House Targaryen

Aegon II Targaryen

Aegon the Elder

Life: 107 AC
House: Targaryen

His reign's final reckoning came at his own faction's hands, not his sister's — the chronicle leaves the year and manner for his veiled record.

Aegon Targaryen was the eldest son Alicent Hightower gave King Viserys I, and the Red Keep raised him understanding exactly what his mother's household expected of him: that he, not his half-sister Rhaenyra, belonged on the Iron Throne, whatever their father's stated wishes said otherwise. He grew into a capable if unremarkable prince, better suited to hawking and to his dragon Sunfyre the Golden than to the patient statecraft his grandfather Otto Hightower had spent a career quietly arranging around him. When Viserys died in 129 AC, that quiet arrangement — a Kingsguard oath extracted at a dying king's own bedside, a small council stacked with Hightower loyalists — saw Aegon crowned within the week, before Rhaenyra at Dragonstone had even finished her mourning. The more sympathetic chroniclers give him fear for his family as motive rather than naked ambition; Fire & Blood does not pretend the fear was groundless, only that it made a serviceable excuse for a coup a long time in the planning.

The arc of Aegon II Targaryen

This carries the character’s road through the published novels. Read on only if you do not fear to know.

Aegon's crowning opens the Dance of the Dragons and very nearly ends with it inside the war's first year: at the Battle at Rook's Rest, his aunt Rhaenys and her dragon Meleys grapple Sunfyre from above, and all three beasts crash to earth. Rhaenys and Meleys die where they fall; Aegon survives, but burned and broken badly enough that he cannot walk or rule for the better part of a year, leaving the throne he had just seized in his brother Aemond's hands. He recovers in time to retake King's Landing after Rhaenyra's death at Sunfyre's own jaws, and reigns alone for less than a year more before dying of poison amid the trials meant to close the war out — undone, in the end, by allies who judged a resentful, crippled king a worse risk to the peace than a dead one.

Where the books leave Aegon II Targaryen: died in 131 AC, poisoned at the Red Keep — killed, most chroniclers agree, by conspirators from his own faction rather than by any partisan of the sister he had dethroned; it was the trial and executions that followed, presided over by Cregan Stark during his single-day Handship, that history remembers as the Hour of the Wolf

These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.

Sourcesfire-and-bloodthe-princess-and-the-queentwoiaf

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House

Who is Aegon II Targaryen?

The elder son of Viserys I and Alicent Hightower, crowned by his mother's faction in defiance of his father's chosen heir, whose claim ignited the Dance of the Dragons.

Is Aegon II Targaryen alive?

No — the chronicle need only say that his own faction settled the war's final reckoning, not his sister's; the particulars are treated in his veiled record.