Fire & Blood, George R.R. Martin’s volume of Targaryen history, provides a detailed account of everything from Aegon’s Conquest of Westeros through the Dance of the Dragons, the Targaryen civil war that tore the realm apart. It tells the stories of people who shaped the Seven Kingdoms. Some of these people are mentioned on Game of Thrones or in A Song of Ice and Fire. Others are not, but as described by Archmaester Gyldayn, the “author” of the book, all of them come to vivid life. Today, let’s highlight a few of the most interesting of these characters and get to know them better.
Princess Meria Martell
When Aegon the Conqueror and his sister wives Visenya and Rhaenys conquered the Seven Kingdoms, they could not bend Dorne to their will. The main reason for this was Princess Meria Martell, who at the time of Aegon’s conquest was 80 years old, fat, balding and blind. Still, she led her countrymen in resisting Targaryen rule, and succeeded where every other kingdom failed.
After Aegon had conquered the other kingdoms of Westeros, he sent his sister Rhaenys to parlay with Princess Meria. But the peaceful negotiations quickly turned hostile when Meria stood her ground. “I will not fight you, nor will I kneel to you,” she said. “Dorne has no king. Tell your brother that.”
"Rhaenys: “I shall, but we will come again, Princess, and the next time we shall come with fire and blood.”"
"Meria: “Your words. Ours are Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken. You may burn us, my lady … but you will not bend us, break us, or make us bow. This is Dorne. You are not wanted here. Return at your peril.”"
Rhaenys did not heed Meria’s words, and when she returned with her brother and sister upon their dragons, they did indeed bring fire and blood to Dorne…only, there were no lords to capture or kill, and Princess Meria had all but disappeared.
When Aegon saw that the ruler of Dorne and her bannermen had abandoned their castles, he proclaimed that Dorne was now under his rule, and installed Lord Jon Rosby as the castellan and Warden of the Sands. As soon as the dragons flew away, the Dornishmen swarmed back into their castles and expelled the men Aegon had placed there.
When Princess Meria returned to Sunspear, the blind and elderly ruler of Dorne personally threw Lord Rosby out of a window at the top of the Spear Tower. To say this woman was a badass would be a gross understatement.
Rhaenys Targaryen returned on her dragon, hoping to catch Princess Meria before she could hide herself away. But when she flew over the castle of Hellholt, a Dornish soldier fired a scorpion bolt at Meraxes, hitting the dragon in the eye and killing it. Queen Rhaenys perished with her dragon, making Dorne the first kingdom to successfully resist Targaryen rule and kill a dragon.
Under Princess Meria, Dorne continued to resist House Targaryen, but when she died of natural causes 13 years after the conquest, her son immediately began negotiations for peace. Princess Meria stayed true to her House’s words. She never bowed, she did not bend, and Dorne was never broken while she still lived.
King Jaehaerys I Targaryen and his wife, Queen Alysanne
Jaehaerys Targaryen ascended to the Iron Throne at the age of 14 and ruled for 55 years. During his reign, Jaehaerys earned the moniker of the Conciliator. He became known for his wisdom, reason and willingness to make peace where his uncle Maegor the Cruel made war. Eventually, he was known as the Old King. His dragon was Vermithor, the third largest dragon at the time, behind Balerion and Vhagar.
Jaehaerys wasn’t able to rule until his sixteenth name day, so for two years his mother the Dowager Queen Alyssa served as regent alongside her second husband Lord Rogar Baratheon, who Jaehaerys named Lord Protector of the Realm and his Hand of the King.
The first obstacle Jaehaerys had to overcome was reconciling with the Faith of the Seven, which had been at war with his predecessor and uncle, Maegor. The High Septon of the Faith declared that the Targaryen practice of marrying brother to sister, or uncle to niece, or aunt to nephew, was a sin in the eyes of the gods, and therefore any marriage coming from House Targaryen was condemned and the children abominations.
Jaehaerys was having none of that, as he was already in love with his sister Alysanne. Knowing the problems her son and daughter would face if they were to marry, Queen Alyssa forbid their union. Lord Rogar backed her up.
