Rhaegar put his hand on Jaime’s shoulder. “When the battle’s done I mean to call a council. Changes will be made. I meant to do it long ago, but . . . well, it does no good to speak of roads not taken. We shall talk when I return.”
Jaime I, AFfC 8
This essay will be done in three parts. The first part will look at the information we have prior to the tourney at Harrenhal. It will look at the information we have about Aerys II Tagaryen’s small council, the shadow host of the tourney and a couple more things.
The second part will be about the things that happened at the tourney proper. The Knight of the Laughing Tree and their identity as well as the crowning of Lyanna Stark as queen of love and beauty by the Prince of Dragonstone will be discussed in this section.
The final part will look at the aftermath of Harrenhal. This section will look at Lyanna Stark’s so-called abduction, Brandon’s mad rush to King’s Landing and so on.
There will obviously be a lot of speculation here. I know that fandom has its mind and heart set on certain things such as Varys being a Blackfyre or a Blackfyre agent, which I wholly disagree with and that Lyanna was kidnapped or eloped with Rhaegar, which I also wholly disagree with.
Most of the information we have about life at court, the small council of Aerys II Targaryen, and the reactions to the announcement of the tourney comes from The World of Ice and Fire. Because the bulk of the information is contained in that book, it will be referred to a lot throughout.
The World of Ice and Fire lays out a fairly complex situation at court and brings to light the rifts and divisions that exist within it. It gives us the names of the men who supported Rhaegar and those who supported Aerys’s rule.
The Mad King’s Supporters
The Mad King could be savagely cruel, as seen most plainly when he burned those he perceived to be his enemies, but he could also be extravagant, showering men who pleased him with honors, offices, and lands. The lickspittle lords who surrounded Aerys II had gained much and more from the king’s madness and eagerly seized upon any opportunity to speak ill of Prince Rhaegar and inflame the father’s suspicions of the son.
Chief amongst the Mad King’s supporters were three lords of his small council: Qarlton Chelsted, master of coin, Lucerys Velaryon, master of ships, and Symond Staunton, master of laws. The eunuch Varys, master of whisperers, and Wisdom Rossart, grand master of the Guild of Alchemists, also enjoyed the king’s trust.
The World of Ice and Fire: The Targaryen Kings – Aerys II
Varys tends to be singled out as a Targaryen enemy because he’s a Blackfyre, or because his friend Illyrio is a Blackfyre, or his wife Serra was a Blackfyre. Or some variation of this theory. But we have to bear in mind that Varys was the one who counselled Aerys against opening his gates to Tywin Lannister when he reached King’s Landing following the royalist defeat on the Trident and Rhaegar’s death by warhammer.
The passage quoted above explicitly names the men who were in the anti-Rhaegar faction and were actively trying to turn Aerys against him. Those men were Qarlton Chelsted, Lucerys Velaryon and Symond Staunton.
Wisdom Rossart and Varys are said to have enjoyed Aerys’s trust, but they are not singled out as men inflaming Aerys’s suspicions of his son. Not in the way the other three are.
Varys’s job as the master of whisperers is to gather information on what’s going on in and around King’s Landing, in the kingdom at large and across the narrow sea. That’s what the job of master of whisperers entails. That’s what is expected of him. And that’s what he does up to a certain extent.
“Ser Barristan once told me that the rot in King Aerys’s reign began with Varys.”
Davos IV, ASoS 36
It makes all the sense in the world for Barristan Selmy to say something like that. Barristan is a good company man. From everything that we know from TWoIaF, his assessment of the situation is incorrect. Aerys’s reign was tainted and his relationships with several people were already damaged.
Aerys’s relationship with Tywin Lannister especially was strained well before what happened at Duskendale.
Most of the small council were with the Hand outside Duskendale at this juncture, and several of them argued against Lord Tywin’s plan on the grounds that such an attack would almost certainly goad Lord Darklyn into putting King Aerys to death. “He may or he may not,” Tywin Lannister reportedly replied, “but if he does, we have a better king right here.” Whereupon he raised a hand to indicate Prince Rhaegar.
Things between Tywin and Aerys are going very badly. There were rumors that Aerys was planning making Steffon Baratheon his new Hand after he returned from Essos, but we know what happened to him. According to The World of Ice and Fire, Aerys believed that Tywin arranged for Lord Steffon’s death.
As far as we know, there were no problems between Aerys and Rhaegar. We know that things were fine between them the year before at the tournament that took place in Lannisport. The quote above may very well have been the thing that drove a wedge between the two.
