George R R Martin - The Rise of the Dragon

raiders from beyond the Wall. At one time they also fought the War Across the Water—a conflict of several generations in which the Starks attempted to seize control of the Three Sisters while the Kings of Mountain and Vale opposed them—but the Starks ultimately withdrew from that conflict. The King in the North prior to the Conquest was Torrhen Stark.

Dorne

As the southernmost region of Westeros, Dorne is a harsh land of wide deserts, dangerous coasts, and high red mountains. Much of the land is parched, save for the more temperate regions in the mountains and those watered by the rivers Greenblood, Vaith, and Scourge. The histories say that the First Men first came to Dorne over the land bridge that connected Essos to Westeros—a bridge that the children of the forest, according to legend, then destroyed with their magic to stem the tide of the invaders. The Broken Arm, as it became known, formed the easternmost part of the region, which then stretched all the way west to the Sunset Sea, and north to the Marches. Like the First Men, the Andals made incursions into Dorne as well, though they also never gained dominion.

Unlike the other regions of Westeros, Dorne remained a patchwork of petty kingdoms for thousands of years, with many royal houses rising and falling. The strangest such kingship was the confederation that formed along the Greenblood, where a dozen noble houses would elect a High King from among their number—though this kingdom eventually fell into warfare, fracturing into lesser petty realms.

Some seven hundred years prior to the arrival of Aegon Targaryen, Dorne eventually coalesced under the rule of Nymeria—a Rhoynish princess who led her people (mostly women, old men, and youths) out of Essos following the Valyrian destruction of both the Rhoynar cities and army. Wedding herself to Lord Mors Martell—an ambitious nobleman in the south of Dorne—Nymeria and her people joined with the Martell forces and set about subduing rival lords and kings, unifying Dorne under their rule. Forever after, women have been included in the Dornish laws of inheritance, holding equal status to men.

In the centuries after, the Martells maintained their rule over Dorne, warring with the Storm Kings and the Kings of the Reach across the Dornish Marches. At the time Aegon Targaryen’s gaze fell on Westeros, the Princess of Dorne was Meria Martell: an aged, fat woman derisively called “the Yellow Toad” by her rivals.

Meria Martell.

Dragonstone.

THE FIRST MEN and then the Andals both settled the rocky isles of Blackwater Bay, making themselves lords and living by piracy and fishing. The largest of these islands, dominated by the volcanic Dragonmont, would come to be known as Dragonstone.

Two hundred years before the Doom, the Freehold of Valyria sent an expedition to seize Dragonstone and make it the westernmost outpost of its vast empire. The citadel that they raised there to guard their new possession was shaped by Valyrian magic into an imposing structure impossible to create by any other means—with towers shaped like dragons, doorways that gaped like the mouths of dragons, and hundreds of gargoyles adorning the wall, forming a menagerie of fanciful beasts that bristled from the stone.

Twelve years prior to the Doom, Aenar Targaryen moved his kin, treasures, and dragons to Dragonstone after his maiden daughter, Daenys the Dreamer, foretold the destruction of Valyria. The Targaryens thus became the only dragonlords to survive both the Doom and the war-torn years called the Century of Blood that followed. Over that century, the Targaryens looked more to the east than to the west, however, busy with the various machinations and wars between the Free Cities in the aftermath of the Doom.

The Targaryens continued the Valyrian custom of wedding brother to sister, but when Aegon Targaryen came of age, he chose to wed not one but two of his sisters: his elder sister Visenya, stern and rumored to practice sorcery, and his younger sister Rhaenys, vibrant and impulsive. All three were dragonriders, each commanding their own great dragon.

Aegon Targaryen had initially made his reputation by joining a grand alliance against Volantis, commanding his dragon Balerion—known as the Black Dread—to burn a Volantene fleet threatening the Free City of Lys. But unlike his predecessors, Aegon showed more interest in Westeros after the fighting in Essos began to abate, exploring the Reach and possibly the Westerlands as well. It was at his command that the Painted Table was made, carved in the shape of the continent and painted to show the mountains, forests, castles, towns, and rivers of Westeros. Notably, however, no borders were ever painted to mark the different kingdoms, presaging what Aegon must have been planning—bringing all of Westeros under his rule.

Aegon joins the grand alliance.

Balerion burning Harrenhal.

THOUGH THE END of Targaryen involvement in the wars between the Free Cities enabled Aegon and his sisters to look to the west, it’s not clear why they decided to take the risk of invading Westeros. The only clear precipitating event seems to be when Argilac the Arrogant, the Storm King, offered the hand of his only daughter Argella to Aegon, along with a dowry of lands beyond the Blackwater. Argilac made this offer in hopes of finding an ally against Harren the Black—the cruelest and most feared king in Westeros at the time. The ironborn had seized the riverlands from the Storm Kings three generations earlier, and Argilac wanted the territory back.

Aegon noted that he already had two wives and did not need a third, so he countered by offering his boon companion and bastard half-brother, Orys Baratheon, as a husband for Argella instead. Misunderstanding the bond between Aegon and Orys, Argilac saw the offer of this baseborn man as an insult, and responded by chopping off Aegon’s envoy’s hands and sending them back to Dragonstone in a box. In response, Aegon gathered his vassals and allies at Dragonstone. Among them were two nominal vassals of the Storm King—Lords Massey and Bar Emmon—who had for many years been more closely associated with the Targaryens.

Six days of debate followed, and on the seventh day ravens flew to every corner of Westeros to announce that Aegon would now be the only king in the land. Shortly after, Aegon and his sisters set sail from their island fortress of Dragonstone with their dragons and a small army—no more than three thousand strong, though some accounts number it more like a few hundred—to begin the Conquest on the mainland. They arrived unopposed at the mouth of the Blackwater Rush, where three hills rose tall above a small fishing village. There the Targaryens erected a simple earth-and-timber palisade upon the highest of the hills, and proceeded to gain control of the river’s mouth and the surrounding lands.

This region had been fought over for centuries, traded off between the kings of the riverlands and the Storm Kings. Some lords submitted to Aegon swiftly, but the Darklyns of Duskendale and the Mootons of Maidenpool joined together with three thousand men and marched on the Targaryen position. Orys Baratheon met them by land while Aegon descended on them from above on Balerion, and both lords were killed while the men they led surrendered and bent the knee.

After this, Aegon had himself crowned by Visenya, and hailed as the King of All Westeros by Rhaenys, in a ceremony witnessed by a handful of lords and knights at the Aegonfort—the crude castle on what would come to be called Aegon’s High Hill. And there he

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