Fire & Blood Vol. I does not stint for material on Jaehaerys I – no less than eight chapters, almost three hundred pages, focus on his reign – which means that it is not going to be possible to cover this monarch in one chapter. And since almost all of this is new material, I’m going to go chapter-by-chapter.
Which is not much of a sacrifice, because this is the strongest material in the book, and absolutely the best in-universe historical writing that GRRM has ever done.
Before I go into the point-by-point stuff, I did want to talk about the inter-personal dynamics of Jaehaerys, Alysanne, Alyssa Velaryon, and Rogar Baratheon. While the relationship between Jaehaerys and Alysanne reminds me a lot of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt – the close partnership marred by a few major crackups, the way Alysanne’s progresses and Women’s Courts mirror the way that Eleanor acted as FDR’s eyes-and-ears while pushing him to expand his policy agenda, etc. – in this chapter, the conflict between Jaehaerys and Alyssa and Rogar reminds me a lot of the young Edward III, his mother Isabella of France, and her consort Roger Mortimer, albeit with a much less violent outcome.
- It still strikes me as odd that Walder Frey is 21 years older than “the Old King” ever got.
- As I suspected, a lot of Jaehaerys’ succession decisions did come down to the fallout of Maegor’s reign: “Although Jaehaerys was the only surviving son of King Aenys I, his older brother Aegon had claimed the kingship before him…if Maegor the Cruel were accounted only a suruper with no right to rule…then Prince Aegon had been the true king.” It doesn’t show up in the Regency chapter, but I imagine the same phenomenon explains why Aegon III didn’t add his mother into the roll of kings.
- To the extent that GRRM is responding to any of the criticisms about his handling of gender issues, I thikn we start to see this in the Jaehaerys section, where it feels like he’s created a macro for the term “formidable woman.” More on this as we go on.
- For someone known to be a “conciliator,” Jaehaerys is enough of a power politician to not fuck around when it comes to dealing with Maegor’s lackies, throwing Darklyn, Staunton, and Towers into the black cells along with the “King’s Justice, the Lord Confessor, the Chief Gaelor [IRONY!], the Commander of the City Watch, and the four knights of the Kingsguard who had remained beside King Maegor.” Makes me think that Rogar and Alyssa’s arrests were put in there to make Jaehaerys more reasonable.
- Regents seem to run into problems with underage monarchs making inconveniently public pronouncements, but rarely figure out a strategy to deal with this. Makes Cersei seem not quite as ineffectual, I guess?
- Against Jaehaerys’ general clemency, we do have to note that he does make sure to take hostages (the Baelor model), and has a lot of lower down torturers put to death. (BTW, among the more misogynistic comments in the series, Maladon Moore’s comment that Ceryse “died of “shrewishness”” has got to be up there. Not sorry that dude’s dead.)
- While in general, I really liked this chapter, I did find myself somewhat disappointed by the way that the Reconciliation itself happened.
- The downfall of Septon Moon was especially disappointing, since we get very few smallfolk characters of historical significance, and I have an emotional attachment to the legacy of John Ball. Not that you didn’t have historical figures like this guy, like the Anabaptist leaders of the Munster rebellion, but there were plenty of religiously-infused populist radicals who weren’t corrupt lunatics, and no one ever wants to tell their stories.
- I do really like Donnel Cuncator Hightower, as a rare example of a post-Targaryen Hightower who isn’t an incompetent.
- Lorcas the Learned feels like a retread of the Butcher King of Astapor.
- While the scene where Joffrey Doggett takes the pardon and a white cloak is a good one, I wasn’t as keen on the Reconciliation happening so early in Jaehaerys’ reign, or omitting the bit from WOIAF where Septon Barth is sent to dicker with the High Septon and work out a deal, which is a far more plausible scenario than everyone being overcome by the pageantry of the Red Dog’s becoming a Kingsguard. If the earlier scenario had been included, it would have worked a bit better (IMO), with Jaehaerys’ actions at Oldtown being the more dramatic and romantic imagery and Septon Barth’s the more realistic power politics.
- Speaking of GRRM creating a place for formidable women, I love the twin-swap between Rhaella and Aerea.
Moving on to the next Jaehaerys chapter, or rather, the next Rhaena, Alyssa, and Alyssa chapter!
Race for the Iron Throne 
In a lot of ways I see parallels between Maegor and Richard III at least the version of him that was popularized by Tudor propaganda as this irredeemable tyrant and usurper. He was after all the power hungry uncle who usurped the throne from his nephews upon his older brother’s death and kept his nephews prisoner before (allegedly) killing them. At which point he kept his nieces hostage and was rumored of having plans on marrying his brother’s eldest daughter. Also like Maegor Richard’s reign was very unpopular and was marked by internal strife and rebellions throughout England which he brutally put down. Eventually he made so many enemies that the “rightful” heir to the throne was able to gather enough support to successfully wrestle the throne from him.
