VIII
The vile, cowardly and ignoble murder of Archon Aerion of Dragonstone, rider of Balerion and sire to the Conquerors, is viewed by many as the catalyst that led to the meteoric and ferocious rise of House Targaryen as the most dominant power in the Known World, one spurred upon by ancient enmities and the ascent of the greatest conqueror, ruler, scholar, and warrior the world would ever see, Viserys the First of His Name, the man who ruled all of Westeros and would one day take on the title of Emperor of the Valyrians.
Yet, before the man that history would come to know as Viserys the Vanquisher launched his numerous conquests, one must go over the years he spent consolidating his power at a time where the Targaryens were at their most vulnerable, with only a three-and-ten nameday boy at its helm. Yet, that boy was not some common, cowardly wastrel encumbered by self-doubt and indecision. In his writings shortly after Viserys of Dragonstone's arrival upon Driftmark, the Lord of the Tides of the time, Daemon Velaryon, brother to Valaena Velaryon, our Most Venerated Lord and Master's mother, wrote:
'The Archon's heir withers not in the face of this new adversity, as he so wily coins it, but, instead thrives like dry tinder given to flame. His intellect and intuition rivals that of the finest of our ancient scholars, of Volarr the Younger and Aen the Harpy Bane. Of Gaenyx from whom Valyria's philosophy flourished and his daughter Gaella from whose encephalon came our lost motherland's great dragon ships of Orros. A Gaella in-the-making he seems from what I can grok from his obsession with improving upon the mighty fleet my late father, dearest cousin, and I have spent half our lifetimes working on. Nay! This statement I must retract for he seeks to make even Gaella the Shipwright seem some callow imbecile. He is but five, yet as eloquent and articulate as the most potent of orators, with eyes reflecting the nightsky, a colouring of his sire's, although his face, though still plump with the seedlings of youth, bears an immaculate resemblance to that of the Archontissa's, my dearest and most beloved sister, Valaena. Already he rides his dragon as well as any other, coaxing her with nary a touch of his whip or spoken word. Even bound to the earth, he spends his days steering a mount, mayhaps even better on horseback than on dragonback, taking part in games of Eight Sticks with his cousins, my eldest two, Aethan and Daenora, both of whom he gets along rather well with, particularly with the latter with whom he has taken up the habit of refining his touch with the harp and lyre. Exceptional alone would be an insult to his unquenchable, fiery brilliance. I am of the thought that even the fable Sra'ach the Taleteller would have found it hard to spin a tale worthy of him.'
The first Navarch's words may not have been as glib as his daughter's, yet there was truth in them all the same. From the moment of his birth, Viserys Targaryen gained a reputation for his austere nature, a trait that had many label him to fear his dark moods and fear even more gaining his abhorrence. From his mother's written accounts, we are able to glean much. As a babe born in purple, he spent whole days contemplating, hardly making a sound lest his mother came to feed him, wherein he would violently protest and cry. He quickly grew into a precocious and inquisitive child, a lover of sword and scroll in equal measure and blessed by the Fourteen with the dragon dreams of his ancestors.
His bold, fearless nature made itself known in even his earliest years. At the age of only five namedays, he claimed the storied dragon Vhagar of the bronze scales and emerald eyes, an act that resulted in him being sent to the island of his uncle where he would act as a cupbearer, as his lordship makes note of in the extract above. Never one to give up, Viserys, son of Aerion and Valaena, instead spent his time on Driftmark beginning the first of his many projects.
The introduction of the now famous four-field crop rotation to the island of Driftmark made the low-lying, fertile island produce up to half over the usual yield of crops in scarce four years. During this time, Viserys also began the world-famous Targaryen Glassworks Company, an initially small venture that soon grew to rival Myr in the quality of its glass in time.
His greatest invention though is without a doubt the dragon ships of Westeros, a design that transformed sailing as we know it and began the famous Westerosi Age of Sail where hundreds of shipyards sprouted like mushrooms along all the port cities of Westeros and plans for the eventual circumnavigations of Planetos came to light. With copper bottomed hulls, sails as far as the eye could see and the introduction of techniques such as 'tacking', the dragon ships outclassed all other types of ships, even the famed swan ships of the Summer Islands and revolutionised trade between the East and the West. The later inventions of the compass and the sextant both further improved the sailing capacities of the Westerosi. The discovery of the Silk Route, charting of the Sunrise Sea and the founding of the western continent of Rhaenos by Prince Rahaedar the Mariner in between the years 26-31 AVC (After Viserys's Conquest), and Lady Elissa Farman's charting of the lands of Ulthos and Sothoryos are also worthy of mention, though I must direct you to "The Sea Dragon's journey" written by the own hand of Prince Rahaedar, and "The Wild, the Savage and the Untamed: A Perilous Voyage" based off the personal accounts of Lady Elissa and written by the much lauded historian Edgarth Dyser for more in-depth retellings.
