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On the seventh day, a cloud of ravens burst from the towers of Dragonstone to bring Lord Aegon’s word to the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.
To be more precise: violence may well be the only form of human action by which it is possible to have relatively predictable effects on the actions of a person about whom you understand nothing.
The answer, it seems, will depend on what we understand by power. And power, it turns out, is an instrument of rule, while rule, we are told, owes its existence to "the instinct of domination." We are immediately reminded of what Sartre said about violence when we read in Jouvenel that "a man feels himself more of a man when he is imposing himself and making others the instruments of his will," which gives him "incomparable pleasure." "Power," said Voltaire, "consists in making others act as I choose"
The maesters of the Citadel who keep the histories of Westeros have used Aegon’s Conquest as their touchstone for the past three hundred years. Births, deaths, battles, and other events are dated either AC (After the Conquest) or BC (Before the Conquest).
Now, the study of this micro-physics presupposes that the power exercised on the body is conceived not as a property, but as a strategy, that its effects of domination are attributed not to 'appropriation', but to dispositions, manoeuvres, tactics, techniques, functionings; that one should decipher in it a network of relations, constantly in tension, in activity, rather than a privilege that one might possess; that one should take as its model a perpetual battle rather than a contract regulating a transaction or the conquest of a territory.
The men of the Vale sank a third of the Targaryen ships and captured near as many, but when Queen Visenya descended upon them from the sky, their own ships burned. Lords Errol, Fell, and Buckler hid in their familiar forests until Queen Rhaenys unleashed Meraxes and a wall of fire swept through the woods, turning the trees to torches.
And the victors at the Wailing Willows, returning across the lake to Harrenhal, were ill prepared when Balerion fell upon them out of the morning sky. Harren’s longboats burned. So did Harren’s sons."
It is true that the effects one can have by disabling or killing someone are very limited, but they are real enough—and critically, it is possible to know in advance exactly what they will be. Any alternative form of action cannot, without some sort of appeal to shared meanings or understandings, have any predictable effects at all.
Stone does not burn, Harren had boasted, but his castle was not made of stone alone. Wood and wool, hemp and straw, bread and salted beef and grain, all took fire. Nor were Harren’s ironmen made of stone. Smoking, screaming, shrouded in flames, they ran across the yards and tumbled from the wallwalks to die upon the ground below.
In short this power is exercised rather than possessed; it is not the 'privilege', acquired or preserved, of the dominant class, but the overall effect of its strategic positions - an effect that is manifested and sometimes extended by the position of those who are dominated.
“It is better to forestall rebellions than to put them down,” Aegon famously said, when asked the reason for his journeys. A glimpse of the king in all his power, mounted on Balerion the Black Dread and attended by hundreds of knights glittering in silk and steel, did much to instill loyalty in restless lords.
Violence, finally, as I have said, is distinguished by its instrumental character. Phenomenologically, it is close to strength, since the implements of violence, like all other tools, are designed and used for the purpose of multiplying natural strength until, in the last stage of their development, they can substitute for it.
In the end, though, Aegon’s enemies had no answer for his dragons.
Notes
Martin, R.R. George. Fire & Blood, pp. 13.
Graeber, David. "Dead zones of the imagination: on violence, bureaucracy, and interpretive labor," pp. 116.
Wheatley, Doug. Illustration from Fire & Blood.
Arendt, Hannah. On Violence, pp. 26.
Martin, R.R. George. Fire & Blood, pp. 8.
Le Brun, Charles. Alexander Entering Babylon (The Triumph of Alexander the Great).
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punishment, pp. 26.
Martin, R.R. George. Fire & Blood, pp. 18.
Wheatley, Doug. Illustration from Fire & Blood.
Graeber, David. "Dead zones of the imagination: on violence, bureaucracy, and interpretive labor," pp. 116.
Martin, R.R. George. Fire & Blood, pp. 20.
Giordano, Luca. Aeneas defeats Turnus.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punishment, pp. 26-7.
“'Yield now, Aegon began, “and you may remain as Lord of the Iron Islands. Yield now, and your sons will live to rule after you. I have eight thousand men outside your walls.”
