Prince Aerion Targaryen was born in 98 AC to Prince Daemon Targaryen and Lady Rhea Targaryen, née Royce, nine months to the day after their wedding. The neatness of the count was much remarked upon at court, and many took it as proof that the prince had been conceived upon the bedding, as tradition required.
Prince Daemon himself was not slow to encourage such belief. He spoke of the matter freely and with coarse pride, boasting before knights and courtiers alike that once had sufficed, and offering the boy's timely birth as further testament to his own vigor. Some heard these words as jests made in wine, others as vanity ill-suited to a prince; Mushroom, for his part, insists they were delivered loudly and often, as if Daemon wished the whole court to mark his prowess.
Of Lady Rhea, the court records little. Yet when these boasts reached her ears, more than one witness reports that she answered only, "Once was enough." Mushroom adds that she laughed when she said it, and that Prince Daemon did not repeat his claim in her presence thereafter — though whether this last is truth or embroidery must remain uncertain.
As is the custom of House Targaryen, a dragon's egg was placed in the prince's cradle. When it hatched, the creature that emerged was said to be bronze of scale, a circumstance many took for a happy omen, seeing in it the bronze armor of House Royce and thus a sign that the union of prince and lady had found favor in the eyes of gods or fate. Whether this was truly so, or only a pleasing conceit imposed after the fact, cannot now be known.
Of the bond between boy and hatchling, however, the reports are more consistent. From the first, Prince Aerion and his dragon were seldom content to be parted. Attempts to remove one from the other are said to have produced weeping, biting, and a most unprincely fury—nor was it always clear to the witnesses whether they complained more of the dragon or the child. One serving woman, quoted years later in a household account, remarked that "when one took temper, so did the other." Such tales are often dismissed as the fond exaggerations of servants, yet similar stories have been told of dragon-bonded children before.
The hatchling itself was accounted fierce for so young a creature, snapping at strangers, servants, and even at those courtiers who sought only to admire it. Yet what pleased the boy seemed also to please the dragon: they were quieted by the same music, amused by the same bright objects, and offended by the same intrusions. Here again later storytellers have embroidered freely, and some go so far as to hint at a sympathy too close and curious to be entirely natural. It is wiser, perhaps, to say only that the prince and his dragon were unusually well-matched in temper.
As was usual with dragons hatched in the cradle, the beast was named by the child to whom it had bonded, though Prince Aerion was still but little more than a babe when he did so. The name he gave it was Moriodhir, plainly High Valyrian, meaning the final word. That the name was High Valyrian is plain enough, which most attributed to Prince Daemon's insistence that his son hear that tongue from the cradle, a resolve many at Runestone judged excessive. Septon Eustace takes Moriodhir for no more than a clever child's choice, apt enough for a dragon, who is oft the final word in any argument. Mushroom prefers a fouler tale, claiming the words were Daemon's first, muttered drunkenly after quarrels with Lady Rhea when the prince, foxed with wine and thwarted in temper, would insist upon having the last word though no one remained to hear it. As for those later writers who would make prophecy of the matter, they stuff cradles with omens too readily. Moriodhir was remembered because it suited the beast, and the bond between beast and boy gave weight to the name.
Prince Daemon did not long remain in the Vale. Finding its mountains and manners ill-suited to his tastes, he soon returned to King's Landing, where court, tourney, and intrigue offered more suitable diversions. From that time forth, his visits to Runestone were infrequent.
Septon Eustace, who ever preferred a more pious and tender reading of men's hearts, writes that the prince felt his father's absence keenly, and would ask when next Prince Daemon meant to return to Runestone. Mushroom, by contrast, claims the prince asked after his father's return not because he missed him, but because Prince Daemon had made a custom of appearing rarely and splendidly, with gifts enough to purchase the welcome his presence alone might not have won.
In his earliest years, Prince Aerion was entrusted to the care of a wet nurse, as is the custom among great houses. A persistent rumor, found in several later compilations and repeated most enthusiastically by Mushroom, holds that the woman in question was no common nurse but a woods witch of the Vale, versed in old rites and stranger knowledge. No other record of her remains, though this is hardly unusual. Smallfolk seldom enter the maesters' accounts at all, even when they have suckled princes.
