The young king’s new interest in the world even extended to the rule of his kingdom. Aegon III began to attend the council. Though he seldom spoke, his presence heartened Grand Maester Munkun, and seemed to please Lord Mooton and Lord Rowan. Ser Marston Waters of the Kingsguard seemed discomfited by His Grace’s attendance, however, and Lord Peake took it for a rebuke. Whenever Aegon made so bold as to ask a question, Munkun tells us, the Hand would bristle and accuse him of wasting the council’s time, or inform him that such weighty matters were beyond the understanding of a child. Unsurprisingly, before very long His Grace began to absent himself from the meetings, as before.

Sour and suspicious by nature, and possessed of overweening pride, Unwin Peake was a most unhappy man by 134 AC. The Maiden’s Day Ball had been a humiliation, and he took the king’s rejection of his daughter, Myrielle, in favor of Daenaera as a personal affront. Never fond of Lady Baela, he now had reason to mislike her sister Rhaena as well; both of them, he was convinced, were working against him, most like at the behest of Baela’s husband, the insolent and rebellious Oakenfist. The twins had deliberately and with malice aforethought wrecked his own plans to secure the succession, he told his own loyalists, and by seeing to it that the king took to wife a six-year-old they had ensured that the child Baela carried would be next in line to the Iron Throne.

   “If the child is a boy, His Grace will never live long enough to sire an heir of his own body,” Peake said to Marston Waters once, in Mushroom’s presence. Shortly thereafter, Baela Velaryon was brought to childbed and delivered of a healthy baby girl. She named the child Laena after her mother. Yet even this did not long mollify the King’s Hand, for less than a fortnight later, the leading elements of the Velaryon fleet returned to King’s Landing bearing a cryptic message: Oakenfist had sent them on ahead whilst he set sail for Lys to secure “a treasure beyond price.”

These words inflamed Lord Peake’s suspicions. What was this treasure? How did Lord Velaryon mean to “secure” it? With a sword? Was he about to start a war with Lys, as he had with Braavos? The Hand had sent the rash young admiral around the whole of Westeros to rid the court of him, yet here he was about to descend on them once more, “dripping with undeserved acclaim” and mayhaps vast wealth as well. (Gold was ever a sore point for Unwin Peake, whose own house was land poor, rich in stone and soil and pride, yet chronically short of coin.) The smallfolk saw Oakenfist as a hero, his lordship knew, the man who had humbled the proud Sealord of Braavos and the Red Kraken of Pyke, whilst he himself was resented and reviled. Even within the Red Keep, there were many who hoped that the regents might remove Lord Peake as King’s Hand, and replace him with Alyn Velaryon.

The excitement occasioned by Oakenfist’s return was palpable, however, so all the Hand could do was seethe. When Lady Baela’s sails were first seen across the waters of Blackwater Bay, with the rest of the Velaryon fleet appearing from the morning mists behind her, every bell in King’s Landing commenced to toll. Thousands crowded onto the city walls to cheer the hero, just as they had at Lannisport half a year before, whilst thousands more rushed out the River Gate to line the shores. But when the king expressed the wish to go to the docks “to thank my good-brother for his service,” the Hand forbade it, insisting it would not be fitting for His Grace to go to Lord Velaryon, that the admiral must come to the Red Keep to abase himself before the Iron Throne.

   In this, as in the matter of Aegon’s betrothal to Myrielle Peake, Lord Unwin found himself overruled by the other regents. Over his strenuous objections, King Aegon and Queen Daenera descended from the castle in their litter, accompanied by Lady Baela and her newborn daughter; her sister Lady Rhaena with her lord husband, Corwyn Corbray; Grand Maester Munkun; Septon Bernard; the regents Manfryd Mooton and Thaddeus Rowan; the knights of the Kingsguard; and many other notables eager to meet Lady Baela at the docks.

The morning was bright and cold, the chronicles tell us. There, before the eyes of tens of thousands, Lord Alyn Oakenfist beheld his daughter, Laena, for the first time. After kissing his lady wife, he took the child from her and held her high for all the crowd to see, as the cheers fell like thunder. Only then did he return the girl to her mother’s arms and bend his knee before the king and queen. Queen Daenaera, blushing prettily and stammering just a little, hung about his neck a heavy golden chain studded with sapphires, “b-blue as the sea where my lord has won his victories.” Then King Aegon III bade the admiral rise with the words, “We are glad to have you safe home, my brother.”

Mushroom says that Oakenfist was laughing as he climbed back to his feet. “Sire,” he replied, “you have honored me with your sister’s hand, and I am proud to be your brother by marriage. Yet I can never be your brother by blood. But there is one who is.” Then with a flamboyant gesture, Lord Alyn summoned forth the treasure he had brought from Lys. Down from the Lady Baela emerged a pale young woman of surpassing beauty, arm in arm with a richly clad boy near the king’s own age, his features hidden beneath the cowl of his embroidered cloak.

Lord Unwin Peake could no longer contain himself. “Who is this?” he demanded, pushing forward. “Who are you?” The boy threw back his cowl. As the sunlight glittered on the silver-gold hair beneath, King Aegon III began to weep, throwing himself upon this boy in a fierce embrace. Oakenfist’s “treasure” was Viserys Targaryen, the king’s lost brother, the youngest son of Queen Rhaenyra and Prince Daemon, presumed dead since the Battle of the Gullet, and missing for nigh unto five years.

   In 129 AC, it will be recalled that Queen Rhaenyra had sent her two youngest sons to Pentos to keep them from harm’s way, only to have the ship taking them across the narrow sea sail into the teeth of a war fleet from the Triarchy. Whilst Prince Aegon had escaped on his dragon, Stormcloud, Prince Viserys had been taken. The Battle of the Gullet soon followed, and when no word was heard of the young prince afterward, he was presumed dead. No one could even say for a certainty which ship he had been on.

But though many thousands died in the Gullet, Viserys Targaryen was not one of them. The ship carrying the young princeling had survived the battle and limped back home to Lys, where Viserys found himself a captive of the grand admiral of the Triarchy, Sharako Lohar. Defeat had left Sharako in disgrace, however, and the Lyseni soon found himself besieged by enemies old and new, eager to bring him down. Desperate for coin and allies, he sold the boy to a certain magister of that city named Bambarro Bazanne, in return for Viserys’s weight in gold and a promise of support. The subsequent murder of the disgraced admiral brought the tensions and rivalries amongst the Three Daughters to the surface, and long-simmering resentments flared into violence with a series of murders that soon led to open war. Amidst the chaos that followed, Magister Bambarro thought it prudent to keep his prize hidden away for the nonce, lest the boy be wrested away by one of his fellow Lyseni, or rivals from another city.

   Viserys was well treated during his captivity. Though forbidden to leave the grounds of Bambarro’s manse, he had his own suite of rooms, shared meals with the magister and his family, had tutors to instruct him in languages, literature, mathematics, history, and music, even a master-at-arms to teach him swordsmanship, at which art he soon excelled. It is widely believed (though never proved) that Bambarro’s intent was to wait out the Dance of the Dragons, and then either ransom Prince Viserys back to his mother (should Rhaenyra emerge triumphant) or sell his head to his uncle (should Aegon II prove the victor).