Aerys I & Maekar

Greetings fellow acolytes. Welcome to another episode of The Westerosi Primer. My name is Liz. If you’re new to this podcast, welcome! I hope you enjoy this journey of all things Westeros. And in this episode, I’ll be talking about two kings, Aerys I and Maekar. If you listened to the previous episode, you know that these two kings were brothers. Why do we get another case of brothers being kings? Keep listening!

Before I get into this week’s episode, I have a couple of announcements to make! First off, I have recently noticed that there has been an increase in streams and downloads for episodes of this show. I want to give a shout out to all of you for spending your time listening to me rambling about a bunch of fictional characters every Wednesday. I want to give shoutouts to those of you listening on Player.fm, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts and Spotify. That’s because listeners on those platforms make up the bulk of my listeners lately.

I especially want to give a shout out to those of you who found my show through Player.fm. If you enjoyed this episode and the most recent ones, please show some love and check out the earlier episodes. Some of these episodes won’t make as much sense if you didn’t listen to the earlier ones. I explained quite a bit in those older episodes.

I’ve created a survey that would help me with promoting and marketing this podcast to other listeners. I’m sincerely hoping that a lot of you listening to this podcast would help by participating. I’ve done a few things and I’d like to see how well those efforts turned out from the listener perspective. You can head over to the podcast website where I have links to polls and surveys that I’m running. If you’re interested, please head over to www.thewesterosiprimer.com/extras. Thank you for helping.

Secondly as a reminder, I have a poll running about who you listeners think are the best and worst of the Targaryen kings. So far I have received just one response to the poll. This isn’t a poll that will expire. So please participate in the poll so you can share your opinions with not just with me, but with other listeners. I won’t be too surprised if you guys decide to wait for the end of season to get more of the facts first. Now that bit of housekeeping is done, let’s get on with the usual disclaimers.

As always, there are a couple of things to note. First there will be some potential spoilers for people who have not read any of the books connected to A Song of Ice and Fire. There may also be potential spoilers for House of the Dragon and other future shows adapted by Max. So if you’re okay with this, then please continue listening.

Second, the information in this episode comes from the written works of George R. R. Martin and the contributors of A Wiki of Ice and Fire on Westeros.org. Check out the full show notes and other links located on this show’s website: thewesterosiprimer.com With that said, let’s begin!

As I had said in the previous episode, Daeron II dies and his son Aerys winds up becoming the next king. If you’re new to this podcast, I have been delving into the history and background of different Targaryen kings this season. This is the continuation of the previous episode about Daeron II.

Typically I’d start with the king as a child so I’m going slightly back in time and then spend the rest of the episode about the king’s reign. Considering this episode is about two brothers who become king, I’ll basically be talking about both brothers together. You’ll get the explanation as to why Maekar becomes king after his brother Aerys.

As I had mentioned last episode, Daeron had four sons with his wife, Myriah Martell. For many of the Targaryens I’ve talked about in this season we do have some information about when they were born and died. There are some cases where for one reason or another, George didn’t really explain much. We don’t know when exactly these two brothers were born. From looking at Westeros.org, people have estimated when they think Aerys and Maekar were born. It’s generally assumed they were born between AC 172 and AC 179.

Aerys is generally described as being thin and more of a bookish type of man. In some ways, he’s pretty similar to his father. However unlike his father, Aerys seemed almost only interested in books. He in fact had special interest in prophecies and other arcane things. It’s interesting to me he has some similarities to Baelor in that both men had very little interest in anything related to ruling Westeros.

We did get some ideas about what Maekar is like in the previous episode. We know that he’s a very talented warrior and pretty interested in all things martial. He’s also pretty harsh, stubborn, and quick to judge, which is something I discussed in the previous episode.

Not really discussed much is Rhaegel, who was the brother born between Aerys and Maekar. Rhaegel was apparently very sickly and possibly had mental difficulties. Or perhaps he just had a strange personality because he demonstrated strange behavior. He was married to Alys Arryn and they had three children together.

Now that I gave you listeners some ideas about what these three men were like, let’s pick up the story where I left off last time. The story ended with the Great Spring Sickness of AC 209. This illness not only killed Daeron II, but it also killed the next in line to the throne. Originally Baelor Breakspear was the Prince of Dragonstone. However he died and his two sons were next in line. His two sons also died with their grandfather of illness. Neither had living children.

