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House Plumm
"Come Try Me"
Colors: Gold and Purple
Sigil: Three Purple Circles on Gold
Seat: Name Unknown
"This old Plumm was a lord, though,... begging your royal pardon, he had himself a cock six foot long"
House Plumm is a noble house in the Westerlands most famous for the very brief marriage between Lord Ossifer Plumm and Elaena Targaryen.
Who do you think was Viserys Plumm's father?
Aegon IV
Ossifer Plumm
For fun. Since the rumors that Aegon was the father of Daena's son Daemon were true, do you think the rumors that he was the father of Elaena's son Viserys were true?
Vote and feel free to leave a comment with your argument if you like.
For those who don't know the story: Elaena Targaryen married Ossifer Plumm, but he died on their wedding night. Months later (the material we have does not say whether there were eight or nine or ten...) she gave birth to a son, Viserys, and said he was Plumm's. Since she was quite intimidating (a la Genna Lannister), no one dared to disagree in front of her, but behind her back everyone was convinced that the father was her cousin, Aegon IV, unless Ossifer had a six-foot "tool" to impregnate his wife from underground. Aegon was also suspected of being the father of Elaena's older sister Daena's bastard son, and that turned out to be true.
Lord Ossifer & Lord Viserys Plumm
“Her first marriage was in 176 AC, to the wealthy but aged Ossifer Plumm, who is said to have died while consummating the marriage. She conceived, however, for Lord Plumm did his duty before he died.”
I'm pondering Elaena Targaryen's marriages and I keep wondering... why those men especially? Why did the King decide for Ronnel Penrose and Ossifer Plumm as potential husbands? Any theory?
See this post re: Plumm
sorry if this has been asked before. Why did elaena marry ossifer plumm? Sorry for bad grammar Thanks for the question, Anon. Your grammar i
And this post re: Penrose
Kind of going off that bastard ask you received, why do you think (so far as we know) Elaena Targaryen was never treated poorly despite havi
Kind of going off that bastard ask you received, why do you think (so far as we know) Elaena Targaryen was never treated poorly despite having twin bastards from her affair with Alyn Velaryon? If she had been shunned at all, that seems like something that would have been pointed out, but instead the fact that she had bastards is merely a passing mention. Did Daeron prohibit negative talk about her? Was she left alone because she was so beneficial in her de facto position as Master of Coin?
Wellllll… you have to consider the timeline, it helps give context.
Princess Elaena Targaryen was freed from 10 years of imprisonment in the Maidenvault in 171AC, at age 21, after her brother Baelor’s death. It’s not certain when she began her affair with Lord Alyn Velaryon (nor whether his wife Baela Targaryen was still alive at the time), but she agreed to marry Lord Ossifer Plumm in 176 AC, a year after Alyn was formally declared lost at sea. Elaena’s cousin Aegon IV became king in 172 AC.
So I’d say it’s most likely that Elaena and Alyn’s affair primarily took place during the early years of Aegon’s reign. And after King Viserys II’s sudden and mysterious death, and then with Aegon the Unworthy on the throne… going through one mistress after another (the Bracken scandal was in 172 AC), sleeping with every maiden and whore and married woman in King’s Landing (that the gold cloaks would bring to him)… quarreling with his son Daeron, accusing his sister-wife Queen Naerys of adultery… attempting to start a war with Dorne in 174 AC… Well, with all that going on, a love affair between a princess and the hero Lord Admiral Oakenfist probably wouldn’t have even been noticed.
Also, this might be a bit ficcy, but I’d bet that Elaena only discovered she was pregnant after Alyn set off on his last voyage. She had hoped to marry him, probably on his return– it may have been that they were even formally betrothed before he left. I’d think a major reason she held out for a year after he was declared dead was not just the hope that her greatest love would return to her, but also the hope that their marriage would post-facto legitimize their children Jon and Jeyne. Alas, it was not to be.
