After the core of the Blackfyre rebellion was broken on Redgrass Field, the subsequent months were marked by the pacification of the remaining revolting forces. The Blackfyre allies besieging Casterly Rock and those defending the various castles of the Dornish Marches surrendered upon news of the defeat at Redgrass Field, with their armies dispersing and their lords surrendering themselves to the justice of the Iron Throne and the Lords Paramount.
Similarly, the remnants of the Blackfyre host disbanded less than a sennight after Redgrass Field, having decided that there was no point in pursuing a conflict against a fully unified Westeros for the time being. However, the Blackfyre cause was not fully extinguished. The last night before the army dispersed, Aegor swore an oath before the entire camp to not rest until Daemon was avenged and the Blackfyres sat on the Iron Throne, and virtually the entire officer corps swore the same oath immediately thereafter. Afterwards, Aegor announced his intentions to head to Essos and seek allies to seize the Iron Throne.
As the 2nd century AC wound down, those officers who swore the oath slowly trickled over to Essos, starting with Aegor, who managed to flee to Tyrosh with Daemon's surviving family and Blackfyre. While a much smaller share of the rank and file were dedicated enough to uproot their lives and cross the Narrow Sea, some did, resulting in nearly fifteen hundred men joining Aegor in Essos. More soldiers and officers from the regional levies that supported Daemon headed east as well, choosing to flee the continent instead of submitting themselves before Targaryen justice.
These exiles would lay the foundation for the Golden Company, although it would take years for Aegor to unify all the exiles under a single banner. For now, these disparate forces largely acted as independent mercenaries forming units no larger than a company, fighting skirmishes across the breadth of Western Essos.
After the flight of Aegor, the kingdom now had to deal with the rebelling nobility and territories. All houses that directly supported Daemon had various punishments meted out, often varying by region.
In the Reach, Lord Leo Tyrell seized swathes of the Dornish Marches, most notably Dustonbury and Whitegrove, reorganizing them into a region administered directly under Highgarden known as the Rose Marches. There were other territorial adjustments that seized land from rebellious houses and gave them to the Tyrells or loyal houses that performed admirably during the rebellion, such as the transfer of nearly a third of House Osgrey's lands to House Webber. Hostages were also sent to both Highgarden and King's Landing to ensure the continued loyalty of the rebels in the Reach.
In the Stormlands, the Baratheons stripped the Marcher Lords of their ability to directly raise soldiers in times of war, instead imposing a "defense tax" on the domains of the rebelling houses to fund an army directly under the control of House Baratheon. Hostages and indemnities were also sent to Storm's End as reparations for the houses' participation in the Blackfyre Rebellion.
Due to Lord Damon Lannister's abysmal performance in the First Blackfyre Rebellion, the rebellious lords in the Westerlands were barely punished by Casterly Rock, for fear that a harsher punishment would result in backlash from the Westerlands nobility that could destabilize House Lannister's position. As such, only a light indemnity and hostages were taken from the houses that rebelled in the Westerlands.
House Tully largely punished the rebels by playing off internal divisions, ordering hostages to be sent to rival houses or Riverrun and altering boundaries in favor of loyalist houses. For instance, House Bracken had to send wards to House Blackwood and cede hundreds of acres to their longstanding rival. However, House Tully did not make any effort to centralize their own power out of concerns for the political backlash they might suffer.
Although the former rebels and a few houses that remained neutral protested what they saw as centralization under the Lords Paramount, the threat of the remaining Kingsguard and the other armies of the Lords Paramount quelled any overt dissent. However, there was still resentment throughout much of the aristocracy that supported Damon, and even some previously neutral lords who saw the actions of the Lords Paramount and the Targaryens as an attempt at eroding the authority of all nobles throughout the continent.
Daeron himself was busy rebuilding the gutted Kingsguard. The oldest standing army in Westeros had suffered serious losses following the betrayal of half the army and bearing the brunt of the fighting during the First Blackfyre Rebellion. Even with amnesty offered to soldiers that fought for Blackfyres in exchange for continued service with the Iron Throne, the Kingsguard stood at a third the strength it was formerly at before the Blackfyre Rebellion. The officer corps was even more reduced, having suffered disproportionate casualties at Redgrass Field.
