By 25 AC, it had outgrown both to become the third most populous city in the realm, surpassed only by Lannisport and Oldtown. By 10 AC, it was a true city, almost as large as Gulltown or White Harbor. By his second, it was already a thriving town of several thousand souls. At Aegon’s first coronation, it was still a village squatting beneath a motte-and-bailey castle. It simply grew?.?.?.?but it grew quickly. Wealthy men raised walled manses on the hillsides, whilst the poor gathered in squalid hovels of mud and straw in the low places between. Shops and homes sprouted like mushrooms after a rain. Then a second sept, twice as large and thrice as grand, was built atop Visenya’s Hill, with coin sent by the High Septon. A modest sept opened on the Blackwater, in the hull of an old cog, followed by a stouter one of daub-and-wattle on the shore. A fish market sprung up along the riverside, a cloth market between the hills.
Much of the trade that had gone through Maidenpool and Duskendale was now coming to King’s Landing. Soon the Aegonfort was threatening to burst out of its walls, so a new palisade was raised, enclosing more of the hilltop, creating space enough for a barracks, an armory, a sept, and a drum tower.īelow the hills, wharves and storehouses were rising along the riverbanks, and merchants from Oldtown and the Free Cities were tying up beside the longships of the Velaryons and Celtigars, where only a few fishing boats had previously been seen. A new watchtower was raised, twice as tall as the older one. A new keep was erected, all of logs and fifty feet high, with a cavernous longhall beneath it, and a kitchen, made of stone and roofed with slate in case of fire, across the bailey. The crude motte-and-bailey fort that Aegon had thrown up so quickly was neither large enough nor grand enough to house the king and his court, and had begun to expand even before the Conquest was complete. The highest of those hills had become known as Aegon’s High Hill, and soon enough the lesser hills were being called Visenya’s Hill and the Hill of Rhaenys, their former names forgotten. King’s Landing grew up around Aegon and his court, on and about the three great hills that stood near the mouth of the Blackwater Rush. What did King’s Landing look like in its earliest days? And what’s the story behind the formation of the Kingsguard, the sacred order that would one day include the Targaryen-killing Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau)? The answers to those questions lie ahead in this first look at Fire & Blood. In an exclusive excerpt for The Hollywood Reporter, Aegon becomes acquainted with the customs of Westeros, as well as his own limitations as a flesh-and-blood ruler of men. Martin’s new book begins with the first Targaryen king, Aegon the Conqueror, the warrior who united the Seven Kingdoms under one rule.
'Game of Thrones' Author Unveils New Book Excerpt With Final Season Implications
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