Joanna Lannister

Joanna was the daughter of Jason Lannister and Marla Prester. In 259 AC she traveled to King's Landing for the coronation of Jaehaerys II and stayed on at court in service to his daughter, Princess Rhaella, where she became friends with the Princess of Dorne, another of the future queen's maidens.

When Aerys took the throne in 262 AC, rumors spread of a liaison between him and Joanna, first as a secret lover and later, some claimed, as his acknowledged favorite. None of it was ever proven, and Grand Maester Pycelle flatly denied it.

In 263 AC Joanna married her cousin Tywin, and those present remembered that he smiled that day, something almost no one had ever seen him do. The celebration turned sour during the bedding, when King Aerys, one of the guests, took liberties with the bride that went well past a jest.

Rhaella put up with her husband's infidelities, but this was different, and soon after she decided to send Joanna away from court. Joanna left for Casterly Rock and rarely returned to King's Landing.

At Casterly Rock the marriage flourished in a way that surprised those who knew them. Joanna became the advisor Tywin trusted above all others, so much that people across the realm said Tywin ruled the Seven Kingdoms, but that in his own house he was ruled by his lady wife.

In 266 AC the twins Cersei and Jaime were born. Aerys asked that the family move to court, but Lord Tytos died that same year and Tywin had to stay to govern the west; the following year the king himself, along with his son Rhaegar and half the court, settled at Casterly Rock for a full year.

In 272 AC, during the tourney marking the tenth anniversary of his reign, a drunken Aerys humiliated Joanna in front of her husband and the court with a remark about her body after nursing the twins. Tywin tried to resign as Hand the next day; Aerys refused to let him.

Back at Casterly Rock, a maid found Jaime and Cersei in a situation Joanna found alarming, and in response she moved the boy to rooms on the other side of the castle and warned both children she would tell their father if it happened again. Soon after, she wrote to the Princess of Dorne inviting her to the castle along with her children Oberyn and Elia.

As Oberyn would later tell it, the plan was to arrange a marriage between the twins and the Dornish siblings, with Sunspear as the destination for whichever child was chosen. But by the time the Martells reached Casterly Rock, Joanna had already died giving birth to her third child, Tyrion, and nothing came of the plan.

Tywin rarely spoke of Joanna, but her death left him devastated and he never remarried. His brother Gerion once said the best part of Tywin died with her, and it was Kevan who ended up taking the place Joanna left as his most trusted advisor.

Barristan Selmy would later say that Aerys's desire for Joanna was a constant source of friction between the king and his Hand. Years afterward, during the siege of Riverrun, Jaime would dream of a woman he barely recognizes, who asks him if he will forget her the way he forgot his father, and who weeps when he tells her the future Tywin wanted for his children — a knight, a queen — has come true.