This is why the next king was Daeron’s second born son Aerys. Aerys decided to pick his uncle, Brynden Rivers to become Hand of the King. Like I said earlier, Aerys was only interested in reading books and studying arcane subjects like magic.

It’s not stated how long Aerys and Aelinor Penrose were married. Aerys had no interest in actually sleeping with his wife which is a big reason why he had no children. The Small Council tried to convince him to set aside his wife since it was not consummated. They had assumed he just didn’t like his wife. He refused to set her aside. I imagine he does like his wife, but just had no desire for her.

Since Aerys refused to have sex with his wife and he had no interest in marrying someone else, Rhaegel’s branch were next in line to the throne. Bizarrely enough, Rhaegel actually dies in AC 215 in the most unexpected fashion. He choked on a lamprey eel pie. Rhaegel had one son and two daughters. Similar to Aegon II, Rhaegel had fraternal twins Aelor and Aelora. Following Targaryen tradition, the twins were married to each other.

Following Rhaegel’s death, Aelor would be Prince of Dragonstone. However this didn’t last long either. It’s not clearly stated, but Aelor would apparently die from a strange accident and his twin sister/wife was responsible for it. Aelora would become mentally unstable after the incident and would never remarry.

To add to the tragedy of the situation, Aelora would later commit suicide. She had attended a masquerade ball and she was attacked by three men disguised as a hawk, a rat, and a pig. Incidentally, many years later these men, whose names have not been revealed by George, would try to start a rebellion. However I’ll address this in a later episode.

Rhaegel’s third child was named Daenora who would marry her cousin, Aerion Targaryen. I had briefly mentioned him in the previous episode if you didn’t listen. But I’ll get more into him in a bit. She would have one son with Aerion named Maegor for some strange reason. If you listened to episode 2.03 of this podcast, you’d know exactly why I say strange reason.

Meanwhile Maekar wound up having a pretty successful marriage like his father did. Maeker married Dyanna Dayne and had 6 children with her. We briefly met some of them in the previous episode when I discussed the Tourney at Ashford Meadow. He has 4 sons and 2 daughters: Daeron, Aerion, Aemon, Aegon, Daella, and Rhae. If any of you have sharp memories or you’ve recently been rewatching Season 1 of Game of Thrones you should recognize the name Maekar because his son Aemon is blind master Aemon at the Wall. How Aemon ended up a master at the Wall I’ll get into later this episode.

This is some of the dynamics that is happening in House Targaryen. Now I’ll get to events that were happening during Aerys’s reign. Eventually the Great Spring Sickness ended after about a year. Considering Aerys had very little interest in actually ruling, Brynden Rivers as Hand gave orders that bodies that couldn’t be buried were brought to the ruins of the Dragonpit. They set up bonfires to cremate all the dead to prevent worsening public health.

However things didn’t get much better after that. A new problem happened when drought occured in the region. Many of the smallfolk left for more opportunities elsewhere. Some even became bandits to survive. Since we don’t have a Fire & Blood volume 2, we don’t really know for sure what Brynden and the Small Council did to fix the situation.

Rebellion broke out when the Ironborn led by Lord Dagon Greyjoy started raiding the western coast. Not too differently from what his descendent Balon Greyjoy would do 70 years later, Dagon and the Ironborn in particular attacked all the major port cities of the Westerlands, especially Lannisport.

Lord Beron Stark would call his banners to deal with raiding on the coast of the North. Just to give some context, Beron Stark is one of the grandsons of Cregan Stark. Beron is also the 2 times great grandfather of Ned Stark. Beron would apparently die during this time. His death would lead to a succession dispute involving different widows of House Stark. They would be referred to as the She-wolves of Winterfell.

It seems that George was going to write another novella in the Tales of Dunk and Egg series involving the She-wolves. Though he has also stated he wouldn’t write it until he finished The Winds of Winter. If you listeners didn’t already know, winter still didn’t reach Westeros yet in the novels. And we’re all still waiting.

It’s really not clear how much involvement House Targaryen had with the Ironborn raiding. It is assumed they did deal with the conflict, but again we lack details about it. However Brynden was more focused on the happenings in Essos because there was the threat of a second Blackfyre Rebellion. By this point, Brynden was both Hand and Master of Whispers. He apparently had a decent spy network on the look out for any whiff of Blackfyre support rearing back up again.

