Aenys I Targaryen

Aenys I Targaryen inherited a newly forged kingdom and a dynasty whose authority remained contested. Remembered as gentle and generous, he began his reign with a public promise of shared rule with his brother, Maegor I Targaryen. But unrest soon tested the new king, and his uncertainty about how to answer rebellion became central to his reputation. His reign ended amid the Faith Militant uprising, illness, and the deaths of his sons; the succession passed not to his surviving heir, but to Maegor.

Identity and Family

Aenys I Targaryen was the son of Aegon I Targaryen and the next king after his father’s death in 37 AC. In 22 AC, at fifteen, he married Alyssa Velaryon, the fifteen-year-old daughter of the Lord of the Tides. Their shared Valyrian ancestry made the match a marriage between cousins. The account describes their union as happy: Aenys was a warm-natured, attentive husband who was never unfaithful, and Alyssa bore him five healthy children—two daughters and three sons. A sixth daughter died in her cradle shortly after birth.

Their first surviving child, Rhaena Targaryen, was born in 23 AC. Unlike her father, who had been small at birth, she was healthy and lively. Aegon I Targaryen reportedly wept when the infant was placed in his arms and thereafter doted on her. Her birth also raised a question of succession: whether Maegor remained second in line or whether the infant princess should come before him. Visenya Targaryen proposed that Rhaena be betrothed to Maegor, but Aenys and Alyssa opposed the match, and the High Septon warned that the Faith would not welcome it. The dispute showed how quickly a family question could become a matter of royal legitimacy.

Accession and the Promise of Shared Rule

When Aegon I Targaryen died, Aenys was away at Highgarden on a royal progress. Quicksilver carried him back to Dragonstone for the funeral. After the rites, he put on his father’s iron-and-ruby crown, and Grand Maester Gawen proclaimed him king before the lords gathered to mourn. When Maegor’s turn came to kneel, Aenys raised his brother to his feet and affirmed that they would rule the realm together. He also entrusted Maegor with Blackfyre, judging his brother more fit to bear the sword than himself.

The gesture combined familial affection with a hazardous political choice. Maegor already possessed Dark Sister, given to him by Visenya, and now held both ancestral Valyrian steel swords. The account later identifies Aenys’s gift of Blackfyre as unwise. His words of partnership could express trust, but they could not resolve the difference between a king’s authority and a brother’s formidable strength. At the time, the promise offered an image of unity; in retrospect, the sword and crown passed into the hands of the man who would claim the throne for himself.

Revolt and Indecision

Aenys’s accession came after the Wars of Conquest had left grievances throughout the realm. Those who remembered the liberties of the former kingdoms saw an opportunity in the arrival of a new king, and the first rebellions were encouraged by the belief that Aenys was weak. Revolt spread across several regions: Harren the Red rose in the riverlands, Jonos Arryn deposed his brother in the Vale, and a Vulture King gathered followers in Dorne. Aenys’s response, as described by Grand Maester Gawen, was marked less by indifference than by difficulty deciding what to do. He struggled to understand why his subjects had turned against him and considered sending messengers to hear their grievances.

The king’s orders shifted as he weighed one danger against another. Fearing that Harren the Red’s proximity made King’s Landing unsafe, he sent Alyssa and their younger children to Dragonstone. He first ordered his Hand, Alyn Stokeworth, to take a fleet and army to the Vale to suppress Jonos and restore Ronnel Arryn. When the ships were about to depart, however, Aenys countermanded the order, concerned that their absence would leave King’s Landing undefended. He instead sent the Hand with only a few hundred men to pursue Harren and considered summoning a great council to determine how to address the other uprisings. While the king hesitated, other lords took the field on their own authority.

The Faith’s challenge made the crisis more severe. Under Maegor, Aenys’s eldest son, and Rhaena, the conflict disrupted a royal progress in the west; the two were forced to shelter at Crakehall as the Poor Fellows mobilized. Aenys remained on Dragonstone, sick with fear and indecision. He was thirty-five, but was said to look much older, and his health failed further when news arrived that thousands of Poor Fellows had surrounded the castle where his children were staying. He collapsed and died three days later. The sequence links the pressure of the rebellion to the final decline of his reign without establishing a single medical cause for his death.

Family’s Loss and Historical Reputation

Aenys was given to the flames in the yard at Dragonstone. His funeral was attended by his sons Viserys Targaryen, son of Aenys, and Jaehaerys I Targaryen, and by his daughter Alysanne Targaryen. Alyssa sang a dirge, and Quicksilver lit the pyre, joined by Vermithor and Silverwing. Visenya was absent; within an hour of the king’s death, she flew east across the Narrow Sea on Vhagar. When she returned, Maegor came with her on Balerion. He claimed the crown on Dragonstone, wearing the iron crown of his father rather than Aenys’s gold crown bearing the faces of the Seven.

Alyssa’s later account of the family’s fortunes casts Aenys’s death as the beginning of a second disaster. She had scarcely time to grieve before Maegor took the throne that she believed belonged to her eldest son, Aegon the Uncrowned. Aegon rose against his uncle and died with his dragon at the Battle Beneath the Gods Eye. Aenys’s second son, Viserys, also died during Maegor’s rule. Alyssa and her younger children were kept under Maegor’s control, and Rhaena was forced to marry him. The violence of the succession crisis fell upon the family Aenys had left behind, making his inability to secure the realm consequential beyond his own lifetime.

Later histories judged Aenys harshly beside both his father and his son. A retrospective account says that his weakness and indecision helped undo much of what Aegon I Targaryen had built, leaving Jaehaerys I Targaryen an impoverished, war-torn kingdom divided by mistrust. During his own campaign against the Vulture King, Jaehaerys was later contrasted with his father: unlike Aenys, he had shown himself capable of acting as a king in war. Yet Aenys’s record is not simply one of personal failure. His marriage to Alyssa is presented as affectionate and stable, and his promise to rule alongside Maegor began in a gesture of trust. The painful contrast is between those familial virtues and the demands of a kingship that required decisions he repeatedly struggled to make.