A ruler needs a good head and a true heart. A cock is not essential.

Alysanne's rebuke that a ruler's judgment and character mattered more than sex answered Jaehaerys's decision to pass over Rhaenys in the succession. The expression gave direct voice to the queen's objection: Rhaenys and her children, she believed, were being denied their rights because Rhaenys was a woman. Though Jaehaerys and Alysanne later reconciled, they never reached agreement on the succession.

Context and Dispute

The dispute arose when Prince Baelon was made heir apparent ahead of Rhaenys. Rhaenys objected first, speaking to Jaehaerys with a hand on her pregnant belly and arguing that the decision deprived her son of his birthright. Her husband, Corlys Velaryon, was so angered that he resigned his admiralty and place on the small council, then took Rhaenys back to Driftmark. Rhaenys's mother, Jocelyn Baratheon, and her brother Boremund, Lord of Storm's End, were also angered.

Alysanne's Argument and Departure

Good Queen Alysanne made the most prominent objection. Having helped Jaehaerys rule the Seven Kingdoms for many years, she challenged the assumption that being a woman made Rhaenys unfit to inherit: a ruler needed sound judgment and a true heart, she argued, not male sex. She made her continued place beside the king conditional on his view of women's capacity to rule. Her words framed the succession dispute as a question of the qualities that make a ruler, not simply a contest between claimants. Alysanne then left King's Landing and flew to Dragonstone on her dragon Silverwing. She and Jaehaerys remained apart for two years; the histories record their estrangement as the Second Quarrel. The departure gave her protest a consequence beyond speech, marking a rupture in the partnership through which she had helped govern the realm.

Reconciliation and Unsettled Succession

Their daughter, Septa Maegelle, helped bring the king and queen together again in 94 AC, but reconciliation did not settle the question that had divided them. Alysanne died in 100 AC, aged sixty-four, still maintaining that Rhaenys and her children had been unfairly denied their rights. The child at the center of Rhaenys's first objection was born a girl in 93 AC and named Laena. Rhaenys gave birth to a son, Laenor, the following year. Although Baelon was by then firmly established as heir apparent, House Velaryon and House Baratheon continued to regard Laenor as having a better claim; some also argued for Laena's rights and for Rhaenys herself. The dispute thus outlasted Alysanne's protest and reconciliation, leaving the question of whether a woman could inherit the Iron Throne unresolved.