#aegon and aemond are supposed to love each other!!!! the greens were a family

[maarigolds]

When the show is good but they keep butchering your favorite characters from the book

[iamyourdailydoseofbi]

DON'T TOUCH WHAT IS MINE. ( HOTD x Reader )

author note: I wanted to do HOTD x Greek Myths cause it's fun. If I get enough like or requests I'l do a HOTD x Greek Myths book on wattpad. pairing: Jealous! Aemond Targaryen x Noble Wife! Reader prompt: Aemond contemplates murder. word count: 1, 000+ words

You were supposed to marry Aegon, a way to secure allies in the North for when Aegon took the Iron Throne. But, when his Mother planned on marrying him to Helaena. Aemond swiftly made his move, knowing that the loss of an ally would upset his Mother. It was supposed to be only for duty. You were supposed to be his duty to his Mother and family. But, of course the Gods were cruel and he fell for you. Hard and fast. He practically fell flat on his face for you, like someone had punched him in the groin with a club named ‘love’. 

You were just so perfect. You were a proper Lady in the Court, weaving your way through politics with a cunning grace. You smiled and happily listened to Helaena as she rambled on about whatever popped in her mind, never judging her. You played with Helaena and Aegon’s children, always so patient with the toddler’s. You were cordial, yet stern, with Aegon⎯keeping him in line for the sake of his family when you could. You understood the want for revenge after the loss of his eye. You were just so perfect and kind. He hated how much he fell in love with you.

Watching you chat with some Lord from the Reach, Aemond grits his teeth, shifting around in place. He wasn’t particularly thrilled about you speaking to that Lord, but he would not tell you nor drag you away. He knew that you had some ambition or plan behind speaking to the Lord, one he did not know yet but knew that you would tell him soon enough. You were smart like that. 

Looking you over for any sign for him to interfere, he inspects your appearance with a subtle look of love. Your gown was more simple in feature, but a similar green to his Mother’s. Your hair is decorated with pearl and gold dragon hair clips. Your fingers decorated in rings, the sapphire one shining a particular bright. A smug smirk spreads on his lips at the sight of the ring.

“Yes, my lord husband, Prince Aemond is everything that I could ask for.” You nod, “I am content, actually I am more than content Lord Wormwood.”

“I am happy to hear that, your grace. But, I am just suggesting that…should you ever find yourself in need of some company whilst visiting the Reach⎯” Lord Wormwood suggests, making his blood boiling. 

“No, now I must return to my husband’s side.” You cut him off, eyes shifting away.

“Just a moment longer⎯” Lord Wormwood tries again, attempting to keep the conversation going.

Watching you straighten up your back and fiddle with your wedding ring, he instantly catches the subtle signal from you. You needed him. Holding his head up a little higher,  Aemond saunters over to you, attempting to hide his slightly faster walking pace than usual. Reaching your side in an instant, he gently places his hand on your hip, tucking you into his side.

“Aemond.” You whispers, a subtle glimmer of appreciation in your eyes. 

“I do believe that my wife and I have other more important matters than you, Lord Wormwood.” Aemond cuts in, his voice cutthroat. 

“I, uh, I well..” Lord Wormwood stutters out, shocked by the sight of Aemond lurking over you like some kind of protective dragon.

“Goodbye, Lord Wormwood.” You nod, dragging him away.

Feeling the tension within the room grow with each second, you softly intertwined your hands with Aemond, to prevent him from reaching for his blade. Tightening your grip on him, you start to drag Aemond away, knowing that he’d make some comment or at worst do something to Lord Wormwood. The last thing you needed and wanted was for a fight to erupt because some stupid old man couldn’t take a hint that you were married. 

“Come, come, Aemond. I am sure Helaena will be happy for us to join her.” You lie, tugging at him a little harder.

“Yes, let us go, my wife.” He nods, his voice sharp.

“Come, Aemond.” You grit your teeth, “Let us go, now.”

