"Fire and Blood" by George R.R. Martin, List 4

The king and queen mourned his loss, and the realm with them, but no man was more bereft than Prince Baelon, who went at once to Tarth and avenged his brother by driving the Myrmen into the sea.

Prince Baelon was firmly ensconced as heir apparent by then, yet House Velaryon and House Baratheon clung to the belief that young Laenor had a better claim to the Iron Throne, and some few even argued for the rights of his elder sister, Laena, and their mother, Rhaenys.

Though not yet forty years of age, Vaegon was pale and frail, a bookish man devoted to alchemy, astronomy, mathematics, and other arcane arts.

The tenuous claims of nine lesser competitors were considered and discarded (one such, a hedge knight who put himself forward as a natural son of King Jaehaerys himself, was seized and imprisoned when the king exposed him as a liar).

The principle of primogeniture favored Laenor, the principle of proximity Viserys.

Nor did he travel as a passenger; he climbed masts, tied knots, scrubbed decks, pulled oars, caulked leaks, raised and lowered sails, manned the crow's nest, learned to navigate and steer.

When the morning and evening tides rolled in, the castle was surrounded by the sea, connected to Driftmark proper only by a causeway.

Ser Otto's precocious fifteen-year-old daughter, Alicent, became his constant companion, fetching His Grace his meals, reading to him, helping him to bathe and dress himself.

Meanwhile, the tedium of rule was left largely to the king's small council and his Hand.

Ser Otto Hightower had continued in that office, serving the grandson as he had the grandsire; an able man, all agreed, though many found him proud, brusque, and haughty.

The longer he served, the more imperious Ser Otto became, it was said, and many great lords and princes came to resent his manner and envy him his access to the Iron Throne.

The greatest of his rivals was Daemon Targaryen, the king's ambitious, impetuous, moody younger brother.

Finding the watchmen ill-armed and clad in oddments and rags, Daemon equipped each man with dirk, short sword, and cudgel, armored them in black ringmail (with breastplates for the officers) and gave them long golden cloaks that they might wear with pride.

Finding the watchmen ill-armed and clad in oddments and rags, Daemon equipped each man with dirk, short sword, and cudgel, armored them in black ringmail (with breastplates for the officers) and gave them long golden cloaks that they might wear with pride.

Nor was he reticent about recording even the most shocking and salacious rumors and accusations, though the bulk of The Reign of King Viserys, First of His Name, and the Dance of the Dragons That Came After remains a sober and somewhat ponderous history.

Whereas Septon Eustace records the secrets of bedchamber and brothel in hushed, condemnatory tones, Mushroom delights in the same, and his Testimony consists of little but ribald tales and gossip, piling stabbings, poisonings, betrayals, seductions, and debaucheries one atop the other.

Whereas Septon Eustace records the secrets of bedchamber and brothel in hushed, condemnatory tones, Mushroom delights in the same, and his Testimony consists of little but ribald tales and gossip, piling stabbings, poisonings, betrayals, seductions, and debaucheries one atop the other.

The boy (named Baelon, after the king's father) survived her only by a day, leaving king and court bereft...save perhaps for Prince Daemon, who was observed in a brothel on the Street of Silk, making drunken japes with his highborn cronies about the “heir for a day.”

His Grace had finally had a surfeit of his ungrateful brother and his ambitions.

Of themselves the isles were of little worth, but placed as they were, they controlled the sea lanes to and from the narrow sea, and merchant ships passing through those waters were often preyed on by their inhabitants. Still, for centuries such depredations had remained no more than a nuisance.

Once Volantis sued for peace and withdrew from the Disputed Lands, the Three Daughters had turned their gaze westward, sweeping over the Stepstones with their combined armies and fleets under the command of the Myrish prince admiral, Craghas Drahar, who earned the sobriquet Craghas Crabfeeder when he staked out hundreds of captured pirates on the wet sands, to drown beneath the rising tide.

The avarice of Craghas Crabfeeder and his partners in conquest soon turned feelings against them, however; the toll was raised again, and yet again, soon becoming so ruinous that merchants who had once paid gladly now sought to slip past the galleys of the Triarchy as once they had the pirates. Drahar and his Lysene and Tyroshi co-admirals seemed to be vying with each other to see who was the greediest, men complained.

When her infamously niggardly uncle refused to pay the ransom, she was sold to a pillow house, where she rose to become the celebrated courtesan known as the Black Swan, and ruler of Lys in all but name.

Though the Stepstones were engulfed in blood and fire, King Viserys and his court remained unperturbed.

Viserys was a man of peace, and during these years King's Landing was an endless round of feasts, balls, and tourneys, where mummers and singers heralded the birth of each new Targaryen princeling.

Loudest amongst her supporters was her father, Ser Otto Hightower, Hand of the King. Pushed too far on the matter, in 109 AC Viserys stripped Ser Otto of his chain of office and named in his place the taciturn Lord of Harrenhal, Lyonel Strong.

“This Hand will not hector me,” His Grace proclaimed.

King Viserys loved both his wife and daughter, and hated conflict and contention. He strove all his days to keep the peace between his women, and to please both with gifts and gold and honors.

Though the Great Council of 101 had ruled against his claim, the Velaryon boy remained a grandson of Prince Aemon Targaryen of hallowed memory, a great-grandson of the Old King himself.

Breakbones had long desired the princess, and lacked Ser Criston's scruples.

Ser Laenor had the aquiline nose, silver-white hair, and purple eyes that bespoke his Valyrian blood.

Armed with Dark Sister, the prince made short work of his rival, and wed Lady Laena Velaryon a fortnight later, abandoning his hardscrabble kingdom on the Stepstones.

Prince Daemon and Lady Laena flew first to Pentos, where they were feted by the city's prince.

In those cities, far removed from the woes of Westeros and the power of the Triarchy, their welcome was less rapturous.

Ser Laenor Velaryon, husband to the Princess Rhaenyra and the putative father of her children, was slain whilst attending a fair in Spicetown, stabbed to death by his friend and companion Ser Qarl Correy.

Call it boldness, call it madness, call it fortune or the will of the gods or the caprice of dragons. Who can know the mind of such a beast?

He considered his brother as well, until he recalled Prince Daemon's previous stints on the small council.

Prince Aemond, despite the loss of his eye, had become a proficient and dangerous swordsman under the tutelage of Ser Criston Cole, but remained a wild and willful child, hot-tempered and unforgiving.

His had always been a moderating voice in council, forever urging calm and compromise whenever issues arose between the blacks and the greens. To the king's distress, however, the passing of the man he called “my trusted friend” only served to provoke a fresh dispute between the factions.

Septon Eustace tells us that this was the result of prayer, but most believed that Orwyle's potions and tinctures were more efficacious than the leechings Mellos had preferred.