House of the Dragon

HBO’s House of the Dragon is centered around the Targaryen dynasty from George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (ASOIAF) franchise. Like many fantasy series, the series is rooted in real world history, drawing inspiration from periods as diverse as Medieval England and ancient Greece. House of the Dragon focuses on the Targaryen dynasty, a royal house whose ancestors left the fictional continent of Valyria and conquered the continent of Westeros, where House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones take place.

Historians like Michael Livingston have noted the similarities between the Targaryens and the real life Ptolemaic dynasty, a line of Macedonian Greeks who ruled Egypt after Alexander the Great conquered it. Martin himself has acknowledged the parallels between the Targaryens and the Ptolemies, both notoriously violent dynasties with a penchant for incestuous marriages.

Martin’s portrayal of the Targaryens’ dramatic rise and decline draws heavily from teleological historical theories which describe the fall of empires as symptoms of moral decay. Mid-twentieth century historians abandoned these ideas and developed newer theories based on geopolitical and economic factors.

In this respect, the Targaryens more closely resemble the version of the Ptolemies imagined by early modern historians than the actual dynasty. The inaccessibility of academic literature in comparison to widely available – and often outdated – pop history books has meant that obsolete theories continue to dominate popular culture and world building in fantasy franchises.

Background and society

Like the historical Ptolemies, the Targaryens are portrayed as foreigners who conquered a country with an ancient history that long predated them. However, the circumstances of their arrival are very different. The Targaryens are portrayed as the last of their people, refugees from a ruined continent, while the Ptolemaic dynasty historically maintained close ties with other Greek states around the Mediterranean.

And while the Targaryens are portrayed as being largely alone amongst their foreign subjects, with the exception of a couple small Valyrian noble families, the Ptolemies were eventually joined in Egypt by hundreds of thousands of Greek immigrants.

This distinction is one of the primary points of divergence between history and fantasy. In the world of ASOIAF, the Targaryens make little impact on the culture and society of Westeros despite uniting its Seven Kingdoms under one banner. By contrast, the Ptolemaic dynasty radically altered the literal and metaphorical landscape of ancient Egypt, shifting its agricultural output to better align with Mediterranean patterns of consumption and implementing policies intended to Hellenize Egyptian culture.

The Ptolemaic dynasty’s ability to co-opt pre-existing power structures was a key factor in their ability to control Egypt. They stepped into the role of the pharaoh, allowing the existing administrative and priestly castes to retain their importance in the new order. In return, these Egyptian elites gave their support to the Ptolemies.

The power of the Egyptian priests to support the legitimacy of a king or queen, and their capacity to foment rebellion, is echoed in the fictional Faith of the Seven whose relationship with the Iron Throne is a point of conflict in the series.

Incest

Since antiquity, the Ptolemaic dynasty has been infamous for its tradition of incestuous marriage. While Ptolemaic kings had a number of concubines, the reigning queen was commonly their sister-wife. In Martin’s series, the Targaryens marry within their house in order to preserve the purity of their Valyrian bloodline. In real life, the reasons why the Ptolemaic dynasty adopted a tradition of incestuous royal marriage is unclear. Ancient sources explain this phenomenon as a form of assimilation to Egyptian customs, but this is generally considered to be inaccurate. Incestuous royal marriages did occur in the Pharaonic period, especially during the New Kingdom, but they were the exception to the rule.

It is possible that contemporary Greeks commonly imagined incestuous marriage to be an important feature of Egyptian kingship, a belief which might have influenced the Ptolemies. Some modern historians, like Sheila Ager, have theorized that such a practice was meant to imitate the incestuous marriages of gods like Zeus and Hera or Isis and Osiris, setting the Ptolemies apart from mere mortals. Another possible explanation was that incestuous marriage prevented Ptolemaic princesses from marrying outside of the family, especially to husbands of a lower station.