Even so, Viserys Targaryen's pioneering earned him many enemies over his long reign and the first on such a long list came in the form of hired rogues, the seedy ilk of the bowels of far-off Duskendale, employed to assassinate the youth.
While accounts vary and thus, we can only speculate on who truly had employed the assassin, all reports agree a Faceless Man of Braavos had the one who dealt the blow. If not for the then Archon's heir Viserys' prowess at arms and Archon Aerion's bravery, both father and son would have perished in indignity, and no doubt their line would have died out shortly after in a series of 'mishaps' paid for in gold, blood and treachery, the keystones of all whom have tried to stand against the dragonlords.
The captured rogues were tortured in the manner of the Valyrians into revealing who it was who had informed them of the hunt. It was swiftly found that a guard had been the one who had plotted to bring the dragons to heel, already having given himself up for clemency for his family. Volantene honors had been used as the form of payment, a ploy no doubt that wished to inspire suspicion over Volantis' involvement. It mattered not where he was in truth, or even who he was. The glass candles of Old Valyria would have found the dead body of the man whose face had been stolen from him, and its magics would uncover any slyness that the assassin would have used to cover for his failure. The man was swiftly arrested and with the arcane knowledge Viserys had gained from his dreams, his true identity was swiftly revealed by use of Valyrian sorcery unknown to the us.
For his part in Archon Aerion's murder, the man was clad in armour, after days of unrelenting torture, before being hung over the parapets. Down below, the boy's ever-growing dragon Vhagar used her hot breath to slowly cook him alive, perhaps an accurate representation of Archon Viserys' unforgiving nature.
The bandits were no doubt given similar deaths though the nature of them eludes us to this day. It can be confirmed however that all involved in the murder were eventually given to Vhagar to gorge on.
The suspected masterminds behind the plot are too many to list yet I will name some of the prime suspects. The most obvious and the most powerful of them all was said to be Sealord of Braavos, Irro Vollaris, the ruler of the Bastard Daughter of Valyria and a man noted for his dislike of the Valyrians and his reckless nature when dealing with them. Given his eventual fate and Braavos' eventual reckoning, it is likely that he was indeed the one who ordered the murders to take place out of nothing but sheer paranoia, something that would turn his name into the most hateful, most denigrating of curses upon many a Braavosi lip.
Even so, some name Myr's magisters who were growing wary of the fledgling Targaryen Glassworks Company and their ever-weakening hold on the Known World's glass industry. Others go so far as to name the False Septon of the West whom they declare had been blessed with visions from the Seven to eliminate the boy who later would become known as "Destroyer of the Faith" when he was still in his boyhood. This however can safely be dismissed as propaganda crafted by the few rebellious septons and septas still reeling from the justful defanging of the Faith of the Seven during the short-lived Faith Militant Uprising in the aftermath of the Submission of Oldtown by the King of all Westeros and his Queen.
The Lannisters are also named in regards to the prophecy that had predicted the gold of Casterly Rock would lead to Valyria's ruin (another likely baseless accusation with no real veracity behind it) while some believe that Volantis had been the ones who ordered the coup after the young dragonlord had spurned their offer of an alliance, a suspicion buoyed upon by the presence of the Volantene coins the bandits were paid with (though it must be noted Archon Viserys Targaryen still maintained a peaceful relationship with Volantis during the direct aftermath of this period and even visited the city during his tour of Essos to mark his manhood some years later).
In the aftermath of such a harrowing situation, Archon Viserys decided he would deal with those who had claimed his father's life and almost his as well with blood and fire. Calling forth the Targaryen and Velaryon fleet, he made his way towards Valyria's Bastard Daughter to deal with the Faceless Men and the long growing thorn in Valyria's side: Braavos.
Perhaps it is now best to describe the nature of this once powerful guild and its prominence in the Bastard Daughter of Valyria. Said to have been born during the days of Old Valyria herself, the mysterious organisation was viewed by all contemporaries as the finest and most efficient of all assassin's guilds though it was also the one that asked for the costliest of prices. They did not ask for a specified amount of gold as repayment. Rather, they demanded as great a price as one is willing to accept. To some, the lives of their sons and daughters, to others a kingdom's weight in spices. Some said they worked directly under the Iron Bank and the Sealord, others claimed they held no affiliation to anyone but themselves.
On the fourteenth day of the eighth moon in the eighty-sixth year since the Doom of Valyria, the enormous shadow of Vhagar engulfed Braavos, bathing the Titan of Braavos in bronze flames shot through with emerald green, killing the over a hundred men that held the battlements. The Titan, once the beacon of mighty Braavos, withered under mighty Vhagar's roil, its bronze upper body melted until molten runnels of the metal ran down the stone archway it was built upon and into the steaming sea. There was no roar to welcome the Velaryon and Targaryen fleet, only the screams of men as they were burnt alive.
