Chapter Text
It is always a point of interest to those of us who study history, to track events back and see the tiny moments on which the larger moments depend. Most agree that the reigns of King Viserys I and his daughter, Queen Rhaenyra, pivoted on one, seemingly small, moment during the lord’s petitions in the year 104.
The Stepstones have always been a place where pirates and outlaws have found shelter. During King Viserys’s reign, the islands had no solid infrastructure, only temporary wooden buildings hastily assembled by pirates, built of wood that had to be shipped to the islands, for none of the islands grew lumber then. In 96 AC the free cities of Lys, Myr and Tyrosh would name themselves the Triarchy and send a militia to clear the islands of pirates and thieves. For five years this was a very successful effort, and Westeros and Essos both enjoyed unharassed access to the prime shipping lanes. Westeros was happy to pay the Triarchy a small fee for their service of policing the islands.
It didn’t take too long, however, before the small fee began to grow larger and larger. The patrolling militia seemed to make up the required fee depending on the day, and Westerosi traders grew frustrated. When ships were unable to pay, the militia declared them ‘pirate’ ships as well and captured them. The ships were added to the patrols, and the crews and goods were sold to the Triarchy’s cities. This practice ramped up slowly and steadily, until it hampered trade with Essos far more than the original pirates had.
In mid-104 a ship was captured sailing from Storm’s End to Stonehelm. On board this ship was the beloved niece of the Lord Swann, Lady Johanna Swann.
With all haste, Lord Swann came to the Capital, surviving documents tell us he arrived worn and dirty, some narratives of the meeting report he was panting with haste, as if he had run. This is hard to believe however, as the official records of this audience tell us he was made to wait to be presented to the King for nearly two hours.
King Viserys, at the time, was known well for his affable behavior, and his celebrations. Having inherited a rich treasury and a (seemingly) peaceful nation from Jaehaerys I, he had not had to face any obstacles in his reign, and he would shortly reveal himself to be unprepared for the challenge of ruling.
Lord Swann came forward, probably unkempt, and perhaps huffy at being made to wait, and spoke loudly, grabbing the attention of all of the nobles in the room who had been quietly chatting on the wings. “Your Grace, I come to you from the House of Swann to beg your help and support. The Triarchy has committed a horrible crime. My niece, Joanna Swann, was abducted when traveling legally on our ship. The Triarchy has demanded a ransom that will beggar my family for her return. I beg for your assistance, your Grace, as a loyal sworn lord of the Seven Kingdoms.”
So saying, Lord Swann knelt, and pressed his fist to his heart, bending his head in a symbol of his loyalty to the King. He would, however, be mightily disappointed. All sources agree that the King himself did not respond. The Hand of the King, Otto Hightower, responded instead, and assured Lord Swann that the issue would be looked into. Lord Swann was so surprised by this quick dismissal that he did not rise immediately. After a moment his attendant had him stand, and they moved to the side of the room. Before long Lord Swann regained his voice, and his loud, incredulous recriminations were heard throughout the hall. The Hand of the King swiftly ended the public audience.
Lord Swann was not so easily dismissed. He would return, at every audience the King held, for two weeks, growing steadily more irate and insulted. Unsurprising, for the King’s inaction, and even worse his refusal to comment, was insulting. At at least one of these audiences he was reportedly accompanied by Lord Baratheon, his liege Lord, who spoke in support of his vassal. House Baratheon was similarly brushed off by Otto Hightower.
At his final attendance, nearly a moon after his arrival in Kingslanding, Lord Swann strode forward, a light in his eye like fire, and he did not kneel. “I have received word from the men who abducted my beloved niece Your Grace.” Unlike when he had first begged the court’s help, reports say that every word from Lord Swann’s mouth was riddled with contempt. “They have sold her, a noble Lady of the seven kingdoms, to a whorehouse in Lys.” There is no recorded reaction from the other nobles present at this public audience, but it must be imagined that they reacted in horror at the fate that no noble woman should have to entertain. “I am told her maidenhead alone went for 500 golden dragons. I lay this crime at your feet.” So saying, and recorded incredulously in every surviving account, Lord Swann spat at the foot of the Iron Throne.
