Jaehaerys I (Part 1)

Greeting fellow acolytes. Welcome to another episode of The Westerosi Primer. My name is Liz. If you’re new to this podcast, welcome! I hope you enjoy this journey of all things Westeros. And in this episode, I’ll be talking about.

Before I start the discussion, there are a couple of things to note. First there will be some potential spoilers for people who have not read any of the books connected to A Song of Ice and Fire. There may also be potential spoilers for House of the Dragon and other shows adapted by Max in the future. So if you’re okay with this, then please continue listening.

Second, the information in this episode comes from the written works of George R. R. Martin and the contributors of A Wiki of Ice and Fire on Westeros.org. Check out the full show notes and other links located on this show’s website: thewesterosiprimer.com With that said, let’s begin!

So in this episode, I’ll be talking about the life and reign of the longest ruling king, Jaehaerys I aka Jaehaerys the Conciliator. Of course I’ll be talking about a bunch of other important characters in this episode, in particular his sister-wife Alysanne aka The Good Queen. Some of the characters included in this episode are some of the ones who were still left alive from the previous episode. So there will be some bouncing around a bit.

Also due to the really long life and reign of Jaehaerys I, I had to split this episode into two parts. This episode will be about his early life and the early half of his reign, which ends at AC 61. The next episode will be his later years to the very end. In order to keep things organized, I’m going to mostly talk about events year by year. As you can tell from the time length, this episode and the next one will be long. That just tells you how much was happening during the longest reign in Westeros.

To kick things off, I’m going to rewind a bit and start from the beginning in a sense. I’m going to go back a few years earlier since the previous episode ended in the year AC 48. Let’s go back to year AC 34 when Jaehaerys was born. His elder sister, Rhaena, was the one who selects a dragon egg for his crib. This is similar to what Rhaenyra does a few decades later for her brother Baelon. As we know by now, the dragon that came out of this egg is Vermithor. Two years later in AC 36, Alysanne is born and Rhaena picks an egg for her that becomes Silverwing.

As you may recall from the previous episode, Jaehaerys and Alysanne had very chaotic childhoods. Their father became king when they were 3 and 1 respectively. They lost their father when they were 8 and 6. Then they spend the next few years as political hostages and fugitives from their uncle’s wrath. That is until Jaehaerys is 14 and makes a claim for the throne. And throughout all of this we have their mother, Alyssa.

While I did talk a bit about Alyssa, let me talk more about her that I didn’t quite get to in the previous episode. Alyssa is clearly a smart, capable, and determined woman. She did everything she possibly could for her children. But even then, it wasn’t always enough. As I mentioned in the previous episode, she, Jaehaerys, and Alysanne had wandered searching for safety and support after the death of Queen Visenya. Eventually they ended up at Storm’s End with Lord Rogar Baratheon, who is pretty important to this part of the story.

If you guys have listened to episode 1.04 of this podcast about the Stormlands, you would know that Alyssa marries Rogar as her second husband. Rogar himself is the grandson of Orys Baratheon, who was the first lord Baratheon of Storm’s End and possibly King Aegon’s bastard brother. He is the first major lord to back Jaehaerys. He also was against the idea of crowning Rhaena as the ruling queen as he believed a man should be ruling.

Now that Maegor was dead in AC 48, Jaehaerys would become the king with his coronation in Oldtown. However he’s still underaged which meant that a regent would be ruling on his behalf along with the Hand. In this case, Queen Alyssa was his regent and Rogar Baratheon was Hand as his reward for being the first major lord to back Jaehaerys’s claim.

Unsurprisingly, Alyssa wanted revenge on Maegor’s supporters. Jaehaerys was prepared to forgive them and Alyssa had to agree to her son’s decision. After all, openly opposing him would weaken his position. She knew firsthand the consequences of a king being viewed as weak. However Jaehaerys did agree to execute everyone involved with torturing and killing his brother Viserys.

Alyssa would accompany her remaining children to Oldtown where they needed to reconcile the Iron Throne with Oldtown. The Faith of the Seven was the greatest threat to Targaryen rule and they needed to work together again. It’s also heavily suspected that during this visit, Rhaena had her daughters switch places. There were stories stating that after this visit to Oldtown, Aerea Targaryen’s personality seemed different. We’ll never truly know but given the twins have opposite personalities with each other, you can read between the lines that there was a twin swap that happened.

