#but aegon's is far more unconditional than octavian at the very least presented his publicly

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I've seen people doing caligula aegon parallels what are your feeling on this as both as someone in both fandoms?

I think I talked about this a bit with @kitsnicket once, lol, but I can kinda see some similarities. Moreso when it comes to personalities than actual political rule, because as governors Aegon and Caligula are very different. I've mentioned this before but it's a bit hard to get a read on how Aegon was as a reigning monarch because he did not reign for a long time (still more time than Rhaenyra's half-year tho shrug dot emoji), whereas Caligula had a bit more time, and had a far larger impact on his world's history than Aegon did. People in Westeros talk about the Dance, yeah, but not a whole lot, and they don't have very many strong opinions on the key players, except for Stannis calling Rhaenyra a traitor, while Caligula has been infamous for two thousand years and has practically entered common parlance the way that infinitely more influential figures have, though for decidedly less kosher reasons.

When it comes to them as people, I can see some surface similarities. Both were ultimately the victims of assassination, both seemed to have favored "new men" over the establishment, both had a period of debilitation and convalescence early on in their reign that also marked a pretty stark change in how the regime operated (Rook's Rest and Caligula's infamous illness), both have a reputation of being somewhat self-indulgent, both were succeeded to the throne by someone who was not their child. And both of them were clearly heavily affected by difficult early lives that had originally started out idyllic, though Caligula far more extremely. Aegon suffered from Viserys's neglect and the issues that caused him, clearly, after Viserys got bored of his newfangled boy baby, but he was still relatively safe, on a physical level, treated well, and surrounded by other family members. Caligula had a longer "cushy" period in his childhood, but after his father died his family was literally wiped out, often through extremely cruel measures (I think both his mother and his older brother were starved to death, and if I remember correctly his older brother was literally trying to eat his own mattress towards the end), and was a hostage from then on until his ascendancy. And while Aegon certainly has no positive feelings towards Viserys or Rhaenyra, they 1) weren't involved in his life all that much (which was part of the problem where Viserys was concerned) and 2) were not a danger to him. Caligula essentially being remanded into Tiberius's personal care was incredibly dangerous for him and his life was under constant threat in a way that Aegon's never was, so he was probably more paranoid in his life than Aegon ever was.

The main thing tho, and I am so sorry (not) to the antis who are definitely using the Aegon/Caligula parallels to talk about how Aegon sucks and Rhaenyra is The One True Queen (she ain't, none of them are, there's no good option they both suck because the system sucks, birthright monarchy is a scam and the Dance proves it, I can and will make this argument day in and day out), is that Aegon was nowhere near as bad as Caligula was. A lot of stuff about Caligula has been exaggerated and flanderized, especially with the amount of time that's gone by and the lack of objective sources, so a lot of what people think of when you say the name Caligula likely wasn't that extreme or flat out not true (the incest, the bit about declaring war on Poseidon and sending his army to stab the sea, the horse thing is iffy because the person who talked about it was Suetonius and Suetonius liked to just make shit up for no reason sometimes and you have to kind of look at the verified behavior/personality of the person he's talking about and then see if what he's saying lines up, it's why I believe him when he talks about Octavian gouging people's eyes out with his own hands or massacring every single senator in a city as a sacrifice just because he was pissed, but I don't buy the bit about him wanting to sleep with other people's wives, and I personally don't know enough about Caligula to make the call on whether the horse thing is accurate to what we concretely know about him). But Caligula also verifiably did a lot of really bad things. He had the treason trials, a continuation of one of Tiberius's most brutal repression tactics, whereas Aegon was far more merciful to people who had fought against him but now went over to his side. Like Aegon II with Rhaenyra's son Aegon, Caligula had a similar "relative of someone I despise who has wronged members of my family" younger person in his life in the form of Gemellus; Aegon deliberately spared Aegon the Younger's life and let him live relatively free of molestation, Caligula had Gemellus murdered (or forced to kill himself, which I don't wrinkle my nose at because tbf I don't know if Aegon wouldn't have also used that as an execution method if it were acceptable in Westeros, and it was basically the same as execution anyway in Ancient Rome, Octavian used it on one of his own fucking friends, true story). Caligula also just executed a lot more people who had just happened to get on his bad side than Aegon ever did; Aegon in general is just more merciful, softer, and not as brutal as Caligula was.

Like I said, there are some comparisons that work, but also a lot of key differences, mostly in terms of Aegon being a better person than Caligula, at least based on the public record, which is funny because again, the people making these comparisons are generally trying to take digs at Aegon/The Greens. But making comparisons between any fictional characters and the Julio-Claudians is always gonna be hard, because all of these bitches led really interesting and deeply intricate lives with a ton of ups and downs that makes it hard to compare them to more linear and limited fictional people.