House Targaryen: sigil, words and swords
Most great houses chose words that warn or boast. The Targaryens chose a description of what they did to anyone who refused them.
Fire and Blood
The three heads
A red three-headed dragon breathing red flame on a black field. The three heads are Aegon, Visenya and Rhaenys: the three siblings, on three dragons, who took six kingdoms in two years. The mark on this site is a heraldic reading of the same idea, three flames rather than three heads.
Rhaegar Targaryen read it as prophecy rather than history. If the dragon has three heads, he reasoned, then the prince that was promised needs three riders. He was arranging his children accordingly when Robert killed him at the Trident.
House Targaryen at a glance
- Words
- Fire and Blood
- Sigil
- A three-headed dragon, red, breathing red flame, on a black field
- Colours
- Black and red
- Ancestral home
- Valyria, abandoned in 114 BC
- Seat
- Dragonstone, then the Red Keep at King’s Landing
- Heir’s title
- Prince or Princess of Dragonstone
- Ancestral swords
- Blackfyre and Dark Sister, both Valyrian steel
- Founder of the dynasty
- Aegon I, the Conqueror
The two Valyrian steel swords
Both are lost. Between them they explain five rebellions and a great deal of what happens beyond the Wall.
Blackfyre
The king’s sword, a hand-and-a-half longsword carried by every Targaryen monarch from Aegon I to Aegon IV.
Aegon IV gave it to his bastard son Daemon rather than to his heir. That single gift created House Blackfyre and five rebellions. Bittersteel carried it into exile after the Redgrass Field and it has not been seen since.
Dark Sister
A slender blade forged for a woman’s hand, carried by Visenya at the Conquest.
Passed to Maegor, then Jaehaerys I, then Prince Baelon, then Daemon Targaryen, who used it to kill Aemond above the Gods Eye. It ended with Bloodraven, who took it beyond the Wall in 252 AC.
Sigil and words questions
What are House Targaryen’s words?
Fire and Blood. Unlike most house words, which are warnings or boasts, the Targaryen words are a plain description of the two things they brought to Westeros.
What does the Targaryen sigil mean?
A red three-headed dragon breathing red flame on a black field. The three heads stand for Aegon the Conqueror and his sister-wives Visenya and Rhaenys, the three riders who took Westeros.
Why does the Targaryen dragon have three heads?
For the three siblings of the Conquest. The image is also read as a prophecy, since the dragon has three heads and Rhaegar believed the prince that was promised would need three riders.
What is the Targaryen coat of arms?
Gules, a three-headed dragon of the field breathing flame, on sable. In plain terms: a red dragon with three heads, breathing red fire, on black.
What is the Blackfyre sigil?
The Targaryen arms with the colours reversed: a black three-headed dragon breathing black flame on a red field. Daemon Blackfyre chose it to say he was a Targaryen and something else at once.
Where did House Targaryen come from?
The Valyrian Freehold. They were dragonlords of middling rank who left for Dragonstone in 114 BC, twelve years before the Doom destroyed Valyria, on the strength of Daenys the Dreamer’s vision.