Aegon would return to King’s Landing and the Aegonfort, whilst Visenya and her son remained on Dragonstone. For this reason, lords and commons alike began to refer to Maegor as the Prince of Dragonstone.
Queen Visenya put a sword into her son’s hand when he was three. Supposedly the first thing he did with the blade was butcher one of the castle cats, men said … though more like this tale was a calumny devised by his enemies many years later. That the prince took to swordplay at once cannot be denied, however. For his first master-at-arms his mother chose Ser Gawen Corbray, as deadly a knight as could be found in all the Seven Kingdoms.
Prince Aenys was so oft in his sire’s company that his own instruction in the chivalric arts came largely from the knights of Aegon’s Kingsguard, and sometimes the king himself. The boy was diligent, his instructors agreed, and did not want for courage, but he lacked his sire’s size and strength, and was never more than adequate as a fighter, even when the king pressed Blackfyre into his hands, as he did from time to time. Aenys would not disgrace himself in battle, his tutors told one another, but no songs would ever be sung about his prowess.
Such gifts as this prince possessed lay elsewhere. Aenys was a fine singer himself, as it happened, with a strong sweet voice. He was courteous and charming, clever without being bookish. He made friends easily, and young girls seemed to dote on him, be they highborn or low. Aenys loved to ride as well. His father gave him coursers, palfreys, and destriers, but his favorite mount was his dragon, Quicksilver.
Prince Maegor rode as well, but showed no great love for horses, dogs, or any animal. When he was eight, a palfrey kicked him in the stables. Maegor stabbed the horse to death … and slashed half the face off the stableboy who came running at the beast’s screams. The Prince of Dragonstone had many companions through the years, but no true friends. He was a quarrelsome boy, quick to take offense, slow to forgive, fearsome in his wroth. His skill with weapons was unmatched, however. A squire at eight, he was unhorsing boys four and five years his elder in the lists by the time he was twelve, and battering seasoned men-at-arms into submission in the castle yard. On his thirteenth nameday in 25 AC, his mother, Queen Visenya, bestowed her own Valyrian steel blade, Dark Sister, upon him … half a year before his marriage.
The tradition amongst the Targaryens had always been to marry kin to kin. Wedding brother to sister was thought to be ideal. Failing that, a girl might wed an uncle, a cousin, or a nephew, a boy a cousin, aunt, or niece. This practice went back to Old Valyria, where it was common amongst many of the ancient families, particularly those who bred and rode dragons. The blood of the dragon must remain pure, the wisdom went. Some of the sorcerer princes also took more than one wife when it pleased them, though this was less common than incestuous marriage. In Valyria before the Doom, wise men wrote, a thousand gods were honored, but none were feared, so few dared to speak against these customs.
This was not true in Westeros, where the power of the Faith went unquestioned. The old gods were still worshipped in the North and the Drowned God in the Iron Islands, but in the rest of the realm there was a single god with seven faces, and his voice upon this earth was the High Septon of Oldtown. And the doctrines of the Faith, handed down through centuries from Andalos itself, condemned the Valyrian marriage customs as practiced by the Targaryens. Incest was denounced as a vile sin, whether between father and daughter, mother and son, or brother and sister, and the fruits of such unions were considered abominations in the sight of gods and men. With hindsight, it can be seen that conflict between the Faith and House Targaryen was inevitable. Indeed, many amongst the Most Devout had expected the High Septon to speak out against Aegon and his sisters during the Conquest, and were most displeased when the Father of the Faithful instead counseled Lord Hightower against opposing the Dragon, and even blessed and anointed him at his second coronation.
Familiarity is the father of acceptance, it is said. The High Septon who had crowned Aegon the Conqueror remained the Shepherd of the Faithful until his death in 11 AC, by which time the realm had grown accustomed to the notion of a king with two queens, who were both wives and sisters. King Aegon always took care to honor the Faith, confirming its traditional rights and privileges, exempting its wealth and property from taxation, and affirming that septons, septas, and other servants of the Seven accused of wrongdoing could only be tried by the Faith’s own courts.
The accord between the Faith and the Iron Throne continued all through the reign of Aegon I. From 11 AC to 37 AC, six High Septons wore the crystal crown; His Grace remained on good terms with each of them, calling at the Starry Sept each time he came to Oldtown. Yet the question of incestuous marriage remained, simmering below the courtesies like poison. Whilst the High Septons of King Aegon’s reign never spoke out against the king’s marriage to his sisters, neither did they declare it to be lawful. The humbler members of the Faith—village septons, holy sisters, begging brothers, Poor Fellows—still believed it sinful for brother to lie with sister, or for a man to take two wives.
Aegon the Conqueror had fathered no daughters, however, so these matters did not come to a head at once. The sons of the Dragon had no sisters to marry, so each of them was forced to seek elsewhere for a bride.
Prince Aenys was the first to marry. In 22 AC, he wed the Lady Alyssa, the maiden daughter of the Lord of the Tides, Aethan Velaryon, King Aegon’s lord admiral and master of ships. She was fifteen, the same age as the prince, and shared his silvery hair and purple eyes as well, for the Velaryons were an ancient family descended from Valyrian stock. King Aegon’s own mother had been a Velaryon, so the marriage was reckoned one of cousin to cousin.
It soon proved both happy and fruitful. The following year, Alyssa gave birth to a daughter. Prince Aenys named her Rhaena, in honor of his mother. Like her father, the girl was small at birth, but unlike him she proved to be a happy, healthy child, with lively lilac eyes and hair that shone like beaten silver. It was written that King Aegon himself wept the first time his granddaughter was placed in his arms, and thereafter doted upon the child … mayhaps in some part because she reminded him of his lost queen, Rhaenys, in whose memory she had been named.
As the glad tidings of Rhaena’s birth spread across the land, the realm rejoiced … save, perhaps, for Queen Visenya. Prince Aenys was the unquestioned heir to the Iron Throne, all agreed, but now an issue arose as to whether Prince Maegor remained second in the line of succession, or should be considered to have fallen to third behind the newborn princess. Queen Visenya proposed to settle the matter by betrothing the infant Rhaena to Maegor, who had just turned eleven. Aenys and Alyssa spoke against the match, however … and when word reached the Starry Sept, the High Septon sent a raven, warning the king that such a marriage would not be looked upon with favor by the Faith. His High Holiness proposed a different bride for Maegor: his own niece, Ceryse Hightower, maiden daughter to the Lord of Oldtown, Manfred Hightower (not to be confused with his grandsire of the same name). King Aegon, mindful of the advantages of closer ties with Oldtown and its ruling house, saw wisdom in the choice and agreed to the match.
Thus it came to pass that in 25 AC, Maegor Targaryen, Prince of Dragonstone, wed Lady Ceryse Hightower in the Starry Sept of Oldtown, with the High Septon himself performing the nuptials. Maegor was thirteen, the bride ten years his senior … but the lords who bore witness to the bedding all agreed that the prince made a lusty husband, and Maegor himself boasted that he had consummated the marriage a dozen times that night. “I made a son for House Targaryen last night,” he proclaimed as he broke fast.
The son came the next year … but the boy, named Aegon after his grandsire, was born to Lady Alyssa and fathered by Prince Aenys. Once again, celebrations swept the Seven Kingdoms. The little prince was robust and fierce and had “a warrior’s look about him,” declared his grandsire, Aegon the Dragon himself. While many still debated whether Prince Maegor or his niece, Rhaena, should have precedence in the order of succession, it seemed beyond question that Aegon would follow his father, Aenys, just as Aenys would follow Aegon.
In the years that followed, other children came one after the other to