The most reliable testimony concerning Aerion's childhood comes from the records kept at Runestone. These attest that the boy was precocious to an uncommon degree. He is said to have spoken in full sentences earlier than most children, and to have taken to letters with equal facility. By his fourth year he could read simple texts, and by his fifth was already noted for a facility with numbers that impressed even those tasked with his instruction. The maester writing of him attributes this to natural aptitude and diligent tutelage, remarking that "the prince's mind is keen, orderly, and inclined toward reckonings."
Not long after Prince Aerion first showed such gifts, the old King Jaehaerys I Targaryen died, to the grief of much of the realm, and was succeeded by his grandson Viserys Targaryen, whilst Prince Daemon was named master of coin. It was noted at the time that he visited Runestone somewhat more often than had been his custom, and that his work in that office improved markedly after each such visit. Septon Eustace attributes this to the beneficial influence of pious wife and family upon a man. Mushroom, more gleefully, suggests that Daemon had simply given over his accounts to his five-year-old son, and that the child proved the better master of coin of the two.
There is also record that Daemon was eager to bring his young son to court, but Rhea objected. Septon Eustace writes that this sprang chiefly from a mother's concern at having so young a child taken from home. Mushroom reports a sharper reply, claiming that Lady Rhea said she would not trust Prince Daemon with a sheep, much less with her son.
In the year that followed, Prince Daemon's course at court changed swiftly. After a brief tenure as master of coin he was made master of laws, and within half a year given command of the City Watch, offices that bound him ever more closely to King's Landing. Septon Eustace writes that the burdens of these duties left him little leisure to visit the Vale; Mushroom, less charitably, lays the blame upon his growing rivalry with Ser Otto Hightower, which kept the prince engaged in quarrel and intrigue. Whatever the cause, his visits to Runestone grew fewer, leaving Lady Rhea to raise both boy and dragon in his stead.
Lady Rhea, who had long delighted in hawking, is said to have approached the matter much as she did her birds of prey, treating the beast as an overlarge and ill-mannered hawk, though one that would at times answer displeasure with flame. The prince was often taken with her into the hills, where hawk and hound were worked, and the dragon too was suffered to range. It was noted that the creature soon took to bringing down small game and returning with it to the boy, yet would brook no hand upon such kills but his own, snapping and hissing at any who drew near. Prince Aerion alone was permitted to handle the prey, and under his mother's instruction he learned to dress it himself, though the work was made difficult by the dragon's watchful temper. When this was done, the flesh was oft roasted upon the creature's own flames and shared between them. Some took these habits as further proof of the uncommon closeness between prince and dragon; others saw in them only the result of patient training and the boy's early familiarity with blood and fire.
It is said that when King Viserys announced that his queen was with child and proclaimed a great tourney to celebrate the expected birth, Prince Daemon conceived the notion that his own son, though but seven years of age, might be presented there to advantage. Such ambition, Septon Eustace observes, speaks more to a father's pride than to a sober reckoning of a child's years. For though Prince Aerion was by no means lacking in courage or instruction, he did not display the effortless brilliance in arms that had marked his father even in youth. Mushroom delights in recounting that the attempt, such as it was, came to little, and that Daemon's disappointment was the sharper for having expected otherwise without first taking measure of the boy.
What followed was a quarrel at Runestone, variously described but widely attested. From this point forward, the prince's attentions turned from shaping his son for the lists to shaping him in other fashions, and not always with moderation.
Some few months before these quarrels, the boy is said to have taken an uncommon interest in the ancient bronze armor of House Royce, with its runes and sigils of First Men make. The maester at Runestone records that Prince Aerion would spend long hours studying these markings, copying them in his own hand, and asking after their meanings, though the answers given him were oft uncertain or contradictory. In time, he began to apply such signs himself, not to parchment alone but, as some accounts have it, upon the scales of his dragon, using a red paste of his own devising.
The substances he employed have been the subject of much later speculation. Mushroom, as might be expected, mutters of blood. Others have written of weirwood sap, though such a thing would not have been readily found in the settled Vale, where the old gods had long since yielded to Andal custom, and if it came at all must have come down from the mountain strongholds of the First Men. The maesters incline to a simpler answer, judging it no more than ochre or some like pigment, ground and mixed by the boy himself, and renewed as often as it faded.
