The Second Quarrel

The Second Quarrel was the two-year rupture between Jaehaerys I Targaryen and Alysanne Targaryen over who should inherit the Iron Throne after the death of their son Aemon. Alysanne opposed her husband’s decision to make their son Baelon heir instead of Aemon’s daughter, Rhaenys. She left King’s Landing and flew to Dragonstone on Silverwing; although the couple reconciled in 94 AC, the dispute over succession remained unresolved, and Alysanne held to her objection until her death.

The Succession Dispute

The quarrel arose from a change in the line of succession. Aemon, Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne, was killed on Tarth in 92 AC. Jaehaerys then named Baelon, Aemon’s younger brother, as his successor. The decision had broad support: Baelon was an experienced knight, had two sons, and was popular with the commons. But it also passed over Aemon’s child, Rhaenys, who had married Corlys Velaryon and was pregnant when her father died.

Rhaenys understood the appointment as a threat to her unborn child’s inheritance. Corlys gave up his admiralty and place on the Small Council and took her back to Driftmark. Alysanne’s objection was different in position but aligned with theirs: she saw her granddaughter being set aside because she was a woman. Her protest made the succession decision a rupture within the royal family, not merely a matter settled by the king and his councillors.

Alysanne’s Departure

Alysanne had long been Jaehaerys’s partner in ruling the Seven Kingdoms. The couple had thirteen children, and their joint reign had included two periods of estrangement, the second of which followed the decision about Rhaenys. Alysanne rejected the premise that a woman’s sex made her unfit to rule, telling Jaehaerys that a ruler needed a good head and a true heart, not a man’s body. She then left King’s Landing and flew to Dragonstone on Silverwing.

The departure gave her dissent a visible and personal consequence. Rather than remain at court while the king’s decision stood, Alysanne removed herself from his side and from the capital. The histories record that she and Jaehaerys remained apart for two years. Her absence marked the depth of the disagreement between two rulers who had otherwise shared power, and turned a dispute over one appointment into a breach in the royal partnership.

Reconciliation Without Agreement

In 94 AC, their daughter Maegelle helped bring her parents back together. Reconciliation ended the separation, but it did not settle the question that had caused it. Alysanne continued to believe that Rhaenys and her descendants had been unfairly denied their rights; the couple resumed their relationship without reaching agreement on the succession.

The disputed child whose inheritance had helped provoke the conflict was born a girl, Laena, in 93 AC. Rhaenys later gave birth to a son, Laenor, in 94 AC. By then Baelon was firmly established as heir, yet House Velaryon and House Baratheon continued to regard Laenor as having a stronger claim, while some also argued for Rhaenys and Laena. The quarrel thus ended as a separation between the king and queen, but not as a political settlement: rival claims persisted beyond their reconciliation.

Legacy of the Quarrel

Alysanne died in 100 AC, still insisting that Rhaenys and her children had been cheated of their rights. The persistence of her position shows that the reconciliation repaired the couple’s estrangement without changing her judgment of the king’s choice. The question remained part of a wider succession problem that had developed during Jaehaerys’s peaceful reign: the royal family had numerous descendants, while the rules and expectations governing inheritance did not prevent competing claims.

The later Dance of the Dragons had its roots, in the account of the succession, in the same long reign. The Second Quarrel did not itself resolve or determine that later conflict, but it exposed an enduring fault line: the king’s preference for Baelon over Rhaenys was accepted by many, while Alysanne and other members of Rhaenys’s family disputed what that choice meant for the rights of women and their descendants.