Jaehaerys I Targaryen and Rogar Baratheon's relationship

Jaehaerys Targaryen and Rogar Baratheon were bound first by a dangerous alliance and later by a conflict over who would control the young king’s rule. Rogar helped Jaehaerys claim the Iron Throne and became his Hand, but his pride and ambition brought the two into open conflict during the regency. Jaehaerys ultimately pardoned him, restored him to service, and required him to honor the king’s family; their settlement preserved a powerful political alliance without pretending that the breach had never occurred.

From shelter to kingship

Rogar’s bond with Jaehaerys began when Maegor’s rule made the prince and his family vulnerable. Rogar gave refuge to Queen Alyssa and her children after their flight from King’s Landing, then became the first lord to proclaim Jaehaerys king. At Storm’s End, the fourteen-year-old prince claimed the throne with his mother and sister Alysanne beside him. Rogar was named Protector of the Realm and Hand of the King, while Jaehaerys rode Vermithor and Alysanne rode Silverwing. Rogar emphasized the strength their dragons gave the cause: “Maegor has only one dragon. Our prince has two.” Rhaena soon joined them on Dreamfyre, making the young king’s claim more formidable still.

Rogar’s support was not merely ceremonial. He placed his own standing and the strength of Storm’s End behind a prince who had yet to secure the realm. In return, he gained an exceptional position beside the new king. Jaehaerys later acknowledged that Rogar could have seized the family when they sought refuge and delivered them to Maegor, but instead swore his sword to Jaehaerys and called his banners. That history became the central argument for mercy when the relationship later broke down.

The kingmaker and the regent’s husband

Rogar’s authority as Hand rested both on his service and on Jaehaerys’s youth. Some suspected that he would rule in the king’s place, and those suspicions intensified when Rogar married Alyssa, the Queen Regent. Jaehaerys opposed the match, believing that his Hand was reaching for power and position rather than acting from affection for his mother. He also resented that neither Alyssa nor Rogar had sought his consent. Yet he kept his misgivings private, reasoning that he had not objected to his sister’s marriage and therefore could not claim the right to prevent his mother’s.

The marriage placed personal and political loyalties in the same household. Alyssa was loved as regent, while Rogar was respected and feared for his strength and military ability; some lords accepted her rule more readily because he stood beside her. But Jaehaerys’s silence was not agreement. The contrast between the kingmaker’s public service and his private influence over the regency left the relationship vulnerable to a contest over who had the right to direct the crown.

Rupture and the proposed succession

The break became explicit after Jaehaerys married Alysanne. Rogar was angered by what he regarded as the king’s ingratitude and humiliated by the confrontation at Dragonstone, where he had been forced to back down before his men. His first impulse was to return with enough force to overwhelm the castle’s garrison. He even argued that he could take Dragonstone by storm. Alyssa dissuaded him by reminding him that her children rode dragons and he did not. The exchange exposed the limits of Rogar’s military confidence when set against the Targaryens’ most decisive power.

Rogar’s grievance then became a challenge to the succession itself. Before the council, he denounced Jaehaerys as unfit and proposed that Princess Aerea replace him. He argued that Aerea’s claim was stronger because her parents were Aenys’s first and secondborn children, whereas Jaehaerys was fourth. Rogar said that Jaehaerys could be sent to the Citadel and that he could continue as Hand to guide Aerea. He denied that he meant to take the Iron Throne for himself, but his plan would have removed the king and preserved Rogar’s own political influence. Alyssa dismissed him from her service and ordered him to return to Storm’s End.

The conflict was not only a private quarrel. Rogar’s actions threatened the king’s authority, and his proposal risked turning a dispute over rule into a succession struggle involving multiple dragonriders. Jaehaerys’s position was strengthened by the same personal and political network that Rogar had once helped assemble, but the king still faced the choice of punishing a former protector or attempting to recover his loyalty.

Pardon on the king’s terms

When Jaehaerys summoned Rogar back to King’s Landing, Rogar’s brothers disagreed over whether he should comply. One urged him to take the black; the younger brothers favored defiance from the strength of Storm’s End. Rogar chose to go to the king, accompanied only by six old knights. Before Jaehaerys, who sat crowned on the Iron Throne, he knelt and laid down his sword. He asked the king to spare his brothers and House Baratheon, beginning to explain that he had acted for what he believed was the realm’s good.

Jaehaerys accepted that explanation without treating it as an excuse for every act. He distinguished Rogar’s treasonous proposals from the deeds he believed had actually been committed, recalled the risk Rogar had taken by sheltering the royal family, and offered him a choice: go to the Wall or remain in royal service. Rogar answered that he would serve. Jaehaerys then pardoned him on conditions: Rogar must never again speak against the king or Alysanne, must defend her from criticism, and must treat Alyssa with honor and courtesy. Alyssa was to return with him to Storm’s End as his wife. Rogar accepted. Jaehaerys also ordered the release of Rogar’s brother Orryn and his companions from Oldtown, but imposed ten years of exile rather than allowing them to go unpunished.

The settlement combined clemency with a clear demonstration of leverage. Jaehaerys took Rogar to the inner ward, where Vermithor was feeding, and told him that he needed no hostages because he had Rogar’s word. The implication was unmistakable: the dragon made the Stormlands vulnerable if Rogar broke faith again. That night, Rogar sat beside Alyssa at a feast and publicly pledged his love and loyalty to Alysanne. Four days later, he left for Storm’s End with Alyssa, escorted by a hundred men-at-arms.

A repaired alliance, not a forgotten breach

Jaehaerys’s pardon restored Rogar to the king’s service, but it did so by defining the obligations that service now entailed. Rogar had once helped make Jaehaerys king; after the rupture, the king made clear that gratitude for this past support did not give the Hand authority to choose a different monarch or disregard the royal family. Conversely, Jaehaerys treated Rogar’s earlier protection as a continuing debt worth honoring, rather than reducing their history to the attempted displacement of the king.

Their reconciliation also repaired the political household around the crown. Rogar returned to Storm’s End with Alyssa, the former regent, and his public pledge to support Alysanne helped close the dispute over the king’s marriage. The relationship thus moved from alliance, through a struggle over authority and succession, to a renewed but conditional loyalty. Its decisive feature was the balance Jaehaerys struck: he preserved the service of the man who had helped him win the throne while making the terms of that service unmistakably the king’s to set.