The core theme explores the mystery behind a letter that convinced Aegon the Conqueror to end a nine-year war with Dorne, shifting from conquest to peace and revealing a more complex, human side to the legendary king.
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Aegon the Conqueror received a letter
that made him declare peace with Dawn
after years of bitter conflict. But what
did it say? Was it a threat or an offer?
Let's take a look. Hi everyone, this is
Robert. Welcome to InDeepge Geek. On
this channel, we dive deep into the lore
and history of A Song of Ice and Fire,
as well as the Lord of the Rings, The
Witcher, and much more. Welcome.
One of the most intriguing subplots in
the Targaryen invasion of Westeros was
their complete inability to subdue Dawn.
Lots could and has been said about the
many Targaryen attempts to invade, the
carnage and death on both sides, but
this video is focused on the curious
circumstances of the peace treaty that
ended hostilities, at least for a time.
The war had been raging on and off for 9
years and had ground into a stalemate of
sorts. The Targaryenss would attack,
initially just with Rainees on her
dragon, Maraxis, and then with the other
Targaryenss, and with armies from the
other kingdoms they had conquered. And
every time the Dornish Army and people
would disappear, hiding who knows where,
in caves perhaps, or out in the desert.
They would leave behind them scorched
lands and poisoned wells. The
Targaryenss would declare a rather
bitter victory. But the moment their
attention shifted elsewhere, the Dornish
would rise up and cut down any from the
seven kingdoms who remained, reasserting
their independence. And then the
Targaryenss would return, burning down
towns, villages, crops, everything. And
the Dornish would assassinate key
Westerosi nobles and torture their
prisoners, reasserting their
independence until the Targaryenss
returned. And well, you get the picture.
It was gruesome. The losses on both
sides were immense. The Dornish lost
thousands of people, probably tens of
thousands, and so did the Targaryenss,
including Rainees Targaryen herself and
her dragon Maraxis. Nobles were
assassinated, people's livelihoods were
destroyed, and no one seemed willing to
back down. But then Maria Martell, the
yellow toad of Dawn, the leader of the
Dornish who had been central to this
strategy of hiding and retaliating, died
to be replaced by her son, Prince
Nymore. and he, it would seem, was weary
of war. He sent his daughter, Deria,
with an offer of peace, taking with her
the dragon Maraxis skull as a gesture of
goodwill. It wasn't a surrender. The
Martell weren't offering to bend the
knee, just an offer to end the fighting,
peaceful coexistence.
Aegon apparently was also weary of war,
but he took advice from Visenya and his
closest advisers, and the advice he
received was to reject the offer. It
would make him look weak, was the
argument. It would make Raine's death
meaningless. It would only encourage
others to stand up to the Targaryenss.
There may also have been a large element
of him wanting to unite the Seven
Kingdoms and Westeros for prophetic
reasons, and he seems to have finally
agreed to all this. He would reject the
offer. He was about to formally reject
the offer when Princess Deria handed him
a letter from ruling Lord Prince Nymore,
apparently to be used as a backup plan
or a revised offer. At which point,
let's pick up on what it actually says
in Fire and Blood.
It was then that Princess Deria
presented the king with a sealed letter
from her father. For your eyes only,
your grace. King Aegon read Prince
Nymore's words in open court,
stone-faced and silent whilst sitting on
the Iron Throne. When he rose afterward,
men said his hand was dripping blood. He
burned the letter and never spoke of it
again. But that night he mounted
Bolyrian and flew off across the waters
of Blackwater Bay to Dragonstone upon
its smoking mountain. When he returned
the next morning, Aegon Targaryen agreed
to the terms proposed by Nymore.
Soon thereafter, he signed a treaty of
eternal peace with Dawn. So whatever was
in that letter changed Aegon's mind, but
whatever was in that letter remained a
secret because Aegon told no one.
Arch Maester Gildane himself made a few
suggestions in Fire and Blood that it
was an impassioned plea for an end to
the bloodshed, that it was insourcled or
contained a threat to hire a faceless
man to kill Aegon's son. But none of
these really ring true, as we'll see in
a moment. So, what was in the letter?
Well, we do actually have some clues
about what was going on based on Aegon's
reaction. Specifically, we know that he
seemed angry at what he had read,
judging from the blood dripping from his
hand. Presumably, he'd been gripping the
Iron Throne too tight. He couldn't tell
or didn't want to tell anyone what the
letter said. He flew almost immediately
to Dragonstone, presumably to see or do
something. Then he flew back, presumably
having seen or done whatever he needed
to do, and immediately changed his mind
and agreed to peace against the advice
of his sister and advisers. And after
all this, he kept up apparently good
relations with the Martell's, visiting
Sunspear a decade later to celebrate 10
years of friendship between the Seven
Kingdoms and Dawn. So whatever he read
in the letter made him angry, but
apparently not at the Martell's or
Neymar Martell personally. It also
prompted him to go to Dragonstone. And
it would appear whatever he saw or did
there changed his mind. Remember, it
wasn't just the letter that made him
change his mind. He only changed his
mind once he had returned from
Dragonstone. This, in my view,
immediately rules out pretty much all of
Gildane's suggestions. If it were
insourcled, then why go to Dragonstone?
