If you enjoy this episode, be sure to sign up the the podcast newsletter! Head over to https://thewesterosiprimer.substack.com
This podcast episode delves into the reigns of Targaryen kings Baelor and Viserys II. King Baelor becomes known for his religious zeal. He made decisions that were more divine than diplomatic. His reign included releasing Dornish captives and journeying to Sunspear for peace. Baelor's actions, such as rescuing his cousin Aemon and secluding his sisters, revealed contradictions in his rule. Despite his piety, Baelor's decisions often conflicted with the kingdom's practical needs.
The episode shifts focus to Viserys II, whose legacy impacted Westeros profoundly. His son, Aegon the Unworthy, became infamous partially due to Viserys II's parenting challenges. Listeners can explore parallels between Viserys I and II and their sons named Aegon. The podcast sets the stage for the next episode dedicated to Aegon the Unworthy.
Baelor's reign began after Daeron the Young Dragon's death, emphasizing religion over politics. His release of Dornish hostages and peace journey to Sunspear culminated in a future marriage alliance. Baelor's rescue of Aemon Targaryen from a snake pit showcased his saintly yet impractical nature. His reign, marked by charitable acts, was flawed by decisions like book burning.
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 Baelor and Viserys II. Yes that is a small spoiler of what happens to Baelor. This is going to be another relatively short episode. Partially it’s because again we have only a limited amount of information regarding the reigns of these two kings. It’s also a reflection of how short their reigns were and how limited they were in terms of their achievements.
Before I start the discussion, 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!
We last left off with the death of Daeron the Young Dragon. Since Daeron died as a childless, unmarried 18 year-old, his heir is his younger brother, Baelor. As I had also briefly mentioned in the previous episode, Baelor is more interested and focused on religion than anything. He’s more interested in being a saintly, pious man and therefore the complete opposite of his brother.
Prince Viserys is still the Hand of the King and was planning to execute the Dornish hostages as retaliation for his nephew’s murder. What do you guys think Baelor decided to do? If you said, release the hostages and sue for peace, you got that right. Again since we don’t have a Volume 2 of Fire & Blood, we have no idea how Viserys felt about this decision. However he’s the Hand and his nephew is now king. Knowing how his nephew is, he possibly tried to persuade him though it wouldn’t work.
Baelor feels that his house needed to atone for invading Dorne. He decides to literally walk all the way to Sunspear as some sort of apology journey. This is not too dissimilar to pilgrimages people would do in centuries past. He actually also returned the hostages back to Dorne along the same journey. Baelor arrived at Sunspear and negotiated a marriage between young Daeron Targaryen and Myriah Martell, the Prince of Dorne’s daughter. Officially war between Dorne and the Iron Throne ended.
Next Baelor headed to Wyl to get his cousin, Ser Aemon Targaryen. If you recall in the last episode I mentioned Aemon survived the sneak attack against King Daeron, but was captured as a prisoner in Dorne. Aemon was only just alive since he was locked up in a cage and hung up high in the air. The cage was above a literal pit of vipers like a stereotypical prisoner held by a Bond villain. Lord Wyl is a pretty sadistic guy and not all that different from his ancestor if you’ve listened to my episode about Aegon the Conqueror, which is episode 2.01.
Lord Wyl basically told Baelor that he would have to cross through the pit and unlock Aemon’s cage himself. Then they could both leave. Baelor was bitten a few times but managed to unlock the cage. Aemon would have to carry Baelor on his back and quickly made it across to leave with the now comatose king. It would take a few months before they returned to King’s Landing. They got to Storm’s End and waited 6 months for Baelor to recover before returning home.
Baelor had officially been crowned king. There was some optimism he’d be a great king achieving things. However some of his choices had pretty mixed results. It shouldn’t be surprising to any of you listeners that Baelor favored charitable works. However he’s ignoring a lot of the practical aspects of life because that’s how you get when all you think about is religion and nothing much else.
Pretty early on Baelor was able to get his marriage dissolved. It wasn’t hard considering the marriage was never consummated. Historically speaking marriages weren’t considered fully binding unless the couple actually had sex. So it did used to be possible to dissolve marriages. It wasn’t a divorce but rather you’re just considered not married in the first place.
