none of personal note; relied late in his reign on hidden caches of wildfire
Notable for
his descent into paranoid cruelty and his death at the hands of his own Kingsguard, Jaime Lannister, during the Sack of King's Landing
A king who began his reign promising and ended it stockpiling wildfire beneath his own city, a promise of a very different kind that his own sworn sword had to break to keep the realm from burning with him.
The Promising Years and the Turn
Aerys came to the throne in 262 AC at eighteen, and the early years of his reign are remembered, when they are remembered kindly at all, as a season of peace and plenty. The turn came gradually: repeated stillbirths and the deaths of infant sons wore at his queen and himself both, and his temper hardened into something crueler with each loss.
The Defiance of Duskendale in 277 AC broke whatever balance remained. Lord Denys Darklyn held the king captive for half a year before Ser Barristan Selmy freed him; Aerys emerged from that captivity gaunt, paranoid, and convinced — not without some cause, though he trusted no one enough to test the theory — that his own Hand, Tywin Lannister, had let him rot there on purpose. From then on he trusted fire and dragons' blood more than men, and set his pyromancers to hoarding wildfire under King's Landing against a day he alone could foresee.
Robert's Rebellion and the Sack
When Lord Rickard Stark came to King's Landing in 282 AC to demand the return of his daughter Lyanna and justice for his son's honor, Aerys had him burned alive in his own armor while Brandon Stark strangled himself trying to reach a sword just out of his hands. The act, and Aerys's subsequent demand for Eddard Stark's and Robert Baratheon's heads, turned smoldering resentment into open rebellion within weeks.
As the rebel host closed on the capital in 283 AC, Aerys ordered his pyromancers to fire the wildfire caches beneath the city rather than surrender it, intending to leave nothing for the victors but ash. His own Kingsguard, Ser Jaime Lannister, cut his throat from behind on the Iron Throne's steps to stop it — an act that earned Jaime the name Kingslayer and haunted him the rest of his life, and that the smallfolk of King's Landing, had they known the alternative, would likely have thanked him for on the spot.
Appearances
In the novels
A Game of Thrones
A Clash of Kings
A Storm of Swords
A Feast for Crows
A Dance with Dragons
On screen
HBO's Game of Thrones — Seasons 6
Key events
244 ACBorn into House Targaryen, later inheriting the Iron Throne.
c. 262 ACCrowned King, beginning a reign initially seen as promising.
c. 270s ACGrows increasingly paranoid and cruel after surviving the Defiance of Duskendale, shunning even his own queen.
281 ACLets his Kingsguard's silence over Rhaegar's actions at Harrenhal pass without intervening.
282 ACDemands the heads of Robert Baratheon and Eddard Stark on rumor alone, and executes Lord Rickard and Brandon Stark when they come to protest, igniting Robert's Rebellion.
283 ACOrders King's Landing mined with wildfire caches, intending to burn the city rather than surrender it.
283 ACIs killed on the Iron Throne's steps by his own Kingsguard, Ser Jaime Lannister, during the Sack of King's Landing.
Reading the character
Aerys II is the chronicle's clearest study in how a promising reign can curdle. Early accounts remember him as an engaged, even generous king; what follows the Defiance of Duskendale is a slow collapse into paranoia that the text traces through the people around him rather than through his own voice, since Aerys is dead before the story proper begins and appears only in memory.
His legacy operates on two levels at once: the immediate political one, where his final orders very nearly reduced King's Landing to ash, and the personal one, where his death handed Jaime Lannister a nickname — Kingslayer — that follows him for decades and complicates how the reader is meant to judge oath-breaking for the rest of the series.
Legacy
Aerys left behind a dynasty in exile, a city that came within a lit torch of incineration, and a single word — Kingslayer — that would define the honor of the man who stopped him for two decades after.
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Who is Aerys II Targaryen?
A king who began his reign promising and ended it stockpiling wildfire beneath his own city, a promise of a very different kind that his own sworn sword had to break to keep the realm from burning with him.
Is Aerys II 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.