Succession
“A violent struggle for succession was likely no matter who the Old King chose to succeed him.”
Fire and Blood, Heirs of the Dragon
It is probably correct to say that House Targaryen, when they arrived on the shores of Dragonstone, lacked a succession law that fit the constraints of the feudal society they were soon about to conquer. Aegon and his kingdom passed from Aenys to Maegor to Jaehaerys seemingly on Alexander the Great’s maxim of giving his Empire to “the strongest”, with even the barest succession law- the King designating his successor- ignored two out of the three transfers of power. This probably dates back to the Targaryens’ roots. The Targaryens were somewhat insignificant magnates in the Freehold of Valyria, a republic, and while we know really nothing of Valyrian governance or inheritance, we can assume that things like this had less grave importance than in feudal Westeros, as they do in the Valyrian free cities that succeeded the mother republic. Seats on whatever councils or Senates lead the Valyrian Republic were important, vast properties spread across Western Essos probably more so, but lacked the same urgency of questions of succession in a monarchy, where the person who succeeds the King becomes the center of a continent-spanning political system. The Roman Republic, which Valyria is almost certainly based on, had lots of civil wars, foreign wars, bitter dynastic struggles, and marriage alliances, but it didn’t have a lot of wars over succession disputes within a single dynasty. If a Targaryen of Old Valyria died without heir, cousins and in-laws would squabble in courts over property titles, if a Targaryen of Westeros died, the rulership of a great realm was at stake, stakes so high that it would inevitably lead to civil war between the various parties up for succession.
Whatever system could be said to be used after the death of Aegon the Conqueror was marked by civil war and endless strife, and the reigns of Aenys and Maegor saw Westeros engulfed in conflict after conflict. The right of conquest hung over this new kingdom like the sword of Damocles. Aegon was not the legitimate son of the seven kings he defeated, he gained his kingdom by dragon and sword. Why couldn’t his heirs do the same? After all, there were a growing number of dragons and one was enough to cow entire kingdoms into submission. Riding a dragon to the defeat of your enemies was a viable way to make yourself King, and undoubtedly many a Targaryen prince saw the realm the way King Renly saw it after the reign of his brother-
“Robert won the throne with his warhammer.” He swept a hand across the campfires that burned from horizon to horizon. “Well, there is my claim, as good as Robert’s ever was.”
A Clash of Kings, Catelyn II
Aegon forged his kingdom in fire and blood, what was to stop Daemon the Rogue Prince, Corlys Velaryon, or any of the ambitious and powerful personalities of the extended Targaryen family tree from doing the same? Why does the dragon need to concern itself with the opinion of the sheep? Well, perhaps, the “sheep” did not consider themselves as such.
A hypothetical Targaryen king could not “make a desert and call it peace”, as Tacitus said about the Romans. They had to balance interests from all over their vast realm. Maegor the Cruel tried to do it, and was stuck with the epithet of “Cruel” and killed by the Iron Throne itself. He was replaced by his nephew, who had the backing of great lords and the tired masses on his side. Striking out on your own with a dragon could certainly gain you the throne, but it could not keep the throne. The Targaryens needed to balance the overwhelming force they could present with a softer, “Greener” image. They needed to respect the Faith of the Seven, the Lords of Westeros they ruled over, and even the unruly citizenry of King’s Landing, who might be politically marginalized, but had the numbers to create enormous problems for an unpopular ruler. Winning over the Faith was always a challenge for the Targaryens. They were imbued and drew their power from so many customs of Old Valyria, such as dragonriding and incest, that the Faithful found either unnatural or deeply repulsive. Attempting to control it at a distance, with the court in King’s Landing a long way away from the center of the Faith at Oldtown, was another challenge. The Targaryens had to force doctrine changes, disarm faithful orders, and settle into an uneasy peace that would not truly be resolved until the days of Blessed Baelor.
