Dragon's wars

The Dragon's wars were the final conflicts of Aegon I Targaryen's conquest, set against the long peace that followed. Though his reign lasted from 1 AC to 37 AC and was largely peaceful, especially in its later years, the wars before the Dragon's Peace were remembered as a bloody struggle to bring the remaining realms under Targaryen rule. The First Dornish War was the last of them—and the last war Aegon fought.

Definition and Chronology

The maesters of the Citadel called the final two decades of Aegon's kingship the Dragon's Peace, distinguishing that comparatively peaceful span from the Dragon's wars that came before it. The Conquest had been declared complete when Aegon was crowned and anointed by the High Septon at the Starry Sept of Oldtown, but the ceremony did not mean that all of Westeros had submitted. The wars continued as the new dynasty sought to secure its rule beyond the lands already conquered.

The distinction was not between a reign wholly at war and one wholly at peace. Aegon's rule encompassed both conquest and a long, later interval of peace; the label Dragon's wars refers to the conflicts that preceded that settled period. The First Dornish War, conventionally dated from 4 AC to 13 AC, was the closing campaign in this sequence. Aegon remained on the Iron Throne for another twenty-four years after it, but did not wage another war.

The Dornish Campaign and Its Limits

Before resorting to war, Aegon sent high lords, maesters, and septons to Sunspear to persuade Princess Meria Martell to join her realm to his. Their negotiations lasted for most of a year and achieved nothing. In 4 AC, Rhaenys Targaryen returned to Dorne on Meraxes and burned the Planky Town. The attack began the fighting, but it did not bring Dorne to submission: the people fled by river, and fewer than a hundred died, most by drowning rather than dragonfire.

Aegon's armies entered by the Prince's Pass and the Boneway. Lord Harlan Tyrell marched with the king's great host, while Orys Baratheon led a smaller force of picked knights through the Boneway. Dornish defenders avoided a pitched battle. They burned crops, poisoned wells, abandoned watchtowers, and obstructed the mountain passes; heat and lack of water then wore down Tyrell's force on its march toward Hellholt. Orys's column was trapped in the Boneway by rockfalls and archers, and he was captured by Wyl of Wyl. Aegon made gains farther east, taking Skyreach by storm and winning Yronwood after a brief siege, but these successes did not decide the war.

The campaign ended without the submission Aegon sought. The Dornish resistance had denied his dragons and armies a decisive victory, and the North remembered the result very differently from Dorne: there, the tactics were mocked as cowardice and dishonor, while survivors and the families of the fallen promised a future reckoning. Such judgments reveal the war's divided legacy. What could be seen as a Dornish victory was regarded north of the Red Mountains as an unfinished grievance.

Aftermath and Historical Meaning

The First Dornish War ended in 13 AC. Its conclusion made it the final war of Aegon's reign, not the end of his rule or of the Targaryen dynasty's capacity to wage war. The expectation of revenge was deferred to another generation and a younger, more bloodthirsty king. The peaceful years that followed therefore rested alongside a memory of resistance that remained unsettled.

Later conflicts in the history of the dynasty show how difficult it was to turn conquest into durable political agreement. During the Dance of the Dragons, Grand Maester Orwyle warned that an attempt to displace Rhaenyra would lead to war because she had dragons; after her coronation, Aegon II rejected proposals for parley. Rhaenyra, in turn, refused his terms because they required her to acknowledge him as king despite her father's designation of her as heir. Corlys Velaryon later urged her to offer pardons and use hostages and a marriage between the rival branches to bind the dynasty together, but questions of succession, past violence, and trust stood in the way. These later events belong to another conflict, but they echo the unresolved problem exposed in the Dragon's wars: military supremacy could compel submission, yet could not by itself make rival claims or memories disappear.

War, Rule, and the Cost of Peace

The wars also left a material problem for later rulers: military power required money, and its costs could unsettle the government meant to consolidate victory. Under the regency of Jaehaerys I, the Crown's treasury remained depleted by Maegor's wars. Lord Edwell Celtigar tried to raise revenue through higher port charges and new taxes on goods, innkeepers, and builders. Trade shifted away from King's Landing, construction slowed, and the Dragonpit project stopped for lack of funds. Rego Draz later obtained three substantial loans from the Iron Bank of Braavos and rival lenders in Tyrosh and Myr, allowing work on the Dragonpit to resume; the borrowing was treated as temporary relief, not a lasting solution.

The same link between war, revenue, and public order reappeared during the Dance. After Aegon II seized the treasury, Rhaenyra's government faced empty vaults, and Bartimos Celtigar restored old levies while imposing new taxes on city businesses, property, trade, wine, and ale. Once Aegon III became king, Tyland Lannister abolished those taxes, set aside a million golden dragons in loans for lords whose lands had been destroyed, and ordered fortified granaries and repairs to the Dragonpit. These later measures are not part of the Dragon's wars, but they clarify the larger historical contrast: the Dragon's Peace named a period of relative calm after Aegon's campaigns, while the dynasty's later wars repeatedly made the work of governing—and paying for rule—fragile again.