a true Targaryen from her mother, Rhaenys, and a bold, adventurous spirit from her father, the Sea Snake. As Lord Corlys loved to sail, Laena loved to fly, and had claimed for her own no less a mount than mighty Vhagar, the oldest and largest of the Targaryen dragons since the passing of the Black Dread in 94 AC. By taking the girl to wife, the king could heal the rift that had grown up between the Iron Throne and Driftmark, Runciter pointed out. And Laena would surely make a splendid queen.
Viserys I Targaryen was not the strongest-willed of kings, it must be said; always amiable and anxious to please, he relied greatly on the counsel of the men around him, and did as they bade more oft than not. In this instance, however, His Grace had his own notion, and no amount of argument would sway him from his course. He would marry again, yes…but not to a twelve-year-old girl, and not for reasons of state. Another woman had caught his eye. He announced his intention to wed Lady Alicent of House Hightower, the clever and lovely eighteen-year-old daughter of the King’s Hand, the girl who had read to King Jaehaerys as he lay dying.
The Hightowers of Oldtown were an ancient and noble family, of impeccable lineage; there could be no possible objection to the king’s choice of bride. Even so, there were those who murmured that the Hand had risen above himself, that he had brought his daughter to court with this in mind. A few even cast doubt on Lady Alicent’s virtue, suggesting she had welcomed King Viserys into her bed even before Queen Aemma’s death. (These calumnies were never proved, though Mushroom repeats them in his Testimony and goes so far as to claim that reading was not the only service Lady Alicent performed for the Old King in his bedchamber.) In the Vale, Prince Daemon reportedly whipped the serving man who brought the news to him within an inch of his life. Nor was the Sea Snake pleased when word reached Driftmark. House Velaryon had been passed over once again, his daughter, Laena, scorned just as his son, Laenor, had been scorned by the Great Council, and his wife by the Old King back in 92 AC. Only Lady Laena herself seemed untroubled. “Her ladyship shows far more interest in flying than in boys,” the maester at High Tide wrote to the Citadel.
When King Viserys took Alicent Hightower to wife in 106 AC, House Velaryon was notable for its absence. Princess Rhaenyra poured for her stepmother at the feast, and Queen Alicent kissed her and named her “daughter.” The princess was amongst the women who disrobed the king and delivered him to the bedchamber of his bride. Laughter and love ruled the Red Keep that night…whilst across Blackwater Bay, Lord Corlys the Sea Snake welcomed the king’s brother, Prince Daemon, to a war council. The prince had suffered all he could stand of the Vale of Arryn, Runestone, and his lady wife. “Dark Sister was made for nobler tasks than slaughtering sheep,” he is reported to have told the Lord of the Tides. “She has a thirst for blood.” But it was not rebellion that the prince had in mind; he saw another path to power.
The Stepstones, the chain of rocky islands between Dorne and the Disputed Lands of Essos, had long been a haunt of outlaws, exiles, wreckers, and pirates. Of themselves the isles were of little worth, but placed as they were, they controlled the sea lanes to and from the narrow sea, and merchant ships passing through those waters were often preyed on by their inhabitants. Still, for centuries such depredations had remained no more than a nuisance.
Ten years earlier, however, the Free Cities of Lys, Myr, and Tyrosh had put aside their ancient enmities to make common cause in a war against Volantis. After defeating the Volantenes in the Battle of the Borderland, the three victorious cities had entered into an “eternal alliance,” and formed a strong new power: the Triarchy, better known in Westeros as the Kingdom of the Three Daughters (as each of the Free Cities considered itself a daughter of Valyria of old), or, more rudely, the Kingdom of the Three Whores (though this “kingdom” was without a king, being governed by a council of thirty-three magisters). Once Volantis sued for peace and withdrew from the Disputed Lands, the Three Daughters had turned their gaze westward,