Green Council

The Green Council was the meeting through which Queen Alicent Hightower and a majority of the royal councillors moved to place Aegon II Targaryen on the Iron Throne after Viserys I Targaryen’s death. It was not simply a routine council conducting the formalities of a royal death: it chose to delay those rites, suppress news of the king’s passing, and settle the succession in favor of Alicent’s eldest son. In doing so, it made a concealed change of power into the opening political act of the Dance of the Dragons.

A council gathered in secret

The meeting took place in the queen’s apartments within Maegor’s Holdfast during the night Viserys died. Queen Alicent had gone to the king’s bedchamber with Criston Cole, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. After they confirmed the king was dead, she ordered the room sealed and guarded, and the serving man who had found the body was detained so that he could not spread the news. Cole then sent the Kingsguard to rouse the councillors. The meeting began in secrecy, at a time the chroniclers call the hour of the owl.

Those gathered were Queen Alicent; her father, Otto Hightower, Hand of the King; Criston Cole; Grand Maester Orwyle; Lyman Beesbury, the eighty-year-old master of coin; Tyland Lannister, master of ships; Larys Strong, master of whisperers and Lord of Harrenhal; and Jasper Wylde, master of laws. Munkun’s later account gives the gathering its familiar name, the Green Council. Its membership joined the queen’s family and political allies to the senior officers responsible for the royal household, the fleet, the treasury, law, intelligence, and the Kingsguard.

The surviving account is not a transparent transcript. Munkun’s history relies for the council’s deliberations on Orwyle’s confession, made before Orwyle’s execution. Orwyle had been present and involved, giving his testimony particular value, but the historian also warns that he had reason to portray himself favorably and disclaim responsibility for what followed. Mushroom and Septon Eustace offer competing versions based on rumor, hearsay, and family tradition. The council’s broad course is clear, but some individual words and the details of Beesbury’s fate remain disputed.

The succession put to a vote of power

Orwyle began by describing the customary response to a king’s death: summon Septon Eustace to perform the last rites, send a raven to Dragonstone to inform Rhaenyra, ring the bells, and prepare for her coronation. Otto stopped him. The succession, he argued, had to be settled first; as Hand, he claimed authority to govern in the king’s absence until a new king was crowned.

Alicent made the council’s intended position explicit: the Iron Throne, she argued, should pass to Viserys’s eldest trueborn son. That claim confronted a decision made by Viserys himself. He had named Rhaenyra his heir, had repeatedly refused to change the succession despite pressure from Alicent and her allies, and had received oaths from lords and landed knights who pledged to defend her rights. Beesbury, who had served both Viserys and Jaehaerys I Targaryen, set out these claims in Rhaenyra’s favor. He also stressed that she was older than her brothers and had more Targaryen blood.

The arguments against Rhaenyra mixed law, fear, and personal attack. Cole warned that her eldest son, Jacaerys Velaryon, would succeed her and invoked the accusation that he was a bastard. Orwyle, according to Munkun’s account, warned that setting aside Rhaenyra would likely bring war: she would not yield quietly, and she had dragons. The council thus heard both the immediate case against recognizing her and the foreseeable danger of refusing her claim. It proceeded despite that danger.

Beesbury’s death and the blood oath

Beesbury’s protest ended when he rose to leave, declaring that he would not meekly sit by while the others plotted to take Rhaenyra’s crown. What happened next cannot be established with certainty. Orwyle said Otto ordered Beesbury seized and sent to a black cell, where the old man later died of a chill while awaiting trial. Septon Eustace instead accused Cole of forcing Beesbury back into his seat and killing him with a dagger; Mushroom also blamed Cole, but described Beesbury being thrown from a window. The accounts differ over the means and the responsible man. All three agree on the consequential fact: Beesbury, master of coin and lord treasurer, was the first person killed in the Dance of the Dragons.

After Beesbury’s death, no further dissent was recorded. The councillors turned to Aegon’s coronation and drew up lists of prospective allies and enemies in case Rhaenyra rejected his accession. They also decided not to announce Viserys’s death that night. No ravens flew and no bells rang; servants who knew what had happened were sent to the dungeons. Cole was assigned to take into custody those supporters of Rhaenyra who remained at court. Otto’s instructions distinguished between those who submitted to Aegon and those who resisted, while Wylde declared that the latter would be treated as traitors.

Larys, who had said nothing during the succession debate, spoke as the meeting reached its conclusion. He proposed that the conspirators swear first, in case there were traitors among them. Drawing a dagger, he cut his palm and urged the others to make a blood oath of brotherhood. The men followed, slashing their palms and clasping hands. Alicent alone was excused from the oath because she was a woman. The ritual turned an agreement among councillors into a personal bond, even as it revealed that their unity required deliberate reinforcement.

The council’s plan and its limits

At dawn, the Kingsguard were sent to find Alicent’s sons. Aemond was in the armory preparing for practice; Aegon, however, had to be sought elsewhere. The council’s decision did not itself complete the accession. It prepared the ground for a public coronation in the Dragonpit, where Criston Cole placed the Conqueror’s iron-and-ruby crown on Aegon’s head and Septon Eustace anointed him. Alicent then placed her crown on her daughter Helaena, Aegon’s wife, and knelt before her. The ceremony gave visible form to the authority the council had claimed in private.

That authority was contested almost immediately. Ser Steffon Darklyn had already fled to Dragonstone with the crown of Jaehaerys the Conciliator, and Rhaenyra was crowned there in turn, with Daemon Targaryen proclaiming her queen. She rejected the Green Council’s settlement and challenged its representatives’ loyalty to the king who had named her heir. Its attempt to control information and move quickly had gained Aegon the capital and a coronation, but it had not secured the recognition of the rival claimant or her supporters.

The Green Council’s significance lies in the collision it embodies between a king’s declared succession and a faction’s capacity to seize the institutions and symbols of rule. The councillors had offices, access to the royal household, and control over the first announcements and ceremonies after Viserys’s death. They used those advantages to present Aegon as king before Rhaenyra could respond. Yet the need to conceal the death, detain witnesses, eliminate dissent, and bind themselves by oath also exposed the weakness of that claim: it could be enacted swiftly, but it could not make the competing oaths, the late king’s choice, or Rhaenyra’s own rival coronation disappear.