This will be a different kind of essay from my usual fare in which I’ll attempt a schizo exegesis into the extended lore and backstory of A Song of Ice and Fire.
My goal here is to convince you that King Aegon IV (epithet “the Unworthy”) wasn’t merely some fat old serial rapist who broke apart Westeros because he was Evil.
Which isn’t to call that characterization inaccurate, understand—only to say there’s a very real story there, and that it’s a lot more sophisticated than the flattened and grotesque meme tyrant we gleam from a surface-level read of the text.
To my mind this story is among the most pivotal in GRRM’s wider literary project, tying together many of his deepest insights about both “the human heart in conflict with itself” and higher order notions of legitimacy, intimacy, purity, and masculinity.
In doing so it also explains why the Blackfyre Rebellions had to be a thing, lending nuance to the most salient political conflicts of mid-Targaryen rule while establishing a palpable thematic unity that at least to my mind makes ASOAIF feel weighty and timeless and philosophically charged in a manner you seldom observe in Boomer genre fiction—every bit the equal of Lewis and Tolkien.
…or at least it would have been, had Martin been even slightly less of a self-indulgent meandering slave to dopamine and actually finished the series instead of allowing Dungeons and Dragons to permanently taint his legacy with the cinematic abortion of those last few seasons, thanks to which the Dany villain tweest will never be regarded as the narrative masterstroke it could have been while the Branraven resolution will eternally be regarded as an absurd shaggy dog story instead of a long-foreshadowed inevitability the entire universe had been inexorably circling towards for millennia and look now I’m the one being meandering and self-indulgent.
Point is if GRRM continues to outlive his jokermode self-insert explained in today’s piece and ever gets around to publishing the second volume of Fire and Blood (and frankly I hope he prioritizes that over the main series, which should have ended with Storm1) I expect its contents will corroborate the narrative below pretty precisely.
TL;DR - Aegon IV wasn’t the fat joke villain Maesters caricatured him as. He was a solipsistic performance artist who turned his own deep-seated trauma into theater, deliberately curating his reputation as “Unworthy” so as to transmute private shame into public myth. In doing so, he not only catalyzed the Blackfyre century but also exposed the hypocrisy of legitimacy, honor, and Andal piety. His reign was less a reign than a baroque act of narrative revenge.
Also he was right that Daeron II was a bastard—it’s just that he probably was too.
Political Context
First we’ll consider the most salient political conditions of our subject’s early life.
Aegon Targaryen was sired in 135 AC—just four years after the Dance of the Dragons conveniently wiped out most of his family’s cadet branches and very nearly all of its dragons, with the exceptions mostly being stunted little tard dragons who themselves died off in toto amidst the unhappy yet recuperative reign of Aegon III (131-157 AC).
Ostensibly the reason for their extinction was that Aegon hated the creatures after watching them eat his fat Hillary Clinton mom and as a consequence allowed his clan’s knowledge of dragon breeding and handling (which seems to have been part institutional and part esoteric familiar oral history) fall into disrepair, in doing so obliterating the one force multiplier enabling the long-term existence of a single polity across a continent as large and diverse as Westeros.
Only it’s awfully hazy how intentional any of that was given there weren’t really any adult Targaryens left after the Dance, with the arguable exception of Aegon’s nubile teen half-sisters. Meanwhile the first years of his reign were spent in regency to a council of bickering nobles, and in any situation like that there’s bound to be loads of fuckery that gets remembered basically every way except how it really happened.
That said what’s always stood out to me is that on a surface-level read the extinction of the dragons happened too fast; it feels a bit cheap and unearned, and gets weirdly little coverage in the text when just from a worldbuilding elegance perspective the obvious choice would be to make the post-Dance dieoff take several decades at least, with the runts being kept around as pets and such. But instead the entire lore pivots from high fantasy to low in one muffled and ignominious whimper.
And some of you will no doubt dismiss that as Martin being a grimdark neckbeard, but that’s kind of just you being a pedestrian hobbit with a smoothbrained superficial read of his style, cause deep down the guy is clearly a romantic who values a satisfying narrative payoff and almost always resolves his arcs bittersweet with robustly earned consequences. Even iconic tweests like the Stark deaths will instantly yield some countervailing narrative catharsis, and are foreshadowed so aggressively that if you can’t spot the signs during a reread you’re honestly just low IQ.
GRRM only ever seems grimdark because his self-indulgent midseries scope creep fucks up pacing; otherwise the ups and downs net out to mythically amplified realism. But what he doesn’t do are pointless and decadent shaggy dog stories.
Which is why I always figured the dragon weirdness was a metatextual hint GRRM was throwing that something seems off about the Official Story of draconic extinction.
…and wouldn’t you know it, one of the most common fan theories is on this very point, positing that during and after the Dance the Maesters had their thumb on the scale, ruthlessly exploiting Targ vulnerability to snuff out the dragons and eradicate useful knowledge of them, their motives being some combination of a hatred of magic borne from euphoric devotion to Reason and Logic and their support for traditional Andal feudalism, which for all its messiness entails a built-in balance of power that makes it pretty difficult in practice for any individual ruler to become overtly tyrannical.
Note that had always been the central ideological current animating the Greens during the Dance of the Dragons, which in substance was less a dynastic clash than a genuine battle of ideas between the longstanding Andal patriarchy—symmetrical, legalistic, great fans of precedent and Chesterton’s Fence—and a competing doctrine of hyper-asymmetric Draconic Maximalism that enshrined an absolutist (and at its worst overtly arbitrary) understanding of royal prerogative.
Of course Rhaenyra and Daemon were themselves a bit too grug and self-absorbed to ever propositionalize that ideology, but by that point the absolutist impulse itself was hardly a novelty given that a century prior Maegor the Cruel had demonstrated to all and sundry what happens when you maximize maximalism. He was unstoppable on the battlefield, but that only taught the Andals how to strike from the shadows like a woman / Dornishman, both by introducing diffuse and uncontainable friction under the cover of plausible deniability to irritate Maegor’s choleric temper and by playing the Targs against each other—a tack that clearly worked swimmingly given it’s how we got Jaehaerys and his girlboss wife (and also just the sheer fishiness surrounding Maegor’s last moments, which pretty obviously points to Maesters covering shit up),
And to be fair J + A probably did the best job anyone could do at carving out a stable resting point with Andal power under a more formal and propositional Targaryenism. But in practice even their reign showed the inexorable fault lines—namely that owning a dragon kind of just turns you into an insufferable special snowflake with a deeply asymmetric relationship with reality that constantly distorts your perspective (esp in Westeros where Dragons aren’t ubiquitous like in Valyria), which combined with the incest ensured half their offspring were dissolute nutjobs. Meanwhile the Targ womyn got far more autonomy than their Andal sisters since dragons are too valuable an asset to restrict girl riders, which means A got to quarrel with J in harder more masculine ways than feudal sensibilities or social infrastructure can properly accommodate, all the while imposing feminist imperatives like First Night Abolition on the realm.
Because in essence the problem here is just deep and structural: even when firmly integrated and co-opted by Andals there’s a natural impetus in dragonriders (and particularly their younger cohorts) towards a kind of bold asymmetric deviance that’s impossible to contain without throwing away your major source of power yet pretty inevitably leads to instability, humiliation, and severe collective active problems… culminating eventually in a drift towards Maegorism, which of course shows up in Daemon and Rhaenyra amidst the Dance and later reaches its zenith under Dany’s BPD INFJ Molested Girl energy as something vaguely Maoist in character.
Point is the escalation was always baked in, as was the Andal resistance to it that used all those same feminine soft power tactics that cooked Maegor—the ambient friction, plausible deniability, playing Targs off against each other while triangulating allies—to gradually reclaim power from inside the house, the long-term goals being diluting Valyrian blood and customs, fracturing royal hegemony through factionalization, and above all else ending the Targaryen dragon monopoly (though I’d hazard this was more of a conspiracy among the Maesters since it’s risky to let kshatriya in when most of them will just get greedy and try to defect against the compact by miscegenating their way to dragon kids; outside House Hightower the nobility were conditional allies at best).
Which speaking of the Hightowers is one of the reasons it’s so significant they were the ones who orchestrated the Dance; they represent the apex of Andal nobility, with a prestige exceeding that of most Great Houses thanks to their seat at Oldtown being the Second City of Westeros with built-in institutional ties to the Faith and Citadel. Such factors proffered an ethno-ideological valence to the Hightowers’ pre-Dance ascension that may well have discouraged would-be saboteurs and ankle-biters given that many of them likely saw Alicent in sort of the same way Indians today see Usha Vance.
Note also that all the real substance on the Green side came directly from Oldtown; basically nobody gave a shit about Aegon II except as a convenient place to rest the crown, and while Vhagar / Aemond were essential to check the Blacks’ advantage in dragons that whole situation kind of just turned into a fake and gay sidequest after Rook’s Rest that was entirely about Aemond’s Dark Triad NPD rivalry with Daemon. At that point neither was especially loyal to his sovereign given that each of them was the guy on his side with the biggest Dragon Dick, which was an irksome coordination problem for the Greens but a crippling liability for the Blacks given that it established beyond all doubt the fatal conceit of Targaryenism (as did the whole Dragonseed fiasco).
But again, note this was all priced in. Once you fragment the Targ power bloc and get them fighting each other the game theoretic endpoint will always reduce eventually to Aemond vs. Daemon… and probably also just a general Targ culling, the particulars of which will obviously matter quite a lot to Otto and Alicent but probs not so much to Archmaester FuckDragons420 who’s focused on the bigger picture.
And when you start to look at the Dance with his goals in mind it doesn’t just seem like a brilliantly coordinated complot by the Westerosi Brahmin to eviscerate Targ power—it’s akin to those Dixieboo maps that show the Confederates coming out of the war with Maryland and Kentucky. Their success was genuinely uncanny… which we could attribute to greenseers or some other weird shit but for the sake of parsimony I’ll just shrug off as narrative contrivance.
The more salient question is why it took a few more years for the dragons to trickle away wholesale, the simplest answer to which is “some combination of logistics and plausible deniability” but yeah idk fam for my part I kind of just suspect the Maesters (or at least some faction thereof) actually weren’t planning to eradicate the Dragons so much as to co-opt both them and the crown for their own purposes—specifically by leaving the youngest Targs / Dragons alive and vulnerable and ostensibly super groomable.
Because the Maesterly optimum wasn’t just to shatter the power of King’s Landing as a permanent thing—recall that Targ centralization had been palpably splendid for the realm and especially its spergs during times of peace, ending the relentless civil wars while significantly curbing the retarded chevauchee strongman shit which had once left Westeros perilously exposed to Wildlings / Ironborn / Dornishmen. It was more that left unchecked the Targs would always drift towards Pol Pot.
And so being a bunch of fart-smelling academics the Maesters probably figured they could figure out everything there was to know about dragons entirely by themselves, seizing the organs of power in a revenge of the nerds fantasy that would establish a more bureaucratic or scientific approach to dragoning under their control—in theory maintaining the benefits of a centralized Westerosi polity while cleansing it of the worst excesses of Targaryen narcissism. Meanwhile the Targs themselves would retain power in a monarchic role less Fuhrer than Holy Roman Emperor, while the Maesters would leverage their newfound draconic clout to gradually impose a sort of bourgeois positivist order on Westerosi society.
Only that part they fucked up, and either accidentally through sheer incompetence or in soberminded recognition of a botched experiment ended up just killing them all.
Which is where Westerosi geopolitics gets pretty damn interesting given that at this point most regions of Westeros have a pretty good incentive to secede—particularly the North and Iron Islands, and to a lesser extent the Vale. The Riverlands of course has a huge incentive to stay given they’re basically Poland / Belgium, and in the Reach unification likewise nets positive (especially for the Tyrells being upjumped stewards). But the Stormlands are a far weaker pro, while the Westerlands are likely a weak con.
Meanwhile just from an administrative standpoint maintaining a realm that massive while having anything approaching a coherent national policy is basically impossible in a medieval setting without dragons, even with ravenry and the Maesters possessing technological sophistication that in some domains approaches Victorian levels. At the end of the day you can only get so far absent mass literacy to facilitate higher order forms of social organization a la NGOs or streamlined management or ideologies of governance; the trend is fragmentation, and losing the North at least almost assured.
But of course there are ways to forestall that outcome—or even expand, as the case ended up being with Daeron I’s famous conquest of Dorne.
Although in that particular instance I rather suspect it was one and the same.
My theory is that after the dragons were culled the Maesters realized Westerosi unity was hanging by a thread and as a consequence sort of became Straussians; integrating Dorne was a “national project” to lend unity to the realm in precisely the same way forcing democracy on Iraq was intended to unify America under the Neocon vision, while the Blackfyre Rebellions were a perfect excuse for the mid-late Targaryens to establish a police state under Dick Cheney of Westeros Brynden “Bloodraven” Rivers, who almost singlehandedly prolonged the realm’s unity nearly a century by leveraging magic every bit as powerful as dragons from the Ice side of that eponymous binary.
Then Egg dismantled that apparatus in the youthful idealism of his early kingship, discovering only in cynical old age after decades of tedious Crusader Kings bullshit that sometimes even Cheney has a point. Which of course is why at Summerhall he almost certainly attempted to bring back dragons by barbecuing a newborn Rhaegar but sorry I’m losing the plot.
The crucial takeaway is the Maesters are big fat liars the same as everyone else, with their own agenda and prejudices and collective interests. Yet Westerosi history is filtered mostly through frames of their choosing, with the only real exceptions of note being an ephemeral oral culture of minstrel songs (which tbh are quite powerful, but also don’t have a lot of staying power), family myth, and poopbutt fishwife gossip.
And so when reading one of GRRM’s fake histories written by a Maester your default assumption should always be a historiography canonizing anyone pro-Maester while demonizing or embarrassing anyone anti-Maester (or just anyone who codes as such by dint of opposing someone pro-Maester). You should also note this won’t be super obvious half the time because A) the Maesters are writing in large part for an audience of aristocrats with staunchly different values; and B) it’s trivial for a stuffy academic to come off as unbiased when the points of contention are circumstantial or higher order—particularly when anyone incentivized to challenge him will usually be a lot less verbally sophisticated and more often than not scarcely literate. Every now and then a Tyrion or Stannis might come along to play gadfly, but unlike modern academics the Maesters don’t have an enormous cadre of journalists and dissident intellectuals to hold their feet to the fire, which makes it quite a lot easier to spin self-serving purdies.
Which isn’t to take up the Dale Gribble position that the Maesters have zero genuine commitment to intellectual honesty, or that they’re some kind of monolith capable of executing Stalinist purges of history regarding shit everyone knows to have gone the other way without inciting dissent from inside and out. They’re not writing A People’s History of the United States here so much as a mainstream historian’s civics textbook for fifth graders that flattens anyone liberal academics don’t like in a way conservative parents will find annoying but usually can’t deconstruct neatly without also sounding deranged or retarded unless they’re specifically a lawyer or Ben Shapiro or something.
Anyway the thing about Aegon IV is that unlike his bastard Daemon Blackfyre he doesn’t really have a natural constituency of defenders the Maesters need to appease by not turning him into an undignified cartoon—in fact he actually serves as Sin Eater in some sense for the entire Blackfyre Project, his infamous deathbed legitimization of all his bastards paving the way for Daemon to present himself as vaguely Arthurian instead of as some opportunist shitheel rogue. Because he was legitimate even the most schoolmarmish of Westerosi aren’t able to simply flatten Daemon, and instead will think of him as a tragic or misguided antihero almost preordained to rise against the throne given his father’s overt acts of sabotage. And so the Blackfyre narrative gets purified, but only at the totalistic expense of Aegon’s own historic legacy, since instead of a somewhat rapier Viserys I he’s now the guy who incited a century of civil war.
…all of which Aegon IV knew would happen, of course.
Because the man had a knack for narrative, and in fact was rather obsessed with it—so much so that in a very real sense his reign from 172 to 184 AC is best understood as an extended piece of performance art, with that deathbed legitimization his denouement.
Aegon actively desired to be seen as the Worst King Ever, and basically succeeded in that despite his 12 years of governance mostly having been a big fat nothingburger, with even the Blackfyre Rebellions he enabled being far less brutal than the Dance.
Yeah, of course they lasted longer—but if anything that was a net positive for the realm given that they also served as a real force for geographic unity by inducing practically every Second House in Westeros to plot against its Lord Paramount, which in turn offered Bloodraven exactly the pretext he needed to establish his Dick Cheney feudal police state (an Anticipation, no doubt, of Bran’s rule-by-CCTV).
And that part I’m less sure was intentional—but who knows? Aegon was a bright pup, and like I said very much a narrative thinker, so it’s not out of the question that he was animated by his own rather darker Straussian vision for Westerosi unity.
Ultimately though I suspect the man was a solipsist above all else—only not in that unconscious Boomer way. It was very deliberate; ran ideological, even philosophical.
Aegon IV was a smart and sensitive boy who dedicated his reign to Performing Evil—in part to not be seen as Weak (a far worse sin in a polity of feudal oligarchs), in part to cope with deep-seated childhood trauma, in part just for shits and giggles, and in part as a sophisticated poetic statement intended as an operatic act of defiance and cosmic retribution for a lifetime of betrayal and gaslighting from his closest kin.
Familial Context
Let’s take a step back at this point and consider the familial context that shaped Prince Aegon IV’s early childhood.
His father was Viserys II—younger brother and Hand to King Aegon III, who at the time of Aegon’s birth circa 135 AC was in the final year of his regency.
Note Viserys himself had only just been recovered to the realm, having spent much of his childhood presumed dead in Westeros while in fact thriving in the Free City of Lys as a “guest” of the mighty Rogare clan, who at the time controlled a merchant bank every bit as powerful as the Iron Bank Of Braavos.
The Rogares had been generous to Viserys, providing the lad not just protection and hospitality but also a sexy big tiddy Rogare wife named Larra seven years his senior—clearly a super hot Straight Shota situation that ultimately yielded Aegon IV shortly into Viserys’s first year back in Westeros and thirteenth year of life.
Now obviously I’m being kind of shit-eating here, but contextually this point actually is salient because by modern standards Aegon IV’s mom kinda sorta groomed his dad.
Which I’m not one to put too fine a point on, since generally I feel male teenagers banging older women is perfectly kosher and even kind of cool, but Viserys would have been mid-pubescent when they consummated that marriage with like a squeaky voice and chicken legs and shit. That’s hebephilia not even ephebophilia, which idk.
Cause don’t get me wrong I myself would have torn the ever-loving shit out of 20yo puss back when I was 13—like, no questions asked—and for sure would have called you a humongous faggotron if you asked me if I felt “traumatized” by it. But it also would have been pretty trivial for her to manipulate me by e.g. arbitrarily withholding sex or gaslighting me post-facto about aggression she obviously solicited not having been consensual or randomly crying when I’m feeling cuddly or implying I’m kind of a fag in a way she finds totes adorbs obv! but also makes me want to show off for her by killing people—the kind of shit girls can pull in your first relationship or three but a feller typically just learns to ignore over time. But machinations like that will always soar completely over the head of even the canniest middle schooler, as the super hot Margaery / Tommen scenes in Season 4 are clearly intended to demonstrate.
Anyway all that being said Viserys also kind of strikes me as the sort of precocious young buck who’d bang Larra in a mildly aggressive way and then make fun of her in public while calling anyone who defends her a simp. Not even because Viserys himself was an asshole, understand—he was just a really unsentimental fuck who as a 7yo had watched his big bro get murked in one of the largest naval battles in Westerosi history before himself getting kidnapped by pirates and dragged off to Lys.
