House Targaryen

Aerys I Targaryen

Life: no fixed AC year given in the text
House: Targaryen

A bookish king more taken with old prophecy than court business — the chronicle holds the ending of his reign back for readers not yet there.

Aerys Targaryen came to the Iron Throne in 209 AC only because the Great Spring Sickness had, within a single terrible season, killed his father Daeron II and both of his own elder brother's direct heirs, and he ruled the twelve years that followed with a visible lack of enthusiasm for the job fate had handed him. Bookish from boyhood and increasingly withdrawn from court as king, he is remembered chiefly for a fascination with old prophecy and the lost lore of dragons that left the realm's actual governance to whichever councilors could get his attention, and for a marriage to Lady Aelinor Penrose that produced, by every surviving account, no children at all.

The arc of Aerys I Targaryen

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

Aerys's disengaged reign did not spare the realm further Blackfyre trouble: a second rising, gathered around a tourney at Whitewalls, was uncovered and put down with comparatively little bloodshed around 212 AC, and a third rebellion in 219 AC ended with the death of the pretender Haegon Blackfyre and the capture of the exiled Aegor 'Bittersteel' Rivers — a mercy of exile to the Night's Watch that cost the crown dear when Bittersteel's escort was taken at sea and he slipped free to the Golden Company once more. Aerys himself took little visible hand in either campaign, and his death in 221 AC, without an heir of his own body to inherit, passed the crown sideways to his brother Maekar — a transition the Citadel records as unusually quiet, for a dynasty that rarely managed one.

Where the books leave Aerys I Targaryen: died in 221 AC of unrecorded natural causes, leaving no living child to inherit and the crown to his younger brother Maekar instead

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.

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Who is Aerys I Targaryen?

A bookish, largely disengaged Targaryen king who came to the throne after a plague killed his father and his brother's heirs, and whose childless marriage passed the crown sideways to his brother Maekar.

Is Aerys I Targaryen alive?

No — the chronicle need only say that his twelve years on the throne ended without an heir of his own body; the particulars are treated in his veiled record.