“One god made us all, but he did not make us all alike.”

One god made us all, but he did not make us all alike condenses the argument Septon Alfyn used to defend the Doctrine of Exceptionalism: the Faith of the Seven’s laws could remain binding for most people while the Targaryens, claimed to be different by origin and nature, stood outside their ordinary application. Spoken by Alfyn from his litter as one of the Seven Speakers, the maxim gave a concise form to a doctrine intended to answer objections to Targaryen sibling marriage.

Wording and Context

The expression appears in Alfyn’s response to those who invoked the Faith’s teachings against the Targaryens’ marriage customs. The doctrine did not deny the Faith’s prohibition of unions between close relatives, or its condemnation of their offspring. Instead, it made an exception for the royal family, arguing that the Targaryens’ roots lay in Valyria rather than Andalos, where the Faith had originated. Alfyn’s statement begins from shared creation, naming Andals, Valyrians, and First Men as peoples made by one god, then turns to difference. That pivot allowed him to affirm a common divine source without treating a single set of customs as universal. The maxim’s force lies in holding those claims together: common origin did not, in this argument, require identical laws or conduct.

The Exceptionalist Argument

Alfyn developed the distinction through an analogy between a lion and an aurochs. Both were noble beasts, he argued, but each had gifts the other lacked and could not live by the other’s nature. He applied the comparison to the Targaryens, presenting their Valyrian heritage and their ability to tame dragons as signs that they were unlike other people. On that basis, he argued that conduct forbidden to others was not for the Faith to judge in them. The comparison makes the maxim more than a statement of difference: it turns difference into the rationale for unequal standards. The Targaryens’ dragons function as evidence within the speech, linking their exceptional political power to a claim of exceptional religious and social status. The expression thus supports not a general rejection of the Faith’s rules, but a carefully bounded exemption for the ruling family.

Public Use and Limits

Alfyn’s words belonged to the Seven Speakers’ wider mission on behalf of Jaehaerys and Alysanne. The speakers praised the queen’s piety and generosity while answering challenges from septons, begging brothers, knights, and lords. The king had devised the arguments in King’s Landing with assistance from Septon Oswyck and especially Septon Barth; in later years, the Citadel and the Starry Sept would call the position the Doctrine of Exceptionalism. The maxim’s political significance is presented with caution. The realm did not rise against Jaehaerys and Alysanne in 51 AC as it had against Aegon and Rhaena ten years earlier, but the account says the reasons are uncertain. The High Septon’s silence and the exhaustion of lords and commoners after war may have mattered; the Seven Speakers may also have helped. The saying gives a memorable shape to their case, but the narrative stops short of treating it as the sole cause of the realm’s acquiescence.