House Targaryen

Aegon IV Targaryen

the Unworthy

Life: 135 AC
House: Targaryen

A king remembered for appetite more than statecraft — the chronicle keeps his reign's ending, and its long shadow, veiled for readers not yet there.

Aegon IV came to the Iron Throne already notorious for appetites the Red Keep had never quite managed to curb — for food, for women outside his marriage bed, for grievances nursed against a sister-wife, Naerys, he never much wanted and rarely troubled to hide his contempt for. Where a more disciplined king might have kept his mistresses discreet, Aegon kept his in something close to open rotation, and fathered, by the Citadel's admittedly generous counting, more bastards across the Seven Kingdoms than any Targaryen before or since. Four of them — sired on noblewomen and acknowledged, if never quite legitimized during his life, as the 'Great Bastards' — grew up close enough to the throne to know exactly what they had been denied.

The arc of Aegon IV Targaryen

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

On his deathbed in 184 AC, in an act his own Grand Maester and Hand both apparently tried and failed to talk him out of, Aegon signed a decree legitimizing every bastard child he could name, chief among them Daemon Blackfyre, born of his cousin and mistress Daena. The decree gave Daemon a claim the realm found uncomfortably credible and a Valyrian steel sword, Blackfyre itself, to press it with, and within a dozen years of Aegon's death the first of five Blackfyre Rebellions had begun — a century of intermittent war the Citadel now treats as the single most direct consequence of any Targaryen king's dying wish.

Where the books leave Aegon IV Targaryen: died in 184 AC, so swollen with excess by the end of his reign that he could no longer walk, having on his deathbed legitimized every bastard he could remember fathering

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-bloodtwoiafthe-sworn-sword

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Who is Aegon IV Targaryen?

A Targaryen king remembered for gluttony, infidelity, and a deathbed decree legitimizing his many bastards — an act that launched the Blackfyre Rebellions.

Why is Aegon IV called the Unworthy?

For a reign marked by cruelty to his lawful wife, open infidelity, and a deathbed legitimization of his bastard children that plunged the realm into generations of war.