Game Of Thrones' Mad King Explained: What You Need To Know Sbout Aerys II Targaryen

There's a saying within the world of George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" novels about the Targaryen family and their inclination towards madness, apparently coined by the house's King Jaehaerys: "Every time a new Targaryen is born, he said, the gods toss the coin in the air and the world holds its breath to see how it will land." On the television adaptation, "Game of Thrones," that aired on HBO from 2011 to 2019, Conleth Hill's spymaster Varys expresses a similar sentiment, saying, "Every time a Targaryen is born, the gods flip a coin." (Obviously, just a condensed version of the previous sentiment.) This is all to say that the powerful, ancient, and royal Targaryen family, who ruled the continent of Westeros with dragons and iron fists for centuries, are ... prone to going berserk, basically. So where does King Aerys II Targaryen, known as the "Mad King," fit into this story?

Let's back up just a little bit for some context on the Targaryens themselves and why Aerys might have ended up losing his mind eventually. Throughout the many, many, many Targaryen dynasties in Westeros — pretty much all of which were led by kings named either Aegon, Aerys, or Jaehaerys, to be honest — the Targaryens really, really liked keeping it in the family, so to speak. To be way more indelicate about the matter, that means they committed incest — a lot. Sisters and brothers, uncles and nieces, and cousins in the Targaryen family were known to frequently marry each other; if you've watched the spin-off and prequel series "House of the Dragon," you saw this in action when, during the show's debut season, Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D'Arcy) marries her own uncle Prince Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith). These unusual ... arrangements may or may not have caused Aerys' madness, but they probably didn't help, realistically.

Not only was Aerys II Targaryen committing incest in his own marriage — his wife, Rhaella, was his sister — his father, King Jaehaerys II, married his own sister, Shaera, so that presents a bit of a genetic issue. Now, let's talk about Aerys' descent into madness. Early in his reign, Aerys was a handsome and stable young man, taking the throne in 262 AC (with the "AC" here referring to "After the Conquest," which itself references the first Aegon Targaryen's conquest of Westeros). After making Tywin Lannister (the patriarch of that great house ultimately played by the great Charles Dance on "Game of Thrones") his Hand of the King, Aerys' reign at first is pretty uncontroversial, to be frank. In fact, Aerys and Tywin's control of the Seven Kingdoms actually ushered in an age of prosperity, but a divide grew between the two powerful men when, unhappy in his marriage to Rhaella, started lusting after Tywin's wife Joanna.

Fans of "A Song of Ice and Fire" have suspicions about whether or not Aerys pushed that particular issue too far with Tywin (and maybe even bedded Joanna at some point), but putting that aside, the story ends like this. After a series of stillbirths, Aerys basically arrested his wife Rhaella and imprisoned her before descending into utter madness, eventually facing an uprising known as the Defiance of Duskendale before entering into an all-out war against the future king of Westeros, Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy on the show). This all came to a point when Tywin's eldest son Jamie (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in the series), the leader of Aerys' Kingsguard who finds out his ruler is planning to destroy King's Landing with deadly wildfyre, kills Aerys for the good of the realm and earns the nickname "Kingslayer," paving the way for Robert to take the throne and end Aerys' ultimately disastrous era.

We only see Aerys II Targaryen in brief flashbacks on "Game of Thrones" (played by David Rintoul), but the main Targaryen on that show — if we're putting aside "House of the Dragon" for a moment, which we are — is his only daughter Daenerys Targaryen, played perfectly by then-newcomer Emilia Clarke. At first, Daenerys' fiery temper, which is made literal by her three fire-breathing dragons, feels righteous most of the time; as the dragons grow bigger and more powerful after she hatches their eggs herself by bringing them into a funeral pyre, Daenerys wields the beasts against evil men like slave traders and spares innocent lives. As the series progresses, though, we get hints that Daenerys, who is literally Aerys' kid, might follow in her late father's "mad" footsteps when we see her incinerating would-be allies who even hesitate about bending the knee to her as their next queen. (Thanks to her Targaryen blood, Daenerys feels entitled to the Iron Throne, which is another issue entirely.)

This all comes to a head in the disastrously rushed final season of "Game of Thrones," where Daenerys finally reaches Westeros after eight seasons of endless traveling and finds herself atop Drogon, her only remaining dragon, at King's Landing. Rather than facing her nemesis, Queen Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) — yes, the daughter of Aerys' hand Tywin and Jamie's twin sister — Daenerys, "driven mad" by the bells ringing in the Red Keep, elects to commit mass murder and level King's Landing with dragonfire instead. Ultimately, like her father before her, Daenerys is killed by a noble man, Kit Harington's Jon Snow, for the good of the realm. If the gods really do flip a coin every time a Targaryens are born, both Daenerys and her dead old dad got the "mad" side of the proverbial coin.

"Game of Thrones" is streaming on HBO Max now.