That the dragon suffered these attentions from no hand but the prince's is more firmly agreed. Indeed, it is said the creature would brook no other to touch what it had taken, whether meat or mark, and would snap and hiss at any who came too near, save only its rider. Even so, the markings did not long endure, and were as often seen newly laid as half-worn away.
Such practices did not pass without remark. A septon in Lady Rhea's household is said to have taken concern at the boy's fascination with runes and signs, and spoke to her of it more than once. Lady Rhea, however, is reported to have dismissed such fears, saying that these were no sorceries but the ancient customs of her house, and that a Royce had no cause to fear the marks of his own forebears. The matter might have ended there, had not the septon, unsatisfied, carried his concerns to Prince Daemon.
Here the accounts grow more pointed. For where the septon perhaps expected correction, he instead found encouragement of a different sort. Prince Daemon, whether from pique, conviction, or some mixture of both, resolved that his son should be instructed not only in the tongues and customs of the Vale, but in those of Old Valyria as well, and soon after brought from Volantis a priest of the Fourteen Flames, a man some called learned and others named sorcerer, to serve amongst the boy's teachers. That such a figure should be installed at Runestone caused no small disquiet, and was taken by many as further sign that the quarrels between prince and lady had not so much been settled as transformed.
Prince Daemon had returned to King's Landing just in time for celebration to turn to mourning, as Queen Aemma perished in childbirth, taking the babe with her. Of what followed much has been written elsewhere, and need not be set down again in full; it is enough to say that Prince Daemon, being in his cups, spoke certain unwise words, which were swiftly reported to his brother, the king. Some name Ser Otto Hightower as the source of this report, though there was no shortage of ambitious men slighted by Daemon who might have done the same. Thus, against the very precedent that had favored him, King Viserys set his daughter as heir in place of his brother, and named her Princess of Dragonstone.
Prince Daemon did not long remain to answer for his words. Mounting his dragon, he departed King's Landing in haste and took himself to Dragonstone, as he had done before when court and king alike displeased him. Nor did he go alone. With him went Mysaria, the foreign woman who had long enjoyed his favor, a circumstance noted with varying degrees of disapproval by those who recorded such matters.
From Dragonstone, it is said, the prince wrote to his wife at Runestone. The letter itself has not survived, but its contents are reported in part by later chroniclers. In it, Daemon is said to have urged Lady Rhea to speak for their son's rights, and to press his claim in the matter of succession, which the king's recent decree had set aside. Septon Eustace presents this as a father's proper concern for the future of his child, expressed in terms at once earnest and forceful. Mushroom, less charitably, claims the letter was couched more as expectation than entreaty, and that the prince wrote as one who presumed obedience rather than sought it.
Of Lady Rhea's reply to her husband, no record remains. That she sent one is not in doubt, but whether it contained agreement, refusal, or something more measured cannot now be known. What is certain is that she did not act as Daemon wished, at least not in any open or immediate fashion. Instead, she addressed herself to the king.
Her letter to King Viserys has come down to us in fragmentary copies, preserved in the archives of Gulltown and elsewhere. In it, Lady Rhea is said to have offered proper condolences for the loss of Queen Aemma and the child that perished with her, expressing grief in terms suitably restrained and courteous. Yet having done so, she turned, with equal propriety, to the matter at hand.
She wrote, so the copies attest, that in a realm so governed by custom and precedent as the Seven Kingdoms, it would ease many minds to understand more fully the nature of the king's decree. Was the naming of Princess Rhaenyra to be taken as a singular act, born of circumstance, or as a precedent to guide succession henceforth? Did the king intend that daughters should now come before uncles in the line of inheritance, and if so, was this to be held only for the Iron Throne, or for the great houses of the realm as well? And in such a case, she inquired, what place was to be accorded to the husbands of such heiresses, and by what style and authority they might stand beside a ruling queen?
