Though King Daeron II Targaryen ruled with parchment, pen, and diplomacy, his court was a nest of daggers. And among the sharpest was Brynden Rivers, bastard of Aegon IV, the Unworthy.
Where others saw a sickly albino boy with a bloody stain upon his face, King Daeron saw something else: a mind keen as Valyrian steel and a loyalty to the throne that bordered on fanaticism. Bloodraven, he called him, as did all the realm—but not in jest, and never without respect. In the Red Keep, Brynden Rivers became a shadow at the king's side, quiet and coiled, whispering counsel that was too sharp for courtiers, too clever for lords.
"Let them mock me, Your Grace," Brynden once told the king, "so long as they never see me coming."
His half-brother, Daemon Blackfyre, was another matter. Where Brynden was thin and grim, Daemon was tall, inhumanely beautiful, and beloved. Raised alongside Daeron's own sons, given the Targaryen sword Blackfyre by their father Aegon The Unworthy, Daemon was the sun to Brynden's shadow. Yet Brynden did not hate him—not then. It was Aegor Rivers, the bastard of House Bracken, whom Bloodraven loathed with every drop of his strange, pale blood.
The Blackwoods and Brackens had warred for a thousand years along the rivers, and their sons brought that war to court. Aegor—called Bittersteel—was all his name implied. Fierce, proud, driven, a warrior and firebrand. If Daemon was loved and Brynden feared, then Bittersteel was hated—or worse, admired. He snarled at Brynden's whispers, mocked his albinism, and once, in front of half the court, named him "the king's pet leech."
Bloodraven answered not with a blade but with silence—and a week later, Aegor's squire was found dead, drowned in a well. No accusations were made, but from that day forth, Bittersteel never drank from any cup that Brynden might have touched.
And then there was Shiera Seastar.
The last of the Great Bastards, the daughter of King Aegon IV Targaryen and Lady Serenei of Lys, Shiera was a creature of midnight and mirrors—beautiful beyond words, desired by all, promised to none. She was a scholar, a sorceress, a seductress. She wore her hair in twin coils like seashells, one silver, one gold, and bathed in the blood of maidens if the rumors were to be believed. Brynden loved her. Obsessively, openly, dangerously.
She shared his bed, though never his name. She took lovers—princes, poets, pirates—and laughed when Brynden seethed. Yet still he returned. Still he lingered.
"It is not her heart you want," Bittersteel told him once. "It's her shadow. And even that you'll never own."
Bloodraven said nothing. But a fortnight later, Aegor's paramour, a Dornish singer with a silver tongue and scandalous tales, vanished from the capital.
It was in those years—quiet years, on the surface—that Brynden Rivers began building his web. His little birds were not children but ravens, quills, whispers. No lord's hall nor lord's bed was safe from his eyes. He knew what courtiers dreamed, what septons confessed, what the king's own kin muttered in the dark. "A thousand eyes, and one," they whispered of him, and though it began as a jest, it ended in fear.
It was not love that kept Daeron II close to Brynden Rivers. It was necessity. For while Daemon Blackfyre smiled in court and feasted in the Reach, the king's shadow knew that blades were being sharpened. That gold flowed to Bittersteel. That brothers were becoming traitors.
"Daemon has friends," the King once said wearily. "But you, Brynden… you have eyes."
"To see treason before it flowers," Bloodraven replied.
And yet the flower bloomed.
When Daemon Blackfyre raised his standard in 196 AC, declaring himself the trueborn son of Aegon the Unworthy and rightful king, it was Bittersteel who rode at his side. Shiera vanished from court that same moon, riding south with a guard of Myrish sellswords, her loyalties unknown.
As the realm fractured, Brynden Rivers remained in the capital—quietly gathering the king's archers, securing key roads, sealing gates. While Daeron II's sons marshaled hosts in the field, it was Bloodraven who laid the traps.
He would later write, "Daemon Blackfyre had the sword, Bittersteel had the fury, but I had the realm's secrets. And when you know a man's secrets, you know where to send the arrow."