A World of Ice and Fire: The Reign of Daeron I and the Conquest of Dorne by Maester Yandel
Contrary to his father's reluctance for anything related to war after his suffering during the Dance of Dragons, Daeron I Targaryen grew up enamoured to the heroic conquests and battles of his predecessors and the Valyrian Freehold. Born in 143 A.C., Daeron was raised during a time when Ser Raynard Ruskyn was in the midst of his reform and expansion of the Kingsguard, alongside the recoveries of both the City Watch and the Royal Fleet. Due to Aegon III's melancholy, his uncle, Viserys, became a father figure to Daeron and would mentor the prince, often bringing him along on inspections and small council meetings to learn how to govern the continent.
In addition, Daeron also had a series of talented mentors, particularly experienced veterans and generals, who drilled him relentlessly in statecraft, grand strategy, tactics, horsemanship, marksmanship, and swordsmanship. As such, by the time he assumed the Iron Throne in 157 A.C., Daeron was widely regarded in the royal court as a prodigy and had no need of a regency, even though he was two years under the age of majority.
After being regaled with the histories of the Freehold and Aegon's Conquest, Daeron's first action was to announce a campaign to finally conquer Dorne. Initially, Viserys and the small council objected, citing Aegon's failure to conquer the kingdom. Nonetheless, Daeron confidently replied, "You now have a dragon. He stands before you."
With his insistence on the campaign, the small council acquiesced. Together with the highest echelons of the Kingsguard and Lord Alyn Velaryon, Daeron planned another three-pronged assault into the heart of Dorn. Daeron would lead the largest column through the Boneway, supported by Lord Lyonel Tyrell's host and a naval invasion led by the Oakenfist. Less than three moons after Daeron's coronation, the host set out with five and twenty thousand Kingsguard and fifty guns, five and ten thousand Reachers including five thousand newly equipped line infantry and eight cannons, and thirty ships of the line and twenty frigates with three thousand Seaguard. Opposing them was a host of five and forty thousand men with fifteen thousand line infantry and five and twenty cannons, largely from sellsword companies that the Dornish hired. In addition, the Dornish recruited an ad-hoc navy from sellsails and raiders in the Stepstones, with token support from the Free Cities, for a total of five ships of the line, twenty frigates, and sixty assorted smaller brigs and galleys.
Contrary to the prior approaches which simply marched an easily separable host through the Red Mountains, Daeron decided to deploy the newly formed Prince's Own Longshot Brigade to screen his march through the Boneway.
The Prince's Own was a product of Ruskyn's reforms, who decided to form an official light infantry unit designed to skirmish and harry the enemy ahead of the line infantry with superior marksmanship and better mobility. As such, they had a disproportionate amount of longshots, giving them the designation as a longshot brigade. With a dedicated corps of light infantry, Daeron used the three thousand skirmishers to screen the smaller goat paths that went above and around the Boneway, thwarting numerous ambushes and allowing the bulk of his army to pass unmolested through the pass. Similarly, Lyonel Tyrell sent detachments of outriders and lightly armored spearmen to screen for ambushes well ahead of his main force.
With the natural defense of the Red Mountains bypassed without much trouble for the invaders, the Dornish decided to engage Daeron's host on the banks of the River Wyl. Thirty thousand Dornishmen, including their entire gunpowder contingent of five and ten thousand line infantry and five and twenty artillery pieces, dug in at the crossing, with an elaborate network of earthworks and trenches all covering the bridge that marked the end of the Boneway. Opposing them was the column headed by Daeron, with a core of twenty thousand line infantry backed by the three thousand skirmishers of the Prince's Own Longshot Brigade, the two thousand elite dragoons of the 1st and 2nd Life Guards Regiment, and 50 artillery pieces.
While the main contingent formed up and began opening fire with their superior field artillery, the true maneuver would happen during the night. The main thrust would be from Prince Aemon Targaryen, who led the two cavalry regiments to another fording four leagues downstream, with cavalrymen and snipers picking off any scouts patrolling the riverbank. At the same time, engineers worked under the cover of the night to swiftly erect three pontoon bridges.
When dawn broke, the Dornish were hastily roused from their sleep by an opening volley from Daeron's artillery. Their concern was only amplified by the thousands of Kingsguard steadily streaming across the new bridges and forming up on their side of the river. As cannons returned fire and infantry formed up on the earthworks, Aemon's dragoons attacked the western flank, supported by the Prince's Own. With the initial chaos of the attack, Daeron managed to seize the first of three defensive lines with ease. As the sun rose, fighting devolved into a brutal melee, with line infantry, skirmishers, and the rare archer occasionally shooting into the fray. In the battle, the heniby truly proved its worth, as line infantry successfully fought against Dornish spearmen and swordsmen. As the back-and-forth in the trenches lasted for hours, ultimately, Daeron broke through, thanks to superior drilling and artillery. The levies that constituted a third of the Dornish forces eventually routed after being pushed beyond all measure, and the rest of the army followed shortly thereafter. Aemon's dragoons were now granted free reign to pursue the routing infantry until dusk, as what little cavalry remained for the Dornish side could not present a cohesive resistance to stop Daeron's dragoons from inflicting thousands of casualties while chasing the Dornish forces.