But note that it was Aegon who insisted that Elaena marry the elderly and wealthy Ossifer Plumm. You can imagine the pressure he was bringing to bear, as she was unmarried with twin bastard children… maybe Aegon was the one who shut down any potential negative talk, for her cooperation? Maybe he even offered a carrot of legitimization? Also note that it was Aegon who almost certainly fathered Viserys Plumm on Elaena after Ossifer died on their wedding night… and while it’s been speculated that Aegon was “comforting a widow”, or that she was tempted because Aegon was still handsome and not at all gross yet… maybe it was a little more hinky than that. Maybe there was pressure there, too. :/ And considering that the infant Viserys was used by Aegon to take the Plumm wealth and lands away from the more definitely legitimate heirs… well, whether Elaena had a real choice in the matter is something, knowing GRRM, that I’d be hesitant to say.
But after that extremely brief marriage and the birth of Viserys, it was at least another 7 years before Elaena married again, to Ronnel Penrose, King Daeron II’s master of coin. (Daeron came to the throne in 184 AC.) So in case you’re wondering why Ronnel might have been willing to marry a woman so touched by scandal (or even why Ossifer was), you have to remember that it had been a pretty long time since those scandals. Also, note that Elaena was really the only marriageable princess the Targaryens had to offer. Rhaena and Baela of Pentos (if widowed) would have been in their late 60s if not dead already, Naerys was dead, Daena was almost certainly dead (as she drops out of the narrative after Daemon’s birth, therefore GRRM=“she died”), Rhaena was a septa, and Daenerys was only 12. (Also Daeron was setting up the Dorne betrothal/treaty with her.) And a princess is a princess – and Elaena grew more beautiful as she grew older, per GRRM. When Daeron requested the match, I doubt Ronnel made even a peep of protest. And even though the marriage was by royal command, Elaena probably found Daeron’s requests far more pleasant than Aegon’s.
So, for the years of her second marriage, Elaena was entirely publicly respectable. She had four perfectly legitimate children. (And after her seventh child, she said if 7 was good enough for the gods, it was good enough for her, and stopped.) Ronnel had a perfectly respectable job as master of coin. (Never mind that Elaena’s brilliant mathematical mind was doing all the work.) And Daeron’s court was such a change from the decadence of Aegon the Unworthy’s, I doubt anyone would have snarked at Elaena’s (ancient) history with Alyn. Even Elaena’s son Jon Waters became a famous knight during this time. (He would have been about 12-16 at Daenerys’s wedding tourney in 187 AC – the final tilt was won by Baelor Breakspear over Daemon Blackfyre, but I bet Jon performed pretty well.)
By the time Elaena was widowed again, I sincerely doubt anyone spoke negatively about her at all. I mean, there was Bittersteel and Bloodraven and Shiera’s triangle, then Daemon’s rebellious rumblings, then the First Blackfyre Rebellion – the court gossips would have had much more interesting things to talk about than Elaena. Her romance and marriage with Michael Manwoody was likely a quiet love of 40-somethings (he played the harp for her, gosh) – perhaps not the kind of thing singers call passionate, without that touch of scandal they enjoy writing about, but just the love she needed after all that time.
Anyway, to sum up – even though a noblewoman having children out of wedlock is normally a huge problem (let alone a princess), Elaena Targaryen’s scandal with Alyn Velaryon was probably overshadowed by Aegon the Unworthy’s far greater scandals at the time. By the time his reign was over, everything was so far in the past, and she was so necessary for marriage diplomacy and her skills with money, that none of it was likely to ever get in the way of her success. I hope that helps!
Do you think there's any chance that Ossifer Plumm actually fathered Viserys Plumm? I think the Aegon IV thing is most likely right, but hey, still curious.
Well, there’s a chance… but the whole story about Ossifer Plumm having a penis six feet long evidently means that Elaena Targaryen gave birth over 9 months after he died on their wedding night. (Reportedly from seeing her naked.) That is, when she claimed that Plumm was the father, wits joked that if that were true, he’d have to have a penis long enough for her to conceive while he was in the grave.
So, while it’s slightly possible that Elaena simply had a longer pregnancy than normal (though it must have been highly atypically long for such suspicions to be raised) and Ossifer was indeed the father, most likely the father was someone else, most likely Aegon IV per his known behavior and probably whatever observed closeness he and his cousin Elaena had after her elderly husband died in such a traumatic way.