Yeah, very much Richard III crossed with Henry VIII.
The downfall of Septon Moon seemed perfect in context I think. Maegor and the High Septon that railed and powered the religious rebellion during Maegor’s time both died in a similar fashion so to speak. Suspicious circumstances, nobody can agree if it was assassin, poison or suicide. Sure they say it was a woman that slit his throat in the tent but the wine was poisoned too. Regardless it always happens before the big event and nobody can remember anything of real significance about these murders. I think it’s in line with how things were done during that time.
I’m not saying it wasn’t plausible, just that it was unfortunate.
GRRM is fond of the El Cid ploy, re Septon Moon.
He is indeed.
The minute people started wondering about what happened to female succession with Rhaneys under Jaehareys I knew it all orginated back to his nieces and the issues of his own claim. Quite frankly he’s lucky they were so young at the time and under Maegor’s custody before making his bid for the throne, along with hos older sister’s negligence. Any other circumstances might have had the Dance of the Dragons right then and there.
Also I wouldn’t say reconciliation with the Faith is all the way through despite the nice kingsguard gesture…. given the sticky religious issues Jaehaerys himself would cause to flair up again and have to deal with once his reign began.
Very lucky indeed. Though I don’t think the Dance would have happened there. The Targaryens were immensely focused on Maegor and then the Faith plus the regency of Robar, Alyssa and in part Rhaena was mostly unified in the beginning.
There’s the business later on with the choosing of the High Septon and the Doctrine of Exceptionalism, which I quite like, but I was looking for this:
“But Jaehaerys instead dispatched Septon Barth to Oldtown, to speak with the High Septon, and there they began to forge a lasting agreement. In return for the last few Stars and Swords putting down their weapons, and for agreeing to accept outside justice, the High Septon received King Jaehaerys’s sworn oath that the Iron Throne would always protect and defend the Faith. In this way, the great schism between crown and Faith was forever healed.”
Which doesn’t really happen.
There’s also Alysanne’s assasination attempt, which I thought demonstrated the continued resistance as well too. And there’s still the issue of clerical courts to resolve as well. But I understand how this might be disappointing in terms of minimizing Barth’s role regardless. I suspect GRRM saw it as necessary once he got to the sticky issue of how to peform Jaehareys coronation without the Faith already on side to sanction it.
Things get weird with age at the high end. My grandmother, in her early eighties, lives in a retirement community with a lady who crochets constantly; said lady just finished making a scarf for her grandson, Billy.
Billy is 56.
Less personally… more than one-sixth of the entire Targaryen dynasty of seventeen rulers is contained within the reign of Jaehaerys the Conciliator, who also lived to an older age than any Targaryen we know of not named Aemon. I think he earned “the Old King.”
I don’t think there is one that doesn’t involve sequestering the monarch such that they can’t do this, which carries with it its own set of problems.
It’s kind of a rock and a hard place thing. People recognize that a child can’t exercise royal power, especially the kind of immensely strong royal power that is the norm in Westeros, which has thousands of years of absolute monarchy behind it (unlike its real-life English inspiration, which had cultural legacies from both Rome and the Anglo-Saxons that predicated a more restricted head of state) and so they’re like “well, we will vest the power of the office in a Regent.”
Only the office and the man aren’t neatly severable in Westeros, are they? The power of the king arises from the king’s body, and it is real hard to move that power elsewhere if you have that inconvenient body there to keep spouting off in a society in which people are expected to obey the king.
The most effective Regents in Westeros in terms of slapping down the king seem to have been those whose own personal power was such that they could tell the king and the populace point-blank “the king is a child. Their power resides in me, his Regent. Unless it comes under my seal, it absolutely doesn’t count.” This is about as good as it can get.
Something I’ve noticed is that a lot of regents and/or hands to underage kings seem very… sanguine about pissing them the fuck off, especially when they don’t have blood ties. If I were regent to a fourteen or fifteen year old monarch who was about to come into their majority, I would start stepping softly around them, on the grounds that if I spent the adolescent years of a monarch screwing them around and acting like I had the biggest swinging dick in the room, they might decide to chop that dick off once they turned sixteen. Because if there’s one thing sixteen-year old boys are known for, it is respecting and obeying authority figures, right?
I’m actually imagining this in the context of a larger historical fight between Barthists and Jaehaerists, with them constantly quarreling down through the years over which man was responsible for the triumphs (and failings!) of Jaehaerys’ reign, with a big mix of “currying royal favor” and “septon-written histories versus maester-written histories” thrown into the mix.
