VARYS: In its time,
the Dragonpit was a marvel of the world.
Full-grown Targaryen dragons nested beneath its massive dome.
And even on the darkest nights,
the walls seemed to glow with the fire of the great beasts inside.
QYBURN: As had the site's previous occupant, the Sept of Remembrance.
When Maegor the Cruel blasted it with dragonfire during morning prayers.
The screams of the dying men echoed through King's Landing all day
and a pall of ash and smoke hung over the city for a week.
VARYS: But as it dissipated,
so too did the rebellion of the Faith Militant.
The Sept of Remembrance faded from memory
and Maegor decided to replace a monument to the gods
with a monument to his family, the Dragonpit.
QYBURN: Labor proved elusive, however.
For after the Red Keep was finished, Maegor had hosted a three-day feast
for all the builders, stonemasons and carpenters who had worked to build it.
At its conclusion, he slaughtered them
so that only he would know the castle's secrets.
So many men fled the construction of the Dragonpit
that Maegor was forced to employ the prisoners of the city dungeons
supplemented by skilled and ignorant builders from across the Narrow Sea.
VARYS: For more than a century,
the Targaryens housed their dragons in the Dragonpit.
But dragons are not horses to be stabled
or hounds to be kenneled.
With each generation, the dragons became less.
Less massive, less swift, less long-lived.
QYBURN: And less invulnerable.
During the Dance of Dragons,
two Targaryen factions killed a handful of their family's dragons
while fighting each other.
A frenzied mob even broke into the Dragonpit
and slaughtered the five dragons chained there.
Though the last managed to bring down the roof of the great dome
on its assailants.
The dragons never recovered their former strength or numbers.
Perhaps their line had been too broken.
Or perhaps others intervened to break it further.
But the last dragon grew no larger than a cat.
And its death earned Aegon, third of his name,
the epithet "Dragonbane."
VARYS: What is a Dragonpit without dragons?
The roof remained where it had fallen.
The great bronze doors rusted and fell off their hinges.
Prostitutes cavorted where fantastic creatures
had once fed and slept.
Then came Daenerys.
Now dragons once again darken the sky.
But they will never darken the Dragonpit again.
Daenerys has learned the folly of chaining her dragons.
The Dragonpit is and will remain a ruin of a bygone age,
when kings and queens flew high above their countrymen.
SAM: The Citadel of Oldtown
is the greatest center of learning in the whole world.
Not that it has much competition really.
Most lords think of books the way they think of younger sons,
useful to have around as long as they keep to the corners.
Back when House Hightower still ruled Oldtown as kings,
a crippled younger son sought solace in books and those who wrote them
and became the greatest patron of learning in his day.
Scholars of all sorts flocked to Oldtown to debate and write and
debate.
After this Prince Peremore's death,
his brother granted land to Peremore's Pets,
as the wise men were called.
Though now, they're known as maesters.
Like the Night's Watch,
the Citadel accepts any boy into its halls,
be he a lordling, peasant or bastard.
Merit, not birth, determines advancement.
Once a novice proves adept in a field,
he forges a chain-link that signifies his skill.
Black iron is for ravenry, gold for sums and accounts,
silver for healing, iron for warfare,
Valyrian steel for the higher mysteries.
Magic. Though nobody likes to say the word in the Citadel.
Or explain how dragons fly or dead men walk.
Once an acolyte has forged enough links to make a chain,
he becomes a maester.
Should he continue his studies,
he might rise to archmaester and be given a ring, rod and mask
forged from the appropriate metal for his chosen field.
The wisest, or most ambitious of the arch maesters,
might even be called to serve as a grand maester on the Small Council,
responsible for steering the king and the realm,
as well as keeping the Citadel informed of everything.
The heart of the Citadel is the library,
which contains tomes from all over the world
on every subject imaginable.
From the trivial to the essential to the
restricted.
If the world ended tomorrow,
we could rebuild it with the knowledge contained in these books.
Theoretically.
Let's hope it doesn't come to that.
But as every novice learns, the Citadel is more than a building,
more than a library, more than the order of maesters.
It is an idea that we may know the world,
not completely, not in any one man's lifetime,
but piece by piece.
With each generation building upon
the knowledge of their predecessors where they can,
and preserving it where they can't.
And, unfortunately for us all,
forgetting it when they shouldn't.
JAIME: According to legend, a huntsman once tracked a lion
that was terrorizing his village all the way to its den.
Though armed with only a spear,
the man managed to kill both the lion and its mate, but spared the cubs.
This mercy so pleased the Old Gods
that they sent a shaft of sunlight deep into the cave
gleaming off golden walls.
The hunter became a miner
and built a ring fort to guard his new wealth.
Nobody ever asks, "What happened to the cubs?"
Maybe the gods forgot about them and they starved.
Maybe there never were any cubs or lions or hunter. Doesn't matter.
Someone found enough gold in that cave to buy whatever truth he wanted.
Along with a castle that he'd named after his new family.
Casterly Rock.
Thanks to that gold,
Casterly Rock soon became the largest, wealthiest
and best-defended castle in Westeros.
An army that struggled up the main approach
would still have to climb thick, high and well-defended walls.
Should they choose instead to lay siege,
the sea helpfully carved a massive cave beneath the castle
which over time became a private port
complete with docks, wharfs and shipyards.
And so, to this day,
even with all the gold in Westeros to tempt invaders,
Casterly Rock has never fallen.
At least not in battle.
The castle is sadly all that remains of its namesake family,
the Casterlys.
According to another legend, my ancestor, Lann the Clever,
swindled the castle from them.
The most common story is that he found a hidden cleft in the Rock,
and snuck into the castle.
At night, he whispered threats into sleeping ears.
Howled in the darkness.
Planted one brother's treasures in the room of another and so forth.
By the end of his games,
the Casterlys believed a demon was haunting their home and fled.
My brother prefers a different version.
Lann the Clever did find a secret entrance into the Rock,
but used it to have his way with the Casterly maidens.
Eventually, the girls gave birth to golden-haired bastards.
And the Casterlys had no choice
but to accept their father into the family.
In gratitude, he changed the family name to honor himself,
and House Lannister was born.
The Casterlys used the gold of the Rock to become lords.
The Lannisters became kings.
For thousands of years, the kingdom of the Rock ruled the Westerlands.
When the ironborn became a nuisance,
my ancestors sailed to the Iron Islands,
and returned with 100 ironborn hostages,
promising to hang one from the Rock
every time the ironborn dared raid our shores.
The ironborns stayed away.
Well, after 20 or so.
When the Andals arrived after sweeping across the rest of Westeros,
we invited their sons and daughters
into the Rock as squires and court ladies.
I don't think we ever had to hang any of them.
