Rhaenys Targaryen and Corlys Velaryon

Rhaenys Targaryen and Corlys Velaryon are presented as a closely matched couple whose marriage joins two kinds of power: the dragonriding princess’s royal claim and the Sea Snake’s maritime wealth and influence. Their shared political ambition comes into sharp focus when Rhaenys is passed over in the succession and they campaign for their son Laenor at the Great Council. The partnership is neither simply a private marriage nor merely a political arrangement; the account emphasizes both their mutual regard and the claims they pursue together.

Marriage and mutual regard

In 90 AC, one of the last occasions of happiness shared by King Jaehaerys and Queen Alysanne was the wedding of their eldest grandchild, Rhaenys, to Corlys, Lord of the Tides. Rhaenys was sixteen; Corlys was thirty-seven and already celebrated as the greatest seafarer Westeros had known. He had completed nine great voyages, but returned home to marry and establish a family. The account presents the marriage as a rare match for both: Corlys had found in Rhaenys a partner equal to his own ambition and stature.

Rhaenys brought distinction of her own to the marriage. A dragonrider since the age of thirteen, she insisted on arriving at the wedding on Meleys, the Red Queen, a scarlet dragon that had once carried her aunt Alyssa. Her confident promise that the two of them could travel to the ends of the earth together, with her flying ahead, captures the balance between them: Corlys’s life had been defined by voyages across the sea, while Rhaenys could command the sky. Their companionship is recalled not only through their public rank, but through the image of a seafarer who had come home for her and a dragonrider who imagined their future as a shared journey.

Ambition, family, and the succession

Corlys’s ambitions reached beyond his voyages and his growing power as Lord of the Tides. He expected his children with Rhaenys to ride dragons and believed that one day one of them would sit the Iron Throne. His expectation gave their family a political future as well as a personal one. Rhaenys was the daughter of the Old King’s eldest son and heir, Prince Aemon; when Aemon died in 92 AC, she was already pregnant. King Jaehaerys then named Aemon’s brother Baelon heir, passing over Rhaenys and, potentially, her unborn child.

The decision affected both spouses. Rhaenys objected directly to the king, arguing that her son’s birthright was being taken from him. Corlys was so angered that he relinquished his admiralty and his place on the small council, then took Rhaenys back to Driftmark. His withdrawal made the dispute more than a question of private disappointment: it was a break with the court and a visible rejection of the king’s choice. Their children’s births sharpened the stakes. The unborn child was a girl, Laena, born in 93 AC; Rhaenys and Corlys had a son, Laenor, the following year. Baelon had meanwhile become firmly established as heir, but the couple and their allies continued to regard Laenor’s claim as stronger, with some also supporting Rhaenys or Laena.

The Great Council campaign

After Baelon’s death reopened the succession question, Corlys and Rhaenys brought the resources and standing of House Velaryon to Harrenhal to press Laenor’s claim. Corlys’s wealth and influence helped gather support from a group that included Boremund Baratheon, the Lord of Storm’s End, as well as lords from the North and the Crownlands. Their campaign translated an old grievance over Rhaenys’s treatment into a direct bid for their son: the claim was no longer only that the king had passed over a daughter, but that Laenor should be recognized as the rightful heir.

The pair argued their case eloquently and generously, but their coalition could not overcome the decision of the assembled lords. The Great Council chose Viserys Targaryen by an overwhelming margin, later said to have exceeded twenty votes to one. Jaehaerys, who had not attended, accepted the verdict and made Viserys Prince of Dragonstone. Driftmark and Storm’s End submitted to the result, though grudgingly. For Rhaenys and Corlys, the outcome closed off their immediate effort to advance Laenor’s claim; for the realm, it was widely understood to establish a precedent against a woman inheriting the Iron Throne or transmitting a claim to her male descendants. Their unsuccessful campaign thus helped define the very rule that constrained their family.

Partnership in war and political memory

The account later shows their partnership operating through coordinated action. As the conflict between Rhaenyra and Aegon II began, Corlys was to command the Velaryon fleet as it blocked shipping into and out of Blackwater Bay, while Rhaenys flew above the ships to deter attacks by dragons. The division of roles reflects the strengths that had marked their marriage from the beginning: his command of ships and sea power, her presence in the air as a dragonrider. Together, they contributed the Velaryon fleet and a royal dragon to the same strategic plan.

Their story consequently binds marriage, inheritance, and political action without reducing one to another. Rhaenys’s royal descent gave the couple’s children a claim; Corlys’s wealth and influence helped make that claim a serious campaign; and their different forms of power remained useful in later conflict even after the Great Council rejected Laenor. The narrative also preserves the marriage as a relationship of apparent personal admiration: Corlys had crossed the known world, yet described Rhaenys as the person who brought him home. Their shared future, as the account frames it, was at once intimate, maritime, aerial, and dynastic.