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Fire & Blood
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Chapters 12, Part 2-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 12, Part 2 Summary: “Heirs of the Dragon—A Question of Succession”
Content Warning: This source material in this section includes violence, debilitating alcohol abuse, and ableist language.
Part 2
Westeros continued to question Rhaenyra’s claim as heir. In 114 AC, Rhaenyra married white-haired, purple-eyed Laenor Velaryon, son of Corlys Velaryon. According to rumors, Laenor only had sex with men. The gossips said Rhaenyra’s lover was her protector Ser Criston Cole and, later, dark-haired Ser Harwin Strong of Harrenhal. Cole became Alicent’s protector and a Green after that. When his first wife died, Daemon eloped with Laena Velaryon, Laenor’s sister. The two lived in Pentos but returned when Laena had twin girls Rhaena and Baela.
Rhaenyra gave birth to sons Jacaerys, Lucerys, and Joffrey. People said their father was Harwin Strong because the boys were brunettes. Aemond, Alicent’s son, lost his eye after Jacaerys put it out; the fight began after Aemond claimed the dragon Vhagar and said Jacaerys and Lucerys were Strongs. Viserys said the boys were Targaryens. Anyone who said otherwise would lose their tongue. He sent Harwin to Harrenhal. Along with his father Lyonel Strong—now Hand. Both died in a fire at Harrenhal. Sources disagree on the culprit, but Harwin’s death benefited several Targaryens.
Otto Hightower, Alicent’s father, became Hand. Laenor and Laena were conveniently dead by 120 AC, and Rhaenyra and Daemon married. They did not ask for Viserys’s permission. Rhaenyra then had a purple-eyed, silver-haired boy that the couple named Aegon—hereafter Aegon the Younger. Years passed, and Rhaenyra gave birth to Viserys and Visenya. Alicent had three sons: Aemond, a skillful swordsman with a temper; sunny, handsome Daeron; and Aegon the Elder, Alicent’s eldest and a glutton with many children born out-of-wedlock. Aegon the Elder married his sister Helaena and had three children with her.
Corlys Velaryon fell ill; there was conflict over his heir because everyone assumed his grandsons Jacaerys and Lucerys were Strongs instead of Velaryons. Rhaenyra and Daemon killed Vaemond, one claimant to Driftmark, and Viserys I had the tongues of the others removed. He promised the same for anyone else who repeated the rumor about Jacaerys and Lucerys’s parentage. Viserys I cut two of his fingers on swords in the throne and nearly died before the maesters amputated the fingers. When he recovered, he forced Alicent, Rhaenyra, and their children to make peace. The peace was a false one. Rhaenyra was pregnant when Viserys died in 129 AC. With his death came the struggle for the throne, “the Dance of the Dragons” (339). Greens, supporters of Alicent who wore green to honor her Hightower origins, and Blacks, supporters of Rhaenyra whose Targaryen house colors included black and red, were at odds.
Chapter 13 Summary: “The Dying of the Dragons—The Blacks and the Greens”
Although people refer to the struggle for the throne poetically as the “Dance of the Dragons,” the conflict from 129 to 131 AC involved violent battles, treachery, and secrets. Alicent and the Greens kept the king’s death secret for days as they plotted to install Aegon the Elder as king. At the end of the Greens’ first meeting, the Blacks’ master of coin was likely dead, and Tyland Lannister was installed in his place.
Larys Strong, the lord at Harrenhal now that both his father and brother were dead, was there. The council jailed, killed, or silenced anyone who knew of the king’s death. The Green council felt confident they could crown Aegon the Elder because most of the great houses were with them, and Rhaenyra was a woman. They only lacked the support of House Baratheon. Alicent sent her son Prince Aemond on Vhagar to woo a Baratheon daughter. Many days later, the Greens officially announced the king’s death and crowned Aegon the Elder in the Dragonpit. They used Aegon the Conqueror’s crown. Sources conflict on how many came, but attendance was likely sparse. Aegon the Elder and Helaena’s son Jaehaerys became the heir.
Rhaenyra was slow to act: She went into labor, but the child died. She and Daemon met with the Black council. Daemon, usually hotheaded, arguedthat they “must fight with words” (406) as well. He took strategically located Harrenhal as a base and sent out ravens to all the lords to tell them to come to Dragonstone to renew their oaths. Three hundred people attended Rhaenyra’s coronation. Aegon II—formerly the Elder—sent new Archmaester Orwyle to Rhaenyra with fair terms. She rejected them and stripped Orwyle of his maester’s chain of office.
