Aemond's relationship with Alys Rivers

Aemond Targaryen’s relationship with Alys Rivers joined intimacy to the wartime occupation of Harrenhal. A wet nurse at the castle and much older than the prince, Alys was taken into his bed after the capture; she became his preferred companion, and accounts of the campaign suggest that his attachment to her influenced his decision to remain behind when Criston Cole marched south.

Alys at Harrenhal

After Aemond took Harrenhal, he chose Alys Rivers from among the women in the castle. The account describes her as a wet nurse twice his age, while noting that Mushroom claimed she was three times his age. Aemond spared her when the Strong family was destroyed, an exception that sets her apart from the other people of the castle. The relationship therefore began within the circumstances of conquest and occupation, not as a publicly described courtship.

Alys’s place beside Aemond also carried practical consequences. During the army’s privations at Harrenhal, she intervened when news of the Fishfeed enraged him and he nearly strangled the squire who brought it. Her intercession saved the boy. The episode presents her not only as Aemond’s bedmate but as someone able to affect his conduct at a volatile moment.

Attachment and the decision to stay

As food and fodder ran short and hunger and sickness weakened the king’s men, Criston Cole urged Aemond to withdraw south and join Ormund Hightower and Daeron Targaryen. Aemond rejected the proposal and favored attacking King’s Landing instead. When Cole and Aemond finally separated, Cole took command of the host and went south, while Aemond remained behind to wage his own war from the air.

The accounts disagree about what kept Aemond from following Cole. Munkun attributes the prince’s refusal to respect for the older man; Mushroom suggests that the two had become rivals for Alys’s affections, with potions and philtres inflaming their passions. Septon Eustace partly echoes Mushroom’s account but places the attachment on Aemond’s side: he had become so besotted with Alys that he could not bear to leave her. The explanations remain competing reports rather than a settled motive, but they connect Alys directly to the choice that divided the prince from Cole and shaped the next phase of the campaign.

Separation and claimed pregnancy

Aemond’s departure left Alys at Harrenhal. The castle stood empty for no more than three days before Lady Sabitha Frey seized it and found Alys there, alone. Alys claimed that she was carrying Aemond’s child. The account records her assertion, not confirmation of a pregnancy or the child’s parentage; it leaves the relationship’s final consequence unresolved even as it shows Alys continuing to define herself through her connection to the absent prince.