After his coronation as Pope in the Sept of the Seven, Aegon soared above King's Landing on Balerion's back, greeted by thunderous cheers from the hundreds of thousands crowding the streets.
The King's assumption of the Faith's highest office sent ripples across Westeros like a stone cast into still water. Reactions came swiftly from all directions.
The great lords of the Seven Kingdoms wrote to the king in alarm: What are you trying to do? Are you turning the Targaryen dynasty into a theocracy?
Religious beliefs varied across the realm. While the Faith of the Seven dominated the continent, many other faiths persisted—the Old Gods of the North, the Greenblood Orphans of Dorne who worshipped the Mother Rhoyne and the Old Man of the River, the Drowned God of the Iron Islands, and the Storm God of the Stormlands...
Aegon quickly responded by using the Raven Tower at Harrenhal to proclaim religious freedom across Westeros, even under his rule as Pope of the Faith. Only then did the unrest among the great lords begin to subside.
But as soon as he finished addressing his vassals' concerns, a new wave of turmoil erupted—widespread riots broke out across the dioceses of the Faith of the Seven.
On the very day of his coronation, Aegon had dismissed over a dozen bishops. These men were not allowed to return to their dioceses, but were instead placed under house arrest in the Sept of the Seven, under the pretense of helping compile the Sevenstar Bible.
Each bishop had disciples in their home dioceses—devoted clerics who viewed their spiritual fathers with reverence. When these disciples saw their bishops absent from King's Landing for extended periods, receiving no letters and being turned away when they attempted visits, they began to suspect foul play behind Aegon's rise.
Unrest spread. In several dioceses, loyalists to the detained bishops organized marches, demanding Pope Aegon release them.
Aegon responded with uncompromising force. He declared the protesters heretics and issued a papal decree nationwide, establishing an Inquisition to root out dissent.
In truth, this "Inquisition" was simply the Kingdom's Religious Affairs Bureau under Grand Maester Gawen—rebranded for the public.
Though some dioceses erupted violently, most of Westeros remained calm. Aegon had followed all official procedures to claim the papacy, which lent legitimacy to his position.
For those close to the detained bishops who were hunted by the Inquisition, Aegon avoided extreme punishments like burning at the stake. Having secured full control over the Faith, he now saw them as nothing more than defeated relics of the past—powerless to alter the future.
The heretics were instead sent to work at the kingdom's most dangerous construction sites for seven years. By the time they finished their sentences, the church would likely have undergone further purges and reforms. Who would even remember these former dissenters?
...
In the twelfth year of the Conquest, Aegon began his second royal progress.
The goal of this tour was to soothe tensions and restore faith across Westeros's dioceses. As Aegon once said, "A lord must understand his lands. A pope must understand his dioceses."
Oldtown, Arbor, Horn Hill, Casterly Rock...
Pope Aegon led his newly established church leadership across the realm, visiting key centers of the Faith. At every stop, he held grand sermons.
At these gatherings, he baptized the devout and presided over public worship. He also regularly engaged in theological debates with veteran Septons.
But Aegon had mastered the three secrets of "receiving, transforming, and redirecting." His interpretations of the Seven's teachings were deliberately vague, wrapped in rhetorical flourishes more befitting 21st-century bureaucratic nonsense than sacred doctrine. The senior Septons and ascetic monks had never encountered such evasive, roundabout discourse.
Many of them could only try to divine meaning from the Pope's words, filling in the blanks with their own imaginations.
But all it did was confuse them further.
One bearded Grand Septon once stepped forward and asked during a sermon, "The Father stretched His hand into the heavens and plucked down seven holy stars. I believe these stars symbolize judgment, motherly love, strength, purity... Your Holiness, how do you interpret the seven holy stars?
Please enlighten us."
Aegon sat with his eyes half-lidded and replied leisurely, "If what you say is true, then it is indeed true."
The bearded Septon was left dumbfounded. He scratched his head in frustration, unable to understand what Aegon had actually said. As he opened his mouth to question further, the Pope's guards gently ushered him aside and invited the next debater forward.
As these debates went on, the Septons began to sense something. The Pope seemed to have only a shallow understanding of doctrine, yet he skillfully sidestepped direct answers. His interpretations of sacred texts were wild and unorthodox, even bordering on absurd.
Some Grand Septons refused to accept this hollow form of theological debate—but when words failed, it was force that spoke.
