Jaehaerys and Alysanne's Secret Marriage was a royal wedding made possible by a secret departure: when the regents arranged for Alysanne to marry a youth ten years her senior whom she scarcely knew, she went to her brother, the young king, and the two chose to marry each other instead. They flew from the Red Keep to Dragonstone under cover of darkness, where Septon Oswyck wed them before the Kingsguard, the castle's garrison and servants, and villagers from below the walls. The ceremony defied the arrangement made for them, but the couple did not consummate the marriage; its immediate force lay in their choice and the public witnesses to it.

The Proposed Match and the Couple's Response

The plan to marry Alysanne to another youth had been settled by the Queen Regent, the King's Hand, and their councillors. No public announcement had been made, and the account does not establish how Alysanne learned of it. Whatever the source of the news, she did not appeal to her mother or wait for the decision to be reconsidered: she went directly to Jaehaerys. The record preserves what she did, not her private thoughts, and does not confirm the rumor that she disliked the proposed groom.

Jaehaerys understood the danger of delay. He anticipated that others might soon make marriage plans for him as well, and, rather than argue with those who had arranged the match, he summoned the Kingsguard and ordered them to sail to Dragonstone. He reminded the knights of their oaths of obedience and instructed them to keep his departure secret. This was not simply an escape from a betrothal: it was a move by a king and his sister to decide their own marriage before the regents could decide it for them.

Flight to Dragonstone and the Wedding

That night, Jaehaerys and Alysanne mounted their dragons, Vermithor and Silverwing, and left the Red Keep for the old Targaryen stronghold beneath Dragonmont. The Kingsguard followed by galley, arriving several days later. The pair had reached Dragonstone without the septon whom Jaehaerys needed to perform the marriage, so he sought out the elderly Septon Oswyck, who tended the island's sept.

Jaehaerys had no confidence in Septon Mattheus, whom he believed would betray their plans. Oswyck, by contrast, had known the siblings from birth and taught them the mysteries of the Faith of the Seven during their childhood. His past also connected him to earlier generations of the royal family: as a younger man he had ministered to King Aenys, and as a boy had served as a novice in Queen Rhaenys's court. Familiar with the Targaryen tradition of sibling marriage, he agreed to officiate.

At sunrise the following morning, Jaehaerys took Alysanne as his wife in Dragonstone's great yard. Septon Oswyck performed the rites in full, despite his thin, tremulous voice. Seven Kingsguard stood witness, their white cloaks marking the king's sworn protectors as witnesses to the union. The castle's garrison and servants watched as well, along with many people from the fishing village below the castle walls. The marriage had begun as a clandestine act, but it was not performed in isolation: the couple made their choice before a substantial local audience.

A Marriage Celebrated, but Not Consummated

A modest feast followed the ceremony, with toasts to the young king and his new queen. Jaehaerys and Alysanne then retired to the bedchamber where Aegon the Conqueror had once slept beside his sister Rhaenys. The parallel connected their marriage to the dynasty's earlier sibling unions, while the account also emphasizes an important limit: because of Alysanne's youth, there was no bedding ceremony, and the marriage was not consummated.

That omission shaped the immediate aftermath. Queen Alyssa and Lord Rogar arrived later from King's Landing in a war galley, accompanied by a dozen knights, forty men-at-arms, Septon Mattheus, and Grand Maester Benifer. Jaehaerys and Alysanne met them inside the castle gates holding hands. Alyssa wept at the sight of them and called them foolish children who did not know what they had done. The arrival of their mother and the Hand brought the private decision directly into the presence of those whose arrangement it had displaced; the lack of consummation would prove important, though the episode's surviving account does not yet set out the full resolution.

Dynastic Choice and Religious Tension

The wedding belongs to a wider tension between Targaryen marriage custom and the teaching of the Faith. During Aegon I's reign, the High Septons had maintained cordial relations with the Iron Throne without declaring the king's marriages to his sisters lawful. Many ordinary members of the Faith continued to regard marriage between siblings as sinful. Oswyck's willingness to perform the rites therefore reflects his familiarity with the royal tradition, not evidence that the Faith as a whole had accepted it.

The marriage also reverses the usual political direction of royal betrothal. Noble marriages were often arranged to bind distant houses together: Aegon's queens, Visenya and Rhaenys, brokered matches intended to connect regions and reconcile old rivals. Here, by contrast, the proposed match had been made for the royal siblings, and they acted together to replace it with a marriage of their own choosing. The ceremony's witnesses, the white cloaks, the feast, and the royal bedchamber all gave the decision dynastic and ritual form, even as the absence of a bedding ceremony left its immediate status unsettled. Its significance lies in that double character: a marriage rooted in Targaryen precedent, enacted against a regency's plans, and not yet consummated.