He would just change his mind straight
away. Similarly, if it were just an
impassioned plea from one father to
another, why go to Dragonstone? And why
did Deria leave it until the last minute
to give him the letter? If it were a
threat, then why did Nymore place his
own daughter in danger like that? He
could have had the letter delivered
without endangering his daughter. And
why would Aegon afterwards treat the
Martell as friends rather than enemies
who are buying peace with threats? No, I
think we can safely say that Gildane has
got it wrong here. True to his usual
style, all of the possibilities he
offers puts Aegon in quite a good light.
Aegon the dragon, the great conqueror,
couldn't possibly have just decided to
accept that he could not conquer Dawn.
That would go completely against
Gildane's narrative of him as the great
founding father of the Targaryen reign
in Westeros. No, he must have been
tricked by magic to agree to peace or
have been compassionate on his enemies
or cared so deeply about his family that
he was willing to give up on his own
ambitions. Gildane's agenda in writing
Fire and Blood was clearly to show the
Targaryenss and Aegon in particular in a
positive light. And that meant that he
couldn't possibly admit the truth that
despite trying for 9 years, sending
dragons and armies and everything he had
against the Dornish, Aegon failed to
defeat Dawn. The Martell's beat the
Targaryenss and Aegon knew it because
before taking advice from his sister and
counselors, we read that Aegon was weary
of war. All men agreed it. Apparently,
it was his advisers who wanted to carry
on, not him. And when he was about to
refuse the peace terms, it wasn't
because he personally wanted to carry on
fighting, but because he was concerned
about what his lords in the Stormlands
and the Reach would think or whether it
might encourage others to rebel. So,
actually, we're not looking for
something that changed Aegon's own heart
about wanting war. He didn't want war
anymore. He no longer had that burning
desire to avenge Reese's death or
conquer all of Westeros. Instead, we're
looking for something that firmed up his
own resolve for peace, regardless of
what others thought or wanted. So, what
was in that letter? Well, we have to be
upfront and say that we will probably
never 100% know for sure. Aegon burned
the letter and told no one. And even if
knowledge of it had passed down to the
present- day Martell three centuries
later, it's probably not actually that
relevant to the plot of A Song of Ice
and Fire. So, there's no obvious reason
for it to be revealed. But I do think we
can make an educated guess. Let's go
through these facts. First of all, it
was just a letter. There were no poisons
or threatening body parts or anything
like that. Aegon opened it and read it
in open court. Everyone could see it was
just a letter, and what he read seems to
have made him angry. He gripped the Iron
Throne so tightly as he read it that it
made him bleed. This is instructive
because Aegon seems generally to have
been quite a level-headed person. In
battles, he seems to have had quite a
cool head, and we only ever read of two
things that prompt any kind of
passionate emotions in him. He loved
Dragonstone, and he loved Reine. He
married her out of desire, apparently,
spent as much time with her as he
reasonably could, and after she died, he
descended on Dawn with a great fury. So,
it's reasonable to guess that the letter
was about Rainees, particularly when you
add in rumors that she didn't die. That
when her dragon fell from the sky with
the scorpion bolt in its eye, instead
she survived and was tortured slowly in
the dungeons beneath the hellhalt. It's
hard to know where these rumors could
have come from if not from the Dornish
themselves. So, let's look again at what
might have happened to Reine. It was the
year 9 AC and the war had been raging
for 5 years. The Targaryenss were on
another one of their aerial bombardments
of Dornish castles and Reine Maraxis was
circling over a castle called the
Hellhalt, home of House Oler. Maxis was
shot and started falling to the earth.
We read that Maraxis did not die at
once, but came crashing to earth in
mortal agony, destroying the tower and a
large section of the hellhalt's curtain
wall in her death rows. So although a
fall from a great height sounds like it
should have killed Rainees, Maraxis
actually was still alive when landing.
It's a fair assumption that the dragon
would have used whatever strength it
still had to both cause damage to its
attackers and protect its rider. So
Rainees could have survived as the
rumors suggest. And if she survived,
then she would have been captured by
House Oler. Now, it's worth knowing a
bit more about the character of House Ul
and the Hell Halt because George R.
