Aegon II Targaryen

Aegon was born in King's Landing in 107 AC, the first son of King Viserys I and his second wife, Queen Alicent Hightower. The king already had a declared heir, his daughter Rhaenyra, named to the Iron Throne in late 105, and two sons from an earlier marriage who had not survived infancy. Alicent chose the boy's name herself, after Aegon the Conqueror. Three younger siblings followed: Aemond, Helaena, and Daeron. Daemon, the king's brother and Aegon's uncle, barely hid his contempt for these nephews — every one of them pushed him a step further from a succession he coveted for himself.

Three sons in, Viserys could have changed his mind. He didn't. He kept Rhaenyra as his heir despite the pressure from his father-in-law, Ser Otto Hightower, who pushed so hard for Aegon's naming that he lost the office of Hand over it. Alicent tried another route: marrying Rhaenyra to Aegon, folding the two rival lines into one before they hardened into factions. Viserys refused that too — the two were ten years apart and had never gotten along — and married his daughter to Ser Laenor Velaryon, heir to Driftmark, instead.

In 111 AC, at a tourney in King's Landing, Alicent and Rhaenyra appeared dressed in green and black. The colors stuck to their followers for the rest of the war to come, long before anyone called it that.

By thirteen Aegon was already riding Sunfyre, the golden dragon that would later lend his war banner its emblem. In 120 AC Rhaenyra gave birth to a sixth child, her second son, and named him Aegon as well. Alicent took it as a deliberate provocation. From then on the court spoke of Aegon the Elder and Aegon the Younger, two identical names for two boys who would grow up fighting over the same throne.

Aegon and his siblings were made to share feasts, weapons training, and a maester with Rhaenyra's three sons, Jacaerys, Lucerys, and Joffrey, and the forced closeness only sharpened the resentment. Aegon was convinced the three boys weren't Laenor's at all, but Ser Harwin Strong's. In 122 AC, at fifteen, Aegon married his own younger sister, Helaena. A year later she bore him twins, Jaehaerys and Jaehaera — the same year Aegon fathered two children outside the marriage, a boy by a girl whose maidenhead he had won at an auction on the Street of Silk, and a girl by one of his mother's own maids. His youngest son, Maelor, was born in 127 AC.

That same year the boys' rivalry finally broke into the open. Prince Jacaerys asked Helaena to dance with him at a feast; Aegon took it as an insult, words turned into something close to blows, and the Kingsguard chose not to step in. It was a small warning of what was coming.

Viserys died in 129 AC. Rhaenyra was at Dragonstone, newly delivered of her sixth child, when Alicent Hightower and the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, Ser Criston Cole, chose to set the king's will aside and crown Aegon instead. Aegon was found that night away from his own bed; the sources disagree on who he was with, and one version, credited to the jester Mushroom, levels a grave accusation involving a minor that gentler chronicles chose not to repeat. He balked at first, unwilling to steal his sister's throne, until Cole convinced him the Iron Throne needed a true Targaryen, not a bastard.

At the Dragonpit, with the aged High Septon away in Oldtown, it was Septon Eustace who anointed him with the seven oils and proclaimed him King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men. The crown brought war with it: the Dance of the Dragons. Aegon held the advantage on land, more troops, control of King's Landing, the backing of House Lannister and House Hightower, but not in the air: four dragons against his sister's twelve. Among his four was Vhagar, the oldest and most feared living dragon, ridden by his brother Aemond.

The war drew its first blood from children. When word came that Aemond had killed Lucerys Velaryon, Aegon greeted him with a feast and named him part of 'the true blood of the dragon.' Daemon answered by sending the killers Blood and Cheese into the nursery shared by Aegon and Helaena's children, forcing the queen to choose which of her sons would die. Helaena never recovered from that night; guilt dragged her into a depression she never climbed out of, and she eventually took her own life. When Corlys later hinted she might consider pardoning her brothers, Rhaenyra answered with a question: 'And what of my brothers? What of the false king Aegon and Aemond Bloodletter? Would I have to pardon them too, after they've taken my throne and killed my sons?'

