The Revelation of the Dragon's Blood Poisoning
• The Litmus Test of Madness: The most horrifying account to spread across the realm was the explanation for why Rhaenyra’s remaining cohorts had descended into such violent, raving lunacy before the end. Surviving scribes and guards confessed that in her final months of utter paranoia, Rhaenyra had forced her inner circle to drink literal dragons' blood mixed with wine to "prove their absolute loyalty to the Rightful Heir.
• "A Literal Poison: To the shock of the Citadel's healers, dragons' blood was revealed to be a highly toxic, slow-killing poison to human physiology, causing severe neurological decay, vivid hallucinations, and violent erraticism. During a small council meeting, Thaddeus Rowan quietly confessed to a horrified Tyland Lannister that his own final straw with Daemon occurred when the prince tried to force a cup of the steaming, black blood into his hand. It explained the terrifying, fanatical madness of Rhaenyra's final days—she had literally poisoned the minds of everyone left around her.
The Next Generation and the Pacifist Queen
• A Court of Survivors: The children who inherited the ashes of the war grew up with a profound, shared understanding of trauma. When the Storming of the Dragonpit happened, Aegon III was ten, Viserys II was seven, and young Daenaera Velaryon was a mere child of six, warded at Driftmark by Baela Targaryen (who had also walked away from Rhaenyra's madness) and Alyn Velaryon.
• The Wisdom of Daenaera: Daenaera’s famous, unyielding pacifism was not born out of weakness, but as a direct trauma response to witnessing the cycle of vengeance nearly incinerate the realm. When she made her magnificent debut at the Maidens Day Ball at sixteen and wed an older, melancholy Aegon III, she became his moral compass.
• The Grace of the Crown: Daenaera gently but firmly encouraged Aegon III to break the generational wheel of hatred. Backed by her wisdom, Aegon III officially issued royal pardons to the very factions and houses that had overthrown his biological parents. He fully accepted Thaddeus Rowan and Floris Baratheon as the true, loving parental figures he had been denied in his youth, building a court focused entirely on healing rather than retribution.
The Healing of the Reach and the Stormlands
• The Bonding of Victims: Once these horrific accounts spread, the petty, centuries-old feuds between the houses of the Reach completely evaporated. The Tarlys, Beesburys, Rowans, and Hightowers realized they had all been twisted, manipulated, and victimized by the same tyrannical claws. They stopped viewing each other as "Blacks" or "Greens" and instead bonded over their shared survival.
• The Twin Reconstructions: A beautiful symmetry emerged in the post-war era. While the houses of the Stormlands put aside their border disputes to pool resources into rebuilding the intellectual sanctuary of the Great Library of Mistwood, the houses of the Reach put aside their political grudges to completely rebuild and fortify Oldtown.
• The Fallen Gods: The consensus of this new era was perfectly summarized by an older Lord Lyonel Hightower (the eldest son of Ormund and Terissa), who sat in the newly restored gardens of Oldtown speaking with Maester Perceval Mertyns. Looking up at the sky where dragons used to fly, Lyonel mused along his mother’s sharp jawline: “My parents told me that even a dragon can fall under their high clouds. As a boy, I did not believe it. I thought the Black Queen’s dragons were omnipresent, dark gods. And yet, the smallfolk and the nobles at the Dragonpit proved otherwise. My mother Terissa knew that the Black Queen’s reign would end swiftly, and she was right. True power belongs to the soil and the people who tend it, not the beasts who burn it.”
The revelation that Mysaria and Ellinda had been physically coerced by Rhaenyra into drinking steaming, toxic dragon’s blood was the absolute breaking point for the High Septon and the Conclave of Oldtown. The Hightowers and the Maesters knew how to heal the diseases of Westeros, but they were not of Old Valyria. They possessed no ancestral knowledge of the magical, volatile blood chemistry of the dragonlords.
Recognizing that the two women were dying of a slow, erratic neurological poison that amplified their traumatic grief into violent madness, Oldtown turned to the only people who held the cure: the ancient Valyrian diaspora of the Free Cities.
When the Doom of Valyria fractured the dragonlord families centuries prior, the survivors split into two distinct factions. One party—including the Velaryons, Celtigars, and the line that would become the Baratheons—joined Aegon the Conqueror to subjugate Westeros. The other party chose absolute liberty over conquest, fleeing east to build the Free Cities. The Barlaeris co-founded Pentos, the Rogares established Lys, and the brilliant, black-haired, golden-eyed House Macklyn co-founded Braavos.
