Controversial as it might have been, House of the Dragon Season 2 does tackle an age-old conundrum in Game of Thrones lore: why are there so many Targaryen royals named Aegon? I mean, it’s normal for families to name a child after another relative, but the Targaryens’ adoration for Aegon the Conqueror takes this to a whole new level. Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) even started a civil war by mixing up her son Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) with the original Aegon when her husband says the name during an unconscious fever dream on his deathbed. Exactly how many Aegons are there, though? Because we can’t have a civil war whenever a new one is born.
In Alicent’s defense, we get it. Targaryens may be dragonlords and all, but it does seem like they also have very poor imaginations, because there are just too many people named Aegon to count. For example, Alicent and Viserys (Paddy Considine) have Aegon II, but, on the other side of the Dance of the Dragons, Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) and Daemon (Matt Smith) have another Aegon themselves, who will also become king (spoiler alert!). By the time House of the Dragon ends, there will have been three monarchs named Aegon.
Unfortunately, the Aegon trend is not going away any time soon, because there are five kings named Aegon in the Targaryen dynasty. And, even before Aegon II, there was another Aegon, “the Uncrowned,” whose crown was usurped by his uncle, Maegor the Cruel. So far, we have talked about four Aegons, but there will be five more after Aegon III, including Jon Snow (Kit Harington), who was named Aegon Targaryen because his biological father, Rhaegar Targaryen (Wilf Scolding), believed he was the Prince That Was Promised. Rhaegar, by the way, was so creative that he had another son named Aegon with his first wife, Elia Martell, not to mention three other Aegons who were either younger brothers or died before being crowned. So, in total, there are a staggering eleven Aegons who belong to the main branch of House Targaryen — five kings, and six who didn’t ascend to the throne.
