Daenaera Velaryon

Daenaera was born in 127 AC, the daughter of Daeron Velaryon — a cousin of Lord Alyn Velaryon — and Hazel Harte. Her mother did not live long: a winter fever took her while Daenaera was still very young.

Her father died six years later, in 133 AC, when the ship he was fighting from against the Free Cities went down near the Stepstones. Orphaned of both parents, the girl was raised in the household of Lord Alyn Velaryon and Lady Baela Targaryen.

That same year, the young king Aegon III's first marriage had ended in tragedy with the death of his wife, Princess Jaehaera Targaryen. Lord Unwin Peake, then Hand of the King, tried to use the opening to marry his own daughter to the king, but the regents refused him. Undeterred, he arranged a great ball to find the king a new queen.

Daenaera was only six years old when Lady Baela and Lady Rhaena Targaryen, the king's half-sisters, presented her at court — the last of the thousand maidens gathered that day. On the final day of 133 AC she married Aegon III.

The failure of his scheme cost Lord Peake his office; he resigned as Hand the following year. Later, he and his wife survived a poisoning only because their taster drank the cup meant for them.

The marriage took years to be consummated: Aegon III was a somber man who had come to hate being touched, even by his own wife. Even so, the couple had five children: Daeron, Baelor, Daena, Rhaena, and Elaena.

As a child, Daenaera had charmed the court with her silver hair streaked with gold, her blue eyes, and a mischievous smile that put people at ease. As queen, she kept that beauty. When she watched her daughter Rhaena fly for the first time on the dragon Alba, she let slip that she wished for a dragon of her own.