This isn’t Varys’s doing. It’s Tywin’s. Tywin who had his own ambitions for his family, like his daughter marrying Rhaegar and becoming queen. And he said what he said knowing that Aerys would hear about it if he came out alive of Duskendale.
“He [Aerys] saw traitors everywhere, and Varys was always there to point out any he might have missed.”
Jaime V, ASoS 37
This is what Barristan and Jaime had to say about Varys during Aerys’s reign. But neither of them is suggesting that he was the one creating the rift between Rhaegar and his father. But that’s not the case for Chelsted, Velaryon and Staunton per TWoIaF. While there is no doubt that Varys played a role in Aerys’s growing paranoia, the people who seem to be driving that anti-Rhaegar train are those three lords.
We never talk about these three men and the possible role they may have had in driving Aerys to the brink, but I think that there is enough information in TWoIaF to form an opinion on the matter.
As it stands right now, the only one of these lords who has made it to the pages of ASoIaF is Qarlton Chelsted and it’s through Jaime’s POVs that we see him and learn to know him a little.
We know that Chelsted was the master of coin in Aerys’s small council before he was named Hand of the King following the Battle of the Bells and the sacking and of Jon Connington. Chelsted was burned by the king following his discovery of the wildfire plot. He tried to dissuade Aerys from it, called him mad, resigned his position as Hand and paid for it.
The lords Staunton and Velaryon have not yet been mentioned in ASoIaF. If the seat of master of ships followed the tradition of giving it to the Lord of the Tides and the head of House Velaryon, then Lucerys is most certainly dead seeing as we were introduced to a different Lord of the Tides in ASoIaF. We don’t know what the familial relationship between him, Monford and Aurane is.
We don’t know if Symond Staunton is dead or alive since he has not been mentioned either. His House was brought up once in AFfC when Brienne visited Duskendale in search of Dontos Hollard.
Qarlton Chelsted, Symond Staunton and Lucerys Velaryon are nothing more than a footnote at the moment, but I don’t think that we should forget about them. Those three, and more specifically Chelsted and Staunton, are the ones leading the charge with Aerys and pushing for a change in the line of succession. They are the ones mentioned as wanting Rhaegar removed from the line of succession and replaced with Viserys, not Varys.
We have seen Varys in action. We know how he operates. Varys gathers information. The things he reveals are usually self-serving. He reveals the things that he judges necessary.
He revealed Daenerys’s pregnancy to Robert Baratheon’s small council in AGoT because it served his purpose. He wanted to light a fire under Khal Drogo, so he used Daenerys’s pregnancy to do so.
We see the way he presents important information and the way he protects it behind things that either sound like nonsense or are of no interest to those sitting around the table.
The eunuch drew a parchment from his sleeve. “A kraken has been seen off the Fingers.” He giggled. “Not a Greyjoy, mind you, a true kraken. It attacked an Ibbenese whaler and pulled it under. There is fighting on the Stepstones, and a new war in Tyrosh and Lys seems likely. Both hope to win Myr as ally. Sailors back from the Jade Sea report that a three-headed dragon has hatched in Qarth, and is the wonder of that city -”
“Dragons and krakens do not interest me, regardless of the number of their heads,” said Lord Tywin.
Tyrion III, ASoS 19
We also see him in action at Tyrion’s trial where he reveals things that he knows to the court. With this, we see how thorough, meticulous and diligent Varys is.
Powdered, primped, and smelling of rosewater, the Spider rubbed his hands one over the other all the time he spoke. Washing my life away, Tyrion thought, as he listened to the eunuch’s mournful account of how the Imp had schemed to part Joffrey from the Hound’s protection and spoken with Bronn of the benefits of having Tommen as king. Half-truths are worth more than outright lies. And unlike the others, Varys had documents; parchments painstakingly filled with notes, details, dates, whole conversations. So much material that its recitation took all day, and so much of it damning. Varys confirmed Tyrion’s midnight visit to Grand Maester Pycelle’s chambers and the theft of his poisons and potions, confirmed the threat he’d made to Cersei the night of their supper, confirmed every bloody thing but the poisoning itself. When Prince Oberyn asked him how he could possibly know all this, not having been present at any of these events, the eunuch only giggled and said, “My little birds told me. Knowing is their purpose, and mine.”
Tyrion IX, ASoS 66
And this is Varys testifying in the trial of someone he has a modicum of respect for. And he did this because he essentially had to. Varys had details about conversations, confirms the things he can confirm. Varys had enough information about Tyrion to bury him.