With the news that Aegor Rivers and much of the Blackfyre command had escaped to Essos, Daeron gave the newly appointed Lord Commander Gwayne Cobray a blank check to rebuild the Kingsguard as soon as possible and ensure that no mass defection ever occurred in the army again.
In regards to the first order, the Lord Commander went on a recruiting spree, offering substantial increases in pay to soldiers and launching one of the largest advertising campaigns in the history of printed media. Various artists were commissioned to design pieces designed to attract literate and illiterate smallfolk alike, while printhouses churned out thousands of posters and pamphlets to be distributed or read across the Crownlands. The recruitment drive was a resounding success, spurring thousands of smallfolk to enlist, and by Daeron's death in 209 AC, the Kingsguard had swelled in size to five and fifty thousand men, roughly ten thousand more men than the Kingsguard had prior to the Black Week.
Rebuilding the officer corps was more difficult, as the Kingsguard needed experienced veterans able to lead and manage units effectively. The First Blackfyre Rebellion had produced thousands of soldiers that satisfied the former requirement, but promotions from the general soldierly only reached up to the rank of sergeant, after which a commission was required. Prior to Cobray's reforms, commissions were only given to members of the aristocracy with connections to the officer corps or smallfolk and nobility with the means to directly purchase a commission. With the Kingsguard doubling in size and the disproportionate losses suffered by the officers, these traditional sources of commissions were not enough to replenish the officer corps.
To solve this problem, the Lord Commander opened the Crownlands Military Academy, which originally just trained combat engineers and artillery officers, to the training of all commissioned officers. Anyone admitted to the academy would graduate as a commissioned officer after undergoing two years of education. Although one could simply pay to enter the academy or ask a well-connected officer for a recommendation, as with previous methods of obtaining a commission, Cobray also encouraged officers to write recommendations for any promising subordinates, regardless of social status or wealth, thus vastly expanding the pool of officer candidates. The Crownlands Military Academy also had the added bonus of centralizing training under the Iron Throne, ending a patronage system that allowed Daemon and Quentyn to amass a network of connections that resulted in the defection of half the Kingsguard.
The Royal Fleet also underwent an expansion and reformation during this era, both out of fear of the inevitable Blackfyre reprisal and a need to cement the loyalty of the Iron Throne's naval arm. While the navy survived the Blackfyre Rebellion relatively unscathed, the Royal Fleet had not undergone a serious expansion since Daeron I's conquest of Dorne. Many of the ships built after the Dance and under the administration of Alyn Velaryon were falling to disrepair, and the naval bureaucracy was a byzantine, corrupt mess that constantly shifted as Masters of Ships came and went. Even though the Battle of Saltpans was a victory, both the fleet and the Seaguard faced serious gunpowder shortages during and after the landings, and if the landing force faced more resistance, there was a high likelihood that the Seaguard may have run out of powder before taking the port.
In addition, the late 2nd century and the early 3rd century AC saw naval expansion from the Free Cities and the regional navies of the Lord Paramount. More comprehensive works about the the maritime history of Essos, such as Evasio Cafarelli's The Essosi Naval Race: 131 AC - 250 AC and Maesters Chrestan and Clayse's comprehensive Naval History of the World, will give a better picture, but the general view is that the stabilization of Essos after the end of large-scale warfare with the dissolution of the Triarchy and several decisive defeats of Dothraki armies in the east, plus the need for an economic stimulus following the fall of the Rogare Bank meant that the Free Cities turned overseas to fit their economic demands. As a result, the first colonies were established. The Braavos East Ulthos Company began expanding their trading outposts in the Jade Sea and Cinnamon Straits into fully fledged colonies with plantations and mines exploiting the wealth of the isles, and they also forcibly conquered the Isle of Leng after a brutal jungle campaign against the god-empresses of the isles. Volantis seized the Basilisk Isles from the pirates, escapees, and Brindled Men residing there and began establishing the factory system to cement their position in the Slave Trade, with the slaver states of the southern Free Cities and Slaver's Bay rushing to exploit as much of the Sothoryos slave trade as they could. Myr, Lys and Tyrosh all began making inroads into the Summer Isles, and the states of Ibben and Far Essos were bombarded with diplomatic requests for trade agreements and concessions.
