Title: The Final Acquisition
Title: The Final Acquisition
Year and Month: 135 AC, 10th Moon
The years that followed the subjugation of the Iron Islands were the golden age of my reign, an era of unprecedented peace and relentless, centrally planned progress. The Seven Kingdoms operated as a single, colossal machine, its gears greased with the profits of my economic reforms, its levers held firmly in my hand. The Great Restructuring had been a success. The old feudal world, with its chaotic loyalties and inefficient rivalries, was a ghost, a story told in history books. In its place stood a modern, bureaucratic state, managed by my civil service, protected by my Royal Army, and fueled by a unified, thriving economy.
I was now forty-three years old. The serum in my veins had preserved my physical prime, granting me a vitality that defied my age. My Queen, Lyanna, ruled at my side, a true partner whose northern wisdom and quiet strength had earned her the love of the people and the respect of the court. Our children, the twin pillars of my dynasty, were now twenty-six. Jaehaerys, my son and heir, had become a master of administration and law, his sharp, analytical mind a mirror of my own. He was the COO-in-training, already taking on many of the day-to-day duties of governance. Visenya, my daughter, was a warrior without peer. Riding the mighty Vhagar, she was the commander of the Dragon Fleet, a living symbol of the realm's terrifying power, her spirit as untamed as the wolfswood of her mother's homeland.
My nephews and nieces had settled into their roles within this new order. Viserys, gentle and kind, was a beloved figure at court, a symbol of the Targaryen family's peaceful side. Daemon, his ambition checked by the overwhelming reality of my power, served as Grand Marshal of my armies, a brilliant, if terrifying, instrument of my will. The realm was secure. The succession was absolute. The ledger was, for the most part, balanced.
But there was one final, outstanding account to be closed. One last great asset that had yet to be formally transferred to the Crown's direct control. That asset was Meleys, the Red Queen, the magnificent scarlet dragon ridden by my cousin, Princess Rhaenys Targaryen.
Rhaenys, the Queen Who Never Was, was now a woman of sixty-one. She had lived a life of immense privilege and profound disappointment. After the death of her two children, she had retreated from public life, living in quiet, dignified grief with her husband, Lord Corlys, on the island of Driftmark. Though the Dragon's Clause had formally disinherited her line from claiming future dragons, her own bond with Meleys remained sacrosanct for her lifetime. And so, the last dragon outside my direct family line remained with House Velaryon.
In the tenth moon of 135 AC, the inevitable happened. Princess Rhaenys died peacefully in her sleep. Her passing marked the true end of an era. She was the last of my brother Aemon's line, the last great Targaryen figure from the time of my father. Her death was met with genuine sorrow throughout the realm. She had been a proud, noble princess, a figure of romance and tragedy.
For me, her death was a scheduled event, the final trigger in a plan set in motion nearly twenty years prior. With Rhaenys gone, Meleys, the Red Queen, was now riderless. And according to the unassailable law I had forged, she was now the property of the Crown. The final acquisition was at hand.
I knew this would be the final, most painful test of my authority for Lord Corlys Velaryon. The Sea Snake was now an old man himself, over seventy years of age, his legendary ambition eroded by a lifetime of loss. He had lost his son, his daughter, and now his wife. All that remained of his great dynastic dreams were his two granddaughters, Baela and Rhaena, the children of Laena. And the dragon, Meleys, the last symbol of his house's former glory. I knew he would not relinquish it without a fight.
I did not send a raven. I did not send a decree. This required a personal touch, the final closing of an account between the two most powerful men in the kingdom. I flew to Driftmark myself. I did not go in state. I came alone, on Balerion.
The Black Dread descended from the sky like a creeping, silent plague of shadow, his immense form blotting out the sun over the Velaryon castle of High Tide. I landed in the main courtyard, the ground shaking under his weight. I had not come as a nephew mourning his cousin. I had come as the King, to claim his property.
Lord Corlys met me at the gates. He was old, his back stooped, his face a mask of grief. But his eyes, when they met mine, still held the proud, defiant glint of the Sea Snake. He was flanked by his granddaughters, Baela and Rhaena, now young women themselves, their faces pale with sorrow and anger.
"Your Grace," Corlys said, his voice a low, gravelly rasp. "You come to pay your respects to my dead wife?"
"I have already sent my official condolences and ordered a month of mourning at court, my lord," I replied, my voice calm and even. "I have come on a matter of state. A matter of law."
"Law?" Corlys scoffed, a bitter, painful sound. "There is only your law, now. Your will. Have you not taken enough from my house? My children are gone. Their dragons are gone, given to yours. Now you come for my wife's dragon, before her body is even cold?"
"Meleys is not your wife's dragon, Lord Corlys," I stated, my voice devoid of malice, a simple statement of fact. "Meleys is, and has always been, an asset of House Targaryen, bonded to a rider of Targaryen blood. Your wife was a Targaryen princess. That is why she was granted the honor of bonding with a dragon. She was not a Velaryon when she claimed Meleys. She was the daughter of the Prince of Dragonstone."
