Aegon the Uncrowned

Aegon the Uncrowned is remembered in the histories chiefly through the family and succession that survived him: his daughter Aerea Targaryen became heir to the Iron Throne, while his wife and sister, Rhaena Targaryen, carried his loss for the rest of her life. He was killed by his uncle in the Battle Beneath the Gods Eye, a death that King Jaehaerys later treated as the defining moment of Rhaena’s grief.

Identity and Family

Aegon the Uncrowned was Prince Aegon Targaryen, husband to Rhaena Targaryen and father of Aerea Targaryen. Rhaena was both his wife and his sister. The evidence offers little account of Aegon’s life apart from these relationships, but they establish the line through which his memory remained politically consequential: after his death, Aerea held the place of heir to the Iron Throne.

Aerea and the Succession

Aerea was eleven when the histories describe her as having been heir for as long as she could remember, apart from a brief interruption of three days between Prince Aegon’s birth and death. Her position made Aegon’s household part of the succession’s continuing story even after he was gone. The account presents Aerea as bold and strong-willed, and notes that she relished the attention due to a queen-in-waiting; her standing was therefore not merely a matter of lineage but a visible identity around which expectations gathered.

Death and Rhaena’s Loss

Aegon died at the hands of his uncle in the Battle Beneath the Gods Eye. At Rhaena’s funeral, King Jaehaerys recalled that she had not been with Aegon at the battle, yet said that she had died that day as well. His words cast the battle’s consequence beyond Aegon’s death: Rhaena survived him, but the loss shaped the remainder of her life. She later spent her final years at Harrenhal, and Jaehaerys ordered that she be burned there and her ashes interred at the castle. Aegon’s own appearance in the record is brief, but his death remains a point of rupture in the histories of both his daughter’s inheritance and his wife’s life.