Prologue:

Samwell Tarly was busy in the Temple achieves of the Blades headquarters, Cloud Ruler Temple. He had been tasked by Loremaster Esbern to clean out the entire library and catalogue the books as well as sort any important books that had to do the with Dragons and the Daedra. This was his punishment for breaking with the Blades and joining the fight at Oldtown. While many Blade members were proud of him for doing that, they also warned him that he risked being expelled from the Blades but he still had his talents and so he was staying.

The Blades had the biggest collection of books in Westeros, even more so than the Citadel as they had books from days of the Septim Empire, books that were very hard to find since they were so old many of them had been ruined and many surviving copies had sadly been destroyed by Baelor I Targaryen in his purges. Esbern told him that the Blades famously refused to turn over the books to Baelor and it became a watershed moment in Baelor's rule. While Baelor was loved by some for his devotion to the faith, many others looked down on him. Even King Martin dismissed him as mad, his fanaticism actually nearly bankrupted the realm with his donations to the people which emptied the treasury. The defiance of the Blades shocked many people in Westeros as they stood up to the king and many nobles began to grow tired of Baelor's ways.

The High Septon at the time was quite a fanatic like Baelor and was said to have a lot of influence at court much to the dismay of court officials including Hand of the King Viserys Targaryen, Baelor's uncle and the future king Viserys II. The High Septon was said to have encouraged Baelor to deem the Blades heretics and put a bounty on them but this did not go down well with many. The Vale which was where the Blades were based at the time as a fighting company to help the people, refused to arrest the Blades since they had helped protect people from the Hill tribes. The situation got so bad that Viserys forced Baelor with support from many other court officials to remove the High Septon from court where he would die not long after.

Even without the fanatic High Septon, Baelor was still trouble in particular when he decided to create taxes for those who didn't worship the Seven. That went even worse that the Blades incident and nearly caused a war when the North refused to pay such unfair taxes as did many people in King's Landing who up until that point had loved Baelor. In an ensuring riot, Baelor was injured and would die not long after. Viserys mended the relations with the Blades and they carried on as a sellsword group until they were exiled following accusations that they were involved in the Blackfyre rebellions under King Aerys I. Brynden 'Bloodraven' Rivers was said to be highly suspicious of the Blades which had been key to their exile and they only returned when they joined with Martin who was still a prince back then.

Samwell was looking through the books from the archives that were to be sorted onto the bookshelves. Many of these books had been stored in a large underground room with magical runes to protect them from moisture. Many of these books were hard to find, some of them may only be the only surviving copy from the books about the Septim Empire too books that were banned and destroyed by Baelor like 'The Testimony of Mushroom' and 'Dragons, Wyrms and Wyverns: Their unnatural History.' It also had possible the only intact collection of the 'Commentaries of Mankar Cameron' as well as series like 'The Wolf Queen' and even all 27 volumes of 2920: Before the Age of Heroes, series so old that even finding one book was next to impossible.

Sam was enjoying look through all of this lost history and sorting the books out that he would often lose track of time and often forget what he had been ordered to do because he would get stuck in such a read. There was apparently a very important book somewhere that Esbern told Sam that he needed to find. It was called the 'Planemeld' a book about an event known as the Planemeld where the Daedric Prince Molag Bal tried to merge his realm of Coldharbour with the realm of mortals. With the Worm Cult returning, such information would be important but the book was lost somewhere but Sam had been hold to look through books about the Daedra so look for Daedric symbols. Looking up on a shelf, he saw a book that had a weird mask which looked like a skull with two horns. That looked like the description of Molag Bal so that may be the book that Esbern asked him to find.

Right now it was too high up so Sam went and got a ladder to climb up the stairs to reach it. Even with the ladder it was too high up so he had to reach up just to get the page. But as she swayed to the side, he lost his balance causing him to fall and take a few books down with him. Sam landed in a heap and looked at the mess, he sighed, this would take some time to clean up. As he was about to get started, he looked at the book he had been reaching for and saw that it was indeed the Planemeld book and so he put it to one side.

He then began putting the fallen books back but as he was doing do, he saw one particular book on the pile with which had two dragons fighting on it. Picking up the book, he read the title which read 'The Dragon of Sothoryos: a tale of Macea Targaryen.'

