Aerys Ii Targaryen - Tumblr Posts
I… I am at a loss for words
DAENERYS IS VERY DIFFERENT FROM HER FATHER, THE MAD KING AERYS II TARGARYEN
In A Song of Ice and Fire, there are instances in which Danaerys is juxtaposed to her father, the Mad King Aerys II Targaryen. Besides the juxtapositions, as the story goes on, there can be drawn anti-parallels between father and daughter, when we analyse and compare their actions and mindset.
To me, this is a clear message that George RR Martin wants to give to his readers: Daenerys is a different person from her father. Her queenship and overall actions are put in a positive light, and her legacy will be different from that of Aerys II. She will let a positive impact in her world and in her people.
Let’s take a look at some quotes:
● “Dany had no wish to reduce King’s Landing to a blackened ruin full of unquiet ghosts. She had supped enough on tears. I want to make my kingdom beautiful, to fill it with fat men and pretty maids and laughing children. I want my people to smile when they see me ride by, the way Viserys said they smiled for my father.” — Daenerys II, A Clash of Kings.
● “Upon a towering barbed throne sat an old man in rich robes, an old man with dark eyes and long silver-grey hair. “Let him be king over charred bones and cooked meat,” he said to a man below him. “Let him be the king of ashes.” Drogon shrieked, his claws digging through silk and skin, but the king on his throne never heard, and Dany moved on.” — Daenerys IV, A Clash of Kings.
● “The traitors want my city”, I heard him tell Rossart, “but I’ll give them naught but ashes. Let Robert be king over charred bones and cooked meat.” — Jaime V, A Storm of Swords.
In the first quote, Daenerys is clear: she does not wish to destroy King’s Landing. Meanwhile, her father (as per her vision in the House of the Undying and Jaime Lannister’s account) wished to burn the city to the ground with wildfire, just so Robert Baratheon would not rule over it.
● “He means well, Dany reminded herself. He does all he does for love. “It seems to me that a queen who trusts no one is as foolish as a queen who trusts everyone. Every man I take into my service is a risk, I understand that, but how am I to win the Seven Kingdoms without such risks? Am I to conquer Westeros with one exile knight and three Dothraki bloodriders?” — Daenerys I, A Storm of Swords.
● “Not every man is what he seems, and a prince especially has good cause to be wary … but go too far down that road, and the mistrust can poison you, make you sour and fearful.” King Aerys was one such. By the end, even Rhaegar saw that plain enough.” — The Lost Lord [Jon Connington], A Dance with Dragons.
Now both quotes talk about trust and mistrust. Daenerys considers a queen must be wary, as taking men into her service involve risks, but not foolish enough as to not trust anyone. King Aerys II, her father, though, did not trust anyone — not his family (Rhaella and Rhaegar), not the men into his service. Jon Connington considers him a king poisoned by mistrust.
“She turned to Ser Barristan. “You protected my father for many years, fought beside my brother on the Trident, but you abandoned Viserys in his exile and bent your knee to the Usurper instead. Why? And tell it true.”
“Some truths are hard to hear. Robert was a … a good knight … chivalrous, brave … he spared my life, and the lives of many others … Prince Viserys was only a boy, it would have been years before he was fit to rule, and … forgive me, my queen, but you asked for truth … even as a child, your brother Viserys oft seemed to be his father’s son, in ways that Rhaegar never did.”
“His father’s son?” Dany frowned. “What does that mean?”
The old knight did not blink. “Your father is called ‘the Mad King’ in Westeros. Has no one ever told you?”
“Viserys did.” The Mad King. “The Usurper called him that, the Usurper and his dogs.” The Mad King. “It was a lie.”
“Why ask for truth,” Ser Barristan said softly, “if you close your ears to it?” He hesitated, then continued. “I told you before that I used a false name so the Lannisters would not know that I’d joined you. That was less than half of it, Your Grace. The truth is, I wanted to watch you for a time before pledging you my sword. To make certain that you were not … ”
“ … my father’s daughter?” If she was not her father’s daughter, who was she?
“ … mad,” he finished. “But I see no taint in you.“” — Daenerys VI, A Storm of Swords.
