Meleys the Red Queen was a she-dragon of scarlet scales and pink wings, her crest, horns, and claws bright as copper, and in her youth the swiftest dragon in Westeros, able to outpace both Caraxes and Vhagar. She lay unridden in the Dragonpit until 75 AC, when the newly wed Princess Alyssa Targaryen passed over old Balerion for a faster mount and claimed her; Alyssa flew her sons Viserys and Daemon upon Meleys within days of their births, and the dragon went riderless when the princess died in 84 AC. Princess Rhaenys Targaryen claimed her three years later and rode her to Highgarden on the royal progress and to her own wedding with Lord Corlys Velaryon.
By the Dance of the Dragons Meleys had grown lazy, though she remained cunning and fearsome when roused. In 129 AC Rhaenys flew her to relieve Rook's Rest, where scorpion bolts only angered her and she burned some eight hundred of Ser Criston Cole's men before King Aegon II on Sunfyre and Prince Aemond on Vhagar fell upon her from above. She tore half a wing from Sunfyre in the fight a thousand feet over the field, but she could not prevail against two, and she was torn apart when she struck the ground. A blackened body found beside her carcass was taken for the princess, and the greens carried Meleys's head back to King's Landing.