Chapter 14 Summary: “The Dying of the Dragons—A Son for a Son”
Knights and fighters rallied to Rhaenyra at Harrenhal, but most lords did not initially declare for her. Jacaerys secured the support of Lady Jeyne of the Eyrie with the promise of dragonriders and of Cregan Stark, lord in Winterfell. When Lucerys reached Storm’s End, Lord Boros Baratheon was already there bargaining with Alicent’s son Aemond Targaryen. Lord Boros sided with the Greens and forced both princes outside to avoid killing guests under his roof. Aemond avenged the loss of his eye by killing Lucerys in a battle of dragons. Aemond became Aemond Kinslayer. Alicent and Otto were horrified at the political implications: Rhaenyra would never accept terms.
Daemon avenged the death swiftly. Two men he hired forced Helaena to pick a son to be killed in vengeance for Lucerys’s death. She chose Maelor, her youngest, but the assassins killed heir Jaehaerys instead. Helaena never recovered from her choice and dwindled away in her grief. Aegon II drank to even greater excess.
Chapter 15 Summary: “The Dying of the Dragons—The Red Dragon and the Gold”
Open civil war broke out. Aegon II lost ground everywhere and grew to distrust Otto’s focus on diplomacy, believing “[t]hrones are won with swords, not quills. Spill blood, not ink” (430). Aegon replaced him with Criston Cole. Aegon’s spymaster Larys Strong—called “Clubfoot” in a society that stigmatized limb differences—targeted lords who went to Rhaenyra’s coronation. The Black council sent Rhaenys on the back of Meleys to fight Aegon II and Aemond to defend the besieged lords. The battle was costly to Greens and Blacks. Rhaenys and her dragon Meleys died. Aegon II suffered such a severe burn that his flesh and armor fused. His dragon Sunfyre was so wounded that they had to leave it where it fell. Maesters dosed Aegon II with morphine; he could not rule. Aemond became king in all but name. Aemond took up with Alys Rivers, a Strong born out of wedlock and the last of her house.
On Dragonstone, Corlys Velaryon blamed Rhaenyra for Rhaenys’s death. Rhaenyra stewed in her grief, leaving Jacaerys to lead. Jacaerys regained Corlys’s support by naming him Hand. They recruited dragonseeds—commoners who were Targaryens born out of wedlock—to mount three tamed dragons and a wild fourth: Sheepstealer, whose rider was a young commoner named Nettles. Rhaenyra’s sons Aegon the Younger and Viserys II, bearing a dragon’s egg, left for Pentos by ship to be wards of the prince there, who had friendly feelings toward Daemon. A Lysene admiral leading a fleet to support the Greens in King’s Landing sank the ship. Aegon the Younger returned, but people assumed Viserys and his egg were at the bottom of the Narrow Sea; he was actually taken captive. Daemon joined Rhaenyra and Jacaerys to attack King’s Landing by air, while Corlys attacked from Blackwater Bay on the city’s edge.
The Blacks won this battle, but Jacaerys died fighting. Corlys now had no heirs but Addam and Alyn, two young men recruited to ride dragons who were likely his sons. Rhaenyra legitimized them, and Addam became the Velaryon heir. Dragonseeds Hard Hugh the Hammer and Ulf the White were knighted. Iron Islander Dalton Greyjoy—the Red Kraken—sacked the Lannisters’ capital at Lannisport and scuttled the ships there, damaging the Greens further. At Maidenpool in Riverrun, Black forces went to kill Sunfyre and take the city, but Sunfyre killed their leader and flew away.
Alicent surrendered the Red Keep. Aegon II, Helaena, and Aegon II’s children were not in the Red Keep when she surrendered. Rhaenyra sat on the Iron Throne and forced lords to swear loyalty oaths. Gyldayn cites Eustace, who claims that when Rhaenyra stepped down from the throne, she was covered in bleeding wounds, a sure sign that “the Iron Throne had spurned her, and her days upon it would be few” (459).
Chapter 16 Summary: “The Dying of the Dragons—Rhaenyra Triumphant”
At King’s Landing, Rhaenyra chained Alicent. She gave the daughters of two executed lords to dragonseeds Hugh and Ulf to marry, but not the lands, which passed to the lords’ sons. Hugh and Ulf abused the smallfolk with no consequences and complained because they had not been raised to lords despite having dragons. When Rhaenyra’s tax master raised taxes and fees, the smallfolk grew resentful. Daemon resumed his affair with Mysaria, who was also now Rhaenyra’s de facto spymaster.
Public opinion turned sharply against Rhaenyra when the townspeople in Bitterbridge, the Reach, lynched Aegon II’s son Maelor. Aegon II and his surviving child were unaccounted for. Rhaenyra still had powerful enemies, and in the Trident region of Riverrun, Prince Aemond was burning the castles and lands of lords with the dragon Vhagar.
Aegon II’s forces defeated the Blacks at Tumbleton, Riverrun. Ulf and Hugh, angry over being mere knights or perhaps because of bribes from Larys Strong, helped the Greens win after they turned their coats. The undisciplined Greens, especially Ulf and Hugh, sacked the town and brutalized the townspeople.