Here we have Ser Barristan Selmy, a knight who served under Aerys II, openly stating that he does not see the “taint” in Daenerys — in other words, she is different from her father. He even observed her during some time before pledging his sword.
Illyrio also admits to Tyrion that Daenerys is different from her father:
“”Viserys was Mad Aerys’s son, just so. Daenerys … Daenerys is quite different.“ He popped a roasted lark into his mouth and crunched it noisily, bones and all. “The frightened child who sheltered in my manse died on the Dothraki sea, and was reborn in blood and fire. This dragon queen who wears her name is a true Targaryen. When I sent ships to bring her home, she turned toward Slaver’s Bay. In a short span of days she conquered Astapor, made Yunkai bend the knee, and sacked Meereen. Mantarys will be next, if she marches west along the old Valyrian roads. If she comes by sea, well … her fleet must take on food and water at Volantis."” — Tyrion II, A Game of Thrones.
Taking all of this in consideration, it is clear as day that theories like “Mad Queen Daenerys” make no sense. The narrative itself takes care of refuting it. Daenerys wil not follow in the steps of her father.
VALYRIAN COUPLES: PART 6
by jota.saraiva.art on instagram
featuring: King Aerys II/Queen Rhaella (1) and Jon Snow/Queen Daenerys (2)
It’s like poetry or whatever but the Knight of the Laughing Tree and the Knight of Tears as fascinating parallels of and inverses to one another.
In both cases, the goal of the mystery knight is to make an objective point, without the details of their respective identities muddling or neutralizing the message. Indeed, one potential advantage of an individual donning the disguise of a mystery knight is the ability to send such a message to the competitors and/or attendees of any particular event, pursuing a goal otherwise unobtainable or complicated by their persons. Yet where other mystery knights may have wished simply to convey their individual worthiness to compete irrespective of their identities (as, perhaps, Baelon Targaryen did when he tilted as the “Silver Fool” to win his spurs at Old Oak, or as Jonquil Darke did when she entered the War for the White Cloaks as the “Serpent in Scarlet”), Prince Aemon and Lyanna Stark were not interested (or, at least, entirely interested) merely in jousting for the sake of jousting; their victories in the tilt mattered less than their motivations for doing so.
Instead, for both Aemon and Lyanna, their points attempted to correct wrongs which inextricably linked the personal and the political. Aemon’s personal love for his sister (complicated as it might have been by his devotion to the vows of the Kingsguard) was clear, and on those grounds alone he might well have resented the preferment of his brother’s mistress over his beloved sister. Yet the insult did not end at mere familial (or even potentially romantic) closeness between Aemon and Naerys. By publicly attempting to snub the present queen for his current mistress, Aegon IV was declaring to the assembled courtiers and aristocrats that his wife - the only woman he could, at least openly and officially, have a publicly approved romantic/sexual relationship with - was not the fairest woman in the land (or at least among the tourney attendees). Beyond being a major breach of courtly etiquette, such a move could suggest greater ambitions on the part of the king to remove Naerys from her place as queen - no empty threat, when Aegon IV had (likely) already used Morghil Hastwyck as a proxy to accuse Naerys of adultery and when the Brackens had schemed to replace Naerys with Barba. Aemon, himself the champion for Naerys against Morghil and one of the voices to call for Barba’s dismissal, would thus again take up the defense of his sister-queen to an insult at once personal and political.
Likewise, Lyanna framed her rescue of Howland from the bullying squires in terms at once familial and feudal. Howland was, so Lyanna declared him, “my father’s man”, the most fundamental expression of the political order which obligated her, as a member of the liege family, to protect the liege’s vassal with her own power. Just as Lyanna cared for Howland herself following the attack (“t[aking] him back to her lair to clean his cuts and bind them up with linen”, in the tale told by Meera Reed) and welcomed Howland into the bosom of the Stark household at Harrenhal - again emphasizing the personal responsibility of her as a Stark to look after a Reed of Greywater Watch - so Lyanna recognized her role as redeeming the honor of young Howland. It was her duty as a resident Stark to personally take up arms against the master of those squires and defeat them (albeit in a play-combat context), much as Lord Rickard would have been expected to do should anyone have made war on any of his vassals. The insult to Howland had triggered Lyanna’s personal obligation to him as a Stark; here was her opportunity to do as her Stark ancestors had done for generations, caring for and defending the people under Winterfell’s protection.
