Maekar I Targaryen

As the fourth son of Daeron II and Myriah Martell, Maekar grew up knowing the throne would never be his. He had three elder brothers, Baelor, Aerys, and Rhaegel, and unlike his father, who was no warrior, both he and Baelor took to arms from an early age. Ser Quentyn Ball, called Fireball, master-at-arms of the Red Keep, trained them both, along with the bastard sons Aegon IV had legitimised.

By seventeen Baelor had already won a tourney as champion, and everyone assumed Maekar would follow, since his skill at arms matched his brother's. As no one expected him to rule, his father granted him Summerhall, the Targaryen summer seat, to hold as his own.

There he married young to Dyanna Dayne, and had six children with her: Daeron, Aerion, Aemon, and Aegon, and the girls Daella and Rhae.

King Daeron II dreamed of binding the Seven Kingdoms together for good, and to tie Dorne closer he married his sister Daenerys to Prince Maron Martell. The match left an open wound in Daemon Blackfyre, eldest of the Great Bastards, who had loved the princess since childhood; Aegor Rivers and Fireball fed that grudge for years until it broke into open rebellion.

Maekar took command of one of the royal armies and reached the Redgrass Field alongside the Hand of the King, Lord Hayford, and Lord Donnel Arryn. When the Blackfyre men broke Arryn's line and killed Hayford, Maekar was left trying to rally what remained of that vanguard while Ser Gwayne Corbray tried to hold Daemon back.

Daemon beat Corbray, but instead of charging at Maekar, who was still fighting to re-form his ranks, he stopped to save his fallen foe. That choice cost him his life: from Wailing Willows, Brynden Rivers and the Raven's Teeth shot him down along with two of his sons.

The rebels began to break, but Aegor Rivers took up his dead brother's sword and rallied the survivors to charge the archers. That was when Baelor arrived with forces from the Stormlands and Dorne, and Maekar, who had by then pulled his own host back together, held the ground without giving an inch. A song would later call the battle The Hammer and the Anvil, with Baelor as the hammer and Maekar as the anvil that never moved; even so, it was his brother who won the glory, and Daemon's mistake that took much of the credit that should have been Maekar's.

Around 207 and 208 AC, Daeron II already had four grown sons and several grandchildren, and the sheer number of potential heirs began to worry him. To ease that pressure he sent Maekar's third son to the Citadel to forge a maester's chain, against his father's wishes.

Shortly before 209 AC, Maekar's wife, Dyanna Dayne, died, leaving him alone at the head of his children.

In 209 AC a tourney was held at Ashford, and Maekar came to watch his sons Daeron and Aerion joust, with young Aegon set to squire for his elder brother. Secretly, Maekar hoped his sons would outshine Baelor's in the lists.

Daeron had no interest in competing and fled the tourney with Aegon, whose head he shaved so no one would know him. On the road Daeron got drunk in a tavern, and Aegon, who actually wanted to be a squire, left him and ended up serving, under the name Egg, a hedge knight called Dunk.

Maekar rode off with Ser Roland Crakehall to search for his sons and left the tourney to Aerion, who used the chance to kill a rival's horse out of sheer cruelty and to accuse a Dornish puppeteer of treason, until Ser Duncan beat him back to protect her. When Maekar returned he found Daeron but not Aegon, and the story his elder son gave him about a supposed robber knight was a lie.

Shamed by both his sons and pushed by each of them, Maekar took Aerion's side in the case against Ser Duncan and demanded a Trial of Seven. He fought himself for his son, alongside Daeron and three Kingsguard knights; his own brother Baelor, by contrast, stood for Duncan because he believed him innocent. In the scuffle, as Maekar tried to fight his way to Aerion, it was Lord Lyonel Baratheon who held him back, and it was his mace that struck Baelor's head. Baelor survived the trial, but died soon after.

Certain he would be branded a fratricide for the rest of his life, Maekar exiled Aerion to the Free Cities and sought out Dunk, offering him a place in his own guard so he could set an example for Aegon. The hedge knight refused to settle at Summerhall and asked instead to take Aegon with him across the Seven Kingdoms; the next morning, Maekar sent the boy off with him, promising to keep his identity hidden and giving him a signet ring in case he ever needed it.

Daeron II and Baelor's sons died in the Spring Sickness, and the throne passed to Aerys, second of the brothers. Maekar expected to be named Hand of the King, but the post went instead to his bastard uncle, Lord Bloodraven, an old enemy of his from Redgrass Field.

Feeling betrayed, Maekar left court and went back to Summerhall, where by some accounts he spent years brooding over the slight. Rhaegel, the third brother and heir to the throne, died by accident in 215 AC, and two years later his children Aelor and Aelora met the same fate; Aerys then named Maekar, his only surviving brother, Prince of Dragonstone.

When the Third Blackfyre Rebellion broke out, Maekar again distinguished himself leading the royal troops. His son Aerion and Lord Bloodraven himself called for Aegor Rivers's head, but Aerys chose mercy instead and let him take the black.

After Aerys I's death, Maekar took the Iron Throne in 221 AC. Still haunted by Baelor's death, he had a new crown forged, more warlike in its lines than those before it, as if it could help him leave what happened at Ashford behind. He kept Lord Bloodraven on as Hand despite the friction between them, and his reign passed, relatively quietly, between two Blackfyre rebellions.

He summoned all his sons to court, including Aemon, now a maester, and offered him a seat on the small council; Aemon turned it down, unwilling to take the Grand Maester's place, and chose instead to serve his brother Daeron, the new heir. But Maekar's sons brought him more grief than comfort: Daeron preferred the title Prince of Summerhall to that of Dragonstone, which he thought a grim pile of stone; Aerion remained as cruel as ever; and Aegon meddled ever more bluntly in matters of government, making enemies among the lords.

A long hot summer stretched through his reign, one some at the Citadel mistook for the Great Summer, followed by a short autumn and a long, hard winter. It was also then that Danelle Lothston, Lady of Harrenhal, fell into disgrace over supposed dark arts and dragged her whole house down with her; Maekar afterward gave the castle to House Whent as reward for their help in bringing the Lothstons down.

Succession turned out to be the greatest problem of his reign. Daeron, his heir, died of syphilis caught from a whore, and Aerion killed himself in 232 AC by drinking wildfire, convinced it would turn him into a dragon. Maekar ruled until 233 AC, when he fell in battle during the Peake Uprising; one semi-canonical source says he died crushed by a boulder hurled from the battlements of Starpike while leading the assault on the castle gates. The Great Council afterward chose his last living son, Aegon, to succeed him.