Hoping to placate the Faith and forge alliances with other powerful houses, Alyssa and Rogar started to arrange outside marriages for both Jaehaerys and Alysanne. When he learned what his mother and Hand were planning, Jaehaerys and Alysanne mounted their dragons, flew to Dragonstone and had the Septon there immediately marry them, with Jaehaerys’ Kingsgaurd looking on as witnesses.
When Alyssa and Rogar found out, they sailed to Dragonstone with a small force of soldiers and a Septon to forcibly separate the two. Jaehaerys and Alysanne were there to greet them when they landed. Lord Rogar pitched a fit when he learned they had been married, and Queen Alyssa began to cry. The Septon — a very large and loud man — began to yell at the young king and his queen, but when he stopped to take a breath, Jaehaerys told him to shut his mouth or he’d have it sewn shut.
When Lord Rogar told his own men at arms to separate the newlyweds, Jaehaerys’ Kingsguard defended their charge, warning Rogar’s men that they would pay with their lives if they came any closer. Rogar eventually backed down, but when he learned that Jaehaerys and Alysanne had not consummated the marriage, he began plotting how to intercede and marry them off into other Houses.
Of course, this didn’t work, and Jaehaerys and Alysanne spent every day together for two years at Dragonstone, where many great Lords of Westeros sought Jaehaerys out in Aegon’s map room. At every meeting, Alysanne stood by her husband and king, giving advice when needed.
At the age of 16, Jaehaerys finally consummated his marriage to Alysanne, and the two flew to King’s Landing where Jaehaerys dismissed his mother and Lord Rogar, as well as many of the Small Council, replacing them with his own picks. He also eventually made peace with the Faith and removed the bounty King Maegor placed on the Faith Militant, although he kept the orders disbanded.
During their long reign, Alysanne became known as Good Queen Alysanne on account of her love for the common people of Westeros, and because whenever she and King Jaehaerys would visit castles elsewhere in the realm, Queen Alysanne always took time to meet with the women in the area. No men were allowed at these meetings, and the women were urged to speak their minds about any concerns great or small that Alysanne might be able to help them with.
On one such visit, Queen Alysanne visited Winterfell alone, Jaehaerys needed to stay in King’s Landing to settle a dispute between two warring factions from cities across the Narrow Sea (he was known as the Conciliator, after all). She stayed at White Harbor on her way north, and Lord Manderly warned her that Lord Alaric Stark was infamous for his stubbornness and foul moods.
This did not deter the queen. When she and her dragon Silverwing landed outside the gates of Winterfell, she got her first taste of Stark hospitality when Lord Alaric told her he’d not have her dragon inside Winterfell’s walls, and that it would be better if she and her retinue didn’t overstay their welcome.
Again, Alysanne was not deterred, and she did everything she could to endear herself to the grouchy Warden of the North…and eventually, it worked. He took her hunting, showed her the bones of a giant, allowed her to begin arranging marriages for his two sons, and let her take his only daughter into her service as a Lady in Waiting. Lord Aleric even approached Silverwing, albeit as cautiously as he could.
However, Queen Alysanne made her biggest impact in the North during a trip to Castle Black. While there, she tried several times to get Silverwing to fly north of the Wall, but each time the dragon resisted, and she eventually had to return south. This unnerved her so much that she wrote to her husband about it. Could Silverwing detect the White Walkers even then, at that time in Westerosi history?
The Lord Commander took Alysanne on a tour of the Wall, where she saw how large and broken down the Nightfort was. She urged the Lord Commander to build a new castle closer to Castle Black and not as large as the Nightfort, and when he told her the Night’s Watch could not afford it, she pledged to sell her own jewels to pay for the building of the castle, which was called Deep Lake. When it was finished, the brothers of the Night’s Watch honored Queen Alysanne with a statue of her likeness that still stands there today.
Alysanne did one more thing of importance during this trip. Since the Night’s Watch had no women, she was taken to Mole’s Town, where the men of the order went to visit the brothel. When Alysanne arrived in the town, she gathered only the women around her, most of whom were prostitutes, and asked them to share their concerns. It was here that the queen learned that the right of the First Night was still being practiced in the North, and how it had ruined one girl’s life in particular.
