“There was a girl there,” the queen said, “no older than I am as I sit before you now. A pretty girl, but not, I think, as pretty as she was. Her father was a blacksmith, and when she was a maid of fourteen years, he gave her hand in marriage to his apprentice. She was fond of the boy, and he of her, so the two of them were duly wed…but scarcely had they said their vows than their lord came down upon the wedding with his men-at-arms to claim his right to her first night. He carried her off to his tower and enjoyed her, and the next morning his men returned her to her husband.

   “But her maidenhead was gone, together with whatever love the apprentice boy had borne her. He could not raise his hand against the lord for peril of his life, so instead he raised it against his wife. When it became plain that she was carrying the lord’s child, he beat it out of her. From that day on, he never called her anything but ‘whore,’ until finally the girl decided that if she must be called a whore she would live as one, and made her way to Mole’s Town. There she dwells until this day, a sad child, ruined…but all the while, in other villages, other maids are being wed, and other lords are claiming their first night.

“Hers was the worst story, but not the only one. At White Harbor, at Mole’s Town, at Barrowton, other women spoke of their first nights as well. I never knew, my lords. Oh, I knew of the tradition. Even on Dragonstone, there are stories of men of mine own house, Targaryens, who have made free with the wives of fisherfolk and serving men, and sired children on them…”

“Dragonseeds, they call them,” Jaehaerys said with obvious reluctance. “It is not a thing to boast of, but it has happened, mayhaps more often than we would care to admit. Such children are cherished, though. Orys Baratheon himself was a dragonseed, a bastard brother to our grandsire. Whether he was conceived of a first night I cannot say, but Lord Aerion was his father, that was well-known. Gifts were given…”

“Gifts?” the queen said in a voice sharp with derision. “I see no honor in any of this. I knew such things happened hundreds of years ago, I confess it, but I never dreamed that the custom endured so strongly to this day. Mayhaps I did not want to know. I closed my eyes, but that poor girl in Mole’s Town opened them. The right of the first night! Your Grace, my lords, it is time we put an end to this. I beg you.”

A silence fell after the queen had finished speaking, Grand Maester Benifer tells us. The lords of the small council shifted awkwardly in their seats and exchanged glances, until finally the king himself spoke up, sympathetic but reluctant. What the queen proposed would be difficult, Jaehaerys said. Lords grew troublesome when kings began taking things that they regarded as their own. “Their lands, their gold, their rights…”

   “…their wives?” Alysanne finished. “I remember our wedding, my lord. If you had been a blacksmith and me a washerwoman and some lord had come to claim me and take my maidenhead the day we took our vows, what would you have done?”

“Killed him,” Jaehaerys said, “but I am not a blacksmith.”

“If, I said,” the queen persisted. “A blacksmith is still a man, is he not? What man but a coward would stand by meekly whilst another man has his way with his wife? We do not want blacksmiths killing lords, surely.” She turned to Grand Maester Benifer and said, “I know how Gargon Qoherys died. Gargon the Guest. How many more such instances have there been, I wonder?”

“More than I would care to say,” Benifer allowed. “They are not oft spoken of, for fear that other men might do the same, but…”

“The first night is an offense against the King’s Peace,” the queen concluded. “An offense against not only the maid, but her husband as well…and the wife of the lord, never forget. What do those highborn ladies do whilst their lords are out deflowering maidens? Do they sew? Sing? Pray? Were it me, I might pray my lord husband fell off his horse and broke his neck coming home.”

King Jaehaerys smiled at that, but it was plain that he was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. “The right of the first night is an ancient one,” he argued, though with no great passion, “as much a part of lordship as the right of pit and gallows. It is rarely used south of the Neck, I am told, but its continued existence is a lordly prerogative that some of my more truculent subjects would be loath to surrender. You are not wrong, my love, but sometimes it is best to let a sleeping dragon lie.”

“We are the sleeping dragons,” the queen threw back. “These lords who love their first nights are dogs. Why must they slake their lust on maidens who have only just pledged their love to other men? Have they no wives of their own? Are there no whores in their domains? Have they lost the use of their hands?”

   The justiciar Lord Albin Massey spoke up then, saying, “There is more to the first night than lust, Your Grace. The practice is an ancient one, older than the Andals, older than the Faith. It goes back to the Dawn Age, I do not doubt. The First Men were a savage race, and like the wildings beyond the Wall, they followed only strength. Their lords and kings were warriors, mighty men and heroes, and they wanted their sons to be the same. If a warlord chose to bestow his seed upon some maid on her wedding night, it was seen as…a sort of blessing. And if a child should come of the coupling, so much the better. The husband could then claim the honor of raising a hero’s son as his own.”

“Mayhaps that was so, ten thousand years ago,” the queen replied, “but the lords claiming the first night now are no heroes. You have not heard the women speak of them. I have. Old men, fat men, cruel men, poxy boys, rapers, droolers, men covered with scabs, with scars, with boils, lords who have not washed in half a year, men with greasy hair and lice. These are your mighty men. I listened to the girls, and none of them felt blessed.”

“The Andals never practiced the first night in Andalos,” Grand Maester Benifer said. “When they came to Westeros and swept away the kingdoms of the First Men, they found the tradition in place and chose to let it remain, just as they did the godswoods.”

Septon Barth spoke then, turning to the king. “Sire, if I may be so bold, I believe Her Grace has the right of this. The First Men might have found some purpose in this rite, but the First Men fought with bronze swords and fed their weirwood trees with blood. We are not those men, and it is past time we put an end to this evil. It stands against every ideal of chivalry. Our knights swear to protect the innocence of maidens…save for when the lord they serve wishes to despoil one, it would seem. We swear our marriage vows before the Father and the Mother, promising fidelity until the Stranger comes to part us, and nowhere in The Seven-Pointed Star does it say that those promises do not apply to lords. You are not wrong, Your Grace, some lords will surely grumble at this, especially in the North…but all the maids will thank us for it, and all the husbands and the fathers and the mothers, just as the queen has said. I know the Faithful will be pleased. His High Holiness will let his voice be heard, never doubt it.”