Gaemon Targaryen

Gaemon was the son of Lord Aenar Targaryen, and inherited the lordship of the island on his father's death. Following the custom of his family, he married his own sister, Daenys, known as the Dreamer.

The couple had at least three children: Aegon, Elaena, and another daughter whose name has not survived. The two sons inherited Dragonstone one after the other as the years passed, while the youngest daughter married outside the main line, to a lord of lesser standing.

Of all the Targaryens who ruled the island in the century before the Conquest, Gaemon was the one best remembered, the one whose byname has stuck to this day.

Seven generations after Gaemon, one of his descendants through the line of his youngest daughter laid claim to the Iron Throne. He did so at the Great Council of 101 AC, called to settle the succession after King Jaehaerys I, and rested his claim on that distant kinship.

The connection did little for him: the lords gathered at the council dismissed his claim.

King Jaehaerys I Targaryen himself — the same king whose succession council later turned down that descendant's claim — had already honoured Gaemon's memory in another way: he named his eleventh son, the one he had with Queen Alysanne, after him.

The gesture shows how much weight the name of Gaemon the Glorious still carried within his own house, generations after he had stopped ruling the island.