House Targaryen

Maegor I Targaryen

the Cruel

Life: 12 AC
House: Targaryen

A king remembered for a reign of open cruelty — the chronicle keeps how it ended veiled for readers not yet there.

Maegor Targaryen took the crown from his own brother's line by force in 42 AC, after King Aenys I's sudden and conveniently timed death, and ruled the Seven Kingdoms for six years with a brutality the Citadel does not soften in the retelling: executions without trial, a Faith Militant crushed with a thoroughness that cost the realm decades of resentment, and — by the more sensational accounts, which the Citadel repeats without fully endorsing — the builders and masons who raised the Red Keep's secret passages killed to keep those secrets his alone. He took wife after wife, some six in all by the more generous counts, in defiance of both law and custom, and treated the ones who displeased him with a cruelty that gave his epithet no real competition.

The arc of Maegor I Targaryen

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

By 48 AC, Maegor's tyranny had driven the realm to open rebellion, led in his nephew Jaehaerys's name and backed by lords no longer willing to pretend the king's cruelty was a phase. Maegor is found dead on the Iron Throne itself before the rebel army ever reaches him — alone in an empty hall, his wrists cut on the throne's own ancient blades, in circumstances the Citadel's sources genuinely cannot agree on beyond the bare, uncomfortable fact of the body. His death, however it truly came, ends the reign the realm most wanted ended, and hands the crown to Jaehaerys — a Targaryen king remembered, pointedly, for almost none of the qualities that defined his uncle.

Where the books leave Maegor I Targaryen: died in 48 AC, found alone on the Iron Throne with his wrists opened by the blades of the throne itself; whether by his own hand, by the throne he had ruled through fear, or by poison remains a matter the Citadel's own sources cannot settle

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 Maegor I Targaryen?

A Targaryen king remembered for a brutal six-year reign of executions, forced marriages, and open war against the Faith Militant.

Is Maegor I Targaryen alive?

No — the chronicle need only say that his cruel reign ended in circumstances the histories never fully agreed on; the particulars are treated in his veiled record.