suitors flocked around her from every corner of the realm. There was never any true question of whom she would wed, however. For a girl such as her, only royalty would suffice, and in the year 22 AC she married Prince Aenys Targaryen, the unquestioned heir to the Iron Throne.
Theirs was a happy and fruitful marriage. Prince Aenys was a gentle and attentive husband, warm-natured, generous, and never unfaithful. Alyssa bore him five strong, healthy children, two daughters and three sons (a sixth child, another daughter, died in her cradle shortly after birth), and when his sire died in 37 AC, the crown passed to Aenys, and Alyssa became his queen.
In the years that followed, she saw her husband’s reign crumble and turn to ash, as enemies rose up all around him. In 42 AC he died, a broken man and despised, only five-and-thirty years of age. The queen scarce had time to grieve for him before his brother seized the throne that rightly belonged to her eldest son. She saw her son rise up against his uncle and die, together with his dragon. A short while later, her second son followed him to the funeral pyre, tortured to death by Tyanna of the Tower. Together with her two youngest children, Alyssa was made a prisoner in all but name of the man who had brought about the death of her sons, and was made to bear witness when her eldest daughter was forced into marriage to that same monster.
The game of thrones takes many a queer turn, however, and Maegor himself had fallen in turn, in no small part thanks to the courage of the widowed Queen Alyssa, and the boldness of Lord Rogar, who had befriended her and taken her in when no one else would. The gods had been good to them and granted them victory, and now the woman who had been Alyssa of House Velaryon was to be given a second chance at happiness with a new husband.
The wedding of the King’s Hand and the Queen Regent was to be as splendid as that of the widowed Queen Rhaena had been modest. The High Septon himself would perform the marriage rites, on the seventh day of the seventh moon of the new year. The site would be the half-completed Dragonpit, still open to the sky, whose rising tiers of stone benches would allow for tens of thousands to observe the nuptials. The celebrations would include a great tourney, seven days of feasts and frolics, and even a mock sea battle to be fought in the waters of Blackwater Bay.
No wedding half so magnificent had been celebrated in Westeros in living memory, and lords great and small from throughout the Seven Kingdoms and beyond gathered to be part of it. Donnel Hightower came up from Oldtown with a hundred knights and seventy-seven of the Most Devout, escorting His High Holiness the High Septon, whilst Lyman Lannister brought three hundred knights from Casterly Rock. Brandon Stark, the ailing Lord of Winterfell, made the long journey down from the North with his sons Walton and Alaric, attended by a dozen fierce northern bannermen and thirty Sworn Brothers of the Night’s Watch. Lords Arryn, Corbray, and Royce represented the Vale, Lords Selmy, Dondarrion, and Tarly the Dornish Marches. Even from beyond the borders of the realm the great and mighty came; the Prince of Dorne sent his sister, the Sealord of Braavos a son. The Archon of Tyrosh crossed the narrow sea himself with his maiden daughter, as did no fewer than twenty-two magisters from the Free City of Pentos. All brought handsome gifts to bestow on the Hand and Queen Regent; the most lavish came from those who had only lately been Maegor’s men, and from Rickard Rowan and Torgen Oakheart, who had marched with Septon Moon.
The wedding guests came ostensibly to celebrate the union of Rogar Baratheon and the Dowager Queen, but they had other reasons for attendance, it should not be doubted. Many wished to treat with the Hand, who was seen by many as the true power in the realm; others wished to take the measure of their new boy king. Nor did His Grace deny them that opportunity. Ser Gyles Morrigen, the king’s champion and sworn shield, announced that Jaehaerys would be pleased to grant audience to any lord or landed knight who wished to meet with him, and sixscore accepted his invitation. Eschewing the great hall and the majesty of the