his torments a bitter man intent upon revenge, but
this proved far from true. Instead the Hand claimed a

curious 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. 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.” 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.

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. The kingdom’s trade
had collapsed during the Dance as well, countless villages, towns, and
castles had been slighted or destroyed, and bands of outlaws and broken
men haunted the roads and woods.

A more immediate problem was posed by the Dowager Queen, who refused to
reconcile herself to the new king. The murder of the last of her sons
had turned Alicent’s heart into a stone. None of the regents wished to
see her put to death, some from compassion, others for fear that such an
execution might rekindle the flames of war. Yet she could not be allowed
to take part in the life of the court as before. She was too apt to rain
down curses on the king, or snatch a dagger from some unwary guardsman.
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. 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 Hand then set out to restore the kingdom’s trade and begin the
process of rebuilding. Great lords and smallfolk alike were pleased when
he abolished the taxes enacted by Queen Rhaenyra and Lord Celtigar. 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. (Though many availed themselves of this coin, the loans did bring
about a rift between the Iron Throne and the Iron Bank of Braavos.) He
also ordered the construction of three huge

fortified granaries, in King’s Landing, Lannisport, and Gulltown, and
the purchase of sufficient grain to fill them. (The latter decree drove
up the price of grain sharply, which pleased those towns and lords with
wheat and corn and barley to sell, but angered the proprietors of inns
and pot shops, and the poor and hungry in general.)

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. 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. The Hand also
announced the Crown’s funding for the construction of fifty new war
galleys. 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 Triarchy…but many suspected Ser Tyland’s real purpose was to lessen
the Crown’s dependence on House Velaryon of Driftmark.

The Hand might also have been mindful of the continuing war in the west
when he set the shipwrights to work. 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. 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. The details of their war lie
outside our purpose here (for those who would know more, the relevant
chapters of Archmaester Mancaster’s Sea Demons: A History of the
Children of the Drowned God of the Isles are especially good). 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.

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 years…mayhaps because the king was a boy,
and his Hand a Lannister. When commanded to cease his raiding, Greyjoy
continued as before. 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.” Instructed to

return 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.”

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. 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.”

Across Westeros, the winds of war were blowing up the narrow sea as
well. 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. 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.
At the time, however, his death was seen as a political killing, and the
Myrish were suspected. When Lys and Myr went to war, Tyrosh seized the
opportunity to assert its dominion over the Stepstones.

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. Racallio overran the islands in a trice
and put the reigning King of the Narrow Sea to death…only to decide to
claim his crown for himself, betraying the Archon and his native city.
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.
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. Ser Tyland
entertained them lavishly, but refused their offer. “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.

That fateful year 131 AC came to a close with the seas aflame both east
and west of the Seven Kingdoms and blizzards descending on

Winterfell and the North. Nor was the mood in King’s Landing a happy
one. 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.
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.”

Within the walls of the Red Keep, there were whispers about the king and
queen as well. The royal marriage was troubled from the first. Both
bride and groom were children; Aegon III was now eleven, Jaehaera only
eight. Once wed, they had very little contact with one another save on
formal occasions, and even that was rare, as the little queen was loath
to leave her chambers. “Both of them are broken,” Grand Maester Munkun
declared in a letter to the Conclave. The girl had witnessed the murder
of her twin brother at the hands of Blood and Cheese. The king had lost
all four of his own brothers, then watched his uncle feed his mother to
a dragon. “These are not normal children,” Munkun wrote. “They have no
joy in them; they neither laugh nor play. The girl wets her bed at night
and weeps inconsolably when she is corrected. Her own ladies say that
she is eight, going on four. Had I not laced her milk with sweetsleep
before the wedding, I am convinced the child would have collapsed during
the ceremony.”

As for the king, the new Grand Maester went on, “Aegon shows little
interest in his wife, or any other girl. He does not ride or hunt or
joust, but neither does he enjoy sedentary pursuits such as reading,
dancing, or singing. Though his wits seem sound enough, he never
initiates a conversation, and when spoken to his answers are so curt one
would think the very act of talking was painful to him. He has no
friends save for the bastard boy Gaemon Palehair, and seldom sleeps
through the night. 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 Kingdoms of the Sky, he showed no interest.
Aegon seldom smiles and never laughs, but neither does he display any
outward signs of anger or fear, save in regards to dragons, the very
mention of which sends him into a rare rage. Orwyle was wont to call His
Grace calm and self-possessed; I say the boy is dead inside. He walks
the halls of the Red Keep like a ghost. Brothers, I must be frank.

I fear for our king, and for the kingdom.”

His fears, alas, would prove to be well founded. As bad as 131 AC had
been, the next two years would be much worse.

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. 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. No one paid Old Wyl any mind until he
took it upon himself to teach some of Mother’s younger girls to read.
One of his pupils demonstrated her new skill to a serjeant in the gold
cloaks, who grew suspicious and led the old man in for questioning. The
truth soon emerged.

The penalty for deserting the Night’s Watch is death. Though Orwyle had
not yet sworn vows, most still considered him an oathbreaker. There was
no question of allowing him to take ship for the Wall. The original
sentence of death that Lord Stark had pronounced on him must apply, the
regents agreed. 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. 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.” 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. The former Grand
Maester was even provided with quill, ink, and parchment, so that he
might continue his confessions. 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.

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. There were ominous stirrings along the Dornish Marches too,
for Dorne had a new ruler in the person of Aliandra

Martell, 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. To deal with their incursions, Lord Caron took his leave
of King’s Landing as well, hastening back to Nightsong in the Dornish
Marches. Thus the seven regents became five. The most influential of
those was plainly the Sea Snake, whose wealth, experience, and alliances
made him the first amongst equals. Even more tellingly, he seemed the
only man the young king was willing to trust.

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. By the time Grand Maester Munkun came rushing to his
aid, the Sea Snake was dead. 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. The Seven Kingdoms would never see his like again. With his
passing, a great hole was torn in the tattered fabric of the Seven
Kingdoms.

  []

Lord Corlys lay in state beneath the Iron Throne for seven days.
Afterward his remains were carried back to Driftmark aboard the
Mermaid’s Kiss, captained by Marilda of Hull with her son Alyn. 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 his

name. It was said afterward that as the hull went down, the Cannibal
swept overhead, his great black wings spread in a last salute. (A moving
touch, but most likely a later embroidery. From all we know of the
Cannibal, he would have been more apt to eat the corpse than salute it.)

The baseborn Alyn of Hull, now Alyn Velaryon, had been the Sea Snake’s
chosen heir, but his succession was not uncontested. 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. This
rebellion cost him his head, but he left a wife and sons behind. Ser
Vaemond had been the son of the elder of the Sea Snake’s brothers. Five
other nephews, sired by another brother, had claims as well. 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. Viserys had their tongues removed for this insolence, though
he let them keep their heads. Three of the “silent five” had died during
the Dance, fighting for Aegon II against Rhaenyra…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.”

Ser Vaemond’s sons Daemion and Daeron took their claim to the council in
King’s Landing. 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. Their silent cousins chose a different
course. “Lacking tongues with which to make their appeal, they preferred
to argue with swords,” says Mushroom. 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. Ser Malentine was slain
during the attempt; his brother captured. Condemned to death, Ser Rhogar
saved his head by taking the black.

Alyn Velaryon, the bastard born of Mouse, was formally installed as Lord
of the Tides and Master of Driftmark. Whereupon he set out for King’s
Landing to claim the Sea Snake’s place amongst the regents. (Even as a
boy, Lord Alyn never lacked for boldness.) The Hand thanked him and sent
him home…understandably, as Alyn Velaryon was but sixteen in 132 AC.
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.

Ser Tyland had a far more pressing concern in 132 AC: the matter of
succession. 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. War, illness,
accident…there were so many ways to die, and if the king should perish,
who then would follow him?

“If he dies without an heir, we shall dance again, however much we may
mislike the music,” Lord Manfryd Mooton warned his fellow regents. 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. King Aegon himself, when
asked, put forward his cupbearer, Gaemon Palehair, reminding the regents
that the boy had “been a king before.” That was impossible as well.

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. The girls were now
sixteen years of age, tall and slim and silver-haired, very much the
darlings of the city. 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). The twins were the only Targaryens the people ever saw.

Yet even here, the council encountered difficulty and division. 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.
“Baela is too wild,” countered Ser Torrhen Manderly. “How can she rule
the realm when she cannot rule herself?” Ser Willis Fell agreed. “It
must be Rhaena. She has a dragon, her sister does not.” When Lord
Corbray answered, “Baela flew a dragon, Rhaena only has the hatchling,”
Roland Westerling replied, “Baela’s dragon brought down our late king.
There are many in the realm who will not have forgotten that. Crown her
and we will rip all the old wounds open once again.”

Yet it was Grand Maester Munkun who put an end to the debate when he
said, “My lords, it makes no matter. They are both girls. Have we
learned so little from the slaughter? We must abide by primogeniture, as
the Great Council ruled in 101. The male claim comes before the female.”
Yet when Ser Tyland said, “And who is this male claimant, my lord? We
seem to have killed them all,” Munkun had no answer but to say he would
research the issue. Thus the crucial question of succession remained
unsettled.

This uncertainty did little to spare the twins from the fawning
attentions of all the suitors, confidants, companions, and similar
flatterers eager to befriend the king’s presumed heirs, though the
sisters reacted to these lickspittles in vastly different ways. 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.

As young girls, the twins had been inseparable, and impossible to tell
apart, but once parted, their experiences had shaped them in very
different ways. In the Vale, Rhaena had enjoyed a life of comfort and
privilege as Lady Jeyne’s ward. Maids had brushed her hair and drawn her
baths, whilst singers composed odes to her beauty and knights jousted
for her favor. 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. And everywhere that Rhaena went came Morning, her
young dragon, oft as not coiled about her shoulders like a stole.

Baela’s time on Dragonstone had been more troubled, ending with fire and
blood. By the time she came to court, she was as wild and willful a
young woman as any in the realm. Rhaena was slender and graceful; Baela
was lean and quick. Rhaena loved to dance; Baela lived to ride…and to
fly, though that had been taken from her when her dragon died. She kept
her silver hair cropped as short as a boy’s, so it would not whip about
her face when she was riding. Time and time again she would escape her
ladies to seek adventure in the streets. 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. Once
she vanished

for three days and refused to say where she had been when she returned.

Even more gravely, Baela had a taste for unsuitable companions. 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. 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.” Once she turned up with an
entire troupe of mummers. 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 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.”

Ser Tyland saw the sense in the septon’s counsel…but there were perils
as well. Baela did not lack for suitors. She was young, beautiful,
healthy, wealthy, and of the highest birth; any lord in the Seven
Kingdoms would be glad to take her for his wife. Yet the wrong choice
could have grave consequences, for her husband would stand very close to
the throne. An unscrupulous, venal, or overly ambitious mate might cause
no end of war and woe. A score of possible candidates for Lady Baela’s
hand were considered by the regents. 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. All of them
were ultimately discarded for one reason or another.

Finally the Hand and the council of regency decided to grant Lady
Baela’s hand in marriage to Thaddeus Rowan, Lord of Goldengrove. Rowan
was no doubt a prudent choice. His second wife had died the year
previous, and he was known to be seeking a suitable young maid to take
her place. His virility was beyond question; he had fathered two sons on
his first wife, and five more on his second. As he had no daughters,
Baela would be the unquestioned mistress of his castle. His four
youngest sons were still at home, and in need of a woman’s hand.

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.

Lord Thaddeus was a bluff, hearty, cheerful man, well-liked and
well-respected, a doting husband and a good father to his sons. He had
fought for Queen Rhaenyra during the Dance, and had done so ably and
with valor. He was proud without being arrogant, just in judgment but
not vindictive, loyal to his friends, dutiful in religious matters
without being excessively pious, untroubled by overweening ambition.
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. Septon Eustace
tells us that the regents were very pleased with the result of their
deliberations.

Baela Targaryen, when informed of the match, did not share their
pleasure. “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.
Then she added, “I’ve bedded two of his sons. The eldest and thirdborn,
I think it was. Not both at once, that would have been improper.”
Whether there is any truth to this we cannot say. Lady Baela was known
to be deliberately provocative at times. If that was her purpose here,
she was successful. The Hand sent her back to her rooms, posting guards
at her door to make certain she remained there until the regents could
convene.

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). By the time the hue and cry went up, she was halfway across
Blackwater Bay, having hired a fisherman to carry her to Driftmark.
There she sought out her cousin, the Lord of the Tides, and poured out
her woes to him. A fortnight later, Alyn Velaryon and Baela Targaryen
were married in the sept on Dragonstone. The bride was sixteen, the
groom nearly seventeen.

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. 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 of

spouse. “The boy comes from noble blood,” he assured the regents, “and I
do not doubt that he will prove as loyal as his brother.” 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. In her
case, it was a misnomer. A sweet girl, if somewhat frivolous, she was to
die in childbed two years later. The stormy marriage would prove to be
the one made on Dragonstone, as the years would prove.

For the Hand and council of regents, Baela Targaryen’s midnight flight
across Blackwater Bay had confirmed all their doubts about her. “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. A snake for a sire, a mouse for a mother…is this to be
our prince consort?” The regents were in agreement; Baela Targaryen
could not be King Aegon’s heir. “It must be Lady Rhaena,” declared
Mooton, “provided she is wed.”

This time, at Ser Tyland’s insistence, the girl herself was made a part
of the discussions. Lady Rhaena proved to be as tractable as her sister
had been willful. 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. So long as he is kind and gentle and noble, I know that I
shall love him.” 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.

Ser Corwyn was far from an ideal choice. A second son, he had two
daughters from a previous marriage. At thirty-two, he was a man, not a
green boy. 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. His brother Leowyn was the
Protector of the Realm. That alone would have made it difficult for the
regents to raise objection. And so the match was made: a quick
betrothal, followed by a hasty wedding a fortnight later. (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.)

