Joffrey Velaryon
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Prince Joffrey Velaryon was the third son of Ser Laenor Velaryon and Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen, born at Dragonstone. Like his older brothers, he was a dragonrider — his dragon was named Tyraxes.
He grew up at the court of a queen whose claim to the throne was contested, his childhood marked both by rivalries among cousins and by the war that would eventually draw in his whole family.
Childhood
Birth
Joffrey was born at Dragonstone in 117, the third son of Ser Laenor Velaryon and Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen, after Jacaerys and Lucerys. His parents named him for an old friend of Laenor's.
Unlike his parents' Valyrian looks, Joffrey had brown hair, brown eyes, and a snub nose, and some at court found his features coarse. As with his brothers, whispers followed him that his true father was not Laenor but Ser Harwin Strong, the queen's rumored lover.
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Incident with Aemond
Barely three years old, Joffrey caught his uncle Aemond, then ten, trying to secretly mount the dragon Vhagar. The prince was slapped for spying and cried out for his older brothers to come to his aid. In the fight that followed, Aemond lost an eye.
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Dance of the Dragons
Betrothal to the Manderlys
When the Dance of the Dragons broke out, Joffrey was eleven and already the rider of Tyraxes. He asked to join his mother's war astride his dragon, but was refused because of his age.
His older brothers rode out to seek allies instead, and Jacaerys sealed Joffrey's betrothal to the youngest daughter of Lord Desmond Manderly in exchange for White Harbor's support for the black cause.
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Oath of vengeance
His brother Lucerys's death drove Joffrey to swear vengeance against Prince Aemond and Lord Borros Baratheon; only his grandparents, Lord Corlys Velaryon and Princess Rhaenys, stopped him from flying Tyraxes at once to hunt them down.
When his other brother, Jacaerys, died in the Battle of the Gullet, Joffrey was proclaimed Prince of Dragonstone. After the Fall of King's Landing to the Blacks, his mother sent for him, and a fleet sailed from Gull Town to bring him to the capital.
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King's Landing
Death
Rhaenyra prepared a solemn ceremony to name Joffrey her heir to the Iron Throne, but the prince had no wish to stay safe in the capital: he wanted to fight what remained of the Greens, as his brothers had. "I want to fight for you, mother, as my brothers did. Let me prove I'm as brave as they were," he told her. She forbade it and kept him at her side.
Hunger set off riots in King's Landing, and a crowd made for the Dragonpit, where Tyraxes waited. Joffrey mounted Syrax, his mother's dragon, to reach his own, but the animal balked at an unfamiliar rider. Realizing what her son was doing, Rhaenyra cried out: "No! I forbid it, I forbid it expressly! After him! Every man and boy, to horse, to horse now, go after him. Bring him back to me, bring him back, he doesn't know what he's doing. My son, my dear son…."
Joffrey fell several hundred feet onto a rooftop; his back broke and his own sword drove into his belly before his body bounced down into a street in Flea Bottom. There a chandler's daughter, a girl named Robin, found him dying and cradled him as he breathed his last.
The crowd fell upon his corpse: they stole his boots and sword, cut off his hands for the rings on his fingers and his right foot, and a butcher's apprentice was about to take his head when armed men arrived to recover the remains. Ser Gyles Yronwood died trying to save the prince's body.
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Relationships
Family tree
The family of Joffrey Velaryon
Tap any relative to put them in the centre.
Parents
second cousins
Children
None recorded
Family
- Rhaenyra TargaryenMotherAppears in Birth, Death
- Laenor VelaryonFatherAppears in Birth
Others in their story
- Aemond TargaryenAppears in Incident with Aemond, Oath of vengeance
- Harwin StrongAppears in Birth
- Borros BaratheonAppears in Oath of vengeance
- Corlys VelaryonAppears in Oath of vengeance
- Gyles YronwoodAppears in Death
Appearances
By work
Played by: Oscar Eskinazi
| Work | Format | Where it is told |
|---|---|---|
| Fire & Blood | Book | Birth, Incident with Aemond, Betrothal to the Manderlys, Oath of vengeance, Death |
| House of the Dragon | Show | — |
Books and show
Where they differ
The show and the books do not tell the same story.
| Show | Books | |
|---|---|---|
| Status | Alive | Dead |
| Died | — | 130 AC · King's Landing |
| Appears in | House of the Dragon | Fire & Blood |
| Played by | Oscar Eskinazi | — |
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