Daella Targaryen

Daella Targaryen, the eighthborn child of Jaehaerys Targaryen and Alysanne Targaryen, was a gentle, fearful princess whose brief life ended after the birth of her daughter, Aemma Arryn. Her marriage was meant to secure her future with a kind husband, but it exposed the limits of her strength and became the first great wound in the relationship between her parents. In Daella’s story, the search for a safe place within a royal family ends in a loss that the people closest to her could neither prevent nor agree how to understand.

Identity and Childhood

Daella was born in 64 AC, a year after her brother Vaegon. As a child she was delicate and shy, easily frightened and quick to cry. She was slow to speak, and even as she grew older often found herself tongue-tied. Her sister Maegelle became a guiding presence, while Daella adored her mother, Alysanne. By contrast, the older Alyssa frightened her, and Daella blushed and hid her face around the older boys at court.

Her fears shaped ordinary parts of her life. A kitten she loved became frightening after it scratched her; dragons terrified her, even Silverwing, and mild scolding could bring her to tears. She loved flowers but was wary of gardens after nearly being stung by a bee. Daella was also not a confident student: she learned to read haltingly and without full comprehension, struggled to memorize simple prayers, and was afraid to sing despite having a sweet voice. These details mark her not as wilfully difficult, but as a young woman whose apprehensions narrowed the world around her.

The Unfulfilled Match with Vaegon

Alysanne took pride in arranging marriages across the realm, yet finding suitable matches for her younger children became a prolonged source of conflict and grief. When Daella and Vaegon were very young, their parents assumed they might eventually marry, as their older siblings Baelon and Alyssa were expected to do. Jaehaerys encouraged Vaegon to be kind to his little sister with that future in mind.

As they grew, however, the prospect became untenable. There was little warmth between them: Vaegon tolerated Daella but did not seek her company, while she feared her sour, bookish brother. He thought her unintelligent; she experienced him as mean. Jaehaerys hoped they would grow closer with time, but their mutual dislike deepened instead. In 73 AC, when Daella was nine and Vaegon ten, a court companion teased them about marrying. Vaegon publicly rejected the idea and insulted Daella’s intelligence. The exchange made clear that a match once presumed by their parents could not provide the gentleness Daella needed.

Choosing a Husband

Alysanne’s search for a husband for Daella came after Vaegon had been settled and was complicated by her daughter’s fears and fragility. Jaehaerys urged the queen to find someone gentle, who would protect Daella and treat her kindly. Alysanne presented her daughter with three eligible choices, all connected to great houses and positions of consequence.

Boremund Baratheon, Lord of Storm’s End, was twenty-eight, imposing, and familiar to Daella through his sister Jocelyn, whom she loved. Ser Tymond Lannister, heir to Casterly Rock, was twenty and handsome, but his reputation for drink and women counted against him. The third candidate, Rodrik Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie and Protector of the Vale, was thirty-six and had four children from his first marriage. He had served Jaehaerys on the small council for twenty years and was regarded as sensible, good-humored, and a capable lord. Alysanne acknowledged that he was not the suitor most maidens might dream of, but considered his kindness and long-standing affection for Daella more important.

Daella chose Rodrik, seeing him as good and wise and welcoming the prospect of becoming a mother to his four children. Her decision gave her a husband who, according to Alysanne’s assurances, would protect her. The wedding took place before the end of the year in a small ceremony at the sept on Dragonstone, attended only by close friends and kin because larger gatherings made Daella desperately uncomfortable. She also asked that there be no bedding, and Rodrik agreed. The marriage carried Daella from the royal court to the Eyrie, where Rodrik hoped the slower, quieter life would suit her.

Aemma’s Birth and Daella’s Death

When Daella became pregnant, Rodrik asked Alysanne to come to the Eyrie because his wife was frightened and often wept. Alysanne stayed beside her daughter throughout the confinement, reading to her at night and trying to reassure her. Daella was small and delicate, and Alysanne worried about the strain of the pregnancy. The labor began two weeks early and was long and difficult. Aemma Arryn was born, and Daella smiled when the child was placed against her breast.

The relief was short-lived. Childbed fever set in soon after the birth. Daella wished to nurse her daughter but could not, and a wet nurse was sent for. As the fever worsened, the maester would not allow her to hold the baby. Daella wept, fell asleep, and died by morning, at eighteen. Rodrik asked permission to bury her in the Vale, but Alysanne refused: Daella was of the blood of the dragon, she said, and would be burned, with her ashes interred on Dragonstone beside her sister Daenerys.

Loss and Narrative Significance

Daella’s death devastated Alysanne. The queen blamed herself, Rodrik, and the Eyrie’s maester, but most of all she blamed Jaehaerys for insisting that Daella marry before the year was out. Alysanne believed her daughter had not been old enough or strong enough to bear a child, and that the marriage should have been delayed. The account does not record Jaehaerys’s reply. That silence leaves the disagreement unresolved, even as Daella’s death is identified as the first sign of the rift that would open between the king and queen.

Daella’s life also shows the difference between arranging a match and ensuring that its consequences will be safe. Her parents had expected her to marry Vaegon, but the match failed when their actual characters emerged; Alysanne then offered alternatives, and Daella herself selected Rodrik for his kindness and family. Yet the husband chosen to protect her could not protect her from the danger of childbirth. Her story is therefore both a personal tragedy and a turning point in her parents’ marriage: the loss of their daughter became a grief that Alysanne carried as an accusation against the king.