Larys Strong and Corlys Velaryon's Conspiracy

Larys Strong and Corlys Velaryon were named as the two great lords at the heart of a conspiracy whose judgment exposed both their shared culpability and their unequal standing at court. Corlys acknowledged his part as an act intended to end a period of madness; Larys neither confirmed nor denied the accusations. Cregan Stark found both guilty of murder, regicide, and high treason, but the old Sea Snake’s allies secured his pardon, while Larys was left without defenders and died. Their divergent fates made the proceedings a test not only of guilt, but of influence, loyalty, and the unsettled authority of a young, uncrowned prince.

The Conspiracy and Its Judgment

The proceedings brought together two men of markedly different public profiles: Larys, Lord of Harrenhal, and Corlys, Master of Driftmark and Lord of the Tides. The account identifies them as the principal lords in the conspiracy, but the surviving details here focus less on how it was organized than on how each faced judgment. Their common position before Cregan Stark was therefore clear in law, even as their responses and the support around them differed.

Corlys did not contest his guilt. He presented what he had done as service to the realm and said he would make the same choice again, insisting that the madness had to end. His defense did not deny responsibility; it asserted a political justification for it. That distinction matters to the relationship between the two conspirators: Corlys was prepared to own his actions publicly, while Larys withheld even that explanation.

The evidence against Larys came through testimony rather than an admission. Grand Maester Orwyle testified that Larys had given him the poison, and Perkin the Flea swore that he had acted as Larys’s man and followed his orders. When Cregan invited Larys to speak for himself, he answered only with a sardonic observation about the futility of words before a wolf. He offered no denial, but neither did he confirm the witnesses’ account. Cregan nevertheless declared both men guilty and sentenced them to death for murder, regicide, and high treason.

Unequal Support and the Prince’s Intervention

The trial’s aftermath made visible a difference that the shared verdict could not capture. Larys had long kept his own counsel and shifted allegiances; once condemned, he stood friendless, and no one spoke in his defense. Corlys, by contrast, had accumulated friends and admirers, including people who had fought against him during the Dance. Their appeals reflected affection for the old man, but also concern about the possible response of his young heir, Alyn Velaryon, if Corlys were executed.

When Cregan remained firm, Corlys’s supporters appealed directly to Prince Aegon. The prince’s half-sisters, Baela and Rhaena, were foremost among those who urged him to act. They reminded him that Corlys had intervened when the prince might otherwise have lost an ear or suffered worse. Their appeal linked the old lord’s past protection of Aegon to the immediate question of mercy: Corlys’s actions were judged not only as a crime, but also through the debt of personal gratitude they had created.

Aegon agreed to spare Corlys and went beyond commutation, restoring him to his offices and honors, including a place on the small council. Larys received no comparable intervention. The contrast reveals how a formal judgment applied equally to both men could be altered in practice by personal loyalty, political anxiety, and access to the prince. Corlys’s supporters could turn remembered service into a case for clemency; Larys’s isolation left no one to make that case for him.

Cregan Stark and the Limits of Authority

Aegon’s intervention created a constitutional difficulty. He was ten years old, had not yet been crowned or anointed, and his decrees had no legal force. Even after coronation he would remain under a regent or regency council until his sixteenth nameday. Cregan could therefore have disregarded the prince’s command and proceeded with Corlys’s execution. Instead, he chose not to do so, allowing the pardon and restoration to stand despite the uncertain legal authority behind them.

The account preserves competing explanations for Cregan’s decision without resolving the mystery. Septon Eustace attributed it to the Mother’s influence, although Cregan did not worship the Seven. Eustace also suggested that Cregan feared Alyn’s strength at sea and wished to avoid provoking him. That explanation, however, is presented as inconsistent with what is known of Cregan’s character: he was not thought likely to shrink from a new war and at times seemed to seek one. The result is a pointed uncertainty around the most consequential difference between the conspirators’ fates. The evidence records Cregan’s restraint, but does not establish why he exercised it.

Larys’s Death and House Strong’s End

Larys was the last of the condemned men to die. Offered the alternative of taking the black, he declined and made one final request: that his clubfoot be separated from his remains, as though death might at last free him from the burden he had carried through life. Cregan granted the request. The exchange gave Larys a measure of control over the terms of his death, but did not soften the sentence or restore the connections he had lacked at trial.

Larys’s death ended the line of House Strong. His remains were entrusted to the silent sisters, and his bones were eventually laid to rest at Harrenhal, while the foot was ordered buried separately in a pauper’s field. Before that burial could take place, it disappeared. Mushroom’s account claimed that it was stolen and sold to a sorcerer for use in spells; the chronicler sets this tale beside a similar story about Prince Joffrey’s foot and treats both accounts as doubtful. The uncertain legend extends Larys’s death into rumor, but cannot change the firm political consequence: his house came to an end, while Corlys survived, regained his honors, and returned to the small council.

The Meaning of Their Divergent Fates

The conspiracy’s two central figures thus leave the proceedings along opposite paths. Corlys’s acknowledged guilt coexists with a stated political rationale, a network of supporters, a prince indebted to him, and a restored public role. Larys’s alleged operational role rests on witnesses and his silence; he is condemned without a public advocate, refuses the offered alternative, and dies as the last Strong. The account does not erase their shared conviction, but it shows that conviction alone did not determine what followed.

Their relationship is consequently defined here by a combination of shared participation and unequal political afterlives. Corlys’s survival should not be mistaken for exoneration: he had admitted his guilt and was still found guilty by Cregan. Nor does Larys’s refusal to answer settle the precise extent of his responsibility beyond the testimony and verdict recorded. What separates them is the reach of their alliances and the decisions made on their behalf. The episode places the machinery of justice beside the personal ties that could redirect its outcome, leaving one conspirator restored to office and the other remembered as the last member of an ancient house.