Addam Velaryon’s escape and campaign

Addam Velaryon’s escape and campaign turned Queen Rhaenyra’s suspicion of a possible traitor into a military challenge to her enemies. Ordered seized along with Nettles, Addam escaped on Seasmoke before the queen’s warrant could be carried out. He then gathered Riverlands lords and levies into a force of nearly four thousand and struck Tumbleton at night, seeking to wrest the town from the Two Betrayers and show that a bastard-born dragonrider need not be disloyal.

Suspicion and the order to arrest Addam

After Hugh Hammer and Ulf White went over to the enemy, Rhaenyra’s black council began to question whether other dragonseeds could be trusted. Addam and Nettles were both of bastard birth, a fact Lord Bartimos Celtigar treated as evidence of inherent treachery. He urged the queen to seize them before they could defect with their dragons. Ser Luthor Largent, commander of the City Watch, and Ser Lorent Marbrand, the queen’s Lord Commander, supported the call for mistrust. Ser Medrick Manderly and Ser Torrhen Manderly also warned that losing two more dragons could be disastrous.

Lord Corlys Velaryon and Grand Maester Gerardys opposed an immediate judgment. Gerardys argued that no evidence had been offered against either rider; Corlys defended Addam and his brother Alyn as true Velaryons and recalled Nettles’s courage in the Battle of the Gullet. Their arguments could not settle the queen’s fears. Rhaenyra, who had endured repeated betrayals, was increasingly ready to expect treachery even from those close to her.

Rather than act at once, she asked Mysaria, her mistress of whisperers, whether Addam and Nettles intended to betray her. Mysaria alleged that Nettles had already betrayed the queen by sharing Prince Daemon’s bed and might bear his child. The account presents this as Mysaria’s accusation, not as established proof. It nevertheless sharpened Rhaenyra’s anger and suspicion. She ordered Luthor to take twenty gold cloaks to the Dragonpit and arrest Addam for questioning. For Nettles, she sent a separate secret command to Lord Mooton at Maidenpool: he was to kill her. Rhaenyra further dismissed the possibility that Nettles had a legitimate bond with a dragon, attributing her success with Sheepstealer to sorcery.

Escape from King’s Landing

Addam was warned before Luthor reached the Dragonpit. As the gold cloaks rode up Rhaenys’s Hill with the queen’s warrant, the doors opened and Seasmoke flew out, his pale grey wings carrying Addam away. The escape prevented his arrest, but it also made the queen’s suspicions politically consequential: an order intended to secure a dragonrider instead drove a loyalist into flight.

Luthor returned to the Red Keep angry at having been thwarted and accused Corlys of treachery. Corlys did not deny the charge. He was bound, beaten, and taken to a black cell to await trial and execution. Rhaenyra also turned against Gerardys, whose defense of the dragonseeds had made him suspect in her eyes. Remembering his long service, she spared him imprisonment, but dismissed him from the council and sent him back to Dragonstone. The episode thus widened the rupture between the queen and the advisers who had urged caution, while Addam’s escape left her without a rider she had tried to keep under control.

Raising an army in the Riverlands

Addam did not disappear from the war. He flew from King’s Landing and moved quickly among castles whose lords remained loyal to Rhaenyra, assembling forces from a region already exhausted by fighting. The account distinguishes the known campaign from singers’ tales that he landed on the Isle of Faces to seek counsel from the Green Men; what it establishes is a rapid effort to gather an army. Addam’s persistence and persuasive manner helped bring Riverlands lords to his cause. By the time he was ready to move on Tumbleton, he had nearly four thousand men.

The force brought together lords and followers with different histories of loss. Benjicot Blackwood, the twelve-year-old Lord of Raventree, joined, as did Sabitha Frey, the widowed Lady of the Twins, accompanied by her father and brothers of House Vypren. Stanton Piper, Joseth Smallwood, Derrick Darry, and Lyonel Deddings raised fresh levies of old men and inexperienced boys despite having suffered severe losses in earlier autumn battles. Hugo Vance came with three hundred of his own men and Black Trombo’s Myrish sellswords. This was not an untouched host: the Riverlands had already paid heavily in battles and skirmishes, and Addam had to persuade depleted communities to fight again.

The most consequential new support came from House Tully. Ser Elmo Tully had been reluctant to call his banners for Rhaenyra, in part against the wishes of his bedridden grandfather, Lord Grover. Seasmoke’s descent on Riverrun finally persuaded him. His decision brought the house into the queen’s war and gave Addam’s campaign a force and political standing it had previously lacked. The dragon’s appearance did what argument alone had not: it resolved Elmo’s hesitation and drew the Tully banners into the conflict.

The night attack on Tumbleton

Addam’s target was the force occupying Tumbleton on behalf of Rhaenyra’s enemies. Its great encampment outnumbered his attackers, but its apparent strength concealed serious weaknesses. Prince Daeron’s army had stayed in one place too long; drunkenness was widespread and disease had taken hold. Lord Ormund Hightower’s death had left the army without a leader, while the lords seeking command were divided by rivalry. Their attention had turned inward, away from the threat gathering against them.

Two days after the Caltrops had planned to strike, Tumbleton woke in darkness to an attack from north and west. Armored knights poured into the camps as arrows fell and Seasmoke descended. Addam’s surprise assault caught the defenders unprepared: some were only leaving their tents, others trying to saddle horses or put on armor. The dragon made the assault more destructive, setting a hundred tents alight, including the silken pavilions of Ser Hobart Hightower, Lord Unwin Peake, and Prince Daeron. Fire also spread through shops, homes, and septs in Tumbleton that had escaped the earlier battle.

The account presents the campaign as both a military response and a rebuttal to the assumption that bastard-born dragonseeds were inherently treacherous. Addam had been branded suspect because of his birth and his capacity to command a dragon; after escaping the queen’s arrest order, he used that dragon to gather a new army and attack the enemy occupying Tumbleton. The evidence establishes the opening of the Second Battle of Tumbleton and the force and circumstances of his assault, but does not establish the battle’s final outcome.