House of the Dragon: Targaryen Family Tree | Every Generation Explained

House Targaryen of the hit HBO series, House Of The Dragon, and the fantasy book series, A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin, has a family tree that looks less like a seriously old tree and more like the deeply embedded roots of a seriously old tree tied up in knots.

House Targaryen | Family Tree

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Three hundred years of the crown marrying inside itself- brother to sister, uncle to niece, cousin to cousin- George R. R. Martin built an epic dynasty that’s brilliant on a map and murder on a flowchart. Want to know how Daenerys connects to Rhaenyra?

Get comfy. It takes eight generations, one sideways succession, and at least one king whose own paternity was a court rumor. This guide walks the entire line, ruler by ruler, from Aegon I’s conquest to Daenerys and Jon Snow. Where the throne skipped a generation instead of passing father to son, we’ll flag it. It’s exactly where most “family tree” breakdowns online get it wrong.

*SPOILERS* *SPOILERS* *SPOILERS*

Quick Targaryen Family Tree Timeline

Generation 1: Aegon the Conqueror

The dynasty starts with Aegon I Targaryen, who landed at the mouth of the Blackwater and left six of the Seven Kingdoms bent to his will. He married both of his sisters, Visenya and Rhaenys, and rode into legend on the back of the largest dragon Westeros ever saw.

• Wives: Queen Visenya, Queen Rhaenys
• Dragons: Balerion, Vhagar, Meraxes
• Children: Aenys I (with Rhaenys), Maegor I (with Visenya)

That sibling marriage wasn’t a one-off. It became house policy for the next two centuries.

Generation 2: Aenys I and Maegor I

Aegon’s death handed the crown to Aenys I, a mild king who couldn’t hold the realm together. His brother Maegor, remembered as Maegor the Cruel, seized the throne by force and held it through fear.

• Aenys I’s children: Rhaena, Aegon, Viserys, Jaehaerys, Alysanne.
• Maegor I: no surviving legitimate children. Maegor died without an heir. The throne passed back to Aenys’s line, landing on a nine-year-old named Jaehaerys.

Generation 3: Jaehaerys I and Queen Alysanne

Jaehaerys I, later called the Old King, ruled for close to sixty years, longer than any Targaryen before or since. He married his own sister Alysanne, and together they had thirteen children, though plague and misfortune took several young. The branches that mattered most survived through their grandchildren, feeding directly into Viserys I and the generation that would tear the family apart.

Generation 4: Viserys I and the Dance of the Dragons

Screenshot of HBO Original, House of the Dragon season 3

This is the generation House of the Dragon is built on, and it’s the messiest fight in Targaryen history. King Viserys I’s children: Rhaenyra, Aegon II, Helaena, Aemond, Daeron (all with Alicent Hightower, except Rhaenyra, whose mother was Aemma Arryn). Viserys named Rhaenyra his heir, broke two centuries of male-preference custom to do it, and then died before making sure it stuck.

His brother Daemon married Rhaenyra. Their children included Aegon III and Viserys II, the two names that carry the line forward. When Viserys I died, the realm split into two camps:

• The Blacks: Rhaenyra, Daemon, and House Velaryon
• The Greens: Aegon II, Alicent Hightower, and Aemond

The civil war that followed, the Dance of the Dragons, killed off most of the family’s dragons along with most of its claimants. Rhaenyra lost. Aegon II won the throne. Neither side really survived it.

Generation 5: Aegon III and the Brother Who Inherited Sideways

Aegon III, Rhaenyra’s son, took the Iron Throne as a traumatized teenager who watched his mother die. Nicknamed the Dragonbane, his reign marked the point where living dragons stopped being a Targaryen advantage at all.

• Aegon III’s sons: Daeron I, Baelor I

Here’s the part most family tree graphics get wrong: Daeron I and Baelor I both died without heirs. Baelor starved himself through religious fasting. So the crown didn’t pass down to a son. It passed sideways, to Aegon III’s own younger brother.

• That brother — Viserys II, born from the same union of Rhaenyra and Daemon that produced Aegon III. He and Aegon III were siblings, not father and son.

Viserys II had spent years as Hand of the King, quietly running the realm while his nephew Baelor prayed and fasted his way toward an early grave. When Baelor died childless, Viserys inherited the throne at forty-nine.

Generation 6: Viserys II

• Children: Aegon IV, Prince Aemon (later known as the Dragonknight), Naerys

Nothing about this generation looks dramatic on paper. It gets very dramatic in the next one.

Generation 7: Aegon IV and the Blackfyre Rebellions

Aegon IV earned the nickname “the Unworthy,” and he earned it. He married his sister Naerys, fathered a trueborn son named Daeron II, and also fathered a small army of bastards, one of whom he legitimized on his deathbed out of pure spite toward his own heir. That bastard: Daemon Blackfyre, who took his father’s dying gesture as a green light and launched the first of several Blackfyre Rebellions against his own trueborn half-brother.

Court gossip of the time also claimed Daeron II wasn’t Aegon’s son at all, but the product of Naerys and her own brother, Prince Aemon the Dragonknight. Nobody ever proved it. Aegon spread the rumor himself late in his reign, mostly to torment a son he resented for being smarter and gentler than he was.

