Viserys II Targaryen

He was born on Dragonstone in 122, the second son of Rhaenyra and Daemon. A dragon egg was laid in his cradle, as with his siblings, but his never hatched; he also came out smaller and less sturdy than his older brothers, though sharp for his age.

In 129, with the war over his mother's throne getting worse, his half-brother Jacaerys arranged for him and Prince Aegon to sail for Essos aboard the Gay Abandon, bound for Pentos, where they were meant to shelter with a local prince until Rhaenyra secured the throne. The Triarchy's fleet intercepted the ship; Aegon got away on Stormcloud, but Viserys had only an unhatched egg with him. He hid the egg, dressed as a common cabin boy, and nearly went unnoticed until someone in the crew gave him away. A Tyroshi captain handed him over to the admiral Sharako Lohar, who held him captive.

For a time the whole realm believed him dead, and Aegon carried the guilt of leaving him behind for the rest of his life. It was Alyn Velaryon who found him in Lys, held by merchants who meant to profit from his ransom or his death, and who paid the fortune needed to bring him home. Viserys returned to King's Landing with Larra Rogare, whom he married in 134; his brother, by then King Aegon III, never trusted anyone else quite the same way again.

As soon as his brother Aegon III came of age, Viserys began serving him as Hand of the King at just fourteen, younger than anyone who had held the post before. Together the brothers worked to settle a realm still unsettled by civil war, and even tried, without much luck, to bring dragons back to the royal house — Viserys's idea of importing mages from Essos came to nothing.

Larra Rogare never felt at home in the court at King's Landing. She gave Viserys three children — Aegon, born in 135; Aemon, in 136; and Naerys, in 138 — and afterward went back to Lys for good. Viserys, charming as a young man, grew harder with the years, perhaps because of it.

In 153, at his brother the king's wish, Viserys married his own children Aegon and Naerys to each other, a match without love from the start. That same year their son was born and named Daeron: Viserys's first grandchild. When Aegon III died in 157, the crown passed to his own eldest son, a fourteen-year-old boy crowned Daeron I; to keep the lords from fighting over who would control such a young king, Viserys chose to stay on as Hand rather than let a regency take hold.

Around then Viserys learned that his son Aegon had fathered four daughters with a smith's wife, Megette; he saw to it that the woman was returned to her husband and left the girls in the Faith's care. Meanwhile young Daeron I turned out ambitious, determined to finish what Aegon the Conqueror had left undone in Dorne, and pushed that war through despite Viserys's objections, the council's, and much of the nobility's; the prince limited himself to keeping the rest of the realm calm while his nephew fought in the south.

Daeron I's death in 161, killed along with his escort and three Kingsguard knights while carrying a peace banner, shook the whole realm. Furious at the betrayal, Viserys had the highborn Dornish hostages thrown in the dungeons to await hanging. The throne then passed to Aegon III's second son, a deeply devout seventeen-year-old crowned Baelor I.

Baelor I pardoned the hostages and pursued peace with Dorne on his own terms; he walked south barefoot, fell ill along the way, and spent nearly half a year recovering at Storm's End. He got his peace, sealed by the betrothal of Princess Myriah Martell to Viserys's own grandson, Prince Daeron. Through all those years Viserys stayed on as Hand, holding things together while his nephew, more devoted to the Faith than to ruling, let them slide.

In 170 Myriah Martell gave birth to Baelor, Viserys's first great-grandson, and that same year Princess Daena bore a bastard son, Daemon Mares, by Prince Aegon — another grandchild for Viserys, born outside marriage. The following year King Baelor's latest fast got out of hand and killed him. Rumors spread that Viserys had poisoned him, some meaning it as an accusation and others almost as praise for ridding the realm of so strange a king. With Baelor's sister already mother to a bastard of her own, and the precedent set at the Great Council of 101 weighing in, the crown fell to Viserys, who by then had spent fourteen years serving his nephews as Hand.

As king, Viserys focused above all on putting the realm's finances in order: he reformed the royal household, founded a new mint, and worked to revive trade across the narrow sea. He also revised, for the better, the legal code Jaehaerys I had left behind generations before.

He had the mind and the hand to have been a second Jaehaerys the Conciliator, but barely got the time: a sudden illness killed him in 172, little more than a year after he took the throne, and the crown passed to his son Aegon IV. Some suspected that Aegon himself hastened his father's end to inherit sooner.

Opinions on Viserys split ever after: to some, he was the man who poisoned a nephew and then did nothing with the throne he won; to others, the one who held the realm together while Aegon III brooded, Daeron I made war, and Baelor I prayed. Tyrion Lannister would later put it his own way: "His uncle served him loyally as Hand, just as he had served the Young Dragon before him. Viserys may have reigned but a single year, yet he ruled for fifteen while Daeron went from war to war and Baelor gave himself over to prayer. And if he did do away with his nephew, is that not understandable? Someone had to save the realm from Baelor's foolishness."