Fall of Dragonstone

The Fall of Dragonstone was a sudden coup that turned House Targaryen’s ancestral seat against Rhaenyra Targaryen and delivered the castle to Aegon II. Its success depended on more than an attack from outside: Ser Alfred Broome used his long familiarity with the garrison to help the king’s men overcome its defenses from within. The seizure brought Rhaenyra into Aegon’s power, but Baela Targaryen’s escape and aerial challenge made the takeover costly, leaving the victorious king and Sunfyre badly diminished.

A Vulnerable Stronghold

Rhaenyra had taken her best men with her when she went to seize King’s Landing. Dragonstone, protected by the Sea Snake’s ships and its high Valyrian walls, seemed difficult to assault, and the queen left a small garrison behind. It consisted largely of men considered less useful elsewhere: greybeards, young boys, wounded men, men with disabilities, and others whose loyalty or courage was doubted. She placed Ser Robert Quince, an able but ageing commander, over them. Quince was a steadfast supporter of the queen, but the garrison was not uniformly loyal, and old resentments gave the king’s party an opening.

Broome was the most prominent of the disaffected men. He had served at Dragonstone for years and had expected to become castellan when Rhaenyra departed to claim the Iron Throne. Instead, she chose the more affable Quince. Broome accepted a promise of lordship, lands, and gold if Aegon II regained the throne, then put his knowledge of the castle at the king’s service. He could identify its strengths and weaknesses and advise which guards might be bribed or persuaded to change sides, and which would have to be arrested or killed. The defenses that seemed to make Dragonstone secure could not compensate for an enemy who knew the garrison from within.

The Coup Inside the Castle

The operation was over in less than an hour. During the hour of ghosts, guards won over by Broome opened a postern gate, allowing Ser Marston Waters, Tom Tangletongue, and their men to enter unseen. One band seized the armory; another took loyal guardsmen and the master-at-arms into custody. Ser Marston surprised Grand Maester Gerardys in the rookery, preventing him from sending word of the attack by raven. Broome led the assault on Quince in the castellan’s chambers. Quince was still struggling to rise from bed when Broome attacked him, making the betrayal personal as well as political: the man who had been passed over helped remove the commander chosen in his place.

The plot’s principal failure came when the attackers went to capture Lady Baela. Tom Tangletongue and his men broke into her bedchamber, but Baela escaped through a window, crossing rooftops and walls to reach the yard. The king’s men had secured the stable where the castle dragons were kept, yet Baela had grown up on Dragonstone and knew ways through the castle they did not. By the time her pursuers caught up, she had freed Moondancer and saddled her. The takeover had captured the castle’s defenders, but it had not contained the one opponent who could meet Aegon in the air.

Baela’s Challenge

Aegon II arrived on Sunfyre expecting to descend upon a castle already secured by his own men. Instead, Baela rose to meet him. She was Daemon Targaryen’s daughter by Laena Velaryon, and her intervention turned the king’s triumphant return into a dragonfight. Moondancer was young and small, no larger than a warhorse, but swift. Sunfyre was much larger, yet he was already weakened: a wing was malformed, and he had suffered fresh wounds from Grey Ghost.

The fight began in the darkness before dawn, with the dragons’ flames lighting the sky. Moondancer darted clear of Sunfyre’s flames and grasp, then attacked from above, striking his back and injured wing. Sunfyre answered with a blast that blinded the smaller dragon. Even then, Moondancer continued to fight, crashing into Sunfyre and attacking his neck as the two fell. Their struggle ended when they struck the hard stone of the yard. Moondancer was killed; Sunfyre survived, but his attempt to rise ended in collapse. Aegon had leapt from his saddle before impact and was gravely injured. Baela stayed with Moondancer through the fall, then escaped from the saddle and crawled away. When Broome moved to kill her, Marston Waters intervened, and Tom Tangletongue carried her to the maester.

Aftermath and Significance

Aegon won the ancestral seat, but the victory did not restore his strength or his dragon’s. Sunfyre could never fly again. He remained in the yard, feeding on Moondancer and later on sheep the garrison slaughtered for him. Aegon lived the rest of his life in great pain. When Grand Maester Gerardys offered him milk of the poppy, the king refused it, distrusting a remedy prepared by a maester he regarded as Rhaenyra’s creature. The incident placed Aegon’s suspicion alongside the physical cost of his victory: possession of Dragonstone brought neither recovery nor security from the conflict that had brought him there.

The return of Rhaenyra made the capture still more consequential. After leaving King’s Landing, she sailed from Duskendale aboard the Braavosi ship Violande with her son Aegon, her ladies, and three Queensguard knights. Her gold cloaks had remained at Duskendale, and the Manderlys aboard the ship were bound for White Harbor. Rhaenyra believed she was returning to the safety of her own seat, unaware that the garrison had fallen. Broome’s men met her party at Dragonstone; the queen’s protectors were killed or overcome, and Rhaenyra and her son were marched into the castle ward. The coup thus transformed Dragonstone from a presumed refuge into the place where the returning queen was captured.

The event’s central reversal is the contrast between apparent impregnability and internal betrayal. Dragonstone’s ships and walls mattered less than the loyalties of the men guarding its gates; a postern opened, the rookery was silenced, and the garrison’s command was removed before Aegon arrived. Yet the seizure was not a clean restoration of royal power. Baela’s resistance deprived Aegon of Sunfyre’s use as a flying dragon and left the king seriously hurt, while Rhaenyra’s capture set the stage for her final confrontation with him. The castle changed hands quickly; the costs of taking it continued beyond the moment of victory.