Council of Regency

The Council of Regency was the body appointed to protect Aegon III and rule in his stead while he was a child. Its seven-member composition initially balanced figures associated with both the Greens and the Blacks, but illness and departures reduced its numbers; when the king later acted without consulting it, Unwin Peake used the diminished council to cancel his decisions and take the offices of Hand and Protector of the Realm.

Formation and Composition

The council was established after Aegon III’s coronation, when the ten-year-old king named those who would defend him and govern until he came of age. Its seven members were Lady Jeyne Arryn, Lord Corlys Velaryon, Lord Roland Westerling, Lord Royce Caron, Lord Manfryd Mooton, Ser Torrhen Manderly, and Grand Maester Munkun, newly selected by the Citadel to succeed Grand Maester Orwyle. The appointments mixed political alignments: Tyland Lannister, whom Aegon made Hand, was considered a Green, while Leowyn Corbray, named Protector of the Realm, was considered a Black. Willis Fell, the last surviving Kingsguard from King Viserys’s reign, became Lord Commander, with Marston Waters as his second.

Cregan Stark was reportedly offered a place among the regents but refused. Several other prominent figures were absent from the council, including Kermit Tully, Unwin Peake, Sabitha Frey, Thaddeus Rowan, Lyonel Hightower, Johanna Lannister, and Benjicot Blackwood. Septon Eustace reported that Peake alone was truly angered by his exclusion, a grievance that would matter when the council’s authority came under strain.

Attrition and a Shrinking Council

The council’s original arrangement depended on its members remaining available to govern. During the Winter Fever, Lord Desmond Manderly and his son Ser Medrick died. Because Medrick had no children, the lordship passed to his brother Torrhen, who consequently had to leave the regency council to rule White Harbor. The council was then reduced from seven members to four.

The loss of a regent was not merely a change in the membership list: it drew one of the king’s appointed governors away from the capital to meet the demands of his own inheritance. By the time the council faced a direct challenge from Aegon, several of its members were also absent from King’s Landing, leaving the balance between delegated royal authority and the judgment of those still present increasingly vulnerable to dispute.

Peake’s Challenge to the King

After Tyland Lannister died, Aegon acted without consulting the regents. He chose Robin Massey and Robert Darklyn for the Kingsguard, recalled Orwyle, asked Thaddeus Rowan to come to court as Hand, and wanted Baela returned so that Alyn Velaryon could serve as admiral. Of the regents, only Peake, Manfryd Mooton, and Munkun remained in King’s Landing. Mooton was bedridden while recovering from the fever and asked that decisions wait until Jeyne Arryn and Royce Caron could return to participate.

Peake rejected that delay. He argued that the absent former regents had forfeited their places by leaving King’s Landing, and, with Munkun’s support, set aside the king’s appointments and arrangements on the ground that a boy of twelve could not judge such matters. The regents confirmed Marston Waters as Lord Commander and ordered Darklyn and Massey to surrender their white cloaks. Orwyle was returned to his cell to await execution. Rowan was offered a place on the council and the offices of justiciar and master of laws, while no comparable position was offered to Alyn Velaryon.

Concentration of Authority

The council’s intervention culminated in the merger of the offices of Hand and Protector of the Realm, previously held separately, and Peake’s appointment to both. The episode exposed a central weakness in the regency: a body created to govern in the king’s name could invoke the king’s youth to reverse his choices, while its reduced and partly absent membership made it possible for the regents remaining at court to determine what the institution’s authority meant in practice.

The council thus changed from a broadly composed group appointed at the start of Aegon’s minority into a smaller, contested center of power. Disease had depleted its ranks; absence gave Peake grounds to challenge who still belonged to it; and Munkun’s backing helped turn that challenge into action. The regency was meant to defend and administer the young king’s rule, but its later decisions demonstrated how readily that delegated responsibility could become a struggle over who governed in his place.