The Great Council deliberated for thirteen days. The tenuous claims of nine lesser competitors were considered and discarded (one such, a hedge knight who put himself forward as a natural son of King Jaehaerys himself, was seized and imprisoned when the king exposed him as a liar). Archmaester Vaegon was ruled out on account of his vows and Princess Rhaenys and her daughter on account of their sex, leaving the two claimants with the most support: Viserys Targaryen, eldest son of Prince Baelon and Princess Alyssa, and Laenor Velaryon, the son of Princess Rhaenys and grandson of Prince Aemon. Viserys was the Old King’s grandson, Laenor his great-grandson. The principle of primogeniture favored Laenor, the principle of proximity Viserys. Viserys had also been the last Targaryen to ride Balerion…though after the death of the Black Dread in 94 AC he never mounted another dragon, whereas the boy Laenor had yet to take his first flight upon his young dragon, a splendid grey-and-white beast he named Seasmoke.

But Viserys’s claim derived from his father, Laenor’s from his mother, and most lords felt that the male line must take precedence over the female. Moreover, Viserys was a man of twenty-four, Laenor a boy of seven. For all these reasons, Laenor’s claim was generally regarded as the weaker, but the boy’s mother and father were such powerful and influential figures that it could not be dismissed entirely.

Mayhaps this would be a good place to add a few additional words about his sire, Corlys of House Velaryon, Lord of the Tides and Master of Driftmark, renowned in song and story as the Sea Snake, and surely one of the most extraordinary figures of the age. A noble house with a storied Valyrian lineage, the Velaryons had come to Westeros even before the Targaryens, if their family histories can be believed, settling in the Gullet on the low-lying and fertile isle of Driftmark (so named for the driftwood that the tides brought daily to its shores) rather than its stony, smoking neighbor, Dragonstone. Though never dragonriders, the Velaryons had for centuries remained the oldest and closest allies of the Targaryens. The sea was their element, not the sky. During the Conquest, it was Velaryon ships that carried Aegon’s soldiers across Blackwater Bay, and later formed the greater part of the royal fleet. Throughout the first century of Targaryen rule, so many Lords of the Tides served on the small council as master of ships that the office was widely seen as almost hereditary.

Yet even with such forebears, Corlys Velaryon was a man apart, a man as brilliant as he was restless, as adventurous as he was ambitious. It was traditional for the sons of the seahorse (the sigil of House Velaryon) to be given a taste of a seafarer’s life when young, but no Velaryon before or since ever took to shipboard life as eagerly as the boy who would become the Sea Snake. He first crossed the narrow sea at the age of six, sailing to Pentos with an uncle. Thereafter Corlys made such voyages every year. Nor did he travel as a passenger; he climbed masts, tied knots, scrubbed decks, pulled oars, caulked leaks, raised and lowered sails, manned the crow’s nest, learned to navigate and steer. His captains said they had never seen such a natural sailor.

At age sixteen, he became a captain himself, taking a fishing boat called the Cod Queen from Driftmark to Dragonstone and back. In the years that followed, his ships grew larger and swifter, his voyages longer and more dangerous. He took ships around the bottom of Westeros to visit Oldtown, Lannisport, and Lordsport on Pyke. He sailed to Lys, Tyrosh, Pentos, and Myr. He took the Summer Maid to Volantis and the Summer Isles, and the Ice Wolf north to Braavos, Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, and Hardhome before turning into the Shivering Sea for Lorath and the Port of Ibben. On a later voyage, he and the Ice Wolf headed north once more, searching for a rumored passage around the top of Westeros, but finding only frozen seas and icebergs big as mountains.

His most famous voyages were those he made on the ship that he designed and built himself, the Sea Snake. Traders from Oldtown and the Arbor oft sailed as far as Qarth in search of spice, silk, and other treasures, but Corlys Velaryon and the Sea Snake were the first to go beyond, passing through the Jade Gates to Yi Ti and the isle of Leng, returning with so rich a load of silk and spice that he doubled the wealth of House Velaryon in a stroke. On his second voyage in the Sea Snake, he sailed even farther, to Asshai-by-the-Shadow; on his third he tried the Shivering Sea instead, becoming the first Westerosi to navigate the Thousand Islands and visit the bleak, cold shores of N’ghai and Mossovy.

