Daenerys Targaryen
Daenerys Targaryen, the last scion of the dragonlords who once ruled the Seven Kingdoms, begins her story as a commodity, a thirteen-year-old girl bartered by her brother Viserys to the Dothraki warlord Khal Drogo in exchange for an army. Over the course of the novel, she undergoes a radical metamorphosis, shedding the skin of a victim to emerge as a khaleesi, a widow, and finally the mother of three living dragons, a rebirth that announces her as a power in her own right and sets the stage for a war for the Iron Throne.
Exile and the Beggar King's Bargain
Daenerys has known only exile and dependency. She was born on Dragonstone during a terrible storm, nine moons after her family fled the fall of King's Landing, and her mother died birthing her, a loss for which her brother Viserys never forgave her. After the death of Ser Willem Darry, the protector who gave her a brief childhood in a Braavosi house with a red door and a lemon tree, she and Viserys were cast out, wandering the Free Cities as beggars, selling their last treasures. Viserys, consumed by his claim to the throne, is called "the beggar king" in the wine sinks of Pentos. He plans to sell Daenerys to Khal Drogo, a Dothraki horselord, to secure an army. Daenerys, who had always assumed she would wed her brother to keep the Targaryen bloodline pure, is horrified. She is dressed in silks and given as a bride gift, a transaction overseen by the magister Illyrio Mopatis. On the night of her wedding, Viserys warns her, "If you do, it will go hard for you. You don't want to wake the dragon, do you?" and twists her nipple cruelly. She is terrified of Drogo, a man whose face is hard and cruel, but she is also terrified of her brother. When she pleads to go home, Viserys tells her he would let his whole khalasar fuck her if it meant getting his army. She smiles and stands up straight as Drogo is brought to her.
The Khaleesi's Transformation
The wedding night is a brutal consummation, but it marks the beginning of Daenerys's transformation. Drogo takes her from behind, Dothraki fashion, and she cries into her pillow. Day after day, she suffers saddle sores and pain, but she endures. She dreams of a dragon, and the next day the pain lessens. She learns to ride her silver filly, and the horse becomes her teacher. She begins to notice the beauty of the Dothraki sea, and the agony of riding becomes a sweetness. She learns to find pleasure in Drogo's embraces. When Viserys, drunk and humiliated, threatens her with a drawn sword in the sacred city of Vaes Dothrak, Daenerys does not flinch. She watches as Drogo pours molten gold over her brother's head, crowning him as he dies. "He was no dragon," she thinks, "Fire cannot kill a dragon." In that moment, she sheds her fear of her brother and begins to claim her own power. She later defies Drogo's bloodriders to save a slave girl from rape, and she commands her khas to stop the raping of the captured Lamb Men, claiming them as her own. When Ser Jorah Mormont tells her that Viserys was less than the shadow of a snake, she realizes that her brother will never take them home. She begins to understand that she is the dragon now.
The Price of Power and the Birth of Dragons
Daenerys's ascent is shattered by tragedy. Khal Drogo is wounded in battle, and the wound festers. Desperate to save him, she allows the maegi Mirri Maz Duur to perform blood magic, a ritual that requires the death of Drogo's horse. The magic saves Drogo's life but leaves him a mindless shell. Daenerys's son, Rhaego, is born monstrous and dead, a twisted creature with scales and wings. The khalasar dissolves, leaving her with only a handful of loyal followers. In her grief and fury, she realizes Mirri Maz Duur has betrayed her. She builds a funeral pyre for Drogo, binds the maegi to it, and places her three petrified dragon's eggs around his body. As the fire consumes them, Daenerys walks into the flames. When the fire dies, she emerges naked, unburnt, with three newborn dragons suckling at her breasts. The cream-and-gold dragon, the green-and-bronze, and the black-and-scarlet are alive. The Dothraki who remain kneel to her as "blood of my blood." She is no longer a khaleesi without a khal; she is Daenerys Stormborn, the Mother of Dragons, and the night comes alive with the music of dragons for the first time in hundreds of years.
Daenerys's chapters were notably extracted and published as a standalone novella titled Blood of the Dragon in Asimov's Science Fiction, which won the 1997 Hugo Award for Best Novella, a significant early recognition for the series. This achievement highlighted the strength of her storyline within the novel. The book's overall critical reception, while not an immediate commercial hit—the first printing sold only a few thousand copies—was strong, with independent booksellers championing it and word of mouth building a following. It won the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel and the 1997 Premio Ignotus for best foreign novel. Contemporary reviews praised Martin's return to prose fiction, with several noting that readers would eagerly await the sequel, despite the ending providing little narrative resolution. The novel was framed as the first installment of a trilogy, and some critics, like Lisa Padol, described it as aspiring to be a page-turner more than epic fantasy. Daenerys's transformation from a frightened pawn to a queen was part of what reviewers saw as Martin's ability to make vital figures out of seemingly stock characters.
