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Their queen’s misgivings thus confirmed, Rogar Baratheon and the other lords put aside all consideration of Princess Alysanne as a bride for her brother Jaehaerys. The princess was three-and-ten years of age, and had recently celebrated her first flowering, so it was thought desirable to see her wed as soon as possible. Though still far apart as regarded a suitable match for the king, the council settled swiftly on a partner for the princess; she would be married on the seventh day of the new year, to Orryn Baratheon, the youngest of Lord Rogar’s brothers.
Thus it was settled by the Queen Regent and the King’s Hand and their lords councillors and advisors. But like many such arrangements through the ages, their plan was soon undone, for they had grievously underestimated the will and determination of Alysanne Targaryen herself, and her young king, Jaehaerys.
No announcement had yet been made of Alysanne’s betrothal, so it is not known how word of the decision reached her ears. Grand Maester Benifer suspected a servant, for many such had come and gone whilst the lords debated in the queen’s solar. Lord Rogar himself was suspicious of Daemon Velaryon, the lord admiral, a prideful man who might well have believed that the Baratheons were overreaching themselves in hopes of displacing the Lords of the Tide as the second house in the realm. Years later, when these events had passed into legend, the smallfolk would tell each other that “rats in the walls” had overheard the lords talking and rushed to the princess with the news.
No record survives of what Alysanne Targaryen said or thought when first she learned that she was to be wed to a youth ten years her senior, whom she scarcely knew and (if rumor can be believed) did not like. We know only what she did. Another girl might have wept or raged or run pleading to her mother. In many a sad song, maidens forced to wed against their will throw themselves from tall towers to their deaths. Princess Alysanne did none of these things. Instead she went directly to Jaehaerys.
The young king was as displeased as his sister at the news. “They will be making wedding plans for me as well, I do not doubt,” he deduced at once. Like his sister, Jaehaerys did not waste time with reproaches, recriminations, or appeals. Instead he acted. Summoning his Kingsguard, he instructed them to sail at once for Dragonstone, where he would meet them shortly. “You have sworn me your swords and your obedience,” he reminded his Seven. “Remember those vows, and speak no word of my departure.”
That night, under cover of darkness, King Jaehaerys and Princess Alysanne mounted their dragons, Vermithor and Silverwing, and departed the Red Keep for the ancient Targaryen citadel below the Dragonmont. Reportedly the first words the young king spoke upon landing were, “I have need of a septon.”
The king, rightly, had no trust in Septon Mattheus, who would surely have betrayed their plans, but the sept on Dragonstone was tended by an old man named Oswyck, who had known Jaehaerys and Alysanne since their births, and instructed them in the mysteries of the Seven throughout their childhood. As a younger man, Septon Oswyck had ministered to King Aenys, and as a boy he had served as a novice in the court of Queen Rhaenys. He was more than familiar with the Targaryen tradition of sibling marriage, and when he heard the king’s command, he assented at once.
The Kingsguard arrived from King’s Landing by galley a few days later. The following morning, as the sun rose, Jaehaerys Targaryen, the First of His Name, took to wife his sister Alysanne in the great yard at Dragonstone, before the eyes of gods and men and dragons. Septon Oswyck performed the marriage rites; though the old man’s voice was thin and tremulous, no part of the ceremony was neglected. The seven knights of the Kingsguard stood witness to the union, their white cloaks snapping in the wind. The castle’s garrison and servants looked on as well, together with a good part of the smallfolk of the fishing village that huddled below Dragonstone’s mighty curtain walls.
A modest feast followed the ceremony, and many toasts were drunk to the health of the boy king and his new queen. Afterward Jaehaerys and Alysanne retired to the bedchamber where Aegon the Conqueror had once slept beside his sister Rhaenys, but in view of the bride’s youth there was no bedding ceremony, and the marriage was not consummated.
That omission would prove to be of great importance when Lord Rogar and Queen Alyssa arrived belatedly from King’s Landing in a war galley, accompanied by a dozen knights, forty men-at-arms, Septon Mattheus, and Grand Maester Benifer, whose letters give us the most complete accounting of what transpired.
Jaehaerys and Alysanne met them inside the castle gates, holding hands. It is said that Queen Alyssa wept when she saw them. “You foolish children,” she said. “You know not what you’ve done.”
