The Sister-Wives of House Targaryen, in Westeros: Marriage & Motherhood, Crowns & Corpses.
CW: discussions of incest, fertility issues, & child brides. mentions of infant mortality, self-defenestration. spoilers for future events of the "House of the Dragon" live-action series, as presented in its source material "Fire & Blood".
Intro.
KEY
Title NAME family name (if not targaryen), birth date: age when first wed/age when first giving birth/age at crowning/age at death.
The Sister-Wives
Queen VISENYA I, b. 29 BC: ?/41/29/73.
Queen RHAENYS I, b. ~25 BC: ?/32/25/35.
Princess RHAENA of Dragonstone, b. 23 AC: 19/20/×/50.
Queen ALYSANNE, b. 36 AC: 13/16/12/64.
Princess ALYSSA, b. 60 AC: 15/17/×/24.
Queen HELAENA, b. 109 AC: 13/~13/15/21.
Queen DAENA "The Defiant", b. 145 AC: 15/~25¹/16/unknown.
Queen NAERYS, b. 138 AC: 15/15/34/41~53.
Princess AELORA of Dragonstone, b. 195~211 AC: ?/×/×/?.
Queen SHAERA, b. 226 AC: 14/18/33/34~55².
Queen RHAELLA, b. ~246 AC: 12/13/19/38.
¹Daena's marriage with her brother was never consumnated (though she did have an affair with A Cousin).
²correction: as a Queen Shaera is noted as remaining at court in 260 AC, Princess Shaera could not have died at Summerhall.
With these data points, the following averages can be made:
average age of siblings being wed to each other (by force or as elopement);
average age at first pregnancy;
life expectancy.
In some instances, specific women will be excluded due to being Statistical Outliers. Characters have also been split into contrasting groups, at times, to better determine any effects of their shared circumstances.
Marriage
The average Targaryen sister-wife was married at 13 years old.
If separated by how "willing" these girls are to wed their brothers, two groups are made:
"voluntary" (6): Rhaenys, age unknown; Rhaena was 19; Alysanne was 13; Alyssa was 15; Aelora, age unspecified; Shaera was 14.
involuntary (5): Visenya, age unknown; Helaena was 13; Daena was 15; Naerys was 15; Rhaella was 12.
The average age of the "willing" brides is 18 years old [17.75], while the average coerced sister-bride is 14 years old [13.75].
That said, even Westeros considers the impregnation of 13 years old (nevermind under 12s) to be uncouth: this gives us a "socially acceptable" age of consent at 14 years old.
This tilts the supposed balance between "willing" & "unwilling" sister-wives towards a majority in the latter grouping:
Most Targaryen Sister-Wives could not (or did not) consent to become a "Sister-Wife".
Motherhood
Due to their being outliers³, Queen Visenya I, Queen Rhaenys I, and Princess Daena are excluded from this sectiom.
Of the 7 remaining sister-wives, the average & median age for their first pregnancy is at 16 years old.
This, while not ideal IRL, is "young but otherwise fine" by the standards of Westeros.
Where this becomes troubling is their lack of support systems: only five of these mothers had a living parent to model off of and, being biological siblings, they would only have two grandparents between them.
Being wealthy and highborn, Targaryen Sister-Wives would have had servants available for the "practical" tasks of parenting (feeding, hygiene, recognising illness or injury, attending to colic, watching for accidents, etc) but their elevated status raises an issue in the "disciplining" of royal children. Who was around to tell children "no", for their own safety and character, if the majority of the parenting is done by employees?
Many sister-wives found pregnancy difficult, almost all of them experiencing miscarriages and stillbirths, and three sister-wives (Princess Alyssa, Queen Naerys, Queen Rhaella) ultimately died of pregnancy.
If the only ones allowed to tell a royal child "no" are their sickly mother and ruling father, what does that mean for that child's future misbehaviour?
The subject of Parenting in House Targaryen will likely follow in future posts.
³The Four Outliers: the Conquerors Visenya & Rhaenys seem to have postponed pregnancy until they were done conquering; Princess Daena's brother refused to bed her so her kid wasn't her brother's; Princess Aelora has no recorded pregnancies.
Crowns
This is less relevant in this post than in another planned post, on the ages of kings, but only because there is little to no data on the deeds of Targaryen women outside their beds.
For the purposes of this series, note that Queen Rhaenyra I will be discussed & counted amongst Westerosi "Kings" and not as a "Queen", despite styling Visenya & Rhaenys as Queens in their own right but counting them amongst Queens-Consort.
The only Targaryen Queens described as active participants in their rule of Westeros are the Queens Visenya I, Rhaenys I and Alysanne: they are, all of them, considered "exceptional" for doing so.
Death
An average life expectancy for a Targaryen sister-wife is somewhat difficult to do due to the differences in their circumstances: most women in the series often exist only as names in a family tree, royal women very much included.
Maesters (and, to briefly be a Doylist, the ASOIAF books as a whole) seldom mention any woman past the date of her youngest child's birth. Women are born, give birth, and promptly disappear from record thereafter unless their death is particularly morbid or unusual.
While this does create the opportunity to make claims such as "Queen Myriah Martell's lacking a date of death must mean she's been chilling in Dorne this whole time" it also makes what calculations we can make "unreliable".
Firstly I will refresh memories by again listing Ages At Death, adding "Cause/s" thereof (if known):
Queen Visenya I, died of old age at 73.