The battle, now known as the Battle of the Boneway, was a decisive victory for Daeron. He suffered five thousand casualties, including a third of his cavalry arm, but he inflicted nearly ten thousand casualties and captured six thousand more men, including members from all the major houses of Dorne. All the Dornish artillery pieces were also captured or destroyed in the battle, along with significant gunpowder stores.
At sea, Alyn Velaryon also inflicted a crushing victory against the Dornish defenders. His dedicated warships easily smashed the hastily amassed navy, capturing two ships of the line and leaving only the smaller galleys and brigs that managed to outrun his ships to flee back into the Stepstones. Sailing unopposed, Alyn began bombarding both Sunspear and the Planky Town with his fleet. After a week-long bombardment that left its fortifications in ruins, Alyn landed the Seaguard and effortlessly seized the city, giving him access to the entirety of the Greenblood and cutting off Sunspear from the eastern parts of the region.
With an unbloodied Reacher host, complete Westerosi dominance of the seas, and Daeron's army marching unopposed, the fate of Dorne was effectively sealed. However, the Dornish still put up a staunch resistance and resorted to irregular warfare. Daeron suffered another five thousand casualties, including three thousand alone in the labyrinthine mazes of the shadow city. However, those efforts were not enough, and by 158 A.C., the Prince of Dorne and forty other Dornish lords bent the knee to Daeron I, marking the successful conquest of the region and the temporary unification of the entire continent for the first time in recorded history.
Daeron stayed a year in Dorne to consolidate his rule, before leaving Dorne to Lyonel Tyrell and his host, departing with fourteen noble hostages and his entire army and navy. Daeron would later go on to pen a short memoir on his conquest and the tactics he used. Due to the tactical brilliance of Daeron's campaign, officers are still required to read The Conquest of Dorne to learn about the effective use of shock tactics and the effective employment of cavalry and light infantry.
However, the conquest would be short lived. Days after the Young Dragon's host left for King's Landing, the guerilla campaign flared up again. Although the nobles were ostensibly held in line due to the hostages, the smallfolk grew resentful of their new Targaryen overlords after centuries of being regaled with the atrocities committed by Aegon the Conqueror and the Freehold during the first invasion of Dorne and the Spice Wars respectively.
Even with five thousand reinforcements from Highgarden, Lyonel's host was stretched dangerously thin. Baggage trains would be destroyed in suspicious rockslides, patrols would disappear into the thin air, and supplies would go up into flames or somehow get lost. Eventually, Lyonel set out on a punitive campaign, systematically razing settlements and executing anybody who was aiding the rebels. However, his men could not be everywhere. As soon as they left an area, the ambushes and raids would continue unabated, and as he marched his way to the Red Mountains, the rebels grew more emboldened. Archers and musketmen would pick off officers and knights alike while groups of guerillas would sneak into the camps at night and set them on fire.
By 160 A.C., Lyonel had expended nearly twenty thousand men in attempting to secure Dorne, more than twice the number that had been lost during the actual conquest. The straw that broke the camel's back would be Lyonel's assassination that year. When the lord reached Sandstone, the seat of House Qorgyle, the canopy of the bed he was resting in fell down to reveal a hundred scorpions that quickly stung him to death. As news spread of the Lord Paramount's death, the nobility finally rose in open rebellion, ending the occupation once again.
The Free Cities of Lys and Pentos quickly threw in their support behind the rebellion, after hearing rumours of a potential alliance between the rival city of Braavos and the Iron Throne to clear the Stepstones again. As such, this Dornish rebellion was backed by arms supplied by the two city-states and their combined navies, which posed a formidable force that could rival the Royal Fleet.
By the time Daeron heard word of the rebellion, the nobles had raised a new force of thirty thousand men, with twenty thousand muskets and five and thirty cannons. Nonetheless, Daeron was undeterred, and he led a much larger host of forty thousand Kingsguard consisting of thirty thousand line infantry, six thousand light infantry, two thousand dragoons, two thousand light dragoons, and eighty cannons.
This time, Daeron concentrated his forces and pushed through the Prince's Pass, and the Dornish force decided to meet him in the Red Mountains with their own force. As both forces gradually marched towards each other, the first engagements were skirmishers. The Targaryen light infantry and light dragoons had more guns than the Dornish outriders and scouts, but the Dornish knew the mountains better and used their knowledge to set up traps and ambushes for Daeron's light infantry. In the span of a week, both sides had lost a thousand men each before their main forces even engaged each other.
