House Targaryen of King's Landing

House Targaryen was one of forty noble families known as the dragonlords who ruled the Valyrian Freehold, though a minor one among them. Twelve years before the Doom struck the city, Aenar Targaryen took his family and five dragons out of Valyria and settled on Dragonstone, after his daughter Daenys the Dreamer foresaw the ruin coming; in Valyria, leaving was read as cowardice.

Through the Century of Blood that followed, they raised a fortress on the island and watched four of their five dragons die, leaving only Balerion alive — though two eggs later hatched into Vhagar and Meraxes. From their Valyrian blood they kept telltale traits, near-white hair and violet eyes, and in some of them a resistance to heat that never made them immune to fire.

Seven generations after Aenar, Aegon set out from Dragonstone with his sisters Visenya and Rhaenys, each riding their own dragon, and brought the kingdoms of Westeros to heel one by one; only Dorne stayed out of reach. Where they landed they raised a new city, King's Landing, which would serve as the dynasty's seat for nearly three centuries.

Aegon's coronation as king in Oldtown was fixed as year 1, the starting point of the calendar Westeros would use from then on. Dragonstone was not abandoned — it remained the traditional seat reserved for the heir, who carried the title Prince of Dragonstone.

The dynasty's last king, Aerys II, saw his reign come apart when, around the year 282, his eldest son Rhaegar rode off with Lyanna Stark. Her betrothed, Robert Baratheon, raised his banners, and the Starks, Arryns and Tullys joined the rebellion.

King Jaehaerys II had warned of it generations earlier: "Madness and greatness are two sides of the same coin, and every time a Targaryen is born, the gods toss the coin in the air and the world holds its breath to see how it will land." Aerys got the side no one wanted.

The war lasted a little over a year. Robert killed Rhaegar at the Trident, and when Tywin Lannister's troops later took King's Landing, Jaime Lannister of the Kingsguard killed Aerys himself.

Rhaella, Aerys's wife and sister, fled pregnant to Dragonstone with her young son Viserys; there, in the middle of a storm, she gave birth to a girl they named Daenerys, and died bearing her.

In King's Landing the rest of the family fared worse. Rhaegar's Dornish wife, Elia Martell, and their two children, Rhaenys and Aegon, were killed by Ser Gregor Clegane and Ser Amory Lorch during the sack of the city.

Years later, Viserys and Daenerys were surviving in Pentos, moving through the Free Cities to stay ahead of the swordsmen Westeros's new powers kept sending after them. Determined to win back his father's throne, Viserys married his sister off to Khal Drogo, lord of a Dothraki khalasar, in exchange for the promise of an army.

At the wedding, magister Illyrio Mopatis gave Daenerys three petrified dragon eggs. With the help of an exiled knight, Jorah Mormont, the group travelled to Vaes Dothrak, where Viserys, no longer in his right mind, died at Drogo's hand.

Drogo's death from a poorly healed wound, worsened by the dark arts of the healer Mirri Maz Duur, left Daenerys alone at the head of what remained of the khalasar. On her husband's funeral pyre, amid the flames, three living dragons were born at last — Drogon, Rhaegal and Viserion, the first the world had seen in generations.

Daenerys's group crossed the Red Waste following a comet that had appeared in the sky, stopped in the dead city of Vaes Tolorro, and finally reached Qarth. No merchant there would sell her the fleet she needed to carry an army to Westeros.

Desperate, she agreed to enter the House of the Undying, an ordeal she barely survived and which ended up destroying the place. The clash left her at odds with Qarth's warlocks, and only the intervention of two protectors sent by magister Illyrio saved her from an assassination attempt soon after.

With what little she had, Daenerys made for the Bay of Dragons. In Astapor she bought the Unsullied and turned them on the slavers with her dragons' help, taking the city and freeing its slaves; in Yunkai she did the same without keeping the city for herself, and finally reached Meereen, where she chose to stop and learn to rule while her dragons grew.

There she found out Jorah Mormont had long been reporting to Varys in secret, and set him aside. She also learned that Arstan, one of her protectors, was in fact Ser Barristan Selmy — and him, instead, she forgave.

A different account of the massacre at King's Landing began circulating in the Free Cities: the boy Ser Gregor Clegane killed that night may not have been Aegon, son of Rhaegar and Elia, but another infant put in his place. The real Aegon, it was said, had been raised in secret far from Westeros, under Jon Connington's care.

Meanwhile Yunkai and other slaving cities declared war on Daenerys, and murdered Unsullied began turning up inside Meereen itself. To stop the bloodshed, Daenerys married a local nobleman, Hizdahr zo Loraq; at the feast that followed, Drogon reappeared after a long absence and flew off with Daenerys on his back, disappearing over the Dothraki Sea, where Khal Jhaqo's khalasar found her.

With the backing of the Golden Company, Aegon landed separately in the Stormlands, took several castles, and laid siege to Storm's End.