At a major tournament, Rhaenyra appears wearing a distinctive Targaryen-black dress, while Alicent wears one of the green dresses she favors. The king and queen subsequently have a daughter (Helaena) and two more sons (Aemond and Daeron).Īs the years pass, a rivalry develops between Rhaenyra and her stepmother Alicent-and two rival court factions develop around each of them. Viserys later re-marries to Alicent Hightower, Otto's daughter, and they succeed in producing a male heir, Aegon but Viserys never rescinds his choice of Rhaenyra to succeed him. Queen Aemma, however, later dies in childbirth, to a son that lives only a day. This decision contradicts the new inheritance law established at the Great Council, which should put a male heir ahead of any female one, but Daemon's reputation is so scandalous that Viserys's powerful advisor Otto Hightower eagerly goes along with it. King Viserys, married to Aemma of House Arryn, names their daughter Rhaenyra as his successor, ahead of his hot-tempered and mercurial younger brother Daemon (the titular "rogue prince"). Rhaenys's husband, however, is the powerful lord Corlys Velaryon, and this estranges the Velaryons from the royal court.
On the old king's death two years later, Viserys succeeds him on the Iron Throne. Despite standard succession law that the elder brother's children should come first, Viserys wins the council by a ratio of twenty votes to one, and is declared the rightful heir. Jaehaerys's elder son Aemon also died some years before, leaving behind a daughter named Rhaenys-but there are many who prefer Baelon's 26 year old son Viserys, due to his gender. Near the end of King Jaehaerys I's long reign, a succession crisis emerges when his second son Baelon dies, leading to a Great Council to decide who should be the old king's heir. The work is presented as the writing of the fictional Archmaester Gyldayn, also the "author" of Martin's The Princess and the Queen.
It chronicles the evolving relationship between Viserys and his brother Prince Daemon, and the king's plan for succession to his daughter from his first marriage even though he has a son from his second marriage, which cements a rivalry within the Targaryens that plays out in The Princess and the Queen. The Rogue Prince serves as a prequel to Martin's 2013 novella The Princess and the Queen and focuses on the reign of Viserys I, from his grandfather Jaehaerys I Targaryen's death to his own. It is set on the continent of Westeros of Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, hundreds of years before the events of A Game of Thrones (1996) during the reign of King Viserys I Targaryen. Martin, published in the 2014 Bantam Spectra anthology Rogues. The Rogue Prince, or, a King's Brother is a novelette by George R.