Alys Harroway

Alys Harroway, also known as Queen Alys and Alys of House Harroway, was Maegor Targaryen’s second wife. Her marriage, undertaken without King Aenys’s consent and opposed by the Faith, made her a focus of a growing conflict over royal authority and the limits of Targaryen custom. Years later, an accusation concerning the paternity of her lost child brought about her death and the destruction of her family.

Background and Marriage

Alys was the daughter of Lucas Harroway, the new Lord of Harrenhal. Maegor had already married Ceryse Hightower, but announced that Ceryse was barren and that he had taken Alys as a second wife. The account places this announcement after Queen Alyssa gave King Aenys another daughter, Vaella, who died in the cradle. It suggests that the continuing uncertainty over Maegor’s prospects for an heir may have contributed to his decision, while leaving his precise reason uncertain.

The wedding took place on Dragonstone under the aegis of Dowager Queen Visenya. When the castle septon refused to officiate, Maegor and Alys married in a Valyrian rite. Aenys had neither permitted nor been told of the ceremony, and his discovery of it led to a bitter quarrel with his half-brother. Lucas Hightower, Ceryse’s father, protested as well, demanding that Alys be put aside. The High Septon denounced the union, and pious lords throughout the Seven Kingdoms condemned it. Aenys gave Maegor a choice between returning to Ceryse and going into exile; Maegor chose exile, departing for Pentos with Alys, his dragon Balerion, and the sword Blackfyre. Ceryse was left in King’s Landing.

Return to Westeros

Alys returned from Pentos on the twenty-eighth day after the Trial of Seven, arriving by ship in the evening with six hundred sellswords. She was accompanied by Tyanna of the Tower, whose relationship to Maegor and Alys was disputed: some regarded Tyanna as Maegor’s concubine, while others called her Alys’s paramour. The account also identifies Tyanna as the natural daughter of a Pentoshi magister and a former tavern dancer who had become a courtesan; rumors attributed poisoncraft and sorcery to her.

On Tyanna’s arrival, Visenya dismissed Maegor’s maesters and septons and entrusted him to Tyanna’s care. The next morning, Maegor appeared on the Red Keep’s walls between Alys and Tyanna, and the crowds celebrated his return. The moment was followed by Maegor’s attack on the Warrior’s Sons assembled at prayer in a fortified sept. Alys’s return therefore belongs to the opening of Maegor’s renewed rule and war against the Faith Militant, although the account assigns the attack and the decisions behind it to Maegor, not to Alys.

Pregnancy and Accusation

In 44 AC, Alys became pregnant, and the court welcomed the prospect that Maegor might finally have the son he wanted. During her confinement, she was cared for by Grand Maester Desmond, two septas, a midwife, and her sisters Jeyne and Hanna. Maegor also insisted that his other wives serve the pregnant queen. In the third moon of the confinement, Alys lost the child. Maegor was horrified by the infant’s appearance and ordered the execution of the midwife, the septas, and Desmond, sparing only Alys’s sisters.

Tyanna then told Maegor that the child had not been his. According to her account, Alys feared that she would share Ceryse’s fate and remain childless, and had turned to her father, the Hand of the King, for help. Tyanna alleged that Lucas Harroway had arranged for other men to father a child with Alys while Maegor was in the beds of Ceryse or Tyanna. Maegor initially rejected the accusation, but Tyanna gave him a list of twenty men said to have been involved. Under torture, all but two confessed; the account notes that the men named were known to have fathered healthy children. These are reported allegations and confessions, not an independently established account of the child’s paternity.

Death and Consequences

The investigation was conducted secretly, and Alys and her father did not know of Maegor’s suspicions until the Kingsguard seized them. Alys saw her sisters killed as they tried to protect her. Lucas Harroway was killed, and other Harroways and the men named in Tyanna’s accusation were also put to death. Alys was given to Tyanna for prolonged torment and died after nearly a fortnight; Maegor was present throughout. The account records the public display of her remains at the city gates, a final act that made her death a spectacle as well as a punishment.

Maegor then marched on Harrenhal and Lord Harroway’s Town, ordering the deaths of people he found there who had Harroway blood. Alys’s fate thus extended beyond the execution of a queen: it accompanied the near-erasure of her family and the transfer of its lands and stronghold. Her story turns on the court’s urgent concern with Maegor’s succession, but the supposed solution to that crisis became a chain of accusations and reprisals whose consequences fell upon Alys, her sisters, and House Harroway.