Lord Hightower called for the guards to remove the man. They tried to do so gently at first, but by the end, they had to drag Lord Swann out as he yelled his vitriol at the King. His words as he was removed would haunt the rest of King Viserys’s reign. “You have damned her with your inaction. You have abandoned your duty as protector of the realm! You are no King! You are a puppet that does nothing!”
To this day Viserys I is known as King Viserys, the Do-Nothing King.
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It was not long after Lord Swann’s condemnation that Lord Corlys Velaryon resigned angrily from his position on the Small Council, outraged that the King still would not mount a defense of the Stepstones.
Corlys met with Prince Daemon on Dragonstone - he had acted as Lord of Dragonstone since his brother had been crowned - and there the two decided to mount their own defense of the Stepstones. Prince Daemon’s first stop was Stonehelm, where Lord Swann was happy to pledge 1,000 men, nearly his entire defense force, to the cause. Forces from the house of Velaryon, Dragonstone, and Stonehelm were quickly dispatched to the Stepstones without leave of the King.
Reportedly, both Prince Daemon and Corlys attempted to gain support for their cause from other marcher lords, who were the most affected by the Stepstones blockade, and other coastal houses in the Soutb before departing. All were hesitant to give support to an informal war without the approval of the crown. They feared there might be repercussions on acting without royal approval.
Whispers began almost as soon as the army set off. There was no reaction from the King. No punishment. Slowly the Lords of the realm began to realize that no Lords had been punished for crimes in Viserys’s entire reign. There was no punishment even for Lord Swann, who had spat on the Iron Throne. The Do-Nothing King was, always, happiest to do nothing.
The next family to join the cause was House Mertyns, perhaps because of their close relationship with House Swann, or just because they were equally as impacted by the Triarchy’s hold on the Stepstones. This first additional family to join the war was a tentative thrust, watched closely by the other Marcher lords. Still no condemnation came from King's Landing, and after a moon, several houses, en masse, decided that inaction was the same as permission. Over the first year of the war, 17 more houses, most of them minor houses whose income depended desperately on fishing or trade with Essos, would join Prince Daemon and Lord Corlys in the Stepstones.
In the second year of the war, more dramatic sources of support were found. House Tyrell was a house whose wealth was derived from produce, though more importantly, the sale of that produce. They had been paying the prohibitive tolls that the Triarchy demanded, but still, nearly one of every four ships was taken entirely. By the time they joined the war, the accounts of the Reach recorded a full 150 ships lost with their entire crews since the beginning of the occupation of the Stepstones in 97 AC. So the Lord Paramount of the South sent 300 desperately needed ships. Not to be left behind when there was a war brewing at sea, House Greyjoy sent along a further 500 ships with experienced crews to manage them.
Not at all surprisingly, there was no word on this development from the Do-Nothing King. Lord Caswell wrote a letter home from King's Landing to his wife that survives where he incredulously stated, “Many of us wonder if Viserys even knows of the war, let alone realizes that the Tyrells have supplied it and the Greyjoys joined it. It is all feasts and merriment here, I have never seen the like.”
The War for the Stepstones (called at the time, Prince Daemon’s War, to the annoyance of Corlys Valeryon who thought it actually his war) was a prolonged series of small bloody battles and naval skirmishes, frustrated by the geography of the Stepstones. At the time these small islands held no buildings or piers, and the side of an island where it was safe to anchor appeared the same as the side of an island with a dangerous reef. The first two years of the war had provided the Prince’s side with a knowledge of the geography, and they learned quickly. Prince Daemon would later dryly remark that he had spent most of his time that first year, not fighting or flying, but drawing and redrawing maps.
