Although their bloodline seems to have finally come to it’s end, it’s hard to deny that House Targaryen is a family that has had an indelible and enormous impact on the entire world of Planetos (the overall name for the Game of Thrones fantasy land, FYI). And the Targaryens certainly went out with a bang, since their last true representative, Daenerys Targaryen, changed the world more than any other Targaryen that came before her.
But despite the fact that they are one of the most powerful families that ever lived, they are a clan that was extremely cloistered and intentionally shrouded themselves in mystery. That’s no surprise, as most people with power are reluctant to share anything about how they acquired or maintained their power, but it also means that there are a lot of unanswered questions about the Targaryens. Here are 10 that we are just dying to know the answers to.
10 What Was Their Status In Valyria?
Apparently around forty families in Valyria were dragon riders, and the Targaryens weren’t the most prominent of the bunch. The fact that only forty bloodlines seemed to be gifted with these particularly useful abilities would indicate that they had to be pretty extraordinary in the grand scheme of things, but if there were more powerful Valyrian dragon riders then where exactly did the Targaryens land in the whole dragon hierarchy?
And obviously being able to ride dragons was an exceptional ability, but did that mean that the dragon riders were actually equivalent to some kind of ruling class in the Valyrian Freehold?
9 Why Were They The Only Dragon Lords Left?
So once upon a time there were many dragon riding families, but once the Doom of Valyria occurred they were the last dragon riders left. But what’s curious is the fact that literally no other family survived besides the Targaryens.
The Targaryens have also always been gifted with premonitions and what they called “dragon dreams”, which is how they knew that the Doom was coming and that they needed to escape it before it was too late. But for no other dragon riders to survive? Even when disaster strikes, dragons provide people with a pretty quick exit strategy, so it’s extraordinarily lucky and strange that only the Targaryens pulled it off.
8 Why Did They Think Incest Was A Good Idea?
Well the obvious answer here is that they believed that diluting their blood would somehow diminish their power over dragons, but that theory doesn’t seem to hold much weight when the few Targaryens who married outside of their family still seemed to be gifted and cursed with the Targaryen traits.
And maybe madness is a small price to pay to essentially have absolute power, but once the dragons died off it made even less sense for the family to continuously inbreed and make their gene pool into even more of a cesspool than it already was.
7 Was Rhaegar A Prophet?
Because Rhaegar certainly seemed to think he was, at least. Rhaegar was in fact willing to bet all of Westeros on his belief that he could see the future, and that the future depended on him.
Rhaegar believed that he himself was the fabled “prince that was promised”, and he believed that “the dragon must have three heads”, meaning that he had to have three children in order to bring his prophecy to life (this was the entire basis of absconding with Lyanna and having a child with her too). And although his three children were not the three headed dragon, Dany did bring three dragons into the world herself, so perhaps that was what Rhaegar was foreseeing?
6 And Was The Mad King A Prophet?
It seems somewhat ironic that despite the fact that Rhaegar’s fatal flaw was that he was utterly consumed by prophecy and premonition, it may have been his mad father who was more of the prophet all along.
All of the Targaryens have the potential to see into the future, and the fact that the Mad King Aerys was obsessed with burning everyone in King’s Landing decades before his daughter literally did burn King’s Landing to the ground makes it seem like his obsession may have been something more than madness. But did he really know what was to come?
5 What Was Left For Daenerys To Conquer?
After Daenerys burned King’s Landing, she gives a rousing speech to her army about breaking the wheel from sea to shining sea. And it’s a lovely premise, if not so lovely in execution. However, her decision begs the question, what exactly is left for Daenerys to conquer?
She overtook nearly all of Essos on her journey towards Westeros, and she conquered that continent within weeks of her arrival. Dany has always been much more of a conqueror than a ruler or a builder, but it’s mystifying that she’s planning on overtaking the rest of the world when she’s really already taken it.
4 Why Did Dany Burn King’s Landing?
A Targaryen burning things ultimately isn’t that confusing. But Dany’s mental state and her decision to burn King’s Landing to the ground after they had already surrendered to her was still pretty baffling.
Yes, she was hurting because she had just lost Jorah and Missandei, not to mention two of her three dragons, but aside from that there wasn’t really a lot to explain her rationale. Even burning the Red Keep could have made some sense, but killing the common people? If Dany’s intention was to scare them into obedience then that’s an odd strategy, it’s pretty hard to scare dead people.
3 How Did They Handle Dragons Before?
Daenerys was the first Targaryen to hatch a dragon in over a century, and she had a pretty rough time raising them and controlling them. So how exactly did the Targaryen family do that for so long?
Even going back to Old Valyria, the Targaryens were dragon masters. But how did they feed them? Where did they house them? And how did a sprawling empire like Valyria handle having so many dragons out and about? The history of Targaryen dragon wrangling was lost to time, but it’s mystifying how they managed to handle these beasts for so long.
2 Where Is Dany Now?
So when Jon Snow killed Drogon’s mom, Drogon didn’t handle it well. He melted the Iron Throne, snatched up the mother of dragons, and took off. But god knows where he went.
Many fans have theorized that Drogon took Dany to the now destroyed Valyria, which is a theory that definitely has some substance to it. But the world of Planetos is vast and mostly undiscovered, so it’s more than possible that he took her beyond the known world. And he really seemed to be a dragon on a mission, so the question isn’t just where he took her, but why he took her there.
1 Were They All Mad?
The old adage about House Targaryen was supposed to be that every time a Targaryen is born the gods flip a coin, with madness on one side and greatness on the other. And from what we’ve seen Dany do, the Targaryens are undeniably capable of greatness.
However, the fact that their madness and greatness was supposed to be an either/or proposition seems a bit dubious. Even the Targaryens who did amazing things seemed to be touched by more than their fair share of madness, so was that something that was a part of them just as much as dragon riding was?