These questions are set down without commentary in the surviving texts, yet their implication is plain enough. Septon Eustace commends the letter as a prudent effort to secure clarity and prevent future discord, observing that uncertainty in such matters has oft been the seed of strife. Mushroom, by contrast, delights in the mischief of it, writing that Lady Rhea "asked so sweetly that none could take offense, whilst pricking the king on every side like a tailor fitting a doublet too tight for comfort."
King Viserys made no written answer to these inquiries. Instead, he sent word that Lady Rhea and her son should come to court, there to swear fealty to Princess Rhaenyra as his chosen heir, as many lords and ladies had already done.
Lady Rhea's reply survives more fully than her first letter, and is consistent in tone with what we know of her. She thanked His Grace for his summons and acknowledged the honor of attending upon the court. Yet she wrote that in a matter touching so nearly upon succession and inheritance, she could not, in propriety, speak or swear apart from her husband. Should Prince Daemon be persuaded to attend and to set his hand and voice to such an oath, she would, she assured the king, be most ready to do the same, and to bring their son to witness and affirm it.
Septon Eustace praises this answer as fitting and dutiful, placing the unity of husband and wife above all else, as the Seven would have it. Mushroom, unsurprisingly, offers another view, claiming that Lady Rhea knew well that Prince Daemon was the last man in the realm to be easily persuaded of anything he had already opposed, and that in naming him as the hinge upon which her obedience must turn, she had contrived a refusal that could not be called such.
Which of these judgments is the nearer the truth, each reader must decide. That the matter was not thereby resolved is beyond dispute.
Not long thereafter, fresh rumors began to circulate at court, and with such speed and convenience that some thought their arrival as notable as their content. It was said that Mysaria, the foreign woman who had accompanied Prince Daemon to Dragonstone, had quickened with child, and that the prince, in delight, had gifted the unborn babe a dragon's egg.
Whether this tale was true, embellished, or merely useful is uncertain. Septon Eustace accepts it readily and condemns the prince's recklessness, whilst Mushroom suggests that babe or no babe, the story served well enough to turn the court from Lady Rhea's awkward questions to a scandal more easily answered.
King Viserys, upon hearing it, commanded that the egg be returned, Mysaria sent back across the narrow sea to Lys, and Prince Daemon himself removed from Dragonstone and restored to Runestone, there to reside with his lawful wife and son. That Mysaria lost the child upon the voyage is often repeated, though on what authority is less clear, and some later doubted whether any child had existed at all.
Daemon obeyed the king in form, if not in spirit. He returned to Runestone, but of any oath sworn by him to his brother, to Princess Rhaenyra, or to the settlement then being made, no certain record remains. Thus the scandal was quieted for a time, yet the questions raised by Lady Rhea's letter went unanswered still.
Prince Daemon was still at Runestone for his son's eighth nameday celebration. Not long after, King Viserys took for his second wife the daughter of his Hand. Notably absent from the wedding feast were both Prince Daemon and his household, as well as House Velaryon. Lord Corlys, indeed, was at that same time visiting Runestone, ostensibly to arrange the fostering of his second son, Aethan Velaryon, though in truth the two men had graver matters to discuss.
Aethan Velaryon was of an age with Aerion, and already showed promise of becoming a formidable warrior. He had a bold seat in the saddle, a quick hand with practice weapons, and rode a pale-scaled dragon called Seafoam. Between the boys friendship came easily, all the more so as Prince Daemon took to giving them both lessons in the air.
This brief season did not endure. Lord Corlys soon departed Runestone, and Prince Daemon with him. For if a crown were to be denied him at court, there were those who thought he might yet win one elsewhere. Yet he rose not in open rebellion against his brother, but in alliance with the Sea Snake, taking sword and dragonflame against the Triarchy's hold upon the Stepstones. Septon Eustace presents this war as a necessary chastisement of pirates and extortioners; Mushroom, less solemnly, writes that Prince Daemon, being denied one inheritance, went off to carve himself another.
Aerion was far too distracted by his new friend to miss his father overmuch, and by then he was used to Daemon's absence. Moriodhir had taught Seafoam how to fetch prey and share it with their humans. Aerion had taught his friend how to dress the catch, and in turn Aethan shared the uses of exotic spices before the meat was roasted on dragonfire, which both boys and dragons found greatly to their liking.