"Macea Targaryen?" Sam questioned "I've never heard of such a Targaryen." He took the book to the side table and decided to read it as the book had peaked his curiosity. He opened the book and began to read.

...

"My name is Macea Targaryen, daughter of Aerys Targaryen, the brother of King Viserys Targaryen. I write this tale towards the end of my life to tell my story to tell the tale of great discoveries that I made and why I decided not to share them. It also tells the story of how we lost the once great power that House Targaryen once had over the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, the dragons. These dragons were lost in the great Civil War that writers have come to call the Dance of the Dragons. Most writers of this even have taken one side of this conflict or the other so I want to write this from a neutral perspective and also from the point of view of someone who was there and so we have to go back to nearly twenty years before the conflict began.

It all began in the year 101 AC, 101 years after King Aegon the Conqueror first landed in Westeros and formed the Seven Kingdoms although at this point, Dorne was still not part of the kingdoms despite the Targaryens claiming so. It was the final years of King Jaehaerys Targaryen I who had ruled for nearly 60 years of prosperity. But now a succession crisis was unfolding. In 92 AC, his eldest son Prince Aemon died fighting Myrish pirates of the island of Tarth. Jaehaerys then named his second son Prince Baelon as his new heir passing over Aemon's daughter Princess Rhaenys. However in 101AC, Prince Baelon would die of a burst belly leaving the succession in crisis again. In the ten years between the two deaths, Jaehaerys had lost nearly all of his children leaving behind many grandchildren and now the question was who was to succeed him.

On the advice of his only surviving son, Vaegon, an Archmaester of the Citadel, Jaehaerys called for the lords of the realm to gather at the castle of Harrenhal to decide who would succeed him in what became known as the Great Council of Harrenhal. Over a thousand lords attended the Council. 14 candidates were heard, most of which were quickly dismissed including three illegitimate children by Princess Saera Targaryen who had fled to Essos to escape the Faith, and a man claiming to be the bastard son of Jaehaerys himself which was proven false by the king himself. In the end only two were considered, Princess Rhaenys Targaryen, the only son of Prince Aemon and the eldest descendant. Her claim was strong since she was married to Lord Corys Velayron, the richest man in the Seven Kingdoms and a powerful lord of Valyrian blood and she had two children of her own, one of which was a son, Laenor who already had a dragon of his own.

The other major claimant was her younger cousin, Prince Viserys, the eldest son of Prince Baelon and the eldest male descendant. After 13 days of discussion, the lords chose Viserys as the next king. The council was called as Jaehaerys himself knew that the only thing that could bring down the House of the Dragon was itself. This council also set a precedent that a woman could not inherit the Iron Throne. Only about 30 years later, this belief would be thrown into doubt when the Seven Kingdoms would tear itself apart over who should inherit the Iron Throne. This is that story.

...

Sam finished reading the opening. There had been several books written about the Dance of the Dragons including Grand Maester Munkun's 'The Dance of the Dragons: a true tell' but this was mostly based of the account of Grand Maester Orwyle who served King Aegon the second and mostly tried to make his side look better. Septon Eustane's book about Viserys I also favoured Aegon over her rival Queen Rhaenrya. The fool Mushroom also wrote about the Dance but his was more of a tale of murder and plotting and so is also considered unreliable. Sam was now very interested to see an account of this major event from a neutral source and so he decided to read more.

Chapter End:

Notes: Well this is my brand new story; I wanted to start off with this short prologue to introduce the story to introduce my new character who will be the main character for this story. While it will follow the events of House of the Dragon, during some of the time skips, we will be travelling to Sothoryos to cover the story which will be based off the Aldmeri Dominion storyline from ESO as well as the Elsweyr expansion, a story I originally planned to have been part of Rise of the Divines as set after the Worm Cult arc and then as a separate story which would have seen Alessia kidnapped and taken to Sothoryos and Martin would have led a mission to rescue her. Now with the House of the Dragon out, I decided to reuse those ideas for this story. I am going to be working more slowly on Fanfiction now because I have finally begun writing my own proper novels which is being encouraged by the therapy for my mental health problems I'm facing and I may eventually have them punished on Amazon which has been a dream of mine to have them officially published instead of just being on the internet.