Aegon III Targaryen

He was born in 120 AC, a small but sturdy baby, pale-skinned, with eyes of a deep, almost black purple and hair so light a silver it looked white — every inch a Targaryen, unlike his older half-siblings, the children of Rhaenyra's first marriage and of Daemon's. Following house custom, a dragon egg was placed in his cradle; from it hatched Stormcloud.

He was named Aegon after the Conqueror, and the choice didn't sit well at court: Queen Alicent Hightower had a son of the same name and took it as a jab from Rhaenyra and Daemon. From then on there were always two Aegons to keep straight, the Elder and the Younger. The boy grew up on Dragonstone, far from the capital.

In 129 AC, at the suggestion of his half-brother Jacaerys Velaryon, Aegon and his younger brother Viserys sailed for Essos aboard the Gay Abandon, meant to shelter with a prince of Pentos while their mother secured the Iron Throne. The ship never made port: the fleet of the Triarchy, allied with the Greens, fell on it and sank or captured its escorts.

Viserys, carrying nothing but a dragon egg, was taken prisoner. Aegon, nine years old, escaped on Stormcloud while the sailors fired on them; the dragon took arrow after arrow to the belly and a scorpion bolt through the neck, but held the air long enough to bring Aegon back to Dragonstone, where he arrived with word of the new threat.

After the Fall of King's Landing, Aegon stayed by his mother's side, and when his brother Joffrey died he became heir. He was riding back to Dragonstone with Rhaenyra when Aegon II's men caught up with them: he was made to watch the dragon Sunfyre devour her alive. Ser Alfred Broome urged the king to kill the nephew too, but Aegon II chose to keep him alive, as a hostage.

Aegon II's poisoning and the arrival in the capital of armies from the North, the Riverlands and the Vale cleared the way for Aegon III's coronation in 131 AC, at just eleven years old.

When Lord Cregan Stark reached King's Landing, he had twenty-two men arrested for his uncle's murder: killing a king in battle was one thing, poisoning him another, an affront to the very gods who had anointed him. Intimidated, the young king agreed to name him Hand.

During the trials, his half-sisters Baela and Rhaena talked him into restoring Lord Corlys Velaryon's seat and honors; Alysanne Blackwood married Cregan Stark in exchange for that decree standing. Once the war was over, Aegon married Jaehaera Targaryen, the late king's daughter, to seal peace between the two sides.

In 133 AC Queen Jaehaera died under circumstances no one ever fully explained. That same year, Lord Unwin Peake, then Hand of the King, threw a great ball hoping to marry Aegon to his own daughter. Of the thousand maidens presented that night, the king chose the very last, Daenaera Velaryon.

Aegon never forgave himself for fleeing on Stormcloud while his brother Viserys was left behind in enemy hands. After the war, Lord Alyn Velaryon found him held in Lys, where merchant princes hoped to profit from his ransom, and paid a fortune to free him. Viserys returned to the capital with his new wife, Larra Rogare, and from then on Aegon trusted no one the way he trusted him.

On the day he turned sixteen, Aegon came before the small council and dismissed the regents who had ruled in his name. As he did, he said: "I mean to give the people peace, food, and justice. If that is not enough to win their love, we shall send Ser Mushroom out among them. Or a dancing bear, perhaps; I am told the smallfolk love nothing so well as dancing bears. You may also cancel tonight's feast: send the lords home to their castles and give the food to the hungry instead. That will be my policy: full bellies and dancing bears."

He named Viserys his Hand, and together the two of them set about untangling what the war and years of regencies had left in disorder.

He was described as a stern, cold man who rarely smiled and could go days without speaking to anyone; he dressed in black, wearing under his clothes nothing but a gold chain with a three-headed dragon.

Four dragons still lived through his reign: Silverwing, Morning, Sheepstealer and Cannibal. Aegon had been terrified of dragons since watching Sunfyre devour his mother, and mounting one was the last thing he wanted, yet he was certain the crown needed them against anyone who defied it. When the last one died in 153 AC, many blamed him for it, though the maesters likely had their own hand in it; the king had tried, without success, to get hold of dragon eggs, and still earned the name Dragonsbane. On Viserys's suggestion he even brought nine sorcerers from Essos to try to win the dragons back; nothing came of it.

With Daenaera Velaryon he had five children: the princes Daeron and Baelor and the princesses Daena, Rhaena and Elaena. Daeron, the eldest, was named Prince of Dragonstone and heir. Aegon III died in King's Landing in 157 AC, at thirty-six, of an illness; many of his subjects took him for older, since his childhood had ended too soon.

Daeron succeeded him. When he and his brother Baelor died without children, the crown passed to Viserys and then to his son, Aegon IV. Aegon III's daughter Daena had a bastard son with her cousin Daemon Blackfyre, who would later rise against Daeron II for the Iron Throne; her other daughter, Elaena, married three times and had seven children of her own.