Speaking of—let’s talk a bit about Lys.
It sits on a lush fertile island south-southeast of Westeros roughly halfway to Volantis. Like the other Free Cities its genesis was Valyrian, and unlike the much-miscegenated Bravos and Pentos seems to have basically stayed that way, remaining by all accounts the purest stock of Valyrian blood left in GRRM’s world. That means the Lyseni look and feel and act quite a lot more “foreign” to the Andals of Westeros compared to e.g. the Braavosi who are seen like an Englishman might see an Italian, whereas even Lys’s peasants carry that ethereal Valyrian phenotype while the Lysene nobility practice a purity eugenics so severe it’s made them the most gorgeous people on the planet—so much so an Andal might well see them as “more Targ than the Targs themselves.”
Overall Lys is written as perfection gone curdled, its paradise climate and sobriquet Lys the Lovely standing in rather stark contrast to the fact that its economy literally specializes in the export of sex slaves—both foids of all ages and especially young boys.
In general Lys is meant to creep you out.
Only that creepiness arises from a place of dissonance, because in addition to being among the rapiest places on Planetos it also seems Lys is easily one of its most feminist—a kind of ancap hooker state that lets even captured sex slaves like Johanna Swan and psycho BPD fallen women like Saera Targaryen rise to wealth, glory, and prominence.
Which it turns out isn’t dissonant in the slightest once you’ve learned anything at all about women and feminine power—that deep and inexorable opacity, how weakness transforms to strength, how perfect consent is impossible while rape itself can lend women immense power through narrative control of masculine retributive fury… all of these things and more would have been basic everyday knowledge to Lyseni men in a way they probably wouldn’t have been anywhere else in Planetos except perhaps Dorne and maybe Volantis.
Now do you remember the name of that poison that smoked Jon Arryn—Tears of Lys? Or that famous line Cersei has about how tears are a woman’s weapon? Long story short Lys is all about feminine-coded danger: the poison in a chalice; words; hole.
It’s the danger you think is eternally on your side—even want to protect—but which always remains tragically illegible and drifting as a matter of basic self-protection.
Which means the men of Lys wouldn’t instantly Believe Women the instant they play the victim—particularly when the ubiquity of pederasty would have left them just as exposed to early childhood sexualization as their girls peers (if not more so), such that they’re a lot more aware of what it’s like on the other side of that dynamic.
So did Viserys himself get buggered?
Almost certainly not—if only because even as a kid the dude was ridiculously cunning and tenacious and would know how to use his name to protect himself. But it would have been a constant possibility he was aware of—his big bros would have joked about what happens to boys in those pillow houses, and Viserys 100% would have been casually sexualized in everyday conversation from the first instant he arrived there, which conjoined to Lysene hooker feminism would have given him an unsentimental and clear-eyed attitude towards women, while his own lowkey hebephilic marriage likely wouldn’t have registered as all that weird to him at all by the time it happened.
But even if Viserys’s sensibilities had become vaguely Lysene he himself would never be one of them, while for her part Larra probs just saw him as some dumb kid her dad was making her fuck. Amidst their first years together she likely would have been able to run circles around him while freely getting her needs met elsewhere if desired—though I’d hazard not quite so long as expected given that Viserys was a cunning little shit who was always bound to surpass her post-pubescence. The situation rather evokes Newt Gingrich, who as a teenager married his high school geometry teacher Jackie Battley only to divorce her after she came down with uterine cancer just as he was coming into power and craved a bit of steamy young Marianne Ginther puss.
Anyway let’s talk about what went down between Viserys and Larra.
The year of Aegon IV’s birth is often called the Lyseni Spring because during the initial honeymoon period after Viserys’s restoration the crown got in hot and heavy with the Rogares as part of the prince’s return treaty. Aegon’s regents sent a Lys a ransom so generous the Hand of the King Unwin Peake resigned in protest, also shifting funds from the Iron Bank to the Rogare Bank and admitting an entourage of Larra’s people to court, which included a sizeable retinue of armed guards plus some enterprising brothers who opened a pillow house smack dab in the middle of King’s Landing.
And at first it all seemed uncomplicatedly great—trade with the Free Cities rapidly increased in volume and all of Westeros began to prosper as a result. The issue is the Rogares were now the single most powerful faction at court, which isn’t an especially great place to be as a foreigner in Westeros—particularly if you’re too mercantile.
Honestly apart from their flamboyantly Aryan phenotype the Lysenis and especially Rogares are astonishingly Jew-coded, being a haughty race of paradoxically pluralistic and insular merchants a bit too horny for their own good who’ll never fit in because they follow a weirdo foreign religion and have totally different values while looking just similar enough to feel familiar and just different enough to seem a bit uncanny.
Moreover it’s hot to think of Larra having big huge Khazar milkers.
But anyway like all good Jews the Rogares were kind of annoying, and as such ended up as scapegoats the instant shit turned sour, which occurred for them just after the Spring thanks to their equally Jewish pastime of getting bullied by Italians. Once Braavos sent the Faceless Men after Rogare leadership it was kind of just anudda Shoah for them, instantly precipitating a run on their bank that forced the Rogares back home to sell hole while leaving the ones off in chud-coded Westeros with basically nowhere safe to run once the goyim started Noticing.
Unwin Peake saw an opportunity, and being his generation’s Chud De Jure in charge of the Reach’s primary Bad Guy House obviously chose to take it. Dude orchestrated a secret putsch trying to arrest Larra and her brothers, which immediately failed quite miserably thanks to the determination and solidarity of Aegon and Viserys and is only notable because during said putsch they tortured the new Hand (himself something of a scapegoat at that point) into admitting he’d been scheming with the Jews/Rogares to assassinate Aegon and install Viserys on the throne—a story precisely no one believed after Mushroom got him to admit to loads of other crimes. Seems they just broke him.
Or at least that’s the official story.
Anyway the perpetrators of the putsch were all punished shortly thereafter—as were Larra’s brothers, one of whom got whipped and the other of whom lost a hand since the many lords impoverished by that bank run sorely needed a scapegoat.
But after that life went on basically as before for everyone but Larra, who never again felt safe in King’s Landing. After siring a spare and wife for Aegon—respectively Aemon (later called the Dragonknight) and Naerys—she separated from Viserys and returned to Lys, where she died of unknown causes half a decade later.
When she abandoned him Aegon was four years old.
But before we dig into that aspect I’d like to return to that Official Story about the Rogare plot to replace Aegon with Viserys being bogus because the Hand Lord Rowan was just too insane from torture to keep his story straight. The way Mushroom tells this with Rowan confessing to killing Viserys I and causing the Doom of Valyria honestly feels way too cute and cinematic—almost like something out of Harry Potter—which to me reads as a pretty decent indication something isn’t on the up and up.
So let’s just ask cui bono?
Note it’s specifically Viserys who “discovers” that Rowan is simply torturebabbling, which first off this is a retarded thirteen year old and what the fuck does he know about that, and second the kid has a pretty fucking obvious incentive to cover for his wife (or just engage in the kind of slimy motivated reasoning basically any clever 13yo boy would fall into amidst such circumstances), whether out of love or lust or simply the fact that Larra was pregnant with Aemon when all this was going down—a motive that seems doubly strong when you recall Viserys himself is sort of implicated by dint of being the dude who was supposed to replace Aegon following the assassination.
Note also that it’s specifically Mushroom—a master wordsmith and rhetorician—who cajoles Rowan into confessing all that shit. Thing is Mushroom has a pretty excellent incentive to protect Viserys since he himself is an outsider who he clearly aligns with the young prince in temperament, and wouldn’t want to see him endangered and his wife murked given he’s still half a child and the Rogares are at this point powerless.
My guess is that the Rogare plot was very real and Thaddeus being a huge mangina even before he was tortured—the text makes it very clear how weak and generally disrespected he was—essentially got coerced into participating by the Rogare bros through some Fargo-coded tincture of flattery, financial integration, and blackmail (mayhaps with Rogare hookers?), which being a Nice Guy Thaddeus didn’t understand as a threat until it was kind of just too late to back out.
Then the putsch happens and Thaddeus starts squealing like a pig, which Viserys is able to obviate with a spirited and unfalsifiable 13yo boy assertion Mushroom then instantly reifies with a theatrical act of sophistry and force of will, producing a story the Maesters tidy up because it neatly resolves the Lysene Spring narrative.
Then at the trial Larra weeps as the Rogare bros are punished—no doubt in part because Aegon and Viserys know perfectly well they were involved in some kind of shady bullshit—but they’re subsequently let go because at this point their faction is a hollow threat while Larra is starting to withhold puss and cry 24/7 so as to groom her child-hubby into shielding her kin (remember this is exactly what Marg does to Tommen in GoT). This is a problem Aegon would rather just make go away for Viserys given A) the entire conspiracy is still plausibly deniable; B) he trusts his little bro implicitly and knows he’d never participate in some weird gay foreign Jew conspiracy to murder him and steal the throne.
Note that nobody even has to lie here or even act in bad faith (other than the Rogare bros, who the text already suggests are huge pieces of shit); really all you need is a straight shotamaxxed 13yo and high verbal IQ midget leveraging frame control to keep everyone aligned with their own entirely understandable motivated reasoning.
The real mystery I’d say is just how involved Larra was in the plot.
If you ask me? She was vaguely aware… but also utterly tangential in her involvement a la Ethel Rosenberg. I picture her wryly alluding to shit with her brothers in playful Lys-tier coded speech while also never feeling any need to stick her nose in.
Women like her seldom need to.
As for her separation from Viserys? There’s clearly some weight to the official story of her feeling culturally/religiously/ethnically isolated and discriminated against but nah fam I don’t fucking buy it.
First off she probably had more enemies in Lys at this point than in Westeros, and going home almost certainly just meant having to suck some old fat guy’s cock or something, and are we seriously to believe Viserys was so much worse than that?
To such an extent, moreover, that she’d abandon her three young children over it—not even mentioning a pretty decent chance at becoming queen one day?
Sorry, not fucking buying it. To my mind there are basically three possibilities here:
1) Viserys stops being thirteen and has his Newt Gingrich Moment re: Larra grooming him into overlooking her brothers’ assassination plot against his, and either he exiles her or she runs away before he can react.
2) It turns out some of the peasant rumors about Larra are true. Maybe she does go to brothels and happens to worships that one Lyseni tranny god because she’s ackshully a lesbo or something. Or maybe it’s darker given all those rumors about her abducting kids—which yeah seem kind of deranged and chud-coded but don’t forget she’s one of the few characters we can point to as definitely having had sex with a middle schooler. Either way, this precipitates a separation from her direction or Viserys’s and she flees.
3) She’s kind of just a selfish cunt and leaves for Reasons. But idk I don’t really buy this given it’s kind of weird she’d stay as long as she did (although maybe Viserys agreed to allow it after an heir, spare, and wife for Aegon).
At any rate whichever of these we choose it’s all just speculation; ultimately Larra’s decision to leave Westeros is kind of just a mystery—as illegible as the rest of her, which is likely half her point as a character (which to some extent GRRM even highlights overtly by noting she never bothered to learn the Common Tongue).
One interesting tidbit about her I do remember though is that at one point Mushroom says Larra enjoyed crying more than laughing—which yeah might just be a Woman Joke but that’s not my read at least.
It actually seems like one of the more pivotal aspects of her character given that the dame was likely facilitating an entire ass assassination scheme against an underage monarch but managed to get away scot free because she deployed the strongest weapons of women—pussy, tears, and plausible deniability—against her preteen hostage husband, and as a consequence gets to be remembered by history mostly as the victim of racism or w/e literally because she cried a lot (probably beautifully tbf).
Anyway the upshot here is that Larra is opaque to us because she was opaque to Aegon, who unlike Aemon and Naerys was old enough when she left for Lys to retain vague primordial images of her—memories that would establish the question of why he was so Unworthy of even a mother’s love as the defining mystery of his life.
Aegon the Boy
When assessing Aegon IV’s character it’s essential to keep in mind that basically all his issues—most palpably with women—originate in this core abandonment wound.
Without an unconditional mother’s love it’s far harder to feel genuinely secure in life. You just don’t have that fundamental sense of being “enough,” which makes you tend to overcompensate—a trait clearly present in Aegon’s siblings Aemon (obsessed with fulfilling the ideal of a noble knight e.g. masculinity as redemptive self-sacrifice) and Naerys (consumed by religious devotion and piety e.g. femininity as self-annihilation).
Note how each sublimates their trauma instead of externalizing it a la Aegon; that’s because their trauma was qualitatively distinct from his in that they grew up without a mother from the start while Aegon would have recalled at least in broad strokes the texture of her voice and smell and moods—or if nothing else at least the day she left, which given his age at the time may well have been Aegon’s first permanent memory.
Note this happened at an age where his cognition was only just starting to settle into a theory of mind and understanding of causality, both of which remained half-baked. He would have had the basic notion that other people exist with their own thoughts and feelings and that the actions of one person influence another, but he would have filtered it all through the solipsistic frame of a toddler; on a deeply visceral level there was no way for Larra’s abandonment NOT to feel like his fault in some way.
Meanwhile Aegon wouldn’t have had any soft modern child psychologists to ensure he processes those Big Feelings in a way that doesn’t cause the deaths of many thousands of people. And that was kind of a big problem given there weren’t really any aunties in the wings keen to play ersatz mom, while Viserys himself never showed any interest in marrying again (mb he was molested in Lys actually who tf knows?) and it’s not as though Viserys himself could show his son that sort of love in a medieval stratocracy. Even if he wanted to the dude was only thirteen years older than Aegon which means in practice it would have all felt a bit Precious-coded.
It’s instructive here I think to compare Aegon to two other characters GRRM calls self-inserts (I assume he does with Aegon as well in private but no Boomer will ever publicly acknowledge the existence of his private rape opera). I’m speaking of course of Sam and Tyrion, both of whom are also clever sensitive boys with maternal wounds.
Sam’s wound was being coddled and overprotected by his mother from an early age in a manner that psychically castrated him in a world where a man needs his masculinity to not get eaten. Sam’s mother knew perfectly well what sort of man she’d wed—that he’d never in a million years let his son become a maester or septon. She understood the Sword of Damocles hanging over Sam’s head. But she still let him climb under her skirts and become a big fat pussy with no chance of surviving Westerosi adolescence.
Let’s not equivocate—this is severe maternal abuse and in a sense real abandonment, and if Jon hadn’t been there at the Wall to protect Sam and harden him up he almost certainly have gotten raped and beaten and driven to suicide by the worst of Watch.
Note Sam’s mother could have forbid him from playing with girls and forced him to go outside to get hurt at a younger and more plastic age. Instead she stuck her head in the sand for years, which was entirely her choice—especially given that in some sense it’s precisely because she married a sadistic brute she’s able to act like the boy’s advocate while letting his father make all the tough decisions, which in a martial clan like Tarly sometimes means culling weak heirs. All her kindness ever amounted to really was fattening Sam up like a pig for the slaughter—a tack likely culminating in a histrionic eruption of tears and whimpers over her baby’s pitiless fate while his sire and butcher triumphantly shreds her enormous crimson pussy to a swollen and agonized catharsis, which allows her to feel like the chief victim here when it’s actually Sam getting culled.
And for all Aegon’s maternal wound genuinely ruined his life, it was at least much better than that. Viserys II did all that could be asked and more of a single father in his position to ensure his children met or exceeded the societal expectational for their sex—seemingly a wildly successful endeavor when it comes just Aemon and Naerys, who each grew up to inhabit their Westerosi sex roles almost like a glove.
As did Aegon—sort of.
As a youth the prince was immensely well-rounded: the cleverest and most verbally adroit prince at court, handsome as they come, talented with lance and sword, and able to hawk, hunt, and dance with the best of them. Think a young Henry VIII.
That or perhaps what Tyrion might have been like had he not been a midget?
It’s not at all unthinkable. Consider for a moment the eerie similarity of their arcs.
Tyrion is eternally haunted by having killed his mother in childbirth—though with him it’s cause Tywin overtly blames him for it. But there’s the same deep and abiding sense of himself as a monster; something unlovable by design. Then for a brief moment of transcendence that idea is disrupted, first by Tysha and many years later by Shae… until his father smashes both of those relationships to bits, which as we’ll soon discover closely mirrors Aegon’s arc with Merry Meg in more ways than one.
Key takeaway here is that both Tyrion and Aegon are self-consciously performative and see life in terms of narrative beats, which means they both preempt rejection through strategic frame control and specifically the tactic of Agree And Amplify—think Tyrion to Jon on bastardry “wear it like armor, and it will never be used to hurt you.” That’s exactly what Aegon does with Unworthyness later in his reign; to picture what it looks like consider the chapter of ADWD where Tyrion rapes that hooker, except instead of a drunk midget it’s a 700 lbs dopamine addict who smells like shit.
They also share a paternal / fraternal wound—which in Tyrion actually haunts him quite a lot more than the ghost of his mother. He rather understandably feels outdone and dominated by other men at basically every turn, which really curdles in the case of both Tysha and Shae, each of which serves to corroborate every paranoid doomcasting spiral that’s ever kept him up at night—he can’t protect his woman when it counts; anyone who says she likes him is faking it and just after his gold; any woman who comes into his orbit will get pulled away by guys with just as much status and power but none of the four feet tall; there’s no reliable way to decipher a woman’s intentions or trust in the veracity of anything she says; whereas as a dwarf even if he does pull a broad who isn’t a whore it’s going to be asymmetric and changeable and vulnerable to hypergamy simply as self-preservation. Dude’s sort of just cooked.
Meanwhile with Aegon it’s the opposite. He has a paternal wound for sure, but it’s not quite as intense as Tyrion’s and only starts to get really visible in his middle teen years. Viserys may have been a mean fuck after Larra left, but from start to finish he was always orders of magnitude less abusive than Tywin.
Whereas those mommy issues are just a fucking black hole… and actually exacerbated by the fact that Aegon’s sort of a chad in his youth because he can’t flatten his problems into being short like Tyrion or fat like Sam; he has basically nothing wrong with him.
Except for being like fourth or fifth in the line of succession. And also his little bro is on track to be the single greatest knight in the realm whereas Aegon is like… Good.
Where Aegon actually excels is in the same realm as Tyrion: superb verbal intelligence—per the text he’s the “brightest prince at court” who “dazzles lords with his wit.”
Now I myself tend to read that as Aegon having been the tryhard always raising his hand to ask Insightful Questions… but I also imagine him doing this in a genuinely artful way, as given his lack of maternal love he sorely needed to feel Special so as to distinguish himself as more than just another unimportant Cadet Branch NPC—which to his credit it seems he basically achieved by becoming a bit of a theater kid even by Targaryen standards.
This performativity was surely influenced at least in part by his mom’s Lysene affect; pretty much all the Free Cities are a little bit gay and Jewy but Lys especially so, and I wouldn’t be surprised if as a young boy Aegon spoke and moved in a register that read as weirdly sensual and emotionally charged to his male peers.
This would have been filed off with age given the absence of Lyseni at court, and the text doesn’t indicate that Aegon or his siblings suffered hostility for being Mischlings, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if even in later years Aegon retained a certain fluidity and easiness about sex role performance and subtextual communication which conjoined to his macho exterior made him both irresistible to women before he weighed 900 lbs and kind of annoying to other men who couldn’t grok the appeal.
