Prince Aegon “Egg” Targaryen dies in the Tragedy at Summerhall , a catastrophic fire at the Targaryen royal castle in 259 AC, during a failed attempt to hatch dragon eggs.

How Egg dies in canon

  • Egg eventually becomes King Aegon V Targaryen , nicknamed “Aegon the Unlikely,” after a long line of relatives die before him.
  • Late in his reign, obsessed with restoring dragons to Westeros, he gathers eggs and mages at Summerhall to perform a ritual to hatch them.
  • The ritual goes wrong and triggers a massive, magical fire that engulfs the castle; Aegon V, his eldest son Duncan the Small , and his old friend Ser Duncan the Tall all perish in the blaze.

The prophecy and foreshadowing

  • In the Dunk & Egg stories, a fortune‑teller tells the young Egg: “You shall be king, and die in a hot fire, and worms shall feed upon your ashes, and all who know you shall rejoice in your dying.”
  • Fans and show commentary note that this prophecy lines up almost exactly with the Summerhall fire , which is treated as both a personal tragedy and a turning‑point that accelerates the Targaryen decline before Robert’s Rebellion.

In the Game of Thrones universe

  • Egg never appears alive in the main Game of Thrones TV series, since he dies decades before the events of the show, but his legacy lives on through his descendants (including Rhaegar, Viserys, and Daenerys) and through his brother Maester Aemon at the Wall.
  • The new HBO series A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (set in the Dunk & Egg era) is expected to build toward this fate, using early scenes and prophecies to foreshadow Egg’s eventual death at Summerhall.

If you want, the next step can be a short timeline table of Egg’s life and death events in Westeros years (AC).