Naerys Targaryen

Naerys was born in King's Landing in the year 138, the youngest child of Prince Viserys Targaryen and Lady Larra Rogare. As a baby she nearly died, and poor health never left her afterward: she ate little, her skin was almost translucent, and her frailty worried everyone around her. She found comfort in the harp, in needlework, and above all in the pages of The Seven-Pointed Star, which she read with a devotion her siblings did not share.

She dreamed of taking the vows of a septa, but her father would not allow it. Of her two brothers she favored Aemon, who could make her laugh like no one else; she had little in common with Aegon, the elder. In 153 her father chose to marry her to that same Aegon. Singers would later claim that she and Aemon wept together at the wedding; what actually happened was an argument between the brothers at the feast, and Naerys's tears during the bedding. Soon after, Aemon joined the Kingsguard, at only seventeen.

On the last day of 153, Naerys gave birth to her first child, Prince Daeron, after a labor so difficult that Grand Maester Alford warned her another pregnancy could kill her. With an heir already in the cradle, she went to her husband and asked to be released from her vows so she could take the septa's habit: "I have done my duty by you and given you an heir. I beg that we live as brother and sister from now on." Aegon laughed at her and refused.

The marriage was never a happy one. Years later Aegon would claim he had loved nine women in his life, and that none of them was his wife. Naerys took comfort in her son and her brother, the only two men who could still make her smile.

Despite the maester's warnings, she fell pregnant several more times. In 161 she bore twins and nearly died in labor; both children died shortly after birth, and King Baelor I fasted for a month in mourning. Afterward, Baelor sent Aegon to Braavos on a diplomatic mission that many read as a way of keeping him away from Naerys while she recovered. It was around then that she, along with Aemon and Daeron, befriended Lady Melissa Blackwood, one of her husband's mistresses.

In 172, the same year Aegon took the throne as the fourth of his name, Naerys again gave birth to twins: the boy was stillborn, but the girl, named Daenerys, survived. The birth once more left her near death, and the Hand of the King, Lord Bracken, went so far as to suggest that if the queen died, Aegon could marry his own daughter Barba, who had borne the king's bastard son only fifteen days earlier. The suggestion cost Bracken his post, but Naerys was slow to recover.

After the coronation, rumors began to spread that Daeron was not Aegon's son but Aemon's. No one at court was blind to what the prince felt for his sister: when he won a tourney he named her Queen of Love and Beauty ahead of the king's own mistresses, and later defended her honor when Ser Morgil Hastwyck accused her of treason. Maester Kaeth would later write, in Lives of Four Kings, that it had been Aegon himself who set Ser Morgil to spreading the tale, though he denied it publicly at the time.

The rumors did not begin by chance: they coincided with 174, the year Aegon and his heir Daeron broke over the prince's refusal to back an unprovoked war against Dorne. Generations later, Cersei Lannister would recall that defense in her own way: "Even the children of Westeros know how Prince Aemon, the Dragonknight, defended his sister, Queen Naerys, against Ser Morghil's accusations."

Naerys died in childbirth in 179, a year after her brother Aemon's own death. The child she carried was never spoken of again; it likely died with her.