Which brings us at last to Aegon’s various dalliances with the fairer sex.
Aegon’s Women
Aegon claimed in his final years to have slept with over 900 women in total over the course of his life, while only loving 9 of them.
His wife and sister Naerys was not one of them—and neither was Daena the Defiant, mother of the famous pretender Daemon Blackfyre.
My suspicion is Aegon chose these nine trying to mythopoetically craft a narrative that makes some meager sense of his love life, and that each was chosen for a reason. In the sections below I’ll assess all nine in detail (plus Naerys and Daena) and try my best to hammer something out.
But to help us keep track here is a chronological listing of all eleven women:
149-151 AC: Falena Stokeworth
151-179 AC: Naerys Targaryen
155-159 AC: Megette (“Merry Meg”)
158-161 AC: Cassella Vaith
161-171 AC: Bellegere Otherys
Just 171 AC: Daena Targaryen
171-172 AC: Barba Bracken
172-177 AC: Melissa (“Missy”) Blackwood
177-178 AC: Bethany Bracken
Just 178 AC: Jeyne Lothston
180-184 AC: Serenei of Lys
Note the chronology of Daena and Serenei are speculative—details to follow.
Timeline
Here’s a consolidated account of the same eleven alongside the era’s major political beats—strongly recommend copying this into a notepad doc to access going forward.
135 AC - Birth of Aegon IV to Prince Viserys II (13) and Larra Rogare (20)
136 AC - Birth of Aegon’s bro Aemon “the Dragonknight”
138 AC - Birth of Aegon’s sis and wife Naerys
139 AC - Larra Rogare (24) abandons Viserys II (17) and their children
149 AC - Aegon (14) made a man by first love Falena Stokeworth (24).
151 AC - Aegon (16) caught in bed with Falena (26) by a Kingsguard. Wanting to end it his father and HotK Viserys II (29) marries her off to retainer Lucas Lothston, who is given Harrenhal by Aegon III. Aegon IV keeps visiting Falena at her husband’s keep.
153 AC - Aegon (18) marries Naerys (15), who later that year gives birth to Daeron II. Around this time Aegon stops visiting Falena (28) at Harrenhal.
155 AC - Aegon (20) secretly marries second love Merry Meg.
157 AC - Aegon III dies. Daeron I (14) takes the throne and declares war on Dorne.
158 AC - Aegon (23) takes as mistress third love Cassella Vaith, a Dornish hostage
159 AC - Aegon (24)’s second family with Merry Meg dissolved by Viserys II (37)
161 AC - Daeron I (18) assassinated by Dorne. Aegon (26) abandons Cassella Vaith to Viserys II for execution, though she’s pardoned by Daemon’s brother Baelor I (17), who also dissolves his own marriage to sis Daena (16), locking her in the Maidenvault. Naerys (23) miscarries so to “protect her from Aegon” Viserys II sends him to Braavos, where Aegon begins an off-and-on with black tomboy fourth love Bellegere Otherys.
164 AC - Jeyne Lothston is born.
170 AC - Daena (25) escapes the Maidenvault a third and final time and gets knocked up by Aegon (35), before later that year giving birth to Daemon Blackfyre
171 AC - Baelor (27) starves to death and Viserys II takes the throne.
172 AC - Viserys II dies. Aegon IV (37) inherits and for HotK appoints Lord Bracken, whose daughter Barba (17) becomes Aegon’s fifth love and public mistress. Morgil Hastwyck killed in a duel for “slander” against Naerys by the Dragonknight, who also defends her honor in a tourney as Knight of Tears. Later that year Barba gives birth to Bittersteel and Naerys almost dies giving birth to Daenerys. Then the Hand is heard angling to replace her with Barba, so Aemon and Daeron have the Brackens ejected and Aegon quickly replaces her with his sixth love Missy Blackwood.
174 AC - Aegon (39) attempts to conquer Dorne; builds a huge fleet a la Daeron I but it ends up broken and scattered by storms while his draconic siege engines explode in the kingswood and kill hundreds of people. The invasion is called off.
175 AC - (year is conjecture because this could have happened any point before 178)
177 AC - Missy herself is replaced by seventh love Bethany Bracken, but Aegon (42) is fat and mean now so Bethany begins an affair with Kingsguard Terrence Toyne.
178 AC - Aegon (43) catches Bethany abed with Toyne and kills them and her father. Toyne’s brothers attempt to avenge him but are stopped by the Dragonknight (42), who himself dies in the line of duty. Eighth love Jeyne Lothston (14) brought to court and is briefly the king’s mistress until he gives her a pox caught from a hooker.
179 AC - After Naerys (41) dies in childbirth Aegon (44) begins openly implying that Daeron II (26) is illegitimate—the bastard son of Naerys and the Dragonknight.
180 AC - Aegon takes ninth love Serenei of Lys as his mistress, though she later dies giving birth to Shiera Seastar (date is conjecture as the timeline is unclear with her).
182 AC - Aegon knights Daemon Blackfyre (12) and formally recognizes him as son.
184 AC - Aegon IV dies bedridden and infected by fleshworms. In his last moments legitimizes all of his bastards. Daeron II (31) takes the throne.
Alright let’s rock and roll.
Falena Stokeworth
According to Aegon she popped his cherry in 149 AC when he was 14 and she 24.
Their affair at court lasted two years, until in 151 a Kingsguard caught them abed together. Viserys II then married her off to Lucas Lothston, his master-at-arms, and cajoled his brother into giving him Harrenhal… where Aegon IV apparently paid her frequent visits over the next two years (which stopped, it seems, once he wed Naerys).
Kind of a funny image, that—imagine being a lord doing lord things and then one day some shit-eating 17yo shows up like yo I’m here to fuck your wife.
Also kind of interesting that GRRM made it Harrenhal specifically.
The haunted castle.
Feels poetic in the sense that Lord Lothston who received it was getting a bit of a booby prize on two levels… and also in that Aegon’s sexuality already had something of a haunted vibe given that maternal wound, and we all know what happened after.
Yeah you see what I’m getting at here. So let’s just address the elephant in the room: are we supposed to see Falena as a Groomer?
I mean, the suggestion’s clearly there; she’s introduced as Ten years older than the king like it’s the single most important thing about her, plus we already know that Aegon’s going into this thing with a deep maternal abandonment wound oft seen in the type of guys who chase after older women, and we’re already a bit sensitive to straight shota age gaps given what went down with Viserys and Larra.
Which speaking of Viserys, his reaction is itself a bit weird—when your son is literal royalty wouldn’t it be normal for him to take a minor noblewoman as mistress? Sure Aegon’s young, but by the time they catch him he’s sixteen and that’s not even illegal in most parts of our world. Seems to me the modal Westerosi lord would have been like “heh, that’s my boy!” and just let him have at it. There’s no political danger there obliging Viserys to spend political capital restoring the honor of House Stokeworth.
I suppose Falena could have acted super weepy about it when they got caught and claim to have been “dishonored,” that Aegon pressured her etc. trying to obligate Viserys to make it right. She needed a husband soon and might have been engineering a situation where the most convenient way to bury a scandal is exactly how Viserys ends up handling it. But it had also been going on for two years by that point, and royal concubine for sure beats lady of a rando castle so I don’t think Falena intended to get caught at all. Playing the victim would be a desperate pivot Viserys would never take seriously given his own experiences and the length of the affair.
Which is why I doubt Falena even tried it—especially since Aegon kept visiting her after. I think she genuinely wanted to stay on as royal concubine and that would have been seen as maybe a little weird if they were caught when Aegon was only 14 but at 16 it would just make Aegon seem like a cougar-chasing chad. By Westerosi standards Viserys overreacted and looks kind of like an ultraconservative fuddy-duddy.
My read is that Viserys was motivated by a few competing impulses.
On one hand he was protective of his son in basically the same way a modern eighth grade boy’s father would be if he found out his son was porking teach, because at this point he was looking back at the way Larra had played him when he was young and horny only to abandon them once he was old enough to call her out on her bullshit.
On the other hand Viserys was only 29 at the time, making Falena three years his junior. Which in part would only amplify the moralistic / protective angle… but is it really so insane to see a bit of intrasexual competition in this situation? Especially when your own sexual identity is at this point probs intractably tied up in banging older women?
These days people have kids so late your dad feels like grandpa half the time, which makes it easy to forget why Oedipus Rex used to sting—it wasn’t that long ago every guy’s dad was an energetic and virile man Who Fucks and your high school gf lowkey finds hotter than you. These days fellers think about the day they can beat their dad up, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it used to be the day women find you hotter than him, which on the other side must have felt like shit. These days parental age gaps are big enough that no man feels sexually competitive with his son unless he’s an insecure weirdo, but a couple centuries ago that dynamic must have been everywhere.
Consider how toxic Tyrion and Tywin got. Some of that was transparent projection stemming from Tywin’s own paternal wound over Tytos’s whoring and insecurity, but just as much was naked sexual jealousy towards the creature who’d ripped apart and murdered his own beautiful wife even the king was jealous over now swaggering around and showing off paid pussy while Tywin’s trying to project an image of dignified restraint. That resentment is pretty obviously why he fucked Shae.
Now Viserys II reads as a much more levelheaded and reasonable feller than Tywin, but the age gap with Aegon IV is also quite a lot smaller.
The Falena affair would have woken Viserys up to the idea of Aegon as a sexual being, at which point he’d realize Aegon is already bigger and stronger and more charming than him at precisely the point in life folks generally start to realize aging will actually happen to them. Pretty much no 29yo man is going to say “heh, that’s my boy!” and slap his teenage son on the back for fucking a 26yo like a dude in his late thirties or forties might. Throw in the fact that having been raised in Lys he’s much less disposed to instinctively desexualize boys and you have the makings of something quite nasty.
Which to be clear doesn’t mean his protective feelings aren’t legit; they likely account for a good 40% of Viserys’s actions here given he himself is unusually attuned to the downside risk of this particular dynamic, and more than other dads will be cognizant of how Falena could manipulate Aegon into doing something tarded for his long-term interests like impulsively marrying a girl from a shitty family no one cares about.
But it’s exactly akin to when moms these days get pissy about their daughter dating an older guy. Her daughter still remembers the day she got hotter than her mom, and can feel in her teeth the salty catty Mothel Gothel resentment behind her perimenopausal words of wisdom. The instant you have even 1% self-serving jealousy literally every adolescent mind will think they’re a genius for sleuthing it out while dismissing all of the real protective sentiments alongside it as bad faith ankle-biting garbage.
Which means Aegon’s take here is 100% that his dad is a jealous stinky incel—and also a hypocrite because didn’t he marry mom at like, 12? Honestly it’s no wonder she left…dour codger couldn’t keep a woman around like *I* can! Clearly the geriatric faggot is just butthurt she chose me over him. Which naturally Falena will play into talking about all the times she caught Viserys staring, which Aegon will proceed to take completely at face value because he’s sixteen, and there’s the seed of your rivalry.
That said it’s important to note Viserys never stopped Aegon from visiting Harenhal to cuck Lord Lothston. Which on some level makes sense—the damage she can do to him is curbed quite a lot if she’s another man’s wife—and he also probably realized it looks bad to police Aegon too severely here (in my headcanon Aegon uses the “this is why she left” line which shatters Viserys’s paternal love and makes him disengage).
Anyway the fact that Aegon continues visiting Harenhal from 16-18 is itself pretty significant IMO, as it proves he actually did love her in an unusually intense way. Teenagers are fickle as shit, and if he just wanted a bedmate he could easily find a chambermaid or lady-in-waiting his own age or just slightly older—especially now that he was Experienced and would no doubt derive a lot of aura from having lost it to an adult noblewoman instead of a hooker or rando common wench, which is surely how it happened for most feudal aristocrats. In a world with power differentials this big you don’t really get incels so much as chambermaid-fuckers.
But speaking of—wouldn’t you think that’s how it would have happened with Aegon?
At least when I was reading about Falena my first thought was 14 is actually kind of old for a kid like Aegon to lose his virginity given the insane sex addiction we see in him later, which is typically associated with boys who get sexualized early in life e.g. by getting hooked on porn before developing a pubescent sex drive—think Kanye West. But in a medieval setting you obviously don’t get much porn worth looking at, which sort of behooves us to consider the alternative possibility which is that Aegon was molested much earlier than Falena.
Obviously it’s possible but there’s no evidence to that effect so I don’t see any reason to assume it happened. It’s probably more his mother did weird Lys shit like walk around naked in front of him a bit too long, while his young father raised him with a little too much resentful candor about sex and women and his own weird boyhood experiences in Lys—only to realize quickly if a bit too late that this was a bad fit for Aegon’s inquisitive and boundary-pushing mind and in keeping with the conservatism of his later years veer hard in the opposite direction with Aemon and Naerys. Still from that point Aegon would always retain a certain fascination with his father’s foundational trauma, as well as a self-destructive shadow urge to recreate it.
Anyway if Aegon’s later proclivities were actually something deep in his nature—which the Masters would certainly have us believe, claiming Aegon hit his baby bro with a dragon egg when he was 1 which is almost certainly a mean-spirited lie—we’d probably expect something to happen before 14. Seems to me in this universe waiting for a noblewoman to punch your ticket suggests either an unusually low sex drive, a remarkably gentle nature, or a high disgust impulse, and if we take the Official Story at face value we also have to accept there was a solid year or two wherein Aegon was horny but still not getting laid and being perfectly chivalrous to washerwomen which idk fam doesn’t really give Aegon to me.
Personally my theory is Falena was probably more his seventh or eighth overall but also the first who wasn’t a weird looking smallfolk bih pulled in a linen closet for a mutually unsatisfying tumble she later giggles at him about in the hallway (or just a hooker). Thing is if that’s true Aegon would def Milhouse Didn’t Count his early experiences because his First in the narrative that gets immortalized for posterity kind of needs to be a noble broad he didn’t pay for, and under those conditions 14 is the youngest age that doesn’t sound like he’s just bragging about being molested.
That said there’s an interesting alternative here which is that Aegon didn’t start out a horny little psycho at all but was actually a bit simpy by nature until Falena did groom him... which honestly strikes me as somewhat plausible on reflection, because I feel like if it were the other case GRRM being GRRM would have definitely had the Maesters include tons of pubescent Paula Jones stories recounted as peasant gossip.
So when I say groom am I trying to call Falena a sinister pedophile or something?
Taken in isolation her story doesn’t read that way to me, though it does make her look a tad sleazy. I think she put two and two together and saw Aegon had mommy issues that made him desperate for approval (especially from older women), as well as certain problems with dopamine regulation that made him impulsively chase life’s fleeting pleasures (very easy to imagine Aegon with ADHD or Bipolar Disorder).
And so she made her move—in the way women do: giggling 20% louder at his jokes, smiling more warmly than decorum mandates, sticking around just a moment longer than everyone else in a quiet room. She for sure would let Aegon be the aggressor.
She might have even let him think he was being too pushy—that she’d assumed she wasn’t allowed to say No because he IS the prince after all; competent seductresses understand that getting the most out of a man will usually involve making him feel guilty and horny and flattered all at the same time. They also like to play hot and cold; alternate between love bombing and withdrawal… really what people call “grooming” and what they call “reeling them in” are exactly the same, except the first is when your counterparty has less leverage whether it’s due to age, IQ, money, whatever.
In this instance Falena had age whereas Aegon had institutional power and a penis. Modern society overindexes on the first to a cringe degree, whereas Westeros likely underindexes on it in with boy-woman matches specifically, with Viserys being a rare exception thanks to his unique experience with Larra.
That said if Falena were subjected to a modern tribunal she’d probably think everyone is being hugely unfair and retarded, insisting that as a male royal Aegon clearly had all the power the whole time and was always the one chasing HER; those room overstays proffer lots of plausible deniability. Then assuming you had access to Red Keep CCTV and showed her footage of her glancing at him while sticking around she’d no doubt groan at you and say look man I was just playing The Game same as everyone else, also why you so focused on my bullshit when you literally know what happens to girls the same age in my universe is a jillion times worse. And she’d kind of have a point.
Tho idk... kind of all depends how she went about it IMHO. Because if a minor noblewoman lets a stupid fourteen year old think he raped her and then cries about her prospects being ruined so he keeps wanting to see her and will elevate her to an official concubine that is kind of ice cold… as is deliberately playing mommy to someone that young and damaged to secure your own advancement. Not Cersei evil for sure, but maybe Lysa evil. And like I said, taken in isolation there’s no evidence she was like that; for all we know she was a dumb bimbo a la distant niece Lollys who was naive enough to follow Aegon into a room and consented because Prince only to fall in love after. That’s certainly how she would have sold it to people either way.
Only there’s more to the story that happens later which suggests otherwise.
And that part I’ll leave for then
For now I’ll just say my read is that Falena was an unusually deliberate seductress who probably did knowingly manipulate Aegon—and also that she was the first person in his life who did anything to soothe that maternal wound, feeling guilty for having prodded it to get her claws in. She likely mothered him a great deal, while shaping most of his formative sexual experiences (certainly the meaningful ones), and most of his eccentricities and more peculiar sexual tastes would have first emerged with her.
Note that given the power differential she would have done basically whatever Aegon wanted sexually, whereas her own agency would have shown up mostly in ways that wouldn’t have been legible to him and perhaps not even her. It’s hard to say though because one way she would have asserted power and dignity in this dynamic is by keeping her own agency opaque—to secure her position it’s essential to situationally code switch between conquered woman, cougar initiatrix, and coddling mommy.
Which is the sort of thing women do all the time and would be entirely sexy under most circumstances but when it collides with hard institutional power and Viserys’s hangups and teenage angst it will often mean that to secure her interests Falena needs to pull Aegon’s strings and intermittently make him feel jealous or insecure or guilty—the last of which is bound to give him a hypersensitivity to the games broads play with selective accountability and a very weird relationship with consent. Meanwhile playing Aegon off against his father and deepening his paternal wound would also improve her position, especially amidst their discovery by the Kingsguard
All that said it’s stupid and unfair to flatten Falena into Mary Kay Letourneau or w/e. Realistically this was an intelligent spirited proto-chad royal who would have figured out most of her bullshit during the second half of their relationship and easily been able to neutralize it. Aegon was without question the dominant party by the time he was eighteen and clapping her cheeks in Harrenhal.
Speaking of Harrenhal I rather suspect those visits were a crucial prototype for the prince’s emerging sexuality. Fucking another man’s wife (who you fucked first btw) in his own castle—and not just any castle, but the biggest baddest most haunted castle in Westeros erected by the biggest baddest most evil rapist in the continent’s history—it’s easy to imagine Aegon frolicking in that, maybe LARPing as Harren the Black while he’s inside her.
Something like that just gives you a certain swagger for the rest of your life.
Naerys Targaryen
Aegon married his baby sister Naerys when he was eighteen and she fifteen, per the longstanding Targaryen tradition of betrothing heir to eldest daughter.
Sadly Naerys didn’t really like Aegon, much preferring their middle brother Aemon, with whom it seems she was inseparable from early childhood.
The maesters tell us that Aegon and Aemon quarreled during the wedding, while during the subsequent bedding Naerys wept.
And I personally blame this situation entirely on Viserys, who to my mind really screwed the pooch here in not simply breaking with tradition early on—especially given the fact that his own brother was literally letting all their dragons die.
