The first rebel was also the last. Harren the Red, who was still at large, was finally cornered by Aenys’s Hand, Lord Alyn Stokeworth. In the fighting that ensued, Harren killed Lord Alyn, only to be killed by the Hand’s squire in turn.
With peace reestablished, the king thanked the chief lords and champions who had put down these rebels and enemies of the throne—and the foremost reward went to his brother, Prince Maegor, whom Aenys named as the new Hand of the King. It seemed, at the time, the wisest choice. And yet, it sowed the seeds that sealed Aenys’s doom.
FROM THE HISTORY OF ARCHMAESTER GYLDAYN
The tradition amongst the Targaryens had always been to marry kin to kin. Wedding brother to sister was thought to be ideal. Failing that, a girl might wed an uncle, a cousin, or a nephew; a boy, a cousin, aunt, or niece. This practice went back to Old Valyria, where it was common amongst many of the ancient families, particularly those who bred and rode dragons. “The blood of the dragon must remain pure,” the wisdom went. Some of the sorcerer princes also took more than one wife when it pleased them, though this was less common than incestuous marriage. In Valryia before the Doom, wise men wrote, a thousand gods were honored, but none were feared, so few dared to speak against these customs.
This was not true in Westeros, where the power of the Faith went unquestioned. Incest was denounced as vile sin, whether between father and daughter, mother and son, or brother and sister, and the fruits of such unions were considered abominations in the sight of gods and men. With hindsight, it can be seen that conflict between the Faith and House Targaryen was inevitable.
It had long been the Valyrian custom to marry within the family, thus preserving the royal bloodlines. Yet this was not a custom native to Westeros, and was viewed as an abomination by the Faith. The Dragon and his sisters had been accepted without comment, and the issue had not arisen when Prince Aenys was wed in 22 AC to Alyssa Velaryon, the daughter of the king’s master of ships and lord admiral; though she was a Targaryen upon her mother’s side, this made her only a cousin. But when the tradition looked to continue yet again, matters came to a sudden head.
Queen Visenya proposed that Maegor be wed to Aenys’s first child, Rhaena, but the High Septon mounted a vigorous protest, and Maegor was wed instead to the High Septon’s own niece, Lady Ceryse of House Hightower. But that proved a barren marriage, while Aenys’s bore more fruit, as Rhaena was followed by his son and heir, Aegon, and later Viserys, Jaehaerys, and Alysanne. Perhaps envious, after two years as Hand—and the birth to his brother of yet another daughter, Vaella, who died as an infant—Maegor shocked the realm in 39 AC by announcing that he had taken a second wife—Alys of House Harroway—in secret. He had wed her in a Valyrian ceremony officiated by Queen Visenya for want of a septon willing to wed them. The public outcry was such that Aenys was finally forced to exile his brother.
Aenys seemed content to let the matter lie with Maegor’s exile, but the High Septon was still not satisfied. Not even the appointment of the reputed miracle-worker, Septon Murmison, as Aenys’s new Hand could wholly repair the breach with the Faith. And in 41 AC, Aenys made matters worse when he chose to wed his eldest daughter, Rhaena, to his son and heir, Aegon, whom he named Prince of Dragonstone in Maegor’s place. From the Starry Sept came a denunciation such as no king had ever received before, addressed to “King Abomination”—and suddenly pious lords and even the smallfolk who had once loved Aenys turned against him.
Septon Murmison was expelled from the Faith for performing the ceremony, and zealous Poor Fellows took up arms, hacking Murmison to pieces a fortnight later as he was carried by litter across the city. The Warrior’s Sons began to fortify the Hill of Rhaenys, making the Sept of Remembrance into a citadel that could stand against the king. In addition, some Poor Fellows attempted to murder the king and his family in the castle itself, scaling its walls and slipping into the royal apartments. It was only thanks to a knight of the Kingsguard that the royal family survived.