As I had discussed in the last episode, even though Daemon and his eldest twin sons died, not everyone on Team Blackfyre died. Aegor Rivers and the rest of Daemon’s family fled to Tyrosh where they were undoubtedly biding their time. And they were biding their time.

Aegor Rivers needed something to do while he was in exile so he joined mercenary companies. This is a thing in Essos. We actually meet a few of them in Game of Thrones if you listeners will recall. We particularly met them in Dany’s storyline in Essos. Many different mercenary companies were hired to defeat Dany’s growing army she got with her now freed Unsullied.

Aegor initially spent time with a famous company called the Second Sons. The Second Sons still exist during the Game of Thrones era in the timeline. Oberyn Martell actually joined the Second Sons for a few years. The Second Sons were a mercenary group that initially were hired to confront Dany, but eventually broke their contract and decided to join her siege of Meereen. I wonder if I should discuss some of this stuff in a future season of the podcast? Feel free to head to the show website and find out how reach out and let me know what you guys think.

Aegor wasn’t the only one serving in mercenary companies. Many of the rebels who joined Daemon Blackfyre’s bid for the throne also chose exile. Aegor decided that the best way to continue the cause was to bring all the exiles together. How to do that? By forming his own company. In fact, he creates one named the Golden Company. If that name even remotely sounds familiar, you would know it because Cersei hires the Golden Company in Season 8 of the TV show.

As a side note, I think it was goofy and pointless the way they used this famous mercenary group in the show. They didn’t get much screen time. Those of you who haven’t read the books are missing out. You were deprived of a far more capable and interesting group of people. Not to mention the Golden Company supported a very different client in the novels, but that’s not for this season of the podcast to talk about.

In AC 212, there was a second Blackfyre Rebellion organized by Lord Gormon Peake, who was one of the many men who supported Daemon Blackfyre. He wanted to back Daemon II, who was of course Daemon Blackfyre’s son. Daemon seems to have inherited Dragon dreams or visions. These visions seem to convince a few lords like Peake to back another bid for the throne.

Aegor however refused to back this plan. This might seem strange why Aegor wouldn’t have backed his nephew like this. There’s different speculations about it but one big one is that this Daemon is the opposite of his father.

As I had mentioned in the last two episodes, Daemon Blackfyre was a very skilled warrior like his namesake Daemon Targaryen. Daemon II wasn’t that good in combat. Hardly the figure to inspire knights and lords to back. Also there are some hints that Daemon was gay, which George actually confirmed. This is just a thing that people wouldn’t support if he was outed. Considering these political factors, it actually makes sense why Aegor wouldn’t support this.

This is something that gets discussed in the Tales of Egg and Dunk, which I will be doing in Season 3 of this podcast. If you didn’t already know after I finish this season of the podcast, I’ll be going on a hiatus. Later this year, I’ll be doing season 3 which includes a reaction of the upcoming series, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. I will also be doing a discussion and analysis of the novellas the series is based on.

Unfortunately we still don’t currently have an official release date from Max yet. So I can’t actually confirm when Season 3 of this podcast will come out. I highly recommend that all of you listeners interested in finding out the future release date, please either sign up to the newsletter or follow the social media accounts I’ve set up for this podcast. The links are available on the podcast website and so is the signup form for the newsletter. I created an Instagram and X account. Recently I also created a Bluesky account for the show. But enough of the self-promo and back to the Blackfyres.

I won’t discuss too much detail about this rebellion since I’ll go into further detail in Season 3. Suffice it to say this attempt failed. Daemon Blackfyre would be captured after the failed rebellion. He would be held hostage against Aegor and the other Blackfyres for their good behavior. Many of the knights and lords who backed this failed attempt were executed. Daemon would eventually die and that is the green light for the third rebellion in AC 219.

The third Blackfyre Rebellion was an attempt to crown Daemon’s fourth son, Haegon. Unlike with his elder brother Daemon, Aegor actually backed this attempt. Since this was while Aerys was the king, he obviously had no actual interest in dealing with it. So Brynden and Prince Maekar were the leaders of the Targaryen forces. Joining in this war were Maekar’s two sons Aerion and Aegon.

We don’t get a ton of details about what exactly happened during this rebellion. What we do know is that there was yet another duel between Bloodraven and Bittersteel. Once again the Blackfyres lose and Haegon surrendered. Though he was treacherously killed after he surrendered his sword and not by actual execution or anything. It’s against rules of war and such.

