Lady Turnips

Lady Turnips was the derisive nickname attached to Myrielle Peake after her father, Lord Unwin Peake, pressed King Aegon III to marry her and likened the match to eating an unwanted vegetable. The name turned a private insult into a public label—and endured even though Myrielle would never be queen.

Origin of the Name

Seven days after the death of the king’s young queen, Lord Unwin came to him with Grand Maester Munkun, Septon Bernard, and Marston Waters of the Kingsguard. They told Aegon Targaryen the Younger that he should put aside his mourning and marry again for the good of the realm; Unwin had already chosen his own daughter as the bride.

Unwin presented Myrielle as an ideal match: she was the king’s age, courteous, and educated by septas to read, write, and do sums. He also argued that her mother’s fertility made her a promising prospect to bear the king strong sons. The proposal treated the marriage chiefly as a dynastic arrangement, while the king’s question—“What if I do not like her?”—put personal reluctance plainly into the exchange.

The Turnip Comparison

Unwin answered that the king need not like Myrielle: he need only wed her, bed her, and father a son on her. He then compared the obligation to eating turnips prepared by the royal cooks, though Aegon did not like them. The comparison reduced a proposed marriage to an unpleasant dish a king was expected to consume because it had been served to him.

The tale spread, and Myrielle became known throughout the Seven Kingdoms as Lady Turnips. The nickname fixed attention on her father’s crude analogy rather than on the qualities he had offered in her favor. Although the proposed bride was the subject of the joke, it was Unwin’s words that gave the name its force.

The Name’s Irony

The name’s royal implication was never fulfilled: Myrielle would never be Queen Turnips. Unwin’s effort to secure a crown for his daughter instead left her publicly marked by the turnip comparison. Lady Turnips thus preserves the episode’s contrast between the formal language of service to the realm and the blunt coercion behind a marriage arranged without the king’s consent.