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TARGARYEN NOVEMBER 2021 || Day 9: Dragons and Their Riders || Dreamfyre

As a hatchling, the she-dreagon Dreamfyre, bonded with nine-year old Princess Rhaena Targaryen, Aegon I’s first grandchild, in 32 AC. Three years later, she became Dreamfyre’s rider and they remained together through the twists and turns of Rhaena’s life until she died in 73 AC. No other riders are noted for Dreamfyre until Rhaena’s great-grandniece, Helaena, bonded with her around 121 AC. She is said to have loved the dragon. When Helaena died in 130 AC, Dreamfyre sensed her death all the way across King’s Landing and roared, breaking two of her chains. Not long after this, an angry mob stormed the Dragonpit. Out of the four dragons present, Dreamfyre was the only dragon able to break free of the rest of her chains. She took wing, circled the cavernous interior of the dome and swooped down to attack the men below. She slew more men than the other three dragons combined. Archers and crossbowmen loosed arrows and quarrels at the her, and whenever she landed men swarmed her to attack, driving her back into the air. Eventually one of her eyes was nicked by a crossbow bolt. Half-blind and maddened, Dreamfyre flew into the Dragonpit’s great dome above, which cracked on impact. Half of it came tumbling down, crushing her and the dragonslayers under tons of broken stone and rubble.

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TARGARYEN NOVEMBER 2021 ↳ Day 16: The Dance of the Dragons

Queen Alicent’s greens enjoyed an advantage; the longer Rhaenyra remained ignorant of the king’s death, the slower she would be to move. “Mayhaps the whore will die in childbirth,” Queen Alicent is reported to have said … Her first act as queen was to declare Ser Otto Hightower and Queen Alicent traitors and rebels. “As for my half brothers, and my sweet sister Helaena,” she announced, “they have been led astray by the counsel of evil men. Let them come to Dragonstone, bend the knee, and ask my forgiveness, and I shall gladly spare their lives and take them back into my heart, for they are of my own blood, and no man or woman is as accursed as the kinslayer.”

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TARGARYEN NOVEMBER 2021 ↳ Day 9: Dragons and their riders

In 93 AC, Prince Baelon’s sixteen-year-old son, Viserys, entered the Dragonpit and claimed Balerion. The old dragon had stopped growing at last, but he was sluggish and heavy and hard to rouse, and he struggled when Viserys urged him up into the air. The young prince flew thrice around the city before landing again. He had intended to fly to Dragonstone, he told his father afterward, but he did not think the Black Dread had the strength for it. Less than a year later, Balerion was gone. “The last living creature in all the world who saw Valyria in its glory,” wrote Septon Barth.

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asoiaf & got characters // pt. XXXI - Aegon, Visenya, Rhaenys (ver. I, ver. II)

“A cloud of ravens burst from the towers of Dragonstone to bring Lord Aegon’s word to the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. To the seven kings they flew, to the Citadel of Oldtown, to lords both great and small. All carried the same message: from this day forth there would be but one king in Westeros. Those who bent the knee to Aegon of House Targaryen would keep their lands and titles. Those who took up arms against him would be thrown down, humbled, and destroyed. […] Balerion, Meraxes, and Vhagar, ridden by Aegon, Rhaenys, and Visenya. The three-headed dragon of House Targaryen—three dragons, and three riders.” 

(the second graphic was inspired by my favorite artwork of King Aegon with his sister-queens by Amok)

| this post on twitter | please do not repost or edit my works |

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TARGARYEN NOVEMBER 2021 || Day : Favorite Monarchs

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TARGARYEN NOVEMBER 2021 ↳ Day 4: Kings

Aegon Targaryen himself, strangely, was as much an enigma to his contemporaries as to us. Armed with the Valyrian steel blade Blackfyre, he was counted amongst the greatest warriors of his age, yet he took no pleasure in feats of arms, and never rode in tourney or melee. His mount was Balerion the Black Dread, but he flew only to battle or to travel swiftly across land and sea. His commanding presence drew men to his banners, yet he had no close friends, save Orys Baratheon, the companion of his youth. Women were drawn to him, but Aegon remained ever faithful to his sisters. As king, he put great trust in his small council and his sisters, leaving much of the day-to-day governance of the realm to them…yet did not hesitate to take command when he found it necessary. Though he dealt harshly with rebels and traitors, he was open-handed with former foes who bent the knee.

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Quentyn did not want to die at all. I want to go back to Yronwood and kiss both of your sisters, marry Gwyneth Yronwood, watch her flower into beauty, have a child by her. I want to ride in tourneys, hawk and hunt, visit with my mother in Norvos, read some of those books my father sends me. I want Cletus and Will and Maester Kedry to be alive again.