Finally, Aegon the Conqueror defeated us on the Field of Fire
and my ancestor knelt.
Still, little changed but titles and taxes.
For when Visenya Targaryen saw the Rock,
she gave thanks that my ancestor had met Aegon on the field.
Even dragon flame would've washed over the castle like the waves
and leftjust as much a mark.
But now the mines are dry,
and Casterly Rock is just that. A rock.
Our gold has passed into legend
just like the merciful huntsman and Lann the Clever.
As will our family if we lose this war.
Unlike the Casterlys however,
we won't even have a castle to remember our name.
RANDYLL: The Tyrells claim Highgarden but they didn't build it.
They claim descent from the first king of the Reach
but only through the female line.
The truth is that House Gardener built Highgarden
when they ruled the Reach as kings, not lords.
As their name attests, they were the true heirs of Garth the Gardener,
who founded their house and the kingdom
and brought law and order to the Reach.
He built Highgarden as a fortress, not a pleasure palace.
In those dark days, the ironborn raided up and down the Mander at will.
And the Dornish were even more trouble than they are now.
While enduring shame,
a Dornish army once sacked Highgarden and destroyed the Oakenseat,
the living throne of the Gardener kings
planted by Garth Greenhand himself.
The Gardeners responded wisely,
sending armies of their own to pacify and defend the countryside.
My ancestors at Horn Hill joined them
as did the other great families of the Reach.
Even House Hightower yielded without a fight,
choosing marriage into House Gardener over a war
that would weaken us against outsiders.
But the outsiders still came.
The Andals swept across Westeros,
destroying many ancient families and kingdoms.
When the invaders arrived at the Reach,
led by Ser Alester Tyrell,
House Gardener chose accommodation over battle,
hoping honors and marriages would sate the foreigner's ambitions.
The Tyrells were welcomed into service as hereditary stewards of Highgarden.
Thousands of years later, they repaid the Gardeners for their acceptance.
When Aegon Targaryen declared that Westeros was now his,
King Mern IX allied with King Loren Lannister of the Westerlands.
Together, they fought to save Westeros from another foreign barbarian
whose family practices put decent men to shame.
But the dragons won.
A field of fire claimed Mern and all his sons, grandsons and brothers.
Instead of using the castle for what it was built to do,
Harlen Tyrell surrendered it to Aegon without a fight.
In exchange, Harlen was given the castle
his family had served for thousands of years,
with all its attendant lands and lords,
including my family.
Perhaps the Tyrells were great once.
But Harlen gave away their honor
when he opened gates that weren't his to open,
and to a foreign invader.
Ever since, there hasn't been a Lord Tyrell
who wasn't a mockery of the title.
Women rule that house.
Everybody knows it. And look what it's wrought.
Their proper lord, heir and queen, dead.
Leaving only a shrunken old woman who forgets her loyalties to the realm
either in grief or dotage.
But her thorns won't protect her more than any other rose
when the Hand comes to rip them out.
JORAH: When I fled Westeros, I washed up where most disgraced knights do,
the Golden Company.
The best of the eastern sellsword companies,
for what that's worth.
Twenty thousand battle-hardened men, horses and even elephants,
ready to kill their employer's enemies,
no matter the cause, no matter the result.
The Golden Company began as revenge.
On his deathbed, a Targaryen king legitimized all his bastards,
either to buy his way into the seven heavens,
or spite the family left behind.
As everyone knew would happen,
his great bastards weren't satisfied with their father's name
and wanted his throne as well,
under the banner of the new House Blackfyre.
Their true-born brothers disagreed.
When the Blackfyres lost the civil war,
they fled to Essos to gather a new army
and return for what was theirs.
But wars cost money.
When Aegor Rivers, the leader of the Blackfyre forces
who now called himself Bittersteel,
decided he could sell his army's services to other lords
while waiting to return to Westeros,
the Golden Company was born.
For their words, they chose, "Beneath the gold, the bitter steel,"
to remind themselves that they weren't just hired killers,
but knights of Westeros who'd one day retake their home.
They never tried because they were too successful as sellswords.
When Qohor declined to pay the new Golden Company for its services,
Bittersteel dared what even the Dothraki failed to do
and sacked the city.
After filling the Company's coffers, he declared that
unlike all other sellswords,
the Golden Company would never break a contract.
So they haven't.
But they also don't take contracts
unless the odds are heavily in their favor.
Cowardly, perhaps, but far from foolish.
Quite a few wars have ended with one side learning
the Golden Company agreed to fight on the other.
Though it's not just their reputation that scares off would-be enemies,
for some, it only takes one look at the captain's war tent
surrounded by the gilded skulls of former captains,
many splintered with the wounds that killed them.
Any sellswords who'd waste that much gold must have a lot of it.
And nobody pays in defeat.
Could the Golden Company ever take Westeros?
They get more practice fighting than the average knight.
And their elephants could make a mess on a battlefield.
But men who fight for gold will never fight as hard
as men who fight for home.
I should know. I've done one.
Now I do the other.
SAMWELL: The maesters don't believe in prophecy. With good reason.
The Children of the Forest supposedly could see into the future,
it was apprised by the First Men who nearly ended their race,
and the Long Night, which nearly ended us all.
Some maesters posited that the Children's magical sight
was invented long after they vanished from Westeros
by singers hoping to thrill peasant girls.
Not that most maesters have much experience
in what does or doesn't do that.
When Aegon the Conqueror came to the Iron Islands,
the priest king Lodos claimed his divine father,
the ironborn's drowned god,
had shown him krakens pulling Aegon's ships into the deep.
No krakens ever arrived.
And even if they had, they wouldn't have stopped
Aegon and his dragon without wings of their own.
Confused, Lodos filled his pockets with stones and walked into the sea
to take counsel with his father.
Thousands followed him.
But apparently, the drowned god didn't appreciate the crowd.
Their corpses washed upon the Iron Islands for years.
According to legend,
House Targaryen survived the Doom of Valyria,
thanks to Daenys the Dreamer, who foresaw the calamity,
and convinced her father to flee their homeland.
It could be true.
The Targaryens were always a bit more.
But as Maester Yendall points out,
in the east, the Targaryens were one of a thousand minor noble families,
and in Westeros, they became kings.
Politics, not prophecy could have drawn them to our shores.
Politics can also explain the prophecies of Daemon Blackfyre ll,
a Targaryen bastard rumored to possess the family gift.
While posing as a hedge knight,
he told the future Lord Commander of the King's Guard
that he dreamt of a dragon hatching up Whitewalls' castle,
and took it as a sign that he'd win the Iron Throne.
Perhaps if he'd slept a bit longer,
he'd have dreamt of the King's Hand putting down his rebellion a day later
before it even began.