In that context, WOIAF was written by a Barthist, emphasizing the Septon-Hand’s contribution to the reconciliation of the throne and the Faith. In contrast, Fire and Blood was clearly written by a Jaehaerist, as it eschews Septon Barth for much of of Jaehaery’s reign; it barely mentions his greatest contribution, the Books of Law and the codification of the realm’s legal system, lightly dances over or completely elides his other contributions to Jaehaerys’ reign, and when it does give us a good close look at him it is in the context of the terrible horror of Princess Aerea’s death and Barth’s delvings into magic and heresy.
(In case you can’t tell: Fire and Blood didn’t have NEARLY enough Barth for my taste. I want some excerpts from his book!)
1. That’s a fair point. It is a bit interesting that, in part b/c GRRM has a thing about people having kids very early and dying fairly young, that we don’t get a lot of cases where kings take over in late middle age or when already old themselves.
2. That’s a fair point, although we don’t really see cases where Regents feel that they can pull the trigger on “the king is a child,” even with very strong-willed regents like Rogar or Cregan.
3. That headcanon works nicely for me, so as far as I’m concerned it’s all down to Barthist vs. Jaehaerian interpretations of history.
I think there’s precisely two times this happens: Viserys II, who assumes the throne at the age of 49 and is dead before he turns 51, and Maekar, who assumes the throne at 47-ish.
House Targaryen has never really had an Edward VII or the future Charles III.
Cregan comes right up to the line when he confines Aegon III to Maegor’s and forbids him from moving around even inside the Red Keep. Unwin Peake manages to actually pull the trigger, when he openly declares that Aegon’s pronouncements on who will join the Kingsguard are null and void. But yeah, it doesn’t happen often, does it? I think Unwin might literally be the only one who gets away with it.
Regarding the issue of the regent and a young monarch issuing public orders, don’t underrate in this case that the young monarch has a fire-breathing dragon and the regent/Hand don’t.
Yeah, Aegon III gets jerked around by his own regents for many reasons, but not having his own nuclear dinosaur was one of’em.
Fair enough.
I found Septon Moon fascinating because 1) the smallfolk acclaimed him as their own Hifh Septon, which is about as firm an act of smallfolk agency as you can get, raising up your own antipope and all, and 2) the fertility cult that sprang up around him, to me, hearkened back to Garth Greenhand and suggests that the pre-Andal religious traditions of the Reach still exist as an undercurrent.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t like Septon Moon, I just think it would have been more interesting for Jaehaerys to negotiate with him than just replace him.
Guys, I don’t see the fascination. He struck me as many strong arm opportunistic tyrants who just rode and manipulated a populist wave while being batshit crazy and incredibly abusive and hypocritical to the very principals and smallfolk he was purporting to lift up, like name a communist leader or fascist. It’s nice seeing the little guys be proactive but this is not the shining example I think you want to be successful and set the precedent with.
Have the Darklyns joined the Brackens as GRRM’s favorite punching bags?
Not when they produce the likes of Jonquil Darke, the Scarlet Shadow.
Which makes me wonder why the institution of the Queen’s shadow never becamea thing.
A welcome surprise, to be sure (though I’m mildly peeved that the Shadow part is a reference to her being a sworn shield, rather than a Darklyn), but she is the exception to the rule.
Lord Darklyn was killed in Aegon’s Conquest.
Old Lord Darklyn was murdered by the Faith Militant.
His son Lord Darklyn stayed with Maegor until the end, got thrown into the black cells, had to surrender lands (instead of money, for some reason) and died within three years. His son didn’t live long either.
Lord Gunthor Darklyn was killed in the Dance of Dragons, Duskendale was sacked etc etc.
Look at the Darklyn Kingsguards:
– Ser Robin “Darkrobin” Darklyn, the only one who’s good.
– Ser Davos Darklyn, only noteworthy casualty in battle, one of Maegor’s henchmen, could be considered a turncloak.
– Ser Steffon Darklyn, death by dragon-taming. Would have been considered a turncloak too.
– Ser Robert Darklyn. Dismissed within a day of his appointment.
– Ser Rolland Darklyn, dead within an hour of donning the white cloak.
And no Darklyn Lord Commander (with only two Darklyn KGs to go), nor Darklyn Small Council members. The way GRRM wrote about them implied they were very influential in the Targaryen court, but so far there’s nothing and no one other than Jonquil Darke to prove it (and she likely was more loyal to Alysanne than a representative of House Darklyn, so…). As it is, the Masseys with the Velaryon marriage, the Masterhood of Coin and one LC of the Kingsguard have shown themselves more relevant. Hell, even the Stokeworths, who got a Hand of the King.
Even the Darklyns’ greatest moment of glory (the Knights of Duskendale defeating Borros Baratheon and winning the Dance for the Blacks) was accomplished through treachery. I honestly expected Lady Meredyth Darklyn (who was apparently the lord’s widow, though she could be a Darklyn cousin I guess) to play a bigger role in the regency… but no. Not a single mention of her after Rhaenyra quits Duskendale.
