House Targaryen

House Targaryen was a dynasty of Valyrian dragonlords whose rule transformed the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros into a single realm. Its history joined the power of dragons to the work of dynastic marriage, royal government, and political reconciliation; the Dance of the Dragons exposed the danger within that combination, leaving the family on the throne but greatly weakened and without dragons by the end of Aegon III’s reign.

Valyrian origins and the move to Dragonstone

The Targaryens traced their ancestry to the dragonlords of ancient Valyria. Twelve years before the Doom, in 114 BC, Aenar Targaryen sold his holdings in the Freehold and the Lands of the Long Summer and moved to Dragonstone. The migration included his wives, wealth, slaves, dragons, siblings, kin, and children. Dragonstone, a bleak island citadel beneath a smoking mountain in the Narrow Sea, became the family’s base beyond Valyria.

The move placed the family and its dragons outside the catastrophe that destroyed Valyria. The house’s later power in Westeros began from this island stronghold: it was there that Aegon I Targaryen was born, and from there that the dynasty announced its intention to rule the mainland.

Conquest and the making of one realm

Aegon I Targaryen was born on Dragonstone in 27 BC, the only son and second child of the lord of Dragonstone and Lady Valaena of House Velaryon, who was herself half Targaryen. His elder sister was Visenya Targaryen; his younger sister was Rhaenys Targaryen. Following the Valyrian custom of marriage between brother and sister, Aegon took both women as wives. Marrying the elder sister alone would have followed the expected practice; taking Rhaenys as a second wife was unusual, though not without precedent. Some accounts distinguished the marriages by saying that he wed Visenya from duty and Rhaenys from desire.

The conquest was announced as a choice with clear political terms. On the seventh day, ravens flew from the towers of Dragonstone to the seven kings, the Citadel of Oldtown, and lords great and small. Aegon’s message declared that Westeros would have one king: those who submitted could retain their lands and titles, while those who resisted would be defeated. The Seven Kingdoms were ultimately hammered into one realm by Aegon and his sisters. House Targaryen’s authority thus rested not only on victory, but also on its offer to preserve the standing of those who accepted the new order.

Marriage, inheritance, and the work of reconciliation

The dynasty’s marriages connected Valyrian ancestry to noble houses across Westeros. Aegon’s queens were both dragonriders, but differed greatly in character; each gave the king a son. The next generation continued the pattern of marriage within a political and familial network. In 22 AC, Prince Aenys I Targaryen married Alyssa Velaryon, daughter of the Lord of the Tides and the king’s admiral and master of ships. Both were fifteen. Her Velaryon ancestry was Valyrian, and because Aegon’s mother had also been a Velaryon, the match was regarded as one between cousins.

Royal marriage-making also served a wider purpose. Aegon’s queens delighted in arranging alliances between houses from distant parts of the realm. Ronnel Arryn married a daughter of Torrhen Stark; Loren I Lannister’s eldest son married a Redwyne girl; and three daughters of the Evenstar of Tarth were betrothed to members of House Corbray, House Hightower, and House Harlaw. Visenya arranged a double wedding between House Blackwood and House Bracken, pairing a son of each family with a daughter of the other to make peace between long-standing rivals. These matches made kinship an instrument of reconciliation, binding regional houses into relationships that outlasted the original act of conquest.

Aegon I’s kingship likewise aimed to make former enemies subjects of one realm. He brought men and a few women from across the kingdoms into his court and councils, and encouraged former foes to send younger children to court. Boys served as pages, cupbearers, and squires; girls became handmaidens and companions to the queens. At King’s Landing, they encountered royal justice and were encouraged to identify with the realm as a whole rather than solely with their regions. Court service and intermarriage were complementary means of turning conquered territories into a political community.

Succession, government, and the costs of rule

The history of the house was shaped by the continuing need to secure heirs and manage succession. Alyssa gave Prince Aenys a second son, Viserys, in 29 AC; in 34 AC she bore Jaehaerys, her fourth child and third son; and in 36 AC she gave birth to Alysanne. Later, the death of Prince Aemon created a succession question around his daughter Rhaenys. Born in 74 AC, she had married Corlys Velaryon in 90 AC and was pregnant when her father died. When Jaehaerys granted Dragonstone to Prince Baelon instead, the choice passed over Rhaenys and potentially her unborn son as well. Dynastic continuity therefore depended not simply on having descendants, but on which descendants royal decisions recognized.

The means of maintaining power could also strain the royal treasury. During the regency, the Crown faced a serious shortage of coin after Maegor I Targaryen’s wars depleted its resources. Higher taxes and new levies had failed to restore the treasury and had deepened resentment. The master of coin, Edwell Celtigar, tripled port fees and taxed some goods both entering and leaving King’s Landing, while imposing levies on innkeepers and builders. Rego Draz later secured three substantial loans from the Iron Bank of Braavos and rival banks in Tyrosh and Myr, bargaining among them for favorable terms. The borrowing enabled work on the Dragonpit to resume, showing how the costs of royal power reached from warfare and taxation to the construction of institutions for the dragons on which the dynasty’s authority depended.

Civil war and a diminished dynasty

The Dance of the Dragons divided the Seven Kingdoms and House Targaryen itself. Lords, knights, and smallfolk took opposing sides, while the claimants’ kin and children were drawn into the struggle. The war was fought not only by marching armies: slaughter came at sea and in the air, where dragons fought dragons, and through stealth, murder, betrayal, and violence in councils and castles. Its scale made the family’s own instruments of power part of the destruction.

After two years, the dynasty remained in possession of the throne, but Targaryen power had been greatly reduced and the world’s last dragons had dwindled in number. The public wedding of Prince Aegon and Princess Jaehaera in 131 AC offered a visible image of dynastic continuity after the conflict. With the Dragonpit still largely in ruins, the ceremony took place outdoors atop Visenya’s Hill. The High Septon of Oldtown performed the rites; after the couple were declared one, tens of thousands of smallfolk cheered as they were carried in an open litter to the Red Keep. There Aegon was crowned Aegon III Targaryen. The ceremony joined marriage and coronation in a single public act, but the damaged Dragonpit surrounding the occasion also marked how much the old basis of Targaryen power had been lost.

Restoration, kinship, and the end of the dragons

Under Aegon III, efforts to rebuild the kingdom included reversing measures that had alienated the population and aiding territories devastated by the war. His Hand abolished the taxes imposed by Queen Rhaenyra and Lord Celtigar. With Crown finances again secure, the Hand set aside a million golden dragons in loans for lords whose holdings had been destroyed. The government also ordered three fortified granaries, in King’s Landing, Lannisport, and Gulltown, and bought grain to fill them. These measures supported reconstruction, although the grain purchases sharply raised prices and angered innkeepers and the poor.

The dynasty’s survival was also personal and familial. Viserys Targaryen, Aegon III’s younger brother and a son of Rhaenyra and Daemon Targaryen, had been presumed dead since the Battle of the Gullet. Nearly five years later, Alyn Velaryon brought him back. When the boy revealed his silver-gold hair, Aegon wept and embraced his lost brother. In that reunion, the recovery of a single family member answered a loss that had shadowed the king since the war.

The line continued into another generation. When Larra of Lys gave Viserys a second son, the prince named the child Aemon. A dragon’s egg had been placed in the cradle, part of the dynasty’s practice of joining a newborn to the house’s dragons from infancy. Yet the continuing birth of heirs could not restore the dragons themselves. The last of the Targaryen dragons died during Aegon III’s reign. House Targaryen endured beyond the loss, but the creatures that had carried it from Dragonstone to mastery of Westeros were gone.