Then, Archon Viserys took Vhagar high up in the sky, until Vhagar was no bigger than a fly before the sun, her scales gleaming like beaten bronze until they dove, landing upon the domed ceiling of the House of Black and White and causing it to crumble under her immense weight. Again, Vhagar spit her bronze flames onto the building, the fire spreading from bridge to bridge, then home to home, temple to temple until half the buildings along the Canal of Heroes were aflame.
A heavily distorted account by a bitter, vengeful, and uneducated fishmonger of the Isles says:
'The demon came from above, with scales of bronze that burned the eyes. Even miles away, I felt the thunder of her descent and the scorch of her fires. Men burnt. Women burnt. Children burnt. They all caught aflame, filling the streets with wails that shattered even the finest of windows and a scent I can sadly recount that smelled of roasted pig. I had jumped into the cold waters shortly after, hoping the cover of the sea may spare me from the horrors of Old Valyria. But I still see them, even five years later. I still see the corpses, still smell the char of cooked human flesh, still see that small bird grow larger and larger until it seemed to blot out the son. The abominable seed of the Slavers I did not see, but his carnage... His bloodletting will damn him to all the hells known to us, as it did his motherland, Gods willing.'
Only when the House of Black and White had been reduced to smoulder did Vhagar take flight again, this time towards the Sealord's Palace where she interrupted the man's planned escape on one of his gilded galleys with its sails of purple and gold, modeled so richly upon the own unlawful garb of their main benefactor. Only after setting fire to the evident blaspheme of each heinous ship, already so poor a model to the superior vessels of Dragonstone, did Viserys leap down from his saddle. It was said the very foundations of the Sealord's palace shook from Vhagar's roar alone, and that enclaves nearby shuddered and shook in massive quakes of earth that spewed into the sea. Dressed in bronze scale armour with a helm modelled after a roaring dragon, the young Archon of Dragonstone cut an imposing and dangerous figure all sources agree. Upon his shoulders hung a cloak of the finest purple trimmed with gold, the colours of not the heir, but the Archon. The colours that only those that bear the crown, ring and sceptre are allowed in all lands known to man. Dark Sister was belted at his side, its ruby as red as the garnets that lined its ebon sheath. The Sealord, spineless and faint-hearted as he was, unsurprisingly yielded without protest, ordering his guards to put down their arms, whereupon he prostrated in front of the boy and begged for mercy.
As a scholar had been a part of their party, the words these two shared are still remembered to this day.
"I come here on behalf of all Valyrians," Viserys said, speaking in a stern manner. "Let it be known anyone who dares interfere with us again will meet the same fate as the Faceless Men. Next time Targaryen blood, blood borne by those closer to Gods than your ilk, is spilt by the descendants of mangy dogs, we will come again, mongrel. We will come armed and ready with the might of the Gods themselves at our beckoning, sufficiently aroused to show you what a true dragon's wroth looks like. And you will pray your ancestors, son of helots, had died toiling in the mines of Valyria."
"Braavos is yours, my Archon," was the Sealord's response. Cowardly mayhaps but most wise, even from one so bereft of wit.
To that, the rider of Vhagar replied in a disgusted manner, his smoky sword lifted towards the black-hearted, loathsome, setentious milksop, "A craven and a schemer dressed in colours you have no right to. You will be glad to know I care not a whit about your isles. Thank your Many Faced God it was one dragon you provoked and not Valyria herself, else, I fear this city would be naught but ashes and bones. I do not think my ancestors would have even wasted their salt on sowing such barren land, and neither will I. Consider this my mercy and kneel, dog."
The Sealord did not dare counter under the threat of dragonfire. Instead, he cut off his own silks, kissed the ends of our glorious father's cloak, and agreed to a peace treaty with the Targaryens that ended any possibility of war between Braavos and House Targaryen, one that dismantled the mighty Arsenal of Braavos and its Iron Bank, burned all the gold-and-purple the Braavosi had been foolish enough to claim from their betters. and paid a lofty tribute of gold and silver, rolls of silk and ships bursting with spices to the scions of Valyria every year for the foreseeable future, a sum said to have been enough to bankrupt many a kingdom.
Even so, the veil of false friendship would not last long…
- Excerpt from Fire and Blood, an Empire Forged with Fire by High Archivist Elizer Nalor of King's College, with special permission from the Crown.
A/N: 8 out of 21. Will probably take a bit to post these chapters given I'm giving them all a clear facelift. Note that this is a heavily biased account meant to portray Viserys as in the right. The truth is different, but we can only find out about it once the excerpts are done and we go back to POV chapters after a short timeskip.