In the face of all this, Aenys abandoned the city with his family and fled to the safety of Dragonstone. There, Visenya counseled him to take his dragons and bring fire and blood to both the Starry Sept and the Sept of Remembrance. Instead, the king, who was incapable of making a firm decision, fell ill, with painful cramps wracking his stomach and loose bowels. By the end of 41 AC, most of the realm had turned against him. Thousands of Poor Fellows prowled the roads, threatening the king’s supporters, and dozens of lords took up arms against the Iron Throne. Though Aenys was only five-and-thirty, it was said that he looked more like a man of sixty, and Grand Maester Gawen despaired of improving his condition.
The dowager Queen Visenya took over his care, and for a time he improved. And then, quite suddenly, he suffered a collapse when he learned that his son and daughter were besieged in Crakehall Castle, where they had taken refuge when their yearly progress was interrupted by the uprising against the throne. He died three days later, and like his father before him, was burned on Dragonstone, after the fashion of the Valyrians of old.
In later days, after Visenya’s death, it was suggested that King Aenys’s sudden demise was Visenya’s doing, and some spoke of her as a kinslayer and kingslayer. Did she not prefer Maegor over Aenys in all things? Did she not have the ambition that her son should rule? Why, then, did she tend to her stepson and nephew when she seemed disgusted with him? Visenya was many things, but a woman capable of pity never seemed to be one of them. It is a question that cannot be readily dismissed … nor readily answered.
The burning of the Sept of Remembrance. (illustration credit 40)
M AEGOR I
MAEGOR, THE FIRST of His Name, came to the throne after the sudden death of his brother, King Aenys, in the year 42 AC. He is better remembered as Maegor the Cruel, and it was a well-earned sobriquet, for no crueler king ever sat the Iron Throne. His reign began with blood and ended in blood as well. The histories tell us he enjoyed war and battle, but it is clear that it was violence he most craved—violence and death and absolute mastery over all he deemed his. What demon possessed him none could say. Even today, some give thanks that his tyranny was a short one, for who knows how many noble houses might have vanished forever simply to sate his desire?
It was said Aenys was an adequate sword and lance—capable enough not to disgrace himself, but little more. Maegor, on the other hand, was defeating hardened knights in the mêlée when he was all of three-and-ten, and quickly won renown in the royal tourney of 28 AC when he defeated three knights of the Kingsguard in succession in the lists, and went on to win the mêlée. He was knighted by King Aegon at six-and-ten, the youngest knight in the realm at that time.
No sooner had Aenys been buried than Visenya mounted Vhagar and flew east to Pentos, to recall her son Maegor to the Seven Kingdoms following his exile. Maegor flew back across the narrow sea with Balerion, staying at Dragonstone for long enough to be crowned with his father’s Valyrian steel crown instead of his brother’s more ornate one.
Grand Maester Gawen protested, noting that, by the laws of inheritance, Prince Aegon, Aenys’s eldest son, should be king. Maegor’s response was to declare the maester a traitor, sentence him to death, and take his head with a single swing of Blackfyre. After that, few others dared to support Aegon’s claim. Ravens flew, declaring that a new king had been crowned—one who would treat his loyal supporters justly and bring a traitor’s death to those who opposed him.
Chief among Maegor’s foes were the Faith Militant—the orders of the Warrior’s Son and the Poor Fellows—and his war against them provided a constant backdrop to his reign. In King’s Landing, the militant orders had seized hold of the Sept of Remembrance and the half-built Red Keep. But Maegor flew straight into the city, fearless upon Balerion, and raised the red dragon of House Targaryen on Visenya’s Hill to rally men to him. Thousands joined him.
Visenya then challenged any who denied Maegor’s right to rule to prove themselves, and the captain of the Warrior’s Sons accepted the cha
llenge. Ser Damon Morrigen, called Damon the Devout, agreed to a trial of seven after the ancient fashion: Ser Damon and six Warrior’s Sons against the king and his six champions. It was a contest in which the kingdom itself was at stake, and the accounts and tales are many—and often contradictory. What we do know is that King Maegor was the last man left standing, but that he took a grievous blow to the head at the very end and fell senseless to the ground just moments after the last of the Warrior’s Sons died.
For twenty-seven days, Maegor was dead to the world. On the twenty-eighth, Queen Alys arrived from Pentos (Maegor was still without issue), and with her came a Pentoshi beauty called Tyanna of the Tower. She had become Maegor’s lover during his exile, it was clear, and some whispered Queen Alys’s as well. The Dowager Queen, after meeting with Tyanna, gave the king over to her care alone—a fact that troubled Maegor’s supporters.