The lords were also difficult to manage, the Targaryens were facing down three dynasties that had once been Kings in their own right in the recent past, one of which (the Starks) were basically still Kings in all but title. The remaining great houses clung onto their seats with the help of Targaryen support and marriage alliances, but had difficulty practically controlling their vassals- the Reach and the Riverlands produced whole armies for opposite sides of the Dance, and would do so for every war right down to the War of the Five Kings (where only one of the two produced opposing armies). The Greyjoys were also new, and had a political culture that required them to physically attack…somewhere, ideally the nearby western shores of Westeros. Finally, the Baratheons were close relatives of the Targaryens, through intermarriage and their origin point from the bastard brother of the conqueror, a threat to power in their own right. The lesser houses had dozens of petty grievances with each other, their liege lords and the crown, and had so much to gain from entering into court or picking sides in succession conflicts. Getting to the throne as a Targaryen was a challenge, and balancing all these factors- bread for the commons, prayers for the septons and lands for the lords- was something that requires lots of political talent.
Jaehaerys I and his Queen, Alysanne, did have that political talent. The long reign of the Old King and the Good Queen allowed Westeros to recover and gave plenty of time and space for House Targaryen to rebuild itself. New children were born, new dragons were raised. Yet the question of succession still lingered. With no established law, Jaehaerys deferred to custom and selected Prince Aemon, his eldest son, as his heir, and always treated him as such. It was a logical move. Aenys was Aegon’s first born son and heir, Visenya was older than Aegon yet it was he who forged the Iron Throne. Queen Alysanne did not agree with this, preferring the rights of Princess Daenerys, her eldest, albeit as the girl died while still a child, Aemon was eventually acknowledged by both parents as heir. Maybe establishing strict primogeniture for the Targaryens would have been the best, the Martells and other Dornish seem to have done it without issue for centuries, and I certainly think Queen Alysanne would have been a better monarch than King Jaehaerys. The Targaryens did not have a succession law at this point other than the ability of a King to acknowledge his successor, and the Targaryens often considered themselves above and different from the other houses and nobles of Westeros? Why not establish this as law? Certainly some of it had to do with Jaehaerys’s concern for his own legitimacy. He had an older sister, Rhaena, who had two daughters by his older brother, Aegon. If he had established that women inherit ahead of men, why was Jaehaerys on the throne at all? Right of conquest? That leads us to circle back to the same old problems that have haunted Targaryen succession from the beginning, there needs to be something stable to avoid that right of conquest from rearing its ugly, dragonriding head.
But it was not just stability and legitimacy that Jaehaerys was concerned with, it was also the patriarchy. The Targaryens were not above their Westerosi subjects on everything, and gender norms might have been slightly different in Old Valyria, but patriarchy was entwined with politics and society on both sides of the Narrow Sea. Women were viewed as fickle, lesser, weaker, lacking virtue and character. Good women were silent and chaste, focusing the whole of their lives on their children and families, uninterested in ruling or fighting, which they left to their men. I’m by no means an expert on feminism or the patriarchy in the series, there are others in the fandom who have written some excellent things on it, but I do want to explore the patriarchal norms that kept Targaryen kings from letting their daughters inherit over their sons (until Viserys I anyways) through comparing it to medieval history, comparing and contrasting Westeros with its closest real world analogue. In this I am indebted to The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, particularly the article “The Political Traditions of Female Rulership in Medieval Europe” by Amalie Fößel, if you’re interested in learning more, please check it out.
It was rare but not unheard of for women in similar patriarchal societies, Europe in the Middle Ages, to inherit lands and titles from their fathers. Marie of Burgundy, Juana of Castile, Mary and Elizabeth of England, all dot the records of our history, and the conflict GRRM has said inspired the Dance of the Dragons, the Anarchy. It is more important to remember that Fire and Bloodis not a medieval text, George R.R. Martin is not a 13th century author, and the book was published in 2018 not 1218. It should be noted, first off, that there is not a single instance in medieval European history of an elder daughter being made heir over a younger son, so already we are dealing with a much different political situation in terms of what was within the realm of possibility for women as rulers. What Viserys I did would have been considered completely impossible in Western Europe, while in Westeros it strikes people as unusual, maybe unfair to Aegon and the Hightowers, but by no means totally outside the realm of possibility. Only two great lords are so incensed by this that they rise in favor of Aegon, one of which seems to have more issues with Rhaenyra personally than her gender’s ability to rule.
