Younger sister-wife of Aegon the Conqueror, beloved by smallfolk for her warmth and her songs. She rode Meraxes in the Conquest and bore Aegon his eldest son Aenys. In the First Dornish War she flew her dragon deep into Dorne and was struck down at the Hellholt, felled with Meraxes by a scorpion bolt, the first dragon and dragonrider lost since the Doom.
She was the youngest child of Lord Aerion Targaryen and Lady Valaena Velaryon, born on Dragonstone two years after her brother and five after her sister. Where Visenya was severe Rhaenys was bright, where Visenya took the sword Rhaenys took the harp, and where Visenya counted ambition Rhaenys counted love. She bonded as a girl with the lean swift Meraxes, the slenderest of the three dragons that crossed from Valyria, and flew her in every hour and every weather; she ranged as far as Westeros and back upon her years before the Conquest had been so much as imagined.
She was the wing of her brother's host that did the singing and the talking. She flew Meraxes over the southern kingdoms in the years before the Conquest to count their strength and judge their lords; she carried the herald's torch to the lords who would treat for peace and gave them time to choose their answers well; and on the Field of Fire she rode with her brother and her sister in the only battle on which all three dragons ever flew as one. After the Conquest she held her own court at her brother's side at the Aegonfort, and the smallfolk who came to her bench called her judgements gentler and surer than either of her siblings'.
The First Dornish War, begun in 4 AC, called her into the air more often than it called Visenya. She flew Meraxes to terrible purpose against the Dornish keeps, burned the Planky Town to its pilings, and scoured the green of the Boneway, yet could never bring Princess Meria Martell to terms. In 10 AC she came low above the Hellholt so the watchers below might see her colours, and a Dornish scorpion bolt the size of a man's forearm took Meraxes through one great golden eye. The two of them fell together upon the keep; the Dornish hung Meraxes's skull in their hall for two centuries thereafter.
She left her brother only one child, Aenys, the elder of his two sons and the heir to his throne. Through Aenys her blood carried forward into the dynasty: every Targaryen who held the Iron Throne after Maegor was of her line, not Visenya's. Aegon never wed again. He kept her chair empty on his small council and her court in his memory, and he answered the Dornish in the years that followed with the burning of every keep on Meria's borders, in what the chronicles called the Dragon's Wroth, until at last the spear bent enough that he could close her ledger and call the long war ended.