Amidst the jubilant celebrations of the realm, Aegon learned of his sister Rhaella's whereabouts.
She had taken residence at the seat of House Estermont:
—Greenstone.
The castle stood upon Estermont Isle, beyond Cape Wrath, where Rhaella was currently living. Aegon wrote her a letter, summoning her to return for her nephew's birthday feast. It had been too long since the Pureborn were gathered together, and Queen Regent Rhaena yearned especially for her youngest daughter.
Several days later, Rhaella replied, informing her brother that she had mounted Grey Ghost and begun her journey home.
On the day of Prince Aemon's birthday feast, the royal family gathered in full, celebrating the prosperity of House Targaryen.
...
Late in the fifty-seventh year of the Conquest, the Master of Whisperers delivered troubling intelligence: a "beast" had been sighted north of Pentos.
The news left Aegon shaken.
At once, he dispatched an elite force to investigate. His trusted knight, Ser William the Wasp, was placed in command. Departing King's Landing, the party rode swiftly toward Pentos.
Privately, Aegon suspected the creature to be a malformed dragonspawn, escaped from the ruins of Old Valyria.
In the realm of governance, his centralization program had already achieved notable progress. That year, most taxes across the kingdom were collected by crown-appointed officials, then distributed after consultation with local lords.
After Rhaella's return, Aegon unveiled an entirely new court system.
Queen Alysanne, though displeased, could not oppose her husband's will. Thus, for the first time in Westeros, the concept of a royal harem court took shape.
Under this system, Alysanne was crowned as Empress. This gesture served in part to soothe her resentment at having to share her husband.
Beneath the Empress, four ranks of consorts were established. In effect, Aegon created a five-tier hierarchy for the harem, each level corresponding to the noble ranks of the Targaryen realm.
The Empress stood equal to a Duke.
The Noble Consort equated to an Earl.
Below them were Consort, Beauty, and Companion.
Both Aerea and Rhaella were granted the rank of Noble Consort, second only to the Empress herself.
What's more, in the Targaryen dynasty, consorts were permitted to legally hold fiefs, granting them independent incomes.
When the new system was announced, the lords of Westeros—though long battered by Aegon's relentless reforms—found themselves slowly adapting to his innovations.
Necessity left them no choice. Unable to resist, they accepted, and some even began to welcome the changes.
Many reasoned that if the Emperor could wed multiple women, then their own daughters might also gain the chance to enter the court.
Thus, the first great beauty pageant of the Targaryen dynasty began.
...
Though the common folk could not witness it, the fervor among the nobility was unmistakable. Nearly every house sent its daughters to King's Landing, and each day the Red Keep saw a procession of lords clad in their finest attire.
Within the Conqueror's Hall, Aegon himself presided, judging the young noblewomen who vied for his favor. Each displayed her charms in turn, eager to outshine the rest.
In the end, seven were chosen, elevated to the rank of Consort—equivalent to a Marquis—and granted fiefs of their own.
Among them were:
Florence Fossoway, intelligent and capable, with a particular talent for managing accounts and finances. Rumor held that she showed her gift for numbers as a toddler, counting apples as soon as she learned to walk.
Leanna Moore, a striking beauty with a graceful figure, skilled in winning the Emperor's attention. Yet Empress Alysanne, watching closely, dismissed her as little more than a dull, empty-headed ornament.
Coryanne Wylde, daughter of Lord Morgan Wylde of Rain House. Whispers claimed that at thirteen she had been seduced in the stables by a "rough groom," yet examination by the female maester of the Red Keep confirmed her virtue remained intact.
Jennis Templeton…
Strangely, none of the daughters of the Seven Great Lords were chosen.
This slight left the great lords humiliated, their pride wounded before all the realm. Whether Aegon's decision carried some hidden meaning, none could say.
What was clear, however, was his increasing determination to curb the autonomy of the great houses. Rumors spread through court that the Emperor intended to station law-trained maesters in every domain, serving as magistrates.
Unlike in the reign of Aegon I, when such judges were tasked only with resolving disputes among immigrants, these new magistrates would oversee all matters of law.
Undoubtedly, this would have been a complete replacement of the nobles' autonomy.
Yet the proposal met with fierce opposition in the Small Council and was ultimately struck down.
Most of the councillors were nobles themselves; naturally, they would never allow such a policy—one that threatened the very foundation of their power—to pass.
