Jeyne Arryn

She was born in 94 AC and was barely three years old when the Stone Crows killed her father and brothers, leaving her the sole heir to the Eyrie. She ruled the Vale from the cradle: Lord Yorbert Royce held her seat at the Great Council of 101 because she was still too young to attend.

Her right to rule was challenged three separate times by people of her own blood. Her cousin Ser Arnold Arryn, who liked to argue that women were unfit to govern, ended up locked in the Sky Cells, and she cut him and his line out of her will. When Runestone was left without an heir after Lady Rhea Royce's death, Rhea's widower, Prince Daemon Targaryen, came to the Vale to claim it. Jeyne told him he was not welcome and sent him away.

She summed it up herself: “Three times now my own kin have tried to replace me. My cousin Ser Arnold likes to say women are too weak to rule. I keep him in one of my sky cells, if you'd like to discuss it with him.”

When war broke out among the descendants of house Targaryen, Prince Jacaerys Velaryon flew his dragon to the Eyrie seeking Jeyne's support. The accounts disagree on how that meeting went: the jester Mushroom claims Jeyne demanded an intimate favor from the prince himself, while the True Telling describes a far more dignified negotiation, in which Jeyne, despite her contempt for Prince Daemon, pointed out that Queen Rhaenyra was an Arryn through her mother.

By that second account, she sealed her support with a line of her own: “In this world of men, we women must close ranks.” Her only price was that a dragonrider stay behind to guard the Eyrie from the dragons of the greens. Once that was granted, she and her men knelt before Jacaerys.

Late that year Joffrey Velaryon, Jacaerys's brother, reached Gulltown on his dragon Tyraxes to make good on the promise. Lady Rhaena Targaryen, Daemon's daughter, traveled with him carrying three dragon eggs. The following year Joffrey sailed on to King's Landing, then held by his mother, while Rhaena stayed behind in the Vale as Jeyne's ward.

In 130 AC Jeyne sent soldiers by sea to join Queen Rhaenyra's forces in the capital. When riots forced Rhaenyra to flee King's Landing, the queen sent ravens asking her supporters for help.

Jeyne answered that she would send men, but winter had already closed the mountain roads with snow; the only way through was by sea, out of Gulltown, and that meant either the Velaryon fleet or money to hire ships in Braavos and Pentos. Rhaenyra had neither: she had imprisoned Lord Corlys Velaryon and lost his house's support, and she had left the capital without a coin.

When the queen was forced to abandon Duskendale, Ser Harrold Darke urged her to shelter in the Vale with Jeyne instead. Rhaenyra chose Dragonstone, where her brother Aegon II captured and executed her.

Rhaenyra's death didn't change which side Jeyne was on. She raised fifteen hundred knights and eight thousand foot, and hired Braavosi ships to carry them south. She also had a dragon of her own by then: one of the eggs Rhaena had brought to the Vale had hatched, though it would be years before it could fight.

Once she had her fleet, she put ten thousand men under Lord Leowyn Corbray and his brother Ser Corwyn. The ships reached Duskendale and Maidenpool separately, shortly after King Aegon II was murdered, and were welcomed with celebrations.

Jeyne herself sailed from Gulltown with her ward Rhaena once King's Landing was under Lord Cregan Stark's control, arriving as the Hour of the Wolf was drawing to a close.

In 131 AC, with the new king Aegon III still a child, Jeyne was named one of the seven regents who would rule in his name. She didn't stay long in the capital: early the following year, bands of wildlings came down from the Mountains of the Moon to raid the Vale, and she had to return and lead its defense herself.

After Ser Tyland Lannister, the Hand of the King, died in 133 AC, Lord Unwin Peake took his place. Lord Manfryd Mooton asked that major decisions wait until Jeyne and Lord Royce Caron returned to King's Landing; Unwin replied that by leaving the capital, they had already given up their seats on the council.

Jeyne died late in 134 AC, brought down by a bad chill. She spent her last hours in the arms of Jessamyn Redfort, at the motherhouse of Maris on an island off Gulltown.

On her deathbed she dictated a will naming Ser Joffrey Arryn, a fourth cousin, as her heir. Her cousin Ser Arnold and his son, Ser Eldric Arryn, refused to accept it and pressed their own claim; so did Ser Isembard Arryn of Gulltown, leaning on his wealth. The Vale split, swords were drawn, and the Iron Throne had to step in.

Jeyne's wishes won out: Lord Joffrey Arryn ended up ruling the Vale. What she left behind was a contradictory picture of herself — Septon Eustace once described her as fond of the company of women, then took it back, while Mushroom, in his account, remembered a woman with an insatiable appetite for men. Not even the people who knew her could agree on who she was.