Rhaenyra lost the support of Corlys and Orwyle, now her Grandmaester, after she accused Addam Velaryon of being a traitor. Addam escaped with his father’s help, and Rhaenyra put both Corlys and Orwyle in jail. Daemon and Aemond killed each other in a dragon fight at Harrenhal; no one knew this at the time. The smallfolk in King’s Landing neared revolt when the Shepherd, a street preacher, prophesied that incestuous marriages and unnatural dragons would lead to a second Doom if the Targaryens weren’t overthrown.
Chapters 12, Part 2-16 Analysis
An obsession with Revenge and Betrayal is responsible for much of the violence that occurred during the Dance of the Dragons. Leaders such as Daemon, Alicent, Aemond, and even Rhaenyra were so consumed with the desire to avenge lost loved ones that they failed to be good leaders and plunged Westeros into war.
The central act of betrayal was the refusal of the Greens to recognize Rhaenyra’s claim to the throne. Like most of the lords and other powerful figures in Westeros, they swore oaths when she was named heir. The lords who became Greens rationalized their oath-breaking because Westeros was fundamentally a patriarchal society that felt ambivalent about women with power. These same lords also questioned Rhaenyra’s legitimacy as a leader because she betrayed her vows of marriage to Laenor—though Laenor was also unfaithful. Her dark-haired sons were evidence that the next generation of heirs in Driftmark and King’s Landing would also be unfit to rule.
Oath-breaking on all sides posed a political problem that threw Westeros into disorder. Aemond killed Lucerys, despite the boy’s role as envoy. Lucerys was not prepared for that violence because he relied on the obligation to leave envoys and guests unharmed. The conflict that led to Lucerys’s death was also about revenge—Aemond, second in line to the throne after his brother, was unable to overcome his anger over the loss of his eye. He failed to think strategically about what killing Lucerys meant, and war was the result. A spiral of vengeance and betrayal led to greater conflict because it left powerful people with wounds. Rhaenyra wanted to avenge the death of her son, making her vulnerable to manipulation.
The Greens’ and Blacks’ ready acceptance of violence as a means of gaining power damaged the credibility of both Aegon II and Rhaenyra. Alicent and the Green council were cautious. They initially put together a coronation that used symbols like Aegon’s crown and the Dragonpit to legitimize Aegon II’s power. Aegon II lacked subtlety, however. He rejected Otto’s attempts to stave off war with diplomacy; he empowered Cole because he believed violence was the first and most appropriate response to challenges to his power. His preference for violence over more symbolic forms of power and persuasion made him an ineffective leader.
Martin uses the symbol of Rhaenyra triumphant but wounded on the Iron Throne to foreshadow her eventual loss of power, which has its roots in how she clawed back her throne. The ineptness of both claimants to the throne in using their power and managing symbols of legitimacy caused them to lose the loyalty of important noble allies.
With so many competing claimants to the throne, the smallfolk questioned the legitimacy of their rulers and readily listened to the Shepherd, who inverted the Doctrine of Exceptionalism to make the case for revolt. The Shepherd understood that messaging is important, so his public preaching became a source of power. The smallfolk of Bitterbridge no longer saw dragon’s blood as something that made the Targaryens different; the smallfolk ripped young Jaehaerys apart. Jaehaerys is Aegon II’s last legitimate male heir; the loss of the esteem of the smallfolk was enough to destroy the Targaryen Greens’ ability to win the power struggle with this particular line of Targaryens. The overall impact of the ruling class’s focus on revenge and betrayal was that they lost their mandate to rule.
The events in these chapters also offer lessons about the use of violence to maintain power. From Aenys I on, the Targaryens maintained power by displaying dragons and deploying symbols of power. Rhaenyra’s trouble worsened when her sons, who were Targaryens since she was their mother, failed to look like Targaryens because of their darker hair. When dragonseeds Nettles, Hard Hugh, and Ulf mounted their dragons, people took note and saw that perhaps there was nothing so exceptional about Targaryens after all; Hugh and Ulf’s turn at Tumbleton was rooted in their belief that being dragon-riding commoners made them special and deserving of what the Targaryens had.
Martin further develops in these chapters the spectacle of the smallfolk as a powerful force to be reckoned with. The Shepherd is not a king, but his labeling of the Targaryens and their dragons as unnatural found open ears because of discontent over higher taxes and a lack of safety in the city with each turnover in power. Commoners aside from the smallfolk gained power as well. Mysaria was so influential that she convinced Rhaenyra to turn on Daemon. Addam and Alyn of Hull were not nobles, but they were both capable men who gained more power each time they achieved goals that were beneficial to powerful people. Ulf and Hugh were violent turncoats, but they also gained power by mastering dragons and waging war effectively. Disorder among the ruling class led to opportunities for ordinary people to move up through the ranks.
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By George R. R. Martin
