The Strongs

The Strongs was the name Aemond Targaryen used to mock Rhaenyra Targaryen’s sons, Jacaerys, Lucerys, and Joffrey Velaryon. More than a personal insult, it implied that the boys were Harwin Strong’s sons rather than Laenor Velaryon’s, challenging their legitimacy and, with it, their place in the succession. When the accusation surfaced before King Viserys, it exposed how a whispered scandal could become a threat to the royal family’s political order.

Meaning and Political Charge

The expression invoked House Strong to suggest that Rhaenyra’s sons had been fathered by Harwin Strong. To call the boys the Strongs was therefore to contest their publicly recognized parentage and imply that they were bastards without rights of succession. The allegation also implicated Rhaenyra: as the king’s heir, she could face a charge of high treason if the claim were treated as established fact.

The name’s force lay in its compression. A single label turned questions about the boys’ appearance and parentage into a pointed challenge to their status. What might have remained court rumor became a direct provocation among the royal children, with consequences that their elders could not contain through a simple demand for peace.

The Quarrel at Driftmark

The insult became an open conflict after Aemond claimed Vhagar. Joffrey ran to summon his older brothers, and Jacaerys and Lucerys confronted Aemond alongside him. During the fight, Aemond mocked the three boys as the Strongs. Jacaerys understood the slur and attacked him again; Lucerys then intervened to help his brother, and Aemond lost an eye in the struggle.

The boys’ confrontation made the underlying accusation impossible to dismiss as an abstraction. Aemond later explained that he had lost an eye but gained a dragon, treating the exchange as worthwhile. His readiness to repeat the insult, even amid the immediate fallout, showed that the label was not incidental name-calling: it was a weapon in an already divided family.

The King’s Attempt at Reconciliation

Viserys required the boys to apologize to one another, but the formal gesture did not satisfy their mothers. Alicent demanded that Lucerys be punished for Aemond’s lost eye. Rhaenyra instead insisted that Aemond be questioned about where he had learned to call her sons the Strongs, because identifying the source would expose how widely the accusation was being circulated. When pressed, Aemond named his brother Prince Aegon, who confirmed that the claim was common knowledge.

Viserys stopped the questioning and refused to allow either boy’s eyes to be put out. He threatened severe punishment for anyone who repeated the slur, then ordered Alicent and Rhaenyra to exchange professions of affection. Their compliance did not resolve the hostility. The king’s response suppressed the accusation in public without settling the question of the boys’ parentage or restoring trust between the two branches of the family.

Separation and Lasting Consequences

To prevent further conflict, Viserys ordered Alicent and her sons back to court while Rhaenyra remained on Dragonstone with her sons. He also assigned Ser Erryk Cargyll as Rhaenyra’s sworn shield, while Harwin Strong returned to Harrenhal. The separation imposed a physical boundary where the attempted reconciliation had failed to create a lasting one.

The expression thus marks a moment when disputed parentage, personal enmity, and succession politics converged. The quarrel did not itself begin the Dance of the Dragons, but the account presents it as part of the accumulation of grievances that preceded the civil war. The king could forbid the name; he could not make its accusation, or the divisions it sharpened, disappear.