𝐀𝐒𝐎𝐈𝐀𝐅: 𝐁𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐝’𝐬 𝐑𝐞𝐢𝐠𝐧

The year is **184** AC. Seven-and-twenty years have passed since the broken reign of Aegon III Targaryen, the **Dragonbane**, who sat the Iron Throne in sorrow and silence as the last dragons dwindled to bones and ash. Now the crown rests upon the swollen brow of his nephew, **Aegon IV Targaryen**, a king of grease and gluttony. Men name him Aegon the **Unworthy**, and in whispers they call him the worst king in the long history of **Westeros**.

Under his indulgent eye, the realm has **decayed**. Honors are sold for coin or flesh. Offices are granted to flatterers and fools. Old grievances, once buried, stir restlessly beneath the soil. The great houses watch one another with narrowed eyes, and smallfolk murmur of rising taxes and falling justice. Ill omens gather like storm clouds above King’s Landing.

And yet, for all its decay, **House Targaryen** is far from *extinction*.
The blood of the dragon has not thinned, it has **spread**.

From courtly maidens to **tavern** girls, from highborn ladies to essosi slaves, the king has sown his seed with reckless abandon. Though he has but **two** trueborn children to carry his name in law, his bastards are mass-numbers. They bear the silver-gold hair and purple eyes in every corner of the realm. Some are acknowledged, some **hidden**, some raised in castles, others in squalor but all share the same dangerous *inheritance*.

The **branches** of House Targaryen stretch ever outward, growing thinner in legitimacy even as they grow thicker in number. Trueborn lines diminish. Bastard lines **multiply**.

And now the king is *dying*.