Naturally, the overseas race resulted in the Free Cities commencing a massive naval buildup. In 150 AC, the Braavosi navy consisted of forty ships of the line and forty frigates, and by 225 A.C., the navy had doubled in size to seven and eighty ships of the line and three and seventy frigates. All the other Free Cities also matched that rate of growth, resulting in the Royal Fleet, which consisted of just under thirty ships of the line and two and forty frigates in 190 A.C., to decline from a first-rate naval power able to engage multiple Free Cities in the Stepstones to a third-rate naval power with a smaller fleet than all coastal Free Cities save Lorath.
In Westeros, the Great Charter allowed the Lords Paramount to maintain their own gunpowder navies following the Dance. With the return of regional shipyards, the Lords Paramount were essentially given shipyards and workers already geared towards producing warships. Although the buildup was slower compared to the arms race occuring in Essos, the shipyards of the Lords Paramount churned out frigates and ships of the line alike, providing the lords with their own fleets for prestige, antipiracy, and trade purposes. By the time Aegon V died, the Lords combined possessed more ships than the Royal Fleet, and by 200 A.C., certain fleets, such as the Iron Fleet of House Greyjoy and the Redwyne Fleet, were on the verge of overtaking the Royal Fleet as the largest navy in Westeros.
In this environment, Daeron had to rebuild the navy to both shore up credibility for the Iron Throne and protect royal interests against both regional and international intrigue. The result was a complete overhaul of the Royal Fleet, backed both by Daeron and the Master of Ships. With virtually all political opposition purged before and after the Blackfyre Rebellions, there was little dissent from any of the courtiers.
The first major reform was establishing the Small Council of the Marine, a formalization of the typical retinue that a Master of Ships assembled to head the Royal Fleet and all other naval organizations under the Iron Throne. As the navy encompassed thousands of sailors and Seaguards, all Masters of Ships since the reign of Jaehaerys I delegated tasks to a retinue, but these retinues only lasted as long as their patron Masters of Ships did and were often subject to cronyism. The Small Council of the Marine - informally known as the Sea Council to distinguish it from the more influential Small Council of the Iron Throne - established permanent positions independent of the tenure of the Master of Ships, although the Master of Ships (and the King obviously) could remove and appoint any member of the Small Council of the Marine at will. At its inception, the positions were as follows:
Grand Admiral of the Royal Fleet: The commanding officer of all military vessels of the Royal Fleet. When the Small Council of the Marine was founded, the Master of Ships assumed this role and leadership of the council, but the two positions would separate in the latter half of the 3rd century A.C.
Commandant of the Seaguard: The commanding officer of the entire Seaguard. His rank is equivalent to a Commander of the Kingsguard.
Master of Maritime Coin: The director of all finances of the Royal Fleet.
Master of Victuals: The director of food and beverage procurement for the Royal Fleet.
Habourmaster-General: The controller of all royal maritime bases, both in the Crownlands and the berths provided to the Royal Fleet in ports across Westeros.
Master of Shipbuilding: The controller of all shipbuilding. The Master of Shipbuilding directly controls drydocks across the Crownlands solely for the Royal Fleet and can commission or seize civilian shipyards if necessary.
Master of Ordnance: An attaché from the Royal Works in charge of coordinating the manufacture and procurement of all naval artillery, gunpowder, and firearms with the Iron Throne's manufactories.
With the leadership firmly established, the next part of Daeron's reforms was a rebuilding of the naval bureaucracy from the ground up, which had largely escaped Daeron's initial bureaucratic overhaul and reform. The same group of maesters that had audited and purged the civilian bureaucracy early in Daeron's reign turned their attention to reviewing the Royal Fleet's administration, resulting in a restructuring and formalization of the entire naval service from the ground up.