Most maesters dismiss all Targaryen claims of prophecy as mystic nonsense.
A relic of their Eastern ancestry.
To be fair, across the Narrow Sea,
there isn't a market without a warlock from Qarth telling fortunes,
or a Shadowbinder from Asshai reading fates in blood.
Or so I hear from the maesters.
But when I was a boy,
I overheard the cook whispering to a maid about a woods witch
camping outside Horn Hill, who was called Maggy the Frog.
Now I realize, it was probably a corruption
of the Eastern word for wizards.
IIMaegi-II
One day, my father rode out hunting, though no game was in season.
And whatever power she had likely didn't save her.
Even the wisest maesters, however, have no answer for the Red Priest
who prophesied about the return of the Long Night.
For thousands of years,
they've kept watch for the return of the prince who was promised,
who will be born amid salt and smoke to drive off the darkness once again.
"Prince of what realm, promised by whom and to whom?"
The prophecy doesn't say.
But at the very least it confirmed that
not even Essos escaped the Long Night.
I imagine the cataclysm must have confused the East.
Unlike Westeros, they wouldn't have known of
the Night King or the White Walkers,
or the war waged by the First Men, and the Children of the Forest.
They would have just seen a terrible winter descend,
and linger far too long until spring magically returned to the world.
Yet somehow,
maybe from passing merchants, maybe in their fires,
the Red Priests saw the truth.
Now the truth is here again for anyone to see.
But the maesters refuse.
They debate and question and doubt not to choose the wisest course,
because they're too used to doing nothing else.
Most prophecies might be lies, but not all of them.
The Long Night is coming.
If we don't believe that, well,
we won't need any prophecy to tell us our future.
LITTLEFINGER: "What the King dreams, the Hand of the King builds"
or so say the Kings, the Hands, and the Lords who wish to be Hands.
The lowborn put it differently,
"The King eats and the Hand takes the shit."
The fact is, most kings hate ruling.
We shouldn't blame them, their only qualification is blood.
So, naturally, they're weary of a seat made of blades.
Far better to find other men to rule in their stead.
But how should a king select his Hand? Family?
One king chose his brother, Prince Maegor,
a warrior who was proud and arrogant.
Maegor agreed to marry the High Septon's niece
to unite the faith and the crown, but then secretly wed a second wife,
a Valyrian ceremony, artfully combining bigamy and heresy.
And when word of it got out, the King was forced to exile Maegor
and choose a Septon as his new Hand.
But the damage had been done.
The King had trusted in family
and his brother had set off a rebellion
that would claim his rule and his life.
Strength? As little more than a boy,
Ser Criston Cole replaced the legendary Ser Ryam Redwyne
on the Kingsguard and soon rose to Lord Commander.
But knights only know one way to settle disputes.
When Prince Aegon's father died,
Ser Criston slit the throat of an advisor
who objected to Aegon's ascension over his aunt, the anointed heir.
His actions so pleased the new king, Aegon, the second of his name,
that he appointed Ser Criston as his Hand in the ensuing civil war
called "the Dance of Dragons."
Neither Ser Criston nor the King
nor even the Targaryen dragons would survive it.
Perhaps it's no surprise
that the wisest king in the history of Westeros
made the wisest choice for his Hand.
The son of a lowly blacksmith,
Septon Barth, had few options for advancement in the world
and even fewer after his family gave him to the Faith as a child.
But as Royal Record Keeper, Barth impressed the King so much
that the King, defying all his high-born advisors,
made Septon Barth his Hand.
Forty years of prosperity ensued.
So much did Barth accomplish
that many Lords and commoners credited him with sorcery.
No other explanation could they accept
for a man without blood or skill at arms,
because what Barth had was rarer than both.
A sharp mind.
Years later,
the realm had no sharper mind than Lord Tywin Lannister,
Hand to King Aerys Targaryen,
or as history remembers him "the Mad King."
He saw assassins and plots in every shadow,
heard whispers in silence and burned men alive.
But his greatest madness by far was driving away Lord Tywin.
The Mad King then cycled through
every mistake of his ancestors, soldiers, toadying Lords,
and at the end, even an alchemist,
perhaps to save the Crown's growing expenses on wildfire.
Unfortunately, it didn't save his crown or his dynasty.
The new King Robert chose his foster father,
Lord Jon Arryn, as his Hand.
The wisest decision Robert ever made.
Not that it had many rivals.
Too bad it proved so fatal.
Lord Arryn was a man of honor from an ancient and proud family.
But honor is no shield against the corruption of the capital.
As Lord Arryn's successor, Ned Stark, learned as well.
Perhaps, the Hand of the King is a flawed idea.
Westeros needs a ruler who can rule,
who builds what he dreams himself.
A king who can't govern his kingdom is no king.
And a Hand who shits what another mans eats is an arse.
JAIME: When disciplining unruly vassals, most lords send armies.
My father, Tywin, only had to send a singer.
There's no faster way to dull a vassal's ambition
or any festive occasion
than hearing The Rains Of Castamere.
House Reyne of Castamere was an old and proud house
that was slowly sinking back into the muck.
Their mines had run dry.
Without gold, they turned to a more common source of wealth.
Daughters.
Lady Ellyn Reyne was betrothed to my great-uncle.
But when he fell in battle,
Lady Ellyn sought comfort in his twin brother's bed,
beating out the other woman he promised to marry.
Then, the husband who had shared his twin's wife,
shared his twin's death on a different battlefield.
Lady Ellyn flung herself at the new, and married, heir to the Rock.
But my grandfather, Tytos, was more kitten than lion.
He ran away and told his wife of Lady Ellyn's designs
and Lady Ellyn soon found herself married off to Walderan Tarbeck,
lord of another failing house.
The Reynes and Tarbecks should have sunk into obscurity together,
and they would have,
if not for my grandfather becoming Lord of Casterly Rock.
At first, the Westerlands laughed with the Laughing Lion,
as the jovial Tytos was called.
But when men realized this lion had neither teeth nor claws,
they started to laugh at him.
None laughed harder than the Reynes and Tarbecks.
Though Lady Ellyn was no longer welcome at Casterly Rock,
Tytos didn't refuse her brothers, Roger and Reynard Reyne.
Not even when they asked for extravagant loans.
Thanks to our family's gold,
Lady Ellyn restored Tarbeck Hall to a splendor she hadn't known
since being cast out of her home.
When my grandfather broached the subject of repayment,
Roger and Reynard only laughed.
And soon enough, my grandfather was laughing along with them.
Then my father, Tywin, returned from the War of the Ninepenny Kings
where he'd seen how the rest of the realm
sniggered at House Lannister.
Determined to restore our proper place,
my father demanded the immediate repayment of all debts to the Rock.
