House Velaryon, root and branch — 19 names across 9 generations, seated at High Tide, Driftmark in The Crownlands. Each band below is a single generation, eldest first; the mono line beneath a name gives its parents, so the descent reads down the page. Dates follow the maesters, and where the songs outrun the records the chronicle hedges the legend as legend.
Driftmark's own chroniclers claim the house sailed for Westeros while Valyria still stood whole, making the Velaryons — with the Targaryens and the Celtigars — one of the few lines of undoubted Valyrian blood ever to settle the Seven Kingdoms. They kept no dragons, only ships, which this maester notes is the rarer wisdom of the two.
Styled first Master of Ships to Aegon I
Threw the Velaryon fleet in with Aegon's before a single dragon crossed the narrow sea, and was rewarded with the first seat ever named master of ships on a Targaryen small council. The Iron Throne has kept a Velaryon or a Velaryon's protégé at that post more often than not ever since — proof that a fleet, well timed, outlasts a battle.
Styled Lord of the Tides; Hand of the King (to Jaehaerys I)
Admiral of Maegor the Cruel's fleet until he judged the wind had shifted, whereupon he declared for the boy-prince Jaehaerys and sailed the royal navy out from under his king — leaving Maegor to discover, on the Iron Throne, that a fleet is a poor thing to lose twice. Jaehaerys made him Hand and confirmed him in the office on reaching his majority, before easing him back to the sea he preferred. A second Daemon in the family's rolls, which this Citadel finds Velaryons share with Starks: an economy of names.
Styled Lord of the Tides
Parents Daemon Velaryon
Eldest of old Daemon's three sons, and father to the boy who would eclipse every Velaryon before or since. The record keeps his name and buries the rest with him.
Styled Lord of the Tides, Master of Driftmark
Wed Rhaenys Targaryen
Parents Corwyn Velaryon
Sailed his own-built ship past the Jade Gates to Yi Ti and Leng, doubled his house's fortune on a single voyage, and married a princess passed twice over for the Iron Throne — becoming, by most countings, the richest man in Westeros who was not also a king. He served four sovereigns and buried both his trueborn children before he was done, then lived to see the realm he had helped build tear itself apart in the Dance and died within the year the fighting ended, the sixth day of the third moon of 132 AC. The Citadel is not aware of a fuller life recorded of any man who never sat a throne.
Styled Lady of the Tides
Wed Corlys Velaryon
Passed over for the succession twice — once unborn, once at the Great Council of 101 AC that named her cousin Viserys king instead — she flew Meleys the Red Queen into the Dance rather than watch her grandchildren's claim dismissed a third time, and died in fire over Rook's Rest with two dragons and a king's son against her one. The realm that would not crown her wrote her epitaph anyway.
Styled commander of the Velaryon fleet
Eldest of Corlys's six nephews by an elder brother the record does not trouble to name, he claimed Driftmark for himself and his own blood over a dying Corlys's Velaryon-named great-grandsons, on the plain if impolitic ground that he, at least, undoubtedly shared it. Rhaenyra had Prince Daemon strike his head from his shoulders in the throne room for the argument, and fed the rest of him to her dragon Syrax. The Citadel records the episode under both succession law and poor timing.
Wed Daemon Targaryen
Parents Corlys Velaryon · Rhaenys Targaryen
Corlys and Rhaenys's elder child and only daughter, wed at last to a prince the Great Council had also passed over — a marriage of two grievances, if the sourest reading holds. She flew Vhagar, gave Daemon twin daughters at Pentos, and died in childbed at Driftmark bearing a third who did not outlive the hour, calling for her dragon with her final breath. Vhagar answered her the only way a dragon can, by burning the room.
Styled heir to Driftmark
Wed Rhaenyra Targaryen
Parents Corlys Velaryon · Rhaenys Targaryen
Wed to his cousin Rhaenyra by their fathers' arrangement and by all report loyal to her regardless of where his own heart lay, he rode Seasmoke and fathered — the smallfolk of Spicetown and half the Citadel's own archmaesters would quietly dispute the verb — three sons who bore his name. He died at a fair on Driftmark, run through by his companion Ser Qarl Correy after a quarrel the witnesses called a lovers' one; the fool Mushroom named Prince Daemon the hand behind it, and offered no proof anyone has since located. Ser Qarl took ship and was never seen in the Seven Kingdoms again, which some maesters find more suggestive than Mushroom's testimony ever was.
Styled Prince of Dragonstone (as Jacaerys Targaryen)
Parents Laenor Velaryon
Son of Ser Laenor Velaryon and Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, by the law of the realm. Registered at birth as Corlys insisted, with a Velaryon name over his father's own preference, though the boy grew up auburn-haired and grey-eyed in a family of silver and violet — a resemblance to the late Ser Harwin Strong that the court noticed and the court, wisely, mostly kept to itself. He rode Vermax into the Dance as his mother's heir and died at Winterfell rallying northern swords to her cause, by most reckonings the last true prince this house's name was ever lent to.
