Chapter 57: The Trident's Roar, The Mad King's End, and the Shadow's Unseen Inheritance (Robert's Rebellion: Part 2)
The Tourney at Harrenhal had been the glittering façade over a festering wound; Rhaegar Targaryen's abduction of (or elopement with) Lyanna Stark, followed by King Aerys II's monstrous murder of Lord Rickard and Brandon Stark, had ripped that wound wide open, plunging the Seven Kingdoms into the bloody chaos of Robert's Rebellion. From his timeless sanctuary in Mount Skatus, Aelyx Velaryon had watched the initial stages of the conflict with the detached precision of an ancient scholar observing a predictable, if violent, chemical reaction. Now, as the war careened towards its climax, his attention sharpened, for the fall of a dynasty was always a moment of profound geopolitical upheaval, pregnant with both danger and opportunity.
The rebel alliance of Stark, Baratheon, Arryn, and Tully had proven formidable, their cause fueled by righteous fury and Aerys's escalating madness. After the crucial rebel victory at the Battle of the Bells, Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, the hope of the loyalists, finally took full command of the royal army. He was a skilled warrior, a charismatic leader, and he still commanded the loyalty of many great houses, including the Tyrells of Highgarden and the Martells of Dorne (though their support was strained by his slight to Princess Elia). He gathered a vast host, nearly forty thousand strong, and marched to meet Robert Baratheon on the banks of the Trident.
Aelyx's network of Emissaries and house-elf agents, operating with unparalleled discretion amidst the chaos of warring armies, provided him with a near real-time tapestry of the unfolding campaign. Lyra, Daenys, and their most gifted seer descendants within the sanctuary strained their greensight, sifting through the bloody currents of fate for clarity.
"The Trident will be the crucible," Aelyx declared to his immortal family, as reports detailed the two armies converging. "Rhaegar seeks a single, decisive battle to crush the rebellion. Robert seeks vengeance. It will be a clash of titans, a battle for the soul of the realm."
The Battle of the Trident, when it came in 283 AC, was a brutal, day-long slaughter. Forty thousand royalists, many of them seasoned warriors, clashed with a slightly smaller but equally determined rebel host. Aelyx's agents reported on the valor of men like Ser Barristan Selmy, who cut a bloody swathe through rebel ranks for the Targaryens, and the fury of Robert Baratheon, his warhammer a blur of destruction. Dragons were absent from this battlefield – the Targaryens' aerial might long since a faded memory – and so it was a war of men, steel, and blood.
The turning point, as Aelyx's seers had glimpsed and his agents confirmed, came with the personal confrontation between Robert Baratheon and Prince Rhaegar Targaryen. They met in the bloody ford of the Trident, their duel a legendary clash of fury versus skill. Rhaegar, the poet prince, fought with Valyrian grace and precision, but Robert, fueled by grief and an indomitable rage, was a force of nature. His warhammer, bearing the crowned stag of his house, crushed Rhaegar's dragon-crested helm and ornate breastplate, shattering the rubies that adorned it and spilling the Prince's lifeblood into the rushing waters. Rhaegar Targaryen, the last dragon prince, fell with Lyanna's name upon his lips – or so the bards would later sing.
"So ends the dreamer," Aelyx commented, his voice devoid of emotion as the news of Rhaegar's death reached Skagos. "Driven by prophecy, undone by passion. He sought to save his dynasty but instead hastened its demise. His death will break the loyalist army's spirit."
And so it did. With Rhaegar fallen, the royalist host wavered, then broke, fleeing the field in disarray. The Trident was a decisive rebel victory, the path to King's Landing now open.
While Robert Baratheon, wounded in the battle, recuperated, Eddard Stark led the pursuit of the fleeing loyalists. It was then that Lord Tywin Lannister of Casterly Rock, who had remained studiously neutral throughout the war, finally made his move. He marched his formidable Lannister army to the gates of King's Landing, proclaiming loyalty to King Aerys. Grand Maester Pycelle, a Lannister toady, convinced the increasingly paranoid Aerys to open the gates.
"The old lion reveals his claws at last," Aelyx noted with a flicker of appreciation for Tywin's ruthless pragmatism. "He waited until the outcome was certain, then moved to secure his place with the victors, and to settle old scores with Aerys. King's Landing will pay a heavy price for its king's folly and Pycelle's treachery."
The Lannister forces poured into the city and began a brutal sack. Aerys II, his mind utterly gone, barricaded himself in the Red Keep, screaming for his pyromancers to "Burn them all! Burn them all in their homes! Burn them all in their beds!" He ordered the caches of wildfire hidden beneath the city to be ignited, intending to take King's Landing with him in a final, fiery apocalypse.
It was Ser Jaime Lannister of the Kingsguard, Tywin's own son, who prevented this ultimate horror. Faced with the King's mad commands and the imminent destruction of the city, Jaime slew Aerys before the Iron Throne, earning himself the infamous epithet "Kingslayer."
Simultaneously, Lannister knights, under the command of Ser Amory Lorch and Ser Gregor Clegane, stormed Maegor's Holdfast. Princess Elia Martell, Rhaegar's Dornish wife, was brutally raped and murdered by Clegane, who then dashed the brains of her infant son, Aegon, against a wall. Her young daughter, Rhaenys, was dragged from beneath her father's bed and stabbed to death by Lorch.
