Shireen Baratheon: "The Dance of Dragons, A True Telling" by Grand Maester Munkun, being a history of the war of Targaryen succession between the Princess Rhaenyra and Aegon, Second of His Name, that nearly destroyed the realm.
Viserys Targaryen: "The Dance of the Dragons." A stupid name for a Targaryen civil war where my ancestors danced away my birthright. Before the war, House Targaryen counted eighteen dragons. By the end, we had two, and nearly as few Targaryens.
We would never be as powerful or as feared again.
The Dance began, as many dances do, with an old man and a young girl.
The queen had failed to produce a son for her king, so he anointed his daughter, the Princess Rhaenyra, as his heir. But years later, the king remarried, and his new wife, Queen Alicent of House Hightower, gave him a son. Feeble and foolish, the old king refused to change the succession.
He didn't even see how his court had split into two rival camps of Blacks and Greens, after the dresses that the princess and the queen had worn to some tourney.
One night, a servant found the old king had died in his sleep and ran to inform Queen Alicent. Protocol dictated that the bells would be rung and a raven sent to Dragonstone to summon the heir, Princess Rhaenyra, for her coronation. But Alicent had other plans.
Once she saw her dead husband's body, she sealed the room and had the servant thrown into the Black Cells to ensure his silence. At the hour of the owl, the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, Ser Criston Cole, summoned the small council to inform them of the king's death.
Ser Otto Hightower, the Hand of the King and father to Queen Alicent, demanded that the succession be settled immediately. The decrepit old men of the small council were confused; the succession was settled in their minds. The old king had forced the lords of Westeros to swear fealty to Princess Rhaenyra as his heir.
But Ser Criston Cole rightly pointed out that a son comes before a daughter. The council argued until dawn when the Master of Coin finally stood up and declared he would have no part of treason.
Ser Criston Cole wisely opened his throat with a dagger, ending the debate.
None were more surprised to hear of Prince Aegon's succession than Prince Aegon himself.
At first, the fool rejected the crown, but his mother pointed out that his sister Rhaenyra would return such loyalty by taking his head. As the old king's trueborn son, he'd always be a threat. Aegon relented.
He was crowned in the Dragonpit, and his wife and sister Helaena became queen. His brother Aemond flew off to win over the few great lords whose support Aegon didn't already have. The banner of the gold dragon flew over King's Landing and the Red Keep as Aegon, Second of His Name, ascended the Iron Throne.
He would not sit it long.
When ravens carried the news of Aegon's coronation to Dragonstone, Princess Rhaenyra summoned her own Black Council. With her was her uncle and husband, Daemon Targaryen, considered by many to be the most dangerous man in Westeros. Few lords supported her, but the greatest of these was Corlys Velaryon, who controlled the largest fleet in the realm, and his Targaryen wife Rhaenys, the old king's sister.
Then there were her five sons, although none grown to manhood. A pitiful assembly, really. Combined they couldn't match the power of House Hightower alone. But Rhaenyra had dragons.
She, Daemon, and Rhaenys rode huge and formidable beasts, and three of her five sons were riders as well. Dragonstone also housed six more dragons without riders.
Against this, King Aegon had only four dragons of his own. Dragons can burn a city, but only armies can take and hold it. If she was to prevail, Rhaenyra desperately needed the support of the few Great Houses not already sworn to Aegon.
Her eldest son, Jacaerys, flew to the Vale and the North, her middle son Lucerys flew to the Stormlands. Rhaenyra hoped that the war would begin and, if the gods were good, end with diplomacy. As always, they weren't.
Robert Baratheon: Little Prince Lucerys must have wet himself when he entered Storm's End and found King Aegon's younger brother, Aemond, already with Lord Baratheon. Aemond was fearsome even before he lost his eye and set a sapphire in its stead, but the princeling pleaded his mother's case.
Finally, Lord Baratheon made his decision. "Go home, pup, and tell the bitch, your mother, that the Lord of Storm's End is not a dog she can whistle on."
As Aemond's false eyed gleamed at him, the princeling fled the castle and mounted his young dragon Arrax. The rain fell in sheets, and great bolts of lightning lit the world bright as day.
