Androw Farman

Androw Farman’s brief life at courtly heights ended in a catastrophe that exposed the cost of his place in Rhaena Targaryen’s household. Chosen as the queen’s husband despite his lack of status and ability, he remained an outsider in the life she built around herself. On Dragonstone, neglect and exclusion gave way to resentment, and resentment to the poisoning of people close to her. His death did not end the consequences: the account presents his actions as the first shock in a wider chain of losses.

Identity and Background

Androw was the younger son of the Lord of Fair Isle, not his father’s heir. He was described as handsome, gentle, and soft-spoken, with pale blue eyes and long flaxen hair, but those qualities did little to secure him respect among the martial, lordly company around him. His father and elder brother possessed skills in arms that he lacked; Androw had failed as a squire and never became a knight. His father even considered sending him to Oldtown to train as a maester, but the family’s maester judged him unable to manage the reading and writing required.

The contrast between Androw’s gentle manner and the expectations attached to his rank shaped how others treated him. He was mocked at his father’s court as insufficiently masculine, and later hosts overlooked him while attending to Rhaena. At Dragonstone, he was treated neither as a ruler nor as a substantial lord: servants might ignore his authority, and the castle’s soldiers paid him little attention. His marriage gave him a queen’s title by association, but no corresponding power or esteem.

Marriage to Rhaena Targaryen

In the Year of the Three Brides, Rhaena married Androw in a small ceremony on Fair Isle. She was twenty-six and had already been widowed twice; he was seventeen and entering his first marriage. The ceremony was conducted by the groom’s father and a septon, with only a small company present. Rhaena’s mother was not included, and the royal court learned of the marriage only after the wedding feast and its formal conclusion. The match joined a queen and the mother of the heir to the Iron Throne with a second son from a comparatively minor house, a disparity that helps explain why the choice attracted disapproval.

Androw’s father had earlier offered Rhaena refuge when Maegor sought to capture her. Some later accounts suggested that Rhaena married Androw partly to repay his father’s kindness. Another possibility was that the queen’s deeper attachment on Fair Isle was to Androw’s sister, Elissa Farman, rather than to her husband. These explanations are presented as conjecture, not settled fact. The account gives a more direct explanation for Rhaena’s choice: she valued Androw’s kindness. Whatever her reason, the marriage did not develop into a close partnership. By 54 AC, the relationship had become openly strained, and Rhaena’s companions observed its unhappy character.

Life in Rhaena’s Household

When Androw’s father died, his elder brother Franklyn ordered Rhaena to leave Fair Isle but insisted that Elissa remain behind. Rhaena left that night on Dreamfyre, intending her husband and companions to follow by ship. Androw offered to confront Franklyn, but Rhaena discouraged him, judging that he would be defeated and that another widowhood would invite further hostility toward her. The next morning, Androw joined the party sailing with more than forty of the queen’s friends and household members. At the docks, Franklyn again tried to prevent Elissa from leaving; the local crowd intervened, and Elissa and the others sailed aboard Maiden’s Fancy for Lannisport.

The party found shelter at Casterly Rock, where Rhaena had previously been received. The Lannisters welcomed the queen, Androw, and their companions, and provided quarters for them and a stable for Dreamfyre. This refuge did not improve Androw’s standing. During Rhaena’s travels in the west, their hosts tended to forget him; on Dragonstone, where the queen’s court surrounded her, he remained socially marginal. His daily life there was notably narrow. He did not take part in the garrison’s weapons practice, could not read the books and scrolls offered by Maester Culiper, and rarely ventured beyond the castle. He rode occasionally within the yard, but did not explore the island’s paths, village, or docks.

Instead, Androw drank heavily and spent long periods in the Chamber of the Painted Table, moving wooden soldiers across the map. Rhaena’s companions privately made light of this habit, imagining that he was planning a conquest, while avoiding open mockery out of regard for the queen. His inability to command respect extended through the household: servants obeyed him inconsistently, and the children could be cruel. Princess Aerea once humiliated him with a chamberpot, an act the account links not to anything he had done but to her anger with her mother. Elissa, who had been his closest and perhaps only friend, was now away from him; after her departure, his isolation deepened.

Resentment, Poisoning, and Death

The separation between Androw and Rhaena sharpened when she went to Storm’s End as her mother was failing. Androw wanted to accompany her, but Rhaena refused. Their argument ended with her saying that the wrong Farman had run away. The remark registered the closeness of the breach: Androw had no recognized role in the queen’s political or personal decisions, and his attempts to claim one were rebuffed. Later, when he asked to replace a dismissed officer as commander of Dragonstone’s garrison, Rhaena’s ladies laughed; the queen joined them. When he offered to travel with her to King’s Landing, she dismissed the suggestion. The account presents these rebuffs as part of a longer accumulation of humiliations.

After Rhaena returned from her mother’s deathbed, the household suffered a series of deaths. Lianna Velaryon died in the queen’s arms despite the maester’s efforts to treat her. Androw challenged Rhaena over her grief, asking whether she would mourn him as well. She struck him and ordered him away; he answered that Lianna had been the last of their group. At first, the deaths were treated as illness. Rego Draz, reviewing the records, suspected poison, and the king’s advisers agreed. When Rhaena received the king’s warning, she recognized the danger and ordered that Androw be found.

The guards discovered Maester Anselm dead in the maester’s chambers, and eventually found Androw in the Chamber of the Painted Table with a longsword. He did not deny poisoning members of the household. He described having served them wine while they saw him as a harmless cupbearer, and claimed that he might have been capable of ruling, advising Rhaena, defeating her enemies, or giving her children. The speech connects his crime to his sense of being dismissed and to the power he believed he had been denied; it does not make the victims responsible for his choices. Rhaena ordered her guards to seize and punish him. Androw instead leapt from a window and died.

Narrative Role and Aftermath

Androw’s story turns on the distance between appearance and agency. To Rhaena’s circle, he was an amiable, ineffectual husband, someone whose imagined command of painted soldiers invited private amusement. In the final confrontation, he recast the same qualities—his position as a servant-like figure and his apparent harmlessness—as the means by which he had acted unseen. The reversal does not erase the limits of his abilities or the contempt he faced; it shows how a household’s failure to take him seriously could coexist with lethal consequences.

His death is described as the last notable one of 54 AC, but not as the end of the harm he caused. The chronicle compares its consequences to ripples spreading outward, and immediately turns to the effect on King Jaehaerys’s council: Lord Daemon Velaryon sought to leave the office of Hand after the deaths on Dragonstone, including that of his niece Lianna. Androw therefore matters not only as Rhaena’s ill-matched husband and a tragic figure within her household, but as the source of a crisis that reached beyond the island and into the government of the realm.