Daemon Targaryen

Daemon was born in 81 AC, while his grandfather Jaehaerys I still reigned. His parents, Prince Baelon and Princess Alyssa, were brother and sister as well as husband and wife; Viserys came first, then Daemon. Fifteen days after his birth his mother was already carrying him aloft on her dragon Meleys, into skies he would later claim for himself on Caraxes.

The family's luck soured fast: Alyssa died in childbirth in 84, and half a year later they lost the infant Aegon too. Widowed, Baelon poured what was left of himself into his two remaining sons and never remarried. Daemon grew up among master-at-arms and, long before he came of age, among the taverns of Flea Bottom, where his face became as familiar as it was at court.

At sixteen his grandfather knighted him and gave him Dark Sister, the sword that had belonged to his father. A year later Queen Alysanne found him a wife among the Royces of Runestone; Daemon never warmed to Lady Rhea or to the cold of the Vale, and took to calling her his "bronze bitch." When Baelon died suddenly in 101, his grandfather called a Great Council to settle the succession, while rumor held that Daemon — already a dragonrider with men of his own — might contest it by the sword.

With the Great Council settled in Viserys's favor, Daemon was beaten twice at the tourney in Maidenpool by an unknown knight named Criston Cole. He asked his brother to annul his marriage to Rhea and was refused, though he was given a seat on the Small Council, first as Master of Coin, then of Laws. He lasted little in either post; his indifference and his running feud with Otto Hightower eventually pushed him out of the council chamber.

He fared better as commander of the City Watch, which he dressed in gold cloaks and disciplined with a heavy hand. Crime fell under him, and so did his reputation rise: some called him the Prince of the City, others, less kindly, Lord Flea Bottom. In the brothels he met Mysaria, who began bringing him the rumors of the street.

He thought himself the natural heir to a king with no living sons, and even styled himself Prince of Dragonstone. When Queen Aemma died bringing the son Viserys had long wanted into the world, Daemon toasted in a brothel to "the heir for a day." Word reached his brother, who answered by naming the infant Rhaenyra his heir instead. Daemon gave up command of the gold cloaks and flew for Dragonstone with Mysaria, furious.

On Dragonstone, Viserys demanded he return a dragon egg he had given Mysaria and go back to his wife in the Vale. Daemon sent his mistress away by ship instead; the vessel ran into a storm on the Narrow Sea and Mysaria lost the child she carried. Daemon never forgave his brother for it.

With Caraxes and Corlys Velaryon's fleet, he invaded the Stepstones in 106 at the head of an army of sellswords. The war won him enemies across Myr, Tyrosh, and Lys — he killed Craghas Drahar with his own hands — and friends in Pentos. In Westeros he earned grudges of his own, starting with the Royces, who never forgot his contempt for Rhea.

With nearly every island taken, he proclaimed himself King of the Stepstones and the Narrow Sea in 109, crowned by Corlys himself. The Triarchy answered with a fleet under Racallio Ryndoon, and Dorne joined the alliance against him. Ruling a kingdom of rock and salt eventually bored him.

In 111 he returned to the capital for the tourney that would later give the Greens and Blacks their names, and knelt before Viserys offering up his crown of the Stepstones. His brother forgave him, restoring his command of the City Watch and his seat on the council.

None of it had changed him. He went back to his old habits on the Street of Silk, treated Queen Alicent with cold courtesy and his new nephews with even less warmth. With Rhaenyra, by then a young woman, he spent hours instead, telling her of his adventures and giving her books, pearls, and a jade tiara once worn by the Empress of Leng; the two of them often flew together to Dragonstone.

Half a year after his return, something happened between uncle and niece that the chroniclers tell differently: some say Daemon seduced her before her sixteenth name day; others, that he was only teaching her how to seduce Ser Criston Cole, whom she fancied. Lord Lyonel Strong called for his head as a traitor; the king instead banished him from the Seven Kingdoms on pain of death. Daemon went back to Bloodstone to carry on his thankless war.

Rhea Royce died in 115, thrown from her horse. Daemon flew to the Vale to claim Runestone and the Royces refused him; Lady Jeyne Arryn had him thrown out of the Vale entirely. He took refuge in Driftmark, one of the few places in Westeros still open to him.