I think the example of Dorne, the Rhoynar and the prominence of Valyrian women suggest a more equitable society than medieval Europe- where you’d have to go to South India or West Africa to find anything close to equitable treatment for women in terms of political succession. The Anarchy between Stephen and Matilda, which the Dance of the Dragons is most directly inspired by, featured Matilda, the daughter and only surviving child of King Henry I, up against her cousin Stephen of Blois, who was not Henry’s son, but rather his younger sister’s son. His claim was through the female line, perhaps comparable to a war between Laenor Velaryon and Rhaenyra…albeit Laenor had a much, much stronger claim than Stephen did. The general rule was that women inheriting the throne was a measure of last resort for most of the medieval Kingdoms that had women ruling directly. As such, the situations in which women ruled varied broadly and very seldom went unchallenged. Matilda’s claims against Stephen caused decades of civil war across England, the Iberian peninsula was wracked by civil war over a woman’s inheritance several times, and Roberto the Wise’s decision to give the throne to his granddaughter Giovanna caused multiple wars for the succession of the Kingdom, including a claim from his nephews and Giovanna’s own first husband, Andrew of Hungary.
Women rulers in our own patriarchal societies also had their fortunes influenced heavily by the popularity and abilities of their husbands, in ways that seem to matter much more than they do for their Targaryen counterparts. As I mentioned, one of Giovanna of Naples’s husbands went to war with her rather than let her take the throne without him as her co-ruler, and even after his defeat, her next husband Louis of Taranto ended up as her co-monarch and sharing the duties of rulership with her. Matilda did rule in her own right, but her husband, Geoffrey Plantagenet, the Duke of Anjou, was the major factor in driving the lords of Normandy, who disliked Geoffrey of Anjou and did not want his lands and political power increased at the expense of theirs, to back Matilda’s rival Stephen of Blois. The idea of a co-monarchy is never discussed in Westeros, which I do find a bit odd. The closest we get is Queen Alicent’s idea that Rhaenyra and Aegon should marry, but even then she never specifies what the relationship should be- should Rhaenyra be his consort, he hers, or should both be co-rulers?
Daemon Targaryen, who is a powerful individual with not only a strong claim to the throne in his own right and previous experience with a royal title in the Stepstones, is never discussed as being Rhaenyra’s co-monarch, in fact, he barely even seems to matter when the Greens and Blacks scramble for supporters after the Green Coup in King’s Landing. Lady Jeyne Arryn, who had to remove Daemon from the Vale, says to Prince Jacaerys-
“Your Prince Daemon used his first wife most cruelly, it is true…but notwithstanding your mother’s awful taste in consorts, she remains our rightful Queen, and mine own blood besides, an Arryn on her mother’s side. In this world of men, we women must band together.”
Fire and Blood, The Dying of the Dragons: A Son for a Son
Daemon is not just understood not to be Rhaenyra’s equal, he basically does not factor in Lady Jeyne’s decision to commit the forces of the Vale to Queen Rhaenyra. A strong departure from what we would expect to see in Medieval Europe, and much closer to what we would see in our present day.