This was the legal argument I had prepared, the irrefutable truth at the heart of my Dragon's Clause.
"My granddaughters have her blood!" Corlys roared, his grief momentarily giving way to a surge of his old fury. "They have the blood of the dragon!"
"They have the blood of my house, yes," I conceded. "And for that, they will always be honored and protected as my kin. They will be given wealthy husbands, great castles, titles. They will live lives of immense privilege. But they do not have the name. The name is Targaryen. The dragons are bound to the name, to the Crown. Not to a bloodline that has been… diluted by marriage to a lesser house."
The insult was deliberate, a clinical, brutal strike designed to end the argument. I was reminding him of the fundamental hierarchy he had spent his life trying to overcome. He was a Velaryon. I was a Targaryen. And that was the end of the discussion.
"Your house has no dragon inheritance of its own, Lord Corlys," I continued, my voice softening almost imperceptibly, a calculated shift from threat to reason. "You have no ancient right to claim these creatures. The privilege was extended to your children through their mother, a Targaryen princess. That privilege, as stipulated by the law I enacted twenty years ago, reverted to the Crown upon their deaths. Now, with the passing of Princess Rhaenys, the final part of that legal process must be completed. It is a simple matter of asset reversion."
"Asset reversion?" he whispered, the words tasting like ash in his mouth. "You speak of my daughter's soulmate, my wife's companion of fifty years, as if it were a parcel of land or a chest of coin."
"I speak of it as what it is," I replied calmly. "The most powerful and dangerous military asset in the world. An asset that must be controlled, managed, and kept in the hands of the central authority. To allow such power to be inherited by other houses, no matter how friendly, is to invite the very chaos and division that my entire reign has been dedicated to eliminating. It is a systemic risk I will not tolerate."
I looked at his granddaughters, Baela and Rhaena. Their eyes were filled with tears of grief and hatred for me. I felt a flicker of something—pity, perhaps, for their loss. But pity was an emotion, a liability. It had no place in this calculation.
"This is not an act of cruelty, my lord," I lied. "It is an act of responsible governance. It is the final step in ensuring the long-term peace and stability of this realm. A peace that has made your own house richer and more powerful than ever before, I might add."
I had reminded him of the benefits he had accrued under my system. I had reminded him of the source of his own prosperity.
Corlys Velaryon, the Sea Snake, the man who had sailed the world and amassed a fortune greater than the Lannisters, looked utterly defeated. He had fought me with pride, with grief, with appeals to decency. And I had met each one with cold, unassailable logic and the brute force of the law I myself had written. He had no moves left to make.
He sagged, the fight going out of him, leaving only a tired, broken old man. "And who?" he asked, his voice barely a whisper. "Who will you give her to? Another of your children?"
"No," I replied. "My children have their mounts. They command the two most powerful dragons in the world besides my own. Meleys is a valuable asset, but one that requires a rider of a specific temperament. A warrior. A creature of fire and instinct."
I had already decided who would claim the Red Queen. It was a move that would further solidify my power and reward my most useful, if most dangerous, family member.
"My nephew, Daemon, has served the realm with distinction as Grand Marshal of my armies," I announced. "His dragon, Caraxes, is a fearsome beast, but it is not a true royal dragon of the first rank. As a reward for his loyal service, and to better equip him for his role as the supreme commander of my land forces, I will grant him the honor of claiming Meleys."
It was another masterstroke. I was rewarding Daemon's loyalty, sating his ambition with a more prestigious mount, and ensuring that another of the realm's great dragons was under the command of a man whose interests were now completely aligned with my own.
Lord Corlys could only shake his head, a bitter, defeated laugh escaping his lips. "Of course," he murmured. "Of course. You leave nothing to chance. Every piece on the board moved to its perfect, logical square."
He turned and looked out at the sea, the source of his life's great adventures. He seemed to shrink before my eyes, an old man whose time had passed, whose ambitions had turned to dust.
"Take her," he said, his voice a dead thing. "Take the dragon. Take it all. It matters not. The age of adventure is over. The age of accountants is upon us."
He was right.
I gave a single, sharp nod. I did not offer further condolences. The transaction was complete. I turned and walked back towards Balerion, who had been waiting with the patience of a mountain.
As I mounted the great dragon, I looked back at the castle of High Tide. The last of the Velaryon's draconic dreams had been extinguished. The final acquisition was complete. All the major assets were now consolidated under the direct ownership of the central corporation. The process of restructuring was over. My control was absolute.
His business model was outdated, I replied, my mind already moving on to the next set of calculations, the next set of challenges. He failed to adapt to the new market reality.
The market I had created. The reality I had forged. The peace I had ruthlessly engineered. The final account was closed. And the ledger, at last, was perfectly, completely, and absolutely balanced in my favor.