Every Targaryen Ruler, Ranked From Best to Worst

The Targaryen dynasty is essentially the Marvel Cinematic Universe of Westeros — they’ve got dragons, they’ve got ambition, and they’ve got a tendency toward absolute power corrupting absolutely. From the moment Aegon the Conqueror rode Balerion across the continent to unify the Seven Kingdoms, the Targaryens have been cycling through absolutely brilliant leadership and mind-bending insanity with almost no middle ground. Some of them were wise philosophers who built an empire. Others lit themselves on fire while claiming to be gods. Today, let’s rank every Targaryen ruler who actually sat the Iron Throne, from the ones who genuinely deserve their crown to the ones who really, truly did not.

The Titans

1. Jaehaerys the Conciliator — The King We Wish We’d Gotten More Of

Jaehaerys is basically the Gandalf of Targaryen rulers, and if you’ve seen House of the Dragon, you already know why his entire family can’t stop crying about him. This is a king who ruled for 55 years — which is longer than most people live — and managed to accomplish actual peace and prosperity. Wild concept, right? He took the crown as a young man in his 20s and immediately got to work being reasonable. He married his sister Alysanne (yeah, the whole incest thing was kind of their move), but here’s the thing: he genuinely loved her, treated her as an equal partner, and they had an actual partnership that strengthened the kingdom instead of just continuing some weird family obsession.

The Crown had spent decades after the Conquest just consolidating power, and Jaehaerys actually used that stability to build infrastructure, roads, and legitimate institutions. He strengthened the bonds between the crown and the nobility by actually listening to them. His reign is this golden age that everyone in both Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon keeps referencing because after he died, everything went downhill faster than a wildfire through the Grand Sept. If you’re judging a ruler on whether they left the kingdom better than they found it, Jaehaerys doesn’t just win—he laps the field.

2. Aegon I — The Conqueror Who Actually Unified a Continent

You have to respect the sheer ambition here. Aegon the Conqueror is one of those historical figures who fundamentally changed the world. He literally rode a dragon (well, three dragons) across Westeros and went “this is mine now,” and he was right. Before Aegon, Westeros was a fragmented mess of seven kingdoms constantly bickering and fighting. Not exactly efficient governance. The dude brought them all under one rule and, more impressively, he did it in a way that actually worked. He left most of the regional power structures intact, let people keep their culture and customs, and basically just said, “I’m the top guy, you all work for me now.”

This was smart rulership because it meant everyone wasn’t constantly rebelling. Yes, he used dragons to make his point, and yes, that’s morally questionable, but we’re talking about unifying a continent here. Aegon was pragmatic, reasonably fair for a absolute monarch, and he created a governmental structure that lasted (in some form) for nearly 300 years. The man founded a dynasty that would reshape the world. That’s bigger than just being a good manager—that’s literally leaving a mark on history.

The Great Middle

3. Viserys I — The Peacekeeper Who Kept Things Stable

Here’s an underrated king. Viserys I gets overshadowed because he comes right before the chaos of the Dance of the Dragons, but his reign was actually pretty solid. He ruled in relative peace, maintained the kingdom’s wealth and stability, and genuinely tried to be a good ruler. The problem was that he was indecisive when the kingdom needed decisive leadership, especially around succession. He loved his wife, he tried to balance his kids, and he didn’t want to create conflict—which is admirable but also kind of a cop-out in his position.

Think about it: he knew there was going to be a succession crisis after he died because he’d been waffling on who would actually inherit the throne. That kind of indecision eventually led to a massive civil war that destroyed an entire generation of Targaryens. He wasn’t bad at his job during his reign, but he failed spectacularly at the one thing a king really has to plan for: what happens after he’s gone. He’s the dude who was a perfectly fine caretaker but forgot that someone else would have to deal with the mess he left.

4. Rhaenyra Targaryen — The Queen Who Never Really Got to Rule

Look, ranking Rhaenyra is weird because she was technically a ruler but only for like two minutes before everything went sideways. The thing about Rhaenyra is that she was politically savvy, strategically minded, and genuinely cared about doing right by the people she ruled. But circumstance kept crushing her. Her father named her heir, then everyone decided a woman couldn’t be queen, and then everything exploded into civil war. When she finally did get the throne, she immediately had to deal with an actual rebellion from her own family. Her reign was like trying to build a sandcastle during a tsunami.

She made some brutal decisions as queen—burning the Riverlands, executing people—but those were decisions she made while actively fighting a civil war. You have to judge rulers on context, and her context was “everyone hates me for my gender and half my family is trying to kill me.” Given that she managed to hold power for as long as she did without completely losing control, she actually shows more political intelligence than most of these other clowns. She’s ranked in the middle because she had potential but never got a fair shot at actually demonstrating how she would have governed during peace.

5. Aegon II — The Survivor Who Wasn’t Meant To Be King

Aegon II gets a middling score because he’s basically the guy who won by being the last one standing. He wasn’t particularly brilliant, didn’t have any special vision for the kingdom, and was basically just the older brother that enough nobles decided to support. What he did have was better military luck and a family that was willing to backstab each other in increasingly creative ways. He won a civil war against his sister, which means he’s competent enough to command armies and alliances, but that’s kind of where his achievements end.