AC 49 became known as the Year of the Three Brides. Why? Well I’m about to get to the three weddings in question.

Rhaena shocked people by marrying for the second time. Her groom was Androw Farman. This was surprising because first off, House Farman is a lower ranking house in the Westerlands, so not even as important as the Lannisters or the Reynes. Secondly he’s the second son and not the oldest son. Thirdly, he’s not even a decent warrior. When asked, Rhaena claimed she felt affection for Androw and that’s why she married him. However there are rumors suggesting she only married him out of gratitude for his father sheltering her before she married Maegor. Androw was apparently the son Lord Marq felt more affection for. There was also a suspicion that Rhaena might have been in love with Elissa Farman and she was closest to her brother Androw.

Now you listeners might be surprised by this rumor since I never brought it up at all in the previous episode. Rhaena was apparently shy as a child and preferred animals over people. As she grew up, she felt strong affection for other girls and would rather spend more time with them over anyone else. One person in particular is Elissa Farman, her sister-in-law, but I’ll talk about her a bit more later in the episode. Rhaena’s close relationships resulted in speculation she is a lesbian or at least bisexual. I personally think a character like this would be pretty interesting to have on a tv show, but who really knows if Max would make a show about this time period.

Alyssa was unsurprisingly upset and disappointed that Rhaena would marry without informing her or inviting her to the wedding. This would become a rift between mother and daughter. Rogar was also displeased about this since he was of the opinion that she married without permission from the Crown. Though it’s generally believed he was truly angry about this marriage because he had ambitions of marrying Rhaena to either one of his brothers or a nephew.

Alyssa Velaryon would marry Rogar Baratheon in a wedding called the Golden Wedding. Jaehaerys didn’t approve of this marriage, but he didn’t publicly express this as he didn’t make any objections of Rhaena’s second marriage. Jaehaerys actually had his suspicions that Rogar just wanted to marry his mother because of the chance to gain more power. Given some of his actions later, there’s probably some truth in this. Also Jaehaerys felt that he was actually a more capable ruler than Rogar. Rhaena didn’t attend the wedding. She still had some bitter feelings over Rogar refusing to support Aegon.

Pretty soon conversation turned to arranging marriages for Jaehaerys and Alysanne. Alyssa actually knew that Jaehaerys and Alysanne wanted to marry each other. She understandably feared a repeat of what happened to Aegon and Rhaena. Rogar proposed arrangements for Jaehaerys to marry the Archon of Tyrosh’s daughter. He also conveniently wanted to have Alysanne marry his youngest brother, Orryn.

Of course, Jaehaerys and Alysanne find out about these arrangements and they manage to escape to Dragonstone where they would marry each other. This wedding wasn’t consummated since Alysanne was only 13 years old. Rogar and Alyssa headed off to Dragonstone to bring the young king and his sister back. The Kingsguard who had followed were prepared to defend their king from Rogar’s guards. Alyssa realizing how adamant her children were decided to leave Dragonstone without them.

Rogar was displeased at failing to retrieve the king and like a typical Baratheon plotted to bring back a larger army to storm the castle. However his wife reminded him that both of her children had dragons. Alyssa and Rogar would plot to end the marriage since it was unconsummated and still a secret at this time.

During this time on Dragonstone, Jaehaerys was determined to prove to people he would be a different king from his father and his uncle. He’d spend his time on Dragonstone becoming a more capable warrior. Lords began visiting him there and the young couple demonstrated charm and intelligence despite not truly ruling just yet.

By AC 50, it got a little suspicious that Jaehaerys and Alysanne still hadn’t returned. Rogar and Alyssa still tried to break up the married siblings, but all attempts failed and Alyssa decided to accept the marriage. However Rogar publicly berates her at a small council meeting and even suggested crowning Princess Aerea as the Queen over Jaehaerys. This is unthinkable to everyone as any such attempt to overthrow Jaehaerys would just create another war between dragonriders. Alyssa put her foot down and demanded Rogar resign from his post, which all the other council members agreed with. Rogar leaves King’s Landing and the marriage sours as a result.

