The Mad King & Why Tywin Lannister was the greatest hand of the king in the history of Westeros.
Hi Guys, welcome to the Blog of Ice & Fire :)
A place where you can find all the history, trivia and back stories of characters and events from Game of Thrones and the Song of Ice and Fire books.
So without wasting more time, I’m gonna start for my first ever post I wanna talk about two of the most important characters from the show and books- King Aerys II Targaryen aka The Mad King and someone who we know very from the show, Tywin Lannister.
So let’s talk about the Mad King first, here’s what we know about him from the show.
The Mad King was mad (quite obvious but here we’re going to explore why did he become like that and the reasons behind it)
He was the father of Daenerys, Viserys and Rhaegar Targarye post (another character heavily referred to in the show, I’ll have a separate about him soon)
He was killed by Jaime Lannister after which he was named as ‘Kingslayer’
The Mad King was the last Targaryen king of Westeros with him the 300 year long rule of Targaryens ended after Robert’s Rebellion and Robert Baratheon was crowned king.
He was the one who burned alive Brandon and Rickord Stark (Brother and Father of Ned Stark tmercilessly contributing to the rebellion which eventually destroyed House Targaryen)
King Aerys II Targaryen came to the throne 262 AC after his father, then king of Westeros King Jaeherys II died only after 3 years of rule.
Aerys was about 18 at that time and maesters who had seen him grow described him as handsome,charming but also very proud changeable and not very intelligent. The Targaryens historically practiced in-breeding that means marrying within the blood line in order to keep the line pure, this was because they thought they possessed the blood of the dragons and did not want to marry outside their blood as it would corrupt the blood line. So following the tradition Aerys was married to sister Rhaella and first their child Prince Rhaegar was born.
It’s interesting to notice that two people who will bring him down in the future were born in the same year when he was crowned king-Robert Baratheon at Storm’s end and Brandon stark in Winterfell.
When Aerys became the king his first order was to dismiss all member of small council who served his father Aegon V. He believed that the council comprised of old and incompetent men who would never be able help them in his ambitions of becoming a great king.
Perhaps the best decision that Aerys ever made was making Tywin Lannister the hand of the king.
Fun fact- King Aerys, Tywin Lannister and Steffon Baratheon were BFFs (I’ll talk about this in detail sometime soon, you can leave comments below if you wanna know more about this though). Tywin Lannister was only 20 when he was appointed as the hand making him the youngest hand of the king in the history of Westeros.
Well as the saying goes ‘The King shits and the Hand wipes’, this couldn’t have been more applicable to Aerys and Tywin. Aerys was least e bothered about the well being of the kingdom and was obsessed with over the top ideas to display his might to others. While Tywin was the one who actually brought in a lot of reforms bringing in prosperity to the kingdom for almost 20 years.
Aerys loved dance,music and women. But he got bored of his mistresses very easily as early as 2 weeks. His only ambition was to be the greatest king of westeros and had many empty ambitions to ride him towards that.
In 264 AC Rickord stark visited King’s Landing and Aerys in order to mock him, declared he was going to build a new wall a 100 leagues north of the current one and claim all the land in between.
In 267 AC when the Iron bank of Braavos ( the one where Mark Gatiss is seen in the show) came to collect the money his father had borrowed during his regime, he declared that he will the world’s largest fleet and bring the Titan of Braavos (the badass statues we see in the show during the Braavos scenes) down on his knees.
None of this actually happened since he was as fickle with his plans as he was with his women.
Over a period of time Aerys started becoming more moody and Tywin started taking more and more of his work as the king.Tywin even settled the crown’s debt with th iron bank with his own money.Many lords and merchant celebrated Tywin as he built new roads, arranged tournaments and brought trade to the city. Some were also envious of Tywin and thought of him as an cold, unforgiving, proud and cruel man.
