Meleys

Before 75 AC, Meleys lived in the Dragonpit of King's Landing, unridden by anyone. That year Princess Alyssa Targaryen climbed onto her back for the first time, and from then on dragon and princess were bound together. She was not the largest of her kind, but she was the swiftest, easily outpacing both Caraxes and the massive Vhagar in flight.

Alyssa would remember that first flight with a line that became famous among her kin: "Maidens both, but ridden now."

In 77 AC, Alyssa strapped her newborn son Viserys, barely nine days old, to her chest and flew with him on Meleys. She did the same four years later with her second son, when he was only a fortnight old.

Meleys was left without a rider in 84 AC, when Alyssa died in childbirth. Three years would pass before another Targaryen princess climbed onto her back.

In 87 AC, Princess Rhaenys, Alyssa's niece, became Meleys's new rider. Two years later she flew her to Highgarden, joining her grandfather, King Jaehaerys I Targaryen, on his royal progress through the Shield Islands.

When Rhaenys married Lord Corlys Velaryon in 90 AC, she would arrive no other way than on her dragon's back. She told her husband-to-be: "We could fly there together, side by side, but I will get there first, for I will go by dragon."

Some sources also place Meleys and Rhaenys in the naval campaigns Lord Corlys led during the reign of Viserys I, though without any firm dates attached.

During the Dance of the Dragons, Rhaenys mounted Meleys again for war. In 129 AC, when Ser Criston Cole's army laid siege to Rook's Rest, Rhaenys flew to the stronghold to relieve the forces loyal to the Blacks. The Greens met the dragon with a hail of iron bolts; they failed to wound her, but succeeded in enraging her, and Meleys answered by raining fire upon her attackers.

The siege, however, was a trap. Vhagar and Sunfyre appeared over Rook's Rest, and Meleys found herself fighting both at once in the air. She managed to close her jaws around Sunfyre's neck, but Vhagar's weight crashing down on all three sent them plummeting to the ground, half a league from the castle.

Meleys did not survive the fall; her body was left shattered and scattered across the field, and Rhaenys was found beside her, burned beyond recognition. Vhagar walked away unscathed; Sunfyre lost a wing, and his rider, King Aegon II Targaryen, was left gravely wounded.

Meleys's head was afterward carried in a cart through the streets of King's Landing. The whole city fell silent as it passed, and thousands of its people began to flee before the gates were shut behind them.