What the fuck do “Targaryen traditions” even mean anymore without your dragons? At that point you might as well start new traditions, let the compatible siblings wed… or just stop it with the incest altogether given the entire-ass point of that was to facilitate dragon-rearing but ofc GRRM has to keep his fetish going I get it.
Anyway point is Aemon and Naerys were almost like gender-flipped versions of each other, whereas Aegon was spiritually outside their dyad—which tbh makes me wonder if he was ackchully a bastard put in Larra by some rando in Lys given hubs was only 12 at the time plus all of Aegon’s other Tyrion echoes and the whole Joanna/Aerys theory.
Call me schizo but it makes a ton of sense when you read between the lines and notice Viserys II shows a ton of unfair favoritism to Aemon and Naerys and seems to have a weird axe to grind against Aegon. Never quite at the level of Tywin and Tyrion, ofc, but you’ll see the same pattern reoccur several times going forward.
The thing is Viserys has no way to be certain about Aegon. When Larra got pregnant he was fucking her sure but he was also just a stupid kid out of his element and had zero idea who else she could have been seeing. And so there’s an ambiguity there for him, and Aegon has a certain stink on him—a certain Unworthiness.
And I’ll not put too fine a point on that, as unlike with Tywin and Tyrion it seems Viserys genuinely does love Aegon, and must on the whole think he’s legitimate up until the marriage, otherwise he clearly wouldn’t have given him Naerys’s hand.
But still it nags at him.
Whereas for their part I suspect Aemon and Naerys are entirely convinced that Aegon’s a bastard starting in early childhood. Part of that would be simple jealousy—remember they’re too young to remember Larra, and Aegon having had that special connection with her would rankle them. But it’s also a self-serving myth that allows the two of them to create their own private universe wherein Aemon’s the rightful heir and Aegon the monstrous usurper to whom their father promised Naerys’s hand and pussy because he was willfully blind to the fact that he’d been cucked as a preteen.
One can imagine Aemon confronting Viserys about the possibility in his middle teen years and provoking a rage no one else would ever see as Viserys makes Aemon swear on his life to never again speculate against his own blood like that—to follow his own example with Aegon III because their family can’t survive another fucking Dance.
Aemon would never break that vow; he’s an honorable young man with real principles. That said he’s also madly in love with Naerys and no one else (clearly intended as a Jaime parallel following Aegon/Tyrion), and doesn’t seem willing to give that up.
I mean, he did if you’re a credulous tard and believe the Official Story—one of the reasons histories still remember Aemon as the Noblest Knight Who Ever Lived.
Which to me reads as the knight with history’s greatest PR Department.
Aemon feels “mythic” in a way no other figure from this era of Targ history does, and he’s constantly described in all these larger-than-life superlatives when if you actually look at the dude’s hard record it’s objectively less impressive than Selmy or Dayne’s.
Let’s recount his lifetime achievements as part of the Kingsguard:
Took a poison arrow for Daeron I during the Conquest of Dorne, after which he was sent back to King’s Landing to recover a la John Kerry
Came back and won great fame defeating a Dornish champion (one guy?)
When Daeron was killed he was there and apparently killed two of the betrayers before getting captured (I like people who weren’t captured), and hung naked in a crow cage by Wyl of Wyl above a viper pit. Frankly though it’s a bit convenient he didn’t go down fighting and tbh I already suspect Viserys was secretly behind Daeron’s death and had been privately negotiating an end to the war for months. IMO Aemon is treated like an honored guest by Wyl right until Baelor shows up.
When Baelor “saves Aemon from the viper pit” he carries the king to safety on his back naked until a septon on the Boneway gives him clothes and a donkey… which quite frankly I suspect was a huge publicity stunt executed by Viserys to make both Baelor and Aemon look good—probably with Wyl’s active participation but for sure not Baelor’s. All he needs to do is have Wyl fill the pit with snakes whose venom is more a sedative while giving Aemon an antivenom; worst case scenario he’s unconscious a bit, and even if Baelor never wakes up from the coma all that means is Viserys himself is on the Iron Throne.
Kills Morgil Hastwyck (one guy?) when he accuses Naerys of betraying Aegon IV
At some point during Aegon’s reign fights as a mystery knight in a tourney he isn’t allowed to compete in because King Aegon really wants to dub his own mistress Queen of Love and Beauty. But Aemon wins as the Knight of Tears and bestows that distinction unto Naerys.
Dies honorably and secures his place in history as the Best Knight Ever by defending Aegon from the vengeful brothers of Terrence Toyne (two guys?)
Now don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying the dude was Meryn Trant. He strikes me most if anything as a metrosexual Loras Tyrell with shades of Jaime—has the same theater kid swagger as Aegon only directed martially instead of in the bedchamber. He’s performative in a quieter Lancelot way. But there’s clearly also loads of real talent there… just also so much hype that it kind of makes it difficult to appreciate his actual accomplishments, which frankly ARE just less impressive than what we know about from Barristan, Arthur Dayne, and even the Kingslayer himself. And it doesn’t help that his dad’s running the kingdom as Hand basically all of Aemon’s adult life.
Consider also the fact that he wields Dark Sister: the blade of Visenya and Bloodraven and the Rogue Prince. He also fights for Naerys as the Knight of Tears, which in the context of anything Lys-adjacent codes as hidden danger and in anything specifically Larra-adjacent gives performative victimhood as dark femininity.
Aemon isn’t what he seems. Not evil, but gray for sure. Jaime by way of Loras.
Naerys meanwhile is just Tears personified… pretty much every time this bitch pops up in the text she’s crying or Almost Died or is sick with something.
And the chicks reading this are gonna get mad and say I’m being whatever but let me petition those gorgeous maidens to hear me out and ask: have you NEVER in your life known a girl who was somehow ALWAYS the victim no matter the circumstances?
Naerys was born small and sick or whatever, but she also “ate but little” which to a modern ear screams eating disorder and she was apparently always super emaciated. And look, I’ve dated tons of girls like that, I know the way they think and don’t hate them for it, but when I read Naerys what I see is someone who LOVED the idea of being a fragile little waif who was super delicate and cared for. It was part of her identity—probably a consequence of being coddled too long given her small size—and that meant she had an unintegrated shadow that kept her from engaging with her own potential for wickedness except in a LARPy exaggerated zealot way.
Girls like this aren’t “mean,” understand; usually they don’t have a malevolent bone in their body. They’re just sickeningly unagentic and if they’re cute with a high verbal IQ can make everything seem like your fault no matter the situation. Which in practice makes them quite a lot scarier than girls who actually ARE mean because they make everyone else think YOU’RE the mean one, while attracting swarms of credulous and retarded white knights who enable them left and right for the slightest whiff of clam.
Though to be fair I don’t exactly read Aemon as a simp. He just really fetishizes how Small and Frail and Helpless his baby sister is, which causes Naerys to fetishize that herself and always sort of half-consciously perform those things for him in a perpetual ambient feedback loop—the same way she fetishizes how Devoted and Righteous and Enduring he is and he performs those things for her.
Now on its own that’s actually a very cute and wholesome dynamic, which to some extent everyone has with his girlfriend, or at least ought to. Really makes you feel like the only people on earth. Only thing is that also creates a certain solipsism, and royal siblings are kind of the last people who should be thinking that way, since with that level of power / insulation from the world you’re liable to form a sort of codependent narc dyad, which ofc is exactly what we see in the main series with Jaime and Cersei.
Though in fairness Aemon and Naerys sublimate their narcissism into religiosity and perfect adherence to their Westerosi sex roles, whereas with Jaime and Cersei it was all about sniffing each other’s farts and kind of nothing else—in large part because Jaime was too much of a man’s man to take much interest in Cersei’s interiority. Compare that to Aemon who at times feels a little anima possessed.
Like imagine a medieval crusader who’s positively obsessed with just how innocent and pure Mary is and wants to stab the ever-loving shit out of you for it. Only it turns out he’s also having sex with Mary and they have a child together. That’s Aemon.
Then imagine that goofy Bible Nerd chick who talk about wanting to become a nun or marry a preacher or w/e, only instead she gets to fuck the second coming of Christ who it also turns out is generationally talented at murking people. That’s Naerys.
Which if we’re being honest is kind of hot, and if you switched Aemon and Aegon’s birth order would likely have resulted in a second Jaehaerys and Alysanne (a couple they echo in lots of ways). And even as things stood it’s not like the average noble or merchant or peasant in Westeros would have much of a problem with how their narcissism manifests; for the most part it just made them more pious or whatever.
But consider this from Aegon’s perspective.
There’s literally no evidence he’s a bastard; only negative space speculation. Obviously he’s countenanced the possibility—a lot earlier than either of those zealous little shits, by the way—but he also knows it’s a completely unfalsifiable point and doesn’t see any reason to dwell on it other than Fuck Aegon I guess.
That and Aemon wanting to surpass him in precedence—which given both of them are far away from the Iron Throne at this point mostly renders the matter about which one of them has the rightful claim to Naerys.
Now I don’t see any reason to think Aegon himself is super in love with Naerys or even really wants to fuck her. Given he starts out with older women, peasant broads and Dornish chicks he might have even liked them a bit more earthy and spirited in his early years (though as his life progresses his broads do tend to grow a lot more ethereal and waifish, and maybe his sis plays a role there). But if he were to simply let Aemon have Naerys it would be a sign of weakness that might drive speculation about the Larra thing, who speaking of is the real reason Aegon insists on having her—it’s a matter of rejection sensitivity; that same old maternal wound popping up.
Consider that at some point growing up Aegon would have been bickering with his siblings over something dumb, and of course the two of them would always take the same side, with Naerys acting aggrieved and helpless and Aemon playing chivalrous knight while Aegon performatively leans into the Big Bad role even from an early age and maybe gets a bit of a primordial kick out of bullying his sister and overpowering his lil bro. Until one day Naerys starts bawling and says I want to marry Aemon instead!
Just think about it—she must have said that fucking constantly. Probably starting when Aegon was like 7 or 8, which given that maternal abandonment wound he def would have overreacted to. Probably whacked the shit out of Aemon the first time she said it.
So Naerys would go crying to crotchety young Viserys who would have rubbed his temple and sighed and asked Aegon why his brother has a dragon egg on his skull and then Aegon would start crying and be like she said she was gonna leave me like mom did! which Viserys would correct in her saying No you’re promised to Aegon, that is our way.
So Aegon grows up feeling the odd one out, and in resentment prob leans into the monster role as a semi-performative agree and amplify thing. Whereas Naerys feels like she’s been promised to Satan and after a family gag rule prevents her from saying that again gets super religious hoping dad just lets her become a septa which he tells her no that’s retarded. So once Aegon becomes sexually active and starts to develop a bit of a name for himself (at the same time she herself is on the onset of puberty and just starting to learn what sex entails) she gets a little hysterical and desperate and comes up with the Aegon is a Bastard theory hoping Aemon gets Viserys to betroth her to Aemon instead. Which is just as unsuccessful—though Viserys begins to feel a little guilty since he always has a soft spot for his sweet little victim complex, which may well have played a role in him sending Falena away; he figures that if Naerys is forced into the marriage Aegon can’t just mess around in King’s Landing.
So Naerys and Aemon embark on a path of heavy petting and theatrically repentant religiosity, as well as a kind of Dynastic Straussianism where their own love affair is the central pillar of the universe serving as a singular obvious exception to all creeds and codes and laws they’re later such huge enormous moralfags about.
They also start to act like lovers in public and treat Aegon even more like an Other—which Falena plays into of course, probably saying gods, the little shits are probably fucking… giving Aegon an intense paranoia about Aemon taking what’s rightfully his.
Which Aegon’s not especially discrete about now that he’s a sexhaver and feeling like a man for the first time. He’s probably a bit cringe about it and starts flirting with Naerys more aggressively now, talking in front of Aemon about how Falena showed him things he’ll use—WHAM! Aemon clocks him in the snout.
Naerys doesn’t cry this time. Instead her cheeks go red; she covers a giggle.
Now it’s Aegon who goes crying to crotchety slightly less young Viserys, who once again rubs his temple and sighs and says look man I’m not retarded… you were obviously taunting them and clearly kind of deserved it. Aegon is furious and says they’ve been treating him like shit—like he’s not even their brother! Viserys grinds his teeth and says you’re nearly adults and it’s not my job to make you be friends. She’ll wed you like I promised but quite frankly I’m glad Aemon’s there to teach you a bit of respect. Anyway you have a bitch now right? Go spent some time in Harrenhal to cool down, you have my leave.
So Aegon goes to Harrenhal and triumphantly cucks Lord Lothston in the rapecastle, probably telling Falena for the first time to stfu and stop crying he doesn’t even care—which gets a better reaction than even he anticipated. The cougar’s turned on by his aggressive swagger, which helps soothe her own guilt for having pressed on his adolescent momwound and also gives her sadomasochistic catharsis for cucking Lucas, while for his part Aegon starts to really internalize the Harren Mindset, which he always escalates up to eleven around his brother and sister as their childhood playfighting dynamic curdles into real psychosexual resentment.
Aegon thinks back on the times Falena played the victim in their early affair and begins to see basically all Tears as this—to him it viscerally codes as sort of molesty.
Women’s Tears are his mom running away because Her Needs Weren’t Being Met.
It’s his sister deciding to exclude him from the sibling bond in early childhood and deciding he’s uniquely Unworthy of the basic right of all firstborn male Targaryens. It’s Falena saying she wasn’t sure she was allowed to say no he is the prince after all…
So when Naerys starts crying during the bedding Aegon rolls his eyes. Sees that shit as transparently performative; one of Naerys’s usual victim games intended purely to humiliate him—probably planned it all in advance, the meanspirited little cunt…
She did. Has been for years. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t real.
And as Cersei herself says, tears are a woman’s weapon. In that room they make him seem like a monster in front of his entire peer group—as deeply Unworthy of her—and would have had the same impact even if Aegon were the picture of chivalry.
Which, of course, he’s not; if the little bitch is gonna paint him as a monster you can bet your ass that it’ll be on his fucking terms. By the laws of gods and men Naerys is his woman now, and like it or not none have sway over him in this bedroom.
Plenty don’t like it. Earlier in the night a shitfaced Aemon kept making japes about the “free hands of Lysene men,” and not even Naerys could make him stop. Aegon kept asking him to explain the joke until Viserys told them all to shut the fuck up.
Suddenly Aegon cums. He roars theatrically and grinds inside Naerys so aggressively it shakes the bed as the skeletal waif whimpers every bit as theatrically. Viserys whacks an armoire and yells at Aegon to cut it out.
Aegon doesn’t. And then he does. Then lazily he turns to Aemon and winks.
In response Aemon gives him a deathglare… and then the faintest hint of a smirk.
Because last night she gave her virginity to the better brother.
Megette (Merry Meg)
This is the one that always makes me really sad.
Megette was the wife of a blacksmith, and per the text had big knockers. Aegon met her in 155 AC—two years after the Salty Wedding—and would have been 20 then, while her age isn’t stated except that she was “young.”
The official story is that Aegon bought her from her husband for seven gold dragons (and the threat of a Kingsguard, from which we can infer the blacksmith didn’t let her go quietly) before putting her up in a house in King’s Landing and marrying her in a secret ceremony “conducted by a mummer playing a septon.”
They were together for four years and she gave him four daughters in total: Alysanne, Lily, Willow, and Rosey (btw I think it’s really cute he probably picked the first one and she insisted on giving the others poor people flower names).
Anyway Viserys found out in 159 AC and ended it, sending their girls to be trained as septas and Megette back to her husband, who beat her to death within the year.
Yeah.
The subtext is practically dripping off the page with this one.
First and foremost the “mummer playing a septon” was probably literally just a septon and it was likely just a legit secret marriage. And if you think I’m being schizo with that please explain how Viserys learning about the affair an entire four years later is supposed to know the septon is fake? Sure they probably keep records, but it’s also utterly trivial to bribe or intimidate some sniveling midlevel bureaucrat into saying ackshully Septon Poopoopeepee isn’t here in our records the guy was clearly a fraud!
Now granted, on some level as a royal you’re just supposed to marry publicly and the fact that Naerys was Viserys’s own daughter was always going to make him unusually punitive towards extracurriculars. He wants to protect her interests, especially from bastards and the like. But there was clearly a Tyrion-Tywin thing here—consider this is basically the exact same story as Tysha except this is how it plays out with a dad who’s normal levels of stern and conservative instead of an insane psychopath.
That said I think this is GRRM kind of making a point that normie stern conservative dad reactions will be almost as bad for smallfolk womyn who get involved with elites in the grand scheme of things. When a woman theatrically humiliates her husband by publicly hypergamizing with a charismatic royal only to get sent back ignominiously four years later it’s not like the blacksmith is going to be especially grateful to anyone, involved, while everyone in the village will 100% treat her like a piece of shit whore.
Which tbh is probably what Viserys wanted.
Only now it’s less about competition—he’s middle aged at this point, used to Aegon outshining him—and more about the fact that a woman just being able to Leave like that and start a whole new life with another man pokes at his own Larra wound.
Consider that Viserys never took another wife after her. That could be bitterness towards women or trauma or w/e, but I’m inclined to interpret it at least partly as feeling like he’s still a married man. Viserys takes marriage seriously, if only because someone else not taking it seriously lowkey ruined his life, and so Aegon marrying polygamously—in a private ceremony no less—would for sure rankle him.
I also think the Lys factor plays a role here. Viserys came up in Hooker Ancapistan, but only after spending his formative years in Westeros, and at least on some level never would have gotten over his aristocratic contempt for grubby transactional merchant values—especially when he himself got married off sort of against his will to the daughter of Lys’s mob boss-cum-Burgher King only to have the entire venture blow up in his face. Which also gives him a protective angle—he doesn’t at all trust women of That Sort to display even the slightest degree of chastity or loyalty faced with some opportunity to hypergamize. To him Megette is a disgusting prostitute.
Which is genuinely quite unfair.
Because number one if her hubby beat her death eventually he probably wasn’t all that nice to begin with, and the way I personally read their relationship origin story is that Aegon saw him being a huge dick to her and had a bit of a simp moment.
Probably because he genuinely wanted to be a woman’s knight in shining armor after two years of his sister’s Tears branding him as a monster. He could agree and amplify all day just as a PR thing, but that image didn’t comport at all with the man he saw in the mirror—with the man Falena would have described, for instance.
I imagine his father forbid the Harrenhal visits after the marriage, probably saying it looks terrible to keep a public mistress when your wife is in her prettiest years—an insult to Naerys. Aegon would have been exasperated, point out she never opens her legs—and Viserys would snort at him: what, do you want me to order her to fuck you?
Aegon would rub his temple, say he doesn’t need Naerys crying more and everyone blaming him, and at that his father would just sneer. She’s always been a sensitive girl.
The only one he’s soft with. Viserys would talk to him like he’s a child and not at this point more experienced with girls than his old man: have you ever tried being romantic?
Clearly he had. Tried to “start over” a dozen fucking times. She barely said a word to him back—not unless Aemon was around, and then it’s nag nag nag and getting into all our private fucking business. He always ended up playing the villain in the end.
It was hard not to when he knew Aemon was fucking her.
Had since the bedding.
And naturally Viserys flew into a rage when Aegon came to him about that—chewed him out for insulting his sis’s honor when he was the one who sullied their betrothal with Falena. Then when Aegon tried to hand him documentation of her comings and goings Viserys just ripped it in half and shamed him for spying on his own blood.
About a year in Naerys gave birth to a boy.
Daeron.
