49 AC

49 AC was remembered as the Year of the Three Brides: a year of peace, plenty, and marriage that offered Westeros respite from the chaos and conflict preceding it. Its weddings ranged from a small ceremony on Fair Isle to a celebration on a scale rarely seen in the realm. Together, they made marriage a public measure of changing family ties and royal power, while the year’s third union would prove the most significant of all.

A year of three marriages

The name Year of the Three Brides gathered three weddings into a single memorable moment in the annals of the Seven Kingdoms. The first was Rhaena Targaryen’s marriage to Androw Farman; the second, the lavish wedding of Alyssa Targaryen and Rogar Baratheon; and the third, the marriage of Jaehaerys Targaryen and Alysanne Targaryen. They differed sharply in ceremony and circumstance. Rhaena married far from court in a swift, modest gathering, while Alyssa and Rogar’s nuptials drew lords and distinguished visitors from across and beyond the realm. The year’s final match stood apart for its dynastic importance.

Marriage already served the Targaryen monarchy as more than a private bond. Aegon the Conqueror and his queens had encouraged matches between houses from distant regions, intending such alliances to help bind conquered lands together. In 49 AC, the contrast between a widow’s independent choice, a royal regent’s spectacular wedding, and the match made for the king placed family decisions within a broader landscape of political influence and succession.

Rhaena and Androw on Fair Isle

The new year was only a fortnight old when news arrived from Fair Isle, by the Sunset Sea, that Rhaena Targaryen had married Androw Farman. The ceremony was small and swift, held under the open sky. Rhaena was twenty-six, twice widowed, and marrying for the third time; Androw, the second son of the Lord of Fair Isle, was seventeen and marrying for the first. He was described as amiable, comely, and wholly taken with his new wife.

Androw’s father presided, and the household septon conducted the ceremony. Lyman Lannister and his wife Jocasta were the only great lords present. Rhaena’s former companions travelled to stand with her, alongside Androw’s spirited sister Elissa. The rest of the company consisted of bannermen and household knights sworn to House Farman or House Lannister. The king and his court were not told beforehand: word came by raven from Casterly Rock only after the wedding feast and the marriage ceremony had taken place.

The secrecy had consequences at court. Alyssa Targaryen was deeply offended that her daughter had not included her, and accounts say that mother and daughter were never as close afterward. Rogar Baratheon was furious that Rhaena had remarried without the Crown’s leave—a matter over which he exercised authority as Hand to the young king. Permission might not have been granted: many considered Androw, a younger son of a relatively minor lord, an unsuitable match for a woman who had twice been queen and remained the mother of the king’s heir. The episode made the quiet wedding a point of family grievance and court politics as well as a personal choice.

The Golden Wedding

Alyssa Targaryen and Rogar Baratheon’s wedding offered a deliberate contrast to Rhaena’s modest ceremony. Planned for the seventh day of the seventh moon, it was to be performed by the High Septon in the half-completed Dragonpit. The building was still open to the sky, but its rising tiers of stone benches could accommodate tens of thousands of witnesses. The celebrations were to include a great tourney, seven days of feasting, and a mock sea battle on Blackwater Bay.

The gathering brought together lords and delegations from across the Seven Kingdoms and further afield. Donnel Hightower came from Oldtown with a hundred knights and seventy-seven members of the Most Devout, accompanying the High Septon. Lyman Lannister brought three hundred knights from Casterly Rock. Brandon Stark travelled south from Winterfell despite his failing health, accompanied by his sons, northern bannermen, and thirty Sworn Brothers of the Night’s Watch. Lords from the Vale and the Dornish Marches represented their regions; the Prince of Dorne sent his sister, the Sealord of Braavos sent a son, and the Archon of Tyrosh crossed the narrow sea with his daughter. Twenty-two magisters from Pentos also attended.

The attendance and gifts gave the celebration a political reach well beyond the couple’s immediate households. Especially lavish presents came from men who had served Maegor, and from Rickard Rowan and Torgen Oakheart, both of whom had marched with Septon Moon. The wedding thus gathered former opponents and distant powers into a public occasion under the authority of the royal court. Its scale helped make the union a spectacle of reconciliation as well as a marriage.

The marriage with dynastic consequence

The Golden Wedding was the most lavish and famous of the year’s nuptials, but the third marriage was considered the most consequential. After their own wedding, Alyssa Targaryen and Rogar Baratheon turned to finding a suitable match for Jaehaerys Targaryen and, to a lesser extent, for his sister Alysanne. The king’s unmarried and childless state left Rhaena’s young daughters as his heirs. Many at court considered the girls too young and plainly unprepared to rule, making Jaehaerys’s marriage and the prospect of an heir an urgent concern.

Alyssa and Rogar also feared what might happen if Rhaena returned from the west to govern on behalf of one of her daughters. The distance between mother and daughter had become politically important: Rhaena had not attended Alyssa’s wedding, just as Alyssa had been excluded from Rhaena’s. Some at court whispered that Rhaena had used sorcery to kill Maegor, adding suspicion to their concern about her possible return. Against this unsettled background, Jaehaerys’s marriage to Alysanne was more than the third celebration in a year of weddings. It answered the court’s concern over the king’s lack of an heir and gave the year its most important dynastic turn.

Memory and significance

The three weddings preserved different kinds of significance in the memory of 49 AC. Rhaena’s match was remembered for its secrecy and the resentment it caused; Alyssa and Rogar’s for the scale of its ceremony and the breadth of its attendance; and Jaehaerys and Alysanne’s for its importance to the royal succession. The contrast is central to the year’s meaning: a marriage could express personal choice, display the Crown’s resources, or shape the future of the dynasty.

The title Year of the Three Brides therefore does more than record a cluster of weddings. It marks a moment when peace and abundance made room for public celebration, even as the marriages exposed tensions over authority, kinship, and inheritance. The year’s remembered brightness rested alongside unresolved questions about who would rule after Jaehaerys, and who could claim the right to decide the royal family’s future.