Khal Drogo

Drogo was the son of Bharbo. From a young age he showed a talent for war that stood out even among the Dothraki, and he nearly died on one of his first hired raids until his blood rider Cohollo pulled him from the fighting. When he came of age, his father gave him the whip that marked his passage into manhood.

By thirty he commanded the largest khalasar on the Dothraki sea, forty thousand riders strong, and no other khal could claim to have beaten him in battle. He was generous with his own as well, once gifting Jhogo a tall grey stallion.

Magister Illyrio Mopatis arranged his marriage to the exiled princess Daenerys Targaryen during one of Drogo's visits to Pentos. In exchange for the bride, the khal promised ten thousand riders for Viserys Targaryen's campaign to reclaim the Iron Throne.

The ceremony followed Dothraki custom: a field outside the city, a feast lasting the whole day, brawls and couples coupling in plain view. His blood riders offered weapons to the new khaleesi, who passed them on to Drogo; he gave Daenerys a silver mare in return.

That night Daenerys feared the worst from a husband she barely knew, but Drogo proved patient: he learned to recognize her refusal and waited for her consent before consummating the marriage.

On the march to Vaes Dothrak, Daenerys won Drogo's affection bit by bit. She learned to speak Dothraki while he struggled, heavily accented, with the Common Tongue. Between them grew the names they would use for each other for the rest of their life together: to him, she was moon of his life; to her, he was her sun and stars.

In the sacred city, after Daenerys ate a horse's heart before the Dosh Khaleen, the crones proclaimed that the son she carried, to be named Rhaego, would be the rider who united every khalasar in the world. Nearby, beside the Mother of Mountains, Drogo and Daenerys sealed that promise.

Viserys, who had never shown any respect for Dothraki custom, lost patience with the help Drogo had promised him. Drunk, he drew his sword within the sacred city and threatened his sister and her unborn child, demanding the crown he believed was owed him. Drogo gave it to him: he melted his own belt of gold medallions and poured the molten metal over his head, without spilling a drop of blood and so without breaking the city's law.

Drogo and his blood riders hunted down a hrakkar that left him with a scar on his leg, a wound he wore like another trophy on his return to Vaes Dothrak, the carcass dragged behind a packhorse. Westeros held no interest for him: it was a land with nothing a Dothraki wanted, across a sea his people had always feared to cross.

Everything changed when a wine merchant tried to poison Daenerys in the city's market. Enraged by the attempt on his wife's life, Drogo swore then to cross the Narrow Sea with his khalasar and seat his son on the throne of the Seven Kingdoms, a promise he had refused to make until then.

To gather ships for the crossing, Drogo raided several cities in Lhazar for slaves to trade. There his khalasar clashed with that of a rival khal, Ogo, and defeated it. In the battle Drogo took an arrow in the arm, and one of Ogo's blood riders sliced off his left nipple; Drogo killed that rider first, then Ogo himself.

Though he neither shared nor understood Daenerys's objections to raping and enslaving the defeated, Drogo backed his wife's order that his warriors stop raping the Lhazareen women, pleased by the courage he saw growing in her.

Drogo made light of his wound, but Daenerys convinced him to let the priestess Mirri Maz Duur apply a poultice to it. The itching led him to tear it off, and the wound turned septic. His condition worsened until he fell from his horse, a sign among the Dothraki that a khal is no longer fit to lead.

As Drogo lay dying, Daenerys convinced Mirri Maz Duur to use blood magic to save him, sacrificing the khal's stallion. Alarmed, Drogo's blood riders tried to stop the ritual and died at the hands of Daenerys's men and Ser Jorah Mormont. Mirri Maz Duur, avenging the earlier attack on her village, betrayed Daenerys: the spell left Drogo in a catatonic state and killed the child she carried.

Drogo's khalasar broke apart; Pono and Jhaqo split most of his riders into smaller new hosts. Daenerys bathed Drogo and tried, without success, to wake him. Realizing he would never be the same man again, she smothered him with a pillow.

Drogo was burned on a pyre together with his treasures and with Mirri Maz Duur, bound to the khal's body. Daenerys placed around it the three petrified dragon eggs Illyrio had given her, and walked into the flames as the platform burned. The fire claimed the maegi's life and, in exchange, hatched three dragons; Daenerys walked out of the blaze without a single burn.

Daenerys named her newborn black dragon Drogon, in memory of her husband. For a time she also wore the pelt of the hrakkar Drogo had hunted, made into a hooded cloak.