Aegon II Targaryen
Alicent's firstborn, rider of Sunfyre the Golden ÔÇö a king who never asked for the crown his grandsire spent twenty years arranging, and wears it mostly in taverns until it is nailed on.
A soul of House Targaryen, born at King's Landing, sworn to The Greens ÔÇö the King's Party.
The fuller tale
Season One
In The Green Council ÔÇö Found in a sept, crowned in a pit, wanted by no one ÔÇö least of all himself. Until the crowd roars.
Where they stand. King's Landing.
Season Two
In A Son for a Son ÔÇö Plays at kingship on his father's throne until grief comes to his own nursery. In Rhaenyra the Cruel ÔÇö Answers one murdered child with twenty hanged fathers. In The Red Dragon and the Gold ÔÇö Rides to his own battle unannounced to feel like a king. Carried home in pieces.
Where they stand. Rook's Rest and King's Landing.
How it ends for them
On the page. Poisoned by his own council (F&B, ch. 7)
He outlived his sister half a year, king of a realm of ashes, and refused every counsel of mercy toward her son. His own lords poured the strongwine: Aegon the Elder died poisoned in his litter with the Wolf of the North two days from the gates.
The series has not yet reached Aegon's final chapter; his fate remains ahead of the story as currently aired.
Fire & Blood gives him roughly half a year as sole king over a realm he can barely govern ÔÇö broken in body, dependent on poppy milk for the pain of his burns, and increasingly a liability to the same council that crowned him. The book is characteristically blunt about the ending: his own small council, weary of an incapacitated and unpredictable king standing between them and a durable peace, has him poisoned in his wine. The murder is, by the book's own account, the least mysterious in the whole history ÔÇö everyone benefits, and no one is ever formally named for it.
Their chapters, book by book
Where the page and the screen part
The show, still working through its early seasons, presents a somewhat more sympathetic and interior Aegon than the book's secondhand chronicling allows ÔÇö his reluctance, his need for his father's approval, and his complicated rivalry with Aemond are all given screen time and psychology that Fire & Blood, narrated by chroniclers with little sympathy for the greens' least impressive king, mostly declines to offer. The book's Aegon is judged almost entirely by his actions and their costs; the show's is allowed motives.
Their journey
Where the two tellings send them to the same place the road runs whole; where they part, the screen keeps the left and the books the right.