Daena Targaryen

Daena Targaryen
Political information
Title(s)	Queen
World of Westeros
Season(s)	1

Daena Targaryen, also called Daena the Defiant, is a character mentioned in the first season and appearing in the Histories & Lore features. She is not expected to appear in the series, being long dead by the time it begins. Though unnamed, she appears in the "The Red Keep" featurette of the Histories & Lore section of the Season 3 blu ray.

Biography

Background

Daena Targaryen was a Queen of the Targaryen dynasty and a sister of Baelor the Blessed, who imprisoned her along their sisters Rhaena and Elaena in the Maidenvault to prevent himself from being tempted by carnal thoughts.

She also became the lover of her cousin, Aegon IV Targaryen. From their union, Daemon Blackfyre was born.

Season 1

Daena is mentioned in House Targaryen's entry in the book The Lineages and Histories of the Great Houses of the Seven Kingdoms

Family tree

Template:House Targaryen family tree Regency Conquest of Dorne era

In the books

In the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, Daena was the bride of her brother, King Baelor Targaryen. He had taken her as his wife at the insistence of his father, Aegon III. However, the two never consummated their marriage. Instead, Baelor had, dissolved his marriage to Daena, and then, along with her sisters Rhaena and Elaena, locked her inside a section of the Red Keep that would become known as the Maidenvault, so they wouldn't incite him or others in the court to lust. During this time she escaped her confinement several times and had an affair with her first cousin Aegon, despite the fact that he was married to his sister Naerys. When she became pregnant she refused to name the father and became known as "Daena the Defiant." She named her son Daemon and raised him alone.

The royal succession laws were changed after the disastrous civil war between Rhaenyra Targaryen, Aegon III's mother, and Rhaenyra's half-brother Aegon II. While under normal Andal inheritance law a lord's daughter would inherit his lands and titles if he had no surviving sons, the new laws wanted to ensure that another royal succession war such as the one surrounding Rhaenyra would never occur again. Therefore, the new succession laws (enacted during the reign of Daena's own father) put female heirs behind all possible male heirs. Under normal Andal inheritance laws, with both of Aegon III's sons dead, the throne should have passed to Daena as his eldest surviving daughter. Under the new inheritance laws, however, the throne had to pass to Aegon III's nearest surviving male heir - his younger brother Viserys II (uncle of Daena, and father of her lover Aegon).

Daena's cousin Aegon later succeeded his father as King Aegon IV. On his deathbed, Aegon IV legitimized all of his bastard children - including acknowledging that Daemon was in fact his own son. He even gave Daemon the ancestral Valyrian steel sword of House Targaryen, Blackfyre, which had been wielded by Aegon the Conqueror himself. After being legitimized, he took the formal name "Daemon Blackfyre", and founded the Cadet branch of House Targaryen known as House Blackfyre. Aegon IV's trueborn son succeeded to the throne as King Daeron II Targaryen. Over the next six generations House Blackfyre would launch repeated attempts to seize the throne from the main branch of the Targaryen family.

As a result, all subsequent generations of House Blackfyre descended from Daena and Aegon III (as well as Aegon IV) - albeit as legitimized bastards. Some even pointed out that had the succession laws not changed, Daena would have inherited the throne ahead of her uncle Viserys II. Meanwhile, subsequent generations of the main Targaryen family descend from Aegon IV and Viserys II, but not from Viserys II's older brother Aegon III. The Blackfyres and their supporters felt this gave them a superior claim to the throne, while the main Targaryen family (Daeron II and his descendants) held that it did not due to Daemon's status as a legitimized bastard.

See also

• Daena Targaryen on A Wiki of Ice and Fire (spoilers from the books)

References

Template:Targaryen navbox