of a dozen rebel lords from the westerlands and riverlands. Lord Rupert Falwell, famed as the Fighting Fool, led the ranks of the pious who had answered the High Septon’s call; with him rode Ser Lyonel Lorch, Ser Alyn Terrick, Lord Tristifer Wayn, Lord Jon Lychester, and many other puissant knights. The army of the Faithful numbered twenty thousand men.
King Maegor’s army was of like size, however, and His Grace had almost twice as much armored horse, as well as a large contingent of longbowmen, and the king himself riding Balerion. Even so, the battle proved a savage struggle. The Fighting Fool slew two knights of the Kingsguard before he himself was cut down by the Lord of Maidenpool. Big Jon Hogg, fighting for the king, was blinded by a sword slash early in the battle, yet rallied his men and led a charge that broke through the lines of the Faithful and put the Poor Fellows to flight. A rainstorm dampened Balerion’s fires but could not quench them entirely, and amidst smoke and screams King Maegor descended again and again to serve his foes with flame. By nightfall victory was his, as the remaining Poor Fellows threw down their axes and streamed away in all directions.
Triumphant, Maegor returned to King’s Landing to seat himself once more upon the Iron Throne. When Wat the Hewer was delivered to him, chained yet still defiant, Maegor took off his limbs with the giant’s own axe, but commanded his maesters to keep the man alive “so he might attend my wedding.” Then His Grace announced his intent to take Tyanna of Pentos as his third wife. Though it was whispered that his mother, the Queen Dowager, had no love for the Pentoshi sorceress, only Grand Maester Myros dared speak against her openly. “Your one true wife awaits you in the Hightower,” Myros said. The king heard him out in silence, then descended from the throne, drew Blackfyre, and slew him where he stood.
Maegor Targaryen and Tyanna of the Tower were wed atop the Hill of Rhaenys, amidst the ashes and bones of the Warrior’s Sons who had died there. It was said that Maegor had to put a dozen septons to death before he found one willing to perform the ceremony. Wat the Hewer, limbless, was kept alive to witness the marriage.
King Aenys’s widow, Queen Alyssa, was present as well, with her younger sons, Viserys and Jaehaerys, and her daughter Alysanne. A visit from the Dowager Queen and Vhagar had persuaded her to leave her sanctuary on Driftmark and return to court, where Alyssa and her brothers and cousins of House Velaryon did homage to Maegor as the true king. The widowed queen was even compelled to join the other ladies of the court in disrobing His Grace and escorting him to the nuptial chamber to consummate his marriage, a bedding ceremony presided over by the king’s second wife, Alys Harroway. That task done, Alyssa and the other ladies took their leave of the royal bedchamber, but Alys remained, joining the king and his newest wife in a night of carnal lust.
Across the realm in Oldtown, the High Septon was loud in his denunciations of “the abomination and his whores,” whilst the king’s first wife, Ceryse of House Hightower, continued to insist that she was Maegor’s only lawful queen. And in the westerlands, Aegon Targaryen, Prince of Dragonstone, and his wife, Princess Rhaena, remained defiant as well.
All through the turmoil of Maegor’s ascension, King Aenys’s son and the princess, his wife, had remained at Casterly Rock, where Rhaena grew great with child. Most of the knights and young lordlings who had set out with them on their ill-fated progress had abandoned them, rushing off to King’s Landing to bend their knees to Maegor. Even Rhaena’s handmaids and companions had found excuses to absent themselves, save for her friend Alayne Royce and a former favorite, Melony Piper, who arrived at Lannisport with her brothers to swear the loyalty of their house.
All his life Prince Aegon had been considered the heir presumptive to the Iron Throne, but now, suddenly, he found himself reviled by the pious and abandoned by many he had thought to be his leal friends. Maegor’s supporters, who seemed more numerous every day, were not shy in saying that Aegon was “his father’s son,” suggesting that they saw in him the same weakness that had brought down King Aenys. Aegon had never ridden a dragon, they pointed out, whereas Maegor had