Alyssa Targaryen

Alyssa was born in King's Landing in 60 AC, the fifth child of King Jaehaerys I and Queen Alysanne, arriving a year after her brother Baelon. She was named for her grandmother, Alyssa Velaryon. As a small child she looked so much like her late sister Daenerys that it caught at the queen's chest to look at her, though the resemblance soon faded.

Her sister Maegelle was born in 62 AC and grew as attached to Alyssa as Alyssa had been to Baelon. It drove the princess to distraction having the younger girl always clinging to her skirts, and she did what she could to shake her off while Baelon laughed at her temper.

She was a thin girl with a long face, large ears, and dirty blonde hair, with eyes of two different colors: one violet, the other green. At six, a blow from a wooden sword broke her nose, and it healed crooked.

She preferred horses and wooden swords to needlework and embroidery, dressed as a boy whenever she could get away with it, and kept clear of the other girls in the castle. Above all she stuck close to Baelon, who eventually got used to having her always behind him. By 68 AC the queen herself said of her: "Alyssa is for Baelon. She's been following him around since she could walk. They're as close as you and I were at their age."

In 73 AC, a lady-in-waiting newly arrived at the Red Keep teased Vaegon and Daella about when they meant to marry. Vaegon reacted as if he'd been slapped, declaring before the whole court that he would never marry her, that she could barely read, and that someone should find her a lord in need of witless heirs. Daella fled the hall in tears with the queen behind her. Alyssa, three years his elder, poured a jug of wine over his head; even that didn't make him sorry for what he'd said. That same year the king had Baelon train Vaegon in arms, and once it was clear the boy had no gift for it, Baelon dressed Alyssa in mail and set her against him in front of Daella. Alyssa, still remembering the wine, put Vaegon on the ground fifty times that afternoon.

At fifteen, in 75 AC, it was her turn to claim a dragon. Her brother Aemon had claimed Caraxes at seventeen, and Baelon had claimed Vhagar at sixteen; Alyssa had no intention of waiting that long. The Dragonkeepers tried to steer her away from Balerion, arguing he was old and slow and that she deserved something swifter. She took to the air instead on Meleys, a scarlet she-dragon no one had ridden before — not the largest of the family's dragons, but fast enough to easily outfly her own brothers' mounts.

That same year she married Baelon. The wedding feast set off jokes that lasted for days — some said the bride's cries during the bedding could be heard as far as Duskendale — and when asked about it, Alyssa answered without missing a beat, saying she'd ridden him and taken him for a turn, and meant to do it again that night, since she loved to ride. The prince, for his part, spent the rest of the year unable to stop smiling, seizing any excuse to be with his wife, whether flying beside her on Vhagar and Meleys or shut away with her in their chambers.

Two years after the wedding, in 77 AC, Alyssa gave birth to their first son, Prince Viserys. When the boy was six days old she strapped him to her chest and flew him on Meleys; she later said he laughed the whole way. She did the same with Daemon, born in 81 AC, taking him up at fifteen days old.

After a victory in the war against Dorne, Baelon and Alyssa were expecting a third child. The birth in 84 AC was long and difficult, and it brought Prince Aegon into the world. Baelon told her he admired her more than himself — that he'd rather fight a dozen battles than go through what she just had. Laughing, Alyssa answered that he was made for battle and she for this, that between Viserys, Daemon and Aegon they already had three, and that once she was back on her feet they'd make another: she meant to give him twenty children, an army of his own.

Alyssa never recovered from the birth and died that same year. Aegon followed her half a year later, before his first nameday. Baelon, undone by the losses, threw himself into raising Viserys and Daemon and never stopped honoring her memory.