As Daemon's war in the Stepstones progressed, boys and dragons alike grew. In time the dragons grew fond not only of wild game, but of Vale sheep as well, so much so that it came to be known as the dragon tax. Yet it did not cause much scorn, for Lady Royce was generous with recompense, and in time some smallfolk counted it almost a point of pride that their sheep should prove tempting to a dragon. The dragons, for their part, soon grew territorial, driving off all other predators from what they deemed their sheep and the humans who tended them.
For his eleventh nameday, Aerion received a notable gift. In that brief season of triumph when Corlys Velaryon had crowned Daemon King of the Stepstones and the Narrow Sea, the prince had named his son his heir, granting him the style of Prince of the Grey Gallows, after the same fashion by which Dragonstone was held beneath the Iron Throne. Torturer's Deep he bestowed upon Aethan, and many lesser isles upon his other followers as lordships. Not to be outdone, Lady Royce placed in Aerion's keeping Lamentation, the ancestral Valyrian steel sword of her house. Some judged such honors too weighty for boys so young. Others remarked that Prince Daemon was displeased, for he had long intended that Dark Sister should in time pass to his son. From his friend Aethan he received a glass candle, procured for the occasion by Lord Corlys at his son's request.
Such honors were not suffered to remain empty styles. As Aerion grew into them, and as Daemon's wars kept his father oft from the Vale, the boy began increasingly to exercise authority in fact as well as in name. With Aethan Velaryon beside him, he took to ranging the hills and mountain roads from dragonback, using the height of the sky and the dragons' own fierce instincts to seek out dens, trails, and hidden camps that would once have escaped any search on foot. In this wise they brought a new and terrible order to the uplands, and outlaw bands long thought beyond the reach of any lord were hunted down on a scale not seen before.
To those who surrendered, the prince is said to have offered three choices: to take the black, to be sent in chains to the Grey Gallows and settled there, or to burn. Few chose the black, and none the dragon. For those who did not surrender immediately, the first sight of dragon wings was warning enough; after that, there was in truth but the third choice.
Many found such justice harsh, and some compared it unfavorably to Prince Daemon's own methods during his time as commander of the City Watch. Yet others noted that the roads grew safer with each passing year. It was said in time that a maid might walk from Gulltown to Runestone with a purse of gold upon her belt and have no cause to fear thieves, though she might well cast an anxious eye toward the sky.
In 111 AC, Prince Daemon came once more to King's Landing, making outward show of reconciliation with his brother, King Viserys. In place of open defiance, he offered courtesies, professions of loyalty, and such assurances as might be given without yielding more than he must. Unlike in some tellings, no clear renunciation of his crown in the Stepstones was ever set down. Some accounts speak of gestures made and words spoken in private, yet no record survives of any formal laying aside of that title. Whether this omission was oversight or design remains a matter of dispute.
King Viserys received his brother warmly, for he ever preferred concord to strife. Honors were restored, gifts exchanged, and for a time it seemed that the breach between them might yet be healed. Yet the question of the Stepstones was left unresolved, neither acknowledged nor denied, and in that silence many at court perceived cause for unease.
It was during this same visit that a match was proposed between Princess Rhaenyra and Prince Aerion. On its face the union could be presented as fitting and proper—a princess for a prince—and might have served to bind the two branches of the royal house more closely together. Yet some suspected that more lay beneath the offer than marriage alone. For if Aerion, already styled heir to his father's newly won domains, were joined to the king's declared heir, what then might be said of the crown Daemon claimed beyond the Narrow Sea? Was it to be set aside, or silently acknowledged?
Such questions found no easy answer. Among the king's council, Lord Lyonel Strong is said to have urged caution, whilst others spoke more plainly against any arrangement that might lend even the appearance of sanction to Daemon's kingship. The queen, Alicent Hightower, worked more quietly but no less diligently, mindful of the place her own children held—or hoped to hold—in the succession. That Prince Daemon himself showed little warmth toward her or her kin did nothing to ease these tensions. Some ascribed this to his long-standing quarrel with her father; others judged it a colder calculation, for each child born of that marriage stood further between his son and the Iron Throne.
