“Or the dragons will kill them,” his mother said, unmoved. “Let them burn. The realm will not long miss them.”

“Mother, what if they kill Tyraxes?” the young prince said.

The queen did not believe it. “They are vermin. Drunks and fools and gutter rats. One taste of dragonflame and they will run.”

At that the fool Mushroom spoke up, saying, “Drunks they may be, but a drunken man knows not fear. Fools, aye, but a fool can kill a king. Rats, that too, but a thousand rats can bring down a bear. I saw it happen once, down there in Flea Bottom.” This time Queen Rhaenyra did not laugh. Bidding her fool to hold his tongue or lose it, Her Grace turned back to the parapets. Only Mushroom saw Prince Joffrey go sulking off (if his Testimony can be believed)…and Mushroom had been told to hold his tongue.

It was only when the watchers on the roof heard Syrax roar that the prince’s absence was noted. That was too late. “No,” the queen was heard to say, “I forbid it, I forbid it,” but even as she spoke her dragon flapped up from the yard, perched for half a heartbeat atop the castle battlements, then launched herself into the night with the queen’s son clinging to her back, a sword in hand. “After him!” Rhaenyra shouted. “All of you, every man, every boy, to horse, to horse, go after him. Bring him back, bring him back, he does not know. My son, my sweet, my son…”

Seven men did ride down from the Red Keep that night, into the madness of the city. Munkun tells us they were men of honor, duty bound to obey their queen’s commands. Septon Eustace would have us believe that their hearts had been touched by a mother’s love for her son. Mushroom names them dolts and dastards, eager for some rich reward, and “too dull to believe that they might die.” For once it may be that all three of our chroniclers have the truth of it, at least in part.

Our septon, our maester, and our fool do agree upon their names. The Seven Who Rode were Ser Medrick Manderly, the heir to White Harbor; Ser Loreth Lansdale and Ser Harrold Darke, knights of the Queensguard; Ser Harmon of the Reeds, called Iron-Banger; Ser Gyles Yronwood, an exiled knight from Dorne; Ser Willam Royce, armed with the famed Valyrian sword Lamentation; and Ser Glendon Goode, Lord Commander of the Queensguard. Six squires, eight gold cloaks, and twenty men-at-arms rode with the seven champions as well, but their names, alas, have not come down to us.

Many a singer has made many a song of the Ride of the Seven, and many a tale has been told of the perils they faced as they fought their way across the city, whilst King’s Landing burned around them and the alleys of Flea Bottom ran red with blood. Certain of those songs even have some truth to them, but it is beyond our purview to recount them here. Songs are sung of Prince Joffrey’s last flight as well. Some singers can find glory even in a privy, Mushroom tells us, but it takes a fool to speak the truth. Though we cannot doubt the prince’s courage, his act was one of folly.

We shall not pretend to any understanding of the bond between dragon and dragonrider; wiser heads have pondered that mystery for centuries. We do know, however, that dragons are not horses, to be ridden by any man who throws a saddle on their back. Syrax was the queen’s dragon. She had never known another rider. Though Prince Joffrey was known to her by sight and scent, a familiar presence whose fumbling at her chains excited no alarm, the great yellow she-dragon wanted no part of him astride her. In his haste to be away before he could be stopped, the prince had vaulted onto Syrax without benefit of saddle or whip. His intent, we must presume, was either to fly Syrax into battle or, more likely, to cross the city to the Dragonpit and his own Tyraxes. Mayhaps he meant to loose the other pit dragons as well.

Joffrey never reached the Hill of Rhaenys. Once in the air, Syrax twisted beneath him, fighting to be free of this unfamiliar rider. And from below, stones and spears and arrows flew at him from the hands of the Shepherd’s blood-soaked lambs, maddening the dragon even further. Two hundred feet above Flea Bottom, Prince Joffrey slid from the dragon’s back and plunged to the earth.

Near a juncture where five alleys came together, the prince’s fall came to its bloody end. He crashed first onto a steep-pitched roof before rolling off to fall another forty feet amidst a shower of broken tiles. We are told that the fall broke his back, that shards of slate rained down about him like knives, that his own sword tore loose of his hand and pierced him through the belly. In Flea Bottom, men still speak of a candlemaker’s daughter named Robin who cradled the broken prince in her arms and gave him comfort as he died, but there is more of legend than of history in that tale. “Mother, forgive me,” Joffrey supposedly said with his last breath…though men still argue whether he was speaking of his mother, the queen, or praying to the Mother Above.

Thus perished Joffrey Velaryon, Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne, the last of Queen Rhaenyra’s sons by Laenor Velaryon…or the last of her bastards by Ser Harwin Strong, depending on which truth one chooses to believe.

The mob was not long in falling on his corpse. The candlemaker’s daughter Robin, if she ever existed, was driven off. Looters tore the boots from the prince’s feet and the sword from his belly, then stripped him of his fine, bloodstained clothes. Others, still more savage, began ripping at his body. Both of his hands were cut off, so the scum of the street might claim the rings on his fingers. The prince’s right foot was hacked through at the ankle, and a butcher’s apprentice was sawing at his neck to claim his head when the Seven Who Rode came thundering up. There amidst the stinks of Flea Bottom, a battle was waged in the mud and blood for possession of Prince Joffrey’s body.

The queen’s knights at last reclaimed the boy’s remains, save for his missing foot, though three of the seven fell in the fighting. The Dornishmen, Ser Gyles Yronwood, was pulled from his horse and bludgeoned to death, whilst Ser Willam Royce was felled by a man who leapt down from a rooftop to land upon his back (his famed sword, Lamentation, was torn from his hand and carried off, never to be found again). Most grievous of all was the fate of Ser Glendon Goode, attacked from behind by a man with a torch, who set his long white cloak afire. As the flames licked at his back, his horse reared in terror and threw him, and the mob swarmed over him, tearing him to pieces. Only twenty years of age, Ser Glendon had been Lord Commander of the Queensguard for less than a day.

And even as blood flowed in the alleys of Flea Bottom, another battle raged round the Dragonpit above, atop the Hill of Rhaenys.

Mushroom was not wrong: swarms of starving rats do indeed bring down bulls and bears and lions, when there are enough of them. No matter how many the bull or bear might kill, there are always more, biting at the great beast’s legs, clinging to its belly, running up its back. So it was that night. The Shepherd’s rats were armed with spears, longaxes, spiked clubs, and half a hundred other kinds of weapons, including both longbows and crossbows.

Gold cloaks from the Dragon Gate, obedient to the queen’s command, issued forth from their barracks to defend the hill, but found themselves unable to cut through the mobs, and turned back, whilst the messenger sent to the Old Gate never arrived. The Dragonpit had its own contingent of guards, the Dragonkeepers, but those proud warriors were only seven-and-seventy in number, and fewer than fifty had the watch that night. Though their swords drank deep of the blood of the attackers, the numbers were against them. When the Shepherd’s lambs smashed through the doors (the towering main gates, sheathed in bronze and iron, were too strong to assault, but the building had a score of lesser entrances) and came clambering through windows, the Dragonkeepers were overwhelmed, and soon slaughtered.