Red Roy Connington

Red Roy Connington was the fifteen-year-old Lord of Griffin’s Roost whose place among Princess Saera Targaryen’s favored companions ended in royal punishment and exile. His brief story moves from the apparent ease of a young lord welcomed into the princess’s circle to a refusal that left a pregnant woman without the marriage she had expected, then to a death abroad before his sentence was complete. The account offers little access to Roy beyond his choices, but those choices make him a consequential figure in the exposure of Saera’s conduct and its unequal costs.

Identity and Place at Court

Roy was fifteen and already Lord of Griffin’s Roost when he became one of the three young men closest to Saera. The other two were Jonah Mooton, heir to Maidenpool, and Braxton Beesbury, a nineteen-year-old knight known as Stinger and heir to Honeyholt. Saera’s female companions were Perianne Moore and Alys Turnberry, whom she nicknamed Pretty Peri and Sweetberry. For more than a year, the three young lords and three young women formed a close company at feasts and balls, as well as on hunts and hawking trips. They once sailed across Blackwater Bay to Dragonstone, and the young women watched the lords compete in the yards.

The group’s public, sociable routine helped reassure King Jaehaerys that a suitable marriage for Saera could be found among the young men already at court. Queen Alysanne, by contrast, considered the young men immature and distrusted Stinger in particular because she had heard he had fathered children out of wedlock. The difference between the king’s confidence and the queen’s suspicion foreshadows how little the appearance of constant company could establish about what the young people did or concealed.

The Blue Pearl Affair

In 84 AC, a prank associated with Saera brought the group to the attention of the City Watch. Two watchmen investigated shouts and screams from the Blue Pearl, where Tom Turnip was the center of a humiliating joke staged for the amusement of the house’s patrons. Roy, Jonah, and Stinger were among those present, and all three were drunk. Roy acknowledged that they had thought it would be funny to watch Turnip perform for the crowd. Jonah then identified the prank as Saera’s idea.

The watchmen returned Turnip to the Red Keep and brought the three young lords before their commander, Ser Robert Redwyne. Redwyne delivered them to the king despite Stinger’s threats and Roy’s clumsy attempt to bribe him. The episode therefore did more than expose a cruel joke: it carried the young men’s conduct from a brothel into the king’s judgment. Roy appears here as a participant who could try to obstruct that process, but whose rank and company did not shield him once the watch had taken notice.

Refusal and Royal Punishment

The affair widened into a crisis around Saera and her companions. When Saera spoke of marriage, she treated Jonah and Roy as men who loved her, while describing Stinger differently: he did not love her, but amused and excited her. She also entertained the possibility of marrying more than one man, invoking the multiple wives of Aegon the Conqueror and Maegor. Roy’s place in that conversation is evidence of his closeness to Saera, but it does not establish the precise nature of his relationship with her beyond what she claimed.

The clearest evidence of Roy’s own position comes when Alys Turnberry was pregnant and Roy refused to marry her. He would not acknowledge Stinger’s child as his or make the baby heir to Griffin’s Roost. His refusal separated the child’s parentage from the possibility of a recognized succession through his house. The king arranged another outcome: Alys was sent to the Vale to give birth to a red-haired girl at a motherhouse on an island in Gulltown harbor, and afterward she married Dunstan Pryor, Lord of Pebble. Perianne, who was not pregnant, married Jonah; their marriage succeeded, and they eventually became lord and lady of Maidenpool. The different outcomes underline that Roy’s refusal was not an isolated private decision: it helped determine what became of Alys and her child.

Jaehaerys gave Roy a choice between joining the Night’s Watch for life and spending ten years in exile. Roy chose exile. The king’s sentence removed him from his lordship’s immediate setting without, in the account given, taking Griffin’s Roost from his family. Unlike Stinger, whose punishment was framed around his personal conduct and physical abilities, Roy’s recorded penalty was separation from Westeros for a fixed term.

Exile and Ending

Roy crossed the narrow sea to Pentos and then went on to Myr, where he joined sellswords and other people described by the account as low company. The narrative records no return to Westeros, reconciliation with the king, or later role in the affairs of Griffin’s Roost. Instead, it marks the possibility of return only to close it: half a year before Roy might have come back, he was stabbed to death by a woman in a Myrish gambling den.

His death ends the political consequence of the sentence for Roy himself, while leaving its broader personal consequences visible in the paths taken by the others. Jonah and Perianne became the lord and lady of Maidenpool; Alys was married elsewhere after giving birth; Roy never completed his exile or resumed his place in Westeros. The brief record makes him neither the center of Saera’s story nor merely a name among her companions. His refusal and subsequent banishment show how the court’s response to the scandal converted a youthful circle’s private conduct into decisions about marriage, inheritance, and who could remain in the realm.