The Targaryens are portrayed as having frequently suffered from hereditary madness brought on by inbreeding. To Martin, this destructive insanity is the cost of the Targaryens’ exceptional nature. Some historians made a similar diagnosis of the later Ptolemies based on their violent behavior.

In his 1970 biography of Cleopatra, Michael Grant surmised that genetic defects resulting from inbreeding may have caused later generations of Ptolemies to inherit a “total absence of moral sense, and a tendency to murder […] brothers and sisters” (p. 27).

However, the actions of the Ptolemies are not especially unique in comparison to other dynasties who ruled in the bloody political environment of the Hellenistic Mediterranean. Familial power struggles and even murder frequently occurred within Hellenistic royal dynasties, and the Roman emperors who ruled Egypt after the Ptolemies were no less brutal.

Both the belief that the Ptolemaic dynasty was obsessed with protecting blood purity and the belief that they suffered from an inherited insanity can detract from the uncomfortable truth that their blood was not especially great or especially terrible. This is the primary distinction between Martin’s dragon-riding conquerors and the descendants of Alexander’s general. Some members of the Ptolemaic family were very accomplished and some were probably quite cruel, but this had little to do with their bloodline.

Powerful women

Many historians have suggested that the unique structure of the Ptolemaic dynasty enabled women to wield greater power than they did in many contemporary societies. Both Egypt and Macedon had long traditions of symbolically powerful queens who took the reins when their husbands or sons were indisposed. In Ptolemaic Egypt, the importance of queens grew to the point that “the difference between the role of royal males and females had been narrowed, the distinction blunted” (Donnelly Carney, p. 104-105). From the beginning, Ptolemaic queens like Arsinoe II played a pivotal role in guiding domestic policy and religious propaganda.

There has been renewed interest in Ptolemaic royal women in recent years, as exemplified Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones’ Cleopatras (2024), Jane Draycott’s Cleopatra’s Daughter (2023) and Francine Prose’s Cleopatra (2022). These women were active rulers at a time when political power was almost solely wielded by men. Their reigns stand out as a unique example of female power in a patriarchal setting.

Some queens, like Arsinoe II, Berenice II, Arsinoe III and Cleopatra VII directed Ptolemaic military policy or even led armies and navies in their lifetime. The martial character of Ptolemaic queenship extended to their athletic activities. In Hellenistic culture, participation in equestrian sports (which had been limited to men in earlier periods) symbolized power and aristocratic prestige. Berenike II’s victories in the chariot racing events at the Nemean Games and Panhellenic Games were rare enough to be worthy of note by contemporary poets. Posidippus puts the following words in Ptolemy II’s mouth, regarding his parents equestrian accomplishments: “Of my father [Ptolemy I]’s glory I boast not, but that my mother [Berenice], a woman, won in her chariot—that is great!” (AB 88 transl. Nisetich).

The fiery Targaryen women of Martin’s books and television series bear many similarities to Ptolemaic queens. The House of the Dragon series portrays the way that, despite their wealth and privilege, royal women have historically been constrained by their expected roles as wives and mothers. The series has explored the double standards regarding the promiscuity of male or female monarchs, and the dangers of childbirth in a world without modern medicine, two pressures which shaped the personal lives of Hellenistic queens and princesses.

Civil wars

Civil wars and uprisings rocked the Ptolemaic Kingdom throughout its history. A major source of conflict was the lack of any formal order of succession. The choice of heir was often determined by the prior ruler’s personal preference, rather than order of birth, legitimacy or gender. Wars between siblings and other relatives divided the kingdom, with opposing claimants being crowned in different regions such as Egypt, Cyprus or Cyrene.

These same problems faced the Targaryen dynasty, resulting in “The Dance of Dragons”, the civil war portrayed in House of the Dragon. The Dance begins with a disagreement over the rightful heir, with various lords taking the side of Rhaenyra, the late King Viserys’ daughter and oldest child, and others siding with his first born son Aegon II.

