Maegor I and Alys Harroway

Maegor I and Alys Harroway were joined in a second marriage that challenged both the king’s authority and the Faith’s opposition to plural marriage. Their relationship, first presented as Maegor’s defiant answer to the alleged barrenness of his first wife, Ceryse Hightower, later became entangled with a disputed pregnancy, accusations of deception, and the destruction of Alys’s family. The account offers little evidence of private intimacy between them; instead, it traces how their marriage became a matter of succession, religious legitimacy, and royal power.

Background and the Second Marriage

Maegor’s marriage to Alys began in 39 AC, after Queen Alyssa gave King Aenys another daughter. Maegor then declared Ceryse barren and announced that he had taken Alys, the daughter of the new Lord of Harrenhal, as a second wife. The account leaves his reasons uncertain, but places the announcement amid continuing questions over heirs and the succession. Aenys had several children with Alyssa, while Maegor’s marriage to Ceryse had not produced a child.

The union also collided with a religious question that had remained unresolved during Aegon I’s reign. The High Septons had never formally condemned Aegon’s marriages to his sisters, but neither had they declared such marriages lawful; the Faith continued to regard a man taking multiple wives as sinful. Maegor defended his own choice by invoking his father’s marriages and claiming that the Faith’s restrictions did not bind the blood of the dragon. His position made his marriage to Alys not merely a personal arrangement but a direct assertion of dynastic exceptionalism.

The wedding took place on Dragonstone under the protection of the Dowager Queen Visenya. Because the castle septon refused to officiate, the couple were joined instead in a Valyrian rite. The marriage proceeded without the leave, knowledge, or presence of King Aenys. Once it became known, Aenys and Maegor quarreled bitterly. Manfred Hightower, Ceryse’s father, demanded that Alys be put aside, while the High Septon denounced the marriage. Maegor nevertheless remained defiant, and the dispute widened beyond the royal family as pious lords condemned the union.

Exile and Separation

Aenys ordered Maegor either to end his marriage to Alys and return to Ceryse, or to accept five years of exile. Maegor chose exile. In 40 AC he left for Pentos with Alys, his dragon Balerion, and the sword Blackfyre. His departure made the marriage the immediate cause of a rupture between the king and his half-brother, while Ceryse was left behind in King’s Landing.

The separation did not resolve the conflict. Aenys appointed Septon Murmison as Hand, apparently hoping that elevating a pious cleric might appease the Faith. He also had Murmison perform nightly rites intended to make Ceryse fertile, hoping, as the account relates, that a child might encourage Maegor to repent. Ceryse soon tired of the ritual and left for Oldtown to rejoin her father. The episode shows how Maegor’s marriage continued to shape the court even in his absence: Aenys’s response focused on Ceryse and the hope of a lawful heir, but it did not undo Maegor’s choice or quiet opposition to it.

Pregnancy and the Disputed Heir

In a later phase of Maegor’s reign, Alys became pregnant, briefly raising the prospect that Maegor might have a son. In 44 AC the court welcomed the news. Grand Maester Desmond managed the queen’s care while she was confined to bed, assisted by two septas, a midwife, and Alys’s sisters, Jeyne and Hanna. Maegor insisted that his other wives attend the pregnant queen as well. The arrangements placed Alys’s pregnancy at the center of the royal household and made its outcome consequential to Maegor’s hopes for an heir.

During the third moon of her confinement, Alys lost the child. Maegor ordered the execution of the midwife, the septas, and Grand Maester Desmond, sparing only Alys’s sisters. The account then reports that Tyanna of the Tower told Maegor the child had not been his. According to her accusation, Alys had feared the fate of Ceryse if she failed to provide Maegor with a son, and her father, Lucas Harroway, had arranged for men to get her pregnant while Maegor shared the beds of his other wives. These claims are presented as Tyanna’s revelation, not as an independently established account of Alys’s actions or knowledge.

Tyanna supplied a list of twenty alleged fathers, ranging from lords and knights to servants and workers, whom she said were known to have fathered healthy children. Under torture, all but two confessed; one reportedly still possessed money Lucas Harroway had paid him. The king’s questioning was conducted secretly, and Alys and her father did not learn of his suspicions until the Kingsguard arrived. The evidence thus shifts the marriage’s story from a dynastic hope for a child to a royal investigation whose methods and conclusions were controlled by Maegor.

Destruction and Significance

The accusation brought consequences not only for Alys but for her family and the alleged fathers. Alys’s sisters died while trying to protect her; Lucas Harroway was killed, and members of his family and the men named in Tyanna’s list were also executed. Alys was given into Tyanna’s custody and died after a prolonged ordeal, with Maegor present. Her remains were displayed above the city’s gates. Maegor then marched on Harrenhal and Lord Harroway’s Town, killing those he found with Harroway blood. The account links the collapse of Alys’s marriage and family directly to Maegor’s effort to punish what he understood as deception over his heir.

The relationship’s significance lies in the contrast between its beginning and end. Maegor initially treated his father’s plural marriages as grounds to reject the Faith’s limits and take Alys without his brother’s approval. Yet when the hoped-for pregnancy ended in loss, suspicion replaced the dynastic promise, and the power imbalance within the marriage left Alys exposed to the king’s judgment. The narrative does not establish whether Tyanna’s accusations were true; it does establish that Maegor acted on them with devastating force. Alys’s brief place as a potential mother of the king’s heir became inseparable from the political and familial destruction that followed.