The first significant engagement was the First Battle of Kingsgrave, when the Dornish stole a march from Daeron's forces, attacking the surprised Targaryen vanguard of three thousand infantry and cavalry with ten thousand men. Despite the shock of the attack, the King's Northern Legion, a brigade largely composed of Northmen led by Rickon Stark, warded off the numerically superior force until dusk, and were able to retreat under the cover of night without suffering heavy casualties. Emboldened by their initial success, the Dornish forces decided to advance further the next day. There, they encountered Rickon, with the brigade and other elements of the vanguard positioned on a ridge overlooking the Dornish forces. As such, the Dornish decided to encamp in order to reorganize their troops for an attack to seize the ridge.
When the sun rose over the Red Mountains, the Dornish formed up for their attack against the King's Northern Legion, only to witness Daeron riding in front of the northerners and rallying them, along with fresh reinforcements rushed to the ridge ahead of the main column. Despite these reinforcements, the Dornish still held a three-to-two numerical advantage and decided to assault the ridge anyways. The subsequent attack was extremely bloody for both sides, but Daeron's forces held. The Targaryens lost four thousand, including half of the King's Northern Legion and Ser Olyvar Oakheart, who was struck by a stray bullet while commanding his forces on the ridge, but the Dornish lost five thousand without any significant gains. With Daeron's main column arriving to reinforce the vanguard, the Dornish decided to retreat, ceding the Prince's Pass to the invading forces in the aftermath of the Second Battle of Kingsgrave.
After retreating, the Dornish host decided to disperse to do what it did best: irregular warfare. Most of the host dispersed in regiment-sized bands that would harry the invading army while retreating as soon as unexpected resistance sprung up, while the remainder retreated to Sunspear to fortify the seat of House Nymeros Martell. As a result, the year would end with Daeron's army chasing ghosts in the desert.
On the seas, the Targaryen force fared much better. Alyn Velaryon crushed the allied fleet of Pentos and Lys, destroying ten ships of the line and five frigates in a pitched battle. With this victory, the Oakenfist once again had free reign of the Stepstones and the Greenblood, which he used to great effect in providing gunfire support to the Targaryen host and keeping a secure supply line running up the river.
Nonetheless, the attrition gradually took its toll on Daeron's forces. The most notable death was Rickon Stark, who died outside the walls of Sunspear when the garrison sallied out against the unprepared besiegers and inflicted disproportionate casualties on Daeron's forces. In addition to Rickon, another five and twenty thousand died in the quagmire of Dorne, as the guerilla bands reaped a devastating toll on Daeron's army through ambushes, traps, raids, and night attacks. Eventually, Daeron and his commanders grew fed up with the increasing body count, and resorted to harsher measures against the smallfolk and nobles that covertly supported the roaming bands of Dornish partisans.
As a result, entire towns were sacked, with more settlements being completely razed to the ground and their population either displaced or massacred. The besieging forces ordered the artillery crews to bombard Sunspear indiscriminately, killing thousands within the shadow city. While fifty thousand men of the Iron Throne would die in Dorne, nearly a hundred thousand civilians were killed, surpassing even the Dance of Dragons in its grim death toll. In total, two hundred thousand died during the campaign, the bloodiest war the continent had seen until Robert's Rebellion a century later.
After several moons in a stalemate and both sides grinding each other down through attrition, the Dornish finally agreed to discuss terms with Daeron and his commanders. However, in an dishonorable act of betrayal, the Dornish drew their swords and pistols in the middle of the discussion and then slew Daeron and three other Kingsguard commanders. The Dornish then captured the other four commanders, including Prince Aemon.
With Daeron's death and the neutralization of their high command, the surviving host decided to withdraw from Dorne, leaving the nation independent once again. Daeron's corpse was brought to a port in the stormlands, now known as the Weeping Town due to the population's sadness at the king's treacherous death.
Daeron was arguably the greatest military mind that the Targaryen dynasty had since Aegon the Conqueror subdued the majority of the continent. He won a string of victories and employed novel tactics with cavalry and light infantry, while conventional Westerosi tactics favored line infantry and artillery following their crucial roles in Aegon's Conquest and the Dance of Dragons. With this military genius, the Young Dragon managed to unify the entire continent for a short period of time. At the same time, Daeron only saw war. His conquest of Dorne was largely unprovoked, and his actions were rash enough that the peace that followed only lasted two years before the region revolted, if the insurgency that cost the lives of twenty thousand men and even more civilians could be called a peace. His atrocities during the second invasion, while militarily sound, were horrific, and many maesters consider him to be a warmonger on the level of Maegor the Cruel, despite earlier maesters glorifying the conquests. Nonetheless, Daeron is held up by the nobility and smallfolk alike as an exemplar of the Targaryen martial prowess that brought the continent under the heel of one house.
A World of Ice and Fire: The Reign of Baelor I by Maester Yandel
Baelor I Targaryen was a stark contrast to Daeron. While Daeron would learn military theory from veterans and tour the Crownlands Royal Military Academy, Baelor often spent his time memorizing the Seven-Pointed Star and touring King's Landing. The newly ascended king was far quieter as well and had a peaceful demeanour and appearance, as opposed to Daeron, who carried himself like the Warrior incarnate.
