Shiera Seastar

Serenei of Lys was the ninth and last woman to share King Aegon IV's bed, heir to a Valyrian line fallen on hard times. The court kept its distance from her; she was said to be far older than she looked, her youth kept intact by arts better left unnamed.

Rumors aside, she was held to be the loveliest of the king's mistresses. She died giving birth to a girl, and that girl, Shiera, closed the roll of Aegon's Great Bastards.

Shiera never married, though suitors were never scarce, and swords were drawn more than once for the right to sit beside her. The most persistent was her own half-brother, Brynden Rivers, Bloodraven, who asked for her hand again and again. She preferred him as a lover rather than a husband, and made good sport of his jealousy.

Aegor Rivers, another half-brother, wanted her too, and that rivalry only poisoned the grudge he already bore Brynden. Once Brynden rose to Hand of the King and Aerys I's Lord Confessor, whispers held that Shiera lent him her knowledge of sorcery.

"Bittersteel and Bloodraven loved Shiera Seastar so well that the Seven Kingdoms bled for it," Barristan Selmy said of her years later.

She was said to be the most beautiful woman of her age: a narrow waist, platinum-blonde hair so long it sometimes reached nearly to the backs of her knees, a heart-shaped face, and one eye dark blue set beside one green. Singers claimed the mismatch only added to her charm.

She wore ivory and silver lace and scorned gold as coarse; her favorite jewel paired emeralds and sapphires to match her eyes. She read a dozen tongues and kept a library of old scrolls, which fed talk of blood magic and of bathing in maidens' blood to stay young. "She bathes in blood to keep her beauty," Egg once said of her.