After Rogar Baratheon leaves, Alyssa’s brother Daemon Velaryon become the new Hand. Alyssa decides to retire from ruling and left it to her brother. At Storm’s End, Rogar hatches a plan. He sends his brother Ronnel to the Red Keep to basically kidnap Princess Aerea. That plot was foiled since Aerea was already hidden away by Alyssa’s orders. Plan B was for Orryn Baratheon to go to Oldtown, kidnap Rhaella and bring her back to Storm’s End. He believes that Aerea and Rhaella were swapped and he plots to crown Aerea as the queen. This also fails when the Faith refuse to give up Rhaella and the Hightowers imprison the Baratheon knights.

While that was going on in King’s Landing, we have other things happening to Alyssa’s children. Let’s start with Jaehaerys. Later that year is Jaehaerys’s 16th birthday and he is legally an adult now. He returns to King’s Landing to be acting king. He summons his stepfather back to court. To Rogar’s surprise, Jaehaerys doesn’t demand for his execution or that he head to The Wall. Rather he pardons Rogar and tells him that going forward he would never speak against Jaehaerys and Alysanne and orders him to be a better husband.

Rogar asks the king if he requires any hostages in exchange. The young king merely brings the Baratheon lord to where Vermithor was being fed. What’s not said is that all of the Stormlands are his hostages. Alyssa and Rogar go to Storm’s End and don’t come back until her children’s second wedding. Incidentally Jaehaerys spends time cleaning house figuring out who to hire, fire, and retain in the court bureaucracy. One notable HR decision he made was hiring a Pentoshi merchant named Rego Draz as Master of Coin. Draz was a commoner who very quickly rose up as one of the richest merchants in Pentos. This undoubtedly convinced Jaehaerys to reach out and recruit him as a man who could fix the poor state of the treasury Maegor left behind.

Rhaena had never gotten along with Franklyn Farman, who was the heir to Fair Isle. Franklyn was one of the many nobles and knights to join Aegon’s failed campaign. He resented Rhaena because he felt she was ungrateful for the sacrifice men like him made for her now dead brother/husband. On top of that, she’s dominated the society of Fair Isle while the actual ruler of the island had lost respect.

Lord Marq dies and Franklyn is the new lord. He makes it clear that Rhaena and her household should leave. Elissa was going to follow as well, but Franklyn wanted his sister to marry. Not surprising considering the type of society Westeros is. Elissa wound up leaving given how many people were against him. After leaving, Rhaena and her entourage would wander around a bit in the Westerlands. She couldn’t stay anywhere for long mainly because people were interested in either gaining her favor or trying to get one of Dreamfyre’s eggs.

Personally it’s bizarre why any of them would be foolish enough to think she’d give away an egg. Even if she did, what were they going to do with it. The most they could do is try to sell the egg. But even if you didn’t sell it how will you hatch one? And even then it’s not like anyone else except a Targaryen can ride a dragon anyway. Eventually, Rhaena was granted permission to stay at Dragonstone with her entourage by her brother. And that’s where things really went downhill for Rhaena.

It’s now AC 51. One major thing Jaehaerys does at this time is that he creates the Doctrine of Exceptionalism. Simply put it’s an idea within the Faith that even though incest is wrong, the Targaryens are exempt from this. Basically the argument is that as Valyrians, they are different people from the Andals, who are the main followers of the Faith. Therefore they aren’t subject to such restrictions with their power to control dragons being a sign of this exception. Jaehaerys even had a group of Seven Speakers who traveled the realm promoting and defending the Targaryens for the next few years. While most of them are sympathetic septons and septas, one of them was actually the former Queen Elinor Costayne. If you listened to the previous episode, you’ll remember who she is. This eventually becomes a full tenet of the Faith after a deal was struck with House Hightower to elect the next High Septon as a Hightower who promotes the idea.

Months later after the second wedding, Alysanne was pregnant with her and Jaehaerys’s first child. The royal couple would participate in another tour around the kingdoms. Unlike Aegon and Rhaena, they both travel with their two full grown dragons to dissuade any remaining Faith Militant from attacking them. This unfortunately didn’t prevent Alysanne from being assaulted by three holy women while stopping in Maidenpool. Alysanne survives the attack, but she goes into premature labor and the baby dies. He was named Aegon.