Arrax was struggling to stay aloft in the gale when a roar shook the very foundations of Storm's End. Aemond rose through the clouds and below him the monstrous Vhagar. Vhagar was five times the size of Arrax and a hardened survivor of a hundred battles. Vhagar caught him above Shipbreaker Bay.
Watchers on the castle walls saw distant blasts of flame and heard a shriek drown out the thunder. Prince Lucerys fell, broken, to be swallowed by the waves.
With his death, the war of ravens came to an end, and the war of fire and blood began.
Catelyn Stark: When Rhaenyra heard of her son's death, she collapsed. She considered ending the war right then until a raven arrived from her husband, Daemon. Her son would be avenged.
Whispers slithered through the taverns and back alleys of Flea Bottom. Two men were found; one was a former Gold Cloak, the other a rat catcher in the Red Keep who knew all its secrets.
History remembers them only as Blood and Cheese.
One night, Queen Helaena entered the royal apartments with her daughter and two sons to put them to bed. Without warning, Blood and Cheese burst in, daggers in hand.
They told her that a debt was owed. A son for a son. Blood and Cheese demanded she choose which son would be ripped from her forever. Queen Helaena pleaded with the men to kill her instead, but they refused. Weeping, Helaena named her younger son Maelor.
Perhaps she thought the boy was too young to understand, perhaps because the older boy was King Aegon's firstborn son and heir.
"You hear that, little boy?" Cheese whispered to the younger son. "Your mama wants you dead." Then Blood struck off the older boy's head with a single blow.
When the guards burst in, they found Queen Helaena still screaming, clasping her dead son's body to her, mad with grief. The blood of her children transformed a dynastic dispute into a war of annihilation.
The grief and rage of losing a child could burn down the world. Either Aegon or Rhaenyra could live at the end, but not both.
Viserys: Rhaenyra's forces struck yet another blow. The moment the Lord of Harrenhal saw Daemon Targaryen circling the castle on his dragon Caraxes, he struck his banners and surrendered. The Blacks now had the strongest castle in the Riverlands.
Darker news still came to Aegon; thanks to Rhaenyra's sons, Winterfell had declared for Rhaenyra, as had the Vale.
Furious, Aegon dismissed his grandfather, Ser Otto, as Hand and appointed Ser Criston Cole, who swore to march on all the lords who had declared for Rhaenyra and put their castles to the torch.
Cole and the royal army first marched north and laid siege to Rook's Rest, a Black stronghold near Dragonstone. When the Lord saw their approach, he sent a raven to Rhaenyra begging for help.
For days he watched his fields and villages burning, with no response from his queen. Until one day, a shadow passed over the Green army. Rhaenyra had sent not an army, but her former mother-by-law Rhaenys and her dragon Meleys.
As her ancestor had done at the Field of Fire, Rhaenys gleefully began to incinerate Ser Criston's army. But Aegon had set a trap, and Rhaenys had flown right into it.
As Rhaenys and Meleys blanketed Ser Criston's troops in dragonflame, two other dragons rose into the sky. Aemond on Vhagar and King Aegon himself on the gleaming Sunfyre.
To her credit, Rhaenys didn't flee. Dragon fought dragons, and a second sun blossomed in the sky.
When the smoke cleared, only Aemond and Vhagar stood uninjured. Sunfyre, the most magnificent dragon in the world, had one of its wings almost completely torn from its body.
Trapped beneath Sunfyre was the king himself, broken and burned so badly in places that his armor had fused onto his flesh. His body survived, but his mind was given over to milk of the poppy.
Meleys had been torn to shreds, and her rider, Rhaenys, was a pile of ash.
Panicked by the defeat, Rhaenyra shipped her two youngest sons across the Narrow Sea for their protection. Only for her youngest to return days later, clinging to the neck of his wounded and dying dragon. He and his brother had been set upon by an enemy fleet just off Dragonstone.
Defying his mother's command, Rhaenyra's eldest son and heir, Jacaerys, mounted his dragon Vermax and flew to rescue his other brother and punish the enemy fleet.
