Daeron II Targaryen

Daeron was born in King's Landing in the year 153, the same year his parents — then-prince Aegon Targaryen and his sister the princess Naerys — were married. He was their firstborn.

Years earlier King Baelor I had tried to conquer Dorne by force and failed; what he won afterward, through patience, was a peace. Among its terms was the betrothal of the young Daeron to Myriah Martell, the Dornish prince's daughter — two children promised to a marriage that would wait until they were grown.

In 172, when his father was crowned Aegon IV, Daeron became heir to the Iron Throne and Prince of Dragonstone. Father and son did not get along: Daeron openly opposed much of Aegon IV's conduct, and above all his scheme to retake Dorne by force. The king pressed ahead regardless, and when the campaign collapsed, it was his own son who felt relief.

Daeron spent most of his father's last years away from court, at Dragonstone with his wife and children. Before his death, Aegon IV came to doubt aloud whether Daeron was truly his — rumor held that he was in fact the son of Naerys and her brother Aemon — and the king considered passing him over for his bastard Daemon Blackfyre. What he did on his deathbed instead was legitimize all his bastard children.

Daeron inherited the crown at thirty and set to work at once. He replaced nearly the whole Small Council and the Kingsguard, and spent a full year scrubbing corruption out of the King's Landing City Watch.

He could not undo his father's legitimization of his bastard half-siblings, so he chose to treat them with honor and kept the incomes Aegon IV had granted them. He paid out of his own pocket the dowry still owed so that Rohanne, daughter of the Archon of Tyrosh, could marry Daemon Blackfyre, and on the wedding day granted him land near the Blackwater to raise his own stronghold.

His marriage to Myriah Martell was one of the rare happy ones among the Targaryens. Barely settled on the throne, he opened negotiations with Maron Martell — already his brother by marriage through Myriah — to bring Dorne fully into the realm. The deal was sealed with a second wedding: Maron to Daenerys, Daeron's younger sister. King and prince walked together from the Red Keep to the Great Sept of Baelor to lay a crown of flowers at the feet of the saint's statue.

Myriah brought Dornish customs that changed the air of the court. Daeron built a keep where the Reach, the Stormlands and Dorne meet, and named it Summerhall as a monument to the peace he had made; in time several Targaryen princes would carry that title. The smallfolk took to calling him Daeron the Good. He was a man of books more than of the sword, though two of his sons did take after him in arms.

In 195 the Blackfyre Rebellion broke out and swept up much of the realm. Many lords, especially in the Marches, still could not stomach the Dornish, and Daeron was resented for exactly that closeness to Dorne. They rallied behind Ser Daemon Blackfyre, the bastard who had been given the sword Blackfyre — to them, the true heir.

It was said Daemon rose because he had been denied the princess Daenerys, whom he loved. The timeline does not quite hold up: the rebellion came eight years after Daenerys's wedding to Maron Martell, by which time Daemon had been married to Rohanne of Tyrosh for years and had at least nine children with her, and Daenerys had already given Maron several heirs of his own.

War broke out at once in the Riverlands, the Reach, the Vale and the Westerlands, splitting the realm between the Black Dragon and the Red. Daeron had the support of another of his father's Great Bastards, Ser Brynden Rivers. It was all decided at the Battle of the Redgrass Field in 196, where Daemon and his two eldest sons died. Ser Aegor Rivers, one of the Black Dragon's chief allies, escaped across the narrow sea with Daemon's surviving sons — the Blackfyre Pretenders would go on causing trouble for generations.

With the rebellion over, Daeron punished the lords who had fought for House Blackfyre, stripping them of lands, castles and hostages. The rest of his reign was peaceful.

He and Myriah had four sons — Baelor, Aerys, Rhaegel and Maekar — all married to noble ladies from different parts of the realm; three of those marriages gave him grandchildren.

He chose to send his grandson Aemon to Oldtown to train as a maester, over his son Maekar's objections. The day the boy left, he overheard the king tell his father: "Too many dragons are as bad as too few."

His eldest son, Baelor — called Breakspear — Prince of Dragonstone, served as Hand of the King in his final years, and many already saw in him a great king to come. He died by accident at the Ashford Tourney in 209.

Daeron died that same year, the year of the Great Spring Sickness, along with two of his grandsons, Valarr and Matarys. His second son, Aerys I, succeeded him. He had reigned twenty-five years that most would remember as years of peace and plenty.