In AC 52 Alyssa gives birth to a healthy baby boy named Boremund Baratheon though she had a hard time after childbirth. It’s not too surprising since she’s 45 years old at this point and this is her 7th baby. Rogar’s brother Borys isn’t all that happy about this considering he was previously the heir to Storm’s End.

Not a lot happened in AC 53 though I will note two births. In this year, Corlys Velaryon was born. This is the same Corlys Velaryon we know from House of the Dragon. He was the grandson of Daemon Velaryon, who as I said earlier, was the Hand of the King and Jaehaerys’s uncle. Also in this year, Alysanne gives birth to her second child, Daenerys. So yes, the Mother of Dragons isn’t the first Daenerys in this dynasty.

AC 54 was a year when a lot of chaotic events happened. This is the year is where a lot of things go very downhill for Rhaena like I mentioned earlier. Pretty much everyone in Rhaena’s household except for Rhaena didn’t want to be on Dragonstone. Elissa was getting bored being there. She’s a sailor at heart and wanted to be able to travel. However Rhaena didn’t want her dearest friend to leave. Also Elissa had no money since her brother refused her inheritance due to her refusal to obey him.

Aerea was resentful of her mother. The earliest years of her life was away from her mother, so they were practically strangers to each other. Dragonstone was super boring compared to King’s Landing where she was for a short while. And some of this resentment will build up even more once Elissa leaves since they had become friends.

Elissa made it clear she was going to leave and Rhaena was upset about this, but didn’t stop her. Elissa conveniently managed to steal three eggs on her way out. She’d later sell them to the Sealord of Braavos who denies having them. There’s suspicion that Daenerys’s dragon eggs centuries later are actually those eggs, but it’s honestly just one of many fan theories out there. We don’t ultimately know for sure what happened to Elissa after this. The last known of her is that years later, Corlys Velaryon (the one we know from House of the Dragon) would find a ship wreck on one of his travels. The wreck matched the ship Elissa Farman used after selling the eggs.

Even Rhaena’s husband was having a miserable time on Dragonstone. Androw wasn’t particularly smart. He wasn’t even a decent warrior, which is a major problem in a society that places emphasis on battle skills. The fact he wasn’t talented in anything meant he was constantly made fun of. In fact Rhaena and the women who followed her openly made fun of him. Aerea regularly played cruel pranks on him. Not sure what it says when a grown man can’t fend off a child who’s not even 10 years old. All he did was drink. Every attempt to try and be helpful was rejected and mocked by his wife.

Alyssa is pregnant again, but she’s had a lot of trouble with this pregnancy. Similar to what we saw with Aemma Arryn a few decades later, they did a primitive c-section on Alyssa. She dies trying to give birth to her final baby, Jocelyn Baratheon. If you’ve listened to episode 1.04 about the Stormlands then you already know that Jocelyn Baratheon is the mother of Rhaenys Targaryen, the queen who never was. But we’ll get more about that in a later episode.

Jaehaerys and Alysanne managed to arrive in time to see their mother. Unfortunately Rhaena was too late and her mother died before she could try to repair their relationship. Rhaena threatens to kill Rogar and burn Storm’s End if he mistreated his children or married another wife. Publicly he dismisses her threats, but he never did remarry.

Later that year, people began dying on Dragonstone. Androw only wonders if Rhaena would mourn his death the way she mourns the death of her companions, which gets him a slap in the face. The deaths get reported back to King’s Landing as there’s suspicion of a disease outbreak happening. However Rego Draz recognized the symptoms as that of the Tears of Lys. For those of you who don’t recall, the Tears of Lys is a colorless, odorless poison that was actually used by Lysa Arryn to kill her husband as Littlefinger tells her to. A message was sent to Rhaena, who realized Androw poisoned everyone. He admits he did it because he hated the mockery and wanted his revenge on them. Rhaena orders he be gelded, but he manages to jump out a window to his death. She has his corpse fed to dragons.

Alysanne goes to Dragonstone to try to comfort her sister and niece. Rhaena is angry and grief stricken. Aerea is somewhat resentful of everyone around her. She resented her mother for abandoning her for a chunk of her life. She also resented the fact she was no longer the heir to the throne. Most of all Aerea wished she could leave Dragonstone and go back to King’s Landing where there was excitement. Unfortunately, Rhaena refused to allow Aerea to leave, so Alysanne couldn’t take her back to the Red Keep.

