Meleys

Meleys
Biographical information
Species	Dragon
Died	132 AC Rook's Rest, the Crownlands
Personal information
Also known as	The Red Queen
Affiliation	{Alyssa Targaryen} {Rhaenys Targaryen}
World of Westeros
Series	House of the Dragon
Season(s)	1 · 2
Appeared in	7 episodes (see below)
First seen in	"We Light the Way"
Last seen in	"Regent" (corpse)
Died in	"The Red Dragon and the Gold"

"My father was furious. His own mother's dragon, the fastest beast ever known, and she'd have none of him. But bent her neck to Rhaenys."

―Baela Targaryen

Meleys, called the Red Queen, was a dragon of House Targaryen. She was the mount of Rhaenys Targaryen, and the second dragon to die during the Dance of the Dragons.

Biography

Background

Meleys was originally ridden by Princess Alyssa Targaryen. She has scarlet scales, greenish yellow eyes, and a crown of bright copper horns. During her youth, she is said to have been faster than both Caraxes and Vhagar. After Alyssa's death, her son, Prince Daemon, attempted to mount Meleys, but she spurned him in favor of Princess Rhaenys, enraging the young prince.

House of the Dragon: Season 1

Rhaenys rides Meleys towards King's Landing. Her son Laenor Velaryon, who is to marry Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, rides the dragon Seasmoke at her side.

During the funeral of Laena Velaryon, Meleys stays at High Tide along with several other dragons, flying overhead alongside Syrax and Caraxes while Dreamfyre and Sunfyre sit on the cliffside.

Meleys is chained in the Dragonpit during the coronation of Aegon II Targaryen. She is eventually freed by Rhaenys and rides her out of the Dragonpit, inadvertently killing a number of smallfolk during their escape to Dragonstone. Helaena predicted this event in a dream, in which she saw Meleys as "the beast beneath the boards."

After the coronation of Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen, Rhaenys and Meleys start to patrol the Gullet and reinforce Lord Corlys Velaryon's blockade of the shipping lanes to King's Landing.

House of the Dragon: Season 2

Meleys and Rhaenys return to the Dragonstone gantry shortly before learning about Lucerys Velaryon's death.

The severed head of Meleys.

Rhaenys embraces Meleys at the Dragonstone gantry as they prepare to fly to Rook's Rest, where they battle the Greens who are assaulting the castle. Meleys repeatedly strafes the battlefield with her fire breath, sending the forces of the Greens into a panicked disarray. Eventually, Sunfyre enters the battlefield with his rider Aegon, in which a fierce aerial melee ensues. Meleys and Sunfyre proceed to brutally bite and claw each other, with the larger red dragon having the upper hand. After Sunfyre briefly escapes the deadlock, Meleys again attacks the smaller golden dragon and clamps her jaws around Sunfyre's right wing, who in turn bites and snaps one of Meleys's horns off. Concurrently, Vhagar and Aemond arrive at the battlefield, with the young prince ordering his dragon to blast both Meleys and Sunfyre with a torrent of fire. As Sunfyre catches fire and plummets into the forest below along with Aegon, Meleys engages Vhagar in a melee in which she slashes the larger dragon's underbelly with her claws as they blast one another with flames and lock talons. The two dragons spiral and plummet to the ground, and Meleys quickly recovers and manages to return to the sky as Vhagar hits the ground, only for Vhagar to ambush her by hiding behind Rook's Rest, tightly clamping her jaws around the red dragon's throat. Meleys and Rhaenys share one final look as Vhagar crushes Meleys's neck in her jaws. Rhaenys and Meleys's body plummet and crash onto the walls of Rook's Rest in a fiery explosion. The wall is breached, allowing the Greens to storm Rook's Rest.

Following the Battle at Rook's Rest, Ser Criston Cole and Ser Gwayne Hightower parade Meleys's severed head through the streets of King's Landing, with Ser Axell Bulwer spreading the lie that it was Aegon himself who slew her.

In the books

In the prequel novellas, Meleys was known as "the Red Queen", which seems to indicate that she was the mother of several of the other dragons (much as Rhaenys was grandmother to the youngest generation of dragon-riders). Her exact age and lineage has not yet been established. Before she bonded with princess Rhaenys, she had been originally ridden by Alyssa Targaryen, daughter of King Jahaerys. When she claimed a dragon, Alyssa was recommended Meleys by the dragonkeepers as her mount rather than Balerion the Black Dread, whom she had considered but was now old, sluggish, and slow. Alyssa was the mother of Viserys I and Daemon Targaryen. Alyssa likewise had taken both of her sons riding on Meleys a few days after their respective births.

Meleys does appear to have been one of the oldest and largest dragons after Vhagar herself, and was probably one of the second generation dragons hatched to the original three from the Conquest-generation (Balerion, Meraxes, and Vhagar). Vhagar was 181 years old during the Dance, and by that point as said to have grown as large as Balerion had been during Aegon's Conquest. Vhagar is also described as being five times the size of the young dragon Arrax, who was only a decade or so old and only just big enough to ride to war.

Appearances

• The Dance of Dragons (illustrated)
• – "King of the Narrow Sea" (mentioned indirectly)
• – "We Light the Way"
• – "Driftmark"
• – "The Lord of the Tides" (mentioned)
• – "The Green Council"
• – "The Black Queen"
• – "A Son for a Son"
• – "Rhaenyra the Cruel" (mentioned)
• – "The Red Dragon and the Gold"
• – "Regent" (corpse)
• – "Smallfolk" (mentioned)

External links

• Meleys on A Wiki of Ice and Fire (potential spoilers for House of the Dragon)
• Meleys on The Official Guide