Faith of the Seven under Jaehaerys

The Faith of the Seven under Jaehaerys occupied a consequential place between religious authority and royal power: its rites could publicly affirm a king, while the choice of its highest leader could affect peace across the realm. Jaehaerys sought not merely a cooperative High Septon but one who would accept the Targaryen doctrine of Exceptionalism, protecting the dynasty’s sibling marriages from renewed religious challenge. At the same time, the Faith’s leaders could endorse reforms of royal law, and its institutions remained vulnerable to the influence of powerful lords and the crown.

Institution and Political Setting

The Faith’s hierarchy in these episodes includes the High Septon, called the Father of the Faithful, and the Most Devout, who assemble to choose his successor. The Starry Sept in Oldtown serves as a center of both religious and political significance: it is where the Most Devout meet, where a High Septon is elected, and where Aegon Targaryen later receives a second coronation. The evidence also points to the Faith’s presence in noble families’ political networks. In 54 AC, Lord Donnel Hightower had a brother, two nephews, and six cousins serving the Seven; several of them belonged to the Most Devout. The Hightowers’ customary participation in the Faith gave their lord a direct interest in who would hold the crystal crown.

The Faith also inherited customs rather than simply imposing a single, uniform order. Grand Maester Benifer explains that the Andals did not practice the lord’s right to the first night in Andalos; after arriving in Westeros, they found the custom established among the First Men and allowed it to continue, as they did the godswoods. That account presents religious history as accommodation to existing local practice, even when the custom later became the subject of moral and political dispute.

Anointing and Royal Legitimacy

The Faith’s public authority was visible at Aegon’s coronation in Oldtown. After Lord Manfred Hightower submitted the city, the High Septon anointed Aegon with the seven oils in the Starry Sept, crowned him, and proclaimed him king and protector of the realm. This ceremony followed Aegon’s earlier crowning at the Aegonfort, which had been attended by far fewer lords. Hundreds witnessed the Oldtown coronation, and tens of thousands later cheered Aegon through the city. The histories treated this second ceremony, rather than the first, as the start of his reign. The episode shows how religious anointing and a public gathering could strengthen a claim already advanced by conquest, while the style of Seven Kingdoms was used even though Dorne had not submitted.

The same institutional form persisted amid later dynastic conflict, although religious participation did not settle every claim. During the contested succession of 129 AC, Septon Eustace anointed Aegon II with holy oils when the High Septon, too old and frail to travel from Oldtown, could not attend. Rhaenyra’s coronation on Dragonstone, by contrast, was conducted by Daemon Targaryen, who placed the crown on her head. The contrast records different forms of public recognition; it does not establish that the Faith as a whole endorsed one claimant over the other.

The Election of Septon Alfyn

After the High Septon died in Oldtown, Jaehaerys treated the coming election as a matter of realm-wide security. He feared that the peace depended on the successor continuing the policies of the deceased High Septon. His first preferred candidate was Septon Barth, one of the king’s trusted advisers, but Barth persuaded him that the choice was impractical: he was young, little known, unorthodox, and not one of the Most Devout. Jaehaerys and the council also agreed that Septon Mattheus should not be elected, because his earlier time in King’s Landing had left mistrust, including over his words at the gates of Dragonstone.

The council considered improper ways to secure that result. Rego Draz suggested bribery; Daemon Velaryon and Qarl Corbray proposed displays of force, and another councillor raised the possibility of a suspicious death. Barth, Grand Maester Benifer, and Queen Alysanne rejected these proposals, and Jaehaerys chose instead to travel to Oldtown for the High Septon’s burial. The decision to seek influence through negotiation rather than force did not remove political calculation from the election, but it set the means by which the king pursued it.

In Oldtown, Jaehaerys and Lord Donnel reached an understanding. The king did not insist that the High Septon be of noble birth or belong to a particular house; his essential condition was that the man accept Exceptionalism and not challenge the Targaryen marriage tradition. Donnel, meanwhile, hoped that one of his own relatives would receive the office. Agents of both the king and Lord Hightower were present among the electors, largely without the other participants’ knowledge. Four ballots followed: Mattheus led the first, but his support fell on each subsequent ballot. The Most Devout ultimately chose Septon Alfyn, an Exceptionalism advocate who had served Jaehaerys and Alysanne and was not himself one of their number.

Exceptionalism, Bargain, and Institutional Vulnerability

Alfyn’s election joined religious policy to a succession of political bargains. He was the oldest of the Seven Speakers and had no legs; the account therefore presents his tenure as likely to be short. Jaehaerys assured Donnel that a Hightower relative would succeed Alfyn if the family aligned firmly with the Exceptionalists during Alfyn’s time as High Septon. The king’s concern was thus doctrinal, but he pursued it through an arrangement that also addressed the Hightowers’ family ambitions.

Septon Barth’s later account makes the limits of the election’s independence explicit. Barth accepted the result and judged Alfyn and Donnel’s successor more worthy of the office than Mattheus, yet regretted that the Most Devout could be manipulated so readily. His reflection leaves the institution in a double light: the elected leaders could be capable and the outcome could serve the Faith’s and realm’s interests, while the process remained susceptible to royal and aristocratic intervention. The episode distinguishes the legitimacy of the chosen men from the compromised means by which their selection was shaped.

Reform and the Right to the First Night

The Faith also supplied arguments for changing secular law. In the debate over the lord’s right to the first night, Lord Albin Massey defended the custom as an ancient practice associated with the First Men. Alysanne answered that the women she had heard from did not experience it as a blessing. Grand Maester Benifer reinforced the historical point that the Andals had inherited the custom in Westeros rather than brought it from Andalos. Septon Barth then argued that the rite contradicted chivalric protection of maidens and the marriage vows made before the Father and the Mother; he maintained that those vows did not exempt lords. He expected the Faith’s High Septon to speak in support of ending the practice.

Jaehaerys accepted the argument, and the crown enacted the abolition as the second of the laws the smallfolk called Queen Alysanne’s Laws. The decree gave a bride’s maidenhead to her husband alone, whether the marriage had been made before a septon or a heart tree, and made sexual taking on the wedding night or any other night a crime of rape, regardless of the perpetrator’s station. The Faith did not enact the law itself in this account: Barth’s intervention furnished a religious and ethical case for royal action, while the anticipated voice of the High Septon promised broader religious support. Its significance under Jaehaerys therefore lay not only in legitimizing rulers, but also in supplying principles through which inherited custom could be challenged and law changed.