It is said that Tywin was only happy with his wife, Joanna whom he married a year after becoming the King’s hand and he only smiled when he was with Joanna (kinda cute, isn’t it) on the other hand Rhaella and Aerys on the other never got along.s
A woodswitch made a prophecy to Aerys that the ‘prince that was promised’ would be born in the blood line of Aerys and Rhaella just before the long winter. Aerys became obsessed with this prophecy and strongly believed that the prince will be his next son since Rhaegar was already born. He wanted to have more children but Rhaella couldn’t give birth to any more kids after Rhaegar and had multiple miscarriages and gave birth to still borns, probably because of the genetic implications caused by in breeding.
Each miscarriage and still born contributed to his insanity and drove him more insane and around this time Tywin and Joanna gave birth to twins- Jamie and Cersei in 266 AC at Casterly rock.
When Tywin’s father died, Aerys accompanied him to Lannisport with his 8 year old son Rhaegar and they ruled Westeros from Lannisport for about a year. It was during this time that Aerys started becoming more and more jealous of Tywin and hearing rumours of how Tywin was manipulating him to his own benefits.
When they returned to King’s Landing it was clear their friendship is ruined. His wife’s inability to give birth of more children and seeing Tywin’s healthy , beautiful children pushed the envelope of his insanity even further.
In 268 AC, Aerys, who would usually consult with Tywin on all his decisions had now started disagreeing with him on all matters for no apparent reason.He also started suspecting that his wife, Rhaella was being unfaithful to her and held her captive
Aerys realized that the common notion was Tywin really ruled the kingdoms and he was just a powerless king who just sat on the throne because of his royal blood.
A tournament was held in 272 AC to celebrate Aerys’ 10th year as king where Tywin and Joanna came with the twins. The king insulted her by asking if her breasts had been ruined due to breastfeeding which used to be high and proud. Humiliated,Tywin tried to resign as hand the next morning but Aerys rejected his resignation.
People would often mock tywin and make fun of him just to please the king which often worked. But poor Tywin took all this like a champ, never complained and continued doing his duty towards the realm and his King.
In 273 AC Joanna died while giving birth Tyrion a deformed dwarf son. Aerys took this as an opportunity to humiliate Tywin and said the Gods had given him this monster to teach him a lesson. This probably explains why Tywin hates Tyrion so much.
In 274 AC Rhaella gave birth to another son Prince Jaeherys and Aerys almost became normal until the son died later that year.
Aerys suspected that his nurse had poisoned him and had her beheaded.After his incident, Aerys made a walk or repent across the city, much like Cersei’s from last season and took a vow that he will only sleep with his wife from now on.
The following year in 276 AC Rhaella gave birth to a boy Prince Viserys. With his birth Aerys became even more paranoid for his safety, and commanded men from the Kingsguard to protect the babe night and day.
Tywin held a huge tournament to celebrate the birth of Viserys which Aerys attended but refused to allow Rhaella or baby Viserys to attend.
At this tournament Prince Rhaegar who was a young, handsome teenager by now, competed and unhorsed many knights including the legendary Ser Barristan Selmy but ended up losing to the kingsguard knight Ser Arthur Dayne ‘The Sword of the morning’ (there will be a post on him too, very soon!)
At the tournament Tywin proposed Cersei’s marriage to Rhaegar, but Aerys refused saying he was a mere servant. He also refused to appoint young Jamie as a squire to Rhaegar.
It is said that after the tournament Rhaegar sang such a beautiful song that it brought Lyanna (Ned’s sister who was present at the tournament) to tears. It was here that Rhaegar crowned Lyanna as the Queen of beauty and roses instead of his wife Elia Martell of Dorne (Oberyn’s sister).
There are more events like the Defiance of Duskendale and the tragedy of Summerhall that would go on contribute to the rebellion against the Targaryens by the others houses and Robert’s ascend to the Iron Throne. I'll have separate posts for those stories and keep my next post about Robert's Rebellion.
In my next post I’ll talk about the remaining story of The Mad King and cover Robert’s Rebellion till the events where Game of Thrones starts.
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