The thing about Aegon II is that he burned bridges (sometimes literally) getting to the top, and once he won, he didn’t have some grand vision for rebuilding. He was trying to govern a kingdom where both sides hated him, the nobles weren’t loyal, and he’d just spent years killing his own family members. He didn’t last long after the Dance of the Dragons, and he died a broken man. Winning isn’t the same as being good, and Aegon II proves that you can be victorious and still be a mediocre ruler.

The Questionable Ones

6. Aerys I — The Scholar Who Forgot How To Rule

Aerys I is the king who got so into his own head that he literally forgot he was supposed to be running a country. He was obsessed with books, history, and philosophy—which is great for a college professor, less great for an absolute monarch. While he was inside studying dusty tomes, actual rebellions were happening in his kingdom. The Blackfyre Rebellion essentially happened while he was like “actually, let me tell you about this really interesting historical precedent…” It’s the equivalent of ignoring the smoke detector while your house is on fire.

What makes Aerys I rank as questionable rather than outright bad is that he wasn’t cruel or tyrannical. He was just incompetent in the specific way that only really intelligent people can be incompetent. He was so smart about ancient history that he was stupid about current events. His reign saw the Blackfyre Rebellion nearly topple his dynasty, he couldn’t command the loyalty of his own knights, and he basically let his younger brother run the kingdom for him. For a king, that’s a failing grade.

7. Aegon III — The Broken King

Aegon III inherited the throne after the Dance of the Dragons completely shattered his family and the kingdom. The dude was a traumatized kid who’d watched his world explode, and then everyone expected him to fix it. To his credit, he tried. He was young, he was broken, and he was basically trying to piece together a kingdom from the rubble of civil war. He made some reasonable decisions and genuinely cared about rebuilding, but he was fundamentally too damaged to be the leader the kingdom needed.

He eventually stopped trying, fell into depression and addiction, and basically checked out as a ruler. That’s not necessarily his fault—civil wars do that to people—but it also means he wasn’t the king the kingdom needed at that critical moment. He’s ranked low not because he was evil or incompetent at specific decisions, but because he basically admitted defeat and let his kingdom suffer for it.

The Disasters

8. Maegor the Cruel — The King Who Thought Cruelty Was Governance

Maegor looked at the throne and said “what if I made everyone suffer constantly?” and then just did that for 26 years. This guy executed people who looked at him wrong, burned the sept because the Faith had political power he didn’t like, and basically treated his own kingdom like a personal torture chamber. He had the dragon power to back it up, so nobody could overthrow him, but also everyone hated him the entire time.

Maegor created so many enemies that his nephew inherited a kingdom full of people desperate for him to be better than the previous guy. That’s your legacy as a ruler: people don’t just not want you dead, they don’t even really celebrate your existence. He was effective at being terrifying, which I guess counts for something, but also that’s like saying a tornado is good at wind—it’s true but nobody wants to live in it.

9. Aerys II — The Mad King Who Actually Wasn’t That Mad at First

Here’s the tragic thing about Aerys II: he wasn’t born the Mad King. He was a young, ambitious guy who wanted to restore Targaryen greatness, and then life just kept breaking him until he snapped. The moment his wife was raped by Rhaegar (which he blamed Rhaegar for rather than Tywin Lannister, which shows some judgment issues), something broke inside him. He got increasingly paranoid, increasingly cruel, and increasingly convinced that he could solve every problem by burning it.

By the end, Aerys II was lighting people on fire for perceived slights and genuinely believing he could become a dragon by sitting in wildfire. That’s not governing; that’s a mental health crisis with nukes. The worst part is that some of his early decisions were actually reasonable—he wasn’t always insane. But once he started down that road, he couldn’t stop, and nobody could stop him because he had a dragon and absolute power. He’s ranked lower than Maegor not because he was worse—honestly, the death toll is comparable—but because he’s the tragic version of Maegor. This could have been a decent king, and instead he burned the kingdom down.

10. Aerys III — The King Who Wasn’t Really a King

Wait, there wasn’t an Aerys III? Right, because the dynasty ended with the second one after he got stabbed by Jamie Lannister during the Sack of King’s Landing. Which kind of perfectly summarizes the entire Targaryen run—they started with a guy who conquered a continent with dragons and ended with a mad king getting killed by a member of the Kingsguard he trusted. That’s not just a fall from grace; that’s a complete trajectory failure.

The Bottom Line

Ranking Targaryen rulers is basically ranking people who had godlike power but very human levels of wisdom and emotional stability. Some of them used that power to build something lasting and beautiful. Others used it to burn things until they convinced themselves they were gods. The dynasty had moments of genuine brilliance interspersed with absolute insanity, which is kind of a metaphor for their entire approach to succession—why plan for the future when you can just see what happens? Spoiler alert: it didn’t work out great for anyone.

The lesson here isn’t that Targaryens were uniquely bad at ruling or uniquely good. It’s that absolute power combined with family drama, dragons, and some hereditary tendency toward madness creates a very specific kind of chaos. Still, some of them—Jaehaerys especially—proved that a Targaryen could actually be great if they had the wisdom to go with the power. The dynasty just couldn’t sustain it long enough to make it matter.