Theoretically he could have been Aegon’s.
He almost certainly wasn’t.
And even if he WAS legitimate the very fact that one might ever doubt that he wasn’t means that he as good as wasn’t—or is that not the same basic logic those two hypocrites are using to carry on behind my back in the first place? Daeron would always be Unworthy in Aegon’s eyes, try as everyone else might to gaslight him about it, and even though Aemon and Naerys were so very fucking fantastic at talking around things.
Though after the birth his sister had come to Aegon—with Aemon in tow, naturally—looking almost conciliatory. The pregnancy had been hard on her little body, and apparently Grand Maester Alford said another might kill her. As Aemon stood beside her stonefaced in his shiny new Kingsguard armor she begged Aegon to leave her be now that she’d given him an heir so they might “live together as brother and sister.”
Clearly an insult of the highest caliber given the circumstances… though I suspect both Naerys and Aemon were a bit too solipsistic to understand why.
Aegon drove home the point by sneering at them. Said “That’s what we are doing”—words that would be used to paint him as a monster for generations to come.
Yet I rather suspect that after that he didn’t fuck Naerys much in practice. Especially once an heir got Viserys off her back she’d make it painful as possible for her hubby; ensure he has to drag her off in front of other people who’ll see her Tears. Which no doubt would arouse Aegon to some degree, but not without also inducing some guilt in him and almost certainly making him look bad to people he actually respects.
And it’s literally because of situations like this that the gods invented side chicks—only crotchety Norwood 5 Viserys isn’t the kind of man to understand that logic. Instead he’d shake his head in disgust and say something to Aegon like if he’s not man enough to solve the solution with Naerys himself he should just go find himself a hooker.
Only Aegon doesn’t really want that. He’s exhausted after the shit with his family and wants a connection that feels innocent and pure… maybe even redemptive? And he for sure doesn’t want to feel like he’s paying for it, except maybe in a higher order way.
He probably also wants to feel like a big powerful daddy this time, which he never had with Falena thanks to the cougar factor except maybe a bit towards the end, and had tasted and liked with Naerys but only in a way that ran sour instead of sweet.
Whereas it’s sweet that Aegon really fucking needed at this juncture.
He needed to be a big fucking simp.
And it just so happens being a simp when you’re also massively higher status than the other dude reads more as Knight In Shining Armor, which meant that Aegon stealing Megette was understood by both of them as a valorous act of chivalry, even if it also proffered a hugely gargantuan stiffy cuckolding another man in public like that.
Moreover the fact that Aegon actually married her says a fucking ton given he never did that with anyone else. Note the aforementioned Tysha connection only goes so far because this situation is quite different from a midget shacking up with a traumatized rape victim desperate for protection; it’s Aegon at his life’s most energetic and handsome, with a lot more money and power than preteen Tyrion and lots of sexual experience. Aegon easily could have nabbed any lowburn dame he wanted, and structurally there isn’t much stopping him from keeping Meg as a captive fleshlight. The only reason to marry her is if you’re genuinely in love with her and want to make her happy, while I’d argue the fact it happened at all is decent evidence she’s prob more religious and innocent and sweet than most of the other chickadees notched on Aegon’s bedpost—just not nearly to the degree of his insano fanatic little sister.
It’s actually a cute Cinderella tradwife story until Viserys sets their life ablaze.
Take for instance the fact that their first daughter was named Alysanne—which tbf might just be Meg on a high from Targ dick being super LARPy and naming her after the one queen she knows (who remains a heroine to womyn of the realm for getting Primae Noctis banned and pushing similar reforms), and it’s not unlikely the decline to flower names is to suggest Aegon got bored of her the last three years (one of which was spent on campaign) and kind of just used her for pussy at that point. Only again, he never did anything like this with anyone else. She had to have been pretty special.
Like even the fact that folks called her “Merry Meg”—how often do random peasant women get their own epithet? I bet she really lit up a room.
Honestly it makes me think that at least during their honeymoon era Aegon actually did see Megette as his Alysanne, and had a deep and abiding respect for her. He still had other women, of course (notice the next chick in this list overlaps her), but Meg probably remained his Main Girl mentally—a safe harbor who ackshully just loved him for him… or at least that’s how it felt to her. In practice you can kind of just let your guard down with chicks of a lower social class since they’ll never see you as beta, esp after a stunt like Aegon pulled. Which still counts for quite a lot in practice.
Point is it couldn’t be clearer Merry Meg was the truest love of Aegon’s life.
Because the dirty little secret about fuckboys is they’re all massive simps deep down. Nobody spends THAT much time and energy chasing pussy unless they love what’s attached—even if it’s oft the sort of love that also makes you loathe the fairer sex.
And my read here is that it’s specifically Viserys nullifying his marriage with Meg that sends Aegon IV spiraling out into Jokermode; internally it’s his villain origin story that excuses basically everything Bad he does in the years thereafter.
Let’s keep in mind that at this point his sister has spent two years cucking him with the Dragonknight—only no one’s allowed to talk about THAT, whereas Aegon wifing up his qt peasant gf and keeping a familia dos sub rosa is I guess the second Doom?
From this point on existence just seems absurd and cruel to Aegon—almost an extended humiliation ritual—and the only way he can cope with the grief and alienation and sheer cosmic injustice of it all is to theatrically humiliate others.
That and make sure the entire fucking world hears about it.
Cassella Vaith
Cassella Vaith was a Dornish noblewoman taken hostage in 158 AC (recall that Aegon is still with Megette at this point) as a consequence of the Submission of Sunspear—the false ending to the Dornish War.
King Daeron I (son of Aegon III, who expired in 157) tasked his cousin Aegon IV with escorting their hostages safely back to King’s Landing—a personnel choice suggesting that in spite of Naerys’s best efforts Aegon didn’t quite have a Reputation yet (that or history never extended Daeron the credit he was due for a wicked sense of humor).
Anyway Cassella was Stony Dornish—not one of them brown ones.
The text describes her as a “willowy maid with green eyes and pale white-blond hair,”, which is awfully interesting because Larra is also described as “willowy,” and being Valyrian would have had the same hair color… and purple eyes, slightly marring the oedipal connection. Still, describing them both as willowy is pretty damn specific and absolutely reads to me as GRRM wanting us to at least float the connection.
Anyway the text says Aegon kept her “hostage” in his own chambers… but even the Maesters use scare quotes there so it was definitely 1000% consensual, even if she performed nonconsent at first to make it hotter for them both (which tbh may have been necessary given his loyalty to the relationship with Megette, which I’d bet was starting to run saccharine for the spirited buck), as well as just to lower his guard.
The chick was Dornish, after all. They’re almost as bad as the Lyseni with this shit.
In her cultural ecology there’s no real downside for women making overt pussy plays, and realistically her dad would just laugh and attagirl the shit out of her for instantly seducing the emotionally incontinent horndog theater kid who was supposed to be keeping her hostage, even if all it won her was a comfier bed and some gringo cock.
In practice though I’d bet Cassella was feeding all manner of intelligence to her dad’s spies among the camp followers. Logistically it would be quite trivial—just tell Aegon you want a threesome and once he leaves the rapetent for a leak tell the bih everything he’s been bragging to you about and that you’ve read in his letters. Aegon is a brilliant dude, but even on campaign someone that sloppy and exhibitionist isn’t going to take adequate measures to hide shit from his concubine.
Really the leakage potential here is so obvious I wouldn’t be surprised if Cassella was specifically tasked with the mission given her close resemblance to Larra, especially given that the Rogares established connections in Dorne as well as King’s Landing back in their heyday. Seems to me anyone familiar with Targaryen court intrigue would see the obvious angle here.
Thing is getting into Aegon’s bed is kind of the easy part—the hard part is not just becoming his girlfriend once you’ve crossed the border and start to lose regular contact with daddy’s spies… which of course is exactly what happened.
And it seems they had something pretty intense, because Cassella never married and apparently spent her latter years consumed with the delusion that she’d been Aegon’s one true love and that he would soon send for her.
But everything would have changed once they arrived in King’s Landing given Aegon has a wife to attend to—two of them. It isn’t just him and Cass in the rapetent having threesomes with spysluts anymore, which means she def would have gotten jealous.
…less so of Naerys, to be clear, given there’s no displacing her and it’s pretty obvious Aegon doesn’t even like the bih.
Whereas Megette? That one’s annoying. For one thing she’s quite a lot lower status than you, yet Aegon’s love for her runs tender and time-tested in a way you’ve never seen in him, even though you’re the newer more exciting broad who’s more of his equal culturally and intellectually, which has got to be pretty fucking irksome.
But for her part Meg isn’t too thrilled with the situation either—recall at this point she’s given Aegon a few kids so her tidders are starting to sag a wee bit and Aegon was already coming to fuck you less even before he left to fight in the King’s dumb retarded war which already made you insecure whereas now you’re big with child while he’s out there publicly flaunting some Skinny Fucking Blonde Bitch who’s a lot more educated and sophisticated than you and is for sure getting more of his attention and definitely his money and—oooh he’s here!
There would have been some pretty intense intrasexual competition going on between them… only it wasn’t really a fair fight, bc when your side chicks are fighting for main the working class one always shows her hand first and in a far uglier more incel-coded way, creating a negative feedback loop for the dynamic. Whereas being a tall skinny blonde bitch Cassella would prob just act passive aggressive and withhold sex, which Aegon can’t really do anything about now since instead of the rapetent Cassella will have her own lodging not subject to his jurisdiction, whereas he knows Megette is basically ride or die (literally, as it turns out…). And so he’ll gradually start prioritizing Cassella more and more which will make Megette more and more anxious and
I actually suspect Cassella is the one who squealed to Viserys about Megette.
First off it’s just a really Dornish thing to do. Second consider the Megette nullification happened in 159—a year after Cassella was taken hostage.
My headcanon is she and Aegon arrive in King’s Landing a few months after Sunspear and she immediately gets to work on subtly provoking Megette to act ugly jealous so as to undermine that relationship—perhaps even using the threesome trick to divine the location of their Love Nest and make Megette insecure about being less kinky or skinny or educated? Meanwhile she makes sure her kawaii hostagepuss gives Aegon tons of bad boy social proof and leans on the mommy angle even harder in private so she’s completely indispensable to him, until finally during one of his fights with Meg (during which she takes Meg’s side and calls Aegon an ass for having neglected her) she has one of her own retainers leak the second family to Viserys, and then proceeds to take a public stance on behalf of Meg as the spicy liberated Latina who obviously Isn’t Threatened by her and thinks Viserys is being needlessly cruel.
Viserys of course sees precisely what she’s doing with this and tries to explain it all to Aegon who is already far far too angry at dad for gaslighting him over Aemon and Naerys to listen to reason and mostly falls even further into Cassella’s arms and puss—which for his part Viserys is a lot less angry about actually since it’s structurally sort of a temporary thing and at least this one’s Valyrian-coded. If it manages to distract Aegon from that peasant it’s a necessary sacrifice.
So for the next year or so Aegon oscillates between angry, sad, guilty… but Cassella also takes most of the edge off. He misses his wife and daughters—a lot—but there’s no denying the convos are just deeper with Cassella, and she understands more of his references, and doesn’t act insecure over stretch marks cause she’s lowkey anorexic, and has an interesting foreign spicy Latina perspective on shit… and anyway he’s been able to maintain a secret letter correspondence with Megette, who might be able…
He learns Megette is dead.
Skull caved in with a smith’s hammer.
For the next year he stops feeling much of anything—though Cassella remains his fleshlight of choice. Still he stops seeing her as much, try as she might to make him jealous with rival nobles, which in practice makes him visit her even less.
Things come to a head in 161 when Dorne assassinates King Daeron (which I’ve already given you my conspiracy theory about), provoking Viserys to order all Sunspear hostages thrown in the dungeons for execution.
At first Cassella assumes she’s excluded from that as the prince’s paramour, but soon realizes the crotchety trentagenarian is after her as well, and in desperation implores Aegon to protect her. Only at this point the dude is still dissociated; just really done with life. And so he snorts at her and shrugs his shoulders—sorry babe, hands are tied.
Cassella flies into a blind fury. Calls him every name in the book and then some. Tells him on that trip back from Sunspear he ackshully raped her and also deflowered her—though she never told him the second bit cause she thought of him as Her Man after he Claimed her and didn’t want him to feel guilty.
At this Aegon rolls his eyes; by now he’s 26 and an accomplished fuckboy wise to the ways of women. But even still he might have indulged her were he not so dissociated. At this point tho he hasn’t the energy to pretend to fall for the oldest trick in the book.
Cassella realizes she’s done for.
Her eyes fill with Woman Scorned hate. She reveals to Aegon that it was her who squealed about Megette—and also claims she had her people tell Meg’s hubster about the letters, which Aegon again rolls his eyes at because he knows she’s just being a histrionic Latina and hysterically making shit up on the spot just to hurt him.
Only thing is bringing Megette up at all kind of did the trick.
Aegon informs Casella that she’s a lying cunt. That he never raped her before, but sure as shit is about to now. He tears into her dry and she comes far harder than at any other point in her life, such that when he personally hands her over to Viserys she whimpers meekly that she’ll face the headsman’s axe thinking only of him.
Aegon farts.
And then he walks away.
The next morning Daeron’s little brother Baelor—the new king, who it seems is a religious fanatic even more insufferable than Naerys—decides he’s going to pardon all Sunspear hostages and escort them back to Dorne himself.
Cassella’s goose, it seems, is no longer cooked.
Which Aegon had known the whole time, of course. But he figured he could use the situation to confirm a few things he already suspected and, well… he had.
Cassella gets back safe; never marries. At this point it would be an insult to the new guy given how fast she’d hop back on Aegon’s cock given the slightest opportunity.
She never quite gets that.
And while Aegon wasn’t wrong that she’d lied to him about being her first, the prince actually would end up being her last. She’d keep telling him as much in her letters.
He’d never believe a word—the first time in Aegon’s life his read of a broad was just kind of mean-minded and uncharitably cynical.
It wouldn’t be the last.
Bellegere Otherys (The Black Pearl of Braavos)
So this one’s kind of funny because it definitely feels on some level like GRRM being a goofy cringe Boomer Liberal and not quite realizing that making the black one the least feminine and most slutty kind of gets you side-eyed these days.
Anyway Bellegere is kind of a cartoon, but there actually is an interesting story here.
She’s a half-Braavosi, half-Summer Islander smuggler / trader / “sometimes pirate” whom Aegon first fucked in 161 AC (the same year Cassella was sent back to Dorne) amidst a diplomatic mission to Braavos he was apparently sent on because Naerys had recently Almost Died during a miscarriage (mayhaps in truth an aborted Aegonbaby?) and his whole family apparently didn’t want big mean gross Aegon going in there and Unworthily tearing her shit up.
Which would probably have been a lot less of an issue if Meg were still around to absorb Aegon’s libidinal energy—this being the main reason dudes have always gotten side chicks and women tolerate them—but it seems Viserys’s regard for the integrity of marriage was in practice rather arbitrary.
Note this means that at this point Aegon’s family weren’t just gaslighting him about Aemon and Naerys; they were saying he can’t fuck his legal wife after killing his real one.
tbh they probably just shipped the guy off to Braavos to calm down because he was starting to give school shooter vibes—I know I would in this nightmare of a situation.
And I suspect for a time Bellegere actually does help him calm down a bit—in large part because she helps him not take himself so seriously and just have some fun.
Meanwhile being mixed race and a merchant (and for sure bisexual; the text doesn’t say that at all but at least to me Bellegere reads like the sort of chick who only fucks girls and apex-tier men) she understands code switching unusually well, whereas the fact that she’s from two cultures that are both deeply performative in entirely different ways gives her remarkable fluidity in shifting between different sexual and romantic scripts and thinking about them abstractly. She’d for sure get shitfaced with him and start going well you see Lysene bitches be like this whereas Dornish hoes be like this and you can bet Aegon would laugh his ass off and fall in love with her right there.
According to the text their affair lasted ten years and they had three children together, although “she had a husband in every port and Aegon was but one of many.”
Oh, GRRM, you sweet summer child...
Anyway I feel like from this point forward Bellegere is his designated Rebound Puss he relies on to help him get over nasty breakups and call him a goofy-ass whiteboi.
Honestly I can see them both calling each other racial slurs during sex and ethnically fetishizing the other (recall Aegon is an Aryan Ubermensch at this point), and bc she’s black and tomboy-coded he’d also subconsciously defeminize her instead of growing sexually possessive. Meanwhile she’s the type who’d rather die than play the victim or get her way through guilt or pity, which makes him act a lot more coo around her and lets the two of them enjoy a genuinely strong and stable FWB connection which because he’s fucking her also enables her to give him girl advice that doesn’t suck total ass.
All in all I actually suspect this may have been the single healthiest and happiest romance of Aegon’s life—and at the very least seems to have lasted the longest.
Also this is conjecture but I’d bet you she’s based on a half-black chick who used to be GRRM’s rebound puss and when he showed her Bellegere assuming she’d be flattered she was actually like nigga why you make me some rachet-ass pirate? I’m a fucking princess!
Daena the Defiant
Daena is the single biggest Mary Sue in the entire ASOIAF canon.
Her only real competition on that front is Lyanna, which I suppose is to be expected given they’re kind of the same character. But with Daena it’s fanficcy enough that I kind of suspect she had a Yoko Ono genesis in the mind of some barely legal fangirl.
Seriously, this bitch is basically Katniss Everdeen in Westeros. Her main thing in life is archery (and of course she gets a special snowflake recurve bow taken from Dorne), she’s unironically a horse girl, she’s One Of The Guys yet also perfectly feminine in appearance, she has a supercool dragon pendant she never takes off Even During Sex, and somehow she manages to be an even bigger theater kid than Aegon—in early life only wearing black because that’s Aegon III’s thing being super emo and she’s a huge daddy’s girl, and then after her volcel brother Baelor refuses to deflower her following their marriage in 160 AC she melodramatically switches to only wearing white.
Which tbf is undeniably a pretty bad bitch move—and not a little Aegon-coded in how it theatrically weaponizes sexualized public humiliation.
Yeah in practice it didn’t work all that well (Baelor agreed and amplified; said white is better, more pure) but the act for sure would have lent Daena long-term narrative capital (one might argue the Blackfyre Revolt starts with her wardrobe, much as Alicent’s green dress planted the seeds of the Dance) and drawn the whole realm’s attention—including that of Aegon, who for sure would have respected the moxie and verve of this bratty little 15yo he’d hitherto found a bit obnoxious but whose brattiness now all of a sudden kinda reads as hot? And then he’d recall how cringe and stupid-horny he himself had been during the Falena years and feel an intense surge of empathy for the embattled little lass, being himself saddled with a cunty spouse who hates sex and life and him and everything but, like, praying (and Aemon’s cock ofc… and lying).
Especially once Baelor takes the throne and has the Faith dissolve their marriage because it was never consummated—but doesn’t even set her up with a new husband, instead deciding to imprison the unhappy nubile (who being a Mary Sue seems to have had an unusually high sex drive for a womyn) in the Red Keep, where she and her sisters aren’t at risk of tempting Baelor or the other men of the court and I guess are expected to live out their years as a porn scenario locked up in Baelor’s Maidenvault.
And such are the occasions in life when it’s the sleazy fast-talking pusshound trying to bang his teenage cousin who ends up looking like the staunchest feminist ally.
