The eldest was Aegon, born in the Red Keep in 135 AC after Viserys’s return from Lys. He was a robust lad who grew to be handsome and charming, and also irresponsible and capricious, devoted to his pleasures. He caused his father much trouble and toil, and the realm much pain.
In 136 AC, Aemon followed. He was as robust as Aegon as an infant, and as beautiful to look upon, but his brother’s faults were not in him. He proved the greatest jouster and swordsman of his age—a knight worthy to bear Dark Sister. He became known as the Dragonknight for the three-headed dragon crest wrought in white gold upon his helm. To this very day some call him the noblest knight who ever lived and one of the most storied names to ever serve in the Kingsguard.
The last of Viserys’s children was his only daughter, Naerys, born in 138 AC. She had skin so pale that it seemed almost translucent, men said. She was small of frame (and made smaller by having little appetite), with very fine features, and singers wrote songs in praise of her eyes—a deep violet in hue and very large, framed by pale lashes.
She loved Aemon best of her brothers, for he knew how to make her laugh—and he had something of the same piety that she possessed, while Aegon did not. She loved the Seven as dearly as she loved her brother, if not more so, and might have been a septa if her lord father had allowed it. But he did not, and Viserys instead wed her to his son Aegon in 153 AC, with King Aegon III’s blessing. The singers say that Aemon and Naerys both wept during the ceremony, though the histories tell us Aemon quarreled with Aegon at the wedding feast, and that Naerys wept during the bedding rather than the wedding.
There are those who write that many of the follies of the Young Dragon and Baelor the Blessed originated in Prince Viserys, while others argue that Viserys moderated the worst of their obsessions as best he could. Though his reign lasted little more than a year, it is instructive to consider his reforms of the royal household and its functions; the establishment of a new royal mint; his efforts to increase trade across the narrow sea; and his revisions of the code of laws that Jaehaerys the Conciliator had established during his long reign.
Viserys II had within him the capacity to be a new Conciliator, for no king had ever been shrewder or more capable. Tragically, a sudden illness carried him away in 172 AC.
It need not be said that some found the illness and its swiftness suspicious, but none dared speak their suspicion at the time. It would be more than a decade before the first accusation was put to paper that Viserys had been poisoned by none other than his successor, his son Aegon.
Is there truth to this suspicion? We cannot say for certain. But given all the infamous and corrupt deeds of Aegon the Unworthy, both before and after he assumed the crown, it cannot be discounted.
A EGON IV
WITH HIS FATHER’S death in 172 AC, Aegon, the Fourth of his Name, came at last to the throne that he had coveted as a boy. He had been comely in his youth, skilled with lance and sword, a man who loved to hunt and hawk and dance. He was the brightest prince at court in his generation and was admired for his wit. But he had one great flaw: he could not rule himself. His lusts, his gluttony, his desires—they all controlled him utterly. Seated upon the Iron Throne, his misrule began with small acts of pleasure, but in time his appetites knew no bounds, and his corruption led to acts that haunted the realm for generations. “Aenys was weak and Maegor was cruel,” Kaeth writes, “and Aegon II was grasping, but no king before or after would practice so much willful misrule.”
Aegon soon filled his court with men chosen not for their nobility, honesty, or wisdom, but for their ability to amuse and flatter him. And the women of his court were largely those who did the same, letting him slake his lusts upon their bodies. On a whim, he often took from one noble house to give to another, as he did when he casually appropriated the great hills called the Teats from the Brackens and gifted them to the Blackwoods. For the sake of his desires, he gave away priceless treasures, as he did when he granted his Hand, Lord Butterwell, a dragon’s egg in return for access to all three of his daughters. He deprived men of their rightful inheritance when he desired their wealth, as rumors claim he did following the death of Lord Plumm upon his wedding day.
The young Prince Aegon, with his parents, Prince Viserys II and Larra Rogare. (illustration credit 68)
For the smallfolk, his reign might have been a source of gossip and amusement. To the lords of the realm who did not stay at court, and who did not wish to have Aegon make free with their daughters, he might have seemed strong and decisive, frivolous, but largely harmless. But to those who dared enter his circle, he was too mercurial, too greedy, and too cruel to be anything but dangerous.
