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| “ | Maegor, the First of His Name, came to the throne after the sudden death of his brother, King Aenys, in the year 42 AC. He is better remembered as Maegor the Cruel, and it was a well-earned sobriquet, for no crueler king ever sat the Iron Throne. His reign began with blood and ended in blood as well. | „ |
| ~ Description of Maegor I Targaryen. |
| “ | Your grace is welcome to try and take her from me. | „ |
| ~ Maegor to his brother when he requested to give him Blackfyre. |
King Maegor I Targaryen, also known as Maegor the Cruel and Maegor the Wise, is a posthumous antagonist in the A Song of Ice and Fire franchise. He is the third Targaryen king to sit on the Iron Throne.
He was the son of King Aegon I Targaryen and his sister-wife, Queen Visenya Targaryen. Maegor's half-brother, Aenys I Targaryen, was instead the son of Aegon I and his favorite sister-wife, Queen Rhaenys Targaryen, who died around 10 AC at Hellholt, in Dorne.
Both the book and show counterparts of Maegor qualify, even though he is only mentioned in the two main series (A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones, respectively). However, the prequel books explore the ASOIAF counterpart's crimes more in depth, while the Histories & Lore animated videos do the same for his GOT counterpart.
What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]
In General[]
- Even though it’s theorized that he was conceived by Visenya via dark magic, it doesn’t give him a moral agency issue as he does know the difference between right and wrong and he's a human. Some people argue that he changed after his coma and that magic was involved in this situation as well, but it doesn’t make a difference as he was already a very evil person before that and killed hundreds of people.
- His relationship with his mother and brother may seem like a mitigation factor, but he subverts them as the story goes, or because he’s not genuine in the first place, as he is a power-hungry psychopath:
- Firstly, while he was devastated by his mother's death, it was probably only for selfish reasons, as she was a strong supporter of his claim as king, and by her death, he lost a powerful ally as she was one of the only people to support his claim for the iron throne.
- Secondly, he and his brother may seem on good terms in their early stages of life, as his brother promised him they would rule the kingdom together, but he eventually subverts this. When he was about to go into exile, Aenys requested that Maegor give back Blackfyre the king sword to him, and Maegor replied to him by saying that he should try and take it from him, showing that he is willing to kill his brother, and later he will even subvert this even further as he kills and tortures the offspring of his brother.
- Despite being limited to a little more than a small section of a guidebook and a few minutes of the Histories & Lore videos, Maegor does more than enough to sink himself to the depths of the vilest in the series, despite the existence of villains such as Joffrey Baratheon, Ramsay Bolton, and Euron Greyjoy.
Background[]
- When he was three years old, his mother, Queen Visenya, gave him a sword, and the first thing he did with it was kill a cat at the castle.
- When he was eight years old, a horse kicked him, and he responded by stabbing it to death and then slashing half the face off a boy who came running when the horse screamed.
- He deliberately waited for his father to die in order to claim his dragon, Balerion, for himself. The Sons of the Dragon segment implies that Maegor did not care about his father very much.
A Song of Ice and Fire[]
- After a rebellion in the Eyrie, Maegor took Balerion, attacked them, and executed every knight by hanging them naked while they died slowly, even though they had surrendered.
- He wanted to suppress the Faith of the Seven and rode on his dragon Balerion to burn down a Sept with all worshippers inside, using archers to pick off stragglers.
- When the Grand Maester Gawen protested his ascension, Maegor personally beheaded him and used his death as a warning to those who opposed him.
- He is very ungrateful, as he executed a knight named Theo Bolling, who was among those who fought for him in his campaign against the Poor Fellows. on false charges so that he could marry Theo's wife.
- He took six women as his wives and raped them in order to produce an heir, and whenever the baby was either deformed or the wife was unable to give birth, Maegor would have them executed. And overall, he treated them horribly, for example:
- It's rumored that he ordered his first wife, Ceryse, to have her tongue cut out after she made a remark to him, and other rumors say that her throat was accidentally cut when she struggled. Most people dismiss this as slander, but it wouldn't have been out of character for Maegor.
- When Queen Alys birthed a child and died not long after, convinced that the child could not be his as it was deformed, he had everyone involved in the birth executed. And it is said that he was seated on the Iron Throne with the head of a Grand Maester in his hand when Queen Tyanna approached him, claiming that the child had been fathered by a secret affair of Alys, who had been desperate to give the king a son and so had slept with men of confirmed fertility. Tyanna provided a list of names as proof. Under torture, all but two of the twenty men confessed to their crime; after that, he had Alys dragged from her bed and given to Tyanna for torture.
- Even though he spared Alys's two sisters, Jeyne and Hanna. He later sent the kingsgaurd to take Alys, and in the process, they killed her sisters.
- He forced Jeyne, Elinor, and Rhaena (who is his niece) into marrying him by holding their children hostage, even having them present at the wedding ceremony to make it clear that he would kill them if they refused to play along.
- He later killed his third wife, Tyanna Hightower, when she confessed to poisoning the fetuses of the other wives by ripping her heart out and feeding it to the dogs.
- After the execution of his second wife, Queen Als, he kills all the members of Harroways at King's Landing, including Maegor's Hand, Lord Lucas Harroway. Then he departed the capital and marched on Harrenhal, killing its entire garrison along with every person with even a single drop of Harroway blood. After that, he marched to Lord Harroway's Town on the Trident and did the same there. Which caused House Harroway to go extinct.
- After having the Red Keep completed, Maegor threw a three-day feast for all the builders who had worked on it, after which he ordered each and every one of them executed so all the secret passageways and trapdoors he had added throughout the Keep would be known only to him.
- Waged several campaigns of exceeding brutality in order to suppress the Faith Militant uprising, killing not just members of the Faith but also many innocents who happened to fall in between. Some of his most infamous acts include burning a sept full of peaceful worshippers down and killing two thousand people, thus claiming their skulls as trophies.
- When Aenys' first son, Prince Aegon, rose up against him, Maegor killed the prince in battle before forcing his nephew's wife (and Maegor's own niece), Rhaena, to wed him by threatening her twin daughters.
- He would later kill Aenys' second son, Prince Viserys, who was only 15 at the time, by having him tortured for nine days at the hands of his third wife, Tyanna of the Tower.
- His dark legacy made people think that whenever a King showed signs of tyranny, they would be "the next Maegor the Cruel," as proven by Rhaenyra Targaryen's nickname "King Maegor with teats." This only changed when Aerys II became the Mad King.
Trivia[]
- He is the first and only individual from the Targaryen dynasty to be Pure Evil.
External Links[]
- Maegor I Targaryen on the Villains Wiki.
- Maegor I Targaryen on the A Wiki of Ice and Fire.
- Maegor I Targaryen on the Game of Thrones Wiki.
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 Pure Evils
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