Faith’s Prohibition of Incestuous and Plural Marriage

The Faith’s Prohibition of Incestuous and Plural Marriage placed the religious authority of the Faith of the Seven in tension with House Targaryen’s Valyrian marriage customs. Its importance lay not only in condemning unions that the dynasty regarded as traditional, but in the gap between public religious accommodation and unresolved doctrine: the High Septons did not openly denounce Aegon Targaryen’s marriages, yet they never declared them lawful, and the Faith’s wider community continued to regard such practices as sinful.

Doctrine and Valyrian custom

House Targaryen inherited the practice of marrying within its own kin from Old Valyria, where dragon-breeding families considered the preservation of the dragon’s blood a justification for close-kin unions. Brother-sister marriage was regarded as ideal; when that match was unavailable, marriages between other relatives were possible. The Valyrian precedent also included plural marriage, though it was less common than incestuous unions.

The Faith of the Seven, whose doctrines came from Andalos, rejected these customs. Its teaching condemned incest, including unions between siblings, parents and children, and treated their offspring as abominations in the sight of gods and men. The Faith also regarded a man taking more than one wife as sinful. These prohibitions challenged a dynastic system in which marriage could preserve a family’s bloodline as well as secure its political future. The disagreement was therefore both religious and institutional: Targaryen tradition asserted the legitimacy of its own exceptional customs, while the Faith’s authority shaped the moral understanding of most of Westeros.

Aegon’s accommodation with the Faith

The conflict did not immediately become an open confrontation during Aegon Targaryen’s reign. Aegon had two wives, Visenya Targaryen and Rhaenys Targaryen, who were also his sisters. The High Septon who presided over the Faith during the Conquest instead counseled Lord Hightower against resisting Aegon and later anointed him at his second coronation in the Starry Sept. Many among the Most Devout had expected the Faith’s leader to speak against the Conqueror and his marriages; his blessing disappointed them.

Aegon’s rule also gave the Faith practical reasons to preserve good relations with the Iron Throne. He confirmed its traditional rights, exempted its lands and possessions from taxation, and affirmed that the Faith’s own courts could try its religious servants accused of wrongdoing. He regularly honored the institution, including by visiting the Starry Sept when he came to Oldtown. These accommodations helped maintain an accord between crown and Faith, but did not settle the disputed status of the royal marriages. Religious endorsement of Aegon’s kingship did not amount to a declaration that sibling marriage was lawful.

A public silence, and a doctrine still contested

That distinction persisted throughout Aegon’s reign. Six High Septons held office from 11 AC to 37 AC, and Aegon remained on good terms with each. None publicly condemned his marriage to his sisters, but none pronounced it lawful either. Below the highest levels of the Faith, the prohibition remained alive: village septons, holy sisters, begging brothers, and the Poor Fellows continued to regard a brother lying with his sister, or a man taking two wives, as sinful. The accord between the Faith and the Iron Throne thus depended in part on leaving a fundamental disagreement unspoken.

The contrast became sharper with the next generation. Aegon’s sons had no sisters to marry, and Prince Aenys wed Alyssa Velaryon, a marriage described as one between cousins. When Aenys later proposed that his eldest children, Aegon and Rhaena, marry, the Faith’s response was no longer quiet. The High Septon issued a condemnation of brother-sister marriage, declaring that children of such a union would be abominations; the declaration was read by ten thousand septons across the Seven Kingdoms. The marriage went ahead. Aenys neither abandoned it nor answered the condemnation with force against the Starry Sept.

Dynastic consequences and significance

The dispute shows how marriage in the Targaryen dynasty could carry consequences beyond the household. A proposed union between siblings became a test of whether royal custom could override the Faith’s moral authority, while the Faith’s pronouncement turned a family decision into a realm-wide religious controversy. Aenys’s refusal either to withdraw the match or to attack the Faith left the tension unresolved rather than reconciling the two positions.

The prohibition also forms part of a wider political setting in which marriage and kinship shaped alliances, inheritance, and claims. Aegon’s queens helped arrange marriages between houses from different regions, while the royal court encouraged the children of former enemies to grow up within a shared realm. Such political uses of marriage coexisted with religious restrictions; they did not erase them. The rule’s lasting significance in this account is therefore the boundary it exposed between a dynasty’s inherited customs and the religious order whose cooperation helped sustain its rule.