Viserys I Targaryen

Viserys was born in King's Landing in 77 AC, the eldest son of Prince Baelon Targaryen and his sister-wife, Princess Alyssa. He had already flown on Meleys at nine days old; by seven he had lost his mother, who died giving birth to a brother who didn't survive either. In 92 AC his uncle Aemon, Prince of Dragonstone, was murdered, and Jaehaerys I named Baelon his heir, making Viserys second in line.

A year later Viserys claimed the aging Balerion and married his cousin Aemma Arryn, then thirteen. After several miscarriages and a son who died in the cradle, Aemma gave birth in 97 AC to a girl, Rhaenyra. When Baelon died suddenly in 101 AC, Jaehaerys called a Great Council to choose between two grandsons with a claim, Laenor Velaryon and Viserys. Viserys won.

Viserys was crowned in 103 AC at twenty-six. At his coronation tourney in Maidenpool, Ser Criston Cole unhorsed Prince Daemon; at young Rhaenyra's request, Viserys named Cole her sworn shield. The new king preferred feasting to feuding, left the duller work of ruling to his Hand, Ser Otto Hightower, and made no secret of distrusting Daemon as his successor — in 104 AC he removed him from the Small Council and gave him command of the City Watch instead.

In 105 AC Aemma died giving birth to a son, Baelon, who followed her a day later; Daemon marked the news by carousing in a brothel and calling the baby 'the heir for a day,' which enraged Viserys. Once mourning ended, the king named Rhaenyra his heir and Princess of Dragonstone. The following year he remarried, to Alicent Hightower, his Hand's daughter; neither a furious Daemon nor House Velaryon came to the wedding.

That same year Daemon went to war over the Stepstones alongside Corlys Velaryon; Viserys, uninterested in fighting, simply paid for the army. Alicent bore him three children — Aegon, Helaena, Aemond — but Viserys never touched the succession he'd already settled on Rhaenyra. When Otto Hightower pushed too hard to change it, the king sent him back to Oldtown and made Lyonel Strong his Hand.

The court split between Alicent's supporters and Rhaenyra's; at the 111 AC tourney she wore green while Rhaenyra wore black and red, and the colors named the two factions. Daemon returned at that same tourney, reconciled, only to be exiled again six months later, amid rumors he had seduced Rhaenyra. Questioned by Viserys, Daemon admitted it and asked for her hand; advised against kinslaying, the king chose banishment instead.

In 113 AC Viserys decided to marry Rhaenyra to Laenor Velaryon, to mend ties with Driftmark; she resisted until he threatened to change the succession. They married in 114 AC, and during the celebration Criston Cole killed Laenor's champion in a duel. Laenor mostly stayed away at High Tide, but Rhaenyra had three sons — Jacaerys, Lucerys, Joffrey — none with Valyrian features, fueling rumors that their real father was her sworn shield, Harwin Strong. Viserys knew and chose not to know more: he treated his grandsons as his successors, and each was given a dragon's egg that hatched.

Meanwhile Daemon married Laena Velaryon without Viserys's leave and had to flee with her to Pentos, where their twin daughters, Baela and Rhaena, were born. Viserys agreed to receive them at court, and Rhaenyra, by then close to Laena, betrothed her sons to Daemon's daughters.

120 AC became known as the Year of the Red Spring: Laena Velaryon died in childbirth, and at her funeral Lucerys took out Aemond's eye defending Jacaerys from the accusation of being Strong bastards. Furious, Viserys forbade the rumor on pain of losing one's tongue and sent Harwin Strong to Harrenhal, where a fire soon killed him and his father Lyonel, the King's Hand. That same year Laenor Velaryon was murdered, and Rhaenyra and Daemon married without telling Viserys, barely widowed themselves.

In 126 AC, with Corlys Velaryon gravely ill and Driftmark's succession disputed, several Velaryons accused Rhaenyra's sons before the king of being bastards with no claim; Viserys ordered their tongues cut out and, rising from the Iron Throne, sliced his hand to the bone. The wound turned septic, cost him two fingers, and he never sat the throne normally again. On the first day of 127 AC he brought Rhaenyra and Alicent together at a feast of reconciliation.

Viserys died in his sleep, after telling his grandchildren stories, on the third day of the third moon of 129 AC, in the Red Keep. He had left Rhaenyra his heir, but the Greens hid his death for seven days and crowned Alicent's eldest son Aegon in her place; Criston Cole proclaimed him king with the Conqueror's crown, and that act lit the war that would become known as the Dance of the Dragons.