The twins were not the only ladies of the realm to wed in 132 AC. 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. With the North already in the grip
of winter, the journey took thrice as long as expected. 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. 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.
At the feast afterward, four-year-old Rickon, Lord Cregan’s son by his
first wife, sang a song for his new stepmother.

Lady Elenda Baratheon, the widow of Storm’s End, also took a new husband
that year. 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. The widow felt the need of a
man’s strong hand to keep the peace. She chose Ser Steffon Connington,
second son of the Lord of Griffin’s Roost. 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.

Elsewhere, men were more concerned with war than weddings. All along the
Sunset Sea, the Red Kraken and his ironmen continued to raid and reave.
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. In King’s Landing, Duskendale, Maidenpool, and Gulltown,
trade withered. Merchants and traders came howling to the king…who
either refused to see them, or was not allowed to, depending on whose
chronicle we trust. 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.

Late that year, a dreadful contagion swept across the Three Sisters. The
Winter Fever, as it was called, killed half the population of Sisterton.
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 their

ships. It made no matter. 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. Thousands died, amongst them Lord
Desmond Manderly. His splendid son Ser Medrick, the finest knight in the
North, survived him by only four days before succumbing to the same
affliction. 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. That left four regents,
where once there had been seven.

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. 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. Many of their stories have been collected in Archmaester
Abelon’s mammoth When Women Ruled: Ladies of the Aftermath. Though
Abelon treats hundreds of widows, we must needs confine ourselves to
fewer. Four such women played crucial parts in the history of the realm
in late 132 and early 133 AC, whether for good or ill.

Foremost of these was Lady Johanna, the widow of Casterly Rock, who
ruled the domains of House Lannister for her young son, Lord Loreon. 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. 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. 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). Her
courage did help inspire her westermen, however, for the raiders were
soon routed and Kayce was saved. Amongst the dead was the Red Kraken’s
favorite uncle.

Lady Sharis Footly, the widow of Tumbleton, achieved a different sort of
fame by her efforts to restore that shattered town. 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 the

burned 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).

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. 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. Instead Lady Samantha mounted a warhorse and
burst into the sept as His High Holiness was leading a prayer. 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. Then she commanded her knights to bar the doors; if the
sept was closed to her, it would be closed to all. 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.

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. Shunned and forgotten since
Daemon Targaryen and his nephew Aemond had met there for their final
flight, Black Harren’s accursed seat had become a haunt of outlaws,
robber knights, and broken men, who sallied forth from behind its walls
to prey upon travelers, fisherfolk, and farmers. A year ago, they had
been few, but of late their numbers had grown, and it was being said
that a sorceress ruled over them, a witch queen of fearsome power. When
these tales reached King’s Landing, Ser Tyland decided it was time to
reclaim the castle. 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. At Castle Darry, he was joined by Ser Damon Darry
with a like number. Rashly, Ser Regis assumed this would be more than
sufficient to deal with a few squatters.

Arriving before the walls of Harrenhal, however, he found the gates
closed and hundreds of armed men on the battlements. There were at least
six hundred souls within the castle, a third of them men of

fighting age. When Ser Regis demanded to speak to their lord, a woman
emerged to treat with him, with a child beside her. 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. The boy was Aemond’s, she
told the knight. “His bastard?” said Ser Regis. “His trueborn son and
heir,” Alys Rivers spat back, “and the rightful king of Westeros.” She
commanded the knight to “kneel before your king” and swear him his
sword. Ser Regis laughed at this, saying, “I do not kneel to bastards,
much less the baseborn whelp of a kinslayer and a milk cow.”

What happened next remains a matter of some dispute. 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. 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. 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. 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.

Whatever the case, Ser Regis Groves was dead in an instant. Half a
heartbeat later, the gates of Harrenhal burst open, and a swarm of
howling riders charged forth. A bloody fight ensued. The king’s men were
put to rout. Ser Damon Darry, being well-horsed, well-armored, and
well-trained, was one of the few to escape. The witch queen’s minions
hunted him all through the night before abandoning the chase. Some
thirty-two men lived to return to Castle Darry, of the hundred that had
set out.

The next day, a thirty-third made his appearance. Having been captured
with a dozen others, he had been forced to watch them die by torture one
by one before being turned loose to deliver a warning. “I’m to tell you
what she said,” he gasped, “but you can’t laugh. The widow put a curse
on me. Any man o’ you laughs, I die.” 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. Any man who comes near her
walls will die. There’s power in them stones, and the widow’s woken it.
Seven save us all, she has a dragon. I seen it.”

The name of the messenger is lost to us, along with the name of the man
who laughed. But someone did, one of Lord Darry’s men. The messenger
looked at him, stricken, then clutched at his throat and began to
wheeze. Unable to draw breath, he was dead in moments. Supposedly the
imprints of a woman’s fingers could be seen upon his skin, as if she had
been in the room, choking him.

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.
The other regents concurred. 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. 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. For on
the third day of 133 AC, Winter Fever arrived in King’s Landing.

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. White Harbor, Gulltown, Maidenpool,
and Duskendale had been afflicted, each in turn; there were reports that
Braavos was being ravaged as well. The first sign of the disease was a
red flush of the face, easily mistaken for the bright red cheeks that
many men exhibit after exposure to the frosty air of a cold winter’s
day. But fever followed, slight at first, but rising, ever rising.
Bleeding did not help, nor garlic, nor any of the various potions,
poultices, and tinctures that were tried. Packing the afflicted in tubs
of snow and icy water seemed to slow the course of the fever, but did
not halt it, those maesters who grappled with the disease soon found. By
the second day the victim would begin to shiver violently and complain
of being cold, though he might feel burning hot to the touch. On the
third day came delirium and bloody sweats. By the fourth day the man was
dead…or on the path to recovery, should the fever break. Only one man in
four survived the Winter Fever. Not since the Shivers ravaged Westeros
during the reign of Jaehaerys I had such a terrible pestilence been seen
in the Seven Kingdoms.

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. Before most had even realized they were ill, they had

spread the contagion throughout every part of the city, to rich and poor
alike. 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. 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. Instead he sent his acolyte with an urgent letter to the King’s
Hand. 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. He ordered the great gates of the Red Keep barred as well, to
keep the disease from king and court.

The Winter Fever had no respect for gates or guards or castle walls,
alas. Though the fever seemed to have grown somewhat less potent as it
moved south, tens of thousands turned feverish in the days that
followed. Three-quarters of those died. Grand Maester Munkun proved to
be one of the fortunate fourth and recovered…but Ser Willis Fell, Lord
Commander of the Kingsguard, was struck down together with two of his
Sworn Brothers. The Lord Protector, Leowyn Corbray, retired to his
chambers when stricken and tried to cure himself with hot mulled wine.
He died, along with his mistress and several of his servants. Two of
Queen Jaehaera’s maids grew feverish and succumbed, though the little
queen herself remained hale and healthy. The Commander of the City Watch
died. Nine days later, his successor followed him into the grave. Nor
were the regents spared. Lord Westerling and Lord Mooton both grew ill.
Lord Mooton’s fever broke and he survived, though much weakened. Roland
Westerling, an older man, perished.

One death may have been a mercy. 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. She had
outlived all of her children and spent the last year of her life
confined to her apartments, with no company but her septa, the serving
girls who brought her food, and the guards outside her door. Books were
given her, and needles and thread, but her guards said Alicent spent
more time weeping than reading or sewing. One day she ripped all her
clothing into pieces. By the end of the year she had taken to talking to
herself, and had come to have a deep aversion to the color green.

In her last days the Queen Dowager seemed to become more lucid. “I want
to see my sons again,” she told her septa, “and Helaena, my sweet girl,
oh…and King Jaehaerys. I will read to him, as I did when I was little.
He used to say I had a lovely voice.” (Strangely, in her final hours
Queen Alicent spoke often of the Old King, but never of her husband,
King Viserys.) The Stranger came for her on a rainy night, at the hour
of the wolf.

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. Mushroom names the dead as well, but spends more time on the
follies of the living, such as the homely squire who convinced a pretty
bedmaid to yield her virtue to him by telling her he had the flush and
“in four days I will be dead, and I would not die without ever knowing
love.” The ploy proved so successful that he returned to it with six
other girls…but when he failed to die, they began to talk, and his
scheme unraveled. Mushroom attributes his own survival to drink. “If I
drank sufficient wine, I reasoned I might never know I was sick, and
every fool knows that the things you do not know will never hurt you.”

During those dark days, two unlikely heroes came briefly to the fore.
One was Orwyle, whose gaolers freed him from his cell after many other
maesters had been laid low by the fever. 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.

The other hero, to the astonishment of all, was the young king. 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 His Grace
seldom spoke, he shared his silences with them, and listened as they
told him stories of their lives, begged him for forgiveness, or boasted
of conquests, kindnesses, and children. Most of those he visited died,
but those who lived would afterward attribute their survival to the
touch of the king’s “healing hands.”

Yet if indeed there is some magic in a king’s touch, as many smallfolk
believe, it failed when it was needed most. The last bedside visited by
Aegon III was that of Ser Tyland Lannister. Through the

city’s darkest days, Ser Tyland had remained in the Tower of the Hand,
striving day and night against the Stranger. Though blind and maimed, he
suffered no more than exhaustion almost to the last…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. “It is very cold in here,”
he said…though the fire in the hearth was blazing, and the window was
already closed.

The Hand declined quickly after that. The fever took his life in two
days instead of the usual four. Septon Eustace was with him when he
died, as was the boy king that he had served. Aegon took his hand as he
breathed his last.

[]

Ser Tyland Lannister had never been beloved. 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. Yet after the death of Aegon II,
he had remained to serve Aegon III, and certain greens hated him for
that. 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. Ser
Tyland never married nor fathered children, so there were few to mourn
him when he was carried off. The veil he wore to conceal his disfigured
face gave rise to the tale that the visage underneath was

monstrous and evil. Some called him craven for keeping Westeros out of
the Daughters’ War and doing so little to curb the Greyjoys in the west.
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 and her very
life. Yet it must be said that he served Rhaenyra’s son well and
faithfully as Hand.

[]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. 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. 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.
“I would have Lord Rowan as my Hand. Ser Tyland thought well enough of
him to offer him my sister’s hand in marriage, so I know he can be
trusted.” He wanted Baela back at court as well. “Lord Alyn shall be my
admiral, as his grandsire was.” Orwyle, mayhaps hopeful of a royal
pardon, hurriedly sent the ravens on their way.

King Aegon had acted without consulting his council of regents, however.
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.
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 Royce

Caron could be summoned back from the Vale and the Dornish Marches to
take part in the deliberations. 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. 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.

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. Grand
Maester Orwyle was returned to his cell, to await execution. So as not
to offend Lord Rowan, the regents offered him a place amongst them, and
the office of justiciar and master of laws. 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. 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.

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. “Kingsguard serve for life,” the boy
said, to which Lord Peake replied, “Only when they have been properly
appointed, Your Grace.” 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.” If his true feelings were otherwise,
Aegon did not choose to voice them, but instead retreated back into
silence and passivity.

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. 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.

It behooves us now to pause for a moment and turn our gaze upon Unwin
Peake, who would rule the Seven Kingdoms in all but name for the best
part of three years, serving as Lord Regent, Protector of the

Realm, and Hand of the King.

His house was amongst the oldest in the Reach, its deep roots twisting
back to the Age of Heroes and the First Men. Amongst his many
illustrious ancestors, his lordship could count such legends as Ser
Urrathon the Shieldsmasher, Lord Meryn the Scribe, Lady Yrma of the
Golden Bowl, Ser Barquen the Besieger, Lord Eddison the Elder, Lord
Eddison the Younger, and Lord Emerick the Avenger. Many Peakes had
served as counselors at Highgarden when the Reach was the richest and
most powerful kingdom in all Westeros. 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. 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. Through the centuries, other
daughters of House Peake had married Redwynes, Rowans, Costaynes,
Oakhearts, Osgreys, Florents, even Hightowers.

All this had ended with the coming of the dragons. Lord Armen Peake and
his sons had perished on the Field of Fire beside King Mern and his.
With House Gardener extinguished, Aegon the Conqueror had granted
Highgarden and the rule of the Reach to House Tyrell, the former royal
stewards. The Tyrells had no blood ties to the Peakes, and no reason to
favor them. And thus the slow fall of this proud house had begun. 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.

Unwin Peake was determined to redress that, and restore House Peake to
its former greatness. 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. 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. 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. This he never
forgave, stabbing the turncloak Owain Bourney and plotting the murders
of the dragonriders Hugh Hammer and Ulf White. Foremost of the Caltrops
(though this was not

widely known), and one of only three still living, Lord Unwin had proved
at Tumbleton that he was no man to trifle with. He would prove that
again in King’s Landing.

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 City Watch was placed under the command of Ser
Lucas Leygood, the son of one of the Caltrops who had died at Tumbleton.
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.

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. Ever mindful of his own safety, he
surrounded himself with his own personal guard, ten sellswords loyal
only to him (and the gold he lavished on them) who in due course became
known as his “Fingers.” Their captain, a Volantene adventurer named
Tessario, had tiger stripes tattooed across his face and back, the marks
of a slave soldier. 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.

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. His widowed aunt Clarice Osgrey was put in
charge of Queen Jaehaera’s household, supervising her maids and
servants. 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. George Graceford, Lord of Holyhall, and Ser Victor Risley,
Knight of Risley Glade, the sole surviving Caltrops aside from Lord
Peake himself, were appointed Lord Confessor and King’s Justice
respectively.

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. Bernard too
was of his blood, being descended from a younger sister of his
great-grandsire. Once relieved of his duties, Septon Eustace departed
King’s Landing for Stoney Sept, the town of his birth, where

  he 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. 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).

None of these changes pleased the young king. His Grace was especially
unhappy with his Kingsguard. He neither liked nor trusted the two new
men, and had not forgotten the presence of Ser Marston Waters at his
mother’s death. King Aegon misliked the Hand’s Fingers even more, if
that is possible, especially their brash and foul-mouthed commander,
Tessario the Thumb. 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.

