Trial of the Red Keep conspirators

The Trial of the Red Keep conspirators was the last major treason proceeding of the regency of Aegon III, bringing dozens of alleged plotters before the Hand and the regents. The case concerned the poisoning of Gaemon Palehair and a conspiracy against the king. Its thirty-three days of hearings produced executions commuted to service at the Wall, a trial by battle, severe sentences for three court women, and no definitive answer about whether the suspected Lady Clarice Osgrey had been involved.

Background and Scope

The proceedings followed the investigation into the poisoning of Gaemon Palehair and the alleged treason against Aegon III. Lord Torrhen Manderly, newly serving as Hand, took responsibility for hearing the cases. The accusations had widened as those named by Lord Graceford implicated others during questioning: forty-two people had at first stood accused. Sixteen had fled and eight had died before judgment, leaving eighteen to be tried. Thirteen of those eighteen had already confessed to some degree of involvement. The other five maintained that they had believed the treason to be Lord Rowan’s and had joined the plot to protect the king from Lyseni whom they thought intended to kill him.

The case therefore put competing claims about loyalty before the court. Some defendants acknowledged involvement; others described their actions as an attempt to save Aegon III. The evidence records those explanations but does not establish that the five defendants’ account was true. Nor did the hearings resolve every suspicion surrounding the plot’s possible reach into the queen’s household.

Hearings and Attendance

The trials lasted thirty-three days. Prince Viserys attended throughout, often with his wife, Larra of Lys, who was pregnant with their second child, and their son Aegon, accompanied by his wet nurse. Aegon III appeared only three times, on the days judgment was pronounced against Gareth Long, George Graceford, and Septon Bernard. He showed no interest in the other proceedings and did not ask what became of the remaining defendants. Queen Daenaera Velaryon did not attend.

The difference in attendance framed the hearings as a matter of state business carried out in the king’s name but largely apart from his presence. Viserys remained there through the long proceedings, while the king came only for three selected judgments. The case’s outcomes were consequently delivered by Manderly and the regents, who had to distinguish among accused courtiers, officials, and women attached to the queen’s household.

Sentences and the Trial by Battle

Gareth Long and George Graceford were condemned to death, but each chose to take the black instead. Manderly ordered them sent by the next ship to White Harbor, from where they could be taken to the Wall. The same alternative was chosen by accused Gold Cloaks who had been captured, though a number of the accused guards had escaped. The surviving Fingers also took the black rather than face execution.

Septon Bernard’s case brought a plea for mercy from the High Septon, who asked that the septon be allowed to atone through religious service. Manderly spared him from execution, but imposed a severe bodily punishment and ordered him to walk barefoot from King’s Landing to Oldtown. Bernard survived the journey and spent the rest of his life copying holy books at the Starry Sept under a vow of silence. Clemency, in this judgment, meant survival and a religious vocation, but not an ordinary or lenient sentence.

Victor Risley, formerly the King’s Justice, refused the offered choice of taking the black and demanded trial by battle, asserting the right of an anointed knight to prove his innocence. Gareth Long, who had named Risley as part of the plot, was brought back to face him. Long defeated and killed Risley, ending the challenge in the court itself. The proceeding thus allowed a defendant to invoke a formal means of vindication, but its result depended on combat rather than further examination of the conspiracy’s evidence.

The Three Women and the Unresolved Suspicion

The most troubling cases for the judges were those of three highborn women who had attended the queen. Lucinda Penrose admitted that she had wanted Daenaera dead, explaining her resentment over the earlier injury to her nose and the consequences she believed it had brought for her prospects. Cassandra Baratheon admitted to relationships with Mervyn Flowers and Tessario the Tiger. When a witness suggested that she had been part of the reward promised to a Volantene conspirator, she broke down in tears. Priscella Hogg, fourteen and described as simple-minded, believed that Viserys would marry her if Larra were dead; she interpreted his smiles and a chance brush of shoulders as signs of affection.

The interrogators also considered whether the three women could implicate a fourth courtier, Clarice Osgrey. Clarice had supervised the attendants of both Jaehaera Targaryen and Daenaera Velaryon and was acquainted with several confessed conspirators. The questioning produced no confirmation: all three condemned women denied that Clarice had been involved. Her possible connection to the conspiracy remained suspicion, not an established finding, and the proceedings did not prove that Unwin Peake was implicated through his aunt.

The regents and Manderly judged the women’s roles comparatively minor and chose mercy, taking their sex into account. Lucinda and Priscella were sentenced to facial mutilation, but the punishment would be stayed if they entered the Faith and remained faithful to their vows. Cassandra’s high birth spared her the same sentence. She was the eldest child of the late Borros Baratheon and sister to the current Lord of Storm’s End; her mother, Elenda Baratheon, was too unwell to attend but sent three of her son’s bannermen to speak for her. With their help and Lord Grandison’s, Cassandra was arranged to marry Walter Brownhill, a minor knight of Cape Wrath.

Brownhill had been widowed three times and had sixteen children from his earlier marriages, thirteen still living. The arrangement was intended to occupy Cassandra with the care of his household and deter further treason. The account says it achieved that purpose: she plotted no further treasons. Her fate contrasted with the sentences imposed on the other women, combining her family standing with a marriage designed as both settlement and containment.

Outcome and Significance

The trials concluded the last of the treason cases, but they did not empty the Red Keep’s dungeons. Larra’s brothers, Lotho and Roggerio, remained imprisoned, not for treason, murder, or conspiracy, but on accusations of fraud and theft connected with the collapse of the Rogare Bank. Their cases belonged to the wider consequences of that financial disaster rather than to the treason judgments themselves.

The proceedings show the regency converting an investigation into a graded series of judgments: flight and death had already removed many accused before the hearings; some who remained chose the Wall; one defendant sought vindication by combat; and the women received punishments shaped by both their alleged roles and their status. Yet the court did not establish every suspected connection. Clarice Osgrey’s name remained an unanswered question, while the recorded outcomes closed the trials without resolving the full extent of the conspiracy.