Martin seems to have gone to town to
suggest to us that a stay with the Ulers
at the Hellhalt would be well, hellike.
There is a Dornish saying about House Olers
Olers
are half mad and the other half are
worse. They made their name by gathering
all their rivals into one place, then
burning them to the ground. Casting
forward a few hundred years in the
books, Arianne Martell considers
recruiting the olers to her cause and
then decides not to because they are too dangerous.
dangerous.
Their castle is called Hellhalt. It lies
on the river Brimstone. There are many
times when George R. Martin is subtle in
his descriptions, but here he is not.
The olers are bad people and the Dornish
seem to have got into the habit of
torturing captured Targaryen loyalist
nobles during the war, even having
competitions apparently to see who could
keep their victims alive the longest. So
if Rainees did survive the fall, which
seems possible, she would almost
certainly have been tortured probably
for a very long time by the olers, who
would have taken things even further
than the rest of the Dornish. and Maria
Martell, the leader of the Dornish at
the time, probably would have been
completely okay with it. Given the
rumors about Reine surviving and the
emphasis George Rara Martin places on
the character of House Ola, all that
seems like the most likely chain of
events. But then four years later,
Princess Maria Martell died and was
succeeded by her son Nymore, who wanted
peace. He clearly pursued a different
approach. He won't have wanted to bend
the knee to the Targaryenss, but he did
want peace, so he needed to reach out.
But what could he offer? Marax's skull,
to be sure, that had been kept at the
hellhalt as a sort of trophy. But what
about Reise herself? If she were dead,
then surely her body would have been
kept as a trophy, too, so that could be
offered. It would look horrible with the
scars of torture, but everyone knew that
the Targaryenss burned their dead, and
Aegon will have wanted to cremate
Rainees, but not been able to. Telling
Aegon of the horrors that had been
perpetrated on the love of his life was
risky, but at least Nymore could blame
his mother for it, and the olers. He was
not personally to blame, nor was his
daughter, who he sent bearing the
message. He could return Rainees's body
so that she could be at rest and
cremated as per Targaryen tradition.
Perhaps he sent a ship with the body up
to Dragonstone. If he were clever, and
the Martell were nothing if not clever,
he would have known that sending
Rainees's body to King's Landing would
have just incited more calls for
retaliation by Venia and the others.
That's what happened when they saw
Maraxis skull. But to Aegon, weary of
war, all of that would have provided
closure. The woman responsible for
Reine's torture and death was dead, and
Raine could now be cremated at last. So
perhaps the letter explained what
happened to Raine. That explains why
Aegon was angry when he read it, but
also that Nyore and his daughter were
horrified by this and wanted to return
Raine's body. That explains why Aegon
wasn't angry at them personally. Perhaps
the letter told Aegon that the body had
been sent to Dragonstone for him to
cremate in the Targaryen fashion. That
explains why he went there straight
away, and having found the truth of it,
and said his farewells to Rainees, the
woman he loved, he agreed to the peace
treaty only on his return. Perhaps
Nymore asked, or Aegon decided, not to
announce all the gory details to court,
knowing that it would only incite
further anger among his nobles. Perhaps,
although this isn't necessary, Nymore
even included a last letter or message
from Rainees begging Aegon to make peace
with Dawn. She didn't like war,
preferring singing and dancing and
flying, and was probably the only person
whose council Aegon would take over all
others. A threat from Nimore doesn't fit
the facts, nor does a simple plea for
peace or even sorcery. This does. It
also provides an intriguing and rather
fitting end to Aegon's tale.
One might have thought that with Rainees
gone, he would have been more amunable
to Visenya and her more forthright
leadership style, but actually as time
went on, he became less warlike and more
focused on building and strengthening
his new kingdom rather than expanding
it. He became more like Reine in her
absence rather than more like Visenya.
Did he give up on his vision or did love
make him see otherwise? Is this another
love versus duty conundrum that George
R. Martin seems to love? Aegon the
Conqueror was a conqueror, but here he
was also a peacemaker. Like everyone in
the world of ice and fire, he was a
three-dimensional character who changed
his mind. Historians and propagandists
may find that harder to present
simplistically, but it's who he was.
George R. Martin's characters aren't
just more than black and white, but they
also change as real humans do, as we do
when the circumstances around us change.
And that's what makes this world seem so
real. But what do you think? Do you
agree? Let me know in the comments
below, or pop into one of my live
streams every Thursday over on IDG Live.
There's a link to that appearing here
sometime soon. That's all for this time.
If you'd like more videos about
Targaryen history or the world of ice
and fire, there's a link appearing now
on the left of your screen. Or to
support this channel, thank you. There's
a link to my Patreon page appearing now
on the right of your screen. Thanks for
watching. That's all for this time, and
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