Century of Blood

The Century of Blood was the century following the Doom of Valyria, a period in which House Targaryen endured the destruction that erased the other dragonlords but took little interest in Westeros. Its defining contrast was between survival and withdrawal: from Dragonstone, the Targaryens retained dragons and command of important sea routes, while the lands to their west waited for the conquest that would end their long isolation.

The Doom and the Targaryen survival

At Valyria’s height, rival houses competed for power in court and council, and the Targaryens were not among the strongest. Their departure for Dragonstone was regarded by their rivals as surrender or cowardice. But Daenys Targaryen, later known as Daenys the Dreamer, had foreseen Valyria’s destruction by fire. Aenar Targaryen led his family away twelve years before the Doom; when it came, the Targaryens were the only dragonlords to survive.

The refuge had been a western outpost of Valyrian power for two centuries. Positioned across the Gullet, Dragonstone gave its lords control over access to Blackwater Bay and a share of the wealth carried by passing ships. The Targaryens’ close allies, the Velaryons of Driftmark and the Celtigars of Claw Isle, dominated the middle reaches of the Narrow Sea with their fleets, while the Targaryens commanded the skies with dragons. The family’s survival therefore rested not only on its escape from Valyria, but on a defensible seat and an established network of maritime power.

A century facing east

For the best part of a hundred years after the Doom, the Targaryens looked east rather than west and took little part in Westerosi affairs. Their succession continued on Dragonstone: Gaemon Targaryen, Daenys’s brother and husband, followed Aenar as lord and became known as Gaemon the Glorious. After Gaemon’s death, his son Aegon and daughter Elaena ruled together. Their descendants carried the lordship through Maegon, his brother Aerys, and Aerys’s sons Aelyx, Baelon, and Daemion; Daemion’s son Aerion succeeded him.

This succession kept the family’s authority concentrated within its own line while its western neighbors remained outside its political reach. Dragonstone was a foothold in Westeros, but not yet the seat of a kingdom spanning the continent. The period’s quiet is thus relative: the Targaryens maintained a dynasty and a valuable maritime position, even as they refrained from intervening in the larger struggles of the mainland.

Aegon and the turn west

The change came with Aerion’s son, Aegon Targaryen, born on Dragonstone in 27 BC. He had two trueborn sisters, Visenya Targaryen and Rhaenys Targaryen, and married both. The Valyrian custom of sibling marriage preserved the dragonlords’ bloodlines; taking two sisters as wives was unusual, though not without precedent. Aegon’s generation carried the old Valyrian inheritance into a new political project: the conquest of Westeros.

That conquest changed the meaning of the Targaryen presence on Dragonstone. At the Aegonfort, after his victories, defeated lords laid down their swords and were confirmed in their lands and titles. His red, three-headed dragon banner marked him as a ruler adopting the heraldic language of Westeros, while Visenya placed a ruby-studded Valyrian steel circlet on his head. His first coronation took place at the mouth of the Blackwater; three days after Oldtown submitted, the High Septon anointed him at the Starry Sept. That second crowning, witnessed by hundreds of lords and by the Citadel’s maesters and archmaesters, became the customary starting point of his reign. Dorne had not submitted, despite the royal style of Seven Kingdoms, but the conquest had begun to gather the other kingdoms into one realm.

The new realm after the century

The end of Targaryen isolation did not by itself reconcile the conquered territories. Aegon’s policy after the conquest sought to turn submission into allegiance by bringing families from across the realm into court and council. Children of former enemies served as pages, cupbearers, and squires, or as handmaidens and companions to the queens. At court they encountered the king’s justice and were encouraged to think of themselves as subjects of a shared realm rather than of separate regions.

Marriage provided another means of binding distant houses. Ronnel Arryn married a daughter of Torrhen Stark; the heir of Loren I Lannister married a Redwyne girl; and Queen Rhaenys arranged matches for the three daughters of the Evenstar of Tarth with House Corbray, House Hightower, and House Harlaw. Queen Visenya arranged a double wedding between House Blackwood and House Bracken, using reciprocal matches to make peace between old rivals. Rhaenys also found husbands and a foster home for a Rowan girl who had become pregnant by a scullion. These measures belong to the settlement that followed the Century of Blood, but they show what the turn west made possible: the maritime dynasty that had survived apart from Westeros began using court service and kinship to hold its conquered lands together.