Septon Moon’s march on Oldtown

Septon Moon’s march on Oldtown exposed how far the Faith’s conflict with House Targaryen outlasted King Maegor’s death. Moon and nearly five thousand followers camped beneath the city, while the High Septon remained trapped inside the Starry Sept. Because Jaehaerys needed the High Septon to anoint him, the standoff threatened both the safety of his journey to Oldtown and the religious legitimacy of his rule.

Background and the gathering host

Maegor’s campaign against the Poor Fellows and the Warrior’s Sons had not ended their resistance. Although hundreds had dispersed after his death, the remaining host beneath Oldtown was still close to five thousand. The broader rebellion drew strength from pious lords and from lesser lords, landed knights, and smallfolk who sheltered, fed, and aided the outlawed religious fighters. The march was therefore not an isolated gathering: it belonged to a continuing struggle over whether the Targaryen dynasty could rule without the Faith’s assent.

Septon Moon’s followers called him the true High Septon, and his claim gave their camp a rival religious authority. Each day he denounced the Targaryens and called for their destruction or expulsion. He also demanded that Lord Hightower surrender Oldtown and that the High Septon leave the Starry Sept to face the Poor Fellows. The rhetoric turned the city’s gates and the High Septon’s confinement into the visible stakes of the confrontation.

Oldtown under pressure

Lords Oakheart and Rowan and their forces defended Moon’s camp. Lord Hightower, meanwhile, shut the city gates against the followers and refused them entry, but would not take up arms against them. He described his reluctance as a refusal to shed pious blood; others suspected he did not wish to fight the two lords who had given Moon protection. The delay left the High Septon effectively a prisoner in his own palace and earned Lord Donnel Hightower the name Lord Donnel the Delayer among the maesters of the Citadel.

The deadlock mattered beyond Oldtown. Jaehaerys’s anointing by the High Septon was considered essential after the long conflict between Maegor and the Faith. Queen Alyssa and Lord Rogar agreed that the new king needed that anointing, but Moon’s armed following made travel to the city unsafe. News of Maegor’s death had persuaded some followers to leave; it had not persuaded the mass of the host to disperse.

The council’s dilemma

In King’s Landing, Jaehaerys and his counselors considered how to break the standoff. Some argued for using the dragons of the king and his sisters, Rhaena and Alysanne, to destroy Moon’s forces. Jaehaerys rejected the prospect of such slaughter, and Queen Alyssa forbade it, invoking the fate of Rhaenys Targaryen and her dragon in Dorne as a warning against assuming that dragonfire would settle the matter without terrible cost.

Rogar Baratheon offered a military alternative: he would lead an army across the Reach to disperse Moon’s followers. But this would mean fighting not only the Poor Fellows, but also the forces of Lords Oakheart and Rowan. Rogar judged victory likely, while acknowledging that it would come at a price. The episode thus sets the need for a lawful, religiously sanctioned coronation against the human and political costs of forcing a route to it by arms.

An unexpected turn

As the king and his council debated, events outside Oldtown began to shift in an unexpected way. At dusk, after a day of preaching, Moon withdrew to his tent for his evening meal. A young woman arrived carrying a flagon of wine, presenting it in return for his help, and the guards admitted her. The account places this encounter at the point where the confrontation begins to resolve, but does not establish the outcome in the evidence available here.