BENGALURU: House Targaryen had ruled Dragonstone for more than two hundred years, since Lord Aenar Targaryen first arrived from Valyria with his dragons. Though it had always been their custom to wed brother to sister and cousin to cousin, young blood runs hot, and it was not unknown for men of the house to seek their pleasures amongst the daughters (and even the wives) of their subjects, the smallfolk who lived in the villages below the Dragonmont, tillers of the land and fishers of the sea. Indeed, until the reign of King Jaehaerys, the ancient right to the first night had been invoked mayhaps more oft on Dragonstone than anywhere else in the Seven Kingdoms, though Good Queen Alysanne would surely have been shocked to hear it.
Though the first night was greatly resented elsewhere, as Queen Alysanne had learned in her women’s counsels, such feelings were muted upon Dragonstone, where Targaryens were rightly regarded as being closer to gods than the common run of men. Here, brides thus blessed upon their wedding nights were envied, and the children born of such unions were esteemed above all others, for the Lords of Dragonstone oft-celebrated the birth of such with lavish gifts of gold and silk and land to the mother.
These happy bastards were said to have been “born of dragonseed,” and in time became known simply as “seeds.” Even after the end of the right of the first night, certain Targaryens continued to dally with the daughters of innkeepers and the wives of fishermen, so seeds and the sons of seeds were plentiful on Dragonstone.
It was to them that Prince Jacaerys turned, at the urging of his fool, vowing that any man who could master a dragon would be granted lands and riches and dubbed a knight. His sons would be ennobled, his daughters wed to lords, and he himself would have the honor of fighting beside the Prince of Dragonstone against the pretender Aegon II Targaryen and his treasonous supporters.
Not all those who came forward in answer to the prince’s call were seeds, nor even the sons or grandsons of seeds. A score of the queen’s own household knights offered themselves as dragonriders, amongst them the Lord Commander of her Queensguard, Ser Steffon Darklyn, along with squires, scullions, sailors, men-at-arms, mummers, and two maids. “The Sowing of the Seeds,” Munkun names the triumphs and tragedies that ensued (crediting the notion to Jacaerys himself, not Mushroom). Others prefer “the Red Sowing.”
The most unlikely of these would-be dragonriders was Mushroom himself, whose Testimony speaks at length of his attempt to mount old Silverwing, judged to be the most docile of the masterless dragons. One of the dwarf ’s more amusing tales, it ends with Mushroom running across the ward of Dragonstone with the seat of his pantaloons on fire, and nigh drowning when he leapt into a well to quench the flames. Unlikely, to be sure . . . but it does provide a droll moment in what was otherwise a ghastly business.
Dragons are not horses. They do not easily accept men upon their backs, and when angered or threatened, they attack. Munkun’s True Telling tells us that sixteen men lost their lives during the Sowing. Three times that number were burned or maimed. Steffon Darklyn was burned to death whilst attempting to mount the dragon Seasmoke. Lord Gormon Massey suffered the same fate when approaching Vermithor. A man called Silver Denys, whose hair and eyes lent credence to his claim to be descended from a bastard son of Maegor the Cruel, had an arm torn off by Sheepstealer.
As his sons struggled to staunch the wound, the Cannibal descended on them, drove off Sheepstealer, and devoured father and sons alike.
Fire and Blood: A History of the Targaryen Kings from Aegon the Conqueror to Aegon III by George RR Martin, excerpted with permission from HarperCollins UK