Yet if indeed there is some magic in a king’s touch, as many smallfolk believe, it failed when it was needed most. The last bedside visited by Aegon III was that of Ser Tyland Lannister. Through the city’s darkest days, Ser Tyland had remained in the Tower of the Hand, striving day and night against the Stranger. Though blind and maimed, he suffered no more than exhaustion almost to the last…but as cruel fate would have it, when the worst was past and new cases of the Winter Fever had dropped away to almost nothing, a morning came when Ser Tyland commanded his serving man to close a window. “It is very cold in here,” he said…though the fire in the hearth was blazing, and the window was already closed.

   The Hand declined quickly after that. The fever took his life in two days instead of the usual four. Septon Eustace was with him when he died, as was the boy king that he had served. Aegon took his hand as he breathed his last.

Ser Tyland Lannister had never been beloved. After the death of Queen Rhaenyra, he had urged Aegon II to put her son Aegon to death as well, and certain blacks hated him for that. Yet after the death of Aegon II, he had remained to serve Aegon III, and certain greens hated him for that. Coming second from his mother’s womb, a few heartbeats after his twin brother, Jason, had denied him the glory of lordship and the gold of Casterly Rock, leaving him to make his own place in the world. Ser Tyland never married nor fathered children, so there were few to mourn him when he was carried off. The veil he wore to conceal his disfigured face gave rise to the tale that the visage underneath was monstrous and evil. Some called him craven for keeping Westeros out of the Daughters’ War and doing so little to curb the Greyjoys in the west. By moving three-quarters of the Crown’s gold from King’s Landing whilst Aegon II’s master of coin, Tyland Lannister had sown the seeds of Queen Rhaenyra’s downfall, a stroke of cunning that would in the end cost him his eyes, ears, and health, and cost the queen her throne and her very life. Yet it must be said that he served Rhaenyra’s son well and faithfully as Hand.

King Aegon III was still a boy, well shy of his thirteenth nameday, but in the days following the death of Ser Tyland Lannister he displayed a maturity beyond his years. Passing over Ser Marston Waters, second in command of the Kingsguard, His Grace bestowed white cloaks upon Ser Robin Massey and Ser Robert Darklyn and made Massey Lord Commander. With Grand Maester Munkun still down in the city tending to victims of the Winter Fever, His Grace turned to his predecessor, instructing the former Grand Maester Orwyle to summon Lord Thaddeus Rowan to the city. “I would have Lord Rowan as my Hand. Ser Tyland thought well enough of him to offer him my sister’s hand in marriage, so I know he can be trusted.” He wanted Baela back at court as well. “Lord Alyn shall be my admiral, as his grandsire was.” Orwyle, mayhaps hopeful of a royal pardon, hurriedly sent the ravens on their way.

King Aegon had acted without consulting his council of regents, however. Only three remained in King’s Landing: Lord Peake, Lord Mooton, and Grand Maester Munkun, who came rushing back inside the Red Keep the moment Ser Robert Darklyn commanded that its gates be opened once again. Manfryd Mooton was bedridden, still recovering his strength after his battle with the fever, and asked that any decisions be postponed until Lady Jeyne Arryn and Lord Royce Caron could be summoned back from the Vale and the Dornish Marches to take part in the deliberations. His colleagues would have none of it, however, Lord Peake insisting that the former regents had given up their places on the council by departing King’s Landing. With the Grand Maester’s support (Munkun would later come to rue his acquiescence), Unwin Peake then set aside all of the king’s appointments and arrangements, on the grounds that no boy of twelve had the judgment to decide such weighty matters himself.

   Marston Waters was confirmed as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, whilst Darklyn and Massey were commanded to surrender their white cloaks, so that Ser Marston might bestow them on knights of his own choosing. Grand Maester Orwyle was returned to his cell, to await execution. So as not to offend Lord Rowan, the regents offered him a place amongst them, and the office of justiciar and master of laws. No similar gesture was made to Alyn Velaryon, but of course there was no question of such a boy of his years, and of such uncertain lineage, serving as lord admiral. The offices of King’s Hand and Protector of the Realm, previously separate, were now combined, and filled by none other than Unwin Peake himself.

Mushroom tells us that King Aegon III reacted to the decisions of his regents with a sullen silence, speaking only once, to protest the dismissal of Massey and Darklyn. “Kingsguard serve for life,” the boy said, to which Lord Peake replied, “Only when they have been properly appointed, Your Grace.” Elsewise, Septon Eustace tells us, the king received the decrees “courteously” and thanked Lord Peake for his wisdom, as “I am still a boy, as your lordship knows, and in want of instruction in these matters.” If his true feelings were otherwise, Aegon did not choose to voice them, but instead retreated back into silence and passivity.

For the remainder of his minority, King Aegon III took little part in the rule of his realm, save for fixing his signature and seal upon such papers as Lord Peake presented him. On certain formal occasions, His Grace would be brought out to sit the Iron Throne or welcome an envoy, but elsewise he was little seen inside the Red Keep, and never beyond its walls.

It behooves us now to pause for a moment and turn our gaze upon Unwin Peake, who would rule the Seven Kingdoms in all but name for the best part of three years, serving as Lord Regent, Protector of the Realm, and Hand of the King.

   His house was amongst the oldest in the Reach, its deep roots twisting back to the Age of Heroes and the First Men. Amongst his many illustrious ancestors, his lordship could count such legends as Ser Urrathon the Shieldsmasher, Lord Meryn the Scribe, Lady Yrma of the Golden Bowl, Ser Barquen the Besieger, Lord Eddison the Elder, Lord Eddison the Younger, and Lord Emerick the Avenger. Many Peakes had served as counselors at Highgarden when the Reach was the richest and most powerful kingdom in all Westeros. When the pride and power of House Manderly became overweening, it was Lorimar Peake who humbled them and drove them into exile in the North, for which service King Perceon III Gardener granted him the former Manderly seat at Dunstonbury and its attendant lands. King Perceon’s son Gwayne took Lord Lorimar’s daughter as his bride as well, making her the seventh Peake maiden to sit beneath the Green Hand as Queen of All the Reach. Through the centuries, other daughters of House Peake had married Redwynes, Rowans, Costaynes, Oakhearts, Osgreys, Florents, even Hightowers.

All this had ended with the coming of the dragons. Lord Armen Peake and his sons had perished on the Field of Fire beside King Mern and his. With House Gardener extinguished, Aegon the Conqueror had granted Highgarden and the rule of the Reach to House Tyrell, the former royal stewards. The Tyrells had no blood ties to the Peakes, and no reason to favor them. And thus the slow fall of this proud house had begun. A century later, the Peakes still held three castles, and their lands were wide and well-peopled, if not particularly rich, but no longer did they command pride of place amongst the bannermen of Highgarden.