“What is outside my walls is of no concern to me,” said Harren. “Those walls are strong and thick.”
“But not so high as to keep out dragons. Dragons fly.”
“I built in stone,” said Harren. “Stone does not burn.”
To which Aegon said, “When the sun sets, your line shall end.”
Then Harren the Black retired to his tower, surrounded by his household guard, to sup with his remaining sons. As the last light of the sun faded, Black Harren’s men stared into the gathering darkness, clutching their spears and crossbows. When no dragon appeared, some may have thought that Aegon’s threats had been hollow. But Aegon Targaryen took Balerion up high, through the clouds, up and up until the dragon was no bigger than a fly upon the moon. Only then did he descend, well inside the castle walls. On wings as black as pitch Balerion plunged through the night, and when the great towers of Harrenhal appeared beneath him, the dragon roared his fury and bathed them in black fire, shot through with swirls of red.
Stone does not burn, Harren had boasted, but his castle was not made of stone alone. Wood and wool, hemp and straw, bread and salted beef and grain, all took fire. Nor were Harren’s ironmen made of stone. Smoking, screaming, shrouded in flames, they ran across the yards and tumbled from the wallwalks to die upon the ground below. And even stone will crack and melt if a fire is hot enough. The riverlords outside the castle walls said later that the towers of Harrenhal glowed red against the night, like five great candles…and like candles, they began to twist and melt as runnels of molten stone ran down their sides.” — Fire & Blood, Aegon’s Conquest
Pairing(s): Aegon i Targaryen x Targaryen!Reader, Aegon i Targaryen x Rhaenys Targaryen, Aegon i Targaryen x Visenya Targaryen, Rhaenys Targaryen x Targaryen!Reader
Was Visenya the third wheel in the romantic relationships between the conquerors? Seems like Aegon loved Rhaenys very much if he was willing to love his son by her so much despite his flaws. Aenys was a total daddy’s boy. Maegor was neglected by his father, despite them both being a warriors and having so much in common. The dynamics is pretty complex
So true anon, the dynamics are complex, that's why I love this set of characters so much and I find them the most fascinating and refuse to shut up about them and why once the strikes are over and the entertainment industry gets its shit together I should be in charge of the Conquerors show for HBO.
Conventional wisdom in Westeros dictates that yeah, Visenya was the third wheel. In universe, it's a very old adage, when talking about the Conquerors, to say that Aegon married Visenya out of duty, but married Rhaenys out of desire. According to Targaryen tradition, Aegon was always going to have to marry Visenya, as she was the eldest daughter and he was the only son, and that he did that because he had to, but then added Rhaenys to the relationship in order actually have the woman he wanted, the woman he was in love with. And it is used to justify things like his closeness to Rhaenys vs his distance from Visenya (the ten nights spent with Rhaenys for every night spent with Visenya thing, for instance) and the reason why he prioritized Aenys over Maegor. And again, never been one to knock headcanons, if your interpretation of these dynamics is to go along with the conventional wisdom, then have it, there's indeed drama to be mined there. But it's not mine.
