While fans of Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire continue to wait on George R.R. Martin to finish the next novel in the series, he has managed to script a new short story telling some of the history of Westeros royalty…
George R.R. Martin is traveling the world and still working on his sixth book in the ‘Song of Ice and Fire’ series titled ‘The Winds of Winter’ but in the meantime he’s put together a short story for the new book ‘Dangerous Women’, which features several short stories from a group of notable authors.
The story — The Princess and The Queen, or, The Blacks and The Greens — is a history lesson on the bloody Targaryen civil war that lasted for two years after the death of King Viserys I and who would take over the Iron Throne after his passing.
(The full story is titled: The Princess and the Queen, Or, The Blacks and the Greens: Being a History of the Causes, Origins, Battles, and Betrayals of the Most Tragic Bloodletting Known as the Dance of the Dragons, as set down by Archmaester Gyldayn of the Citadel of Oldtown)
As the story goes, King Viserys wants his daughter Rhaenyra to take over and rule the kingdom after he passes and so she’s groomed from childhood to sit on the throne but his new wife Queen Alicent has other ideas and wants her son Aegon II to become king instead.
What results in a bloody war between Targaryen factions that lasts for two years and the death of a whole lot of dragons during that time.
Here is a brief excerpt from the story:
The Dance of the Dragons is the flowery name bestowed upon the savage internecine struggle for the Iron Throne of Westeros fought between two rival branches of House Targaryen during the years 129 to 131 AC. To characterize the dark, turbulent, bloody doings of this period as a “dance” strikes us as grotesquely inappropriate. No doubt the phrase originated with some singer. “The Dying of the Dragons” would be altogether more fitting, but tradition and time have burned the more poetic usage into the pages of history, so we must dance along with the rest.
The story is a great look into the history of Westeros and maybe even a bit of a lesson of the opposition that our favorite Khaleesi will face if she ever makes it back to the Seven Kingdoms and tries to reclaim the Iron Throne for the Targaryen family.
