“The Mother Above has been so good to me, to bless me with so many babes, all bright and beautiful,” Queen Alysanne declared in 73 AC, when it was announced that her daughter Maegelle would be joining the Faith as a novice. “It is only fitting that I give one back.” Princess Maegelle was ten years of age, and eager to take the vows. A quiet, studious girl, she was said to read from The Seven-Pointed Star every night before sleep.

   Hardly had one child departed the Red Keep than another arrived, however, for it appeared that the Mother Above was not yet done blessing Alysanne Targaryen. In 73 AC, she gave birth to her eleventh child, a son named Gaemon, in honor of Gaemon the Glorious, the greatest of the Targaryen lords who had ruled on Dragonstone before the Conquest. This time, however, the child came early, after a long and difficult labor that exhausted the queen, and made her maesters fear for her life. Gaemon was a scrawny thing as well, barely half the size his brother Vaegon had been at birth ten years earlier. The queen eventually recovered, though sad to say the child did not. Prince Gaemon died a few days into the new year, not quite three moons old.

As ever, the queen took the loss of a child hard, questioning whether or not it had been through some fault of her own that Prince Gaemon had failed. Septa Lyra, her confidant since her days on Dragonstone, assured her that she was not to blame. “The little prince is with the Mother Above now,” Lyra told her, “and she will care for him better than we could ever hope to, here in this world of strife and pain.”

That was not the only sorrow House Targaryen was to suffer in 73 AC. It will be remembered that this was also the year that Queen Rhaena died at Harrenhal.

Near year’s end, a shameful revelation came to light that shocked both court and city. The amiable and well-loved Ser Lucamore Strong of the Kingsguard, a favorite of the smallfolk, was found to have been secretly wed, despite the vows that he had sworn as a White Sword. Worse, he had taken not one but three wives, keeping each woman ignorant of the other two and fathering no fewer than sixteen children on the three of them.

In Flea Bottom and along the Street of Silk where whores and panders plied their trade, men and women of low birth and lower morals took a wicked pleasure in the fall of an anointed knight, and made bawdy japes about “Ser Lucamore the Lusty,” but no laughter was heard in the Red Keep. Jaehaerys and Alysanne had been especially fond of Lucamore Strong and were mortified to learn that he had played them both for fools.

   His brothers of the Kingsguard were even angrier. It was Ser Ryam Redwyne who discovered Ser Lucamore’s transgressions and brought them to the attention of the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, who in turn brought them to the king. Speaking for his Sworn Brothers, Ser Gyles Morrigen declared that Strong had dishonored all they stood for, and requested that he be put to death.

When dragged before the Iron Throne, Ser Lucamore fell to his knees, confessed his guilt, and begged the king for mercy. Jaehaerys might well have granted him same, but the errant knight made the fatal error of appending “for the sake of my wives and children” to his plea. As Septon Barth observed, this was tantamount to throwing his crimes in the king’s face.

“When I rose against my uncle Maegor, two of his Kingsguard abandoned him to fight for me,” Jaehaerys responded. “They might well have believed they would be allowed to keep their white cloaks once I’d won, perhaps even be honored with lordships and a higher place at court. I sent them to the Wall instead. I wanted no oathbreakers around me, then or now. Ser Lucamore, you swore a sacred vow before gods and men to defend me and mine with your own life, to obey me, fight for me, die for me if need be. You also swore to take no wife, father no children, and remain chaste. If you could shrug aside the second vow so easily, why should I believe that you would honor the first?”

Then Queen Alysanne spoke up, saying, “You made a mockery of your oaths as a knight of the Kingsguard, but those were not the only vows you broke. You dishonored your marriage vows as well, not once but thrice. None of these women are lawfully wed, so these children I see behind you are bastards one and all. They are the true innocents in this, ser. Your wives were ignorant of one another, I am told, but each of them must surely have known that you were a White Sword, a knight of the Kingsguard. To that extent they share your guilt, as does whatever drunken septon you found to marry you. For them some mercy may be warranted, but for you…I will not have you near my lord, ser.”

   There was no more to be said. As the false knight’s wives and children wept or cursed or stood in silence, Jaehaerys commanded that Ser Lucamore be gelded forthwith, then clapped in irons and sent off to the Wall. “The Night’s Watch will require vows from you as well,” His Grace warned. “See that you keep them, or the next thing you lose shall be your head.”

Jaehaerys left it to his queen to deal with the three families. Alysanne decreed that Ser Lucamore’s sons might join their father on the Wall, if they wished. The two oldest boys chose to do so. The girls would be accepted as novices by the Faith, if that was their desire. Only one elected that path. The other children were to remain with their mothers. The first of the wives, with her children, was given over to the charge of Lucamore’s brother Bywin, who had been raised to be the Lord of Harrenhal not half a year earlier. The second wife and her offspring would go to Driftmark, to be fostered by Daemon Velaryon, Lord of the Tides. The third wife, whose children were the youngest (one still on her breast), would be sent down to Storm’s End, where Garon Baratheon and young Lord Boremund would see to their upbringing. None were ever again to call themselves Strong, the queen decreed; from this day they would bear the bastard names Rivers, Waters, and Storm. “For that gift, you may thank your father, that hollow knight.”

The shame that Lucamore the Lusty visited on the Kingsguard and the Crown was not the only difficulty Jaehaerys and Alysanne faced in 73 AC. Let us pause now for a moment, and consider the vexing question of their seventh- and eighthborn children, Prince Vaegon and Princess Daella.

Queen Alysanne took great pride in arranging marriages, and had put together hundreds of fruitful unions for lords and ladies from one end of the realm to another, but never had she faced so much difficulty as she did whilst searching for mates for her four younger children. The struggle would torment her for years, bring about no end of conflict between her and the children (her daughters in particular), drive her and the king apart, and in the end bring her so much grief and pain that for a time Her Grace contemplated renouncing her marriage to spend the rest of her life with the silent sisters.

The frustrations started with Vaegon and Daella. Only a year apart in age, the prince and princess seemed well matched as babes, and the king and queen assumed that the two of them would eventually marry. Their older siblings Baelon and Alyssa had become inseparable, and plans were already being made for them to wed. Why not Vaegon and Daella as well? “Be sweet to your little sister,” King Jaehaerys told the prince when he was five. “One day she will be your Alysanne.”

   As the children grew, however, it became apparent that the two of them were not ideally suited. There was no warmth between them, as the queen saw plainly. Vaegon tolerated his sister’s presence, but never sought it out. Daella seemed frightened of her sour, bookish brother, who would sooner read than play. The prince thought the princess stupid; she thought him mean. “They are only children,” Jaehaerys said when Alysanne brought the problem to his attention. “They will warm to one another in time.” They never did. If anything, their mutual dislike only deepened.