Dragonstone

A brooding fortress of black stone shaped like dragons, raised by Valyrian art on a smoking island.

The fuller tale

Dragonstone is Rhaenyra’s island long before it is her fortress — the ancestral seat of House Targaryen, granted her by Viserys I as the mark of an heir apparent, and the place where, in 105 AC, the great lords of Westeros are made to kneel and swear that a woman shall one day sit the Iron Throne. For twenty years it is less a castle than a court in exile, the household Alicent Hightower’s faction will never quite let her build in King’s Landing, ringed by black stone shaped like the dragons that first raised it.

It is on Dragonstone that Rhaenyra hears of her father’s death and her own disinheritance in the same breath, and Dragonstone where she answers Aegon II’s stolen crown with one of her own — a second coronation for a second king, the moment the Dance stops being a rumor and starts being a war. The island’s dragons, Syrax foremost among them, make it the black faction’s unassailable base for the war’s opening years: no green fleet or army can touch a fortress that flies its own air force.

The island’s ending is its beginning turned inside out. Driven from King’s Landing, Rhaenyra retreats to Dragonstone only to find it is no longer entirely a sanctuary — her own dwindling court, her fear, and at the last the very dragon-shaped stone of the place close in around her, and it is on Dragonstone’s grounds that Aegon II has her killed, in the same fortress where the realm once knelt to promise her the throne. The island outlives every claimant who ever held it, black stone and dragon-shapes indifferent, as always, to who currently owns them.

In the first season

The Targaryens' last seat in Westeros, held now by Stannis Baratheon — a name Ned Stark writes in a letter he never gets to send.

The chronicle here

• Daemon takes Dragonstone with his gold cloaks and steals a dragon's egg — the one meant for Baelon's cradle. (S1·E2)
• Rhaenyra sees the court for what it is and removes her family to Dragonstone. (S1·E6)
• Rhaenyra and Daemon wed on Dragonstone's shore in the old Valyrian way — over a fresh corpse in Laenor's clothes, while Laenor rows for Essos, alive and free. (S1·E7)
• Aegon II is crowned before the mob with the Conqueror's crown and blade — until Meleys bursts through the pit floor, and Rhaenys, with the greens at her mercy, spares them and flies to Dragonstone. (S1·E9)
• Word of the usurpation reaches Dragonstone; the shock sends Rhaenyra into early labor, and she buries a daughter, Visenya, the same day. (S1·E10)
• Ser Erryk Cargyll arrives with a stolen crown; Daemon sets Viserys's crown on Rhaenyra's head on the shore of Dragonstone. (S1·E10)
• Ser Arryk Cargyll is sent to Dragonstone wearing his twin's face; Ser Erryk finds him at Rhaenyra's door. (S2·E2)
• Ser Steffon Darklyn dies in fire on Dragonstone's slopes, trying to claim the riderless Seasmoke for the blacks. (S2·E6)
• Alicent comes alone to Dragonstone: take the city, take the crown, spare Aegon — 'and what of Aemond?' The season ends with every piece in motion and the Gullet waiting. (S2·E8)
• The king is a day dead before the green council has crowned a new one: Aegon, the Conqueror's crown on his head, anointed before the mob in the Dragonpit while his sister labors on Dragonstone, unknowing. Grand Maester Orwyle is sent with terms; Rhaenyra answers with her father's crown on her own head. The realm chooses sides — the Vale, the North and the rivers for the queen, Oldtown, the Rock and Storm's End for the king. And at Storm's End, in a storm, Vhagar falls upon a boy flying home with an answer. (F&B 2)
• Blood and Cheese come over the walls of the Red Keep with a purse of Daemon's gold and instructions that fit in five words. Queen Helaena is made to choose among her sons; they take Jaehaerys's head regardless. The greens answer with a mummer's Cargyll: twin meets twin at Dragonstone's gates and both die of it. Daemon takes Harrenhal without a blow; Bracken and Blackwood open the war of the rivers at the Burning Mill; and Ser Criston Cole, Hand and kingmaker, marches the green host into the crownlands. (F&B 3)
• Rhaenyra, sold by the garrison of Dragonstone, is given to Sunfyre in front of her son: the king watches his sister eaten, and thinks it justice. It buys him half a year. Second Tumbleton kills a Betrayer and the young Prince Daeron; Addam of Hull dies proving a bastard's honor at Second Tumbleton; and with the Wolf of the North marching south and no dragons left worth the name, Aegon II drinks poisoned wine poured by his own council. 'Let there be an end,' the lords agreed — and made one. (F&B 7)

Born here

Souls the story brings here

The fallen of this place — if any, they are named here. Spoilers.

• Rhaenyra Targaryen — Given to Sunfyre in Dragonstone's yard (the books' telling)
• Jacaerys Velaryon — Lost with Vermax in the Battle of the Gullet (the books' telling)
• Arryk Cargyll — Slain by his twin at Dragonstone
• Erryk Cargyll — Fell on his sword for grief
• Steffon Darklyn — Burned trying to claim Seasmoke