Baelor was also incredibly pious, to the point where the High Septon himself ordained the prince as a Septon in 155 A.C. Five years later, Viserys wed Baelor to his sister, Princess Daena Targaryen, following a contract that Aegon III wrote for the two siblings prior to his death, but Baelor never consummated the marriage due to his piety and role as a septon.
When Daeron was assassinated in Dorne, Viserys immediately had the highborn hostages slated for execution, but Baelor's first act as king was to free the Dornish nobles. In an unprecedented act of amnesty, Baelor led the fourteen prisoners through the Prince's Pass, clad in only a sackcloth and walking the entire Boneway barefoot while guiding the horses the Dornish hostages rode.
When the king passed through Wyl, he pleaded with Lord Wyl to release his cousin, Prince Aemon Targaryen, who was being held captive by the sadistic house. Despite his pleas, Baelor was unsuccessful and continued on his journey to Sunspear. In what many considered to be a miracle, the young king braved the deserts and storms of Dorne to reach Sunspear in early 162 A.C. In an even larger miracle, Baelor's act of goodwill actually moved the Prince of Dorne, and both managed to hammer out a treaty, which laid the groundwork for Dorne's eventual unification after Baelor's death. In exchange, Baelor promised copious aid and investment in the arid region to rebuild Dorne and uplift the region to the prosperity of the other six kingdoms, as well as a marriage contract between Prince Daeron II and Princess Myriah Martell to cement the union. With the signing of this agreement, Baelor had managed to accomplish in several moons what his elder brother failed to do during his entire reign, de facto incorporate the southern realm into the folds of the now Seven Kingdoms. Although Daeron II would officially integrate Dorne with the Iron Throne, Baelor's actions and legacy would prove essential in convincing Prince Maron to finally bend the knee.
Although the Prince offered Baelor a galley for the journey home, the king decided to walk back to King's Landing in the same manner by which he arrived. Nonetheless, the Prince of Dorne ensured that Baelor was met with open hospitality on the way back, save for one lord. Even with the command of his liege lord, Lord Wyl refused to release the Dragonknight, giving Baelor the key to Aemon's cage but placing the cage over a pit of snakes. Despite the obvious danger the pit presented and Aemon's pleas for his cousin to leave him, Baelor walked into the pit.
Accounts differ on what exactly happened in the pit. On one hand, the Faith's official view is that the snakes bowed their heads before Baelor and did not bite him. On the other extreme, the Dornish, particularly House Wyl, insist that Baelor was bitten over fifty times as he crossed the pit. The Citadel's own consensus is that Baelor was bitten six times, which the maesters estimate to be the amount of venom required to put the king into a coma.
Regardless of how many times the snakes bit Baelor, he entered a coma after freeing Aemon, so Aemon carried his cousin across the Red Mountains until he reached Blackhaven, where the resident maester quickly rushed the two to Storm's End. Baelor eventually woke up at the formidable seat of House Baratheon, and he stayed there for six moons before he recovered enough to make the trip to King's Landing.
Upon Baelor's return to King's Landing, he implemented a series of reforms in line with his pious beliefs. First, he had his marriage to Daena dissolved, citing that the marriage was brokered without his consent and was never consummated, before sequestering Daena Targaryen and her two other sisters - Rhaena and Elaena - in a part of the Red Keep that would be later called the Maidenvault. Nearly every protested this decision, from Viserys to the three sisters to half the small council, but Baelor refused to budge on this notion.
Next, Baelor would focus his reforms on the Faith of the Seven. Following the purges by Maegor, the Faith was a shadow of its former self, no longer able to wield the power that kept gunpowder from Westeros and united multiple houses against Aegon the Conqueror. Corruption was rampant across the clergy, with septons embezzling money from their vast territories and committing the very same sins they themselves preached against. To compound these problems, new schools of thought arose among the nobility and within the maesters that espoused the importance of humanity over the gods and even outright rejected their existence, thanks to the advent of secular education in the form of the Bastions and the proliferation of copies of the Seven-Pointed Star with the printing press. Baelor's experience prior to being ordained made him well-aware of the faults within the Faith, so he decided to spearhead a new revival of the faith alongside the eager High Septon.
Baelor's reforms are far too complex to adequately summarize in a few paragraphs, so I recommend Maester Haereg's book Of Trees, Statues, and the Sea: The History of Religious Thought in Westeros for an in-depth analysis of Baelor's reforms to the Faith, now called the Targaryen Reformation. Nonetheless, I will attempt to briefly summarize his primary reforms, which led to a resurgence in belief and by proxy, the power of the Faith. Baelor was immensely lucky that the High Septon had a similar vision for the religion, one of individual faith and fervor rather than the might of the organization itself, and they both worked together to radically reform the Faith for the first time since the Andals landed on the continent.
First, Baelor sent out holy brothers from the septries, converting them to iternant septons that travelled around the continent solely dedicated to spreading the principles of the Seven-Pointed Star by preaching to everyone, from the smallfolk in the countryside to crowds of thousands in major cities.
