Fire & Blood (A Targaryen History #1) - George R.R. Martin Page 0,117

of his line, and sickly and impoverished as well. In a castle built to house thousands, Towers dwelt alone but for a cook and three elderly men-at-arms. “The castle has five colossal towers,” the king pointed out, “and the Towers boy occupies part of one. You can have the other four.” Rhaena was amused by that. “One will suffice, I am sure. I have a smaller household than he does.” When Alysanne reminded her that Harrenhal too was said to have ghosts, Rhaena shrugged. “They are not my ghosts. They will not trouble me.”

And thus it came to pass that Rhaena Targaryen, daughter of one king, wife to two, sister to a third, spent the final years of her life in the aptly named Widow’s Tower of Harrenhal, whilst across the castle yard a sickly youth named after the king who had slain the father of her children maintained his own household in the Tower of Dread. Curiously, we are told, in time Rhaena and Maegor Towers came to forge a friendship of sorts. After his death in 61 AC, Rhaena took his servants into her own household and continued to maintain them until her own death.

Rhaena Targaryen died in 73 AC, at fifty years of age. After the death of her daughter Aerea, she never again visited King’s Landing or Dragonstone, nor played any part in the ruling of the realm, though she did fly to Oldtown once a year to visit with her remaining daughter, Rhaella, a septa at the Starry Sept. Her hair of gold and silver turned white before the end, and the smallfolk of the riverlands feared her as a witch. Travelers who turned up at the gates of Harrenhal in hope of hospitality were given bread and salt and the privilege of a night’s shelter during those years, but not the honor of the queen’s company. Those who were fortunate spoke of glimpsing her on the castle battlements, or seeing her coming and going on her dragon, for Rhaena continued to ride Dreamfyre until the end, just as she had in the beginning.

When she died, King Jaehaerys ordained that she be burned at Harrenhal and her ashes interred there. “My brother Aegon died at the hands of our uncle in the Battle Beneath the Gods Eye,” His Grace said at her funeral pyre. “His wife, my sister Rhaena, was not with him at the battle, but she died that day as well.” With Rhaena’s death, Jaehaerys granted Harrenhal and all its lands and incomes to Ser Bywin Strong, the brother of Ser Lucamore Strong of his Kingsguard and a renowned knight in his own right.

We have wandered decades ahead of our tale, however, for the Stranger did not come for Rhaena Targaryen until 73 AC, and much and more was to pass in King’s Landing and the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros before that, for both good and ill.

In 57 AC, Jaehaerys and his queen found cause to rejoice again when the gods blessed them with another son. Baelon, he was named, after one of the Targaryen lords who had ruled Dragonstone before the Conquest, himself a second son. Though smaller than his brother, Aemon, at birth, the new babe was louder and lustier, and his wet nurses complained that they had never known a child to suck so hard. Only two days before his birth, the white ravens had flown from the Citadel to announce the arrival of spring, so Baelon was immediately dubbed the Spring Prince.

Prince Aemon was two when his brother was born, Princess Daenerys four. The two were little alike. The princess was a lively, laughing child who bounced about the Red Keep day and night, “flying” everywhere on a broomstick dragon that had become her favorite toy. Mud-spattered and grass-stained, she was a trial to her mother and her maids alike, for they were forever losing track of her. Prince Aemon, on the other hand, was a very serious boy, cautious, careful, and obedient. Though he could not as yet read, he loved being read to, and Queen Alysanne, laughing, was oft heard to say that his first word had been, “Why?”

As the children grew, Grand Maester Benifer watched them closely. The wounds left by the enmity between the Conqueror’s sons, Aenys and Maegor, were still fresh in the minds of many older lords, and Benifer worried lest these two boys likewise turn on one another to bathe the realm in blood. He need not have been concerned. Save