Baelor then proceeds to basically imprison his three sisters in the Red Keep. He has them held in a section of the Red Keep, which would be known as the Maidenvault. His rationale was that it was to protect their virtue while also preventing them from being temptation to men at court. I just personally think he’s insane, but that’s just my opinion. Incidentally, the Maidenvault is a structure that gets mentioned quite a bit in the novels. Mostly because after Baelor’s death, it was just another convenient area that provided housing for noble guests at the Red Keep.
There were also a few notable maidens sent to the Maidenvault as the princesses’ companions, including Barba Bracken, who is someone I briefly mentioned in episode 1.09. I will also mention her again in the next episode.
I had mentioned Naerys gave birth to her son, Daeron, in the previous episode. However not mentioned is that Naerys, much like her great-grandmother Aemma Arryn, had multiple pregnancies that ended without any living children. In AC 161, she finally gave birth to twins, who sadly die not long afterwards. King Baelor actually fasted for a month after this tragic loss in the family.
Aegon would also be sent on a diplomatic mission after this incident. There’s speculation this was so Aegon would leave his wife alone to recover. While on this journey, Aegon would meet one of his many mistresses. In fact this mistress would be considered his 4th official mistress. Aegon rivals Robert Baratheon with the number of women he sleeps with.
A few women would be considered Aegon’s official mistresses mostly based on whether their relationships actually lasted more than just a couple of times or not. This is pretty similar to how a lot of actual nobles and royals have had affairs. However not all of them are acknowledged as being mistresses and are considered as flings.
Baelor quickly gained the support of the common people, but angered much of the nobility with his policies. While Westerosi nobles are in the general habit of being pretty self-interested, I can’t actually blame them for disliking their religion obsessed king. He made prostitution illegal and literally had sex workers and their children expelled from King’s Landing. He did this despite being warned that there would be pretty angry people.
Baelor was more focused on building a giant new sept in the city. It wouldn’t be completed until many years after Baelor dies and would be known as the Sept of Baelor. Actually those of you who have watched Game of Thrones should be familiar with the Sept of Baelor. Ned Stark was executed in front of the Sept of Baelor. In fact he had spotted Arya standing by the statue of King Baelor. Ned let Yoren the Night’s Watchman know where to find her so she could escape the city. The Sept of Baelor is also where the High Sparrow would hold his trials and Cersei would later blow up in Season 6.
Baelor would do many charitable acts like having free bread distributed to the poor citizens of the capital. However he also had books burned that he felt were immoral. He even had a really famous book about dragons burned simply because he felt the author Septon Barth was unorthodox. If you guys didn’t remember, Septon Barth was actually one of Jaehaerys I’s Hands. Check out episodes 2.04 and 2.05 if you didn’t already.
Baelor would also claim to have visions and would choose an illiterate blacksmith and later an 8 year old boy as High Septon. It’s honestly hard to say how much of this is because he’s dealing with mental issues and delusions or not. Clearly his uncle Viserys is the only reason Westeros hadn’t descended into chaos with a king who may or may not be insane.
Of course I had already mentioned before how Daena Targaryen had a really bold personality. Well you didn’t think she’d accept being locked up quietly did you listeners? There were apparently 3 occasions she actually escaped her imprisonment. Her third time happened in AC 170 and there were very major consequences. She was quickly revealed to be pregnant and would refuse to state who the father of the baby was. She would give birth to a boy named Daemon Waters. Again because we don’t have a sequel to Fire & Blood, we don’t know for sure if Daena ever marries and when she dies.
Like many religious zealots, Baelor was in the habit of fasting. The discovery of his sister’s out of wedlock pregnancy made him do another fast. He fasted for 40 days and collapsed afterwards in AC 171. Unlike past fasting sessions he did, Baelor was extremely weak and would die.
There was much debate who would succeed Baelor since he had no children and no younger brother to inherit. Daena was briefly considered, but again her being female was a factor against her. Memories of the Dance and her grandmother Rhaenyra’s short rule was still on the minds of many nobles. On top of that, she had been in isolation for 10 years. This meant she had no opportunities to network with nobles at court who might be willing to back her as a ruling queen. Ultimately the only logical choice if Daena and her sisters were out of the running was Prince Viserys.