BTW, this is relevant to current-times ASOIAF, and not just through Brown Ben Plumm’s stories about his extremely well-endowed ancestor and his “two drops” of Targaryen blood leading to his affinity for dragons. It’s also the reason why the Lannister treaty with the Westerlings bans Jeyne from marrying for two full years – because even if she gave birth a year after Robb’s death, some might still claim the baby was his child, but two years is too much for even that kind of miracle. And it’s also the reason why Cersei didn’t want Tommen and Margaery sleeping in the same bed after their wedding:
“…Surely we can agree about the wedding night? A man should not sleep apart from his wife on the night of their wedding. It is ill luck for their marriage if they do.”Someday I will teach you the meaning of “ill luck,” the queen had vowed. “Margaery may share Tommen’s bedchamber for that one night,” she had been forced to say. “No longer.”“Your Grace is so gracious,” the Queen of Thorns had replied, and everyone had exchanged smiles.Cersei’s fingers were digging into Jaime’s arm hard enough to leave bruises. “I need eyes inside that room,” she said.“To see what?” he said. “There can be no danger of a consummation. Tommen is much too young.”“And Ossifer Plumm was much too dead, but that did not stop him fathering a child, did it?”
–AFFC, Cersei III
That is, if Margaery became pregnant during her marriage to Tommen, unless there were witnesses that they had never been together to consummate the marriage, she could still claim that he was the father even though he was only 9 years old, just as Elaena claimed Ossifer Plumm fathered her son even though he was already in his grave at the time. Hope that helps!
Art by Jota Saraiva
So, What Was the Big Deal About Viserys Plumm Anyway?
As I begin work on a little series I plan to call Black As Sin, which will deal with the Blackfyres, I find myself considering the man responsible for the whole mess, the appropriately numbered Aegon IV. (Appropriately numbered as he was double the shit Aegon II was.) And this leads me to the story of poor Lord Ossifer Plumm, destined to have the strangest jokes about his penis size circulated after his death.
For modern Westerosi (and indeed much of the audience), the tale of Plumm is essentially an amusing joke, an old man made a post mortem cuckold with the resulting bastard raised as his heir. However, for contemporaries, the matter was probably a great deal less amusing--and not simply because of the Seven Kingdoms obsession with bloodlines. Because as one looks, one realizes what looks like a happy little sex romp out of the Decameron is infinitely more sordid. World of Ice and Fire mentions Aegon cheating the Plumms in this matter somehow--a little discussion of medieval and Renaissance wards will show how he probably did it, and illustrate what a big deal this was.
As the combination of disease, war and getting executed that played such a big role at the time had a tendency to leave many children sans parents, dealing with orphans from prominent families was an important matter. (Orphans from less prominent families were, naturally, on their own.) Of course most such families tended to have their own arrangements for this occurrence, but these not infrequently failed leaving everyone in a bad way. And so, bit by bit, the crown took it over, appointing people to manage the affairs of these unfortunates. Which swiftly proved to be very lucrative--remember, these were generally property owners--something kings like Henry VII and Henry VIII came to use quite skilfully to enrich the Royal Treasury. Very soon, families were going out of their way to avoid having their parentless children named “wards”, and rather frequently failing. Thus was something that had begun as charity became a form of highway robbery.
Now, with this as our model, the tale of Ossifer Plumm comes into sharp relief. The marriage is held, Lord Plumm dies on his wedding night, and suddenly, Elaena Targaryen announces she is pregnant with his child. Ten months later, little Viserys Plumm comes into the world, and is promptly declared a royal ward by Aegon IV, who then proceeds to enjoy the income of the Plumm lands in the name of his little cuckoo, (possibly appointing one of his cronies to run the lands until Viserys comes of age) while Ossifer Plumm’s actual relatives are left out in the cold.
I’m going to bet that Ossifer Plumm’s mighty manhood isn’t quite as funny anymore. Now imagine living in a court where things like this happen all the time.
That’s life under Aegon IV.
