Aegon II Is a Terrible King and That’s What Makes Him Interesting

When Aegon II sits on the Iron Throne, it’s immediately clear that he’s not cut out for the job. He’s weak, he’s indecisive, he’s torn between competing advisors who all want different things, and he seems to constantly retreat into substance abuse and self-medication rather than actually dealing with the monumental responsibilities that come with ruling the Seven Kingdoms during wartime. In almost any other story, this would make him a boring character—a bumbling antagonist with no real agency or compelling motivation. But House of the Dragon takes Aegon II’s fundamental inadequacy as a ruler and makes him into one of the most compelling characters on the show precisely because of his failures. He’s the anti-king, the monarch who represents everything that goes wrong when someone unfit for power gets the crown anyway.

The Weakling King Nobody Wanted

The tragedy of Aegon II’s kingship is that it’s built on something he didn’t even really want. His mother, Alicent, made the decision for him. Otto Hightower pushed it forward for dynastic reasons. His brother Aemond goes along with it because he’s a loyal supporter of the Targaryen line, or perhaps because he hopes he can guide Aegon from behind the throne. But Aegon himself? There’s never a sense that he desperately wanted to be king, that he had some burning ambition that drove him to pursue the crown. He got the crown because he was born male, because his grandfather changed his mind at the last minute, because of a bunch of decisions made by other people that Aegon had no control over.

This is actually what makes him so relatable as a character. A lot of us know what it’s like to be pushed into a role we didn’t ask for, to be told we’re supposed to be something we’re not sure we can be, to feel the weight of expectations that far exceed our actual capabilities. Aegon II is that on a cosmic scale. He’s supposed to be king of the Seven Kingdoms, and he’s fundamentally unsuited for it. He knows it, the people around him know it, and the viewer knows it from the moment he sits on the throne.

What’s brilliant about House of the Dragon’s portrayal is that it doesn’t try to make Aegon II into something he’s not. He doesn’t rise to the occasion. He doesn’t find some hidden reserve of strength and wisdom that allows him to excel despite his apparent weaknesses. Instead, he’s just… a failing king. He makes bad decisions. He listens to the wrong advisors. He relies on substances to get through the day. He does things that seem cruel not because he’s inherently cruel, but because he’s panicking and lashing out at threats he doesn’t fully understand.

The Weight of Expectation vs. The Reality of Capability

One of the central tensions of Aegon II’s character is the gap between what he’s supposed to be and what he actually is. He’s supposed to be a king, a leader, a symbol of Targaryen power and Targaryen rule. He has the blood, he has the crown, he has the throne. But he doesn’t have the temperament, the intelligence, the moral clarity, or the strength of will that a king actually needs to lead a kingdom through a civil war.

We see this most clearly in his decision-making. When faced with difficult choices, Aegon frequently chooses poorly, and not always for reasons that are inherently morally wrong—he just lacks the wisdom or foresight to understand the consequences of his actions. He’s swayed by people around him who have their own agendas. He makes impulsive decisions and then has to live with the fallout. He’s reactive rather than proactive, responding to crises rather than anticipating them.

The most striking thing about Aegon II’s kingship is that it’s probably worse for the realm than Rhaenyra’s would have been, even though Rhaenyra is presented as somewhat incompetent herself. At least Rhaenyra has advisors who are relatively competent and who generally have the kingdom’s interests at heart. Aegon II’s small council is a disaster—Otto Hightower is serving his family’s interests above the realm’s, Alicent is emotionally driven and prone to poor decision-making, and various other members are all pulling in different directions.

The Sympathetic Despot: A Tyrant Who Doesn’t Want to Tyrannize

What makes Aegon II’s character work is that he’s not a scheming despot who actively wants to cause harm. He’s not Joffrey, who was cruel and capricious for the sheer joy of it. Aegon II’s cruelty, such as it is, emerges from weakness and desperation rather than genuine malice. He doesn’t want to be a tyrant, but he also doesn’t have the competence to be a good king, so he ends up trapped somewhere in the middle—making increasingly desperate and harmful decisions as he tries to maintain control of a situation he never wanted and doesn’t understand.

There are moments where you can see Aegon II wanting to do the right thing, wanting to be a good ruler, wanting to live up to the role he’s been placed in. But he keeps failing, keeps falling short, keeps making mistakes. And as the failures accumulate, he becomes more paranoid, more reliant on his inner circle for reassurance, more willing to make harsh decisions just to prove that he’s in control even when he clearly isn’t.