The Darklyns tend more towards the Tragic Family side than the Designed Asshole Family side.
I mean, the Brackens and Peakes do not catch a break.
I just KNEW that this would be your favourite section from this book Maester Steven (one must admit to delighting in it myself*); I have to admit that the only thing one didn’t really enjoy was all the creepy, CREEPY Targaryen incest being treated as the stuff of Grand Romance/Romantic Comedy.
The only thing I found creepier was whatever Hellish thing killed poor Princess Aerea and drove Septon Barth deep into the study of things Man was not Meant to Trifle with …
On a less agreeable note, one must admit that I found the image of “Septon Moon, Reach’s Greatest Love Machine (Ra ra!)” more than a little amusing – though you make a good point about it being more than a little too convenient for the Blood of Dragons that one of their more dangerous rivals was not only a Populist Demagogue and not only a Turbulent Priest but a libidinous hypocrite to boot (unless, of course, history has not only been written but re-written by the Victors …).
*Not least because it’s grist for the mill of my imagination; I’ve been toying with the mental image of a series of DUNK & EGG-esque shorts following a sharp-nosed, slightly shifty Septon as he tries to keep the Power of the Faith alive in a post-Maegor world and keeps finding himself sidetracked into diverse mysteries through sheer nosiness (not to mention a knack for fishing up confessions from the depths of a human soul on short-acquaintance) and a certain appetite for Authority.
Though the idea he would keep getting caught up in the business of the lower & middling orders of society has remained consistent throughout, I keep going back-and-forth on what this Septon’s name ought to be (if it weren’t for my refusal to risk the Curse of Maester Martin on fan-fiction and my own distractibility, the working title for this series would currently be “The Mysteries of Septon Osric” play on words wholly intentional).
I cannot wait to get into Septon Barth, Lovecraftian Protagonist…
Hey, go for it, we need more good headcanon fanfic that’s not about the main families in ASOIAF.
I greatly appreciate your kind encouragement Maester Stevenand feel just slightly ashamed to admit that I actually have no intention of actually creating fully fledged Fan Fiction for the Seven Kingdoms – partly because I’m not confident enough in my knowledge of life in the Feudal System outside the “Men of War” and mostly because one is very reluctant to transgress against Mr Martin’s specific injunction.
While I understand that others are bolder and will not condemn them, Mr Martin’s word is Law so far as I am concerned; brainstorming* & hypothesising are my therefore my limit for the foreseeable future. (-:
*For some reason quite a few titles have occurred to me; The Mystery of the Fallen Star, The Mystery of the Loveless Bride, The Mystery of the Unsung Chorus, The Mystery of the Drowning Sands et al.
As for Septon Barth’s skirmish with the Unholy, never has a scene given me stronger reason to wonder what Ominous Valyrian Chanting and the Faithful’s Rite of Exorcism sound like; tell me that the Good Septon didn’t spend the whole horrific incident calmly chanting the most appropriate prayers as he made himself useful & FREAKED THE **** OUT and I couldn’t possibly believe you!
Hopefully after this the “Blessed Hand” would know enough to discretely ensure that an old priest AND a young priest were always on hand JUST IN CASE of such future Incidents!
Septon Moon is like the TV show high septon was inserted into the book narrative.
1.Ser Joffrey the Red Dog reminds me a lot of Sandor Clegane: from the westerlands, dog sigil, served in the KG and in the Faith. Of course, Joffrey genuinely believed in chivalry and his cause while Sandor was a cynic.
2. A Baratheon is being the voice of reason for once, by arguing against just plain executing Maegor’s men, pointing out it would create more strife and disincentivize people from surrendering.
1. Other than the dog name, it’s a bit of a stretch. The Doggetts’ sigil is a unicorn and a raven, no less.
2. Well, that was pretty close to Robert’s original policy too.
Second Pet Theory of the Day – I really like the idea that House Towers of Harrenhal claimed some connection to the House Towers which was pulled down by House Stark in the course of their long campaign to win the North … whether or not such a connection actually existed or were even genuinely plausible.
[…] Alyssa. As I said last time, there’s definitely a slight Freudian nature to Jaehaerys’ resentment of the union […]
Isn´t it somewhat unjust and cruel to punish the King´s Justice? Fo all we know (especially if this position is based on the executioners from our Middle Ages), the man holding this position is appointed at it, and doesn´t get to chose who he executes, or even how he does it. And if he refuses, well, he´s the next on the list…
Ok, Ilyn Payne is a truly horrifying character, but I don´t think he represents the “normal case” scenario, especially since he is a member of the nobility, while executioners were true parias to society.