ATTN: Spoilers ahead from season 7 of Game of Thrones.
If you’re up to speed on the HBO phenomenon that is Game of Thrones, then you’re aware by now that Jon Snow is not only not a bastard but also true heir to the Iron Throne. His real name is revealed to Eddard Stark by his sister Lyanna in one of Bran’s infamous flashbacks in which, as she lay dying shortly after giving birth to a son following her secret marriage to Rhaegar Targaryen in Dorne, Lyanna makes Ned promise keep her baby’s identity a secret because the usurper and Ned Stark’s BFF, Robert Baratheon, was betrothed to Lyanna and would have the infant assassinated out of jealousy over Lyanna’s marriage to Rhaegar and insecurity regarding his claim to the throne. So Ned agrees to raise Aegon as his bastard son Jon Snow, infuriating his wife Catelyn, who had recently given birth to their first son, Robb, when Ned returned to Winterfell following Robert’s Rebellion.
Jon Snow is not the first Aegon Targaryen to be fathered by Rhaegar—nor is he the second or even tenth Aegon of house Targaryen. One of the babies murdered by the Mountain during Tywin Lannister’s Sack of King’s Landing was Rhaegar’s firstborn son Aegon by Elia Martell, whose marriage Rhaegar secretly annulled (as Gilly discovered in an old maester’s diary in season seven of the HBO series). The Mountain raped Elia before murdering her along with hers and Rhaegar’s two children, smashing the infant Aegon’s head against a wall. (Poor Elia—betrayed and cast aside by her husband, raped by Gregor Clegane after watching him murder her two children before cutting her in half, her son’s name given to a newer sibling by a newer, younger wife. Will no one ever avenge poor Elia Martell?)
In an effort to discover just how many Aegon Targaryens existed in the Song of Ice and Fire universe, I attempted the map the Targaryen family tree, beginning with the first Aegon Targaryen, first of his name and Lord of Dragonstone, who preceded Aegon I Tagaryen, or Aegon the Conqueror/Aegon the Dragon. To do this, I read GRR’s novella The Princess and the Queen, which detailed an historic Targaryen civil war for the throne known as the Dance of the Dragons. The novella is included in the anthology Dangerous Women, edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, and includes short stories by other fantasy writers such as Diana Gabaldon, Jim Butcher, and Carrie Vaughn.
This undertaking of mapping a Targaryen family tree by piecing together clues from a novella-long narrative about an enormous family with members who share common names and incestuous relationships soon proved an exhausting, frustrating endeavor. However, a last-ditch-effort search for “how many Aegons” on Google brought me to a list on A Wiki of Ice and Fire—a significantly less tedious route—which I used to fact-check the bits and pieces I’d managed to compile from the novella, along with an exhaustive list of the dragons and their riders for another post I will write later regarding the dragon skeletons beneath the Red Keep. The last and eleventh Aegon referenced in the Wiki list is the infant son of Rhaegar and Elia, making Jon Snow/Aegon the twelfth of his name.
(As an aside, Daenerys reveals in an internal monologue in A Game of Thrones before being sold to Khal Drogo that she’d always assumed she would marry her brother Viserys, as Targaryens typically marry their siblings.) So when it is inevitably revealed to her that Jon Snow is actually her nephew, she’ll be even more shocked to realize that not only is she not the last Targaryen but that Aegon has a more legitimate claim to the Iron Throne. One can only speculate how that will go down in the series and the long-awaited continuation of the Song of Ice and Fire series—(we’re waiting, GRR).
If Jon Snow a.k.a. Aegon Targaryen were to take the Iron Throne, that would make him the seventeenth Targaryen king, and the sixth Targaryen king to go by the name Aegon Targaryen, after Aegon V Targaryen—called Aegon the Unlikely and Egg because he was the fourth son of Maekar I, making him unlikely to become Maekar’s heir. Maekar was the fifteenth Targaryen king and father of King Aerys Targaryen, the Mad King, father to Daenerys, Viserys, and Rhaegar and grandfather to Jon Sow/Aegon. (Confused yet? Because I sure am.) So if Aegon [Jon Snow] Targaryen takes the throne, what would his full namesake be? My guess is something along the lines of:
Aegon Targaryen, twelfth of his name, former Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, Lord of Winterfell, and King of the North; the Resurrected; the (arguably) Prince That Was Promised; King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men; Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm.
Of course, we have no idea whether Jon/Aegon will take the throne. His motivation doesn’t appear to be one of power but of stopping he Night King and his hoard of wights, White Walkers, and now an undead, [ice? blue fire?] wight dragon. With Daenerys’ likewise goal of destroying the Night King to avenge Viserion with Jon at her side, it is highly likely that they will both end up dead. As we know, GRR enjoys turning traditional fantasy tropes on their heads, so the two most likely heroes of the story are almost bound to perish. It’s also entirely possible that the TV series and GRR’s book series will have entirely different endings so as not to dissuade fans of A Song of Ice and Fire from finishing the series—if it ever gets written.
The Humble Pedant 