Aemond Targaryen
The second of Alicent's sons: dragonless as a boy and mocked for it, until at ten he claimed Vhagar ÔÇö the greatest living dragon ÔÇö and paid an eye for her. 'One eye for a kingdom,' he calls it. He studies; he waits.
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 Driftmark ÔÇö Traded an eye for the greatest dragon in the world, and counts it a bargain. Says so. In the night, Aemond climbs onto Vhagar ÔÇö the greatest dragon alive answers a ten-year-old's nerve, and the realm's balance shifts. Laena's daughters and Rhaenyra's sons fall on him in the yard; knives and fists in the dark, and Lucerys cuts out Aemond's eye. In The Green Council ÔÇö Hunts his brother through the gutters and would rather keep what he finds.
In The Black Queen ÔÇö Wanted to frighten the boy, not kill him. Vhagar had her own opinion. 'One eye for a kingdom.' Above Shipbreaker Bay, Aemond's game stops being a game: Vhagar takes Arrax and Lucerys both ÔÇö and Rhaenyra's face, hearing it, ends the peace.
Where they stand. King's Landing, Driftmark and Storm's End.
Season Two
Rhaenyra combs the shores of Shipbreaker Bay until she finds a wing of Arrax ÔÇö and speaks her first words in an episode of grief: 'I want Aemond Targaryen.' Unable to find Aemond, they take the head of Helaena's boy Jaehaerys while his mother watches: the green court's grief now matches the black's. In The Red Dragon and the Gold ÔÇö Burns the enemy and the brother in one pass, and walks away regent in all but name. Rhaenys and Meleys answer Rook's Rest; the trap closes: Aegon comes half-drunk on Sunfyre, and Aemond brings Vhagar for both dragons.
Aemond's fire takes king and enemy alike ÔÇö Sunfyre and Aegon fall broken into the wood. In Regent ÔÇö Prince regent ÔÇö the realm in the hand that burned its king. Aegon lives ÔÇö barely: burned, broken, and drowned in milk of the poppy. The green council passes the rule to Aemond, not Alicent. In Smallfolk ÔÇö A regent who answers arithmetic with fire.
Aemond answers the blockade's noose the only way he knows: Vhagar burns black-sworn towns along the crownlands coast. In The Red Sowing ÔÇö For the first time since Rook's Rest ÔÇö outnumbered in the sky. Aemond burns Sharp Point rather than see it feed the blacks ÔÇö and finds Rhaenyra's new riders already in the sky over the bay. In The Queen Who Ever Was ÔÇö Regent of a city his enemies feed and his allies flee.
Alicent comes alone to Dragonstone: take the city, take the crown, spare Aegon ÔÇö 'and what of Aemond?' The season ends with every piece in motion and the Gullet waiting.
Where they stand. King's Landing and Rook's Rest.
How it ends for them
On the page. Dark Sister through the eye, above the Gods Eye (F&B, ch. 6)
Above the Gods Eye, Daemon leapt from Caraxes onto Vhagar's back and drove Dark Sister through his nephew's sapphire eye as the dragons fell locked together. Aemond's bones were found years later, chained to Vhagar's saddle, the sword still in his skull.
The series has not yet flown Aemond to his final battle; his fate remains ahead of the current seasons.
Above the Gods Eye, in the single combat the whole war has been building toward, Aemond on Vhagar meets Daemon on Caraxes ÔÇö and loses, in the end, to a maneuver almost too reckless to plan for. Daemon leaps from his own dragon's back onto Vhagar's and drives Dark Sister through Aemond's remaining eye as the two dragons fall from the sky still locked together. His remains, the book notes with a certain grim precision, are found years afterward still chained to Vhagar's saddle, sword buried in the skull ÔÇö the last and most literal payment of the debt he swore, as a boy, an eye had bought him.
Their chapters, book by book
Fire & Blood ÔÇö The Dance of the Dragons 2 chapters that name them
Where the page and the screen part
The show gives Aemond considerably more screen presence and psychological shading in its aired seasons than Fire & Blood's terse chronicling ever affords him ÔÇö his rivalry with Aegon, his isolation, his particular cruelty are all dramatized directly, where the book relays his actions mostly through their consequences and the testimony of people who feared or hated him. The Harrenhal chapter with Alys Rivers is one place both tellings agree to stay genuinely mysterious, letting Aemond's private motives remain essentially unknowable in either version.
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.