Jaehaerys and Alysanne’s Secret and Public Weddings

Jaehaerys and Alysanne’s Secret and Public Weddings were two stages of a single marriage: a quiet ceremony on Dragonstone after the siblings learned that Alysanne was to be married elsewhere, followed months later by a public wedding beneath the Iron Throne. Their first vows asserted their own choice against a betrothal made without their consent; the second ceremony, attended by court and family, made their union visible and formally secure.

The Betrothal and Departure

Alysanne’s betrothal had been decided by the Queen Regent, the King’s Hand, and their councillors, but it had not yet been announced. The surviving account does not establish how the princess learned of the arrangement. It records instead that she went directly to Jaehaerys, a youth ten years her senior whom she scarcely knew and, according to rumor, did not like. Rather than appeal to their mother or respond with the despair conventionally assigned to a girl forced into marriage, she sought her brother.

Jaehaerys understood that the same councillors might soon arrange a marriage for him. He summoned the Kingsguard and ordered them to sail for Dragonstone, where he would meet them, while instructing them to keep his departure secret. That night, under cover of darkness, he and Alysanne mounted their dragons, Vermithor and Silverwing, and left the Red Keep for the old Targaryen stronghold beneath the Dragonmont. The departure transformed the threatened marriage from a decision made by others into an action taken by the young king and princess themselves.

The Secret Wedding on Dragonstone

On landing, Jaehaerys asked for a septon. He did not trust Septon Mattheus, whom he believed would disclose their plans, and instead turned to Septon Oswyck, who tended Dragonstone’s sept. Oswyck had known the siblings since birth and instructed them in the Faith of the Seven during their childhood. His past service to King Aenys and his familiarity with the Targaryen tradition of sibling marriage made him a willing celebrant.

The Kingsguard reached Dragonstone by galley a few days later. At sunrise the following morning, Jaehaerys and Alysanne married in the castle’s great yard. Septon Oswyck performed the rites, with the seven knights of the Kingsguard as witnesses. The garrison and servants watched, as did many residents of the fishing village below the castle’s curtain walls. The ceremony was therefore secret in its political circumstances, but not private in the sense of being unwitnessed: a small community saw the king take his sister as his wife.

A modest feast followed, with toasts to the king and his new queen. The couple then retired to the bedchamber where Aegon the Conqueror had once slept beside his sister Rhaenys. Because of Alysanne’s youth, there was no bedding ceremony and the marriage was not consummated. That distinction became important when Queen Alyssa and Lord Rogar arrived from King’s Landing with their party. Their journey brought the regent and the King’s Hand face to face with a marriage already celebrated, but not yet consummated.

The Public Ceremony in King’s Landing

The first wedding did not end the separation between the couple. Nearly half a year later, Jaehaerys sent for Alysanne. She left Dragonstone with Silverwing within an hour of his summons; her household followed by ship. Although even beggars in Flea Bottom knew that the king and queen had married, they slept apart for a month while preparations were made for a second ceremony, allowing public recognition to follow the initial, clandestine vows.

Jaehaerys declined to spend money on another lavish Golden Wedding. Whereas forty thousand people had witnessed his mother’s marriage to Rogar, a thousand gathered in the Red Keep to see Jaehaerys marry Alysanne again. Septon Barth performed the rites beneath the Iron Throne. Queen Alyssa and Lord Rogar attended, having returned from Storm’s End with Rogar’s brothers Garon and Ronnal. Rhaena Targaryen also came, flying from the west on Dreamfyre to see her siblings wed and visit her daughter Aerea.

Bells rang across the city when the ceremony ended, and ravens carried news of the union throughout the realm. This wedding differed from the first in one decisive respect: it was followed by a bedding ceremony. Alysanne later said that she had insisted on it, both because she was ready and because she wanted there to be no further question about whether she was truly married. The union was consummated at last in the canopied bed in Maegor’s Holdfast, before witnesses gathered for the customary ceremony.

Dynastic and Public Meaning

The repeated wedding made the marriage legible in two different settings. On Dragonstone, a trusted septon, seven sworn knights, and the castle community witnessed a choice made in defiance of a court arrangement. In King’s Landing, Septon Barth, the royal family, and a larger audience witnessed its public confirmation. The movement from the great yard to the Red Keep, and from a modest feast to a ceremony beneath the Iron Throne, gave the same union both personal initiative and royal form.

The second wedding also connected Alysanne’s marriage to the wider Targaryen family and its public authority. The presence of Alyssa and Rogar, as well as Rhaena’s arrival on Dreamfyre, placed the siblings’ union before the people whose political and familial standing mattered at court. The bells and ravens extended that announcement beyond the assembled guests. What had begun as a secret departure was thus followed by a deliberate, realm-wide declaration: the king and queen were married, and Alysanne’s place beside Jaehaerys was no longer merely a private fact.