Melissa Blackwood, nicknamed Missy, was the sixth and best loved of the nine mistresses of King Aegon IV Targaryen. Slender, pretty, kind, and modest, she took her place at court in 172 AC after the disgraced Lady Barba Bracken was sent away, and though she was the king's paramour she won the friendship of his sister-wife Queen Naerys, the Dragonknight Prince Aemon, and Prince Daeron. When the buxom Barba mocked her as flat as a boy, Aegon, who had once renamed the hills called the Mother's Teats in Barba's honor, granted those hills to House Blackwood and named them for Melissa instead; to this day the Blackwoods call them Missy's Teats while the Brackens still call them Barba's.
In five years as the king's mistress she bore him three children: two daughters, Mya and Gwenys, and a son, Brynden Rivers, who would grow into the sorcerer-knight Bloodraven. She was supplanted at last by Lady Bethany Bracken in 177 AC, yet the goodwill she had earned at court lingered long after, smoothing her son's path among the great. A statue of her still stands in the godswood of Raventree Hall, which Hoster Blackwood, generations later, swears is fairer by far than any likeness of a Bracken.