The king soon developed a strong antipathy for his new master-at- arms
as well. Ser Gareth Long was a skilled swordsman but a stern taskmaster,
renowned at Starpike for his harshness toward the boys he instructed.
Those who did not meet his standards were made to go for days without
sleep, doused in tubs of iced water, had their heads shaved, and were
oft beaten. None of these punishments were available to Ser Gareth in
his new position. Though Aegon was a sullen student who displayed little
interest in swordplay or the arts of war, his royal person was
inviolate. Whenever Ser Gareth spoke to him too loudly or too harshly,
the king would simply throw down his sword and shield and walk away.

Aegon seemed to have only one companion he cared about. 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. 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. Thereafter any
misbehavior, laziness, or truculence on King Aegon’s part resulted in
punishment for his friend. 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.

Tyland Lannister, blind and crippled, had always treated the king with
deference, speaking to him gently, seeking to guide rather than command.
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. 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.

Rightly or wrongly, Ser Tyland Lannister was perceived as having been a
weak and ineffectual Hand, yet somehow also sinister, scheming, even
monstrous. Lord Unwin Peake came to the Handship determined to
demonstrate his strength and rectitude. “This Hand is not blind, nor
veiled, nor crippled,” he announced before king and court. “This Hand
can still wield a sword.” And so saying, he drew his longsword from its
scabbard and raised it high so all might see it. Whispers flew about the
hall. 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 Feast Day of Our Father Above is a most propitious day for making
judgments, the septons teach us. 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 city gaols were crowded to bursting,
and even the deep dungeons below the Red Keep were near full. Lord Unwin
emptied them. The prisoners were

marched or dragged out to the square before the Red Keep’s gates, where
thousands of Kingslanders gathered to see them receive their due. With
the somber young king and his stern Hand looking down from the
battlements, the King’s Justice set to work. As there was too much work
for one sword alone, Tessario the Thumb and his Fingers were tasked with
aiding him.

“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.” Forty thieves had their hands
removed. 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. A suspected Poor Fellow who preached that the Seven sent the
Winter Fever to punish House Targaryen for incest had his tongue
removed. Two pox-riddled whores were mutilated in unspeakable ways for
passing the pox to dozens of men. Six servants found guilty of stealing
from their masters had their noses slit; a seventh, who cut a hole in a
wall to peek upon his master’s daughters in their nakedness, had the
offending eye plucked out as well.

Next came the murderers. 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. Where
the other murderers were hanged straightaway, he had his hands hacked
off and burned before his eyes, then he was hung by a noose and
disemboweled as he strangled.

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. The King’s Justice, Ser Victor Risley, attended to each of them
himself. 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.

“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. “Would that I could write
that the smallfolk returned to their homes and hovels to fast and

pray and beg forgiveness for their own sins, but that would be far from
the truth. Flush with blood, they sought out dens of sin instead, and
the city’s alehouses, wine sinks, and brothels were crowded unto
bursting, for such is the wickedness of men.” Mushroom says the same,
though in his own way. “Whenever I see a man put to death, I like to
have a flagon and a woman afterward, to remind myself that I am still
alive.”

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. “The king had as well been made of wax,” observed
Septon Eustace. Grand Maester Munkun echoes him. “His Grace was present,
as was his duty, yet somehow he seemed far away as well. Some of the
condemned turned to the battlements to shout out cries for mercy, but
the king never seemed to see them, nor hear their desperate words. Make
no mistake. This feast was served to us by the Hand, and ’twas he who
gorged upon it.”

By midyear the castle, city, and king were all firmly in the grasp of
the new Hand. 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. Beyond the walls
of King’s Landing, however, the woes that had afflicted the realm these
past two years had only worsened. 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. It
was past time the Iron Throne showed its power, Lord Peake decided.

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. To command the royal fleet, he tapped
another uncle, Ser Gedmund Peake, a seasoned battler known as Gedmund
Great-Axe for his favored weapon. 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.

The situation in the Stepstones as Ser Gedmund and Blackbean set sail
was chaotic, to say the least. Racallio Ryndoon’s ships had been

swept from the sea for the most part, but he still ruled Bloodstone,
largest of the islands, and a few smaller rocks. 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. 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.

Westeros could not hope to prevail in a sea war against Braavos, Lord
Unwin knew. 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.
The royal fleet—comprised of the eight new warships and some twenty
older cogs and galleys—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.”

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.” 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. 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.” Lord Alyn sent
him back. “I would have hanged him,” he wrote to Ser Gedmund, “but I am
loath to waste good hempen rope on a bean.”

In winter, strong north winds oft prevail upon the narrow sea, so the
fleet made splendid time on its voyage south. Off Tarth, another dozen
longships rowed out to further swell their ranks, commanded by Lord
Bryndemere the Evenstar. The tidings that his lordship brought proved
less welcome, however. 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. “What of Pentos?” Lord

Alyn wanted to know. “Discarded,” the Evenstar informed him. “A pie
split three ways offers larger slices than one cut into quarters.”

Gedmund Great-Axe (who had been so seasick during the voyage that the
sailors had named him Gedmund Green-Sick) decided that the King’s Hand
should be informed of this new alignment amongst the warring cities. 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. “That
will lose us any hope of taking Racallio by surprise,” argued Alyn
Velaryon, but Ser Gedmund proved adamant. The two commanders parted
angrily.

The next day when the sun rose, Blackbean woke Ser Gedmund to inform him
that the Lord of the Tides was gone. The entire Velaryon fleet had
slipped off during the night. Gedmund Great-Axe snorted. “Run back to
Driftmark, I’d venture,” he said. Ned Bean agreed, calling Lord Alyn “a
scared boy.”

They could not have been more wrong. Lord Alyn had taken his ships
south, not north. 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. 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. 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.

  []

The fight was not entirely bloodless. 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. 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 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. 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.”

Alyn Velaryon’s victory was complete. 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. 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. When Lord Alyn sailed Queen Rhaenys up the

Blackwater 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. At the gates of
the Red Keep, King Aegon III himself appeared to welcome him.

Once within the walls, however, it was a different story. By the time
Alyn Oakenfist reached the throne room, the young king had somehow
vanished. Instead Lord Unwin Peake scowled down at him from atop the
Iron Throne, and said, “You fool, you thrice-damned fool. If I dared, I
would have your bloody head off.”

The Hand had good cause to be so wroth. However loudly the mob might
cheer for Oakenfist, their bold young hero’s rash attack had left the
realm in an untenable position. 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. The
destruction of Racallio Ryndoon’s pirate kingdom had been Lord Peake’s
objective; instead, Racallio appeared to have emerged stronger than
ever. The last thing the Hand desired was war with Braavos, richest and
most powerful of the Nine Free Cities. “Yet that is what you have given
us, my lord,” Peake thundered. “You have given us a war.”

“And an elephant,” Lord Alyn answered insolently. “Pray, do not forget
the elephant, my lord.”

The remark drew nervous titters even from Lord Peake’s own handpicked
men, Mushroom tells us, but the Hand was not amused. “He was not a man
who liked to laugh himself,” the dwarf says, “and he liked being laughed
at even less.”

Though other men might fear to provoke Lord Unwin’s enmity, Alyn
Oakenfist was secure in his own strength. 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. Lord Regent or no, Unwin Peake was not so
mad as to imagine he could safely harm the hero of the Stepstones.

“All young men suspect they are immortal,” Grand Maester Munkun writes
in the True Telling, “and whenever a young warrior tastes the heady wine
of victory, suspicion becomes certainty. Yet the confidence

of youth counts for little against the cunning of age. Lord Alyn might
smile at the Hand’s rebukes, but he would soon be given good reason to
dread the Hand’s rewards.”

Munkun knew whereof he wrote. 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. Ser Marston Waters, Lord Commander of the
Kingsguard, dubbed him a knight. 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. The king himself inquired if his lordship would consent to
serve upon his small council, as master of ships. Lord Alyn humbly
agreed.

“Then the Hand’s fingers closed about his throat,” says Mushroom. “The
voice was Aegon’s, the words Unwin’s.” 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? 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.

The trap was neatly set. The voyage was perilous, and like to take a
heavy toll of the Velaryon fleets. The Stepstones teemed with enemies,
who would not be taken unawares a second time. Past them lay the barren
coasts of Dorne, where Lord Alyn was not like to find safe harbor. And
should he gain the Sunset Sea, he would find the Red Kraken waiting with
his longships. 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. 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.

The Lord of the Tides made a gift of his elephant to King Aegon III as
he took his leave of King’s Landing. 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. “Name him Corlys, after my

grandsire,” Lord Alyn told her. “One day he may sit the Iron Throne.”
Baela laughed at that. “I will name her Laena, after my mother. One day
she may ride a dragon.”

Lord Corlys Velaryon had made nine famous voyages on his Sea Snake, it
will be recalled. Lord Alyn Oakenfist would make six, upon six different
ships. “My ladies,” he would call them. 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.

Some might think it queer for Lord Peake to send off the largest fleet
in the Seven Kingdoms whilst war with Braavos threatened. 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. Six other noble lords accompanied him, along
with threescore knights, guardsmen, servants, scribes, and septons, six
singers…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.”

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. Profit means more than pride amongst the hundred
isles. 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. “We have already replaced every ship
that your boy admiral stole or sank,” the Sealord boasted to Lord
Mooton.

Having thus demonstrated the power of Braavos, however, he was more than
willing to be placated. 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. 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, the

Sealord had in effect sold something that he did not own, but this was
not unusual in Braavos).

The mission to Braavos proved eventful in other ways as well. 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. The fool himself so amused the Sealord that he received a
handsome offer to remain in Braavos. “I do confess that I was tempted.
In Westeros my wit is wasted capering for a king who never smiles, but
in Braavos they would love me…too well, I fear. Every courtesan would
want me, and soon or late some bravo would take umbrage at the size of
my member and prick me with his little pointy dwarf-skewer. So back to
the Red Keep Mushroom scurried, and more fool me.”

So it came to pass that Lord Mooton returned to King’s Landing with
peace in hand, but at a grievous cost. 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.

The last half of the year proved calamitous in other ways as well. 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. Widespread famine was reported in the North, and the Winter
Fever descended on Barrowton, the first time it had ever traveled so far
inland. 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. A thousand leagues to the south,
Ser Steffon Connington was hunting too, pursuing a small band of Dornish
raiders across the windswept marches. But he rode too far and too fast,
ignorant of what lay ahead until one-armed Wyland Wyl came down on him,
and Lady Elenda

found herself widowed once again.

In the west, Lady Johanna Lannister hoped to follow her victory at Kayce
by striking another blow against the Red Kraken. 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 plan was to land them undetected on the south end of the
island, but someone had betrayed them, and the longships were waiting.
Lord Prester, Lord Tarbeck, and Ser Erwin Lannister commanded the
ill-fated crossing. 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.”

Yet all these were as naught against the tragedy that descended on the
court and king. 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. 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. Impaled through breast and belly, she twisted in agony for
half an hour before she could be lifted free, whereupon she passed from
this life at once.

King’s Landing grieved, as only King’s Landing could. 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. There the whispers soon were flying, just as they had
when Queen Helaena died in similar fashion. Had the little queen truly
taken her own life? Even inside the walls of the Red Keep, speculation
was rampant.

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. What could have made her mad enough
or sad enough to leap from her window onto those cruel spikes? Some
suggested that Lady Rhaena’s miscarriage might have made her so
distraught she did not wish to live. Others, of a more

cynical bent, countered that it might have been jealousy over the child
growing inside of Lady Baela that drove her to the act. “It was the
king,” whispered still others. “She loved him with all her heart, yet he
paid her no mind, showed her no affection, did not even share his rooms
with her.”

And of course there were many who refused to believe that Jaehaera had
taken her own life. “She was murdered,” they whispered, “just as her
mother was.” But if that were true, who was the murderer?

There was no lack of suspects. By tradition, there was always a knight
of the Kingsguard posted at the queen’s door. It would have been a
simple thing for him to slip inside and throw the child from her window.
If so, surely the king himself had given the command. Aegon had tired of
her weeping and wailing and wanted a new wife, men said. Or perhaps he
wished to revenge himself on the daughter of the king who killed his
mother. The boy was dour and gloomy, no one truly knew his nature. Tales
of Maegor the Cruel were freely told.

Others blamed one of the little queen’s companions, Lady Cassandra
Baratheon. 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). Disappointment had
turned her sour, her detractors said; once her father’s heir at Storm’s
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.

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. A
serving boy who had spilled soup on the little queen the year before,
and been beaten for it, was accused. 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). Even holy
servants of the Seven were not above suspicion. A certain septa in the
city had once been heard to say that the little queen ought never to
have children, for simpleminded women produced simpleminded sons. The
gold cloaks brought her in as well, and she vanished into a dungeon.

Grief makes men mad. With hindsight, we can say for a fair certainty
that none of these played any role in the sad death of the little queen.
If indeed Jaehaera Targaryen was murdered (and there is no shred of

proof 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.

Lord Peake was known to have shared his predecessor’s concerns about the
succession. 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. 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. If either of the twins produced a
son, to be sure, the boy would at once become first in the order of
succession…but Lady Rhaena’s pregnancy had ended in miscarriage, which
left only the child growing inside Lady Baela on Driftmark. 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.

Were the king to sire an heir of his own body, that calamity might be
averted…but before that could happen, Jaehaera had to be removed so
Aegon could remarry. Lord Peake could not have pushed the child from the
window himself, to be sure, as he was elsewhere in the city when she
died…but the Kingsguard posted at the queen’s door that night was Mervyn
Flowers, his bastard brother.

Could he have been the Hand’s catspaw? It is more than possible,
particularly in light of later events, which we shall discuss in due
course. 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. Not all men are as they seem, however,
particularly in King’s Landing. Those who knew Flowers best saw other
sides of him. When not on duty, he was fond of wine, says Mushroom, who
was known to have drunk with him. 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. Like many bastards, he was hot of blood
and quick to anger, seeing slights where none had been intended.

