#( 🌹 ) > alicent & helaena > what they have done to my daughter.

[advitameternal]

AEGON, the first child she was forced to have for the throne. She remembered laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, waiting for her husband to be done. Aegon, who came without a fuss, at the price of her innocence. Too young to be a mother, but aware that the crown needed its heir — wasn’t it why Aemma died, bleeding in bed after Viserys ordered for her to be cut open? A terrible fate, one that made her shudder. The very same thing could have easily happened to her.

She wanted to be the kind of mother who could love her first child unconditionally, but her heart was shackled by the chains of her the weight of her responsibilities. Before she could even learn how to be a mother, she was pregnant again. With another child on the way, the fragile bond she hoped to forge with Aegon seemed to slip further from her grasp. Her duties multiplied, her time divided, and yet she tried. She held him, cradled him at night, and when he cried, sometimes, she did too.

Still, loving a baby was different than loving a future king, and while he was still small, while he still needed the comfort of her arms, she tried to give him that for as long as she could. The maids tried to tell her she should not hold Aegon while heavily pregnant but she refused to listen to them. For a little while, she could pretend that Aegon was just 𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒔, and did not belong to the throne.

Now the guilt is devouring her very soul, and she thinks about all the times she could have just hugged him.

HELAENA was born, a beautiful baby girl with shining eyes. Yet, this daughter did not belong to her either, she was Aegon’s. The future queen, the one who would have to take over this burden one day. A reflection of her own fate, of her own pain, but Helaena would be raised for it, and Alicent secretly swore to herself that she would never let her down. No matter what, she was always going to protect her little girl. A fussy baby, who never stopped crying. She spent hours trying to calm her down in front of a window, not giving her away to any nurse. It was her daughter, and she wanted to be a good mother, but all the time occupied with the incessant cries also took her further away from her first born.

She wishes she could cradle her like she used to and protect her from the horrors of the war.

AEMOND was more hers than her first children. A word she loathed: the spare. Perhaps it was why she protected him more, trying her hardest to shield him from mockeries, from feeling like he was not simply born in case Aegon died. Without a dragon, she knew her son could not find his place within this already torn family, and yet for a while, it made her closer to him. In his arms, he is more protected than on the back of a dragon. It was her he sought when in trouble, when his cousins – and brother – mocked him, and with him she felt needed, and loved.

He does not anymore, he is on his own path, one of destruction that she has no idea how to stop.

DAERON, her youngest, a precious child. Daeron, who clutched to her legs with strength, who whispered mama with a big smile on his face. He was forced to share a wet nurse with Jacaerys, her husband foolishly thinking it would be enlightened to create bonds, instead making the rivalry grow. Daeron, so charming, helpful, who wanted to make his mother proud. Their family was being torn apart by hatred, resentment growing in each of her son except him. So she sent him to Oldtown, so the atrocities of the court could not poison his beautiful son. A necessary sacrifice so he could grow up with no burden on his shoulders.

He does not reply to her letters anymore, the child she tried to protect, and she feels lost, more alone than ever, but also proud of the child who is much better than she could ever be.

There is no name for a child that is not born, that potentially did not exist, moon tea erasing it from existence before life could form. Ironically enough, it would have been the first child made with her consent, with her feeling pleasure, instead of staring at the ceiling, waiting for the deed to be over. The moon tea, a poignant reminder of the love she was both embracing and denying, a reminder of the life she could have had, if she had never married Viserys. Surely, it was foolish to feel love and longing for a child that did not exist, yearning for a phantom future that could never be.

[advitameternal]

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