George Martin - Rogues

A Song for Lya,

Sandkings,

Songs of Stars and Shadows,

Songs the Dead Men Sing,

Nightflyers,

and

Portraits of His Children.

By the beginning of the eighties, he’d moved away from SF and into the horror genre, publishing the big horror novel

Fevre Dream,

and winning the Bram Stoker Award for his horror story “The Pear-Shaped Man” and the World Fantasy Award for his werewolf novella “The Skin Trade.” By the end of that decade, though, the crash of the horror market and the commercial failure of his ambitious horror novel

Armageddon Rag

had driven him out of the print world and to a successful career in television instead, where for more than a decade he worked as story editor or producer on such shows as new

Twilight Zone

and

Beauty and the Beast.

After years away, Martin made a triumphant return to the print world in 1996 with the publication in 1996 of the immensely successful fantasy novel

A Game of Thrones,

the start of his Song of Ice and Fire sequence. A freestanding novella taken from that work, “Blood of the Dragon,” won Martin another Hugo Award in 1997. Further books in the Song of Ice and Fire series—

A Clash of Kings,

A Storm of Swords,

A Feast for Crows,

and

A Dance with Dragons—

have made it one of the most popular, acclaimed, and bestselling series in all of modern fantasy. Recently, the books were made into an HBO TV series,

Game of Thrones,

which has become one of the most popular and acclaimed shows on television, and made Martin a recognizable figure well outside of the usual genre boundaries, even inspiring a satirical version of him on

Saturday Night Live

. Martin’s most recent books are the latest book in the Ice and Fire series,

A Dance With Dragons,

a massive two-volume retrospective collection spanning the entire spectrum of his career,

Dreamsongs,

a novella collection,

Starlady and Fast-Friend,

a novel written in collaboration with Gardner Dozois and Daniel Abraham,

Hunter’s Run,

and, as editor, several anthologies edited in collaboration with Gardner Dozois, including

Warriors,

Songs of the Dying Earth,

Songs of Love and Death,

Down These Strange Streets,

and

Dangerous Women,

as well as several new volumes in his long-running

Wild Cards

anthology series,

Wild Cards: Busted Flush

and

Wild Cards: Inside Straight.

In 2012, Martin was given the Life Achievement Award by the World Fantasy Convention.

A World of Ice and Fire

, a comprehensive history of Westeros and the lands beyond, will be released in fall of 2014.

Here he takes us to the turbulent land of Westeros, home to his Ice and Fire series, for the story of that swashbuckling rogue Daemon Targaryen, the Prince who never became a King—although his ambition to become one would plunge the entire world into war.

a consideration of the early life, adventures, misdeeds, and marriages of Prince Daemon Targaryen, as set down by Archmaester Gyldayn of the Citadel of Oldtown

here transcribed by George R. R. Martin

He was the grandson of a king, the brother of a king, husband to a queen. Two of his sons and three of his grandsons would sit the Iron Throne, but the only crown that Daemon Targaryen ever wore was the crown of the Stepstones, a meager realm he made himself with blood and steel and dragonfire, and soon abandoned.

Over the centuries, House Targaryen has produced both great men and monsters. Prince Daemon was both. In his day there was not a man so admired, so beloved, and so reviled in all Westeros. He was made of light and darkness in equal parts. To some he was a hero, to others the blackest of villains. No true understanding of that most tragic bloodletting known as the Dance of the Dragons is possible without a consideration of the crucial role played before and during the conflict by this rogue prince.

The seeds of the great conflict were sown during the last years in the long reign of the Old King, Jaehaerys I Targaryen. Of Jaehaerys himself, little need be said here, save that after the passing of his beloved wife, Good Queen Alysanne, and his son Baelon, Prince of Dragonstone—Hand of the King, and heir apparent to the Iron Throne—His Grace was but a shell of the man that he had been.

With Prince Baelon lost to him, the Old King had to turn elsewhere for a partner in his labors. As his new Hand, he called upon Ser Otto Hightower, younger brother to Lord Hightower of Oldtown. Ser Otto brought his wife and children to court with him, and served King Jaehaerys faithfully for the years remaining to him. As the king’s strength and wits began to fail, he was oft confined to bed. Ser Otto’s fifteen-year-old daughter Alicent became his constant companion, fetching His Grace his meals, reading to him, helping him to bathe and dress himself. The Old King sometimes mistook her for one of his daughters, calling her by their names; near the end, he grew certain she was his daughter Saera, returned to him from beyond the narrow sea.

In the year 103 AC King Jaehaerys I Targaryen died in his bed as Lady Alicent was reading to him from Septon Barth’s Unnatural History. His Grace was nine-and-sixty years of age, and had reigned over the Seven Kingdoms since coming to the Iron Throne at the age of fourteen. His remains were burned in the Dragonpit, his ashes interred with Good Queen Alysanne’s beneath the Red Keep. All of Westeros mourned. Even in Dorne, where his writ had not extended, men wept and women tore their garments.

In accordance with his own wishes, and the decision of the Great Council of 101, his grandson Viserys succeeded him, mounting the Iron Throne as King Viserys I Targaryen. At the time of his ascent, King Viserys was twenty-six years old. He had been married for a decade to a cousin, Lady Aemma of House Arryn, herself a granddaughter of the Old King and Good Queen Alysanne through her mother, the late Princess Daella (d. 82 AC). Lady Aemma had suffered several miscarriages and the death of one son in the cradle, but she had also given birth to a healthy daughter, Rhaenyra (born 97 AC). The new king and his queen both doted on the girl, their only living child.

Viserys I Targaryen had a generous, amiable nature and was well loved by his lords and smallfolk alike. The reign of the Young King, as the commons called him upon his ascent, would be peaceful and prosperous. His Grace’s openhandedness was legendary, and the Red Keep became a place of song and splendor. King Viserys and Queen Aemma hosted many a feast and tourney, and lavished gold, offices, and honors on their many favorites.

At the center of the merriment, cherished and adored by all, was Princess Rhaenyra, the little girl the court singers soon dubbed the Realm’s Delight. Though only six when her father came to the Iron Throne, Rhaenyra was a precocious child, bright and bold and beautiful as only one of dragon’s blood can be beautiful. At the age of seven, she became a dragonrider, taking to the sky atop the young dragon she named Syrax, after a goddess of old Valyria. At eight, like many another highborn girl, the princess was placed into service as a cupbearer … but for her own father, the king. At table, at tourney, and at court, King Viserys thereafter was seldom seen without his daughter by his side.

Meanwhile, the tedium of rule was left largely to the king’s small council and his Hand. Ser Otto Hightower had continued in that office, serving the grandson as he had the father; an able man, all agreed, though many found him proud, brusque, and haughty. The longer he served, the more imperious Ser Otto became, it was said, and many great lords and princes came to resent his manner and envy him his access to the Iron Throne.