had existed for centuries, in ruder form, but Jaehaerys would remake them beyond all recognition, filling ruts, spreading gravel, bridging streams. Other roads his men created anew. The cost of all this was not inconsiderable, to be sure, but the realm was prosperous, and the king’s new master of coin, Martyn Tyrell—aided and abetted by his clever wife, “the apple counter”—proved almost as able as the Lord of Air had been. Mile by mile, league by league, the roads grew, for decades to come. “He bound the land together, and made of seven kingdoms, one,” read the words on the plinth of the Old King’s monument that stands at the Citadel of Oldtown.
Mayhaps the Seven smiled on his work as well, for they continued to bless Jaehaerys and Alysanne with children. In 63 AC the king and queen celebrated the birth of Vaegon, their third son and seventh child. A year later came another daughter, Daella. Three years hence, Princess Saera came into the world, red-faced and squalling. Another princess arrived in 71 AC, when the queen gave birth to her tenth child and sixth daughter, the beautiful Viserra. Though born within a decade of one another, it would be hard to conceive of four siblings so different from one another as these younger children of Jaehaerys and Alysanne.
Prince Vaegon was as unlike his elder brothers as night to day. Never robust, he was a quiet boy with wary eyes. Other children, and even some of the lords of the court, found him sour. Though no coward, he took no pleasure in the rough play of the squires and pages, or the heroics of his father’s knights. He preferred the library to the yard, and could oft be found there reading.
Princess Daella, the next oldest, was delicate and shy. Easily frightened and quick to cry, she did not speak her first word until she was almost two…and even thereafter she was tongue-tied more oft than not. Her sister Maegelle became her guiding star, and she worshipped her mother, the queen, but her sister Alyssa seemed to terrify her, and she blushed and hid her face in the presence of the older boys.
Princess Saera, three years younger, was a trial from the very start; tempestuous, demanding, disobedient. The first word she spoke was no, and she said it often and loudly. She refused to be weaned until past the age of four. Even as she ran about the castle, talking more than her siblings Vaegon and Daella combined, she wanted her mother’s milk, and raged and screamed whenever the queen dismissed another wet nurse. “Seven save us,” Alysanne whispered to the king one night, “when I look at her I see Aerea.” Fierce and stubborn, Saera Targaryen thrived upon attention and sulked when she did not receive it.
The youngest of the four, Princess Viserra, had a will of her own as well, but she never screamed and certainly never cried. Sly was one word used to describe her. Vain was another. Viserra was beautiful, all men agreed, blessed with the deep purple eyes and silver-gold hair of a true Targaryen, with flawless white skin, fine features, and a grace that was somehow eerie and unsettling in one so young. When one stammering young squire told her she was a goddess, she agreed.
We shall return to these four princelings, and the woes they visited upon their mother and their father, in due time, but for the nonce let us take a step back to 68 AC, not long after the birth of Princess Saera, when the king and queen announced the betrothal of their firstborn son, Aemon, Prince of Dragonstone, to Jocelyn Baratheon of Storm’s End. There had been some thought, after the tragic death of Princess Daenerys, that Aemon should wed Princess Alyssa, the eldest of his remaining sisters, but Queen Alysanne firmly put the thought aside. “Alyssa is for Baelon,” she declared. “She has been following him around since she could walk. They are as close as you and I were at their age.”
Two years later, in 70 AC, Aemon and Jocelyn were joined in a ceremony that rivaled the Golden Wedding for its splendor. Lady Jocelyn at sixteen years old was one of the great beauties of the realm; a long-legged, full-breasted maid with thick straight hair that fell to her waist, black as a raven’s wing. Prince Aemon was one year younger at fifteen, but all agreed that they made a handsome couple. An inch shy