Viserys Targaryen

Viserys Targaryen was the younger of Rhaenyra Targaryen and Daemon Targaryen’s two sons, and the younger brother of Aegon Targaryen the Younger, later King Aegon III. Taken captive as a child during the Battle of the Gullet and believed dead, he spent nearly five years in Lys before Alyn Velaryon secured his return. His homecoming reunited the brothers, settled the succession, and transformed a private family loss into a question with consequences for the Iron Throne and the royal treasury.

Identity and Early Life

Born in 122 AC, Viserys was named for his grandfather. He was smaller and less robust than his older brother and his half-brothers, but was described as precocious. The dragon’s egg placed in his cradle never hatched, a circumstance the Greens treated as an ill omen. Later, he went everywhere with the egg, carrying it with him even when the danger around him made escape uncertain.

By the end of 129 AC, Rhaenyra was seeking safety for her two younger sons as the war threatened her family. Jacaerys Velaryon arranged for Aegon and Viserys to be fostered in Pentos, where Daemon had made friends during earlier visits. The boys boarded the cog Gay Abandon with a Velaryon escort of seven warships. Aegon took his young dragon, Stormcloud; Viserys carried his egg. The plan was to keep them beyond the conflict until Rhaenyra had secured the Iron Throne, but their passage east brought them directly into the reach of the Triarchy’s fleet.

Capture and the Battle of the Gullet

When the Gay Abandon was attacked, Viserys tried to conceal his identity. He hid his egg, changed into ragged, salt-stained clothes, and pretended to be an ordinary ship’s boy. One of the ship’s actual boys betrayed him. A Tyroshi captain recognized the captive as a prince, and Sharako Lohar, the Lysene admiral commanding the fleet, soon took possession of him.

His brother escaped on Stormcloud, but Viserys had no way to flee the captured cog. During the ensuing Battle of the Gullet, his fate became impossible to establish. Survivors could not agree which ship had carried him, and people on both sides assumed he had died, whether drowned, burned, or killed in the fighting. The loss shaped Aegon’s understanding of his own escape: he had survived, but believed he had abandoned his little brother to death. For nearly five years, Viserys was absent not only from his family but from the political calculations of the realm, where his place in the line of succession could not be known to be secure.

Captivity in Lys

The ship carrying Viserys survived the battle and returned to Lys. There he became the captive of Sharako Lohar. After the admiral fell into disgrace and faced enemies, he sold Viserys to the Lysene magister Bambarro Bazanne for the boy’s weight in gold and a promise of support. Bambarro kept him hidden amid the upheaval of the Daughters’ War, apparently to prevent rivals from taking him. The evidence records that Viserys was treated well: he lived in the magister’s manse, shared meals with the household, and received instruction in languages, literature, mathematics, history, and music, as well as swordsmanship. He was not permitted to leave the grounds.

Bambarro’s plans ended with his death in 132 AC. His sellsword company turned against him over unpaid wages, and after his death his creditors seized his estate. His wife and children were sold into slavery, while his possessions—including the captive prince—passed to Lysandro Rogare. At first, Viserys’s striking appearance led Lysandro to consider putting him to work in the Perfumed Garden, the Rogares’ famous pillow house. Once Viserys identified himself, Lysandro changed course: rather than exploit him in that way, he arranged the prince’s marriage to his youngest daughter, Larra Rogare, later known in Westeros as Larra of Lys.

Negotiating His Return

A chance encounter between Alyn Velaryon and Drazenko Rogare at Sunspear opened a path to Viserys’s recovery, but his return required a bargain with Lysandro. Alyn went to Lys to negotiate. The agreement he signed committed the Iron Throne to a ransom of one hundred thousand golden dragons, a promise not to take up arms against House Rogare or its interests for a hundred years, and the transfer to the Rogare Bank of Lys of funds held by the Iron Bank of Braavos. It also granted lordships to three of Lysandro’s younger sons and guaranteed that Viserys’s marriage to Larra would not be set aside.

The terms later provoked a dispute at court. Unwin Peake argued that Alyn had lacked authority to bind the Iron Throne, since that power belonged to the regents and the Hand. Grand Maester Munkun acknowledged that law and tradition supported Peake’s objection. Yet repudiating the agreement after Alyn had brought the prince home would have carried its own political cost. The regents upheld the pact, confirmed the legitimacy of Viserys’s marriage, arranged to pay the ransom in ten annual instalments, and moved a much larger sum from Braavos to Lys. The price of his return thus extended beyond gold: it formalized ties to the Rogares and constrained the Crown’s dealings with them.

Return, Family, and Succession

In 134 AC, Viserys returned at twelve, seven years after his capture at age seven. Alyn brought him ashore at a public welcome attended by King Aegon III, Queen Daenaera, Baela, Rhaena, and members of the court. Viserys emerged from under the cowl of his embroidered cloak; Aegon recognized him and wept, embracing the brother he had believed lost. The reveal reversed the assumptions formed after the Gullet: the missing prince was alive, and Alyn’s diplomatic bargain had restored him to his family.

The reunion changed Aegon’s conduct and eased his loneliness. He had long blamed himself for escaping while Viserys remained behind, and had felt unworthy of the throne because he had failed to save his brother, his mother, and his young queen. As children on Dragonstone, the brothers had shared a bedchamber, lessons, and games. After Viserys returned, he again became Aegon’s constant companion. The account presents his presence as restoring a closeness that the king’s years of loss had fractured; Aegon’s attachment to Gaemon Palehair, previously a substitute for the brother he thought dead, faded, and he also neglected Queen Daenaera.

Viserys’s return settled the immediate succession. As Aegon’s brother, he stood as heir apparent ahead of any children of Baela or Rhaena, or of the royal twins. His marriage to Larra also gave the court reason to expect that the dynasty would have heirs through him: she was nineteen, seven years older than Viserys, and not a child. Those calculations helped make the recovery consequential beyond the brothers’ reunion. The boy once hidden as a ship’s servant in Lys returned as the king’s closest companion and the acknowledged next heir, while the costly agreement that secured him became a test of how far the regents would honor a bargain made in the Crown’s name.