Hey YouTubers it's Charlie. So the the Game of Thrones finale is this weekend so I wanted to
talk all about Aegon the Conqueror and the early history of the Targaryen family. Even houses
that hate the Targaryens refer to Aegon as the greatest king that Westeros ever had. His
biggest achievement to date is uniting the Seven Kingdoms, although he really only united
six kingdoms and Dorne came in to the fold later. That happened about eight generations
later. That's why Dorne's motto is "Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken". But there's actually a lot of really cool
Targaryen history between the Doom and Aegon's conquest. Real quick side note too, the actual
king that sign the pact with Dorne was Baelor the first. He was known as Baelor the Blessed,
the one that built this big sept, the one in King's Landing where we've seen all the weddings
and the funerals. Whenever people talked about Aegon the Conqueror, though, they just omitted that
little fact about Dorne because they wanted to keep their heads and they didn't want to get
doused in wildfire. He was such a big deal though that the archmaesters of the Citadel changed
the calendar to honor him. So when we say King Joffrey died in 299 AL, AL refers to After
Landing although it's a little bit wonky. There's BC, Before Conquest, and AL, After
Landing. Technically the Conquest begun in 2 BC so, like, the calendar is just a little
wonky. It'd be more accurate if the AL was AC and it was After Conquest. George R. R. Martin goes
a long way to base a lot of these little facts on actual real-world history and I'm sure
there are a lot of inaccuracies in the Gregorian calendar. We will actually have to talk about false narration
and the way history is remembered in A Song of Ice and Fire at some point. Martin has said that
false narration exists in the series. That's like characters remembering things that are
false. A really good example of that is when Tyrion keeps asking people about where his first
wife is. Tywin tells him "wherever whores go", Jaime feeds him a lie that she only pretended
to love him. That's false narration so whenever a character tells a story just be wary that
they might be remembering something falsely. But as much as Aegon the Conqueror is a point
of origin for modern Westeros he was not the first Targaryen dragonrider in the Seven
Kingdoms. Dragonstone up over here was never completely cut off from contact with the Andals.
The Valyrians colonized it about 200 years before Aegon's Conquest. It became the westernmost
outpost of the Valyrian Freehold. They used it to make money on the shipping trade in the
area. It really started out as more of a stronghold but it's basically built on this active volcano.
If you didn't know there is an active volcano underneath Dragonstone. The only evidence of
the volcano today is just steam rising from natural vents in the ground. The name of the
volcano is Dragonmont but I don't think it's ever been referred to on the show.
Stannis just says that it's full of dragonglass, of course that's going to come in handy at some point. But there's
an extensive series of tunnels beneath Dragonstone and there have been many dragons that have
roosted there. Dragons just naturally like to roost near active volcanoes which says
a lot about the dragons of ancient Valyria being found around the Fourteen Flames. And for any
tinfoil theory crafters out there, I don't, you know, people are always wondering if there's
a secret clutch of dragon eggs beneath Dragonstone. There is no proof of that but it's totally
possible. Historically you would think that future Targaryen kings would have moved all
existing dragon eggs to King's Landing. That's what the Dragonpit was created for, to be
like a giant roost for the dragons, although it was a pretty terrible one. If there are any
new dragon eggs to be had on the show logically you would think that one of Daenerys's dragons
would switch genders and they would mate with each other. Dragons can do that, like, they haven't
explained it on the show but in the series dragons can switch genders. Starting with the Doom
of Valyria and Aenys Targaryen there were five rulers of Dragonstone before Aegon was
ever born. Like I said though, they didn't do a whole lot other than make a ton of money
from the ships passing by through the area, the shipping trade. And they did have dragons
but the only one that was still alive, the only one that was originally born in ancient
Valyria that was still alive during Aegon's time was Balerion the Black Dread. The two dragons
that Aegon's sisters rode, Vhagar and Meraxes, they were hatched on Dragonstone.
But the Targaryen family historically was not buddy-buddy with all the other kings of
Westeros, they didn't hang out all the time. But Aegon and his sisters did visit a
lot of different big places. They supposedly visited the Citadel in Oldtown all the way down
in the Reach, they spent time in Lannisport, I mean they traveled all over. Aegon is
the one that commissioned that giant map of the Seven Kingdoms that sits in Dragonstone
that Stannis is looking at when he's still at Dragonstone. So he was preoccupied with the Seven Kingdoms
in a way that his predecessors were not. And even though all the different petty kings
of Westeros, you know, were continually fighting with each other it wasn't until things got really
bad between Harren Hoare, also known as Harren the Black, and Argilac Durrandon, also
known as Argilac the Arrogant, great names I know. They sound super nice. So when Aegon
was about 26, Argilac reached out to him to help him deal with Harren the Black.
Harren was king of the crownlands and he had started annexing all this territory and was
slowly getting ready to move in on Argilac. He ruled over the area that's known as the
Stormlands although a lot of that encompassed what is now the Reach. This isn't a
historical map so all these boundaries were just a little bit different during their time.
So what happened is is Argilac offered Aegon his daughter's hand in marriage and a bunch
of land south of this river here, like right on the border of Harren the Black's land.