The thousands of Septon-guards accompanying Pope Aegon on his tour, along with the Inquisition, were enough to silence those with sense. Those who didn't know better were shipped off to work as miners in the gold mines beneath Golden Tooth.
Through this, Pope Aegon delivered a clear message to the world:
In matters of faith, it's not how well you argue that wins debates—it's how many legions you command. Philosophy alone gets you nowhere.
...
Most Devout Aenys traveled with his father during the tour, and what he witnessed left a deep impression on his young mind.
"So religion can be wielded like this?"
He began pondering a question of his own—how could he compete with his younger brother Maegor for the title of Crown Prince?
He'd seen Maegor—already strong as a calf despite being under two years old, running wild through the Red Keep. In contrast, he'd heard that at the same age, he had only just started crawling. How was he supposed to win against that?
But witnessing Aegon twist the teachings of the Sevenstar Bible opened up a whole new world for Aenys:
"If Father can reinterpret the Sevenstar Bible, then why can't I write a new one of my own? One that could lead the followers of the Faith of the Seven to help me conquer Essos!"
During the religious royal tour, Aegon arrested numerous Grand Septons—but Aenys managed to gain custody of them. As the Most Devout of the Crownlands, he humbled himself, eagerly seeking theological knowledge from them to build a firm foundation in the faith of the Seven.
He understood one thing clearly: if he wanted to sway others, he'd need more than vague, flowery words. He needed real knowledge of theology.
Otherwise, he'd end up like his father—forced to hide his ignorance behind ambiguous nonsense. But not every Septon was a fool. Plenty were clear-headed and sharp.
If he couldn't outmatch them in debate, he'd be left with no choice but to fall back on brute force, like Aegon. And that would put him in a weak position.
Aenys knew he lacked his father's authority and influence. So he resolved to master the Holy Books, fully grasp the theology of the Seven, and eventually compile a new Bible of his own—one that could reshape the beliefs of the Faith's followers from the ground up.
And truth be told, those Grand Septons imprisoned by Aegon were brilliant theologians. Aenys soaked up their knowledge like a sponge.
The Septons, in turn, were more than willing to teach the King's eldest son.
They had long since lost faith in Pope Aegon and now pinned their hopes on Aenys—the Crown Prince and Most Devout.
During that year's tour, Aenys even volunteered to represent his father in debates, testing his wits against the seasoned Grand Septons to sharpen his skills in their rhetorical tricks and styles.
As the tour neared its end, Aegon saw that Aenys had developed a solid grasp of theology—enough to trade arguments with seasoned Septons for dozens of rounds.
Aegon later spoke with Aenys in private. When he confirmed that his son had not been misled by dogma, he decided to let him continue on this path freely.
...
Twelve years after the Conquest, Aegon was too busy advancing a major new law in court to continue the royal tour.
Aenys stepped up and requested to travel the dioceses himself as Most Devout.
After arranging proper security for his son, Aegon allowed the eight-year-old Aenys to take his place and tour the religious districts.
Aegon's focus was on implementing a new law within the Crownlands: the [Local Taxation System].
While taxation had always existed in Westeros, after the Targaryens united the Seven Kingdoms, tax laws had gone through several iterations as part of legal standardization.
However, the [Local Taxation System] Aegon now introduced was unlike any that came before.
Under the pretext of reforming tax collection, Aegon proposed a complete reclassification of noble territories within the Crownlands—creating the new ranks of Duke, Marquis, Earl, Viscount, and Baron. Previously, Westeros recognized only Grand Duchies and Counties, followed by knightly fiefs.
With this new hierarchy, Aegon assigned tax rates according to rank and stationed royal tax officials permanently within each lord's domain to oversee collection.
The position of [Tax Officer] was introduced for the first time in Targaryen history.
Naturally, the Crownlands served as the pilot region—but Aegon's vassals fiercely opposed the move. Previously, lords would self-report taxable amounts and pay nominal sums to their superiors. As long as payments followed customary practice, higher lords rarely interfered.
Now that Aegon planned to station Maesters from the School of Mathematics as permanent tax officials within his own territories, how could the lords possibly get away with tax evasion? The vassals of the Crownlands were firmly opposed!
Their outright refusal to cooperate with the new policy was something Aegon would never tolerate.
He was a man obsessed with taxation—anyone who tried to dodge his taxes might as well have murdered his father for how enraged it made him!
Besides, the population of the Crownlands was steadily increasing. Around many castles, small-scale light industry workshops had begun to flourish. Without tax officials, there was no way to monitor what was being produced.
