Alicent Hightower

Otto Hightower was named Hand of the King in 101 AC, and his thirteen-year-old daughter Alicent arrived with him at King's Landing. The monarch he served, Jaehaerys I, had sat the throne for decades and his body was starting to fail him.

The girl became something close to his daily companion: she brought him his meals, helped wash and dress him, read to him in the afternoons. In his final months the king sometimes mistook her for his own daughter Saera, as though the faces of the past had begun to blur together. He died in 103 AC with Alicent's voice still reading to him.

Queen Aemma Arryn died in 105 AC, leaving King Viserys I a widower without a male heir. Against the advice of his small council, the king set his eye on Alicent and chose her for his new wife; they married the following year, amid murmurs that the Hand had risen far above his station. Rumors also circulated — never confirmed — that Prince Daemon had taken her virginity before the wedding, and even that Alicent had shared the king's bed while Aemma still lived.

At first Alicent got along well with her stepdaughter Rhaenyra, the king's heir. But once the new queen bore Aegon, then Helaena, then Aemond, one after another, and Rhaenyra remained the one named for the throne, that closeness began to fade. Both women wanted the same place at court, and only one could hold it.

Otto Hightower, his daughter's chief support in those early years, began overreaching in his role as Hand and was eventually dismissed, returning to Oldtown without a place at court. Even so, a circle of lords loyal to the queen — what people came to call "the queen's party" — kept backing her children.

In 111 AC King's Landing held a tourney for the royal couple's fifth anniversary. At the welcoming feast Alicent wore green while Rhaenyra wore Targaryen black and red, and from then on people began calling the queen's supporters Greens and the princess's Blacks. In the lists, Ser Criston Cole, fighting for Rhaenyra, unhorsed several of the queen's champions, among them Alicent's own brother, Ser Gwayne Hightower.

When Rhaenyra married Ser Laenor Velaryon, her former Kingsguard protector, Ser Criston Cole, entered Queen Alicent's service and fought under her favor at the wedding tourney.

In 115 AC Alicent had her fourth child, Daeron, who like his siblings showed the Valyrian Targaryen look. The sons Rhaenyra had borne with Laenor, Jacaerys and Lucerys, resembled neither their mother nor her husband, and Alicent grew convinced their true father was Ser Harwin Strong. King Viserys refused to give the suspicion any weight.

In 120 AC a fight between Alicent's son Aemond and Rhaenyra's son Lucerys ended with Aemond losing an eye. Alicent demanded Lucerys pay with the same eye, and the king, hoping to keep the two branches of the family apart, ordered her and her children to remain at court while Rhaenyra settled at Dragonstone. Months later, when Rhaenyra bore her first child with Prince Daemon, she named him Aegon — the same name as Alicent's firstborn — and Alicent took it as a deliberate insult.

On the first day of 127 AC, King Viserys made Rhaenyra and Alicent share a feast with their children. To please him, the two women arrived each wearing the other's colors; the princes traded friendly words and broke bread together, and even Prince Daemon had kind words for Otto Hightower, who returned the courtesy by praising Daemon's valor. Viserys, relieved, declared the feud between Greens and Blacks over. It lasted about as long as the evening did.

King Viserys died on the third day of the third moon of 129 AC. A servant brought the news to Alicent before anyone else heard it. She sent for Ser Criston Cole, by then Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, and together they summoned the small council to crown her son Aegon in Rhaenyra's place.

The ceremony was held at the Dragonpit. Alicent set the crown on her daughter Helaena's head with her own hands, making her queen alongside her brother and husband Aegon II, and addressed her as "my queen."

After the coronation, Alicent settled into rooms in the Tower of the Hand, where her father lived. Every night her daughter Helaena brought the children to see her before bed. The tower was less secure than Maegor's Holdfast, and two assassins known as Blood and Cheese took advantage of that habit: they broke into her chambers, killed her handmaid, and bound and gagged Alicent herself.

When Helaena arrived with the children, the assassins killed Aegon II's heir in revenge for the death of Rhaenyra's son Lucerys. Grief drove Helaena mad. Aegon II, left with only one living son, handed him to his mother so Alicent could raise him.

