Aegon The Conqueror

Save for Dorne, I can't think of many things I would have changed being Aegon.

I think my strategy lowers the chances of you being overthrown.

You should write science fiction

If the Mad King wasn't mad or died early and Rhaegar become King then the Targs would still be in charge.

It obviously wouldn't be interesting being that the hero in all my stories would have the easiest path to victory

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, I would have just flew to every house made them bend the knee

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how many foreign invasions have worked out like this? you can show them the stick but they need to feel it and it has to hurt so badly they never want to feel it again, no matter what.

you'd think nuking japan once was enough, but we had to do it twice and even after they made the decision to surrender there was an attempted coup to prevent this.

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one of his descendants would flip out in paranoia only to get stabbed in the back(by his own son Jaime I believe)

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wut

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He let the strong challengers present themselves with massive armies. Many of the weak that wanted to deny him joined this massive army in hopes of preventing his takeover. He set most of them on fire and boo bam he's got a completely subservient kingdom.

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But even in doing that, by planting your seed all across the land and giving them dragons ensures that your bloodline will rule forever

I think Aegon handled the Conquest and later kingdom organization admirably. Prepare yourself. Wall of text inc.

At the start of Aegon's Conquest we are told that there are Seven Kingdoms. This makes each kingdom and victory seem equal.

They are not.

In those days there were three superpowers and four smaller (though certainly not insignificant) forces. The Big 3 were the Gardeners, the Starks, and the newly ascendant Hoares. Each of these families was currently at the top of their game and would under almost no circumstances entertain the idea of surrender. You might kill them, but you couldn't beat them.

It's like comparing the retaking of Europe, which was contested by the Germans all the way back to Berlin, to dropping two nukes on Japan. Only after witnessing the complete and utter annihilation of their contemporaries at Harrenhall and the Field of Fire could the Starks accept that as great as they were, they didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning (which makes Dorne's later resistance ridiculous). Those battles had to happen and happen in that fashion.

Of further note is how Aegon handled the dismantling of these old powerbases and the potential threats they could pose to he and his descendants.

First we'll tackle the obvious, easy one: the Kingdom of the Isles and Rivers. Being the most recently established of all the kingdoms, it was also the easiest to disassemble into two relatively homogenous (and weaker) parts. Finishing with installing a family with every reason to be loyal to him in perpetuity on one side, this threat was easily and effectively defused.

Next we have the more difficult Reach. It's been claimed by multiple people that the Tyrells didn't deserve the succession of Highgarden, that other, more prestigious families had a greater claim and the Tyrells were simply in the right place at the right time. And they're partially right. Aegon, however, didn't want a strong and universally respected family in Highgarden. He wanted a family with just enough claim to be tolerable by the Reach lords but not enough to rally into a new Gardener dynasty. And of course the Tyrells would also be eternally grateful to him. It was genius, really.

Last we have the peculiar case of the North. By capitulating without a fight they were spared the massive weakening and political chains the other kingdoms were shackled in. I fully think Aegon would have treated the North like the Reach and installed a weaker family in power (i.e. not the Boltons) had he been forced to come in and exterminate the Starks. I'm somewhat surprised that he didn't do SOMETHING to lessen their influence in the North as he did with the other two. Perhaps upon meeting them he respected the family too much to do so. I rather doubt it, but who knows.

Aaaaannnnnndddddd that covers the major happenings of the Conquest and why I think Aegon did a fine job and Dorne has a penchant for bad storylines. What do y'all think?

Except now you have a bunch of heirs hungry for power of their own...with dragons