Then up spoke Septon Mattheus, his voice thunderous as he berated the king and queen and prophesized that this abomination would once more plunge all of Westeros into war. “They shall curse your incest from the Dornish Marches to the Wall, and every pious son of the Mother and the Father shall denounce you as the sinners you are.” The septon’s face grew red and swollen as he raved, Benifer tells us, and spittle sprayed from his lips.
Jaehaerys the Conciliator is rightly honored in the annals of the Seven Kingdoms for his calm demeanor and even temper, but let no man think that the fire of the Targaryens did not burn in his veins. He showed it then. When Septon Mattheus finally paused for a breath, the king said, “I will accept chastisement from Her Grace my mother, but not from you. Hold your tongue, fat man. If another word passes your lips, I will have them sewn shut.”
Septon Mattheus spoke no more.
Lord Rogar was not so easily cowed. Blunt and to the point, he asked only if the marriage had been consummated. “Tell me true, Your Grace. Was there a bedding? Did you claim her maidenhead?”
“No,” the king replied. “She is too young.”
At that Lord Rogar smiled. “Good. You are not wed.” He turned to the knights who had accompanied him from King’s Landing. “Separate these children, gently if you please. Escort the princess to Sea Dragon Tower and keep her there. His Grace shall accompany us back to the Red Keep.”
But as his men moved forward, the seven knights of Jaehaerys’s Kingsguard stepped up and drew their swords. “Come no closer,” warned Ser Gyles Morrigen. “Any man who lays a hand upon our king and queen shall die today.”
Lord Rogar was dismayed. “Sheath your steel and move aside,” he commanded. “Have you forgotten? I am the King’s Hand.”
“Aye,” old Sour Sam answered, “but we’re the Kingsguard, not the Hand’s guard, and it’s the lad who sits the chair, not you.”
Rogar Baratheon bristled at Ser Samgood’s words, and answered, “You are seven. I have half a hundred swords behind me. A word from me and they will cut you to pieces.”
“They might kill us,” replied young Pate the Woodcock, brandishing his spear, “but you will be the first to die, m’lord, you have my word upon that.”
What might have happened next no man can say, had not Queen Alyssa chosen that moment to speak. “I have seen enough death,” she said. “So have we all. Put up your swords, sers. What is done is done, and now we all must needs live with it. May the gods have mercy on the realm.” She turned to her children. “We shall go in peace. Let no man speak of what happened here today.”
“As you command, Mother.” King Jaehaerys pulled his sister closer and put his arm around her. “But do not think that you shall unmake this marriage. We are one now, and neither gods nor men shall part us.”
“Never,” his bride affirmed. “Send me to the ends of the earth and wed me to the King of Mossovy or the Lord of the Grey Waste, Silverwing will always bring me back to Jaehaerys.” And with that she raised herself onto her toes and lifted her face to the king, and he kissed her full upon the lips whilst all looked on.[1]
When the Hand and the Queen Regent had made their departure, the king and his young bride closed the castle gates and returned to their chambers. Dragonstone would remain their refuge and their residence for the remainder of Jaehaerys’s minority. It is written that the young king and queen were seldom apart during that time, sharing every meal, talking late into the night of the green days of their childhood and the challenges ahead, fishing and hawking together, mingling with the island’s smallfolk in dockside inns, reading to one another from dusty leatherbound tomes they found in the castle library, taking lessons together from Dragonstone’s maesters (“for we still have much to learn,” Alysanne is said to have reminded her husband), praying beside Septon Oswyck. They flew together as well, all around the Dragonmont and oft as far as Driftmark.
If servants’ tales may be believed, the king and his new queen slept naked and shared many long and lingering kisses, abed and at table and at many other times throughout the day, yet never consummated their union. Another year and a half would pass before Jaehaerys and Alysanne would finally join as man and woman.
Whenever lords and council members traveled to Dragonstone to consult with the young king, as they did from time to time, Jaehaerys received them in the Chamber of the Painted Table where his grandsire had once planned his conquest of Westeros, with Alysanne ever by his side. “Aegon had no secrets from Rhaenys and Visenya, and I have none from Alysanne,” he said.
Though it might well have been that there were no secrets between them during these bright days in the morning of the marriage, their union itself remained a secret to most of Westeros. Upon their return to King’s Landing, Lord Rogar instructed all those who had accompanied them to Dragonstone to speak no word of what had transpired there, if they wished to keep their tongues. Nor was any announcement made to the realm at large. When Septon Mattheus attempted to send word of the match to the High Septon and Most Devout in Oldtown, Grand Maester Benifer burned his letter rather than dispatch a raven, on orders from the Hand.
