The Kingdom of the Three Daughters was the name used in Westeros for the alliance of Lys, Myr, and Tyrosh, a maritime power whose hold over the Stepstones made it both a gatekeeper of trade and a decisive force in the Dance of the Dragons. Its authority depended on cooperation among three rival cities: the alliance could project great naval strength, but its leaders’ competing interests also made it slow to act and vulnerable to internal fracture.

Formation and Government

The alliance arose after Lys, Myr, and Tyrosh set aside old enmities to make common cause against Volantis. Following their victory at the Battle of the Borderland, the cities entered an alliance described as eternal and formed a new power. Westerosi called it the Kingdom of the Three Daughters because each city regarded itself as a daughter of old Valyria. The more derisive name Kingdom of the Three Whores also circulated, though the supposed kingdom had no king.

Instead, the alliance was governed by a High Council of thirty-three magisters: eleven from each city. Decisions on war, peace, and alliances therefore required agreement among representatives whose concerns included their own standing and the advantage of their home city. The arrangement could unite the cities behind a major undertaking, but it did not produce a single, readily obeyed sovereign. A later history of the alliance compared the council to thirty-three horses pulling in different directions, a metaphor for the institutional friction that repeatedly shaped its actions.

Conquest of the Stepstones

After Volantis withdrew from the Disputed Lands, the Three Daughters turned west and conquered the Stepstones with combined armies and fleets. The islands controlled important sea lanes between the Narrow Sea and the waters beyond; for generations, pirates and wreckers had made passage dangerous. The conquest initially won approval among Westerosi lords because the new rulers appeared to replace disorder with security. A toll on shipping seemed a modest cost if it kept pirate attacks at bay.

The alliance’s commander in the campaign was the Myrish prince admiral Craghas Drahar, who became known as Craghas Crabfeeder for his treatment of captured pirates on the tidal shore. Control of the islands, however, soon became a source of resentment. Drahar and his Lysene and Tyroshi fellow admirals repeatedly raised the tolls until merchants who had once paid them began trying to evade the fleet. The Lyseni drew particular hostility for taking women, girls, and attractive young boys from passing ships and selling them into sexual servitude. The alliance’s initial claim to have brought order thus gave way to a reputation for predation and extortion.

War with Daemon and Corlys

Corlys Velaryon, whose fleets and wealth were especially exposed to the Three Daughters’ policies, joined with Daemon Targaryen to challenge their control of the islands. In 106 AC they began a private war: Corlys commanded the fleet, while Daemon gathered landless adventurers and second sons for the fighting on land. The prince’s dragon, Caraxes, gave their smaller force a formidable weapon, and Daemon won a series of victories during the conflict’s first two years.

In 108 AC, Daemon confronted Craghas Crabfeeder and killed him himself with Dark Sister. By 109 AC, Daemon’s forces controlled all but two of the islands, while Corlys’s fleet held the surrounding waters. At the height of this success, Corlys placed a crown on Daemon’s head after the prince declared himself King of the Stepstones and the Narrow Sea. Their new dominion was not secure: the Three Daughters sent another invasion force the following year under the Tyroshi captain Racallio Ryndoon, and Dorne joined the alliance against them. Fighting resumed, and the Stepstones remained contested rather than becoming a settled kingdom under Daemon’s rule.

Intervention in the Dance

During the Dance of the Dragons, the Kingdom of the Three Daughters became a potential counterweight to the Velaryon fleet. The royal fleet alone could not break Corlys’s blockade of the Gullet, and Aegon II had not secured the support of Dalton Greyjoy. Otto Hightower therefore offered the magisters exclusive trading rights at King’s Landing in return for clearing the Gullet; he also promised them the Stepstones, although the Iron Throne had never claimed the islands. The proposal made the alliance’s control of maritime access and its interest in trade direct instruments of Westerosi politics.

The Three Daughters did not respond quickly. When Otto’s envoys arrived, the High Council was not even in session, and its many competing voices prolonged deliberations over war and alliance. Eventually, meeting in Tyrosh, the council accepted Otto’s offer. Ninety warships sailed from the Stepstones toward the Gullet. Their arrival turned a contest over the sea blockade into a major battle, and a Pentoshi cog carrying two Targaryen princes was caught in the fleet’s path.

The fighting around Dragonstone became one of the bloodiest sea battles of the war. Of the ninety Myrish, Lysene, and Tyroshi warships sent, only twenty-eight returned; nearly all the returning ships were crewed by Lyseni. The attack also devastated Driftmark: Spicetown was sacked and burned and was never rebuilt, High Tide was put to the torch, and the Velaryon fleet lost almost a third of its strength. The alliance had demonstrated that its combined fleets could strike deep into the conflict, but the cost was immense.

Division and Significance

The battle’s aftermath exposed the political weakness behind the alliance’s naval reach. Widows in Myr and Tyrosh accused the Lysene admiral Sharako Lohar of sacrificing their fleets while holding back his own. That quarrel began the division that culminated two years later in the Daughters’ War, when the three cities turned against one another. The Kingdom of the Three Daughters had been formed through unity against a common enemy, and its later power depended on cooperation among its members; the losses in the Gullet gave their rivalries a new and devastating focus.

Across these episodes, the alliance’s role is inseparable from the routes it controlled and the interests attached to them. Its conquest of the Stepstones initially offered safer passage, but tolls and the seizure of people from merchant ships transformed that promise into an oppressive regime. In the Dance, control of the same islands made the alliance a tempting partner to the Greens and a formidable naval opponent to the Velaryons. Its ability to act collectively could alter a war; its council’s divided interests and its cities’ mutual suspicion ultimately undermined that power.