If you go through my answered tag, you're probably gonna find a lot of my varying thoughts on the Conquerors and their relationhips, I'd link but people have asked me a lot of questions about it and I'm honestly kinda lazy rn, and I'm more than happy to repeat myself. I don't think that there necessarily was a third wheel in the dynamic while all three Conquerors were alive, or if there wasn't, it wasn't the one traditionally thought of. My view has always been that, while Aegon wasn't ever attracted to or interested in Visenya, neither was Visenya attracted to or interested in Aegon (or even men at large, for that manner). For me, both Aegon and Visenya were in love with Rhaenys, and a love triangle between the three Conquerors would have been Visenya and Aegon competing for Rhaenys's affections, rather than Visenya and Rhaenys competing for Aegon's. Visenya never seemed to have any problem with Rhaenys being included in the marriage, in Rhaenys being entrusted in battle commands or specifics parts of the Conquest or in her roles of administration, and Visenya is never recorded as having voice any displeasure or otherwise shown herself to be annoyed with Aegon spending more time with Rhaenys as a romantic and sexual partner than he did with her (and this would have been something people were on the lookout for and would have written down, so stands to reason there's no evidence of displeasure because there was none). So yeah, my personal theory was that Visenya was in love with Rhaenys, while viewing Aegon only as a little brother, and while I tend to fluctuate on whether Rhaenys returned this sentiment and allowing Visenya to express her romantic desires in turn based on how angsty I'm feeling that day, these three seem to have been relatively content with their situation and happy with their lives up until the First Dornish War. The chronicles we have, based on F&B and TWOIAF all seem to point to Aegon and Visenya's relationship deteriorating after the First Dornish War, and Rhaenys's death, not before. Whatever led things to go so wrong between them to the point where Aegon wasn't getting involved in the life of their son and Visenya was willing to usurp his and Rhaenys's line for the sake of her own seems to have its roots in that war, not in Rhaenys being introduced to the marriage. It seems to me, based on what we know about her personality (someone kindhearted and very well liked who seemed to engender love in most people she met as well as just the baby of her family), that Rhaenys was the glue holding the three of them together, and that Aegon and Visenya, aka a solitary and introverted man and a very stern and serious woman now without that brighter and kinder and softer element that was Rhaenys, fell apart without her. They didn't know how to comfort each other, how to really do anything other than unite in their anger and grief and burn Dorne to the ground for two years straight. Aegon's unilateral decision to end the war with Dorne, without Visenya's input and likely against her desires, very much didn't help matters, and that was when Visenya and Aegon started to pull away from each other. At that point, Visenya probably was the third wheel, just the third wheel to the relationship of Aegon and Rhaenys's ghost.
(will i ever be able to answer one of these questions without bringing up that accursed godforsaken war? idk it hasn't happened yet all angst roads lead to the first fucking dornish war)
I think Aegon's relationship with his sons is a combination of a lot of factors. For one, I'd like to hope the man would love his child no matter what, just because that's his child and children shouldn't need to earn their father's love by being more like that or catering to their whims (a lesson Viserys I clearly didn't learn and why he's in Hell now). I'm gonna be charitable and say that Aegon was willing to love his son in spite of any flaws he might have simply because, you know, that was his son. There's also a lot of factors that go into prioritizing Aenys in spite of their differences of personality. For one, yes, Aenys was the son of his preferred wife, and a wife who died young and died tragically and that Aegon likely remembered fondly whenever Aenys did anything that reminded him of her, and we know that Aenys definitely took after Rhaenys in some similar personality traits and similar loves for things like music and patroning singers and dancers. For two, Aenys nearly died himself incredibly young. He was, I think, three years old when his mother died and he essentially had his nervous breakdown, and it's canon that not only was everyone worried that he was going to die, but Aegon himself was despairing about the situation before Quicksilver hatched and bonded with Aenys, allowing him to recover. Aegon was a very recent widower whose only child at the time had a major healthscare at a frighteningly early age, and it's entirely natural that, even after Aenys recovered and grew up relatively healthy, Aegon would always have the memory of that time his toddler almost died in the back of his head coloring every interaction these two ever had, making him more doting and protective than he might have been otherwise. For three, Aegon also had to look to legal matters. Aenys is his eldest son. Westeros, even when split into seven kingdoms, by and large practiced male dominant primogeniture, where the eldest male descendant was the one who inherited. So Aegon, likely to continue the trend of keeping Westeros as a cohesive unit and following Westerosi customs and laws, would have been well aware of the fact that Aenys was set to inherit his throne once he died. We know that Aegon was aware of the importance of assimilating into Westeros, it's why he converted to the Faith of the Seven and followed other Westerosi continent customs once he was king. If Aegon had decided to forego that tradition and just decide that the new custom was that the heir was chosen out of whoever the person giving the inheritance felt was the most worthy, that would cause a lot of consternation to a lot of lords, not to mention just make the system of inheritance incredibly more chaotic than it was, which is bad news for him as someone ushering in a new age and hoping to create a dynasty. So he decided not to do that, because it wasn't what he wanted to happen and wouldn't have served him, and instead focused on trying to help his son prepare for the task. And Aenys gets a bad rep, but he wasn't hopeless, he had his flaws like his hesitancy and his insistence on seeing the best in people, but he was an adequate fighter and intelligent and clever and a dragonrider in his own right. It's entirely reasonable that, combined with Aegon's love for him as his child, Aegon decided that preparing Aenys for kingship irregardless of his shortcomings in the battlefield was the best course of action for the realm and his family.
