Queen Rhaenys

Queen Rhaenys was Alyn Velaryon’s flagship and the most prominent vessel in his surprise attack on the Braavosi fleet in the Stepstones. Its collision with the great dromond Grand Defiance turned a daring assault into a celebrated victory, while the campaign’s failure to secure the islands revealed the difference between a ship’s triumph at sea and the strategic results the crown had sought.

Flagship of the Velaryon Fleet

When the royal fleet reached the Gullet, Alyn was given command of the Velaryon squadrons. His force comprised sixty war galleys, thirty longships, and more than a hundred cogs and great cogs, with Queen Rhaenys as his flagship. Alyn took the ships south after the royal fleet remained off Tarth awaiting a reply from King’s Landing, and struck the Braavosi in the Stepstones while their grand admiral and many captains were gathered on Bloodstone.

The Attack on the Grand Defiance

During the fighting, the four-hundred-oared Braavosi dromond Grand Defiance forced its way past half a dozen smaller Velaryon warships and reached open water. Alyn was waiting there aboard Queen Rhaenys. The larger ship was slow to turn and meet its attacker; Queen Rhaenys struck it broadside, its oars driving hard through the water. The collision broke the dromond’s oars, damaged its hull, brought down its masts, and nearly split it in two. When Alyn ordered his rowers to back away, water entered through the opening and Grand Defiance sank within moments.

Victory and Return

Alyn’s fleet lost three ships in the fighting, including True Heart, commanded by his cousin Daeron, who died when it sank. In return, the Velaryons sank more than thirty enemy ships and captured six galleys, eleven cogs, eighty-nine hostages, and large stores of provisions, weapons, and coin, as well as an elephant intended for the Sealord’s menagerie. Queen Rhaenys carried Alyn back up the Blackwater Rush; he rode the captured elephant into King’s Landing, where crowds gathered to acclaim him and King Aegon III welcomed him at the Red Keep.

A Naval Triumph Without Conquest

Queen Rhaenys’s most famous exploit did not bring the political outcome Lord Unwin Peake had intended. Alyn had captured or destroyed many Braavosi vessels, but he had not taken Bloodstone or the other Stepstones; the troops needed for such a conquest had been left with the royal fleet off Tarth. The ship’s victory therefore returned Alyn as a popular hero while leaving the realm facing the prospect of war with Braavos, and the pirate Racallio Ryndoon apparently stronger than before.