Tyanna of the Tower
Tyanna
Tyanna was a Pentoshi dancer who arrived at King's Landing in Queen Alys Harroway's retinue and rose to become the third wife of King Maegor I Targaryen. Known as the King's Raven, she served as his whisperer, the one who brought him everything murmured in every corner of the city.
Her name became bound to the most feared reign of the Targaryen dynasty, that of a king who ruled the Seven Kingdoms yet was said to be ruled himself by three women: his mother and his two wives.
Chapter 1
From Dancer to Queen
42 ACBooks only
Nobody could ever settle where she truly came from: some called her the bastard daughter of a Pentoshi magister, others just a tavern dancer who worked her way up into the city's highest courtesan circles. She was also rumored to dabble in sorcery, alchemy, and poison — a reputation that never left her.
She arrived at King's Landing in Queen Alys Harroway's retinue, nearly a month after King Maegor came out of the Trial of Seven gravely wounded and comatose. Queen Visenya dismissed his maesters and septons and put him in her care instead; by morning Maegor had woken with enough strength to storm the Sept of Remembrance. After his victory at the Great Fork of the Blackwater in 42 AC, the king declared he would make her his third wife. Grand Maester Myros was the only one who openly objected, and paid for it with his head; a dozen septons had to be executed before one agreed to marry them among the ruins of the burned sept.
Chapter 2
The King's Raven
43 ACBooks only
It was said that King Maegor ruled the Seven Kingdoms, but that three women ruled him: his mother Visenya and his wives Alys and Tyanna, the last of whom kept watch over the court's whispers. They called her the King's Raven, for her hair and for her trade, and claimed every spider and rat in King's Landing came to her by night to inform on anyone foolish enough to speak against the king.
When Prince Aegon rose against his uncle in 43 AC, it was Tyanna who warned Maegor that the dowager queen Alyssa had reached out to Storm's End, the Eyrie, Winterfell and Casterly Rock for support, though the great lords of Westeros preferred to wait and see who won before committing. Forewarned, the king met his nephew and defeated him beneath the Gods Eye.
Chapter 3
Years of Blood
44–45 ACBooks only
In 44 AC Queen Alys lost the child she carried, born deformed. The king had Grand Maester Desmond and the septas and midwives who attended the birth put to death. It was then that Tyanna came to Maegor accusing Alys of having lain with other men to conceive, with her father Lord Lucas Harroway's blessing. Enraged, the king hurled the executed maester's head at her and called her a jealous, barren witch; she answered with a list of twenty names, of which only two confessed under torture. Alys was handed over to Tyanna, who tortured her for a fortnight before the king's own eyes.
She was also given the task of torturing Prince Viserys after his mother, the dowager queen Alyssa, fled the capital with her younger children; the prince died after nine days of suffering. The following year, when the king left the city to deal with what remained of the Faith Militant, he left Tyanna and his Hand, Lord Edwell Celtigar, in charge of King's Landing.
Chapter 4
Betrayal and Death
46–48 ACBooks only
By 46 AC, with Queens Alys and Ceryse Hightower both dead, Tyanna was the king's only remaining wife, though he no longer shared her bed and kept her only as his mistress of whisperers. The next year Maegor took three more wives in search of an heir, among them his niece Rhaena; it was Tyanna who found the daughters Rhaena had hidden away and brought them before her mother on the wedding day to secure her cooperation.
She was said to have offered a fertility draught to the new queen Jeyne Westerling, who conceived soon after, as did Queen Elinor Costayne; both lost their children at three months, deformed just as Alys's had been. This time the king was certain where the evil came from, and had Tyanna seized. Under torture she confessed to poisoning her rival queens so they would birth monsters. Maegor killed her himself in 48 AC, cutting out her heart with his own sword and feeding it to his dogs; even dead, she had her last revenge when Elinor gave birth to a stillborn, deformed child.