Assault on Dragonstone

When word reached King's Landing that Prince Rhaegar had fallen to Robert Baratheon at the Trident, King Aerys II had Queen Rhaella and young Viserys sent away for safety, put aboard a ship bound for Dragonstone, the island that had once cradled House Targaryen. Aerys stayed behind with the rest of his blood, and none of them lived through the sack that followed the city's fall.

Rhaella was carrying the daughter she had conceived that same night, after watching Aerys burn Lord Qarlton Chelsted alive. She spent the whole pregnancy in exile on the island, while across the sea Robert claimed the crown and asked his brother Stannis, celebrating the rebellion's end at Storm's End, to build a new fleet for the house now ruling from King's Landing.

In 284, as a storm broke over Dragonstone and wrecked what was left of the Targaryen ships in the harbour, Rhaella died giving birth to a girl.

Sailing aboard the warship Fury, Stannis led the newly built fleet to take Dragonstone for his brother. The island's garrison was already prepared to hand over the two remaining Targaryen children, Viserys and his newborn sister.

But before Stannis's sails came into view, Ser Willem Darry, once master-at-arms of the Red Keep, got the two children off the island and across the Narrow Sea to the Braavosi coast. When Stannis landed, he found a castle emptied of Targaryens and took it for the crown without a fight.

With Dragonstone lost, the Targaryens held no ground left anywhere in the Seven Kingdoms, and Viserys and his sister would grow up in Braavos, in the care of Ser Willem Darry.

Robert named Stannis Lord of Dragonstone, the seat that by tradition belonged to the heir to the Iron Throne — on the face of it, an honor. But the king never forgave the children slipping through his fingers, and gave Storm's End, the Baratheons' ancestral seat, to his youngest brother Renly instead. Stannis took it as a slight he would not forget.