Duncan Targaryen

Duncan was born around the year 220, though even the atlas's own records can't agree on the exact date. He was the firstborn son of the then-prince Aegon Targaryen and his wife, Lady Betha Blackwood.

His parents named him after a close friend of his father's, a hedge knight called Ser Duncan the Tall. The difference in height between the two of them earned the boy the nickname Duncan the Small.

Once he became king, Aegon V broke with the Targaryen custom of marrying his children to one another to keep the Valyrian bloodline pure. With Queen Betha's help, he looked instead among the children of the realm's great lords, hoping to win their support for the reforms he had in mind.

Those betrothals were settled in 237, while the princes were still children. Duncan was promised to a daughter of Lord Lyonel Baratheon of Storm's End.

Two years later, while travelling through the Riverlands, Duncan met a girl who called herself Jenny and claimed to come from Oldstones. He married her without asking anyone's leave. People in the nearby villages whispered that she was nothing but a half-mad peasant girl, or even a witch, though she herself claimed descent from the old Kings of the First Men.

The king tried every way he could to have the marriage undone. The High Septon, the Grand Maester and the Small Council all pressed Duncan to reconsider, but the prince would not be moved.

Rather than give Jenny up, he gave away his claim to the throne and handed the title of Prince of Dragonstone to his younger brother, Jaehaerys. From then on he was known as the Prince of Dragonflies, and in time the court came to speak of his wife respectfully, as Lady Jenny.

In 247, Duncan took part in the tourney at Blackhaven. There he crossed lances with a ten-year-old mystery knight who had slipped into the lists: Barristan Selmy. While everyone else laughed at the boy, Duncan was the only one willing to joust with him, and won.

It was Duncan, too, who gave him the nickname he would carry afterward, the Bold. Years later, grown now, Selmy would challenge him again at a winter tourney held in King's Landing.

Duncan died in 259, at Summerhall, together with his father King Aegon V. The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, Duncan the Tall, the very knight he had been named after as a boy, fell there too, along with many other members of the court gathered that day.

His story with Jenny outlived the tragedy as a song, the tale of the Prince of Dragonflies who gave up a throne for love. It is still sung across the Seven Kingdoms.