On the thirtieth day since the trial of seven, the king awoke with the sunrise and walked out onto the walls. Thousands cheered—though not at the Sept of Remembrance, where hundreds of the Warrior’s Sons had gathered for their morning prayers. Then Maegor mounted Balerion and flew from Aegon’s High Hill to the Hill of Rhaenys and, without warning, unleashed the Black Dread’s fire. As the Sept of Remembrance was set alight, some tried to flee, only to be cut down by the archers and spearmen that Maegor had made ready. The screams of the burning and dying men were said to echo throughout the city, and scholars claim that a pall hung over King’s Landing for seven days.
This was only the beginning of Maegor’s war against the Faith Militant, however. The High Septon remained staunchly opposed to his rule, and Maegor continued to gather more and more lords to his side. At the battle at Stonebridge, the Poor Fellows fell in droves and it is said that the Mander ran red with blood for twenty leagues. Afterward, the bridge and the castle that commanded it became known as Bitterbridge.
An even greater battle was joined at the Great Fork of the Blackwater, where thirteen thousand Poor Fellows—as well as hundreds of knights from the chapter of the Warrior’s Sons at Stoney Sept, and hundreds more besides from rebel lords of the riverlands and westerlands who joined them—fought against the king. It was a savage battle that lasted until nightfall, but it was a decisive victory for King Maegor. The king flew on Balerion’s back in the battle, and though rains dampened the Black Dread’s flames, the dragon still left death in its wake.
The Faith Militant remained Maegor’s bitterest enemy for all of his reign, and he remained theirs. Even the mysterious death of the High Septon in 44 AC, followed by a High Septon far more genial and biddable who attempted to disband the Stars and Swords, did little to reduce the constant violence. Maegor’s wars against them were further compounded by his many marriages, as he strove to produce an heir. Yet no matter how many women he wedded—or bedded—he found himself childless. He made brides of women whom he had widowed—women of proved fertility—but the only children born of his seed proved monstrosities: misshapen, eyeless, limbless, or having the parts of man and woman both. His descent into true madness, some say, began with the first of these abominations.
Maegor does hold one distinction in his reign: the completion of the Red Keep in the year 45 AC. It was a project begun by King Aegon and continued by King Aenys, but it was Maegor who saw it finished. He went beyond the plans of both his father and brother, raising a moated castle within the larger castle, which in later days was known as Maegor’s Holdfast. More notably, he was the first to command that secret tunnels and passages be made. False walls were introduced, and trapdoors—and riddled throughout Aegon’s High Hill were more and more tunnels. Maegor’s lack of heirs seemed to matter little as he threw himself into overseeing the construction. He appointed his good-father, Lord Harroway, as his new Hand, and left him to govern the realm for a time while he saw the castle completed.
But, as was typical of Maegor’s reign, even this great achievement was turned to horror. When the keep was at last completed, the king threw a riotous feast for the masons and carvers and other craftsmen who had helped to construct the castle. But after three days of revelry at the king’s expense, they were all put to the sword so that the secrets of the Red Keep would be Maegor’s alone.
In the end, it was a confluence of the Faith and his own family that proved Maegor’s undoing. In 43 AC, his nephew, Prince Aegon, attempted to win back the throne that by law should have been his, in what came to be known as the great Battle Beneath the Gods Eye. Aegon died in that battle, leaving behind his wife and sister Rhaena, and their two twin daughters; his dragon, Quicksilver, was lost as well.
The Battle at Stonebridge. (illustration credit 41)
FROM THE HISTORY OF ARCHMAESTER GYLDAYN
Hardly had the last stone been set on the Red Keep than Maegor commanded that the ruins of the Sept of Remembrance be cleared from the top of Rhaenys’s Hill, and with them the bones and ashes of the Warrior’s Sons who had perished there. In their place, he decreed, a great stone “stable for dragons” would be erected, a lair worthy of Balerion, Vhagar, and their get. Thus commenced the building of the Dragonpit. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it proved difficult to find builders, stonemasons, and laborers to work on the project. So many men ran off that the king was finally forced to use prisoners from the city’s dungeons as his workforce, under the supervision of builders brought in from Myr and Volantis.