Baelor then expanded the charitable missions of the Faith. Various monastic orders suddenly experienced an influx of coins from the Iron Throne, as Baelor commissioned them to expand their roles, from providing education, supporting orphanages and poorhouses, and offering basic healthcare to the poor.
Baelor's third reform was organizational in nature. The Most Devout, who typically congregated in the opulent septs of the major cities, were ordered to preside over six score primacies throughout the continent, where they would oversee the septs and eliminate any corruption or impiety within the Faith.
Most importantly, Baelor and the High Septon published a letter addressed to all the clergy and spread throughout the entirety of the Seven Kingdoms which would fundamentally change the Faith of the Seven. The letter, now known as the 77 Theses, was a collection of seven and seventy statements emphasizing three fundamental principles: everybody is sinful in the eyes of the Seven Who Are One, only through belief in the Seven can they be saved from damnation in the seven hells, and faith inherently leads to good works and deeds. While the Faith did practice these principles to some extent - several earlier edicts prior to Aegon's Conquest accepted the first two principles and outlawed theological positions which opposed those doctrines - they were never at the forefront of the Faith's doctrine.
These reforms would lead to a resurgence in piety as the smallfolk felt the impact of Targaryen Reformation, from the fervor of the travelling itinerant preachers to the expanded welfare provided by the septs and septries. The coffers of the Faith swelled even with the expanded programs, as the highborn and smallfolk alike increased their donations.
However, not all was well within the Faith. The suddenness and the scale of the reforms, which were implemented in less than a year, brought staunch opposition from much of the clergy. At first, this manifested in minor slights, such as septons denying the itinerant preachers space within their sept to preach or members of the Most Devout simply refusing to tour this jurisdiction. Over time, the opposition grew more emboldened and heightened their refusal to accept Baelor's reforms. The conservative faction began to outright preach against the 77 Theses and began shuttering Baelor's welfare programs and driving itinerant preachers completely out of cities and towns.
In 166 A.C., things came to a head when seven members of the Most Devout burned an itinerant preacher at the stake for spreading heresies. Both Baelor and the High Septon asked for the entirety of the Most Devout to convene at Longtable, a middle ground between King's Landing and Oldtown, the center of the conservative opposition. Both sides acquiesced and met at Longtable to debate the future of the Faith of the Seven. For seven weeks, the Council of Longtable debated the theological foundation behind the Targaryen reforms. The most famous incident occurred when Baelor stood up and talked for the entire day, from dawn to dusk, about his reforms and their justification within the Seven-Pointed Star. Despite this impressive feat, the conservatives remained staunchly opposed to the Targaryen Reformation, so both sides decided to split.
At the end of the seven weeks, ravens sent out the Edict of Longtable, which separated the conservative branch of the Faith - which would be called Alvarism for their leader, Septon Alvar - from the reformists, who formally retained the name of the Faith of the Seven. Informally, the Alvarites called themselves the Faith of the Seven and called Baelor's faction "Baelorism" and its followers "Baelorites." Alvarism would become predominant in the southern portions of the Reach due to the Alvarites declaring the Starry Sept as the center of their new denomination and the Vale thanks to the region's staunchly conservative nobility and its history as the landing point of the Andals. Nonetheless, the Faith of the Seven remained strong despite the schism and actually saw an increase of membership through the loss of some of their constituency to Alvarism.
At the same time, Baelor focused on charity and piety within the framework of his government. In 164 A.C., he implemented a new welfare system run by the Iron Throne. The Dragonstone System, as both Baelor and his small council called it, would be the first secular welfare system on the continent, which consisted of two parts: the workhouses and grain subsidies.
Both Baelor and Viserys were aware of the unemployment caused by the population boom in King's Landing and other cities, so they sought to employ those able-bodied men and women to reduce this unemployment. The solution would be workhouses, new buildings erected for the explicit purpose of housing and employing able-bodied smallfolk until they could get back on their feet. These workhouses would provide room, board, and a marginal wage in exchange for menial labour for the Royal Works, such as chopping down trees for timber or preparing sewage and manure for processing into saltpeter.
The second part of the Dragonstone System would be direct payments to smallfolk during price increases in grain. Baelor declared that should prices rise to six pennies for a loaf of bread, the head of each poor household would get a weekly payment of one star, with an additional halfgroat per week for each additional direct family member. Moreover, these payments would scale proportionally with the increase in price. For instance, should the price of a loaf of bread rise up to twelve pennies per loaf, the subsidies would double from the base subsidy rate.
The plan proved to be immensely popular with the smallfolk, and the trial period within the crownlands showed that the Dragonstone System's cost was partially recouped by the labour in the workhouses, allowing the remainder of the costs to be absorbed by the budget surplus. Soon, the Lords Paramount adopted the system within their own realms and cities, creating a comprehensive welfare system that helped lift up and employ tens of thousands of smallfolk.
