Chapter Text
King Viserys I passed away in the late evening of the 3rd day of the 1st moon of 130 AC, leaving behind two daughters, three sons and three grandchildren. As had been decreed and written into law long before, it was to his eldest daughter, Rhaenyra, that the crown would now pass.
The divine grace that had favoured Queen Rhaenyra since the gods sent the white hart to her on Prince Aemon’s second name day once again revealed itself. The full might of House Targaryen was gathered in the Red Keep that night and quickly united around their new queen. When Queen Rhaenyra summoned the court and announced the king’s death the next morning, the Iron Throne was flanked by five princes, three princesses, the dowager queen, Ser Laenor Velaryon, Lady Laena Velaryon (as she remained known, despite her earlier marriage to Prince Daemon) and her daughters.
After being seen to by the silent sisters, the king’s body was placed in the Grand Sept for seven days as those of King’s Landing and the surrounding Crownlands came to pay their respects. Then, in the tradition of House Targaryen, a pyre was constructed on the same cliffside that had borne witness to the funeral of Queen Aemma. Though it was Queen Rhaenyra’s fearsome mount, Syrax, that set King Viserys’s pyre alight, all the royal house’s dragons were gathered for the occasion. Once the formalities had concluded, those dragons large enough to be mounted took to the air, twisting and diving past each other in what the smallfolk would say looked almost like a dance.
The coronation was set for one month after the king’s funeral. Accounts tell that some among the Small Council wished for it to be held sooner, that – given the realm was seeing the crowning of its first ruling queen – it was safer if Queen Rhaenyra was invested with all the trappings of her position as quickly as possible. The queen responded, “I am the rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. I will not rush to crown myself as Maegor did, when he stole a throne that was not his.”
While the succession had been set over a decade and a half before, rumour and hearsay indicate that there was still worry throughout the realm of a dispute materialising. Prince Aemon was a boy of fifteen years when his sister became queen, unmarried with no heirs of his own. However, some of the more unenlightened, traditional lords would surely have preferred that he inherit the crown, despite the will of King Viserys and the capability Queen Rhaenyra had already shown.
For all that several probably wished for another king, none rose up against Queen Rhaenyra inheriting the Iron Throne. With the Hightower explosion having claimed many of Dowager Queen Alicent’s closest kin less than a year before, the house most likely to press Prince Aemon’s claim was led by eight-year-old Lord Lyonel Hightower. A boy that was being fostered by Queen Rhaenyra. It is therefore unsurprising that no protests to the queen’s accession emerged from Oldtown.
The actions of Prince Aemon himself should not be overlooked either. In its short history, House Targaryen’s rulership had already seen usurpation and disputed successions: Maegor the Cruel seizing the throne from King Aegon the Uncrowned; King Jaehaerys acceding over Queen Rhaena and Princess Aerea; Princess Rhaenys’s rightful claim being overlooked as Prince Baelon and the then Prince Viserys were installed as heir one after the other.
However, Prince Aemon was fiercely loyal to his elder sister and to the will of their kingly father. In those early weeks of her queenship it was said to be rare to see Queen Rhaenyra without Prince Aemon at her back, a silent affirmation of support. When questioned about it in his later years, the prince remarked that he “would rather have become the court’s fool than seek to sit the Iron Throne.” No, Prince Aemon would lead a relatively unremarkable life as an envoy for the crown and then Lord Consort of the Stepstones after he married Lady Baela Targaryen.
Rhaenyra of House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lady of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm was crowned thus on the 14th day of the 2nd moon of 130 AC.
The coronation took place in the Dragonpit before hundreds of lords and ladies and tens of thousands of smallfolk. Indeed, the jubilation that erupted from the populace of King’s Landing at Queen Rhaenyra’s accession was said to have bordered on disrespect to the late King Viserys. Though this was certainly only because the queen was so well loved by the people there.
The High Septon made the journey from Oldtown to anoint Queen Rhaenyra with the seven holy oils and bless her in the name of the Faith himself. Having only been elected half a year previously, this would be the first important ceremony the High Septon would perform since rising from his role as archsepton of King’s Landing. It seems only fitting then that he was brought back to the city where he had served for so long, working with the then Princess Rhaenyra and Queen Alicent to improve the lives of the people.
It was the last of King Jaehaerys’s trueborn grandchildren that laid the Conciliator’s crown upon Queen Rhaenyra’s brow: Princess Rhaenys, the Queen Who Should Have Been. In that moment, part of Princess Rhaenys surely mourned that she would have worn that crown herself had King Jaehaerys not been so unenlightened on the subject of women. Alas, Princess Rhaenys would have to look to the next generation to see that particular wrong righted.
Once her own crowning was complete, Queen Rhaenyra placed a circlet of plain gold upon the head of her husband, declaring him Prince Consort Laenor Velaryon. Despite the solemness of the occasion, several of those in attendance swore that the two exchanged small grins. Though this was perhaps to be expected from a couple remembered for the warmth of their relationship.
