genuinely no clue. to me it is one of the biggest points of dissonance both plot-wise and thematically in the whole series. If i want to be generous id say that it’s clear that Jaehaerys is remembered as a Good King, like the best possible ruler in the monarchical system, and this is BECAUSE he is unambiguously just a terrible person to his family because that’s what feudalism mandates and that familial destruction causes the civil war? To me this SHOULD be the point, but somehow it is NOT because fire and blood and the main series don’t really draw any particular conclusions about the ethics of Jaehaerys’ rule.
You get to fire and blood and he is just not singularly a standout politician despite everyone saying he is? as a ruler he is not fantastically distinct from maegor the cruel other than their relationship to the faith. He built a bunch of stuff, but most of the reforms were his wife or his septon’s idea and he doesn’t really get enough to demonstrate competence as a ruler. One standout is that he’s so inexplicably terrible at making marriage alliances like he somehow seems genuinely surprised any time one of his kids comes of age and needs a spouse and the only logical explanation for the bonkers matches he makes for his children seems to be active malice against them. His actions specifically his misogyny against Rhaenys literally caused the dynasty destroying civil war.
and if the similarities between the two were the point, the book was making, I would be pretty interested. like yeah they both build all these things but their entire legacy is built on reproductive coercion and violent misogyny. Jae and Maegor both got their start by usurping Rhaena. Jaehaerys is actually worse in terms of how he treats his mother. Maegor actually named a female heir at one point while Jaehaerys refused to do so at multiple points. Like his uncle Jae was also obsessed with making children and forced his wife to have THIRTEEN of them even though she begged him not to. Jaehaerys had someone hold his teenage daughter down and make her watch as he chopped her boyfriend into small pieces with a sword to punish her for having premarital sex.
all of this is just the plot- not atypical for ASOIAF which really focuses on gender violence as a theme and condemning its entrenchment in the setting. except it’s just depicting a lot of violent misogyny without the commentary or making a point about it because Jaehaerys is Good which is really weird unusually shallow writing.
TLDR: there’s so much dissonance in how he is written: he is described as this fantastic ruler, but doesn’t do a lot of big political moves that maegor didn’t, he’s a terrible person, but is never really called out for this by anyone in the text in ways kings like Baelor are. What’s the point? What IS the text trying to say about Jaehaerys? I would also like to know.
