The Dragonseeds
Bastards and smallfolk with the blood of old Valyria in them, summoned by the queen to try the riderless dragons. Dozens burned; a handful rose ÔÇö and changed the war's arithmetic.
The fuller tale
The Red Sowing is the BlacksÔÇÖ answer to a problem no amount of ships or riverlords could solve on their own: three dragons at Dragonstone with no rider, and a war being decided, increasingly, by whoever has more of them in the air. RhaenyraÔÇÖs solution breaks a rule the dynasty had quietly kept for a century ÔÇö that dragons answer to Valyrian blood of acknowledged, legitimate descent ÔÇö by throwing the call open to anyone in the city who can claim so much as a rumor of dragon ancestry, highborn or gutter-born alike.
The Sowing is less a ceremony than a culling. Dozens come forward to try Vermithor and Silverwing, dragons old enough and short-tempered enough to kill outright rather than merely refuse a rider, and several candidates burn in front of the whole assembled crowd before anyone succeeds ÔÇö a public, repeated demonstration that dragon blood is not a courtesy title but a physical fact some claimants simply do not possess.
The ones who do succeed change the warÔÇÖs arithmetic and its politics at the same time: Hugh Hammer claims Vermithor, the Bronze Fury, second-oldest living dragon in the world; Ulf White claims Silverwing; and Addam of Hull, a shipwrightÔÇÖs son with more claim to Velaryon blood than anyone had previously bothered to acknowledge, claims Seasmoke. None of the three had a title worth mentioning a season earlier, and all three are, by the SowingÔÇÖs end, riders of dragons great lords would have killed for.
Outside the SowingÔÇÖs official roll entirely, a young woman known only as Nettles claims the wild dragon Sheepstealer near Driftmark on her own initiative, unsanctioned and unexpected ÔÇö proof, alongside the Sowing itself, that the warÔÇÖs single greatest disruption to a century of Targaryen orthodoxy was simply discovering how many people the old rules had been quietly excluding all along.
The page and the screen
NettlesÔÇÖs fate afterward is one of Fire & BloodÔÇÖs most openly disputed episodes ÔÇö MushroomÔÇÖs account has Daemon killing her in a fit of jealous rage after suspecting an affair with the dragon rather than the woman, while other sources have her simply flying away from the war entirely and surviving it, unresolved. The show has to commit to a single version for its ending; the book, characteristically, refuses to tell you which chronicler to believe.
