Alysanne Targaryen and Rhaenys Targaryen

Alysanne Targaryen and Rhaenys Targaryen were grandmother and granddaughter whose relationship became politically significant when the succession to the Iron Throne was disputed. After Prince Aemon’s death, Jaehaerys Targaryen named his younger son Baelon heir, passing over Rhaenys and the child she was carrying. Rhaenys objected directly, and Alysanne became the decision’s most prominent critic. The evidence records their aligned opposition, but does not establish a close personal bond between them; their importance lies in the family claim they shared and the different positions from which each challenged the king.

Family and dynastic setting

Rhaenys was the daughter of Aemon, Alysanne’s son, and was born in 74 AC. She grew into a clever and capable young woman. At sixteen she married Corlys Velaryon, Lord of the Tides and the famed Sea Snake, joining the royal line to one of the realm’s most powerful seafaring houses. By 92 AC, when Aemon was killed on Tarth, Rhaenys was pregnant. The question of succession therefore concerned both her own claim and the possibility that Aemon’s unborn child might inherit after her.

That child was a girl, Laena, born in 93 AC. Rhaenys and Corlys had a son, Laenor, the following year. Although Baelon was already established as heir, House Velaryon and House Baratheon continued to maintain that Laenor had a stronger claim; some also argued for Laena or Rhaenys. The dispute thus extended beyond a choice between two immediate successors: it implicated the standing of Rhaenys’s descendants and the political interests of the houses allied to her.

The decision and Rhaenys’s protest

After Aemon’s death, Baelon was acclaimed by many as his obvious successor. Jaehaerys’s decision accorded with established practice: the crown had passed to Aegon rather than his elder sister Visenya, and Jaehaerys himself had succeeded Maegor even though his sister Rhaena had seniority by birth. The king also had practical grounds for preferring Baelon, an experienced adult with sons of his own, to Rhaenys or an unborn child whose sex was unknown. The choice was made after consultation with the small council.

Rhaenys was the first to object. She argued that the decision deprived her unborn son of his birthright, placing a hand on her pregnant belly as she confronted the king. Her protest made the prospective child central to the claim: the king was not only setting aside Aemon’s daughter but potentially excluding the next generation of his line. The child proved to be Laena, but the birth of a daughter did not end the wider contention over Rhaenys’s rights or those of her children.

Alysanne’s dissent and separation

Alysanne’s opposition gave Rhaenys’s objection the force of a royal and familial dissent. The Good Queen had helped Jaehaerys govern for many years; she now saw her granddaughter passed over because she was a woman. She challenged the assumption that a woman’s sex made her unfit to rule and declared that, if the king truly believed women lacked the wit to govern, he had no further need of her. She then left King’s Landing and flew on Silverwing to Dragonstone.

The departure became the Second Quarrel. Alysanne and Jaehaerys remained apart for two years, and their daughter Septa Maegelle eventually helped reconcile them in 94 AC. Reconciliation did not resolve their disagreement over succession. Alysanne continued to insist that Rhaenys and her children had been unfairly denied their rights, maintaining that position until her death in 100 AC. The account establishes a shared political cause between grandmother and granddaughter, while showing that the king’s decision strained Alysanne’s marriage as well as the royal family’s succession.

Lasting significance

The relationship is defined less by recorded private intimacy than by a moment when kinship became a platform for dissent. Rhaenys spoke as the daughter of the dead heir and the mother of a potential successor; Alysanne spoke as queen, experienced partner in rule, and grandmother. Their objections exposed the cost of applying male-preference practice to a line that included a capable adult woman and her unborn child.

Their challenge did not alter Baelon’s position, and Alysanne’s later reconciliation with Jaehaerys did not produce agreement. The birth of Laena and then Laenor kept the competing claims alive among their supporters. In this way, the bond between Alysanne and Rhaenys became a point where family loyalty, the precedent of male succession, and the political future of the next generation met—and remained unresolved.