A woman ruler could have one very particular advantage over her adversary, which is one of the factors that comes closer to being relevant. Most medieval Queens-regnant were daughters of their father, the previous King and ruler of the realm, while oftentimes their opponents for political power were foreign-born and had limited support outside their own kingdom. Obvious Aegon and his brothers were just as Westerosi as Rhaenyra was, growing up in the Red Keep just as she had, and if anything, their Hightower connections made them more related to the nobility of Westeros than Rhaenyra with her three Targaryen grandparents. I think that is part of why Rhaenyra maintained an advantage over them through most of the war and ended up with her sons, not Aegon’s, taking the throne after her death. She was unquestionably the more Targaryen ruler, both by blood and image- the color black appears on the Targaryen sigil, her claims to rulership outside of Andal tradition placed herself in the tradition of Targaryen exceptionalism. Her first husband was the son of Princess Rhaenys, who many thought was the rightful queen, while her second husband was her uncle, Prince Daemon. She had appeared alongside her father in court for decades as his acknowledged heir, sat in the throne room as a Targaryen King would, and exercised the duties of Targaryen kingship. Though Aegon at the time of his ascension may have had a lot of the trappings of Targaryen power- the red castle, the iron chair, the Valyrian steel sword- Rhaenyra was far more associated with it. Both sides knew it, and it would lead to multiple mistakes, misjudgements and cruelty from the Greens as they tried to become the kind of dragons all of Westeros knew they were not.
There is one aspect of how women ruled in the Medieval period that does linger into George R.R. Martin’s work and our modern world, the commonplace view that in order for a woman to ascend to a position of power like the monarchy, they needed to embody masculine traits and fulfill the role of a king. They may be called Queens, but they needed to perform rulership distinct from the power and traditions associated with being a Queen-consort and distinct from gender roles as commonly understood in society. Men were meant to rule and women were meant to be ruled, so for a woman to exercise power, she was called upon by her society to reject certain social aspects of femininity, such as mercy, kindness and motherhood, and embrace masculine virtues of reason, vigor and courage. There are hints of this in the distinction I made between the Greens and the Blacks, and I do think it does filter down to discussions of potential queens in Westeros. It’s never sat right with me the extent to which women who are talked about as being potential queens regnant in Westeros are not distinguished from their male counterparts in any way other than their genitalia. Good Queen Alysanne says to her husband Jaehaerys when he chose Prince Baelon as his heir over Princess Rhaenys,
“A ruler needs a good head and a true heart,” she famously said, “A cock is not essential.”
Fire and Blood, Heirs of the Dragon
The proponents of Rhaenys and Rhaenyra often fall back on this line, that she could be a ruler “despite” her sex. It makes sense in the patriarchal society that they live in, but it also does underline how Rhaenyra could be associated with the Blacks and that masculine power associated with vigor and virtue, while the Greens, helmed at least partially by Queen Alicent, who always did her very feminine duties- running the King’s Household, singing, bearing children, praying, and tending to the sick- could be associated with femininity, songs and stories.
Rhaenyra was raised as Viserys’s heir, she sat with him on small council meetings, she traveled with him on royal progresses, she learned how to ride a dragon and fight atop its back, she learned how to be King. She didn’t learn how to be Queen, she didn’t learn from Alicent how to manage a household or how to run a woman’s court. I think this paints Alicent in a different light, it moves her away from the traditional idea of a wicked step-mother, wroth with jealousy and hatred for the younger and more beautiful eldest daughter, willing to betray her gender to spit on her career, and towards being a dutiful mother and queen consort. Alicent performs femininity incredibly well, but yet she still has her gender devalued and ignored by the family she married into, who doesn’t let her be a queen mother and ignores her children’s claims. She ends up window-dressing for House Targaryen, the queen consort who is expected to be a pawn in a pretty green dress. I think this ultimately makes her unable to see a kindred spirit in Rhaenyra, she didn’t see another Queen like herself, she sees another Targaryen King, one that is willing to tear apart her Queenship, murder her children and grandchildren, destroy her family and sack their city, and rejects the social roles she had always cherished and performed to the best of her ability.
Alicent is not right, of course, and in refusing to see Rhaenyra as another woman, because she has been given a different set of expectations, rights and abilities, and she ends up reinforcing the patriarchal society that refuses to acknowledge her own womanhood as completely valid. She’s afraid of Rhaenyra as another Targaryen king, but in doing so she falls in with those who ignore all women’s power and ability to be political players, even ones who “did everything right” like herself. Meanwhile, Rhaenyra’s characterization is torn between the masculine aspects of kingship she needs to embody to seize the throne and her personal experience as being a mother and having a lot of those values of kindness and mercy that her enemies like to ignore, but exists within her character. I’m sure it was a complicated and fraught question for her, and I’m looking forward to Alicent, Rhaenys and Rhaenyra being fleshed out in House of the Dragon. Rhaenyra is played by a non-binary actor, Emma D’Arcy, and they have said some wonderful things about how her experience relates to Rhaenyra’s own struggle between the femininity society has assigned to her and the masculinity her father has assigned to her.
