The Dragonseed Sowing was Prince Jacaerys Velaryon’s effort to find new dragonriders for his mother’s cause by inviting volunteers to claim the unclaimed dragons on Dragonstone. Four riders emerged from the attempt, including men of uncertain or low birth, giving the queen’s side new strength in the war. The price was severe: sixteen people died, three times that number were burned or maimed, and many who sought dragons never returned.

A call beyond the royal household

The campaign drew on Dragonstone’s long-standing population of people believed to have Targaryen blood. For generations, members of House Targaryen had sought partners among the island’s smallfolk, and the descendants of such unions were known as dragonseeds. Although the right of the first night had ended, the account notes that Targaryens continued to form relationships with the island’s people, leaving many potential descendants. This history supplied a possible pool of riders, but it did not define all who answered Jacaerys’s call.

At the urging of his fool, Jacaerys promised that anyone who mastered a dragon would receive lands and riches and be made a knight. Their sons would be ennobled and their daughters married to lords; the new rider would also have the honor of fighting beside the Prince of Dragonstone against Aegon II Targaryen and his supporters. The offer made dragonriding a path to status as well as a military service, extending the chance to claim a dragon beyond the established royal family.

The volunteers reflected that breadth. A score of the queen’s household knights came forward, among them Ser Steffon Darklyn, Lord Commander of her Queensguard. Squires, scullions, sailors, men-at-arms, performers, and two maids joined them. Not all were dragonseeds, nor descendants of dragonseeds. The campaign’s name also varies in the historical accounts: Grand Maester Munkun calls it the Sowing of the Seeds and credits the idea to Jacaerys, while others call it the Red Sowing.

The danger of claiming a dragon

The volunteers faced creatures that could not be handled like horses. Dragons could reject or attack people who approached them, and the unclaimed dragons differed greatly in temperament. No one wise enough to survive sought to disturb the Cannibal. Some volunteers searched for the elusive Grey Ghost without finding him. Sheepstealer was easier to locate, but proved especially dangerous, killing more would-be riders than the three dragons kept at the castle combined.

The losses were substantial. Munkun’s account records sixteen deaths during the Sowing and three times as many people burned or maimed. Steffon Darklyn died while attempting to mount Seasmoke; Lord Gormon Massey was killed while approaching Vermithor. Silver Denys, whose appearance lent credence to his claim of descent from a son of Maegor, lost an arm to Sheepstealer. When his sons tried to help him, the Cannibal drove Sheepstealer away and killed all three. The episode shows that claimed ancestry, noble rank, and courage did not ensure that a dragon would accept a rider.

Mushroom, the fool whose testimony devotes considerable attention to the attempt, also tried to mount Silverwing, regarded as the most docile of the masterless dragons. His effort ended with him fleeing across Dragonstone’s ward after his clothes caught fire and jumping into a well. The episode offered an absurd interruption to a campaign otherwise marked by danger and death, but it did not change the central risk: even a comparatively tractable dragon could not simply be commanded.

Four new riders

Seasmoke, Vermithor, and Silverwing were more accustomed to people than the wild dragons. Each had once carried a rider, and the account presents that history as one reason they were more accepting of new claimants. Vermithor, the Old King’s dragon, accepted Hugh Hammer, a blacksmith’s towering bastard. Silverwing, once ridden by Queen Alysanne, accepted Ulf White, a pale-haired man-at-arms whose drinking also earned him the name Ulf the Sot. Seasmoke, formerly ridden by Laenor Velaryon, accepted Addam of Hull, a fifteen-year-old whose origins remained disputed.

Addam and his younger brother, Alyn, were sons of Marilda of Hull, a shipwright’s daughter known as Mouse. Both boys had silver hair and purple eyes, grew up around their grandfather’s shipyard, and went to sea as ship’s boys while still young. Marilda inherited the yards after her father’s death, sold them, and became a trader and captain. By 130 AC she owned seven ships, with her sons serving aboard them. Their family background connected the new riders not only to Dragonstone but also to the seafaring life of Hull.

Alyn himself failed to claim Sheepstealer. After seeking Grey Ghost without success, he approached Sheepstealer’s lair and escaped only because Addam acted quickly and Seasmoke drove the wild dragon away. Alyn survived, but carried lasting scars from the encounter. His failure underscores the difference between the dragons: Seasmoke accepted Addam, while Sheepstealer resisted a claimant whose brother had already become a rider.

Sheepstealer was ultimately brought to heel by Nettles, a sixteen-year-old described as small and brown. Rather than force an immediate claim, she brought him a freshly slaughtered sheep each morning until he learned to expect her. Munkun records her name as Nettles; Mushroom calls her Netty and gives her a different account of her birth. Whatever her origins, she became the dragon’s first and only rider. Her method contrasted with the direct approaches that had failed: persistence and repeated offerings established the association that made the claim possible.

Military gain and its limits

The Sowing achieved Jacaerys’s central objective: four new dragonriders were found despite the deaths and injuries among the volunteers. As 129 AC drew to a close, he prepared to fly against King’s Landing, choosing the first full moon of the new year for the attack. The account places the Sowing immediately before that plan, making the newly claimed dragons a prospective addition to the queen’s military strength.

That intended advance was overtaken by events from the east. The Triarchy’s High Council accepted Otto Hightower’s offer of alliance, and ninety warships sailed from the Stepstones toward the Gullet. The Pentoshi cog Gay Abandon, carrying two Targaryen princes, sailed into the fleet’s path; its escorts were sunk or captured, and the cog itself was seized. Prince Aegon reached Dragonstone on Stormcloud, whose wounds proved fatal. The fleet’s arrival and the capture of the ship show how quickly the war’s demands could shift even as Jacaerys’s dragonrider plan approached its intended use.

The Sowing therefore changed the balance of available dragonriders without securing an uncomplicated advantage. Its successes depended on dragons accepting people whose social standing ranged from household knights to a shipwright’s sons and Nettles, while its failures demonstrated that neither royal promises nor claimed descent could guarantee a bond. The event joined an expansion of military power to a stark accounting of its cost: four new riders, sixteen dead, and many more left injured.