Jaehaerys I Targaryen and Rogar Baratheon

Jaehaerys I Targaryen and Rogar Baratheon were king and former Hand, but also old friends whose bond endured grief, family conflict, and war. Alyssa Targaryen’s fatal childbirth exposed the strain between them; years later, as Rogar faced death, Jaehaerys granted his request to pursue the Vulture King and personally joined the campaign. Their alliance turned shared loss into action, and the war became a means by which both men confronted what they could not undo.

A Friendship Tested by Alyssa’s Death

When Alyssa’s labor proved impossible to survive, Maester Kyrie offered a choice: attempt to save the child by cutting the queen open, knowing that she would die, or do nothing. Jaehaerys brought Rogar into the birthing chamber and made him hear the decision directly. Reminding him that Alyssa was his wife, the king told him that the words had to be his to speak. Rogar could not look at her; after Jaehaerys shook him by the arm, he asked the maester to save his son and fled the room. The exchange placed a terrible responsibility on Rogar, while Jaehaerys, Alyssa’s son, stood witness to the choice and its cost.

The accounts differ on whether Alyssa woke before the operation began, but agree that Alysanne Targaryen held her mother’s hand throughout and that the child survived. Afterward, Rhaena Targaryen confronted Rogar, blaming him for choosing their half-brother’s life over their mother’s. She ordered him not to marry again and warned that she would make another Harrenhal of Storm’s End if he did. Rogar dismissed the threat as madness; once Rhaena had left, he and his brothers laughed, and he arranged Alyssa’s burial. His invitation to Jaehaerys and Alysanne to remain for a feast in honor of his daughter stood in stark contrast to the grief that had just divided the family and tested the king’s friendship with him.

Rogar’s Final Request

Years later, Rogar returned to Jaehaerys with a different family fear: his nine-year-old son Boremund would be left in the care of Ser Garon, while Rogar’s brother Borys had reappeared in Westeros and was said to be raiding the Stormlands alongside the Vulture King. Rogar feared what might happen to both his son and his lands after his death. He then told the king that he was dying. Pain had begun even before the Shivers and had worsened since; milk of the poppy eased it, but Rogar took little, unwilling to sleep away the life he had left. Rather than die abed, he intended to find Borys and the Vulture King in the mountains, though Ser Garon called the plan a fool’s errand. Rogar asked Jaehaerys for leave to go.

The request drew Jaehaerys down from the Iron Throne. He embraced Rogar by the shoulder, acknowledged Borys as a traitor, and refused to grant the Vulture King the dignity of that title. The king gave Rogar leave, then offered more than permission: he would bring his own sword. This was no distant royal commission. The former Hand’s private reckoning with his brother and the outlaw who menaced the marches became a campaign undertaken by the king beside his old friend.

The histories called the fighting the Third Dornish War, although the Prince of Dorne kept his armies out of it; the smallfolk called it Lord Rogar’s War, a name better suited to its purpose. Rogar led five hundred men into the mountains, while Jaehaerys rode Vermithor above them. The campaign thus reversed the helplessness that had marked the loss of Alyssa: against an enemy he could reach, Jaehaerys could act, and he chose to stand with Rogar.

The Campaign and Its Aftermath

Jaehaerys’s participation changed the nature of the mountain campaign. The first Vulture King had led thousands into battle, but this one was a minor lord’s son with only a few hundred followers, adept at raiding, ambush, and vanishing into familiar terrain. Jaehaerys hunted from above on Vermithor, burning the raiders’ scattered camps while Rogar’s stormlanders pressed into the heights on foot, abandoning their horses for steep slopes, goat tracks, and caves. Hidden foes rolled stones down upon them. From the west, Simon Dondarrion and a small force of marcher knights closed off escape; Jaehaerys watched from the sky and coordinated the converging hunters.

Borys was the first of the two targets to be cornered, since he lacked the Dornish knowledge of the mountains. Rogar’s men overcame his followers, but when the brothers came face-to-face, Jaehaerys descended to prevent Rogar from becoming a kinslayer. Borys instead rushed the king, who met him with Blackfyre and killed him with a cut to the neck. The moment placed Jaehaerys between his old friend and the act that might have burdened him: the king took the violence upon himself, leaving Rogar to continue the campaign without killing his brother.

The Vulture King was captured at a burned lair on the next full moon. Rogar claimed the right to face him, ordered his chains removed, and allowed him a spear and shield; if Rogar fell, he said, the outlaw should go free. Though sick and weakened, Rogar turned aside his opponent’s attacks and killed him with his axe. The victory fulfilled the purpose of his expedition but not the death he had imagined. He told Jaehaerys that he would not, after all, die with axe in hand. Half a year later, he died at Storm’s End, with his maester, septon, brother Garon, and son and heir Boremund present.

The campaign, called Lord Rogar’s War by the smallfolk, lasted less than half a year and was fought and won in 61 AC. With the Vulture King gone, raiding along the Dornish Marches fell sharply for a time. The campaign also changed how the realm regarded Jaehaerys: accounts of his leadership dispelled lingering doubts about him, and even the most martial lords gained respect for the young king. For Jaehaerys personally, fighting beside Rogar answered, in part, the helplessness he had felt during Alyssa’s death. Their friendship had been tested by that loss, but in the mountains it found a purpose in shared action; Rogar’s final victory and later death closed the alliance without undoing the grief that had first divided them.

The Alliance’s Dynastic Afterlife

Rogar’s death did not end the connection between his house and Jaehaerys’s court. In 62 AC, Jaehaerys named his eldest son Aemon Prince of Dragonstone and acknowledged heir to the Iron Throne. At the feast celebrating the investiture, Queen Alysanne seated Jocelyn Baratheon, Rogar’s daughter, beside Aemon; the two young people spent the evening talking and laughing together. The moment offered a quiet continuation of the families’ bond: after shared grief and a campaign fought side by side, Rogar’s daughter and the king’s heir were drawn into one another’s company.