Aemond Claims Vhagar and Loses an Eye is the turning point at Driftmark when Aemond Targaryen gains the dragon he wants and loses an eye in a fight with his half-nephews. The incident transforms a childhood contest into an open family and succession conflict: the boys’ quarrel exposes the charge that Rhaenyra Targaryen’s sons are bastards, while King Viserys’s settlement divides the royal household rather than healing it.

Setting and Stakes

The events followed Laenor Velaryon’s funeral. The king and his court travelled to Driftmark to witness the funeral pyre, many arriving on dragons. Septon Eustace remarked that so many dragons had gathered that Driftmark had become the new Valyria. The gathering brought the royal children together at High Tide, where the presence of dragons made the question of who could ride them more than a private matter of childhood pride.

Aemond was ten, younger than his brother Aegon Targaryen, who was thirteen, and older than his sister Helaena Targaryen, eleven, and youngest brother Daeron Targaryen, six. Aegon and Helaena were already dragonriders: Helaena rode Dreamfyre, and Aegon’s young dragon was Sunfyre. Daeron had Tessarion, a blue she-dragon, though he had not yet ridden her. Aemond alone had no dragon. Viserys hoped to remedy this by taking the court to Dragonstone after the funeral, where eggs and young hatchlings could be found. His suggestion that Aemond might choose one, if he dared, stung the boy rather than persuading him to wait.

Aemond’s Secret Claim

Aemond decided that a hatchling or an egg was beneath his ambition. Vhagar was at High Tide: the oldest, largest, and most formidable dragon in the world. She had recently lost her rider, and Aemond understood that his parents would not permit him to approach her, let alone attempt to ride her. He therefore acted without their knowledge, slipping from his bed at dawn while they slept and making his way to the outer yard where the dragons were fed and housed.

As Aemond crept toward Vhagar, Joffrey Velaryon, Rhaenyra’s three-year-old son, called out a warning. Joffrey had risen early to see his own dragon, Tyraxes, and Aemond feared that he would raise the alarm. He shouted at the younger boy to be quiet and pushed him backward into a pile of dragon droppings. While Joffrey cried out, Aemond ran to Vhagar and climbed onto her back. He later explained that fear of being discovered had momentarily overtaken his fear of being burned or eaten.

Vhagar’s response remained beyond anyone’s certainty. She roared, rose, shook herself, broke her chains, and took flight. Aemond circled twice around the towers of High Tide before bringing her down. The result was immediate and unmistakable: the previously dragonless prince had become a rider of the greatest dragon in the world. His success, however, did not end the danger of the morning; Rhaenyra’s sons were waiting when he landed.

The Fight and Its Accusation

Joffrey had gone to fetch his brothers, Jacaerys Velaryon and Lucerys Velaryon. The three boys, aged six, five, and three, had armed themselves with wooden swords from the training yard. They attacked Aemond, who fought back. He broke Luke’s nose with a punch, took the wooden sword from Joffrey, and struck Jace across the back of the head, forcing him to his knees. When the younger boys drew back, Aemond mocked them by calling them the Strongs.

Jacaerys understood the insult and charged him again. Aemond began beating him until Lucerys intervened with a dagger and cut Aemond across the face, taking out his right eye. Stableboys arrived and separated the children. Aemond was left in pain, and Vhagar roared nearby. The incident thus joined his new bond with the dragon to a permanent injury inflicted by one of Rhaenyra’s sons. In Aemond’s later accounting, the loss of his eye was a fair exchange for gaining Vhagar.

The name Aemond had used turned the quarrel into a challenge to Rhaenyra’s position. Calling her sons Strongs implied that they were the children of Harwin Strong rather than Laenor Velaryon, and therefore illegitimate, with no claim to succession; it also implied that Rhaenyra was guilty of high treason. When Viserys demanded to know where he had heard the accusation, Aemond identified his brother Aegon as its source. Aegon’s response made clear that the allegation was not confined to a private rivalry: he treated the boys’ parentage as something widely known.

The King’s Settlement

Viserys tried to restore peace by requiring each boy to apologize to his rivals. The gesture did not satisfy either of the boys’ mothers. Alicent Hightower demanded that Lucerys lose an eye in return for the one he had taken from Aemond. Rhaenyra rejected that punishment and instead insisted that Aemond be questioned sharply until he disclosed who had taught him to call her sons Strongs. Their dispute therefore concerned both the physical injury and the danger carried by the allegation about the princes’ birth.

Viserys ended the questioning and ruled that no one would lose an eye. He also threatened to have the tongues of anyone who again mocked his grandsons as Strongs pulled out with hot pincers, whether that person was a child or an adult, noble or common, royal or not. The decree defended the boys against public repetition of the accusation without settling the underlying question of their parentage. The king then ordered Alicent and Rhaenyra to kiss and exchange vows of love and affection. Their smiles and words were plainly insincere to everyone but him, leaving the attempted reconciliation as a performance rather than a repair.

Separation and Significance

To prevent further conflict and suppress what he called vile rumours and base calumnies, Viserys ordered Alicent and her sons to return with him to court. Rhaenyra was to remain on Dragonstone with her sons. Ser Erryk Cargyll of the Kingsguard became her sworn shield, while Harwin Strong returned to Harrenhal. Septon Eustace’s account says the rulings pleased no one. The decree separated the two branches of the household but did not resolve their distrust; it made their division part of the royal arrangement.

The event’s force lies in the contrast between triumph and injury. Aemond’s boldness brings him the dragon he had wanted, but the claim is followed at once by a fight that costs him an eye and makes the hidden accusation about his nephews explicit. Viserys can forbid the insult and forbid retaliation, yet neither command changes what the children and their mothers believe. By the end of the episode, the dragonless prince has become a powerful rider, while the family’s attempt at peace has produced separation, guarded words, and a conflict sharpened by the question of succession.