A similar dynamic occurred in Egypt ca. 49 BCE, when a civil war broke out between supporters of King Ptolemy XIII and supporters of his older sister Cleopatra VII. Ptolemy and Cleopatra initially ruled jointly but it was an uneasy partnership, as each desired to exercise sole control. Beneath the surface, divisions between factions of Egypt’s military and political administration coaxed the friction between the siblings into all-out war.

Much like in House of the Dragon, the official issue was the legitimacy of the heirs claimant. Cleopatra had seniority over her older brother and the implied legitimacy of having been co-ruler during the reign of her father, but Ptolemy was male and the royal succession traditionally privileged sons over daughters. For some of Ptolemy’s supporters, the idea of being ruled by a woman was unconscionable.

Ptolemy and Cleopatra’s war ended with an unexpected twist, when the defeated Roman general Pompey the Great arrived seeking sanctuary from his enemy, Julius Caesar. Caesar and Pompey’s landing in Egypt altered the course of the war. Pompey’s gruesome murder at the hands of Ptolemy’s men, the illicit affair between Caesar and Cleopatra, and the machinations of a rogue Roman legion further complicated events.

The fall of empires in historiography vs fantasy

In Martin’s world, the steady decline of the once-great Targaryen dynasty is symbolized by the decreasing size and number of their dragons. The in-universe history explains this development as the result of the Targaryens moving away from their Valyrian roots, growing weak and complacent. This kind of teleological explanation for the Targaryen’s fall from grace is rooted in older historiographical approaches which explained the fall of dynasties in terms of moral or cultural atrophy. This was once a popular philosophical framework for understanding events like the fall of Rome, but has been largely abandoned by academic historians in favor of a focus on broad sociopolitical and economic forces as the principal drivers of historical change.

Ancient Greek and Roman authors such as Polybius described the Ptolemaic dynasty as having fallen into decadence and complacency. In their accounts, it was the ascension of weak and ineffectual Hellenistic kings like Ptolemy IV that paved the way for their eventual conquest by the Roman Republic. Polybius described Ptolemy IV as having caused the collapse of the Ptolemaic dynasty’s power by neglecting foreign policy (Polybius 5.34). These historians believed that Rome’s ascendancy was inevitable, and were principally concerned with retroactively creating narratives to support this. Portraying the later rulers as inept, with the exception of a few outstanding characters, helped to explain why Egypt failed to keep up with Rome.

Historians in the nineteenth and early twentieth century typically accepted these narratives unquestioningly, basing their accounts of Ptolemaic decline on their testimony. These early modern historians theorized that the late Ptolemaic dynasty had become weakened by the orientalizing influences of Egyptian culture, falling away from their rugged Macedonian roots. In 1927, historian Edwyn Bevan wrote that Ptolemy IV had “brought down Egypt […] to a condition of feebleness and humiliation from which it never again rose to the proud position it had held under the first three Macedonian kings” (p. 220).

Modern reassessments of the later Ptolemies are generally more flattering, focusing on their long-term strategies for consolidating power and strengthening friendships with necessary allies like Rome. The surviving evidence for the Ptolemaic Kingdom’s economic and military capacity implies that the dynasty experienced a period of resurgence after a long slump in the second Century BCE.

Later generations of the Ptolemaic dynasty also grew more effective at leveraging Egyptian power structures for their own benefit, implying adaptation rather than stagnation. In light of this evidence, historian Christelle Fischer-Bovet has argued for “a more dynamic view of the development of the Ptolemaic state, where periods of decay alternate with times of reconstruction within the same ruling dynasty, rather than viewing it as a long decline” (p. 224).

While academia has moved away from this model of decline, popular history books and documentaries still rely heavily upon it. The degeneration of a once-proud house remains a popular trope in fantasy, which is often informed by pop history. The concept makes for compelling television, but can leave viewers with a skewed understanding of historical trends. In time, it is likely that the work of contemporary historians will filter into pop culture through the efforts of historical consultants and pop historians. But for now, as usual, historical fantasy remains about 50 years behind the times.