rhaenys aegon visenya

Screengrab via GameofThrones/YouTube

‘Game of Thrones’ animated history illustrates the Targaryen conquest of Westeros

It's only the beginning of a war that would change Westeros forever.

 

Michelle Jaworski

Internet Culture

Posted on Sep 15, 2017   Updated on May 22, 2021, 5:19 pm CDT

Game of Thrones has offered hints and teases about the man who conquered Westeros with fire and blood for years, and the show name-checked Aegon the Conqueror in nearly every episode. But for fans who haven’t dived into A Song of Ice and Fire or The World of Ice and Fire, they’ll soon get the full story of just how Aegon got nearly all of Westeros to bend the knee.

The Game of Thrones season 7 Blu-ray and DVD will include a 45-minute animated retelling of Aegon’s Conquest with narration from Pilou Asbæk, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Aidan Gillen, Conleth Hill, Harry Lloyd, and Sophie Turner. The animation style is more complex but similar to Game of Thrones’ ongoing “Histories and Lore” series, which depicts and details different great Houses of Westeros, locations, and legends from Westeros, Essos, and beyond. (“Histories and Lore” segments on King’s Landing’s dragonpit, prophecy, and the Rains of Castamere will be among those featured on the season 7 Blu-ray.)

To tease the full release, Game of Thrones released the first chapter of the story, which is narrated in-character by Lloyd, who played Daenerys Targaryen’s older brother Viserys in season 1. It’s not so much about Aegon’s Conquest itself—that will come later—but what led up to it. Viserys—showing his own personal biases—touched on the Doom of Valyria, scoffed at the tale of the prophetic dream of his ancestor that brought the Targaryens to Dragonstone, and started to reveal Aegon’s origins.

The map Daenerys and Tyrion used to plan their conquest of Westeros? It’s the same one Aegon and his sister-wives Rhaenys and Visenya used hundreds of years ago, built after they flew across the continent on the back of his dragon, Balerion the Dread. Back then, Westeros wasn’t just a single country but seven separate kingdoms, each ruled by a powerful family.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc32z-wgxU4

But that would soon change. Even without diving into the conquest itself, some of the ruling families of Westeros named by Viserys were no longer in power by the time Game of Thrones began.

The Game of Thrones season 7 DVD and Blu-ray will be released Dec. 12.

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*First Published: Sep 15, 2017, 10:26 am CDT