Rhaena Targaryen

Rhaena was born on Dragonstone in 23 AC, the first child of Prince Aenys Targaryen and Lady Alyssa Velaryon; Aegon, Viserys, Jaehaerys, Alysanne and Vaella followed after her. She was named for her grandmother, Queen Rhaenys Targaryen. Her grandfather, King Aegon I, wept the first time he held her and doted on her without limit; her birth pushed her uncle Maegor further down the line of succession, and Queen Visenya went so far as to propose marrying her to him as a child, an idea both the High Septon and Rhaena's own parents refused outright.

As a girl she was quiet and dreamy, happier around animals than other children, and would hide behind her mother's skirts whenever strangers were near. At nine she was given a newly hatched dragon she named Dreamfyre, and she flew for the first time at twelve; the flight loosened some of her shyness, though she remained a woman of few words. Her cousin Larissa Velaryon became her first real friend, and when Larissa returned to Driftmark to marry, she found company in Samantha Stokeworth.

King Aegon I died in 37 AC and her father inherited the throne; Rhaena, fourteen by then, drew admiring looks from lords and smallfolk alike on the journey to his coronation in Oldtown, though her old reserve crept back until Queen Alyssa sent for her friend Melony Piper. Two years later she declared herself a grown woman and flew alone to Harrenhal, Tarth, Runestone and Gulltown; those journeys gave rise to an unconfirmed rumor of a lowborn lover.

In 41 AC her father announced Rhaena's betrothal, at eighteen, to her own brother and heir, Prince Aegon. Neither objected, since they were fond of each other, though the Faith condemned the match between siblings. Shortly after the wedding they set out on a royal progress without Dreamfyre, whom the king forbade her to bring, fearing it would make Aegon look unmanly beside a wife with a dragon of her own; the tour was a disaster, and the couple met jeers wherever they went.

While at Fallenstar Hall they learned of her father's death and that her uncle Maegor had returned from Essos to claim the throne. They took refuge at Casterly Rock, where Lord Lyman Lannister sheltered them under the laws of hospitality without ever swearing them his loyalty. There Lady Jocasta Tarbeck noticed Rhaena was with child, and her twin daughters, Aerea and Rhaella, were born in the castle while nearly all their household deserted them to swear fealty to Maegor in King's Landing.

Rhaena begged her husband to flee with her to Essos, telling him she would not hesitate to give her own life to make him king but would not risk their daughters'. Aegon refused, and late in 43 AC the couple crossed the Riverlands in secret to reach King's Landing, entering the city hidden in a mule cart before flying back out on Dreamfyre and Quicksilver. They raised an army at Rosby, and near the Gods Eye Aegon met Maegor and Balerion in battle, and died.

Rhaena had stayed behind at Rosby, and received word of her husband's death, and of her friend Melony Piper's, with a silence that never broke into tears. She fled with her daughters to Lannisport and then to Fair Isle, where Lord Marq Farman, whose father and elder son had died fighting for Aegon, gave them shelter.

To protect her daughters, Rhaena dyed their hair, changed their names, and sent them away with trusted allies without asking to be told where, so that she could reveal nothing even under torture. She withdrew to Fair Isle, given over to rest and prayer, until her uncle Maegor summoned her to the capital; knowing that refusal would endanger those who protected her, she flew to the Red Keep, where she learned she was to become his wife.

In 47 AC King Maegor I took as wives, on the same day, Lady Elinor Costayne, Lady Jeyne Westerling, and his own niece. Rhaena bowed her head and spoke her vows in a cold voice after Queen Tyanna arrived at the ceremony with her two daughters. Her daughter Aerea was named heir to the king until he fathered children of his own, while Rhaella was sent to Oldtown to become a septa.

The following year her brother Jaehaerys proclaimed himself the rightful king at Storm's End. Rhaena fled King's Landing on Dreamfyre with her daughter Aerea and the sword Dark Sister to join his cause, though by then she had come to hate the court and wanted nothing more than to return to Fair Isle. She attended Jaehaerys's coronation and rode with his procession toward Oldtown, but broke away at Highgarden and flew back to the island.

In early 49 AC, already twice widowed at twenty-six, Rhaena married Androw Farman, Lord Marq Farman's second son and seventeen years her junior, in a small ceremony held outdoors on Fair Isle. Among the few guests were Lord Lyman Lannister and his wife Lady Jocasta Tarbeck, along with Samantha Stokeworth and Elissa Farman, the groom's sister. Many wondered why a Targaryen queen would marry the younger son of a minor house; she herself would later say it was because Androw was kind to her.