Or a hostage from those who couldn't pay.
Reynard Reyne merely laughed when he received the raven.
Lord Walderan Tarbeck chose to ride to Casterly Rock,
sure that he could cow Lord Tytos into rescinding my father's commands.
He could have,
except it wasn't Tytos who met him at the gates,
but my father, who had Lord Walderan thrown into a dungeon.
Lady Ellyn protested.
The Reynes threatened war, and finally, my grandfather broke
and released Lord Tarbeck with an apology, no less.
As if bathing himself in shame,
Tytos further forgave all the Tarbeck debts to our house.
To celebrate the end of hostilities, Lord Roger feasted Tytos at Castamere
and the two lords proclaimed their friendship for eternity.
My father allowed eternity to last a year.
When he summoned the Reynes and Tarbecks to Casterly Rock
to answer for their crimes,
they rose in revolt, exactly as he expected.
Their defiance gave him a pretext to call his banners
and ride for Tarbeck Hall and Castamere with an army behind him.
He didn't even bother to inform my grandfather.
My father's army descended on the Tarbecks so quickly
that Lord Walderan had no time to gather his forces
and rode against my father with only his household knights.
Soon, his head, his sons' heads
and the heads of any man with Tarbeck blood
adorned the spears of the Lannister vanguard
as it marched to Tarbeck Hall.
At their approach, Lady Ellyn Tarbeck closed the gates
and sent ravens to her brothers at Castamere.
She assumed they'd have more than enough time to muster their armies
and break what would be a long siege.
My father had trebuchets up in a day
and brought down the keep within hours.
Lady Ellyn and her son were crushed in its fall.
When the Tarbeck forces surrendered,
my father put their castle to the torch.
Roger Reyne arrived with his army just in time to see
the flames consuming his sister's home.
He charged my father's camp,
hoping surprise would win out over my father's greater numbers.
It didn't.
With half his men dead on the field and a crossbolt in his back,
Lord Roger fled back to Castamere.
The Lannister host arrived at Castamere three days later.
Like Casterly Rock, the seat of House Reyne had begun as a mine.
When the gold gave out,
the mineshafts were widened into halls,
galleries and bed chambers deep beneath the earth.
The Reyne brothers didn't have the men to defend the castle walls
and retreated into their underground stronghold.
From this relative safety,
they offered terms to my father to avoid a long siege.
My father didn't reply.
Instead, he commanded that the mines be sealed with stone and soil
until there was no way in and no way out.
When that was completed,
it took less than a day to dam the stream beside the castle
and only two to divert it to the nearest mine entrance.
The Reynes had taken more than 300 men,
women and children into the mines.
A few guards reported hearing faint screams and shouts
below them one night.
But come dawn, the earth was silent once again.
And now the rain weeps o'er their halls
with no one left to hear.
VISERYS: This world wasn't always so small and petty.
Thousands of years ago, while the rest of men prayed to gods,
the Valyrians became them.
Through magic or sheer will,
they mastered the greatest creatures in history.
A horse grants man dominion over the land, a ship, over the sea.
But dragons gave us the sky, and everything, and everyone beneath it.
At its height, my ancestors ruled the known world.
Whatever parts we didn't weren't worth knowing.
Our capital of Valyria shamed the magnificent cities of the east,
for hammers and chisels were no match for dragonfire and sorcery.
It was a city and an empire built to last until the end of time.
It didn't.
Four hundred years ago, the Doom fell on Valyria.
Mountains cracked open like eggs.
Lakes and rivers boiled.
Fountains of fire, ash and smoke spewed from the ground,
so high and so hot that even dragons burned in flight.
The land splintered, and the angry sea rushed in.
In hours, the greatest city in history became history.
But my ancestors didn't burn or drown with the rest of their race.
Twelve years before the Doom, despite the sneers of his rivals,
Aenar Targaryen abandoned the capital with his family.
Legends claim that his daughter foresaw the destruction of the city in a dream.
More likely, Aenar met with some mishap at court
and chose exile over execution.
He and House Targaryen slinked away to a dreary, remote, godforsaken island.
Forsaken no longer.
With arts now lost to the world,
we transformed a tiny outpost into Dragonstone,
a fortress fit for the last dragonlords.
Then Aenar's descendants settled into it like a tomb for their lost homeland.
Until Aegon.
When he looked east,
he saw the past, old, tired, dead.
But when he looked west,
he saw the future,
gold in the ground, gold in the fields,
and no dragons in the sky but his.
He and his sisters Rhaenys and Visenya flew over the great continent,
ostensibly visitors to a strange land.
But when Aegon returned,
he ordered construction of a massive table carved in the shape of Westeros,
with all the notable rivers and mountains that they had seen.
A personal map of the Seven Kingdoms,
then ruled by seven squabbling families.
House Durrandon held the Stormlands from their seat at Storm's End,
due south of Dragonstone.
House Hoare of the Iron Islands had also conquered and enslaved the Riverlands,
and ruled them from Harrenhal,
a monstrous castle rising on the shore of the Gods Eye.
House Stark held the frozen wasteland of the North,
the oldest, largest and emptiest of the kingdoms.
House Lannister held the Westerlands,
the wealthiest kingdom, thanks to their gold mines.
House Gardener held the Reach,
the second wealthiest kingdom, thanks to their crops.
House Arryn held the Vale, or rather the Vale held them.
The mountains were impassable except through the Bloody Gate,
which had never been taken.
House Martell held the deserts of Dorne,
probably because no one else wanted them.
Together, the Seven Kingdoms made Westeros,
a realm that wasn't yet a realm,
ruled by great families who didn't know what greatness was.
Aegon would teach them.
VARYS: Though House Durrandon titled themselves "Storm Kings,"
they were little more than gusts.
Their kingdom in the Stormlands had been doddering to its end
for the past few centuries,
helped along by other houses,
most of all by House Hoare,
who were nearly finished with the monstrous castle of Harrenhal,
too large and too costly a seat to rule only the Riverlands.
King Argilac knew where the ironborn would soon turn.
You'd think a king who wanted to keep his crown
would be wary of a man with fire-breathing monsters,
but King Argilac Durrandon wasn't called "the Arrogant" for nothing.
Determined to arrest his family's decline,
he sent an envoy to Dragonstone
to enlist Aegon Targaryen and his dragons against his enemies.
In exchange, Argilac offered lands he didn't have
and a wife Aegon didn't need,
for, as the Valyrians did, Aegon had wed his elder sister, Visenya.
Then, as the Valyrians didn't, he took the younger Rhaenys as well.
Two sisters, two wives.
Perhaps that's why he was so keen to get off Dragonstone.
Aegon countered Argilac with courtesy.