Daemon Velaryon would resign his position as Hand. He claimed that the deaths of his sister and his niece Lianna Velaryon, who was one of Rhaena’s companions on Dragonstone was too much. Lord Myles Smallwood would take over the Handship.

At some point, Aerea would claim Balerion as her dragon. She takes advantage of this and uses Balerion to escape Dragonstone. Rhaena would spend the next year wandering all over Westeros trying to find any signs of her missing daughter. Rhaena would spend a few months on Estermont, where one of her cousins was living there with her daughter and son-in-law.

AC 55 had a couple of important things happening. During this time, Jaehaerys, Septon Barth, Alysanne and other advisors began reforming and codifying the various laws in the kingdoms. This project will take a few decades to be completed, but it’s definitely something that needed to be done. Also that year Alysanne gives birth and has a son named Aemon.

Interesting thing that happened is that Jaehaerys refers to Aemon has his heir rather than Daenerys, which displeased Alysanne. My personal thought is that Alysanne is being a bit hypocritical here. Why? She’s trying to make an argument that Daenerys is their oldest living child and should be heir. She conveniently ignores that with her argument, their sister Rhaena should be on the Iron Throne instead of Jaehaerys. I absolutely would favor a ruling queen existing in Westeros. I just think there needs to be consistency when you apply the principle of absolute primogeniture versus male-preference primogeniture.

AC 56 is when the missing Aerea Targaryen returns to King’s Landing. However it’s not a happy reunion. Balerion brought the missing princess to the Red Keep and all who saw her were horrified. Her clothes were rags and she looked severely ill. A few days later she would die. Officially records would state she had contracted a fever and died from it. Her body was promptly cremated per Targaryen tradition.

However there was speculation that since Aerea was young and not trained to handle such a powerful dragon, Balerion just flew off with her to Valyria. There were some reasons why people on the Small Council suspected this. You imagine that Balerion is the largest and oldest of the dragons at this time. He returned with lots of scars and injuries he definitely didn’t have before flying off with Aerea. You just have to wonder what in the world could possibly injure him.

Not to mention, the Grandmaester and Septon Barth were the only ones to attend to the poor princess in her final days. It was claimed that while she was suffering from a terrible fever, there were rumors and stories about what really happened to her. One of the kingsguard had carried the princess to the Grandmaester after collapsing from Balerion’s back. Ser Lucamore would later tell the king that her eyes were bloodshot and she was covered with swollen bumps on her body. He’s swears “something was moving inside her.” I won’t describe anything further than that as it would be super squeamish to some listeners. I will however put a link on the website with the full show notes if you are really that curious.

Rhaena would receive notice her daughter arrived and died. Jaehaerys asked his sister if she wanted to inter Aerea’s ashes on Dragonstone. Rhaena would only state Aerea despised being on Dragonstone. She would fly over the sea and release her daughter’s ashes to air. Rhaena had no desire to return to Dragonstone where all that was left were “ghosts.” She also had no desire to stay at the Red Keep with all the politicking going on. She was angry at Alysanne’s suggestion of getting remarried and having more children.

Ultimately she went to Harrenhal and was a guest of the current ruling family there, House Towers. She gained a reputation as a reclusive woman, who would be a hostess that welcomed travelers that stopped by at the castle, but otherwise avoided strangers. She would stay there until her death in AC 73. Her ashes would be interred at the Gods’ Eye where Aegon died.

As a result of Aerea’s horrific fate, Jaehaerys decreed it was forbidden for anyone to travel to Valyria. If any go and attempt to return to Westeros, they were to be killed on sight. Undoubtedly, the horrible condition Aerea returned in made the king concerned those horrors could spread in Westeros.

In AC 57, there were some improvements made in King’s Landing including updating and expanding the sewer system, creating public fountains and other improvements in the city. While that is great, as we’ve seen in House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones, the Crown really didn’t do much to maintain public infrastructure. That is just horrific to think about from a 21st century perspective. Jaehaerys also selected Septon Barth to become Hand. A really unconventional choice, but surprisingly he would turn out to be pretty astute Hand. In fact he’d wind up serving 41 years until his death. But I’ll get to that in the next episode. The other important thing that happened this particular year was the birth of Prince Baelon.