Alongside the educational reforms of the Kingsguard, Daeron also established the Crownlands Military Academy School of Seamanship, hoping to boost the number of officers present in the navy as well as cementing the loyalty of the Navy to the Iron Throne in the same way the educational reforms in regards to the Kingsguard were designed to ensure the army's loyalty to the crown. Two hulks were converted from aging frigates, and a few school buildings were established on Dragonstone to form the initial School of Seamanship for aspiring officers of both the Seaguard and the Royal Fleet, and the recommendation system was also applied to the Royal Fleet and Seaguard as well.
As a capstone to all his naval reforms, Daeron ordered a series of 20 74-gun ships of the line to be built over the next 30 years in 205 A.C., aiming to restore the influence and prestige of the Royal Fleet over rival Essosi powers and the Lords Paramount.
With the largest mobilization and armament effort in the history of the Kingsguard and the Royal Fleet, as well as a fundamental reorganization of the entire military, the Iron Throne plunged into debt, although some of this debt was offset by an influx of Dornish tax revenue, especially from all the new mining and agricultural projects set up by Baelor, and arms sales from the Royal Works to the burgeoning armies of the Lords Paramount.
Daeron's final years were spent on legal and judicial reforms, primarily in the Crownlands. Despite his desire for a complete overhaul on par with Aegon I or Jaehaerys' reforms, he knew that the political will for a more centralized legal code was nonexistent. As such, Daeron focused his efforts within the Crownlands, directly under Targaryen dominion. Daeron expanded the Royal Iters' presence in the Crownloads and began ordering legal reviews and audits of the nobility more frequently and at more irregular intervals than they had in Viserys' reign.
One effect of the increased presence of the Royal Iters was the professionalization of legal studies, which moved away from a part-time duty of the polymath maesters, of which a brass link was often just one of their academic specializations, to dedicated lawyers in the tradition of the Freehold and its Essosi colonies. With the establishment of the first law school in Westeros under the King's Landing Bastion, lawyers became more prominent, first as legal advisors to landed nobles and Royal Iters, then as judges and barristers in the courts that would eventually supplant the justice of the nobility.
However, the larger effect of the expansion of the Royal Iters was the picture being formed of inefficiency and corruption of the nobility as the Royal Iters sent back more and more scathing reports of improper decisions and judicial procedure on the part of the lords of the Crownlands.
In response, Daeron and the Small Council began working on draft decrees to rigidly enforce Jaehaerys' code and even begin taking away judicial powers from the nobility towards the end of 208 A.C., but the Great Spring Sickness and the subsequent Blackfyre Rebellions would see that those drafts would not be implemented until well into the reign of Aegon V.
209 A.C. would be marked by two tragedies. The first was the fateful trial by seven that occured during a banquet hosted by Lord Ashford in celebration of his daughter's thirteenth name day. Prince Aerion Targaryen took offense to a Dornish puppeteer's retelling of the Second Spice War and her depiction of Garin's initial victories over the Valyrian forces at Selhorys, Valysar, and Volon Therys, and he attacked the girl, Tanselle, over this perceived slight against the might of Valyria. A member of the Kingsguard that had accompanied the Targaryen retinue to Ashford, one Sergeant Duncan "the Tall," interceded and struck the prince, resulting in Aerion's Kingsguard detail nearly gutting the sergeant were it not for the intervention of Prince Aegon Targaryen, who apparently developed a friendship with the Kingsguard officer while the prince was disguised to avoid the formalities of the Ashford banquet.
