House of the Dragon: House Targaryen, Explained
Daenerys Stormborn was all that was left of the illustrious Targaryen lineage by the time Game of Thrones rolled around, but House of the Dragon will show the Targaryens at the height of their power. The prequel series, adapted from the middle chapters of George R. R. Martin’s feigned history book Fire & Blood, tells how the dynasty came to civil war over questions of succession, seeding causes for their eventual decline and downfall in Robert’s Rebellion, itself a precursor to Thrones. But that leaves half of Fire & Blood behind, including the material concerned with the origins and initial rise of House Targaryen.
If you’d like to know those origins before House of the Dragon premieres but feel unprepared to tackle one of Martin’s tomes, this is the place for you.
Fleeing from Valyria
House Targaryen was among the dragonlords of Old Valyria, the city on the southern peninsula of Essos that was the seat of the Valyrian Freehold. Though it had no monarch, the Freehold was an empire in all but name, ruled by a small collection of noble families. The Valyrians were set apart from other men by their pale hair of silver or gold and violet eyes (the latter being one of myriad visual details described by Martin that went unused by HBO). And the dragonlords were set apart from other Valyrians by their control of dragons, those magical beasts said to be “fire made flesh” in A Clash of Kings. For centuries, the dragonlords vied with one another for power while the Freehold held sway across Essos. To keep their bloodlines pure, the Valyrians practiced incestuous marriage, ideally brother to sister. The wealth and power of Valyria – and, perhaps, the magic spells and rituals that kept the volcanic range around the city known as the Fourteen Flames – were sustained by a constant influx of slaves.
The Targaryens were not the mightiest of the dragonlords. But Valyrians bonded to dragons were sometimes given to prophetic dreams, and Daenys Targaryen had one of fire and ruin. Her father, Aenar, took her vision to heart. He sold all his holdings in the Freehold, gathered all his kin, dragons, and slaves, and fled to the island of Dragonstone, Valyria’s furthest outpost west. The island and its castle of the same name rested in Blackwater Bay of Westeros, where Valyrian trade had penetrated but without conquest.
The other dragonlords paid no heed to Aenar’s flight. But twelve years after the Targaryens’ departure, the Doom came to Valyria. All Fourteen Flames erupted as one, though no one knows why. Within a single day, Valyria was reduced to smoldering ruin, the power of the Freehold shattered. With it went the Valyrian knowledge of magic and of crafting the Valyrian steel swords coveted throughout the world. Nearly all the dragonlords fell into fire with their empire, and the few that lingered in Essos were killed along with their dragons in the Free Cities. Only the Targaryens survived.
Conquering Westeros
For five generations, the lords of Dragonstone looked east to their ruined origins, continuing such Valyrian customs as sibling marriage but paying Westeros no need. That changed with the ascendency of Aegon Targaryen and his sister-wives Visenya and Rhaenys. This trio found Westeros divided into its Seven Kingdoms, almost always at war with one another. Aegon had taken an interest in Westeros since his youth; it was at his command that the great wooden table of Dragonstone be carved in its shape, with no borders marked.
Whether it was ambition or a premonition of danger from the North not unlike his ancestor Daenys’s that drove Aegon is unclear (Martin hinted it was the latter). Regardless, he, his sisters, and their bastard brother Orys Baratheon led a small army to the mouth of the Blackwater. The site would eventually grow into the King’s Landing of Game of Thrones. Aegon’s ravens preceded him, bringing to all kings and lords his claim to be their sire. The rulers of the Seven Kingdoms all moved to oppose him with larger armies and ancient claims to their lands – but the Targaryens had dragons.
Nor was Aegon’s coming wholly unwelcome. The Riverlands, under the subjugation of King Harren the Black of the Iron Islands, saw many of its own lords go over to the Targaryen cause. When Harren refused to yield, trusting to the walls of his massive castle Harrenhal, Aegon assaulted it with his dragon Balerion, the Black Dread, the last of the dragons born in Old Valyria. The dragon’s fire was so hot that parts of the stonework melted, and Harren and all his line burned alive. The three dragons of Aegon, Visenya, and Rhaenys together roasted the combined hosts of King Loren of the Rock and King Mern of the Reach, whose line ended in fire as well. Orys Baratheon had no dragon, but with Rhaenys’s support, he decimated the host of Argilac the Storm King, ending another royal line. The North and the Vale escaped dragonfire by kneeling to the Targaryens, who made a gesture of assimilation when they adopted the Westerosi customs of bearing sigils (a red three-headed dragon on a black field) and words (“fire and blood”).
Aegon, thereafter known as the Conqueror or the Dragon, so swept away the old order in Westeros that dates were marked BC or AC – Before or After the Conquest. He was crowned Aegon I Targaryen, First of his Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm. With the blades of his thousands of fallen foes, he forged in dragonfire the Iron Throne, declaring that no king should ever sit easy in his rule. But once his conquest was – mostly – complete, he worked to ensure peace and unity among his kingdoms. He confirmed or appointed the noble families that serve as lords paramount of the Seven Kingdoms at the start of Game of Thrones: Stark, Tully, Arryn, Lannister, Baratheon, and Tyrell. His sister-wives arranged countless marriages to interknit the realm. The institution of the Kingsguard was created. And Aegon devoted half his year to royal progress throughout Westeros, that lords and smallfolk might see and be heard by their new king.
Only Dorne, to the South, managed to resist the Dragon, and the Targaryens’ unsuccessful efforts to bring it into their realm would cost Rhaenys her life and degenerate into mutual atrocities. But except for Dorne, Aegon’s rule was uncontested.
Jaehaerys: The Greatest of Targaryen Kings
His two sons would not be so fortunate. Aenys, eldest and son of Rhaenys, was a weak-willed dreamer eager to please; Maegor, son of Visenya, was violent, unstable, and unyielding. Their attempts to perpetuate the Targaryen customs of sibling marriage and polygamy put them afoul of the Faith, the worship of the new gods spread everywhere but the North and the Iron Islands on Westeros. Their sins and their faults threw the Seven Kingdoms into open rebellion, and the Targaryen line might have ended had Maegor not died upon the Iron Throne itself.
Following him was Aenys’s son Jaehaerys, who would become known as the Conciliator and the Old King, the greatest of the Targaryen monarchs. Under Jaehaerys I, the wounds of his predecessors were healed and, by laws and roads, the Seven Kingdoms were further unified into one Westeros. It was Jaehaerys who formalized the small council seen on Game of Thrones and oversaw the completion of the Dragonpit. He and his sister-wife Alysanne also connived a compromise with the Faith on the matter of their marriage: the Doctrine of Exceptionalism. All the doctrines of the Faith were confirmed as a sacred writ for men to obey, but the Targaryens, blood of the dragon, immune to most illness and set apart in looks and powers, could not be held to the same standard as other men.
Jaehaerys and Alysanne ruled the Seven Kingdoms for over 50 years, outliving many of their children. However, this meant that Jaehaerys was left without a clear heir. To resolve the matter convened a Great Council of all the lords of the realm to determine who would succeed him. And it is there that House of the Dragon begins…
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