To bring the question of succession full circle, it is difficult for the Targaryens to mesh the patriarchal society- albeit won more open to female rulership- they live in with the idea that a King can make a daughter an heir over a son. It simply does not work that way anywhere in the lands that the Targaryens rule. The North practices cognatic succession, where the children of a son place ahead of his brothers, while the Andal lands practice agnatic succession, where male heirs are placed above female potential heirs in the line of succession, inheritance is through the male line and women ruling is only a last resort when all other options are exhausted. Neither of these options give much of a claim to Rhaenyra, except to be queen mother to her “Velaryon” children via cognatic succession or to her children with Daemon via agnatic succession. This isn’t fair to eldest daughters, there’s not particular reason why an eldest daughter has less value than an elder son, but it isn’t just about fairness, it’s a question of whether the Targaryen dynasty as a whole are above the laws of the realm by virtue of creating them, or whether they are exceptions to the laws of the realm. Are Targaryens above the patriarchal norms of Westeros? Their male kings usually don’t seem to think so. Neither Jaehaerys or Viserys or even Alysanne attempts to draft a new succession law for Westeros in which it unequivocally stated that either the eldest child inherits, inheritance can only be passed through the male line, or the children of a man’s body proceed to the throne ahead of his brothers, despite their gender. What is given instead are half-measures, stop-gap solutions to get the next succession crisis out of the way and avoid the civil war that was brewing on the horizon.
The first “stop-gap” was the Great Council of 101 A.C. Proposed by Jaehaerys’s son Archmaester Vaegon, Jaehaerys decided to call all the lords of the realm to great council at Harrenhal to decide the issue of succession between Viserys and Rhaenys and her children for him. Jaehaerys said he would abide by the decision of the council when choosing his successor, but he did not give the Great Council ultimate authority to draft a succession law. The Great Council overwhelmingly selected Prince Viserys to be the heir. Viserys was the young son of a popular prince, Rhaenys may have had the better claim under the cognatic laws of succession prevalent among the First Men, but the majority of the lords in the hall were from Andal kingdoms where Viserys would have been their heir anyways. Rhaenys was even dismissed otu of matters of sex, with her young son Laenor even cast aside, to the fury of Corlys Velaryon and Rhaenys’s Baratheon cousins. The phrasing in “Fire and Blood” by Gyldayne that the Great Council was considered to be “iron precedent” is rather odd; it is clear that Jaehaerys was using this to solve a specific problem with the succession. Nowhere is it implied that Viserys wouldn’t have the authority to choose his own solution for his specific problem of succession, with the possible caveat that he should have called another Great Council if he was unable to decide. Maybe “Fire and Blood: Part II” will give us further revelations on this, but I have always somewhat suspected that the “Iron Precedent” of the Great Council of 101 is something that only truly gets established after the death of Baelor the Blessed by Rhaenyra’s son Viserys II to prevent his niece Daena the Defiant from inheriting the throne.
Most lords of Westeros don’t take the Great Council of 101 to mean anything beyond what it is implied at the time, there is relief, if anything, at the idea of Daemon Targaryen not succeeding his brother, but for those who do, I think they arrive at that conclusion because of how large of an event it was. Harrenhal could barely fit all the lords in attendance, inns were packed for miles around, because for once, House Targaryen was giving nobles of the realm an actual, formal share in its governance. Westeros does not have Parliaments like medieval England, Sejms like Poland or Estates General like France, the Great Council was the first time the lords of Westeros got a share of power in the Targaryen court that they considered to be outside the mere service of the King, they were expected to make a formal decision on one of the King’s prerogatives themselves. The Great Council of 101 wasn’t “iron precedent”, but the nobles of Westeros wanted it to be iron precedent. They wanted Andal law codified and didn’t want women to inherit the throne in their patriarchal society, they wanted to have a lasting effect on Targaryen governance, and they wanted their consultation to matter. One day it would, but not in deciding King Viserys I’s successor.