While the Dragonstone System caused little controversy, aside from minor grumblings about how the smallfolk were lazy and training the treasury, Baelor's next move was much more controversial.
In 165 A.C., Baelor banned prositution in King's Landing, citing its immorality and the spread of venereal diseases within the city and among Kingsguard. This immediately sent much of the city into uproar, and a dozen gold cloaks were injured in the unrest following Baelor's decree. Nonetheless, Baelor refused to budge, despite pleas from nearly every social strata about the necessity of prostitutes as a "necessary evil."
That same year, Baelor commissioned the construction of a grand sept according to a vision he purportedly had while sleeping. The Sept of Baelor, as it would be known upon its completion, would take three decades to complete with engineers and architects drawn from across the known world in a feat that would cost over a hundred thousand gold dragons. Baelor would not live to see its completion, but upon its opening, the Great Sept of Baelor would become the crowning achievement of Westerosi architecture.
The Sept is a massive construction that is the largest building by mass in Westeros, and its height is second only to the Hightower and the Wall. The sept proper boasts massive statues of the Seven-Who-Are-One and is able to host thousands within its walls. However, the crowning architectural achievement is the dome that lies above the sept supported by a set of seven stone chains that lay over each of the statutes of the Seven as well as a secondary shell, allowing the dome to span 60 yards across, eclipsing even the Valyrian concrete domes of Volantis in size.
In time, the Sept would become the spiritual center for the Faith and the Targaryens, to the point where the dynasty would perform all its ceremonies, from marriages to consecrations to funerals, within the Sept.
In the years following the Edict of Longtable, Baelor turned his attention to fulfilling the promises he made to the Dornish. In 169 A.C., immediately after Prince Daeron II turned sixteen, he wed the prince to Myriah Martell in a lavish ceremony. Following the marriage, Baelor proceeded to commission massive infrastructure projects in Dorne, fulfilling the second part of the treaty.
Like the Great Sept of Baelor, most of these projects would be finished long after Baelor's death, but they would bring an economic boom to the region, developing a previously arid wasteland into a dominant regional power, able to contend with the Free Cities and the Stormlands in economic standing.
Of Baelor's projects, two of them are of particular significance. The first is the Kingsgrave Aqueduct, which routed water from the reservoirs and springs in the Red Mountains hundreds of miles to the Tor and the banks of the Scourge, transforming the arid holdings of House Jordayne into a fertile plains as further irrigation projects utilized the water to grow Dornish crops.
The second major project would be the expansion of the Royal Works and subsidized prospecting in Dorne. Thanks to its climate and geology, Dorne had copious mineral deposits along its southern shore and in the Red Mountains, but the focus on subsistence farming in the poor climate of Dorne meant that very few of these despots were exploited. To rectify this, Baelor ordered the expansion of the Royal Works into Dorne to capitalize on these deposits, most notably the sulfur deposits at the headwaters of the Brimstone and saltpeter deposits along the salt flats of Salt Shore. In addition, Baelor commissioned dozens of maesters and Essosi prospectors to scour geographic records and search the Red Mountains for exploitable mineral deposits.
In total, Baelor invested over a million gold dragons into developing Dorne, but the results were worth it. Dornish agriculture bloomed in previously desolate lands, providing Dorne with an agricultural surplus and creating a population boom that lasted for nearly a century. The Royal Works found both abundant saltpeter and sulfur in Dorne, to the point where Dorne accounted for a third of saltpeter production and a fourth of sulfur production of the entire continent by 225 A.C. Finally, the prospecting missions found plenty of mineral deposits, primarily those of tin, silver, iron, and lead. Geologic records and various maester estimate that Baelor's prospectors found over three million dragons worth of ore veins and deposits in the Red Mountains, which led to a boom in mining towns that further drew in immigrants and brought increased prosperity to Dorne in a period now known as the Dornish Renaissance.
Despite the achievements he made, Baelor's health took a turn for the worse in 170 A.C. The king never truly recovered from his poisoning in Wyl while saving his brother, and the venom began to take a toll on his mental health over the years. For most of his reign, this manifested as convulsions and hallucinations, which increased in frequency starting in 168 A.C. Despite the concerns of the small council and Grand Maester Munkun, Baelor simply insisted that these symptoms were visions from the Seven. Furthermore, Baelor's mind grew more addled by the venom, and he started performing downright fanatic actions in the name of the Faith. In 170 A.C., he began forcing lords to wash the feet of smallfolk in front of the entire royal court, attempted to replace ravens with doves, and burned countless books within the Royal Library which he deemed heretical.
At the end of the year, the final straw came with Princess Daena's pregnancy, despite her sequestration in the Maidenvault. As a result, Baelor fasted for forty days and forty nights straight, seeking answers from the Seven about Daena's bastard, Daemon Waters. However, the fast proved too much for Baelor's body, and he collapsed a day later, dying shortly thereafter, Although the general consensus within the Citadel is that Baelor died of complications due to the fast, some Maesters and the Faith insist someone poisoned the king, whether it be the Alvarites for the Targaryen Reformation or Viserys trying to preserve Baelor's legacy before he descended into total madness.