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. Even Mushroom, ever ready to think the worst of everyone, says as
much. If Ser Mervyn had killed the queen, he would have done it with a
pillow, the fool insists…before suggesting a far more sinister and
likely possibility. 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 him…
someone, mayhaps, like Tessario the Thumb, or one of the Fingers. 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.

So says the fool, but to be sure, all of this is fancy. The true tale of
how Jaehaera Targaryen met her end will never be known. Mayhaps she did
take her own life in some fit of childish despair. 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. Yet without proof, none of
this would have been damning…if not for what the Hand did afterward.

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. They had come to inform His Grace that he must put aside his
mourning blacks and wed again “for the good of the realm.” Moreover, his
new queen had been chosen for him.

Unwin Peake had married thrice and sired seven children. Only one
survived. His firstborn son had died in infancy, as had both of his
daughters by his second wife. His eldest daughter had lived long enough
to marry, only to die in childbirth at the age of twelve. 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. Ser
Titus, heir to Starpike, was the only one of Lord Unwin’s sons to grow
to manhood. 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. The Hand’s
last surviving child was a daughter, Myrielle.

Myrielle Peake was to be Aegon III’s new queen. She was the ideal
choice, the Hand declared; the same age as the king, “a lovely girl, and

courteous,” born of one of the noblest houses in the realm, schooled by
septas to read, write, and do sums. Her lady mother had been fertile, so
there was no reason to think that Myrielle would not give His Grace
strong sons.

“What if I do not like her?” King Aegon said. “You do not need to like
her,” Lord Peake replied, “you need only wed her, bed her, and father a
son on her.” Then, infamously, he added, “Your Grace does not like
turnips, but when your cooks prepare them, you eat them, do you not?”
King Aegon nodded sullenly…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.

  She would never be Queen Turnips.

Unwin Peake had overreached himself. 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. Lady Arryn sent a
waspish note from the Vale. Kermit Tully declared the betrothal
“presumptuous.” Ben Blackwood questioned the haste of it; Aegon should
have been allowed half a year at least to mourn his little queen. A curt
missive arrived from Cregan Stark in Winterfell, suggesting that the
North might look with disfavor on such a match. Even Grand Maester
Munkun began to waver. “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. 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 reasons…for
power, or the glory of House Peake.”

Mushroom, our wise fool, observes that there are certain doors best not
opened, for “you never know what might come through.” 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.

To recount all the names put forward would take more pages than we have,
but a few are worthy of mention. At Casterly Rock, Lady Johanna
Lannister set aside her war with the ironmen long enough to

write the Hand and point out that her daughters Cerelle and Tyshara were
maidens of noble birth and marriageable age. The twice-widowed Lady of
Storm’s End, Elenda Baratheon, put forward her own daughters, Cassandra
and Ellyn. Cassandra had once been betrothed to Aegon II and was “well
prepared to serve as queen,” she wrote. 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. Sharis
Footly, widow of Tumbleton, made so bold as to nominate herself.

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.” 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.” 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. (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.)

In the face of so much tumult, Lord Unwin was forced to think again.
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. 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.
Many have been put forward for this honor, the fairest flowers of the
realm. Whichever girl King Aegon weds shall be the Alysanne to his
Jaehaerys, the Jonquil to his Florian. She will sleep by his side, birth
his children, share his labors, soothe his brow when he is

sick, grow old with him. It is only fitting therefore that we allow the
king himself to make this choice. 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. Let the maidens come from every corner of the Seven Kingdoms
and present themselves before the king, that His Grace may choose the
one best suited to share his life and love.”

And so the word went out, and a great excitement took hold of the court
and city, and spread out across the realm. From the 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? I might be the queen.”

Yet even before Lord Unwin had ascended the Iron Throne, he had sent a
raven to Starpike summoning his daughter to the city. 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.

That much is known; what follows now is rumor. 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. 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.
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.

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. The dwarf was much in His
Grace’s company following the death of Queen Jaehaera. Though his japes
could not dispell the king’s gloom, they delighted

Gaemon Palehair, so Aegon oft summoned him for the boy’s sake. 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.”

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. 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. Lucinda Penrose was set upon by outlaws whilst
hawking along Blackwater Bay, not half a day’s ride from the castle. Her
hawk was killed, her horse was stolen, and one of the men held her down
whilst another slit her nose open. 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. 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.

Were the Hand and his minions responsible for these tragedies and
misfortunes, or were they happenstance? In the end it would not matter.
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. At tourneys,
fair maidens and high ladies vied for the honor of being named the queen
of love and beauty, but such reigns lasted only for a night. Whichever
maid King Aegon chose would reign over Westeros for a lifetime. The
highborn descended on King’s Landing from keeps and castles in every
part of the Seven Kingdoms. 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. 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).

  “Each maid seemed lovelier than the last,” Mushroom says in his

Testimony, “sparkling and spinning in their silks and jewels, they made
a dazzling sight as they made their way to the throne room. It would be
hard to picture anything more beautiful, unless perhaps all of them had
arrived naked.” (One did, for all intents and purposes. 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. 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.)

No doubt these maidens dreamed sweet dreams of dancing with the king,
charming him with their wit, exchanging coy glances over a cup of wine.
But there was to be no dancing, no wine, no opportunity for
conversation, be it witty or dull. The gathering was not truly a ball in
the ordinary sense. 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. 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. “By the time the tenth girl was
presented, the king had doubtless forgotten the first five,” Mushroom
says. “Their fathers could well have sneaked them back into the queue
for another go-round, and some of the more cunning likely did.”

A handful of the braver maidens made so bold as to address the king, in
an attempt to make themselves more memorable. 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?” but there is no truth to that).
Alyssa Royce told him she had come all the way from Runestone to be with
him today. 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. “I shot one with an arrow,” she declared
proudly. “In the arse.” Lady Anya Weatherwax, aged seven, informed His
Grace that her horse’s name was Twinklehoof and she loved him very much,
and asked if His Grace had a good horse too. (“His Grace has a hundred
horses,” Lord Unwin answered impatiently.) Others ventured compliments
about his city, his castle, and his clothes. 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.”

  The boldest tongue belonged to a Dornishwoman, Moriah Qorgyle of

Sandstone, who rose from her curtsy smiling and said, “Your Grace, why
not climb down from there and kiss me?” Aegon did not answer her. He
answered none of them. He gave each maid a nod, to acknowledge that he
had heard them. Then Ser Marston and the Kingsguard saw them on their
way.

Music wafted over the hall all through the night, but could scarce be
heard over the shuffle of footsteps, the din of conversation, and from
time to time the faint, soft sound of weeping. 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. The herald charged with announcing the name and
lineage of each of the fair maidens lost his voice and had to be
replaced. Four of the hopefuls fainted, along with a dozen mothers,
several fathers, and a septon. One stout lord collapsed and died.

“The Maiden’s Day Cattle Show,” Mushroom would name the ball afterward.
Even the singers who had made so much of it beforehand found little to
sing about as the event unfolded, and the king himself appeared ever
more restless as the hours passed and the parade of maids continued.
“All this,” says Mushroom, “was just as the Hand desired. 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.”

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. 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. “She was no great beauty,”
Mushroom says, “but she was fresh and pretty and pleasant, and His Grace
did not seem averse to her.” 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. 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. Which is to say, not comfortable at all,
but he did not seem to find her presence distasteful. Three days before
the ball, he gave her

one of the little queen’s dolls. ‘Here,’ he said as he thrust it at her,
‘you can have this.’ 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.”

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. 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). 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. 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.

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. 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. The doors to the throne room were thrown
open, and the daughters of Prince Daemon entered upon a blast of winter
air. Lady Baela was great with child, Lady Rhaena wan and thin from her
miscarriage, yet seldom had they seemed more as one. 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.

Mounted on a pair of coal black chargers, the twins rode the length of
the hall side by side. 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. “His Grace my brother can command me. You
cannot.” At the foot of the Iron Throne they reined up. Lord Unwin
rushed forward, demanding to know the meaning of this. The twins paid
him no more heed than they would a serving man. “Brother,” Lady Rhaena
said to Aegon, “if it please you, we have brought your new queen.”

Her lord husband, Ser Corwyn Corbray, brought the girl forward. A gasp
went through the hall. “Lady Daenaera of House Velaryon,” boomed out the
herald, somewhat hoarsely, “daughter of the late and

lamented 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.”

Daenaera Velaryon was an orphan. Her mother had been carried off by the
Winter Fever; her father had died in the Stepstones when his True Heart
went down. 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. 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. 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. “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.” Daenaera’s smile transformed her face, men agreed; it was sweet
and bold and mischievious, all at once. Those who saw it could not fail
to think, “Here is a bright, sweet, happy little girl, the perfect
antidote to the young king’s gloom.”

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. 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. As she was led away, King Aegon summoned his young cupbearer,
Gaemon Palehair. To him was given the honor of making the announcement.
“His Grace will marry Lady Daenaera of House Velaryon!” Gaemon shouted
happily.

  []

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. In
a council meeting the next day, however, he gave vent to his wroth. By
choosing for his bride a girl of six, “this sulky boy” had thwarted the
entire purpose of the marriage. It would be years before the girl was
old enough to bed, and even longer until she could hope to

produce a trueborn heir. Until such time the succession would remain
clouded. The foremost duty of a regency was to guard the king against
the follies of youth, he declared, “follies such as this.” For the good
of the realm, the king’s choice must be set aside, so that His Grace
might marry “a suitable maid of child-bearing age.”

“Such as your daughter?” asked Lord Rowan. “I think not.” Nor were his
fellow regents more sympathetic. For once, the council remained adamant,
defying the Hand’s wishes. The marriage would proceed. The betrothal was
announced the next day, as scores of disappointed maidens streamed out
the city gates for home.

King Aegon III Targaryen wed Lady Daenaera on the last day of the 133rd
year since Aegon’s Conquest. 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. Ladies Baela and Rhaena, riding just behind the royal litter,
were greeted with exuberant cheers as well. Only a few took note of the
King’s Hand farther back, with “his face as grim as death.”

  []

  et us leave King’s Landing for a time, and turn back the calendar to
  speak of Lady Baela’s lord husband Alyn Oakenfist on his epic

voyage to the Sunset Sea.

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. 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. 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. We shall not
echo their work here, save in the broadest strokes.

Oakenfist displayed considerably more caution on his return to the
Stepstones than he had on his previous visit. 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 what

awaited him. 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. Many of
the channels between the islands were closed by booms, or blocked by the
hulks of ships sunk during Lord Alyn’s attack. Such waterways as
remained open were controlled by Ryndoon and his rogues. 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.

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. 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.

Surprisingly little is known of his youth, and much of what we believe
we know is false or contradictory. He was six-and-a-half feet tall,
supposedly, with one shoulder higher than another, giving him a stooped
posture and a rolling gait. 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. In the fashion of many
Tyroshi, he was wont to dye his hair and beard. 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. He liked sweet scents and would bathe in lavender or
rosewater.

That he was a man of enormous ambition and enormous appetites seems
clear. He was a glutton and a drunkard when at leisure, a demon when in
battle. He could wield a sword with either hand, and sometimes fought
with two at once. He honored the gods: all gods, everywhere. When battle
threatened, he would throw the bones to choose which god to placate with
a sacrifice. Though Tyrosh was a slave city, he hated slavery,
suggesting that perhaps he himself had come from bondage. When wealthy
(he gained and lost several fortures) he would buy any slave girl who
caught his eye, kiss her, and set her free. He was open-handed with his
men, claiming a share of plunder no greater than the least of them. In
Tyrosh, he was known to

toss gold coins to beggars. 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.

He had a dozen wives and never beat them, but would sometimes command
them to beat him. He loved kittens and hated cats. He loved pregnant
women, but loathed children. From time to time he would dress in women’s
clothes and play the whore, though his height and crooked back and
purple beard made him more grotesque than female to the eye. Sometimes
he would burst out laughing in the thick of battle. Sometimes he would
sing bawdy songs instead.

Racallio Ryndoon was mad. Yet his men loved him, fought for him, died
for him. And for a few short years, they made him a king.

In 133 AC, in the Stepstones, “Queen” Racallio was at the height of his
power. 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. He
therefore chose talk instead of battle. 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.

Ultimately he succeeded, though Racallio kept him for more than a
fortnight in his sprawling wooden fortress on Bloodstone. 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. One day he
would hail Oakenfist as a friend and brother-in-arms, and urge him to
join him in an attack on Tyrosh. The next he would throw the bones to
see if he should put his guest to death. He insisted that Lord Alyn
wrestle with him in a mud pit behind his fort, whilst hundreds of
jeering pirates looked on. 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. To prove his innocence,
Lord Alyn was forced to kill three Tyroshi prisoners. When he did, the
“Queen” was so delighted with him that he sent two of his wives to
Oakenfist’s bedchamber that night. “Give them sons,” Racallio commanded.
“I want sons as brave and strong as you.” Our sources are at odds as to
whether or not Lord Alyn did as he was bid.

  In the end Ryndoon allowed that the Velaryon fleet might pass, for a

price. He wanted three ships, an alliance writ on sheepskin and signed
in blood, and a kiss. 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. That proved sufficient. The fleet sailed through the
Stepstones.

More trials awaited them, however. The next was Dorne. The Dornishmen
were understandably alarmed with the sudden appearance of the large
Velaryon fleet in the waters off Sunspear. Lacking any strength at sea
themselves, however, they chose to regard Lord Alyn’s coming as a visit
rather than an attack. Aliandra Martell, Princess of Dorne, came out to
meet with him, accompanied by a dozen of her current favorites and
suitors. 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. Lord
Alyn required fresh water and provisions for his ships, whilst Princess
Aliandra required services of a more intimate nature. Bastard Born would
have us believe that he provided them, Hard as Oak that he did not. We
do know that the attentions the flirtatious Dornish princess lavished
upon him much displeased her own lords, and angered her younger
siblings, Qyle and Coryanne. 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.

