Aerys I Targaryen, the first of his name, was born in 171 AC, the second son of King Daeron II and Queen Myriah Martell. Bookish and withdrawn, he cared more for old scrolls, prophecy, and the higher mysteries than for the work of kingship, and few had ever thought to see him on the Iron Throne. Yet in 209 AC the Great Spring Sickness swept King's Landing and carried off his father and his nephews Valarr and Matarys, while his elder brother Baelor Breakspear had already died of injuries taken at the Trial of Seven at Ashford, and so the crown came unexpectedly to Aerys. He was wed to Lady Aelinor Penrose, but the marriage was loveless and barren and gave the realm no heir; it was whispered that the king never shared his queen's bed at all.
Caring nothing for the labor of rule, Aerys named his nephew Brynden Rivers, the sorcerer called Bloodraven, his Hand of the King and master of whisperers, and left the governing of the Seven Kingdoms in his hands. Some said the king chose him because the two shared a love of arcane lore. Bloodraven ruled in his stead "with spies and spells," and Aerys's reign was a hard one: the realm still reeled from the deaths of the Great Spring Sickness when a drought settled over the land for more than a year, withering the crops, emptying the holdfasts, and turning desperate smallfolk to banditry while travel grew ever less safe. Old feuds festered, among them the long enmity of House Bracken and House Blackwood in the riverlands, and Dagon Greyjoy's longships raided the western coasts unchecked.
The exiled Blackfyres took the troubled years as their opening. In 211 AC a plot gathered around a wedding at Whitewalls to crown Daemon II Blackfyre, but Bloodraven's thousand eyes uncovered it and he marched on the castle, ending the Second Blackfyre Rebellion and taking the pretender captive without a battle. A Third Blackfyre Rebellion followed in the king's later years, likewise broken. Through it all Aerys remained aloof in his library, and when he died in 221 AC after a reign of twelve years, he left no child to follow him. With his brother Rhaegel and Rhaegel's children also dead, the throne passed to the last of Daeron's sons, Maekar, the First of His Name.