“Yes.” Aemond glares down the squirming Lord, like he hoped that he would burst into flames.

Cringing at the tension in the air, you tug him a little harder, struggling as he was practically glued to his spot. Sighing as he refuses to move, you press a kiss onto his cheek, using it as a way to soften him just enough to drag him away. Smirking as he instantly melts like a dragon burning a piece of wood, you drag him forcefully, weaving your way through the sea of Courtiers. 

“You kissed me.” He mumbles, a faint hum of pink on his cheeks.

“I did.” 

“You kissed me, in public.” He repeats, “You have never done that before.”

“Yes, well, I cannot exactly carry you over my shoulder to stop you from killing that man. So a kiss is what it was.” You counters back, a hint of wit in your voice.

Looking over his face in an attempt to see his reaction, he doesn’t really display any emotions, just this flatness which was typical of him. You liked to think he was born with a stone face and that Alicent had mistaken him for a statue instead of a babe. Cocking a brow up at the lack of anything from him, you softly squeeze his hand, attempting to get his attention or something from him. 

“I do not like him.” He grumbles, the disdain clear in his voice.

“Oh, really? I had no clue that you disliked him.” You jest, rolling your eyes playfully. 

“Do not jest. Tis’ not a jesting manner.” He sulks, “He propositioned you to visit his bedchambers.”

“I know, tis’ why I had you infer. I do not intend to share a bed with any other man than you. So do not even think of entertaining any doubt’s, Aemond.” You argue, quickly dismissing any doubt he may have.

He goes quiet for the longest time. It almost looked like he was actually accepting your words without any possible argument or disagreement. Relaxing for a moment, you watch as he licks his bottom lip, his eye narrowing for a moment.

“Let me kill him.” He mumbles, almost like he was begging you to allow it.

“Not in public.” You argue, not taking him seriously.

“That can be arranged.” He smiles, a rare smile tugging at his lips. 

Shaking your head with a gentle scoff, you look over his face for a moment, seeing that he was being serious. The look on your face shifting into one of annoyance. Whilst other men would have lashed out and caused a scene, Aemond was cunning and waited. Like a snake hiding in the tall grass. Smacking his arm softly, he lets out a soft snort, a cheeky little grin spreading on his face. 

“No.”

“Fine.” He mumbles, rushing away from you. “I will not be the one to do it.”

“Aemond Targaryen, don’t you dare.” You scold, chasing after him.

---

@lovelykhaleesiii

@fragileheartbeats

@danytar

@nightvers

@zaldritzosrose

[beware-of-pity]

You believe me like a god (I destroy you like I am) I

Masterlist

- Next

Jacaerys Velaryon x reader

Summary:

Your family was dead; everyone had been killed. The war had been fought, many had died, and the victor had ascended the throne in the name of Rhaenyra Targaryen, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men. Lady of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm. Everyone was dead…..except you, your mother and your little niece, Jaehaera.

TW: Self-hatred/Implied Self Harm. Complicated family relations. The reader is a Targtower.

A/N: This is a blend of both the show and the book, so if most characterisations (mostly the greens) don't add up to you, it's because of that. (since the show has been....something, as of late). Also, Silverwing is your dragon, for story's sake.

Cross-posted on Ao3

Chapter I: I fell in love with a war (nobody told me it ended)

Your family was dead; everyone had been killed. 

The war had been fought, many had died, and the victor had ascended the throne in the name of Rhaenyra Targaryen, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men. Lady of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm. 

Everyone was dead…..except you, your mother and your little niece, Jaehaera.

After the Blacks captured the capital and killed your brother Aegon and the rest of your family, your sister ruled the Seven Kingdoms unchallenged. Prince Jacaerys, her son and your nephew, was named the prince of Dragonstone in front of the whole of the realm. Her other sons were given high places of honour at her court, her family was praised and became the subject of songs and tales through the realm, while you and your remaining family became royal afterthoughts. 

