An Extract from Fire and Blood by Archmaester Gyldayn of the Citadel of Oldtown.
On the third day of that accursed year 124 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.
After three days of delirium, Lady Laena passed from this mortal coil.
She was 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.
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 124 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.
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 rumoured 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.
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.)
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.
Prince Aemond said later that he lost an eye and gained a dragon that day, and he 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 Rhaenya 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.
Though Viserys I would reign for seven more years, the bloody seeds of the Dance of the Dragons had already been planted, and 124 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 stiffness 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 named heir 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.
The king, court, and commons were all outraged by the news.
Prince Daeron would later come to say that this was one of his sister’s greatest mistakes, which shifted her favourability among their father, The King and one of the reasons he later renamed his brother as heir.
We do not know the true thoughts of the King but it was well known among his court that he had begun to grow wroth of his daughter in his later years.
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 124 AC ended as it began, 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.
By all rights, the year 126 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 and uncle.
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.
King Viserys wed his son Aegon the Elder to Cassandra Baratheon, the Eldest daughter of Lord Borros Baratheon.
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 strong wine and pinching and fondling any serving girl who strayed within his reach.
And the bride.
Cassandra was widely considered to be the cleverest of the Four Storms (the name kept for the four daughters of Lord Baratheon), She was widely considered a sweet girl, if somewhat frivolous.
It has been noted by Grand Maester Mellos, that the King thanked his Hand, Otto Hightower in the small council meetings after the marriage for suggesting such a match, while Lord Otto credited it to his nephew, Lord Ormund Hightower, who brokered it.
Many in the blacks considered it to be a treacherous scheme orchestrated by the lord Hand to win the support of the Stormlands but this is wildly discredited as Princess Rhaenyra had the same opportunity to bind her blood to other houses by her sons but instead chose her close relatives.
As we saw in 120 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 six then and Lucerys five, the girls four.
Princess Rhaenyra had every opportunity to break the said betrothal and find better matches for her sons but instead she withheld them.
Rumours began to spread that the Princess believed her sons to be too great for anything less than Royal blood, Mushroom suggests the young princes had already consummated with their betrothed, hence breaking the match would now be seen as a wound to the pride and purity of the Dragon Twins, Rhaena and Baela.
But this has been dismissed as nothing more than a debaucherous thought by the jester as we see in the upcoming chapters.
Barely a year later, in 127 AC, the seventeen-year-old Lady Baratheon gave birth to twins, a boy she named Orys and a girl called Visenya.
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.
Visenya 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.
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.
Daeron was twelve now, he was sent five years ago to Oldtown to serve as cupbearer and squire to Lord Hightower.
Reports from the Maesters confirms that Prince Daeron has made multiple visits to the old halls and long libraries over the years, sometimes staying as long as weeks and discussing matters of knowledge and designs of new tools.
Maesters of that time found some of his designs to be outrageous, otherworldly and impossible to make but many have them later came to fruition.
Some claim that Prince Daeron was a Dragon Dreamer akin to his ancestor Daenys the Dreamer and instead of foretelling invents, he had gained knowledge to design tools, many even suggested that he had been blessed by the Smith but the Prince had refused such claims in his later years.
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 goodfather 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 scarcely 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.”
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 128 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.
The announcement came late in the eve when most of the festives were done and dealth with when news of the arrival of the third son of King Viserys reached the chambers.
The servants and the court both agree, it was this eve that started the gruesome war called the Dance of the Dragons to begin.
Or so the court chronicles record.