The Lord of Storm’s End wanted time. Angry at the disrespect he felt the king had shown him and unaccustomed to defeat, Rogar Baratheon remained determined to find a way to part Jaehaerys and Alysanne. So long as their marriage remained unconsummated, he believed, a chance remained. Best then to keep the wedding secret, so it might be undone without anyone being the wiser.
Queen Alyssa wanted time as well, though for a different reason. What is done is done, she had said at the gates of Dragonstone, and so she believed … but memories of the bloodshed and chaos that had greeted the marriage of her other son and daughter still haunted her nights, and the Queen Regent was desperate to find some way to ascertain that history would not be repeated.
Meanwhile, she and her lord husband still had a realm to rule for the best part of a year, until Jaehaerys attained his sixteenth nameday and took the power into his own hands.
And so matters stood in Westeros as the Year of the Three Brides drew to an end, and gave way to a new year, the 50th since Aegon’s Conquest.
A Surfeit of Rulers
All men are sinners, the Fathers of the Faith teach us.
Even the noblest of kings and the most chivalrous of knights may find themselves overcome by rage and lust and envy, and commit acts that shame them and tarnish their good names. And the vilest of men and the wickedest of women likewise may do good from time to time, for love and compassion and pity may be found in even the blackest of hearts. “We are as the gods made us,” wrote Septon Barth, the wisest man ever to serve as the Hand of the King, “strong and weak, good and bad, cruel and kind, heroic and selfish. Know that if you would rule over the kingdoms of men.”
Seldom was the truth of his words seen as clearly as during the 50th year after Aegon’s Conquest. As the new year dawned, all across the realm plans were being made to mark a half century of Targaryen rule over Westeros with feasts, fairs, and tourneys. The horrors of King Maegor’s rule were receding into the past, the Iron Throne and the Faith were reconciled, and the young King Jaehaerys I was the darling of smallfolk and great lords alike from Oldtown to the Wall. Yet unbeknownst to all but a few, storm clouds were gathering on the horizon, and faintly in the distance wise men could hear a rumble of thunder.
A realm with two kings is like a man with two heads, the smallfolk are wont to say. In 50 AC, the realm of Westeros found itself blessed with one king, a Hand, and three queens, as in King Maegor’s day … but whereas Maegor’s queens had been consorts, subservient to his will, living and dying at his whim, each of the queens of the half-century was a power in her own right.
In the Red Keep of King’s Landing sat the Queen Regent Alyssa, widow of the late King Aenys, mother to his son Jaehaerys, and wife to the King’s Hand, Rogar Baratheon. Just across Blackwater Bay on Dragonstone, a younger queen had arisen when Alyssa’s daughter Alysanne, a maid of thirteen years, had pledged her troth to her brother King Jaehaerys, against the wishes of her mother and her mother’s lord husband. And far to the west on Fair Isle, with the whole width of Westeros separating her from both mother and sister, was Alyssa’s eldest daughter, the dragonrider Rhaena Targaryen, widow of Prince Aegon the Uncrowned. In the westerlands, riverlands, and parts of the Reach, men were already calling her the Queen in the West.
Two sisters and a mother, the three queens were bound by blood and grief and suffering … and yet between them lay shadows old and new, growing darker by the day. The amity and unity of purpose that had enabled Jaehaerys, his sisters, and their mother to topple Maegor the Cruel had begun to fray, as long-simmering resentments and divisions made themselves felt. For the remainder of the regency the boy king and his little queen would find themselves deeply at odds with the King’s Hand and the Queen Regent, in a rivalry that would continue into Jaehaerys’s own reign and threaten to plunge the Seven Kingdoms back into war.[1]
The immediate cause of the tension was the king’s sudden and secret marriage to his sister, which had taken the Hand and the Queen Regent unawares and thrown their own plans and schemes into disarray. It would be a mistake to believe that was the sole cause of the estrangement, however; the other weddings that had made 49 AC the Year of the Three Brides had also left scars.
