Rhaena and Androw Farman's Wedding was a swift, privately arranged marriage on Fair Isle in 49 AC, the Year of the Three Brides. Rhaena Targaryen, twice widowed and still the mother of the king’s heir, married Androw Farman, the much younger second son of the island’s lord. The match brought her personal life into conflict with the Crown’s expectations: the king and court learned of it only after the ceremony, while her mother and the King’s Hand took the marriage and their exclusion from it as grievances.

The Match and Ceremony

The new year was only a fortnight old when news of the wedding came from Fair Isle. Rhaena was twenty-six, and Androw was seventeen. It was his first marriage and her third; accounts described him as amiable and devoted to his new wife. The ceremony was small and swift, held beneath the open sky and conducted by Androw’s own septon. His father, Marq Farman, Lord of Fair Isle, presided.

The only great lords present were Lyman Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock, and his wife, Jocasta. Rhaena’s former favorites, Samantha Stokeworth and Alayne Royce, hurried to Fair Isle to stand with her, as did Androw’s high-spirited sister, Elissa Farman. The other guests were bannermen and household knights sworn to House Farman or House Lannister. The wedding feast and bedding had already taken place before a raven from the Rock carried word to King’s Landing.

Secrecy and the Crown’s Objection

Rhaena married without seeking the Crown’s leave. In this instance, the authority over such permission rested with Rogar Baratheon, the young king’s Hand. The chroniclers report that he was furious at her decision. Androw’s standing helps explain why the marriage might have provoked opposition: as the second son of a minor lord, he seemed to many an unsuitable match for a woman who had twice been queen and remained the mother of the king’s heir.

There were also possible alternatives among Rogar’s own family. His youngest brother was still unmarried, and two nephews by another brother were considered of suitable age and lineage for a Targaryen widow. The account presents these circumstances as a possible explanation both for Rogar’s anger and for the secrecy of the wedding, while making clear that royal approval would not necessarily have been granted even had Rhaena asked for it.

Family Reactions and Political Aftermath

Queen Alyssa was deeply offended that she had neither been told about nor invited to her daughter’s wedding. Later accounts say that mother and daughter were never as close again. The hurt was not confined to Alyssa: King Jaehaerys also felt he should have been consulted, although he took the slight less keenly. By contrast, Jaehaerys and his sister Alysanne welcomed the news, sent gifts and congratulations to Fair Isle, and ordered the bells of the Red Keep rung in celebration.

The wedding became one of the sources of strain within the royal family during the regency. Jaehaerys’s secret marriage to Alysanne was the immediate cause of the widening rift with Alyssa and Rogar, but the other marriages of the Year of the Three Brides had also left grievances behind. Rhaena’s unannounced match thus carried consequences beyond Fair Isle: its private character protected the choice she made, but its secrecy and the exclusion of her mother deepened divisions among the king, the Queen Regent, the Hand, and the widowed queen in the west.