Balerion

Balerion was born in Valyria before the Doom swallowed the city, one of the five dragons Lord Aenar Targaryen carried with him when his household moved to Dragonstone. He was named for an old Valyrian god.

Long before any Targaryen sat a Westerosi throne, the dragon was already fighting in the wars of the Free Cities: he burned a Volantene fleet sailing against Lys.

When Aegon crossed the Narrow Sea to take Westeros, Balerion carried him, and in that war he earned the name Black Dread. His most remembered moment came at the Field of Fire, the only time all three of the Conquest's dragons flew together: between him, Vhagar and Meraxes, four thousand men burned. King Mern died in the flames, and House Gardener died with him.

After the Field of Fire the Reach's army broke apart, and Aegon marched on to Highgarden, whose gates opened without a fight. Hearing that Torrhen Stark was marching south with his own men, he flew to join his sisters and bannermen; faced with the size of the dragons, the northern king bent the knee without a battle.

By the war's end, Balerion's fire had melted the swords of Aegon's defeated enemies into the Iron Throne.

When Aegon died, his son Maegor claimed Balerion for himself, unwilling to consider any other dragon worthy of him. He rode the Black Dread to crush Jonos Arryn's rebellion in the Vale, after Jonos locked up his own brother, Lord Ronnel Arryn, and declared independence from the Iron Throne.

When Maegor fell from favor and left for exile, he took Balerion with him to Pentos. After his brother King Aenys I died, he flew back on the dragon's back to claim the crown.

As king, he rode Balerion in the war against the Faith Militant, burning a fortified sept on Rhaenys's Hill with seven hundred Warrior's Sons still inside, and used him again in the battle beneath the Gods Eye, where he killed a nephew of his along with the nephew's own dragon.

In 54 AC, Princess Aerea Targaryen claimed Balerion for her own and fled Dragonstone, away from her mother, Queen Rhaena. Rhaena searched for her for more than a year without finding her.

One morning in 56 AC the dragon flew back to King's Landing alone; landing in the yard of the Red Keep, Aerea fell from his back, and Ser Lucamore Strong carried her to the Grand Maester. Balerion came back with half-healed wounds and a gash nearly seven feet long along his side. From then on he settled in the Dragonpit, the first of his kind to do so.

The last to claim Balerion was Prince Viserys, in 93 AC. The dragon, by then very old, was hard to wake and resisted taking flight; they circled King's Landing three times. Viserys had meant to fly him to Dragonstone, but feared he no longer had the strength for the journey and chose not to risk it.

Less than half a year later, in 94 AC, Balerion died of old age. Viserys never claimed another dragon.

His skull, along with those of other Targaryen dragons, stood as decoration in the Red Keep's throne room until, after the Targaryens fell, King Robert Baratheon had them all taken down and stored in the dungeons. A colored image of him survives in the book Blood of the Dragon.