He wanted to create, like, a Targaryen dragon buffer between him and Harrenhal. Aegon saw
right through it, took a hard pass on the third wife 'cause he'd already married his two
sisters, countered with the proposal that if Argilac basically gave him most of the
Stormlands and, you know, part of what is the Reach over here as well as marry his daughter
to Orys Baratheon his champion. So this is where things start to get crazy. Argilac gets
super pissed at the idea of having to marry his daughter to Orys Baratheon, who he calls
a bastard, and sends the hands of Aegon's messenger back in a box. Aegon is super pissed and finally
says enough is enough and after about seven days of deliberation with his generals declares
war on the Seven Kingdoms. So he's not just responding to this grave insult, he's tired of all these
petty kings being so belligerent. Why is it such an insult to call Orys Baratheon a
baseborn bastard? Well it's rumored that he is the half-brother of Aegon the Conqueror. That
would make Orys like the Jon Snow of the Targaryen family. So Aegon the Conqueror and Orys
Baratheon are a lot like Rob Stark and Jon Snow. He eventually went on to become Aegon's
hand, he became the first hand of the king. And his nickname, in a funny twist of
fate, became Orys One-Hand because he got his hand chopped off. Just to tie these characters
even more with characters on the show, so Orys was captured in this Dornish conflict,
ransom had his sword hand chopped off, just like Jaime Lannister. His son, Orys's son, was
named Davos and they fought alongside Savage Samwell Tarly. That all happened after the
War of Conquest but I just, I love how those names make you think about characters that are on the
show right now. So that was like the beginning of house Baratheon, like once they conquered the
Stormlands he gave them to Orys Baratheon which is funny when you think about the modern-day
animosity between House Baratheon and House Targaryen. So houses that once used to be really
friendly like, you know, say the Starks, the Lannisters, hundreds of years later might be bitter enemies.
The same is true for all the other great houses of Westeros. So let's pull out the map here. So Aegon
lands at the area that is now known as King's Landing, you guessed it. The first places that
he takes are the Stormlands and the crownlands. Those are when you had the famous burning
of Harrenhal, that's why it looks all melty because one of his dragons melted
it. Then he moves his army south-west, takes the Reach, then King Torrhen bends the knee.
There was even an inn built on the spot where he kneeled called the Inn of the Kneeling Man.
It showed up a couple times during book two. Arya gets taken there by the brotherhood without
banners and Jaime and Brienne stay there briefly after she first started her mission to take
Jaime back to King's Landing. So then Aegon marches on the Vale, Dorne, and Oldtown. Dorne
obviously, as I mentioned, was a total wash but after he marched into Oldtown a conqueror
he was crowned ruler of the Six Kingdoms inside the Starry Sept and given a new crown. The old
crown that he wore was just this simple circlet of Valyrian steel. The books only talk
about that first crown so it's possible that that new crown that he got he only wore like
that one time. Future Targaryen kings always modified their crowns to their own preference.
Really like the the biggest artifact that got passed down generation to generation unchanged
was the Valyrian sword Blackfyre. Some of you guys have actually asked me to do a video on like
where all the special Valyrian blades are. Most of them still exist, I mean they haven't
been sucked into a black hole or anything, but the funny thing when you think about it is
is that, you know, before the Doom, Valyrian swords were super common, like, and anybody that
was a member of the Freehold probably could've commissioned their own Valyrian blade. It would
be really cool if Varys and Illyrio track down Blackfyre to give to Daenerys before
she marched on Westeros. Don't know if that's ever going to happen but I'm just saying it'd be
pretty badass. The blades that Aegon melted down into the Iron Throne, there were actually about 1000
of them, were from all the conquered people, the people that didn't bend the knee. This is what
it'd actually look like. It took almost 100 people 59 days of, like, beating metal and Balerion's
dragon fire to reshape all those blades into the chair. The rumor is is that the rulers
that bent the knee like Torrhen Stark didn't get there blades melted down so supposedly
there is no Stark blade in the Iron Throne. Aegon died when he was about 64 years old
and unfortunately, as is true with real-world history, a lot of his successors ended up being
pretty weak. It's like when your dad is that successful, unless your name is Daenerys and
you have three dragons, there's no way you're going to top conquering Westeros. Daenerys
does have a lot of visual and metaphorical parallels with Aegon the Conqueror but Martin
isn't overly simplistic on the way that history repeats itself. I mean, we'll have to see
how the show deals with Daenerys's army in season six and seven but Dan and Dave are
really good about including little Easter eggs from the side stories too like the Dance
of the Dragons. That's not something that's overly explained in the main novels,
you have to read like the side story for that. Here's my big question for you guys. Do you feel like Daenerys's
story will play out in a very similar way to Aegon the Conqueror's story? Do you feel
like Martin wants us to feel like they're almost the same person like she's the second
coming. I don't want to make any Christ analogies or anything like that, there are definitely characters
that are just as important as Daenerys on the show but she feels very much like Aegon
the Conqueror. The really cool thing is is that Martin is actually going to write a book about
the history of the Targaryen family just called "Fire and Blood" but it's not going to happen until after
he finishes A Song of Ice and Fire which is probably gonna be like six years away. So really big reminder,
the finale is tonight, I'll post my video after the episode airs, be sure to subscribe to get it.
I'm also giving away a signed copy of A Feast for Crows. What I'll probably do is I'll do
my season six predictions on Monday before I do my Q&A and then the bonus videos that
I do after that would just be dictated on on whatever WTFs happened in the finale. So
just be sure to check out those videos whenever they post. There'll be some extra giveaways going
on too. So while you guys are all waiting for that to drop, you can click here for my episode video
and you can click here to learn all about the Night's King and Azor Ahai. Thank you
so much for watching, everybody let's high five. We're almost there, almost time for the finale!