Chapter Text
In the two-and-fortieth year After Conquest (42 AC), the reign of King Aenys the First came to its troubled end. His rule, long beset by discord both within the realm and amongst his own kin, left the Iron Throne in a state of peril upon his passing. By his queen, Alyssa of House Velaryon, he had sired six children: Princess Rhaena, born 23 AC; Prince Aegon, born 24 AC; Prince Viserys, born 26 AC; Prince Jaehaerys, born 34 AC; Princess Alysanne, born 36 AC; and the youngest, Princess Vaella, born in that same ill-fated year of 42 AC.
Yet the crown did not pass peacefully to his heirs. Instead, it was seized by Maegor, brother to the late king, who claimed the Iron Throne in defiance of Aenys’s trueborn son, Prince Aegon. Thus began a cruel and bloody interlude, wherein the rightful line of Aenys was cast down one by one, until few remained to contest Maegor’s dominion.
Only in the year 48 AC did this darkness lift. Upon the death of Maegor—under circumstances still whispered of with unease—Prince Jaehaerys, fourth son of Aenys, was proclaimed king. With him stood his sister, Princess Alysanne, whom he took to wife in the Valyrian fashion. Their ascent marked not merely a change of rulers, but the restoration of order and hope to a fractured realm.
In that same year, their mother, Dowager Queen Alyssa Velaryon, took a second husband: Lord Rogar of House Baratheon, a powerful lord of the Stormlands and a staunch supporter of young King Jaehaerys. From this union came two children: Boremund, born in 50 AC, and Jocelyn, born in 54 AC. The latter’s birth, however, proved a sorrowful one, for Queen Alyssa perished in childbed, as so many noble ladies have before and since.
Meanwhile, King Jaehaerys and Queen Alysanne were blessed with many children, strengthening the royal line. Among them were Prince Aemon (b. 55 AC), Prince Baelon (b. 57 AC), Princess Alyssa (b. 60 AC), and Princess Daella (b. 64 AC), with more to follow in the years thereafter.
Of Princess Vaella, youngest child of Aenys, less is often recorded, yet her life was not without consequence. In 58 AC, she was wed to Aurion of House Qoherys, a Valyrian house of ancient lineage, said to have survived the Doom alongside the Targaryens, Velaryons, and Celtigars. Their seat lay upon an isle east of Cracklaw Point, in the narrow waters between Dragonstone and Claw Isle—a place of windswept shores and watchful towers.
From this marriage came a single son, Aerion of House Qoherys, born in 59 AC, in whom the blood of Old Valyria was doubly strong.
Thus were the lines of dragonlords and their kin woven yet further together in those early years of Jaehaerys’s reign—a time that, though born of strife, would come to be remembered as the beginning of one of the most prosperous and enduring eras in the history of the Seven Kingdoms.