Aemon Targaryen and Jocelyn Baratheon

Aemon Targaryen and Jocelyn Baratheon were husband and wife, joined while Aemon was heir to the Iron Throne. Their marriage linked the royal succession to Storm's End and gave them a daughter, Rhaenys, whose place in the family became politically consequential after Aemon was killed on Tarth. The surviving account offers only a few glimpses of their life together, but its milestones—from the choice of bride to a brief farewell before battle—show a marriage at the intersection of dynastic planning and private bereavement.

Betrothal and dynastic setting

In 68 AC, not long after the birth of Princess Saera, King Jaehaerys and Queen Alysanne announced the betrothal of their firstborn son, Aemon, Prince of Dragonstone, to Jocelyn Baratheon of Storm's End. The match followed consideration of a different pairing: after Princess Daenerys died, Aemon might have married Princess Alyssa, his eldest surviving sister. Alysanne rejected that possibility, saying Alyssa was intended for Baelon, to whom she had been close since childhood. Jocelyn, rather than Aemon's sister, was therefore chosen as his future wife.

The account presents the decision within a royal family in which marriage shaped both intimate bonds and the succession. Jocelyn was a daughter of House Baratheon, while Aemon had been formally anointed heir in 62 AC. Their betrothal thus placed a prominent family from Storm's End alongside the prince expected to inherit the Iron Throne. The evidence does not state the couple's private feelings about the arrangement, but it makes clear that their union belonged to the future of the dynasty as well as to their own household.

Marriage and family

Aemon and Jocelyn married in 70 AC in a ceremony described as rivaling the Golden Wedding in splendor. Jocelyn was sixteen and Aemon fifteen. The chronicler emphasizes their striking appearance as a couple: Jocelyn was unusually tall, with long black hair, while Aemon was a pale prince who stood taller still. Their wedding was presented as a spectacle befitting the Prince of Dragonstone and his bride, and as the formal beginning of their shared family life.

Their daughter Rhaenys was born in 74 AC. In 90 AC, at sixteen, she married Corlys Velaryon, the king's admiral and master of ships, known as the Sea Snake. Rhaenys's marriage extended the family’s connections into House Velaryon, but she remained Aemon and Jocelyn's child and, eventually, the surviving link between Aemon's line and the succession. When Aemon died, Rhaenys was pregnant. That circumstance gave the loss a further dynastic dimension: the child she carried might be Aemon's successor, and Aemon would never meet that grandchild.

Aemon's public life and Jocelyn's place in it

The account chiefly records Aemon's public career, rather than the daily details of the marriage. He was knighted at seventeen, became a tourney champion at twenty, and served his father as justiciar and master of laws at twenty-six. He was not Hand of the King because Septon Barth held that office. These details establish the demanding public position around which the marriage was formed: Aemon was not simply Jocelyn's husband but the named heir and a senior royal servant.

In 92 AC, Aemon left to take part in the campaign against Myrish forces on Tarth. Lord Corlys and the Velaryon fleet had sailed from Driftmark, and Aemon followed a few hours later. Before departing, he said farewell to Jocelyn and Rhaenys. Rhaenys had learned that she was expecting and would otherwise have accompanied her father on Meleys. Aemon's response turned their parting toward the next generation: he expected a grandson and looked forward to becoming a grandfather. The farewell is the clearest recorded glimpse of the family together, and its ordinary expectation of a future makes the sudden end of that future especially stark.

Death and consequences

Aemon was killed on Tarth after a Myrish scout, aiming at Lord Cameron, struck the prince instead. He was thirty-seven. His death left Jocelyn bereaved and Rhaenys without her father; the account describes Jocelyn's empty bed and bitter tears, and records Rhaenys's grief at knowing that her father would never hold the child she was carrying. It does not give further detail about Jocelyn's life after his death, so the relationship's documented arc ends at this rupture rather than at any account of her later years.

Aemon's death also transformed the meaning of their marriage within the royal succession. King Jaehaerys named Aemon's brother Baelon heir and Prince of Dragonstone, a decision that passed over Rhaenys and potentially the child she carried. The king's choice followed established practice and the counsel of his advisers, and Baelon's popularity among the commons was also cited. For Jocelyn, the loss was therefore both personal and connected to the altered place of her daughter in the line of inheritance. Their marriage had begun as a union between the heir and a Baratheon bride; after Aemon's death, its enduring significance rested in Rhaenys, the child left to embody a claim the king did not advance.