House Blackfyre, root and branch — 21 names across 5 generations, seated at None in Westeros in The narrow sea and the Disputed Lands (in exile). 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.
Styled King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men (r. 172–184 AC)
Wed Naerys Targaryen (his sister), and nine acknowledged mistresses besides
A king who governed his appetites not at all and his realm scarcely better. His deathbed legitimization of his bastards armed five generations of war with a single stroke of the quill.
Styled Princess; once queen to Baelor the Blessed, in name if in nothing else
Wed Baelor I Targaryen (unconsummated, set aside)
Locked in the Maidenvault by a holy husband, she escaped often enough to prove the locks ornamental. She named no father for her Daemon; the boy's Valyrian look and the king's later gifts named him for her.
Styled Fifth mistress of Aegon IV
A Bracken of Stone Hedge, dismissed from court when her ambitions outran her welcome. Her house's ancient feud with the Blackwoods was thereby bequeathed, undiluted, to her son.
Styled Sixth mistress of Aegon IV
By most accounts the only mistress the court actually liked, which at that court was a distinction. Mother of Brynden Rivers and two daughters besides.
Styled Ninth and last mistress of Aegon IV
Of old and dwindled Valyrian blood, cold and haughty and rumored to dabble in the dark arts. She died bringing forth Shiera, her only gift to the world and a considerable one.
Styled Pretender King; first of his name and house
Wed Rohanne of Tyrosh (m. 184 AC)
Parents Aegon IV Targaryen · Daena Targaryen
Given the sword Blackfyre at twelve and a crown's worth of ambition with it; half the realm swore the better man wore the black dragon. He died on the Redgrass Field under Bloodraven's arrows, which settled the battle but not, as it proved, the question.
Styled Daughter of the Archon of Tyrosh
Wed Daemon I Blackfyre
Wed to Daemon as the price of Daeron's peace with Tyrosh, she gave the black dragon seven sons and several daughters — a fecundity the Iron Throne would have cause to regret. She fled with her younger children to Tyrosh after Redgrass; her end is not recorded.
Styled Founder and Captain-General of the Golden Company; kingmaker to three pretenders
Wed Betrothed to Calla Blackfyre; whether they wed, no maester can say
Parents Aegon IV Targaryen · Barba Bracken
He nursed his mother's dismissal from court into a grievance that outlived four kings, and lost an eye's worth of hatred to Bloodraven at Redgrass without losing the hatred. Captured after the Third Rebellion, freed from a ship bound for the Wall, he died in a Disputed Lands skirmish; his gilded skull still rides before the Golden Company, waiting.
Styled Hand of the King (209–233 AC); Master of Whisperers; Lord Commander of the Night's Watch (from 239 AC)
Wed None (Shiera Seastar declined him, repeatedly and by all accounts with relish)
Parents Aegon IV Targaryen · Melissa Blackwood
Ces bifurcations nomment des morts, des dénouements et des chemins que les livres n'ont pas encore parcourus. Ne les dévoilez que si les deux routes vous sont connues — ou si vous ne craignez pas de savoir.
Wed None; she took lovers and refused husbands, Bloodraven chief among both categories
Parents Aegon IV Targaryen · Serenei of Lys
The most beautiful woman of her age, with one eye sapphire and one jade, and a library in Valyrian she read better than most archmaesters. That Bittersteel and Bloodraven both wanted her did nothing to cool their feud, which one suspects amused her.
Parents Daemon I Blackfyre · Rohanne of Tyrosh
Eldest twin and heir to the black dragon, cut down by the Raven's Teeth beside his father. The songs give the twins a hero's end; the chronology gives them uncomfortably few years in which to have earned one.
Parents Daemon I Blackfyre · Rohanne of Tyrosh
The younger twin, who took up Blackfyre when his brother fell and fell in his turn. Whatever else the maesters dispute about that field, none dispute that the sword outlasted its bearers.
Styled Pretender (the Second Blackfyre Rebellion, such as it was, 211 AC)
Parents Daemon I Blackfyre · Rohanne of Tyrosh
Third son, a dreamer of dragon-dreams who staged his rising as a wedding tourney at Whitewalls and watched it dissolve before a blow was struck in earnest. Bloodraven kept him alive as a hostage precisely so Bittersteel could not crown a better Blackfyre; when he died, Bittersteel promptly did.