But the foolish boy let Vermax be hooked like a trout and dragged into the sea, where he soaked up even more arrows than seawater. His brother disappeared over the horizon or beneath the waves. No one could say for sure.
With the loss of four dragons, Rhaenyra's only advantage was fading. Luckily for her, over the centuries, House Targaryen had spilled more than blood on Dragonstone.
She promised gold and title to any of the Targaryen bastards who could tame the six untamed dragons on the island. These bastards were called the dragonseeds, though most were called supper.
Perhaps the dragons were eventually sated or bored, but four of them accepted riders and were enlisted in Rhaenyra's cause.
Robert: After Rook's Rest, Aemond One-Eye took command of the Greens from his crippled and poppy-addled brother. Aemond was the blood of the dragon, and dragons don't cower behind city walls.
He marched the king's army north to take back Harrenhal from Rhaenyra's husband, Daemon. But when he and Criston Cole reached the castle, they found the gates open, with Daemon and all his men gone. That night they feasted their victory; Daemon had fled rather than face their wrath.
But Daemon was more snake than dragon. As Aemond marched north, he'd flown Caraxes south, slithering past the Green army over the waters of the Gods Eye.
One day King's Landing looked up and saw two dragons circling their foul city. Daemon and Rhaenyra had come for her throne, for the city was defenseless.
Aemond had taken the king's army from the city, and worse, he'd taken his dragon Vhagar. Seeing that resistance was hopeless, the small council surrendered the city, the Queen Mother Alicent, and the broken Queen Helaena.
But not King Aegon.
Somehow, despite his wounds and delirium, he had vanished from the city. And so Queen Rhaenyra climbed the steps and seated herself of the Iron Throne.
Legend has it that as she left that hall later, blood trickled down her legs and hands, proving the Iron Throne had spurned her. Nonsense! It's a chair made of steel blades. Rhaenyra had wanted it all her life and had sacrificed two sons for it. She likely gripped the damn thing too tight.
Viserys: When Aemond realized that his arrogance had cost him the capital, he mounted Vhagar in a black rage and rained fire onto every village and castle he suspected of disloyalty.
Abandoned by Aemond, Ser Criston marched the royal army back to King's Landing, intent on recapturing the city himself. Instead, he was trapped and cut to pieces by the Riverlords, who had sworn to support Rhaenyra's claim.
When a new army of Green loyalists marched up from the Reach and laid siege to the city of Tumbleton, Rhaenyra sent two of her dragonseeds to lay waste to them.
Instead, the dragonseeds proved their bastard nature and betrayed her.
They burned the city and all the Black forces garrisoned within. Lucky for her, they didn't turn towards King's Landing but whored and drank in the ruins with the Greens, who were victorious and somewhat confused.
Oberyn Martell: Rhaenyra now mistrusted all the dragonseeds, including the girl who rode with her husband Daemon, hunting Aemond in the Riverlands. She ordered the girl's head be sent to her.
But there was a complication. As well as her dragon, the girl had taken to riding Daemon.
When Daemon received the queen's order, he proclaimed it a queen's words and a whore's work. He sent the girl away at dawn, watching her and her dragon vanish into the morning mists. Then Daemon sent a challenge to his nephew Aemond and flew to Harrenhal alone to wait.
Fourteen days later, a shadow blacker than any passing cloud swept over Harrenhal. Vhagar had come at last and on her rode one-eyed Prince Aemond.
He mocked Daemon for facing him alone. "You have lived too long, uncle." And Daemon replied, "On that much, we agree."
Then the old prince climbed stiffly onto the back of his dragon Caraxes but neglected to fasten the chains that secured rider to saddle. The sun was close to setting when, as one, the two dragons leapt into the sky.
Daemon took Caraxes up swiftly until he disappeared into a bank of clouds. Vhagar, older and slower, ascended more gradually. Up and up, Vhagar soared, searching for Caraxes. Sudden as a thunderbolt, a shrieking Caraxes dove upon Vhagar.
