The Fall of King's Landing transformed Rhaenyra Targaryen’s contested claim into possession of the capital, but not into secure rule. In less than a day, a city whose walls and gates were meant to resist attack opened to her forces. The decisive causes were not simply the dragons overhead: the defenders had been depleted, the king could not direct them, and the City Watch turned against the regime it was meant to protect. Rhaenyra entered the Red Keep, but the flight of Aegon II and the resistance that followed made clear that taking the Iron Throne did not end the war.

Causes and the weakened defense

The attack took shape while Prince Aemond Targaryen and Ser Criston Cole were away from the capital, having set out to retake Harrenhal. Daemon Targaryen flew south on Caraxes, avoiding Criston’s marching host by following the western shore of the Gods Eye, crossing the Blackwater, and then following the river toward King’s Landing. From Dragonstone, Rhaenyra put on black scale armor and flew Syrax through a rainstorm. The two came together above Aegon’s High Hill, making the threatened assault visible to the city below.

The crown had little strength to answer them. Aemond had taken Vhagar, while Dreamfyre and several half-grown hatchlings remained in King’s Landing. The hatchlings had never been ridden, and Dreamfyre’s rider, Helaena Targaryen, was in no condition to fight. The city’s defenders therefore had dragons in name, but almost none that could be brought into effective opposition. Aegon II, meanwhile, was burned, confined to bed, and lost in poppy dreams. With both the Lord Protector and the King’s Hand absent, the task of defending the city fell to Queen Dowager Alicent Hightower.

Alicent acted to secure the castle and the city: she ordered the gates closed, sent the gold cloaks to the walls, and dispatched riders to summon Aemond back. She also instructed Grand Maester Orwyle to send ravens calling the loyal lords to defend their king. That effort was intercepted before it could take effect. Four gold cloaks seized Orwyle in his chambers, bound him, and carried him to the black cells. Alicent’s riders were stopped at the gates and taken into custody as well. The orders were being issued, but the people responsible for carrying them out had already turned against her.

The City Watch opens the gates

The Watch’s change of allegiance had begun as soon as Caraxes appeared above the Red Keep. The seven captains commanding the gates, all selected for loyalty to Aegon, had been imprisoned or killed. The rank and file, by contrast, still felt loyalty to Daemon, who had commanded them before and had been known as the Prince of the City. Their divided loyalties made the capital’s defenses vulnerable from within at the moment they were most needed.

Ser Gwayne Hightower, Alicent’s brother and second in command of the gold cloaks, tried to raise the alarm from the stables. His commander, Luthor Largent, had him seized and disarmed. When Gwayne denounced Largent as a turncloak, Largent answered that the cloaks remained gold however they were turned, and killed him. He then ordered the gates opened to the men arriving from Corlys Velaryon’s ships. The episode made the Watch’s allegiance unmistakable: its uniform had not changed, but its loyalty had.

There was still resistance at the River Gate. Thirteen Hightower knights and a hundred men-at-arms drove off the gold cloaks and held out for nearly eight hours against attacks from both inside and outside the city. Their stand could not decide the battle. Rhaenyra’s soldiers entered through the other six gates without opposition, and the sight of dragons over the city broke the resolve of the remaining loyalists. Some hid, some fled, and others bent the knee. The walls were formidable, but the gates and the men who guarded them mattered more.

Rhaenyra enters the capital

The dragons descended at different points around the city. Sheepstealer settled on Visenya’s Hill; Silverwing and Vermithor came down on the Hill of Rhaenys outside the Dragonpit. Daemon circled the Red Keep’s towers before landing Caraxes in the outer ward. He waited until he was satisfied that the defenders posed no danger before signaling Rhaenyra to descend on Syrax. Addam Velaryon remained in the air on Seasmoke, circling the walls as a warning against renewed resistance.

Alicent emerged from Maegor’s Holdfast with her father, Otto Hightower, as well as Tyland Lannister and Jasper Wylde. Larys Strong was absent; the master of whisperers had disappeared. Alicent proposed that she and Rhaenyra summon a great council to decide the succession, invoking the precedent of the Old King. Rhaenyra rejected the offer and gave her stepmother a choice between yielding and facing the dragons. Alicent bowed in defeat, surrendered the castle keys, and ordered her knights and men-at-arms to lay down their swords. Her warning that Aemond would return with fire and blood showed that, even in surrender, she expected the struggle to continue.

The missing king and the Iron Throne

When Rhaenyra’s men searched the king’s apartments, they found Aegon’s bed empty. Aegon II had escaped, as had his young children, Princess Jaehaera and Prince Maelor, along with Kingsguard Willis Fell and Rickard Thorne. Alicent did not appear to know where they had gone, and Luthor Largent swore that none had left through the city gates. Their disappearance denied Rhaenyra the immediate capture of her rival and left the succession conflict alive beyond the walls of the Red Keep.

The Iron Throne itself could not be carried away, and Rhaenyra would not rest until she had claimed it. With torches lit in the throne room, she climbed the iron steps and sat where her father Viserys had ruled, as had earlier Targaryen kings. Still wearing armor, she remained there through the night while the men and women of the Red Keep were brought before her to ask forgiveness and swear their lives, swords, and honor to her. The scene turned conquest into a public act of submission: possession of the seat was followed by the compelled recognition of the people who served within the castle.

Rhaenyra’s coronation on Dragonstone had used the crown of Jaehaerys the Conciliator, brought there by Ser Steffon Darklyn and other deserters from Aegon’s Kingsguard. That crown, which Aegon’s side had kept locked away after Aegon II chose the iron-and-ruby crown of the Conqueror, now connected her claim to an earlier Targaryen king. At King’s Landing, however, the visible act of taking the Iron Throne carried its own warning. Septon Eustace reported that Rhaenyra left the room with cuts on her legs and the palm of her left hand. He understood them as a sign that the throne had rejected her and that her time in power would be short.

The limits of the victory

The seizure of the capital was a striking reversal: a city whose smallfolk had feared a dragon attack became the seat of Rhaenyra’s rule, while its king was reduced to a fugitive. Yet the response of the inhabitants did not settle into uncomplicated allegiance. When Corlys Velaryon’s fleet appeared in Blackwater Bay, people fled with their children and possessions, sought shelter in pits and tunnels beneath their homes, and rioting broke out in Flea Bottom. Bells rang from the city’s septs, and mobs looted the streets before the gold cloaks restored order. Hidden passageways and subcellars later associated with this period suggest how fear left a physical mark on the city.

The capital’s instability continued after Rhaenyra took the throne. Later, a crowd stirred by the Shepherd marched toward the Dragonpit, calling for the dragons’ destruction; its numbers grew on the way to the Hill of Rhaenys. Rhaenyra sent riders to disperse the crowd and defend the royal dragons, but she had too few loyal gold cloaks to be confident of success. When Joffrey pleaded to ride out with knights from White Harbor, she refused, judging that the castle itself would be at risk if the crowd took the hill. The episode did not undo the fall of King’s Landing, but it exposed the limits of the victory: Rhaenyra had captured the capital and its throne, yet neither the city’s fear nor its divided loyalties had been conquered.