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Legacy, what is a legacy?
It's planting seeds in a garden you never get to see
I wrote some notes at the beginning of a song someone will sing for me
—Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda
—
Daenerys Targaryen is dead.
Daenerys Targaryen, the Queen who came out of the East with dragons at her back and summer at her heel, who set King’s Landing ablaze and wreathed the world in flame, is dead.
Bells toll across six kingdoms, and Bran Stark is crowned King. A new dynasty begins.
—
There is no body.
The Dragon Queen, they call her, their voices filled with mingled fear and awe. The Dragon Queen who came with her armies and her knights already devoted to her, and who doled out mercy and cruelty in equal measure.
The strange people from over the seas mourn her, tell them stories they cannot belief. They speak of hope and freedom, when Westeros has known from her fear and fire (and aid without which the Night King’s winter would have fallen over all of Westeros, but fire burns wildly and not only on target).
They mourn her, or rejoice for her death, and there is no body.
There are stories, of course.
The body burst into fire the moment her lover stabbed her, a column of flame that destroyed the Iron Throne, and from which the King in the North barely escaped with his life. She was not stabbed, but walked out in anger after discovering her lover’s treachery in the nick of time, wielding flame and vowing to return to Westeros and burn it all down. Her dragon breathed life into her still body, and she rose and rode off and was never seen again.
In all of these stories, Daenerys Targaryen is alive. She haunts the nightmares and the dreams of Westeros, and none know whether to fear her or welcome her.
—
There is one dragon left in the world.
The throne of Westeros may have been won and lost through flame and sword, but dragons run in the blood of the House Targaryen. The fate of the House is tied to the fate of dragons, in a string knotted tightly and inexorably. Targaryens live and die with dragons, whether or not the blood that runs in them is strong enough to actually be a dragon. While there is a Targaryen alive, a dragon will seek that person out.
There is one dragon left in the world. The death of a dragon is a wound in the web of life that someone, somewhere would have felt. Thus, there is one dragon yet in the world.
But the last Jon Snow sees of Drogon is his dark form fading into the distance, the body of his dead queen clutched between great claws.
He never sees him again.
—
This is what people will say about Queen Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, the rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, Lady of Dragonstone, Queen of Meereen, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Unburnt, Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons: she lived and died.
She lived and died.
She walked through fire and died at the hand of a dragon.
She was barren from birth and brought dragons from within her womb.
She was buffeted by forces of fate beyond her reckoning, but she rode on the wings of the storm and thunder broke beneath her fist.
She wrought death and destruction and left trails of slaughter in her wake, and a hundred years on, the cities she freed are wracked by revolution and rebellion.
There is no gold to be found where Daenerys Targaryen has tread. The downtrodden whisper her name and gather in rebellion, defiant even as they are hunted down and slaughtered. Her ghost watches over them, they say. She walks in flame and fire and defends those who call out to her. She is capricious and wild, but if given the respect due to her, she will protect you. If you defy her or betray her, if you go against her—
The memories of stories are long. Kraznys mo Nakloz and the sack of Astapor, the siege of Meereen and the Great Masters, they live in infamy.
Daenerys Targaryen may be dead, but her name lives on.
—
This is a story that may or may not be the truth. Merchants who deal in exotic things, knights who ride beyond the limits of the world, they tell these stories.
In a desert far over the ocean, in lands where few people walk, there is a city.
It is an old city, tumbled down and ruined and broken, so old that none can last remember when it was filled with voices and laughter. The city is not a city of men. It seems from the distance to be a dead city, surrounded by waste land.
The city is filled with green and gold and blue, life blooming everywhere you look. There are fruits and flowers, birds and butterflies, trees and vines, carefully tended to and grown through what could only be lifetimes of cultivation.
The city is a refuge.
It is a refuge of the desperate. Those who are hunted, chased, have no hope. Those whose only choice is to chase a legend.
The city stands as a haven. Many die before they reach it, but once inside its walls, none have come to harm.
It is said that no enemy dares defile the city. It is said that any army that rises to take it will be pushed back in a column of flame to the city.
There are tales of the city’s guardian. A dragon, old and powerful, large enough to cover the entire city with the span of a wing. And a woman, who commands fire at her fingertips, who brings storms of rage to bear at any who dare to harm her people, who would level nations for harm done to a single hair of those under her protection.
Many shake their heads at the stories. What guardian could command those powers? What guardian could live forever, through the generations the story has been passed down?
And still, there is a city over the sea. And the city takes in all those who ask for refuge.