Even so, it was in Dornish waters that Lord Velaryon suffered his first
losses. 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.
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.

Those losses were more than made good when Lord Oakenfist reached
Oldtown, however. 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. 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 old

enmities between the blacks and greens to rest. Oldtown would provide
twenty warships for the fleet, Hightower promised, and his good friend
Lord Redwyne of the Arbor would send thirty. In a stroke, Lord
Oakenfist’s fleet had become considerably more formidable.

[]

The Velaryon fleet lingered overlong in Whispering Sound, waiting for
Lord Redwyne and his promised galleys. 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. 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. 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. 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. It is known, however,
that he dispatched letters to his own lady wife on Driftmark whilst at
the Hightower. We do not know the contents.

Oakenfist was still a young man in 133 AC, and young men are not known
for their patience. Finally he decided that he would wait no

longer for Lord Redwyne, and gave the order to sail. Oldtown cheered as
the Velaryon ships raised their sails and lowered their oars, sliding
down the Whispering Sound one by one. Twenty war galleys of House
Hightower followed, commanded by Ser Leo Costayne, a grizzled seafarer
known as the Sea Lion.

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. 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. Before they
could move much farther north, however, another storm came down on them.
One ship went down, and three more were so badly damaged that they could
not proceed. Lord Velaryon regrouped the fleet off Crakehall, where the
lady of the castle rowed out to meet him. It was from her that his
lordship first heard of the great ball to be held on Maiden’s Day.

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. “An iron maid upon the Iron Throne,” he said,
“what could be more fitting?” The Red Kraken had more immediate
concerns, however. Long forewarned of the coming of Alyn Oakenfist, he
had gathered his power to receive him. Hundreds of longships had
assembled in the waters south of Fair Isle, and more off Feastfires,
Kayce, and Lannisport. 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. (Though Greyjoy was not quite three years older than his
foe, he never called him anything but “that boy.”) He might even take
Lady Baela for a salt wife, the Lord of the Iron Islands told his
captains, laughing. “ ’Tis true, I have two-and-twenty salt wives, but
not a one with silver hair.”

So much of history tells of the deeds of kings and queens, high lords,
noble knights, holy septons, and wise maesters that it is easy to forget
the common folk who shared these times with the great and the mighty.
Yet from time to time some ordinary man or woman, blessed with neither
birth nor wealth nor wit nor wisdom nor skill at arms, will somehow rise
up and by some simple act or whispered word change

the destiny of kingdoms. So it was on Fair Isle in that fateful year of
133 AC.

Lord Dalton Greyjoy did indeed possess two-and-twenty salt wives. Four
were back on Pyke; two of those had borne him children. 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).
The rest were girls of humbler birth, the daughters of simple
fisherfolk, traders, or men-at-arms who had somehow caught his eye, oft
as not after he had slain their fathers, brothers, husbands, or other
male protectors. One bore the name of Tess. Her name is all we truly
know of her. Was she thirteen or thirty? Pretty or plain? A widow or a
virgin? Where did Lord Greyjoy find her, and how long had she been
amongst his salt wives? Did she despise him for a reaver and a raper, or
love him so fiercely she went mad with jealousy?

We do not know. Accounts differ so markedly that Tess must remain
forever a mystery in the annals of history. 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.

And so perished the Red Kraken of Pyke on the eve of his greatest
battle…slain not by the sword of a foe, but by his own dagger, in the
hand of one of his own wives.

Nor did his conquests long survive him. 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. 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. 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. A struggle for power was inevitable, a truth
the ironborn captains saw well as they raced back toward their isles.

Meanwhile, the smallfolk of Fair Isle and such knights as still remained
on the island rose up in red rebellion. The ironmen who had lingered
when their kinsmen fled were dragged from their beds and

hacked to death or set upon on the docks, their ships swarmed over and
set ablaze. 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. 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.

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. Fair Isle was free, the longships had fled, the fighting was
done. As the Lady Baela passed beneath the walls of Lannisport, the
bells of the city pealed in welcome. Thousands rushed from the gates to
line the shore, cheering. Lady Johanna herself emerged from Casterly
Rock to present Oakenfist with a seahorse wrought in gold and other
tokens of Lannister esteem.

Days of celebration followed. Lord Alyn was anxious to take on
provisions and depart on his long voyage home, but the westermen were
loath to see him go. With their own fleet destroyed, they remained
vulnerable should the ironmen return under the Red Kraken’s successor,
whoever he might be. 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. “We should put every man of them to the sword,” her
ladyship declared, “and sell their wives and children to the slavers of
the east. Let the seagulls and the crabs claim those worthless rocks.”

Oakenfist would have none of it, but to please his hosts, he did agree
that the Sea Lion, Leo Costayne, would remain at Lannisport with a third
of the fleet until such time as the Lannisters, the Farmans, and the
other lords of the west could rebuild sufficient warships of their own
to defend against any return of the ironmen. Then he raised his sails
once more and took the remainder of his fleet back out to sea, returning
from whence he’d come.

Of their voyage home, we need say little. 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 the

Lady Baela. 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. Again he sailed
along the parched, dry coasts of Dorne, this time beating eastward.
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.

It was from her that Lord Oakenfist learned that Dorne had joined the
Daughters’ War, making alliance with Tyrosh and Lys against Racallio
Ryndoon…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. 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.” Instead he
whispered something in the admiral’s ear, a secret that changed the
course of Westerosi history. The next day, Lord Velaryon returned to
Lady Baela and gave the command to raise sail…for Lys.

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.
Hope and good feeling reigned over the Red Keep as the new year dawned.
Though younger than her predecessor, Queen Daenaera was a happier child,
and her sunny nature did much to lighten the king’s gloom…for a while,
at the least. 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). 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”). Even Gareth Long, the Red
Keep’s despised master- at-arms, made note of a change. “We no longer
have to beat the bastard boy as often as before,” he told the Hand. “The
boy has never

lacked for strength nor speed. Now at last he is showing some modicum of
skill.”

The young king’s new interest in the world even extended to the rule of
his kingdom. Aegon III began to attend the council. Though he seldom
spoke, his presence heartened Grand Maester Munkun, and seemed to please
Lord Mooton and Lord Rowan. Ser Marston Waters of the Kingsguard seemed
discomfited by His Grace’s attendance, however, and Lord Peake took it
for a rebuke. 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. Unsurprisingly, before very long His Grace
began to absent himself from the meetings, as before.

  []

Sour and suspicious by nature, and possessed of overweening pride, Unwin
Peake was a most unhappy man by 134 AC. 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. 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, most

like at the behest of Baela’s husband, the insolent and rebellious
Oakenfist. 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.

“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. Shortly thereafter, Baela Velaryon was brought to childbed and
delivered of a healthy baby girl. She named the child Laena after her
mother. 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.”

These words inflamed Lord Peake’s suspicions. What was this treasure?
How did Lord Velaryon mean to “secure” it? With a sword? Was he about to
start a war with Lys, as he had with Braavos? 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. (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.) 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. Even within the Red Keep, there were many who
hoped that the regents might remove Lord Peake as King’s Hand, and
replace him with Alyn Velaryon.

The excitement occasioned by Oakenfist’s return was palpable, however,
so all the Hand could do was seethe. 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. 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. 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 the

admiral must come to the Red Keep to abase himself before the Iron
Throne.

In this, as in the matter of Aegon’s betrothal to Myrielle Peake, Lord
Unwin found himself overruled by the other regents. 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 morning was bright and cold, the chronicles tell us. There, before
the eyes of tens of thousands, Lord Alyn Oakenfist beheld his daughter,
Laena, for the first time. After kissing his lady wife, he took the
child from her and held her high for all the crowd to see, as the cheers
fell like thunder. Only then did he return the girl to her mother’s arms
and bend his knee before the king and queen. 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.” Then King Aegon III bade the admiral rise with
the words, “We are glad to have you safe home, my brother.”

Mushroom says that Oakenfist was laughing as he climbed back to his
feet. “Sire,” he replied, “you have honored me with your sister’s hand,
and I am proud to be your brother by marriage. Yet I can never be your
brother by blood. But there is one who is.” Then with a flamboyant
gesture, Lord Alyn summoned forth the treasure he had brought from Lys.
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.

Lord Unwin Peake could no longer contain himself. “Who is this?” he
demanded, pushing forward. “Who are you?” The boy threw back his cowl.
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.
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.

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. Whilst Prince Aegon had escaped on his dragon,
Stormcloud, Prince Viserys had been taken. The Battle of the Gullet soon
followed, and when no word was heard of the young prince afterward, he
was presumed dead. No one could even say for a certainty which ship he
had been on.

[]

But though many thousands died in the Gullet, Viserys Targaryen was not
one of them. 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. Defeat had
left Sharako in disgrace, however, and the Lyseni soon found himself
besieged by enemies old and new, eager to bring him down. 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. 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. Amidst the chaos that
followed, Magister Bambarro thought it prudent to keep his prize hidden
away for the nonce, lest the boy be wrested

away by one of his fellow Lyseni, or rivals from another city.

Viserys was well treated during his captivity. 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. 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).

As Lys suffered a series of shattering defeats in the Daughters’ War,
however, these plans went awry. 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. Upon his death, it was
discovered that he had been enormously in debt, whereupon his creditors
seized his manse. 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.

Lysandro was the patriarch of a rich and powerful banking and trading
dynasty whose bloodlines could be traced back to Valyria before the
Doom. Amongst many other holdings, the Rogares owned a famous pillow
house, the Perfumed Garden. Viserys Targaryen was so striking that it is
said Lysandro Rogare contemplated putting him to work as a
courtesan…until the boy identified himself. Once he knew he had a prince
in hand, the magister quickly revised his plans. 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.

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 brother…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. “The
realm might have been better served had it been Lord Alyn’s mother at
that table rather than Lord Alyn,” Mushroom observes, rightly. Oakenfist
was no haggler. To secure the prince, his lordship

agreed 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, and… above all…swear upon
his honor that the marriage between Viserys Targaryen and Larra Rogare
would not be set aside, for any cause. To all of this Lord Alyn Velaryon
had agreed, and affixed his sign and seal.

Prince Viserys had been seven when he was taken from the Gay Abandon. He
was twelve on his return in 134 AC. His wife, the beautiful young woman
who had walked arm in arm with him from the Lady Baela, was nineteen,
seven years his senior. Though two years younger than the king, Viserys
was in certain ways more mature than his elder brother. 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.

The return of his brother from the dead worked a wondrous change in
Aegon III, Munkun tells us. 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. 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. Down deep, the Broken King felt himself unworthy to sit the Iron
Throne. He had not been able to save his brother, his mother, or his
little queen from grisly deaths. How could he presume to save a kingdom?

Viserys’s return did much to lessen the king’s loneliness as well. As a
boy, Aegon had worshipped his three elder half-brothers, but it was
Viserys who shared his bedchamber, his lessons, and his games. “Some
part of the king had died with his brother in the Gullet,” wrote Munkun.
“It is plain to see that Aegon’s affection for Gaemon Palehair was born
of his desire to replace the little brother he had lost, but only when
Viserys was restored to him did Aegon seem once more alive and whole.”
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.

The return of the lost prince resolved the question of succession as
well. 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. King Aegon’s choice of a girl of six as his second
wife no longer seemed so worrisome. Prince Viserys was a lively, likely
young lad, possessed of great charm and boundless vitality. Though not
as tall, as strong, or as handsome as his brother, he struck all who met
him as more clever and more curious than the king…and his own wife was
no child, but a beautiful young woman well into her childbearing years.
Let Aegon have his child-bride; Larra of Lys was like to give Viserys
children sooner rather than later, thereby securing the dynasty.

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. Their joy was not shared
by the King’s Hand, however. 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 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.”

Law and tradition were on his side, Grand Maester Munkun admitted when
the Hand brought his grievances to the council…but the king and the
smallfolk felt otherwise, and it would have been the height of folly to
repudiate Lord Alyn’s pact. The other regents concurred. 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.

For Lord Unwin Peake, this seemed yet another humiliating rebuke. Coming
so close on the heels of the Maiden’s Day Cattle Show and the king’s
repudiation of his daughter, Myrielle, in favor of the child Daenaera,
it was more than his pride could endure. Mayhaps his lordship thought he
could bend his fellow regents to his will by threatening to resign as
King’s Hand. Instead the council accepted his resignation with alacrity,
and appointed the bluff, honest, and well- regarded Lord Thaddeus Rowan
in his place.

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. Lord Unwin even bequeathed Tessario and his Fingers to his
successor; the king had his guards, he declared, and so must the Hand.

[]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. His lordship had been failing for
some time, never truly having regained his strength after the Winter
Fever, so his passing excited little comment. To take his place upon the
council, Lord Rowan turned to Ser Corwyn Corbray, Lady Rhaena’s husband.
Her sister, Lady Baela, meanwhile returned to Driftmark with Lord Alyn
and their daughter. Not long after, Prince Viserys thrilled the court by
announcing that the Lady Larra was with child. All of King’s Landing
rejoiced.

Beyond the city, however, 134 AC would not be a year to remember fondly.
North of the Neck, winter still held the land in its icy fist. At
Barrowton, Lord Dustin closed his gates as hundreds of starving
villagers gathered beneath his walls. 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. Even in the winter town,
beneath the very walls of Winterfell, the northmen fell to eating dogs
and horses. Cold and hunger carried off a third of the Night’s Watch,
and when thousands of wildlings walked across the frozen sea

east of the Wall, hundreds more of the black brothers perished in
battle.

In the Iron Islands, a savage struggle for power followed upon the death
of the Red Kraken. 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.

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. 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
entreaties…swayed, mayhaps, by her promise to marry him if he delivered
the Iron Islands to her son’s rule. That proved beyond Ser Leo’s power
to achieve, however. 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.

