Jaehaerys Targaryen’s coronation in the Starry Sept secured his accession through the authority of the High Septon and made Oldtown the setting for a public settlement after Maegor’s war with the Faith. Held in the waning days of 48 AC, it followed the violent removal of Septon Moon, but its message was not a simple restoration of the Faith’s armed orders: Jaehaerys offered protection to the Faith while refusing to revive the Warrior’s Sons and the Poor Fellows.

Background and the Road to Oldtown

The coronation required the High Septon’s anointing, and Queen Regent Alyssa and Lord Rogar Baratheon agreed that Jaehaerys should receive it. Septon Moon’s movement, however, still blocked a safe journey to Oldtown. The death of Maegor had persuaded only a few hundred of Moon’s followers to disperse from a force approaching five thousand. Moon continued to preach against the Targaryens and called on Oldtown’s lord, the High Septon, and the smallfolk to join his cause.

Jaehaerys and his counselors considered using dragons against the gathering, but the young king had no desire for such slaughter, and Alyssa expressly forbade it. Rogar offered, reluctantly, to lead an army across the Reach, although doing so could bring his forces into conflict with Lords Rowan and Oakheart, their men, and Moon’s followers. The crisis ended instead with Moon’s murder. His killer’s identity and sponsors remained disputed: accounts questioned whether the act had been ordered by Jaehaerys, Rogar, or Alyssa, while many later scholars favored a camp follower acting for Lords Rowan or Oakheart. The lords’ prompt abandonment of Moon’s cause and later submission to Jaehaerys strengthened the view that their grievance had been against Maegor rather than the Targaryen dynasty itself.

The Coronation at the Starry Sept

With the way to Oldtown clear, the High Septon anointed Jaehaerys and placed the crown of his father, Aenys I, upon his head. The ceremony brought together the religious authority whose recognition the new reign needed and the dynastic inheritance represented by the old king’s crown. It was followed by seven days of feasting, during which hundreds of lords, both great and small, came to swear their swords and bend the knee.

The breadth of attendance made this more than a private act of succession. Present were Jaehaerys’s sisters, Rhaena and Alysanne; his nieces, Aerea and Rhaella; Alyssa and Rogar; Ser Gyles Morrigen, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard; Grand Maester Benifer; and the assembled archmaesters of the Citadel. Lords Rowan and Oakheart also came to submit. Their appearance marked the reversal of their brief alignment with Moon and helped turn the coronation into a public demonstration that opposition to Maegor need not mean continued rebellion against his successor.

The Faith and the Limits of Reconciliation

Among the unexpected attendees was Ser Joffrey Doggett, the outlawed self-proclaimed Grand Captain of the Warrior’s Sons. He arrived with Lord and Lady Tully of Riverrun, not in chains but under a safe conduct bearing the king’s own seal. Doggett and Lady Lucinda Tully urged Jaehaerys to undo Maegor’s decrees and restore the Warrior’s Sons and Poor Fellows as armed orders. The young king refused. He promised the Faith the Iron Throne’s protection, rescinded the bounties on the heads of the two groups, and made clear that this would not mean tolerating treason or rebellion.

That decision gave the ceremony a political meaning beyond the anointing itself. Jaehaerys accepted the need for religious recognition and rejected a policy of indiscriminate punishment, yet he did not restore the Faith’s armed power. Grand Maester Benifer later judged the encounter between the king and the outlaw knight as setting the pattern for the reign: reconciliation was possible, but it would take place under the authority of the crown.

Accession and Historical Significance

The Starry Sept coronation followed the death of Septon Moon and closed the immediate challenge that had endangered Jaehaerys’s journey to Oldtown. Its assembled lords, religious officers, and royal family gave the accession a visible constituency, while the High Septon’s anointing supplied the religious sanction that Jaehaerys’s advisers had considered essential after Maegor’s conflict with the Faith.

The event also joined ceremonial legitimacy to practical restraint. Jaehaerys received the crown and oaths of the assembled lords, but his first settlement with the Faith preserved its protection without reinstating its military orders. The ceremony thus presented a new reign not as a return to the old order unchanged, but as an effort to make royal authority strong enough to end rebellion without repeating Maegor’s approach.