Establishment of the New Gift

The Establishment of the New Gift was Queen Alysanne’s successful effort to enlarge the lands supporting the Night's Watch. After visiting its holdings and seeing their limits, she persuaded Lord Alaric Stark to agree to a further grant south of Brandon’s Gift, doubling the size of the Gift in a single stroke. The decision addressed the Watch’s material needs while requiring the consent of a northern lord who knew that other landholders might object.

The Watch’s Need for More Land

During her northern progress, Queen Alysanne visited Brandon’s Gift, the lands Brandon the Builder had granted to the Night's Watch for its support and sustenance. She judged the existing grant insufficient: its soil was thin and stony, its hills were unpopulated, and the Watch lacked both coin and the food it would need when winter came. Her proposal for a New Gift answered those shortcomings by extending the land available to the order.

Negotiation with Lord Alaric Stark

The plan depended on Lord Alaric Stark, whose support for the Night's Watch did not remove the political difficulty of the proposal. The lands under consideration were presently held by other lords, who, Alaric understood, could object to having them given away without their leave. Alysanne urged him to persuade them; charmed by the queen, he agreed that he could. The account thus presents the grant not as an uncontested royal allocation, but as a measure whose success rested on Alaric’s willingness to secure the necessary assent.

The Grant and Its Significance

The New Gift extended the Watch’s holdings south of Brandon’s Gift, and the account describes the result as doubling the size of the Gift at a stroke. Its immediate significance was practical: more land was intended to help sustain an order whose existing territory could not reliably provide enough food or resources. The episode also shows Alysanne’s influence operating through persuasion and cooperation with a regional lord, rather than through a military campaign or an imposed settlement.

The grant belongs to the wider work of binding the realm to Targaryen rule. Aegon I had sought to reconcile former enemies by drawing people from across the realm into court and arranging marriages between noble houses. Alysanne’s negotiation with Alaric followed a different, more local course: she identified a specific need at the Wall, proposed a change to the lands supporting the Watch, and relied on a Stark lord to help overcome the objections it could raise. The account records the enlarged grant as the result, without detailing how the affected landholders responded individually.