Baelor remains one of the most beloved kings, if not the most beloved king among the general population of the continent. For the vast majority of the smallfolk, they remember Baelor for his generous welfare programs and the revitalization of the Faith, leading to his moniker "Baelor the Blessed." In Dorne, both the aristocracy and the gentry call the king "Baelor the Builder," for his projects that did much to rebuild and revitalize Dorne following his brother's actions during the conquest of Dorne. However, in the spiritual strongholds of the Alvarites, the public holds Baelor in a much lower esteem, largely for sundering the Faith and reforming the religion in ways that they deemed heretical. In those regions, such as parts of the Reach and the Vale, Baelor is known as a zealous lackwit that turned the population away from the rightful doctrine of the Seven. Despite all his good deeds, which immensely benefited the realm, Baelor's final year and his occasional instances of zealotry tainted his reputation amongst the nobility, but even then, most lords and ladies still regard the pious king as one of the greatest Targaryen royals.
A World of Ice and Fire: The Reign of Viserys II by Maester Yandel
After close to thirty years of serving as the Hand of the King for three successive kings, Viserys II assumed the Iron Throne, as Baelor left no heirs. Initially, his right to succession was contested by Daena Targaryen, the eldest daughter of Aegon III and Baelor's former wife, but Daena's sequestration in the Maidenvault left her with little political power. When combined with the stigma of another woman assuming the throne out of both tradition and the memory of Rhaenyra's abysmal reign, Daena's claim to the throne was quickly shot down by the court.
In practice, Viserys' reign was the continuation of his tenure as Hand of the King. Aegon III did not involve himself in governmental affairs due to his trauma and depression, Daeron gallivanted off to Dorne for the entirety of his reign, and Baelor was focused on his own projects rather than the general state of the realm. As such, Viserys essentially ran the Seven Kingdoms as the Hand of the King, procuring the dragons to support Daeron and Baelor's endeavors while piloting his own reforms with the rest of the small council. Nonetheless, there are several notable events which occurred during his official reign as Lord of the Seven Kingdoms.
First, Viserys commissioned the construction of a palace atop the remains of the Dragonpit, which lay in ruins since its destruction during the Dance of Dragons. With the destruction of the Dragonpit, the gold cloaks relocated to the Red Keep, as the only other defensible position within King's Landing. In addition, the Red Keep was starting to become a huge financial drain due to its sheer size and was slowly becoming ill-suited to host events and foreign dignitaries due to its primary function as a fortress. The new palace would not only resolve these problems by giving a dedicated keep to the gold cloaks and moving the Targaryens to a more modern palace fit for receiving royals and leaders from across the known world, but it would also bring the Targaryens back in line with the rest of the Westerosi aristocracy, of whom the vast majority had already abandoned their castles due to the unnecessary cost and obsolescence as a fortification.
More importantly, Viserys opened diplomatic talks with the Free Cities in an effort to promote trade across the Narrow Sea. Conflicts over the Stepstones and the impact of Lyseni Spring meant that all Free Cities, save Braavos, started hitting Westerosi merchants with crippling import and export tariffs, slowing down the trade across the Narrow Sea. To do this, he sent the first permanent diplomatic missions overseas to all nine of the Free Cities, marking the first time that the Iron Throne had permanent envoys to foreign nations. All missions were successful to some extent, with both sides agreeing to remove some trade barriers between the two states, but the true legacy of Viserys' diplomatic efforts would be the establishment of embassies as far as Qarth and diplomatic overtures to nations as far as Asshai by subsequent kings, finally connecting Westeros with the known world and drastically increasing trade as the Iron Throne gained concessions and lowered tariffs.
Seven moons into Viserys' reign, a Braavosi delegation arrived, both to set up a permanent embassy and to propose a novel offer: rights to the lands beyond the Wall and Skagos. While Viserys had the tact to not break down into laughter at the proposal, he was incredulous of the proposal, as both regions had an exceptionally harsh climate for what the king saw as a desolate wasteland. As the Braavosi envoys proceeded to further explain their position, the king realized that they were serious about the proposal and began negotiating earnlest with the Braavosi about the rights to these lands.
Essentially, the Braavosi needed raw resources, most notably timber, iron, and food, to fuel their growing economy, and the lands on the northern fringe of the Seven Kingdoms offered these resources in abundance. These regions were also home to the Skagosi and the wildings, both of whom were notoriously hostile groups, but they lacked the industry for gunpowder and steel, giving the Braavosi a significant advantage over the natives.