You can’t honestly blame people who supported Viserys as the king. After all, he had been Hand of the King during his brother’s reign. Then he remained in the position for his two nephews. He was in essence king already in all but name since his brother died. There are some who secretly suspected that Viserys actually had Baelor poisoned. Not out of greed for power, but literally to get rid of a king who was progressively causing more problems and instability to the realm.
It seems that Baelor had expressed a belief that he needed to convert more people to the Faith. If any of you have listened to season 1 of this podcast, you’ll know that past attempts ended in failure. Followers of the Old Gods and the Drowned God resisted and this resulted in war. Keep in mind, the invasion of Dorne ended only 10 years earlier. The Dance ended 40 years earlier. There are lords of the Realm who remembered the chaos and destruction of the Dance first hand. No one wants to create chaos with a religious war. Even the most adherent believers of the New Gods aren’t inclined to spend money and resources over religion.
I’m not 100% convinced Viserys actually went that far. I don’t think he is a kinslayer. I think he would have tried other things before resorting to assassination. Though a part of me wonders why he would just allow the king to do some of the extreme things he did. I have a suspicion that he didn’t object to certain things because they were ultimately minor in comparison to other concerns of the realm. It’s a convenient distraction for the king while the Hand and the Small Council did the real work of ruling the realm.
Viserys would become Viserys II since he was named after his grandfather. Viserys actually would only rule for 1 year and die in AC 172. Like his brother, he died of sudden illness. However some rumors believe he was poisoned by his son Aegon, who is eager to be on the throne. I’m not 100% convinced of this, but I wouldn’t be completely surprised as I’ll get into next episode.
Viserys did implement some meaningful changes during his super brief reign. It’s not clear when exactly his brother named him Hand, but you imagine Viserys spent at least 15 years as Hand. He was in essence the king for that long considering his nephews didn’t do much actual ruling. He reformed procedures and function within the Royal household. He established a new royal mint and trade agreements with Essos. He also continued reform of Westerosi law that was started by his great-great grandfather, Jaehaerys.
When Viserys died the next in line was his son, Aegon. Considering what I’ve already discussed about Aegon in this episode and last time, you can just imagine what a mess this man will be as king. Trust me listeners, next episode will be a doozy.
I’m genuinely curious what some of you listeners think. Which Targaryen king do you think is the worst? Which one do you think is the best? I’m going to have a poll and you guys can have fun answering these two questions. I also set it up so that after you submit your answer you can see the results of what answers have been submitted so far. This is going to be an open-ended poll. I won’t end it and I’ll leave it available for anyone to participate for fun. I might occasionally mention results of the poll in future episodes.
As you can probably tell I don’t like Baelor. I just don’t think he was a particularly good king. Other than the peace with Dorne and charitable works, he didn’t do anything that helped the realm. Also on a personal side note, I’m a non-practicing Catholic. I have a general suspicion of super religious people in positions of power exactly because I’ve seen it too often. I just don’t trust them to do meaningful things when they have that kind of power and authority. Real world history shows that a huge percentage of the time, my suspicion is true.
I didn’t dwell too much on Viserys here partially because he only ruled for a year. But also if you’ve been listening to the episodes this season, I’ve talked about Viserys for a few episodes already. There’s not much more left I can talk about regarding him. I think he would have been a pretty great king if he had lived longer. He was starting to implement a lot of really practical, beneficial things for the realm. There have been some people who felt he potentially could have been a second version of Jaehaerys. But alas, it was not to be.
I suppose the biggest thing I would criticize him for is how he raised his kids. Now granted, he was a literal teenage father when they were born. He had an unusual, chaotic childhood so I’ll acknowledge he didn’t have a ton of guidance. I still feel like in particular what a mess of a human being Aegon turned out to be is to some degree his fault. But well I’ll get more into it in the next episode. You’ll be finding out why the people in Westeros refer to Viserys’s son as Aegon the Unworthy. It is a funny parallel if you think about it. Viserys I had a wastrel son named Aegon. And then his grandson, Viserys II also had a wastrel son named Aegon, who is actually way worse than the earlier Aegon.
And that just about covers the lives of Baelor and Viserys II. 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 the Unworthy.