What I was referring to in my original post was that both Aegon IV and Rhaenyra were monarchs who put their personal pleasure and desires ahead of the realm and its laws. The power of the Iron Throne was a vehicle for them to use to satisfy their fancies and caprices, and little more. But the similarities do not end there: both were brazen about their affairs; both bestowed favor (or tried to, in Aegon’s case) on a lover publicly; both cared little for legalities; both used their obvious bastards to get the property of their purported fathers, Laenor Velaryon and Ossifer Plumm; both took action that threatened to send the realm into a civil war (Rhaenyra by having an affair and passing her bastards as trueborn heirs, Aegon by legitimizing his bastards and giving Daemon the sword Blackfyre, one of the visible symbols of Targaryen legitimacy – and one that had been used to argue that its wielder was the heir to the throne before – while casting shadow on his sister-wife’s fidelity and showing public disfavor to his heir to the point where rumors abounded that he was planning to disinherit him); both abused royal power even before they ascended to the throne, both were vindictive, cruel and consummately selfish. The list goes on.

As for Rhaenyra being a problematic ruler, boy oh boy. There is an abundance of evidence to that in the text that I’m wondering if perhaps you only read TWOIAF but not The Rogue Prince or The Princess and The Queen? The latter two really paint a picture a proper tyrant with a heavy inclination to abuse the law for her personal gain and pleasures, whether during her time as Princess of Dragonstone or her short tenure as queen.

Under the cut for length.

As Princess of Dragonstone, Rhaenyra’s most infamous act that bespoke of her indifference to the laws governing the realm she claimed as hers was her brazen affair with Ser Harwin Strong that produced three boys that she claimed fathered by her husband Laenor Velaryon, but who were facially the bastard sons of her lover rather than her husband. Trying to pass three obvious bastards as trueborn princes not only speaks of the extent of Rhaenyra’s belief of her own supreme power that (she thought) allows her to claim unprecedented privilege by getting her boys acknowledged as trueborn heirs based on her own say so, but also shows her willingness to flout the law and jeopardize the integrity of the line of succession for the sake of her own pleasure. According to Archmaester Gyldayn, it was high treason that Rhaenyra brashly committed by claiming bastards as trueborn heirs to the Iron Throne. Politically speaking, this was an awful political action that undermined Rhaenyra’s already tremulous position as heiress, but more importantly, it was an outright invitation for a future succession war even without the Dance happening. No one was ever going to accept the throne being passed to an obvious bastard while trueborn male heirs to King Viserys I lived, not the Westerosi nobility, not Rhaenyra’s brothers, not even her second husband Daemon the Rogure Prince who assuredly would have pushed for his two sons’ rights over the three nominal Velaryon princes. This decision on Rhaenyra’s part was a civil war waiting to happen, one way or another. The fact that she thought she could get away with it and that everyone would accept her kids’ parentage on her word is a testament of a despotic view of her power and what allowances it gave her, and a clear statement of her disregard of the laws governing Westeros. I mean, I don’t really have to argue how damaging to the realm such an attempt was, do I? The main novels made that argument quite effectively with Cersei’s children.

Of that inherently destabilizing act came two instances that set the tone of Rhaenyra’s behavior when it came to covering her treason, and emphasized her dismissal of the law as something that didn’t apply to her. The first is the tiff between her brother Aemond and her three Velaryon sons in which he called them Strongs that escalated to her second son Lucerys using a dagger to slash at Aemond taking out his right eye. In the aftermath, Rhaenyra demanded that Aemond be questioned “sharply” till he revealed where he heard the Strong rumor. She wanted Aemond, all of ten years old then, to be tortured so she could make a statement about her intolerance of the “rumors” of her sons’ parentage, completely ignoring the fact that someone armed her five-year-old child with live steel that he then used on his uncle permanently injuring him. Mind you, Alicent’s demand that Lucerys’ eye be put out in retribution for Aemond’s eye was just as monstrous, but two wrongs don’t make a right. Just because Alicent was awful does not make Rhaenyra any less awful. One wanted a child maimed, another wanted a child tortured.

The other example happened after the death of both Laena and Laenor Velaryon when their father Corlys was stricken by fever raising the question about the inheritance of Driftmark. Rhaenyra urged her goodfather to name her son Lucerys the heir to Driftmark, except, you know, Lucerys was not actually a Velaryon so he didn’t have any right to the Velaryon inheritance, no matter how Rhaenyra insisted otherwise. When Corlys’ nephew Vaemond objected and argued that Driftmark should pass to him because Rhaenyra’s children were bastards (admittedly purposely ignoring the claims of Baela and Rhaena Targaryen, Laena’s daughters by Daemon Targaryen, in the process), Rhaenyra had Daemon seize Vaemond and with no trial or due process, had him beheaded and fed his body to her dragon, an atrocity that was later compounded when Vaemond’s brothers went to Viserys I with their families to ask for justice and press their claim, only for the king to have their tongues removed, every single one of them, based on his previous edict that he’d remove the tongue of any who talked about the Strong rumors. That’s a gross mockery of justice and law, an infringement on the rights enjoyed by nobles, and a blatant show that Rhaenyra thought she could do whatever she wanted, even illegally seizing and murdering a noble with no trial. How very Aerys II of her.

Those are, unequivocally, the actions of a tyrant that also show what an awful political actor Rhaenyra was. There are some other examples of her bad political action during her time as Princess of Dragonstone, but I’m not going to get into them because being a bad political player doesn’t automatically equate to being a tyrant. Aenys was a terrible and ineffective political actor, but he was no tyrant. It just happens that Rhaenyra was both. Her actions during the Dance and her short tenure sitting the Iron Throne only damned her further on both accounts. Even at the height of her victory, her vengeance and whims proved her an appalling leader and ultimately led to her losing any legitimacy she could have claimed when her actions led to the smallfolk of King’s Landing storming the Dragonpit in a clear rejection of her rule (and to be fair, of Aegon II’s as well), and to even her most leal noble allies deserting her.