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. Hundreds of longships and fishing boats
were burned, with as many homes and villages. The wives and children of
the ironborn who had wreaked such havoc on the westerlands were put to
the sword wherever they were found. Amongst the slain were nine of the
Red Kraken’s cousins, two of his three sisters and their husbands, Lord
Drumm of Old Wyk and Lord Goodbrother of Great Wyk, as well as the Lords
Volmark and Harlaw of Harlaw, Botley of Lordsport, and Stonehouse of Old
Wyk. 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. 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.

  Across the width of Westeros, another struggle for succession broke

out 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. 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.” On her deathbed, her ladyship dictated a last testament,
naming her cousin Ser Joffrey Arryn as her heir. 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.

Ser Joffrey was only a fourth cousin by degree, however. Far closer by
blood was Lady Jeyne’s first cousin, Ser Arnold Arryn, who had twice
attempted to depose her. 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 Moon…but his son Ser Eldric
Arryn was sane, shrewd, and ambitious, and came forward now to press his
father’s claim. 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.”

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.
Having split off from their noble kin during the reign of King
Jaehaerys, the Gulltown Arryns had gone into trade and grown rich. Men
japed that the falcon on Isembard’s arms was made of gold, and he soon
became known as the Gilded Falcon. He used that wealth now, bribing
lesser lords to support his claim and bringing sellswords across the
narrow sea.

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.
The Lannisters and the Arryns alike ignored his decrees, and far too
little food arrived at White Harbor to alleviate the famine. Though
well-liked, neither Thaddeus Rowan nor the boy he served were feared. 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.

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 Lysene

wife. Larra Rogare had taken up residence in the Red Keep with her
husband, yet in her heart she remained a lady of Lys. 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. Her ladies were all Lyseni, as were her servants. 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. She
even had her own protectors. 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.

All this the court and kingdom might have come to accept in time, had
Lady Larra not also insisted upon keeping her own gods. She would have
no part in the worship of the Seven, nor the old gods of the northmen.
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.

Her ladies, her servants, and her guards would join Lady Larra at
certain times in performing obeisances to these queer, ancient deities.
Cats were seen coming and going from her chambers so often that men
began to say they were her spies, purring at her in soft voices of all
the doings of the Red Keep. It was even said that Larra herself could
transform into a cat, to prowl the gutters and rooftops of the city.
Darker rumors soon arose. 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. And every time a child went
missing, the ignorant would look at one another and talk of Saagael’s
insatiable thirst for blood.

Even less loved than Larra of Lys were the three brothers who had come
with her to King’s Landing. Moredo commanded his sister’s guards, whilst
Lotho set about establishing a branch of the Rogare Bank atop Visenya’s
Hill. 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. Though their favors
cost ten times as much as any other

brothel dared to charge, Roggerio never lacked for customers. Great
lords and common tradesmen alike spoke of the beauties and wonders to be
found behind the Mermaid’s carved and painted doors… including, some
said, an actual mermaid. (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.)

Across the sea, the Daughters’ War finally reached its end. 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. The Myrish suffered the greatest
losses in these new arrangements, whilst the Archon of Tyrosh and the
Princess of Dorne gained the most. 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. Chief amongst these was Lysandro Rogare and
his brother Drazenko, architect of the Dornish alliance. Drazenko’s ties
to Sunspear and Lysandro’s to the Iron Throne made the Rogares the
princes of Lys in all but name.

By the end of 134 AC, some feared they might soon rule Westeros as well.
Their pride and pomp and power became the talk of King’s Landing. Men
began to whisper of their wiles. Lotho bought men with gold, Roggerio
seduced them with perfumed flesh, Moredo frightened them into submission
with steel. 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.
The king, the little queen, the young prince…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.

Or so the stories went. Like all such tales, they had some truth to
them, well mixed with fear and falsehood. That the Lyseni were proud,
grasping, and ambitious cannot be doubted. That Lotho used his bank and
Roggerio his brothel to win friends to their cause goes without saying.
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. Though more successful than their rivals (for a time, at
least), the Lyseni were only one of several factions competing for
influence. 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.

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. The people who lived through it called it the Lysene Spring…for
spring was indeed a part of it. 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.

Spring is ever a season of hope, rebirth, and renewal, and the spring of
135 AC was no different. 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. Only in the
Vale did fighting continue. 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.

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. 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. 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.

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. On Driftmark, the town
of Hull experienced a rebirth. 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.

Across the narrow sea, Lys itself was prospering under the “velvet
tyranny” of Lysandro Rogare, who had taken on himself the style of

First Magister for Life. 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. Men
began to speak of Lysandro the Magnificent.

During the first quarter of 135 AC, two momentous events were the
occasion of great joy throughout the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. 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. Lady Rhaena, at the age of
nineteen, was flying her dragon, Morning, for the first time. That first
day she circled once around the city before returning to the Dragonpit,
but every day thereafter she grew bolder and flew farther.

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). Shortly thereafter, Morning carried Lady Rhaena across Blackwater
Bay to Dragonstone where, as she said, “Dragons and those who ride them
are more welcome.”

Less than a fortnight later, Larra of Lys gave birth to a son, Prince
Viserys’s firstborn child. The mother was twenty years of age, the
father only thirteen. 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. 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. Gifts were sent from every
corner of the realm, though none so lavish as those bestowed upon the
babe by his Lyseni uncles. In Lys, Lysandro the Magnificent declared a
day of feasting in honor of his grandson.

Yet even in the midst of joy, whispers of discontent began to be heard.
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. 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, began

to question whether the Seven had turned against House Targaryen and the
Seven Kingdoms in their wroth.

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. 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. Within moments of hatching, the creature
turned upon the babe in her cradle and tore a bloody chunk from her arm.
As Laena shrieked, Lord Oakenfist ripped the “dragon” off her, flung it
to the floor, and hacked it into pieces.

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. Prince Viserys still had his own dragon’s egg.
Though it had never quickened, the prince had kept it with him
throughout his years of exile and captivity, for it held great meaning
for him. When Aegon commanded that no dragon’s eggs were to be allowed
in his castle, Viserys grew most wroth. 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.

His Grace was much dismayed by the quarrel with his brother, Mushroom
tells us, but what happened next left him bereft and devastated. 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. “Run fetch Grand
Maester Munkun,” the king commanded Mushroom. By the time the fool
returned with the Grand Maester, Gaemon had collapsed and Queen Daenaera
was moaning, “My belly hurts too.”

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. The Grand Maester gave Daenaera a
powerful purgative, which most like saved her life. She retched
uncontrollably throughout the night, wailing and writhing in pain, and
was too drained and weak to leave her bed the next day, but she was
cleansed. Munkun came too late for Gaemon Palehair, however. The boy
died within the hour. 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. He was thought to be but nine years
old at his death.

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. Fortunately, the king had never been especially fond of
sweets (nor of any other food, if truth be told). 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. Under torture, seven
confessed to attempting to poison the king…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.” (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.)

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. 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. That proved little enough, however. 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 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. 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.
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. Words grew heated, turned to curses,
then to threats. When Corbray drew on Lady

Forlorn—whether to strike at Royce or merely threaten him will never be
known—a crossbowman on Runestone’s battlements loosed a quarrel and
pierced him through the breast.

Striking down one of the king’s regents was an act of treason, akin to
attacking the king himself. 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. With
his death, the flames of war sprang up anew across the Vale of Arryn.
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. Gulltown and House Grafton remained staunch in its support of
the Gilded Falcon, despite his captivity.

The answer from King’s Landing was not long in coming. 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.” When no reply was forthcoming,
the Hand took counsel with Oakenfist and made plans to bring the
rebellion to an end by force.

With the coming of spring, it was thought that the high road through the
Mountains of the Moon would once again be passable. Five thousand men
set out up the kingsroad, under the command of Ser Robert Rowan, Lord
Thaddeus’s eldest son. 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.

A second attack was launched by sea. 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.
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).

The army Lord Alyn was to carry to the Vale would be commanded by Lady
Larra’s brother Moredo Rogare, Lord Rowan announced. That

Lord 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.

His prowess notwithstanding, however, the Lyseni’s appointment was
deeply unpopular. 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. Lord Rowan’s enemies at
court—amongst them many of the men who owed their offices to Unwin
Peake—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.

Such muttering might not have mattered had the assaults upon the Vale
been successful. They were not. 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. 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. Chaos
ensued.

At the other end of the Vale, meanwhile, the high road through the
mountains proved far less open than had been assumed. 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). “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.” Soon the cold and the snow and the nightly attacks began to
take a toll.

High in the mountains, the unthinkable happened one night as Lord Robert
and his men huddled about their campfires. In the slopes above, a cave
mouth was visible from the road, and a dozen men climbed up to see if it
might offer them shelter from the wind. The bones scattered about the
mouth of the cave might have given them

pause, yet they pressed on…and roused a dragon.

Sixteen men perished in the fight that followed, and threescore more
suffered burns before the angry brown wyrm took wing and fled deeper
into the mountains with “a ragged woman clinging to its back.” That was
the last known sighting of Sheepstealer and his rider, Nettles, recorded
in the annals of Westeros…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. One of the most savage of the mountain clan came to
worship her, the storytellers say; youths would prove their courage by
bringing gifts to her, and were only accounted men when they returned
with burns to show that they had faced the dragon woman in her lair.

Their encounter with the dragon was not the last peril encountered by
Ser Robert’s host. By the time they reached the Bloody Gate, a third of
them had perished in a wildling attack or died from cold or hunger.
Amongst the dead was Ser Robert Rowan, crushed by a falling boulder when
the clansmen toppled half a mountainside down upon the column. Bloody
Ben Blackwood assumed command upon his death. 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. At the Bloody Gate, the entrance to the
Vale, the survivors found food, warmth, and welcome…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. Far from being a help to him in his war, they would be a
burden.

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. Though the narrow sea lay
between them, the two Rogares died within a day of each other, both
under suspicious circumstances. Drazenko perished first, choking to
death upon a piece of bacon. Lysandro drowned when his opulent barge
sank whilst carrying him from his Perfumed Garden back to his palace.
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. 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.

But if indeed the Faceless Men had done these deeds, at whose bidding
had they acted? 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. Some went so far as to suggest that the First
Magister had been removed by his own sons (he had sired six trueborn
sons, three daughters, and sixteen bastards). So skillfully had the
brothers been removed, however, that not even the fact of murder could
be proved.

None of the offices through which Lysandro exercised his dominion over
Lys were hereditary. His crab-eaten corpse had scarce been dredged up
from the sea before his old enemies, false friends, and erstwhile allies
began the struggle to succeed him.

Amongst the Lyseni, it is truly said, wars are fought with plots and
poisons rather than with armies. For the rest of that bloody year, the
magisters and merchant princes of Lys performed a deadly dance, rising
and falling almost fortnightly. Oft as not their falls were fatal.
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. 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. 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.

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. All of his
offspring partook of the wealth represented by the Rogare Bank. Even his
bastards received shares, albeit fewer than those alloted to his
trueborn sons and daughters. Effective control of the bank, however, was
vested in Lysandro’s eldest son, Lysaro…of whom it was truly written,
“he had twice his father’s ambition and half his father’s ability.”

Lysaro Rogare aspired to rule Lys, but had neither the cunning nor the
patience to spend decades in the slow accumulation of wealth and

power, as his father Lysandro had. With rivals dying all around him,
Lysaro first moved to secure his own person by buying one thousand
Unsullied from the slavers of Astapor. These eunuch warriors were
renowned as the finest foot soldiers in the world, and were moreover
trained to absolute obedience, so their masters need never fear defiance
or betrayal.

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. When
these expenditures exhausted his personal fortune, he began to divert
gold from the bank. His intent, as he later revealed, was to provoke a
short, victorious war with Tyrosh or Myr. As gonfaloniere, the glory of
conquest would accrue to him, enabling him to win the office of first
magister. 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.

It was a fool’s scheme, and it was quickly undone. 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 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
vaults…a river that soon enough ran dry. By that time Lysaro himself was
gone. 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. Understandably alarmed, the city
magisters moved at once to seize the Rogare Bank, only to discover that
naught remained but a hollow shell.

The fall of House Rogare was swift and brutal. Lysaro’s brothers and
sisters claimed to have played no part in the despoiling of the bank,
but many doubted their claims of innocence. 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. When
Lysara Rogare protested, “I did not know,” Magister Tigaro Moraqos
replied, “You should have,” and the mob roared its approval. Half the
city had been ruined.

  Nor was the damage confined to Lys. As word of the fall of the House

of Rogare reached Westeros, lords and merchants alike soon realized the
coin they had entrusted to the House of Rogare was lost. In Gulltown,
Moredo Rogare moved swiftly, yielding up his command to Alyn Oakenfist
and taking ship for Braavos. 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. Meanwhile, Ser
Marston Waters of the Kingsguard descended on the Mermaid with two of
his Sworn Brothers and fifty guardsmen. 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. 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.

At first it was widely assumed that the Hand had ordered their arrest.
With Ser Corwyn’s death in the Vale, only Lord Rowan and Grand Maester
Munkun remained as regents. This misapprehension lasted only a few
hours, for that very evening Lord Rowan himself joined the Rogares in
captivity. Nor did the Fingers, the Hand’s supposed protectors, do aught
to defend him. When Ser Mervyn Flowers entered the council chambers to
take his lordship into custody, Tessario the Tiger ordered his men to
stand aside. The only resistance was that offered by Lord Rowan’s
squire, who was quickly overwhelmed. “Spare the boy,” Lord Thaddeus
pleaded, and they did… but not until Flowers had cut off one of the
lad’s ears, “to teach him not to bare steel to the Kingsguard.”

The list of those to be seized and held for trial as suspected traitors
did not end there. 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. All were taken unawares and yielded meekly. 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. “It was a heavy axe, the prince a somewhat spindly
boy of three-and-ten,” the fool Mushroom tells us. “One doubted that the
lad could even lift that axe, much less wield it.”

“If you are come to take my lady wife, ser, turn and go,” the young
prince said, “for you shall not pass whilst I still stand.”