She surrounded herself with a small circle of ladies whom Ser Franklyn Farman, Androw's elder brother, mockingly called 'the Four-Headed Beast', while lords visiting Faircastle asked for audience with the Queen in the West before their own host. When Lord Marq choked to death, Franklyn inherited Fair Isle and, only four days later, ordered Rhaena to leave with her entire court.

Androw wanted to challenge Franklyn to single combat, but Rhaena talked him out of it, warning that a third widowhood would see her hunted as a witch across Westeros. That same night she flew to Casterly Rock, where Lord Lyman received her again, though she soon realized he wanted more than to host them — an alliance with the Iron Throne. They left the Rock, and her traveling court passed afterward through Ashemark, Castamere, Golden Tooth, Wayfarer's Rest and Rosby.

In 51 AC Rhaena and Androw arrived in King's Landing for the wedding of Jaehaerys I to his sister Alysanne. After the ceremony, Rhaena asked her brother for a seat of her own where no lord could ever cast her out again, arguing that her blood gave her more right than anyone to claim the castle where she had been born: Dragonstone. Jaehaerys granted it, making clear she would hold it at his pleasure, and also agreed to return custody of her daughter Aerea.

Settled on Dragonstone, Rhaena received the lords who sought her favor coldly, and her bond with Aerea, whom she barely knew, never improved. She fell out with Elissa Farman after refusing her the gold to build a ship, and in 54 AC Elissa asked leave to go; stone-faced, Rhaena granted it without further pleading. Soon after, the castle garrison discovered the theft of three dragon eggs, and Rhaena flew furiously to King's Landing to warn her brother.

That same year word reached her that her pregnant mother was dying; she landed at Storm's End the morning after Alyssa Velaryon's death and, after embracing her brother and sister, confronted Lord Rogar Baratheon and blamed him for it, warning him never to remarry and to see that the children her mother had given him wanted for nothing. Back on Dragonstone, her dearest ladies — among them her cousin Lianna Velaryon — died that same season of what turned out to be poison: her own husband Androw had killed them with tears of Lys, spurned by the queen's coldness.

Confronted, Androw confessed to the murders; before the brutal punishment Rhaena ordered could be carried out, he threw himself from a window and died, and she had his body fed to her dragons. Sunk in grief, she turned away even her sister Alysanne, who had flown to Dragonstone to comfort her.

Late in 54 AC, her daughter Aerea claimed the dragon Balerion and fled Dragonstone. Rhaena searched for her first in King's Landing and, failing to find her, flew to Oldtown hoping she had gone in search of her twin sister. Aerea was not there, but Rhaena spent time with Rhaella, by then a novice, confessing her regret at not having been a better mother; the girl embraced her and said she'd had the best mother a child could wish for.

From Oldtown, Rhaena flew on to Highgarden, Fallenstar Hall, Casterly Rock and Fair Isle, always without a trace of her daughter. Through all of 55 AC her whereabouts went unknown, though Dreamfyre was said to have been sighted over the Fever River, Dorne's Red Mountains, the Fingers, the Mountains of the Moon, Cape Wrath, the Shield Islands and the Whip. She eventually spent a stretch of time at Greenstone with her cousin Larissa Velaryon.

Word of Aerea's return and death, in 56 AC, found her at Estermont. By the time she reached the capital, her daughter's body had already been burned; knowing how much Aerea had hated Dragonstone and longed to fly, Rhaena mounted Dreamfyre and scattered her ashes to the winds.

King Jaehaerys offered her Dragonstone back, but Rhaena refused to live among its ghosts, and turned down remarriage as well when Queen Alysanne suggested it. Her brother settled her instead at Harrenhal, alongside Lord Maegor Towers. She never again set foot in King's Landing or Dragonstone, though she went on flying to Oldtown every year to visit her daughter Rhaella at the Starry Sept.

As the years passed, the smallfolk of the Riverlands came to fear her as a witch; those who came to Harrenhal received hospitality but rarely laid eyes on her. She kept riding Dreamfyre until the end. She kept her chambers in the Widow's Tower while Lord Maegor lived in the Tower of Dread, and it was said the two of them came, in time, to a kind of friendship.

When Lord Maegor died in 61 AC, Rhaena took his household servants into her own care and remained at the castle. She died in 73 AC, at fifty. By the king's order she was burned, and her ashes were buried at Harrenhal near the Gods Eye, where her first husband had fallen many years before.