Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

Seen from afar, the second son of Maekar Targaryen seemed the very incarnation of the songs bards sang in the South. He possessed the biting, sharp beauty of Old Valyria: eyes of a violet so dark they bordered on the color of ripe grapes, and a cascade of silver-gold hair that fell over his shoulders in perfect symmetry. But behind the divine features dwelt a creature made of broken edges and meticulous cruelty. To Aerion, the world was not divided into good and bad men, but into Targaryens and mud. He did not walk among the court; he tolerated it.

If his brother Baelor was the sunlight that drew the eyes of the realm, Prince Maekar Targaryen was the rock that held the dynasty's foundations from the shadows. He was the fourth son of King Daeron II, the Lord of Summerhall, and a man sculpted by resentment and duty. He lived perpetually under the shadow of his older brothers, knowing that Westeros looked at him not with the love they professed for Baelor, but with the fear reserved for winter storms. Physically, Maekar was a block of stone in human form. He possessed the robust, broad build of a...

...when Prince Baelor Targaryen left his pavilion. There was in his presence no heaviness of fear nor rust of resentment; where Baelor walked, men straightened their backs not out of obligation, but out of a deep desire to be worthy of his gaze. If Westeros was a kingdom perpetually fractured by ambition, Baelor Breakspear was the bridge that kept it together. As the firstborn son of King Daeron II and Princess Myriah Martell, Baelor was the heir to the Iron Throne, the Hand of the King, and the herald of an era of peace. In him, the coin of the gods has not only...

If his cousin Aerion was the fire that devours and destroys, Valar was the light of the afternoon sun—warm, constant, and comforting. He was the firstborn son of Baelor Breakspear and, therefore, the favorite grandson of the good King Daeron II. In him rested the hopes of an entire kingdom that watched with relief as the coin of the gods, this time, had landed on the side of absolute sanity. Physically, Valar carried the duality of his lineage with a singular grace. Like his father, he lacked the striking silver hair of the dragon lords; instead, he possessed subtle chestnut hair...

If his brother Aerion was the fire that consumed the world and his uncle Baelor the light that guided it, Prince Daeron Targaryen was the ash. The firstborn son of Maekar, the man who by right of birth should have worn the dragon's crown, was a shipwrecked soul within his own lineage, baptized by the maesters and the smallfolk with a nickname that he carried like a hot branding iron: Daeron the Drunken. In him, the coin of the gods did not land on the side of violent madness or greatness, but on the side of absolute and tragic weakness. Physically, Daeron looked like a faded sketch...

Aegon Targaryen, whom the whole world simply called Egg, was the fourth son of Prince Maekar. In a dynasty obsessed with thrones and the purity of blood, he was the loose thread—the boy born so low in the line of succession that his own father allowed him to shave his head to hide his identity and travel Westeros as a hedge knight's servant. In him, the coin of the gods did not land on the side of madness or innate majesty, but on the side of the earth: he was forged in the mud, among common men, learning to be human before being a king.