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| - House Targaryen carries the trait for insanity in its bloodline. Over three hundred years of heavy inbreeding, marrying brother to sister whenever possible to "keep the bloodline pure," resulted in many of the medical problems seen with incest, particularly mental instability. The most prominent example of the Targaryen madness was the last Targaryen king, Aerys II, who subsequently became known as "the Mad King". Aerys suffered from some sort of paranoid schizophrenia, hearing voices in his head that weren't real and told him to burn people alive because they were all plotting against him.
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| abstract
| - House Targaryen carries the trait for insanity in its bloodline. Over three hundred years of heavy inbreeding, marrying brother to sister whenever possible to "keep the bloodline pure," resulted in many of the medical problems seen with incest, particularly mental instability. The most prominent example of the Targaryen madness was the last Targaryen king, Aerys II, who subsequently became known as "the Mad King". Aerys suffered from some sort of paranoid schizophrenia, hearing voices in his head that weren't real and told him to burn people alive because they were all plotting against him. Other Targaryens displayed highly bizarre personalities, though they were not strictly speaking "insane". They didn't have hallucinations or hear voices, but some had aggressive, sociopathic personalities. Aerion Brightflame, the older brother of Maester Aemon and King Aegon V, eventually succumbed to the delusional belief that if he drank wildfire it would transform him into a dragon but instead it killed him. The effects worsened with each generation of compounded inbreeding. By the later centuries of their rule, it was joked that when a new Targaryen was born the gods would flip a coin to decide if they would be a brilliant statesman or insane. This does not mean that all Targaryens were as a rule mentally unstable, as seen with how Daenerys Targaryen is considered to be mentally stable whereas her older brother Viserys is quite disturbed. Daenerys's oldest brother Rhaegar was considered a great man by all who knew him, and Maester Aemon became a wise and revered adviser to the Night's Watch for many decades. Generally, if a Targaryen had multiple sons and one of them was clearly mentally unstable, they would try to skip over him in the line of succession in favor of a more stable younger son. Therefore, fewer of the early Targaryen kings had mental problems, because if a king did have a mentally unstable son he wouldn't be allowed to succeed his father. However, during the last century of their rule the Targaryen madness became increasingly common, making it more and more difficult to avoid having a mentally unstable son inherit the throne. Although not a Targaryen himself, Joffrey Baratheon's incestuous bloodline is thought to have produced similarly severe defects in his sanity; he does not, in fact, have a drop of Baratheon blood in his veins. Joffrey's parents are actually twin brother and sister, Jaime and Cersei Lannister. While he doesn't hear voices or see hallucinations, Joffrey is a sadistic, megalomaniacal sociopath.
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