It is said of bastards that they are born of lust, thrive by cunning, and fall by pride. Yet few men born on the wrong side of the blanket ever cast a shadow as long as Brynden Rivers, bastard son of King Aegon the Unworthy and Lady Melissa Blackwood. Fewer still wielded as much power, and none—not one—have been so feared.
Brynden came into the world in 175 AC beneath a bleeding moon, or so the Blackwoods say. He was small, sickly, and strange from the start. Where his brothers bore the gold of the dragonlords or the dark curls of the Riverlands, Brynden was born an albino, his skin pale as milk, his hair bone-white, and his eyes red as coals. A birthmark stained the right side of his face—deep red, wine-dark, crawling up from throat to cheek like a raven's talon.
They called him "Bloodraven" before he could walk.
He was raised at court, a silent shadow in silk, always watching. While Daemon Waters, golden and gallant, jousted before throngs and whispered promises to noble maids, Brynden took to scrolls and secrets. He learned his letters from Grand Maester Alford, his sums from the coinmaster, and his whispers from the spymaster Thorne. The sword did not come easily to him, but the bow did. From a young age he could loose a shaft farther and faster than men thrice his age, and never miss his mark. His longbow was carved of weirwood, bleached white, strung with silk-drawn sinew. They say he could shoot a fly off a wall at fifty yards—and sometimes did, just to prove he could.
When Aegon IV died bloated and vile in 184 AC, he left behind a kingdom smoldering beneath the surface. A score of bastards were legitimized with his dying breath, loosing a dragon's brood upon Westeros. The realm groaned under King Daeron II's attempts to bind it with parchment and peace. And from these legitimized sons, Daemon Blackfyre rose like a black sun to challenge the Red Dragon's reign.
The First Blackfyre Rebellion was where Brynden Rivers stepped from shadow into history.
He fought for Daeron—not with pomp and banners, but with steel and silence. It was Bloodraven who commanded the royal archers at the Redgrass Field, his weirwood bow whispering death from a ridge above the carnage. And when Daemon Blackfyre turned the tide with Blackfyre in hand, it was Bloodraven's arrows that found him. Three shafts to the chest, one to the throat. Some say he wept when he loosed them. Others say he laughed.
What is certain is this: he never denied it.