Fire and Blood. George R.r. Martin
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bastard born. All of them were quick, strong, observant, skilled with sword and shield, and devoted to the king.
These are the names of Aegon’s Seven, as written in the White Book of the Kingsguard: Ser Richard Roote; Ser Addison Hill, Bastard of Cornfield; Ser Gregor Goode; Ser Griffith Goode, his brother; Ser Humfrey the Mummer; Ser Robin Darklyn, called Darkrobin; and Ser Corlys Velaryon, Lord Commander. History has confirmed that Visenya Targaryen chose well. Two of her original seven would die protecting the king, and all would serve with valor to the end of their lives. Many brave men have followed in their footsteps since, writing their names in the White Book and donning the white cloak. The Kingsguard remains a synonym for honor to this day.
Sixteen Targaryens followed Aegon the Dragon to the Iron Throne, before the dynasty was at last toppled in Robert’s Rebellion. They numbered amongst them wise men and foolish, cruel men and kind, good men and evil. Yet if the dragon kings are considered solely on the basis of their legacies, the laws and institutions and improvements they left behind, the name of King Aegon I belongs near the top of the list, in peace as well as war.
King Aegon I Targaryen took both of his sisters to wife. Rhaenys and Visenya were dragonriders, with the silver-gold hair, purple eyes, and beauty of true Targaryens. Elsewise, the two queens were as unlike each other as any two women could be … save in one other respect. Each of them gave the king a son.
Aenys came first. Born in 7 AC to Aegon’s younger wife, Rhaenys, the boy was small at birth and sickly. He cried all the time, and it was said that his limbs were spindly, his eyes small and watery, and that the king’s maesters feared for his survival. He would spit out the nipples of his wet nurse, and give suck only at his mother’s breasts, and rumors claimed that he screamed for a fortnight when he was weaned. So unlike King Aegon was he that a few even dared suggest that His Grace was not the boy’s true sire, that Aenys was some bastard born of one of Queen Rhaenys’s many handsome favorites, the son of a singer or a mummer or a mime. And the prince was slow to grow as well. Not until he was given the young dragon Quicksilver, a hatchling born that same year on Dragonstone, did Aenys Targaryen begin to thrive.
Prince Aenys was three when his mother, Queen Rhaenys, and her dragon, Meraxes, were slain in Dorne. Her death left the boy prince inconsolable. He stopped eating, and even began to crawl as he had when he was one, as if he had forgotten how to walk. His father despaired of him, and rumors flew about the court that King Aegon might take another wife, as Rhaenys was dead and Visenya childless and perhaps barren. The king kept his own counsel on these matters, so no man could say what thoughts he might have entertained, but many great lords and noble knights appeared at court with their maiden daughters, each more comely than the last.
All such speculation ended in 11 AC, when Queen Visenya suddenly announced that she was carrying the king’s child. A son, she proclaimed confidently, and so he proved to be. The prince came squalling into the world in 12 AC. No newborn was ever more robust than Maegor Targaryen, maesters and midwives agreed; his weight at birth was almost twice that of his elder brother.
The half-brothers were never close. Prince Aenys was the heir apparent, and King Aegon kept him close by his side. As the king moved about the realm from castle to castle, so did the prince. Prince Maegor remained with his mother, sitting by her side when she held court. Queen Visenya and King Aegon were oft apart in those years. When he was not on a royal progress, Aegon would return to King’s Landing and the Aegonfort, whilst Visenya and her son remained on Dragonstone. For this reason, lords and commons alike began to refer to Maegor as the Prince of Dragonstone.
Queen Visenya put a sword into her son’s hand when he was three. Supposedly the first thing he did with the blade was butcher one of the castle cats, men said … though more like this tale was a calumny devised by his enemies many years later. That the prince took to swordplay at once cannot be denied, however. For his first master-at-arms his mother chose Ser Gawen Corbray, as deadly a knight as could be found in all the Seven Kingdoms.