That said for all we know their affair didn’t even start until Daena’s brain was so very tediously fully developed a full decade later, which is when Aegon ackshully got her preggers. And idk it seems to me in a universe where everyone’s super chill about this dynasty fucking their 15yo sis Aegon banging his 25yo cousin isn’t that transgressive at all—if anything it sort of gives lamo symmetrical NPR sex contextually speaking.
But yeah the Official Story has Daena escaping the Maidenvault three times in the garb of a servant or peasant, with only the last instance resulting in the pregnancy that in 171 AC resulted in the birth of Daemon Blackfyre.
…and also the death of Baelor the Blessed, just over a month later—seems the notion of his little sis actually having had sex was enough to make the zealot starve himself.
Ever the theater kids, Daena and Aegon had collaborated to massive success on an act of erotic dramaturgy that proved regicidal in scale—Abramović herself would applaud! Makes you wonder if it kind of let the wind out of Aegon’s sails, though. Like once you cuck the king so bad it fuckin kills him where else can you even go from there?
Anyway it’s hard to talk about Aegon and Daena because we don’t actually know much about their relationship—or even her time inside the Maidenvault, really. All we have is that story about her escaping three (3) times and coming back pregnant on the last… which seems like a bit of a fairy tale, no?
Which isn’t to say it’s a lie—it’s just we don’t even know how long she was out during each of those instances, or even when exactly during her captivity they happened, save the last time being near the end. But for all we know it could have occurred a lot more often and the other occasions just weren’t recorded, whether it’s because they weren’t significant or Daena wasn’t caught then or it fucked up the fairly tale rule of threes.
Whatever the case, my headcanon is Aegon was the one who helped her escape each time—mostly since if Baelor is locking her down aggressively it would need to be someone with a lot of clout at court and extreme risk tolerance, which makes Aegon the obvious candidate… particularly since we know it was him knocked her up later.
Only this was a Faustian Bargain, with Aegon extracting sexual favors from Daena each time, being at this point simultaneously A) disenchanted with women after what went down with Megette and Casella; and B) actively vengeful toward his family on account of their years of gaslighting and hypocrisy; yet C) truly empathetic toward Daena and increasingly seeing a lot of himself in her—in more ways than one, even if that means being sort of a shit and opportunistically taking advantage of her situation.
The dynamic is essentially the same as we saw with The Rogue Prince and Rhaenyra—think perverted outsider mentor meets bratty ingenue.
But was that really romance per se, or just some sketchy West Virginia shit?
I mean, clearly it’s both.
Aegon doesn’t list her as one of his loves, which tbh is weird given that it would have extended Daemon a bit more credibility. But he prob prefers the story as him being the rakish older cousin who takes advantage of Better Naerys. That said I kind of just don’t fucking believe him about that, because knowing Aegon he was 100% simping his ass off over a literal princess in a tower who at 16 could already out theater kid him.
I think it’s more he didn’t include her because he was still embarrassed that she didn’t want to be his mistress after she got out—likely in no small part due to Viserys II passing her over in inheritance after Baelor died. She would have tied it continuing to Aegon becoming her Rogue Prince and at that point our boy was way too much of a lazy middle aged man to do that for some 25yo pussy… which explains why Daena wouldn’t even claim him as the father until over a decade later.
At the same time, I actually do think Aegon would have loved her as much as he could love anyone at that point; the story’s just too good not to. He’s just way too cynical and performatively cruel to ever let his guard down around her, which means to Daena he never quite gives Daddy so much as that cringe Millennial with Uncle Energy who buys her Lululemon when she swallows.
At the same time there’s a real if spiky affection on her end to be sure—particularly once she’s mother to Aegon’s most important son. Not nearly enough affection to be his entire-ass mistress, mind you (she probably won’t tie herself to any dude after the Maidenvault), but they definitely remain friends once she gets over Viserys passing over her and she likely still fucks him on occasion for a bit of Mean Cock or random favors (their basic sexual script) until he weighs like 600 lbs at which points she just quietly nopes out of there, having signed up for Unkie Mephistopheles and not Jabba.
But it’s not exactly transactional for her; it’s just not not that either.
At the end of the day as tempting as it is to ship them Daena and Aegon were far too similar to be a decent couple—you can’t have two cringe narcissists in a relationship without them either abandoning or destroying each other, as we saw with Daemon and Rhaenyra. Their union was primarily one of artistic collaboration, and to that end their shared frustration at their family’s fanaticism and hypocrisy made them briefly ideal for one another. Long term though the eros was just too mythopoetic to survive any of the boring ugly shitty parts of a relationship e.g. Aegon’s stretch marks.
One final thing that strikes me as worth mentioning here is that between 161 and 172 (when Aegon himself ascends to the throne) the only chickadee he says he loved was Bellegere, and even when you add Daena to that count both of them would have been wildly intermittent at best. The obvious implication of that is that after what went down with Merry Meg he’s given up on the idea of a lasting Lady Love.
It’s just not worth the risk… at least not until Baelor croaks and opens up a patricidal path to the Iron Throne and mayhaps with it True Love?
The entire decade is effectively one big sad dissociative fuckboy era wherein Aegon’s forced to obey a zealous nutcase who’ll take his two-timing crybully whore of a wife and her Simp in Shining Armor at face value on literally everything, punctuated only occasionally by brief beautiful moments with his saucy black FWB and even less frequent volcanically transgressive tumbles with the bitchy lil cuz he’s grooming.
It’s an environment where repression and lies and hypocrisy are the name of the game and only private debauchery offers the man a few meager crumbs of happiness.
And I’m not saying that justifies his actions—only that basically any man with a shred of dignity would strike back every bit as hard as he did, just with a lot less style.
Barba Bracken
Viserys II ascended to the Iron Throne following Baelor’s death in 171, after which it seems to me Aegon pulled that classic Crusader Kings move of having his dad killed so as to more quickly inherit the throne, which is what happened in 172.
And honestly? Fair.
Viserys was a decent man who had the makings of a genuinely marvelous king—but if I’m Aegon you can bet your sweet ass I’m drip feeding that motherfucker Tears of Lys after what he did to Merry Meg, and idrc if that makes me a kinslayer go fuck yourself.
Moreover at this point the Tyrion / Tywin similarities are so plentiful it would be a bit weird if he didn’t take that page from the dwarf’s book (or is it the other way around?), especially when Aegon being just 13 years younger means if Viserys lives to old age it’ll ruin—or even prevent, gods forbid—his own kingship. Dad’s kinda just gotta go.
Note it’s also not out of the question that Aegon acted in self-defense here—it may be that upon taking the throne Viserys started poking into Aegon’s parentage, having at this point been poisoned hard against the Crown Prince by his other children, who insist that he has it out for Daeron. And even if he doesn’t believe Naerys’s conspiracy theory there’s little doubt Viserys would see the writing on the wall that conflict is inevitable… and after watching Aegon hurt Naerys too many times might be willing now to accept the worst about him out of convenience (a theory I like since it mirrors Aegon’s distrust of Daeron and portends his own destruction by an heir acting in self-defense). Meanwhile Aegon would feel unspeakably betrayed and unappreciated for having not sided with Daena and her hot pussy against his dad and decide it’s war.
Anyway speaking of Daena’s pussy Aegon first knew Barbra Bracken as one of her qt ladies-in-waiting inside the Maidenvault. However he wouldn’t actually take her on as his mistress until he was king, despite apparently being “entranced” by her during the year of his father’s reign when the girlies were set free to have naked pillow fights etc.
That makes a lot of sense; the Brackens are a crucial house in the Riverlands—stronger even than House Tully one-on-one and widely renowned as horse breeders—which means even the Crown Prince won’t be permitted to make free with their daughters. Everything he has comes from his dad, and in the game of Pussy Politics that makes for a pretty fraught position when it’s a dour old grouch like Viserys II on the throne.
Whereas if Aegon himself were king? An entirely different story—especially given that the Brackens are a designated Bad Guy House that GRRM loves randomly shitting on, and if you ask his Mary Sue House the Blackwoods the Brackens are just a bunch of upjumped sellswords and horse traders anyway so why not hawk a bit of daught puss?
But if the Brackens are whores they’ll certainly not be cheap ones—and never for a john who isn’t himself seated the Iron Throne. Even a whore’s got her dignity!
Now, you’re probably wondering at this point if I’m trying to imply that Aegon murdered his dad specifically to expedite his acquisition of Barb Pussy.
I don’t think it slowed him down.
Obviously it was the aspect of kingship that viscerally excited him the most.
I suspect Aegon was initially euphoric after Baelor’s death, and then perhaps got his feefees hurt by Daena when freshly liberated she preferred the idea of girlbossing to being his concubine. Whereas her 16yo lady-in-waiting Barba was probs a lil coquette being a Bracken and all and also probably kind of a pick me? She also knows Aegon isn’t about to just force himself on a girl of her rank which in practice gives her a lot of latitude to be flirty and overtly tease him where others girls might steer clear.
Now, Barba’s a bit too young at this point for me to think she deliberately put the idea of offing Viserys in Aegon’s fat head… but she also wouldn’t really have had to. Dude’s at this point coming out of a decade of Baelor and sees at long last a shimmer of what he had with Cassella if not with Meg. So I think it would have happened either way, but the Barb Puss probably cuts Viserys’s reign from 3 or 4 years down to only 1.
So how’d he do it?
Obviously Tears of Lys—duh.
And so Aegon got his Barb Puss—the price of which was Lord Bracken becoming his first Hand of the King, alongside which Barba became his mistress publicly.
Which clearly would have humiliated Naerys and everyone would have felt Really Bad for her—particularly Aemon, who shows back up in our story as an enormous pain in Aegon’s ass going forward, given that Aegon’s policy objective numero uno from this point is to disinherit Daeron and undermine the kid’s parents (which is honestly the only one that would make sense to a medieval mind trapped in a gaslighting machine).
Anyway Barb is likely the mistress Aegon wanted to crown Queen of Love and Beauty in that tourney where Aemon won it for Naerys as the Knight of Tears.
I also suspect this year is when a feller with the promising name of Morgil Hastwyck accused Naerys of cucking Aegon with Aemon (almost certainly at Aegon’s behest) and for his efforts received a Dark Sister tonsillectomy during a duel with the heroically self-righteous Dragonknight over her honor. Which to me kind of confirms Daeron is a bastard because isn’t that literally a fucking scene from Camelot?
Anywho within a year of Aegon’s coronation Barba bears the king a bastard they call Aegor (really shitty awful name btw but w/e… anyway this is Bittersteel) just as Naerys herself Almost Dies bearing him twins, one of which croaks immediately and the other is the same Daenerys that Daemon later falls in love with only for Daeron to marry her off to brown ppl and in doing so precipitate the Blackfyre Rebellion.
Which of course being head of an ontologically evil Bad Guy House causes Bracken to idiotically float the idea publicly of marrying Barba off to Aegon if Naerys dies and yeah Barb’s goose is pretty much cooked at that point.
…probably at least in part because Bracken forgot half the fun of this for Aegon is getting something he’s not supposed to, cause like who wants to conquer their wife?
That said what the text actually says is that “the young Prince Daeron and his uncle, the Dragonknight, forced Aegon to send her and the bastard away.”
Which
um
Like wtf do they even mean by “forced” in this context? Was Aemon giving him a wedgie until he repudiates Barb? Is his nerdy son wagging a finger at him?
Is Aegon the fucking king or not here?
Actually an interesting question!
We know that by the end of Aegon IV’s reign in 184 a huge chunk of the realm had united behind Daeron, who now led his own faction at court and had significant foreign backing from Dorne thanks to his marriage to a Dornish princess (yes that’s literally the Rhaegar / Aerys plot recycled)—this being the chief reason according to the Maesters at least that Aegon unsuccessfully made war with Dorne in 174.
Long story short he needed to disinherit Daeron before he could actually rule his own fucking kingdom in earnest, but needed first to take out the little shit’s allies
Though it seems for most of Aegon’s reign Daeron’s real clout came mostly from his “uncle” (obv really his dad regardless of what the Gaysters scared of Bloodraven insist) Aemon the Dragonknight… who in fairness seems to have mostly been loyal to Aegon as Kingsguard (echoing Jaime Lannister fucking his queensis and cucking fatty), except when the rights of his sister or son got threatened, at which point he’d presumably threaten to twist Aegon’s nips or something to get him to stand down. And it seems Aegon was genuinely scared of his little bro, because it was only once Aemon died in the line of duty that he started implying publicly that Daeron was illegitimate.
But until then Aemon kind of just got to turn Westeros into a giant Cuckocracy.
So why didn’t Aegon just have him ganked or something?
Well for one thing if the legends are true the Dragonknight can probably kill any three other Kingsguard by himself, so you’d likely need a whole battalion of trained knights to take him out. Yet in practice Aemon is too respected for you to assemble such a squad of anything but shitheel sellswords, and even when morals are out of the question survival instinct will make any competent Bronn type Nope right out of there.
That said in practice Aemon can only use his Purple Nurple Veto when the situation genuinely merits it or his honor card disappears, and he’s likely too smart to make frivolous power plays against fatty—which means, I think, there’s a bit more to the Naerys vs. Barba situation than meets the eye.
Number one is I think Daeron absolutely knows or at least suspects that unc/dad killed grandpa and is almost certainly gunning for mom now.
Number two is a return of the same intersexual competition angle that haunted Aegon’s relationship with Viserys—keep in mind Daeron is 19 now and being forced to watch his big fat 37yo daduncle swagger around the palace with a giggly busty 17yo on his arm—who you just know is encouraging the rivalry in both of them because she really wants Aegon to set Naerys aside. Which it seems to her isn’t an ackshual marriage anyway, and certainly a lot less meaningful than what she has with Darling Eggy!
Meanwhile Aegon is quietly jealous of Daeron’s deep love with his Dornish princess, which sometimes even makes him think about writing Cassie Vaith and—nah, fuck her.
Long story short I suspect Daeron gets so agitated by Barba’s overt angling against his mom that he gets paranoid and interprets her sickness as poisoning by Aegon, even though this isn’t Viserys and that bih’s always sick she’s probs just a hypochondriac.
But Aeron believes him—or sees at least that circumstances permit him to act—and backs Daeron up with the Nurple Veto. And it would seem the Secret Cuck Clan has enough power at court at this point that Aegon feels the need to send Barba away.
The line has been drawn, and none of Aegon’s women will cross it again.
Yet the king also sees a silver lining amidst this indignity—specifically in the chance to take it all out on Barba by replacing her with a younger and prettier girl from her family’s mortal enemy. That of course being the genesis of Aegon’s relationship with…
Melissa (Missy) Blackwood
I genuinely can’t stand House Blackwood.
In EVERY generation they get to be the cool badass Mary Sue dynasty that gets to dab on the shitty evil embarrassing Brackens at every turn just because they have special snowflake First Man blood or whatever. It’s a degree of authorial favoritism that to my mind feels really cartoonish and insulting to the reader’s intelligence.
Then again, maybe that’s sort of the point.
Because there’s actually a lot of interesting subtext in how Missy gets described.
Foremost being it’s painfully obvious Bloodraven had his thumb on the Maesters here cause her portrayal in the text feels Mary Sue even by Blackwood standards: introduced as the”best loved of Aegon’s mistresses,” feted as younger and prettier (if less buxom aka my mom was skinny), and more modest and kind and generous… the text also goes on to note Missy befriended all members of the Secret Cuck Clan, while during the five years of her own “reign” (lasting 172-177) she gave birth to three bastards.
Hmm.
Now, fam… Maybe I’m just being schizo here looking for something where there’s nothing… but why would they use the word “reign” for her (scare quotes maester’s) when it’s not used for literally any other mistress?
I’ll tell you why—because Missy Blackwood was fucking terrifying.
Not in the way Aegon is terrifying, obviously—but did you srsly think Bloodraven got all that from his pops? When he wields the blade Dark Sister?! Nigga come on.
I think Missy was a Margaery Oreo with Roose Bolton filling, and the scariest thing about her was her impenetrable opacity. She’d never let you know she’s anything BUT the sweet cute innocent lil babygirl, and would have wielded plausible deniability like a machete until your mouth gets shredded by the razor lodged in the tootsie roll.
Hence why it’s hard to say much about her—if she did anything shady Missy wouldn’t have left ANY fingerprints behind, and would have ruined your life and your entire family’s if you ever came anywhere NEAR her record. And if she somehow missed you then Bloodraven certainly wouldn’t. That’s why anything interesting about her has to be divined entirely from all the negative space suspiciously left unfilled.
Like how did Aegon come to acquire her? Did the Blackwoods get anything for it?
The text doesn’t say—of course.
Both because Bloodraven wouldn’t let that get out, and because the noble Blackwoods would have ofc made it all seem plausibly deniable—probably staged some LARPy little adventure for Aegon where he gets to “rescue” her or some shit in the same way he once did Megette. Then much later during his seduction some unrelated old fat guy would walk over to him and be like Hey Your Majesty! Do you see that hill over there? Gods, we Blackwoods suuuure do love that hill. You know, when Melissa was a little girl she used to say how Nice it would be if someone could build a castle there… and then walk off.
That or they could kind of just dangle Melissa and make him Take her—have her never explicitly give the king a Yes, have the menfolk perform scandalized cuckoldry. Make sure she always looks scared and uncomfortable, yet never quite does the things girls do when they’re actually scared and uncomfortable. Just keep her victim-coded.
If you ask me it was likely a sophisticated combination of both of the above tactics that allowed Missy to dominate Aegon’s court for such a long period of time; she could play the Woman Game at Olenna levels despite also having a Hot Young Pussy.
Which of course begs the question—did the Naerys and her boys ackshully like her?
Seems to me it could go either way, and is kind of a moot point. Given Bloodraven’s centrality to Daeron the record would always say they were besties no matter what.
But my own theory is Missy was forward-thinking and knew it was all going to come down to Daemon vs. Daeron at some point, and since Bittersteel would grow up with a chip on his shoulder against the Daeron faction the Blackwoods and her own Brynden fall kind of automatically on Daeron’s side and will benefit from making nice with him
That said we should also remember that Aegon will tell Missy the Secret Cuck Clan thinks he’s a bastard, and if that’s true her Brynden won’t have any real Targ blood and instead be kind of a Doublebastard… which is a lot less of an issue once fatty’s kicked the bucket since it’s mostly just an excuse for Aemon and Naerys to fuck him over, but until then makes the Missy-Naerys detente kind of conditional at best.
Also I’m sorry but the side chick and the wife are never friends. They sometimes will tell you they are, but this is just one of those situations where you’re frankly a bit of a tard if you straightforwardly Believe Women.
Which isn’t to say they hated each other; both of them were way too softgirl to ever admit that even to themselves. They just wouldn’t have trusted the other at all.
That said I’d bet you Missy charmed the shit out of Aemon and Daron and got both of them to develop a bit of a crush on her, which she encouraged *just* enough to stir idle fantasies both men would be far too loyal to ever follow up on but are super useful to just have sitting there as potential energy—particularly the first time Naerys is like hey boooooys don’t u think Missy was kind of being a bitch today? and suddenly she feels out-gaslit for the first time in her life. And by her own damn team, no less.
Thing is Naerys is also mature enough to realize that Bloodraven will grow up on her baby’s side no matter what while Missy is a lot better at getting Aegon to pull back a bit on Naerys Fucking (probs beause they both offer skinny bitch appeal), and so at least temporarily Naerys kind of just accepts that there’s someone flat-out better at Tears than her and there’s not much she can do about it.
