the Conquest of Westeros; founding the Iron Throne, King's Landing, and the Anno Conquest calendar
The man three dragons and sixteen hundred men made king of a continent
Aegon Targaryen came from Dragonstone, the westernmost holding of a Valyrian dragonlord house that had fled the Doom a century before he was born and, alone among the Freehold's great families, still commanded living dragons when he reached manhood. In 2 BC he landed at the mouth of the Blackwater Rush with fewer than two thousand men, his two sister-wives Visenya and Rhaenys, and three dragons — Balerion, Vhagar, and Meraxes — and by the time the fighting settled, six of the Seven Kingdoms had bent the knee or been broken into bending it. Dorne alone held out, and would go on holding out for centuries after his death.
He built the Iron Throne, by tradition, from the melted swords of the kings he'd unseated — a thousand blades, or so the boast runs, though no one has ever counted them and lived to report an exact figure. He built King's Landing around it, on a stretch of riverbank his ships had used as a landing camp, and ruled the realm he'd made for thirty-seven years, mostly by leaving the local lords to their own laws so long as they paid their taxes and answered his summons.
He rode Balerion, the Black Dread, the largest dragon ever to nest in Westeros and old enough to have flown over Valyria before its fall — and one that would go on flying for another fifty-seven years after him, into his son's and then his grandson's reigns, outliving the empire that bred it by two centuries and the king who first rode it by more than half of one. Aegon himself died in 37 AC, in his sleep by most accounts, and left the throne to a son by Rhaenys — not, as the custom he'd imported from Valyria might have suggested, to either of his sister-wives directly.
Key events
27 BCBorn on Dragonstone to a Valyrian dragonlord house that had fled the Doom.
2 BCLanded at the mouth of the Blackwater Rush with fewer than two thousand men and three dragons.
1–2 ACSix of the Seven Kingdoms bent the knee or were broken into bending it; Dorne alone held out.
unrecordedBuilt the Iron Throne and raised King's Landing around it.
1–37 ACRuled the Seven Kingdoms for thirty-seven years, mostly by leaving local lords to their own laws.
37 ACDied in his sleep, leaving the throne to his son by Rhaenys.
Reading the character
Aegon Targaryen is less a personality the histories preserve than an event they date everything else against — the man three dragons and sixteen hundred men made king of a continent, and whose landing is so foundational that the Seven Kingdoms still counts its years before and after it. What the Citadel actually knows of him as a person, as opposed to as an occasion, is comparatively thin: a conqueror who, having won, mostly governed by not governing very hard.
That restraint is arguably his most consequential trait. Rather than remake six kingdoms' laws and customs from Valyrian first principles, he let them keep their own — a choice that bought the dynasty three centuries of rule at the cost of never fully digesting Dorne, the one kingdom that never bent. The throne he built from melted swords and the calendar built from his landing are the same kind of monument: physical proof of a fact everyone already knew, more symbol than substance, and all the more durable for it.
Legacy
The calendar the Seven Kingdoms still uses — years "After the Conquest," with everything before reckoned backward from it — is his monument as much as the throne is; the Citadel dates nearly everything else in this encyclopedia against the year he stepped off his ship.
Sourcesfire-and-bloodtwoiaf
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Who is Aegon Targaryen?
The man three dragons and sixteen hundred men made king of a continent
Is Aegon Targaryen from the books or the show?
Book canon. This profile follows George R. R. Martin’s novels and histories, and notes where the television series diverges rather than following it.