King Maegor’s war against the Faith Militant had just begun, however. It would continue for the remainder of his reign. The king’s first act upon ascending the Iron Throne was to command the Poor Fellows swarming toward the city to lay down their weapons, under penalty of proscription and death. When his decree had no effect, His Grace commanded “all leal lords” to take the field and disperse the Faith’s ragged hordes by force. In response, the High Septon in Oldtown called upon “true and pious children of the gods” to take up arms in defense of the Faith, and put an end to the reign of “dragons and monsters and abominations.”

Battle was joined first in the Reach, at the town of Stonebridge. There nine thousand Poor Fellows under Wat the Hewer found themselves caught between six lordly hosts as they attempted to cross the Mander. With half his men north of the river and half on the south, Wat’s army was cut to pieces. His untrained and undisciplined followers, clad in boiled leather, roughspun, and scraps of rusted steel, and armed largely with woodsmen’s axes, sharpened sticks, and farm implements, proved utterly unable to stand against the charge of armored knights on heavy horses. So grievous was the slaughter that the Mander ran red for twenty leagues, and thereafter the town and castle where the battle had been fought became known as Bitterbridge. Wat himself was taken alive, though not before slaying half a dozen knights, amongst them Lord Meadows of Grassy Vale, commander of the king’s host. The giant was delivered to King’s Landing in chains.

   By then Ser Horys Hill had reached the Great Fork of the Blackwater with an even larger host; close on thirteen thousand Poor Fellows, their ranks stiffened by the addition of two hundred mounted Warrior’s Sons from Stoney Sept, and the household knights and feudal levies of a dozen rebel lords from the westerlands and riverlands. Lord Rupert Falwell, famed as the Fighting Fool, led the ranks of the pious who had answered the High Septon’s call; with him rode Ser Lyonel Lorch, Ser Alyn Terrick, Lord Tristifer Wayn, Lord Jon Lychester, and many other puissant knights. The army of the Faithful numbered twenty thousand men.

King Maegor’s army was of like size, however, and His Grace had almost twice as much armored horse, as well as a large contingent of longbowmen, and the king himself riding Balerion. Even so, the battle proved a savage struggle. The Fighting Fool slew two knights of the Kingsguard before he himself was cut down by the Lord of Maidenpool. Big Jon Hogg, fighting for the king, was blinded by a sword slash early in the battle, yet rallied his men and led a charge that broke through the lines of the Faithful and put the Poor Fellows to flight. A rainstorm dampened Balerion’s fires but could not quench them entirely, and amidst smoke and screams King Maegor descended again and again to serve his foes with flame. By nightfall victory was his, as the remaining Poor Fellows threw down their axes and streamed away in all directions.

Triumphant, Maegor returned to King’s Landing to seat himself once more upon the Iron Throne. When Wat the Hewer was delivered to him, chained yet still defiant, Maegor took off his limbs with the giant’s own axe, but commanded his maesters to keep the man alive “so he might attend my wedding.” Then His Grace announced his intent to take Tyanna of Pentos as his third wife. Though it was whispered that his mother, the Queen Dowager, had no love for the Pentoshi sorceress, only Grand Maester Myros dared speak against her openly. “Your one true wife awaits you in the Hightower,” Myros said. The king heard him out in silence, then descended from the throne, drew Blackfyre, and slew him where he stood.

   Maegor Targaryen and Tyanna of the Tower were wed atop the Hill of Rhaenys, amidst the ashes and bones of the Warrior’s Sons who had died there. It was said that Maegor had to put a dozen septons to death before he found one willing to perform the ceremony. Wat the Hewer, limbless, was kept alive to witness the marriage.

King Aenys’s widow, Queen Alyssa, was present as well, with her younger sons, Viserys and Jaehaerys, and her daughter Alysanne. A visit from the Dowager Queen and Vhagar had persuaded her to leave her sanctuary on Driftmark and return to court, where Alyssa and her brothers and cousins of House Velaryon did homage to Maegor as the true king. The widowed queen was even compelled to join the other ladies of the court in disrobing His Grace and escorting him to the nuptial chamber to consummate his marriage, a bedding ceremony presided over by the king’s second wife, Alys Harroway. That task done, Alyssa and the other ladies took their leave of the royal bedchamber, but Alys remained, joining the king and his newest wife in a night of carnal lust.

Across the realm in Oldtown, the High Septon was loud in his denunciations of “the abomination and his whores,” whilst the king’s first wife, Ceryse of House Hightower, continued to insist that she was Maegor’s only lawful queen. And in the westerlands, Aegon Targaryen, Prince of Dragonstone, and his wife, Princess Rhaena, remained defiant as well.

All through the turmoil of Maegor’s ascension, King Aenys’s son and the princess, his wife, had remained at Casterly Rock, where Rhaena grew great with child. Most of the knights and young lordlings who had set out with them on their ill-fated progress had abandoned them, rushing off to King’s Landing to bend their knees to Maegor. Even Rhaena’s handmaids and companions had found excuses to absent themselves, save for her friend Alayne Royce and a former favorite, Melony Piper, who arrived at Lannisport with her brothers to swear the loyalty of their house.

All his life Prince Aegon had been considered the heir presumptive to the Iron Throne, but now, suddenly, he found himself reviled by the pious and abandoned by many he had thought to be his leal friends. Maegor’s supporters, who seemed more numerous every day, were not shy in saying that Aegon was “his father’s son,” suggesting that they saw in him the same weakness that had brought down King Aenys. Aegon had never ridden a dragon, they pointed out, whereas Maegor had claimed Balerion, and the prince’s own bride, Princess Rhaena, had been flying Dreamfyre since the age of twelve. Queen Alyssa’s attendance at Maegor’s wedding was trumpeted as proof that Aegon’s own mother had abandoned his cause. Though Lyman Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock, stood firm when Maegor demanded that Aegon and his sister be returned to King’s Landing “in chains, if need be,” even he would not go so far as to pledge his sword to the youth who now found himself being called “the pretender” and “Aegon the Uncrowned.”

   And thus it was there at Casterly Rock that Princess Rhaena gave birth to Aegon’s daughters, twins they named Aerea and Rhaella. From the Starry Sept came another blistering proclamation. These children too were abominations, the High Septon proclaimed; fruits of lust and incest, accursed of the gods. The maester at Casterly Rock who helped deliver the children tells us that afterward Princess Rhaena begged the prince her husband to take them all across the narrow sea to Tyrosh or Myr or Volantis, anywhere beyond their uncle’s reach, for “I would gladly give up my own life to make you king, but I will not put our girls at risk.” But her words fell on stony ears and her tears were shed in vain, for Prince Aegon was determined to claim his birthright.