He sent his own envoy requesting
that Princess Durrandon's hand be given instead to Aegon's closest friend,
and rumored half-brother, Orys Baratheon.
Argilac answered with a box and a note,
"These are the only hands your bastard shall have of me."
Inside the box were the hands of Aegon's envoy.
How long had Aegon been waiting for such a pretext?
As his army prepared to sail,
ravens flew to every great lord of the Seven Kingdoms.
All bore the same message.
From this day forth, there would be but one king in Westeros.
Those who bent the knee to Aegon of House Targaryen
would keep their lands and titles.
Those who took up arms against him
would be thrown down, humbled and destroyed.
Poor old Argilac.
He couldn't even match Aegon in arrogance.
Aegon landed at the mouth of the Blackwater River
and raised a primitive "Aegonfort"
in the disputed land between Harren's and Argilac's kingdoms,
so that neither could decide whose problem he was.
Adopting the customs of the Seven Kingdoms,
Aegon unfurled his own banner
with a red three-headed dragon breathing fire upon a black field.
Visenya crowned him with a ruby-studded circlet of Valyrian steel,
while Rhaenys hailed him as
the first high king the continent had seen since the Dawn Age.
As his lords and the gathered locals cheered him,
Aegon named his loyal friends to a "Small Council"
led by Orys Baratheon, whom he called, "My strong right hand."
The title stuck,
and a bastard became the first Hand of the King.
But for now, Aegon's kingdom contained only a rocky island and a handful of fields.
The other kings had larger armies, ships, castles and thousands of years of rule.
But Aegon had dragons.
He had chosen for the words of his house, "Fire and blood."
Before he was done, the rivers, fields and skies would turn red.
EURON: Harren of House Hoare inherited a kingdom
that stretched from the Iron Islands to the Trident,
too great a kingdom to rule from a castle as shitty as Pyke.
For 40 years, his ironborn
- plundered the Riverlands - (METAL CLANKING)
for stone, timber and slaves to build a seat worthy of him.
Legend has it that masons laid the final stone in Harrenhal
on the very day that Aegon landed in Westeros.
Could've been a divine omen.
Could've been the masons wanted to fuck off before the dragons got there.
They weren't the only ones.
At Aegon's approach,
Harren's riverlords revolted, led by House Tully.
I doubt Harren noticed.
Harrenhal could repel an army of a million men.
No ladder could summit its walls,
and no ram could shatter them.
The castle was as impregnable as an old maid's cunt.
Harren shut his gates around himself, his sons, and his ironborn,
and waited for Aegon's army to drain back into the muck.
When Aegon finally saw the monstrous castle, he asked for parley.
Harren granted it.
Valyria had been the greatest empire the world had ever seen.
Harren wanted to piss on its ashes.
AEGON: "Yield now, and you may remain as Lord of the Iron Islands.
"Yield now, and your sons will live to rule after you.
"You see my army outside your walls.
"You see my dragons."
HARREN: "What is outside my walls is of no concern.
"Those walls are strong and thick."
AEGON: "Dragons fly."
(HARREN LAUGHS DERISIVELY)
HARREN: "But stone doesn't burn."
AEGON: "When the sun sets, your line shall end."
EURON: Harren spat and returned to his castle.
Once inside, he promised lands, riches and Tully's daughters
to whoever could bring down Aegon or his dragon.
As the sun sank below the horizon,
all of Harren's men patrolled the battlements,
hearing wings in every gust of wind.
But the moon rose, and sank,
and no dragon appeared.
VISERYS: While the ironborn were ringing the battlements,
Aegon drove his dragon Balerion higher and higher in the night sky
so that even the great castle of Harrenhal looked like an anthill below them.
Then they plunged straight into the castle, well inside the guarded walls.
The five towers of Harrenhal reached towards Aegon like a hand.
Balerion opened his mouth and bathed all the fingers in flame.
EURON: Harren was right, stone doesn't burn, but men do,
even when they're ironborn. (SNIGGERS)
The dragon blasted my ancestors into ash
that choked the survivors when they screamed.
Harren's soldiers leapt from the battlements and died.
They huddled against the walls and died.
They fled across the yard and died.
Harren and his sons took shelter inside the castle.
The stone didn't burn,
but as Balerion blasted it with fire, it glowed white-hot.
(LAUGHS DERISIVELY)
The world's greatest castle became the world's greatest oven,
baking the last of House Hoare within it.
VISERYS: Outside the castle walls,
the towers of Harrenhal glowed red against the night
and began to twist and melt like five huge candles
with liquid stone trickling down their sides like wax.
The next morning, Aegon forged a new Riverlands.
He named the rebel Edmyn Tully as his Lord Paramount of the Trident,
and had the other riverlords swear him fealty as their new liege.
For centuries, House Hoare had terrorized the Riverlands.
Under House Tully,
the Riverlands would at last return to peace and prosperity.
After the castle cooled enough to allow men inside,
Aegon ventured into the ruin he'd made of Harrenhal.
He saw the ashen bodies, the scorched stone
and the mangled and melted swords of his former enemies.
To his men's confusion,
he ordered these useless swords collected and sent to his Aegonfort.
VARYS: While Aegon marched on Harrenhal after his coronation,
Orys Baratheon had taken most of his forces, and his Queen Rhaenys with her dragon,
south to deal with the excuse for the invasion,
Argilac the Arrogant, King of the Stormlands.
Argilac had his seat at Storm's End,
a castle considered the most impregnable in Westeros after Harrenhal.
Argilac may have been arrogant, but he wasn't stupid or a coward.
His lords advised him to shut his gates and wait out the siege,
but he'd heard what had happened at Harrenhal
and refused to die a suckling pig cooked in his own castle.
He would meet victory or defeat the same way, with sword in hand.
He called his banners and marched to meet Orys Baratheon in the field.
Thanks to Rhaenys' dragon, Meraxes,
Orys knew Argilac was coming, how many men he had,
and how fast he marched.
So Orys simply seized the high ground and dug in on the hills to wait for Argilac.
As the two armies approached,
the wind rose to meet them, and the rain poured from the sky,
a gale which would give the battle its name, "the Last Storm."
King Argilac's lords urged him to wait for the weather to die down,
but the Storm King saw that the rain
was blowing into the faces of the Baratheon men on their hills,
and Argilac outnumbered the Baratheon host two-to-one,
with four times as many knights and heavy horse.
Argilac attacked.
Three times Argilac led his knights against the Baratheon line,
but the hills were steep and the rain had beat the earth to mud.
- The warhorses foundered and slipped, - (SWORDS CLANKING)
and the charges collapsed.
The battle seemed lost
until Argilac ordered his spearmen up the hill.
Blinded by the rain, the Baratheons didn't see them until it was too late.
