George R R Martin - The Rise of the Dragon

first displayed the banner of the three-headed red dragon on black that would be borne by his descendants. Accepting the fealty of those who surrendered, he also granted offices to his most loyal supporters, establishing his court. The rest of the Seven Kingdoms responded to this brash act by readying for war against their new king—or, in the case of Dorne and the Vale, making overtures of alliance, which Aegon then rejected.

Aegon’s campaign to conquer the Seven Kingdoms began in earnest a few days later. He divided his forces into three parts, each attacking a different enemy. Orys Baratheon and Queen Rhaenys, riding on Meraxes, led the main host south across the Blackwater, invading Argilac’s domain. The newly named admiral, Daemon Velaryon, led the Targaryen fleet against the Vale, accompanied by Queen Visenya on Vhagar. And King Aegon on Balerion flew above a smaller army marching northwest against King Harren the Black.

The Velaryons were a lesser house of Valyrian descent, and thus always closely aligned with their more powerful Targaryen allies. Like the Targaryens, they shared the same silver-blonde hair and purple eyes so characteristic of those with High Valyrian blood, though they possessed no dragons.

Each of these armies met resistance and setbacks. At the Battle of the Gullet, two-thirds of the Targaryen fleet was destroyed or captured, and the master of ships himself, Lord Velaryon, lost his life. At the crossing of the Wendwater, when the Storm King’s vassals fell on Orys Baratheon’s forces, a thousand men perished. And at the Battles of the Reeds, Harren the Black’s forces led a series of attacks against Aegon’s host, while two of Harren’s sons led longships across the Gods Eye to fall on Aegon’s rear at the Wailing Willows.

But complete disaster was averted each time thanks to the Targaryen dragons. Visenya’s Vhagar burned many of the Vale’s ships, as well as the Braavosi sellsails Queen Regent Sharra had hired, before she withdrew with the remaining Targaryen fleet. Rhaenys’s dragon Meraxes set the rainwood ablaze and destroyed the holdings of the stormlords Errol, Buckler, and Fell. And Balerion the Black Dread burned the longships carrying Harren’s briefly victorious sons, sending them both to watery graves.

Yet even as these battles were ongoing, others saw opportunity in the Targaryen invasion. Pirates and Dornish raiders beset the lands of the Storm King while Argilac was distracted; the Three Sisters rose in rebellion and crowned Marla Sunderland as their queen while the Vale was otherwise occupied; and the long-suffering riverlords rose up against Harren the Black under the leadership of Lord Edmyn Tully. Allying themselves with Aegon, the riverlords renounced House Hoare, forcing Harren and his army to take refuge in the enormous Harrenhal, only recently completed. Harren offered great rewards to any man who could slay Balerion, but to no avail. In the dead of night, Aegon and Balerion descended on Harrenhal from above. The dragon’s black flames were hot enough to melt stone, and Harren the Black and all his line perished in the conflagration. In the aftermath, Aegon named Edmyn Tully Lord Paramount of the Trident, making the rest of the riverlords his vassals.

Meanwhile, Orys Baratheon and Queen Rhaenys continued their march into the stormlands, despite the early setback at the Wendwater. King Argilac gathered a large army at Storm’s End, and—ignoring warnings about Rhaenys and Meraxes—chose battle. Rhaenys saw his army from the sky and delivered word to Orys, who placed his forces in a strong defensive position in the hills south of Bronzegate. The battle that followed, called the Last Storm, took place during increasingly heavy rainfall. Argilac, however, continued the attack, trusting in his numbers—for he had nearly twice the men, and almost four times the knights and horses. The battle raged into night, with Argilac personally leading three charges against Orys Baratheon’s positions and gaining ground each time. But at the fourth charge on the final hill, Argilac’s forces met Rhaenys and Meraxes on the ground, where the rain proved incapable of stopping a dragon’s fires.

The Last Storm.

Though Argilac’s forces were in disarray and he himself was thrown from his horse, still he fought on. At the end, after the old warrior king had slain half a dozen men, Orys Baratheon faced him in single combat. Each wounded the other, but Argilac was slain and his followers surrendered. His daughter and heir, Argella, attempted to hold Storm’s End against the Targaryen host, declaring herself the Storm Queen, but her men betrayed her and delivered her chained and naked to Orys Baratheon. Orys freed her of her bonds and treated her kindly, and as a reward was granted Storm’s End and its domains, and Argella as his wife. He took the Durrandon sigil, a crowned stag, and their words—Ours is the Fury—for his own.

Now in control of two of the Seven Kingdoms, the Targaryens became much more of a threat. An alliance between Mern IX Gardener of the Reach and Loren I Lannister of the Rock—known to history as the Two Kings—enabled them to field an enormous army, five times greater than Aegon’s own. This great host marched from their meeting place at Goldengrove, traveling northeast toward the riverlands. Aegon advanced to meet them, joined by his sisters at Stoney Sept. Queen Rhaenys had come from Storm’s End, while Queen Visenya arrived from Crackclaw Point, where she had already received the fealty of those minor knights and lords.

Aegon’s forces and the Two Kings’ host came together on a plain south of the Blackwater Rush, with Mern and Loren both fully confident in their superior forces. But the plains they fought on were dry—the grass parched and the wheat ripe for harvest—so Aegon and his sisters set the field alight with dragonfire. What followed was forever after known as the Field of Fire. Four thousand men burned, and a thousand more were killed in combat—including King Mern and all the sons, brothers, uncles, grandsons, and cousins he had brought with him. House Gardener came to an abrupt and bloody end that day—and House Lannister only survived because King Loren abandoned the field when he knew the battle was lost. In the aftermath, he surrendered to Aegon Targaryen and became the first Warden of the West, and was afterward remembered as Loren the Last. The toll of the battle was steep—but not for the Targaryens, who lost fewer than one hundred men. From there, Aegon traveled to Highgarden, where the Gardener steward, Harlan Tyrell, yielded the castle to Aegon and in turn was granted Highgarden and its domains and named Lord Paramount of the Mander.

Before Aegon could march on to secure the rest of the Reach and begin to subdue Dorne, however, he learned that Torrhen Stark, the King in the North, had finally marched south with thirty thousand northmen. So Aegon gathered his new vassals and his queens and went to meet Stark at the Trident with a force forty-five thousand strong. The ruins of Harrenhal and the rumor of what had befallen the Two Kings at the Field of Fire made Torrhen hesitant to attack. Some of his bannermen urged him to fight, while his bastard half-brother, Brandon Snow, suggested he could cross the Trident at night and slay all three dragons before the Targaryens knew what had happened. Brandon Snow did cross the river, but as Torrhen’s envoy—and the next morning the King of Winter became the King Who Knelt, bending the knee to Aegon. In turn, he was granted continued dominion over his lands as the Warden of the North.

The Targaryen siblings then resumed their separate campaigns. Visenya took flight

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