Chapter 48: The Young Dragon's Folly and the Pious King's Madness (Life Under the New Order: Daeron I & Baelor I)
The somber, dragonless reign of Aegon III eventually gave way to a new, more turbulent chapter in the Targaryen saga. The accession of his eldest son, Daeron I, the "Young Dragon," in 157 AC, was like a sudden, reckless flare of wildfire after a long, grey twilight. Barely fourteen years of age but burning with an ambition that far outstripped his resources or experience, Daeron was determined to etch his name into history alongside Aegon the Conqueror. His chosen target: Dorne, the unconquered kingdom, the defiant thorn that had pricked Targaryen pride for generations.
From his eternal seat in Mount Skatus, Aelyx Velaryon observed the Young Dragon's ascent with a weary sense of predictability. "Youth, ambition, and a glorious ancestor to emulate," he remarked to Lyanna, as reports from Tibbit's network detailed Daeron's martial fervor and his dismissal of cautious counsel. "It is a potent, and often fatal, brew. He possesses the Targaryen name, but not the Conqueror's dragons, nor, I suspect, his strategic acumen. Dorne will teach him a harsh lesson, one his ancestor learned at great cost."
And so it proved. Daeron I, charismatic and brimming with youthful confidence, launched his invasion of Dorne with a brilliance that initially stunned his foes and impressed his own lords. He eschewed the treacherous Boneway, instead using his fleet to land forces along the coast while another army, guided by goat tracks over the mountains, outflanked the Dornish defenses. Sunspear fell, and for a brief, heady period, it seemed the Young Dragon had achieved what even Aegon the Conqueror could not. He left Lord Lyonel Tyrell as his Warden in Dorne and returned to King's Landing in triumph.
Aelyx, however, was not deceived by these early victories. His agents in Dorne, glamoured house-elves and magically bound local informants, painted a different picture: a sullen, unsubdued populace, a landscape that bred insurgency, and Dornish lords who had merely retreated, not surrendered. "He has captured the castle, but not the viper," Aelyx noted. "Dorne is a land that fights with whispers, with shadows, with poisoned wells and scorpion bolts from unseen hands. An occupying army in such a land is a tethered goat awaiting the slaughter."
The Dornish rebellion, when it came, was swift and brutal. Lord Tyrell, attempting to rule with a heavy hand from Sunspear, was lured into a trap beneath a canopy of scorpions – a thousand of the venomous creatures released upon his bedchamber, a uniquely Dornish form of execution. The castles Daeron had garrisoned rose up in revolt, his soldiers picked off by hidden archers, their supply lines severed, their morale crumbling under the relentless heat and the ceaseless, unseen enemy.
Daeron I, enraged, returned to Dorne, vowing to crush the rebellion with an iron fist. He fought with courage, leading his men from the front, but it was a fool's errand. The Dornishmen were phantoms, their resistance a Hydra whose heads multiplied with every one struck down. In 161 AC, during a parley under a flag of peace, Daeron I Targaryen, the Young Dragon, barely eighteen years of age, was cut down by a volley of arrows, his dreams of conquest turning to dust in the red sands of Dorne. His death marked the ignominious end of the brief, bloody Dornish adventure, a costly reminder that ambition without overwhelming power and true understanding of one's foe was a path to ruin.
Aelyx used Daeron's folly as a pointed lesson for his own burgeoning dynasty within the sanctuary. To his great-great-grandchildren, now young adults and dragonriders themselves, he said, "Observe the fate of the Young Dragon. He possessed courage, charisma, even a degree of tactical brilliance in his initial assault. But he lacked patience, he underestimated his enemy, and he overreached his strength. He sought glory in conquest, forgetting that true, lasting power is built not upon the fleeting triumphs of war, but upon unshakeable foundations of secrecy, self-sufficiency, and overwhelming, carefully husbanded strength. Let his failure be a testament to the perils of overt ambition."
The public Lord Volmark of Skagos (now Aelyx's great-great-great-great-grandson, Lord Valerion Volmark, named for Aenar's studious son, a man whose quiet demeanor concealed a sharp intellect honed by Aelyx's teachings) sent appropriate condolences to King's Landing via Winterfell, along with a substantial "gift" of Skagosi gold to the Iron Throne to "aid in stabilizing the realm after this tragic loss." Skagos remained a pillar of Northern loyalty, its own remote shores untouched by the southern turmoil.