Ser Amaury found his show of defiance more amusing than threatening.
“Your lady is wanted for questioning in connection with the treason of
her brothers,” he told the prince.

  “And who is it who wants her?” the prince demanded. “The Hand of the
  King,” Ser Amaury replied.

  “Lord Rowan?” asked Viserys.

“Lord Rowan has been removed from office. Ser Marston Waters is the new
King’s Hand.”

At that moment Aegon III himself stepped from the holdfast gate to stand
beside his brother. “I am the king,” His Grace reminded them, “and I
never chose Ser Marston for my Hand.”

Aegon’s intervention took Ser Amaury aback, Mushroom tells us, but after
a moment’s hesitation he said, “Your Grace is still a boy. Until you
come of age, Sire, your leal lords must make such choices for you. Ser
Marston was chosen by your regents.”

  “Lord Rowan is my regent,” the king insisted.

“No longer,” said Ser Amaury. “Lord Rowan betrayed your trust. His
regency is at an end.”

  “By whose authority?” demanded Aegon. “The Hand of the King,” said the
  white knight.

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 dance… but you shall
not pass, ser, nor shall you touch my wife. Begone, or I promise you,
every man of you shall die here.”

Then Ser Amaury Peake ran short of patience. He could not allow himself
to be balked by two boys, one of fifteen and one of thirteen, the elder
unarmed. “Enough,” he said and ordered his men to move the boys aside.
“Be gentle with them, and see that they come to no harm at our hands.”

“This is on your head, ser,” Prince Viserys warned. He drove his axe
deep into the wood of the drawbridge, scampered back, and said, “Go no
farther than the axe, or you will die.” The king took him by the
shoulder and drew him back into the safety of the holdfast, and a shadow
stepped onto the drawbridge.

Sandoq the Shadow had come from Lys with Lady Larra, a gift from her
father the Magister Lysandro. Black of skin and black of hair, he stood
almost seven feet tall. His face, which he oft kept hidden behind a
black silk veil, was a mass of thin white scars, and his lips and tongue
had been removed, leaving him both mute and hideous to look upon. 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.

Such tales grow in the telling, to be sure, and we cannot know how much
of this, if any, is to be believed. 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. “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.”

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. That night his chosen instruments were a tall black
shield of nightwood, boiled hide, and iron, and a great curved sword
with a dragonbone hilt whose dark blade shone in the torchlight with the
distinctive ripples of Valyrian steel. 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. Mushroom, who
claims to have seen the battle from the roof above, testifies that “it
did not look so much like a swordfight as like a farmer reaping grain.
With every stroke more stalks would topple, but these stalks were living
men who screamed and cursed as they fell.” 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.

Let this be said of Ser Amaury Peake: his dying did not disgrace the
Kingsguard. Three of his men were dead upon the drawbridge and two

more were twisting on the spikes below by the time Peake slid his own
blade from its scabbard. “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.” 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. 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. From his knees, Ser Amaury staggered back to
his feet and charged his unarmed foe.

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. 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. The
castle-within-the-castle stood secure.

  And so it would remain for eighteen days.

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. Both of them presented
themselves before the holdfast the next morning, to demand that the king
leave his sanctuary. “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. “We acted only to protect Your Grace from
false friends and traitors. Ser Amaury was sworn to protect you, to give
his own life for yours if need be. He was your leal man, as I am. He did
not deserve such a death, at the hands of such a beast.”

King Aegon was unmoved. “Sandoq is no beast,” he answered from the
battlements. “He cannot speak, but he hears and he obeys. I commanded
Ser Amaury to be gone, and he refused. My brother warned him what would
happen if he stepped beyond the axe. The vows of the Kingsguard include
obedience, I thought.”

“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 fall

upon our swords should you command that of us. 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.”

  “Lord Thaddeus is my Hand,” Aegon insisted.

“Lord Thaddeus sold your realm to Lys and must answer for it. I will
serve as your Hand until such time as his guilt or innocence can be
proved.” 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.”

If the Lord Commander believed those words would sway the king, he could
not have been more wrong. “You stood beside me when the dragon ate my
mother,” Aegon answered. “All you did was watch. I will not have you
watch while they kill my brother’s wife.” Then he left the battlements,
and no words of Marston Waters could induce him to return that day, or
the next, or the next.

On the fourth day Grand Maester Munkun appeared together with Ser
Marston. “I beseech you, sire, end this childish folly and come out,
that we may serve you.” 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. To this the Grand Maester made no
answer. Nor did the ravens fly.

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. These efforts drew little or no response from
the boy king beyond a sullen stubborn silence. His Grace was roused to
anger only once, when his master-at-arms, Ser Gareth Long, took his turn
attempting to convince the king to yield. “And if I will not, who will
you punish, ser?” King Aegon shouted down at him. “You may beat poor
Gaemon’s bones, but you will get no more blood from him.”

Many and more have wondered at the seeming forebearance of the new Hand
and his allies during this stalemate. Ser Marston had several hundred
men within the Red Keep, and Ser Lucas Leygood’s gold cloaks numbered
more than two thousand. Maegor’s Holdfast was a

formidable redoubt, to be sure, but it was but weakly held. 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. 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. (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.)
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.

Thus the question must be asked: Why did Marston Waters not simply take
the holdfast by storm? He had more than enough men. Whilst some would
have been lost to Sandoq and the other Lyseni, even the Shadow would
surely have been overwhelmed in the end. 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.

Some will say that Ser Marston’s reluctance was simple cowardice, that
he feared to face the blade of the Lysene giant Sandoq. This seems
unlikely. 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 attack…but Mushroom calls
this “a base lie.”

The most likely explanation is the simplest. Marston Waters was neither
a great knight nor a good man, most scholars agree. 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. In the years since, Waters had climbed high
indeed, becoming Lord Commander of the Kingsguard over knights of better
birth and far greater renown. As the Hand of the King, he would be the
most powerful man in the realm until Aegon III came of age…but at the
crux he hesitated, weighed down by his vows and his own bastard’s honor.
Unwilling to dishonor the white cloak he wore by ordering an attack upon
the king he had sworn to protect, Ser

Marston 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).

On the morning of the twelfth day of the secret siege, Thaddeus Rowan
was brought forth in chains to confess to his offenses.

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.

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. “The
poison used is called the Tears of Lys,” Bernard declared, an assertion
that Grand Maester Munkun then confirmed. “Though the Seven spared you,
sire,” Bernard concluded, “Lord Rowan’s foul plot took the life of your
young friend Gaemon.”

  []

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. 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, whereupon

he said in a thick voice, “Ser Marston speaks truly, Your Grace. I have
confessed to all. Lotho promised me fifty thousand dragons when the deed
was done, and another fifty when Viserys took the throne. The poison was
given to me by Roggerio.” 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.

The confession left King Aegon III bereft of speech. 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.

It fell to Prince Viserys to make answer. “And my wife, Lady Larra,” he
shouted down, “was she a part of this plot too, my lord?” Lord Rowan
gave a heavy nod. “She was,” he said. “And what of me?” asked the
prince. “Aye, you as well,” his lordship answered dully…an answer that
seemed to surprise Marston Waters, whilst greatly displeasing Lord
George Graceford. “And Gaemon Palehair, ’twas he who put the poison in
the tart, I’ll venture,” Viserys went on glibly. “If it please my
prince,” mumbled Thaddeus Rowan. Whereupon the prince turned to the king
his brother and said, “Gaemon was as guilty as the rest of us… of
nothing,” and the dwarf Mushroom called down, “Lord Rowan, was it you
who poisoned King Viserys?” To which the old Hand nodded, saying, “It
was, my lord. I do confess it.”

The king’s face grew hard. “Ser Marston,” he said, “this man is my Hand
and innocent of treason. The traitors here are those who tortured him to
bring forth this false confession. Seize the Lord Confessor, if you love
your king…else I will know that you are as false as he is.” His words
rang across the inner ward, and in that moment, the broken boy Aegon III
seemed every inch a king.

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.

Whatever the truth, Ser Marston did as the king had commanded. Lord
Graceford was seized by the Kingsguard and dragged away to the very
dungeon he himself had ruled when he awoke that day. Lord Rowan’s chains
were removed, and all his knights and serving men

were brought up from the dungeons into the sunlight.

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. 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.

Not all surrendered peacefully. 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. Three of the accused captains fled before
they could be taken, with a dozen of their men. 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.

Ser Marston chose to confront Mervyn Flowers himself. “We are the both
of us bastards and Sworn Brothers besides,” he was heard to tell Ser
Raynard Ruskyn. 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. 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. Flowers got no farther than the stables,
where a drunken man-at-arms and two young stableboys found him saddling
his courser. He killed them all, but the noise brought others running,
and the bastard knight was finally overwhelmed and beaten to death,
still clad in the white cloak that he had shamed.

His lord commander, Ser Marston Waters, did not long outlive him. 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.
Though Munkun sewed him up as best he could and gave him milk of the
poppy, Waters expired that same night.

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. The rest of the
plotters were consigned to the black cells to await trial. Some
protested their innocence, whilst others claimed, as Ser Marston had,
that they

had acted from the honest belief that Thaddeus Rowan and the Lyseni were
the traitors. A few proved more forthcoming, however. Ser Gareth Long
was the most voluable, declaring loudly that Aegon III was a weakling
unfit to hold a sword, much less sit the Iron Throne. Septon Bernard
argued from his Faith; the Lyseni and their queer foreign gods had no
place in the Seven Kingdoms. 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.

The frankest of the plotters was Tessario the Thumb. He had done it for
gold and girls and vengeance, he said. 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. But when his inquisitors asked who had made this
promise, Tessario had no answer but a grin…a grin that turned into a
grimace, and thence a scream, when he was asked again under torture. The
first name he gave was that of Marston Waters, but on further
questioning he named George Graceford, and still later Mervyn Flowers.
Mushroom tells us that the Tiger was on the point of giving a fourth
name, mayhaps the true name, when he expired.

One name was never mentioned, though it hung over the Red Keep like a
cloud. 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. The “player in the
shadows,” Mushroom calls him. “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. The women were women,
and the Kingsguard were used to obeying commands, not giving them. 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 all of
them had ties to one man: Unwin Peake, Lord of Starpike, Lord of
Dunstonbury, Lord of Whitegrove, once Hand of the King.”

No doubt others entertained the same suspicions once the plot to kill
the king had been unmasked. Several of the traitors had blood ties to
the former Hand, whilst others owed him their positions. Nor was Peake a
stranger to conspiracy, having once planned the murder of two
dragonriders under the sign of the Bloody Caltrops. But Peake had been
at Starpike during the secret siege, and none of his supposed

catspaws ever spoke his name, so his involvement remained unproven, then
as now.

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. 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 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.

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. Soon thereafter Thaddeus
Rowan once more took up residence in the Tower of the Hand…but it was
plain to all that his lordship was in no fit state to resume his duties
as the Hand of the King. The things that had been done to him in the
dungeons had broken him. One moment he might seem his old self, hale and
hearty, only to begin weeping uncontrollably the next. Mushroom, who
could be as cruel as he was clever, would make mock of the old man,
accusing him of outlandish crimes to elicit even more absurd
confessions. “I do recall that one night I made him confess to the Doom
of Valyria,” says the dwarf in his Testimony. “The court roared with
laughter, but as I look back upon it now, I blush for shame.”

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. 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. 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.
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.

As the old year waned and gave way to the new, lord after lord arrived
in King’s Landing, answering the king’s summons. The ravens

had done their work. 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. King’s Landing was soon full
to the point of bursting, to the delight of the city’s innkeeps, whores,
and merchants.

Most of those attending came from the crownlands, the riverlands, the
stormlands…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). 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. Yet the largest retinue
was that accompanying Lord Unwin Peake, who brought a thousand of his
own men and five hundred sellswords. (“What ever could he be afraid of?”
Mushroom quipped.)

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. After meeting for more than a
fortnight, they were no closer to accord than when they had begun.
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. The strong men had too many enemies, whilst the lesser lords
were looked down upon for being poor or weak. Finally, in despair at
reaching an agreement, Grand Maester Munkun proposed that three regents
be chosen by lot. When Prince Viserys added his voice to Munkun’s, the
proposal was adopted. The lots fell to Willam Stackspear, Marq
Merryweather, and Lorent Grandison, of whom it could be truly said that
they were as inoffensive as they were undistinguished.

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.
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 brother

would prefer a younger man, “and one less like to fill his court with
traitors.” Alyn Velaryon’s name was also put forward, but he was deemed
to be too young. Kermit Tully and Benjicot Blackwood were spurned for
the same reason. Instead the lords turned to the northman, Torrhen
Manderly, Lord of White Harbor…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).

“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.” Then up stood Oakenfist, to offer the name of Isembard Arryn, the
Gilded Falcon of the Vale. 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”). Ser Raynard Ruskyn became Lord Commander of the
Kingsguard, whilst Ser Adrian Thorne was chosen to command the gold
cloaks. 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.

And so it was done. 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.

His new Hand began at once to tend to the business of the realm. 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. No fewer than forty-two persons stood accused, for those named by
Lord Graceford had in turn named others when questioned sharply. Sixteen
had fled and eight had died, leaving eighteen to be judged. Thirteen of
those had already confessed to some degree of involvement in the crimes,
for the king’s inquisitors were most persuasive. 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.

The trials lasted three-and-thirty days. 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. King Aegon came but thrice, on the days that judgment was

pronounced upon Gareth Long, George Graceford, and Septon Bernard; he
showed no interest in the rest, and never asked about their fates. Queen
Daenaera did not attend at all.

Ser Gareth and Lord Graceford were condemned to die, but both chose to
take the black 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. 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. Instead
Bernard was gelded and condemned to walk barefoot from King’s Landing to
Oldtown with his manhood hung about his neck. “If he survives, His High
Holiness may make what use of him he will,” the Hand decreed. (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.)

