Reign of Aegon III

The Reign of Aegon III (131–157 AC) followed the Dance of the Dragons and became the period in which the dynasty’s most formidable source of power disappeared. Aegon III, Rhaenyra Targaryen’s son and known as the Dragonbane, inherited a crown shaped by rival claims and competing ceremonies; before his reign ended, the last Targaryen dragons had died.

Dates and dynastic setting

The chronology places Aegon III’s reign from 131 to 157 AC. It came after the war between Aegon II and his half-sister Rhaenyra, both of whom perished in the conflict later called the Dance of the Dragons. The brief succession account identifies Aegon III as Rhaenyra’s son, locating his kingship in the aftermath of the very struggle that had destroyed his mother and rival claimant.

The title Dragonbane supplies a pointed contrast with the dynastic identity he inherited. House Targaryen’s kingship had been bound to dragons, yet the record of Aegon III’s reign closes with their disappearance: the last of the dragons died during this period. The chronology thus marks not only a stretch of years under a named king, but a decisive change in the conditions of Targaryen rule.

Inherited claims and royal precedent

The struggles that preceded Aegon III’s accession had made succession a matter of public decision as well as descent. At the Great Council of 101 AC, the assembled lords chose Viserys Targaryen over Laenor Velaryon by a reported margin of more than twenty to one. Many thereafter treated the decision as a precedent that the Iron Throne could not pass to a woman or through a woman to her male descendants. Rhaenyra’s later claim, and the war that followed Aegon II’s accession, tested that understanding with catastrophic results. Aegon III’s descent from Rhaenyra places his reign within the consequences of that unresolved conflict; the evidence does not describe how the reign itself interpreted or settled the precedent.

The ceremonies of kingship had also accumulated competing meanings. Aegon the Conqueror’s first coronation took place at the Aegonfort, but his later anointing by the High Septon in the Starry Sept, before hundreds of lords and tens of thousands of cheering townspeople, became the ceremony reckoned as the beginning of his reign. Centuries later, Aegon II was crowned with the Conqueror’s iron-and-ruby crown, while Rhaenyra was crowned on Dragonstone with the crown of Jaehaerys the Conciliator. These distinct crowns and rites show the political weight carried by royal recognition in the generation before Aegon III’s rule.

The end of the dragons

The defining outcome attached to Aegon III’s reign is the death of the last dragons. The chronology gives no account here of when or how the final dragon died, or of Aegon III’s personal role in its disappearance; it establishes only that the extinction occurred within the years of his rule. That limit matters: the epithet Dragonbane cannot, on this evidence alone, be read as a literal account of a deed by the king.

Its force instead rests in the contrast between the ruler’s name and the fate of the creatures that had made Targaryen power unmistakable. The dragons’ death during his reign turns the period into a dividing line in the dynasty’s history: Aegon III inherited a crown forged in a conflict fought by dragonriders, but the reign associated with him was also the one in which the last dragons vanished.