When Alysanne returned to King’s Landing, she took her place at the Small Council and convinced King Jaehaerys to abolish the practice of First Night, making it illegal for any lord, great or small, to partake in it. Because of Good Queen Alysanne, women were protected from being taken from their husbands on the first night of their marriage and deflowered by some lord.
Jaehaerys and Alysanne were married for 46 years, until the queen’s death. They had 13 children, though only nine lived to adulthood. King Jaehaerys the Conciliator and Good Queen Alysanne ruled of Westeros for 55 years, in which the realm saw its longest-ever period of peace and prosperity. To this day, they remain the gold standard of Targaryen leadership.
Cregan Stark
There was a time in Westerosi history when House Stark could have taken control of King’s Landing and sat the Iron Throne as rulers of the Seven Kingdoms. This time was known as the Hour of the Wolf, and it is the story of Lord Cregan Stark of Winterfell, the Warden of the North. He pledged support to Rhaenyra Targaryen’s Blacks during the Dance of the Dragons, and eventually marched on King’s Landing with a very large army of Northerners and took control of the city.
Lord Cregan was a seasoned warrior and masterful swordsman. He once fought Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, and later, Aemon claimed he never faced a finer swordsman.
Lord Cregan’s decision to march was based on a pact he made with Rhaenyra’s son Prince Jacaerys Velaryon. Called the Pact of Ice and Fire, it provided that when Rhaenyra or her sons took the Iron Throne from Aegon II’s Greens, marriages would take place between Houses Targaryen and Stark. In fact, according to the fool Mushroom, while he was at Winterfell, Prince Jacaerys fell in love with and married Lord Cregan’s bastard half-sister.
Anyway, when Lord Cregan and his army arrived at King’s Landing, Aegon II had been killed, and Aegon III had already been crowned as the new king. Known as Aegon the Younger, he was the fourth-born son of his mother, Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, and ascended to the Iron Throne because all of his older brothers were killed in the Dance of the Dragons.
However, because he was only 11 years of age, Aegon III ruled through a regency until he turned 16. When Lord Cregan arrived at the Red Keep, he let Aegon III know that he was there to support him, but wanted to know what happened to Aegon II (Aegon the Older), and how he was killed without anyone having besieged the city.
When Cregan learned that Aegon II was poisoned, a dishonorable act, he convinced the young king to make him Hand of the King, so he could find and punish those involved in King Aegon II’s murder.
Lord Cregan held King’s Landing in his grasp for six days, wherein many Lords feared he would take control and become regent or even King himself. The Septons of the Faith feared Cregan and his Northerners would tear down the Septs and force the realm to worship the old gods and their weirwood trees.
However, Lord Cregan had no such aspirations. He only wanted to serve justice, and since he and his army marched on King’s Landing looking for a fight, his men were itching to help him bring justice to the Red Keep. As Hand of the King, Lord Cregan threw every member of Aegon II’s Small Council in the dungeons, along with his remaining Kingsguard and even his Septon and Maester.
After all was said and done, 22 men were arrested for the late king’s death, and after a day of deliberation in the throne room, where Lord Cregan sat on a wooden bench at the foot of the Iron Throne (such a Stark thing to do), most of the men were found guilty of treason. The penalty was death. Only Lord Corlys Velaryon was pardoned after Aegon III and Lady Aly Blackwood spoke on his behalf.
When Lord Cregan unsheathed House Stark’s ancestral Valyrian steel blade Ice to behead the guilty (the Lords of Winterfell held to the custom that the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword), all but Ser Gyles Belgrave of the Kingsguard and Larys the Clubfoot chose to take the black of the Night’s Watch, and since Lord Cregan knew how important it was to keep adding men to that ancient order, he allowed it to happen.
Ser Gyles chose death because he believed no Kingsguard should outlive their king, and Larys the Clubfoot knew he was doomed, as he was the man mainly responsible for poisoning Aegon II. He asked Lord Cregan to hack off his clubfoot as well, since he didn’t want to drag it around in the afterlife, and Cregan agreed. Larys Strong the Clubfoot was buried at Harrenhal, without his clubbed foot.
