Alys Turnberry

Alys Turnberry, called Sweetberry by Saera Targaryen, was a young court companion whose friendship with the princess became entangled in a scandal that reshaped her future. The account presents her first as one of a close-knit group sharing the pleasures of court life, then as a pregnant young woman whose uncertain circumstances drew Queen Alysanne’s attention and whose eventual marriage was arranged after the inquiry.

Place in Saera’s Circle

Alys was a maid of Saera’s own age and, with Perianne Moore, became one of the princess’s dearest friends. Saera gave the two girls affectionate nicknames: Perianne was Pretty Peri, and Alys was Sweetberry. Their friendship belonged to a larger, unusually close circle. For more than a year, the three young women and three favored young men—Jonah Mooton, Red Roy Connington, and Braxton Beesbury—were together at feasts and balls, and also hunted and hawked. They once sailed across Blackwater Bay to Dragonstone; when the young men practiced riding at rings or fighting in the yards, the girls were there to cheer them on.

This social world placed Alys in the company of heirs and a knight whose status carried consequences beyond private friendship. Queen Alysanne had already expressed reservations about Saera’s companions and the young men around her. Her concern about Braxton included reports that he had fathered children outside marriage. The later investigation made those warnings part of the context for Alys’s predicament, though the account does not establish that she had any particular relationship with Braxton before the events she described.

The Inquiry

When Queen Alysanne decided to question the girls, her guards found Alys and Perianne asleep in Perianne’s chambers. The queen brought them to her solar and told them that the three young men were in the dungeons. She made clear that telling the truth was the way to avoid joining them. Perianne and Alys then hurried to confess what they knew, and the queen listened without interrupting. The episode places Alys’s disclosure within Alysanne’s established practice of hearing women’s accounts in private rather than confronting them before the king on the throne.

The girls described the conduct that had brought the circle under scrutiny as having begun in play and then involved the young men. Alys agreed with Perianne’s account. The evidence does not provide a separate, extended account from Alys, so her actions and perspective reach the reader chiefly through the shared confession and the queen’s response. It does, however, record that the group had kept attendants outside and that some servants who knew what was happening had remained silent after threats from Braxton. The inquiry thus exposed not only the young people’s conduct but also the secrecy and pressure surrounding it.

Pregnancy and the Queen’s Response

During the questioning, Alys broke down and told Alysanne she was pregnant but did not know who the father was. She expressed remorse and described herself as having been pressured by Braxton and challenged by Saera. Her account does not resolve paternity, and the narrative does not supply a later answer. The uncertainty is central to her situation: her pregnancy was known, but the identity of the father could not be established from what she said.

Alysanne’s immediate response was practical and pastoral. She told Alys to rest that night and said a septa would be sent the next day so she could confess; she assured her that the Mother would forgive her. Alys answered that her own mother would not. The brief exchange sets the queen’s offer of religious consolation beside Alys’s fear of rejection at home, without explaining what her mother later did or how their relationship developed.

Marriage and Aftermath

The crown arranged marriages for the young women involved, but Alys’s pregnancy made her case more difficult. Perianne was not pregnant and was married to Jonah Mooton; the match succeeded, and they eventually became lord and lady of Maidenpool. Red Roy refused to marry Alys, rejecting responsibility for the child and the prospect that it might inherit Griffin’s Roost. The account therefore does not describe Alys’s marriage as a reconciliation with one of the young men in Saera’s circle.

Instead, Alys was sent to the Vale to give birth on an island in Gulltown harbor, at a motherhouse where lords commonly sent their natural daughters to be raised. She bore a girl with bright red hair. After the birth, Alys married Dunstan Pryor, Lord of Pebble. These arrangements shifted her from the royal court to a setting associated with the upbringing of noblemen’s natural children, then into a marriage beyond the circle that had defined her earlier life. No further details of her later years are given.

Narrative Significance

Alys’s story is brief, but it shows how a private court friendship could become a matter of royal inquiry and family arrangement. The narrative gives her little independent history beyond her closeness to Saera, her confession, her pregnancy, and the decisions made afterward. That narrow record is itself important: Alys appears chiefly through the voices and institutions that interpret her circumstances, while her own recorded concern is immediate and personal—the uncertain father of her child and whether her mother would forgive her. Her departure for the Vale and subsequent marriage provide a concrete ending to the episode, but not a broader account of the life that followed.