First-born son of King Aerys II and Queen Rhaella, born at Summerhall on the day of the great fire there in 259 AC, the burning of the old summer seat the only labour-cry to mark his coming into the world. As a boy he read so deeply that jests were made of his bookishness, until something he found in the pages set him to the sword, and at seventeen he was knighted and grew quickly into a warrior who could unhorse Ser Arthur Dayne of the Kingsguard at the lists. His closest friends were Ser Arthur, whom he loved better than any other man, his squire-brother Jon Connington, his squires Myles Mooton and Richard Lonmouth, and his mother's maester-uncle Aemon of the Wall, with whom he kept up a long correspondence by raven. He could be found often at the ruins of Summerhall with only his silver harp for company, and the songs he played there reduced women to tears in halls all across the realm. King Aerys sent his cousin Lord Steffon Baratheon over the narrow sea to find a bride of pure Valyrian blood and Steffon drowned within sight of Storm's End for his pains, after which Rhaegar was betrothed instead to the Dornish princess Elia Martell and wed her in 280 AC at the Great Sept of Baelor; she gave him Rhaenys that same year and Aegon two years after, the boy's birth nearly killing her and barring her of any further childbearing. Rhaegar wrote to Maester Aemon that this Aegon, he believed, would prove to be the prince that was promised.
In 281 AC Lord Walter Whent of Harrenhal announced a tourney to rival any held in living memory — some say it was the prince's own coin behind the lists, an excuse to gather the great lords and discuss the calling of a Great Council to set his father quietly aside before the realm went mad with him. The prince rode through the field unhorsing all challengers, including Ser Arthur in the final tilt, and when he came to the queen of love and beauty he passed his Dornish princess in the stands and laid the winter-rose crown in the lap of the willful Stark girl Lyanna, who was betrothed to Robert Baratheon. Lord Eddard would say afterwards that that was the moment all the smiles died. The next year the prince and the girl rode out from their separate places and disappeared together into the south, and whether she went with him willing or unwilling no man living now knows certain; Brandon Stark called it abduction and rode to King's Landing to demand her, where the king burned his father alive in front of him while he strangled himself reaching for the sword to save him, and Robert Baratheon called it rape and raised the rebellion that would end the dynasty.
Rhaegar passed the war's first acts beside Lyanna at the tower of joy in the Red Mountains of Dorne with Ser Arthur and Ser Oswell Whent and the Lord Commander himself sworn to guard her. When his friend Jon Connington was broken at the Battle of the Bells he came north to take command of his father's host and meet Robert in single combat at a ford of the Trident, where the river took the wound of him: Robert's warhammer caved in the ruby-studded breastplate over his heart, the rubies scattered down the stones to give the ford the name it bears now, and the dragon prince died with the Stark girl's name upon his lips. His body was burned, as is the way of his house; his wife Princess Elia was raped and murdered in her bed by Ser Gregor Clegane during the Sack of King's Landing, his daughter Rhaenys was stabbed beneath her father's bed by Ser Amory Lorch, and his son Aegon's head was dashed against a wall by the Mountain in the same hour. The realm has remembered him as the dragon prince of every harp-song, and the men closest to him have remembered him as the gentlest soul they ever served.