Rhaenyra had been unsure of what to do with you when she had taken hold of the capital. At the time, you had the comfort of your older sister Helaena, who you comforted and held most of the time, especially after she had fallen into the grief of madness at the death of her eldest son. She had allowed you relative freedom, more than your mother was allowed, as she had been confined and chained to the dungeons of the keep, gaining her the name ‘The Queen in Chains’. In her ways, you suppose, she had tried to get close to you in an effort to reconcile the break the war had caused to your family, and despite how you had never seen her in the same way your mother had all her life, you remained unresponsive to her approaches. The wounds were too deep, and you weren’t sure you could forgive what had taken place the night Blood and Cheese stormed the castle, even with the knowledge that she had not been the one to orchestrate the siege but rather your uncle Daemon, in the name of revenge for the death of your nephew Lucerys. 

But when Helaena had thrown herself off the highest window of the keep, losing her life after getting impaled by the spikes surrounding it, Rhaenyra had given up hope for reconciliation.  Helaena was the closest family member you had, after your mother, never properly gettin' along with your brothers, except for Daeron. Safe to say, her death had broken you and left you unresponsive to each news of peril coming to your faction. 

When the news of Aemond’s death at the end of your uncle Daemon reached you, you did not shed a tear, and when Daeron died you said you had no time for them. They would be futile, tears did not reach the dead, after all. 

Amidst bloodshed and warmongering, there was but one person you allowed in the solitude your life had taken hold of; Your nephew, Jacaerys. 

It was he who had dismissed the attempts of his mother’s council of sending you away to Old Town to become a Septa or making you a lady in waiting to his step-sisters Baela and Rhaena, who they too took no comfort in the notion. You were their prisoner, yes, but no one must forget that you and Jaehaera were their family, of royal blood, and with peace now upon the realm, proving discord lingering still was not how the House of the Dragon would rebuild itself.  

Jacaerys had convinced them to keep you hostage, using you to keep in line the great houses that had fought alongside the greens - but that was a notion he used only for his allies and councillors. You were more than just a hostage for him, always having been. You were his aunt, one he cherished so. 

Since you were the same age, you had grown up together. You shared a wet nurse in infancy and were often taught your lessons by the same measter. 

You never shared the same dislike your brothers had for him and his brothers, and even so, you thought the notion of Jacaerys stealing Aegon and Aemond’s birthrights, which they and your mother believed in, to be utterly ridiculous. He couldn’t steal something that was not theirs in the first place; he got what he had from his mother, your sister, who had rights over the iron throne long before they were even born. To say you were heartbroken when your sister had taken residence on Dragonstone, taking her children with her, would be an understatement. You were more pained when the next time you saw him was the same night Aemond lost his eye. 

Aemond played the helpless victim of a deliberate attack by your nephews and cousins in public as he spouted devious words about them in private while gloating at his great accomplishment, claiming Vaghar for the greens. Words you tried to reprimand him for, which, in turn, turned his anger to you. It’s not that you didn’t condone his lost eye, but for him to be rid of guilt and his part in the ordeal always ticked you in the wrong way. His anger had always been his least strong suit, narcissism only growing from there, thinking himself invincible, which only resulted in him making rush decisions that gained him but a brief advantage, such as marching to Harrenhall and leaving King’s Landing undefended, giving the perfect opening for your sister to fly and claim as her own. 

You had been among the few asking for Aegon to send for peace. The damage was done, the throne was usurped, though everyone refused to call it so, and you couldn’t do anything about that. When Helaena suggested peace terms, she did so with your support as well as that of your mother and grandmaster Orwyle.

 But Aemond had to go and ruin everything. 

You thought of escaping then, wanting to bring Helaena and her little ones along, flying on Silverwing and Dreamfyre to Dragonstone, bending the knee and seeking protection before Rhaenyra’s wrath befell your family. But how could you? Helaena and you had been separated from Rhaenyra since you two were young, occasionally seeing her when her family visited King’s Landing, you didn’t know the woman or how she would react to you showing up at her doorsteps. 