Rhaegar did not spend his entire marriage on Dragonstone. In fact, he seems to have remained in King’s Landing after he returned to present Rhaenys to his parents.
If we cobble together a timeline from what we were given in TWoIaF and ASoIaF, then we get something like this;
- 280 AC – Rhaegar marries Elia and leaves for Dragonstone (likely stayed away from King’s Landing some 15 months)
- 280 AC – Rhaenys is born and Elia is bedridden for 6 months
- 281 AC – The Year of the False Spring
- 281 AC – Rhaegar returns to King’s Landing (likely with his wife) to present Rhaenys to his parents (she smells Dornish incident)
- 281 AC – Aegon is conceived in King’s Landing (Rhaegar saw a comet in the sky and was convinced it was a bleeding star)
- 281 AC – Oswell Whent goes to visit his family after which the tourney at Harrenhal is announced (we don’t really know the order that things happened in in 281)
- 281 AC – Aerys announces that he will attend the tourney with his son
- 281 AC – Tourney at Harrenhal
- Late 281 to early 282 AC – Aegon is born on Dragonstone
So it does seem like Rhaegar spent a fair amount of time in King’s Landing after he returned to present his daughter to his parents. Either Rhaegar was excellent at keeping his secrets or he wasn’t worried about Varys.
Shadow Organizer
Everything we’ve been given thus far seems to indicate that Rhaegar was behind the tourney at Harrenhal. Let’s start with a few quotes;
“Not every man is what he seems, and a prince especially has good cause to be wary . . . but go too far down that road, and the mistrust can poison you, make you sour and fearful.” King Aerys was one such. By the end, even Rhaegar saw that plain enough.
The Lost Lord, ADwD 24
This quote seems to hint at Rhaegar not wanting to see or believe the obvious truth about his father, but eventually had no choice but to acknowledge things for what they were. This is the heart in conflict with itself. There’s something tragic about a son not wanting to accept that his father was so far gone that he might have to act against him.
Perhaps by now he should have grown used to such things. The Red Keep had its secrets too. Even Rhaegar. The Prince of Dragonstone had never trusted him as he had trusted Arthur Dayne. Harrenhal was proof of that. The year of the false spring.
The memory was still bitter. Old Lord Whent had announced the tourney shortly after a visit from his brother, Ser Oswell Whent of the Kingsguard. With Varys whispering in his ear, King Aerys became convinced that his son was conspiring to depose him, that Whent’s tourney was but a ploy to give Rhaegar a pretext for meeting with as many great lords as could be brought together. Aerys had not set foot outside the Red Keep since Duskendale, yet suddenly he announced that he would accompany Prince Rhaegar to Harrenhal, and everything had gone awry from there.
The Kingbreaker, ADwD 67
We don’t know what Varys whispered in Aerys’s ear, but we know how Varys uses information and he likely gave Aerys just enough information about what Rhaegar may have been up to in order to bait Aerys into going to Harrenhal. And I must say, it’s quite the genius move.
But if indeed there was a shadow, who was he, and why did he choose to keep his role a secret? A dozen names have been put forward over the years, but only one seems truly compelling: Rhaegar Targaryen, Prince of Dragonstone.
If this tale be believed, ‘twas Prince Rhaegar who urged Lord Walter to hold the tourney, using his lordship’s brother Ser Oswell as a gobetween. Rhaegar provided Whent with gold sufficient for splendid prizes in order to bring as many lords and knights to Harrenhal as possible. The prince, it is said, had no interest in the tourney as a tourney; his intent was to gather the great lords of the realm together in what amounted to an informal Great Council, in order to discuss ways and means of dealing with the madness of his father, King Aerys II, possibly by means of a regency of a forced abdication.
If indeed this was the purpose behind the tourney, it was a perilous game that Rhaegar Targaryen was playing. Though few doubted that Aerys had taken leave of his senses, many still had good reason to oppose his removal from the Iron Throne, for certain courtiers and councillors had gained great wealth and power through the king’s caprice and knew that they stood to lose all should Prince Rhaegar come to power.
The World of Ice and Fire – The Fall of the Dragons: The Year of the False Spring
The biggest proof that Rhaegar may have been behind the organization of the tourney comes from his own mouth, in the opening quote of this essay.
Whatever Rhaegar’s intent was at Harrenhal, on the surface, it seems like Varys upset those plans when he managed to convince Aerys to attend the tourney. But did Varys really burn those plans to the ground? I think the question is worth asking.
