Septon Mattheus

Septon Mattheus was a prominent cleric of the Most Devout whose resistance to Targaryen sibling marriage made him a flashpoint in the struggle between royal custom and the Faith. At court, he warned that the union of Jaehaerys Targaryen and Alysanne Targaryen risked provoking the pious; after their marriage, he condemned them openly. Jaehaerys later removed him from court, but Mattheus’s subsequent lead in the contest to choose a new High Septon showed that dismissal had not erased his influence.

Identity and Position

Mattheus joined the court in King’s Landing while the High Septon and much of the Faith’s senior company had returned to Oldtown. He was a member of the Most Devout, and his standing made him a plausible successor to the aging High Septon. The historical account presents his physical size and splendid robes as conspicuous features: he was famously corpulent, and his appearance lent force to the contrast between his place in the religious hierarchy and the king’s willingness to dismiss him.

His lineage also figured in how others understood his authority. Mattheus claimed descent from the Gardener kings, who had ruled the Reach from Highgarden. Many considered him likely to become the next High Septon. The incumbent, by contrast, was described as cautious and accommodating, and the account suggests that he was unlikely to challenge a royal marriage while he remained in office. But he was old, and his journey to King’s Landing to officiate at the Golden Wedding had nearly proved fatal. The prospect of his death made Mattheus’s views a matter of immediate political concern.

Opposition to the Royal Marriage

The question arose when the regency considered marrying Jaehaerys to someone other than his sister. The Targaryens had long married brother to sister, and Jaehaerys and Alysanne had grown up expecting to wed. Their mother, Alyssa Targaryen, nevertheless feared that announcing another such match could stir former members of the Warrior’s Sons and Poor Fellows, despite those orders having been disbanded and outlawed. Mattheus supported her concern. He warned that not all members of the Faith shared the incumbent High Septon’s accommodating outlook, and that a sibling marriage at that moment could be taken as an affront by the devout, with dangerous consequences.

The regents consequently set aside Alysanne as a bride for her brother and arranged for her to marry Orryn Baratheon. That settlement was overtaken by the young king and queen’s own decision to marry. When Alyssa and Rogar Baratheon arrived at the castle gates and found Jaehaerys and Alysanne holding hands, Mattheus confronted them. He foretold that their union would bring renewed conflict across Westeros and that the faithful would condemn them. His denunciation turned a political and religious dispute into a public confrontation with the king.

Jaehaerys answered in anger, distinguishing his mother’s right to chastise him from Mattheus’s. He threatened to have the septon’s lips sewn shut if he spoke again. Mattheus said nothing further. The scene marked the limit of his immediate power: he could pronounce the Faith’s objections, but he could not compel the king to abandon the marriage.

Dismissal and Departure

Jaehaerys later removed Mattheus from the royal court. When Mattheus argued that a king could not rule without a septon beside him, Jaehaerys pointed to the clerics who would remain, including Septon Oswyck and Septa Ysabel, and to a young man arriving from Highgarden to oversee the royal library: Septon Barth. Mattheus dismissed those replacements, but Jaehaerys answered that his former adviser knew little beyond his own assumptions. The exchange presented the dismissal not as a withdrawal from religious counsel altogether, but as the king’s decision about which voices would have access to him.

Four days later, Mattheus left for Oldtown in a gilded wheelhouse because he was too corpulent to ride a horse. Six guardsmen and a dozen servants accompanied him. A later legend placed him crossing the Mander at Bitterbridge as Septon Barth rode in the opposite direction, alone on a donkey. The sharply different departures give the account a pointed visual contrast between the senior cleric’s established retinue and the younger man who was about to enter royal service.

The Election of a New High Septon

When the High Septon died at Oldtown, Jaehaerys understood the election of a successor as a question of the realm’s stability. He wanted a High Septon who would accept the Targaryen marriage tradition and make Exceptionalism an official doctrine of the Faith. The king initially considered Septon Barth, but Barth persuaded him that he was too young, little known, and outside the Most Devout to have a realistic chance. The council instead agreed on one immediate objective: Mattheus must not be chosen. His time at court had left distrust behind, especially because Jaehaerys had not forgotten his denunciation at the castle gates.

The council discussed bribery, a display of military force, and even arranging Mattheus’s sudden death. Jaehaerys rejected those proposals and traveled with Alysanne to Oldtown. There, he reached an understanding with Lord Donnel Hightower, whose relatives included several senior clerics. The arrangement linked the king’s religious objective to the Hightower family’s hope that one of its own would eventually become High Septon.

At the election, Mattheus led the first ballot, as the king’s party had expected. He did not receive enough votes to win, however, and his support diminished with each successive ballot. On the fourth, the Most Devout chose Septon Alfyn, an Exceptionalism supporter who was not one of their own members. Mattheus’s fall from first-ballot leader to unsuccessful candidate completes the reversal of his fortunes: once a likely successor and a forceful critic of the king, he became a contender whom the crown’s allies worked to outmaneuver. His career illustrates how religious authority could command a following without determining royal policy, and how the selection of the Faith’s leader became entangled with dynastic interests.