This is actually more interesting, from a character perspective, than if Aegon II were simply a villain. A villain is predictable. A villain wants things. Aegon II wants to not be failing, which is a much more complicated and human motivation. His desperation to not fail becomes almost as destructive as actual malice would be, because it drives him to overreach, to make statements of power that he doesn’t actually possess, to commit acts of violence that he might later regret if he had time for self-reflection.

The Dragon Rider, The King, and The Difference Between Them

Interestingly, Aegon II appears to be a reasonably competent dragon rider, which makes his failure as a king even more pointed. When he’s on his dragon Sunfyre, he has power and agency and a clear role to play in the world. He’s good at that. But when he’s on the throne trying to make decisions about troop movements and diplomacy and governance, he’s lost. The skills that make someone a good dragon rider—physical courage, decisiveness in the moment, the ability to command a powerful creature—don’t translate to being a good king. A king needs to think about consequences beyond the immediate moment, needs to understand politics and economics and human nature, needs to be able to listen to advisors and synthesize their input into coherent policy.

Aegon II can do none of those things particularly well. He can ride a dragon, and that’s what he’s good at. Everything else is a struggle. This creates a tragic dynamic where Aegon II would probably be much happier if he could just be a prince without responsibilities, a dragon rider without the throne. His unhappiness as king is palpable, and part of what makes his character work is that you can see him struggling against a role that doesn’t fit him.

Addiction, Self-Medication, and the Escape from Reality

As Aegon II’s kingship becomes increasingly difficult, he turns more and more to alcohol and other substances to escape the weight of his position. This isn’t presented as a character flaw so much as it is as a symptom of his fundamental unsuitability for the role he’s been forced into. He’s self-medicating because reality is too painful to face without some kind of chemical buffer.

The show handles this with surprising nuance. It doesn’t judge Aegon for his substance use so much as it presents it as a logical consequence of being a weak person placed in an impossible position. If you put someone who isn’t equipped to handle extreme stress into a situation with extreme stress, they’re going to find ways to cope, and not all of those coping mechanisms are healthy. Aegon II’s turn to the bottle isn’t presented as a character choice that he could simply choose to stop; it’s presented as the understandable result of being pushed past his breaking point.

This also serves a narrative function: as Aegon II becomes more impaired, his decision-making becomes more erratic, which drives the plot forward and creates more conflict. But it’s done in a way that makes sense for the character and doesn’t require you to believe that Aegon is somehow secretly cunning or strategic. He’s just a guy who’s in over his head and drowning.

The Problem of Legitimacy and the Weakness of the Crown

Aegon II’s failure as king also raises interesting questions about legitimacy and power in the world of Game of Thrones. He has the crown because a council voted to give it to him, because his grandfather changed his will in a way that’s ambiguous and contestable, because his mother and her allies were willing to seize power. But legitimacy in Westeros isn’t just about who has the strongest claim—it’s also about whether people accept that you have a right to rule.

Aegon II’s weakness as a king undermines his legitimacy in a way that Rhaenyra’s weakness doesn’t undermine hers, or at least not in the same way. Rhaenyra has centuries of precedent behind her claim—she was named heir by the king, she’s the firstborn child of a much more respected king. Aegon II has a council vote and an ambiguous change to a will. And as he proves himself to be a weak and ineffectual king, more and more people start to question whether he really should have the crown at all. His weakness becomes a threat to his own rule.

This is actually historically accurate to how medieval monarchies worked. A king who couldn’t project strength, who couldn’t make decisions, who seemed out of control, would quickly lose support. Lords would start to question his right to rule, would start to look for alternatives, would start to actively work against him. Aegon II’s weakness as a king is directly linked to the erosion of support that allows the war against him to continue so long.

Conclusion: The Interest of Inadequacy

The reason Aegon II is such a fascinating character is precisely because he’s a terrible king. If he were competent, if he were wise, if he could rally the lords and make decisive decisions and keep his small council working together, he’d be a boring protagonist—the rightful king defending his throne against a usurper. But instead he’s a terrified, inadequate man thrust into a role he never wanted, and watching him fail in real time, watching the toll it takes on him, watching the consequences of his failure ripple out across the realm, is endlessly compelling.

Aegon II represents something important about power and privilege: sometimes the people born to lead are the ones least equipped to do it. Sometimes the accident of birth gives you everything except the thing you actually need to succeed. And sometimes the most human response to that situation is not to rise up and prove yourself worthy, but to slowly fall apart under the weight of impossible expectations. That’s what Aegon II does, and that’s what makes him interesting. He’s not a good king, but he’s an honest king, and in his honesty—his inability to fake the competence he doesn’t possess—he becomes one of the most compelling characters in House of the Dragon.