After Robert's death, control of the Crownlands and King's Landing passed to Joffrey, after his death - to Tommen, and then to Cersei.ДЄfter Cersei's death, she was succeeded by Daenerys Targaryen, who was killed shortly afterwards. When House Targaryen was deposed at the end of Robert's Rebellion, seventeen years before the War of the Five Kings, Robert took the throne, and his new House Baratheon of King's Landing took up the rule of the Crownlands. ДЇor most of its three centuries of existence the Crownlands were ruled directly by House Targaryen and their subordinate vassals. None of them wanted to deal with the Targaryen threat directly, and each wasted so much time arguing that Aegon was really the problem of the other two respective kingdoms that the Targaryens were able to land all of their forces and establish a firm beachhead unopposed. One of the main reasons Aegon the Conqueror began his invasion in the area which would become the Crownlands is because it was where the borders between these three powerful rival kingdoms met. Culturally and historically, the Crownlands were primarily an extension of the Riverlands, but with cultural influences from neighboring regions which periodically captured territory in the region, such as the Stormlands, the Reach, and even the Iron Islands.

The Riverlands were always more of a borderland frequently changing hands between rival strong kingdoms and were not an independent kingdom at the time of the Targaryen Conquest, and thus are technically not counted as one of the 'Seven' Kingdoms.В The Crownlands are even younger than the Riverlands (which are loosely the 'eighth' kingdom), which at least existed as a loose cultural area for thousands of years even if they weren't always politically independent, thus the Crownlands functionally make up the ninth 'kingdom' within the realm anachronistically known as 'the Seven Kingdoms'. It is therefore the newest of the regions in Westeros, and as a result, does not have much of a distinct 'cultural identity', so much as it is shaped by its distinction as the region containing the capital city.

The Crownlands were never a sovereign nation, instead being contested between the Riverlands, the Stormlands, and other regions for thousands of years until Aegon the Conqueror seized control of the area during his invasion and made it his primary foothold on the continent, three centuries before the death of King Robert Baratheon.

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