House Velaryon

Corlys Velaryon

the Sea Snake

Life: 53 AC
House: Velaryon
Titles: Lord of the Tides · Lord of House Velaryon · Master of Driftmark
Allegiance: House Velaryon
Seat: Driftmark (High Tide)
Culture: Valyrian (Velaryon)
Religion: The Faith of the Seven
Notable for: Nine great voyages east aboard the Sea Snake; husband of Princess Rhaenys Targaryen

The Lord of the Tides weathered the war's worst losses — the chronicle keeps his final chapter veiled for the show-only reader.

Corlys Velaryon inherited an old and wealthy house and then spent his youth proving he did not need the inheritance, sailing his ship the Sea Snake on nine great voyages east — to Qarth, to Yi Ti, as far as the shores of Leng, by his own later telling — and returning each time richer and more famous than the last. Wed at sixteen to Princess Rhaenys Targaryen, herself passed over for the Iron Throne at the Great Council of 101 AC, Corlys built Driftmark into a fortune the crown itself sometimes had to borrow from, and wore the title Lord of the Tides less as an honor than as a fact the rest of Westeros had simply been made to accept.

Key events

53 ACBorn into House Velaryon, one of the oldest and wealthiest houses of the Seven Kingdoms.
c. 69-77 ACSails the Sea Snake on nine great voyages east — to Qarth, Yi Ti, and as far as the shores of Leng — returning each time richer and more famous.
c. 78 ACWeds Princess Rhaenys Targaryen, herself later passed over for the Iron Throne, building Driftmark into a fortune the crown itself sometimes has to borrow from.
120 ACLoses his son Laenor, killed at Spicetown, and his daughter Laena, dead in childbirth — both in the same year, years before the Dance of the Dragons begins.
129 ACLoses his wife Rhaenys, burned from the sky with her dragon Meleys at the Battle at Rook's Rest.
131 ACJoins the conspiracy behind King Aegon II's poisoning, in the plot later remembered as the Hour of the Wolf.
132 ACDies at seventy-nine, collapsing on a stairway at his own seat, and is given the sea burial he had long arranged for himself.

Reading the character

Corlys Velaryon's life divides cleanly into two very different stories: the younger man who made his own fortune and fame through nine voyages no highborn heir strictly needed to risk, and the older Lord of the Tides who spends the Dance of the Dragons watching a lifetime of accumulated wealth and family do nothing to protect the people he loves most. Few figures in Fire & Blood embody the gap between worldly success and personal loss quite so starkly.

His late turn toward conspiracy against the king he had fought a war to oppose reads less as a change of principle than as simple exhaustion — a man who has run out of people left to lose and decides that ending the killing matters more, by that point, than which Targaryen sits the throne when it stops.

The arc of Corlys Velaryon

This carries the character’s road through the published novels. Read on only if you do not fear to know.

The Dance of the Dragons costs Corlys nearly everything his voyages had built toward: his son Laenor dead before the war even properly begins, his daughter Laena dead in childbirth years earlier, and his wife Rhaenys burned from the sky at Rook's Rest fighting for a Black cause the Sea Snake had staked his whole house on. Maimed himself and increasingly doubtful the war could still be won cleanly, he becomes, in its final days, one of the conspirators behind Aegon II's poisoning — a Hour of the Wolf plot aimed less at revenge than at simply making the killing stop. He lived on afterward, Lord of the Tides to the last, outliving nearly everyone the war had asked him to lose.

Where the books leave Corlys Velaryon: died in 132 AC at seventy-nine, collapsing on a stairway at his own seat, and was given the burial he had long since arranged for himself — at sea, aboard his own ship, in the deep water east of Dragonstone

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.

Sourcesfire-and-bloodthe-princess-and-the-queentwoiaf

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House

Who is Corlys Velaryon?

The Lord of the Tides and head of House Velaryon, famed for nine great voyages east aboard the Sea Snake, and husband to Princess Rhaenys Targaryen.

Is Corlys Velaryon alive?

No — the chronicle need only say that the Sea Snake outlived nearly everyone the war asked him to lose; the particulars are treated in his veiled record.