Yet Aemon and Lyanna diverged in the means by which they conveyed their respective messages, placing them on opposite ends of a symbolism spectrum. For Aemon, the proper moniker to demonstrate his point was the Knight of Tears. Even without the specifics on his shield’s device, the designation conveyed Aemon’s sense of grief at the humiliation of his sister. While the disguise may have subtly recalled the history between the siblings - when Aemon had, so the songs relate, wept to see his sister wedded to their brother - its main purpose was, I think, to communicate the objective shame of the king’s proposed action. If the king himself would forget (or actively refuse) his social duty to his lady wife, Aemon would remind him - not as his brother (whom then-Prince Aegon had ignored in their quarrel at Aegon’s wedding to Naerys), nor as his Kingsguard (since Aemon would, at least in his mind, owe the king his unquestioned loyalty), but as the representation of a chivalric ideal. To so great an insult, Aemon’s guise suggested, any true knight must surely weep - and only such a true knight could redeem the honor of a queen so disparaged by her king.
Lyanna, for her part, also sought to shame the men who (indirectly) humiliated the person she sought to defend, but in a way which more directly mocked the knights in question. The Blount, Haigh, and Frey knights she challenged may not have directly or publicly insulted Howland Reed as Aegon IV attempted to do to Naerys, but their squires’ harassment of Howland reflected none too well on the knights themselves as ostensible instructors of honor and chivalry. The laughing weirwood thus mocked the pretensions of both the knights and their squires to the outward appearance of chivalry. Where the squires had failed in honor by attacking a young and much smaller man, their knights would fail in the public demonstration of knighthood, being roundly defeated by the Knight of the Laughing Tree. This mystery knight, and openly bearing the symbol of a non-Andal, non-Seven-worshiping land and people (and thus without inherent ties to the Andal tradition of knighthood), would humble the knights whose squires had acted so unchivalrously. That Lyanna was of course no knight herself only underlined the joke intrinsic to the choice of device: she could not be the chivalric ideal as Prince Aemon (himself one of the most publicly celebrated knights of all time) had been as the Knight of Tears, but she could secretly advertise that these knights would be unhorsed by a teenage girl with no formal knightly training.
In turn, both Aemon and Lyanna found (or likely found, in Aemon’s case) in the outcomes of their tourneys reversals of their chosen disguises. Aemon might have symbolically wept to see Naerys so insulted by their brother, but in emerging victorious in the tilt, Aemon perhaps restored a smile to Naerys’ face. In being presented with the crown of the queen of love and beauty, Naerys had been publicly acknowledged as the fairest woman in the land (at least in the context of the tourney). Too, that it was a mystery knight who presented her this honor (supposing Aemon was still disguised when he did so) may have only underlined the triumph in Naerys’ mind; to all onlookers, this was not a brother playing favorites against their loathed eldest sibling, but a true representation of knighthood defending the position of the queen. Aegon IV would not cease his attempts to humiliate and undermine his wife after this event, but in at least this instance, the queen and not the king’s mistress (or the king himself) would have the last laugh, thanks (with no small sense of irony) to the Knight of Tears.
By contrast, while Lyanna had chosen a laughing device for her tourney stunt, the end of the tourney of Harrenhal was “the moment when all the smiles died”. If Lyanna had succeeding in (literally) beating honor into the knights whose squires had so abused Howland Reed, she then found herself on the opposite side of the knightly dynamic, the unexpected recipient of the crown of the queen of love and beauty at the hands of Rhaegar Targaryen. Where his great-great-great-great-great-granduncle had refuted an attempt to honor the king’s mistress and instead acknowledged the queen as the rightful queen of love and beauty, Rhaegar likely seemed, to the attendees of Harrenhal, to do precisely the opposite - grossly publicly insulting his own present wife (and the future queen) for the sake of a would-be mistress. Not for Lyanna the power or desire of a Prince Aemon, to follow through on crowning a queen of love and beauty, and so not for Lyanna the ultimately happy outcome promised by her weirwood’s laughing face; hers would be that “sadder story” alluded to by Meera Reed, one more full of tears than Aemon’s tourney victory.
