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 strange 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. So he made certain they did not know, sliding from his bed at dawn whilst they still slept and stealing down to the great 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 slapped him, 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 for his brothers when Aemond took to the sky, and both Jace and Luke had come to his call. The Velaryon princelings were younger—Jace was six, Luke five, Joff 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, calling them the Strongs. Jace was old enough to grasp the insult. He flew at Aemond again, but the older boy began pummeling him savagely … until Luke, coming to the rescue of his brother, drew his dagger and slashed Aemond’s face, taking out his right eye. By the time the stableboys 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 a formal apology to his rivals on the other side, but these courtesies did not appease their mothers. Queen Alicent demanded that one of Lucerys’s eyes be put out for the eye he had cost Aemond. 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, of course, 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 each other, 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.
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. Other 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 have wished to remove the man who had dishonored his daughter lest he 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 memory, His Grace declared angrily. The marriage had been performed on Dragonstone, suddenly and secretly. Septon Eustace claims that Rhaenyra knew that 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 had 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, Queen Alicent grew most wroth when she learned the babe had been named Aegon, taking it for a slight against her own Aegon … which it most certainly was. (Hereafter, we will refer to Queen Alicent’s son as Aegon the Elder and Princess Rhaenyra’s son as Aegon the Younger.)
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, who fathered two bastard children the same year as his trueborn twins: a boy on a girl whose maidenhood he bought 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 his trueborn children dead, by law his lands and titles should pass to his 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.