Aegon II replaced Otto Hightower as Hand of the King with Ser Criston Cole, and Alicent could not stop it. When thousands of commoners began fleeing the capital after the Battle of Rook's Rest, it was Alicent who ordered the city gates shut.

During the fall of King's Landing, Alicent surrendered the Red Keep to Rhaenyra. "The city is yours, princess, but you won't hold it for long. When the cat's away, the mice will dance, but my son Aemond will return with fire and blood," she told her. Her brother Ser Gwayne Hightower was killed by Ser Luthor Largent, and Alicent was bound in golden shackles. Her father and the rest of the small council conspirators were beheaded for treason, but Rhaenyra spared her life "for the sake of our father, who loved you once."

On learning that Rhaenyra was planning campaigns against Aemond and Daeron, Alicent proposed splitting the realm: her son would keep the Stormlands, the Westerlands, and the Reach, ruling from Oldtown, while Rhaenyra held the rest. Her stepdaughter rejected the offer, saying her brothers had already stolen her birthright and her own children's lives. When Alicent answered that only bastard blood had been spilled, a furious Rhaenyra threatened to cut out her tongue.

Madness drove Helaena to leap from her window, and Alicent cursed her rival for it. Prince Aemond died fighting Daemon at the Battle over God's Eye; Daeron died at the second Battle of Tumbleton; and Alicent's grandson Maelor died at Bitterbridge.

After the Assault on the Dragonpit, Rhaenyra fled the capital. Alicent was present when Ser Perkin the Flea sat his own squire, Trystane, on the Iron Throne. After the fall of Dragonstone, Aegon II had the dragon Sunfyre devour Rhaenyra.

When Lord Borros Baratheon ended the Moon of the Three Kings, Alicent negotiated the betrothal of her surviving son to Cassandra Baratheon, and rejoiced to learn her granddaughter Jaehaera had reached Storm's End safely.

She distrusted Lord Corlys Velaryon, but Larys Strong won her over, and she reluctantly agreed to betroth Jaehaera to Rhaenyra's son, Aegon the Younger. Acting for Aegon II, Alicent publicly pardoned Corlys and restored him to the small council.

Back in King's Landing, Aegon II wanted revenge on those who had betrayed him, and Alicent encouraged it. Learning that Lady Rhaena had raised a dragon in the Vale, she feared the smallfolk would now see the Blacks as more legitimate; Aegon II tried and failed to claim one of his own. As the armies of the Boys and Lord Cregan Stark closed on the capital, conspirators poisoned the king, and Alicent was arrested by the Velaryons and taken to the dungeons.

In 131 AC, Rhaenyra's ten-year-old son ascended the throne as Aegon III. When the Boys reached the Red Keep they found Aegon II's body laid out before the Iron Throne, with Alicent weeping beside it.

During the Hour of the Wolf, the new Hand of the King, Lord Cregan Stark, put to death the men who had arrested her. Alicent opposed her granddaughter Jaehaera's marriage to the new king and stayed away from the ceremony.

Aegon III's regents could not agree on what to do with her: they feared she might curse the boy king or snatch a dagger from a guard. Nor could she be trusted alone with Jaehaera, after she once suggested over a meal that the girl cut Aegon's throat in his sleep. Since Alicent refused any reconciliation, Hand Ser Tyland Lannister settled for a gentle confinement, keeping her to her rooms in Maegor's Holdfast.

She spent her last year there, with only her septa, her maids, and her guards for company. She was given books and needlework, but her guards reported she wept more than she read or sewed, and one day tore all her clothes to pieces. By year's end she had begun talking to herself and had come to hate the color green.

A few days into 133 AC, winter fever reached King's Landing and Alicent fell ill. While most of the sick raved, she found a measure of clarity, confessed her sins, and told her septas she wished to see her children again: "I want to see my children again, and Helaena, my sweet girl... and King Jaehaerys. I'll read to him like I did when I was small." In her final hours she never once spoke of her husband Viserys. She died of the fever on a rainy night, during the Hour of the Wolf, and many took her death for a mercy.