Blackwater Bay becomes a passage between private defiance and public recognition. Baela Targaryen crosses it in secret to escape a marriage arranged by the regents; later, its waters carry her back with Alyn Velaryon and the fleet, as the city gathers to welcome him and a long-lost prince.

Escape across the bay

When the regents sought to marry Baela to Thaddeus Rowan, she was confined to her rooms. She escaped by climbing out a window, exchanging clothes with a washerwoman, and walking out through the castle’s front gate. By the time the alarm was raised, she had crossed half of Blackwater Bay in a fisherman’s boat, bound for Driftmark. There she sought out her cousin, Corlys Velaryon, the Lord of the Tides, and told him her troubles. A fortnight later, she and Alyn Velaryon married in the sept on Dragonstone.

A fleet’s return

The bay later framed a very different crossing. When Baela’s sails appeared across the water, the rest of the Velaryon fleet emerged behind her from the morning mists. Bells rang throughout King’s Landing, thousands cheered from the city walls, and others hurried through the River Gate to line the shore. Alyn’s return had become a public spectacle before he even reached the docks. Although King Aegon III wished to go there and thank his good-brother, Unwin Peake insisted that Alyn should instead come to the Red Keep and present himself before the Iron Throne. The other regents overruled him, and the king’s party went down to meet the fleet.

The bay as a threshold

On a bright, cold morning, before tens of thousands of onlookers, Alyn saw his daughter Laena for the first time. He kissed Baela, lifted the child for the crowd to see, then returned her to her mother and knelt before the king and queen. The bay’s crossing thus ended not in a private flight but in a public homecoming. Alyn had also brought Viserys Targaryen, Aegon III’s younger brother, presumed dead since the Battle of the Gullet and missing for nearly five years. The harbor reception became the setting for the brothers’ reunion, turning Blackwater Bay into the route by which both a family and the court received what they had believed lost.