King Viserys attempted another stop-gap measure after ascending to the throne in 105 A.C.- declaring Rhaenyra, his only daughter by Aemma Arryn, to be his heir over his brother Daemon, and having the lords of the realm swear to it. This was the first step in Viserys’s long and winding path to avoid the civil war that the lords of Westeros felt was looming on the horizon after Aemon Targaryen died without a male heir a decade before. The act of forcing the lords to swear allegiance to Rhaenyra over Daemon was a good idea, and was agreed to by almost every lord, especially Otto Hightower, who was desperate to keep Daemon away from the throne, but this also ends of being a stop-gap measure. After the lords swear to Rhaenyra, Viserys never makes them swear another oath even after the situation is dramatically changed by his second marriage to Alicent Hightower and the three sons she bears for him. Otto nagged Viserys about this to the point where he dismissed him as Hand, and I don’t think Viserys was really afraid of the Hightowers posing a threat to his rule for it. Hightowers were not Targaryens, they were not dragonriders and they were not dangerous to his reign or to Rhaenyra the same way Daemon and the Velaryons were. Daemon Targaryen had been gathering support for his own personal ventures since before the Great Council of 101, when he gathered swords to help put his brother Viserys on the throne.
Things had only gotten worse from there. Daemon conquered the Stepstones with the aid of Westeros’s most powerful- and angry at Viserys and the Great Council- lord, Corlys Velaryon. Corlys Velaryon is a legendary figure, his ventures across the globe are a thrilling part of Fire and Blood, his vast fortunes and new towns built on Driftmark made him reshape the entire economy of eastern Westeros, but it’s not often talked about how brutally ambitious Corlys Velaryon was. He married Rhaenys, the only daughter of the eldest son of King Jaehaerys, he fought for the rights of her and his son at the Great Council, and later on, would be so obsessed with having a grandchild sit the Iron Throne in name, that he was more than willing to forget that his “grandchildren” were not his by blood. He is doing something very similar to what Otto and the Hightowers are doing, but as a Velaryon, connected by blood to the Old Freehold and in several marriages to the Targaryen dynasty, he starts out with much more advantages, and is willing to be more aggressive with them. When Otto is rejected by Viserys, he sulks off, the whole Green coalition not getting stitched together until the last minute. Corlys was planning the rise of House Velaryon for years, and found a partner in these early years of Viserys’s reign in his brother, Daemon. An alliance was brewing between Daemon and the Velaryons was brewing, one that would engulf the realm in civil war after Viserys’s death. Daemon had collected personal armies and had a better claim in the eyes of some to the Iron Throne than Rhaenyra.
There were two potential solutions to this problem. One was Otto Hightower’s. Have the King remarry, have male children, their claims couldn’t be doubted to be better than Daemon’s, have the King declare his eldest son heir, and Daemon Targaryen would be nothing but an angry wildcard with no support. Viserys was resistant to doing this, however, at least after a while. Maybe it was the love he bore for Rhaenyra, or for Aemma Arryn, respect for the oaths he made the lords of the realm swear, or perhaps he considered his Hightower children too “lowborn” to have a shot at gathering a coalition to repel Daemon, but he kept Rhaenyra as his heir. His solution was to isolate Daemon from the Velaryons by marrying Rhaenyra and Laenor. I see his reasoning, in fact it was very good. As I said above, Corlys Velaryon wanted a grandchild on the Iron Throne just as much as the Hightowers did, if not more so. His options were through Daemon, marrying Laena to Daemon, insisting that their children were the rightful heirs via the cognatic line, and coming after Viserys’s children for having a weak claim from a paper shield of oaths and councils, or through Rhaenyra, marrying Laenor to Rhaenyra, not only getting grandchildren on the Iron Throne but ones bearing his name! Laena did marry Daemon soon after Rhaenyra married Laenor, but by that point, Rhaenyra was tied into the fortunes of the Velaryon family. Daemon would not have Corlys’s support to overthrow her, and with the Hightowers provincials who couldn’t match the number of dragonriders in the extended Velaryon-Targaryen clan, Viserys probably thought he had avoided the civil war he had dreaded for so long.
