Varys I

Viserys I Targaryen was king from 103 to 129 AC, ascending after the Great Council of 101 selected him over Laenor Velaryon. His reign ended with the succession unresolved: after his death, his eldest son Aegon II Targaryen and Rhaenyra Targaryen disputed the Iron Throne, and both perished in the war between them, known as the Dance of the Dragons Civil War.

Identity and Accession

Viserys was a grandson of Jaehaerys I Targaryen. His path to the throne was decided not by an uncontested inheritance but by the Great Council of 101, convened to determine the succession. Corlys Velaryon and Rhaenys Targaryen made an eloquent, well-funded effort to have their son Laenor recognized as heir. The assembled lords chose Viserys instead, reportedly by a margin said to exceed twenty to one, though the maesters who counted the votes did not publish the exact total.

Jaehaerys had not attended the council. When its decision reached him, he thanked the lords and granted Viserys the title Prince of Dragonstone. The scale of the vote mattered beyond the immediate choice: many regarded the Great Council as establishing a precedent against a woman inheriting the Iron Throne or passing a claim through a woman to her male descendants. That interpretation would shadow the next succession.

House and Reign

The account places Viserys’s reign between 103 and 129 AC. Among the details given of his family is the marriage he arranged in 122 AC between his son Aegon and his daughter Helaena, following the ancient marriage tradition of House Targaryen. Aegon was fifteen and Helaena thirteen. The following year, Helaena gave birth to twins, Jaehaerys and Jaehaera; their cradles each received a dragon’s egg, and both eggs hatched. A third child, Maelor, was born in 127 AC.

These family and dynastic arrangements did not prevent a rival claim from emerging. The later account identifies Aegon as Viserys’s eldest son and records that his ascent was disputed by his half-sister Rhaenyra, ten years his elder. The evidence presented here does not detail Viserys’s decisions about that competing claim, but it establishes the conflict that followed his death as a crisis within his own family and dynasty.

Death and Competing Crowns

After Viserys died, Aegon was crowned in the Dragonpit. Criston Cole placed the iron-and-ruby crown of Aegon the Conqueror on the new king’s brow, while Alicent Hightower crowned her daughter Helaena. The ceremony gave Aegon a public accession, but it did not secure universal recognition of his claim.

On Dragonstone, Rhaenyra was crowned the next day before three hundred witnesses. Daemon Targaryen placed Jaehaerys’s crown on her head, and she named her eldest son, Jacaerys, Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne. The two coronations presented competing royal claims through distinct ceremonies and crowns; neither settled the dispute.

Legacy

The council that chose Viserys had been intended to resolve a question of succession, and its decision was later treated by many as a rule that excluded women and their descendants. Yet the succession after his death demonstrated the limits of that settlement: Rhaenyra contested the crown held by Aegon, and the realm went to war. In the dynastic record, Viserys’s reign is therefore bounded by two contests over recognition—the council that made him heir and the civil war that followed his own succession. The conflict ended with both Aegon II and Rhaenyra dead.