The Dance of the Dragons is the flowery name bestowed upon the savage internecence struggle for the Iron Throne of Westeros, fought between two rival branches of House Targaryen during the years 129 to 131 AC.

To characterize the dark turbulent, bloody doings of this period as a dance strikes us as grotesquely inappropriate.

No doubt the phrase originated with some singer.

The dying of the dragons would be altogether more fitting, but tradition time and grand maister munkin

have burned the more poetic usage into the pages of history, so we must dance along with the rest.

There were two principal claimants to the Iron Throne upon the death of King Visseris,

the first Targaryen. His daughter Rainiera, the only surviving child of his first

marriage, and Aegon, his oldest son by his second wife. Amidst the chaos and carnage brought on

by their rivalry, other would-be kings would state claims as well, strutting out like murmurs

on a stage for a fortnight or a moon's turn only to fall as swiftly as they had risen.

The dance split the seven kingdoms and two, as lords, knights, and small folk declared for one

side or the other, and took up arms against one another, even how Stargarian itself was divided.

When the kith, Ken, and children of each of the claimants became embroiled in the fighting,

over the two years of struggle, a terrible

toll was taken on the great lords of Westeros, together with their bannermen, knights, and small folk.

While the dynasty survived, the end of the fighting, saw Targaryen power much diminished in the

world's last dragons vastly reduced in number. The dance was a war unlike any other ever fought

in the long history of the seven kingdoms.

Though armies marched and met in savage battle, much of the slaughter took place on water,

and especially in the air, as dragon fought dragon with tooth and claw and flame.

It was a war marked by stealth, murder, and betrayal as well.

A war fought in the shadows and the stairwells,

...