The five most interesting characters from Fire & Blood

King Jaehaerys I Targaryen and his wife, Queen Alysanne

Jaehaerys Targaryen ascended to the Iron Throne at the age of 14 and ruled for 55 years. During his reign, Jaehaerys earned the moniker of the Conciliator. He became known for his wisdom, reason and willingness to make peace where his uncle Maegor the Cruel made war. Eventually, he was known as the Old King. His dragon was Vermithor, the third largest dragon at the time, behind Balerion and Vhagar.

Jaehaerys wasn’t able to rule until his sixteenth name day, so for two years his mother the Dowager Queen Alyssa served as regent alongside her second husband Lord Rogar Baratheon, who Jaehaerys named Lord Protector of the Realm and his Hand of the King.

The first obstacle Jaehaerys had to overcome was reconciling with the Faith of the Seven, which had been at war with his predecessor and uncle, Maegor. The High Septon of the Faith declared that the Targaryen practice of marrying brother to sister, or uncle to niece, or aunt to nephew, was a sin in the eyes of the gods, and therefore any marriage coming from House Targaryen was condemned and the children abominations.

Jaehaerys was having none of that, as he was already in love with his sister Alysanne. Knowing the problems her son and daughter would face if they were to marry, Queen Alyssa forbid their union. Lord Rogar backed her up.

Hoping to placate the Faith and forge alliances with other powerful houses, Alyssa and Rogar started to arrange outside marriages for both Jaehaerys and Alysanne. When he learned what his mother and Hand were planning, Jaehaerys and Alysanne mounted their dragons, flew to Dragonstone and had the Septon there immediately marry them, with Jaehaerys’ Kingsgaurd looking on as witnesses.

When Alyssa and Rogar found out, they sailed to Dragonstone with a small force of soldiers and a Septon to forcibly separate the two. Jaehaerys and Alysanne were there to greet them when they landed. Lord Rogar pitched a fit when he learned they had been married, and Queen Alyssa began to cry. The Septon — a very large and loud man — began to yell at the young king and his queen, but when he stopped to take a breath, Jaehaerys told him to shut his mouth or he’d have it sewn shut.

When Lord Rogar told his own men at arms to separate the newlyweds, Jaehaerys’ Kingsguard defended their charge, warning Rogar’s men that they would pay with their lives if they came any closer. Rogar eventually backed down, but when he learned that Jaehaerys and Alysanne had not consummated the marriage, he began plotting how to intercede and marry them off into other Houses.

Of course, this didn’t work, and Jaehaerys and Alysanne spent every day together for two years at Dragonstone, where many great Lords of Westeros sought Jaehaerys out in Aegon’s map room. At every meeting, Alysanne stood by her husband and king, giving advice when needed.

At the age of 16, Jaehaerys finally consummated his marriage to Alysanne, and the two flew to King’s Landing where Jaehaerys dismissed his mother and Lord Rogar, as well as many of the Small Council, replacing them with his own picks. He also eventually made peace with the Faith and removed the bounty King Maegor placed on the Faith Militant, although he kept the orders disbanded.

During their long reign, Alysanne became known as Good Queen Alysanne on account of her love for the common people of Westeros, and because whenever she and King Jaehaerys would visit castles elsewhere in the realm, Queen Alysanne always took time to meet with the women in the area. No men were allowed at these meetings, and the women were urged to speak their minds about any concerns great or small that Alysanne might be able to help them with.

On one such visit, Queen Alysanne visited Winterfell alone, Jaehaerys needed to stay in King’s Landing to settle a dispute between two warring factions from cities across the Narrow Sea (he was known as the Conciliator, after all). She stayed at White Harbor on her way north, and Lord Manderly warned her that Lord Alaric Stark was infamous for his stubbornness and foul moods.

This did not deter the queen. When she and her dragon Silverwing landed outside the gates of Winterfell, she got her first taste of Stark hospitality when Lord Alaric told her he’d not have her dragon inside Winterfell’s walls, and that it would be better if she and her retinue didn’t overstay their welcome.

Again, Alysanne was not deterred, and she did everything she could to endear herself to the grouchy Warden of the North…and eventually, it worked. He took her hunting, showed her the bones of a giant, allowed her to begin arranging marriages for his two sons, and let her take his only daughter into her service as a Lady in Waiting. Lord Aleric even approached Silverwing, albeit as cautiously as he could.

However, Queen Alysanne made her biggest impact in the North during a trip to Castle Black. While there, she tried several times to get Silverwing to fly north of the Wall, but each time the dragon resisted, and she eventually had to return south. This unnerved her so much that she wrote to her husband about it. Could Silverwing detect the White Walkers even then, at that time in Westerosi history?

The Lord Commander took Alysanne on a tour of the Wall, where she saw how large and broken down the Nightfort was. She urged the Lord Commander to build a new castle closer to Castle Black and not as large as the Nightfort, and when he told her the Night’s Watch could not afford it, she pledged to sell her own jewels to pay for the building of the castle, which was called Deep Lake. When it was finished, the brothers of the Night’s Watch honored Queen Alysanne with a statue of her likeness that still stands there today.

Alysanne did one more thing of importance during this trip. Since the Night’s Watch had no women, she was taken to Mole’s Town, where the men of the order went to visit the brothel. When Alysanne arrived in the town, she gathered only the women around her, most of whom were prostitutes, and asked them to share their concerns. It was here that the queen learned that the right of the First Night was still being practiced in the North, and how it had ruined one girl’s life in particular.

When Alysanne returned to King’s Landing, she took her place at the Small Council and convinced King Jaehaerys to abolish the practice of First Night, making it illegal for any lord, great or small, to partake in it. Because of Good Queen Alysanne, women were protected from being taken from their husbands on the first night of their marriage and deflowered by some lord.

Jaehaerys and Alysanne were married for 46 years, until the queen’s death. They had 13 children, though only nine lived to adulthood. King Jaehaerys the Conciliator and Good Queen Alysanne ruled of Westeros for 55 years, in which the realm saw its longest-ever period of peace and prosperity. To this day, they remain the gold standard of Targaryen leadership.