asoiaf Archives - History of Westeros

Our joint coverage of the Dance of the Dragons with Radio Westeros begins with the key events that led to war. The Queen Who Never Was, the Year of the Red Spring, the formation of the Blacks & Greens and much more.

The Dance of the Dragons is the flowery name bestowed upon the savage internecine struggle for the Iron Throne of Westeros fought between two rival branches of House Targaryen during the years 129 to 131 AC. To characterize the dark, turbulent, bloody doings of this period as a “dance” strikes us as grotesquely inappropriate. No doubt the phrase originated with some singer. “The Dying of the Dragons” would be altogether more fitting, but tradition and time have burned the more poetic usage into the pages of history, so we must dance along with the rest.

Rhaenys Targaryen – The Queen Who Never Was by Drafturgy
Rhaenys Targaryen & Corlys Velaryon by Drafturgy
Visenya, Aegon, and Rhaenys by NaomiMakesArt
Laena and Laenor Velaryon by NaomiMakesArt
Rhaenyra and the Strongs by Poly-Hebdo
Alys Rivers and Aemond Targaryen by NaomiMakesArt
Rhaenyra and Daemon by NaomiMakesArt
Rhaenyra by Doug Wheatley
Rhaenyra by NaomiMakesArt

The third of our THREE (1, 2) Bloodraven episodes. This one has a deep dive into the life of Brynden Rivers beginning from the point at which he took the Black. Was he a ranger? What did he and Maester Aemon talk about? Who is Coldhands? and much more on… the Three-Eyed Bloodraven!

Thanks to guest producer Zack of Game of Owns!

Before them a pale lord in ebon finery sat dreaming in a tangled nest of roots, a woven weirwood throne that embraced his withered limbs as a mother does a child. His body was so skeletal and his clothes so rotted that at first Bran took him for another corpse, a dead man propped up so long that the roots had grown over him, under him, and through him. What skin the corpse lord showed was white, save for a bloody blotch that crept up his neck onto his cheek. His white hair was fine and thin as root hair and long enough to brush against the earthen floor. Roots coiled around his legs like wooden serpents. One burrowed through his breeches into the desiccated flesh of his thigh, to emerge again from his shoulder. A spray of dark red leaves sprouted from his skull, and grey mushrooms spotted his brow. A little skin remained, stretched across his face, tight and hard as white leather, but even that was fraying, and here and there the brown and yellow bone beneath was poking through.
– Bran II, ADWD