King's Landing City Watch during the plague

The King's Landing City Watch during the plague was both a policing force and a key part of the capital’s defenses. Its effectiveness depended on command and on whether its men remained loyal when power shifted. The Shivers of 59 AC killed its commander and many of its members, leaving the streets exposed to lawlessness. Decades later, the watch’s rank and file helped determine the outcome of King’s Landing’s capture, and then suffered catastrophic losses in the disorder that followed. Further disease and changes of regime repeatedly weakened and rebuilt the force.

Duties and Command

The City Watch had responsibilities across the capital, from maintaining order in its streets to holding the city’s gates in wartime. Its organization included a commander and seven captains, each responsible for one of the gates. This arrangement made the force useful to rulers defending the city, but also gave the captains and their subordinates influence over whether the gates stayed shut or were opened to an approaching army.

The watch’s commanders could also be drawn directly into the king’s political and military calculations. During Jaehaerys Targaryen’s reign, Lord Corbray inspected the men of the East Barracks. Later, as the succession crisis developed, Daemon Targaryen’s former command of two thousand watchmen helped make him more powerful at court. The force was not merely a civic service: control of it could strengthen a prince, protect a regime, or place the capital within an enemy’s reach.

The Shivers and the Breakdown of Order

The Shivers struck the capital especially hard in 59 AC. Among those who died were the watch’s commander, Qarl Corbray, and many watchmen who were sick or incapacitated. With its leadership gone and its ranks depleted, the force could no longer keep order across the city. Shops were looted, residents were robbed or killed, and women were assaulted. The crisis exposed the danger of a city force whose ability to respond depended on a healthy commander and enough men able to serve.

Jaehaerys sent Kingsguard and household knights into the streets to restore order, but they were too few to manage the disorder. He soon had to recall them. The loss of Qarl Corbray was therefore not simply a vacancy at the head of the watch: it removed the officer around whom the city’s response had been organized, while the illness had also weakened the force expected to carry out that response.

After the epidemic, the king had to replace both leaders and personnel. Ser Robert, the eldest son of Lord Manfryd Redwyne, was appointed to command the City Watch. The king also appointed Ser Ryam Redwyne and Ser Robin Shaw to the Kingsguard, part of the wider effort to replenish the royal service after the deaths. These appointments show how rebuilding the watch was bound to the replacement of other lost officers, rather than being an isolated administrative task.

Political Allegiance and the Fall of King’s Landing

During the struggle between Rhaenyra Targaryen and Aegon II, the watch again became decisive. When Queen Alicent’s faction consolidated power, the watch’s commander and gate captains were summoned to the Red Keep and questioned. Five captains were judged sympathetic to Aegon’s cause; the other two and the commander were imprisoned. Ser Luthor Largent was made the new commander, with Ser Gwayne Hightower appointed second in command to watch him for signs of disloyalty. The appointments reflected the regime’s concern that command alone could not guarantee the loyalty of the force.

That suspicion proved well founded when Daemon and his forces reached the capital. The gate captains chosen for loyalty to Aegon had already been imprisoned or killed, while the rank and file still favored Daemon, who had once commanded them. Ser Gwayne tried to raise the alarm, but Luthor seized him and killed him. Luthor then ordered the city gates opened to the soldiers coming from the ships of Corlys Velaryon. The watch’s loyalties thus helped turn the city’s defenses against the regime they were meant to protect.

King’s Landing fell in less than a day. A small body of defenders held the River Gate for hours, but Rhaenyra’s soldiers entered through the other gates with little opposition. The result was not simply a failure to defend the walls: control of the gates had already passed to men who chose to admit the queen’s forces. The episode recalled the earlier lesson of the Shivers in a different form. In one crisis, disease disabled the watch; in another, political allegiance redirected it.

Riot, Losses, and Partial Restoration

After the capture of the city, the watch faced another test when a crowd gathered around the Shepherd. Ser Luthor led five hundred watchmen into Cobbler’s Square, where the force’s presence drove many people away. When the remaining crowd refused to disperse and violence broke out, the watch advanced in formation. The Shepherd’s followers overwhelmed the smaller force, and the confrontation became a riot and a slaughter. Luthor was killed, and the watch was driven back to its barracks.

By dawn, fires burned through the city and bands of lawless men moved through Flea Bottom. The surviving watchmen could not restore order across the capital at once. Captains Ser Balon Byrch and Ser Garth the Harelip led forces out from the Old Gate and Dragon Gate, recovering some control north and east of Rhaenys’s Hill. Ser Medrick Manderly and a hundred men from White Harbor restored order in another district, down to the Iron Gate. Elsewhere, the disorder continued: Ser Torrhen Manderly lost a quarter of his men withdrawing from a fight with the so-called gutter knights, and only sixteen men returned from Ser Lorent Marbrand’s force in Flea Bottom. The piecemeal recovery showed how much the city depended on local commanders and additional armed forces once the watch had been broken.

Later Epidemics and Reconstitution

A later outbreak of Winter Fever again brought the capital’s defenses into service against a threat within the city. The first cases appeared among workers and residents along the Blackwater Rush, including sailors, ferrymen, dockers, and wharfside traders. After examining the sick, Grand Maester Munkun sent an urgent message to the Hand rather than return to the castle. Ser Tyland Lannister ordered the watch to close the city, preventing people from entering or leaving while the fever ran its course, and had the Red Keep’s gates barred as well. The measures could not keep the disease from spreading, but they made the watch an instrument of quarantine as well as public order.

The fever killed the watch’s commander, and his successor died nine days later. The force was again left without stable leadership. When Unwin Peake later reshaped the court after the deaths of the Winter Fever and the Moon of Madness, he placed Ser Lucas Leygood in command of the City Watch and gave five hundred of his own men gold cloaks to replace personnel lost in the crises. As with earlier appointments, this rebuilding also served the interests of the political power that controlled the capital. Across the episodes, the watch emerges as an essential but vulnerable institution: its capacity to keep order rested on numbers and command, while its actions could be redirected by epidemic, factional loyalty, or the authority of the ruler who appointed its leaders.