Generation 8: Daeron II the Good

Daeron II spent his reign cleaning up his father’s mess and brought Dorne into the realm through marriage instead of war, something four Targaryen kings before him had failed to do by force.

• Sons: Baelor Breakspear, Aerys I, Rhaegel, Maekar I

Baelor Breakspear, the eldest and the presumed heir, died before his father in a tourney accident. Aerys I inherited next and died without children of his own, so the crown moved again to a younger brother: Maekar I.

Generation 9: Maekar I to Aegon V

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Maekar I’s reign was short and largely forgettable, but his youngest son wasn’t. That son, born fourth and never expected to rule, was Aegon V, nicknamed “Egg” by the hedge knight who raised him without knowing who he was. Aegon V inherited because everyone ahead of him in line, including his 3 brothers, died. It’s one of the more quietly wild successions in the whole family tree.

Generation 10: Aegon V and the Line to the Mad King

• Sons: Duncan, Jaehaerys, Daeron
• Daughters: Shaera, Rhaelle

Two things worth knowing here. First: Aegon V’s son, Jaehaerys, is the direct link to Aerys II, the Mad King, which brings us to the generation most family tree graphics skip entirely. Second, his daughter Rhaelle married into House Baratheon, which is exactly how Robert Baratheon later claimed a blood right to the Iron Throne he eventually took by force.

Generation 11: The Generation the Show Left Out

This is the correction that matters most. Game of Thrones simplifies its family tree by making Aegon V the father of Aerys II directly. The books don’t. There’s a full king in between. King Jaehaerys II Targaryen, son of Aegon V, married his own sister Shaera, and their children were Aerys II and Rhaella.

If you’ve ever seen a Targaryen chart online that jumps straight from Aegon V to the Mad King, that’s the show’s shorthand, not the book’s genealogy. Worth knowing if you’re cross-referencing House of the Dragon lore against anything from the novels.

Generation 12: Aerys II, the Mad King

Aerys II married his sister Rhaella, in keeping with two hundred and fifty years of family tradition, and their reign ended the dynasty’s grip on the Iron Throne.

• Children: Rhaegar, Viserys, Daenerys

Aerys started his reign well enough. He didn’t end it that way. Paranoia, cruelty, and a fondness for fire eventually cost him his crown, his life, and most of his family, and it triggered the war that put House Baratheon on the throne instead.

Generation 13: Rhaegar Targaryen

Rhaegar secretly married Lyanna Stark, a fact that stayed buried for the entire span of Robert’s Rebellion and most of the show that followed it. Their son: Jon Snow. Raised as a Stark bastard and revealed, generations later, to be Aegon Targaryen. That single reveal rewrites everything about who has a claim to the Iron Throne by the end of the story.

Generation 14: Daenerys Targaryen

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Daenerys is the last openly acknowledged Targaryen heir of her generation, and the only one who survives long enough for the title to mean anything. Her arc runs from exile across the Narrow Sea to claimant of the Iron Throne, dragons and all. Until Jon Snow’s true identity is revealed in the last season of Game of Thrones.

Where Does Jon Snow Fit Into the Targaryen Family Tree?

• Son of Rhaegar Targaryen
• Grandson of Aerys II, the Mad King
• Nephew of Daenerys Targaryen

How Is Daenerys Related to Rhaenyra?

Here’s the line, generation by generation: Rhaenyra to Viserys II (her son) to Aegon IV to Daeron II to Maekar I to Aegon V (Egg) to Jaehaerys II to Aerys II to Daenerys. That’s eight generations of direct descent, which makes Daenerys Rhaenyra’s six-times-great-granddaughter, not some vague “many greats” the internet tends to shrug off with.

Why Is the Targaryen Family Tree So Complicated?

A few things stack up against anyone trying to follow it in one sitting:

• Constant sibling, uncle-niece, and cousin marriages
• Multiple successions that skipped sideways to a brother or uncle instead of passing father to son
• Civil wars that wiped out whole branches at once
• The same four or five names, Aegon, Viserys, Daeron, Jaehaerys, reused every other generation.

Add nearly three centuries of rule, and you get a tree with more grafted branches than straight lines.

Targaryen Family Tree FAQs

• Who started House Targaryen? Aegon I Targaryen founded the dynasty after conquering six of the Seven Kingdoms.
• How is Daenerys related to Rhaenyra? Daenerys is Rhaenyra’s six-times-great-granddaughter, descended through eight generations, starting with Rhaenyra’s son Viserys II.
• Is Jon Snow a Targaryen? Yes. He’s the son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, raised under a different name to keep him alive.
• Why did Targaryens marry their siblings? The family followed Valyrian tradition to keep the bloodline pure and preserve their claim to dragons and the throne.
• Did every Targaryen king inherit from his father? No. At least twice, the crown skipped sideways to a brother or uncle instead: Viserys II inherited from his nephew Baelor I, and Maekar I inherited from his brother Aerys I.
• Who was the last Targaryen king? Aerys II, the Mad King, was the final Targaryen ruler before Robert’s Rebellion ended the dynasty’s hold on the Iron Throne.

Stay tuned for more content on House of the Dragon and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and be sure to browse through Reel Movie Junkie to see what other TV shows are worth streaming right now!