Black Brides

Black Brides is the collective name attached to women who were wives of Maegor. The term outlasts his rule as more than a reference to his marriages: after his death, it marks women and their associations as part of the political legacy his successors had to confront.

Meaning and Context

The surviving account does not give a complete roster or specify how many women the name encompassed. It does establish that Queen Elinor Costayne was one of Maegor’s Black Brides, and that noblewomen had attended them. The distinction matters: the sources identify Elinor as a bride, while describing other highborn women as attendees, not as wives themselves.

The name also appears against the background of Maegor’s contested rule and the effort to secure loyalty after his death. Women associated with his court could therefore be treated not simply as private figures but as people whose presence connected them to a former regime.

After Maegor’s Death

When Jaehaerys’s party took control of King’s Landing, the arrest campaign reached beyond the men accused of serving Maegor. Noblewomen who had attended the Black Brides were arrested alongside other alleged supporters; a score of lowborn women, described in the account as Maegor’s whores, were also seized. The episode shows how broadly suspicion could extend across the social circle around the former king, though the evidence does not say that the Black Brides themselves were all arrested.

A Marriage Proposed as Reconciliation

The Black Brides also entered the debate over Jaehaerys’s marriage. During discussions among the regents and councillors, Daemon Velaryon proposed Queen Elinor, Maegor’s widow, as a bride for the young king. He argued that marrying one of Maegor’s Black Brides could demonstrate that Maegor’s supporters had been forgiven; he also suggested that Jaehaerys might adopt Elinor’s three sons from her first marriage. Elinor’s proven fertility was another consideration in her favor.

The proposal made a former royal marriage into a possible instrument of settlement: rather than treating every connection to Maegor as grounds for exclusion, the court could use such a connection to signal inclusion. It remained one candidate among several, however, and the councillors failed to reach consensus during their extended discussions. The episode gives the term its clearest political force: the Black Brides were part of the contested inheritance of Maegor’s reign, and Elinor’s possible remarriage was considered as a way to manage that inheritance.