Yet even here, the council encountered difficulty and division. When Leowyn Corbray said, “Lady Rhaena would make a splendid queen,” Ser Tyland pointed out that Baela had been the first from her mother’s womb. “Baela is too wild,” countered Ser Torrhen Manderly. “How can she rule the realm when she cannot rule herself?” Ser Willis Fell agreed. “It must be Rhaena. She has a dragon, her sister does not.” When Lord Corbray answered, “Baela flew a dragon, Rhaena only has the hatchling,” Roland Westerling replied, “Baela’s dragon brought down our late king. There are many in the realm who will not have forgotten that. Crown her and we will rip all the old wounds open once again.”

Yet it was Grand Maester Munkun who put an end to the debate when he said, “My lords, it makes no matter. They are both girls. Have we learned so little from the slaughter? We must abide by primogeniture, as the Great Council ruled in 101. The male claim comes before the female.” Yet when Ser Tyland said, “And who is this male claimant, my lord? We seem to have killed them all,” Munkun had no answer but to say he would research the issue. Thus the crucial question of succession remained unsettled.

This uncertainty did little to spare the twins from the fawning attentions of all the suitors, confidants, companions, and similar flatterers eager to befriend the king’s presumed heirs, though the sisters reacted to these lickspittles in vastly different ways. Where Rhaena delighted in being the center of court life, Baela bristled at praise, and seemed to take pleasure in mocking and tormenting the suitors who fluttered around her like moths.

As young girls, the twins had been inseparable, and impossible to tell apart, but once parted, their experiences had shaped them in very different ways. In the Vale, Rhaena had enjoyed a life of comfort and privilege as Lady Jeyne’s ward. Maids had brushed her hair and drawn her baths, whilst singers composed odes to her beauty and knights jousted for her favor. The same was true at King’s Landing, where dozens of gallant young lords competed for her smiles, artists begged leave to draw or paint her, and the city’s finest dressmakers sought the honor of making her gowns. And everywhere that Rhaena went came Morning, her young dragon, oft as not coiled about her shoulders like a stole.

Baela’s time on Dragonstone had been more troubled, ending with fire and blood. By the time she came to court, she was as wild and willful a young woman as any in the realm. Rhaena was slender and graceful; Baela was lean and quick. Rhaena loved to dance; Baela lived to ride…and to fly, though that had been taken from her when her dragon died. She kept her silver hair cropped as short as a boy’s, so it would not whip about her face when she was riding. Time and time again she would escape her ladies to seek adventure in the streets. She took part in drunken horse races along the Street of the Sisters, engaged in moonlight swims across the Blackwater Rush (whose powerful currents had been known to drown many a strong swimmer), drank with the gold cloaks in their barracks, wagered coin and sometimes clothing in the rat pits of Flea Bottom. Once she vanished for three days and refused to say where she had been when she returned.

Even more gravely, Baela had a taste for unsuitable companions. Like stray dogs, she brought them home with her to the Red Keep, insisting that they be given positions in the castle, or be made part of her own retinue. These pets of hers included a comely young juggler, a blacksmith’s apprentice whose muscles she admired, a legless beggar she took pity on, a conjurer of cheap tricks she took for an actual sorcerer, a hedge knight’s homely squire, even a pair of young girls from a brothel, twins, “like us, Rhae.” Once she turned up with an entire troupe of mummers. Septa Amarys, who had been given charge of her religious and moral instruction, despaired of her, and even Septon Eustace could not seem to curb her wild ways. “The girl must be wed, and soon,” he told the King’s Hand, “else I fear that she may bring dishonor down upon House Targaryen, and shame His Grace, her brother.”

Ser Tyland saw the sense in the septon’s counsel…but there were perils as well. Baela did not lack for suitors. She was young, beautiful, healthy, wealthy, and of the highest birth; any lord in the Seven Kingdoms would be glad to take her for his wife. Yet the wrong choice could have grave consequences, for her husband would stand very close to the throne. An unscrupulous, venal, or overly ambitious mate might cause no end of war and woe. A score of possible candidates for Lady Baela’s hand were considered by the regents. Lord Tully, Lord Blackwood, Lord Hightower (as yet unwed, though he had taken his father’s widow as a paramour) were all put forth, as were a number of less likely choices, including Dalton Greyjoy (the Red Kraken boasted of having a hundred salt wives, but had never taken a rock wife), a younger brother of the Princess of Dorne, and even that rogue Racallio Ryndoon. All of them were ultimately discarded for one reason or another.

Finally the Hand and the council of regency decided to grant Lady Baela’s hand in marriage to Thaddeus Rowan, Lord of Goldengrove. Rowan was no doubt a prudent choice. His second wife had died the year previous, and he was known to be seeking a suitable young maid to take her place. His virility was beyond question; he had fathered two sons on his first wife, and five more on his second. As he had no daughters, Baela would be the unquestioned mistress of his castle. His four youngest sons were still at home, and in need of a woman’s hand. The fact that all Lord Rowan’s offspring were male counted heavily in his favor; if he were to sire a son on Lady Baela, Aegon III would have a clear successor.

Lord Thaddeus was a bluff, hearty, cheerful man, well-liked and well-respected, a doting husband and a good father to his sons. He had fought for Queen Rhaenyra during the Dance, and had done so ably and with valor. He was proud without being arrogant, just in judgment but not vindictive, loyal to his friends, dutiful in religious matters without being excessively pious, untroubled by overweening ambition. Should the throne pass to Lady Baela, Lord Rowan would make the perfect consort, supporting her with all his strength and wisdom without seeking to dominate her or usurp her rightful place as ruler. Septon Eustace tells us that the regents were very pleased with the result of their deliberations.

Baela Targaryen, when informed of the match, did not share their pleasure. “Lord Rowan is forty years my senior, bald as a stone, with a belly that weighs more than I do,” she purportedly told the King’s Hand. Then she added, “I’ve bedded two of his sons. The eldest and thirdborn, I think it was. Not both at once, that would have been improper.” Whether there is any truth to this we cannot say. Lady Baela was known to be deliberately provocative at times. If that was her purpose here, she was successful. The Hand sent her back to her rooms, posting guards at her door to make certain she remained there until the regents could convene.

Yet a day later, he discovered to his dismay that Baela had fled the castle by some secret means (later it was found she had climbed out a window, swapped clothes with a washerwoman, and walked out the front gate). By the time the hue and cry went up, she was halfway across Blackwater Bay, having hired a fisherman to carry her to Driftmark. There she sought out her cousin, the Lord of the Tides, and poured out her woes to him. A fortnight later, Alyn Velaryon and Baela Targaryen were married in the sept on Dragonstone. The bride was sixteen, the groom nearly seventeen.

Several of the regents, outraged, urged Ser Tyland to appeal to the High Septon for an annulment, but the Hand’s own response was one of bemused resignation. Prudently, he had it put about that the marriage had been arranged by king and court, believing that it was Lady Baela’s defiance that was the scandal rather than her choice of spouse. “The boy comes from noble blood,” he assured the regents, “and I do not doubt that he will prove as loyal as his brother.” Thaddeus Rowan’s wounded pride was appeased by a betrothal to Floris Baratheon, a maid of fourteen years widely considered to be the prettiest of the “Four Storms,” as Lord Borros’s four daughters had become known. In her case, it was a misnomer. A sweet girl, if somewhat frivolous, she was to die in childbed two years later. The stormy marriage would prove to be the one made on Dragonstone, as the years would prove.