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Naerys Targaryen

How a love legend becomes a weapon against legitimacy

Contains spoilers through A Dance with Dragons. Television events and unfinished preview chapters are outside this collection.

The character in context

Naerys was the sister-wife of Aegon IV and mother of Daeron II. The five main novels never give her a voice; Sansa's romances, songs, and the argument between Arianne and Arys preserve the legend of her love for Aemon the Dragonknight. Claims that Aemon fathered Daeron remain political accusation rather than established fact, so reading Naerys requires separating chivalric romance from Aegon's campaign of delegitimization.

A reading path

These are editorial starting points, not a complete appearance list or a claim that the character narrates every chapter.

  1. 1. Sansa uses old romance to understand love, showing the legend's appeal.

    A Game of Thrones, Chapter 15, Sansa I

  2. 2. Confined Sansa reads the doomed romance and makes Naerys a mirror.

    A Game of Thrones, Chapter 44, Sansa III

  3. 3. Arys explicitly treats the adultery claim as Aegon's pretext for disinheriting Daeron.

    A Feast for Crows, Chapter 13, The Soiled Knight

Sources and chapter references

Our original summaries use named novel chapters and the A Wiki of Ice and Fire reference index. The links lead to that secondary index, not the full novel text. Coverage is selective, not exhaustive line-by-line verification.

  1. 1. A Game of Thrones, Chapter 15, Sansa I — A Wiki of Ice and Fire reference index
  2. 2. A Game of Thrones, Chapter 44, Sansa III — A Wiki of Ice and Fire reference index
  3. 3. A Feast for Crows, Chapter 13, The Soiled Knight — A Wiki of Ice and Fire reference index
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