restored to favor if she had done as she was told, if she had remained meekly in her chambers reflecting on her sins and praying for forgiveness. Jaehaerys and Alysanne met all the next day with Barth and Grand Maester Elysar, discussing what was to be done with the six sinners, particularly the princess. The king was angry and unyielding, for his shame was deeply felt, and he could not forget Saera’s taunting words about his uncle’s wives. “She is no longer my daughter,” he said more than once.
Queen Alysanne could not find it in her heart to be so harsh, however. “She is our daughter,” she told the king. “She must be punished, yes, but she is still a child, and where there is sin there can be redemption. My lord, my love, you reconciled with the lords who fought for your uncle, you forgave the men who rode with Septon Moon, you reconciled with the Faith, and with Lord Rogar when he tried to tear us apart and put Aerea on your throne, surely you can find some way to reconcile with your own daughter.”
Her Grace’s words were soft and gentle, and Jaehaerys was moved by them, Septon Barth tells us. Alysanne was stubborn and persistent and she had a way of bringing the king around to her own point of view, no matter how far apart they had been at the start. Given time, she might have softened his stance on Saera as well.
She would not have that time. That very night, Princess Saera sealed her fate. Instead of remaining in her rooms as she had been instructed, she slipped away whilst visiting the privy, donned a washerwoman’s robes, stole a horse from the stables, and escaped the castle. She got halfway across the city, to the Hill of Rhaenys, but as she tried to enter the Dragonpit, she was found and taken by the Dragonkeepers and returned to the Red Keep.
Alysanne wept when she heard, for she knew her cause was hopeless. Jaehaerys was hard as stone. “Saera with a dragon,” was all he had to say. “Would she have taken Balerion as well, I wonder?” This time the princess was not allowed to return to her own chambers. She was confined to a tower cell instead, with Jonquil Darke guarding her day and night, even in the privy.
Hasty marriages were arranged for her sisters in sin. Perianne Moore, who was not pregnant, was wed to Jonah Mooton. “You played a part in her ruin, you can be a part of her redemption,” the king told the young lordling. The marriage proved to be a success, and in time the two became the lord and lady of Maidenpool. Alys Turnberry, who was pregnant, presented a harder case, as Red Roy Connington refused to marry her. “I will not pretend Stinger’s bastard is my son, nor make him the heir to Griffin’s Roost,” he told the king, defiant. Instead Sweetberry was sent to the Vale to give birth (a girl, with bright red hair) at a motherhouse on an island in Gulltown harbor where many lords sent their natural daughters to be raised. Afterward she was married to Dunstan Pryor, the Lord of Pebble, an island off the Fingers.
Connington was given a choice between a lifetime in the Night’s Watch or ten years of exile. Unsurprisingly, he chose exile and made his way across the narrow sea to Pentos, and thence to Myr, where he fell in with sellswords and other low company. Only half a year before he might have returned to Westeros, he was stabbed to death by a whore in a Myrish gambling den.
The harshest punishment was reserved for Braxton Beesbury, the proud young knight called Stinger. “I could geld you and send you to the Wall,” Jaehaerys told him. “That was how I served Ser Lucamore, and he was a better man than you. I could take your father’s lands and castle, but there would be no justice in that. He had no part in what you did, no more than your brothers did. We cannot have you spreading tales about my daughter, though, so we mean to take your tongue. And your nose as well, I think, so you may not find the maids quite so easy to beguile. You are far too proud of your skill with sword and lance, so we will take that away from you as well. We shall break your arms and legs, and my