Rogar Baratheon’s Plot to Depose Jaehaerys was an attempt to replace the young king with Princess Aerea, first by winning the Queen Regent’s support and then, after that effort failed, by manipulating the identity of Aerea’s twin, Rhaella. The plot exposed the weakness beneath Rogar’s authority as Hand: he could propose a rival succession, but could not secure the support of the regent, the council, or the Faith that his plan required.

Causes and Succession Claims

The immediate crisis followed the revelation that Jaehaerys and Alysanne had married. Their union had become difficult to conceal: witnesses had seen the confrontation at the castle gates, and visiting lords had noticed Alysanne beside the king and the affection between them. Rogar had threatened to silence those spreading the news, but the Queen Regent, Alyssa Targaryen, recognized that the marriage was known and could not be undone. She urged her councillors to protect the young couple from what might follow. Her response was shaped by family losses and estrangement: she had lost two sons to Maegor the Cruel, and the relationship with her eldest daughter was cold; she did not want to be permanently separated from the two children still close to her.

Rogar reacted not with accommodation but with a direct challenge to the king’s fitness and right to rule. In front of Grand Maester Benifer, Septon Mattheus, Lord Velaryon, and the other councillors, he denounced Alyssa as weak and described Jaehaerys as self-interested and likely to be a worse king than his father. He argued that the council had erred in crowning Jaehaerys and that it was not yet too late to set him aside. The proposal turned a dispute over the king’s marriage into an effort to change the succession.

The other councillors understood the gravity of the proposal. Alyssa wept in silence; Lord Velaryon questioned Rogar’s judgment, while Qarl Corbray, commander of the City Watch, said his men would not support the plan. Prentys Tully asked whether Rogar meant to claim the Iron Throne himself. Rogar emphatically denied wanting the crown. His stated alternative was to send Jaehaerys to Oldtown and make him a maester, arguing that a scholarly life would suit the boy.

Rogar named Princess Aerea as his preferred replacement. He claimed that she had the stronger hereditary claim because her mother and father were King Aenys’s first- and second-born children, whereas Jaehaerys was fourth-born. He also argued that Aerea possessed a fire the king lacked, and expected to remain Hand so he could shape and guide her. He invoked the support of Aerea’s mother, Queen Rhaena, and the fact that she had a dragon. That last point sharpened the danger of the proposal: Jaehaerys and Alysanne had dragons as well, making the prospect of rival royal claimants a threat of dragon against dragon.

The Regent’s Rejection

Alyssa ended the council confrontation by asserting her authority as Queen Regent. Until Jaehaerys came of age, she reminded the assembled lords, they served at her pleasure, including the Hand. She then dismissed Rogar and ordered him to return to Storm’s End, treating his proposal as treason rather than a legitimate debate over succession. Rogar initially refused to accept that she could remove him, but Qarl Corbray rose and laid his Valyrian steel sword, Lady Forlorn, on the table with its point toward him. Only then, according to Benifer’s account, did Rogar understand that he was alone in the chamber.

With Rogar gone, Alyssa appointed her brother Daemon Velaryon as Hand and sent a raven to Dragonstone to inform Jaehaerys of some, though not all, of what had happened. She withdrew from public life for the remainder of her regency and left the government of the Seven Kingdoms to Daemon. Rogar returned to Storm’s End, but did not accept defeat inwardly. The narrative describes a man unable to yield: he treated the king’s marriage as a war he still intended to win, and pursued one further scheme.

The Attempt to Substitute Rhaella for Aerea

At the motherhouse attached to the Starry Sept in Oldtown, Ser Orryn Baratheon arrived with a dozen armed men and a letter bearing Rogar’s seal. He demanded that the novice Rhaella Targaryen be handed over, claiming only that Rogar urgently needed the girl at Storm’s End. Septa Karolyn, who was guarding the motherhouse door, delayed the men while sending for the High Septon. Although the High Septon was asleep, his steward, Casper Straw, was awake and alert.

The Baratheon party found thirty armed septons under Straw’s command instead of Rhaella. When Orryn drew his sword, Straw claimed that forty of Lord Hightower’s knights were on their way. The threat was a bluff, but it worked: the Baratheons surrendered. Under questioning, Orryn confessed the purpose of the operation. Rogar intended to take Rhaella to Storm’s End and force her to say that she was actually Aerea, then proclaim her queen. The scheme tried to turn the twins’ identities into an instrument of succession, after Rogar’s open bid to install Aerea had been rejected.

Exposure and Aftermath

The High Septon forgave Orryn after hearing his confession, but Lord Hightower imprisoned the captured Baratheons and sent a full account to both the Red Keep and Dragonstone. He showed no willingness to yield to the former Hand’s rank or family power. Across Westeros, Rogar raged at his brother’s failure and imprisonment, yet did not call his banners, despite fears that he might do so. Instead, he fell into despair and told his maester that he expected either to take the black or to lose his head.

Rogar then ordered a will and confession drafted. He absolved his brothers Borys, Garon, and Ronnal of involvement, asked mercy for Orryn, and named Ser Borys heir to Storm’s End. He maintained that his actions had been for the good of the realm and the Iron Throne, but the confession and provisions for his family marked the collapse of his attempt to control the succession. The council chamber had denied his proposal; the Faith had thwarted his covert operation; and his failure to raise an army left him without a further instrument of resistance.

The episode also throws the distinction between a hereditary argument and recognized authority into sharp relief. Rogar cited birth order and Aerea’s dragon, but neither claim persuaded Alyssa’s council to depose Jaehaerys. Later, the Great Council of 101 AC chose Viserys over Laenor by a margin said to exceed twenty to one, and its result was understood to establish a precedent against the Iron Throne passing to a woman or through a woman to her male descendants. That later settlement does not resolve every question raised by Rogar’s argument, but it underscores the enduring stakes of the crisis: royal succession depended not only on lineage, but on whether powerful institutions and lords would recognize a claimant.