Fire & Blood ÔÇö The Dance of the Dragons ÔÇö The Red Dragon and the Gold

Cole takes Duskendale and Rook's Rest by march and treachery; the trap at Rook's Rest is the war's first dragonfall. Rhaenys Targaryen, the Queen Who Never Was, answers the castle's ravens and finds two dragons waiting: Aegon on Sunfyre the Golden and Aemond on Vhagar. Meleys the Red Queen dies with her teeth in Sunfyre's throat; the king falls with her, burned half to nothing, and the realm passes to the regent Aemond ÔÇö one eye, one dragon, no restraint.

The chapter retold

The war's abstractions become concrete the day a dragon falls out of the sky. Cole takes Duskendale and Rook's Rest by march and treachery, and the trap at Rook's Rest is baited precisely to draw down a dragon and kill it ÔÇö the first time anyone in the Dance treats the beasts as targets rather than gods. Rhaenys Targaryen, the Queen Who Never Was, answers the castle's ravens on old Meleys and finds two dragons waiting: Aegon come half-drunk on Sunfyre to feel like a king, and Aemond on Vhagar, the largest living thing in the world.

What Rhaenys does with the arithmetic is the section's monument. Given a clear window to flee, she turns the Red Queen back into Vhagar's teeth instead, and does not die cheaply ÔÇö Meleys savages Sunfyre badly enough to eventually kill him and burns Aegon half to ruin, taking the greens' king out of the war's middle stretch before Vhagar's ancient bulk finally brings her down. The crown she was twice denied she pays the price of anyway, and the realm passes into the hands of the regent Aemond: one eye, one enormous dragon, and none of the restraint that had, until now, kept the Dance from becoming a slaughter.

This movement: The Dance Begins

• Blood and Cheese answer Shipbreaker Bay in a nursery; the Cargyll twins answer each other at Dragonstone's gates.
• Daemon takes Harrenhal; Bracken and Blackwood open the rivers' war at the Burning Mill; the Winter Wolves march south.
• Cole's host takes Duskendale by march and Rook's Rest by trap ÔÇö and the trap costs the greens their king, burned under his own dragon.
• Aemond One-Eye rules as regent with Vhagar for a scepter, and the rivers burn wherever her shadow passes.

The fallen ÔÇö spoilers

• Lord Gunthor Darklyn ÔÇö Lord of Duskendale, beheaded for keeping faith with the queen he had sworn to.
• Princess Rhaenys Targaryen ÔÇö The Queen Who Never Was, dead at Rook's Rest with her Red Queen ÔÇö she fell upon Sunfyre and near took the king with her.