Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Big Bad Is Weirder Than You Realize
Aerion Targaryen's claim of treason is based on a strange character quirk.
Game of Thrones may not have had that much Targaryen representation, but House of the Dragon completely changed that. In that spinoff, we got to know the full spectrum of Targaryen personalities. Some are full of righteous fury, like Rhaenyra, while others just seem straight-up evil, like Aemond.
In the latest Game of Thrones spinoff, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, most of the Targaryens seem chill, actually. Baelor, the heir to the throne, actually vouches for Ser Duncan the Tall so he can join the lists. Maekar is a bit aloof, but he’s worried about his missing sons. There’s one big exception, though. Aerion Targaryen, played by Finn Bennett, is on the extreme evil end of the spectrum, and we get a clear image of that in Episode 3. However, that’s only the start of what makes this character crazy.
Warning! Spoilers for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Episode 3 ahead!
Tanzelle’s puppet show was considered treason by Aerion.
In A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Episode 3, Aerion freaks out when he watches Tanzelle in a puppet show playing a knight slaying a dragon. He believes this is treason and breaks her fingers, saying, “The dragon ought never lose.” It’s a stretch, but one can see how a Targaryen could take this silly show as an insult to the reigning house. However, Aerion’s complaints go even further than that.
As told in the book The Hedge Knight, Aerion doesn’t just consider himself a member of the dragon house: he believes he literally is a dragon. This is even reflected in his armor: in the books, his helm and horse are adorned to look like flame, but in the series, they’re decorated to look like dragons. So this puppet show wasn’t just metaphorically offensive; it was, to Aerion, a literal effigy of him and his kind.
Aerion’s dragon obsession is even reflected in his armor.
This was viewed as strange even to the other Targaryens, and he later would spend much of his life in Lys and the Free Cities, with his father hoping that time would straighten him out. (Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.)
Unfortunately, this strange madness would eventually become Aerion’s undoing in the book canon. In the book A Clash of Kings, Jeor Mormont, Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, tells Jon Snow about Aerion’s ultimate end. “One night, in his cups, he drank a jar of wildfire, after telling his friends it would transform him into a dragon,” he says. “But the gods were kind, and it transformed him into a corpse.”
So this delusion isn’t just an inciting incident to get Dunk on the wrong side of the Targaryens: it’s actually foreshadowing one of the strangest moments in Westerosi history. Apparently, all those generations of inbreeding reared their ugly dragon heads in Aerion.