There he set his sights on Laena Velaryon, Corlys's daughter and rider of Vhagar, already promised to the son of a Braavosi Sealord. Daemon challenged the suitor to a duel to the death and won it with Dark Sister. They married without Viserys's leave and crossed the Narrow Sea — Pentos, Volantis, Qohor, Norvos. Their twin daughters, Baela and Rhaena, were born in Pentos in 116.

Back at Driftmark, Viserys agreed to bless the girls — "Daemon is a father now," he told his maester — and the brothers reconciled for a second time, though Daemon chose to stay on the island rather than return to the Red Keep. Rhaenyra, married to Laena's brother Laenor, grew close to them both and betrothed her elder sons to the twins.

Laena died in 120 giving birth to a son who did not survive; Daemon and Rhaenyra kept watch over her body together. That same year Laenor was murdered at Spicetown by a companion of his, and Lyonel and Harwin Strong died in a fire at Harrenhal. Court gossip lost no time laying all three deaths at Daemon's door.

In the same year both were widowed, Daemon, thirty-nine, married his niece Rhaenyra, twenty-three, in a sudden ceremony Viserys learned of only after the fact. Neither Laena nor Laenor had been dead six months; the court was scandalized. They had two sons: Aegon, born that same year, and Viserys, two years later.

In 126, with Corlys ill and Rhaenyra pressing him to name her son Lucerys his heir, Ser Vaemond Velaryon stood up and called the princess's children bastards. Rhaenyra ordered Daemon to seize him; Daemon beheaded him and fed the body to his dragon Syrax. Vaemond's kin went to protest before the king, who ordered their tongues cut out; wrestling with the Iron Throne in his fury, Viserys badly gashed his hand.

On the first day of 127, now healed, the king forced Greens and Blacks to sit together at a feast of reconciliation. Daemon praised Otto Hightower's work as Hand, and Otto returned the compliment; Viserys, pleased, declared the feud over. It would not last.

Viserys died in his sleep in 129, perhaps of his gout, perhaps — some whispered — poisoned. The Greens kept the news quiet; by the time it reached Dragonstone, Ser Criston Cole had already crowned Aegon II. Otto Hightower, who had long opposed any chance of Daemon as a king consort, had once warned: "We all know his nature. Make no mistake, were Rhaenyra ever to sit the Iron Throne, it would be the lord of Flea Bottom who ruled us, a king consort as cruel and unyielding as Maegor." Daemon crowned Rhaenyra himself and kept the title of Protector of the Realm for his own.

Together with Corlys Velaryon, Daemon was the Blacks' strongest military asset: both had fought in the Stepstones and knew more of war than all their enemies combined. He took Harrenhal without a fight, landing Caraxes atop the castellan's tower held by Ser Simon Strong, and the Riverlands rallied to Rhaenyra as a result. Stone Hedge fell next.

When he learned that his nephew Aemond had killed his stepson Lucerys, Daemon used Mysaria to hire Blood and Cheese, who slipped into the Red Keep and murdered young Jaehaerys, Aegon II's son. "An eye for an eye, a son for a son. Lucerys will be avenged," Daemon was said to have vowed. The Triarchy's fleet, brought in by Otto Hightower, later broke the Velaryon blockade at the Battle of the Gullet, where his other stepson Jacaerys died.

With Aemond and Cole marching on Harrenhal, Daemon abandoned it and flew Caraxes back to the capital in time to help Rhaenyra take King's Landing. Seated on his wife's council afterward, he argued for pressing the war until every last Aegon II loyalist was crushed, a position Corlys, now Hand of the Queen, did not share.

Rhaenyra sent Daemon, along with the dragonseed Nettles, to hunt down Aemond and his dragon Vhagar, who were burning their way across the Riverlands. They made camp at Maidenpool; it's said Daemon and Nettles became lovers for a single night, until Maester Norren warned them the queen wanted the girl dead. They parted the next morning.

Daemon then flew to Harrenhal to wait for his nephew. For thirteen straight evenings he carved a fresh cut into the castle's godswood weirwood, until Aemond finally came to face him. They fought in the air over the Gods Eye; at the decisive moment, Daemon leapt from Caraxes onto Vhagar's back and drove Dark Sister into the only eye his nephew had left. Both riders and both dragons died that day.

Daemon's body was never found. The songs say he lived on in secret with Nettles, something most maesters doubt. He never sat the Iron Throne, though his sons Aegon and Viserys later did. Forty years on, in 170, Princess Daena Targaryen named a bastard grandson after him. The thirteen cuts he left in the Harrenhal weirwood, they say, still bleed every spring.