Lord Rogar had never asked Jaehaerys for leave to wed his mother, an omission the boy king took for a sign of disrespect. Moreover, His Grace did not approve of the match; as he would later confess to Septon Barth, he valued Lord Rogar as a counselor and friend, but he did not need a second father, and thought his own judgment, temperament, and intelligence to be superior to his Hand’s. Jaehaerys also felt he should have been consulted about his sister Rhaena’s marriage, though he felt that slight less keenly. Queen Alyssa, for her part, was deeply hurt that she had neither been advised of nor invited to Rhaena’s wedding on Fair Isle.
Away in the west, Rhaena Targaryen nursed her own grievances. As she confided to the old friends and favorites she had gathered around her, Queen Rhaena neither understood nor shared her mother’s affection for Rogar Baratheon. Though she honored him grudgingly for rising in support of her brother Jaehaerys against their uncle Maegor, his inaction when her own husband, Prince Aegon, faced Maegor in the Battle Beneath the Gods Eye was something she could neither forget nor forgive. Also, with the passage of time Queen Rhaena grew ever more resentful that her own claim to the Iron Throne, and that of her daughters, had been disregarded in favor of that of “my baby brother” (as she was wont to call Jaehaerys). She was the firstborn, she reminded those who would listen, and had been a dragonrider before any of her siblings, yet all of them and “even my own mother” had conspired to pass her over.
Looking back now with the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to say that Jaehaerys and Alysanne had the right of it in the conflicts that arose during the last year of their mother’s regency, and to cast Queen Alyssa and Lord Rogar as villains. That is how the singers tell the tale, certainly; the swift and sudden marriage of Jaehaerys and Alysanne was a romance unequaled since the days of Florian the Fool and his Jonquil, to hear them sing of it. And in songs, as ever, love conquers all. The truth, we submit, is a deal less simple. Queen Alyssa’s misgivings about the match grew out of genuine concern for her children, the Targaryen dynasty, and the realm as a whole. Nor were her fears without foundation.
Lord Rogar Baratheon’s motives were less selfless. A proud man, he had been stunned and angered by the “ingratitude” of the boy king he had regarded as a son, and humiliated when forced to back down at the gates of Dragonstone before half a hundred of his men. A warrior to the bone, Rogar had once dreamed of facing Maegor the Cruel in single combat, and could not stomach being shamed by a lad of fifteen years. Lest we think too harshly of him, however, we would do well to remember Septon Barth’s words. Though he would do some cruel, foolish, and evil things during his last year as Hand, he was not a cruel or evil man at heart, nor even a fool; he had been a hero once, and we must remember that even as we look at the darkest year of his life.
In the immediate aftermath of his confrontation with Jaehaerys, Lord Rogar could think of little else but the humiliation he had suffered. His lordship’s first impulse was to return to Dragonstone with more men, enough to overwhelm the castle garrison and resolve the situation by force. As for the Kingsguard, Lord Rogar reminded the council that the White Swords had sworn to lay down their lives for the king and “I shall be pleased to give them that honor.” When Lord Tully pointed out that Jaehaerys could simply close the gates of Dragonstone against them, Lord Rogar was undeterred. “Let him. I can take the castle by storm if need be.” In the end only Queen Alyssa could reach his lordship through his wroth and dissuade him from this folly. “My love,” she said softly, “my children ride dragons, and we do not.”
The Queen Regent, no less than her husband, wished to have the king’s rash marriage undone, for she was convinced that word of it would once again set the Faith against the Crown. Her fears were fanned by Septon Mattheus; once away from Jaehaerys, and secure in the knowledge that his lips would not be sewn shut, the septon found his tongue again, and spoke of little else but how “all decent folk” would condemn the king’s incestuous union.
Had Jaehaerys and Alysanne returned to King’s Landing in time to celebrate the new year, as Queen Alyssa prayed (“They will come to their senses and repent this folly,” she told the council), reconciliation might have been possible, but that did not happen. When a fortnight came and went and then another, and still the king did not reappear at court, Alyssa announced her intention to return to Dragonstone, this time alone, to beg her children to come home. Lord Rogar angrily forbade it. “If you go crawling back to him, the boy will never listen to you again,” he said. “He has put his own desires ahead of the good of the realm, and that cannot be allowed. Do you want him to end as his father did?” And so the queen bent to his will and did not go.
“That Queen Alyssa wished to do the right thing, no man should doubt,” Septon Barth wrote years later. “Sad to say, however, she oft seemed at a loss as to what that thing might be. She desired above all to be loved, admired, and praised, a yearning she shared with King Aenys, her first husband. A ruler must sometimes do things that are necessary but unpopular, however, though he knows that opprobrium and censure must surely follow. These things Queen Alyssa could seldom bring herself to do.”
