Maegor I and Rhaena Targaryen

Maegor I and Rhaena Targaryen were uncle and niece, but their relationship became a struggle over refuge, succession, and control. After Maegor killed Rhaena’s husband, she sought safety on Fair Isle with her daughters; Maegor later summoned her back and made her his wife. The marriage was presented as a way to unite rival claims, yet its circumstances show how royal kinship could be turned into an instrument of power.

Kinship and dynastic stakes

Rhaena was Maegor’s niece and the widow of Aegon the Uncrowned, Maegor’s slain nephew. Her position mattered not only because of her own descent, but because of the claims carried by her young daughters. If Aegon had been king in law, his elder daughter, Aerea, could have been regarded as his heir and a claimant to the throne. Rhaena judged that openly advancing such a claim would put the children in mortal danger, so she chose concealment over immediate assertion.

Maegor’s counselors recommended Rhaena as a bride for reasons that joined marriage to political containment. A union with his niece could bring their claims together, prevent rebels from gathering around her, and provide leverage against her mother, Queen Alyssa, who remained in hiding with her younger children. Maegor also concluded that he should take more than one wife, believing additional marriages would increase his prospects of producing a son. Rhaena was therefore not summoned simply as a member of his family: her marriage was intended to strengthen his position and diminish the danger posed by her family’s rival claims.

Refuge on Fair Isle

After her husband’s death, Rhaena acted to protect Aerea and her twin sister, Rhaella. She dyed their hair, changed their names, and entrusted them to powerful allies who could arrange for them to be fostered without revealing their identities. She insisted that even she must not know where the girls had been sent, so that she could not disclose their whereabouts under torture. The precautions separated a mother from her children in order to keep them hidden from Maegor.

Rhaena could not disappear as they did. She was a dragonrider, and Dreamfyre, the pale blue dragon she had ridden since the age of twelve, could not be concealed. She took the dragon and went with her to Fair Isle, where Marq Farman offered her the shelter of Faircastle. There Rhaena read and prayed while wondering how long she would be allowed to remain beyond Maegor’s reach. Her refuge was real, but she did not mistake it for lasting security; she expected that he would eventually send for her.

The summons and triple wedding

When Maegor’s summons came, Rhaena saw no safe way to refuse. Defiance, she believed, could bring him and Balerion down upon Fair Isle. She had grown fond of Lord Farman and especially of his second son, Androw, and would not repay their hospitality by exposing them to such danger. She mounted Dreamfyre and flew to the Red Keep, where she learned that Maegor intended to marry her. The marriage was to be part of a triple wedding, not a private arrangement between two relatives.

The other brides were also widows, and their circumstances underscored that Maegor was gathering women whose previous marriages did not protect them from his demands. At the ceremony, the presence of Rhaena’s daughters brought the concealed family crisis into the open: Tyanna of the Tower escorted two silver-haired, purple-eyed girls dressed in Targaryen colors before Rhaena. The account records that Rhaena bowed her head and spoke her vows in a cold voice. The scene gives no basis for treating the marriage as a freely chosen reunion; it shows her returning from refuge under pressure and confronting the children she had tried to hide.

Succession after the marriage

In the aftermath, Maegor declared Aerea his lawful heir until he had a son, while sending Rhaella to Oldtown to be raised as a septa. The decision gave Rhaena’s elder daughter a place in the succession, but it also placed both girls within arrangements determined by Maegor. Rhaella was separated from her sister, and the protection Rhaena had sought through concealment gave way to the king’s direct authority over their futures.

Maegor’s decree also expressly disinherited Jaehaerys, whom the account identifies as the rightful heir under the laws of the Seven Kingdoms. The marriage thus accompanied, rather than resolved, a contested succession: it drew Rhaena into Maegor’s household and used Aerea’s position to support his order of inheritance, while excluding another claimant. Their relationship reveals the distance between kinship as a bond and kinship as a political resource. Rhaena’s family connection to Maegor offered no dependable protection; it made her and her daughters valuable to his designs, and brought them within his power.