Aelyx received these reports with a cold, analytical mind. The sack of the city, the murder of the royal children – these were brutal, savage acts, yet strategically effective in extinguishing Targaryen claimants. "Tywin Lannister plays a bloody, but thorough, game," he observed. "He leaves no loose ends, no rival heirs to rally future rebellions from Rhaegar's direct line. The Dornish, however, will never forgive this. This act of barbarity will sow dragon's teeth of its own, a vendetta that will simmer for generations." He instructed his Emissaries in Dorne to monitor the Martell reaction closely.
When Eddard Stark arrived in King's Landing, he was met with the horrifying aftermath of the sack and the news of Aerys's death at Jaime Lannister's hand. He was disgusted by the slaughter of Elia and her children, a disgust that created an immediate rift with Robert Baratheon, who, upon his own arrival, seemed to accept the brutal necessities of war and Tywin Lannister's timely alliance. Robert Baratheon claimed the Iron Throne by right of conquest and his Targaryen grandmother, his claim cemented by the might of his armies and the support of the great houses who had rebelled with him. To seal the alliance with the wealthy and powerful Lannisters, he agreed to marry Tywin's daughter, Cersei.
Aelyx watched the formation of this new Baratheon dynasty with keen interest. "A warrior king, not a scholar or a madman," he assessed Robert. "He is strong, charismatic in his way, but also prone to indulgence and perhaps lacks the patience for the intricacies of peacetime governance. His reign will be built on alliances forged in war, and such alliances can be… fragile. And his queen, Cersei Lannister, with her father Tywin behind her, will be a power in her own right. This new dynasty already contains the seeds of future intrigue."
While Robert consolidated his rule in King's Landing, the remnants of the war played out. Ned Stark lifted the long siege of Storm's End, where Robert's younger brother Stannis had heroically held out against the Tyrell fleet and army. Then, Ned journeyed to Dorne, to the mysterious Tower of Joy, where Rhaegar had kept Lyanna Stark. He arrived to find Lyanna dying, but not before she extracted a promise from him, the nature of which remained a closely guarded Stark secret (though Aelyx's Emissaries, with their subtle arts and Lyra's distant greensight, had pieced together a strong suspicion about a hidden child of Rhaegar and Lyanna, a secret of monumental potential consequence that Aelyx filed away for future consideration).
The last Targaryen stronghold, Dragonstone, was held by loyalists, sheltering King Aerys's only surviving children, Prince Viserys and the newborn Princess Daenerys (born during a fierce storm that gave her the moniker Stormborn). Before Stannis Baratheon's fleet could take the island, Ser Willem Darry and a few loyal retainers smuggled the children across the Narrow Sea to Braavos, into exile.
"So, the last public vestiges of House Targaryen flee to Essos," Aelyx noted. "A boy prince and an infant princess, with nothing but their name and a dwindling handful of supporters. They are no immediate threat. But Valyrian blood has a way of enduring, of seeking to reclaim what it believes is lost. Tibbit's network in the Free Cities will keep a discreet, generational watch on their progress. One never knows when even the smallest ember might reignite."
With Robert Baratheon crowned King Robert I, and the last Targaryens in exile, Robert's Rebellion drew to its bloody close. The realm was scarred, many great houses diminished, but a new order had been established. Jon Arryn, Robert's foster father, became Hand of the King, tasked with healing the wounds of war and guiding the new, untested monarch.
Publicly, Lord Daeron Volmark of Skagos sent lavish congratulations to King Robert I, reaffirming Skagos's loyalty to the Iron Throne through their liege, Lord Eddard Stark, now Warden of the North and Robert's closest friend. Skagosi gold helped replenish Winterfell's coffers, depleted by the war effort, and funded memorials for the Northern fallen. Skagos was seen as a staunch, if distant, supporter of the new regime, its wealth and loyalty beyond question.
Within the sanctuary of Mount Skatus, Aelyx conducted his final assessment of the rebellion.
The Targaryen dynasty, after nearly three centuries of rule, had been shattered by its own internal flaws – madness, arrogance, disputed successions, and the catastrophic loss of their dragons.
The new Baratheon dynasty, while founded on strength and broad alliances, lacked the unifying mystique of dragons and was already burdened by the compromises and resentments born of its violent inception.
The North, under Eddard Stark, would likely enjoy a period of respected autonomy, its ties to the crown strong through Ned's friendship with Robert. This suited Aelyx perfectly.
And Skagos, his hidden kingdom, had emerged entirely unscathed, its secrets intact, its power base immeasurably strengthened in relative terms. The seven "Summerhall Seven" dragons, hatched during the early days of Aerys II's reign, were now young, powerful juveniles, their bloodlines a precious addition to his hundreds of Skagosi dragons. His dynasty was generations deep, unified, and possessed of magical knowledge and resources beyond anything currently imagined in Westeros.
The rebellion had been a brutal, cleansing fire. It had swept away an old, decaying order. Aelyx Velaryon, the immortal Shadow King, had not merely weathered the storm; he had subtly profited from it, gathering knowledge, artifacts, and a clearer understanding of the forces that now shaped Westeros. He was content. The world had changed, but his eternal goals remained the same. His hidden dynasty would continue its patient, silent growth, awaiting the opportunities that future centuries, and the inevitable follies of new mortal kings, would undoubtedly provide. Robert Baratheon might rule the Seven Kingdoms for a time, but Aelyx Velaryon ruled eternity from his unseen throne in the North. The game of ages had simply entered a new, intriguing chapter.