In the House of the Dragon adaption, Lord Lyonel Strong said something interesting.
“King Jaehaerys ruled over half a century of peace while his children drove him to the
edge of madness ... his daughters, in particular.”
One of those daughters was Viserra Targaryen.
A fiery Targaryen who was as beautiful as the gods.
In this video, we are going to go over the full life of this vivacious character.
In 71 AC, the queen gave birth to her tenth child and sixth daughter, the beautiful Viserra.
Like her sister Saera, Viserra had a will of her own as well, but she never screamed
and certainly never cried.
Sly was one word used to describe her.
Vain was another.
Viserra was beautiful, all men agreed, blessed with deep purple eyes and silver-gold hair
of a true Targaryen, with flawless white skin, fine features, and a grace that was somehow
eerie and unsettling in one so young.
When one stammering young squire told her she was a goddess, she agreed.
In 86 AC, Queen Alysanne announced the betrothal of her daughter Viserra, fifteen years of
age, to Theomore Manderly, the fierce old Lord of White Harbor.
The marriage would do much and more to tie the realm together by uniting one of the great
houses of the North to the Iron Throne, the king declared.
Lord Theomore had won great renown as a warrior in his youth, and had proved himself a canny
lord under whose rule White Harbor had prospered greatly.
Queen Alysanne was very fond of him as well, remembering the warm welcome he had given
her during her first visit to the North.
His lordship had outlived four wives, however, and whilst still a doughty fighter, he had
grown very stout, which did little to recommend him to Princess Viserra.
She had a different man in mind.
Even as a little girl, Viserra had been the most beautiful of the queen’s daughters.
Great lords, famous knights, and callow boys had danced attendance on her all her life,
feeding her vanity until it became a raging fire.
Her great delight in life was playing one boy off against the other, goading them into
foolish quests and contests.
To win her favor for a joust, she made admiring squires swim the Blackwater Rush, climb the
Tower of the Hand, or set free all the ravens in the rookery.
Once she took six boys to the Dragonpit and told them she would give her maidenhead to
whoever put his head in a dragon’s mouth, but the gods were good that day and the Dragonkeepers
put an end to that.
No squire was ever going to win Viserra, Queen Alysanne knew; not her heart, and certainly
not her maidenhead.
She was far too sly a child to go down the same path as her sister Saera.
“She has no interest in kissing games, nor boys,” the queen told Jaehaerys.
“She plays with them as she used to play with her puppies, but she would not more lie
with one than with a dog.
She aims much higher, our Viserra.
I have seen the way she preens and prances around Baelon.
That is the husband she desires, and not for love of him.
She wants to be the queen.”
Prince Baelon was fourteen years older than Viserra, twenty-nine to her fifteen, but older
lords had married younger maids, as she well knew.
It had been two years since Princess Alyssa had died, yet Baelon had shown no interest
in any other woman.
“He married one sister, why not another?”
Viserra told her closest friend, the empty-headed Beatrice Butterwell.
“I am much prettier than Alyssa ever was, you saw her.
She had a broken nose.”
If the princess was intent on marrying her brother, the queen was equally determined
to prevent it.
Her answer was Lord Manderly and White Harbor.
“Theomore is a good man,” Alysanne told her daughter, “a wise man, with a kind heart
and a good head on his shoulders.
His people love him.”
The princess was not persuaded.
“If you like him so much, Mother, you should marry him,” she said, before running to
her father to complain.
Jaehaerys offered her no solace.
“It is a good match,” he told her, before explaining the importance of drawing the North
closer to the Iron Throne.
Marriages were the queen’s domain in any case, he said; he never interfered in such
matters.
Frustrated, Viserra next turned to her brother Baelon in hopes of rescue, if court gossip
can be believed.
Slipping past his guards into his bedchamber one night, she disrobed and waited for him,
making free with the prince’s wine whilst she lingered.
When Prince Baelon finally appeared, he found her drunk and naked in his bed and sent her
on her way.
The princess was so unsteady that she required the help of two maids and a knight of the
Kingsguard to get her safely back to her own apartments.
It will never be known how the battle of wills between Queen Alysanne and her headstrong
fifteen-year-old daughter might finally have resolved.
Not long after the incident in Baelon’s bedchamber, as the queen was making arrangements
for Viserra’s departure from King’s Landing, the princess traded clothes with one of her
maids to escape the guards who had been assigned to keep her out of mischief, and slipped from
the Red Keep for what she termed “one last night of laughter before I go and freeze.”
Her companions were all men, two minor lordlings and four young knights, all green as spring
grass and eager for Viserra’s favor.
One of them had offered to show the princess parts of the city that she had never seen:
the pot shops and rat pits of Flea Bottom, the inns along Eel Alley and River Row where
the serving wenches danced on tables, the brothels on the Street of Silk.
Ale, mead, and wine all featured in the evening’s frolics, and Viserra partook eagerly.
At some point, near to midnight, the princess and her remaining companions decided to race
back to the castle.
A wild ride through the streets of the city ensued, with Kingslanders scrambling out of
the way to avoid being run down and trampled.
Laughter rang through the night and spirits were high until the racers reached the foot
of Aegon’s High Hill, where Viserra’s palfrey collided with one of her companions.
The knight’s mare lost her footing and fell, breaking his leg beneath her.
The princess was thrown from the saddle headfirst into a wall.
Her neck was broken.
It was the hour of the wolf, the darkest time of the night, when it fell to Ser Ryam Redwyne
of the Kingsguard to rouse the king and queen from their sleep to tell them that their daughter
had been found dead in an alley at the foot of Aegon’s High Hill.
Despite their differences, the loss of Princess Viserra was devastating to the queen.
In the space of five years, the gods had taken three of her daughters.
Daella in 82 AC, Alyssa in 84 AC, Viserra in 87 AC.
Prince Baelon was greatly distraught as well, wondering if he should have spoken to his
sister less brusquely the night he found her naked in his bed.