Ceryse Hightower

Ceryse Hightower was Maegor’s first wife and queen, a Hightower bride whose marriage linked the royal house to Oldtown. Her position was repeatedly reshaped by the claims of dynastic alliance and royal authority: Maegor married her in a public ceremony, later took another wife without the king’s knowledge, and eventually restored Ceryse’s rights in a negotiated reconciliation. Her story ends with a sudden death whose cause remains uncertain in the account, while rumor and later judgment pull in different directions.

Marriage and position at court

In 25 AC, Maegor, Prince of Dragonstone, married Ceryse in the Starry Sept of Oldtown. The High Septon himself performed the ceremony. Maegor was thirteen, while Ceryse was ten years his senior; the union therefore joined a very young prince to an adult bride from a powerful Oldtown family. The lords who witnessed the bedding agreed that the marriage had been consummated, and Maegor afterward publicly presented it as a successful beginning for House Targaryen. The account records the boast, but offers no evidence that the marriage produced a child.

The setting and officiant gave the match a significance beyond the couple’s private lives. It was a royal marriage celebrated in Oldtown, performed by the Faith’s highest authority, and it aligned Maegor with Ceryse’s family. Later, when Maegor chose a different bride, her father, Lord Hightower, protested to King Aenys and demanded that Alys Harroway be put aside. The protest shows that Ceryse’s marriage remained bound up with the relationship between the Crown, the Hightowers, and the Faith, even when she herself was absent from the dispute’s public negotiations.

The second marriage and separation

Maegor’s second marriage broke the apparent settlement of his first. He announced that Ceryse was barren and had married Alys Harroway in a Valyrian rite on Dragonstone, without the leave, knowledge, or presence of King Aenys. The castle septon refused to officiate. The High Septon condemned the union, and Lord Hightower also appealed to the king. Ceryse was left abandoned in King’s Landing as the quarrel widened from a dispute between spouses into a conflict over royal power and religious law.

Aenys demanded that Maegor return to Ceryse or accept five years of exile. Maegor chose exile and departed for Pentos with Alys, his dragon, and the sword Blackfyre. Ceryse did not accompany him; she remained in King’s Landing. Aenys then appointed Septon Murmison to replace Maegor as Hand. The king also had Murmison perform a nightly healing ritual over Ceryse, hoping that she might become fertile and that this might prompt Maegor to repent. The account says she soon grew weary of the ritual and left the capital for Oldtown, where she rejoined her father. Her departure marks a concrete change in her circumstances: from an abandoned queen at court to a member of her birth family’s household, while the dispute over her marriage continued without her presence.

Reconciliation and restored rights

During Maegor’s time at Oldtown, he and Ceryse reached an agreement. She accepted his other wives and undertook to treat them with respect and honor, while agreeing to speak no further ill of them. In return, Maegor swore to restore the rights, incomes, and privileges due to her as his wedded wife and queen. These terms did not erase the existence of the other marriages; instead, they set out how Ceryse’s queenship would be recognized alongside them.

A great feast at the Hightower marked the reconciliation. Its ceremonies included a bedding and a second consummation, arranged so that observers would understand the union as genuine and loving. The public character of the occasion matters: after the earlier marriage had been displaced by Maegor’s unilateral choice, the restoration was demonstrated before witnesses and supported by explicit promises about Ceryse’s status and income. The account does not say how long the renewed accord lasted or describe the private quality of their relationship afterward. It establishes that Ceryse again held the rights of Maegor’s queen, not that the earlier breach had been undone.

Death and disputed account

Not long after the Red Keep was completed in 45 AC, Ceryse was stricken with a sudden illness and died. A story circulated at court that Maegor had ordered Ser Owen to remove her tongue after she offended him, and that she died during the attempt. The account presents this as a rumor, not as an established event: it was never proven, and most maesters in the present day consider it slander devised by Maegor’s enemies to worsen his reputation.

That distinction leaves the circumstances of Ceryse’s death unresolved. The narrative records both the rumor’s contemporary reach and the later rejection of its truth, without supplying an alternative cause beyond her sudden illness. After her death, Maegor had only one queen, Tyanna of Pentos. Ceryse’s arc thus closes with a contrast between the formal restoration of her queenship and the uncertainty surrounding her final days. Her marriage began as a public alliance blessed by the High Septon, was interrupted by Maegor’s second marriage and exile, and was publicly reaffirmed at the Hightower before ending in a death later used to darken the king’s name.