Septon Murmison

Septon Murmison was a pious cleric whose appointment as Hand of the King placed him at the center of King Aenys Targaryen’s attempt to answer religious opposition with religious authority. His reputation for healing could not resolve the conflict: the Faith expelled him for performing Prince Maegor’s forbidden marriage, and Poor Fellows later killed him in the streets of King’s Landing.

Appointment and Office

After Prince Maegor chose exile rather than put aside Alys Harroway, Aenys turned to Murmison to replace his brother as Hand. The king’s choice appears to have been intended to appease the Faith at a moment when Maegor’s marriage had provoked condemnation among pious lords. Murmison was known as a devout cleric, said to heal the sick by laying on his hands.

Aenys also had Murmison perform a nightly laying-on of hands on Lady Ceryse Hightower’s belly, hoping that she might conceive and that this would encourage Maegor to return to his lawful wife. Ceryse soon tired of the ritual and left King’s Landing for Oldtown, where she rejoined her father. The episode links Murmison’s reported healing gift to the king’s dynastic hopes, while showing the limits of the appointment as a political gesture.

Conflict with the Faith

Murmison’s position as Hand could not protect him from the religious controversy surrounding the marriage he had performed. The Faith expelled him for officiating at the forbidden nuptials. Aenys then wrote to the High Septon asking that Murmison be restored and explaining the history of brother-and-sister marriage in old Valyria. The High Septon’s reply condemned the king rather than relenting, and the dispute widened from Murmison’s standing into a direct challenge to Aenys’s right to rule.

The king’s defense of Murmison therefore had consequences beyond the cleric’s office: it made the conflict between Valyrian custom and the Faith’s prohibitions more public, without securing Murmison’s return to the Faith. The account presents his appointment as an attempted accommodation that failed to quiet opposition.

Death and Consequences

Less than a fortnight after the High Septon’s denunciation, Poor Fellows attacked Murmison as he crossed King’s Landing in his litter and killed him. His death occurred amid a rapidly worsening rebellion against House Targaryen. The Warrior’s Sons fortified the Hill of Rhaenys, and Aenys, fearing for his safety at his vulnerable manse, planned to leave for Dragonstone with Queen Alyssa and their younger children.

Three days before the planned departure, Poor Fellows broke into the king’s bedchamber; the Kingsguard intervened in time to save him. Murmison’s killing thus belongs to the same escalation that threatened the king himself, although the account does not describe the cleric as its cause. His brief tenure as Hand ends not with reconciliation between crown and Faith, but with the destruction of the very figure Aenys had chosen in hopes of bridging their divide.