Aegor Rivers was captured and brought back to the Red Keep for judgment. Maekar and Brynden advocated that he be executed since he’s the biggest instigator and the real martial force for the Blackfyres. Aerys however decided to be more merciful and sentenced him to the Wall. Aegor was on a ship to the Wall when Blackfyre supporters attacked the ship and rescued Aegor. He was able to go back to Essos to fight another day.

We’re not told exactly how or why Aerys died, but we only know he dies in AC 221. The childless king would be followed by his only surviving brother, Maekar. Maekar’s rule was mostly peaceful and not a whole lot that we know of happens at this time. Brynden Rivers would remain as Hand of the King. Just a few notable things to mention.

House Lothston had been the ruling family of Harrenhal since the reign of Aegon III, who gave it to the former Master-at-arms in the Red Keep. By this point in time, the one ruling Harrenhal was Lady Danielle Lothston. She actually participated in the Second Blackfyre Rebellion to support the Targaryens. However she allegedly started doing dark arts of some kind and she was rumored to be crazy as well. Again we lack details since George didn’t give us much.

Eventually she either died or lost power. As the last of the Lothstons, Harrenhal once again had no lord so eventually Maekar grants it to one of the knights who helped defeat their previous mistress Lady Danielle Lothston. The knight would be called Lord Whent. The Whents actually still ruled Harrenhal during Robert Baratheon’s reign until the War of the Five Kings. In fact Lady Shella Whent was an old woman who ruled Harrenhal until she was stripped of the title and it was given to Janos Slynt. If you recall this was his reward for helping Baelish betray Ned Stark in the Red Keep.

A couple of interesting facts to share is that Catelyn Stark’s mother was Minisa Whent. It’s not clear what her exact relationship to Lady Shella was, but there’s no indication Minisa was the daughter of Lord Whent. She could be a niece or a cousin of some kind. Also Lady Shella’s brother-in-law was Ser Oswell Whent, who was one of the kingsguard serving Aerys II. I’ll be talking about him again in a later episode.

The final thing is how Maekar’s reign ends. As I mentioned earlier, Gormon Peake supported and died because of the Second Blackfyre Rebellion. Perhaps this is an echo of the grasping Unwin Peake, who I discussed heavily in episodes 2.09 and then 2.10 of this podcast. The rest of House Peake were pretty angry and bitter about what happened. They also had lost two of three castles their house owned as punishment for supporting house Blackfyre. They started an uprising.

Because of how martial Maekar is, he participated in crushing this uprising. His son Prince Aegon also joined in the fighting, which isn’t too surprising since he’s 33 years old. Also joining in was a squire who was the heir to Casterly Rock named Tywald Lannister. During the storming, Maekar would be hit by falling debris and dies from his injuries. Also dying from injuries was Tywald Lannister.

So you might be thinking why is it a big deal that this Lannister squire dies? Well like I mentioned he’s the heir to Casterly Rock. Fortunately for his family he has 3 younger brothers, his twin Tion, Tytos, and Jason. You’ll want to keep these names in mind because they’ll come up again in the next couple of episodes. So Tywald’s death potentially has a huge impact on things that come down the line later.

As you can imagine, with Maekar dead there’s now a matter of who is the new king. Which is why I’ll just mention a few things about Maekar’s children. Unsurprisingly, we won’t know a whole lot about what happened to Maekar’s two daughters Daella and Rhae. We only know they got married and had children, but not much else.

Maekar’s oldest son is Daeron. Daeron was not much of a knight and actually disliked horses and other aspects of knighthood. He preferred drinking and women, which I’ll come back to in a bit. He also apparently had dragon dreams, which is something that comes up in the Dunk and Egg stories. He eventually marries Kiera of Tyrosh, who was actually the widow of his cousin Valarr Targaryen. If you listened to the previous episode, Valarr was the older son of Baelor Breakspear.

Daeron and Kiera would have one daughter together, who may have had development issues. Daeron was the Prince of Dragonstone once his father became king. Daeron would catch the pox after visiting a sex worker. It seems he died from complications related to the disease. Since he died before his father, the next in line would be Aerion.

