Daughter of Prince Jaehaerys Targaryen and his sister Princess Shaera, born around 245 AC and given as a girl in marriage to her elder brother Aerys at their father's command, in obedience to a woods-witch's prophecy brought to court by Jenny of Oldstones that the prince that was promised would be born of their joint line. Ser Barristan Selmy said long after that she had loved a landed knight of the stormlands named Ser Bonifer Hasty in her girlhood and he had named her his queen of love and beauty, but he was of too small a house to be reckoned a suitor for a princess, and there was no fondness between bride and brother on their wedding-day. In 259 AC she labored to bring forth her first son Rhaegar while the old summer seat of Summerhall burned around her bed, taking her own grandsire King Aegon V into the flames; three years on, when her father Jaehaerys II died of illness, Aerys was crowned king and she became Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.
Seventeen years passed before another of her children would live to outgrow the cradle: miscarriages in 263 and 264 AC, the stillborn Princess Shaena in 267, Prince Daeron who lived but half a year, another stillbirth in 270, a miscarriage in 271, Prince Aegon born two months premature in 272 and dead before the year was out, Prince Jaehaerys cradle-dead in 274. The king grieved with her at first and then grew jealous, certain she had bedded other men and that the dead babes had been bastards; from about 270 AC he confined her to Maegor's Holdfast with two septas in her bed every night to guard her faithfulness. Prince Viserys was safely born in 276 AC and the king's terror for him made the boy a captive of his own Kingsguard. As the king's mind broke further with the years he found in the burning of men a heat that drove him to her chambers — Ser Jaime Lannister and Ser Jonothor Darry standing guard outside the door, the queen's maids finding bite-marks and bruises upon her in the mornings — and Ser Barristan said she did her best in those last years to shield young Viserys from the worst of his father. When the city was emptied of its dragonseed after the Trident, the queen — six months pregnant of an unsuspected child — was put aboard ship for Dragonstone with the boy and the master-at-arms Ser Willem Darry, while the king stayed behind for the wildfire he meant to set. In 284 AC, nine months after she had sailed, she brought her last daughter Daenerys into the world while a summer storm tore the Targaryen fleet to pieces on the rocks of Dragonstone, and died upon the birthing-bed before the storm had blown itself out.