Aegon was not surprised by the resistance against appointing local magistrates. He had already been quietly preparing another groundbreaking reform: the imperial examination system for selecting officials. The plan was nearing completion, and Aegon intended to enact it the following year.
When that day came, all officials of the Targaryen dynasty—save those seated in the Small Council—would be chosen through examinations.
...
During the beauty pageant, Aegon's bold measures left the great lords uneasy, yet powerless to resist.
It was then that new intelligence arrived from Lord Rego's spies across the Narrow Sea.
One report claimed that a dragon had appeared in the fighting pits of Astapor in Slaver's Bay.
This beast, its wings already severed, was forced into brutal combat against bulls, cave bears, and bands of slaves armed with spears and axes. The bloody spectacle drove the crowds into frenzied delight.
Upon hearing this, Brother Barth immediately dismissed it.
"This is undoubtedly a wyvern," he declared. "Wyverns from Sothoryos are often mistaken for true dragons by those who have never seen one."
The rumor spread quickly among the nobles of King's Landing, who began watching closely this "dragon" that had appeared outside the Targaryen Pureborn's line.
Soon after, further reports about the so-called "false dragon" sent shockwaves through the nobility.
It was said that a bastard of pure Targaryen blood, named Maegor Waters, had traveled to Astapor. Barred from possessing a true dragon by the Pureborn's dragon-riding laws, he seized upon the chance to claim this wyvern for himself.
By fortune, the beast had not yet perished in the pit. To gain the opportunity to tame it, Maegor entered the slave duels.
Before thousands of onlookers, he displayed astonishing courage and skill, and against all odds, subdued the two-legged wyvern.
The feat stunned the world.
When word reached King's Landing that a bastard had tamed a "false dragon," the Targaryen nobles were first dumbfounded, then elated.
The Pureborn dragon-riding laws did not forbid bastards from taming wyverns!
In that moment, the bastards of the royal bloodline entered an unprecedented "spring."
Many bastards of Aegon the Conqueror were suddenly sought out, while the bastards of Aegon II were courted warmly by nobles. These children of the blood—both sons and daughters—were honored as esteemed guests.
Soon after, nobles began spending lavishly to acquire wyverns.
Expeditions set out from King's Landing to Sothoryos in search of them. Some wyverns already present in Slaver's Bay were purchased and brought back, where Targaryen nobles staged taming duels in Aegon's newly built dragon arena.
To remain in favor and continue enjoying noble hospitality, the royal bastards risked their lives to tame the savage creatures.
After several bastards paid with their blood, a true wyvern rider finally emerged.
When he soared above King's Landing on his wyvern, the nobility erupted with wild cheers.
The bastard knight, Dan Waters, was hailed as a hero. To many, it seemed a rival power to the Targaryen dragons had at last been born.
...
This uproar soon drew the Emperor's attention. Aegon dispatched Brother Barth to investigate.
The Septon did not disappoint.
After thorough study, he authored Dragons, Wyrms, and Wyverns: An Unnatural History of the Dragonkind.
In it, Barth detailed the clear differences between true dragons and wyverns. He concluded that wyverns were, at their core, mere beasts. Though faintly magical and distantly related to the ancient dragons, they had long since diverged into a separate species.
Wyverns, he wrote, rarely exceeded ten meters in length.
Aegon studied Barth's work carefully and came to a decision.
He would loosen restrictions on wyverns and the royal bastards—or more precisely, he would not interfere at all, leaving them to develop freely.
These bastards carried his blood, and he did not wish their lineage to languish in obscurity among the commons. If they could win noble favor by taming wyverns, then so be it.
What followed exceeded all expectations.
The lords of Westeros, traditionally conservative and fiercely proud of their honor, began welcoming wyvern-riding bastards into their families as sons-in-law.
Thus, the role of the royal bastard son-in-law appeared for the first time in Westeros.
Bastard daughters fared no worse. Nobles competed fiercely to wed them, especially those who proved themselves riders. The most renowned was Lillia Waters, a bastard daughter of Aegon II.
Born in a brothel outside King's Landing, she had grown up under the Emperor's protection but with no prospects of glory.
That changed the day she tamed a striped wyvern.
Her fate was forever transformed.
The heir of House Tully asked for her hand, and she gladly accepted. When he inherited Riverrun, Lillia would become the first bastard-born Lady of a Great House in Westeros.
...
Over time, methods of taming wyverns grew more refined and safer.
