Why Are There Only 2 Targaryens Left? A Deep Dive into a Dynasty’s Fall

The Echoes of a Fallen House: Unraveling the Targaryen Decline

When we first step into the world of Game of Thrones, the legendary House Targaryen is but a shadow of its former self, a whispered story of dragons, madness, and glory long past. The burning question for many is simple yet profound: Why are there only 2 Targaryens left? At the start of the saga, the once-mighty dynasty that ruled Westeros for nearly three centuries has been reduced to two desperate exiles, Viserys and Daenerys Targaryen. The answer, however, is far from simple. Their near-extinction was not the result of a single catastrophe but rather a protracted, agonizing decline spanning over 150 years. It was a tragic saga woven from the threads of devastating civil wars, the critical loss of their dragons, staggering political folly, and a fatal obsession with prophecy that ultimately consumed them.

To truly understand how a house that once bestrode the world like a colossus fell so low, we must journey back through its turbulent history, examining the key events that acted as bottlenecks, systematically culling the Targaryen line until only a desperate brother and sister remained.

The Seeds of Ruin: Targaryen Hubris and the Loss of Dragons

The foundation of the Targaryen downfall was, ironically, built into the very source of their power. Their Valyrian heritage, their dragons, and their belief in their own exceptionalism set them apart, but it also sowed the seeds of their destruction.

The Doctrine of Exceptionalism and a Fiery Pride

The Targaryens never truly saw themselves as mere mortals. They were the blood of Old Valyria, dragonlords who believed they were “closer to gods than men.” This belief manifested in their most famous and controversial tradition: incestuous marriage. By wedding brother to sister, they sought to keep their bloodline pure, preserving the magical traits that allowed them to bond with dragons. While this practice produced legendary figures like Aegon the Conqueror, it also had profound consequences:

• Political Isolation: By refusing to marry into the great houses of Westeros, the Targaryens largely remained outsiders. They ruled from above, not among, their subjects, fostering a sense of alienation that would later make it easier for the lords of the realm to unite against them.
• Genetic Instability: The infamous “Targaryen madness” is often attributed to generations of inbreeding. While not every Targaryen was mad, the trait appeared frequently enough to become a terrifying gamble with each new generation. As the saying went, “Every time a new Targaryen is born, the gods toss a coin in the air and the world holds its breath to see how it will land.”
• Unchecked Hubris: Their unique power led to an unshakeable belief in their own destiny and right to rule. This arrogance often blinded them to political realities and the consequences of their actions, leading to catastrophic miscalculations.

The Dance of the Dragons: The First Great Culling

If there was a single event that broke the back of Targaryen power, it was the devastating civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons (129-131 AC). This was the point where the dynasty turned its full, fiery fury upon itself. The conflict arose from an unresolved succession crisis after the death of King Viserys I. He had named his daughter, Rhaenyra, as his heir, but upon his death, his son by a second marriage, Aegon II, was crowned king by a rival faction.

The realm split into two camps—the “Blacks” supporting Queen Rhaenyra and the “Greens” supporting King Aegon II. What followed was not just a war of armies, but a war of dragons.

The Dance of the Dragons was an unmitigated disaster for the house. Before the war, there were dozens of dragons and numerous Targaryens. By its end:

• The Dragons Were Decimated: Dragon fought dragon in the skies above Westeros, and nearly all of them were killed. The few that survived were stunted and sickly, and the last one died out within a generation. With the loss of their dragons, the Targaryens lost their ultimate weapon and the very symbol of their divine right to rule. They became, for all intents and purposes, just another noble family.
• The Family Was Shattered: Both claimants to the throne, Rhaenyra and Aegon II, died brutally. Countless other princes, princesses, and their children were killed in the fighting. The Targaryen family tree was viciously pruned, leaving only a handful of survivors from a once-sprawling dynasty. The war taught Westeros a terrible lesson: Targaryens were not invincible, and their greatest threat was often each other.

A Dynasty Divided: The Lingering Wound of the Blackfyre Rebellions

After the Dance, the Targaryens managed to rebuild their numbers over the next few generations. However, a new, internal threat emerged that would bleed the dynasty for nearly a century and prevent it from ever fully recovering its strength: the Blackfyre Rebellions.

The Great Bastards and the Gift of a Sword

The crisis began with King Aegon IV, “the Unworthy,” one of the most disastrous kings in Westerosi history. On his deathbed in 184 AC, he made the fateful decision to legitimize all of his numerous bastard children. The most prominent of these was Daemon, a charismatic and supremely skilled warrior. Aegon IV had previously gifted Daemon the ancestral Valyrian steel sword of the Targaryen kings, Blackfyre. This act was seen by many as a sign of his true favor.

Upon Aegon IV’s death, his trueborn son Daeron II took the throne. However, Daemon, now calling himself Daemon Blackfyre, gathered supporters who felt he was the more worthy heir. He became the figurehead for all those discontented with Daeron’s rule, and the Blackfyre Rebellions were born.

A Century of War and Paranoia

For five generations, the Blackfyres and their descendants launched a series of bloody rebellions against the ruling Targaryen line. While all ultimately failed, they came at a tremendous cost.

1. The First Blackfyre Rebellion (196 AC): This was the largest and most dangerous, splitting the realm in two much like the Dance. Daemon Blackfyre and his eldest sons were slain at the Battle of the Redgrass Field, but countless loyalist lords and Targaryen supporters also perished.
2. Subsequent Rebellions (212-260 AC): Four more major attempts were made by the surviving Blackfyres from their exile in Essos. Each rebellion, though smaller than the first, forced the Targaryens to expend blood and treasure, and often resulted in the death of more Targaryen family members on both sides of the conflict.

