Aegon's Conquest

Aegon's Conquest is remembered as the decisive beginning of Targaryen rule in Westeros, but the evidence surrounding it presents more than a completed victory. It survives as a political precedent, a religious test, a source of local loyalties, and a reservoir of legendary power. Later rulers repeatedly invoke Aegon the Conqueror to justify submission, rebellion, dynastic custom, or dreams of renewed conquest; the continuing force of the event lies in how thoroughly it remains embedded in the institutions and arguments of the realm.

Conquest and Political Reordering

Aegon Targaryen conquered Westeros with dragons, a fact treated by both his admirers and his enemies as the essential explanation for the change in political order. In the account preserved by Nimble Dick Crabb, the lords of Crackclaw Point had heard of Harren’s end and, recognizing the danger posed by the conquering power, laid their swords at the feet of Visenya Targaryen. Visenya accepted them as her own men and declared that they would owe no fealty to Maidenpool, Crab Isle, or Duskendale, while still acknowledging the king. The arrangement left room for local lordship beneath royal sovereignty: the people of Crackclaw could resist outside tax collectors, yet they were expected to bow to their own lords and to the true king.

The same history shows that conquest did not erase regional political identity. Crabb describes the people of Crackclaw as loyal to the “dragon men,” but his loyalty is directed against later royal legitimacy as much as toward the original conquerors. He distinguishes Aegon’s kingship from the Baratheon monarchy and recalls local families who fought alongside Prince Rhaegar on the Trident or served in the Kingsguard. Aegon’s victory therefore becomes a measure by which later regimes are judged: the Conquest established the standard of true kingship, while subsequent dynasties could be condemned as usurping or lesser inheritors.

The conquest also altered the constitutional position of the Iron Islands. According to the Greyjoy history, Aegon ended the line of the last King of the Iron Islands but permitted the ironborn to revive their ancient custom of choosing their own ruler. They selected Lord Vickon Greyjoy of Pyke. This compromise combined submission to the Targaryen order with the preservation of a distinct succession practice, allowing an old regional tradition to survive inside the new realm. The later Greyjoy claim to descent from the Grey King, whose legend says that he ruled the sea itself and married a mermaid, gives the islanders a history older than the Conquest even as their political status derives from Aegon’s settlement.

Faith, Prophecy, and Submission

The Conquest is also remembered as a moment when religious authority helped determine whether military power would be resisted. Three hundred years after Aegon landed beneath the hill at Oldtown, the High Septon’s response was presented as a precedent for the Faith’s own political conduct. The High Septon is said to have shut himself inside the Starry Sept for seven days and seven nights, taking only bread and water, before announcing that the Faith would not oppose Aegon and his sisters. The Crone had supposedly lifted her lamp and shown him what lay ahead: if Oldtown fought the dragon, the city, the Hightower, the Citadel, and the Starry Sept would be destroyed.

This account makes submission an act of interpretation rather than simple surrender. Lord Hightower, described as a godly man, kept his strength at home and opened the city gates when Aegon arrived. Aegon was then anointed with the seven oils, binding conquest to sacred recognition. The precedent remains powerful because it gives later religious leaders a model for responding to overwhelming political change: pray, fast, read the signs, and preserve the institutions that might otherwise be destroyed. The Conquest thus enters the history of the Faith not merely as an invasion, but as a crisis in which prophecy and prudence converged.

Memory, Legend, and Historical Uncertainty

Later accounts do not present the Conquest as a single uncontested narrative. In Duskendale, the older rebellion against the king is remembered through the town’s attachment to Lord Denys Darklyn, whose defiance took place generations after Aegon’s arrival but whose history depends on the political order Aegon created. The maester explains that the Darklyns were petty kings during the Age of Heroes, that their realm was eventually swallowed by larger kingdoms, and that they continued as a noble house under changing masters. Their fate illustrates the long historical movement from numerous local sovereignties toward larger kingdoms and, ultimately, toward a realm ruled from the Targaryen center.

The Conquest is repeatedly joined to stories whose reliability is uncertain but whose political usefulness is clear. Aegon’s destruction of Harren’s power persuades the lords of Crackclaw to submit to Visenya. The Faith’s vision of the Crone validates Oldtown’s decision to open its gates. The Greyjoy tradition preserves both the loss of an independent kingship and the survival of a distinctive island custom. Each version selects different consequences: local autonomy, religious preservation, or dynastic continuity. The event’s meaning is therefore carried by competing regional memories rather than by one neutral historical account.

Dragons and the Dream of Repetition

Aegon’s Conquest remains inseparable from dragons, and later conquerors attempt to reproduce its central image. Euron Greyjoy claims that he discovered a dragon horn among the smoking ruins of Valyria, bound with red gold and Valyrian steel engraved with enchantments. He promises that the horn will allow ironmen to bind dragons to their will and explicitly invokes Aegon as a precedent for renewed domination of Westeros. When Asha Greyjoy objects that there are no dragons, Euron answers that there are three and treats their existence as sufficient grounds for a new claim to power.

Euron’s promise reveals how the Conquest functions as a political myth. Its military success is reduced to a portable formula: dragons plus a claimant can transform ambition into kingship. Yet the boast is met with skepticism, exposing the distance between historical memory and present reality. The original conquest is remembered as an accomplished fact, while later attempts to repeat it depend on uncertain artifacts, disputed knowledge, and promises of power not yet demonstrated.

The broader magical history surrounding the period reinforces this contrast between lost power and surviving traces. Glass candles are said to have been brought from Valyria to Oldtown a thousand years before the Doom and to exist in a set of one green candle and three black ones. One such candle, three feet tall, twisted and ridged like a sword, burns without being consumed; its flame does not flicker, and its light intensifies colors while making shadows appear like holes in the world. Dragonglass also remains connected to older histories: the Children of the Forest once gave the Night’s Watch a hundred obsidian daggers each year during the Age of Heroes, and obsidian is said to be effective against the Others. These objects do not belong exclusively to the Conquest, but they show how the age is remembered within a wider chain of Valyrian, heroic, and supernatural power.

Enduring Significance

The legacy of Aegon’s Conquest is consequently institutional as much as military. It establishes the royal center against which later kings are measured, permits selected regional customs to survive under royal supremacy, and provides the Faith with a remembered example of prudent accommodation. It also leaves behind a language of legitimacy in which “the true king” is defined by relation to Aegon’s achievement rather than merely by possession of a crown.

Its durability comes from unresolved tension. The Conquest unifies Westeros without eliminating its older peoples, houses, memories, or claims; it incorporates traditions without making them identical; and it creates a political order that later generations can defend, resist, or imitate. Aegon’s victory is therefore both an historical turning point and a continuing argument about who may rule, what submission preserves, and whether the extraordinary power that founded the realm can ever truly be recovered.