A black volcanic island in Blackwater Bay, crowned by the smoking cone of Dragonmont and the castle Valyrian hands raised from its stone before their empire had ever taken much notice of Westeros. It was Targaryen ground before Aegon set foot on the mainland, and in some sense has never quite stopped being so.
Valyrian colonists fortified Dragonstone some two centuries before the Doom, using it as the westernmost outpost of a Freehold that otherwise had little interest in a damp island at the edge of the known world. House Targaryen held it only as one distant holding among many until Daenys the Dreamer, still resident in Valyria itself, dreamed the Freehold's end in fire; her father Aenar believed her, sold off the family's holdings, and moved the household — and their five dragons — to that same damp island a bare dozen years before the flames she had foreseen actually arrived.
Dragonstone remained the Targaryen seat for generations after, and it was here that Aegon and his sister-wives gathered their bannermen, their allies, and their three dragons before sailing to make a single kingdom of seven. Aegon himself died on the island decades later, a conqueror who outlived his conquest by rather less time than his legend suggests, and the smoking caverns of Dragonmont are said even now to shelter wild dragons no rider has yet claimed.
In the timeline
SourcesTWOIAF · The Targaryen KingsF&B · The Dying of the Dragons
Explore further
House seated here
Where is Dragonstone (the island)?
A black volcanic island in Blackwater Bay, crowned by the smoking cone of Dragonmont and the castle Valyrian hands raised from its stone before their empire had ever taken much notice of Westeros. It was Targaryen ground before Aegon set foot on the mainland, and in some sense has never quite stopped being so.
Is Dragonstone (the island) from the books or the show?
Book canon. This entry follows George R. R. Martin's novels and histories, and notes where the television series diverges rather than following it.