The two were then presented to the assembled masses, with the resulting cheers and dragon roars audible miles outside King’s Landing itself.
And thus began the reign of Queen Rhaenyra the Golden, so-called because of the Golden Age she ushered in and because of her golden dragon, Syrax.
Of course, no reign is without strife. The early years of Queen Rhaenyra’s time on the throne bore witness to the infamous sack of Lannisport by the Red Kraken, an attack which saw Lord Jason Lannister perish and his eldest daughter, Tyshara, become Lady of Casterly Rock. There was the Winter Fever too, a disease that claimed the lives of many on the Three Sisters and in White Harbour before decisive action by Queen Rhaenyra saw trading ships banned from entering or leaving the realm’s ports. An edict reinforced by the Velaryon fleet blockading the Gullet and by the crown’s dragons. Small outbreaks were unavoidable but the Winter Fever never gained a true foothold in King’s Landing.
But this is not a history on the reign of Rhaenyra I. Enough books have been written about her relationship with the Faith; the improvements brought to King’s Landing; the minimum age established for marriages; the abolishment of a husband’s right to chastise his wife; the recognition that rape could occur within the bounds of marriage and its outlawing; the expansion of the Night’s Watch. On what would later become known as the ‘Reign of the Two Queens’ after Dowager Queen Alicent Hightower was named the realm’s first Hand of the Queen.1
No, this is a history of Queen Rhaenyra’s relationship with Lord Lyman Beesbury, the so-called Queenmaker.
1 The author is aware of the salacious rumours that have persisted throughout the centuries regarding the relationship between Queen Rhaenyra I and Dowager Queen Alicent. They do not bear repeating here and any copies of the seditious pamphlet ‘Childhood Companions’ should be burnt if come across.
Lord Lyman Beesbury would continue to serve as Master of Coin for the first four years of Queen Rhaenyra’s reign before stepping down. Even then he did not leave the Red Keep, remaining at court for the rest of his life – which would be a further eight years.
It was Queen Rhaenyra herself who flew Lord Lyman’s body to Honeyholt after he passed away and remained there for the funeral, joined by much of the royal family. The funeral itself was small – as had apparently been Lord Lyman’s request – so no first-hand accounts have survived of what took place there. However, it was noted by the court that the queen was melancholy in the months to follow.
So came to an end the life of the man that was said to have influenced Queen Rhaenyra’s reign the most, despite having lived through but the first dozen years of it.
History loves to make comparisons between its figures and it is Ser Otto Hightower that Lord Lyman is most often viewed against. Ser Otto is remembered as a grasping second son, one that put his own ambitions over what benefited the realm in encouraging his daughter to be made queen consort over Lady Laena Velaryon. One whose death, while violent, was ultimately for the best. On the other hand, Lord Lyman Beesbury had all the virtues one would hope for in a servant of the realm: modest, intelligent, hard-working, and beholden to the will of the crown.
It has never been clear why exactly the task of mentoring the then Princess Rhaenyra fell to Lord Lyman, the Master of Coin. Surely it would have been more sensible for King Viserys to take his untrained, fourteen-year-old heir in hand after declaring her such. However, the king appears to have done little to educate his daughter on her future duties himself, nor did he arrange for a suitable proxy, merely a maester. One cannot help but wonder how well Queen Rhaenyra would have ruled had it not been for the instruction Lord Lyman provided in those early years.
Many scholars have presented Lord Lyman as having been driven solely by his desire to serve the crown; that the counsel he provided to Queen Rhaenyra in her youth was to help fulfil the will of King Viserys that she sit the Iron Throne after him. To forge her into the heir she would need to become. A role Lord Lyman willingly took on when no others presented themselves for it.
However, this interpretation of events ignores the undeniable personal connection that developed between the two: the reports that Queen Rhaenyra and Lord Lyman frequently dined together; that they were in and out of each other’s offices at all hours of the day; that Lord Lyman was a grandfather figure to the younger generation of princes and princesses; that Queen Rhaenyra was thought to have mourned Lord Lyman’s death far more deeply than King Viserys’s.
By the time of Queen Rhaenyra’s accession, I would go so far as to argue that the relationship between her and Lord Lyman was more of a daughter being supported by her father than anything else. That these feelings had eclipsed their initial pragmatic mentor/mentee dynamic.
For those still unsure which interpretation they favour, I leave you with one last historical fact, gentle readers. Officially, Queen Rhaenyra used the standard Targaryen sigil first adopted by the Conqueror: the red three-headed dragon on a field of black. However, it was widely known that a different banner hung in the queen’s rooms: those same Targaryen arms quartered with those of House Arryn … and those of House Beesbury. When Queen Rhaenyra I passed away after ruling for near half a century, it was that same quartered banner which became her funeral shroud.