You know one of the things that saddens me the most about the dance (other than the deaths of my faves and it's general outcome) Is the extinction of dragons.
There were such majestic creatures and it really hurts to see them die out like that. But I then I start thinking about how the future would have turned out with dragons still alive and...
Aerys II with a dragon?
The battle of the Trident but Rhaegar has a dragon? (Actually, since he descends from a Targaryen princess, Bobby B could also have a dragon if he managed to claim one and that's equally terrifying.)
Actually, with dragons on their side the Mad King would have won the war 100% and basically all of our faves would have died or never been born.
The blackfyre rebellions but both sides have dragons? Shit, that'd be a second dance.
Aegon IV with a dragon? ( No wait nevermind , he'd be too fat to get on it anyway)
Suddenly I'm so glad these Targs never had the chance to get their nasty hands on them.
Sorry Morning, but I'm kind of glad you were the last one.
Daenerys Targaryen Appreciation Week
↪ One quote
Dany hungered and thirsted with the rest of them. The milk in her breasts dried up, her nipples cracked and bled, and the flesh fell away from her day by day until she was lean and hard as a stick, yet it was her dragons she feared for. Her father had been slain before she was born, and her splendid brother Rhaegar as well. Her mother had died bringing her into the world while the storm screamed outside. Gentle Ser Willem Darry, who must have loved her after a fashion, had been taken by a wasting sickness when she was very young. Her brother Viserys, Khal Drogo who was her sun-and-stars, even her unborn son, the gods had claimed them all. They will not have my dragons, Dany vowed. They will not.
Valyrian Couples: Part II
Aegon IV Targaryen, Naerys Targaryen and Aemon (son of Viserys II) Targaryen
Daemon I Blackfyre and Daenerys (daughter of Aegon IV) Targaryen
Brynden Rivers and Shiera Seastar
Aelor Targaryen and Aelora Targaryen
Aerion "Brightflame" Targaryen and Daenora Targaryen
Jaehaerys II Targaryen and Shaera Targaryen
Aerys II Targaryen and Rhaella Targaryen
Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen
By Jota Saraiva
PART I
They will not have my dragons, Dany vowed. They will not. — ACOK, Daenerys I
Freya Allan as book!Daenerys Targaryen, Heath Ledger as book!Rhaegar Targaryen, Alexandra Moen as book!Rhaella Targaryen, André Dussollier as book!Willem Darry & Jamie Campbell Bower as book!Viserys Targaryen
Great Houses of Westeros: House Targaryen (2/2)
“But in recent years, it has occured to me from time to time that it might have made for an interesting twist if instead I had made the dragonlords of Valyria, and therefore the Targaryens black….if I’d had dark-skinned dragonlords invade and conquer and dominate a largely white Westeros… though that choice would have brought its own perils. The Targaryens have not all been heroic, after all… some of them have been monsters, madmen, so…Well, it’s all moot. The idea came to me about twenty years too late.”
Daenerys Targaryen Appreciation Week
↪ One quote
Dany hungered and thirsted with the rest of them. The milk in her breasts dried up, her nipples cracked and bled, and the flesh fell away from her day by day until she was lean and hard as a stick, yet it was her dragons she feared for. Her father had been slain before she was born, and her splendid brother Rhaegar as well. Her mother had died bringing her into the world while the storm screamed outside. Gentle Ser Willem Darry, who must have loved her after a fashion, had been taken by a wasting sickness when she was very young. Her brother Viserys, Khal Drogo who was her sun-and-stars, even her unborn son, the gods had claimed them all. They will not have my dragons, Dany vowed. They will not.
2024 presidential candidates looking like this atm
fire and blood
the kings (and rhaegar) of house targaryen
I'm watching GOT for the first time and I’m not going to lie, everyone calling Jaime a Kingslayer as an insult is like okay and??? He did y'all a solid like I know for a fact nobody was Team Aerys so everyone here is fake af by pretending they weren't cheering when he dropped dead in front of the throne