Nevertheless, Duncan was still detained for assaulting a member of the royal family, and the slighted Aerion demanded a trial by seven, which had not occurred since the trial that saw Maegor and the champions of the Warrior's Sons die almost to a man. While officiated trials by combat were nominally phased out by Jaehaerys I and Baelor I, honor duels were still prevalent throughout the Westerosi aristocracy. However, a trial by seven was unprecedented and had not occurred since the time of Maegor I. An unfortunate combination of honor, house politics, and personal interests resulted in a lineup of Ser Robyn Rhysling, Ser Humfrey Hardyng, Ser Lyonel Baratheon, Prince Baelor Targaryen, Ser Humfrey Beesbury, and Ser Raymun Fossoway fighting alongside Duncan, while Ser Roland Crakehall, Ser Steffon Fossoway, Prince Daeron Targaryen, Prince Maekar Targaryen, Ser Donnel of Duskendale, and Ser Willem Wylde fought alongside Aerion.
The ensuing duel was vicious, as all combatants were extensively drilled in swordsmanship, and several of the champions had fought in the First Blackfyre Rebellion. Eventually, Duncan forced Aerion to yield, but the real tragedy came from a blow to Prince Baelor's head accidentally delivered by Maekar. Despite the best efforts of the doctors present, Baelor perished from his wounds hours after the end of the trial, much to the dismay of Maekar. Two other knights also died as a result of the trial, Ser Humfrey Beesbury and Ser Humfrey Hardyng.
The tragedy at Ashford sent a shock through the whole nation. Aerion was banished to Lys by an enraged Maekar, and the Prince would lobby for extensive dueling restrictions and regulations that would later be fully realized during his reign in 225 A.C. Daeron immediately banned the trial of seven, with only a nominal protest from the nobility due to how popular Baelor had been as a fair and just Hand of the King and his reputation as a war hero from the First Blackfyre Rebellion.
Less than two moons after the Ashford Banquet, the Great Spring Sickness arrived on Westerosi shores. Brought over from Yi Ti by the massive increase in Essosi and Westerosi trade to Far Essos, plus various military expeditions in overseas colonies, the disease reached Westerosi ports in 209 A.C., decimating urban centers across the continent. Daeron himself, his two most immediate heirs, Princes Valarr and Matarys, the High Septon, a third of the Most Devout, the Hand of the King Ser Rolland Uffering, Damon Lannister, and hundreds of other nobles fell victim to the plague, alongside hundreds of thousands of smallfolk across all regions of Westeros.
In one of the Targaryen's greatest crises, Daeron easily rose to the task and oversaw a successful recovery from a devastating civil war. Without Daeron, one could easily see the Ninepenny Kings seizing King's Landing, or Westeros divided into petty kingdoms under the influence of Essosi powers.
The official incorporation of Dorne into the Seven Kingdoms saw an economic boom lasting all the way until the Great Spring Sickness, while Daeron's leadership saw the decisive defeat of the Blackfyres. Daeron's anticorruption efforts in the civil service and the royal court saw the bureaucratic bloat and sycophancy that ran rampant during Aegon IV's reign disappear, resulting in a modern bureaucracy easily able to handle the expanding role of the Iron Throne in governing the Crownlands and overseeing the Lords Paramount. Meanwhile, Daeron's military reforms turned a factional, elitist Kingsguard in a streamlined meritocracy that would never again revolt against the Targaryen dynasty, and his naval reforms also saw the return of Westerosi to a great power in the face of the rapid expansion and industrialization of the Free Cities. Finally, Daeron's reforms and audits of the justice system in the Crownloads would continue a series of legal reforms and pave the path for Aegon V's complete overhaul of the antiquated judicial system in Westeros. In that regard, Daeron stands next to Jaehaerys and the Conqueror himself as one of the greatest and most loved kings of all time.
Author's Note:
Unfortunately, I can't guarantee any more updates, since my interests have largely moved beyond this project. I will try to get to Robert's Rebellion, but updates will be sporadic, if they even exist.
Daeron's land based military reforms are basically expanding the military academy to encompass general officer training, while his naval reforms follow the structure of the Royal Navy's Board of Admiralty.
Aerion and Duncan's trial of seven still occur, largely the same as in canon.
Essos will become more relevant in Westerosi politics thanks to the Blackfyres, and I plan for the Ninepenny Kings to be a far larger affair than in canon, if I get there.
