Hull Port

Hull Port’s significance in the account rests on its shipyards: they shaped the seafaring lives of Marilda of Hull and her sons, and became the setting for an unresolved question of lineage. The port’s local maritime world eventually intersected with the royal struggle to find new dragonriders.

The shipyards and Marilda of Hull

Marilda was the daughter of a shipwright and a familiar presence in her father’s yards. She was sixteen when Addam Velaryon was born in 114 AC and barely eighteen when Alyn Velaryon followed in 115 AC. The brothers grew up around the shipyard and went to sea as ship’s boys before either had reached eight, making the port a formative setting for their early lives.

When Marilda’s father died, she inherited the yards. She sold them and used the proceeds to take to sea herself as captain of the trading cog Mouse. By 130 AC she owned seven ships, and her sons served aboard them. Hull Port is thus associated not only with shipbuilding but with the maritime livelihood Marilda established for her family.

A disputed family origin

The brothers’ silver hair and purple eyes marked them, in the account, as dragonseed, but Marilda refused for years to name their father. When Jacaerys Velaryon called for new dragonriders, she claimed that Addam and Alyn were the natural sons of Laenor Velaryon. Laenor had sometimes visited the shipyard, lending the claim a connection to Hull Port, though his remembered disinterest in women made many on Dragonstone and Driftmark skeptical.

Corlys Velaryon nevertheless brought the brothers to Jacaerys for the Sowing. Addam’s successful mounting of Seasmoke, the dragon once ridden by Laenor, appeared to support Marilda’s account, but did not end debate over the brothers’ parentage. The competing tradition preserved by Mushroom proposed instead that Corlys himself had fathered them, pointing to his more frequent presence at the shipyards and suggesting that he kept the boys away from court during Rhaenys Targaryen’s lifetime. Hull Port consequently anchors both the accepted public claim and the alternative account of the brothers’ origins.

The port’s narrative significance

Hull Port’s importance is conveyed through the movement between the shipyard, the sea, and the royal court. Marilda’s connection to the yards leads to a family sustained by trading ships; the brothers’ maritime upbringing precedes their presentation as dragonseeds; and Addam’s bond with Seasmoke gives the disputed lineage consequences beyond the port itself. The location is therefore significant less as a described landscape than as the working environment where the brothers’ seafaring childhood and contested identity meet.