Aerion Brightflame
Maekar's second son, beautiful as a dream and cruel as a nightmare, who half believes he is a dragon in human skin. Wine, vanity, and viciousness ÔÇö and a prince's immunity, almost always.
A soul of House Targaryen, born at Summerhall.
The fuller tale
Season One
In Ashford Meadow ÔÇö Beautiful, cruel, and sure he is a dragon wearing a man. The princes of the realm arrive in force ÔÇö Baelor, Maekar and his sons: Aerion the Bright Flame, Daeron the Drunken, and somewhere unseen, a missing fourth son. In The Lists ÔÇö Breaks a girl's fingers over a wooden dragon; meets a real one in a hedge knight. Ser Humfrey Hardyng unhorses Aerion Brightflame ÔÇö and Aerion's answer is a lance through his horse's neck, leaving Hardyng broken-legged under a dying animal.
That night Aerion finds the puppet show: the wooden dragon offends the Bright Flame, and he breaks Tanselle's fingers for it. In A Trial of Seven ÔÇö Assembles his seven from Kingsguard white and bought apples. Aerion demands a trial by combat ÔÇö and names it a trial of seven, the old Andal way: seven against seven, and Dunk must find six men to die for a hedge knight's honor. Raymun Fossoway shames his cousin Steffon into promising help; Steffon sells his promise to Aerion instead by morning ÔÇö and Raymun is knighted on the spot to take his place.
In The Judgment of the Gods ÔÇö Recants his accusation with Dunk's fist as his conscience. Aerion drives Dunk to the river's edge ÔÇö and Dunk, remembering he was a boy of Flea Bottom before he was a knight, drops his sword and beats the yield out of him with his hands. Aerion recants. The trial is won ÔÇö but across the field Prince Maekar's mace has found his brother Baelor's helm, and the Hand of the King is swaying in the saddle. In A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms ÔÇö Exiled to Lys, where the wine is stronger and the patience shorter.
Aerion is packed off to Lys, Daeron to a watch he'll drink through. And a hedge knight rides south for Dorne with a prince shining his kettle helm ÔÇö Ser Duncan the Tall, of no house, of the Seven Kingdoms.
Where they stand. Ashford Meadow and Lys.
How it ends for them
The chronicle records no death for this soul ÔÇö they are living when the tale leaves them, or their ending is a page the maesters have yet to turn.
Their chapters, book by book
The Hedge Knight 4 chapters that name them
Where the page and the screen part
Finn BennettÔÇÖs take on Aerion drew some of the loudest praise in the showÔÇÖs first-season reviews ÔÇö critics called the performance genuinely unsettling rather than cartoonish, crediting Bennett with finding the wounded vanity underneath the characterÔÇÖs casual sadism. The puppet-show sequence, adapted essentially beat for beat from the novella, became one of the seasonÔÇÖs most discussed scenes precisely because the show resisted softening it; both tellings agree that AerionÔÇÖs cruelty needs to be shown plainly, without excuse, for the trial of seven to carry its full weight.
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.