Don’t attend any Westerosi puppet shows if you haven’t watched “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” Season 1 Episode 3, “The Squire.” Spoilers ahead!
Throughout the “Game of Thrones” universe, we’ve come across some pretty odious members of the Targaryen family. I’ll delve deeper into the first spin-off and prequel “House of the Dragon” soon, but in the second big show set in the fictional world of Westeros created by author George RR Martin, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” we meet a few more members of this dysfunctional clan. One of them, however, is a surprise: Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell), the small and humble squire who pledged himself to Ser Duncan the Great (Peter Claffey), is actually Aegon Targaryen, future king of the Seven Kingdoms.
Even if Egg has a pure heart, the same can’t it is said of his older brother Aerion, played in “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” by Finn Bennett. In the original book series, “Tales of Dunk and Egg,” Aerion is precisely as he appears on screen: a young man struck by the hereditary “madness” of the Targaryen family tree which dabbles in occasional cruelty. We see him in action in “The Squire” when, offended by a puppet show depicting a dragon (the eternal symbol of House Targaryen), he breaks the fingers of Tanselle (Tanzyn Crawford), the puppeteer he considers guilty, in one of the most brutal moments of the series to date. Duncan, who was summoned by Egg (and is clearly nice to Tanselle), defends her, further angering Aerion. Ultimately, Duncan is only saved from a horrible fate thanks to Egg’s intervention, but Aerion continues a great tradition of being a truly terrible Targaryen.
The terrible Targaryens are sold by the shovels in Westeros
The first Targaryens we meet all from the “Game of Thrones” universe, at least on screen, are siblings Viserys and Daenerys Targaryen, played by Harry Lloyd and Emilia Clarke, respectively. (As a reminder, these two, introduced in “Game of Thrones”, are descendants of all the others we are talking about here; this show is the “newest” one on the timeline, so to speak). Daenerys develops her own issues later, and I’ll get to that, but she’s great at first. Viserys? That’s a whole different story.
From the start, Viserys is obnoxious, slimy and disgusting, ogling his own sister’s naked body (although, considering the importance of the Targaryens) love incest is perhaps the most “normal” thing he does) and reveling in the violence committed by her new warlord husband, Dothraki champion Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa). Viserys is so incredibly horrible in every way imaginable that it feels good when, defending Daenerys, Drogo drops an entire pot of molten gold on his brother’s head, killing him.
Things don’t get much better in “House of the Dragon.” Even though we’re ostensibly meant to identify with self-crowned queen Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) as she battles her stepmother and former best friend Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke), she does some pretty horrible things — like sending a group of ordinary men to their deaths in Season 2 in an attempt to see if any of them might be dragon riders. Alicent’s son Aegon II Targaryen is simply horrible, unrepentantly abusing handmaids in his spare time, and his brother Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) kills his own nephew. Ultimately, Aerion is simply carrying on a long-standing family tradition…of being the worst.
Aerion is clearly pretty bad…and he’ll probably continue to be horrible in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
It’s no secret, even at the beginning of “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms”, that Aerion is the worse. In the same episode, we see him, with Duncan and Egg, participating in a particularly brutal joust where he kills his opponent’s horse in front of the entire court. It shows how shitty Aerion is and how bad his reputation is that Duncan’s friend Raymun Fossoway (Shaun Thomas) says he suspects Aerion deliberately murdered the majestic beast. “Aerion is just vain and cruel,” Raymun – Ser Stefon Fossoway’s cousin and squire, who allies himself with Duncan in his spare time – muses as he and Duncan hang out.
Now that we know that Egg is Aerion’s younger brother and a full heir to the Targaryen dynasty, we can only hope that Duncan is protected from Aerion’s wrath… but there’s no doubt that we’ll see this Targaryen get worse and more reprehensible. as “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” continues its excellent inaugural season. The series airs new episodes Sunday nights at 10 p.m. on HBO and HBO Max.
