Aegon I Targaryen and Orys Baratheon

Aegon Targaryen and Orys Baratheon’s relationship combined a rare personal closeness with a consequential political partnership. Orys was Aegon’s companion from youth and, by the time Aegon began his conquest, the only close friend attributed to him. Aegon made that loyalty public by placing Orys at the center of his new government as his first Hand, but war eventually altered Orys’s ability and wish to serve in that role.

A Friendship Before the Crown

Orys’s importance to Aegon preceded the creation of the Seven Kingdoms. He was described as the companion of Aegon’s youth and the sole exception to the king’s otherwise notably small circle of close friends. Although Aegon commanded loyalty from bannermen and allies, the account distinguishes those political ties from his bond with Orys: among his companions, Orys was personal as well as trusted.

The source also preserves uncertainty about their kinship. It was whispered that Orys was Aegon’s baseborn half-brother, but this is presented as rumor, not established fact. Argilac the Storm King used that alleged status to reject Aegon’s marriage proposal for his daughter. The distinction matters: Orys was unquestionably Aegon’s friend and champion, while the claimed blood relationship remained hearsay.

A Proposed Match and Its Rejection

During the confrontation with Argilac, Aegon countered the Storm King’s offer of land with terms of his own. He would accept the lands originally proposed and sought additional territory, including Massey’s Hook and lands extending toward the Wendwater and the headwaters of the Mander. To seal the pact, he proposed that Argilac’s daughter marry Orys.

Argilac angrily refused. He regarded the proposed match as an insult to his daughter because Orys was said to be a bastard, and he had Aegon’s envoy’s hands cut off and returned in a box with a written rejection. The proposal thus made Orys’s place in Aegon’s plans visible before the conquest was secured: Aegon was prepared to make his closest companion the intended husband of a king’s heir and to bind a territorial agreement to that marriage. Argilac’s response turned the proposed alliance into a point of rupture rather than reconciliation.

The First Hand of the King

After the conquest had begun, Aegon’s trust in Orys took institutional form. At the Aegonfort, after taking castles and securing the mouth of the Blackwater Rush, Aegon received the defeated lords and confirmed them in their lands and titles. He also rewarded his own principal supporters with offices. Orys was named the king’s strong right hand, and later maesters reckoned him the first Hand of the King.

The appointment joined personal esteem to public authority. Aegon relied on his small council and sisters for much of the realm’s day-to-day government, but he entrusted Orys with the highest office beside the crown. The first Hand was not simply an old friend honored at court: his position placed him among the people through whom the newly conquered realm would be governed. Orys’s appointment therefore gave lasting political weight to their youthful companionship.

War and the End of His Service

Orys’s tenure ended after the Dornish War. He was captured and lost his sword hand; after he was ransomed, he asked Aegon to relieve him of the Handship. Orys explained that he did not want people to speak of the king’s Hand as a stump. The concern, as reported, was not simply that he had been injured, but that the office’s name and public perception would become a source of ridicule.

Aegon subsequently appointed Edmyn Tully, beginning a succession of Hands that continued through later changes in the king’s government. Orys’s departure marks a change in the form of his service, not evidence that the friendship ended: the account records his request to leave office and the king’s next appointment, but gives no further scene between them. The relationship’s arc is consequently defined by two linked facts: Aegon elevated his boyhood companion to the first Handship, and war brought that public partnership to a close when Orys no longer wished to bear the office.