And maybe after that they actually can become friends of a sort.
Whatever the case I do think she stayed Aegon’s hand and got him to back off a bit on some of his Intrigue Focus Crusader Kings shenanigans. On the whole her years were pretty quiet, with the admittedly massive exception of Aegon’s failed war with Dorne.
Speaking of that war, everyone likes to call Aegon a stupid Unworthy retard for how he waged it, but the text itself says pretty directly that it mostly failed because of a giant storm that scuttled the king’s war fleet as it sailed south more or less exactly following the Young Dragon’s example. Which seems to me like nothing more damning than bad luck, but idk I guess I’m not an expert strategist.
Thing is everyone focuses on Aegon’s wildfyre dragons that set the kingswood on fire, but again I think they’re taking it at face value. Number one they were obviously sabotaged either by Dornish spies or (more likely) Daeron’s people, which yeah it’s on Aegon for letting them get sabotaged I’ll always blame the victim but come on they were pretty badass wunderwaffen either way. And number two he obviously wasn’t intending to pull them through the Boneyway like the Gaesters try to dab on him for. He was clearly going to pivot them halfway through he march to Dorne and then start burning through the castles of Daeron’s faction in the Reach and Riverlands one by one, which if he’d pulled that off you’d be saying is super duper badass and cool.
Anyway for all his talents Aegon isn’t a military man like Aemon and got outplayed fair and square, which is why after Dorne he seems to have been ostensibly quite chill for the last three years of Missy’s reign, who for her part probably managed to get everyone to calm the fuck down for a while.
I can easily imagine Aegon and Daeron quarreling at a private feast where Naerys starts crying only for Missy to run over and comfort her while admonishing the boys:
”Do the two of you have to act like such spiteful bastards all the time?”
For a moment, silence.
Then at once everyone is laughing their ass off. Immediately Naerys despises herself for actually feeling fucking deferential… and even, gods help her, a bit turned on?
Which to the extent Aegon genuinely does love Missy, I’d hazard this is the primary reason why; she neutralized his lifelong enemy and obviated the Purple Nurple Veto with a kind of ruthless Pussy Politics that takes no prisoners and leaves no witnesses—and makes you actually fucking like her despite yourself. Pretty much exactly what fatso needed psychologically after the Barba debacle.
More importantly, she never let him figure out how real her Tears were.
Bethany Bracken
Bethany’s fucking weird.
Her whole description reads as an operatically asspained /pol/ rant from Bloodraven—apparently Bethany was “groomed by Lord Bracken” (they actually use that word, which is probs intended as a pun on House Bracken’s equine origins) for the express purpose of displacing Melissa Blackwood. According to the text the king took a real shine to Bethany during a trip to visit Baby Bittersteel in 177.
…only they don’t even say what’s so great about Bethany that would get the king to throw away his “best loved mistress” for some rando Bracken bih. Especially given said bih literally cheats on Aegon with his own Kingsguard like five seconds after he brings her back to King’s Landing, cause by this point he’s too fat and mean I guess?
Anyway Aegon catches her abed with him in 178 and though the two of them insist they’re In Love (???) the king has the dude who did it—one Terrence Toyne—tortured to death before also executing Bethany and her dad/pimp. And then there’s a whole-ass epilogue where Toyne’s bros try to avenge him and Aemon dies defending his king.
Hmm, fam.
Hmm.
So first off I’m not buying that Aegon gives a rat’s ass about Bittersteel—first because the entire point of Aegor’s character is he’s kind of the incel no one likes and always gets screwed over, and second because are we rly supposed to believe the dude directly called out in the text—in the same passage, no less!—for being a foul-tempered fatty is about to leave his comfy palace for weeks of bumpy carting through rain and mud and glassy-eyed toothy smallfolk head to see some shitty little toddler he barely knows?
Give me a fucking break.
You know, this all looks pretty convenient, Brynden—leaving out why your own mom got dumped, and then throwing in *just* enough noise to make her successor somehow even less legible?
So much so that at this point I think we need to step back and ask ourselves: cui bono?
As I see it there are two winners of the Bethany story.
The first is House Blackwood. Their rivals the Brackens are humiliated—yet again—with its paterfamilias and comeliest hookerdaughter executed before all and sundry, showing what happens when prostitute horse merchants try to play at nobility.
The second is Aegon himself. Yeah he gets cucked, but he’s been cucked privately for decades now and couldn’t do jack. This lets him assert control over the narrative with a baroque exhibitionist flair—and also permanently besmirches the honor of the Kingsguard while priming the public for the idea of a Kingsguard cucking the king.
Note the record has Toyne and Bethany admitting guilt and playing up their being in love (?)—I suspect Aegon tricked them into a public confession that makes people realize this kind of thing is even conceptually possible. Otherwise when Aegon goes public about Daeron all the smallfolk with an IQ of 80 thanks to no saturated fat in their diet would have just gone hurrrr durrr! no that not possible! Aemon king guard! they no have sex!
Whereas after Aegon rips him apart Toyne will clearly get immortalized in song, such that all the realm soon learns Kingsguard are weak mortal men... which just fuckin soaks the Westerosi chivalric ideal in pussyjuice and cum—just eternally degrades it, and flattens real masculine honor into a romantic fetish object for simps and little girls.
Or at least that’s how Aemon will see it.
And those vows mean everything to him—even if he himself has happened to maybe break one or two of them in particular a couple thousand or so times. Whereas now Aegon has covered those vows, forevermore, in his cum, such that from hereon out whenever anyone hears about the Kingsguard vow of chastity they will inevitably think to themselves Heh, not Terrence Toyne!
The genius is that it’s all plausibly deniable in its own way—a romantic story about cucking him won’t read as anything he had a hand in, and on net will actually seem pro-Kingsguard to all the sort of people who’ll never join the fucking Kingsguard or serves its interests in literally any way. Whereas to Sandor Clegane types you actually want to maintain a bit of chivalric idealism this is proof positive that knights are all a bunch of hypocritical faggots and Might Makes Right and imma go rape this bih.
And what’s even worse is that Toyne will get all the mythopoetic credit for a retarded “forbidden love story” that was nothing more substantive than some idiot kid getting horny and simpy for a completely forgettable piece of teenage ass. Whereas Aemon’s own forbidden love story with Naerys—a love genuinely mythic in character, that’s lasted decades, is consensually monogamous, actually cuckolded the king in the true and literal sense of the word—the bards probably won’t even want to write about if it gets out. Sure the Dragonknight is a celebrity, but HIS songs are all about him killing Hastwyck for accusing him of doing this very thing. Which means to the singers and their audience if it gets out that Daeron is a bastard the other song was just a lie, and Toyne will already have the credit for the doomed romance angle.
Assuming Aegon actually did orchestrate the entire thing (more on how soon), this really was just an insanely brilliant act of semiotic and dramaturgical terrorism on the king’s part that would have gotten to Aemon existentially like almost nothing else.
Don’t believe me? A century and a half later Arys Oakheart has this to say whilst thinking wistfully about Toyne as he breaks his own vows:
Ser Terrence Toyne was found abed with his king's mistress. 'Twas love, he swore, but it cost his life and hers, and brought about the downfall of his House and the death of the noblest knight who ever lived
But did you catch that part at the end?
Because the epilogue is actually the most important part of this story—it’s where Aemon makes sure Aegon can’t just cum on the white cloak and leave it out to dry.
Granted, he can’t just wipe the cumstain off wholesale. But by sacrificing his own life to rescue Aegon—engaging in his own little display of flamboyant dramaturgy—the Dragonknight is able to wipe off just enough that you have to stare rly hard to see it.
So to mythically rescue his beloved institution—rescue chivalry itself—Aemon makes sure the fight with the Toyne brothers ends with both of them dead and him as well.
He keeps it plausibly deniable for dignity’s sake, but he and Aegon know he could cut through five Toynes if he wanted to. Instead he fights precisely well enough to leave Aegon the last man in the room—the only thing the latter ever really wanted.
Naerys died a year later.
So anyway you’re probably wondering about what sort of schizo explanation I have for how Aegon got a teenage girl to fuck his Kingsguard.
Because for the record I very much am convinced that picking up Bethany for this particular task was the real purpose of the “Aegor Visit”—and also btw that Bethany wasn’t one of his nine loves at all. I think Aegon’s private position is that he DID love Daena, but that he replaces her with Bethany because looking back he is genuinely ashamed of both Daena not loving him back and himself not ever loving Bethany.
Anyway on the Kingsguard side it would have been easy finding the right simp: once you need to fill a post say you want young blood cause there are too many geezers defending you, and then have a big contest that has a box of cute young girls close to the arena, and if one of the more handsome guys can’t resist flirting with them or showing off you say Heh, I like his moxie! Reminds me of me! and insist he gets admitted. And then for a while you make him follow you around with him first seeing you as a cool father figure he never had but then he starts to watch as you’re extremely disgusting with women, plus mb lowkey cuck him a bit by making him hold the lube or something idk. Point is after a solid three months of this he’ll be primed and ready.
Meanwhile on the chickside I suspect the grooming detail is crucial here.
Not because Aegon would lie about having a Kingsguard Cuck Fetish to get Bracken and Barb to write Bethany a bunch of smut with that plot or something—rather I think he’d tell B&B their problem was always being too power-hungry and aggressive whereas he wants something pure and sweet and childish (obviously spun more as romantic idealism than anything sadomasochistic), and then B&B basically achieved this objective as desired by sheltering and isolating Bethany so that irrespective of her ackshual age she was mentally kind of a terrified child when Aegon come and got her.
Which means that Bethany Bracken’s tears, at least, were kind of just tears not Tears—observe that the text indicates directly she “found his royal embraces distressing,” and nothing like that is ever really said about Aegon’s other women so this for sure wasn’t just Bethany doing the Japanese Porn Woman thing.
In fact it’s probably the closest to outright Rape Rape our protagonist ever got.
Anyway this still leaves us with the mystery of Melissa Blackwood’s abandonment.
My initial take there was that the two of them had some big giant fight which made her leave and so he went to go cuckqueen her by fucking a Bracken, with Bloodraven making up the whole grooming angle post facto because he was repeating family myth passed down from Melissa. But that doesn’t really comport with the above theory and is also kind of just lame.
On further reflection I sort of suspect Melissa was involved with the entire thing and may have even lowkey been the mastermind. Recall that House Blackwood was the other beneficiary here… and also that Aegon’s tastes are trending younger and younger with each girl, whereas Missy herself sure isn’t getting any younger and would definitely prefer to cultivate her own replacement on terms that offer her a dignified exit. Also some of the nobles are getting pissy about Aegon’s behavior by now and even overtly siding with a public Daeron Faction, whereas she herself needs to be Daeron-coded for the inevitable civil war 20 years down the line, so it makes sense to just drop out of realm-level politics for the time being to let father and son have their moment.
Melissa wouldn’t do any of this overtly, of course. Maybe she’d mention to Aegon that once as a young girl she sat next to Bethany at a tourney but the latter wouldn’t stop crying over all the violence which made Missy feel so very terribly for her—though gods, how would she survive a marriage bed? Poor thing… She could also maybe feel out the Kingsguard, talk about one with a crush—you get the picture. Missy would coordinate it seamlessly so that by the time the king was ready to replace her she could return to her Mary Sue Castle to raise Bloodraven in peace during Aegon’s Capri Era.
And over the next year even Naerys would come to miss her.
Jeyne Lothston
So remember Falena Stokeworth? Older gal, popped our boy’s cherry back in the day? Told you there’d be some more shit with her that complicates things?
Well in 178 AC sometime after the Toyne fiasco she heads back up to King’s Landing accompanied by her batcuck hubby Lord Lothston, who becomes Hand of the King.
Tagging along is Falena’s 14yo daughter Jeyne, who becomes the king’s new mistress.
Yeah.
The text isn’t especially subtle about this one, either: “Daughter of Lady Falena, the king’s first mistress, by either Lord Lucas Lothston or the king himself”
Now a bit of second grade math places Jeyne’s conception in 164—which is several years into the long and shitty reign of Baelor the Blessed, which basically overlapped Aegon’s romantically aimless fuckboy decade betwixt Cassella and Barba.
It’s entirely plausible to me that during that epoch Aegon would occasionally visit Harrenhal to rearrange Falena’s guts or get the Mommy treatment... and yet her own section only specifically mentioned him visiting her those first two years after their first affair. So tbh it’s hard to know how we’re even supposed to read this relationship. Maybe it’s a thing where Aegon just pops in every now and then, or maybe they resumed something more substantial on and off? Impossible to say.
Anyway Jeyne’s section is short—the text says Aegon reputedly liked to enjoy mother and daughter in bed together at the same time, but ultimately ended up giving Jeyne a pox he caught from a hooker following Bethany’s execution and the Lothstons weren’t seen in court after that (not rly clear whether they left or Aegon himself ended things).
Weighing in on whether Jeyne was Aegon’s or Lucas’s brat is dumb—there’s literally no way to know from the evidence available and that’s kind of the whole point (just like it is with Daeron’s true parentage and arguably even Aegon’s). The fact it’s 50/50 means there’s that transgressive thrill in your amygdala but not the instantaneous moral pushback, which means Aegon has plausible deniability… but also not. It lets him have his cake and eat it too, which he’s been doing quite a bit of by this point.
That said the fact her name is Jeyne sort of evokes Jeyne Poole—so what if this chick is just a high end hooker Falena trained? Assuming Aegon hasn’t been to Harrenhal in the last few years it’s not like he’d be able to tell the difference.
Either way, at this point Aegon very definitely was looking to indulge a fantasy of ultimate transgression, and at least seems to have suspected Jeyne was his daughter, because otherwise why would she even be on this list?
The text informs us that she got the pox “soon” after they started seeing each other, which means they probably only had sex a few times. That suggests to me either that her inclusion on Aegon’s love count is basically just a prestige kill—he’s bragging about fucking his daughter despite not ackshully loving her—or he truly did feel something intense in the brief period she was his mistress.
Obviously I think it’s the latter—only the feeling in particular was probably Shame.
Consider the text implies that after Bethany (who’d been revolted by him, unlike anyone else thus far) he was in Tyrion Mode and only fucking whores—Aegon probs found it a bit difficult to land a normal mistress so soon after the last ends up murked, whereas the fact he got a pox implies even his whores were a far cry from Shae Tier.
Even as a king his prospects are degrading somewhat.
Then his Childhood Groomer shows up with her own daughter, maybe by him maybe not, who’s fourteen years of age—precisely the age Aegon himself was at when he first helped himself to mom. There’s no way you’re convincing me that’s not intentional.
Aegon probably reads it as a fresh start.
Maybe to a Targaryen brain the idea of a daughter-wife seems an even better way to keep the bloodline pure than sisters (do it enough times and you can clone yourself!). At the very least he’ll float the idea for a while, since being the first Targaryen to go Full Craster and marry his daughter (GRRM really is a huge fucking perv, ain’t he?) would without a doubt ensure his record goes down in infamy.
Or if you want to get really dark?
Maybe during their first affair Falena always “joked” about doing this to stay relevant once she got too old for him, which sort of implanted the fetish in Aegon’s mind such that he starts to actually press her for it much later.
This comports ofc with my narrative in Falena’s section that Aegon was by his nature a simp and it was she who turned him perverted—though if that did happen I could also see her avoiding pregnancy out of guilt and confusion despite Lothston’s need for an heir and Aegon’s hounding in later years. Consider she wasn’t pregnant until 39—kind of weird. Maybe during his fuckboy era Aegon realized the chance was fading and just hung out at Harrenhal fucking the shit out of her until she was big with child.
But long story short I kind of think Falena genuinely was a predator and GRRM intends for her to be read as such. But let’s also not be schoolmarmish and manichean here; in the context of the universe she’s obviously not THAT bad. Also it’s pretty clear there’s a reenacting trauma thing going on here when you consider her own history.
See, Falena was brought to King’s Landing as a little girl to serve as a playmate for King Aegon III’s sister, who ended up “killing herself” when both were ten years old (which kind of makes me wonder what Unwin Peake was doing when Epstein died).
So anyway while Falena gets over her friend dying it’s announced that the realm is going to hold a Maiden’s Day Ball to find the 13yo king a new wife, with Falena a possible competitor. And being a minor house suddenly faced with the potential for a massive surge in power, you can bet your ass all of House Stokeworth would have been drilling into her head how absolutely critical it is that she’s Hot and Sexy for the king.
Imagine a child beauty pageant, except if you win your dad gets to be Vice President (tbh if Vance fucks up I wouldn’t put it past Trump to replace him like this). Those are the cards Falena is dealt in early life. And given the stakes I wouldn’t be surprised if her mom has her talk to a bunch of courtesans who specialize in catering to younger male clients or something like that. Whatever the case she’s definitely getting out of nowhere sexualized three or four years earlier than the Westerosi norm by a bunch of people who’d ordinarily be slowing that down because if she can just arouse this one particular 13yo boy their dynasty will be set for life instead of having to marry Bronn.
Only Unwin Peake has his guys push Falena down the stairs shortly before the ball and she breaks her leg, which means she can’t even compete. tbh fuck Unwin Peake.
The upshot is obvious. Her family probably all but disowned her for fucking up her one shot to do anything good for them, which explains why at 24 she isn’t married yet and still weirdly caught up on securing the bag from teen royals with her Hot Pussy. Psychologically she’s still the clumsy little girl with the broken leg who might have been queen had she not Ruined Everything. So if at any point she thinks Aegon might walk away you can bet her ass she’s gonna fight dirty to keep her Prince Charming around (which to be fair Harrenhal is a lot better than her family’s shitty castle).
And so you don’t even need Falena herself getting molested to explain everything. Seducing Aegon IV was just her way of healing her old girlhood wound of not seducing Aegon III (they even have the same fucking name!), while she’s probably able to excuse the Jeyne situation by saying look man I was ten when I got thrown into this I think a fourteen year old can handle it. Besides, the king was for sure pressuring her at this point and offering the Handship to Lothston (who likely didn’t gaf about Jeyne for the same reason Aegon hated Daeron) so in some sense her hands were just tied.
It’s all very southern gothic; almost gives Pretty Baby. Not unlike her portly protege the broad started off as Mephistopheles and ended up as Faust.
Anyway speaking of Lothston he’s almost certainly been memed into a cuck fetish at this point or something—though you don’t really feel bad for him anymore either way. Which isn’t at all relevant really I just thought this section needed some levity.
So back to Aegon’s plans—like I said he views Jeyne as a much-needed fresh start, sort of a Merry Meg 2.0, and I think after the Bethany brouhaha and death of his brother the king is feeling shitty and is actually sweet with both Falena and Jeyne.
He’s not pushing them into some depraved chicken egg menage, but everyone else assumes that’s what’s going on when they’re all in a room together because honestly that’s a fair assumption with Aegon. But in reality he’s just trying to spend time with both “as a family” because he feels a bit haunted and spooped by how far he went with Bethany and is trying his best to make this new dynamic feel somewhat wholesome.
He’s also getting on in years—43 now. There’s a good chance that a lot of his feelings towards Jeyne would just be genuinely paternal and protective. He wants to make up for lost time—thinks often of Alysanne and her sisters with the dumb flower names…
He gives Jeyne a disgusting painful STD.
Contracted from a hooker.
a gross one.
A friend who’d seemed openminded mutters something about a “curse” around him…another something to the effect of what do you expect from the gods, going for a daughter?.
