Feast Day of Our Father Above

The Feast Day of Our Father Above was considered a propitious time for judgments, and in 133 AC Unwin Peake made it the occasion for a sweeping public reckoning. The day joined religious observance to royal justice, but its ceremonies revealed a sharp divide between the king’s silent presence, the Hand’s authority, and the crowds’ appetite for spectacle.

Religious and Judicial Significance

Septon teaching held the feast day to be especially favorable for making judgments. In 133 AC, Unwin Peake decreed that it would also be the day when people already judged for crimes were punished. The proceedings did not concern a single case: the city gaols and the Red Keep’s deep dungeons were crowded, and Peake ordered them emptied.

The Judgments of 133 AC

Prisoners were brought to the square before the Red Keep, where thousands of people gathered. Aegon III and Peake watched from the battlements as the King’s Justice, Ser Victor Risley, carried out the sentences, assisted by Tessario the Thumb and his Fingers because the work exceeded what one executioner could manage. The punishments ranged from corporal penalties and removal from the realm to executions. Among those singled out at the end were a false claimant known as the Shepherd Reborn, a Pentoshi captain convicted of bringing the Winter Fever to King’s Landing, and former Grand Maester Orwyle, convicted of treason and desertion from the Night’s Watch. Risley executed the captain and the false Shepherd; Orwyle was allowed to die by the sword, an exception made in consideration of his age, birth, and long service.

The King, the Hand, and the Aftermath

Aegon remained atop the gatehouse throughout the proceedings. He neither spoke nor turned away, and accounts describe him as seemingly distant even when some of the condemned appealed to him. The day’s apparent religious solemnity thus stood beside his withdrawal from the judgments, which the accounts attribute to Peake’s authority as Hand. Septon Eustace reported that Peake was satisfied when the crowd dispersed; the smallfolk, rather than returning home to fast and pray, filled the city’s alehouses, wine shops, and brothels. The feast day’s association with judgment therefore became, in this episode, a setting for public punishment whose consequences extended beyond the square into the contrasting responses of king, Hand, clergy, and crowd.