The Targaryens were far from the most powerful of the dragonlords, and their rivals saw their flight to Dragonstone as an act of surrender, as cowardice. Within its shining walls, twoscore rival houses vied for power and glory in court and council, rising and falling in an endless, subtle, oft savage struggle for dominance. Twelve years before the Doom of Valyria (114 BC), Aenar Targaryen sold his holdings in the Freehold and the Lands of the Long Summer, and moved with all his wives, wealth, slaves, dragons, siblings, kin, and children to Dragonstone, a bleak island citadel beneath a smoking mountain in the narrow sea.Īt its apex Valyria was the greatest city in the known world, the center of civilization. The Targaryens were of pure Valyrian blood, dragonlords of ancient lineage. Thus it can be seen that most of Aegon’s actual conquering took place from 2–1 BC, Before the Conquest. This coronation took place two years after Aegon’s Landing, well after all three of the major battles of the Wars of Conquest had been fought and won.

The day of Aegon’s Landing was celebrated by the king and his descendants, but the Conqueror actually dated the start of his reign from the day he was crowned and anointed in the Starry Sept of Oldtown by the High Septon of the Faith.

Many assume, wrongly, that the reign of King Aegon I Targaryen began on the day he landed at the mouth of the Blackwater Rush, beneath the three hills where the city of King’s Landing would eventually stand. Sporadic attempts to bring the Dornishmen into the realm continued all through King Aegon’s reign and well into the reigns of his sons, making it impossible to fix a precise end date for the Wars of Conquest.Įven the start date is a matter of some misconception. More than two years passed between Aegon’s landing and his Oldtown coronation…and even then the Conquest remained incomplete, since Dorne remained unsubdued. Aegon Targaryen’s conquest of the Seven Kingdoms did not take place in a single day. True scholars know that such dating is far from precise.

Births, deaths, battles, and other events are dated either AC (After the Conquest) or BC (Before the Conquest). The maesters of the Citadel who keep the histories of Westeros have used Aegon’s Conquest as their touchstone for the past three hundred years.

Fireblood book