Here are headcanons on how House Macklyn utilized their mystical ancestral knowledge and advanced Essosi sciences to completely purge the dragon’s blood from Mysaria and Ellinda
The Alchemical Diagnosis of the Phoenix
• The Black Heat: The moment Mysaria and Ellinda arrived at the Macklyn estate in Braavos, the house’s master glass-crafters and alchemists drew their blood using precise, hollow Myrish glass needles. True to their phoenix motif ("To See is to Believe"), the Macklyns observed the samples under advanced magnification lenses. They saw that the dragon's blood hadn't just poisoned their organs; it was actively running "hot," cooking their human blood vessels from the inside out and causing the horrific, waking hallucinations that had driven them to self-harm.
• The Valyrian Counter-Logic: While Westerosi maesters treated the women with milk of the poppy (which only slowed their hearts and trapped them in their nightmares), the Macklyns understood that dragon's blood is an apex predator element. To defeat it, they had to neutralize its heat. They moved the women to subterranean chambers cooled by the sea mists of the Braavosi lagoon, slowing the poison's circulation to give the healing remedies time to work.
The Purging Rituals: Moon-Pale Wine and Volcano Clay
• The Lefford and Macklyn Elixir: To strip the toxic heat from their veins, the Macklyns formulated a daily regimen utilizing a rare, highly secretive Essosi compound known as Moon-Pale Elixir. This dense, chalky liquid was brewed from cold volcanic clays found near the smoking ruins of Valyria and infused with crushed moonstones. When ingested, the elixir chemically bound itself to the heavy metallic elements of the dragon's blood, neutralizing its magical toxicity.
• The Physical Evacuation: The purging process was agonizing but life-saving. For three weeks, Mysaria and Ellinda sweated out a thick, foul-smelling black residue through their pores and wept tears that stained their linen pillows dark. The Macklyns’ handmaids carefully bathed them in cooled rosewater and mint infusions to keep their skin from blistering as the internal fire left their bodies.
Mystical Ailments and Sonic Healing
• The Braavosi Tones: House Macklyn utilized advanced sonic therapies that Westeros entirely lacked. The Valyrian dragonlords had originally used horns and specific vocal frequencies to bend dragons to their will. The Macklyns inverted this practice. They placed Mysaria and Ellinda in central chambers surrounded by giant, precisely tuned bronze and glass singing bowls
• .Vibrational Alignment: For hours each day, trained Macklyn scribes struck the bowls, filling the air with low, heavy, rhythmic humming tones. These specific frequencies resonated through the women's skulls, physically disrupting the erratic, chaotic neurological firing caused by the dragon's blood. To the shock of the Westerosi septas who had accompanied them, the steady, rhythmic vibrations instantly quieted Ellinda’s hysterical weeping and allowed Mysaria’s clenched, rigid jaw to finally relax.
Shifting the Vision: The Surrealist Awakening
• The Mental Realignment: Once the physical poison was successfully purged, the Macklyns tackled the psychological trauma bond. They understood that Rhaenyra’s coercion had convinced these women that the dragon was a god and they were nothing. To break this mental cage, the Macklyns draped the women in the house's signature avant-garde, Schiaparelli-inspired purple and gold silks—garments designed with deliberate structural anomalies and eye-catching optical illusions
• .A New Reality: They forced the women to look at themselves in high-polished mirrors. By dressing them in clothes that challenged the conventional, rigid geometry of Westeros, the Macklyns visually broke the old patterns of their minds. They looked into the mirror and no longer saw Rhaenyra’s weeping shadows; they saw independent, striking figures standing under the phoenix banners of a free city.
• The Report to the Citadel: Within a year of their arrival in Braavos, the madness completely receded. Ellinda’s eyes, though scarred, cleared entirely of their bloodshot frenzy, and she began working alongside the Macklyn lens-grinders, finding peace in the quiet mathematics of light. Mysaria’s razor-sharp mind returned with a cold, sober clarity; she realized she had given her youth to a tyrant's delusion and vowed to spend her remaining years building her own wealth in the free ports.
• The Relief of the Realm: When official word reached Oldtown and Highgarden that the two women had fully recovered, Lady Raymona Mertyns let out a long, hard-won sigh of relief. The Macklyns had proven to the entire world that the dragon's fire could not only be extinguished by a unified realm, but its lingering, poisonous venom could be utterly defeated by human wit, science, and the unyielding spirit of freedom.
