Ser Lucamore Strong’s scandal turned a popular Kingsguard knight into a public example of what happened when a sworn protector treated sacred vows as disposable. His secret marriages violated both the Kingsguard’s prohibition on marriage and the trust owed to his three wives, while his sixteen children made the deception impossible to treat as a private transgression. Jaehaerys Targaryen punished Lucamore and sent him to the Wall; Alysanne Targaryen then determined the futures and names of the families he left behind.

Discovery and Exposure

Near the end of 73 AC, the court and city learned that Lucamore had secretly married three women, keeping each unaware of the other two and fathering no fewer than sixteen children. The revelation shocked those who had known him as an amiable and well-loved knight, and as a favorite of the smallfolk. His white cloak made the secret marriages more than a domestic betrayal: he had sworn as a Kingsguard knight to take no wife, father no children, and remain chaste.

Ser Ryam Redwyne uncovered Lucamore’s transgressions and reported them to the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, who brought the matter before the king. Lucamore’s sworn brothers responded with anger. Speaking for them, Ser Gyles Morrigen declared that the knight had dishonored everything the Kingsguard stood for and asked that he be put to death. The request framed the scandal as an injury to the order as a whole, not merely a breach of its rules by one member.

The contrast between Lucamore’s standing and his hidden life sharpened the disgrace. In Flea Bottom and along the Street of Silk, people made bawdy jokes about Lucamore the Lusty and delighted in the fall of an anointed knight. There was no such amusement in the Red Keep: Jaehaerys and Alysanne had been especially fond of Lucamore and were mortified to discover that he had deceived them as well as his wives.

Judgment by the King and Queen

Dragged before the Iron Throne, Lucamore fell to his knees, confessed, and asked the king for mercy. His appeal invoked his wives and children, but that plea did not soften Jaehaerys. The king set Lucamore’s broken vows against the trust required of a Kingsguard: a knight who had discarded his vow of chastity and marriage could not be relied upon to keep his oath to defend and obey the king. Jaehaerys also recalled that, when he rose against his uncle Maegor, two Kingsguard had abandoned their sworn king to fight for him; after his victory, Jaehaerys had sent them to the Wall rather than reward their disloyalty. He would not tolerate oathbreakers in his own service.

Alysanne’s response widened the judgment beyond Lucamore’s service to the Crown. She condemned his repeated betrayal of his marriage vows, but distinguished the children from their father’s crime, calling them the true innocents in the matter. She understood that the wives had been kept ignorant of one another, while also judging that each must have known Lucamore was a white-cloaked Kingsguard knight. In her assessment, that gave the wives and the septon who had married them some share of responsibility, though it did not make them equivalent to Lucamore. She would not have the disgraced knight near the king.

Jaehaerys ordered Lucamore gelded immediately, clapped in irons, and dispatched to the Wall. The punishment joined bodily penalty to exile from court and service: Lucamore lost his place among the Kingsguard and was required to take the Night’s Watch’s vows instead. The king warned him that if he broke those vows too, he would lose his head. The sentence thus treated the scandal not as a lapse that could be excused by Lucamore’s former popularity, but as a failure of sworn loyalty with consequences for the king’s safety.

The Wives, Children, and New Names

Jaehaerys left the families’ disposition to Alysanne. She allowed Lucamore’s sons to join their father at the Wall if they chose; the two eldest did so. His daughters could enter the Faith as novices if they wished, and one selected that path. The remaining children stayed with their mothers. These distinct choices meant that the king’s sentence did not simply carry the entire family into exile: Alysanne separated the children’s futures from Lucamore’s punishment and arranged for their upbringing in different households.

The first wife and her children were placed in the care of Lucamore’s brother Bywin, who had been raised to be Lord of Harrenhal less than half a year earlier. The second wife and her children were sent to Driftmark to be fostered by Daemon Velaryon, Lord of the Tides. The third wife, whose children were the youngest, including one still at the breast, was sent to Storm’s End, where Garon Baratheon and the young Lord Boremund would oversee their upbringing. The arrangements placed the households under separate guardians and in different regions of the realm.

Alysanne also decreed that none of the children could continue to bear the name Strong. Their new surnames recorded their separate placements and illegitimate status: Rivers, Waters, and Storm. The change made the consequences of Lucamore’s secret life public and enduring, even as it gave each branch a recognized name under which to live. Alysanne’s decision paired practical provision for the children with the removal of the family name that his conduct had compromised.

Significance

The scandal exposed the gap between Lucamore’s reputation and his conduct: a beloved knight had secretly maintained three marriages and fathered sixteen children while bound by vows that expressly forbade both marriage and fatherhood. His fall tested the authority of the Kingsguard’s oaths in a way that ordinary disapproval could not settle. Jaehaerys’s judgment insisted that personal affection and public popularity could not substitute for fidelity to the office.

The aftermath also shows two forms of royal authority working together. Jaehaerys enforced the knight’s obligations through punishment and exile; Alysanne dealt with the people left vulnerable by his deception, assigning guardians, religious options, and new surnames. Lucamore’s scandal therefore ended not only with his removal from the white cloak, but with the reordering of three households whose lives and identities had been shaped by his concealed violations.