Lord Cregan then stepped down as Hand of the King and returned to Winterfell, but not before securing the hand of Lady Aly Blackwood in marriage. As for his army, many of them formed a company of sellswords, aptly named the Wolf Pack, and others followed Lady Aly Blackwood back to the Riverlands to marry the many widows who lost their husbands during the Dance of the Dragons.
After making sure her lands were once again safe and that homes and castles were being reconstructed and repaired by the Northmen she helped to settle there, Lady Aly went to Winterfell and married Lord Cregan in front of Winterfell’s weirwood tree, as House Blackwood was and still is one of the few southron Houses to keep the old gods.
One final note: King Aegon III granted many rewards to Lord Cregan, but a Targaryen princess never did marry into House Stark. The Pact of Ice and Fire was never fulfilled…not yet, anyway.
Mushroom
Mushroom was a dwarf fool and court jester for Viserys I Targaryen, Aegon II Targaryen, Rhaenyra Targaryen, and Aegon III Targaryen. The royals he entertained believed he was a halfwit, so they chose to speak freely around him.
But he wasn’t. In fact, Mushroom was quite smart and witty, and his tales of plots, murders, affairs, and debaucheries were recorded in The Testimony of Mushroom. In Fire & Blood, Arch Maester Gyldayn leans heavily on some of Mushroom’s recounts in order to connect parts of the story that other Maesters and Septons did not record.
Mushroom is described as being three feet tall and having a large head…and according to him, his member was just as big. Most of this can be backed up by Septon Eustice, who served House Targaryen at the same time Mushroom was the court fool, but of Mushroom’s most ribald tales, there is only his word to go on.
Some of his juiciest stories include:
- Prince Daemon Targaryen took the maidenhead of Lady Alicent Hightower (the second wife to King Viserys I Targaryen, and leader of the Greens in the Dance of the Dragons).
- Prince Daemon Targaryen taught his niece, Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, how to sexually please a man with her hands and her mouth. Mushroom even claims Prince Daemon had the princess practice on himself, more than once. Later, during the Dance of the Dragons, Prince Daemon did, in fact, marry Princess Rhaenyra, who was the leader of the Blacks.
- Mushroom tried to mount Silverwing, formerly Queen Alysanne’s mount, when Prince Jacaerys called on all men and women with Targaryen blood (known as “dragonseeds”) to come and try to mount a dragon, so that the forces of the blacks might be bolstered. This ended with Mushroom’s pants being caught on fire, and he claims he almost drowned when he hopped into a well to put out the flames.
- He claims to have become Princess Rhaenyra’s closest confidant during the Dance of the Dragons, counseling her on matters great and small.
- Mushroom witnessed a small force of warriors and Kingsguard get slaughtered by Sandoq the Shadow, who was the protector of Larra Rogare, who was the wife of Prince Viserys Targaryen, who was the younger brother of King Aegon III. This happened when King Aegon III’s regents tried to imprison Lady Larra after her father’s bank went under. Lady Larra was later acquitted of any crimes.
Tales of Mushroom’s involvement in the Dance of the Dragons are worth picking up a copy of Fire & Blood all by themselves. He is by far the most entertaining character in the book.
Corlys Velaryon
Lord Corlys Velaryon, known as the Sea Snake, was the Lord of the Tides, Master of Driftmark, and head of House Velaryon. He was the husband of Princess Rhaenys Targaryen, and during the Dance of the Dragons, he became Hand of the Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen. He also served as a regent for King Aegon III. Guy had a full life.
As a younger man, Corlys was adventurous. He once sailed his ship the Ice Wolf beyond the Wall in search of a northerly route around Westeros, but was unable to find it and had to turn back. Lord Corlys also sailed aboard his legendary ship the Sea Snake, which gave him his nickname, on nine great voyages to Essos. He accumulated an overwhelming amount of wealth from visits to Qarth, Yi Ti and Leng. This made House Velaryon the richest house in the Seven Kingdoms for a time.