It was said of Aegon that he never slept alone and did not count a night complete until he had spent himself in a woman. His carnal lusts were satiated by all manner of women, from the highest born of princesses to the meanest whore, and he seemed to make no difference between them. In his last years, Aegon claimed he had slept with at least nine hundred women (the exact number eluded him), but that he only truly loved nine. (Queen Naerys, his sister, was not counted among them). The nine mistresses came from near and far, and some gave him natural children, but each and every one (save the last) was dismissed when he grew weary of her. However, one of those natural children came from a woman not accounted his mistress: Princess Daena, the Defiant.
Daemon was the name Daena gave to this child, for Prince Daemon had been the wonder and the terror of his age, and in later days that was seen as a warning of what the boy would become. Daemon Waters was his full name when he was born in 170 AC. At that time, Daena refused to name the father, but even then Aegon’s involvement was suspected. Raised at the Red Keep, this handsome youth was given the instruction of the wisest maesters and the best masters-at-arms at court, including Ser Quentyn Ball, the fiery knight called Fireball. He loved nothing better than deeds of arms and excelled at them, and many saw in him a warrior who would one day be another Dragonknight. King Aegon knighted Daemon in his twelfth year when he won a squires’ tourney (thereby making him the youngest knight ever made in the time of the Targaryens, surpassing Maegor I) and shocked his court, kin, and council by bestowing upon him the sword of Aegon the Conqueror, Blackfyre, as well as lands and other honors. Daemon took the name Blackfyre thereafter.
Queen Naerys—the one woman Aegon IV bedded in whom he took no pleasure—was pious and gentle and frail, and all these things the king misliked. Childbirth also proved a trial to Naerys, for she was small and delicate. When Prince Daeron was born on the last day of 153 AC, Grand Maester Alford warned that another pregnancy might kill her. Naerys was said to address her brother thus: “I have done my duty by you, and given you an heir. I beg you, let us live henceforth as brother and sister.” We are told that Aegon replied: “That is what we are doing.” Aegon continued to insist his sister perform her wifely duties for the rest of her life.
Matters between them were inflamed further by Prince Aemon, their brother, who had been inseparable from Naerys when they were young. Aegon’s resentment of his noble, celebrated brother was plain to all, for the king delighted in slighting Aemon and Naerys both at every turn. Even after the Dragonknight died in his defense, and Queen Naerys perished in childbed the year after, Aegon IV did little to honor their memory.
The king’s quarrels with his close kin became all the worse after his son Daeron grew old enough to voice his opinions. Kaeth’s Lives of Four Kings makes it plain that the false accusations of the queen’s adultery made by Ser Morgil Hastwyck were instigated by the king himself, though at the time Aegon denied it. These claims were disproved by Ser Morgil’s death in a trial by combat against the Dragonknight. That these accusations came at the same time as Aegon and Prince Daeron were quarreling over the king’s plans to launch an unprovoked war against Dorne was surely no coincidence. It was also the first (but not the last) time that Aegon threatened to name one of his bastards as his heir instead of Daeron.
Blackfyre, the sword of the Targaryen k
ings. (illustration credit 69)
After the deaths of his siblings, the king began to make barely veiled references to his son’s alleged illegitimacy—something he dared only because the Dragonknight was dead. His courtiers and hangers-on aped the king, and this calumny spread.
In the last years of his reign, Prince Daeron proved the chief obstacle to Aegon’s misrule. Some lords of the realm clearly saw opportunity in the increasingly corpulent, gluttonous king who could be convinced to part with honors, offices, and lands for the promise of pleasures. Others, who condemned the king’s behavior, began to flock to Prince Daeron; despite all his threats and calumnies and tasteless japes, the king never formally disowned his son. Accounts differ as to why: some suggest that some shriveled part of Aegon still knew honor, or at least shame. The likeliest cause, however, was that he knew that such an act would bring war to the realm, for Daeron’s allies—chief among them the Prince of Dorne, whose sister Daeron had wed—would defend his rights. Perhaps it was for this reason that Aegon turned his attention to Dorne, using the hatred for the Dornishmen that still burned in the marches, the stormlands, and the Reach to suborn some of Daeron’s allies and use them against his most powerful supporters.
