Eldest child of King Aenys I and Queen Alyssa Velaryon, born on Dragonstone in 23 AC. Rhaena was a girl of the old Valyrian customs from the cradle, bound as a child to the blue she-dragon Dreamfyre and married at eighteen to her brother Aegon in defiance of the Faith's loud objection. Of that union came twin daughters in 43 AC, Aerea and Rhaella, the first Targaryen princesses born in the Red Keep. Within months of their birth her father was dead, her uncle Maegor had seized the Iron Throne, and Aegon had ridden out to take it back; her husband and brother fell that same year at the Battle Beneath the God's Eye, burned out of the sky upon Quicksilver by Maegor on Balerion.
She fled the realm with her twins, first to Fair Isle and then to Casterly Rock, where Lord Lyman Lannister gave her his hall and his oath. There she ruled as a queen in exile for some years, holding her own court beneath the rock and corresponding with her mother and her younger brother Jaehaerys, and the singers of the West gave her the name Queen in the West, a name she never wished and never used. When Maegor at last forced his peace by naming Jaehaerys his heir, he summoned Rhaena to King's Landing and compelled her to marry him as his fifth and last queen; she sent her daughters into hiding before she came, fearing what he would do with a younger pair of dragon-blood claimants under his roof. She suffered him for not yet a year before he was found dead upon the Iron Throne in 48 AC, the spikes of the seat through his arms and back, and she gave the crown to her brother with her own hand.
She lived out the rest of her life as Lady of Dragonstone, refusing every other dignity her brother would have settled on her. Rhaella she gave to the Faith and never saw again; Aerea she lost in the worst way, a girl of fourteen who slipped her watchers and stole Balerion to fly east, and came back a year later eaten from within by fire-borne worms that drove her into the sea-water of a bath to die. Of her own old Dreamfyre Rhaena spoke little afterwards, and rode her only seldom. She died at Dragonstone in 73 AC, having outlived two husbands, both daughters, and most of the world she had been born into; Dreamfyre lay unridden in the Dragonmont for the better part of forty years before another Targaryen princess would claim her.