Character from House of the Dragon by George R.R. Martin
Daemon's first wife in the era of the Dance and rider of Vhagar — beautiful, bold, and the only woman to claim the world's largest dragon, she died in childbirth and her death freed Vhagar to be claimed by Aemond, reshaping the war.
Laena is one of those figures whose importance to the Dance lies more in what happened after her death than in what she did in life, though what she did was remarkable enough. She claimed Vhagar — the oldest, largest, most terrifying dragon alive — as a teenager, a feat of will that no one else had dared attempt. She married Daemon Targaryen and bore him twin daughters, Baela and Rhaena. Her death in childbirth is agonizing — in some tellings, she dragged herself from the birthing bed to Vhagar, wanting to die a dragonrider's death in fire rather than bleeding out in a bed. Whether Vhagar obliged or whether Laena collapsed before reaching her is disputed. What is not disputed is the consequence: Vhagar was riderless, and the young Prince Aemond — bold, desperate to prove himself, missing an eye's worth of caution — claimed her. That single act made the Greens nearly unbeatable in the air and guaranteed that the Dance would be decided by dragon fire.
Strikingly beautiful with classic Valyrian features — long silver-white hair, violet eyes, and fine, sharp features. She is tall for a woman and carries herself with the effortless grace of someone who regularly commands a creature the size of a castle. Her beauty is the bold, windswept kind — a dragonrider's beauty, not a courtier's.
Also known as: Laena, Lady Laena, Laena Velaryon