Lord Corlys was the first man from Westeros to visit Nefer in N’Ghai and to navigate the Thousand Islands. During his last sailing adventure, he filled the Sea Snake’s hold with gold and bought twenty ships at Qarth, each loaded to bursting with spices, elephants and silk. Lord Corlys Velaryon was a living legend and popular among the people of King’s Landing and beyond.
Lord Corlys and Princess Rhaenys Targaryen had two children, Laena and Laenor. During the Great Council at Harrenhal, when King Jaehaerys called on the Lords of Westeros to weigh in on who should be his heir, Laenor was one of the claimants. However, Prince Viserys earned more support and was named Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne.
Later, after being slighted by King Viserys, Lord Corlys used his considerable wealth to support Prince Daemon Targaryen, and the two conquered all but two islands in the Stepstones. Prince Daemon led the forces on the ground and from the air on the back of his dragon Caraxes the Blood Wyrm, while Lord Corlys led their fleet. When Deamon declared himself King of the Stepstones and the Narrow Sea, it was Corlys who placed the crown upon Daemon’s head. Lord Corlys Velaryon was now a Kingmaker.
During the Dance of the Dragons, Lord Corlys became Hand of the Queen to Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen, but for a while became disillusioned with her after his own wife Rhaenys and her dragon died in the Battle at Rook’s Rest. Rhaenys had tried to fight Prince Aemond Targaryen and his dragon Vhagar together with King Aegon II Targaryen upon Sunfyre all by herself. Before Aemond and Aegon appeared at that battle, Rhaenys had burned through Ser Criston Cole’s ground forces, almost winning the battle single-handedly.
However, the three dragons met a thousand feet in the air and collided, crashing to the ground so hard that stones from Rook’s Rest fell from the ramparts. Rhaenys died and her burned corpse was found beside her dead dragon Meleys the Red Queen. King Aegon II was badly injured and burned from the fall, and his dragon Sunfyre almost lost a wing and never fully recovered. Prince Aemond and Vhagar, the largest of the Targaryen dragons then living, came out of the battle unscathed.
Lord Corlys returned to Driftmark and his seat at High Tide to brood, but when Queen Rhaenyra went into seclusion (with only Mushroom the fool as her confidant), depressed over the loss of her mother and her son, Prince Jacaerys called Corlys back and made him Hand of the Queen once more.
Later, when Prince Jacaerys called for “seeds” of the dragon — those who claimed to have the blood of House Targaryen flowing through their veins — two bastard boys from Driftmark, Addam and Alyn of Hull, came to Dragonstone to see if they could claim a dragon. They had the silver hair and purple eyes so commonly associated with House Targaryen, so no one challenged their claim, but House Velaryon was also from Valyria, and their features also included silver hair and purple eyes.
When pressed, the boys’ mother claimed that Laenor, Lord Corlys’ dead son and former husband to Queen Rhaenyra, was their father. However, it was known that Laenor was gay, and the three children Rhaenyra bore while she was married to him were likely the progeny of her protector and lover Harwin Strong. Laenor was not the father. Instead, everyone assumed that Lord Corlyn himself had fathered Addam and Alyn and kept it a secret from his wife Rhaenys.
Anyway, Addam claimed the dragon Seasmoke, the same dragon that belonged to Laenor until his untimely death. His brother Alyn, however, was not able to claim any dragon. Still, Lord Corlys petitioned Queen Rhaenerya to legitimize the brothers as Velaryon, which she did.
When Addam and Seasmoke died in the second Battle of Tumbleton, Alyn Velaryion was named Lord Corlys’ heir, and when he Corlys died, Alyn became Master of Driftmark, Lord of the Tides, and head of House Velaryon. Under the rule of King Aegon III, he earned the name Oakenfist after ramming his ship into a Braavosi warship and winning a great victory at the Stepstones. He rescued Prince Viserys — long thought dead — from captivity in Lys, earning high favor from the young King Aegon III. Later, he married into House Targaryen by marrying Lady Baela Targaryen, the daughter of Prince Daemon.
Lord Corlys enjoyed a long and eventful life before dying at the ripe old age of 79. He was thought of so highly by King Aegon III that his body was placed at the foot of the Iron Throne for a week.
Do you agree with my choices for the most interesting characters in Fire & Blood? If not, who are your picks?
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