- Daemon arrives at Harrenhal from Maidenpool to find no banners or lords in the castle — only a dozen or so squaters.
When the last of them was gone, Daemon Targaryen walked the cavernous halls of Harren’s seat alone, with no companion but his dragon.
^ Now that is how you boss the RPG called life and reality — commandeer a giant castle with just you and your dragon, make it your home, and enjoy the peace and bliss of solitude.
The whole world is out there, but you have your own bubble of Being to have all to yourself, living the dream 😛
Each night at dusk he slashed the heart tree in the godswood to mark the passing of another day.
Thirteen marks can be seen upon that weirwood still; old wounds, deep and dark, yet the lords who have ruled Harrenhal since Daemon’s day say they bleed afresh every spring.
^ Pretty damn cool imagery. Way before Bloodraven — wonder if any greenseer was spying on him in real-time… 😮
- Aemond and Vhagar show up on the fourteenth day.
He had not come alone.
Alys Rivers flew with him, her long hair streaming black behind her, her belly swollen with child.
Prince Aemond circled twice about the towers of Harrenhal, then brought Vhagar down in the outer ward, with Caraxes a hundred yards away.
The dragons glared balefully at each other, and Caraxes spread his wings and hissed, flames dancing across his teeth.
^ Love this football field length of separation between them — the calm before the storm.
I guess in Westeros they use “yards” for measurement, same as here, LMAO.
The prince helped his woman down from Vhagar’s back, then turned to face his uncle. “Nuncle, I hear you have been seeking us.”
“Only you,” Daemon replied. “Who told you where to find me?”
“My lady,” Aemond answered. “She saw you in a storm cloud, in a mountain pool at dusk, in the fire we lit to cook our suppers. She sees much and more, my Alys.You were a fool to come alone.”
^ Yet she didn’t see Aemond dying over the Gods Eye during the dragon battle…what kind of woman of sorcery is she??? Sounds like an amateur.
Most likely a bastard girl from a lord and some woods witch, who has occasional bouts of prophecy, but like Melisandre never sees the exact outcome and has to interpret.
“Were I not alone, you would not have come,” said Daemon.
“Yet you are, and here I am. You have lived too long, nuncle.”
“On that much we agree,” Daemon replied.
^ Aemond pretty much admits he is a coward and would not have come if Daemon had a host with him at Harrenhal, or multiple dragons.
Eh, life is short and the grave does not care if you were brave or a coward, only human ego cares about that — hard to blame the One-Eyed Prince.
Daemon got forty nine great years in of adventure and mythic role playing and countless lovers — time to put a bow on it all and be done with it 😉
Advantage always goes to the guy not afraid of dying.
The Fight Begins
- Aemond buckled himself to his saddle — Daemon did not, so it would be easy to jump from his dragon.
Prince Daemon took Caraxes up swiftly, lashing him with a steel-tipped whip until they disappeared into a bank of clouds.
^ Got the high ground early on.
Vhagar, older and much the larger, was also slower, made ponderous by her very size, and ascended more gradually, in ever widening circles that took her and her rider out over the waters of the Gods Eye.
The hour was late, the sun was close to setting, and the lake was calm, its surface glimmering like a sheet of beaten copper.
Up and up she soared, searching for Caraxes as Alys Rivers watched from atopKingspyre Tower in Harrenhal below.
^ We get a nice sunset battle to balance out the pre-dawn battle between Sunfyre and Moondancer.
The attack came sudden as a thunderbolt.
Caraxes dove down upon Vhagar with a piercing shriek that was heard a dozen miles away, cloaked by the glare of the setting sun on Prince Aemond’s blind side.
^ Knew the loss of his eye was going to come into play before it was all said and done.
The Blood Wyrm slammed into the older dragon with terrible force.
Their roars echoed across the Gods Eye as the two grappled and tore at one another, dark against a blood red sky.
So bright did their flames burn that fisherfolk below feared the clouds themselves had caught fire.
Locked together, the dragons tumbled toward the lake.
The Blood Wyrm’s jaws closed about Vhagar’s neck, her black teeth sinking deep into the flesh of the larger dragon.
Even as Vhagar’s claws raked her belly open and Vhagar’s own teeth ripped away a wing, Caraxes bit deeper, worrying at the wound as the lake rushed up below them with terrible speed.
And it was then, the tales tell us, that Prince Daemon Targaryen swung a leg over his saddle and leapt from one dragon to the other.
In his hand was Dark Sister, the sword of Queen Visenya. As Aemond One-Eye looked up in terror, fumbling with the chains that bound him to his saddle, Daemon ripped off his nephew’s helm and drove the sword down into his blind eye, so hard the point came out the back of the young prince’s throat.
Half a heartbeat later, the dragons struck the lake, sending up a gout of water so high that it was said to have been as tall as Kingspyre Tower.
^ Now THAT is absolutely legendary — both riders were going to die anyways, but Daemon wanted to personally kill Aemond before the surface of the lake did — as well as make sure the prince did not swim away or manage to pull Vhagar up at the last second.
The Aftermath
Neither man nor dragon could have survived such an impact, the fisherfolk who saw it said.
Nor did they.
Caraxes lived long enough to crawl back onto the land.
Gutted, with one wing torn from his body and the waters of the lake smokingabout him, the Blood Wyrm found the strength to drag himself onto the lakeshore, expiring beneath the walls of Harrenhal.
^ The pride in dying on land, and not inside the lake — one last small victory before you exit the world.
No one wants to die in the water and then drift to the bottom — creatures with legs should always die on land.
Vhagar’s carcass plunged to the lake floor, the hot blood from the gaping wound in her neck bringing the water to a boil over her last resting place.
When she was found some years later, after the end of the Dance of the Dragons, Prince Aemond’s armored bones remained chained to her saddle, with Dark Sister thrust hilt-deep through his eye socket.
^ Vhagar gets a watery grave … the beast deserved better 😦
For a few years a Valyrian blade was up for grabs for anyone who ventured beneath the lake’s surface … too bad no one was bold enough to search.
That Prince Daemon died as well we cannot doubt. His remains were never found, but there are queer currents in that lake, and hungry fish as well.
^ Basically would have been impossible to survive the currents pulling him under and the fish once he splashed in the middle of it. However it was calm before the gargantuan splash — no hectic waters.
It’s best if Daemon did die, however. Not worth living after that epic sendoff and no longer possessing a dragon — serving as Regent to Aegon III would be pretty damn boring in comparison.
The singers tell us that the old prince survived the fall and afterward made his wayback to the girl Nettles, to spend the remainder of his days at her side. Such stories make for charming songs, but poor history.
^ And how would he find her without a dragon? She would never come back to the mainland, except for the mountains of the Vale.
Best if they never saw one another again after their epic sendoff.
It was upon the twenty-second day of the fifth moon of the year 130 AC when the dragons danced and died above the Gods Eye. Daemon Targaryen was nine-and-forty at his death; Prince Aemond had only turned twenty.
Vhagar, the greatest of the Targaryen dragons since the passing of Balerion the Black Dread, had counted one hundred eighty-one years upon the earth.
^ That’s a nice long run — can only imagine how many books, video games, STEM fields, and mountains skied a human can experience in almost two centuries … son we will find out, I think 😉
Thus passed the last living creature from the days of Aegon’s Conquest, as dusk and darkness swallowed Black Harren’s accursed seat.
Yet so few were on hand to bear witness that it would be some time before word of Prince Daemon’s last battle became widely known.
^ I believe GRRM said the years have twelve months like ours, so right now we are about half way through the year 130 AC.
Daniel's Backup of 20 years of ASOIAF Historical Analysis 