Maiden’s Day

Maiden’s Day was the appointed occasion for a royal bride-selection at King’s Landing, designed by Lord Unwin Peake to let Aegon III choose a wife while quietly advancing Unwin’s plan to marry him to his daughter, Myrielle. What was announced as a grand ball became instead a tightly controlled parade before the Iron Throne. Its decisive turn came when Aegon’s half-sisters arrived with Daenaera Velaryon, displacing the candidate Unwin had spent months preparing and making the day a public contest over who could shape the young king’s future.

The Plan for a Royal Choice

After the death of Aegon’s first queen, Jaehaera, Unwin remained intent on marrying his daughter Myrielle to the king. But he needed the support of other lords and could not simply impose his choice. He therefore presented a royal selection as a matter of public propriety: the king should take another wife, and it was fitting that he choose her himself. Maiden’s Day was set for a ball at which maidens from every corner of the Seven Kingdoms would present themselves to Aegon.

The promise of the king’s personal choice concealed Unwin’s own design. Even before announcing the event, he had summoned Myrielle from Starpike to court, hoping she would befriend and charm Aegon before the ball. She spent time in the king’s company, including half a dozen suppers arranged by her father during the fortnight before the event. Aegon was reserved, but did not appear to dislike her presence. Three days before Maiden’s Day, he gave her one of Jaehaera’s dolls. Myrielle treated the gesture as a sign of affection; Unwin took it as encouragement for his plan.

A Contest That Became a Parade

The ball attracted more than a thousand highborn girls, despite Unwin’s attempt to limit the candidates to noble maidens under thirty. They came from across the Seven Kingdoms and from abroad: the Prince of Pentos sent a daughter, the Archon of Tyrosh a sister, and candidates also sailed from Myr and Old Volantis. The daughters from Old Volantis never arrived, having been taken by corsairs from the Basilisk Isles. Even before the selection began, the scale of the gathering had exceeded the Hand’s ability to manage it.

The event’s name promised dancing and courtship, but neither took place. Aegon sat on the Iron Throne, dressed in black, with a golden circlet and chain. One by one, the herald announced each candidate’s name and lineage; each girl curtsied, the king nodded, and the next came forward. The presentation offered almost no chance for conversation. A few candidates tried to make themselves memorable with brief remarks: Patricia Redwyne spoke of her party’s journey and its encounters with outlaws, while Barba Bolton asked that she be sent home with food because the snows were deep and people were starving. Aegon answered none of the girls, acknowledging each with a nod.

The immense crowd transformed the throne room into an ordeal of waiting rather than a celebration. With candidates accompanied by parents, siblings, guards, and servants, the chamber became difficult to move through and stiflingly hot. The herald lost his voice; four hopefuls fainted, as did numerous parents and a septon, and one lord collapsed and died. As the hours passed, Aegon grew increasingly restless. Mushroom later called the occasion the Maiden’s Day Cattle Show. The comparison captured the gulf between the court’s romantic presentation of a bride’s choice and the impersonal procession the day actually delivered.

Myrielle’s Prospects and the Reversal

Unwin arranged for Myrielle to appear late enough in the first hour that she would not seem to have been given special precedence, but early enough that Aegon might still be attentive. She arrived carrying the doll he had given her. When the king greeted her by name and said he was pleased she liked it, Unwin had reason to hope his careful preparation had worked. He believed that Aegon’s growing weariness with the parade might also help: each frown and tired nod seemed, to the Hand, to bring the king closer to choosing his daughter.

The balance shifted when fewer than a dozen candidates remained. A trumpet announced the arrival of Baela Velaryon and Rhaena Corbray, daughters of Prince Daemon. They entered together in black velvet and rubies, bearing the three-headed dragon of House Targaryen on their cloaks. Baela was pregnant; Rhaena was still thin and wan after a miscarriage. Their appearance brought a striking dynastic presence into a contest that Unwin had tried to manage as his own political opportunity.

When Ser Marston Waters blocked their way and demanded that they dismount, Baela struck him across the cheek with her riding crop and insisted that only her brother, the king, could command her. At the Iron Throne, Rhaena addressed Aegon and presented the girl they had brought as his new queen. The herald identified her as Daenaera of House Velaryon, the daughter of the late Daeron and Hazel, and a ward of Baela and Alyn Velaryon. The sisters’ intervention overturned the outcome Unwin had labored to arrange; Daenaera would become Aegon’s queen.

The Day as a Turning Point

Maiden’s Day was both a court occasion and a measure of competing claims on the king. Unwin invoked Aegon’s right to choose, but tried to steer that choice through his daughter’s placement at court and the management of the ceremony. The format gave the candidates visibility while denying them meaningful access to Aegon; the king’s silence made the event less a meeting of prospective partners than a demonstration of how remote royal choice could be from the people presented for it.

The arrival of Baela and Rhaena exposed the limits of that managed spectacle. They did not merely add another candidate: they came with Daenaera and asserted a family claim to participate in deciding Aegon’s marriage. Their entrance redirected the occasion from Unwin’s carefully staged selection toward a choice made possible by the king’s sisters and their political standing. In the account of the day, the ceremonial promise that Aegon would choose for himself and the reality of influence around him remain in tension.

Maiden’s Day also serves as a marker for events elsewhere. At Sunspear, on the very day the candidates paraded before Aegon in King’s Landing, Alyn Velaryon attended a Maiden’s Day feast and was approached privately by Drazenko Rogare. Drazenko whispered a secret that changed the course of Westerosi history; the following day, Alyn ordered his ships to sail for Lys. The simultaneous feasts connect the crowded royal selection with a separate political turning point, showing how a single named day could register very different kinds of consequence across the realm.