Jaehaerys I's reign

Jaehaerys I's reign lasted fifty-five years, from his accession to the Iron Throne at fourteen in 48 AC until his death in 103 AC. Remembered as the Conciliator, he inherited a poor, war-torn realm divided by mistrust and became the ruler whom later scholars credited with making Aegon the Conqueror’s conquests into a more lasting union. Yet the peaceful span of his rule did not resolve the question of who could inherit the Iron Throne: the choices made during his reign established a precedent that would shape, and intensify, later dynastic conflict.

Accession and the Work of Reconciliation

Jaehaerys came to the throne after the reigns of Aenys I, whose weakness and indecision had damaged the realm, and Maegor I, whose cruelty and violence had deepened its divisions. The young king had no experience of rule, and even his right to succeed was open to argument. He was the only surviving son of Aenys I, but his elder brother, Aegon the Uncrowned, had claimed the kingship before him and left twin daughters, Aerea Targaryen and Rhaella Targaryen. If Maegor were treated as a usurper without a right to rule, the succession might have passed through Aegon to his elder daughter instead.

That uncertainty made Jaehaerys’s task more than the exercise of royal authority. He had to govern a realm damaged by recent conflict while establishing that his rule could command recognition. The memory of Aegon the Conqueror’s coronations offered an earlier model of how authority could be made public: Aegon’s first crowning at the Blackwater was followed by an anointing in the Starry Sept at Oldtown, where the High Septon proclaimed him king. The Oldtown ceremony, attended by lords, maesters, and a vast cheering crowd, became the date from which his reign was reckoned. In Jaehaerys’s own time, the arguments over succession would show that inherited custom and formal recognition could lend authority to a claim, but could not prevent the claim from being challenged.

A King Who Appeared Among His People

Jaehaerys made royal presence part of his approach to rule. Announcing his first royal progress late in 51 AC, he explained that he intended the smallfolk to see their king. The journeys became a recurring feature of his long reign: he spent more days and nights visiting lords or holding audiences in market towns and villages than he spent at Dragonstone and the Red Keep combined. Alysanne often travelled with him, her dragon flying beside his own.

The scale of the progress was deliberately restrained. Aegon the Conqueror had sometimes taken as many as a thousand knights, soldiers, grooms, cooks, and other attendants on the road, a following that burdened hosts with the costs of feeding and lodging the royal party. Jaehaerys limited his own retinue to one hundred people: twenty knights, with the remainder made up of men-at-arms and servants. Riding Vermithor, he judged that he did not need to surround himself with a larger force. A smaller company also allowed the king to visit lesser lords whose castles could not have accommodated Aegon’s immense procession. He meant to be seen in more places, while staying briefly enough not to become an unwelcome guest.

His reign was not free of disaster. In the winter of 59 AC, the Shivers entered from the east and spread across Blackwater Bay and up the Blackwater Rush. Its course was swift: after the initial chill came increasingly violent shivering, and no more than one victim in five recovered. The disease struck nobles and smallfolk, young and old; among those it took were Edwell Celtigar and his heir, and Septa Edyth on Dragonstone. Oldtown lost a quarter of its population, including the High Septon and a third of the Citadel’s archmaesters, maesters, acolytes, and novices. The cause remained unproved. Many smallfolk blamed black rats arriving from ships, and cats became so sought after that kittens sold for as much as destriers. More than seventy years later, when Winter Fever ravaged Westeros, the Shivers under Jaehaerys was still the last comparable pestilence remembered by the realm.

The Heir and the First Succession Dispute

For much of the reign, the succession appeared secure. Jaehaerys and Alysanne had two capable sons, Aemon and Baelon. Aemon was named Prince of Dragonstone and heir in 62 AC, when he was seven. He was later knighted, became a tourney champion, and served his father as justiciar and master of laws. Baelon, his younger brother, was knighted at sixteen and married at eighteen. Their rivalry was healthy, and their affection for one another was widely recognized; together they seemed to offer the realm an unusually strong succession.

That confidence broke in 92 AC. Aemon was killed on Tarth by a Myrish crossbow bolt intended for the man beside him. Baelon went to Tarth and drove the Myrish forces into the sea in revenge. On his return, Jaehaerys named him Prince of Dragonstone and heir. The decision was popular with the smallfolk and accepted by many lords, who regarded Baelon as his brother’s natural successor. But Aemon had a daughter, Rhaenys, who was pregnant when he died. She was already married to Corlys Velaryon, the king’s admiral and master of ships, and the king’s appointment of Baelon passed over both her and the child she carried.

Jaehaerys’s choice followed a male-preference custom that had precedents in the dynasty, including Aegon the Conqueror’s succession before his elder sister Visenya and Jaehaerys’s own succession before his sister Rhaena. The king consulted his small council, whose members agreed that the experienced Baelon was better suited to rule than the eighteen-year-old Rhaenys or her unborn child. Alysanne objected that her granddaughter was being passed over because she was a woman. She left King’s Landing for Dragonstone on Silverwing, and she and Jaehaerys remained apart for two years. They reconciled in 94 AC through the efforts of their daughter, Septa Maegelle, but never agreed about the succession. Alysanne died in 100 AC still convinced that Rhaenys and her children had been denied their rights. The unborn child at the center of the dispute proved to be a girl, Laena; Rhaenys later bore a son, Laenor. House Velaryon and House Baratheon continued to regard Laenor as a possible rightful heir, with some also advancing the claims of Rhaenys and Laena.

The Great Council and the Reign’s Afterlife

Baelon died before Jaehaerys, reopening the question of succession. At the Great Council of Harrenhal of 101 AC, Corlys and Rhaenys used the wealth and influence of House Velaryon to press for their son Laenor. Boremund Baratheon and other lords supported them. The assembled lords instead chose Viserys Targaryen by an overwhelming margin, later said to have exceeded twenty votes to one, though the maesters never published the precise tally. Jaehaerys had not attended the council. On receiving its verdict, he thanked the lords and made Viserys Prince of Dragonstone. Driftmark and Storm’s End accepted the result, reluctantly.

Many later regarded the Great Council’s decision as an iron precedent: the Iron Throne could not pass to a woman or through a woman to her male descendants, regardless of seniority. That interpretation gave the council’s vote enduring force, but it did not extinguish competing claims or the possibility of disagreement over how its precedent applied. After Jaehaerys’s death, the rival coronations of Aegon II and Rhaenyra made the fragility of succession unmistakable. Aegon II was crowned with Aegon the Conqueror’s iron-and-ruby crown; Rhaenyra was crowned with the crown of Jaehaerys the Conciliator. The different crowns and ceremonies invoked different royal inheritances, while the earlier settlement of 101 AC remained part of the argument over who could rule.

Death and Historical Significance

In 103 AC, Jaehaerys died in bed while Alicent Hightower read to him from Septon Barth’s Unnatural History. He was sixty-nine and had ruled since the age of fourteen. His body was burned in the Dragonpit, and his ashes were placed on Dragonstone beside those of Alysanne. Viserys succeeded according to Jaehaerys’s wishes and the decision of the Great Council. Even in Dorne, beyond the reach of Jaehaerys’s writ, people mourned his death.

The reign’s reputation rests on a consequential contrast. Jaehaerys helped unite a realm fractured by violence and maintained a long period of peace, yet the dynastic abundance of his family and the precedents used to order its succession generated claims that peace could not settle. The Great Council offered a public decision and a rule later generations could invoke; the Dance of the Dragons demonstrated that neither the rule nor the memory of the Conciliator could make a disputed crown secure.