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. The same choice was made by the
surviving Fingers…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.” 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. “You
always were a bloody fool, Victor,” Ser Gareth said, when his longsword
was placed into his hand. The former master-at-arms dispatched the
former headsman quickly, then turned with a smile to the condemned in
the back of the throne room and asked, “Anyone else?”

The most troubling cases were those of the three women who stood
accused, all of them highborn ladies and attendants to the queen.
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 man will have me now, because of her.” 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.” When Willam Stackspear suggested that perhaps she was part of
the reward the Volantene had been promised, Lady Cassandra burst into
tears. Yet even her confession paled beside

that 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. “He
smiles whenever he sees me,” she told the court, “and once when he
passed me on the steps, his shoulder brushed against my bosom.”

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. 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). If she had been involved, it was likely Unwin Peake had
as well. 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.

Though unquestionably part of the conspiracy, the roles played by the
three women had been comparatively minor. For that reason, and on
account of their sex, Lord Manderly and the regents chose to show them
mercy. 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.

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. 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. 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.”
Thrice bereft, Ser Walter had fathered sixteen children by his previous
wives, thirteen of whom still lived. It was Lady Elendra’s thought that
caring for these children and any additional

sons or daughters that she herself might give Ser Walter would keep Lady
Cassandra from plotting any further treasons. (And so it did.)

This concluded the last of the treason trials, but the dungeons beneath
the Red Keep had not as yet been emptied. The fate of Lady Larra’s
brothers Lotho and Roggerio remained to be decided. 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. 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.

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. The palace he
had bequeathed to his daughter Lysara was seized, together with the
manses of his other children, and all their furnishings. 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. Lady
Lysara was deprived of her gold, gems, and gowns, Lady Marra of her
books. Fredo Rogare saw the magisters seize the Perfumed Garden, even as
he tried to sell it. His slaves were sold, along with those of his
siblings, trueborn or bastard. 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. 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.

Nor did Lysaro Rogare, architect of his family’s doom, escape unscathed.
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. Loyal to the end, the Unsullied died to a man fighting to protect
him…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. Once taken, Lysaro was sent
downriver to Volantis, where the Triarchs offered him to his brother
Drako, for a certain price. Drako

declined and suggested the Volantenes sell him back to Lys instead. And
so Lysaro Rogare was returned to Lys, chained to an oar in the belly of
a Volantene slave ship.

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. It did not
save him. 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).

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. And so it was done. 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. Lysaro expired in the seventh hour of the first day of his
scourging. 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.

In this instance, at the least, Lysene justice proved to be considerably
harsher than that of the Seven Kingdoms. 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 alike…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.

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. Lord Manderly gave him the choice of taking the black, or having
his right hand removed as if he were a common thief. “Then praise
Yndros, I am left-handed,” Lotho said, choosing mutilation. Nothing at
all could be proved against his brother Roggerio, but Lord Manderly
sentenced him to seven lashes all the same. “For what?” Roggerio
demanded of him, aghast. “For being a thrice-damned Lyseni,” Torrhen
Manderly responded.

  After the sentences had been carried out, both of the brothers left

King’s Landing. 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. Thus was his pillow house reborn,
this time with sails. 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. 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
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. Thus was born the
Bank of Oldtown, which has made House Hightower richer still.

(Moredo Rogare, the eldest of the three brothers who had come with Lady
Larra to King’s Landing, was in Braavos during the trials, treating with
the keyholders of the Iron Bank. Before the year was out, he would sail
for Tyrosh, flush with Braavosi gold, to hire ships and swords for an
attack on Lys. That is a tale for another time, however, beyond our
current purview.)

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. 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.

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 Hand…though more the latter than the former. “The gods chose our
new regents,” Mushroom observed, “and it would seem that gods are just
as thick as lords.” He was not wrong. 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.
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. 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. Manderly
did become fond of Prince Viserys, however, and doted on Queen Daenaera.

Though the northman’s regency was comparatively short, it was far from
uneventful. 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. With the Lord
Commander, he brought the Kingsguard up to seven once again, bestowing
white cloaks upon Ser Edmund Warrick, Ser Dennis Whitfield, and Ser
Agramore Cobb to fill the places of Marston Waters, Mervyn Flowers, and
Amaury Peake. 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.

With Ser Gareth Long upon the Wall, the Red Keep had need of a new
master-at-arms. Lord Manderly appointed a fine young swordsman named Ser
Lucas Lothston. 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. 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. It was Grand Maester Munkun who urged
that Rowley be appointed. “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.”

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. A feast was held
to celebrate, and all rejoiced at the birth of this new prince…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. No harm was done, for Aemon’s howls soon brought Lady Larra
running to disarm and discipline her elder son.

Soon thereafter, Lord Alyn Oakenfist grew restless, and began to make
plans for the second of his six great voyages. The Velaryons had
entrusted much of their gold to Lotho Rogare, and lost more than half

their wealth in consequence. 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.

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.
Yet in the end they reconciled, as they always did. The fleet set sail
at mid-year, led by Oakenfist in a galley he named Bold Marilda after
his mother. Lady Baela remained on Driftmark with Lord Alyn’s second
child growing inside her.

The king’s sixteenth nameday was drawing near. 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. It would be good for the boy to see the lands he ruled, the Hand
reasoned, to show himself to his people. Aegon was tall and comely, and
his sweet young queen could supply whatever charm the king might lack.
The commons would surely love her, which could only be of benefit to the
solemn young king.

The regents concurred. Plans were made for a grand progress lasting a
full year, one that would take His Grace to parts of the realm that had
never seen a king before. From King’s Landing they would ride to
Duskendale and Maidenpool, and thence take ship for Gulltown. After a
visit to the Eyrie, they would return to Gulltown and sail for the
North, with a stop at the Three Sisters.

White Harbor would give the king and queen a welcome such as they had
never seen, Lord Manderly promised. Then they could continue north to
Winterfell, perhaps even visit the Wall, before turning south again,
down the kingsroad to the Neck. 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. A few nights at Riverrun, and they
would cross over the hills into the west, to visit Lady Johanna at
Casterly Rock.

From there it would be down the sea road to the Reach… Highgarden,
Goldengrove, Old Oak…there was a dragon at Red Lake, Aegon would not
like that, but Red Lake was easily avoided…a visit at one of Unwin
Peake’s seats might help assuage the former Hand. At

Oldtown 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. “It will be a progress such as the
realm has not seen in more than a century,” Grand Maester Munkun told
His Grace. “Spring is a time for new beginnings, sire, and this will
mark the true beginning of your reign. From the Dornish Marches to the
Wall, all will know you for their king, and Daenaera for their queen.”

Torrhen Manderly agreed. “It will do the lad some good to get out of
this bloody castle,” he declared, in Mushroom’s hearing. “He can hunt
and hawk, climb a mountain or two, fish for salmon in the White Knife,
see the Wall. Feasts every night. It would not harm the boy to put some
flesh on those bones of his. Let him try some good northern ale, so
thick you can cut it with a sword.”

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. Lists of those lords and knights
wishing to accompany the king were drawn up, torn up, and drawn up
again. Horses were shod, armor polished, wagons and wheelhouses repaired
and repainted, banners sewn. 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. 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. Even
the clothing that the king and queen would wear came in for careful
thought. On the days when Queen Daenaera wore green, it was decided,
Aegon would be clad in his customary black. 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.

A few matters were still under discussion when King Aegon’s nameday
dawned at last. 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.

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.

Four knights of the Kingsguard accompanied the young king to the council
chambers. So did Sandoq the Shadow, veiled and silent, carrying his
great sword. His ominous presence cast a pall in the room. For a moment
even Torrhen Manderly lost his tongue.

“Lord Manderly,” King Aegon said, in the sudden stillness, “pray tell me
how old I am, if you would be so good.”

“You are ten-and-six today, Your Grace,” Lord Manderly replied. “A man
grown. It is time for you to take the governance of the Seven Kingdoms
into your own hands.”

  “I shall,” King Aegon said. “You are sitting in my chair.”

The coldness in his tone took every man in the room aback, Grand Maester
Munkun would write years later. 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. As he held the chair
for the king, he said, “Your Grace, we were speaking of the progress—”

“There will be no progress,” the king declared, as he was seated. “I
will not spend a year upon a horse, sleeping in strange beds and trading
empty courtesies with drunken lords, half of whom would gladly see me
dead if it gained them a groat. If any man requires words with me, he
will find me on the Iron Throne.”

Torrhen Manderly persisted. “Sire,” he said, “this progress would do
much and more to win you the love of the smallfolk.”

“I mean to give the smallfolk peace and food and justice. If that will
not suffice to win their love, let Mushroom make a progress. Or perhaps
we might send a dancing bear. Someone once told me that the commons love
nothing half so much as dancing bears. You may call a halt to this feast
tonight as well. Send the lords home to their own keeps and give the
food to the hungry. Full bellies and dancing bears shall be my policy.”
Then Aegon turned to the three regents. “Lord Stackspear, Lord
Grandison, Lord Merryweather, I thank you for your service. Consider
yourselves free to go. I shall have no further need of regents.”

  “And will Your Grace have need of a Hand?” asked Lord Manderly.

  []

“A king should have a Hand of his own choosing,” said Aegon III, rising
to his feet. “You have served me well, no doubt, as you served my mother
before me, but it was my lords who chose you. You may return to White
Harbor.”

“Gladly, sire,” said Manderly in a voice that Grand Maester Munkun would
later call a growl. “I have not drunk a decent ale since coming to this
cesspit of a castle.” Whereupon he removed his chain of office and set
it on the council table.

Less than a fortnight later, Lord Manderly took ship for White Harbor
with a small entourage of sworn swords and servants…amongst them
Mushroom. 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. “I was a
fool but never such a fool as to stay with that fool,” he tells us.

The dwarf would come to outlive the young king that he abandoned. 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 here…so, sadly, the little man with the foul
tongue must pass from our story. Though never the most reliable of
chroniclers, the

dwarf spoke truths no one else dared speak, and was often droll besides.

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. 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.

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.

And thus did the rule of the regents come whimpering to an end, as the
broken reign of the Broken King began.

Lineages and Family Tree

[]

  []

  1–37 Aegon I

the Conqueror, the Dragon 37–42 Aenys I

  son of Aegon I and Rhaenys

  42–48 Maegor I

the Cruel, son of Aegon I and Visenya 48–103 Jaehaerys I

  the Old King, the Conciliator; Aenys’s

  son 103–129 Viserys I

grandson of Jaehaerys

  129–131 Aegon II

eldest son of Viserys

  [Aegon II’s ascent was disputed by his half-sister Rhaenyra, ten years
  his elder. Both perished in the war between them, called by singers
  the Dance of the Dragons.]

  131–157 Aegon III

the Dragonbane, Rhaenyra’s son

  [The last of the Targaryen dragons died during the reign of Aegon
  III.]

  157–161 Daeron I

the Young Dragon, the Boy King, eldest son of Aegon III [Daeron conquered Dorne, but was unable to hold it, and died young.]

  161–171 Baelor I

the Beloved, the Blessed; septon and king, second son of Aegon III

  171–172 Viserys II

younger brother of Aegon III

  172–184 Aegon IV

the Unworthy, eldest son of Viserys

  [His younger brother, Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, was champion and
  some say lover to Queen Naerys.]

  184–209 Daeron II

the Good, Queen Naerys’s son, by Aegon or Aemon [Daeron brought Dorne into the realm by wedding the Dornish princess Myriah.]

  209–221 Aerys I

second son of Daeron II (left no issue) 221–233 Maekar I

  fourth son of Daeron II

  233–259 Aegon V

  the Unlikely, Maekar’s fourth son 259–262 Jaehaerys II

second son of Aegon the Unlikely

  262–283 Aerys II

the Mad King, only son of Jaehaerys II

Therein 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.

  []

for Lenore, Elias, Andrea, and Sid, the Mountain Minions

  By George R. R. Martin

  A Song of Ice and Fire Book One: A Game of Thrones Book Two: A Clash
  of Kings Book Three: A Storm of Swords Book Four: A Feast for Crows

  Book Five: A Dance with Dragons

  The World of Ice & Fire: The Untold History of Westeros and the Game
  of Thrones

  Fire & Blood Dying of the Light

  Windhaven (with Lisa Tuttle)

  Fevre Dream

  The Armageddon Rag

  Dead Man’s Hand (with John J. Miller)

  Short Story Collections Dreamsongs: Volume I Dreamsongs: Volume II

  A Song for Lya and Other Stories Songs of Stars and Shadows Sandkings

  Songs the Dead Men Sing Nightflyers

  Tuf Voyaging Portraits of His Children

  Quartet

Edited by George R. R. Martin

  New Voices in Science Fiction, Volumes 1–4

  The Science Fiction Weight-Loss Book (with Isaac Asimov and Martin
  Harry Greenberg)

  The John W. Campbell Awards, Volume 5 Night Visions 3

  Wild Cards I–XXII

  Co-edited with Gardner Dozois

  Warriors I–III Songs of the Dying Earth

  Down These Strange Streets Old Mars

  Dangerous Women Rogues

  Old Venus

About the Author

  GEORGE R. R. MARTIN is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of
  many novels, including those of the acclaimed series A Song of Ice and
  Fire—A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast
  for Crows, and A Dance with Dragons—as well as Tuf Voyaging, Fevre
  Dream, The Armageddon Rag, Dying of the Light, Windhaven (with Lisa
  Tuttle), and Dreamsongs Volumes I and II. He is also the creator of
  The Lands of Ice and Fire, a collection of maps featuring original
  artwork from illustrator and cartographer Jonathan Roberts, and The
  World of Ice & Fire, with Elio M. García, Jr., and Linda Antonsson. 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. He
  lives with the lovely Parris in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

  georgerrmartin.com Facebook.com/GeorgeRRMartinofficial Twitter:
  @GRRMspeaking

About the Illustrator

  DOUG 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. 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.

  Facebook.com/doug.wheatley Twitter: @wheatley_doug Instagram:
  @doug_wheatley

  []

RANDOM HOUSE

  Penguin Ranaom House

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