From there, they stood ready to threaten the Seven Kingdoms. The Band of Nine met their goals with initial success, conquering the Disputed Lands and securing the Free City of Tyrosh, setting up Alequo Adarys, the Silvertongue, as its ruler. Nonetheless, preparations were made to make sure the Blackfyres could not land on Westerosi soil.

Most men, including King Aegon V and later King Jaehaerys II Targaryen, thought that the threat posed by these pretenders would be countered by the might of the Free Cities, or otherwise founder in Essos. When told of these events, Prince Duncan Targaryen famously quipped that 'crowns were being sold nine a penny', and afterwards the Band of Nine became known in the Seven Kingdoms as the Ninepenny Kings. His desired kingdoms, as Daemon I Blackfyre's last descendant, was the Seven Kingdoms.

Among them was Maelys I Blackfyre, better known as Maelys the Monstrous, the last Blackfyre Pretenders, who had won the command of the Golden Company by killing his cousin Daemon a few years before. Late during the reign of King Aegon V Targaryen, in 258 AC, news reached King's Landing that the so-called Band of Nine, a group of ambitious power-seekers in Essos, had come together under the Tree of Crowns where they had vowed to aid one another in carving out kingdoms for each individual member. After the Band of Nine had successfully conquered the Stepstones, King Jaehaerys II Targaryen, aware of the fact that the Band of Nine were set on conquering the Seven Kingdoms for the last remaining Blackfyre Pretender, Maelys I Blackfyre, dispatched an army to the Stepstones to defeat the enemies of the Iron Throne. The War of the Ninepenny Kings, also known as the Fifth Blackfyre Rebellion, was a conflict between the Band of Nine, a group of merchants, mercenaries and pirates from the Free Cities, and the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. Barristan Selmy fights Maelys Blackfyre during the War of the Ninepenny Kings, as depicted by Jose Daniel Cabrera Pena in The World of Ice & Fire

Penny a song of ice and fire