He sits Jeyne down. Tells her that from now on she’ll have her own bed and he’ll get her the best maester available and in a few years find her a decent husband…
She begs him to just let them all go and to never ever write to them ever again.
Aegon complies.
Serenei of Lys (Sweet Serenei)
Methinks after the debacle with Jeyne our protagonist did a bit of soul searching—about Falena. Cassella. Aemon. Naerys. Viserys.
Himself.
And then at long last he came to that curdled conclusion that feels eye-rollingly obvious to anyone who’s read their Freud.
We don’t know the actual year Sweet Serenei arrived from Lys in King’s Landing, or even how old she was—only that she was the most beautiful of Aegon’s mistresses, but lowkey sort of a cunt to other people at court. Word has it she came from an old impoverished Valyrian family and was brought to King’s Landing by Jon Hightower (the newly appointed Hand). Besides that it’s known that she died while giving birth to the last of Aegon’s bastards—his daughter Shiera Seastar.
And also that certain people alleged that she was “much older” than the king and simply using sorcery to disguise that a la Melisandre.
And yes after reading that I too considered exactly what you’re thinking and no it can’t be Larra given we already know she died when Aegon was like 5. I suppose Serenei could theoretically be a Lysene Momzombie, but I’m pretty sure it’s more parsimonious to assume other Lysene women exist and she is one of them?
That said I guess she could be he his grandma or something. Which, gross.
I almost wonder if Aegon wanted to find out if he actually WAS a bastard, and under penalty of whatever tasked Jon Hightower (who very interestingly comes from a family with mystic vibes) to find out. In which case it seems entirely possible to me at least that Serenei’s “old impoverished Valyrian family” was in fact the family of some early lover of Larra prior to Viserys who seeded her before she set of for Westeros?
In which case perhaps Sereni is his elder sister?
Or maybe Jon just found the hottest courtesan he could and was like Hey so I’m from this giant country far to the west where the king thinks his dad got cucked by his mom from here and wants me to find out his actual family history but I’m kind of too lazy so do you want to come up with something plausible and just come be his sugar baby? And Serenei says okay.
Honestly the latter is kind of my read. But I also suspect Aegon knows she’s a fake and kind of doesn’t care and just thinks it’s funny.
Because I suspect in his last years he sort of owns the idea that existence is absurd— that his life was always cursed because he’s a bastard, but Daeron is as well and so shouldn’t get to hypocritically hide behind faith and law and Tears just because his parents were good at plausible deniability games and performative victimhood.
Recall that at this point Daeron would be actively working almost nonstop to curb the king’s power. To him Aegon was the ogre who’d murdered both his parents—Aemon through the Toyne Affair and Naerys by fucking another baby into her (right after her protector’s death, no less) the old lecher knew perfectly well her body couldn’t handle. Both she and the baby had died in 179.
And at this point Aegon wouldn’t have even denied he was an ogre; what he would have said is Well fuck you, too, you little shit—you think I got this way by accident? It was your cunt mom and dad and grandpa never left me a choice. But I guess hurting me is always okay because it’s Aegon and fuck Aegon. You litte faggot. I should be walking Aly down the aisle right now— but that could never fucking happen, because I was Unworthy from the start.
Which makes his final act of legitimizing all of his bastards a sort of grandiose and baroque supervillain move—or superhero move? He’s kind of just saying We’re all bastards here, so let us all play by the same rules. And tbh fuck your hypocritical ideals of legitimacy and honor. In practice it all comes down to performance and propaganda and power and plausibly deniability. And I know you faggotrons will lie about me either way, so if you call me a fucking monster it’s gonna be on my own goddamned terms. Fuck worthiness.
Which honestly? Serve, king!
Now personally I feel like either Aegon / Daeron / Jeyne are all bastards or none of them are, simply because that makes for the better dramatic irony. Still in principle I agree with Aegon’s take that it doesn’t matter either way—a view that’s actually quite modern and ahead of its time, and at the very least makes a lot of sense given all that Aegon has gone through. He’s not just some horny evil fat guy who was evil for the sake of being evil; his deathbed legitimization makes a cogent ideological point.
But more generally I think the whole Serenei story shows Aegon is soul-searching now and wants to reengage with his past, which is I suspect sort of her entire point as a character: to show that toward the end of Aegon’s life he actually WAS reckoning with his core maternal wound—or at least attempting to.
Jeyne shook him.
Anyway they called Serenei a sorceress—one might wonder if Aegon was trying to bring back his mother, or Meg or Viserys or Aemon or Bethany or anyone else?
Probably not; he’s kind of just an old fat guy about to die and wants a big tiddy mommy to help him alchemize his Big Feelings.
Aegon’s Sexuality
Obviously Aegon’s defining trait in life was being a great big pussyhound.
But he wasn’t really fratty about it like Robert, nor a lothario a la Oberyn. He had a hobbyist streak like Tyrion, but it was more sadomasochistic than transactional, and while he was definitely a bit rapey it wasn’t at all like how e.g. Gregor or Ramsay are rapey. If anything he was comparable to Euron Greyjoy.
Remember that scene where Crow’s Eye has the Shield Islands Cuck tied up in his banquet hall and is forcing his nubile daughters to serve his crew naked while their Dark Cinderella bastard sister sits on his lap making fun of all the Stacies who were mean to her? That’s exactly the sort of thing that would have appealed to Aegon by the end of his reign—dude lived for these baroque rituals of dominance and humiliation where half the fun consists specifically in hurting her dad’s feelings.
Because Aegon IV wasn’t a physical sadist like Ramsay, nor was he turned on by mindless brutality like Gregor—to Aegon’s tastes that shit would read as kind of cringe and pedestrian. Rather he was a psychological sadist who got off on feeling undeniable and in control, which meant it would have defeated the whole purpose to simply force himself on a woman. The fun was in the theater beforehand; in getting her to come willingly, and ideally in a way that humiliates the men in her life.
Now at this point it should really go without saying what all of the above stems from, but for the thickies among you it’s A) a curdled sensitivity to rejection originating in an intense maternal wound that made him eroticize the impossibility of Women Leaving; B) a need to dominate and humiliate other men with his sexuality after what went down first with his dad and Falena/Meg and then with Naerys and Aemon (note this mirrors Tyrion’s sexuality); C) a certain normative exhibitionism rooted in visceral disdain for the entire concept of dignity and sexual privacy because he’s always been on the losing side of those things; D) a performative cruelty borne of contempt for performative suffering in women and Tears; and finally E) an eroticization of himself as Monster, which no doubt escalated in a feedback loop as Aegon in his final years ascended towards hamplanet status (another echo of Tyrion; presumably this is GRRM’s own thing?).
All that said I think at this point it’s important to note Aegon was still a lot less rapey than half the Bad Guys in George Rape Rape Martin’s universe.
Just consider this quote from the text:
“For the smallfolk, his reign might have been a source of gossip and amusement. To the lords of the realm who did not stay at court, and who did not wish to have Aegon make free with their daughters, he might have seemed strong and decisive, frivolous, but largely harmless. But to those who dared enter his circle, he was too mercurial, too greedy, and too cruel to be anything but dangerous.”
Doesn’t really strike me as monstrous.
If anything Martin’s all but screaming to us here that the nobles who messed around with Aegon were sort of just Asking For It. And we don’t hear about any of the minor mistresses, granted, but going just off the Brackens they absolutely were Asking For It.
Now don’t get me wrong; Aegon was no doubt quite a bit more likely to Paula Jones some random chambermaid than your modal Westerosi lord.
But also, come on—I’d bet you anything there were TONS of lords like Roose Bolton out facefucking peasants left and right and just keeping that shit locked down. Aegon was simply more overt about it, which the other guys likely found kind of annoying.
Also: come on. Even poor womyn have agency. They’ll take a hard line when men are in the room for Sisterhood reasons or w/e, but among themselves they know the score.
If you’re a Virtuous Woman who doesn’t want to get Taken you definitely aren’t going to be a chambermaid to Aegon the fucking Unworthy, and even if you’re serving in another castle and he visits there are ways to avoid his gaze. Moreover poor people just aren’t super concerned with purity in their women, particularly when mixing with rich dudes—consider Glendon Ball’s sis or Rosey or that scene in My Fair Lady where Eliza’s dad instantly reads it as a sugaring thing and tries to ‘aggle with ‘enry ‘iggins. Any smallfolk chick Aegon banged knew he wasn’t Gregor and was 100% focused on maximizing her eventual payoff, even if that did involve Tears a lot of the time.
In practice women aren’t scared of men like Aegon IV at all—honestly he’s kind of the Westerosi analog to Donald Trump. Yeah chicks know he’s a bit aggro but they also have perspective and even if they won’t admit it publicly will frequently be thinking bitch why’d you go behind closed doors with Donald fucking Trump if you didn’t want that? In fact when a man is theatrically sexually aggressive like this it’s often specifically about emitting a low resolution filter warning Good Girls to stay away, and functionally speaking the whole thing is sort of just a covert contract CNC dynamic.
That said there clearly exists the Thomas Boleyn archetype of minor noble who tries to curry favor with Daughterpussy in an even more hookery and low rent manner than Bracken, and Aegon’s court probably had quite a few of those dudes. Hell, by the end it was prob like 80% these dudes and 20% cuck fetishists.
On the other hand idk… is that situation the worst thing in the world? It’s kind of just a higher risk yet potentially higher reward version of the conventional feudal marriage strategy, which must have been worth it on net or it wouldn’t happen, and if you think about it just in terms of revealed preferences Boleyning was clearly the game theoretic optimum for the gentry during Aegon’s reign. It obviously wouldn’t have been worth it for a Stark or Lannister (just consider the Mad King and Joanna), but for high-mid houses involved in intense local conflicts like the Blackwoods and Brackens the time horizons are shorter, so especially when you consider that Bloodraven and Bittersteel ended up being among the most important men in the realm it’s clearly worth it.
Likewise I’d bet a solid 80-90% of the girls were basically fine with it—by hairy armpit feminist standards they’re literally all being groomed into sex trafficking by default number one, and number two they’d be pricing in eventual abandonment which yeah it would hurt their marriage prospects to have been pumped and dumped by Aegon but you can probably just sell the jewels he gave you and marry who you want after to end up better on net. Not if you’re a dumb whore with a swollen pussy like Barba but Missy pretty clearly ended up better off coming out of that situation.
Anyway thinking about it in terms of selection bias these are gonna be gals with a bit higher time preference, openness, neuroticism… good girls seldom make history types who these days would say they have BPD and find the idea of dying at 30 hot. Feeling especially bad for them is kind of a tell you’re a simp or naive undersexed fat chick.
At the end of the day the fact that Aegon IV had a decently long and by all accounts fairly stable reign serves as proof positive he wasn’t That Bad. Just consider Daeron was actively angling after him toward the end but was never able to coup him, which means the king still had a more powerful faction of loyalists on his side. He wasn’t insane like Aerys and knew how far he could push shit. Without any dragons there’s a pretty low ceiling on how cartoonishly evil you can be before provoking something like Robert’s Rebellion, and even with them Maegor incited half the realm against him.
Aegon IV was mostly just a LARPy theater kid who chose his targets shrewdly enough to avoid destabilizing political fallout, and most of the time the script likely amounted more to them choosing him while letting him think it was all his idea… which he would have known on some level and no doubt appreciated as a sort of lived half-conscious performance art in the manner you’d expect from anyone born of a Lysene woman.
Thing is though Aegon’s mistresses were incentivized to give him Tears and their Boleyndads incentivized to act super duper cucked and humiliated about it, which means that by the final years of Aegon’s reign his entire court had likely drifted into some species of Weimarish CNC theater full of fetishistic LARPers that normal people lower in neuroticism and openness are going to find gross and annoying.
Meanwhile the Maesters in particular probably all have Asperger’s Syndrome and can’t really grasp the nature of things like plausible deniability and covert contracts, which makes them more likely to take everything going on at face value and gives them an almost visceral disgust for the very notion of affairs of state turning into performance art. Only that’s kind of on them for being a bunch of credulous and literal-minded nerds who don’t understand that basically all leadership and certainly all royal pageantry is already performance art.
…which the text seems to suggest is precisely how Aegon envisioned his conquests and all attendant theatrics—he intended for them to sit in the public record as eternal testaments to the implacability of his appetite. If Tywin flexed nuts through silence, shame, and repression then Aegon flexed nuts by constantly giving the smallfolk juicy new Aegon Stories to gossip about while forcing the nobility to hear about his gross disgusting sex life and narcissistically curating his own elaborate pussy mythos; as mentioned above, Aegon claimed in his final years to have smashed 900+ womyn in total over the course of his life, while loving only 9 of them.
Though frankly I suspect he was pulling those numbers out of his big fat ass—and not even because the figures themselves are unrealistic so much as bc that sounds exactly like some shit Delicious Tacos or WBE would say on their deathbed to immortalize their record mythopoetically by way of catchy parallelism. Thing is tho anyone who actually fucked 900+ girls would either know the exact number or be off by hundreds.
I suspect with his bona fide Puss Count he either had a massive cumstained grimoire somewhere with the exact number (probs like 746) plus a LARPy account of each lay for him to jerk off to later and show off to the girls he fucks OR he just got too fat to keep counting somewhere around the mid 400s after which he spent his remaining years sloppily dead reckoning all of life’s metrics out of principle.
Whereas for his Heart Count it was probs more like 93 girls he was genuinely quite infatuated with for at least a month or so such that he would have called it love at the time, but then when taking accounts near the end he realized it would make him look kind of simpy and gay if he was honest whereas 90% of those bitches for sure weren’t iconic enough to mythologize. So he kept the prestige gals that would impress people down the line and left out the ones that made him look like a groace nasty sex addict.
Cause you just know that 900+ includes some shit he wouldn’t brag about.
Like imagine you’re traveling to Highgarden or Riverrun for court business and stop in some buttfuck peasant village where all the stumpy malnourished smallfolk broads give you googly eyes but you can’t even enjoy cucking their husbands / dads because those niggas are practically beating down the tavern door trying to pimp their women out to you. And so the only chick who seems fun is that neurotic gawkish big teeth horse girl with asymmetric tidders who owns the tavern and I guess is a widow or something? But then after you call her to your room and facefuck the shit out of her she giggles wiping puke off her asymmies asking if she can tell you Her Theory about you and then after an evening bawling your eyes out you have to spend the entire morning explaining to some bemused seneschal why this one in particular got strangled or elevated to minor nobility when she isn’t even That Hot, such that the instant you leave your most trusted adviser (some weird spergy gay dude mb in love with you) ends up having the entire village Disappeared so the story never gets out.
Shit like that probably happened to Aegon constantly, and if you got him drunk near the end he’d for sure spend the entire night crying about a bunch of rando burgher concubines who ackshully loved him but he never appreciated.
Only then the next day he’d blame it on the wine and say those girls were unimportant distractions—more like pets, really—and it was ackshully Daena the Defiant who was his true love. And while he was never quite good enough to keep her around Daemon obviously serves as living testament to the cosmological significance of their union.
Then he’d get mad at himself and say No it was surely Merry Meg—she was the only one who saw the True Aegon; knew him before he was Like This. She may well have helped him grow every bit as heroic as Aemon and Daeron had that brute Viserys not
Yet what of Cassella? His Dornish Flower… the one who really roused The Dragon in him for the first time—if Falena had made him a man by the letter of the law it was Cassie had in spirit. Though Falena herself certainly had her charms! Like that time
No no, it must have been Serenei—had to be. How could it not? He never adored her like the others, granted… barely fucked her. But when she sang that Lysene lullaby…
Perhaps, though, a case might also be made for the 14yo hedge knight’s daughter he has a crush on right now? Since
Aegon could probably spend the better part of an afternoon cycling through them all, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the main criterion for his inner circle was an ability to not just tolerate this but participate in it with real enthusiasm and verve—I imagine lots of minstrel-adjacent minor lords and closet cases in his early reign, whereas in the last few years Aegon is hanging out almost entirely with his mistresses and the sort of wine track prosties who’d find his sexual lorecrafting genuinely interesting
As for the epithet Unworthy?
I’m almost positive he came up with that shit himself.
Aegon’s Gambit
Aegon IV knew he wouldn’t be remembered well by history.
Which he actually didn’t mind assuming it was for the right reasons—the thing he couldn’t countenance was a bunch of autistic incel Maesters who take crying women and Noble Knights at face value completely fucking up his story.
He understood no one would ever give him credit for thirteen years of stable effective rule—and if they did would certainly never admit that stability was ballasted at least in part by the reputation he cultivated (recall the nobility didn’t fear Aegon’s appetite so long as they kept their head down, but they didn’t want to be his enemy).
He also saw how history was starting to remember his uncle and father and cousins. Daeron gets to be the hero; Baelor the saint. Aegon III was sad. His father died fast and lives on in mostly in well ackhully talking points that bore everyone at parties.
No matter what he’s going to be remembered as the fat retarded rapist who built those stupid wooden dragons that exploded. That’s not really under his control anymore.
What he CAN do is make sure he’s a proper fucking villain with real narrative heft and not just some undignified cartoon—he can go out like a true fucking Theater Kid.
And so in an act of performance art that puts even his original collaboration with Daena to shame our boy legitimizes all of his bastards with his dying breath.
Why does he do this?
To attach his legacy to a century of civil war instead of just Tears.
To serve as a Sin Eater for the Blackfyre Cause—Daemon gets to be a noble knight now instead just another Rogue Prince.
As a huge middle finger to the notion of legitimacy qua legitimacy… and also dignity and law and plausible deniability. Either we all fight Queensbury or we all gouge eyes in the mud, but if you try to keep me in the former while you’re operating in the latter then fuck you—I’m just gonna start flinging shit in everyone’s face.
To demonstrate it’s always been about Might Makes Right and the hypocritical sisterfucking moralism of Aemon and Naerys was always fake and gay.
As a statement that nobody else can decide which of his loves were and weren’t meaningful or “legitimate.” Fuck Naerys I’m glad she’s dead; Meg was my girl.
He kind of just doesn’t care about Westeros anymore. By now he’s reengaged with his Lysene heritage; perhaps learned his mom’s tongue via Serenei. For all Aegon knows he’s a bastard, so he might as well lean into the side of him he’s sure about. Rightly or not he figures as a Man of Lys he doesn’t owe anything in particular to these Andal brutes (certainly that’s what Serenei is telling him).
I’m sorry Aly. I’m sorry Lily; Willow; Rosey. I’m really sorry, Jeyne.
Eat my fat rotten ass, Daeron.
And as mentioned above, I’m thoroughly convinced Aegon himself was the genesis of his famous epithet “the Unworthy,” which seems like kind of a bizarre choice even from his enemies if you take it at face value but makes loads of sense when you peer beneath the surface.
Aegon proved unworthy of much throughout his life: a mother’s love; father’s respect; a sister’s acceptance—and wife’s fidelity; a brother’s loyalty (to you, not just his own self-concept); a wholesome sexual initiation; true love’s safety; princess’s gratitude; real sovereignty over his own damn kingdom; a family that didn’t gaslight him.
Aegon was certainly unworthy of posterity’s respect and admiration.
And equally, perhaps, of its contempt.
…or at least incorporated GRRM’s planned Five Year Gap to start a fresh second trilogy instead of bogging down the midseries with a slice of life anime that simultaneously feels tedious and narratively compressed
This is pretty much a short book
I got to the bits about Lys/the attempted coup, then saw how much was left of the article. Sorry bro I gotta do some work today. It's just a lot.