Jaehaerys Targaryen and Alysanne Targaryen

Jaehaerys Targaryen and Alysanne Targaryen were spouses and governing partners whose shared rule was tested by grief, family decisions, and the question of whether a woman could inherit the Iron Throne. Known in the histories as the Old King and the Good Queen, they reconciled after two estrangements, but not on the succession that divided them most deeply: Alysanne died still believing their granddaughter Rhaenys and her children had been denied their rightful claim.

Partners in Rule and Family

Alysanne had helped Jaehaerys rule the Seven Kingdoms for many years. Their partnership was not merely ceremonial: the histories present her as a queen with a significant political voice, one willing to challenge the king directly when she believed his decisions harmed their family or wronged women. Their bond also belonged to a large family life. Their daughter Daella’s death became the first recorded sign of a rift between them, while their granddaughter Rhaenys’s marriage later offered them a shared occasion for celebration.

The personal and political dimensions of their relationship repeatedly met in questions of marriage and inheritance. After Daella died following childbirth, Alysanne refused Lord Rodrik Arryn’s request to bury the princess in the Vale. She ordered that Daella, as a Targaryen, be burned and her ashes placed on Dragonstone beside her sister Daenerys. The decision expressed the queen’s insistence on her daughter’s place in the royal family, even as grief made the circumstances of Daella’s marriage and death impossible to separate from her relationship with Jaehaerys.

The First Quarrel

Daella’s death wounded Alysanne, who blamed herself, Lord Arryn, and the Eyrie’s maester for their parts in what had happened. Above all, she blamed Jaehaerys for insisting that Daella marry and choose a husband by the end of the year. Alysanne believed their daughter had not been old enough or strong enough to bear a child, and that the marriage should not have been pressed upon her so soon. The account records no reply from Jaehaerys, leaving the disagreement’s immediate exchange unknown; its consequence, however, was lasting estrangement.

A later rupture deepened that distance. When Alysanne grieved for their dead daughters and wanted to go to Lys, Jaehaerys opposed the journey and spoke to her in terms she did not forgive. She did not fly to Lys. Instead, she told him to undertake their planned royal progress without her and returned alone to Dragonstone to mourn. The king travelled through the west in 88 AC, visiting Casterly Rock and other great seats, then continued into the Reach and remained on the move through 89 AC. Alysanne’s absence became visible at court, but Jaehaerys declined the advances of women who sought his attention, saying that he had a queen and wanted no paramours.

The estrangement was called the Great Rift by contemporary maesters; after a later, nearly as bitter dispute, it became known as the First Quarrel. Their daughter Septa Maegelle helped end it. She urged her father to reconcile before Rhaenys’s approaching marriage, reminding him that the family should be together for the occasion. A fortnight later Jaehaerys returned to King’s Landing, and Alysanne came back from her self-imposed exile on Dragonstone. The record does not preserve what they said to one another, but for a considerable time they were again as close as before. In 90 AC they shared in the wedding of Rhaenys to Corlys Velaryon, an occasion described as one of their last good times together.

The Second Quarrel and the Succession

The later rupture followed Jaehaerys’s decision, after Prince Aemon’s death, to name Prince Baelon heir to the Iron Throne. Rhaenys, Aemon’s daughter, was pregnant when her father died; the king’s choice therefore passed over both her and the child she carried. Alysanne opposed the decision because she saw her granddaughter being displaced on account of her sex. She argued that the capacity to rule depended on a good head and a true heart, not on being a man, and made clear that she would not remain at court if the king’s decision rested on women’s supposed inability to govern.

Alysanne left King’s Landing and flew to Dragonstone on Silverwing. She and Jaehaerys remained apart for two years, an estrangement remembered as the Second Quarrel. Their daughter Septa Maegelle again helped bring them together, and they were reconciled in 94 AC. Reconciliation did not mean agreement: the account states that they never reached accord on the succession. The disagreement concerned more than a single appointment. Rhaenys’s unborn child proved to be a daughter, Laena, and she later had a son, Laenor; House Velaryon and House Baratheon continued to maintain that Laenor had a better claim than Baelon, while some also argued for Rhaenys and Laena.

Reconciliation and an Unsettled Legacy

The second reconciliation restored the couple’s relationship without settling the political principle at its heart. In 100 AC, Alysanne died after a wasting illness, aged sixty-four, still insisting that Rhaenys and her children had been unfairly deprived of their rights. Jaehaerys outlived her, but the account does not describe a final resolution between them on the matter. Their story thus holds together two truths: they repeatedly returned to closeness after periods of separation, and the deepest cause of their last major conflict remained intact.

Their relationship gives the histories a personal measure of royal decisions. Jaehaerys’s choices about Daella’s marriage and Baelon’s succession were acts of rule with consequences inside his own family; Alysanne answered them not only as queen but as mother and grandmother. The reconciliations show that their partnership could survive severe disagreement. Its limits are equally clear: affection and shared rule did not persuade Alysanne to abandon her conviction that Rhaenys’s claim had been wronged.