Aegon had poured enormous effort into relocating people to this region—how could he allow his vassals to grow rich while he couldn't even get a taste of the profits?
Absolutely not.
To Aegon, the degree to which his vassals paid their taxes in full was the clearest measure of the Targaryen regime's strength. Only when taxation was complete and consistent could his rule be called secure.
The Targaryen dynasty was also in the process of forming a standing army—a professional military force far stronger than the feudal levies of the past. But that also meant greater financial strain. Without increased tax revenue, who would fund this army?
Would he mint coins from the Dragonlord's treasury?
That would only trigger inflation and send the entire kingdom spiraling into collapse.
More importantly, these local tax officials were not just about finances—they were political extensions of Aegon's power throughout the realm. They were the king's reach into every corner of the Crownlands. Refusing them wasn't just insubordination—it was rebellion.
If the vassals wouldn't comply voluntarily, Aegon would force it upon them.
Seated securely at the center of King's Landing, Aegon personally oversaw the rollout of the [Local Taxation System]. If any of the tax officers he dispatched happened to meet an "accidental" end, Aegon would have no qualms about making an example—executing offenders and reclaiming noble lands to place them under direct royal control.
...
As Aegon pressed ahead with his sweeping tax reforms from King's Landing, his eldest son Aenys was meticulously developing his own grand design during his tour of the dioceses.
Through a mix of pressure and persuasion, Aenys gained the loyalty of the Grand Septons previously imprisoned by Aegon, and with their help, he founded his own theological order—the "New Covenant Crusade."
The Crusade's primary goal was to assist Aenys in refining his newly annotated Seven-Pointed Star scripture. He designated the original text of the Faith of the Seven as the "Old Testament," and his revised version as the "New Testament."
The Old Testament had only vaguely described the moral bond between the Seven Gods and mortals—those who lived by the precepts would ascend to heaven, while those who violated them would fall into the seven layers of hell. It was essentially a moral covenant between gods and mankind.
In contrast, Aenys's New Testament was based on what he claimed were divine dreams—visions granted by the Seven themselves.
In one such dream, the Seven Gods revealed to Aenys that they had long watched over humanity's lives and lineage, but had grown deeply disappointed by the deceit, conflict, scheming, and endless strife among men.
As a result, the Seven planned to one day seal the gates of heaven, usher in an eternal night, wipe out all life, and reset the world entirely.
Yet before doing so, they had chosen to warn a Targaryen named Daenys—tasking her with leading her people to Westeros and spreading their gospel. But Daenys, the first divine messenger, was betrayed by her own disciples and never reached Westeros.
To punish the traitor, the Seven destroyed the Valyrian Peninsula.
Aenys, as he claimed, was the second chosen messenger—the new vessel for divine will. As such, he was naturally qualified to rewrite the Seven-Pointed Star.
In Aenys's visions, the Seven declared that Westeros had already been redeemed and unified by the Targaryens. However, the continent of Essos remained torn by war and division. If humanity failed to end the conflict in Essos, the Seven would destroy Westeros just as they had Valyria—triggering a second Long Night to wipe out the world.
While Aenys's revised Seven-Pointed Star contained numerous flaws and inconsistencies, it introduced key elements that served to sanctify House Targaryen:
First, the Targaryens were cast as saviors of mankind.
Second, they appeared repeatedly as chosen messengers of the Seven.
He cleverly tied the family's image to major global cataclysms—the Doom of Valyria and the Long Night—to elevate their divine status.
When Aegon first heard Aenys's ideas, he was left speechless for a long time. But in the end, he chose not to stop his son. On the contrary, he even offered helpful suggestions to patch holes in the New Testament's narrative.
And so, the twelfth year of the Conquest passed quietly—Aegon pushing tax reforms with iron resolve, and Aenys crisscrossing the realm, refining his theology and doctrine.
Though there were minor ripples in the Targaryen political landscape, nothing threatened the stability of the dynasty.
...
Time flowed on, and the thirteenth year of the Conquest arrived.
That year, Maegor's second son turned three.
On his third birthday, Queen Visenya placed a longsword in her son's hands.
Rumor had it that the young prince's first act with the sword was to kill a cat in the castle. Though likely exaggerated slander from his detractors, what was certain was that he began weapons training from an early age.
For her son's teacher, Queen Visenya chose none other than Ser Gawen Corbray—one of the finest swordsmen in all the Seven Kingdoms.
...
[Upto 20 chapters ahead for now]
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