Jocelyn Baratheon

Jocelyn was born in 54 AC at Storm's End, the second child of Lord Rogar Baratheon and the dowager queen Alyssa Velaryon. The birth was so hard that her mother lay dying for days; the maester Kyrie said he could no longer save Lady Alyssa, only try to bring the child out alive. Rogar chose to save the baby, and Jocelyn came into the world so small and weak that no one expected her to live through the night.

At four she traveled with her father and her brother Boremund to King's Landing, for the tourney marking Jaehaerys I's first decade on the throne. At seven, after the aunts who cared for her died, Rogar asked the king and queen to take her in; Queen Alysanne agreed gladly, and from then on Jocelyn grew up at court as kin of the royal blood.

There she grew close to Prince Aemon, her nephew through her mother, sharing games and evenings together as children; she often sat watching when he and his brother Baelon trained in the yard. In 68 AC the king and queen announced the betrothal between the two of them, after briefly weighing the idea of marrying Aemon to his own sister Alyssa, a match Alysanne refused to allow.

In 70 AC Jocelyn and Aemon married in a ceremony so lavish it was likened to the Golden Wedding. She was sixteen, tall and long-haired with hair black as night; he was a year younger, pale beside the "dark lady" he made such a fitting match with that Ser Gyles Morrigen said the realm's future "rested in them".

On the seventh day of the seventh moon of 74 AC their daughter was born, Princess Rhaenys, a big, fierce-tempered girl with her mother's black hair and her father's Targaryen violet eyes. As the firstborn child of the Prince of Dragonstone, many took for granted that she would stand next in line to the Iron Throne.

In 92 AC Prince Aemon led the assault on the Myrish pirates who had seized a stretch of the coast of Tarth. He died there, struck in the throat by a crossbow bolt from an enemy scout. Jocelyn wept bitterly for him, and her daughter Rhaenys, then pregnant, felt the loss just as hard.

Aemon's death left the realm without a clear male heir, and King Jaehaerys decided the throne would pass instead to his other son, Baelon, setting aside Rhaenys and the unborn child she carried. Jocelyn was furious to learn that her daughter and her grandchild had been pushed out of the succession that way.

Jocelyn became a grandmother with the birth of Laena Velaryon, Rhaenys's daughter. How long she lived after that is unclear: she died sometime between her granddaughter's birth and the outbreak of the Dance of the Dragons, the civil war that would split House Targaryen decades later.

Her death is known only indirectly: Lord Borros Baratheon, son of her brother Boremund, speaks of her in the past tense, which places her death before that conflict.

She is remembered with a solemn look, large dark eyes, and black hair that drew notice in any hall. In her youth she was counted among the great beauties of the realm, and her height - two varas - did not go unremarked. The nickname "the dark lady" came as much from her hair as from a temperament many called reserved.