Aegon I Targaryen

Aegon was born on Dragonstone, the rock his family had held for a century before Valyria itself was gone. He was the second child and only son of Lord Aerion Targaryen and Lady Valaena Velaryon, and he grew up on that isolated crag, far from the rest of the Freehold. When he came of age to marry he followed the Valyrian custom of keeping to his own blood, though he went further than most: he took Visenya, the elder, out of duty, and Rhaenys, the younger, because he wanted her.

He crossed the sea more than once as a young man. Volantis asked him for an alliance against the other Free Cities and he refused; when that same Volantis attacked Tyrosh, he flew in on Balerion to defend it. He also knew Westeros before the invasion, whatever people said afterward: he had visited Oldtown and the Arbor as a guest of the Redwynes, and perhaps Lannisport as well.

The war began over a marriage that never happened. The Storm King Argilac Durrandon offered his daughter's hand along with a stretch of neutral land; Aegon answered by proposing his half-brother Orys Baratheon as her husband instead, and Argilac sent the messenger back without his hands. Aegon called his chief bannermen together and sent ravens across Westeros with a single warning: from that day on there would be only one king.

He landed with his sister-wives in the bay of Blackwater, raised a wooden fort there, and flew his house's three-headed dragon banner for the first time — something the lords of Westeros, used to heraldry, read as a sign. Visenya crowned him and Rhaenys proclaimed him king; the common people cheered louder than the lords did.

Harren the Black burned with his sons inside Harrenhal for refusing to bend the knee, and the river lords rose against him; Aegon put Edmyn Tully in charge of those lands. The ironmen surrendered under Vickon Greyjoy. Orys Baratheon defeated and killed Argilac before Storm's End, in the fight that came to be called the Last Storm, and kept the castle and lands for himself.

Loren Lannister and Mern of Highgarden joined forces against him with over fifty thousand men; outnumbered, Aegon loosed all three dragons at once and burned them at the Field of Fire. He let Lannister keep his lands as a vassal and gave the Reach to Harlen Tyrell. Torrhen Stark marched south ready to fight, but seeing the army and the dragons, he knelt without a battle. In the Vale his admiral Daemon Velaryon died, and it was Visenya who finally talked Ronnel Arryn and his mother Sharra into bending the knee. Only Dorne held out: Rhaenys rode as far as Sunspear to speak with Princess Meria Martell, but no terms were reached, and Aegon set those lands aside for another day.

When word of the landing reached Oldtown, the High Septon fasted for seven days beneath the dome of the Starry Sept and came out to say the Faith would not stand against the Targaryens. By the time Aegon reached the city its gates were already open: Lord Manfred Hightower swore fealty and His High Holiness anointed him with the seven oils, proclaiming him king of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, lord of the Seven Kingdoms and protector of the realm — though Dorne had not yielded, and would not for a century.

He founded his capital, King's Landing, on the spot where he had first come ashore. He melted his enemies' swords in Balerion's fire to make the Iron Throne and began work on what would become the Red Keep. He named Orys Baratheon his first Hand. Not long after, the lords of the Three Sisters declared themselves independent and crowned their own queen; Aegon sent Torrhen Stark, and between the northern fleet's siege and Vhagar's intervention, the rebellion was put down.

In year 4 he tried Dorne again, this time from within, and the war dragged on for nine years without gaining him much beyond a few castles. Somewhere in the middle of it his sister Rhaenys was killed, along with her dragon, and the loss enraged him like little else. An attack on him and Visenya in the streets of King's Landing, in year 10, led him to form the elite guard that would become the Kingsguard.

Princess Meria Martell died and her son Nymor took her place; the new prince wanted to end the war without surrendering, and sent his daughter Deria to King's Landing with Meraxes's skull as an offering. Some voices at court wanted her mistreated; Aegon chose to hear her out instead. She handed him a letter from her father. Aegon read it, burned it, and left for Dragonstone. He came back the next day and signed the peace.

He had one son by each wife — Maegor with Visenya, Aenys with Rhaenys. Rhaenys stayed his favorite; he spent ten nights with her for every one with Visenya, though people said she took other lovers in the meantime. With the Faith of the Seven he trod carefully, letting a sept rise on Visenya's Hill and promising a larger one, the Sept of Remembrance, on Rhaenys's Hill.

King's Landing had no walls until year 26, when Aegon accepted that dragons alone couldn't protect a city he and Visenya weren't always in. In year 35 he moved his court back to Dragonstone — Aegon's Fort had never struck him as fit for a king — while work on the Red Keep went on without him; the Iron Throne stayed behind, too heavy to move.

He was a tall, solitary man with purple eyes and hair somewhere between gold and silver, who left the daily business of ruling to his sisters and stepped in only when it mattered. Hard on those who defied him, generous to those who knelt. He never rode in a tourney and never flew Balerion except to war or on a journey; his only friend, it was said, was Orys Baratheon. One line of his survived: "A king should never sit easy."

He died on Dragonstone in year 37, at sixty-four. He was in the Painted Table chamber, telling two of his grandsons the story of his conquest, when a stroke took him. It was said to be a peaceful death, at the close of a reign that had redrawn the map. His son Aenys succeeded him.