Aegon III Targaryen

Born in the year 120, Aegon III Targaryen was the eldest son of Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen and her uncle-husband Prince Daemon Targaryen. He rode the young dragon Storm Cloud.

Aegon III Targaryen Personality

The events of the Dance of the Dragons, and in particular the death of his mother before his very eyes to his uncle's dragon Sunfyre, deeply traumatized him when he was only ten years old. He became a sad child, with little interest in his surroundings, and spoke little. During the first years of the regency, Gaemon Pale-hair was his only friend, until he died in an attempt to poison the king.

During his reign and until the end of his days, he was a distrustful, very distant and deeply melancholic monarch, who trusted only his brother Viserys. He sometimes locks himself in his chambers for several days without seeing or talking to anyone.

Aegon is particularly fearful of dragons, and although at the beginning of his reign some of them are still alive, he does not seek to become the master of any of them.

Aegon III Targaryen Appearance

Aegon was born small, but he was robust, a characteristic he kept throughout his childhood. He has deep purple eyes, and pale silver hair.

As an adult, he is a sad man, always dressed in black and with a short beard. Apart from a gold chain with a pendant representing the three-headed dragon of House Targaryen, he wears only a golden headband as a crown.

Aegon III Targaryen History

Childhood

Aegon was born at the end of the year 120 in Peyredragon. He is the first child of the couple formed by the princess of Peyredragon Rhaenyra Targaryen and her uncle-husband, Prince Daemon Targaryen.

Both parents were married earlier this year, very shortly after their respective widowhoods, and without the consent of King Viserys I Targaryen.

In his Testimony, the dwarf jester Mushroom suggests that Rhaenyra was already pregnant at the time of the marriage and that it was rushed so that Aegon would not be born a bastard.

His name is given in reference to Aegon the Conqueror, which infuriates Queen Alicent Hightower, Princess Rhaenyra's rival, because it is also the name of her own eldest son. According to Targaryen tradition, a dragon's egg is placed in his cradle, which will give the dragon Storm Cloud.

The Dance of the Dragons

When his grandfather King Viserys I Targaryen dies, Aegon is only nine years old and is in Peyredragon with his mother, Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, his father's designated heir to the Iron Throne.

The accession to the throne of her uncle Aegon II Targaryen in King's Landing, against the wishes of the late King Viserys, leads to the conflict of succession between the supporters of Princess Rhaenyra and King Aegon that will become known as the Dance of the Dragons.

Like the other members of the royal family, young Aegon is drawn into the vortex of the civil war.

Soon after the conflict began in the year 129, his older half-brother, Ser Jacaerys Velaryon, sent young Aegon and his younger brother Viserys to the East for their safety.

However, while crossing the strait, their ship, the Fol Abandon, is captured by the fleet of the Kingdom of the Three Daughters, which is about to attack the powerful Velaryon fleet, the main supporters of Princess Rhaenyra.

However, Aegon manages to escape by flying for the first time on the back of his dragon Storm Cloud. His younger brother Viserys disappears during the battle, and is presumed dead.

But during their flight, Aegon's dragon is badly wounded and dies just after reaching Peyredragon. Prince Aegon will never get over abandoning his younger brother, and will feel guilty for his presumed death.

When in 130, his mother Rhaenyra succeeded in taking King's Landing, she brought the young Aegon to her side and made him her personal cupbearer. Indeed, having already lost her two eldest sons during the conflict and the youngest, Viserys, being now deemed dead, Rhaenyra refused to part with her last two children, young Aegon and her heir Joffrey Velaryon. However, the latter was killed during the sack of Fossedragon, which plunged his mother into inconsolable despair and grief.

After the disaster of the riots in King's Landing, Queen Rhaenyra's supporters find it safer to flee, and a small group, including the queen, the young prince Aegon, four young damsels-in-waiting, Ser Balon Boulleau, twenty gold cloaks, the last four surviving members of the Queen's Guard (Ser Lyonel Bentley, Ser Harrold Sombre, Ser Adrian Rougefort and Ser Loreth Lansdale), and the two Manderly brothers (Ser Medrick and Ser Torrhen), quietly leave the city.

The royal escort passes through Sombreval before boarding the Violande to reach Peyredragon, the ancestral stronghold of the Targaryens and the historic seat of Rhaenyra.

The flight proves to be trying, and the royal escort gets little support, even from former allies of the Black party. The queen, in despair over the losses she has suffered, especially of her sons, and in panic at the thought of losing her last living child, steadfastly refuses to part with him, day or night, so much so that the young prince is referred to as his mother's "pale little shadow. Aegon sees his mother lost and physically weakened.

Upon arriving in Peyredragon, the royal escort is betrayed by Ser Alfred Balaie, who had joined the party of King Aegon II after the latter had taken the island. The last members of the Queen's Guard are massacred, and Prince Aegon tries in vain to defend his mother: no sooner has he managed to seize the sword of Ser Harrold Sombre than he is disarmed by Alfred Balaie.

The survivors are captured and brought before Aegon II and his dragon, Feux-du-Soleyl. After a few curt words of hatred between the half-brother and half-sister, Aegon is torn from his mother's arms, while she is presented before the king's dragon. She is burned and devoured almost entirely before the eyes of her son.

Ser Alfred Balaie advises to have the young prince Aegon executed, but Aegon II refuses: alive, the boy is a valuable hostage in front of the possible attempts of the last supporters of Rhaenyra. The child is then tied up tightly and taken to the dungeons under Peyredragon.