AC 58 was a major year where the Targaryens visit the North. Jaehaerys was forced to stay behind in King’s Landing to mediate trade disputes between Pentos and Tyrosh. Alysanne and their entourage headed off first so they wouldn’t insult the waiting Starks. Alysanne does a pretty good tour of the North to meet the people and learn more about the problems the Northmen were dealing with. It took months before Jaehaerys got to the North. By then Alysanne headed up to the Wall to learn more about the Night’s Watch.

There’s actually a later abandoned keep with a village called Queenscrown named in her honor since she had stopped there on the tour. Also one of the castles at the Wall was renamed Queensgate in her honor. Alysanne had proposed that additional land be given to the Night’s Watch that would later be called “The New Gift.” The Northmen were displeased that land that would be otherwise used for their own production was basically given away without their consent by the Queen. It’s also pretty annoying when you think about how by the time Jon Snow gets to the Wall, the New Gift is mostly empty, abandoned land. There’s so few men in the Night’s Watch that security is laxed. Free Folk raid there so regularly that people left. I’m more surprised that later generations of Starks never petitioned for the return of the New Gift to develop it again.

Another important development was that Alysanne heard about the complaints women had with First Night privileges noble lords were doing. Alysanne and Barth persuaded Jaehaerys to abolish this custom. Unsurprisingly there were many displeased with this, which just tells you what kind of lords were running things. However the smallfolk, who were often the biggest victims of this, were happy and praised the young rulers. So I think that’s way more important.

AC 59 was a bad year. In fact technically it was a bad two years because this is when an epidemic known as the Shivers happened. Now I’m not in the medical field, but to me George was probably using The Plague aka “Black Death” or Bubonic plague as the inspiration for this disease. The symptoms described are pretty similar. Also the fact the disease was spread mostly in port cities also fits. On a side note, the real life disease is bacterial and it actually still exists in modern times. Yes, Yersinia Pestis still exists along with the fleas that can spread them. The only reason why it’s not a horrific pandemic is because we have things like better pest control, methods to detect the disease, and really importantly antibiotics.

But this is not a medical podcast or a history podcast. Point though is that unfortunately a number of people die. This included half of the Small Council and tragically Princess Daenerys. The grieving parents didn’t do too well initially. Jaehaerys focused on work, which to be fair he really needed to since a number of people in the administration died during the epidemic. Alysanne withdrew from ruling with her husband though she soon realized she was pregnant again. Later in AC 60, Alyssa Targaryen was born.

Rego Draz was blamed for the disease purely because he’s a foreigner. Also there was some resentment over the increases of different taxes in order to cover budget shortfalls. He was killed by an angry mob while he was traveling through the city. Jaehaerys and some of the remaining guards went out to find the culprits and brutally killed them as punishment for their crimes.

AC 61 there was a Dornish bandit, known as the Vulture king, leading a band of outlaws. This is not the same Vulture king who was running around in the first war with Dorne during Aegon the Conqueror’s reign. Borys Baratheon joined up with this Vulture King and used his own knowledge of the Stormlands to lead raids against the people.

By this point, Rogar had aged and gotten weaker despite only being in his 40’s. He brings Jocelyn and two of his Baratheon nieces to King’s Landing asking that they be wards of the Crown while he goes off to fight against the raiders. He heavily suspects he’ll die due to his health, so he hopes Jaehaerys and Alysanne will be the girls’ guardians and keep an eye out for Boremund as well. Rogar doesn’t want to die in his bed. He wants to die in battle like a proper warrior. Jaehaerys decides to join in the fight, which only makes sense because these raiders are a threat to his domain.

Ultimately Jaehaerys used Vermithor to burn the camps. Rogar kills the Vulture King in a one-on-one duel. Jaehaerys kills Borys just so Rogar wouldn’t be put in a position of being a kinslayer. It’s only six months later in AC 62 that Rogar dies.

And that just about covers the first part of Jaehaerys’s life and reign. If you’re interested in finding out more for yourself, feel free to go to the full show notes where I will have links. Though be aware if you do any of this research there will be spoilers to the novels, House of the Dragon, and Max’s future adaptations.

Thank you for listening and tune in to the next episode where I get to the rest of Jaehaerys’s reign including the infamous choosing of an heir at Harrenhal.