But he hadn’t. Not everyone played their part in this plan. Otto and Alicent still insisted that their heirs should be Viserys’s, and despite the fact that the King was dismissive of Hightower power, they still had strong connections and wealth from the Reach at their back. Oldtown was the greatest city in Westeros before King’s Landing. The Hightowers had immense resources and a chokehold on the two most important institutions in Westeros, the Maesters and the Faith of the Seven. They were no match for dragonriders, but Maesters filling the heads of the lord’s children with tales of great Hightower deeds and the validity of Andal succession laws in their lessons and Septons preaching the divinely ordered social roles for men and women in their sermons would have an effect on how the Westerosi thought about their new heiress and her spurned brothers. Things really started veering off course when Laenor and Rhaenyra failed to have any legitimate children. Laenor was uninterested in women sexually, but Rhaenyra was very interested in Ser Harwin Strong, producing three sons that bore the Velaryon name but were very obviously not of Velaryon blood. If proven, the Velaryon children being bastards would force Viserys to remove them from the line of succession, angering Corlys who cared much more about his name on the Iron Throne than his blood, and bring on the very same succession issues the marriage between Rhaenyra and Laenor was meant to avoid. It would also irreparably damage Rhaenyra’s reputation. Westeros could perhaps accept a woman ruler, but an adulterous woman ruler was probably too far even for those loyal to the Princess. Viserys cracked down strongly on those who said that Rhaenyra’s Velaryon children were bastards, he dealt out harsh punishments for those who suggested it, and probably burned down Harrenhal to ensure that Harwin could not live to ever claim the boys as his own. This was a ridiculous offense to the Green camp, everyone knew Rhaenyra’s children were not Laenor Velaryon’s, and Alicent, who had bore the King three legitimate sons, was getting her children’s claims ignored and dismissed in favor of this marriage alliance that had produced no legitimate children.
Viserys’s attempts to avoid civil war was creating a civil war, but one different than he could have expected when his reign began twenty years before. Daemon was not a threat to Rhaenyra, Rhaenyra was not a protection against Daemon, the two had eloped without his permission and were beginning to have children of their own. Rhaenyra now no longer served the interests of Otto Hightower, who had grandchildren of his own whom many in Westeros considered had a better claim. Viserys I spent his last years lost in a labyrinth of succession problems, begging his wife and daughter to get along, begging his family to respect his wishes and place his daughter on the throne without contest, begging his sons to forfeit their turn on the Iron Throne to children they knew not to be legitimate. With this groundwork laid, we can go back and look at this succession crisis from another angle, from the perspective of the Hightowers, and the desperate attempts Otto and Alicent made to ensure Daemon Targaryen would not be King of Westeros and Aegon Targaryen would. They bitterly struggled against Viserys’s wishes, attempting to assemble some kind of coalition to ensure they could inherit while the sons of King Viserys fought the sons of Princess Rhaenyra in spat after spat. The court was even further divided, the Greens attempted to claim the mantle of Targaryen power but ultimately failed. Their solution was a desperate one, and one that won them no favors, a midnight coup over the dead king’s rotting corpse.
Hello everyone, I’d like to thank all of you for the support you’ve shown for the first two parts of the essay series, I got a lot of excellent comments and feedback! I originally intended this post to be parts III and IV, but part III got incredibly long (it’s about the same size as parts I and II combined) and I wasn’t able to finish part IV, so I will be posting that sometime this week. I have more essays and series planned, so I hope you enjoyed this part and am looking forward to writing more!
Queen on the Trident 