Alys Rivers

The chroniclers of the Dance of the Dragons disagree on who Alys was before her name became linked to Harrenhal. Grand Maester Munkun and Septon Eustace agree that Lord Lyonel Strong fathered her in his youth with a woman never identified, but differ on everything else: Munkun holds that Alys had been a servant girl fond of potions, while Eustace calls her a woods witch.

The fool Mushroom gives yet another account: he places her a generation earlier, as wet-nurse to Lord Lyonel's children — and perhaps to Lyonel himself — and turns her into a sorceress who bathed in maidens' blood to stay young. The children Alys herself bore were stillborn. She was also said to have long black hair, to barely age, and to see visions in fire, like the red priests.

Alys was already past forty when the Dance of the Dragons reached Harrenhal, though she looked far younger. When the Greens retook the castle and Prince Aemond Targaryen ordered the remaining Strongs killed, he spared her and took her as his lover. When the prince tried to strangle the squire who brought news of a defeat, it was Alys who stepped in and saved the boy's life.

According to the fool Mushroom, Alys used potions and philtres to stoke Aemond's passion and also that of Ser Criston Cole, setting the two men against each other. When Lady Sabitha Frey seized an undefended Harrenhal, she found only Alys inside, who claimed to be carrying the prince's child; she escaped and drove Sabitha off when Aemond returned.

Alys rode with Aemond when he mounted Vhagar to face Daemon Targaryen over Harrenhal: by her account, she had seen in the fire where to find him. Before the clash with Caraxes, Aemond set her down with a last kiss, and Alys watched the battle from atop the tower.

In 132 AC, during the regency of Aegon III, word spread of a witch queen gathering outlaws at Harrenhal. Ser Tyland Lannister, the Hand of the King, sent Ser Regis Groves and Ser Damon Darry with a hundred men to retake the castle. The witch queen was Alys, who called herself Aemond's widow and put forward a boy as his son and the rightful king ahead of Aegon III.

Ser Regis died moments after insulting her — some say by sorcery, others by crossbowmen — and of Darry's hundred men only thirty-two returned. The next day Alys let a prisoner go with a message: she had cursed him to die if anyone laughed at his story, and warned that anyone who approached without swearing her loyalty would die too. The man, who swore he had seen a dragon, drowned within moments when someone laughed.

Lord Unwin Peake gave no credit to the talk of dragons and sorcery, and the regents concluded a larger force would be needed; the arrival of the winter fever put those plans on hold.