Blockade of Blackwater Bay

The Blockade of Blackwater Bay was the Velaryon fleet’s attempt to place King’s Landing under maritime pressure at the opening of the Dance of the Dragons. Planned as an alternative to an assault on the capital, it turned the Gullet into a strategic choke point: the Blacks sought to deny the city shipping while building a mainland position and assembling allies. The blockade quickly made the war’s political stakes visible in the daily complaints of merchants, but it also gave Aegon II and Otto Hightower a reason to seek a naval counterforce.

Strategic Background

The blockade emerged from the Blacks’ assessment that neither side could readily capture the other’s strongest position. Daemon Targaryen judged that his faction lacked the strength to take King’s Landing by storm, just as the Greens could not easily seize Dragonstone. Instead of concentrating their forces against the capital’s defenses, the council chose a combination of territorial foothold, maritime pressure, and diplomacy. Daemon would lead an assault on Harrenhal, while the Velaryon fleet closed the Gullet and ravens went to the Eyrie, Pyke, Riverrun, and Storm’s End to seek the allegiance of their lords.

The plan treated control of the sea as a way to compensate for limits on land. Harrenhal could provide a place on the mainland where riverlords might gather, while the ships would threaten the flow of trade into and out of the capital. Daemon also anticipated that Aegon might be provoked into a rash attack. The blockade was therefore not presented as a direct means of conquering King’s Landing, but as one part of a broader effort to make the Greens respond on less favorable terms.

Deployment and Command

The Velaryon ships sailed from Hull and Spicetown on Driftmark to close the Gullet. The fleet’s immediate task was to block shipping entering or leaving Blackwater Bay, tightening pressure on King’s Landing without first having to take the city. Corlys Velaryon, known as the Sea Snake, was to command the ships. Princess Rhaenys Targaryen would fly overhead, deterring the opposing side from attacking the fleet with dragons.

These arrangements joined naval force to a visible aerial threat. The ships imposed the blockade, while Rhaenys’s presence was intended to help keep them from being challenged by dragon attack. At the same time, the campaign depended on action elsewhere: Daemon rode Caraxes to the Trident, and Jacaerys Velaryon and Lucerys Velaryon undertook separate diplomatic missions on dragonback. The blockade was thus one strand in a coordinated opening, not a self-contained naval operation.

Effects on King’s Landing

The fleet’s closure of Blackwater Bay soon became a source of pressure inside the capital. As the blockade continued, merchants complained to Aegon II each morning, and the king had no answer for them beyond drinking more strongwine. The evidence presents the complaints as a recurring consequence of interrupted maritime trade, not merely as a single reaction when the ships first appeared. In a war fought over allegiance and control, the blockade made the conflict tangible to the city’s commercial community and to the king who had to hear its grievances.

The pressure coincided with other setbacks for Aegon II. The fall of Harrenhal, defeats at the Burning Mill and Stone Hedge, and declarations for Rhaenyra by lords across the Reach and elsewhere had already made his position appear more vulnerable. The blockade added a distinct problem: while the Greens faced losses and defections on land, the capital’s access by sea was being contested. Its strategic value lay partly in that convergence, as a maritime constraint compounded the political and military shocks confronting the king.

The Attempt to Break the Blockade

Aegon II’s royal fleet alone lacked the strength to break the Velaryon hold on the Gullet. His overtures to Dalton Greyjoy had also failed, leaving the Iron Islands unavailable as the naval support he sought. Otto Hightower responded by looking beyond Westeros to the Kingdom of the Three Daughters. He offered its magisters exclusive trading rights at King’s Landing if their combined fleets from Tyrosh, Lys, and Myr would clear the Gullet and reopen the sea lanes. He further promised them the Stepstones, although the Iron Throne had never claimed those islands.

The proposed intervention depended on a council that was slow to convene and deliberate. The High Council of the Three Daughters was not even in session when Otto’s envoys arrived, and decisions there required agreement among magisters concerned with their own cities’ interests. The delay exasperated Aegon II. Though Alicent Hightower defended Otto, the king removed him as Hand and gave the office to Criston Cole, declaring an end to the policy of writing letters. The episode shows how the blockade shaped the Greens’ choices even before a rival fleet could be assembled: it forced them to bargain for outside naval power, and the delay fed a rupture within the royal leadership.

Significance

The blockade’s importance lay in the strategic problem it posed rather than in a reported capture of the capital. The Blacks did not claim they could storm King’s Landing; they used the Velaryon fleet to restrict its trade, while seeking to establish themselves at Harrenhal and recruit allies across the realm. The resulting pressure drew a response involving foreign fleets, commercial concessions, and a promise over disputed islands. In this way, the Gullet became both a military bottleneck and a diplomatic arena, linking control of shipping to the larger contest for the allegiance of Westeros.