Alyn Stokeworth

Alyn Stokeworth was Hand of the King under Aegon the Conqueror and Aenys, serving first as an overseer of royal construction and later as a commander during the rebellions that troubled Aenys’s reign. His career moved from the planned rebuilding of King’s Landing to a campaign against Harren the Red, where he was killed in battle.

Royal Appointment and the New Castle

In 35 AC, Aegon ordered the Aegonfort torn down so that a stone castle could be built in its place. The existing fortress had outgrown its wooden palisade, and Aegon judged it unfit as a royal residence. He named Alyn, then the King’s Hand, and Queen Visenya to oversee the design and construction. The appointment placed Alyn in charge of a substantial royal undertaking, though the account gives no further details of his work on the project.

Aegon moved his court back to Dragonstone while the new castle was planned. A jest at court suggested that Visenya’s role in the building project was intended to spare the king from enduring her presence there. The anecdote records the court’s humor, but does not otherwise describe Alyn’s relationship with either the king or the queen.

Service under Aenys

During the rebellions in Aenys’s reign, Alyn was again entrusted with a military command. Aenys first ordered him to take a fleet and an army to the Vale to suppress Jonos Arryn and restore Ronnel Arryn. As the ships prepared to sail, however, the king reversed the order, fearing that Alyn’s departure would leave King’s Landing undefended.

Aenys instead sent Alyn with only a few hundred men to hunt Harren the Red. The change in orders reflected the king’s uncertainty about where to direct his forces as several rebellions threatened the realm. Alyn’s mission against Harren was one part of that unsettled response; the king also resolved to summon a great council to consider how to deal with the other rebels.

Death and Consequences

Alyn eventually brought Harren the Red to bay in a village west of the Gods Eye. Harren fought fiercely and killed Alyn before Alyn’s squire, Bernarr Brune, cut the outlaw king down. Alyn’s death came at the end of the hunt he had been sent to lead, rather than in the Vale campaign that Aenys had first assigned him.

Aenys rewarded Bernarr with knighthood for killing Harren, and gave gold, offices, and honors to other participants in the suppression of the rebellions. The king’s greatest praise went to his brother Maegor, whom he named Hand after Maegor returned to King’s Landing and was acclaimed as a hero. Alyn’s death thus left the office he had held vacant and formed part of the transition from his service to Maegor’s elevation.