twoiafart:
The World of Ice and Fire - The Brides of Maegor the Cruel
L [top to bottom]: Ceryse Hightower, Tyanna of the Tower, Alys Harroway
R [top to bottom]: Elinor Costayne Jeyne Westerling, Rhaena Targaryen
Artist: Magali Villenueve
The Brides of Maegor the Cruel
• Ceryse of House Hightower •
Ceryse was the daughter of Martyn Hightower, the Lord of Oldtown. She was advanced by her uncle, the High Septon, after he protested the betrothal of the thirteen-year-old Prince Maegor to Maegor’s newborn niece, Princess Rhaena. Ceryse and Maegor were married in 25 AC. The prince claimed to have consummated their marriage a dozen times on their wedding night, but no sons ever came of it. He soon grew tired of Ceryse’s failure to bear him an heir and began taking other brides. Ceryse died in 45 AC, taken by a sudden illness, though it is also rumored that she was killed at the king’s command.
• Alys of House Harroway •
Alys was the daughter of Lucas Harroway, the new Lord of Harrenhal. A secret marriage took place in 39 AC, while Maegor was Hand, leading to Maegor’s exile to Pentos. Alys became queen after Maegor brought her back from Pentos. She was the first woman to become pregnant by the king in the year 48 AC, but she lost the babe soon after. What was expelled from her womb was a monstrosity, eyeless and twisted, and in his fury Maegor blamed and executed her midwives, septas, and the Grand Maester Desmond. Tyanna of the Tower convinced the king that the child was the product of Alys’s secret affairs, however, leading to the death of Queen Alys, her companions, her father and his Hand, the Lord Lucas, and every Harroway or Harroway kinsman King Maegor could discover between King’s Landing and Harrenhal. Lord Edwell Celtigar was named Hand afterward.
• Tyanna of the Tower •
Tyanna was the most feared of the brides of King Maegor. Rumored to have been the natural daughter of a Pentoshi magister, she had been a tavern dancer who rose up to become a courtesan. She was said to practice sorcery and alchemy. She was wed to the king in 42 AC, but their marriage bed was as barren as the rest. Called the king’s raven by some, she was feared for her ability to ferret out secrets and served as his mistress of whisperers. She eventually confessed her responsibility for the abominations that were born of Maegor’s seed, claiming she had poisoned his other brides. She was killed by Maegor’s own hand in 48 AC, her heart cut out with Blackfyre and thrown to his dogs.
• The Black Brides •
In 47 AC, Maegor took three women to wife in a single ceremony— all women of proven fertility, and all widows who had lost their husbands to Maegor’s wars or at his command. They were:
• Elinor of House Costayne •
Elinor was the youngest of the Black Brides, but though she was nine-and-ten at her marriage, she had already given her husband, Ser Theo Bolling, three children. Ser Theo was arrested by knights of the Kingsguard, accused of conspiring with Queen Alyssa to place her son, Prince Jaehaerys, on the throne, and was then executed—all on the same day. After seven days of mourning, Elinor was summoned to wed Maegor. She, too, became pregnant, and like Alys before her, she gave birth to a stillborn abomination said to have been born eyeless and with small wings. She survived that monstrous labor, however, and was one of the two wives who survived the king.
• Rhaena of House Targaryen •
When Prince Aegon was killed by Maegor in the Battle Beneath the Gods Eye, Rhaena took refuge on Fair Isle under the protection of Lord Farman, who hid her and her twin daughters. Tyanna found the twin girls, however, and Rhaena was then forced to wed Maegor. Maegor named her daughter, Aerea, as his heir while disinheriting Queen Alyssa’s surviving son, Jaehaerys. Along with Elinor, Rhaena was the only other queen to survive Maegor.
• Jeyne of House Westerling •
Tall and slender, Lady Jeyne had been wed to Lord Alyn Tarbeck, who died with the rebels at the Battle Beneath the Gods Eye. Having given him a posthumous son, her fecundity was proven and she was being courted by the son of the Lord of Casterly Rock when the king sent for her. In 47 AC she was with child, but three moons before the child was due her labor began, and from her womb came another stillborn monster. She did not survive the child for long.
—The World of Ice and Fire