#this is the conflation of a lot of my more niche dragon show interests
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
navree · 2 years ago
Note
What do you think about Aenys i and his relationship with Maegor. Do you think that the two of them have weird feelings between each other like Show! Viserys and Daemon ?
I've discussed Aenys and Maegor's relationship a bit in a prior ask (mostly in the second and seventh paragraphs, but it's sprinkled in throughout the entire thing), but my view of it is, as I said, it was kind of doomed to fail. The age difference isn't an insurmountable thing, but five years is significant when it comes to childhood development and where two kids are at, and Aenys wasn't in the mental place to have any connection to anyone who wasn't Quicksilver or Aegon as he recovered from such a heavy mental breakdown at such an early age, which stunted any early bonding he might have had with Maegor, along with the fact that they were living in tow different locations (Maegor on Dragonstone, Aenys in King's Landing). There's also, like I mentioned, the fact that Aenys was clearly the favored child over Maegor, not even for anything about Aenys himself but because of who his mother was and what she meant to Aegon, which was never going to change and was always going to affect Maegor and Aenys even if it wasn't about them specifically but the events and relationships that had already been set in stone long before they were born.
That being said, I don't think the relationship was all bad straight through. Aenys appears to have been somewhat more emotionally intelligent and self aware than most people in this world (and I know people give him shit for being "weak" and "weak minded" but on the former point that seems to refer to martial prowess and on the latter that seems to be a bit disingenuous because he had meltdown at the age of three, but clearly he was able to handle taxing things like visiting Dorne himself years later in spite of what happened to his mother), and likely at some point became aware of the fact that the family issues that began to plague them and their father wasn't necessarily about them specifically, but a whole host of things. Aenys extended a serious olive branch in giving Maegor Blackfyre, given how powerful a symbol it became once Aegon won his Conquest, and in saying that they should "rule together". And even though Visenya took that to mean that Aenys was unworthy of the throne, there's no indication that Maegor ever thought the same way. Like I said in the longer Maegor response, Maegor was incredibly deferent to Aenys's authority as king. He followed him as a ruler, he fought for him and put down rebellions for him right and left and protected him, almost similar to the way that Visenya would for Aegon like we saw during the Dragons' Wroth. And Maegor, though he did take Blackfyre with him over Aenys's objections, abided by the exile imposed on him and remains in that exile until Aenys died and Visenya specifically told him to come home. And listen, that's not a small thing. Aenys rode Quicksilver and Maegor rode Balerion, later in the timeline we do see those two dragons clash and Balerion makes extraordinarily quick work of Quicksilver. And that's Quicksilver after he'd been alive for a while, when Aenys exiled Maegor he'd have been smaller and weaker than he was below God's Eye. If Maegor had really wanted to defy Aenys, he could have easily just said "no" to exile and completely decimated Aenys if he'd tried to enforce it. But Maegor didn't do any of that, he followed the order and he stayed away and acquiesced to Aenys's authority over him as the king, and that does speak to some kind of respect or affection for his brother that he chose to do that. And Aenys himself is noted as having used exile as a last resort, that he only even got involved in the situation because everyone was pointing out that this was blasphemous and as the king he had to do something and he felt that voicing outrage was his only option publicly, not to mention that he offered the alternative of having Maegor leave Alys, clearly only deciding to exile Maegor when everything else had been exhausted. All this points to some kind of stilted affection in an uncomfortable relationship that can never be fully reconciled due to the circumstances of their childhoods, in spite of what they both might want, and that they're trying their best in the most repressed ways that they can.
But that being said, I don't think that either Maegor or Aenys had that dynamic we got with HOTD's version of Daemon and Viserys, the idea that Daemon was in some kind of unrequited love with Viserys and did desire him both romantically and sexually and part of his interest in Rhaenyra was as an extension of Viserys's body, a socially acceptable Viserys who would want him back. Considering that this is something that's only been seriously discussed post-season 1 by Ryan, the specifics of it are incredibly open to interpretation, but I've given my (incredibly long) two cents on it before. Daemon's feelings about Viserys, at least in my view, are borne out of very specific circumstances, the age he was when he lost his mother and how distant his father might have been, and that he views Viserys not just as a brother but almost as a parent, and there were some degrees of transference involved, which is never a type of dynamic Aenys and Maegor had, as well as Daemon's canonical (I think?) bisexuality both making him capable of same sex attraction and bringing up feelings about how, if he'd been born a woman, he and Viserys would have been married but in this reality that's not possible, and how that might affect him emotionally. Daemon's feelings about Viserys are very much a product of his life up until that point, which was very different from both Maegor and Aenys's. A major component of the Viserys and Daemon relationship is also that Daemon feels constantly rejected by Viserys, and spent some time desperately seeking the opportunity to be the most important person to him, and seems to have become more bitter the longer this was seemingly denied to him. Aenys never rejected Maegor, he very explicitly seeks out his assistance and his companionship once he's king, while Maegor in return, despite valuing this, doesn't seem to have been as desirous for Aenys's approval as Daemon was for Viserys's (if anything I think Maegor probably had that sort of "I want to be important to you please approve of me and if you don't I'm going to be so hurt and angry even when I keep trying" mentality going on with Aegon, which does only further my point that Daemon views Viserys as a father as much as he does a brother or a potential romantic/sexual partner, God they're sordid I love it). Maegor and Aenys have their own sets of issues, but not the specific set of issues and furthermore, personalities and various interpersonal dynamics that led to the specific Daemon and Viserys situation.
(i'm sure there's an angle similar to the Daemon/Viserys and Daemyra situation that can be extrapolated from the dynamics of Aenys and Maegor and Maegor's subsequent marriage to Rhaena after it had already been proposed when they were both significantly younger, but that's more for my dear @lemonhemlock and their Maena tag)
36 notes · View notes