Conclave for electing the Grand Maester

The Conclave for electing the Grand Maester is the Citadel’s authority for choosing the Grand Maester, giving the scholarly institution a formal role at court while keeping the appointment beyond the Crown’s direct control. Its independence became clear when King Viserys I left the choice of a successor to Grand Maester Mellos to the Citadel, which appointed Archmaester Orwyle.

Authority and place in the realm

The Conclave’s stated function was to select the Grand Maester. When Mellos died, Princess Rhaenyra supported Maester Gerardys, whose healing had helped save Viserys after his injury on the Iron Throne. Queen Alicent instead pressed for Maester Alfador, then serving at the Hightower. Each candidate was advanced through a rival court faction, but neither the princess nor the queen controlled the appointment.

Viserys refused to settle the dispute himself, reminding both women that the choice belonged to the Citadel of Oldtown, not the Crown. The episode defines a boundary between royal influence and institutional authority: the monarch could hear competing claims, but the Conclave retained the decision.

The choice of Archmaester Orwyle

In due course, the Conclave bestowed the chain of office on Archmaester Orwyle, one of its own. The selection resolved the contest without granting either Rhaenyra or Alicent her preferred candidate. The account describes Orwyle as a member of the Conclave, but does not detail its membership, deliberations, or voting procedure.

Orwyle’s arrival at court coincided with a brief improvement in Viserys’s health. Septon Eustace attributed the king’s recovery to prayer, while most observers credited Orwyle’s potions and tinctures over the leechings favored by Mellos. The improvement did not last: gout, chest pains, and shortness of breath continued to afflict the king, whose declining health left more of the realm’s governance to his Hand and small council.

The Citadel and royal ceremony

The Conclave’s authority belonged to a wider Citadel presence in the realm’s public life. At Aegon the Conqueror’s second coronation in the Starry Sept at Oldtown, maesters and archmaesters were among the witnesses. That ceremony helped establish the dating of Aegon’s reign, but the account does not assign the Conclave a role in the coronation itself.

The distinction between such public presence and the Conclave’s specific duty matters: the evidence identifies the body through its appointment of the Grand Maester, not as a general council governing the Crown or deciding matters of succession. Its recorded intervention in Viserys’s reign shows the practical weight of that narrower authority, since the king’s court had to receive the Grand Maester chosen by the Citadel.