Besides, you two had been securely under Alicent's thumb for your whole lives, and the thought of your mother thinking you a traitor filled you with panic. You couldn’t betray her or make her believe you had. You and Helaena had been robbed of autonomy your entire lives, but you did try to help Rhaenyra when you two could. So, when Helaena was punished alongside Aegon for something Aemond had done, you felt all the more guilty for not having done more for your siblings. 

If before you had been worried about losing everything, now that you had nothing, you spent your days mute, not doing anything. When your mother was allowed to visit, you turned her away, not wanting to hear of her maddening and secretive plans to place you or Jaehaera on the throne. 

You were told she mostly cried, ripped her old gowns and threw the books given to her out of the windows of her room. You cared for her still, but not enough to deal with her when you too were not doing any better. 

You were not allowed outside, in case you tried an escape, unless Jacaerys or a group of guards accompanied you. You were not allowed to dine with everyone in the great hall and most of all you were deprived of Silverwing. The last you saw or rode her was before Rhaenyra had taken King’s Landing…..and how long ago was that? A year….two? You couldn’t tell….you had lost perception of time.

Jacaerys always proved courteous and kind, just as he had before the war. Even when you were stripped of your room and placed in a smaller one, your staff diminished to only a few trusted maids of his mother, and your gowns relegated to simple, black ones, he always made sure you had everything you needed, which you were grateful for. What he couldn’t give you though, was the thing that pained you the most. 

He brought you books, needles and points to pass your time, and kept you company when he was free of his duties. But it was all futile, nothing could quelch the sting of pain in your heart. 

You wandered the halls like a ghost, the black of your gowns making you blend in the darkness. Some say you were dead inside or having died the day your sister had. Nevertheless, Jacaerys’ attempts at bringing light to your life never ceased. He brought you flowers which you kept in vases in your room, but that with barely any light or air in the smallness of it all, died by the days. As so, he’d let you plant your flowers in the gardens of the Keep. Even though you barely spoke after the death of your entire family, taking care of the flowers made you happy.

You were allowed to bring Jaehaera with you, the little girl taking to you as if you were her mother, and if you were mute, she was another case altogether. Jaehaera was born tiny and slow to grow. She did not cry or smile or act as babies normally would. Her lack of emotion continued as she grew older. She is sweet but a simple girl in mind.  She loved the flowers you planted, which you encouraged for her to pick and take with her to her room.

You two were often asked to attend court, to remember others of your presence and what they meant. Jaehaera would clutch your hand as you held hers, standing as close to you as she could and more so she could hide behind the panels of your skirt. Those days were those she dreaded most; she hated being looked at, especially by so many people, but your presence beside her gave her enough strength and courage to withstand the ordeal. 

Those were also the days you had begun begging your sister to allow you for things. You would kneel, if necessary, in front of the iron throne which she sat upon, asking her in front of the eyes of the court to allow you for simple things, the simple pleasures you had long forgotten the taste of, such as one more gown for you or Jaehaera, the companionship of more maids, or for you to see your dragon.

She would accept every request of yours except for the last, she never accepted the last. But you held the same stubbornness every Targaryen was born with, one she had, and saw in her children too. Your requests became more frequent, sometimes, they were frantic, at times, you cried, while at others, you just asked with the monotony of a dead woman. How low of you, some thought, a royal princess, the daughter of a King long gone, having to beg her sister on her knees. 

While it pained Rhaenyra to turn you down, the pain you felt was one she would never understand. Jacaerys would watch from the sideline all the time, knowing he couldn’t interject with his mother’s word, but none of it made it easier for him to see you so torn down by the reality which you now lived in.

So, one night, he went to his mother, suggesting the one thing he could only come up with.

