Aemond Targaryen

Aemond Targaryen’s life was shaped by two claims: first, his bold seizure of Vhagar, the greatest dragon of his age; later, his claim to power as Prince Regent during the Dance of the Dragons. The dragon gave him the force to change the war, but it could not contain the family feud that turned his pursuit of Lucerys Velaryon into a killing and earned him the name Aemond the Kinslayer. His story ends above the Gods Eye, where he and Vhagar fell in battle with Daemon Targaryen and Caraxes.

Identity and Early Rivalries

Aemond was the second son of King Viserys and Queen Alicent Hightower, younger brother to Aegon and Helaena and elder brother to Daeron. Born into a court still given over to feasts, balls, and tourneys, he grew up amid a royal household divided by the enmity between Alicent and Princess Rhaenyra. Their sons inherited that division. Aemond and his brothers resented their Velaryon nephews, whom they regarded as having taken their birthright to the Iron Throne. Though the boys attended the same celebrations, trained in the yard under the same master-at-arms, and studied under the same maesters, enforced proximity deepened rather than eased their mutual hostility.

That rivalry became especially fraught around the question of Rhaenyra’s sons’ parentage and succession. The boys called them Strongs, an accusation that implied they were bastards and that Rhaenyra had committed treason. When a fight between the children ended with Aemond losing an eye, King Viserys required the boys to apologize to their rivals. The gesture did not settle the matter. Alicent demanded that Lucerys lose an eye in return, while Rhaenyra insisted that Aemond be questioned about who had taught him the accusation. He named his brother Aegon, who answered that the truth was widely known. The injury thus became more than a private grievance: it attached the rivalry between the boys to the succession crisis surrounding their mothers.

Claiming Vhagar and the Cost of the Feud

At ten, Aemond was the only one of Viserys’s sons without a dragon. Aegon rode the young Sunfyre, Helaena flew Dreamfyre, and Daeron had Tessarion, though he had not yet ridden her. Viserys hoped Aemond might choose a hatchling or an egg if the court travelled to Dragonstone after the funeral. Aemond instead fixed his attention on Vhagar, then at High Tide: the oldest, largest, and most terrible dragon in the world, and one that had once carried Rhaena Targaryen.

Aemond did not wait for the proposed journey. Vhagar roared, rose, broke her chains, and flew with him; he circled the towers of High Tide twice before landing. The feat made the boy a dragonrider, but it also sharpened the danger of the family conflict. His new bond with the largest dragon in Westeros transformed a childhood rivalry into a contest in which the stakes could be settled from the sky.

Years later, the hostility surfaced again at court. After Viserys had left for the evening, Aemond toasted his Velaryon nephews with deliberately mocking praise of their brown hair, eyes, and supposed strength. Later, Aegon took offense when Jacaerys Velaryon asked Helaena for a dance; the princes exchanged angry words and might have fought if the Kingsguard had not intervened. Rhaenyra and her sons left for Dragonstone the next morning. These episodes show a peace maintained by ceremony rather than reconciliation: even shared feasts and family occasions offered fresh opportunities for insult.

Envoy, Kinslayer, and Prince Regent

When the succession crisis broke open, Aemond was found preparing for practice in the castle yard while the question of Aegon’s kingship remained unsettled. The Greens sent him to Storm’s End to win the hand of one of Lord Borros Baratheon’s daughters and, through the marriage, secure the support of the stormlands for Aegon. Aemond flew there on Vhagar. On his return, he had achieved that political purpose, but he had also pursued Lucerys and Arrax through a violent storm above Shipbreaker Bay. The dragons met in the air, and Lucerys did not survive. Aemond came back to King’s Landing with the Baratheon alliance and Rhaenyra’s undying enmity.

The responses exposed how differently his family judged the deed. Alicent went pale and feared what it would bring; Otto Hightower rebuked Aemond for failing to foresee the consequences. Aegon II, by contrast, welcomed him with a feast, praised him as true dragon blood, and called the killing a good beginning. That approval did not erase the political cost. Aemond was henceforth known to his foes as Aemond the Kinslayer, and his successful mission to Storm’s End was inseparable from the act that made peace with Rhaenyra impossible.

After Aegon was gravely weakened, Ser Criston Cole told Aemond that he must rule until his brother could take the crown again. Aemond took up Aegon the Conqueror’s iron-and-ruby crown but did not style himself king. He named himself Prince Regent and Protector of the Realm, while Criston remained Hand of the King. The distinction preserved Aegon’s formal kingship even as Aemond assumed authority in practice.

Aemond’s War and Death Above the Gods Eye

Aemond and Criston eventually separated their forces and aims. Criston took command of the host and headed south to join Ormund Hightower and Prince Daeron. Aemond chose to wage his own campaign from Vhagar, intending to burn the enemy from the air. He reasoned that Rhaenyra could not commit all her dragons against him without leaving King’s Landing vulnerable, and expected that Vhagar would defeat any dragon sent to stop him. His confidence rested on the same imbalance that had made him formidable since childhood: Vhagar’s size and experience gave Aemond overwhelming force, but his campaign also invited an answering challenge.

That challenge came from Daemon, Aemond’s uncle, after the prince had spent time at Harrenhal with Alys Rivers. Aemond arrived there on the fourteenth day of Daemon’s vigil, with Alys beside him. When Daemon addressed her, Aemond answered that she had seen him in clouds, pools, and firelight, and warned that Daemon had come alone foolishly. The exchange places Aemond’s confidence in the dragon’s power beside his reliance on Alys’s visions, but neither prevented the confrontation.

Caraxes attacked Vhagar above the Gods Eye. The dragons grappled and fell toward the lake. As they descended, Daemon leapt from Caraxes to Vhagar and drove Dark Sister into Aemond’s blind eye. Both dragons struck the water. Caraxes managed to reach the shore before dying beneath Harrenhal; Vhagar sank, and Aemond died with her. The accounts place the battle on the twenty-second day of the fifth moon of 130 AC. Aemond had only just turned twenty; Daemon was forty-nine, and Vhagar was 181 years old. Vhagar had been the greatest Targaryen dragon since the passing of Balerion the Black Dread, and her death also marked the passing of the last living creature from the days of Aegon’s Conquest. Few witnesses saw the battle, so news of Daemon’s final fight took time to spread. When Vhagar was found years later, Aemond’s armored remains were still chained to her saddle.

Legacy and the Claims Made in His Name

Aemond remained a political presence after his death, though not a living claimant. Aegon II had commissioned enormous statues of Aemond and Daeron; by the time work stopped, the sculptors had already carved the princes’ heads. The unfinished monuments record how the regime had chosen to memorialize its royal fighters, even as the next government redirected labor toward repairing the Dragonpit and strengthening King’s Landing.

Harrenhal also became the setting for a disputed claim about Aemond’s legacy. The ruined castle had become a refuge for outlaws and broken men, and reports said that a powerful witch queen ruled there. The woman who appeared before the royal force was Alys Rivers, Aemond’s former nurse and paramour, who now called herself his widow. She presented the boy beside her as Aemond’s trueborn son and heir, and as the rightful king of Westeros. The claim was contested, and the account of what followed is disputed; it does not establish the child’s parentage as fact. Instead, it shows how Aemond’s name and his death could still be invoked to challenge the settlement of the realm. His legacy therefore rests both on the force he wielded through Vhagar and on the unresolved claims that outlasted him.