Then, late in 45 AC, King Maegor entered a new campaign against the rebellious Faith Militant, who had not put down their swords at the new High Septon’s behest. According to an inventory from that time, the next year the king brought back two thousand skulls as trophies from his campaign, which he claimed to be from outlawed Warrior’s Sons and Poor Fellows, though many thought they were more likely the heads of smallfolk who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Day by day, the realm turned against the king.
The death of the Dowager Queen Visenya in 44 AC was a notable event although Maegor seemed to take it in his stride. She had been his greatest ally and supporter from birth, seeking his advancement over his elder brother Aenys, and doing what she could to secure his legacy. In the confusion after her death, Aenys’s widow, Queen Alyssa, slipped away from Dragonstone with her children, as well as with Dark Sister, Visenya’s Valyrian steel sword. Alyssa and Aenys’s next eldest son after Aegon, Prince Viserys, had been kept at the Red Keep as the king’s squire, however, and he suffered for her flight. He died after nine days of questioning at the hands of Tyanna of the Tower. The king left his body in the castle courtyard, like so much offal, for a fortnight, hoping that word of it would force Queen Alyssa to claim her son’s body, but she did not return. Viserys was fifteen at his death.
In 48 AC, Septon Moon and Ser Joffrey Doggett—also known as the Red Dog of the Hills—led the Poor Fellows against the king, and Riverrun stood with them. When Lord Daemon Velaryon, the admiral of the king’s fleets, turned against Maegor as well, many of the great houses joined with him. Maegor’s tyrannical reign could no longer be borne, and the realm rose up to end it. Unifying them all was the claim put forward by the young Prince Jaehaerys—Aenys and Alyssa’s only remaining son, now all of fourteen years of age—and supported by the Lord of Storm’s End whom Jaehaerys had named as Protector of the Realm and Hand of the King. When Queen Rhaena—whom Maegor had married after Aegon’s death—learned of her brother’s proclamation, she fled on her dragon, Dreamfyre, stealing Blackfyre away as her king and husband slept. Even two of the Kingsguard abandoned Maegor, joining Jaehaerys instead.
Maegor’s response to this was slow and confused, and it seems that this series of betrayals—and perhaps even the loss of his mother’s guidance—had left him, in his own way, as broken as Aenys. He called his loyal lords to King’s Landing, but all that came were minor lords of the crownlands, who had little to marshal against the king’s many enemies. It was late at night, during the hour of the wolf, when the remaining lords departed the council chamber, leaving Maegor to brood alone. Early the
next morning, he was found dead on the throne, his robes sodden with blood, his arms slashed open by the barbs of the Iron Throne.
Thus ended Maegor the Cruel. How he came to die is a matter of much speculation. Though the singers would have us believe that the Iron Throne itself killed him, some suspect his Kingsguard, and others some mason whom the king had failed to kill and who knew the secrets of the Red Keep. But perhaps even likelier is the suggestion that the king killed himself rather than suffer defeat. Whatever the truth, it was a reign that ended in the only way it could after the six years of terror that Maegor had visited upon the realm. But his nephew’s reign would do much to mend the deep wounds he had made in the Seven Kingdoms.
Maegor I, dead upon the Iron Throne. (illustration credit 42)
The Brides of Maegor the Cruel
CERYSE OF HOUSE HIGHTOWER
Ceryse was the daughter of Martyn Hightower, the Lord of Oldtown. She was advanced by her uncle, the High Septon, after he protested the betrothal of the thirteen-year-old Prince Maegor to Maegor’s newborn niece, Princess Rhaena. Ceryse and Maegor were married in 25 AC. The prince claimed to have consummated their marriage a dozen times on their wedding night, but no sons ever came of it. He soon grew tired of Ceryse’s failure to bear him an heir and began taking other brides. Ceryse died in 45 AC, taken by a sudden illness, though it is also rumored that she was killed at the king’s command.
The World of Ice & Fire: The Untold History of Westeros and the Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire) Page 9