The Game of Thrones TV universe has had its fair share of childish, petulant, fair-haired kings. And at first, House of the Dragon season 2’s addition to that lineup, Aegon II Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney), seemed like he could end up just a slightly less evil rehash of Joffrey, like the series taking its foot off the gas and playing the hits. But in the first two episodes of the season, Aegon has already proven that there’s plenty to separate him from Game of Thrones’ greatest villain.
[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for House of the Dragon season 2. It also contains spoilers for Game of Thrones, if that’s somehow a concern for you.]
Joffrey is, by necessity, a pretty simple character. In season 2 of Game of Thrones, when he first really steps into power, the show is introducing half a dozen new factions and twice as many characters. Joffrey’s immature, cruel, violent, impulsive, and generally thoughtless in most of his actions. That isn’t to say his character is bad because it’s simple, just that he fills in a very necessary role. The season is a maelstrom of morally gray characters with Joffrey in the center to give the audience an anchor, like a measuring point to judge the comparative evil of every other king; when everyone else is morally complex, it helps to have a villain to orient ourselves around.
But like most of the characters in House of the Dragon, Aegon is far more nuanced than his closest Game of Thrones counterpart.
In his earliest moments this season, Aegon gets a similar setup. We see him at a small council meeting, acting like a brash child, pushing for war in an instant, furious that anyone would question his claim to the throne. But his humanity doesn’t take long to emerge. During his time seeing to the concerns of his lowborn subjects, it becomes clear that Aegon wants to be a good king. He tries to loosen the livestock tax on farmers, only to be told that it would cripple his dragons, and he clearly wants to give the smiths the money they request. Neither of these, as Otto points out, are particularly good decisions. But they’re empathetic and understandable all the same, in a way that Joffrey never could be.
In that way, Aegon is more affected by tragedy than Joffrey ever was. In the second episode of the season, after the death of his son and heir, Aegon is broken in a more nuanced way than Game of Thrones characters ever have been, at least on screen. We see him impulsively call for war and Rhaenyra’s head; we see him kill the former Goldcloak that was caught attempting to ferry his son’s head out of King’s Landing; and we see him cry alone in his room in one of the saddest television scenes in recent memory, made even more poignant by the fact that Alicent simply walks out of the room when she sees this, too sad herself to even confront her son.
It’s all the impetuous restlessness that we saw from Aegon during the first episode’s small council meetings, but manifesting itself though grief instead of boredom. Aegon’s spoiled life distances him from tragedy but doesn’t immunize him to it. So when it comes for him, too, he has no idea what to do with those feelings. It’s deeply, inescapably, and devastatingly human, all in ways that Joffrey never needed to be. And that’s exactly what House of the Dragon needs, with its tangled web of familial conflicts, misunderstandings, and backhanded power grabs.
Unsurprisingly, the best summary for the kind of king Aegon II Targaryen is, and how different he is from Joffrey, comes from Game of Thrones itself. In the original series’ second season, Tyrion tells Joffrey that Westeros has had vicious kings and idiot kings, but that Joffrey might be its first vicious idiot king. In Tyrion’s parlance, Aegon is an idiot king. Not the insulting kind of idiot that Tyrion intended, but a tragic kind of idiot. In another time, Aegon could have had a fine enough reign, and that fact alone creates a massive gulf between him and Joffrey, and makes Aegon an even sadder character in the process.
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