Valyria

Valyria was the heart of an ancient civilization and the ancestral homeland of the Targaryens. Though the family was not among Valyria’s most powerful dragonlords, its departure before the Doom made it the only dragonlord house to survive the catastrophe; the dynasty that later conquered much of Westeros began its history there.

Center of Valyrian power

At its height, Valyria was described as the greatest city in the known world and a center of civilization. Within its shining walls, forty rival houses competed for influence in court and council through a struggle that could be subtle or savage. The Targaryens were dragonlords of ancient lineage, but they were far from the strongest of these houses. Their rivals interpreted the family’s eventual withdrawal not as foresight but as surrender and cowardice.

Valyria’s reach extended beyond the city itself. Dragonstone had served as its westernmost outpost for two centuries, positioned across the Gullet and commanding access to Blackwater Bay. From there, the Targaryens and their close Valyrian-descended allies, House Velaryon of Driftmark, profited from passing trade. Ships of House Velaryon and House Celtigar dominated the middle reaches of The Narrow Sea, while the Targaryens held the skies with dragons. Dragonstone was therefore both an outpost of Valyrian power and a strategic base from which its exiled rulers could preserve wealth and influence.

The Targaryen exodus and the Doom

Twelve years before the Doom, Aenar Targaryen sold his holdings in the Freehold and the Lands of the Long Summer and moved to Dragonstone. He brought his wives, wealth, slaves, dragons, siblings, other kin, and children to the bleak island beneath a smoking mountain. The move placed the family beyond Valyria before its destruction, though contemporaries treated it as a humiliating retreat.

The decision followed a vision by Aenar’s maiden daughter, Daenys Targaryen, remembered as Daenys the Dreamer. She had foreseen Valyria’s destruction by fire. When the Doom came twelve years after the migration, the Targaryens alone among the dragonlord houses survived. Their survival transformed a move their rivals had scorned into the condition that allowed the family to endure beyond Valyria.

From Valyrian house to Dragonstone dynasty

For nearly a century after the Doom, during the period known as the Century of Blood, House Targaryen looked east rather than west and took little interest in Westerosi affairs. The family’s succession continued on Dragonstone through successive generations until Aerion became its lord. His son, Aegon I Targaryen, was born there in 27 BC, as the second child and only son of Aerion and Lady Valaena of House Velaryon, who was herself half Targaryen through her mother.

The family carried Valyrian customs with it. Dragonlords had traditionally married brother to sister to preserve the bloodline, and Aegon took both his sisters, Visenya Targaryen and Rhaenys Targaryen, as wives. The inclusion of two sisters was unusual even by that tradition. Later, the marriage of Prince Aenys to Alyssa Velaryon was regarded as a union between cousins; both families claimed Valyrian descent. These marriages show how Valyria’s dynastic inheritance continued to shape alliances and succession long after the city itself had fallen.

Valyria’s western legacy

Valyria’s destruction did not end its influence on Westeros. The Targaryens carried its lineage, dragonlord identity, and marriage customs to Dragonstone, while House Velaryon remained a close Valyrian-descended ally whose ships helped command regional trade. From this island base, the Targaryens eventually turned toward Westeros: Aegon’s birth on Dragonstone joined the family’s Valyrian past to the later history of conquest and rule.

Valyria thus occupies the story as both a lost center of power and the source of a surviving dynasty. Its fall removed the world in which the Targaryens had once been a comparatively minor house; their escape preserved the people, dragons, and inherited traditions that would later make them rulers across much of Westeros.