Daeron's death without issue brought his younger brother, Baelor, to the Iron Throne. And if Daeron's reign had been a brief, violent conflagration, Baelor I's was a strange, ethereal, and deeply unsettling luminescence. Baelor the Blessed, as he would come to be known, was a figure unlike any Westeros had ever seen upon its ruling seat. He was an ascetic, a mystic, a religious fanatic whose piety bordered on madness.
Aelyx observed Baelor's ascension with a mixture of contempt and profound strategic concern. "From a boy-king drunk on martial glory, we pass to a boy-king drunk on religious ecstasy," he remarked to Lyanna. "Both are equally dangerous to the stability of a realm, though their methods of destruction differ. Daeron sought to conquer with steel; Baelor seeks to conquer with prayer and piety, and in doing so, may well surrender the crown's authority to the Faith he so fervently embraces."
Baelor's first significant act was to make peace with Dorne. Where Daeron's armies had failed, Baelor succeeded through an act of astonishing, almost suicidal, personal devotion. He walked the Boneway barefoot, enduring hardship and humiliation, to personally escort the Dornish hostages (who included the future King Daeron II's Martell bride) back to Sunspear. He even, legend claimed, survived a pit of vipers through sheer holiness. This act of profound humility and forgiveness won over the Dornish where Targaryen steel had failed, and a lasting peace was forged.
Aelyx, while privately scoffing at the king's self-abasing theatrics, could not deny its political efficacy. "He achieves through apparent weakness what his brother could not achieve through strength," he noted. "There is a power in symbols, in gestures that resonate with the common folk and even with proud lords. However, to abase the royal personage so thoroughly… it sets a dangerous precedent. It elevates the moral authority of his Faith above the temporal authority of his crown."
And it was Baelor's fanatical devotion to the Faith of the Seven that became the defining, and most troubling, aspect of his reign for Aelyx. Baelor appointed a common stonemason, and later an illiterate young boy, as High Septon, believing them divinely inspired. He ordered the construction of the Great Sept (later the Great Sept of Baelor) atop Visenya's Hill in King's Landing, a project that would drain the royal treasury for generations. He fasted for weeks on end, often to the point of near starvation, seeking visions and divine guidance. He outlawed prostitution, emptied the royal coffers on charity, and preached constantly of piety and repentance.
Aelyx, whose entire existence was predicated on ancient Valyrian magic, arcane knowledge, and a carefully constructed god-like persona within his own hidden domain, viewed the rise of such fervent, institutionalized religious power with deep suspicion. "The Faith Militant rose against Aenys and Maegor because of Targaryen exceptionalism," he reminded his council. "Baelor now seeks to make Targaryen rule subservient to, or at least an instrument of, that same Faith. This is a dangerous path. A king who rules by divine mandate granted by priests is a king who can be unmade by those same priests if their 'divine will' changes. It cedes true power."
He ensured that Skagos, publicly, remained firmly rooted in the traditions of the Old Gods, a faith far more ancient and less centrally organized than the Seven. Lord Valerion Volmark made conspicuous offerings at the heart tree in Icefang Keep's godswood, a gesture appreciated by his Northern peers and one that subtly distanced Skagos from the religious fervor gripping King's Landing.
The most bizarre, and for Aelyx, most contemptuously amusing, episode of Baelor's reign was the incident of the dragon eggs. It was said that Baelor, in a fit of pious fervor, gathered seven dragon eggs – relics from a bygone age, long believed to be inert stone – and prayed over them for days and nights in the Red Keep, fasting and chanting, convinced his holiness would bring forth new dragons for the realm. The eggs, of course, remained stone.
Aelyx, when this news reached him via Tibbit's incredulous agents, actually permitted himself a rare, dry chuckle. "The fool," he said to Aenar, his master of dragonlore and magical breeding. "He believes prayer can reawaken the fire that his own house allowed to die. He seeks miracles where only deep knowledge, potent magic, and unwavering will can prevail. Let him pray over his stones. We shall continue to hatch true dragons from true eggs, here in the heart of our mountain." It was a stark confirmation of how far the Targaryens had fallen from their Valyrian roots, how completely they had lost the true understanding of their own ancestral power.