The Tourney at Harrenhal happened in a post-Duskendale environment. The Defiance of Duskendale took place in 277 AC and lasted half a year. The Tourney at Harrenhal marked the first time the king left the Red Keep in four years. Aerys’s mental faculties are on the decline and his appearance is frightful.
Had any whiff of proof come into their hands to show that Prince Rhaegar was conspiring against his father, King Aerys’s loyalists would most certainly have used it to bring about the prince’s downfall. Indeed, certain of the king’s men had even gone so far as to suggest that Aerys should disinherit his “disloyal” son, and name his younger brother heir to the Iron Throne in his stead. Prince Viserys was but seven years of age, and his eventual ascension would certainly mean a regency, wherein they themselves would rule as regents.
In such a climate, it was scarce surprising that Lord Whent’s great tournament excited much suspicion. Lord Chelsted urged His Grace to forbid it, and Lord Staunton went even further, suggesting prohibition against all tourneys.
Such events were widely popular with the commons, however, and when Lord Merryweather warned Aerys that forbidding the tournament would only serve to make him even more unpopular, the king chose another course and announced his intention to attend. It would mark the first time that Aerys II had left the safety of the Red Keep since the Defiance of Duskendale. No doubt His Grace reasoned that his enemies would not dare conspire against him under his very nose. Grand Maester Pycelle tells us that Aerys hoped that his presence at such a grand event would help him win back the love of his people.
If that was indeed the king’s intent, it was a grievous miscalculation. Whilst his attendance made the Harrenhal tourney even grander and more prestigious than it already was, drawing lords and knights from every corner of the realm, many of those who came were shocked and appalled when they saw what had become of their monarch. His long yellow fingernails, tangled beard, and ropes of unwashed, matted hair made the extent of the king’s madness plain to all. Nor was his behavior that of a sane man, for Aerys could go from mirth to melancholy in the blink of an eye, and many of the accounts written of Harrenhal speak of his hysterical laughter, long silences, bouts of weeping, and sudden rages.
The World of Ice and Fire – The Fall of the Dragons: The Year of the False Spring
In a lot of ways, it seems like TWoIaF is giving us some of the answers we have been looking for about Harrenhal.
First, there is mention of Aerys’s loyalists and king’s men, and the names that come up again are those of Staunton and Chelsted. They suspect or are simply telling Aerys that Rhaegar is conspiring against him without any sort of proof.
Second, they come up with terrible ideas to put a stop the tourney from happening when the easiest thing to do would have been for Aerys to forbid Rhaegar from attending. Aerys was Rhaegar’s father as well as his king.
Third, Aerys decided to attend because his enemies would not conspire under his nose. He thought that being at the tourney would make him popular again. If this is Varys whispering in Aerys’s ear to convince him to go to Harrenhal as Barristan tells us, then he used a scare tactic and appealed to his vanity to get him out of the Red Keep. There are people conspiring against you and you have to show yourself to gain the people’s love again.
I think the underlined part of the last paragraph of the quote above is the real raison d’être of the tourney.
What if Rhaegar meeting as many lords as he possibly could was only secondary to his main objective? What if the tourney was designed in an effort to get Aerys out of the Red Keep and to Harrenhal where everyone present could see for themselves how far the king had fallen since the Defiance of Duskendale.
This is a situation in which Rhaegar wins either way.
If his father had remained at the Red Keep, Rhaegar is free to speak to as many lords as he wants about his father’s decline and perhaps suggest calling a council. Some lords might see the sense in that and some lords might see this as treason and an attempt at usurping the throne. I think that meeting a bunch of lords to gauge what they want is a lot more riskier than having Aerys present at the tourney. People talk and there will always be those who seek to advance their own fortunes.
But because of Varys, the king ended up leaving the Red Keep, and the world got to see exactly what Aerys had become.
As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words and that’s what Varys gave everyone present at Harrenhal. He gave them Aerys in the flesh, a man who was emotionally unstable and volatile, swinging wildly from one emotion to the other. A man who looked more like a beggar than a king. Whatever rumors and gossip people heard about Aerys is no longer gossip or rumor, it is proof.
Meanwhile, there’s the accomplished firstborn son and heir, who presents the opposite image of the king. He looks nothing like him and he doesn’t behave like him.
Aerys’s presence at Harrenhal allows Rhaegar to keep his hands clean, while Aerys digs his own grave. All he has to do is sit back and watch, while he enters the lists and lines up the victories.
There is a very nice parallel with this that is found in AGoT, in Jon’s first chapter no less. Jon is observing King Robert and comparing him to Jaime Lannister during the feast at Winterfell following the arrival of the royal family and their party.