The Blackfyre threat fundamentally changed the Targaryen psyche. It bred a deep and lasting paranoia within the royal court. Suspicion fell on anyone with a drop of Targaryen blood who wasn’t in the direct line of succession. This constant fear further thinned their ranks and contributed to the instability that would define their final decades.

The Final Blows: Prophecy, Madness, and Rebellion

By the reign of King Aegon V, the Targaryen dynasty was a pale imitation of its former glory. They had no dragons, and the memory of the Blackfyre threat was still fresh. It was in this precarious state that they suffered two final, catastrophic blows that led directly to their overthrow.

The Tragedy at Summerhall: A Prophecy Turned to Ash

King Aegon V, “the Unlikely,” was a good and kind ruler who spent his reign trying to improve the lives of the common folk. However, he was haunted by the decline of his house and became obsessed with a prophecy that the Prince That Was Promised would be born from his line. He believed that the return of dragons was essential to fulfilling this prophecy and solidifying his family’s power.

In 259 AC, he gathered his closest family and friends at his favorite palace, Summerhall, for a mysterious ceremony to try and hatch ancient dragon eggs using wildfire. The attempt went horribly wrong. A great fire consumed the castle, leading to the event known as the Tragedy at Summerhall.

The cost was staggering:

• King Aegon V himself was killed.
• His eldest son and heir, Prince Duncan the Small, was killed.
• The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, Ser Duncan the Tall, was also killed.

This single event wiped out the king and his direct heir, further narrowing an already thin line of succession. It was a devastating blow born from a desperate hope to restore the very power the Targaryens had lost.

The Reign of the Mad King: The Point of No Return

The final Targaryen king, Aerys II, ascended the throne with great promise but descended into a violent, paranoid madness. His insanity was likely a combination of the latent “Targaryen madness,” the deep-seated paranoia from the Blackfyre era, and a traumatic personal experience during a brief rebellion known as the Defiance of Duskendale.

Aerys II’s reign was a litany of horrors that alienated even his most steadfast supporters. His final, unforgivable act was the spark that ignited the continent. When Brandon Stark rode to King’s Landing to demand justice for the abduction of his sister, Lyanna, by Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, Aerys had him arrested. He then summoned Brandon’s father, Lord Rickard Stark, to court. In a display of horrific cruelty, Aerys II burned Lord Rickard alive in his own armor while forcing Brandon to watch, strangling himself to death trying to save his father. This atrocity left the great houses with no choice but rebellion.

Robert’s Rebellion: The End of a Dynasty

Robert Baratheon, betrothed to Lyanna Stark, along with Jon Arryn and Eddard Stark, raised their banners in rebellion. The war that followed was the final nail in the Targaryen coffin. The royal family was systematically eliminated:

• Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, the crown prince, was killed by Robert Baratheon at the Battle of the Trident.
• King Aerys II Targaryen, the Mad King, was slain in the throne room by his own Kingsguard, Jaime Lannister.
• Princess Elia Martell, Rhaegar’s wife, and their two young children, Rhaenys and Aegon, were brutally murdered during the Sack of King’s Landing by Lannister soldiers.

With the death of the king, the crown prince, and the prince’s children, the Targaryen dynasty in Westeros was effectively over. Only Aerys’s pregnant wife, Queen Rhaella, and their young son, Viserys, managed to escape to the island fortress of Dragonstone. There, Rhaella died giving birth to Daenerys. Shortly after, loyalists smuggled the two children, Viserys and the infant Daenerys, across the Narrow Sea into exile, making them the last known survivors of a once-unbeatable house.

A Visual Decline: The Targaryen Family Tree Narrows

To truly appreciate the scale of the Targaryen decline, it is helpful to visualize the major bottlenecks that crippled their dynasty over time.

The Last Dragons: Daenerys, Viserys, and a Hidden Secret

The story of why only two Targaryens are left is thus a story of compounding tragedies. Viserys and Daenerys’s survival was a miracle in itself, a testament to the loyalty of men like Ser Willem Darry who spirited them away. Their childhood in exile, hunted by Robert’s assassins, shaped them into the figures we meet at the beginning of the story—one bitter and obsessed with reclaiming a birthright, the other a young girl about to discover a power her ancestors had lost.

The Hidden Targaryen: A Secret Hope

Of course, the narrative holds one final, stunning twist. Unknown to almost everyone, a third Targaryen did survive the rebellion. Jon Snow, raised as the bastard son of Eddard Stark, was in fact the trueborn son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, who had secretly married. He was Aegon Targaryen, the hidden heir to the Iron Throne. His existence proves that even at its lowest ebb, the blood of the dragon endured, hidden away and waiting for its moment to re-emerge.

Conclusion: A Legacy of Fire and Blood

In the end, the Targaryens were the architects of their own demise. Their fall was not a simple matter of being defeated in a single war. It was a long, slow decay caused by a fatal combination of factors. The Dance of the Dragons broke their power, the Blackfyre Rebellions bled them dry, the Tragedy at Summerhall shattered their leadership, and the madness of King Aerys II provided the final push into the abyss. Their greatest strength—their ‘fire and blood’ and the belief in their own exceptionalism—morphed into a fatal weakness. It led them to fight devastating civil wars, to isolate themselves politically, and to chase prophetic dreams into fiery ruin. By the time Robert Baratheon raised his war hammer, House Targaryen was already a hollow crown, waiting for one last strike to shatter completely, leaving only two lonely children to carry the weight of a fallen dynasty.