- One hill fell, then another, and another, - (MEN YELLING AND GRUNTING)
until only one remained in the Baratheon center.
If Argilac could break through there,
he could split the invading army and flank both halves.
Argilac and his men charged, and the Baratheon line broke...
Revealing Queen Rhaenys and Meraxes.
Argilac's vanguard burst into flame, and his men panicked.
- The victory charge fell into chaos, - (HORSES WHINNYING)
and Argilac himself was thrown from his horse.
But he didn't yield.
When Orys Baratheon arrived,
he found the old king holding off half a dozen men,
another half-dozen dead at his feet.
Orys dismounted to meet the king on equal footing
and offered Argilac one final chance to yield.
Argilac cursed him instead.
As the storm raged around them,
the grizzled old warrior and the bearded upstart
fought for life and kingdom.
- In the end, Argilac got his wish. - (SWORDS CLANKING)
He died, sword in hand.
As word of Argilac's death spread,
his lords and knights threw down their swords and fled.
Orys and his vanguard rode to Storm's End to claim Argilac's castle for Aegon
only to find the gates barred and the walls manned.
Argilac's daughter had assumed his crown,
and the new Storm Queen was as fond of yielding as her father.
She declared that Orys would win only bones, blood and ashes here.
But her men were weaker than her,
and that night Orys found Argilac's daughter delivered,
gagged, chained and naked to his camp.
Argilac had refused to give Orys her hand.
Now, Orys could have any part of her he wished.
But Orys unchained the girl,
wrapped his cloak around her and poured her a glass of wine.
He told her he would take the arms, banner and words of House Durrandon,
to honor her father's courage in the Last Storm.
Conveniently, Orys had none of his own to discard first.
The crowned stag became the sigil of House Baratheon,
and Storm's End their seat.
Argilac's daughter would even remain in her home,
though as a lady instead of a princess.
The Stormlands were now Aegon's,
and as tribute, Aegon demanded the swords of the men Orys had defeated.
For what purpose, Orys didn't know.
JAIME: Aegon now ruled two of the Seven Kingdoms,
but he would no longer be able to take the rest piecemeal.
For the first time in thousands of years,
the kings put aside their squabbles and joined forces against a common enemy.
My ancestor, King Loren of House Lannister,
was head of the wealthiest family in the Seven Kingdoms.
When King Loren joined his forces to Mern of House Gardener, King of the Reach,
they had the mightiest army in history,
a so-called "iron fist" to break the would-be conqueror.
But while an iron fist can smash a man's face in battle,
you'd look silly hunting birds or beasts with it,
and Aegon had a creature that was both.
The kings had never even seen a dragon, let alone fought one.
They had fought each other for thousands of years,
and victory always went to the larger army.
Surely a force five times that of Aegon's could manage one dragon...
But Aegon arrived with three.
Still, the Lannisters and Gardeners hoped for victory.
The battlefield they chose was a wide plain with firm ground and clear skies.
Perfect for archers and mounted cavalry.
But neither of the kings spared a thought for why the ground was firm.
There had been no rain for a fortnight,
which meant all the wheat and grass on it were bone-dry.
- Perfect for dragons. - (HOOVES THUDDING)
At first, the kings looked like
- they would emerge victorious. - (HORN BLOWS)
When the horn blew for battle, their armies swept around Aegon's flanks
and their iron fist of mounted knights smashed through his center
before the dragons could even enter the fray.
But then Aegon and his sisters took flight and unleashed their dragons
not on the soldiers, but on the dry fields all around them.
- The iron fist unclenched - (MEN SCREAMING)
- and became a hand outstretched for mercy. - (HORSE WHINNIES)
As Aegon promised, he had none.
More than 4,000 men died in the fires, another 1,000 escaping them.
Tens of thousands returned home as monsters,
burned and scarred beyond recognition.
House Gardener never returned at all.
The "Field of Fire," as the singers call it, claimed the last of the Gardener line,
and House Tyrell rose in their stead
as Lords of the Reach and Wardens of the South.
As for my illustrious ancestor,
when King Loren saw the battle was lost,
he rode through a wall of flame and smoke to safety...
Or at least to a heroic capture a day later,
where he laid his sword before Aegon and knelt.
Aegon, true to his word, spared him and confirmed House Lannister
as Lords of Casterly Rock and Wardens of the West.
Why wouldn't he?
A Lannister always pays his debts, and now we owed our lives to the crown.
That was worth centuries of subservience, at least.
Besides, Aegon had a fetish for collecting swords, not heads.
He added Loren's to the pile his men had retrieved from the Field of Fire
and sent them back to the Aegonfort.
SANSA: With most of the South in Aegon's hands,
the best chance to throw back the Conqueror now lay with the North,
if we cared enough to try.
Unlike our southern rivals,
the Stark Kings of Winter didn't forge the North into one kingdom
for glory or gold,
there is little of either here, but to survive.
Alone in Westeros,
the North remembered when worse than dragons laid waste to armies.
Thousands of years ago,
the sun set on the realms of men and the Long Night began.
A new race emerged from the ice and snow, the White Walkers.
They demanded no crown, offered no terms, spared no life,
and the dead marched with them.
With humanity facing extinction, a Stark sought out the Children of the Forest,
the most ancient beings in Westeros,
and convinced them to ally with the men they'd once fought.
Together the two races pushed the Walkers back into the Land of Always Winter
and sealed it off from the Seven Kingdoms with the Wall,
300 miles of ice, stone and earth rising nearly 700 feet tall.
To guard it, they established the Night's Watch,
a brotherhood sworn to defend the living from the dead,
whose vows erase both titles and crimes.
VISERYS: After the Long Night, the North tried to forget it belonged to the continent,
perhaps through pride, perhaps through sheer ignorance.
You never can tell with the North.
But as news of Aegon's dragons spread,
Torrhen Stark, the King of Winter, knew he couldn't forget Westeros any longer
and summoned his lords to Winterfell.
Many fools shrugged off the threat
while the rest placed wagers on how long the South would take to burn.
Torrhen silenced them with a command to assemble their armies
and descend from the North in force.
SANSA: As the kings of the Rock and the Reach burned on the Field of Fire,
the greatest Northern force since the Long Night
crossed the Neck into the Riverlands.
But when King Torrhen arrived at the Trident,
he saw on the opposing riverbank
the combined strength of all Aegon's conquered kingdoms.
A force larger than Torrhen's own by half, and with three dragons.
VISERYS: That night, King Torrhen called a conference
of all his lords and advisers.
Some wanted to fight, and trust Northern valor to carry the day,
and burn on the Trident.
The wisest of them wanted to withdraw to Moat Cailin,
the fortress which had thrown back every southern invasion, and burn there.