Sitting again on the Iron Throne, Aegon II still has to face his enemies. In 131, when Lord Borros Baratheon fell at the Battle of the Royal Road, his position was unstable.

Lord Corlys Velaryon, pulled out of the prison where Rhaenyra had put him and now sitting in the king's restricted council, advises him to surrender and take the black.

Aegon II refuses categorically and, as a sign of warning, threatens to cut off an ear of the young Aegon his nephew. He does not have time to carry out his threat: he is poisoned during a litter ride, only six months after the death of Rhaenyra.

Regency

The Battle of the Royal Road allowed the former supporters of Rhaenyra to take control of King's Landing. Aegon then ascended to the Iron Throne in 131, under the name of Aegon III.

His marriage to his cousin Jaehaera, the daughter of Aegon II, which took place the same year, put an end to the civil war between the supporters of his mother Rhaenyra and those of his uncle, King Aegon II.

This union allows indeed to reunite the two fratricidal lines and to reconcile the former surviving supporters of the two pretenders to the throne, now deceased.

But the new peace appears to be very fragile, and this time of transition is known in the chronicles as the Deceitful Dawn. While Lord Corlys Velaryon began peace talks with the main supporters of the deceased king, the Lannisters, Baratheons and Hightowers, Lord Dalton Greyjoy, the Red Kraken, continued to attack the coast of the Western Lands and Lord Cregan Stark occupied King's Landing for six days, determined to punish those responsible for the ignominious death of Aegon II.

Appointed Hand of the King, he carries out the judgments and executions he deems necessary in one day, then returns to the North. This episode is called "The Hour of the Wolf". In addition, a severe winter, declared by the Conclave of Villevieille in 130, also hit the populations already affected by the war.

As the king was still a minor, a regency council of seven members was created. The regency of Aegon III, which lasted until 136, was a troubled and confusing period during which many factions, including the regents themselves, tried to gain control over the young king.

One of them, Lord Unwin Peake, Hand of the King in 133, is possibly responsible for the suspicious suicide of the young queen Jaehaera Targaryen, in order to propose his own daughter in marriage to the king.

At the beginning of the regency, Aegon's only friend was Gaemon Peake, a child who had been proclaimed king during the Moon of the Three Kings and then adopted by the royal family after the fall of his supporters. Lord Unwin Peake, then Hand of the King, made Gaemon the King's whipping boy and taster. Gaemon dies poisoned in what was probably an attempt to poison the king.

In 133, a grand ball is held in King's Landing. It was on this occasion that the princesses Rhaena and Baela Targaryen, half-sisters of the king, introduced him to the young lady Daenaera Velaryon, who became his wife some time later.

Opposed to the marriage, Lord Unwin Peake threatened to resign, which his rivals did not fail to accept. He was replaced in 134 as Main by Lord Thaddeus Rowan, also regent.

In 134, an event gives Aegon a rare joy in these troubled times. The king's younger brother, Prince Viserys, who had been presumed dead since the battle of Gosier, was brought back to court by Alyn Velaryon.

He had in fact been captured by merchant princes of Lys, who hoped for a ransom of their precious hostage. Lord Alyn paid a large ransom and brought Viserys and the wife he had taken from Lys, Larra Rogare, back with him.

In the year 135, a new plot is revealed, in which the Rogares, the prince's family-in-law, are implicated and accused of wanting to seize the Iron Throne (perhaps wrongly: it could be a slander aimed at eliminating this family, too influential and too close to the king for some).

The situation degenerates to the point that Lord Thaddeus Rowan, the alleged accomplice, is arrested and tortured while, King Aegon having refused to hand over Lady Larra Rogare, is besieged with his brother and sister-in-law in Maegor's Citadel by Ser Marston Waters, sworn brother of the Kingsguard and now Hand of the King. However, after eighteen days of siege, the king regains control of the situation and Ser Marston is killed during his arrest.

This plot allows the king to emancipate himself somewhat from the power of the regents, now reduced to the Grand Maester Munkun. Munkun in turn became Hand of the King until a Grand Council was held to elect (by lot) new regents, who sat until the end of 136. The king reaching then the age of sixteen years, the regency ends.

The Broken King

Deeply marked by the brutal death of his mother, burned and devoured by the Sunfire, Aegon III is a distrustful monarch, deeply melancholic and particularly distant with his people and his court.

Physical contact is difficult for him for a long time, including with his wife. Only his brother Viserys, with a more charming character, who became his Hand at the end of his reign, had his confidence.

His marriage with Daenaera Velaryon is however fruitful, since they have five children together: His eldest child becomes the heir of the Iron Throne, and takes the title of Prince of Peyredragon.

Aegon proved to be a relatively skillful king, especially in managing the unrest that persisted in the kingdom after the Dance of the Dragons.

The main highlight of Aegon III's reign was the disappearance of the dragons. At the end of the Dance of the Dragons, only four dragons remain (Silverwing, Daypoint, Sheepstealer and Cannibal). The last of them dies in the year 153.

Aware of the value of keeping dragons in the face of potential adversaries to the Crown, the king, despite his aversion to dragons, and his brother made several attempts to hatch a clutch. At the suggestion of Prince Viserys, Aegon sent for nine mages from Essos to try to revive dragon eggs, but to no avail.

Despite these attempts, Aegon III is often accused of having poisoned the last dragons out of fear, but also out of revenge for the death of his mother, hence his nickname of the Scourge of Dragons.

He died in the year 157 of consumption, aged only thirty-six. His eldest son Daeron succeeded him.