It was discovered that any Pureborn with true dragon blood could tame a wyvern by spending long periods with it—so long as its claws were firmly bound with ropes and its eyes covered with leather hoods to keep it in darkness, dulling its senses. Gradually, the creature would calm... until it was fully broken.
This method bore an uncanny resemblance to the falconry practices Aegon remembered from his past life.
By the year's end—the fifty-seventh of the Conquest—the practice had taken firm root.
The cold of winter settled over Westeros as expected.
At the same time, grim tidings arrived from Essos: the expedition Aegon had dispatched to the hills north of Pentos to investigate reports of a giant beast had been wiped out.
Ser Willem the Wasp, who led the force, had hired a local guide claiming knowledge of the creature's whereabouts. Instead, the man lured them straight into an ambush laid by bandits in the Velvet Hills of Andalos. Though Ser Willem and his men were seasoned warriors of great skill, they were hopelessly outnumbered and perished bravely in the fight. It is said Ser Willem was the last to fall.
Later, Lord Rego recovered his severed head through one of his informants in Pentos.
When this painful news reached King's Landing, Hand of the King Myles Smallwood pressed Aegon to punish the Pentoshi for their arrogance and insolence.
The Emperor decreed that Pentos's tribute for the year would be increased fivefold, a small measure of chastisement.
...
Beyond this, however, Aegon and his council turned their attention to the great fire that had recently ravaged the Disputed Lands.
Fanned by fierce winds and feeding on parched grass, the blaze raged for three days and three nights, consuming six villages and an entire mercenary company—the Adventurers.
Hemmed in with fire to their front and the army of the Western Protectorate, led in person by its commander, to their rear, the mercenaries faced a grim choice. Most chose to fall on spears rather than be burned alive. In the end, none survived.
As for the fire's cause, it remained a mystery.
"It was the work of a dragon," Lord Smallwood declared flatly.
"What else could it have been?"
Lord Rego de Raz was less convinced. "Lightning, perhaps. Or a campfire. Maybe some drunken fool carrying a torch to a whorehouse." He listed off his doubts. "Any of these could have sparked it."
Aegon agreed. "If a dragon had done this, there would have been at least one witness."
...
As the dawn of the fifty-eighth year of Conquest approached, Aegon made a decision of historic weight: he would assemble a fleet, carefully built and provisioned, to sail west and explore the edge of the known world.
His vision stretched beyond the horizon, across the storm-wracked Sunset Sea. He proclaimed the plan to his realm: to cross the western ocean in search of continents beyond mankind's wildest imagining.
Among the common folk, belief still held sway that the world was flat—that far to the west lay its edge. Some spoke of fiery walls and boiling seas. Others told of endless black fog. Still others whispered of the very gates of hell.
The learned, of course, knew better.
Anyone could see the sun and moon were spheres. The natural conclusion was that the world itself was also a sphere. Centuries of study had convinced the scholars of the New Citadel. Nor was the notion unique to Westeros; the Valyrian dragonlords had believed it, and wise men in Qarth, Yi Ti, and Leng had reached similar conclusions.
But on the size of the world, opinions diverged sharply—even within the Citadel. Some argued the Sunset Sea was endless, impossible to cross. Others claimed it was no larger than the Summer Sea between Arbor and Great Moraq. A formidable voyage, yes, but one a daring captain with stout ships might survive.
From a practical view, whoever discovered a western route to Yi Ti and Leng—and returned with spices and silk—would become the richest man alive, if indeed the world was as small as some scholars imagined.
Aegon did not believe it was so small.
...
At the dawn of the fifty-eighth year of Conquest, as the fleet bearing his great ambition prepared to sail, the Emperor addressed the adventurers with a speech both passionate and stirring.
"The world is far vaster and more wondrous than the maesters suppose.
I do not send you west, like greedy merchants chasing gold, merely to reach Ulthos or Asshai.
I send you to broaden our horizons, to explore the unknown.
I am certain that beyond Westeros, stretching past the eastern edges of Essos and Ulthos, there lie lands and seas as yet unseen by mankind.
A new world awaits us—perhaps another Essos, another Sothoryos, another Westeros.
I dream of roaring rivers and windswept plains, of mountains that pierce the clouds; of sunlit emerald isles, untamed beasts, and strange fruits never tasted; of golden cities gleaming beneath unfamiliar stars.
My lords, set sail—and carry my dream with you!"