Nor was the prince's cause aided by the talk that had begun to gather about Aerion in his absence. For all that he was the king's nephew, Prince Aerion had never set foot in King's Landing, and was known there only by report. From the Vale came tales of a severity in the boy's rule beyond his years, and of the manner in which he and Aethan Velaryon ranged together from dragonback, hunting outlaws in the hills with a zeal that some found admirable and others troubling. Their closeness, too, did not pass without remark. The two were said to be seldom parted, in hall or field, and to share not only their pursuits but their counsels. Such companionship might have been thought unremarkable in younger boys, yet as they grew older it gave rise to quieter murmurs, which Mushroom, as ever, repeats with relish and little restraint.
More ominous still were the comparisons some began to draw. In his harsh justice and his delight in the hunt, there were those who named Aerion another Maegor in the making, though whether this speaks more to the boy's nature or to the fears of those who watched him is a matter the chronicles leave unresolved.
In the end, the proposed accord came to nothing. Whether it failed through mistrust, pride, or the quiet labors of those who stood to lose by it, the histories do not agree. What is certain is that no marriage was made, no alliance sealed, and that Prince Daemon soon departed the court once more, the question of his crown—and his son's place in the realm—left as uncertain as before.
In the Vale, however, other troubles were rising. The quarrelsome septon then attached to Runestone had long railed against the Volantene priest retained for Aerion's instruction, denouncing him as a sorcerer and corrupter of youth. The priest, for his part, is said to have answered these charges with equal heat, holding the septon to be a superstitious fool unfit to judge what he did not understand. Of what passed between them in their final confrontation the accounts differ. It is certain only that harsh words gave way to blows, and blows to fire, and that when the matter was ended both men were dead.
Lady Rhea, who had little patience left for contentious holy men of any stripe, declined thereafter to receive another septon into her household. This refusal caused some murmuring amongst her vassals, for the Faith was not without strength in the Vale, and there were those who judged such defiance prideful, if not impious. Yet few cared to press the matter overboldly whilst her dragon-riding son remained at her side.
About this same time the betrothal was agreed between Prince Aerion and Vaella Velaryon, twin sister to Aethan. The match was reckoned a prudent one. Laena, the elder daughter of Lord Corlys, had already been promised to the son of the Sealord of Braavos, an alliance of no small importance, for Braavosi support in the affairs of the Stepstones remained too valuable to be lightly cast aside. Thus the younger daughter was given where policy and blood alike might best be served.
Of Vaella herself the sources tell us little that can be trusted without caution. Septon Eustace, in the brief notice he affords her, writes that she was a quiet and studious girl, more given to books than to courtly vanities, and better pleased with reading than with revels. Mushroom, in one of his less credible but more eagerly repeated tales, names her half a sorceress before she had flowered, owing partly to this bookish disposition and partly to the company she kept. In particular he makes much of a certain Emily Banefort, one of her ladies, whom he accuses—on grounds nowhere made plain—of dabbling in unclean rites amongst corpses and grave-dust. Such charges are best received with the reserve due all Mushroom's favorite scandals.
It was in these same years that Prince Aerion first began to speak of troubling dreams. In them, he said, he saw a gate marked all over with dragons, not painted nor carved in the usual fashion, but as if the beasts themselves were part of its substance. The dreams recurred often enough that the boy, who was not by nature given to foolish fancies, asked the maester at Runestone to write to the Citadel concerning them. No answer of consequence seems to have been returned. Aethan, however, makes mention of these dreams in a surviving letter of his own, and notes that they left his friend restless and more than once wakeful before dawn.
As part of the same betrothal settlement, Lord Corlys commissioned a ship for Aerion, fine-built and swift, as befitted one who was both prince and future lord in more than one quarter. It was aboard this vessel that Vaella was at last sent to the Vale, accompanied by a modest household of her own. Some said she went merely to meet the boy to whom she had been promised, and to begin that formal acquaintance expected of noble children so pledged. Others thought her journey less innocent, and believed she had become curious about the prince's dreams, and wished to speak of them with him in person. On this point, as on so many others, certainty escapes us.