Meleys

Meleys passed through Targaryen hands for the better part of a century before the Dance ever gave her a war to fight in. Princess Alyssa Targaryen — daughter of the Conqueror himself, and later regent for the boy who would become Jaehaerys the Old King — was her first rider of record, and by the time the dragon came down to Rhaenys Targaryen, granddaughter of Jaehaerys and wife to Corlys Velaryon, the Red Queen had already outlived one royal generation and was well into her second. Rhaenys came to her own claim on the Iron Throne twice over — passed by at the Great Council of 101 AC in favor of her cousin Viserys, and passed by again at Harrenhal on the eve of the Dance itself — and the histories are unanimous that she bore both slights with more grace than the men who delivered them deserved. The Queen Who Never Was earned the name honestly; it was Meleys, more than any crown, that let her make her own peace with it.

That peace ended at Rook's Rest. Lured into what Fire & Blood records as a deliberate trap — a lone green dragon reportedly sighted and unguarded — Rhaenys arrived to find Aegon II on Sunfyre and Aemond on Vhagar waiting for her instead. She had the wings to run; Meleys was the swiftest dragon then flying, and a clean retreat was hers for the taking. She turned into the fire instead. The three dragons grappled above the town in the first great dragon-battle of the war, and though Meleys wounded both her attackers badly enough that Sunfyre spent the better part of a year grounded and Vhagar carried scars into her own death six months later, two dragons against one told in the end. Rhaenys and her Red Queen fell together into the ruin their fight had made — the first great dragon death of the Dance, and proof to everyone still counting swords instead of wings that this would not be a war decided by numbers alone.