conquering the Stepstones; commanding the 'Blacks' in the Dance of the Dragons
A prince the realm loved to watch and never once trusted
Daemon Targaryen was the younger brother of King Viserys I and, by most accounts the Citadel is willing to stand behind, the most gifted swordsman of his generation — a fact he never let the court forget. He carried Dark Sister, the Valyrian blade of his ancestor Visenya, and rode Caraxes, a dragon the smallfolk named the Blood Wyrm for a temper that suited its rider rather too well.
He made himself Prince of the Stepstones by conquest before he was thirty, then lost the title, then took it back, in a private war against the Triarchy that the crown alternately funded and disowned depending on how the fighting was going. Two marriages followed — first to Rhea Royce of Runestone, a match neither party pretended to want, and then, after Rhea's death and his own long courtship of his niece Rhaenyra, to Rhaenyra herself, uniting the throne's heir with its most dangerous claimant to the throne in one household.
When Viserys died in 129 AC and the throne split between Rhaenyra and her half-brother Aegon II, Daemon became the Blacks' sword rather than their diplomat, which suited him. He died on the twenty-second day of the fifth month of 130 AC above the Gods Eye, locked in single combat with his nephew Aemond Targaryen — Caraxes gripped in Vhagar's jaws, Daemon's blade finding Aemond's eye, both riders and both dragons falling together into the lake. Rhaenyra outlived him by less than half a year.
Key events
81 ACBorn the younger brother of the future King Viserys I.
before 106 ACWon and lost and won again the Stepstones in a private war against the Triarchy.
before 129 ACMarried first Rhea Royce, then, after her death, his niece Rhaenyra.
129 ACKing Viserys I died and the realm split between Rhaenyra and Aegon II.
129–130 ACFought as the Blacks' sword through the Dance of the Dragons.
130 ACDied above the Gods Eye in single combat with his nephew Aemond Targaryen.
Reading the character
Daemon Targaryen is the Dance's clearest argument that talent and trustworthiness are unrelated qualities: the finest swordsman of his generation, and a prince whose own brother-king never once let him closer to the throne than the Small Council. His career is a study in restless ambition finding legitimate outlets — the Stepstones, the Watch, the Master of Coin's ledgers — because the one outlet he actually wanted, the crown itself, was never on offer.
His marriage to Rhaenyra, and the war it helped provoke, makes him inseparable from the worst dynastic catastrophe in Targaryen history, and Fire & Blood's own conflicting accounts — schemer versus devoted husband — refuse to settle which Daemon was real. That unresolved duality is arguably truer to the man than either version alone: a prince the realm loved to watch and never once fully trusted, for reasons neither the realm nor the record can fully articulate.
Legacy
Fire & Blood preserves at least two irreconcilable accounts of Daemon's character, one a schemer who married his way to power and one a genuinely devoted husband and father; the Citadel notes only that Mushroom and Grand Maester Munkun were rarely describing the same man.