Queen Rhaenys I, killed at 35.
Princess Rhaena, died of "old" age at 50.
Queen Alysanne, died of "old" age at 64.
Princess Alyssa, died of pregnancy at 24.
Queen Helaena, self-defenestrated at 21.
Queen Daena, apparently immortal (disappears from histories after revealing the father of her son, Daemon Blackfyre).
Queen Naerys, died of pregnancy aged 41~53 years.
Princess Aelora of Dragonstone, assumed to have unalived herself (details unknown).
Queen Shaera, **survived Summerhall and still lived in 260 AC. As she does not appear in any of Ser Jaime's flashbacks to the court of Aerys II, nor the stories recalled by Daenerys Stormborn, it can be assumed Shaera died prior to 281 AC, aged 34~55 years old.
Queen Rhaella, died either of pregnancy or the Storming of Dragonstone at 38.
Despite age and pregnancy being natural causes of death, the circumstances of each sister-wife & the nature of their being Targaryens (incestuous, royal, magically-adjacent) makes me hesitate to truly call any of these deaths "natural".
Furthermore, Westeros canonically has moontea and other contraceptive methods readily available: if, however, the King has decided that he requires more children... the suggestion of birth control becomes "treason". Even if the wife in question is long-past the ages where pregnancy is safe or reasonable (for the mother and for any children).
Thusly, any queen who dies of pregnancy can, very technically, be considered as having been killed by her husband.
(Princess Baela's death by pregnancy is only "natural" in the sense that even healthy pregnancies can be fatal but, when your entire family is an incestuous phone tree designed by evil blood wizards who took "blood of the dragon" very literally? your "natural" was unnatural to begin with) [edit: idk the context i had in mind for this but lol]
Despite common belief, human life expectancy has not hugely changed since historic times: the discrepancy comes from how overwhelming the statistics of infant mortality were. Generally speaking, if you survived childhood you could expect to live into your late 60's.
(Unless there was drought or war or dysentry or, say, a surprise dragon from beneath the floorboards to crush you while its rider makes a dramatic entry...)
"Old" age for Targaryen dragon riders is difficult to calculate because few lived long enough to die from age: the effects of blood magic, being born of centuries of incest, and dragonriding on a person's health can be guessed but is compounded by the effects of too many pregnancies from too young an age, surviving battle & resultant trauma, etc.
So, while the average life expectancy of a Targaryen Sister-Wife is 42.8 years (rounded) and the median is 38 years... the means & timings of these deaths are incredibly circumstantial.
Such is the case with royalty in a feudal setting... and with any character known as a Targaryen.
Overall Patterns
It is notable that (with one exception) after the extinction of House Targaryen's dragons, all instances of siblings wedding each other are forced by parents or then-presiding kings. While not evident in this list, which excludes both the "otherwise-related" and "unrelated" consorts, there is a pattern of having a sibling-marriage every other generation (as sandwiched between marriages between cousins).
This generational trend would have been interrupted by the likes of Maekar I but for the multiple unexpected tragedies (the Great Spring Sickness of 209 AC; the events in the Dunk&Egg novellas; Summerhall) that resulted in the Last Targaryen king being Aerys II, son of siblings Jaeherys II & Shaera, the brother-husband of Queen Rhaella.
Of 11 recorded instances of Targaryen sister-wives, all ended up directly positioned to take the Iron Throne: Princess Rhaena was Considered to succeed her uncle Maegor's usurpation but refused, favouring her younger siblings Jaeherys I & Alysanne; Princess Alyssa's eldest son was Viserys I, chosen heir of Jaeherys I over his cousin Rhaenys and her son, Laenor Velaryon; Princess Aelora was chosen as an heir by Aerys I but was dead before much could come of it.
Of the 16 officially recognised Royal Consorts (excluding Maegor's black brides, Princess Rhaena, & Prince-Consort Daemon but including Queen Helaena) in the Targaryen Dynasty, 9 were sister-wives though only 3 reigned longer than a decade (Rhaenys I dying exactly 10 years into her queenship).
Only 3 royal consorts were entirely unrelated to their spouses (Queens Alicent Hightower, Myriah Martell, & Betha Blackwood), with the remaining queens-consort being "cousins".
(do not ask me how closely/removed: in Houses Targaryen & Velaryon, EVERYONE is everyone else's cousin several times over, while also being their own aunt or nephew. simultaneously! /j?)
Conclusions
...are likely to be typed up in their own posts, as they occur to me, if i have not already, accidentally, presented them earlier.
i think i concluded that the incest was abuse, not occult science, in The Myth of Targaryen Exceptionalism or this other post on Valyrian/Targ Propaganda.
There's also The Maternity of Targaryen Monarchs (i think it speculates on how these stats played out?) and a post on Dragon Riders & "Old Age".
Related: Life Expectancies of Targaryen Monarchs & those of Non-Targaryen Queens Consort.
many ages used here are approximations, sourced via entries on the AWOIAF wiki & as extrapolated from crossreferencing timelines. to be Watsonian, the maesters can be wrong & write with varying objectivity; to be Doylist, GRRM is not a historian nor is his fantasy writing as historically accurate as may be assumed.
Many thanks to @NobodySuspectsTheButterfly for correcting me on Queen Shaera's surviving Summerhall!
[edited in 2025 for readability & to link to conclusions made on other posts]
