Across the sea, the Daughters’ War finally reached its end. Racallio Ryndoon fled south to the Basilisk Isles with his remaining supporters; Lys, Tyrosh, and Myr divided the Disputed Lands; and the Dornish took dominion over most of the Stepstones. The Myrish suffered the greatest losses in these new arrangements, whilst the Archon of Tyrosh and the Princess of Dorne gained the most. In Lys, ancient houses fell and many a highborn magister was cast down and ruined, whilst others rose up to seize the reins of power. Chief amongst these was Lysandro Rogare and his brother Drazenko, architect of the Dornish alliance. Drazenko’s ties to Sunspear and Lysandro’s to the Iron Throne made the Rogares the princes of Lys in all but name.

By the end of 134 AC, some feared they might soon rule Westeros as well. Their pride and pomp and power became the talk of King’s Landing. Men began to whisper of their wiles. Lotho bought men with gold, Roggerio seduced them with perfumed flesh, Moredo frightened them into submission with steel. Yet the brothers were no more than puppets in the hands of Lady Larra; it was her and her queer Lysene gods who held their strings. The king, the little queen, the young prince…they were only children, blind to what was happening about them, whilst the Kingsguard and the gold cloaks and even the King’s Hand had been bought and sold.

   Or so the stories went. Like all such tales, they had some truth to them, well mixed with fear and falsehood. That the Lyseni were proud, grasping, and ambitious cannot be doubted. That Lotho used his bank and Roggerio his brothel to win friends to their cause goes without saying. Yet in the end they differed but little from many of the other lords and ladies of Aegon III’s court, all of them pursuing power and wealth in their own ways. Though more successful than their rivals (for a time, at least), the Lyseni were only one of several factions competing for influence. Had Lady Larra and her brothers been Westerosi, they might have been admired and celebrated, but their foreign birth, foreign ways, and foreign gods made them objects of mistrust and suspicion instead.

Munkun refers to this period as the Rogare Ascendency, but that term was only ever used at Oldtown, amongst the maesters and archmaesters of the Citadel. The people who lived through it called it the Lysene Spring…for spring was indeed a part of it. Early in 135 AC, the Conclave sent forth its white ravens from Oldtown to herald the end of one of the longest and cruelest winters that the Seven Kingdoms had ever known.

Spring is ever a season of hope, rebirth, and renewal, and the spring of 135 AC was no different. The war in the Iron Islands came to an end, and Lord Cregan Stark of Winterfell borrowed a huge sum from the Iron Bank of Braavos to buy food and seed for his starving smallfolk. Only in the Vale did fighting continue. Furious at the refusal of the Arryn claimants to come to King’s Landing and submit their dispute to the judgment of the regents, Lord Thaddeus Rowan sent a thousand men to Gulltown under the command of his fellow regent, Ser Corwyn Corbray, to restore the King’s Peace and settle the matter of succession.

Meanwhile, King’s Landing experienced a period of prosperity such as it had not seen in many years, in no small part thanks to House Rogare of Lys. The Rogare Bank was paying rich returns on all the monies deposited with them, leading more and more lords to entrust the Lyseni with their gold. Trade flourished as well, as ships from Tyrosh, Myr, Pentos, Braavos, and especially Lys crowded the docks along the Blackwater, offloading silks and spices, Myrish lace, jade from Qarth, ivory from Sothoryos, and many other strange and wondrous things from the ends of the earth, including luxuries seldom seen in the Seven Kingdoms before.

   Other port towns shared in the bounty; Duskendale, Maidenpool, Gulltown, and White Harbor saw their trade expand as well, as did Oldtown to the south, and even Lannisport upon the sunset sea. On Driftmark, the town of Hull experienced a rebirth. Scores of new ships were built and launched, and Lord Oakenfist’s mother greatly expanded her own trading fleets, and began work on a palatial manse overlooking the harbor that Mushroom dubbed the Mouse House.

Across the narrow sea, Lys itself was prospering under the “velvet tyranny” of Lysandro Rogare, who had taken on himself the style of First Magister for Life. And when his brother Drazenko married Princess Aliandra Martell of Dorne, and was named by her Prince Consort and Lord of the Stepstones, the ascendancy of House Rogare reached its apex. Men began to speak of Lysandro the Magnificent.

During the first quarter of 135 AC, two momentous events were the occasion of great joy throughout the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. On the third day of the third moon of that year, the people of King’s Landing woke to a sight that had not been seen since the dark days of the Dance: a dragon in the skies above the city. Lady Rhaena, at the age of nineteen, was flying her dragon, Morning, for the first time. That first day she circled once around the city before returning to the Dragonpit, but every day thereafter she grew bolder and flew farther.

Only once did Rhaena land Morning inside the Red Keep, however, for not even the best efforts of Prince Viserys could persuade his brother the king to come see his sister fly (though Queen Daenaera was so delighted with Morning that she was heard to say that she wanted a dragon of her own). Shortly thereafter, Morning carried Lady Rhaena across Blackwater Bay to Dragonstone where, as she said, “Dragons and those who ride them are more welcome.”

Less than a fortnight later, Larra of Lys gave birth to a son, Prince Viserys’s firstborn child. The mother was twenty years of age, the father only thirteen. Viserys named the child Aegon after his brother, the king, and placed a dragon’s egg inside his cradle, as had become the custom with all trueborn children of House Targaryen. Aegon was anointed with the seven oils by Septon Bernard in the royal sept, and the bells of the city rang in celebration of his birth. Gifts were sent from every corner of the realm, though none so lavish as those bestowed upon the babe by his Lyseni uncles. In Lys, Lysandro the Magnificent declared a day of feasting in honor of his grandson.

   Yet even in the midst of joy, whispers of discontent began to be heard. This new son of House Targaryen had been anointed into the Faith, but soon enough the city heard that his mother meant to have him blessed by her own gods as well, and rumors of obscene ceremonies in the Mermaid and blood sacrifice in Maegor’s Holdfast began to be heard on the streets of King’s Landing. The trouble might have ended there, with talk, but soon thereafter a series of disasters befell the realm and royal family, each following hard upon the heels of the other, until even men who mocked the gods, like Mushroom, began to question whether the Seven had turned against House Targaryen and the Seven Kingdoms in their wroth.

The first omen of the dark times to come was seen on Driftmark, when the dragon’s egg presented to Laena Velaryon upon her birth quickened and hatched. Her parents’ pride and pleasure quickly turned to ash, however; the dragon that wriggled from the egg was a monstrosity, a wingless wyrm, maggot-white and blind. Within moments of hatching, the creature turned upon the babe in her cradle and tore a bloody chunk from her arm. As Laena shrieked, Lord Oakenfist ripped the “dragon” off her, flung it to the floor, and hacked it into pieces.