The reconstruction of Oldtown in the wake of the Dance of the Dragons became a monument to human resilience and a literal manifestation of peace. For decades, the houses of the Reach had been fractured by bitter wartime allegiances. However, the systematic documentation of Rhaenyra’s tyranny—and the horrifying revelation of the dragon’s blood poisoning—acted as a collective wake-up call. The region stopped fighting for ghosts and instead poured their immense agricultural wealth into restoring the realm's historic capital of faith, knowledge, and trade.
Here are headcanons on how the houses of the Reach came together to repair Oldtown.
The Unified Guild of the Mander
• The Highgarden Timber Caravans: Under the watchful eye of Lady Regent Raymona Mertyns and her growing son, Lord Lyonel Tyrell, Highgarden opened its private reserves of ancient white oak and structural ironwood. Tyrell lumber fleets choked the waters of the Mander, floating massive construction platforms straight down to the Whispering Sound.
• The Tarly Guard: House Tarly, despite having fiercely backed the Black faction during the war, completely renounced their former allegiances. To prove their commitment to the Reach’s unity, Lord Tarly personally commanded a massive peacekeeping detachment that guarded the reconstruction routes from highwaymen and rogue sellswords, ensuring that materials arrived in Oldtown entirely unhindered.
• The Rowan Stonemasons: Lord Thaddeus Rowan sent hundreds of Master Stonemasons from Goldengrove to collaborate directly with the Hightower architects. The Rowans specialized in advanced quarrying techniques; they provided the heavy, pale granite needed to reinforce the cracked seawalls of the harbor, which had been battered during the naval skirmishes of the war
The Restoration of the Starry Sept and the Citadel
• Funding the Faith: The destruction of the extended Hightower line had left Oldtown’s treasury heavily strained. To fix this, a young Lord Lyonel Hightower worked hand-in-hand with his Lannister cousins. Terissa Lannister's youngest daughter, Bethany (raised under the fierce pride of the West), negotiated a massive, interest-free reconstruction loan from Casterly Rock. This gold was explicitly used to re-gild the damaged towers of the Starry Sept and replace the stained glass windows shattered by the roaring vibrations of the dragons.
• The Beesbury Glassworks: House Beesbury, deeply ashamed of how their late Lord Lyman had been murdered in the Red Keep, dedicated their entire regional economy to the reconstruction. Honeyholt possessed unique, silica-rich river sands. The Beesburys built massive new glass furnaces, producing thousands of clear, leaded glass panes to restore the grand greenhouses and astronomical observatories of the Citadel.
• Maester Perceval’s Archival Exchange: Operating as a chief coordinator, Maester Perceval Mertyns utilized the newfound peace to establish a historical bridge. For every shipment of architectural stone the Reach houses brought to Oldtown, Perceval sent newly copied scrolls from the rebuilt Library of Mistwood to restock the Citadel’s vault, ensuring that lost histories were shared equally between the Stormlands and the Reach.
The Architecture of Reconciliation
• The Plaza of the Fallen Roses: At the center of the newly reconstructed merchant district, the Reach lords collectively funded the creation of a massive, white-marble plaza. Instead of displaying statues of wartime generals or Targaryen kings, the plaza featured a grand, central fountain carved with a single, un-sigiled rose surrounded by owls, lions, and stags. It was a public space dedicated entirely to the common smallfolk and local merchants who had kept the city fed during the six months of the capital's collapse.
• The "Warm Beauty" Aesthetic: The reconstruction heavily rejected the cold, imposing Valyrian architectural styles of Dragonstone and King's Landing. Influenced by Raymona’s personal style and preference for warmth, the new buildings of Oldtown featured wide, sunlit courtyards, sweeping terraces, and intricate floral masonry. The city was designed to feel approachable, open, and safe—a direct architectural rebellion against the suffocating stone fortresses favored by the Dragon Queen.
The Final Validation of the Soil
• The Feast of the First Harvest: When the grand seawalls, the Citadel libraries, and the harbor districts were finally declared fully restored, Lord Lyonel Hightower hosted a massive week-long feast in the Honeywine valley. Every single lord of the Reach attended, sitting at a massive, unified table that stretched across the orchards.