Styled heir to Driftmark
Parents Laenor Velaryon
Son of Ser Laenor Velaryon and Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen. Named Corlys's heir over Vaemond's furious objection, he flew to Storm's End on his mother's business and was run down over the sea by his one-eyed uncle Aemond on the back of Vhagar — the first blood of the Dance, and the one that made every death after it inevitable. He was fourteen.
Parents Laenor Velaryon
Youngest of Rhaenyra Targaryen's Velaryon-named sons, bonded to the dragon Tyraxes too young to properly master him and killed attempting to fly to his mother's aid regardless — a boy's courage spent on a beast not yet grown into its rider, which this Citadel counts among the Dance's smaller, sadder tragedies.
Styled Lady of Driftmark (by courtesy, after her son's ascent)
A ship's captain's daughter of humble Hull who bore two sons and swore, without ever once wavering, that Ser Laenor Velaryon had fathered both — a claim the smallfolk found faintly comic given Laenor's well-known preferences, and one Mushroom answered with a different father entirely: Lord Corlys himself, kept quiet to spare Princess Rhaenys the insult. The Citadel has no way to settle it and declines to pretend otherwise.
Styled dragonseed
Parents Marilda of Hull
Claimed Seasmoke, the dragon his supposed father Laenor had once ridden, and flew him into the Dance's last battles for Rhaenyra's cause — proof, if the claim of Velaryon blood needed any, that the dragon at least believed it. Queen Rhaenyra legitimized him alongside his brother Alyn at Lord Corlys's own petition, making him a Velaryon in law as well as in the sky, not long before he was lost with his mount over the Gullet.
Styled Lord of the Tides; Hand of the King
Parents Marilda of Hull
Legitimized alongside his brother Addam during the Dance itself, at Corlys's own petition to Queen Rhaenyra, and raised to Driftmark years later on Corlys's dying word over five trueborn nephews' worth of objection, he rebuilt the fleet the war had gutted, hunted the Triarchy from the Stepstones, fetched a hostage prince home from Lys, and served as Hand of the King in his turn — earning, ship by ship, the byname his low birth was never going to hand him for free. The Citadel's ledger of what became of his own line runs thin past his own long service, which this maester chooses to read as the last word on how little birth mattered to a man who simply refused to stop being useful.
Styled Lord of the Tides, Master of Driftmark
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
Styled Lord of the Tides, Master of Driftmark
Parents Monford Velaryon
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
Dashed cards mark bastards and baseborn lines. Names shaded behind the veil belong to the present tale; unveil them only if you do not fear to know.
Younger sons and daughters whose blood struck out on its own — some founding houses of their own name, some withered to a line in the annals, some disputed to this day.
Marilda's sons were not the only Velaryon blood the fishing town of Hull claimed before the Dance made one of them a lord — a scattering of cousins and half-cousins the great houses of Driftmark generally declined to count, until the day it suited Corlys to count one of them after all.
Vaemond spoke of six nephews with a claim on Driftmark; only his own name and his death made the histories. The other five went into the Dance, or into obscurity, unrecorded either way.
Where the records quarrel, contradict, or fall silent, this chronicle sets the arguments down rather than settling for you what the texts leave open.
Whether Ser Harwin Strong or Ser Laenor Velaryon fathered Jacaerys, Lucerys, and Joffrey: the boys' auburn hair and grey eyes argued one way, their father's public acknowledgment the other, and the Dance was fought in no small part on which argument the swords preferred.
Whether Ser Qarl Correy killed Laenor Velaryon from jealousy, as Septon Eustace records, or on Prince Daemon's order, as Mushroom swears with his usual total absence of proof: Correy's ship sailed and neither man was ever brought before a maester to settle it.
Whether Marilda of Hull's sons Alyn and Addam were Laenor's natural children, as their mother maintained her whole life, or Lord Corlys's own by-blows quietly fathered on the same woman and disguised as his son's, as Mushroom alone claims: Corlys's own dying preference for Alyn over five trueborn nephews is the only evidence either way, and it argues nothing conclusively.
How many years separated the founding of House Velaryon on Driftmark from the Doom of Valyria: the family's own boast puts it in the deep past, before even the Targaryens crossed to Dragonstone, and no surviving record troubles to count the generations between.
This tree gathers the current documented Velaryon corpus from the novels and their histories — kings and lords, daughters and bastards, and cadet offshoots. The maesters count only what the texts preserve; where a name survives without its deeds, the chronicle says as much rather than inventing the rest.
Each band down the page is one generation, eldest first. Beneath a name, the mono line names that person's parents, so descent reads from the top down. Dashed cards mark bastards and baseborn lines; cards behind the veil hold fates from the present tale, revealed only if you choose to unveil them.
House Velaryon holds High Tide, Driftmark. The tree opens with the earliest forebears the records name — legendary where the singers outrun the maesters, firmer once true dates begin — and this chronicle marks the myths as myths, never dressing a song up as a certainty.
A good many. Contested parentage, missing generations, bynames left unexplained, and legends the singers embroider all appear under 'What the maesters dispute' at the foot of this page, where the arguments are set down without pretending to close what the books leave open.