Fire & Blood (A Targaryen History #1) - George R.R. Martin Page 0,161

greater than your father,” Alysanne told him the last time they were together. She did not know. How could she know?

After the death of Princess Gael, King’s Landing and the Red Keep became unbearable to Alysanne. She could no longer serve as she once had, as a partner to the king in his labors, and the court was full of strangers whose names Alysanne could not quite recall. Seeking peace, she returned once more to Dragonstone, where she had spent the happiest days of her life with Jaehaerys, between their first and second marriages. The Old King would join her there when he could. “How is it that I am the Old King now, but you are still the Good Queen?” he asked her once. Alysanne laughed. “I am old as well, but I am still younger than you.”

Alysanne Targaryen died on Dragonstone on the first day of the seventh moon in 100 AC, a full century after Aegon’s Conquest. She was sixty-four years old.

The seeds of war are oft planted during times of peace. So has it been in Westeros. The bloody struggle for the Iron Throne known as the Dance of the Dragons, fought from 129–131 AC, had its roots half a century earlier, during the longest and most peaceful reign that any of the Conqueror’s descendants ever enjoyed, that of Jaehaerys I Targaryen, the Conciliator.

The Old King and Good Queen Alysanne ruled together until her death in 100 AC (aside from two periods of estrangement, known as the First and Second Quarrels), and produced thirteen children. Four of them—two sons and two daughters—grew to maturity, married, and produced children of their own. Never before or since had the Seven Kingdoms been blessed (or cursed, in the view of some) with so many Targaryen princelings. From the loins of the Old King and his beloved queen sprang such a confusion of claims and claimants than many maesters believe that the Dance of the Dragons, or some similar struggle, was inevitable.

This was not apparent in the early years of Jaehaerys’s reign, for in Prince Aemon and Prince Baelon His Grace had the proverbial “heir and a spare,” and seldom has the realm been blessed with two more able princes. In 62 AC, at the age of seven, Aemon was formally anointed Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne. Knighted at seventeen, a tourney champion at twenty, he became his father’s justiciar and master of laws at six-and-twenty. Though he never served his father as Hand of the King, that was only because that office was occupied by Septon Barth, the Old King’s most trusted friend and “companion of my labors.” Nor was Baelon Targaryen any less accomplished. The younger prince earned his knighthood at sixteen, and was wed at eighteen. Though he and Aemon enjoyed a healthy rivalry, no man doubted the love that bound them. The succession appeared solid as stone.

But the stone began to crack in 92 AC, when Aemon, Prince of Dragonstone, was slain on Tarth by a Myrish crossbow bolt loosed at the man beside him. The king and queen mourned his loss, and the realm with them, but no man was more bereft than Prince Baelon, who went at once to Tarth and avenged his brother by driving the Myrmen into the sea. On his return to King’s Landing, Baelon was hailed as a hero by cheering throngs, and embraced by his father the king, who named him Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne. It was a popular decree. The smallfolk loved Baelon the Brave, and the lords of the realm saw him as his brother’s obvious successor.

But Prince Aemon had a child: his daughter, Rhaenys, born in 74 AC, had grown into a clever, capable, and beautiful young woman. In 90 AC, at the age of sixteen, she had wed the king’s admiral and master of ships, Corlys of House Velaryon, Lord of the Tides, known as the Sea Snake after the most famous of his many ships. Moreover, Princess Rhaenys was with child when her father died. By granting Dragonstone to Prince Baelon, King Jaehaerys was not only passing over Rhaenys, but also (possibly) her unborn son.

The king’s decision was in accord with well-established practice. Aegon the Conqueror had been the first Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, not his sister Visenya, two years his elder. Jaehaerys himself had followed his usurping uncle Maegor on the Iron Throne, though had the order of birth alone