One suicidal lord even wanted to ambush Aegon's camp in the dark
and kill the dragons as they slept, or at the very least their riders.
Hard to tell what would've been his fate.
Burning, beheading, dismemberment?
Perhaps all three.
SANSA: My ancestor listened to their counsel,
- and in the morning crossed the Trident - (HOOVES THUDDING)
under a flag of parley.
Then King Torrhen of House Stark laid his ancient crown at Aegon's feet,
and was named Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North...
VISERYS: And the King Who Knelt.
SANSA: He had no choice,
and thanks to him our soldiers returned to their homes whole and unharmed.
The swords that Aegon took from them were not twisted, burnt or mangled.
VISERYS: Yet.
LITTLEFINGER: The Vale of Arryn was the last of the great kingdoms left.
Old and proud,
House Arryn did what they always did in times of strife.
They shut the Bloody Gate, sealing off the Vale.
Then the Queen-Regent Sharra of House Arryn retreated with her son,
the boy king Ronnel, into the Eyrie, their family's impregnable fortress.
From the top of their mountain, they could look down on Westeros far below,
its problems hidden beneath the clouds.
But one day Queen Sharra entered the outer courtyard
to find her young son sitting on the knee of Visenya Targaryen,
- and ogling her dragon, Vhagar, beside her. - (VHAGAR GROWLING SOFTLY)
Just as he'd ask for another cake at dinner,
little King Ronnel asked his mother if he could go flying on the nice lady's dragon.
Visenya smiled at Sharra.
So, Sharra imagined, did Vhagar.
Remembering her manners,
Sharra asked if she could have Visenya brought some wine or food,
she must be tired after such a long flight.
But Visenya demurred.
Bored with his mother's pleasantries, Ronnel demanded an answer.
Poor boy.
He didn't even understand the question.
Sharra hesitated for a moment, then asked Visenya, as a mother,
if it were safe for the boy.
Visenya assured her it was.
What choice did Sharra have?
Whilst her son circled the castle,
she collected his little ringlet, her own regent's coronet,
and the ancient Falcon Crown of Mountain and Vale,
which the Arryns had worn for thousands of years.
Ronnel had taken to the sky as a king, but he landed as a lordling.
Perhaps he considered his ancient rights
a fair trade for a few minutes of flight, as a little boy would.
More likely he didn't even notice the three crowns at Visenya's feet,
or recognize the swords of his garrison beside them.
VISERYS: The heads of Westeros had bowed to Aegon,
but its heart still beat free.
Oldtown, the center of the Faith of the Seven.
There dwelt the High Septon, the Father of the Faithful,
who commanded the obedience of all Westeros,
save the savages of the North and their Old Gods.
When Aegon had landed in Westeros,
the High Septon had locked himself in the Starry Sept
and fasted for seven days and seven nights,
one for each of his gods.
All he received for his trouble was the divine wisdom
that if Oldtown took up arms against the Dragon, the city would burn,
faithful and faithless alike.
After the submission of House Stark,
Aegon marched towards Oldtown, steeling himself for another battle.
But he found the gates open, with the High Septon welcoming him.
The pious fool even had the arrogance to grant what Aegon had already won,
and anointed the last Valyrian as "Aegon of House Targaryen,
"First of His Name, King of the Andals and the First Men,
"Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm."
As if titles meant anything to a man before whom time itself now bowed.
The maesters would hence divide all history into "Before" and "After Conquest."
Most expected Aegon to stay and make Oldtown his seat,
but soon after his coronation, Aegon returned to the mouth of the Blackwater River
where he had first set foot on Westeros.
A small town had since sprouted around his primitive fort.
To honor their new master, the locals dubbed it King's Landing,
though it looked more fit for a hedge knight,
with wooden palisades, muddy streets
and piles of mangled swords carted in from every corner of the conquest.
But when Aegon made it his court, wood became stone.
Black mud was buried beneath a Red Keep.
And the collected swords of Aegon's foes were blasted by dragonfire,
and became a seat fit for the Conqueror
and the greatest dynasty this world has ever known.
House Targaryen.
My family.
My throne.
Or so it should've been.
VARYS: But while Aegon titled himself "Lord of the Seven Kingdoms,"
in reality he held only six.
The seventh, Dorne, had never knelt.
Visenya had flown into the Vale and returned with its crown.
Mimicking her sister,
Rhaenys had flown over the enemy force holding the passes into Dorne,
and landed in the castle of its ruling lady, Princess Meria of House Martell.
Meria was 80 years old, fat, bald and blind.
Behind her back, many sniggered at her as the "Yellow Toad of Dorne."
The beautiful Rhaenys probably thought as much when they met.
She demanded Princess Meria kneel to her brother Aegon,
though she allowed that on account of Meria's age and health,
a simple vow of submission would do.
But the Princess told the Queen that the Targaryens weren't wanted in Dorne,
and no Martell would ever bow, bend or break no matter how badly they burned.
Rhaenys could have mounted her dragon right then
and roasted Meria in the castle as her brother had done at Harrenhal.
But whatever she saw in Meria's eyes
scared her right back to King's Landing,
with her dragon's tail between its legs.
After Aegon's coronation,
Rhaenys returned to Dorne with Aegon and Visenya
and their dragons.
But no armies met them in the field, and no lords defied them in their castles.
As the dragons approached, Dorne simply emptied.
House Martell had learned from Harrenhal and the Field of Fire.
The dragons were unbeatable in battle,
but wars were more than battles.
Unopposed, Aegon claimed Dorne for his own.
But as soon as he returned to King's Landing,
his castellans were hurled off towers, and his royal garrison vanished in the desert,
never to be seen again.
Except, perhaps, when the winds change and the sands cough up old bones and armor.
Rhaenys returned on Meraxes,
intent on revenging herself against Meria Martell.
But Dorne was no longer empty.
The Dornish kept Meria's promise,
and fought even while burning under dragonflame.
And they won.
One day a bolt pierced the eye of Meraxes and knocked the dragon out of the sky.
House Martell remained unbroken, unlike the unfortunate Rhaenys.
In their wrath, Aegon and Visenya set flame to every castle and city but Sunspear,
trying to turn the people against House Martell.
But the Dornish stayed loyal,
and when Aegon returned to King's Landing,
he found assassins waiting for him in the streets of his own capital.
If not for Visenya, the Conqueror would not have enjoyed his Conquest for very long.
From then on, the king and his family would be guarded
by the seven greatest knights in the realm, the Kingsguard.
When Meria died in her sleep, her weak and tired son sued for peace.
But old Meria had exhausted Aegon as well, and he granted the request.
The Targaryens still wanted Dorne, and eventually they would have it,
but not at the point of a sword.
They would buy it the same way great lords buy anything...
