House of the Dragon Gave a Very Short Introduction For a Crucial Character

Summary:

• House of the Dragon primarily gets focused on King Viserys I’s feuding daughter and wife fighting for the ultimate power, but one particular scene once showed the essential character that may have been behind all the happening fuss.
• The first season briefly introduced the character as the greatest and longest ruler in Westeros who had a huge influence on House of Targaryen’s future prosperity.
• Despite all the wealth that he brought to the family, the character also may be responsible for his family’s rivalry and further extinction that was previously shown in Game of Thrones.

Game of Thrones’ prequel House of the Dragon picks up the events that unfold approximately two centuries before the original show’s storyline. Revolving around the House of Targaryen, House of the Dragon follows the Westeros’s most powerful family’s rise and fall after the Targaryens are divided into two warring clans.

The fire starts blazing up after Rhaenyra Targaryen is crowned by her supporters after her father King Viserys I Targaryen’s death signaling an approach of much darker times for the house of Targaryen.

Though it wasn’t always like that — and even with King Viserys I Targaryen whose reign brought some stability to Westeros, it wasn’t entirely his merit, but rather his grandfather’s major breakthrough.

Before King Viserys I got to rule, the reign was in his grandfather King Jaehaerys Targaryen’s hands — and he was one of the most notable members of the whole family, to say the least. House of the Dragon gives quite a brief introduction for Jaehaerys during only one scene in the first season’s first episode, but he nonetheless may be the essential character of the whole series.

Though initially Jaehaerys Targaryen was never supposed to become the heir to the throne, a sequence of accidental events led to him becoming the Kind and probably the best Targaryen that ever ruled.

Despite being caught off guard by an unexpected role, Jaehaerys was quick to take it all under his control as the King’s reign that lasted more than half a century is generally characterized by unprecedented peace and a bunch of new laws that later on turned out to be Westeros’s main principles.

Yet still Jaehaerys Targaryen’s figure appears to be somewhat controversial considering his role in the Dance of the Dragons that will unfold in the upcoming second season.

Though the time of Jaehaerys being on the throne is unanimously called the most prosperous one in the country’s whole history, he still contributed to his family’s entire extinction that was shown later on in Game of Thrones.

By the time of the end of his ruling the King had to face a real succession crisis. All his children died for various reasons thus leaving him no choice but opting for his grandchildren.

Among fourteen of them, only two candidates were taken seriously — his oldest grandson Viserys and his oldest granddaughter Rhaenys. And everyone was, obviously, in the man’s favor.

Thus, by naming Viserys the new king, Jaehaerys still offered Westeros some more decades of relatively peaceful reign, but yet reinforced even more the inner tension in the Targaryen’s family which eventually led to a full-scale war inside the same house.