Styled Pretender King (Third Blackfyre Rebellion, 219 AC)
Wed Wife unrecorded; he left sons
Parents Daemon I Blackfyre · Rohanne of Tyrosh
Fourth son, crowned by Bittersteel and carried to Westeros on the third great gamble. He yielded his sword after the battle was lost and was slain regardless — a treachery even the victors did not care to defend.
Parents Daemon I Blackfyre · Rohanne of Tyrosh
Fifth son, who trusted a safe conduct to the Great Council of 233 and pressed his claim by letter and then in person. Bloodraven had his head off at the Red Keep, reasoning that a broken oath was a cheap price for a dead dragon; King Aegon V priced it rather higher.
Wed Promised to Aegor Rivers on the eve of her father's rebellion; no wedding is recorded
Parents Daemon I Blackfyre · Rohanne of Tyrosh
Eldest daughter, whose hand was the coin that bought Bittersteel's full devotion to her father's cause. Of her life after Redgrass the chronicles say nothing, which for a Blackfyre may count as mercy.
Styled Pretender King (crowned in Tyrosh 219 AC; Fourth Blackfyre Rebellion, 236 AC)
Parents Haegon I Blackfyre
Eldest son of Haegon, crowned by Bittersteel before his father's corpse was well cold. His invasion drew few Westerosi swords and ended on his enemies' — Ser Duncan the Tall's among them — at the Wendwater, feeding more men to the fishes than to glory.
Styled Captain-General of the Golden Company, until the command was contested
A Blackfyre of the exile line whose exact descent the records do not fix, remembered chiefly for the manner of his death: his cousin Maelys settled their contest for the Golden Company by killing his horse with a fist and twisting his head from his shoulders. The company found the argument persuasive.
Styled Pretender King; Captain-General of the Golden Company; one of the Band of Nine
Grandson of Daemon I by a line no maester has satisfactorily traced, monstrously strong, with a second head at his neck said to be the twin he devoured in the womb. Young Ser Barristan Selmy slew him in single combat during the War of the Ninepenny Kings, and with him the male line of House Blackfyre was extinguished.
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.
Styled Wife of Magister Illyrio Mopatis of Pentos
Wed Illyrio Mopatis
Ces bifurcations nomment des morts, des dénouements et des chemins que les livres n'ont pas encore parcourus. Ne les dévoilez que si les deux routes vous sont connues — ou si vous ne craignez pas de savoir.
Styled Claimant to the Iron Throne, borne to Westeros by the Golden Company
Ces bifurcations nomment des morts, des dénouements et des chemins que les livres n'ont pas encore parcourus. Ne les dévoilez que si les deux routes vous sont connues — ou si vous ne craignez pas de savoir.
Where the records quarrel, contradict, or fall silent, this chronicle sets the arguments down rather than settling for you what the texts leave open.
The ages of the twins Aegon and Aemon: if Daemon wed Rohanne in 184 AC, his eldest sons could scarcely have been twelve on the Redgrass Field in 196, yet the accounts have them dying sword in hand beside their father. Either the wedding, the births, or the songs are misdated.
Daemon I's paternity itself: Princess Daena never named the father. The realm inferred it from the boy's looks, and Aegon IV confirmed it by the gift of Blackfyre and deathbed legitimization — proofs a rigorous maester calls strong but not conclusive.
Two of Daemon I's seven sons and all but one of his daughters go unnamed in the chronicles; where their lines went, if anywhere, no one can say.
Maelys the Monstrous's exact parentage is unrecorded: chronology makes him a grandson of Daemon I, and some argue a younger son of Haegon I, but the Citadel possesses no document that settles it.
Whether Bittersteel ever wed his betrothed Calla Blackfyre, and whether Maelys's generation descends from that match, is argued in the alehouses of Oldtown more than in its libraries.
The precise year of Daemon II's death in the Red Keep is unrecorded, beyond falling between Whitewalls (211 AC) and the crowning of Haegon (219 AC).
Shiera Seastar's fate is a blank page; the wilder novices would write Asshai on it, but the Citadel declines.
The 'female line' question: TWOIAF is careful to say Maelys's death extinguished the male line of House Blackfyre. Whether a female line persists — and whether it wears the Golden Company's cloth-of-gold, Illyrio's grief, or a young claimant's blue-dyed hair — is the great genealogical dispute of the present age, and the novels present it as doubt, not fact.
Certain dramatizations have invented Blackfyre matter of their own; the Citadel marks all such show-only embellishments as apocrypha and admits none of it here.
This tree gathers every named Blackfyre the novels and their histories record — kings and lords, daughters and bastards, cadet offshoots and all. 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 Blackfyre holds None in Westeros. 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.