“Let me take her on Vermax” he had said “if you’re worried about her flying away, with me beside her and on a dragon not of her own, she surely will have nowhere else to go”

Rhaenyra couldn’t object to her son’s words, as so, she relented, though not without a few warnings and orders on her part, which Jacaerys was more than happy to relent to. 

At last, when he came to your room the morning after, he did so with an air so light, it startled you. 

“You wouldn’t mind dressing in your riding fit, would you?” He asked, taking you by slight surprise 

“What do you mean?” You didn’t know if he was making fun of you, and if he were you thought he was doing so in a really bad taste

“I want you to come ride with me” he walked closer, taking your hand in his “Fly on Vermax with me. I know you wish to take to the skies, and Mother has agreed to my request,” he said.

Vermax was small, having grown only to the size of a middle-sized dragon. When you sat upon his saddle, which was tight for two people, such as you and Jacaerys, you only reminisced about Silverwing’s leathery one. Only having to hang around the handle, not being able to pull at the reins or command the dragon, only deepened your yearning for the many rides you had taken in the past and the freedom to do so again. 

You had thanked him, but the gratitude felt hollow when your heart ached so much, and perhaps he had seen through you too. You felt guilty for complaining about such an opportunity and the rarity you had been given. You should be grateful, but what was here to be grateful for when you were a caged bird, in a golden cage, whose wings were ripped from its body? 

You had become hot-tempered, wishing harm on others and yourself, cursing in despair, and picking up one of your mother’s most destroying traits, her nail picking. Your cuticles were often raw and bloody from you either picking at or chewing at them. You did the same to your lips, pulling at the dead skin, drawing blood, the sting making you hiss and following you for days.

You ordered for the curtains of your room not to be drawn, preferring the glow of candles and the scent of incense, even during the day. You visited the sept, the royal one in the Red Keep, not the Grand one in the city, always followed closely by your Septa and guard, lighting candles for the lost souls of your family and for those that had fought for you.

You picked at your food, often leaving it untouched; you had no fondness for meat and mead, leaving you famished and pushing down food when your stomach was begging you for substance. 

Eating yourself alive was the last thing you thought you would be doing if you were to look into your future long ago, but now even the feel of your skin made your fingers crawl over it with the intent to rip and tear apart. How hypocritical of you to send your mother away because of her descent into madness when you were carrying yourself down your own. 

But you weren’t mad, you were unhappy, and unhappy people often were also depressed, which you were.

You only wanted to be happy, to be free, to do as you pleased after years of having been conditioned to the bids of others. First, it was your mother’s, and now they were Rhaenyra’s and her family's. You dream of a time when you could live for the simple pleasure of living, not someone else’s life but your own, not the one others envisioned for you but the one you dreamt for yourself. To breathe the open air, to walk where you wished, whenever you wished so. 

Was it so wrong of you?

The gods are cruel, that’s why they’re gods, and the curse of your family being usurpers now laid all on you. You suffered from the sins which your mother perpetuated, from those her own father sowed the seeds he planted with his ambitions in the dirt laid and worked by your ancestors. You held the rage of all those women before you, your mother’s, her mother’s too, that of your sister and the people at her heel and call. 

All because of who you were. 

[maidragoste]

Can you please write a drabble about it being the readers birthday on like maybe December 6th and she requests a whole family dinner amongst her green and black relatives and at this dinner, everyone begins to argue and she leaves upset, but as she's getting ready for bed, her mother (Rhaenyra or Alicent, you can pick) walks into her room to apologize for the disturbance and asks reader if she can follow her, when reader does, her mother leads her to the library where all her relatives are and they all have gifts for her and everyone is getting along and it's a happy birthday in the end. I know you are a very busy girl and you can obviously change the story and stuff, but it'd mean a lot if the date remained the same as that is my birthday and whenever I request a birthday related story lol, no one ever wants to write it which I get, but I'm a very poor English speaker and writer and I am just a poor writer in general so I can only imagine this stuff so it'd be cool to have it written out. Thank you and have a lovely day!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I hope it's still December 6th in your country and I'll feel fulfilled hahaha I hope you had a nice celebration and thank you for choosing me to write something for you in honor of your birthday 🥰🥰💖💖 I hope you like it!

