Maegelle Targaryen

Maegelle Targaryen was a daughter of King Jaehaerys I and Queen Alysanne whose life in the Faith placed her between two kinds of service: religious devotion and care for her family. A quiet, bright child who eagerly chose religious vows, she later instructed her sister Saera and helped bring her parents back together during a serious estrangement. Her final years were devoted to nursing people with greyscale, an act of care that ended in her own death from the disease in 96 AC.

Identity and Early Life

Maegelle was born in 62 AC, one of the children of Jaehaerys and Alysanne. Her temperament distinguished her within a large family: she was gentle, selfless, sweet-natured, and exceptionally bright. In childhood, she attached herself to her sister Alyssa, much as their brother Baelon had attached himself to Aemon. The parallel did not mean that Alyssa welcomed the closeness. She bristled at having the baby follow her and evaded Maegelle when she could, while Baelon laughed at her irritation. The account presents Maegelle as affectionate and devoted, but also records that this attachment was not equally desired by her sister.

Her religious interests were already evident before she left the Red Keep. She was a quiet, studious girl who read from The Seven-Pointed Star every night before sleep. In 73 AC, at ten years old, she was eager to join the Faith as a novice and take her vows. Queen Alysanne described giving one of her beloved children to religious life as a fitting offering to the Mother Above. The queen’s words frame Maegelle’s departure not as a punishment or political arrangement, but as a chosen vocation that her daughter herself welcomed.

Life in the Faith and Family Service

Maegelle’s commitment to the Faith gave her a role beyond the court, but it did not sever her connection to her family. In 85 AC, after Saera’s misconduct and the king’s decision to send her away for discipline, the seventeen-year-old princess was sent to Oldtown, where Septa Maegelle was to take charge of her instruction. The sisters were markedly different in character and circumstance. Maegelle was remembered as gentle and devout; Saera endured the discipline imposed on her but did not accept the religious path her parents intended. Maegelle’s assignment placed her in the position of guiding a sister whose obedience could not be secured simply by placing her within the Faith.

Jaehaerys later visited Maegelle in Oldtown during the journeys that occupied him in 89 AC. His visit formed part of a royal progress that concluded in the city, where he also received the High Septon’s blessing, was feasted by the Conclave, and attended a tourney held in his honor by Lord Hightower. The record situates Maegelle within both the royal family and the religious community: she was the king’s daughter, living in Oldtown as Septa Maegelle, while her father’s visit brought courtly and ecclesiastical authorities together around him.

The Great Rift and Reconciliation

Maegelle’s most consequential intervention in her parents’ affairs came during the Great Rift, the name given to the estrangement between Jaehaerys and Alysanne. Their separation had lasted long enough to threaten the family’s gathering for an important occasion: the coming marriage of their granddaughter Rhaenys. Maegelle recognized that Rhaenys would want both grandparents present and urged her father to end the dispute. She invoked his reputation as the Conciliator, arguing that he should act in keeping with the title others gave him and reconcile with the queen.

Her appeal succeeded. A fortnight later, Jaehaerys returned to King’s Landing, and Alysanne came back from her self-imposed exile on Dragonstone. The account does not record what passed between them, so Maegelle’s precise role in the private settlement cannot be known. It does establish the sequence: her rebuke prompted her father’s return, the queen returned as well, and the couple were close again for a considerable time. Their reunion preceded Rhaenys’s wedding to Corlys Velaryon in 90 AC, one of the last happy periods the king and queen shared. Maegelle thus acted as a family mediator at a moment when the parents’ division threatened to overshadow a gathering of the next generation.

Death and Legacy

Maegelle died in 96 AC after nursing people afflicted with greyscale. The account connects her death directly to this work of care: her arms and legs were turned to stone by the disease she had spent her final years tending. It gives no further account of her illness or death, but the brief description makes clear the cost of her service. The same gentle and selfless qualities used to describe her early life reappear in the work that preceded her death.

Her life is recorded through a series of relationships and acts rather than a public office or political faction. As a child, she sought the Faith and read its scripture; as a septa, she instructed Saera; and, when her parents’ estrangement threatened to separate the family at Rhaenys’s wedding, she pressed Jaehaerys to repair the breach. Her story closes with service to the sick. In a royal history crowded with succession disputes, wars, and court decisions, Maegelle’s significance lies in the quieter forms of influence the account preserves: chosen devotion, instruction, reconciliation, and nursing.