Locked together, the dragons tumbled toward the lake. Caraxes' jaws closed upon Vhagar's neck, but Vhagar ripped open Caraxes's belly, and her teeth ripped off a wing. The lake rushed up with terrible speed.
Then Daemon Targaryen, who had never fastened his riding chains, stood in his saddle. He leapt from his dragon to Aemond's, and in his hand was Dark Sister, the Valyrian sword of Aegon's sister-queen Visenya.
As Aemond One-Eye looked up in terror, Daemon ripped off his nephew's helm and drove the sword down into his one remaining eye so hard the point came out the back of the young prince's throat.
Half a heartbeat later, the dragons struck the lake, sending up a gout of water so high that it was said to have been as tall as Harrenhal's great tower. The lake boiled with dragon blood and then was still.
Daemon Targaryen was nine-and-forty at his death. Prince Aemond had only turned twenty. Vhagar, the greatest of the Targaryen dragons, had counted one-hundred-and-eighty-one years.
Thus passed the last living creature from the days of Aegon's Conquest.
Viserys: Back in King's Landing, Queen Rhaenyra didn't have much time to grieve for her stupid husband. The mad former queen Helaena flung herself from a balcony, to be impaled upon the iron spikes lining the moat of Maegor's Holdfast.
That night, the city rose in riot against Rhaenyra, demanding justice for Queen Helaena and her murdered son, among other foolish peasant fantasies.
In the midst of this chaos, a one-handed fool called the Shepherd began to rant against dragons. Not just the ones of the enemy, but all dragons everywhere.
As he pointed to the Dragonpit above on the hill, he shouted, "There the demons dwell, this is their city. If you would make it yours, first you must destroy them." A cry went up from ten thousand throats, "Kill them!"
There were four dragons housed within the Dragonpit that night. By the time the first of the attackers came pouring in, all four were roused, awake and angry.
Nobody knows how many men and women died that night. Who cares? They all should have! Trapped within the pit, the dragons could not fly. Instead, they fought with horns, claws, teeth, and fire. For every man who died, ten more appeared, shouting that the dragons must die. One by one, they did.
Finally, the last remaining dragon broke her chain, spread her wings, and flew straight up at the great dome trying to flee. Already weakened by dragonflame, the dome cracked under the force of impact and then tumbled down, crushing the dragonslayers and herself.
Joffrey Baratheon: High atop the Red Keep, Queen Rhaenyra clutched her two remaining sons to her as she watched the end of her family's might, too afraid of the peasants to defend her dragons.
At least her older son, Joffrey, had a man's spine.
He stole his mother's dragon Syrax and tried to fly it to the Dragonpit to save his birthright. But the stupid beast didn't understand and twisted beneath him, fighting to be free of the little boy, until it was.
A queen is still a woman, with all the weakness of that sex. Weeping for her lost son more than her dragons, Rhaenyra abandoned the Iron Throne and sold her crown to buy passage for her and her last son back to Dragonstone. Rhaenyra hoped to hatch more dragons from the eggs in the castle.
But when she landed, the welcoming party slew her guards and marched her and her son at spearpoint to the castle to face a dead man and a dying dragon.
"Sister!" King Aegon, Second of His Name, called out to Rhaenyra. Rook's Rest had left Aegon bent and twisted, his once handsome face puffy from milk of the poppy, with burn scars covering half his body.
Rhaenyra, ever defiant, told her dear brother that she'd hoped he was dead.
"After you!" Aegon answered.
Then Sunfyre bathed her in a blast of flame and devoured her in six bites while her son watched, leaving the seventh and final bite, her lower leg, for the Stranger.
Viserys: Rhaenyra was dead, and King Aegon sat the Iron Throne again. But only for half a year. He was poisoned by his own men and replaced with the very boy who had watched his mother devoured.
Shireen: When Rhaenyra's last son wed Aegon's only daughter, the Dance of Dragons officially ended.
Ash and burned men. All that was left of the Riverlands.
Two scared children spouting oaths they didn't understand. All that was left of the mighty House Targaryen.
Ancient skulls and hatchlings that grew no bigger than cats. All that was left of the dragons.