Manfryd Mooton

Manfryd Mooton, Lord of Maidenpool, was a Riverlands lord whose service during the Dance of the Dragons repeatedly brought him to choices with consequences beyond his own lands. As a host to Daemon Targaryen and Nettles, he faced a royal command to deliver up a guest for execution; as a regent after the war, he warned that an unresolved succession could reopen the conflict. His career joined local responsibility to the unstable politics of the Iron Throne, and ended after illness weakened him and peace with Braavos had been secured at great cost.

Lord of Maidenpool and the wartime crisis

Manfryd’s importance in the account emerges most clearly through Maidenpool, where he welcomed Daemon and Nettles while they hunted Aemond Targaryen. The pair made their base there, and Manfryd lived in fear that Vhagar might descend on the town. Each day, Daemon and Nettles flew out on Caraxes and Sheepstealer, searching the Riverlands for their quarry, then returned at dusk without finding him. Manfryd suggested that they divide their search to cover more ground. Daemon refused, judging that neither dragon could safely face Vhagar alone and that they needed to remain together. His refusal kept Nettles close to him, but also left Manfryd’s town exposed to the danger surrounding their pursuit.

The queen’s response turned that danger into a test of Manfryd’s loyalty and judgment. A raven brought Rhaenyra’s order that he send her Nettles’s head, while sparing Daemon and returning him to the queen. The message placed Manfryd between his sovereign’s demand and the protection owed to a guest beneath his roof. The chronicle records how deeply the letter shook him: he lost his voice and needed three cups of wine before he could speak. He then summoned his captain, his brother, his champion, and his maester to hear their counsel.

Their advice exposed the choices’ competing risks. The captain proposed seizing Daemon by force; Manfryd’s brother preferred drugging him; Ser Florian Greysteel objected that Nettles was a child and that an honorable lord should not agree to her killing. Manfryd described the dilemma as a foul choice: obedience would leave Maidenpool cursed for betraying a guest, while refusal could bring attainder and destruction. His brother added that Daemon might burn the town if Nettles were killed, and Manfryd noted that Rhaenyra had expressly forbidden harm to her husband. He saw no clean way to obey without compounding the wrong.

Nettles’s escape and the change of banners

Maester Norren resolved the immediate crisis by showing Daemon and Nettles the queen’s letter. When Daemon learned of the order, he left Maidenpool with Nettles. The chronicle does not establish Manfryd’s private part in arranging their escape, but his response to Norren shows that he accepted the danger created by the maester’s warning: when Norren offered to surrender his chain and submit himself to the queen as a traitor, Manfryd refused. He described the household’s predicament as shared, rather than making the young maester bear it alone.

Daemon returned to Maidenpool briefly to break his fast with Manfryd and announce that he would fly to Harrenhal, where he would face Aemond if his nephew dared come. After Daemon had departed for the last time, Manfryd’s political position changed openly. Rhaenyra’s quartered banners came down from the gates, and the golden dragons of Aegon II were raised in their place. The account connects this turn to the danger of the queen’s order and the escape of her condemned guest; it does not reduce Manfryd’s decision to a simple declaration of allegiance. His choice had been made under threat, with the safety of Maidenpool and the lives of those under his roof at stake.

A regent confronting succession and plague

In the aftermath of the war, Manfryd served on Aegon III’s council of regents. The death of Lord Corlys Velaryon prompted him to warn his fellow regents that if the king died without an heir, the realm could be forced into another war. The problem was not merely a lack of possible claimants: the regents rejected Queen Jaehaera as an unsuitable choice, and King Aegon’s suggestion of Gaemon Palehair was also impossible. Manfryd’s warning gave voice to the fragile political settlement that followed the Dance. The realm had a king, but the question of who would succeed him could reopen the conflict it had barely survived.

The Winter Fever then altered the regency through death and succession. Manfryd fell ill, as did Roland Westerling; Manfryd’s fever broke, and he survived, though much weakened. Westerling died. The epidemic killed many across King’s Landing and struck the ruling circle as well as the wider population, leaving only four regents where there had once been seven. Manfryd remained among them, but his recovery was incomplete. His later death is explicitly attributed to his long decline after the fever, which had never allowed him to regain his former strength.

The Braavos mission and final years

Despite that frailty, Manfryd undertook a major diplomatic mission to Braavos. The King’s Hand sent him to negotiate with the Sealord and return the elephant associated with the Braavosi peace settlement. Six other noble lords accompanied him, along with knights, guards, servants, scribes, septons, singers, and Mushroom. The mission had substantial stakes: Braavos had reason to resent the actions of Lord Alyn Velaryon, and the royal fleet had been recalled to guard the Gullet against possible retaliation.

The Braavosi demonstrated their power, including the speed with which their Arsenal could build a warship, before bargaining over peace. While Manfryd negotiated with the Sealord, members of his party distributed bribes among influential figures in the city. The resulting agreement secured Braavos’s forgiveness for Velaryon’s transgression, its withdrawal from its alliance with Tyrosh and its ties with Racallio Ryndoon, and its cession of the Stepstones to the Iron Throne. Those terms came with a very large indemnity. Manfryd returned to King’s Landing with peace, but the payment depleted the royal treasury; Lord Peake then had to borrow from the Iron Bank of Braavos and reinstate taxes that Tyland Lannister had abolished, angering lords and merchants and weakening support among the smallfolk.

Peace held in King’s Landing for the remainder of the year, but Manfryd’s health continued to fail. He died as Lord of Maidenpool and the last of Aegon’s original regents. His death drew little comment in the chronicle, in part because his weakness after the fever had been long-standing. Lord Rowan selected Ser Corwyn Corbray, Rhaena’s husband, to take his place on the council. Manfryd’s departure thus closed the service of one of the regents who had helped navigate the postwar settlement, while the offices and alliances of that settlement continued to change around him.