Aemon Targaryen and Baelon Targaryen

Aemon Targaryen and Baelon Targaryen were brothers, rivals in achievement, and the two princes whose apparent fitness together made the royal succession seem secure. Their mutual affection survived competition and shaped Baelon’s response to Aemon’s death; that loss also redirected the succession, making their relationship consequential to the realm as well as to their family.

Brothers and Heirs

Jaehaerys I Targaryen had in Aemon and Baelon what the history calls an heir and a spare. Aemon, the elder, was formally anointed Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne in 62 AC, when he was seven. Baelon, his younger brother, stood behind him in the succession, but was no mere reserve: both princes were regarded as able, and the realm’s confidence rested on the strength of the pair.

Their accomplishments developed in parallel, though not at the same pace. Aemon was knighted at seventeen, became a tourney champion at twenty, and at twenty-six served his father as justiciar and master of laws. He did not become Hand of the King because Septon Barth already held that office as Jaehaerys’s trusted companion in his work. Baelon earned his knighthood at sixteen and married at eighteen. The contrast was not presented as hostility: the brothers had a healthy rivalry, while the love between them was beyond question. Their relationship joined competition to loyalty rather than making one cancel the other.

Following One Another

That pattern is clearest in Baelon’s repeated pursuit of his elder brother’s milestones. In 72 AC, Aemon won a squire’s melee at Duskendale and later distinguished himself in the lists. At seventeen, he received his knighthood; soon after returning to King’s Landing, he became a dragonrider, mounting Caraxes, a blood-red young dragon known to the Dragonkeepers as the Blood Wyrm.

The following year, Baelon followed him into knighthood. To earn his spurs at sixteen, he travelled to Old Oak, where Lord Oakheart was celebrating the birth of a son with seven days of jousting. Disguised as the mystery knight called the Silver Fool, Baelon defeated Lord Rowan, Ser Alyn Ashford, both Fossoway twins, and Ser Denys, Lord Oakheart’s heir. Ser Rickard Redwyne finally overcame him; after helping Baelon to his feet, he unmasked and knighted the prince. Baelon stayed only for the feast, then rode back to King’s Landing to pursue the next achievement he shared with Aemon: becoming a dragonrider.

Baelon had already chosen Vhagar, the great she-dragon who had not been ridden since Queen Visenya’s death twenty-nine years earlier. He claimed her and flew across Blackwater Bay to Dragonstone, arriving to surprise Aemon and Caraxes. The scene makes their rivalry an act of approach as well as emulation: Baelon’s achievement takes him back to his brother, and their dragons give the two princes a visible, shared distinction. Their public identities were not identical, but the younger repeatedly measured his progress against the elder’s.

Aemon’s Death and Baelon’s Grief

In 92 AC, Aemon was killed on Tarth by a crossbow bolt intended for the Evenstar, Lord Cameron, who stood beside him. Baelon went to the island and avenged his brother by driving the Myrish forces into the sea, fighting with Dark Sister in hand. His return to King's Landing with Aemon’s body was met by cheering crowds who hailed him as a hero. Yet the public celebration did not resolve his private grief: he wept in his mother’s arms and acknowledged that killing his enemies could not restore his brother.

The contrast between the vengeance and its limit defines the aftermath. Baelon could answer Aemon’s death with military action, and the realm could celebrate that action, but neither changed the loss within the family. Jaehaerys and Alysanne mourned as well, while Aemon’s wife Jocelyn was left grieving and his daughter Rhaenys faced the future without her father. Baelon’s sorrow was therefore personal, but it unfolded amid a broader rupture in the royal house.

Succession and Lasting Consequences

Aemon’s death ended the arrangement in which he stood as heir and Baelon as the spare. Jaehaerys named Baelon Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne. The choice was popular: the smallfolk loved Baelon, and the lords regarded him as the obvious successor to his brother. But Aemon had left a daughter, Rhaenys, and she was pregnant when he died. By advancing Baelon, the king passed over both her and, potentially, her unborn child.

The brothers’ closeness thus had a political consequence neither achievement nor affection could prevent. Baelon became heir because Aemon was gone, while Rhaenys’s claim made clear that succession was not simply a matter of replacing one brother with another. The decision followed established practice, but it left a precedent that later arguments over the Iron Throne would invoke: Baelon had come before Aemon’s daughter. What had seemed a secure succession built around two capable brothers became a contested question of rank, gender, and descent. Their relationship remains at the center of that reversal: a younger brother who had followed the elder in life now succeeded him in the line of inheritance, carrying both the honor of that place and the grief that had made it vacant.