Driftmark

The island of the sea horse, settled by Valyrians before the dragonlords came. From the new castle of High Tide, Corlys the Sea Snake commands a fleet greater than the crown's and wealth greater than the Rock's.

The fuller tale

Driftmark is the Dance’s second throne — not the Iron one, but the fortune and the fleet that make challenging for the Iron Throne possible at all. Settled by Valyrians before the dragonlords themselves ever came west, the island belongs in these years to Corlys Velaryon, the Sea Snake, whose nine great voyages built the greatest private fortune and the largest private navy in Westeros, and to his wife Rhaenys Targaryen, the Queen Who Never Was — between them, High Tide is a court that rivals King’s Landing in wealth and very nearly rivals it in royal blood.

The island pays for its closeness to the throne in the currency the Dance always demands: family. Laena Velaryon dies bearing Daemon Targaryen’s daughters; Laenor Velaryon’s own death is staged rather than real, a mercy that costs Driftmark the certainty of who will inherit it; and the question of whether Rhaenyra’s sons by Laenor are actually Velaryons at all becomes the whisper that arms the greens for a generation, curdling a marriage alliance into the war’s favorite insult. Corlys himself is wounded fighting in the Stepstones years before the Dance proper begins, a limp he carries into the war that his family’s fleet will end up deciding.

It is Driftmark’s ships, not Dragonstone’s dragons, that give Rhaenyra’s cause its reach — the Velaryon fleet blockades the Gullet and starves King’s Landing’s trade for the length of the war’s worst years, forcing Otto Hightower into the desperate gamble of buying Triarchy help just to break it. Corlys outlives the war his family’s wealth made possible, serving as Hand through the regency that follows and dying, at the last, exactly as a man who spent his life on the water ought to — at sea, in his own bed, every horizon finally sailed.

The chronicle here

• Viserys sails to Driftmark to mend the realm's two dragon houses: Rhaenyra will wed Laenor Velaryon, and their sons will sit the throne. (S1·E5)
• Laena is given to the sea at Driftmark, all the realm's dragons and grievances gathered on one island for a funeral. (S1·E7)
• Six years on: Corlys takes a wound in the Stepstones that festers; his brother Vaemond sails to court to claim Driftmark over the 'strong boys.' (S1·E8)
• On Driftmark, Alyn of Hull — the sailor who pulled the Sea Snake from the waves — is owed more than wages, and Corlys knows it. (S2·E5)
• Seasmoke does his own choosing: he hunts down Addam of Hull on Driftmark and takes him into the sky alive. (S2·E6)

Born here

Souls the story brings here

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

• Laena Velaryon — Died of childbed at Driftmark (the books' telling)
• Laenor Velaryon — Slain at Spicetown by Qarl Correy (the books' telling)
• Vaemond Velaryon — Beheaded by Daemon; his tongue they kept (the books' telling)