You were upset and disappointed. Nothing like how excited you were when you started the day. It was your name day and you wanted to celebrate. You hadn't asked for anything extravagant like a tournament in your honor, all you had asked for was a family dinner. It shouldn't be that complicated. But with your family everything was. They may not have ended up in war after your father's death but you could still feel the tension between both sides of the family. Your mother still wore her green dresses and Daemon always looked at you and your siblings like they were the enemy. Maybe it was stupid of you to think that they would forget about the feud for today.

You began to take the hairpins out of your hair as you thought about everything that had gone wrong with dinner. First Daeron was too busy in Old Town so he hadn't been able to come; then Aegon while pouring himself more wine had rowed some of it over Jacaerys. Your brother claimed it was an accident and pretended he was drunk but you were sure he did it on purpose after Jacaerys asked you and Helaena if you would dance with him later. Afterwards Aemond in what was supposed to be a speech about you ended up finding some way to “subtly” insult your nephews. Of course, they didn’t stay quiet and so the big fight began. You had left upset while you listened to your mother trying to stop your brothers.

“Mother,” you said, not hiding your annoyance, seeing her enter your chambers, when you were already finishing undoing your hair. “Did someone die while I was gone?”

At your scathing tone, Alicent couldn’t help but feel even more guilty. You had never spoken to her like that, you were always a good daughter to her, sweet and ready to help your family. You hadn’t asked for much and somehow they had managed to ruin your day.

“I’m sorry, my sweet girl. We didn't behave like we should" she sighed. "But your day doesn't have to end like this, please come with me"

You couldn't stay upset with your mother for long, not when she looked at you with pleading eyes and you could see how guilty she felt. The way she moved her hands made her look nervous that you would reject her.

"It's okay" you agreed and watched as she relaxed.

You walked out of your chambers together with your arms linked and you let her lead you through the castle. It caught your attention when you realized she was taking you to the library but you didn't say anything. You looked at your mother confused when she didn't instantly open the doors.

The truth is that Alicent was afraid that the two of you would find that the family was fighting each other again. She made a quick prayer in her head and opened the door.

"Daeron!" you screamed and ran excitedly into your brother's arms. He picked you up and hugged you and you laughed. You didn't know how you had missed Tessarion's arrival but you didn't care. You were glad to have him with you.

“Of course, he's her favorite” you heard Aegon say as Daeron put you down.

“Because he didn't try to ruin my name day,” you said without letting go of Daeron

“For saying such a slander I won't give you my present”

And thanks to Aegon you noticed that one of the tables in the library was full of presents. You were surprised to see so many. You weren't expecting presents that weren't from your siblings, your mother and your grandfather. But clearly, Rhaenyra, Daemon, your nephews, and your cousins ​​had brought you something too.

“It doesn't matter cousin, I'm sure you're not missing much,” Baela said making you laugh.

“I'm sure my present is better than yours”

Of course, as you opened the presents your family started arguing about who would give you the best present. But you didn't care because you could see that this time it wasn't a serious fight. You were happy to see that both sides of your family were sharing this moment with you. Maybe this could be the start of a change in the whole family dynamic, leaving the feuds behind.

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Now I’m Covered In You [Chapter 5: Bells Each Hour]

Series summary: Aemond is a prince of England. You are married to his brother. The Wars of the Roses are about to begin, and you have failed to fulfill your one crucial responsibility: to give the Greens a line of legitimate heirs. Will you survive the demands of your family back in Navarre, the schemes of the Duke of Hightower, the scandals of your dissolute husband, the growing animosity of Daemon Targaryen…and your own realization of a forbidden love?