In the end the Sea Snake made nine voyages. On the ninth, Ser Corlys took her back to Qarth, laden with enough gold to buy twenty more ships and load them all with saffron, pepper, nutmeg, elephants, and bolts of the finest silk. Only fourteen of the fleet arrived safely at Driftmark, and all the elephants died at sea, yet even so the profits from that voyage were so vast that the Velaryons became the wealthiest house in the Seven Kingdoms, eclipsing even the Hightowers and Lannisters, albeit briefly.

This wealth Ser Corlys put to good use when his aged grandsire died at the age of eight-and-eighty, and the Sea Snake became Lord of the Tides. The seat of House Velaryon was Castle Driftmark, a dark, grim place, always damp and often flooded. Lord Corlys raised a new castle on the far side of the island. High Tide was built of the same pale stone as the Eyrie, its slender towers crowned with roofs of beaten silver that flashed in the sun. When the morning and evening tides rolled in, the castle was surrounded by the sea, connected to Driftmark proper only by a causeway. To this new castle, Lord Corlys moved the ancient Driftwood Throne (a gift from the Merling King, according to legend).

The Sea Snake built ships as well. The royal fleet tripled in size during the years he served the Old King as master of ships. Even after giving up that office, he continued to build, turning out merchantmen and trading galleys in place of warships. Beneath the dark, salt-stained walls of Castle Driftmark three modest fishing villages grew together into a thriving town called Hull, for the rows of ship hulls that could always be seen below the castle. Across the island, near High Tide, another village was transformed into Spicetown, its wharves and piers crowded with ships from the Free Cities and beyond. Sitting athwart the Gullet, Driftmark was closer to the narrow sea than Duskendale or King’s Landing, so Spicetown soon began to usurp much of the shipping that would elsewise have made for those ports, and House Velaryon grew ever richer and more powerful.

Lord Corlys was an ambitious man. During his nine voyages on the Sea Snake, he was forever wanting to press onward, to go where none had gone before and see what lay beyond the maps. Though he had accomplished much and more in life, he was seldom satisfied, the men who knew him best would say. In Rhaenys Targaryen, daughter of the Old King’s eldest son and heir, he had found his perfect match, a woman as spirited and beautiful and proud as any in the realm, and a dragonrider as well. His sons and daughters would soar through the skies, Lord Corlys expected, and one day one of them would sit the Iron Throne.

Unsurprisingly, the Sea Snake was bitterly disappointed when Prince Aemon died and King Jaehaerys bypassed Aemon’s daughter, Rhaenys, in favor of his brother, Baelon the Spring Prince. But now, it seemed, the wheel had turned again, and the wrong could be righted. Thus did Lord Corlys and his wife, the Princess Rhaenys, arrive at Harrenhal in high state, using the wealth and influence of House Velaryon to persuade the lords assembled that their son, Laenor, should be recognized as heir to the Iron Throne. In these efforts they were joined by the Lord of Storm’s End, Boremund Baratheon (great-uncle to Rhaenys and great-great-uncle to the boy Laenor), by Lord Stark of Winterfell, Lord Manderly of White Harbor, Lord Dustin of Barrowton, Lord Blackwood of Raventree, Lord Bar Emmon of Sharp Point, Lord Celtigar of Claw Isle, and others.

They were nowhere near enough. Though Lord and Lady Velaryon were eloquent and open-handed in their efforts on behalf of their son, the decision of the Great Council was never truly in doubt. By a lopsided margin, the lords assembled chose Viserys Targaryen as the rightful heir to the Iron Throne. Though the maesters who tallied the votes never revealed the actual numbers, it was said afterward that the vote had been more than twenty to one.