Baela's escape and marriage to Alyn Velaryon

Baela Targaryen’s escape and marriage to Alyn Velaryon overturned a marriage settlement designed to protect the succession. When the regents chose Thaddeus Rowan for her, Baela refused the match, escaped the castle in disguise, and reached Driftmark by fishing boat. Within a fortnight, she and Alyn were married on Dragonstone. The marriage secured Baela’s choice of husband, but it also changed the regents’ view of her political future and redirected their attention to her sister Rhaena.

The Match Chosen by the Regency

Baela was an unusually consequential bride. Young, wealthy, highborn, and eligible, she attracted many possible suitors; the regents knew that her husband would stand close to the throne. They feared that an ambitious or unprincipled match could bring conflict, so their choice was not simply a private arrangement. It was a calculation about who might one day wield power beside the king, or succeed him through Baela.

The council considered a wide range of candidates, including Lord Tully, Lord Blackwood, Lord Hightower, Dalton Greyjoy, a younger brother of the Princess of Dorne, and the adventurer Racallio Ryndoon. Each was rejected. The Hand and council ultimately selected Thaddeus Rowan, Lord of Goldengrove, a widower whose second wife had died the previous year. He was seeking a young wife, and his established family appeared to make him a particularly useful choice for the crown.

Rowan had two sons by his first wife and five by his second, but no daughters. His four youngest sons still lived at home, and the regents expected Baela to take charge as mistress of his castle. More importantly to their succession calculations, if Rowan fathered a son with her, Aegon III would have a clear successor. The match therefore offered a household for Baela and a possible male heir for the king in the same arrangement.

The regents considered Rowan personally suitable as well. He had fought ably and bravely for Queen Rhaenyra during the Dance. Septon Eustace described him as cheerful, well liked, dutiful, just without vindictiveness, and loyal to his friends. In the account’s assessment, his lack of excessive ambition made him an especially safe prospective consort: he was expected to support Baela rather than displace her if she inherited the throne. The council was pleased with its deliberations, but Baela was not.

Refusal and Escape

When informed of the decision, Baela protested Rowan’s age and appearance. She also made a provocative claim about having been intimate with two of his sons, a statement the account does not confirm and presents as possibly intended to shock. Whatever her purpose, her response ended the meeting. Tyland Lannister sent her back to her rooms and ordered guards to remain at her door until the regents could gather again.

A day later, Tyland discovered that Baela had escaped. The means were simple but effective: she climbed out of a window, changed clothes with a washerwoman, and walked out through the castle’s front gate. By the time an alarm was raised, she was already crossing Blackwater Bay. She had hired a fisherman to take her to Driftmark, where she sought out her cousin Corlys Velaryon, the Lord of the Tides, and told him of her troubles.

The escape made Baela’s refusal an accomplished fact rather than a request the council could continue to debate. Guards had been posted to keep her in her rooms, yet she had left the castle and reached the coast without their stopping her. Her route, from a window and borrowed clothes to a fisherman’s boat, put distance between her and the marriage planned for her before the regents could impose another decision.

Marriage on Dragonstone

A fortnight after her flight, Baela and Alyn Velaryon married in the sept on Dragonstone. Baela was sixteen; Alyn was nearly seventeen. The speed of the marriage meant that the regents had little opportunity to prevent it or substitute another match. It was the outcome of Baela’s departure, not the settlement the council had intended.

Several regents were outraged and urged Tyland to ask the High Septon to annul the marriage. The Hand instead accepted the situation with resignation. He presented the match publicly as one arranged by the king and court, judging that Baela’s defiance would be more damaging as a scandal than her choice of husband. He also reassured the regents that Alyn was of noble blood and likely to be loyal, invoking his brother as a comparison. The effort to manage the public account did not undo the fact that Baela had escaped the council’s chosen match and married Alyn.

The settlement with Rowan was redirected rather than simply abandoned. To appease his wounded pride, the court betrothed him to Floris Baratheon, one of Lord Borros’s four daughters, known collectively as the Four Storms. Floris was fourteen and widely considered the prettiest of the sisters. She died in childbirth two years later. The account contrasts this arrangement with the marriage made on Dragonstone, describing Baela and Alyn’s union as the stormy one that the years would bear out.

Succession and Political Consequences

The regents read Baela’s escape as confirmation of their doubts about her suitability to inherit. They regarded her as wild and willful, and objected that she had bound herself to Corlys Velaryon’s illegitimate son. Their concern was not only that Baela had disobeyed them: a queen’s husband would occupy a position close to the throne, and they had already treated that proximity as a danger requiring careful management. Her marriage to Alyn gave those concerns a new focus.

The council concluded that Baela could not be Aegon III’s heir and declared that Rhaena must take her place, provided she married. This made Baela’s flight a turning point in the succession discussions. The first proposed match had been designed to give the king a possible male successor through Baela; once she married Alyn, the regents shifted the succession question to her sister and sought a husband for Rhaena instead.

Baela’s action thus had two outcomes that the council could not separate. It secured the marriage she chose, while weakening her position in the regents’ plans for the crown. The episode sets her determined refusal against the regency’s effort to manage marriage as a matter of political security: the council could select a husband, but it could not make Baela accept him. Her escape changed the marriage, the court’s public explanation, and the identity of the sister the regents now considered for the succession.