Equally troubling to Aelyx, though for different reasons, was Baelor's treatment of his own sisters: Daena the Defiant, Rhaena, and Elaena. To "protect" them from sin and the "temptations of the flesh" (and to prevent Daena, who had a strong claim to the throne herself, from producing heirs), Baelor confined them to a lavishly appointed section of the Red Keep known as the "Courtyard of Maidenly Delights," later more cynically dubbed the Maidenvault.
"He imprisons his own blood, his own potential allies, out of fear and a twisted sense of piety," Aelyx observed, his voice laced with disdain. "Valuable Valyrian princesses, who could forge powerful alliances through marriage, locked away like treasured trinkets. It is a profound waste, a sign of a mind unhinged by fanaticism, incapable of understanding the true levers of dynastic power." He made a mental note: his own female descendants, like Visenya and her daughters and granddaughters, were raised to be powerful sorceresses, dragonriders, and leaders, not cloistered maidens.
Throughout these tumultuous southern reigns, life within the Skagosi sanctuary continued its serene, relentless progression. Aelyx's great-great-great-grandchildren were now young adults, bonding with the latest generation of Skagosi dragons, their numbers and power growing with each passing year. The integration of the stolen Targaryen bloodlines had produced dragons of exceptional intelligence, varied temperaments, and unique magical affinities, further strengthening Aelyx's hidden armada. Magical research yielded new breakthroughs in warding technology, in alchemy, in the manipulation of elemental forces. The Emissary program, though still in its nascent stages, had seen a few of Aelyx's most carefully trained descendants, their Valyrian features subtly altered by long-term glamours, their histories flawlessly fabricated, begin to make discreet inroads into the scholarly circles of Oldtown and the mercantile houses of some Free Cities, their true purpose known only to Aelyx and his immortal inner circle.
Lord Valerion Volmark, the public face of Skagos, ruled for nearly fifty years, his reign marked by continued peace, prosperity, and unwavering loyalty to Winterfell. He oversaw the expansion of Shadowport, the establishment of new Glass Gardens in sheltered Skagosi valleys, and the careful management of the "Heir's Hoard," its riches still the envy of the North. He married a Stark cousin, further intertwining the public Volmark line with their liege lords, and produced a brood of healthy children who would, in turn, be initiated into the family's deeper secrets. When Lord Valerion eventually "died" peacefully in his bed at a ripe old age (his retreat into the sanctuary as seamless as those of his forebears), his son, another Aelyx Volmark (Aelyx's naming conventions often circled back, a subtle nod to the enduring presence of the Founder), took up the public lordship.
Baelor the Blessed's reign came to an end in 171 AC, after forty-one days of fasting, an act of piety that finally consumed him. Whispers abounded that his uncle and Hand, Prince Viserys (who had patiently endured Baelor's madness and effectively ruled the realm in his stead), had perhaps aided the King's passage to the Seven Heavens with a merciful cup of poison, to save the realm from further pious folly. Aelyx, upon hearing of Baelor's death, felt a sense of relief. The reign of the Pious King had been a dangerous time, not of overt military threat, but of insidious ideological encroachment and royal instability.
With Baelor's demise, his capable, pragmatic uncle ascended the Iron Throne as King Viserys II Targaryen. Though his reign would be tragically short (only a year), Aelyx saw in him a return to more rational, predictable governance. The Targaryen dynasty had weathered the storms of the Young Dragon's ambition and the Pious King's madness. It was weakened, its dragons gone, its mystique tarnished, but it endured.
Aelyx Velaryon, from his timeless Northern throne, watched it all. He had seen kings rise and fall, empires burn and fade. His own hidden kingdom, built on foundations of immortal will, arcane power, and draconic might, only grew stronger, its roots sinking deeper into the fabric of time itself. The follies of mortal rulers were but fleeting tempests on the surface of the great ocean of history. He was the deep, silent current beneath, shaping the seabed, awaiting the distant, inevitable turning of the tides.