House Targaryen

Fire and Blood: the dragonlords who ruled for three centuries.

House Targaryen ruled the Seven Kingdoms for nearly three hundred years, with seventeen kings and, in practice, one queen holding court at King's Landing. Its arms show a red three-headed dragon breathing fire on black, and its words are Fire and Blood.

Quick Facts

Seat: King's Landing (Dragonstone before the Conquest)
Words: Fire and Blood
Sigil: Red three-headed dragon on black
Reign: Nearly 300 years

Lore & Background

The Targaryens came from Valyria, one of forty dragonlord families of the Valyrian Freehold and not the most powerful. Before the Doom they moved to Dragonstone, the Freehold's westernmost outpost, because of a dream of their ancestor Daenys the Dreamer. A century later Aegon I used his dragon Balerion to defeat Volantis, then turned west to unite Westeros.

Reader's Guide

The dynasty's decline began with the Dance of the Dragons, the succession war told in House of the Dragon. It ended with the death of Aerys II, the Mad King, in Robert's Rebellion, which put House Baratheon on the throne; Aerys's surviving children Viserys and Daenerys fled to the Free Cities of Essos.

With his sister-wives Rhaenys and Visenya and their three dragons, Aegon conquered six of the Seven Kingdoms, destroying the houses that defied him and taking the submissive ones as subjects; the seventh joined the realm peacefully by marriage.