I briefly discussed a bit about Aerion in the last episode. He’s a pretty hot-headed individual. There are hints he’s also mentally unstable given his erratic behavior, which I’ll get into in a bit. It says something that two of Aerion’s nicknames were Aerion Brightflame and Aerion the Monstrous. We got some hints at his problematic behavior at the Tourney at Ashford Meadow. Like I mentioned earlier, Aerion married his cousin Daenora and they have one son Maegor born in AC 232.

As proof Aerion is possibly crazy, he dies not long after his son is born. How and why you might be wondering. He decides to drink wildfire to transform into a dragon because he thought that was an idea that would work. He did not and he died screaming in agony. This is why listeners Viserys getting his golden crown isn’t some evidence he’s unworthy. It’s a reminder that the Mother of Dragons is an anomaly. Targaryens aren’t fire-proof. If you listened to my earlier episodes, Rhaenyra met a fiery death and now we have Aerion.

Aemon was Maekar’s third son. Aemon was born while Daeron II was still alive. Daeron was actually the one who decided to send Aemon to the Citadel. Aemon was a scholarly child so continued education would make sense. Also Daeron felt that there were potentially too many heirs to the throne so it seemed at the time the sensible decision. Oh the irony.

Aemon was particularly close with his younger brother Aegon and he would fondly nickname the boy Egg. In fact one nice detail they included in Game of Thrones was Aemon’s final moments at the Wall. He would speak to Egg and how he dreamed he was old. Well now you listeners know he was thinking of his little brother. As we saw, he would do really well and succeed in gaining multiple links and becoming a maester. Initially young Maester Aemon would serve at some unnamed lord’s household.

Later Aemon and his brothers would be summoned to the Red Keep when their father became king. Maekar wanted his son to serve as a maester in the Red Keep. However Aemon didn’t want to use nepotism to displace the Grandmaester. He said he would serve his brother Daeron as the maester of Dragonstone until Daeron died, like I explained earlier.

Aegon meanwhile had a pretty adventurous life. He would squire as a kid with Duncan the Tall, which is why he is the other protagonist of the upcoming Max series A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Through a series of events that happened at the Tourney of Ashford Meadow, Aegon winds up becoming Dunk’s squire for a few years.

Later as an adult he married Lady Betha Blackwood. Unlike many other marriages in House Targaryen, Aegon got to choose his spouse and married for love. This was allowed because Aegon is the 4th son of a 4th son. As you imagine, it was highly unlikely this prince would be on the throne. Hence there weren’t any objections of him marrying a noble woman not high status enough to be a prince’s wife.

Brynden Rivers had to call a Great Council to address the issue of succession. It’s rather odd why they did so, but there were some objections to Aegon being the king. The alternatives were young Maegor and Aemon. Even Aenys Blackfyre, son of Daemon Blackfyre, had put in a bid for the throne that didn’t involve armies.

Aenys Blackfyre had been promised safety to attend the Great Council. However the moment he arrived in King’s Landing, the Goldcloaks arrested him and brought him to the Red Keep. Aenys was executed and his decapitated head was presented at the Council. It was Brynden’s warnings to anyone with Blackfyre sympathies of what will happen to them if they try anything.

Maegor was a toddler and also there were some genuine concerns he inherited his father’s craziness, which I talked about earlier. Aemon however made it very clear he had zero interest in being on the throne. Aegon would be crowned as Aegon V.

In fact to make sure that Aegon would have a solid reign, Aemon decided to join the Night’s Watch. He had legitimate fear that nobles opposing Aegon would try to use him as some kind of plot to overthrow his brother and replace him. And that’s why 60-odd years later, Jon Snow would meet a very wise, blind maester at the Wall. A man who was Jon’s many times great uncle, but that’s for another episode to discuss.

On a personal note, I honestly think Aemon would have been a very good king. As we’ll see in the next episode, I don’t think Aegon V was a bad king. I think Aemon had a certain level of wisdom that Aegon doesn’t have. And also we might have had a different timeline had Aemon been released from his maester vows and became king instead of Aegon.

And that just about covers the lives of Aerys I and Maekar. If you’re interested in finding out more for yourself, feel free to go to the full show notes where I will have links. Though be aware if you do any of this research there will be spoilers to the novels, House of the Dragon, and Max’s future adaptations.

Thank you for listening and tune in to the next episode where I’ll talk about Aegon V and why do some nobles think he’s “half-peasant.”