After a flurry of correspondences between King's Landing, Lord Jonnel Stark, and Lord Commander Robart Boggs over the course of a moon, both sides hammered out a deal. Braavos would gain all territory beyond the Wall and Skane in perpetuity, while also gaining a 100 year lease on all mineral and fishing rights around Skagos and the western coast of the Lands Beyond the Wall. In return, the Iron Throne received a direct payment of a ninety thousand gold dragons and a reduction in tariffs for Westerosi merchants lasting a decade, House Stark received ten thousand gold dragons and a team of Braavosi engineers that would help build windmills and pumps to drain the area surrounding Moat Cailin, and the Night's Watch received a shipment of a thousand guns and three cannons.
As a result of the Skagos Purchase, as it became known, the Free City of Braavos suddenly gained the nominal rights to over a hundred millions of acres of land, making it the third-largest nation by land area in the known world, with only Yi Ti and the Seven Kingdoms greater in size (although if one counts the various khals in the Dothraki Sea as one entity, the Dothraki would have a larger area than Braavos. Soon, trappers and fishing boats soon began arriving across the Shivering Sea, and by 200 A.C., a handful of small settlements and ports started emerging to sustain the growing economy of these new Braavosi lands.
For the Seven Kingdoms, the most notable effect of the Skagos Purchase would be the start of the Moat Cailin reclamation efforts with the loaning of Braavosi engineers who helped drained the marshland, which would start over half a century of drainage projects by the Starks that would eventually eliminate their dependency on southern kingdoms for grain imports and transform the previously abandoned ruins of Moat Cailin into a sizeable metropolis.
The final act of Viserys' reign would be a reform of Jaehaerys' Code, which added a slew of financial crimes and revised some punishments written with the code. However, the most significant change was the establishment of the Royal Iters, a series of commissioned maesters with extensive knowledge of Jaehary's Code that would tour the Seven Kingdoms to ensure that the lords were adequately enforcing the law. In practice, the lords had advance warning of the Royal Iters and would put on a show for the maesters while flouting Jaehaerys' Code as soon as they left. Nonetheless, the Royal Iters would serve as precursors to a more centralized justice system that would be further developed under Daeron II and Aegon IV.
With these significant reforms, many thought that Viserys was on the path to having a long and prosperous reign, like that of the Jaehaerys. However, in 172 A.C., Viserys fell ill suddenly and died days after falling sick. The speed at which Viserys fell ill and the Grand Maester's inability to diagnose Viserys' sickness has led to a popular school of thought at the Citadel that Aegon IV poisoned him to assume the throne, but such theories are little more than conjecture until further evidence can be found.
Viserys II presided over some of the largest modernization efforts in Westerosi history. Under his watch as Hand of the King and later as Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, Viserys directed copious infrastructure investments, the reformation of the Kingsguard, the establishment of a comprehensive welfare system, and the further centralization of authority to the hands of the Lords Paramount and the Iron Throne, among countless other accomplishments that would fill an entire book. Despite all his accomplishments as Hand of the King, Viserys is not well known, and recent campaigns by the Faith of the Seven have smeared his legacy by insinuating he poisoned Baelor I. As such, he remains an oft-overlooked king in contemporary discussions of the Targaryens. Should he have lived out his life in full, we might have seen the Seven Kingdoms reach even greater heights and not suffer under the tyrannical reign of Aegon the Unworthy.
Author's Note:
So three kings!
For Daeron, I hope that I wrote out the battles decently. I took inspiration from several battles during the Peninsular War, since I think Dorne is analogous to Napoleonic Spain in some regards (warmer climate, guerilla warfare, a primarily agrarian economy, etc.). In addition, the Conquest is much more violent than in canon, which I also modelled off the collateral damage and destruction during the Peninsular War.
For Baelor, I portrayed him in a much better light, primarily because I didn't see why Baelor should nessacarily be overly zealous to the point of making stupid decisions, aside from the explanation of snake venom. Also, Baelor seemed to be the person to both reform the Faith and generously spend in welfare and aid due to his piety. The Targaryen Reformation was inspired by a combination of the First Great Awakening, the Protestant Reformation, and the Counter-Reformation, which I thought was necessary for religion to still be significant enough to have a influence in the War of the Five Kings.
The greatest deviation from canon during Viserys' reign would be the Skagos Purchase. Namely, I am setting things up for the Wildlings to still be relevant by the time the books happen. I plan for Braavos to be similar to late 18th century Canada, so few settlements on the eastern coast (I plan for Hardhome, Skane, and a logging town at the mouth of the Antler River) and trading posts primarily for the fur trade. Also, the wildlings get limited gunpowder with these trades as well, and Stannis can also make a deal with Braavos when he heads north .
The infrastructure developments in the North and Dorne are primarily to make both regions competitive against the other regions of the Seven Kingdoms, since a desert or tundra wasteland won't be able to field a large standing army otherwise.
Next up will likely be Aegon IV and Daeron II, with an appendix or interlude focusing on the modernization efforts of the Lords Paramount.
Finally, I am nearly 2/3rds of the way done with this history (I plan to go up until the end of the Greyjoy Rebellion). After that, I'll switch over to a narrative format.
As always, feedback on my writing style or worldbuilding is appreciated.