Aenys I Targaryen

Aenys was born on Dragonstone in the year 7 AC, son of Aegon I Targaryen and his sister-wife, Queen Rhaenys. He was a frail child, and his thinness fed ugly rumors — that no son of a warrior like Aegon could look like that, and that his real father had been one of the singers his mother liked to keep close.

He was only three when he lost his mother, who died in Dorne. The loss left him weaker still, and for a while people doubted he'd live to adulthood. Relief came with a dragon's egg: once Quicksilver hatched and bonded with him, his health turned around almost overnight, and the rumors about his birth faded along with it.

He grew up in King's Landing with his father, far from Dragonstone, where his aunt Visenya and his half-brother Maegor were being raised; the two boys barely knew each other as children. Aenys trained with the Kingsguard but never had his brother's build, and his temperament ran calmer, more dreamy — he loved court life, dabbled in alchemy, and was known for a sweet, strong singing voice. At fifteen, in 22 AC, he married his cousin Alyssa Velaryon in a match arranged for convenience; together they had six children — Rhaena, Aegon, Viserys, Jaehaerys, Alysanne, and Vaella.

In 37 AC Aenys was at Highgarden when word reached him that his father had died. From the ashes of Aegon's funeral pyre he recovered Blackfyre, the Valyrian steel sword the fire hadn't touched. Years later he would pass it on to Maegor, saying his brother was twice the warrior he'd ever be.

The Iron Throne was still in King's Landing, so Aenys travelled back to the capital to be crowned the second king of the Seven Kingdoms. He inherited a realm his father had built with dragons — and now had to hold without them.

Not every lord in Westeros welcomed a king they judged soft. In the Riverlands, a man called Harren the Red, who claimed descent from Harren the Black, went on a rampage until the crown's forces ran him down; the victory cost the life of the Hand who led it, Lord Alyn Stokeworth.

In the Vale, Jonos Arryn rose in rebellion and killed his own brother, Lord Ronnel Arryn, before Prince Maegor put the revolt down. Further south, a warlord known as the Vulture King spread ruin across the Dornish Marches while the Martells looked the other way, until Orys Baratheon and other lords hunted him down.

Trouble reached the Iron Islands too, when a man turned up claiming to be King Lodos returned from the dead; Lord Goren Greyjoy was the one who killed him. As a reward, Aenys offered him any favor he wanted, and Lord Goren asked that the Faith of the Seven be barred from his lands. Bound by his own word, the king had no way to refuse — and the Faith never forgot the insult.

The Targaryens' Valyrian ways clashed with the customs of the Seven Kingdoms, and that clash first broke out inside the family itself. When the dowager queen Visenya tried to marry Maegor to Aenys's eldest daughter, the Faith of the Seven refused to bless a match between uncle and niece; the betrothal fell apart, and Maegor married the Hightower septon's niece instead.

The peace didn't last. Maegor, eager for a son, took a second wife, Alys Harroway, in a rite performed by Visenya under Valyrian custom and without the Faith's blessing. Aenys had no choice but to exile his brother and strip him of his titles, putting the septon Murmison in charge of the government as his new Hand.

The real explosion came when Aenys decided to marry off his two eldest children. To the Faith of the Seven, this was final proof that a king born of a marriage between siblings had no right to the crown; they started calling him the Abomination King. Septon Murmison, sent to calm the rioters, was torn apart by the mob.

There was an attempt on the king's own life, stopped only because a Kingsguard knight, Ser Raymont Baratheon, threw himself in the way and paid for it with his life. Aenys fled King's Landing with his family and took refuge on Dragonstone. Visenya urged him to burn the Starry Sept and the Sept of Remembrance to show the realm who was in charge. Aenys, unable to make up his mind, let the moment pass — and fell ill.

By late 41 AC much of the realm had turned against him: Poor Fellows roamed the streets threatening anyone loyal to the crown, and several lords took up arms against the Iron Throne. According to Grand Maester Gawen, who tended him, Aenys looked twice his real age, and there seemed no hope of curing him. It was Visenya who took over his care, and under her the king rallied a little — until word came that his eldest son and daughter were under siege at Refugio Quebrado, and the news broke him again.

Aenys died on Dragonstone in 42 AC, at thirty-five, after five years on the throne. What killed him was never settled — some say the strain of his last months wore him down, others suspect Visenya had a hand in it, determined to see her own son crowned instead.

And that's what happened: though Aenys left six living children, it was Maegor who took the Iron Throne, not his eldest son Aegon. In the confusion that followed the coronation, two of those children, Aegon and Viserys, would die during their uncle's reign.