The Regents’ Attempt to Separate Jaehaerys and Alysanne

The Regents’ Attempt to Separate Jaehaerys and Alysanne was a political effort to reverse the young king’s marriage to his sister, not merely a dispute within the royal family. Queen Regent Alyssa Targaryen feared that the union would again set the Crown against the Faith, while Lord Rogar Baratheon sought to exert control over the king and prevent the marriage from becoming irrevocable. Their response combined religious instruction, surveillance, and an alleged plan to place another woman in Jaehaerys’s path. None of it broke the bond between the king and queen.

Causes and Political Stakes

The regents’ alarm rested on both religious and political concerns. The Faith regarded marriage between brother and sister as sinful, and Alyssa believed that news of her children’s union could renew the Crown’s conflict with religious authorities. Septon Mattheus reinforced her fears, warning that respectable people would condemn the match. Alyssa hoped that Jaehaerys and Alysanne might return to court, reconsider, and end the marriage before it divided the realm.

Rogar’s purpose was less conciliatory. Already angered by his humiliation at Dragonstone, where he had been forced to back down before the king, he had considered returning with enough men to take the castle by force. Alyssa dissuaded him from that course. But she did not share his desire to leave the marriage intact: she, too, wanted it undone, largely because she feared the consequences of the Faith’s opposition. When Jaehaerys and Alysanne did not return to King’s Landing, Rogar prevented Alyssa from going to Dragonstone herself to plead with them. Their absence hardened the division between the royal couple on Dragonstone and the regents who still held power at court.

The regents kept the confrontation secret beyond their council. Rogar ordered the men who had witnessed events on Dragonstone to say nothing, threatening them with the loss of their tongues. He hoped that, if the marriage could be annulled before it was consummated, it could be treated as though it had never happened. The secrecy was therefore part of the strategy: it was meant to preserve the possibility of a quiet reversal and prevent the dispute from becoming public knowledge.

The Household Sent to Dragonstone

Alyssa turned the need to provide Alysanne with a proper household into an opportunity to influence her. Since the young queen had no suitable female companions of her own, the regent sent a carefully selected group to Dragonstone. Septa Ysabel and the novices Lyra and Edyth were to provide religious instruction. Lady Lucinda Tully, renowned for her piety, came to oversee the women and servants of Alysanne’s household, accompanied by her sister Ella. The company also included daughters of Lord Celtigar and noble girls from the Vale, the stormlands, and the Reach, among them Coryanne Wylde.

The selection served more than ordinary household needs. Alyssa hoped that the women’s prayers, sermons, and instruction in the Faith would persuade Alysanne that marrying her brother was impious, and perhaps persuade Jaehaerys as well. She regarded the king and queen as young and willful rather than irredeemably wicked, and hoped that instruction might lead them to repent before their marriage tore the realm apart.

Rogar had a different use for the household. Unable to depend on the garrison or the Kingsguard to serve his purposes, he instructed Lady Lucinda and the others to report what the royal couple said and did. He was especially concerned with whether they intended to consummate their marriage, which he wanted prevented. The household thus became both an attempted moral influence and a channel of political surveillance. Alyssa’s plan relied on religious persuasion; Rogar’s relied on information and control.

The Coryanne Wylde Allegation

A later, notorious book attributed a more coercive scheme to the regents’ circle: Coryanne Wylde was supposedly summoned before being sent to Dragonstone and instructed to use her influence over Jaehaerys to make him abandon the marriage. The surviving versions disagree about who allegedly met her, naming either Rogar or his brother Borys. Their shared claim is that Coryanne was intended to serve as a companion to Alysanne while also being used to draw the king away from his wife.

The account cannot be confirmed. It survives only in a text that circulated decades after the supposed events, was repeatedly altered by copyists, and became increasingly contradictory. There is no independent evidence that the meeting at the inn took place or that Coryanne received the alleged instructions. The possibility remains that a Baratheon spoke with her about her duties as a spy, but the record cannot establish what was said. What is known is that Coryanne was sent to Dragonstone as one of Alysanne’s companions, a choice later treated as suspicious because other suitable young noblewomen were available. The accusation therefore complicates the regents’ documented attempt at religious persuasion without proving that they pursued the alleged sexual scheme.

Failure and Exposure

The household’s religious campaign did not weaken Alysanne’s resolve. Prayer, sermons, and readings from The Seven-Pointed Star left her convinced that she was meant to marry Jaehaerys, support him as his confidante, and become the mother of his children. Her conviction, and her gentle manner in other matters, made it difficult for the women sent to correct her to condemn her. Instead, they gradually became more sympathetic to her. The attempt to turn pious companions into an instrument of separation thus produced the opposite effect: the women drew closer to the queen they had been meant to change.

Rogar’s effort also failed. Accounts by Septon Oswyck and Maester Culiper describe the couple’s time together on Dragonstone before Jaehaerys came of age as free of quarrels or harsh words. The later tales about Coryanne’s supposed encounters with the king contradict one another and cannot establish whether she ever tried to approach him. History does record that she left Dragonstone secretly on the fifteenth day of the sixth moon of 50 AC with Ser Howard Bullock, a married man who left his wife behind and took much of her jewelry. They travelled by fishing boat to Driftmark and then sailed for Pentos. Their flight gave the regents’ plan no success to show: whatever Coryanne’s intended role, she did not separate the royal couple.

By the time news of her departure reached Rogar, both the religious and political means of breaking the marriage had failed. The union was also becoming impossible to keep secret. Men had witnessed the confrontation at Dragonstone’s gates, and visiting lords had seen Alysanne beside Jaehaerys and the affection between them. Rogar’s threats could not stop the rumors spreading through the realm and beyond it. Alyssa ultimately accepted that the marriage could not be undone and turned from separation toward protecting her children from the consequences. The episode showed the limits of regency: Alyssa and Rogar could command a household and control the court, but neither persuasion, surveillance, nor secrecy could make the king and queen abandon one another.