• The Toast to Survival: Lyonel Hightower stood at the head of the table, flanked by Thaddeus Rowan and Maester Perceval. Raising a heavy golden goblet filled with Arbor gold, Lyonel delivered a toast that would be remembered for generations: “The dragons claimed the sky and brought us nothing but fire and ashes. But the Reach belongs to the men who till the soil and the women who guard the hearth. We have rebuilt what the beasts tore down. Let the iron chair across the sea rust; Oldtown stands tall, rooted in our own strength.” The roaring cheers of the unified Reach houses echoed across the Whispering Sound, cementing a peace that no dragon could ever threaten again.
LYONEL TYRELL'S CHILDHOOD AND BACKSTORY
The Sanctuary of the Solar
• The Boy Behind the Rose: While the rest of the Reach fractured into bloody skirmishes, young Lyonel’s world was entirely contained within the thick, secure white stone walls of Highgarden. Having lost his father, Ser Garlande, to a Black assassin's poison when he was barely out of the cradle, his entire universe was anchored by his mother, Lady Regent Raymona. He grew up watching her run the fortress not with an iron fist, but with a quiet, razor-sharp precision that fascinated him from a young age.
• The Mother’s Mirror: Physically, Lyonel grew to be the spitting image of his late father—inheriting Garlande’s strong build, thick dark brown hair, and charismatic facial structure. However, when he looked at people, they were instantly reminded of House Mertyns. He possessed Raymona’s unnaturally large, incredibly observant storm-grey eyes. Even as a small boy, those eyes seemed to quietly take in and map out every room he entered, listening far more than he spoke.
The Lessons of the Neutral Fortress
• The Art of Calculated Hospitality: Raymona raised her son to be a perfect fusion of both their houses. Under her strict tutelage, Lyonel mastered Garlande’s legendary, warm hospitality, learning how to make visiting lords feel completely welcome and disarmed. Simultaneously, she drilled him in the Mertyns’ classic wit and psychological strategy. He was taught to look past a lord’s flattery to calculate their grain supplies, their marital disputes, and their true military leverage.
• The Ultimate Doctrine: Lyonel vividly remembered the frantic, aggressive ravens arriving from both the Greens and the Blacks, demanding that Highgarden call its banners to war. He watched his mother systematically deny them all, locking down the fortress and keeping their armies firmly in the barracks. When a young Lyonel asked why they weren't fighting like the other brave knights, Raymona knelt down, adjusted her silver silk sleeves, and told him: “Sometimes, Lyonel, some games can only be won by walking away.” It was a lesson in supreme strategic patience that he etched into his heart forever.
The Ash in the Distance: Turning Nine
• The Echoes of the Pit: Lyonel was exactly nine years old when the cataclysmic news of the Storming of the Dragonpit and Queen Helaena’s tragic death reached the Reach. Rumors of the horrific violence, the thrashing beasts, and the thousands of citizens crushed under falling masonry terrified the courtly children of Highgarden. Lyonel found himself plagued by nightmares of fire and screaming mobs, deeply shaken by the realization that the Targaryen gods could be torn apart by common men.
• The Mother’s Comfort: Raymona did not shelter him with sweet lies or pretend the world wasn't brutal. She brought him into her private study, wrapped him in a heavy wool blanket, and held him close against her elegant Swann neck. With absolute maternal clarity, she validated his fear but reframed the tragedy. She explained that the uprising was a horrific but entirely necessary response to a tyrant who had pushed a desperate people too far. She mourned the innocent lives lost in the crossfire—including her own handmaids and allies like Hazel Harte—teaching Lyonel that a true ruler never glorifies the slaughter of war, but soberly remembers its cost.
The Foundation of a Royal Supporter
◦ The Rejection of the Black Legacy: Spending his entire formative childhood watching the Realm burn under Rhaenyra and Daemon's reckless entitlement bred a deep, permanent disgust for the Black faction's ideology within Lyonel. He grew up associating Rhaenyra’s legacy with the assassination of his father and the burning of his family's beloved Great Library of Mistwood.
◦ The King’s Vanguard: Because his mother had raised him on the values of law, survival, and reparations, an adult Lord Lyonel Tyrell became the most fierce, reliable, and unshakeable pillar of support for the next generation of Targaryen kings.
◦ He fiercely backed Aegon III and the Master of Coin, Tyland Lannister, using Highgarden's immense grain reserves to pull the realm out of bankruptcy.
◦ He worked seamlessly alongside Viserys II to establish structural reforms that limited royal overreach and protected the autonomy of regional lords.
◦ And decades later, when King Daeron I (The Young Dragon) sought to unify the continent completely, Lyonel took the fierce lessons of his childhood and rode out as a brilliant, calculated military commander to conquer Dorne. He spent his youth winning a war by walking away, ensuring that when he finally did draw his sword as a man, he did so with the absolute wit, grace, and weight of Highgarden behind him.