Fortunately for the realm, the king’s plans to invade Dorne in 174 AC proved a complete failure. Though His Grace built a huge fleet, thinking to succeed as Daeron the Young Dragon had done, it was broken and scattered by storms on its way to Dorne.
This was far from the greatest folly of Aegon IV’s stillborn invasion of Dorne, however, for His Grace had also turned to the dubious pyromancers of the ancient Guild of Alchemists, commanding them to “build me dragons.” These wood-and-iron monstrosities, fitted with pumps that shot jets of wildfire, might perhaps have been of some use in a siege. But Aegon proposed to drag these devices up and through the Boneway, where there are places so steep that the Dornishmen have carved steps.
They did not come even that far, however, for the first of the dragons went up in flames in the kingswood, far from the Boneway. Soon all seven were burning. Hundreds of men burned in those fires, along with almost a quarter of the kingswood. After that, the king gave up his ambitions and never spoke of Dorne again.
The reign of this unworthy monarch came to an end in 184 AC, when King Aegon was nine-and-forty years of age. He was grossly fat, barely able to walk, and some wondered how his last mistress—Serenei of Lys, the mother of Shiera Seastar—could ever have withstood his embraces. The king himself died a horrible death, his body so swollen and obese that he could no longer lift himself from his couch, his limbs rotting and crawling with fleshworms. The maesters claimed they had never seen its like, whilst septons declared it a judgment of the gods. Aegon was given milk of the poppy to dull his pain, but elsewise little could be done for him.
His last act before his death, all accounts agree, was to set out his will. And in it, he left the bitterest poison the realm ever knew: he legitimized all of his natural children, from the most baseborn to the Great Bastards—the sons and daughters born to him by women of noble birth. Scores of his natural children had never been acknowledged; Aegon’s dying declaration meant naught to them. For his acknowledged bastards, however, it meant a great deal. And for the realm, it meant blood and fire for five generations.
The knighting of Daemon Blackfyre by his father, King Aegon IV. (illustration credit 70)
The nine mistresses of Aegon IV, the Unworthy
LADY FALENA STOKEWORTH
Ten years older than the king
Lady Falena “made him a man” in 149, when Aegon was fourteen. When a Kingsguard found them abed together in 151, his father wed Falena to his master-at-arms, Lucas Lothston, and persuaded the king to name Lothston Lord of Harrenhal in order to remove Falena from court. However, over the next two years, Aegon paid frequent visits to Harrenhal.
Children by Falena Stokeworth: None acknowledged.
MEGETTE (MERRY MEG)
The young and buxom wife of a blacksmith
While riding near Fairmarket in 155, Aegon’s horse threw a shoe, and when he sought out the local smith, he came to notice the man’s young wife. He went on to buy her for seven gold dragons (and the threat of Ser Joffrey Staunton of the Kingsguard). Megette was installed in a house in King’s Landing; she and Aegon were even “wed” in a secret ceremony conducted by a mummer playing a septon. Megette gave her prince four children in as many years. Prince Viserys put an end to it, returning Megette to her husband and placing the daughters with the Faith to be trained as septas. Megette was beaten to death within a year by the blacksmith.
Children by Merry Meg: Alysanne, Lily, Willow, Rosey.
LADY CASSELLA VAITH
Daughter of a Dornish lord
After the Submission of Sunspear, Aegon escorted the hostages that the king had gathered from the lords of Dorne back to King’s Landing. Among them was Cassella Vaith, a willowy maid with green eyes and pale white-blond hair, whom Aegon ended up keeping “hostage” in his own chambers. When the Dornishmen revolted and murdered King Daeron, all the hostages were to be killed, and Aegon—by then bored of her—returned Cassella to her place with the other prisoners. However, the new king, Baelor, pardoned all the hostages and personally took them back to Dorne. Cassella never wed, and in her old age she was consumed by the delusion that she had been Aegon’s one true love and that he would soon send for her.
Children by Cassella Vaith: None.
