Princess Elaena was only eleven when locked away in the Maidenvault. At that age she was a skinny thing, the runt of the litter, but she had more than a little of her sister Daena's wilfullness even then, as she would prove when she grew older. She liked to dress in black as a girl, because her big sister Daena had done it. Her eyes were a soft lilac, her mouth thin-lipped and often angry. Her hair was a platinum white with a bright golden streak down the middle, an unusual color even for the Targaryens. She wore it long, pulled back, and braided, and was always being told it was her crowning beauty.

When Baelor the Blessed confined his sisters to the Maidenvault, he said it was because they were so beautiful that just seeing them would tempt the men of his court to sin. Elaena hated the imprisonment, so she cut her braid off and sent it to her brother, hoping that if she rid herself of her beauty her brother might let her out. (He didn't). For years after, however, Princess Elaena wore her hair short. Elaena's most cherished possession was a dragon's egg whose stony shell showed the same colors as her hair.

Elaena lived a much longer life than her sister Daena, and a much more tumultuous one than her sister Rhaena. The great love of her life was her cousin, Alyn Velaryon, the seafarer and admiral known as Oakenfist, to whom she bore a bastard son and daughter, Jon and Jeyne Waters. She married thrice in later years, twice at a king's behest and once for passion. She gave birth to seven children, then declared that if seven was sufficient for the gods it would do for her as well.
Never regarded as a great beauty like her sisters, Elaena proved to be one of those women whose features improve with age, and men said she was more beautiful at seventy than she had been at seventeen. She was shrewd and intelligent as well, especially with money. Though her second husband sat on the king's small council as master of coin, it was widely known that it was Elaena who actually performed all the duties of the office.