King's Landing

Aegon's city on Blackwater Bay, where good King Daeron keeps a court of maesters and septons ÔÇö and where Bloodraven's thousand eyes see everything, and one.

The fuller tale

KingÔÇÖs Landing in the reign of Daeron II the Good is a capital finally permitted to be dull, in the specific and valuable sense that a kingdom recovering from civil war finds dullness a luxury. Daeron ended the First Blackfyre Rebellion and then spent his remaining years doing the unglamorous work of keeping it ended ÔÇö patient government, a Dornish peace bought with two royal marriages instead of another war, and a court that runs on maesters and septons rather than swords, at least on the surface. The Red Keep under his rule is a working palace rather than a battleground, which is precisely the condition that lets the realmÔÇÖs deeper fractures fester quietly instead of erupting.

By the time of Whitewalls those fractures belong to a different reign: Daeron is gone, his heir Baelor Breakspear died on Ashford Meadow, and the throne has passed first to the frail, bookish Aerys I and, behind him, to the small councilÔÇÖs most formidable member ÔÇö Brynden Rivers, called Bloodraven, AerysÔÇÖs Hand and master of whisperers, who runs the intelligence of an entire kingdom out of the Red KeepÔÇÖs chambers with a thoroughness that makes the Second Blackfyre RebellionÔÇÖs failure look, in hindsight, almost inevitable. The city itself barely appears on the page in these tales, and that absence is its own kind of presence ÔÇö every road Dunk and Egg travel, every plot they stumble into, ultimately answers to decisions made within these walls, whether the boy squire realizes yet how close he one day sits to making them himself.

Born here

Souls the story brings here

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

• King Daeron II Targaryen ÔÇö Taken by the Great Spring Sickness (the books' telling)
• Valarr Targaryen ÔÇö Taken by the Great Spring Sickness (the books' telling)