Yet late in the evening, after King Viserys had departed (for His Grace still tired easily), Mushroom tells us that Aemond One-Eye rose to toast his Velaryon nephews, speaking in mock admiration of their brown hair, brown eyes…and strength. “I have never known anyone so strong as my sweet nephews,” he ended. “So let us drain our cups to these three strong boys.” Still later, the fool reports, Aegon the Elder took offense when Jacaerys asked his wife, Helaena, for a dance. Angry words were exchanged, and the two princes might have come to blows if not for the intervention of the Kingsguard. Whether King Viserys was ever informed of these incidents we do not know, but Princess Rhaenyra and her sons returned to their own seat on Dragonstone the next morning.

After the loss of his fingers, Viserys I never sat upon the Iron Throne again. Thereafter he shunned the throne room, preferring to hold court in his solar, and later in his bedchamber, surrounded by maesters, septons, and his faithful fool Mushroom, the only man who could still make him laugh (says Mushroom).

Death visited the court again a short time later, when Grand Maester Mellos collapsed one night whilst he was climbing the serpentine steps. His had always been a moderating voice in council, forever urging calm and compromise whenever issues arose between the blacks and the greens. To the king’s distress, however, the passing of the man he called “my trusted friend” only served to provoke a fresh dispute between the factions.

   Princess Rhaenyra wanted Maester Gerardys, who had long served her on Dragonstone, elevated to replace Mellos; it was only his healing skills that had saved the king’s life when Viserys cut his hand on the throne, she claimed. Queen Alicent, however, insisted that the princess and her maester had mutilated His Grace unnecessarily. Had they not “meddled,” she claimed, Grand Maester Mellos would surely have saved the king’s fingers as well as his life. She urged the appointment of one Maester Alfador, presently in service at the Hightower. Viserys, beset from both sides, chose neither, reminding both the princess and the queen that the choice was not his to make. The Citadel of Oldtown chose the Grand Maester, not the Crown. In due time, the Conclave bestowed the chain of office upon Archmaester Orwyle, one of their own.

King Viserys did seem to recover some of his old vigor once the new Grand Maester arrived at court. Septon Eustace tells us that this was the result of prayer, but most believed that Orwyle’s potions and tinctures were more efficacious than the leechings Mellos had preferred. But such recoveries proved short-lived, and gout, chest pains, and shortness of breath continued to trouble the king. In the final years of his reign, as his health failed, Viserys left ever more of the governance of the realm to his Hand and small council. Perforce we ought to look at the members of that small council on the eve of the great events of 129 AC, for they were to play a large role in all that followed.

The King’s Hand remained Ser Otto Hightower, father of the queen and uncle to the Lord of Oldtown. Grand Maester Orwyle was the newest member of the council, and was thought to favor neither blacks nor greens. The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard remained Ser Criston Cole, however, and in him Rhaenyra had a bitter foe. The aged Lord Lyman Beesbury was master of coin, in which capacity he had served almost uninterrupted since the Old King’s day. The youngest councillors were the lord admiral and master of ships, Ser Tyland Lannister, brother to the Lord of Casterly Rock, and the Lord Confessor and master of whisperers, Larys Strong, Lord of Harrenhal. Lord Jasper Wylde, master of laws, known amongst the smallfolk as “Ironrod,” completed the council. (Lord Wylde’s unbending attitudes on matters of law earned him this sobriquet, Septon Eustace says. But Mushroom declares that Ironrod was named for the stiffness of his member, having sired twenty-nine children on four wives before the last died of exhaustion.)

   As the Seven Kingdoms welcomed the 129th year after Aegon’s Conquest with bonfires, feasts, and bacchanals, King Viserys I Targaryen was growing ever weaker. His chest pains had grown so severe that he could no longer climb a flight of steps, and had to be carried about the Red Keep in a chair. By the second moon of the year, His Grace had lost all appetite and was ruling the realm from his bed…when he felt strong enough to rule at all. Most days, he preferred to leave matters of state to his Hand, Ser Otto Hightower. On Dragonstone, meanwhile, Princess Rhaenyra was once again great with child. She too took to her bed.

On the third day of the third moon of 129 AC, Princess Helaena brought her three children to visit with the king in his chambers. The twins, Jaehaerys and Jaehaera, were six years old, their brother, Maelor, only two. His Grace gave the babe a pearl ring off his finger to play with, and told the twins the story of how their great-great-grandsire and namesake Jaehaerys had flown his dragon north to the Wall to defeat a vast host of wildlings, giants, and wargs. Though the children had heard the story a dozen times before, they listened attentively. Afterward the king sent them away, pleading weariness and a tightness in his chest. Then Viserys of House Targaryen, the First of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm, closed his eyes and went to sleep.

   He never woke. He was fifty-two years old, and had reigned over most of Westeros for twenty-six years.

Then the storm broke, and the dragons danced.

      * Hereafter, to avoid confusing the two princes, we will refer to Queen Alicent’s son as Aegon the Elder and Princess Rhaenyra’s son as Aegon the Younger.

The Dance of the Dragons is the flowery name bestowed upon the savage internecine struggle for the Iron Throne of Westeros fought between two rival branches of House Targaryen during the years 129 to 131 AC. To characterize the dark, turbulent, bloody doings of this period as a “dance” strikes us as grotesquely inappropriate. No doubt the phrase originated with some singer. “The Dying of the Dragons” would be altogether more fitting, but tradition, time, and Grand Maester Munkun have burned the more poetic usage into the pages of history, so we must dance along with the rest.

There were two principal claimants to the Iron Throne upon the death of King Viserys I Targaryen: his daughter Rhaenyra, the only surviving child of his first marriage, and Aegon, his eldest son by his second wife. Amidst the chaos and carnage brought on by their rivalry, other would-be kings would stake claims as well, strutting about like mummers on a stage for a fortnight or a moon’s turn, only to fall as swiftly as they had arisen.

The Dance split the Seven Kingdoms in two, as lords, knights, and smallfolk declared for one side or the other and took up arms against one another. Even House Targaryen itself was divided, when the kith, kin, and children of each of the claimants became embroiled in the fighting. Over the two years of struggle, a terrible toll was taken on the great lords of Westeros, together with their bannermen, knights, and smallfolk. Whilst the dynasty survived, the end of the fighting saw Targaryen power much diminished, and the world’s last dragons vastly reduced in number.

   The Dance was a war unlike any other ever fought in the long history of the Seven Kingdoms. Though armies marched and met in savage battle, much of the slaughter took place on water, and…especially…in the air, as dragon fought dragon with tooth and claw and flame. It was a war marked by stealth, murder, and betrayal as well, a war fought in shadows and stairwells, council chambers and castle yards with knives and lies and poison.