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Many of the courtesans of Braavos are celebrated in song and story, and a few have even been immortalized in bronze or marble. In the Seven Kingdoms, the most storied and infamous of these are the Black Pearls. The first woman to bear that name was the captain and pirate queen Bellegere Otherys, who reigned briefly as one of the nine paramours of King Aegon IV Targaryen, and bore him a bastard daughter, Bellenora, the second Black Pearl, a famous courtesan acclaimed by the singers of her day as the most beautiful woman in all the world. Her descendants became courtesans as well, each in turn known as the Black Pearl, and each having in her veins some measure of the blood of the dragon to this very day.

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ASOIAF + House Stark Fancasts

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TARGARYEN NOVEMBER 2021 ↳ Day 3: The Conquest

Sharra Arryn had strengthened the defenses of Gulltown, moved a strong host to the Bloody Gate, and tripled the size of the garrisons in Stone, Snow, and Sky, the waycastles that guarded the approach to the Eyrie. All these defenses proved useless against Visenya Targaryen, who rode Vhagar’s leathery wings above them all and landed in the Eyrie’s inner courtyard. When the regent of the Vale rushed out to confront her, with a dozen guards at her back, she found Visenya with Ronnel Arryn seated on her knee, staring at the dragon, wonder-struck. “Mother, can I go flying with the lady?” the boy king asked. No threats were spoken, no angry words exchanged. The two queens smiled at one another and exchanged courtesies instead. Then Lady Sharra sent for the three crowns (her own regent’s coronet, her son’s small crown, and the Falcon Crown of Mountain and Vale that the Arryn kings had worn for a thousand years), and surrendered them to Queen Visenya, along with the swords of her garrison. And it was said afterward that the little king flew thrice about the summit of the Giant’s Lance, and landed to find himself a little lord. Thus did Visenya Targaryen bring the Vale of Arryn into her brother’s realm.

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TARGARYEN NOVEMBER 2021 || Day 3: The Conquest

The Westeros of Aegon’s youth was divided into seven quarrelsome kingdoms, and there was hardly a time when two or three of these kingdoms were not at war with one another. The vast, cold, stony North was ruled by the Starks of Winterfell. In the deserts of Dorne, the Martell princes held sway. The gold-rich westerlands were ruled by the Lannisters of Casterly Rock, the fertile Reach by the Gardeners of Highgarden. The Vale, the Fingers, and the Mountains of the Moon belonged to House Arryn…but the most belligerent kings of Aegon’s time were the two whose realms lay closest to Dragonstone, Harren the Black and Argilac the Arrogant.

…a cloud of ravens burst from the towers of Dragonstone to bring Lord Aegon’s word to the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. To the seven kings they flew, to the Citadel of Oldtown, to lords both great and small. All carried the same message: from this day forth there would be but one king in Westeros. Those who bent the knee to Aegon of House Targaryen would keep their lands and titles. Those who took up arms against him would be thrown down, humbled, and destroyed. – The Wolrd of Ice and Fire

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Lord Rogar had been married once before, but his wife had died young, taken off by a fever less than a year after their wedding. The Queen Regent Alyssa was forty-two years old, and thought to be past her child-bearing years; the Lord of Storm’s End, ten years her junior.  The Hand was admired for his courage, respected for his strength, feared for his military prowess and skill at arms. The Queen Regent was loved. So beautiful, so brave, so tragic, women said of her. Even such lords as might have balked at a woman ruling over them were willing to accept her as their liege, secure in the knowledge that she had Rogar Baratheon standing beside her, and the young king less than a year away from his sixteenth nameday. – Fire and Blood

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You’ve known queens and princesses. Did they dance with demons and practice the black arts? Lady Shiera does. Lord Bloodraven’s paramour. She bathes in blood to keep her beauty.

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The crannogman saw a maid with laughing purple eyes dance with a white sword, a red snake, and the lord of griffins, and lastly with the quiet wolf... but only after the wild wolf spoke to her on behalf of a brother too shy to leave his bench

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TARGARYEN NOVEMBER 2021:

↳ Day 2: Pre Conquest

When Daenys was still a maiden, she had a powerful prophetic dream, showing the destruction of Valyria by fire. In 114 BC, her father, Lord Aenar Targaryen, heeded her dream and sold his holdings in the Valyrian Freehold and moved his family and all of their belongings to Dragonstone, an island in the narrow sea off the eastern coast of Westeros. With them, they took five dragons. When the Doom of Valyria came twelve years later, House Targaryen was the only family of dragonriders which survived.

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stargazing.

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you love your children, do you not?