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Faith and put an end to the bloodshed that had troubled the reigns of his uncle and father.”

       The Year of the Three Brides

       49 AC

      The 49th year after Aegon’s Conquest gave the people of Westeros a welcome respite from the chaos and conflict that had gone before. It would be a year of peace, plenty, and marriage, remembered in the annals of the Seven Kingdoms as the Year of the Three Brides.

      The new year was but a fortnight old when news of the first of the three weddings came out of the west, from Fair Isle by the Sunset Sea. There, in a small swift ceremony under the sky, Rhaena Targaryen wed Androw Farman, the second son of the Lord of Fair Isle. It was the groom’s first marriage, the bride’s third. Though twice widowed, Rhaena was but twenty-six. Her new husband, just ten-and-seven, was notably younger, a comely and amiable youth said to be utterly besotted with his new wife.

      Their wedding was presided over by the groom’s father, Marq Farman, Lord of Fair Isle, and conducted by his own septon. Lyman Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock, and his wife, Jocasta, were the only great lords in attendance. Two of Rhaena’s former favorites, Samantha Stokeworth and Alayne Royce, made their way to Fair Isle in some haste to stand with the widowed queen, together with the groom’s high-spirited sister, the Lady Elissa. The remainder of the guests were bannermen and household knights sworn to either House Farman or House Lannister. King and court remained entirely ignorant of the marriage until a raven from the Rock brought word, days after the wedding feast and the bedding that sealed the match.

      Chroniclers in King’s Landing report that Queen Alyssa was deeply offended by her exclusion from her daughter’s wedding, and that relations between mother and child were never as warm afterward, whereas Lord Rogar Baratheon was furious that Rhaena had dared remarry without the Crown’s leave … the Crown in this instance being himself, as the young king’s Hand. Had leave been asked, however, there was no certainty it would have been granted, for Androw Farman, the second son of a minor lord, was thought by many to be far from worthy of the hand of a woman who had been twice a queen and remained the mother of the king’s heir. (As it happened, the youngest of Lord Rogar’s brothers remained unwed as of 49 AC, and his lordship had two nephews by another brother who were also of a suitable age and lineage to be considered potential mates for a Targaryen widow, facts which might well explain both the Hand’s anger and the secrecy with which Queen Rhaena wed.) King Jaehaerys himself and his sister Alysanne rejoiced at the tidings, dispatching gifts and congratulations to Fair Isle and commanding that the Red Keep’s bells be rung in celebration.

      Whilst Rhaena Targaryen was celebrating her marriage on Fair Isle, back in King’s Landing King Jaehaerys and his mother, the Queen Regent, were busy selecting the councillors who would help them rule the realm for the next two years. Conciliation remained their guiding principle, for the divisions that had so recently torn Westeros apart were far from healed. Rewarding his own loyalists and excluding Maegor’s men and the Faithful from power would only exacerbate the wounds and give rise to new grievances, the young king reasoned. His mother agreed.

      Accordingly, Jaehaerys reached out to the Lord of Claw Isle, Edwell Celtigar, who had been Hand of the King under Maegor, and recalled him to King’s Landing to serve as lord treasurer and master of coin. For lord admiral and master of ships, the young king turned to his uncle Daemon Velaryon, Lord of the Tides, Queen Alyssa’s brother and one of the first great lords to abandon Maegor the Cruel. Prentys Tully, Lord of Riverrun, was summoned to court to serve as master of laws; with him came his redoubtable wife, the Lady Lucinda, far famed for her piety. Command of the City Watch, the largest armed force in King’s Landing, the king entrusted to Qarl Corbray, Lord of Heart’s Home, who had fought beside Aegon the Uncrowned beneath the Gods Eye. Above them all stood Rogar Baratheon, Lord of Storm’s End and Hand of the King.

