Rogar’s Attempt to Take Rhaella and Claim She Was Aerea

Rogar’s Attempt to Take Rhaella and Claim She Was Aerea was a failed political plot to manufacture a rival queen: Rogar Baratheon sent his brother Orryn to remove the novice Rhaella Targaryen from a motherhouse in Oldtown, intending to make her claim she was Princess Aerea. The plan was exposed before Rhaella could be taken, and the resulting confession brought the affair to the attention of the royal court and Dragonstone.

The Attempt in Oldtown

Orryn Baratheon arrived at the motherhouse attached to the Starry Sept with a dozen men-at-arms and a letter bearing Rogar’s seal. He demanded that Rhaella be handed over immediately, offering only that Rogar had urgent need of the girl at Storm’s End. The written authority and the apparent urgency might have persuaded the motherhouse to comply, but Septa Karolyn, who guarded its door that day, was suspicious. She pretended to send for Rhaella and instead alerted the High Septon.

The High Septon was asleep, but his steward, Casper Straw, was awake and wary. A former knight who had served as a captain in the Warrior’s Sons before their abolition, Straw confronted Orryn with thirty armed septons. When Orryn brandished a sword, Straw claimed that forty of Donnel Hightower’s knights were on their way. The claim was a bluff, but it worked: the Baratheon men surrendered, and Rhaella remained beyond their reach.

The Plot Revealed

Under questioning, Orryn confessed the purpose of the mission. He was to take Rhaella to Storm’s End, where Rogar planned to force her to say that she was Aerea rather than Rhaella. Rogar then intended to name her queen. The attempt was therefore more than an unauthorized removal from the motherhouse: it depended on replacing Rhaella’s identity with a claim that could support a rival to the existing royal order.

Confession and Consequences

The Father of the Faithful heard Orryn’s confession and forgave him. That pardon did not prevent Donnel Hightower from imprisoning the captured Baratheons in a dungeon. He also sent a full account of the affair to both the Red Keep and Dragonstone, carrying news of Rogar’s plan beyond Oldtown and placing it before the royal authorities.

The episode ended with the scheme exposed before it could produce the queen Rogar sought to create. Its failure rested on the motherhouse’s resistance and the swift intervention of its armed defenders; the confession made the intended deception explicit, while Donnel’s imprisonment and reports ensured the plot could not remain a private matter between the Baratheons and their intended captive.