Aegon and Aemond then met Rhaenys Targaryen in the Battle of Rook's Rest. Ser Criston Cole, now Hand of the King, had struck at minor houses loyal to Rhaenyra to draw their defenders into an ambush, and Rhaenys came on Meleys. Rhaenys and her dragon died in the clash, but Aegon left the fight with broken bones and burns that melted the armor onto his left arm. It took him more than a year to recover, and he never fully did; Sunfyre, one wing shattered, had to stay behind at Rook's Rest for a time.

After Rook's Rest, Aegon was in no state to fight. When the Blacks seized the capital by surprise, his Confessor, Lord Larys Strong, smuggled him out of King's Landing.

Disguised as a fisherman with the help of a baseborn knight, Aegon reached Dragonstone and, months later, took the island with the backing of lords unhappy with Rhaenyra's rule. During the takeover he fought Baela, Daemon's daughter, and her dragon Moondancer on dragonback; he won, but at heavy cost to himself and Sunfyre.

Suspicious of Maester Gerardys, who had been dosing him with milk of the poppy, Aegon fed him to his dragon.

Meanwhile a string of victories and an uprising in King's Landing wiped out the five dragons left in the city and drove Rhaenyra out. She fled to Dragonstone, was captured, and Aegon had Sunfyre devour her. Ser Alfred Broome argued the young prince Aegon should die too; the king forbade it.

Aegon offered House Velaryon a pardon: if Alyn Velaryon, Lord Corlys's heir, swore fealty and let him cross the waters of Blackwater Bay. While still on Dragonstone, Sunfyre died of his wounds.

When Lord Borros Baratheon finally reached King's Landing, the dowager queen Alicent arranged a marriage between Aegon and Borros's eldest daughter, Cassandra. Corlys, for his part, swore loyalty to the throne and was named Master of Ships. Aegon returned to King's Landing aboard the battered cog Mouse, a homecoming many read as mockery.

'Enough hiding. Let the ravens fly, so the whole realm knows the usurper is dead and her rightful king has come home to claim his father's throne,' Aegon is said to have declared. He said it from a padded wooden chair, unable to climb the Iron Throne's steps, a blanket over legs that would never fully heal. He refused dreamwine or milk of the poppy despite the pain, and turned instead to the three pretenders who had risen in the capital: Trystane he executed, Gaemon he pardoned, and the Shepherd and his followers he had burned alive.

He spent what strength he had left trying to hatch the dragon eggs at Dragonstone, without success. When Corlys begged him to marry his daughter Jaehaera to the captive young Aegon, the king refused; he wanted his sister's line to end, and decreed the prince would take the black or serve as a eunuch instead. He also ordered the Dragonpit rebuilt, and statues raised to his dead brothers, Daeron the Daring and Aemond the One-Eyed.

With Borros Baratheon's army defeated and Cregan Stark's northmen closing on the capital, Lord Corlys told the king defeat was certain and urged him to abdicate and take the black. Aegon refused, and ordered his nephew's ear cut off and sent to Lord Tully as a warning.

After a council meeting, an exhausted Aegon took his litter toward the royal sept, his usual bottle of Arbor red at hand against the pain. When his escort arrived and Ser Gyles Belgrave drew back the curtains, the king was dead, blood on his lips. Who killed him was never established, though twenty-two men were arrested on suspicion. 'There was blood on his lips. Otherwise, one might have said he was sleeping,' Belgrave would say.

Corlys and an unharmed young Aegon rode out to meet Lord Kermit Tully's vanguard and announce the king's death, while Lord Leowyn Corbray, commanding the Arryn host, watched the Velaryon fleet lower Aegon's banner. As Targaryen custom demanded, his body was given to the fire; some hoped the ills of his reign would burn with it. With no surviving son, the throne passed to Aegon III, Rhaenyra's son, who would later marry Jaehaera and join the two rival branches of the family back into one.