      It would be a mistake to underestimate the influence of Jaehaerys Targaryen himself during the years of his regency, for despite his youth the boy king had a seat at most every council (but not all, as will be told shortly) and was never shy about letting his voice be heard. In the end, however, the final authority throughout this period rested with his mother, the Queen Regent, and the Hand, a redoubtable man in his own right.

      Blue-eyed and black-bearded and muscled like a bull, Lord Rogar was the eldest of five brothers, all grandsons of Orys One-Hand, the first Baratheon Lord of Storm’s End. Orys had been a bastard brother to Aegon the Conqueror and his most trusted commander. After slaying Argilac the Arrogant, last of the Durrandon, he had taken Argilac’s daughter to wife. Lord Rogar could thus claim that both the blood of the dragon and that of the storm kings of old flowed in his veins. No swordsman, his lordship preferred to wield a double-bladed axe in battle … an axe, he oft said, “large and heavy enough to cleave through a dragon’s skull.”

      Those were dangerous words during the reign of Maegor the Cruel, but if Rogar Baratheon feared Maegor’s wroth, he hid it well. Men who knew him were unsurprised when he gave shelter to Queen Alyssa and her children after their flight from Dragonstone, and when he was the first to proclaim Prince Jaehaerys king. His own brother Borys was heard to say that Rogar dreamed of facing King Maegor in single combat and cutting him down with his axe.

      That dream fate denied him. Instead of a kingslayer, Lord Rogar became a kingmaker, delivering to Prince Jaehaerys the Iron Throne. Few questioned his right to take his place at the side of the young king as Hand; some went so far as to whisper that it would be Rogar Baratheon who ruled the realm henceforth, for Jaehaerys was a boy and the son of a weak father, whilst his mother was only a woman. And when it was announced that Lord Rogar and Queen Alyssa were to marry, the whispers grew louder … for what is a queen’s lord husband, if not a king?

      Lord Rogar had been married once before, but his wife had died young, taken off by a fever less than a year after their wedding. The Queen Regent Alyssa was forty-two years old, and thought to be past her childbearing years; the Lord of Storm’s End, ten years her junior. Writing some years later, Septon Barth tells us that Jaehaerys was opposed to the marriage; the young king felt that his Hand was overreaching himself, motivated more by a desire for power and position than a true affection for his mother. He was angry that neither his mother nor her suitor had sought his leave as well, Barth said … but as he had raised no objections to his sister’s marriage, the king did not believe he had the right to prevent his mother’s. Jaehaerys thus held his tongue and gave no hint of his misgivings save to a few close confidants.

      The Hand was admired for his courage, respected for his strength, feared for his military prowess and skill at arms. The Queen Regent was loved. So beautiful, so brave, so tragic, women said of her. Even such lords as might have balked at a woman ruling over them were willing to accept her as their liege, secure in the knowledge that she had Rogar Baratheon standing beside her, and the young king little more than a year away from his sixteenth nameday.

      She had been a beautiful child, all men agreed, the daughter of the mighty Aethan Velaryon, Lord of the Tides, and his lady wife Alarra of House Massey. Her line was ancient, proud, and rich, her mother esteemed as a great beauty, her grandsire amongst the oldest and closest friends of Aegon the Dragon and his queens. The gods blessed Alyssa herself with the deep purple eyes and shining silvery hair of Old Valyria, and gave her charm and wit and kindness as well, and as she grew suitors flocked around her from every corner of the realm. There was never any true question of whom she would wed, however. For a girl such as her, only royalty would suffice, and in the year 22 AC she married Prince Aenys Targaryen, the unquestioned heir to the Iron Throne.

      Theirs was a happy and fruitful marriage. Prince Aenys was a gentle and attentive husband, warm-natured, generous, and never unfaithful. Alyssa bore him five strong, healthy children, two daughters and three sons (a sixth child, another daughter, died in her cradle shortly after birth), and when his sire died in 37 AC, the crown passed to Aenys, and Alyssa became his queen.

      In the years that followed, she saw her husband’s reign crumble and turn to ash, as enemies rose up all around him. In 42 AC

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