Fire & Blood Files: Which Targaryens Just Entered The Chat?

The second episode of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, “Hard Salt Beef” features the entry of some notable royal Targaryens into the tourney grounds of Ashford Meadow. While AKOTSK is deliberately not as concerned with the political maneuverings of the highest classes of Westeros (their … game of thrones, if you will), the Targaryens of AKOTSK will still play a key role in the unfolding story of Dunk’s (Peter Claffey) experience at the tournament.

As such, it’s worth having a good understanding of who exactly is on hand and, more broadly, the state of the Targaryen dynasty at this point in the story.

At the time of this series, the king of the Seven Kingdoms is Daeron II, called Daeron the Good. He is the 12th Targaryen monarch to sit the Iron Throne (Viserys, from the first season of House of the Dragon, was the fifth), and is best remembered for bringing Dorne peacefully into the realm, making the Seven Kingdoms live up to its name for the first time. As of this episode, Daeron has four adult sons: Baelor, Aerys, Rhaegel and Maekar. It is the first and fourth of these sons, Baelor (Bertie Carvel) and Maekar (Sam Spruell), whom we meet in “Hard Salt Beef.”

As the designated heir to the throne and Prince of Dragonstone, Baelor is named after his grandfather’s cousin, the man who arranged the marriage that led to his birth (it is that Baelor, a deeply religious Targaryen king, for whom the Sept of Baelor, where Ned Stark (Sean Bean) was beheaded, and which Cersei (Lena Headey) later blew up in Game of Thrones, is named).

Baelor is also serving as Hand of the King to his father, making him arguably the most powerful man in Westeros at the time. As we see in this episode, he is intelligent, fair-mind, and largely not a dick. Qualities which, along with his martial prowess (his sobriquet is “Baelor Breakspear”) make him well-known and mostly well-liked throughout the kingdom. Notably, Baelor lacks the striking white-silver hair of Targaryens; his mother is Myriah Martell, of the ruling house of Dorne, and he inherited her darker hair.

Baelor has two sons, Valarr, the Young Prince, and Matarys, the Even Younger Prince. Valarr (Oscar Morgan), who is next in line for the throne after his father, appears briefly in this episode; he is the Targaryen riding in the night joust whom Egg name checks.

Also making his introduction in “Hard Salt Beef” is Maekar, younger brother of Baelor, Prince of Summerhall (another ancestral Targaryen holding like Dragonstone). As the fourth son of Daeron the Good, Maekar is well-removed from the line of succession, and while not an out-and-out monster like Maegor the Cruel, is a bit closer to the typical preening, dick-ish aristocrat than his older brother; Dunk overhears him complaining in a very, “I’m not even supposed to be here today!” manner about coming to the tournament in the first place (which he’s doing in front of Lord Ashford, the tournament’s host).

Like his brother, Maekar is an accomplished warrior, having helped quell the first Blackfyre Rebellion (an uprising triggered by a group of Targaryen bastards that will probably be featured in a future “Fire & Blood Files” entry) alongside Baelor. They fought together at the Battle of the Redgrass Fields (Ser Arlan’s previous squire died in this battle, as noted in this episode) in which the brothers came to be known as “the Hammer and the Anvil” for a maneuver in which Baelor (the Hammer) led his forces to push their opponents against the strong defensive position of Maekar (the Anvil), ending the uprising. Yet in the aftermath, it was Baelor the Hammer who became more celebrated, stoking Maekar’s fourth son resentment even further.

Maekar has four sons at the time of this episode, just like his father: Daeron (called Daeron the Drunken), Aerion (who calls himself Aerion Brighflame), Aemon and Aegon. Aerion (Finn Bennett) is the third Targaryen we see in “Hard Salt Beef” riding in alongside Baelor and Maekar, the one who assumes Dunk is a stable boy and asks for wine and wench. Daeron and Aegon are meant to be attending the tournament as well, with the older Daeron set to joust while Aergon serves as his squire.

They are the missing sons Baelor and Maekar are discussing in this episode (Aemon, meanwhile, is around 11 years old and currently at the Citadel studying to become a maester; you may remember him as a much older Maester Aemon (Peter Vaughn) of Castle Black in the early seasons of Game of Thrones).

Despite Maekar’s disgruntlement about attending the tournament at Ashford Meadow, the presence of the Targaryen retinue serves an important political purpose within the story. There is a reason why they rode into the tournament on horses rather than dragons. While AKOTSK is set roughly between House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones (with about a hundred years on either side), it figuratively takes place much closer to Game of Thrones in one key aspect: the dragons are all gone. The Targaryens are still the undisputed rulers of the Seven Kingdoms, but they no longer have the “hard” power of winged atomic bombs at their beck and call.

As a result, they must rely more on the kind of “soft” power deployed by regular rulers; strategic alliances. This is evidenced by Baelor having a Martell mother, and the general lack of Targaryen sister-wives in this time period. It is also demonstrated by good relations with their lower lords and subjects, such as the kind fostered by having key members of court leave King’s Landing to attend a tournament hosted by a vassal lord. Without the immediate shorthand of “has dragons,” the Targaryens need other ways to put the splendor, magnanimity, and martial prowess of the dynasty on full display for the smallfolk. For all of the grumbling of Maekar, someone much further away from the literal seat of power, this is something Crown Prince Baelor understands all too well, making him the even rarer Targaryen ruler-in-waiting who might actually be good at the job.