And then on the flipside of all of this doting, loving fatherliness and protective nature and determination to do right by Aenys and the law, we have Aegon basically, yeah, neglecting Maegor. That's also probably due to a lot of things, that he was in charge of ruling a country and all of his progresses and making sure that his chosen heir, Aenys, was prepared to rule and spending time on that, but also his relationship with Visenya. Visenya and Aegon literally couldn't even be in the same city at a certain point, I think either when Maegor was really young or even while Visenya was still pregnant. It literally had to be Aegon in King's Landing and Visenya on Dragonstone, or vice versa, they couldn't stand to be within miles of each other. And with Visenya likely making sure that she was the primary parent responsible for Maegor's upbringing and education, that meant that Aegon wasn't spending any time near Maegor, because it was time near Visenya. Aegon also clearly wasn't putting in anywhere near the effort he was with Aenys, likely because of the relationship he had with Maegor's mother versus Aenys's. Cuz you're right anon, Aegon loved Rhaenys a lot, he married her against all common tradition and kept her as a wife and a queen and wanted her to be the mother of his children to carry on their family line, he trusted her as a battle commander and as a co-administrator, he was devastated when she died to the point of being almost suicidal and clearly still cared about her long after she was gone to the point of openly expressing emotion about her years later, which is not something that he did. And this probably did bleed into his determination to be close to their child. And on the flipside, you have his relationship with Visenya, which actively took a turn for the worse right when Maegor came onto the scene, and never improved and got progressively more bad the more he grew up, which meant that even if Aegon loved his second son (and I believe he did, he still showed an interest in Maegor at least in terms of battle prowess and knighted him himself), he was more willing to favor Aenys and spend less time with Maegor cuz it meant less time with Visenya or being reminded of Visenya. It's also important to note that we really don't know anything about Aegon as a person. We know he was a prodigious warrior, yes, but he never entered tourneys and was more willing to give command to others when he needed. Perhaps he was more like Aenys personality-wise, maybe he was naturally inclined to be more interested in academic pursuits and was a warrior out of necessity, even though he was more naturally gifted at it than Aenys. We know that Aegon was a solitary person, yes, but nowhere is he recorded as having the same antisocial tendencies that Maegor did. It could very well be possible that, as a person, Aegon had more in common with Aenys's personality than he did with Maegor's, given how little we know of him, but that's just conjecture on my part. I also just wanna point out that Aegon probably had more of an incentive to spend time with Aenys as opposed to Maegor due to the fact that Maegor had another parent to pick up the slack where Aegon was concerned. If Aegon neglected Aenys, he didn't have his mother to make sure someone was still taking care of him and showing him parental love, because his mother was dead. Visenya on the other hand was still alive, and Aegon probably felt that he didn't need to spend as much time with Maegor because of that. Maegor could be raised by his mother, and Aenys would be raised by his father, and then all the other stuff came in as well to create the situation at hand.
Aegon's relationships with his children was absolutely colored by his relationships with their mothers, but in my view it was less along the simple lines of "Aegon and Rhaenys with Visenya always as the odd one out" and more about how there were a series of dynamics at play that worked relatively well when Rhaenys was alive, but the fallout of her death was so extreme that it changed how Aegon and Visenya in turn interacted for the remainder of their lives, which bled into Aegon's treatment of Maegor as opposed to his treatment of Aenys and the emotions involved with his love and grief for Rhaenys and wanting to do right by her and their child, along with dynastic concerns and his own love for Aenys in his own right. As I've said a lot of times, there's not ever going to be a very concrete answer to this. Fire & Blood isn't in the habit of giving firm answers to anything, and this era in particular is so devoid of actual facts when it comes to dynamics and personalities and so filled with rumor and agenda that any theorizing basically goes into "personal headcanon" territory very quickly, and everyone's allowed their interpretation. But my reading of the text and my own additional thoughts on filling in the gaps have led me to these particular conclusions, and that's my canon when it comes to Visenya and Aegon and Rhaenys, and their children.