Prince Aenys was so oft in his sire’s company that his own instruction in the chivalric arts came largely from the knights of Aegon’s Kingsguard, and sometimes the king himself. The boy was diligent, his instructors agreed, and did not want for courage, but he lacked his sire’s size and strength, and was never more than adequate as a fighter, even when the king pressed Blackfyre into his hands, as he did from time to time. Aenys would not disgrace himself in battle, his tutors told one another, but no songs would ever be sung about his prowess.
Such gifts as this prince possessed lay elsewhere. Aenys was a fine singer himself, as it happened, with a strong sweet voice. He was courteous and charming, clever without being bookish. He made friends easily, and young girls seemed to dote on him, be they highborn or low. Aenys loved to ride as well. His father gave him coursers, palfreys, and destriers, but his favorite mount was his dragon, Quicksilver.
Prince Maegor rode as well, but showed no great love for horses, dogs, or any animal. When he was eight, a palfrey kicked him in the stables. Maegor stabbed the horse to death … and slashed half the face off the stableboy who came running at the beast’s screams. The Prince of Dragonstone had many companions through the years, but no true friends. He was a quarrelsome boy, quick to take offense, slow to forgive, fearsome in his wroth. His skill with weapons was unmatched, however. A squire at eight, he was unhorsing boys four and five years his elder in the lists by the time he was twelve, and battering seasoned men-at-arms into submission in the castle yard. On his thirteenth nameday in 25 AC, his mother, Queen Visenya, bestowed her own Valyrian steel blade, Dark Sister, upon him … half a year before his marriage.
The tradition amongst the Targaryens had always been to marry kin to kin. Wedding brother to sister was thought to be ideal. Failing that, a girl might wed an uncle, a cousin, or a nephew, a boy a cousin, aunt, or niece. This practice went back to Old Valyria, where it was common amongst many of the ancient families, particularly those who bred and rode dragons. The blood of the dragon must remain pure, the wisdom went. Some of the sorcerer princes also took more than one wife when it pleased them, though this was less common than incestuous marriage. In Valyria before the Doom, wise men wrote, a thousand gods were honored, but none were feared, so few dared to speak against these customs.
This was not true in Westeros, where the power of the Faith went unquestioned. The old gods were still worshipped in the North and the Drowned God in the Iron Islands, but in the rest of the realm there was a single god with seven faces, and his voice upon this earth was the High Septon of Oldtown. And the doctrines of the Faith, handed down through centuries from Andalos itself, condemned the Valyrian marriage customs as practiced by the Targaryens. Incest was denounced as a vile sin, whether between father and daughter, mother and son, or brother and sister, and the fruits of such unions were considered abominations in the sight of gods and men. With hindsight, it can be seen that conflict between the Faith and House Targaryen was inevitable. Indeed, many amongst the Most Devout had expected the High Septon to speak out against Aegon and his sisters during the Conquest, and were most displeased when the Father of the Faithful instead counseled Lord Hightower against opposing the Dragon, and even blessed and anointed him at his second coronation.
Familiarity is the father of acceptance, it is said. The High Septon who had crowned Aegon the Conqueror remained the Shepherd of the Faithful until his death in 11 AC, by which time the realm had grown accustomed to the notion of a king with two queens, who were both wives and sisters. King Aegon always took care to honor the Faith, confirming its traditional rights and privileges, exempting its wealth and property from taxation, and affirming that septons, septas, and other servants of the Seven accused of wrongdoing could only be tried by the Faith’s own courts.
The accord between the Faith and the Iron Throne continued all through the reign of Aegon I. From 11 AC to 37 AC, six High Septons wore the crystal crown; His Grace remained on good terms with each of them, calling at the Starry Sept each time he came to Oldtown. Yet the question of incestuous marriage remained, simmering below the courtesies like poison. Whilst the High Septons of King Aegon’s reign never spoke out against the king’s marriage to his sisters, neither did they declare it to be lawful.