The contrast between the two coronation feasts of the Dance of the Dragons became a legendary piece of political lore in the Seven Kingdoms. While Rhaenyra’s coronation resulted in the grotesque humiliation of the Rat Feast, Aegon II’s postponed banquet became a historical testament to the Green faction's adaptability, survival instinct, and dark, unifying humor.
Here are headcanons on the accounts of King Aegon II’s coronation feast.
• The Coronation Crash: Aegon II’s actual coronation day had ended in absolute, terrifying chaos when Princess Rhaenys and her dragon Meleys burst through the floor of the Dragonpit, shattering the grand arena and forcing the royal family to scramble for safety. With the city infrastructure damaged and a potential siege looming, the planned royal banquet had to be postponed for an entire week. The exotic, luxurious game Aegon II had personally hunted for the occasion had spoiled in the summer heat during the cleanup.
• Helaena’s Masterstroke of Economy: Facing a severe shortage of luxury resources, the small council scrambled for a solution. It was Queen Helaena who stepped forward with a steely, practical suggestion. Instead of draining the city's remaining coin to import exotic delicacies, she ordered the kitchens to unlock the castle's staple pantries. She told the cooks to use whatever poultry, grains, and stored wines were readily available within the Red Keep's inner stores
• .The Feast of the People: When the lords and ladies of the Green faction finally gathered a week later, they weren't served foreign delicacies. Instead, the long tables were piled high with simple, perfectly roasted plates of local pheasant, fat goose, winter root vegetables, and thick trenchers of dark bread. It lacked the traditional, blinding luxury of a Targaryen royal banquet, but it achieved something far more critical: every single dignitary was entirely well-fed, comfortable, and warm.
The Spirit of the Board: The Dartboard Parlor
• The Prince's Temper Turned Practical: Dowager Queen Alicent always maintained that despite her eldest son's boisterous temper and rebellious teenage years, Aegon II possessed a sharp, highly observant intelligence. He inherited his mother’s ruthless ambition and a distinct flash of a younger Otto Hightower’s cold efficiency. He knew the court was tense after the dragon attack, so he decided to use his love for parties and hunting to shift the room's energy.
• The Portraits of the Usurpers: Midway through the feast, when the wine was flowing freely, Aegon II ordered the servants to bring out two massive, lifelike painted portraits of Prince Daemon and Rhaenyra Targaryen. He had them mounted securely to heavy cork boards at the far end of the Great Hall.
• The Royal Target Practice: Aegon stepped down from the high dais, picked up a handful of heavy, iron-tipped hunting darts, and launched the first one directly into Daemon’s painted eye with a raucous laugh. The tension in the hall snapped instantly. For the rest of the night, lords from the West, the Stormlands, and the Reach queued up to throw darts and hunting daggers at the portraits, turning their collective fear of the Black faction into a unifying, rowdy game of mockery.
The Memory of the Reach: A Dynamic King
• A Devastated Brother: The lords who attended the feast noted that beneath Aegon’s loud, boisterous exterior lay a man deeply dedicated to his immediate family. Whenever he looked across the high table at Helaena, his expression softened into genuine, protective reverence. Scribes recorded that his later fury in the war was entirely fueled by this fierce love; when young Jaehaerys was brutally taken by Blood and Cheese, the dynamic, party-loving king died, replaced by a ruthless, hyper-efficient commander who would stop at nothing to eradicate his sister's murderers.
• The Consensus of History: Decades after Aegon II’s death, when the maesters of Oldtown and the scribes of Mistwood gathered testimonies to write the history of the war, the Reach lords looked back on his reign with nuanced respect. They freely admitted he was a deeply flawed mess of a man in his youth, but they firmly maintained his competence over Rhaenyra's brief, catastrophic rule
• .The Lion's Final Verdict: The local perspective was beautifully summarized by the aging lords of the Honeywine valley. Over cups of Arbor gold, they would look back on that postponed feast as the moment they realized the Greens could survive anything. “Rhaenyra sat on her throne and fed her own supporters rats on a spear to show her power,” the old knights would say. “But King Aegon? Aegon took a dragon attack, cleaned the dust off his crown, fed us honest goose, and handed us darts to throw at his enemies. He was a rogue, aye, but he was a king who knew how to hold a hall together when the sky was falling.”
