Maegor's cruelty

[Drekinn]

Despite executing the grandmaester, Maegor's violence seemed to be really amplified after waking from his coma. So, do you think Tyanna healed him with dark magic, similar to what Mirri Maz Duur was doing to Drogo? Or did the strong bash to the head damaged further his inbred brain?

[Mrs.Grumpy]

I think it's both. Magic was definitely a factor there.

[The silver dragon]

neither.

Maegor was merely a pragmatic asshole.

[The hairy bear]

The way he dealt with rebels in the begining of his brother's reign seems cruel enough for me. I would say it was in his character from the begining.

[Bright Blue Eyes]

Traumatic experiences are more than enough reason to go overboard. No need for any magic.

[Mithras]

Maegor's very conception was by magic.

[The silver dragon]

The way he dealt with rebels in the begining of his brother's reign seems cruel enough for me. I would say it was in his character from the begining.

how?

all he did was hang jonos arryn, which is the customary punishment for high treason.

[Lord Varys]

Maegor was always into violence, and had not exactly a forgiving nature. TWoIaF doesn't cover that, but he did actually also hang Jonos Arryn's (former) allies who gave Jonos up following his arrival on Balerion despite the fact that Maegor promised them not to kill him.

Yandel states that the births of his monstrous children were the reason he was driven mad, though. That began in 44 AC when Alys gave birth to her monstrosity, and the testament for that is reaction to Tyanna's tale that she had cheated on him. The monstrosities in 47-48 after the marriage to the black brides obviously is what led to his breaking and subsequent downfall. The man seems to have lost his grip on reality and apparently killed what little allies he had left in the process.

[Lemon of Lemonwood]

Yandel states that the births of his monstrous children were the reason he was driven mad, though.

I think the true damage was due to the head trauma.The babies were more like the straw that broke the camel's back.

Interestingly,Maegor can be compared with many modern serial killers.Their similar traits include:

• animal abuse at young age

lonely and neglected childhood

antisocial behaviour

pyromania

severe head trauma

And if we look for a historical monarch to compare him,Henry the VIII fills the bill perfectly:

• both were the younger sons

their fathers prefered their elder brothers

both were renowned for being strong at arms and liking bloody sports

both suffered a several head injury and become increasingly paranoid after it

both had a poor reproductive record and took many wives to resolve it,clushing with religion for it

both killed wives on -probably-false adultery charges after a miscarriage

[Lord Varys]

Maegor's violent tendencies were always there. I imagine the head trauma as a quite severe brush with his own mortality (perhaps even more than that considering that Tyanna's magic was apparently involved in his healing process) leading to an even strong 'all or nothing' and 'no mercy with the enemy' approach. Or not, it is difficult to say whether Maegor would have treated the Faith Militant differently had he not suffered the blow to the head.

[Arakan]

Is Maegor inspired by Ivan the Terrible?

[The Skinner]

Maegor was always a violent asshole. But I do believe that he was on another level after the coma. I mean he's down for like 28 days, Alys returns with Tyanna and Visenya leaves him in her care and then the next day he's up and burning people alive. He was king, it's pretty logical to assume the grandmaester was taking care of him and he couldn't do it; but Tyanna could? I mean if he was so crazy from the get go, why bother with the trial of seven that puts him in the coma in the first place? Why not raze the sept of remembrance from the jump? I mean what if he died and was resurrected by her, we've seen what death and resurrection does to people.

[Gasp of Many Reeds]

Is Maegor inspired by Ivan the Terrible?

Don't see that many parallels to be honest. Ivan is regarded as having been a good ruler for parts of his long reign (1547-1584), and greatly expanded Muscovy's territory and power, especially by defeating Kazan and conquering parts of Siberia (admittedly, whilst he was generally successful militarily, Ivan's financial mismanagement and handing out of estates to his favoured supporters are considered to have contributed to Muscovy's economic decline towards the end of his reign). His paranoid streak increasingly, however, became apparent (the death of his first wife in 1560 is cited as a possible exacerbating factor), and from the 1560s onward he became increasingly aggressive and repressive towards his boyars, establishing the oprichnina (secret police) which he then used to persecute nobles he suspected of treachery. This culminated in his use of the oprichnina to sack Novgorod in 1570, where thousands are supposed to have died, including many civilians. Towards the end of his reign, Ivan became increasingly prone to fits of rage, infamously resulting in his killing his own heir (also named Ivan) in a fight triggered by Ivan's beating of his pregnant daughter in law for wearing 'immodest' clothing. 

 

So all in all, Ivan was certainly a brutal monarch cursed by a tragically violent madness and paranoia. But all in all, he was able not only hold Muscovy together but to greatly expand its territory over a long reign. The Russian state he left behind was unstable and weakened under the rule of his mentally feeble son Feodor, but Ivan arguably did much more to establish Russia's greatness than to harm it.

 

Maegor, on the other hand, came very close to tearing Westeros apart with his war on the Faith, and only ruled for a mercifully brief time. His madness does not appear particularly intermittent and he seems far more of a monster than Ivan despite the latter's terrible acts (but then, we hardly ever hear a sympathetic source on Maegor, whereas Ivan has been admired for centuries by Russian chroniclers in spite of his cruelties).

[twikee]

Didn't Tyanna admit that she was the reason why Maegor's children were deformed? Maybe she paid for his "awakening" by the lives of his children.

[Lord Varys]

Tyanna said that, but the context is unclear. It is actually quite likely that she confessed this under torture rather than, say, after she and Maegor had had the best night of their lives. Maegor killed her in 48 AC, probably after both Jeyne Westerling and Elinor Costayne had had their monstrous children, and he may have been searching for somebody to blame for the monstrosity since he could never admit or entertain the idea that he himself was the one to blame (just as Aerys II later decreed that all of Rhaella's stillbirths and miscarriages couldn't have been his seed).

 

A more intriguing notion is that Tyanna was indeed to blame - but not for poisoning the unborn children but for the fact that there was actually a conception at all. Remember, Maegor was married to Ceryse Hightower for over a decade before he married Alys Harroway - who was married to him for five years - but only after he and Alys had met the reputed sorceress Tyanna in Pentos and returned to Westeros did any of Maegor's wife get pregnant from him (Alys in 44 AC). After Alys' miscarriage and the monstrous offspring Tyanna could deflect the blame to Alys and some invented lovers she supposedly had - but what if the spells Tyanna used to make Maegor's semen viable simply didn't work as they were supposed to. They enabled the semen to quicken the womb - which Maegor couldn't do on his own all those years - but failed to produce healthy human offspring.

 

Another hint that Tyanna's magic may have been involved in the conception of Maegor's children is the fact that they only begin after Visenya's death - if Visenya herself had used magic to conceive Maegor, and if she had known and warned her son to take the same path (say, because she knew that wouldn't work) then it makes sense why Maegor only dared to use magic for that enterprise after his mother's death.