Next had come King Robert himself, with Lady Stark on his arm. The king was a great disappointment to Jon. His father had talked of him often: the peerless Robert Baratheon, demon of the Trident, the fiercest warrior of the realm, a giant among princes. Jon saw only a fat man, red-faced under his beard, sweating through his silks. He walked like a man half in his cups.
Jon I, AGoT 5
Ser Jaime Lannister was twin to Queen Cersei; tall and golden, with flashing green eyes and a smile that cut like a knife. He wore crimson silk, high black boots, a black satin cloak. On the breast of his tunic, the lion of his House was embroidered in gold thread, roaring its defiance. They called him the Lion of Lannister to his face and whispered “Kingslayer” behind his back.
Jon found it hard to look away from him. This is what a king should look like, he thought to himself as the man passed.
Jon I, AGoT 5
Yes, Jon is a fourteen year old boy, but his thoughts do help put into context the way people view their monarchs. Robert looks like a fat slob when Jon sees him for the first time. He is nothing like the stories he’s heard about him, but Jaime is another matter. Jon sees Jaime as the standard. Jaime is what a king should look like. And yes, I know all about GRRM’s original outline, but the parallel stands (never mind all that black and red that Jaime is wearing).
I think that we have to wonder how many people had the same reflection as Jon Snow at Harrenhal when they saw Aerys and Rhaegar?
This is why I’m fairly convinced that Rhaegar and Varys were allies in this and working together.
If Varys is this Targaryen enemy, then eliminating Rhaegar is a must because he is a threat. If Varys is plotting a Blackfyre coup, then he’d want Aerys to continue being king. He’d want Rhaegar removed from the line of succession if not dead. Viserys is a young boy who would need regents and at seven years old, Viserys is apparently showing some signs of madness.
“Some truths are hard to hear. Robert was a . . . a good knight . . . chivalrous, brave . . . he spared my life, and the lives of many others . . . Prince Viserys was only a boy, it would have been years before he was fit to rule, and . . . forgive me, my queen, but you asked for truth . . . even as a child, your brother Viserys oft seemed to be his father’s son, in ways that Rhaegar never did.”
Daenerys VI, ASoS 71
I understand that people in the fandom hate Rhaegar, but except for Robert Baratheon, the people in-universe are an entirely different matter. Rhaegar seems to have been a well-liked if not a loved figure in Westeros. We have seen how Barristan describes him and remembers him. We have seen how Jaime feels about him. Jon Connington was probably in love with him. Cersei has certainly elevated Rhaegar in her mind to some god-like status. From Wyman Manderly who scorns Rhaegar Frey for having a dragon’s name to Godric Borrell who wants to laugh in the man’s face because of his name, there is no lack of characters who seem to have liked and/or respected Rhaegar Targaryen. We, as readers, can love or hate a character as much as we want, but at the end of the day, it’s the opinion of the characters that matters, not ours.
Tywin thought Rhaegar would be a good king as did Barristan. What does Varys want with a good Targaryen king if he is on a mission to give the throne to some Blackfyre descendant?
Convinced that the smallfolk and lords were plotting against his life and fearing that even Queen Rhaella and Prince Rhaegar might be part of these plots, he reached across the narrow sea to Pentos and imported a eunuch named Varys to serve as his spymaster, reasoning that only a man without friends, family, or ties in Westeros could be relied upon for the truth.
The World of Ice and Fire – The Targaryen Kings: Aerys II
Varys had skills that Aerys wanted, but Varys also had no familial ties to Westeros or to Westeros itself. Whichever way we slice it, this was a shortsighted mistake on Aerys’s part. And when we start pulling apart some of the threads in the story and the information we were also given in TWoIaF, I think that the conclusion is that whatever Varys knew about Rhaegar’s plans for Harrenhal, he simply did not give them up entirely. He gave up just enough to convince Aerys that his presence at Harrenhal would neutralize his son when the most important thing Aerys’s presence at the tourney does is show his decline and his madness instead. It gives the realm a good justification as to why Rhaegar might move against his father.
I think that this was Plan A all along, shining a light on what Aerys has become.
Varys being a man without family and friends and ties to Westeros means that he can choose who he wants to serve. Aerys may have hired Varys, but what if Varys decided that he was going to serve his heir instead?
Next part will look at the Knight of the Laughing Tree and that ransom part of the story that Bran found so stupid.
I can be found at @Something_Rose@mastodon.social on Mastodon, on Reddit as u/coldwindsrising07 and as Alexis-something-Rose on westeros.org.
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