TARGARYEN NOVEMBER 2021
↳ Day 5: Reign: Aegon I, Visenya and Rhaenys
The long reign of King Aegon I Targaryen (1 AC–37 AC) was by and large a peaceful one, in his later years, especially. Aegon I Targaryen was a warrior of renown, the greatest Conqueror in the history of Westeros, yet many believe his most significant accomplishments came during times of peace. The Iron Throne was forged with fire and steel and terror, it is said, but once the throne had cooled, it became the seat of justice for all Westeros. The reconciliation of the Seven Kingdoms to Targaryen rule was the keystone of Aegon I’s policies as king. To this end, he made great efforts to include men (and even a few women) from every part of the realm in his court and councils. His former foes were encouraged to send their children to court, where the boys served as pages, cupbearers, and squires, the girls as handmaidens and companions to Aegon’s queens.
The Targaryens also brokered many marriages between noble houses from the far ends of the realm, in hopes that such alliances would help tie the conquered lands together and make the seven kingdoms one. Aegon’s queens, Visenya and Rhaenys, took a special delight in arranging these matches. Through their efforts, young Ronnel Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie, took a daughter of Torrhen Stark of Winterfell to wed, whilst Loren Lannister’s eldest son, heir to Casterly Rock, married a Redwyne girl from the Arbor. When three girls, triplets, were born to the Evenstar of Tarth, Queen Rhaenys arranged betrothals for them with House Corbray, House Hightower, and House Harlaw. Queen Visenya brokered a double wedding between House Blackwood and House Bracken, rivals whose history of enmity went back centuries, matching a son of each house with a daughter of the other to seal a peace between them. And when a Rowan girl in Rhaenys’s service found herself with child by a scullion, the queen found a knight to marry her in White Harbor, and another in Lannisport who was willing to take on her bastard as a fosterling.
Though none doubted that Aegon Targaryen was the final authority in all matters relating to the governance of the realm, his sisters Visenya and Rhaenys remained his partners in power throughout his reign. Save perhaps for Good Queen Alysanne, the wife of King Jaehaerys I, no other queen in the history of the Seven Kingdoms ever exercised as much influence over policy as the Dragon’s sisters. It was the king’s custom to bring one of his queens with him wherever he traveled, whilst the other remained at Dragonstone or King’s Landing, oft as not seated on the Iron Throne, ruling on whatever matters came before her.
“'Yield now, Aegon began, “and you may remain as Lord of the Iron Islands. Yield now, and your sons will live to rule after you. I have eight thousand men outside your walls.”
“What is outside my walls is of no concern to me,” said Harren. “Those walls are strong and thick.”
“But not so high as to keep out dragons. Dragons fly.”
“I built in stone,” said Harren. “Stone does not burn.”
To which Aegon said, “When the sun sets, your line shall end.”
Then Harren the Black retired to his tower, surrounded by his household guard, to sup with his remaining sons. As the last light of the sun faded, Black Harren’s men stared into the gathering darkness, clutching their spears and crossbows. When no dragon appeared, some may have thought that Aegon’s threats had been hollow. But Aegon Targaryen took Balerion up high, through the clouds, up and up until the dragon was no bigger than a fly upon the moon. Only then did he descend, well inside the castle walls. On wings as black as pitch Balerion plunged through the night, and when the great towers of Harrenhal appeared beneath him, the dragon roared his fury and bathed them in black fire, shot through with swirls of red.
Stone does not burn, Harren had boasted, but his castle was not made of stone alone. Wood and wool, hemp and straw, bread and salted beef and grain, all took fire. Nor were Harren’s ironmen made of stone. Smoking, screaming, shrouded in flames, they ran across the yards and tumbled from the wallwalks to die upon the ground below. And even stone will crack and melt if a fire is hot enough. The riverlords outside the castle walls said later that the towers of Harrenhal glowed red against the night, like five great candles…and like candles, they began to twist and melt as runnels of molten stone ran down their sides.” — Fire & Blood, Aegon’s Conquest
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