Tyanna of the Tower’s poisoning of the royal pregnancies

Tyanna of the Tower’s poisoning of the royal pregnancies exposed a hidden cause behind the stillbirths that haunted Maegor’s court. Her confession linked the loss of Jeyne Westerling’s child to an earlier pregnancy and made Elinor Costayne’s unborn child the next threatened victim.

Suspicion and Confession

After Jeyne’s child was stillborn, people attributed the repeated calamities to a curse upon Maegor, citing his crimes against family, the Faith, and the gods. Maegor rejected that explanation. He sent Ser Owen Bush and Ser Maladon Moore to seize Tyanna of the Tower and bring her to the dungeons. As the king’s torturers prepared their instruments, Tyanna confessed that she had poisoned Jeyne’s child in the womb, as she had previously poisoned Alys Harroway’s child. She also promised that Elinor’s child would meet the same fate.

Elinor’s Pregnancy and the Confession’s Consequence

Tyanna of the Tower was killed after her confession. The account says that the outcome she had foretold followed: after the passage of several months, Elinor Costayne gave birth at night to a malformed stillborn boy. The child’s death made Tyanna’s threat appear fulfilled, while leaving the court with another loss rather than the living son Maegor hoped to secure.

Political and Narrative Significance

The confession offered a human explanation for the royal pregnancies’ repeated tragedies, in contrast to the widely voiced belief that Maegor was cursed. Yet Tyanna’s warning proved consequential even after her death: Elinor’s child was stillborn, and Maegor’s remaining followers began to abandon him. The sequence thus turned a private crime and threatened repetition into a public sign of the king’s failing fortunes.