The men holding the islands were a hodgepodge of militia members from the Triarchy and the very pirates that this militia had pretended to defeat in order to gain a foothold. Craghas Drahar, a prince admiral from Myr, had taken a Triarchy militia to the islands in 96 AC reportedly in order to ‘subdue’ the pirates who hid in the islands. He reported to the Triarchy in 97 AC that he had successfully done so. In actuality he had created himself into something like a Pirate King, gathering the outlaws and pirate ships under his own banner. He named himself Crabfeeder, and began killing by staking men to beaches and letting crabs feeds on their bodies. He was the lynchpin in both the organization and the brutality of the occupying force in the Stepstones, a fact well known by the Prince’s forces. The trick was finding him and killing him, amid the scores of islands and hundreds of ships.
When the fast ships from the Tyrells arrived, they had been immediately drafted into service as scouting ships, given to command by various Greyjoy captains, who were the acknowledged experts on sailing dangerous rocky shores. Lightly crewed (and supplied with the very latest and most updated maps) they patrolled the Stepstones looking for the Crabfeeder. In early 107 AC the White Rose, captained by Jodgen Pyke, reported that the Crabfeeder was on one particular island, an isle that would come to be known as Blooddrop. The Prince at once flew his dragon to the isle to survey, staying up high enough to not be seen. He found four ships at anchor and at least 1,000 men on the isle.
What the White Rose had found was, by the gift of the Gods, a meeting between the Crabfeeder and his surviving captains.
At once Prince Daemon returned to the main force - ships had been quickly loaded while he scouted - and they began their assault. The first move was definitive, Caraxes and Seasmoke descended from the sky and burnt the four ships at anchor to the waterline. The Crabfeeder and his captains were now trapped on Blooddrop, with the Westerosi army incoming and two furious dragons in the sky.
Crabfeeder and his pirate captains were not the type to give in or kneel. They fought to the last man, but all 1,000 were slain or burned. In the ash and blood the war was declared won. The surviving songs tell us that Prince Daemon slew Drahar in single combat with a decisive slice of Dark Sister, but in truth he most likely never dismounted Caraxes, and fought this battle from the air.
Other songs tell us that the Prince was hailed by the soldiers, knights and sailors as King, and this is more believable, as we know he was crowned. Whether that came at the behest of his army, by his own decree, or by some machination by Corlys Velaryon (Corlys later took credit), is harder to ascertain (though it seems doubtful that the Sea Snake proposed the idea, he was the type more inclined to crown himself).
There were some weeks of clean up of course. There always is, in war. Daemon rewarded Jodgen Pyke for his miraculous find with a knighthood and named him his castellon of Bloodstone. The Tyrell forces happily gifted the blessed captain with the White Rose who Jodgen quickly crewed with other Pykes and Iron Islanders. Ser Jodgen and his crew would be the first Westerosis to establish living quarters in the Stepstones, and when they sent for their families, they would spark the first embers of what would become the city of Axes (named in honor of Caraxes of course) which survives to this day.
It was not long after his decisive victory that Daemon, now King of the Stepstones and the Narrow Sea, flew directly to Myr, with the head of the Crabfeeder in his bag (some say, with two crabs happily feasting). Caraxes put on a show as they flew above the city, shrieking and blowing fire, just barely missing several buildings, and pointedly reminding the city of their long subjugation after the doom by Volantis. Caraxes landed solidly on top of the building that housed the ruling magistrate of the city, cracking an exterior wall. Daemon dropped the bag holding the Crabfeeder’s head, and loudly proclaimed that the next time the Myrish attacked his islands, he would not stop at the Stepstones, and would come back for the entire city. The two took off. Their message had been clear, and the Myrish quickly abandoned the Triarchy, causing Lys and Tyrosh to fall quickly to infighting. The Stepstones would not be attacked again until the reign of Maekar I.
There was another piece of business after the end of the war. It is reported that two ships from House Swann sailed to Lys to find Johanna Swann. She had been a courtesan now for three years however, and had amassed wealth and power which she would not give up to live as a ruined women in Westeros. She told her Uncle’s forces to return without her and went on to reign over Lys in all but name, known widely as the Black Swan.