Days passed and turned to weeks and thence to fortnights, whilst hearts hardened and men grew more resolute on both sides of Blackwater Bay. The boy king and his little queen remained on Dragonstone, awaiting the day when Jaehaerys would take the rule of the Seven Kingdoms in his own hands. Queen Alyssa and Lord Rogar continued to hold the reins of power in King’s Landing, searching for a way to undo the king’s marriage and avert the calamity they were certain was to come. Aside from the council, they told no one of what had transpired on Dragonstone, and Lord Rogar commanded the men who had accompanied them to speak no word of what they had seen, at the penalty of losing their tongues. Once the marriage had been annulled, his lordship reasoned, it would be as if it had never happened so far as most of Westeros was concerned … so long as it remained secret. Until the union was consummated, it could still easily be set aside.
This would prove to be a vain hope, as we know now, but to Rogar Baratheon in 50 AC it seemed possible. For a time he must surely have drawn encouragement from the king’s own silence. Jaehaerys had moved swiftly to marry Alysanne, but having done the deed he seemed in no great haste to announce it. He certainly had the means to do so, had he so desired. Maester Culiper, still spry at eighty, had been serving since Queen Visenya’s day, and was ably assisted by two younger maesters. Dragonstone had a full complement of ravens. At a word from Jaehaerys, his marriage could have been proclaimed from one end of the realm to the other. He did not speak that word.
Scholars have debated ever since as to the reasons for his silence. Was he repenting a match made in haste, as Queen Alyssa would have wished? Had Alysanne somehow offended him? Had he grown fearful of the realm’s response to the marriage, recalling all that had befallen Aegon and Rhaena? Was it possible that Septon Mattheus’s dire prophecies had shaken him more than he cared to admit? Or was he simply a boy of fifteen who had acted rashly with no thought to the consequences, only to find himself now at a loss as to how to proceed?
Arguments can and have been made for all these explanations, but in light of what we know now about Jaehaerys I Targaryen, they ultimately ring hollow. Young or old, this was a king who never acted without thinking. To this writer it seems plain that Jaehaerys was not repenting his marriage and had no intention of undoing it. He had chosen the queen he wanted and would make the realm aware of that in due course, but at a time of his own choosing, in a manner best calculated to lead to acceptance: when he was a man grown and a king ruling in his own right, not a boy who had wed in defiance of his regent’s wishes.
The young king’s absence from court did not go unnoticed for long. The ashes of the bonfires lit in celebration of the new year had scarce grown cold before the people of King’s Landing began asking questions. To curtail the rumors, Queen Alyssa put out word that His Grace was resting and reflecting on Dragonstone, the ancient seat of his house … but as more time passed, with still no sign of Jaehaerys, lords and smallfolk alike began to wonder. Was the king ill? Had he been made a prisoner, for reasons yet unknown? The personable and handsome boy king had moved amongst the people of King’s Landing so freely, seemingly delighting in mingling with them, that this sudden disappearance seemed unlike him.
Queen Alysanne, for her part, was in no haste to return to court. “Here I have you to myself, day and night,” she told Jaehaerys. “When we go back, I shall be fortunate to snatch an hour with you, for every man in Westeros will want a piece of you.” For her, these days on Dragonstone were an idyll. “Many years from now when we are old and grey, we shall look back upon these days and smile, remembering how happy we were.”
Jaehaerys himself no doubt shared some of these sentiments, but the young king had other reasons for remaining on Dragonstone. Unlike his uncle Maegor, he was not prone to bursts of rage, but he was more than capable of anger, and he would never forget nor forgive his deliberate exclusion from the council meetings wherein his marriage and that of his sister were being discussed. And whilst he would always remain grateful to Rogar Baratheon for helping him to the Iron Throne, Jaehaerys did not intend to be ruled by him. “I had one father,” he said to Maester Culiper during those days on Dragonstone, “I do not require a second.” The king recognized and appreciated the virtues of the Hand, but he was aware of his flaws as well, flaws that had become very apparent in the days leading up to the Golden Wedding, when Jaehaerys himself had sat in audience with the lords of the realm whilst Lord Rogar was hunting, drinking, and deflowering maidens.