During the course of the Dance, Rhaenyra sanctioned the murder of Aegon II’s heir, the six-years-old Prince Jaehaerys, and started a rewarding manhunt for his daughter, the six-years-old Jaehaera and his youngest son, the toddler Maelor, that involved sending out “knights inquisitors” AKA torturers to wring information about them from the people. Strategically and politically, Rhaenyra prolonged the war in pursuit of personal vengeance and ignored Corlys Velaryon’s counsel of war-ending efforts. She insisted on inflicting severe punishments on those who served Aegon II, lined the walls of the Red Keep with severed heads daily (something that soured the smallfolk of King’s Landing on her and led to a comparison to Maegor the Cruel), refused to offer reasonable surrender terms to Lords Baratheon, Lannister and Hightower, and summarily had the Hand Otto Hightower and several members of the small council executed with Tyland Lannister sent to the torturers, all of which made bending the knee to Rhaenyra a rather unattractive option and ensured that the lords on Aegon II’s side would continue to fight to the end since their choices were death in battle or death after surrender. If all the roads led to death, why not go down fighting? Corlys Velaryon argued for pardons and hostages from the noble lords, for Alicent and Helaena to be sent to the Faith and Aegon and Aemond to the Wall, for Princess Jaehaera to be his own ward and in time wed Aegon the Younger in a conciliatory move between the two factions. Rhaenyra actively rejected any attempt of peace talks and chose vengeance instead.

She then doubled down on her brutality and went on to turn the smallfolk against her and alienate her own allies out of paranoia. She showed utter tone-deafness and lack of care for the people of whom she claimed the right to rule when she redirected resources away from a populace wrought by war and hunger and to preparations of a “lavish” party for her last Velaryon son to mark his installation as Prince of Dragonstone. Taxing the people to throw a party is damningly selfish in normal circumstances but doing it in time of war and winter when the people have been suffering for a prolonged period of time as it was (for a petty fight over the throne between two spoiled children no less) is reprehensible. The storming of the Dragonpit was a natural response and a testament to the level of misery the Dance inflicted on the people that facing fire-breathing creatures became an acceptable risk. This was a rejection of the dragons, greens and blacks alike, brought to head by Rhaenyra pushing a populace already pushed to the brink to throw a party. The frankly idiotic order for Addam Velaryon’s arrest and the execution of Nettles in the wake of the Two Betrayers and news of Nettles’ relationship with Rhaenyra’s husband Daemon came after that, and was crippling to Rhaenyra in every way. 

First came another instance of Rhaenyra’s disregard for the law by ordering the arrest of someone who proved nothing but loyal to her and who later went on to die in her service for the grand crime of being bastard-born, made worse by her demand of Lord Mooton of Maindenpool to break one of the oldest tenents of law to kill a teenager protected by guest right under his roof. Which made his options to either defy Rhaenyra’s order which was tantamount to treason in her eyes and basically forfeited his life, or violate an ancient and widely respected taboo and bring down the wrath of the gods upon him (and face the wrath of Daemon and his dragon as well). That the Maidenpool maester showed Prince Daemon and Nettles Rhaenyra’s orders and was promptly followed by Lord Mooton’s defection to Aegon II comes as no surprise in the face of the “foul choice” the queen gave him. Second was the devastating result of that decision. Through her paranoia and vengeful impulses, Rhaenyra effectively forced her allies to turn on her. Besides Lord Mooton, that edict lost her her two most loyal supporters: Coryls Velaryon who warned his nominal grandson Addam of Rhaenyra’s orders leading to Addam’s escape and Coryls’ arrest, and Daemon Targaryen who helped Nettles escape then took off to settle a personal score with Aemond, abandoning Rhaenyra. Considering that Coryls provided like, half of Rhaenyra’s army and all her naval force, Daemon was the commander of her troops and her Protector of the Realm, and that he, Addam and Nettles commanded three out of the four mature dragons on the Blacks’ side, that decision was counterproductive to Rhaenyra’s war efforts and a serious blow to her military strength. It was only Addam Velaryon’s stalwart valor at the Second Battle of Tumbleton that prevented the greens’ descent on Rhaenyra in King’s Landing.

Too, and relatedly, that edict and its consequences also sent a rather damning message to Rhaenyra’s supporters and created uncertainty within her ranks. She was turning on her own allies by this point for absolutely no reason. She ordered a loyal dragonrider’s arrest for no crime just because two other dragonseeds betrayed her and threw one of her staunch supporters, her one-time goodfather, in the black cells awaiting trial and execution. If the queen could turn so easily on her most loyal subjects and on a lord with the weight, influence and familial connection to House Targaryen

like Corlys Velaryon whose family served the queen faithfully and even died for her, if she gave orders to have her own husband subdued and delivered to her in King’s Landing, what’s stopping her from doing the same to the next lord who displeased her?

So I’d say that Rhaenyra was more than just problematic, anon. In light of how she showed herself to be dismissive of the law as something that didn’t apply to her, a dreadful political player who was more interested in serving her own wishes and wants than in anything that benefited the realm, and a dishonorable and brutal figure in both war and peace with no respect to law or social taboos or the rights of the nobility or the suffering of the smallfolk, I’d say she proved herself a tyrant and earned her place as one of the worst Targaryen monarchs in the text.