BELLEGERE OTHERYS (THE BLACK PEARL OF BRAAVOS)
Smuggler, trader, sometime pirate, captain of the Widow Wind, born of a union between a Braavosi merchant’s daughter and an envoy from the Summer Isles
After Naerys fell pregnant and almost died in 161, King Baelor sent Aegon to Braavos on a diplomatic mission. Accounts of the time suggest it was an excuse to make certain Aegon left Naerys alone as she recovered from a failed childbirth. There he met Bellegere Otherys. His affair with the Black Pearl continued for ten years, though it was said that Bellegere had a husband in every port and that Aegon was but one of many. She gave birth to three children during the decade, two girls and a boy of doubtful paternity.
Children by the Black Pearl: Bellenora, Narha, Balerion.
(l. to r.): Lady Melissa Blackwood, Serenei of Lys, Lady Falena Stokeworth, Bellegere Otherys (illustration credit 71)
LADY BARBA BRACKEN
The vivacious dark-haired daughter of Lord Bracken of Stone Hedge, and a companion to the three princesses in Maidenvault
With Baelor’s death in 171 and Viserys II’s ascension to the throne, the princesses were once again permitted male company. Aegon (now Prince of Dragonstone and heir apparent) became entranced with sixteen-year-old Barba. On his own ascent in 172, he named her father as his Hand and openly took her for his mistress. She bore him a bastard only a fortnight before another set of twins—a stillborn boy and a girl, Daenerys, who survived—were delivered by Queen Naerys. With the queen lingering near death, the Hand—Barba’s father—talked openly of wedding his daughter to the King. After the queen’s recovery, the scandal proved Barba’s undoing, as young Prince Daeron and his uncle, the Dragonknight, forced Aegon to send her and the bastard away. The boy, raised at Stone Hedge by the Brackens, was called Aegor Rivers, but in time became known as Bittersteel.
Children by Barba Bracken: Aegor Rivers (Bittersteel).
LADY MELISSA (MISSY) BLACKWOOD
The best loved of the king’s mistresses
Both younger and prettier than Lady Barba (albeit far less buxom), as well as more modest, Missy had a kind heart and generous nature that led even Queen Naerys herself—as well as the Dragonknight and Prince Daeron—to befriend her. During the five years of her “reign,” Missy bore the king three bastards, most notably the boy Brynden Rivers (born 175), later called Bloodraven.
Children by Melissa Blackwood: Mya, Gwenys, Brynden (Bloodraven).
LADY BETHANY BRACKEN
Lady Barba’s younger sister
Bethany was groomed by her
father and sister expressly to win the king’s favor and displace Missy Blackwood. In 177, she caught Aegon’s eye as he visited at Stone Hedge to see his bastard son, Aegor. By now, the king was fat and foul-tempered, but Bethany delighted him, and he took her back with him to King’s Landing. However, Bethany found his royal embraces distressing. For comfort, she turned to a knight of the Kingsguard, Ser Terrence Toyne. The pair was discovered abed by Aegon himself in 178. Ser Terrence was tortured to death and both Lady Bethany and her father were executed. When Ser Terrence’s brothers sought to avenge his death, Prince Aemon the Dragonknight was slain while defending his brother, King Aegon.
Children by Bethany Bracken: None.
LADY JEYNE LOTHSTON
Daughter of Lady Falena, the king’s first mistress, by either Lord Lucas Lothston or the king himself
Jeyne was brought to court by her mother in 178, when she was fourteen. Aegon made Lord Lothston his new Hand, and it was said (but never proved) that he enjoyed mother and daughter together in the same bed. He soon gave Jeyne a pox he’d caught from the whores he’d been seeing after Lady Bethany’s execution, and the Lothstons were then all sent from court again.
Children by Jeyne Lothston: None.
SERENEI OF LYS (SWEET SERENEI)
A Lysene beauty from an ancient but impoverished line, brought to court by Lord Jon Hightower, the new Hand
Serenei was the most beautiful of Aegon’s mistresses, but she was also reputed to be a sorceress. She died giving birth to the last of the king’s bastard children, a girl called Shiera Seastar who became the greatest beauty in the Seven Kingdoms, beloved of both her half brothers, Bittersteel and Bloodraven, whose rivalry would ripen to hatred.
The World of Ice & Fire: The Untold History of Westeros and the Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire) Page 16