The Wedding of Aegon III and Jaehaera joined the two rival branches of House Targaryen after the Dance of the Dragons. Celebrated on a date considered sacred to the gods and solemnized by the High Septon of Oldtown, it ended two years of treachery and carnage through a dynastic union; the book marks the wedding as the close of the war and the beginning of Aegon III Targaryen’s melancholy reign.

The Two Branches

Aegon Targaryen the Younger was the eldest son of Rhaenyra Targaryen and her uncle, Daemon Targaryen. Jaehaera Targaryen was the daughter of Helaena Targaryen and her brother, King Aegon II. Their marriage therefore brought together the descendants of the opposing claimants: the son of the queen who had seized King’s Landing and the daughter of the king whose supporters had crowned him in the capital.

That division had been asserted in public ceremonies as well as in battle. Aegon II was crowned with the iron-and-ruby crown of Aegon the Conqueror, while Rhaenyra was crowned with the crown of Jaehaerys the Conciliator. Their children’s marriage did not erase the conflict that had divided the family, but it placed its surviving branches within one royal household.

Ceremony and Settlement

On the seventh day of the seventh moon in 131 AC, the High Septon of Oldtown pronounced the marriage vows. The date was regarded as sacred to the gods, giving the union a place within religious as well as dynastic ceremony. The account does not detail the wedding’s setting or festivities; its emphasis falls instead on who was joined, who officiated, and what the match accomplished.

The wedding’s political force lay in the identities of the bride and groom. Rather than merely confirming an alliance between separate noble houses, it joined the children of the two sides whose struggle had devastated the realm. The marriage was presented as an act of reconciliation at the level of succession and kinship: the rival branches were now bound together by the next generation.

End of the Dance

The account links the vows directly to the ending of the Dance of the Dragons. The wedding united the branches and ended two years of treachery and carnage; the war’s conclusion is not presented as an independent settlement apart from the marriage, but as the consequence and meaning attached to it.

That resolution did not usher in a triumphant aftermath. The narrative moves from the declaration that the Dance was done to the beginning of Aegon III Targaryen’s melancholy reign. The wedding thus closes one political crisis while opening a reign defined, in the book’s framing, by sorrow. Its significance rests in this double turn: the royal family was reunited by marriage, and the war ended, but the peace began under a melancholy king.