The death of Aegon II ended a reign already undone by defeat and conspiracy. The king died in his litter while being carried to the castle sept, poisoned through his favorite wine; although the identity of the person who administered the poison remained uncertain, the account identifies Larys Strong as the one who ordered it. Two days later, Corlys Velaryon announced Aegon’s death to the arriving Riverlands host, and the war was declared over, though the peace that followed would prove unstable.

Defeat and the turncloaks

Aegon’s end was set in motion before the poison reached his wine. The turncloaks around him began acting as soon as they learned that Lord Borros Baratheon had been defeated on the kingsroad. Aegon had not yet understood that his cause was finished. When Ser Alfred Broome crossed the drawbridge to Maegor’s Holdfast to carry out the king’s order, Ser Perkin the Flea and six of his gutter knights blocked his way. Perkin declared that there was a new king and killed Broome by shoving him from the bridge. The confrontation made the change in power tangible: Aegon could still issue commands, but men who had served his cause now acted against them in the name of a successor.

The seizure of power was conducted with little public disturbance. Inside the Red Keep, those marked for death were killed while the rest of the court continued without knowing what was happening. Queen Alicent was arrested on the serpentine steps by men wearing the seahorse of House Velaryon; her guards were killed, but she and her ladies were left unharmed. She was taken to the dungeons, where she awaited the new king. By then, Aegon’s death had already removed the last of her sons. The quiet, controlled arrests contrast with the violence and spectacle that had accompanied the struggle for the throne.

The final journey

After a council meeting, two squires carried Aegon down to the yard. His limited mobility made the stairs difficult even with a crutch, and his litter was waiting as usual. Ser Gyles Belgrave, the Kingsguard knight commanding the escort, later testified that the king seemed unusually fatigued. His face appeared grey and slack, but rather than ask to be taken back to his chambers, Aegon ordered the litter to go to the castle sept. Septon Eustace later suggested that he may have sensed death approaching and wanted to pray for forgiveness; the account presents this as an interpretation, not a certainty.

A cold wind was blowing as the litter set out, and Aegon drew its curtains against the chill. Inside was a flagon of sweet Arbor red, his favorite wine. He drank a small cup while the litter crossed the yard. The bearers and Ser Gyles noticed nothing amiss until they reached the sept and the curtains remained closed. Ser Gyles called to the king; after receiving no answer to repeated inquiries, he drew the curtains back and found Aegon dead on the cushions. The closed curtains, the familiar wine, and the unanswered call turn an ordinary royal journey into the account’s final scene: the king’s death is discovered only after the ceremony of escort has brought him to its destination.

Poison and the disputed hand

The poison was in the Arbor red, but the evidence does not identify who placed it there or establish which poison was used. Maesters and ordinary people continued to debate both questions. Ser Gyles was considered by some a possible culprit, though the account regards it as unthinkable that a Kingsguard knight would kill the king he had sworn to protect. The murdered food taster, Ummet, was offered as a more plausible candidate, but that suggestion rests on Mushroom’s disputed claim to have witnessed the killing. The uncertainty over the immediate agent is therefore preserved rather than resolved.

The account is firmer about responsibility at the level of command: it states that the poisoning was done at Larys Strong’s behest. That distinction matters to the event’s political meaning. The plotters had already neutralized opposition within the castle and moved against Aegon’s supporters; the king’s death completed a transition that had begun before he knew it was underway. His death was not presented as the result of an open challenge at his bedside, but as the final, concealed act of a court conspiracy.

Crowns and the end of the war

Aegon had been crowned in the Dragonpit after Viserys Targaryen’s death. Ser Criston Cole placed the iron-and-ruby crown of Aegon the Conqueror on his brow, while Alicent placed her own crown on Helaena, Aegon’s wife and sister, and knelt before her. The rival ceremony on Dragonstone had made the conflict over royal authority visible in another way: Daemon Targaryen crowned Rhaenyra with the crown of Jaehaerys the Conciliator, and she named Jacaerys her heir. The two crowns embodied competing claims that the war could not reconcile. At Aegon’s death, that contest was settled not by another coronation but by a concealed poisoning and the transfer of power within the Red Keep.

Aegon had lived twenty-four years and reigned for two. His brief rule began with a public coronation and ended in a curtained litter, without a public deathbed or a final proclamation from the king himself. Two days afterward, when Lord Tully’s vanguard appeared before King’s Landing, Corlys Velaryon rode out with a prince at his side and announced that the king was dead and the new king lived. Across Blackwater Bay, a Braavosi ship watched Velaryon warships lower Aegon’s golden dragon and raise the red dragon flown by Targaryen kings before the Dance. The banners made the change legible at a distance; the death that brought it about had taken place unseen. The war was over, but the account’s qualification—that the peace would not remain peaceful—denies the succession any simple finality.