With a daughter.
VISERYS: After the Conquest, when men looked up, they saw dragons.
Nobles learned to keep their eyes down,
but the gods weren't used to sharing the heavens.
When Aegon died, the High Septon led the Faith and its army in revolt,
claiming that the Valyrian tradition of wedding brother to sister
was an abomination in the eyes of the Seven.
Though no one could explain where the divine Mother and Father had come from.
My ancestor Maegor the Wise, or Maegor the Cruel, as men slander him,
put a bounty on the head of every militant priest,
and miraculously the Faith soon returned to the septs.
With Dorne in the fold, and the Faith put in its place,
none in Westeros were left to oppose my family,
so we started opposing each other.
In the Dance of Dragons,
a Targaryen Princess tried to steal her brother's throne.
Thanks to her stupidity, most of our dragons died,
though one thankfully ate her before it did.
But even without our dragons, we were still the blood of Old Valyria,
which proved just as dangerous.
One of my foolish ancestors didn't see
what separated his bastards from our family proper,
and legitimized them all on his deathbed.
Adopting the name Blackfyre,
the bastards proved their nature and tried to seize their father's kingdom.
When they failed, their sons tried.
When the sons failed, their grandsons tried.
Until finally Ser Barristan the Bold, knight of the Kingsguard,
slew Maelys the Monstrous in the War of the Ninepenny Kings,
ending the last of the Blackfyre line.
Ultimately, without our dragons and with our blood diluted by commoners,
we failed to see the greatest threat growing under our noses.
JAIME: As the saying goes,
"Every time a Targaryen is born, the gods flip a coin."
They must've dropped the one for King Aerys,
for at first he seemed to have dodged the family madness.
But as he grew older, he began to see conspirators everywhere,
and where there were none, he worked to create them.
As one of his Kingsguard, I saw firsthand
that a king who couldn't rule his own mind couldn't rule seven kingdoms.
We endured his reign
because we hoped his son Rhaegar would right the realm
when he ascended to the throne.
But then Rhaegar proved as mad as his father
and snatched Lyanna Stark, daughter of the Warden of the North,
and betrothed to Robert Baratheon, Lord of the Stormlands.
When Lyanna's father and eldest brother demanded justice,
- the Mad King obliged, - (AERYS LAUGHING INSIDIOUSLY)
laughing as he dispensed it.
VARYS: Unsatisfied with only two murders,
the Mad King then ordered Jon Arryn, Lord of the Vale,
to execute his two wards, Robert Baratheon and Eddard Stark.
Instead, Jon Arryn raised the Vale in revolt.
Ned Stark slipped past royalist sentries and raised the North,
and Robert won three battles in a single day to unite the Stormlands behind him,
only to be defeated by a royalist army and forced to flee,
leaving his home of Storm's End besieged.
SANSA: The Hand of the King finally cornered Robert
in the town of the Stoney Sept
and sent his soldiers door-to-door
- searching for the rebel leader. - (KNOCKING)
But the villagers hated the Mad King and loved Robert,
and kept him one step ahead of the soldiers.
Until only one refuge remained.
As the soldiers closed in, all the town bells rang out.
- (BELLS TOLLING) - Hearing of Robert's plight,
our father and Jon Arryn had rushed to the Riverlands
and enlisted our grandfather, Hoster Tully, to help them.
Together they routed the Hand's army and rescued Robert.
To celebrate and cement the Tully alliance,
our father wed our mother, Catelyn, and Jon Arryn took our Aunt Lysa.
Only a fortnight later, both men rushed back into the field,
for the dragon had finally woken.
VISERYS: While my father's servants were losing my father's kingdoms,
my brother Rhaegar had been cooped up with his...
Mistress? Whore?
Whatever else, I'd call her a distraction.
But now Rhaegar came to his senses and returned to King's Landing.
He persuaded our father to summon his estranged friend,
Lord Tywin Lannister, the richest and most powerful lord in the realm.
- Rhaegar himself would lead the royal army - (HOOVES THUDDING)
against the usurper, Robert.
- (SWORD SWISHES) - On the banks of the Trident,
my brother fought the man whose wife he'd stolen,
and who fought to steal his birthright in return.
In the end, Robert wanted it more.
His hammer shattered my brother's armor
and its rubies fell into the river like raindrops,
vanishing in the current.
VARYS: With Rhaegar's defeat, nothing stood between Robert and King's Landing.
Imagine the King's surprise a fortnight later
when he saw not stags, but lions outside his gates.
His former Hand, Tywin Lannister,
had come to the capital with a force even Robert couldn't match,
claiming to be loyal to the king.
Trusting what he wanted to believe, Aerys ordered the gates opened,
and the Lannister forces dutifully began
to rape, pillage and murder the king's actual loyal subjects.
When Eddard Stark finally arrived at the capital with Robert's army,
he found Lannister banners hanging over the sacked city,
Targaryen corpses littering its streets,
and Ser Jaime Lannister sitting on the Iron Throne.
Below him, the Mad King Aerys,
whom Ser Jaime had sworn to guard, lay in a pool of his own blood
from a sword thrust through his back.
Lord Eddard might've thanked Ser Jaime for doing the realm a favor,
but honorable as he was,
Lord Eddard condemned Ser Jaime as a Kingslayer,
a name he would never escape.
JAIME: Unlike Lord Eddard,
Robert appreciated my contribution to his glorious victory.
He pardoned me for my crime, and even kept me on his Kingsguard
beside Ser Barristan Selmy,
who'd been wounded at the Trident fighting for Rhaegar.
True, both of us had failed to protect our Targaryen charges,
but perhaps that's what Robert liked most about us.
When my father presented Robert
with the bodies of Rhaegar's wife and two children,
Ned Stark hiked up his skirts and demanded
Robert send their killer to Dorne, and me to the Wall.
But I saw what Ned couldn't.
Robert was ashamed of the bodies,
and more ashamed of his relief.
He knew that Rhaegar's heirs had to die or his throne would never be safe,
but glorious heroes didn't kill children.
They simply didn't punish their murderers.
VISERYS: No doubt I would've suffered a similar fate,
but my father had wisely sent me and my pregnant mother to Dragonstone.
When the usurper heroically sent men to kill me and my newborn sister
to protect his stolen throne,
a loyal knight smuggled us across the Narrow Sea to Essos.
And so the last dragons of Valyria,
heirs to the greatest dynasty
from the greatest civilization this world has ever known,
slept in sewers and foraged for scraps in alleyways,
one step ahead of the usurper's knives
and one step behind the whispers of his spymaster Varys.
But we won't run forever.
One day I'll return to my kingdoms with an army,
take back my throne,
and repay all traitors with the only coin my family knows.
Fire and blood.