Original subtitles

VARYS: Though House Durrandon titled themselves "Storm Kings,"

they were little more than gusts.

Their kingdom in the Stormlands had been doddering to its end

for the past few centuries,

helped along by other houses,

most of all by House Hoare,

who were nearly finished with the monstrous castle of Harrenhal,

too large and too costly a seat to rule only the Riverlands.

King Argilac knew where the ironborn would soon turn.

You'd think a king who wanted to keep his crown

would be wary of a man with fire-breathing monsters,

but King Argilac Durrandon wasn't called "the Arrogant" for nothing.

Determined to arrest his family's decline,

he sent an envoy to Dragonstone

to enlist Aegon Targaryen and his dragons against his enemies.

In exchange, Argilac offered lands he didn't have

and a wife Aegon didn't need,

for, as the Valyrians did, Aegon had wed his elder sister, Visenya.

Then, as the Valyrians didn't, he took the younger Rhaenys as well.

Two sisters, two wives.

Perhaps that's why he was so keen to get off Dragonstone.

Aegon countered Argilac with courtesy.

He sent his own envoy requesting

that Princess Durrandon's hand be given instead to Aegon's closest friend,

and rumored half-brother, Orys Baratheon.

Argilac answered with a box and a note,

"These are the only hands your bastard shall have of me."

Inside the box were the hands of Aegon's envoy.

How long had Aegon been waiting for such a pretext?

As his army prepared to sail,

ravens flew to every great lord of the Seven Kingdoms.

All bore the same message.

From this day forth, there would be but one king in Westeros.

Those who bent the knee to Aegon of House Targaryen

would keep their lands and titles.

Those who took up arms against him

would be thrown down, humbled and destroyed.

Poor old Argilac.

He couldn't even match Aegon in arrogance.

Aegon landed at the mouth of the Blackwater River

and raised a primitive "Aegonfort"

in the disputed land between Harren's and Argilac's kingdoms,

so that neither could decide whose problem he was.

Adopting the customs of the Seven Kingdoms,

Aegon unfurled his own banner

with a red three-headed dragon breathing fire upon a black field.

Visenya crowned him with a ruby-studded circlet of Valyrian steel,

while Rhaenys hailed him as

the first high king the continent had seen since the Dawn Age.

As his lords and the gathered locals cheered him,

Aegon named his loyal friends to a "Small Council"

led by Orys Baratheon, whom he called, "My strong right hand."

The title stuck,

and a bastard became the first Hand of the King.

But for now, Aegon's kingdom contained only a rocky island and a handful of fields.

The other kings had larger armies, ships, castles and thousands of years of rule.

But Aegon had dragons.

He had chosen for the words of his house, "Fire and blood."

Before he was done, the rivers, fields and skies would turn red.