Since taking her leave of Lyman Lannister and Casterly Rock, Rhaena Targaryen and her traveling court had made their own royal progress of sorts, visiting the Marbrands of Ashemark, the Reynes of Castamere, the Leffords at the Golden Tooth, the Vances at Wayfarer’s Rest, and finally the Pipers of Pinkmaiden. No matter where she turned, the same problems arose. “They are all warm at first,” she told her brother, when she met with him after his wedding, “but it does not last. Either I am unwelcome or too welcome. They murmur of the cost of keeping me and mine, but it is Dreamfyre who excites them. Some fear her, more want her, and it is those who trouble me most. They lust for dragons of their own. That I will not give them, but where am I to go?”

“Here,” the king suggested. “Return to court.”

“And live forever in your shadow? I need a seat of my own. A place where no lord may threaten me, banish me, or trouble those I have taken under my protection. I need lands, men, a castle.”

“We can find you lands,” the king said, “build you a castle.”

“All the lands are taken, all the castles occupied,” Rhaena replied, “but there is one I have a claim to…a better claim than your own, brother. I am the blood of the dragon. I want my father’s seat, the place where I was born. I want Dragonstone.”

To that King Jaehaerys had no answer, promising only to take the matter under consideration. His council, when the question was put to them, were united in their opposition to ceding the ancestral seat of House Targaryen to the widowed queen, but none had any better solution to offer.

After reflecting on the matter, His Grace met with his sister again. “I will grant you Dragonstone as your seat,” he told her, “for there is no place more fitting for the blood of the dragon. But you shall hold the island and the castle by my gift, not by right. Our grandsire made seven kingdoms into one with fire and blood, I cannot and will not make them two by carving you off a separate kingdom of your own. You are a queen by courtesy, but I am king, and my writ runs from Oldtown to the Wall…and on Dragonstone as well. Are we of one mind on this, sister?”

“Are you so uncertain of that iron seat that you must needs have your own blood bend the knee to you, brother?” Rhaena threw back at him. “So be it. Give me Dragonstone and one thing more, and I shall trouble you no further.”

“One thing more?” Jaehaerys asked.

“Aerea. I want my daughter restored to me.”

“Done,” the king said…mayhaps too hastily, for it must be remembered that Aerea Targaryen, a girl of eight, was his own acknowledged successor, heir apparent to the Iron Throne. The consequences of this decision would not be known for years to come, however. For the nonce it was done, and the Queen in the West at a stroke became the Queen in the East.

The year continued without further crisis or test as Jaehaerys and Alysanne settled in to rule. If certain members of the small council were taken aback when the queen began to attend their meetings, they voiced their objections only to one another…and soon not even that, for the young queen proved to be wise, well-read, and clever, a welcome voice in any discussion.

Alysanne Targaryen had happy memories of her childhood before her uncle Maegor seized the crown. During the reign of her father, Aenys, her mother, Queen Alyssa, had made the court a splendid place, filled with song, spectacle, and beauty. Musicians, mummers, and bards competed for her favor and that of the king. Wines from the Arbor flowed like water at their feasts, the halls and yards of Dragonstone rang with laughter, and the women of the court dazzled in pearls and diamonds. Maegor’s court had been a grim, dark place, and the regency had offered little change, for the memories of King Aenys’s time were painful to his widow, whilst Lord Rogar was of a martial temperament and once declared mummers to be of less use than monkeys, for “they both prance about, tumble, caper, and squeal, but if a man is hungry enough, he can eat a monkey.”

Queen Alysanne looked back on the short-lived glories of her father’s court fondly, however, and made it her purpose to make the Red Keep glitter as it never had before, buying tapestries and carpets from Free Cities and commissioning murals, statuary, and tilework to decorate the castle’s halls and chambers. At her command, men from the City Watch combed Flea Bottom until they found Tom the Strummer, whose mocking songs had amused king and commons alike during the War for the White Cloaks. Alysanne made him the court singer, the first of many who would hold that office in the decades to come. She brought in a harpist from Oldtown, a company of mummers from Braavos, dancers from Lys, and gave the Red Keep its first fool, a fat man called the Goodwife who dressed as a woman and was never seen without his wooden “children,” a pair of cleverly carved puppets who said ribald, shocking things.

All this pleased King Jaehaerys, but none of it pleased him half so much as the gift that Queen Alysanne gave him several moons later, when she told him she was with child.

* Ser Orryn Baratheon never did return to Westeros. Together with the men who had accompanied him to Oldtown, he crossed to the Free City of Tyrosh, where he took service with the Archon. A year later, he married the Archon’s daughter, the very maid his brother Rogar had hoped to wed to King Jaehaerys as a means of securing an alliance between the Iron Throne and the Free City. A buxom maid with blue-green hair and a winsome manner, Ser Orryn’s wife soon gave him a daughter, though there was some doubt whether the girl was truly his, for like many women of the Free Cities she was free with her favor. When her father’s term as Archon ended, Ser Orryn lost his position as well and was forced to leave Tyrosh for Myr, where he joined the Maiden’s Men, a free company with an especially unsavory reputation. He was killed soon afterward in the Disputed Lands, during a battle with the Men of Valor. We have no knowledge of the fate of his wife and daughter.

Jaehaerys I Targaryen would prove to be as restless a king as ever sat the Iron Throne. Aegon the Conqueror had famously said that the smallfolk needed to see their kings and queens from time to time, so they might lay their griefs and grievances before them. “I mean for them to see me,” Jaehaerys declared, when announcing his first royal progress late in 51 AC. Many more were to follow in the years and decades to come. During the course of his long reign, Jaehaerys would spend more days and nights guesting with one lord or another, or holding audience in some market town or village, than at Dragonstone and the Red Keep combined. And oft as not, Alysanne was with him, her silvery dragon soaring beside his great beast of burnished bronze.

Aegon the Conqueror had been accustomed to taking as many as a thousand knights, men-at-arms, grooms, cooks, and other servants with him on the road. Whilst undeniably grand to behold, such processions created many difficulties for the lords honored by royal visits. So many men were difficult to house and feed, and if the king wished to go hunting, nearby woods would be overrun. Even the richest lord would oft find himself impoverished by the time the king departed, his cellars drunk dry of wine, his larders empty, and half his maidservants with bastards in their bellies.

Jaehaerys was resolved to do things differently. No more than one hundred men would accompany him on any progress; twenty knights, the rest men-at-arms and servants. “I do not need to ring myself about with swords so long as I ride Vermithor,” he said. Smaller numbers also allowed him to visit smaller lords, those whose castles had never been large enough to host Aegon. His intent was to see and be seen at more places, but stay at each a shorter time, so as never to become an unwelcome guest.

The king’s first progress was meant to be a modest one, commencing with the crownlands north of King’s Landing and proceeding only as far as the Vale of Arryn. Jaehaerys wanted Alysanne with him, but as Her Grace was with child, he was concerned that their journeys not be too taxing. They began with Stokeworth and Rosby, then moved north along the coast to Duskendale. There, whilst the king viewed Lord Darklyn’s boatyards and enjoyed an afternoon of fishing, the queen held the first of her women’s courts, which were to become an important part of every royal progress to come. Only women and girls were welcome at these audiences; highborn or low, they were encouraged to come forward and share their fears, concerns, and hopes with the young queen.