Alicent Hightower and Rhaenyra Targaryen

Alicent Hightower and Rhaenyra Targaryen are first presented as a queen and princess capable of familial affection, but their relationship becomes the personal and political fault line of a disputed succession. Rhaenyra remains King Viserys Targaryen’s acknowledged heir even after Alicent bears sons; each woman comes to stand at the center of a rival court party. Their history moves between intimate gestures of kinship and public acts of reconciliation that cannot settle the question beneath them: who will inherit the Iron Throne?

Family Ties and the Succession Question

When Viserys Targaryen married Alicent in 106 AC, the welcome within the Red Keep appeared affectionate. At the wedding feast, Rhaenyra poured wine for her stepmother, and Alicent kissed the princess and called her daughter. Rhaenyra also joined the women who attended the king as he was taken to the bridal bedchamber. Yet the apparent warmth existed alongside a political disappointment for House Velaryon, which was notably absent from the wedding: the king had passed over its marriage prospects, as he had previously passed over its claims in the succession debates.

The birth of Alicent’s children altered the stakes without changing the king’s declared choice. Her first son, Aegon II, was born in 107 AC, followed by Helaena Targaryen and then Aemond Targaryen. Meanwhile, Rhaenyra continued to sit at the foot of the Iron Throne when Viserys held court, and he began bringing her to meetings of the small council. She remained Princess of Dragonstone and the acknowledged heir, with half the lords of Westeros sworn to defend her rights. The Great Council of 101 supplied a potent argument for those who thought a male claimant should prevail, but Viserys refused to reopen the matter.

This unresolved contrast gave the women’s relationship its political weight. Alicent had sons whose existence made the succession contest immediate, while Rhaenyra held the title and public recognition of heir. The evidence does not reduce their conflict to a single private grievance: the court’s competing interpretations of inheritance, and the alliances attached to each claimant, continually pressed their family relationship into a struggle for power.

From Courtly Amity to Rival Parties

The early friendship between queen and princess did not last. Both aspired to be the first lady of the realm, and Queen Alicent questioned the intimacy between Rhaenyra and Ser Criston Cole, the young Kingsguard champion who was her constant companion. The remark sharpened an already widening distance. Rhaenyra’s position as heir remained unchanged, while Alicent’s supporters kept returning to the precedent of the Great Council of 101.

In 109 AC, Viserys finally removed Alicent’s father, Otto Hightower, as Hand of the King after he pressed the succession question too far. Lyonel Strong took the office instead. Otto’s departure did not dissolve the queen’s party: powerful lords at court continued to support Alicent and her sons, opposed by the party of the princess. Viserys loved both his wife and his daughter, and tried to keep their competing households balanced with gifts, honors, and gold. As long as he ruled, feasts and tourneys continued and peace held across the realm, but observers noted that the dragons associated with the two parties snapped and spat flame when they came near one another.

The factions acquired enduring names at a great tourney in King’s Landing in 111 AC, held on the fifth anniversary of Viserys’s marriage to Alicent. The queen wore green; Rhaenyra appeared in Targaryen red and black. Their clothing became the shorthand for their supporters: Alicent’s were called the Greens, and Rhaenyra’s the Blacks. The division was not simply a later label for a private quarrel. It made visible the rival political identities already gathering around the queen and the named heir.

The Dispute Over the Princes

The tensions between the women were renewed through their children. After Aemond Targaryen claimed Vhagar, a fight with Rhaenyra’s sons ended with Lucerys Velaryon taking out Aemond’s right eye. King Viserys tried to restore order by requiring the boys to apologize to their rivals. The gesture did not satisfy either mother. Alicent demanded that Lucerys lose an eye in return; Rhaenyra rejected that demand and insisted that Aemond be questioned about where he had heard her sons called Strongs. The insult implied that the boys were bastards and that Rhaenyra had committed treason.

Under questioning, Aemond named his brother Aegon II as the source of the accusation. Viserys stopped the inquiry and ruled that no eyes would be taken, but threatened to have the tongues of anyone who again mocked his grandsons as Strongs pulled out with hot pincers. He then ordered his wife and daughter to kiss and exchange declarations of love and affection. Their smiles and words were false, though the king alone accepted them as genuine. The imposed reconciliation did not repair the dispute: Viserys ordered Alicent and her sons back to court, while Rhaenyra was to remain on Dragonstone with her sons. The physical separation of the two households formalized a division that the king’s demand for affection could not undo.

Ceremonies, Ruptures, and the Limits of Peace

After Viserys’s grave injury on the Iron Throne, Rhaenyra came from Dragonstone with her healer, Maester Gerardys, whose treatment helped save the king’s life. To mark his recovery, the court held a feast on the first day of 127 AC and required both women and all their children to attend. Alicent wore Rhaenyra’s colors, and Rhaenyra wore Alicent’s; the women made declarations of love, while their children kissed and shared bread at the table. The public display gave Viserys the amity he wanted to see, and the chronicles recorded the ceremony as a show of peace.

Mushroom’s account, however, describes what followed after Viserys had left the feast. Aemond Targaryen rose to toast his Velaryon nephews, using their hair, eyes, and supposed strength to renew the insult behind the word Strongs. Mushroom also reports an angry exchange between Aegon II and Jacaerys Velaryon after Jacaerys asked Helaena to dance, checked before it came to blows by the Kingsguard. The account cannot establish whether Viserys was told of these incidents. Rhaenyra and her sons returned to Dragonstone the next morning.

Across these episodes, the relationship is marked by repeated efforts to stage family unity and repeated evidence that the underlying conflict survives them. A wedding kiss, an ordered exchange of vows, and a feast in exchanged colors all make kinship publicly legible; none resolves the rival claims, the factions, or the accusations surrounding Rhaenyra’s children. Viserys’s preference for peace can hold the court together while he lives, but the women’s relationship remains bound to a succession he has declared settled and the court continues to contest.