Series title is a lyric from: Ivy by Taylor Swift.

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+), dubious consent, miscarriage, pregnancy, childbirth, violence, warfare, murder, alcoholism, sexism, infidelity, illness, death, only vaguely historically accurate, lots of horses!

Word count: 5.7k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Taglist: @borikenlove​ @myspotofcraziness​ @ipostwhatifeel​ @teenagecriminalmastermind​ @quartzs-posts​ @tclegane​ @poohxlove​ @narwhal-swimmingintheocean​ @chainsawsangel​ @itsabby15​ @serrhaewin​ @padfooteyes​ @arcielee​ @travelingmypassion​ @what-is-originality​ @burningcoffeetimetravel​ @blackdreamspeaks​ @anditsmywholeheart​ @aemcndtargaryen​ @jvpit3rs​ @sarcastic-halfling-princess​ @flowerpotmage​ @ladylannisterxo​ @thelittleswanao3​ @elsolario​ @tinykryptonitewerewolf​ @girlwith-thepearlearring​ @minttea07​ @trifoliumviridi​ @deltamoon666​ @mariahossain​ @darkenchantress​ @doingfondue​ @atherverybest​ @namelesslosers​ @skythighs​ ​

Let me know if you’d like to be added! 💜

You’re waiting for Aemond under the hundred-year-old cedar tree at the edge of the forest, Alonzo’s most recent letter in your hands. Midnight is grazing not far away, dewy April grass trampled flat beneath her hooves, silky black tail swishing. She won’t tolerate a lead chain, so she travels the woods unimpeded; but you know she won’t run. She never does. The slender pink ivory wood box is open on the ground, your sword propped against the tree trunk. Weeks ago, you carved four dates there in Roman numerals, infinitesimal inscriptions that you periodically trace back over so they never fade. They’re the days when you lost your children. You were permitted to keep no remnants of them, no stained cloths or recorded names. They belonged less to you than to the kingdom, and you were never allowed to forget this. All you have left are these shallow marks on a cedar tree as the world wakes up again: blossoms unraveling in the palace gardens, sprigs of jade-colored herbs piercing through cool rich earth.

Mother is possessed by conspiracies, Alonzo writes, forever a touch hyperbolic; you can picture his familiar wry smile as you drink up his words like roots swallow rain. He’s your oldest brother and thus the Crown Prince of Navarre. He’s been married for six years to Ippolita of Ferrara, three healthy children so far, one a boy named for your father. She swears there is something wrong with the water there, or the air, or the wheat, the culprit changes by the day. She frets, you know. As she always has. She wonders if we should dispatch one of our own bishops to bless you, or if you should undertake a pilgrimage to some holy site to beg the Virgin Mary for healing. More than anything, I think, she misses you. Her other daughters have found happiness in their marriages, and so it is easier for her to let them go and imagine it was for the best, but you…it is a different circumstance entirely, don’t you agree? Even Father has begun reassessing the illustrious English alliance he was once so proud of. He mutters that if you are to be childless either way, you might as well be home with your family, not trapped in some far-off, gloomy, turbulent land with a degenerate husband. We’ve heard things about Prince Aegon. Father says he never would have sent you across the Bay of Biscay if he knew what waited for you there.

I suppose what I’m trying to ask is…if the Pope would grant an annulment…if Father could work out an arrangement with King Viserys and the Duke of Hightower for you to come home again…would you want to?

All my love (and plenty more from Lita and the children),

Alonzo

You shred his letter so no one else will find it, looking up at a turquoise sky cluttered with fleecy white clouds, the same sky that stretches eastward to Navarre and beyond. You can’t go home; it would be a surrender, it would mean giving up any hope of a grander future. And it would mean giving up Aemond too. He’s not yours, but you can’t lose him. You feel like you can’t breathe every time you think of it. And there’s another reason why you can’t consider trying to dissolve your marriage. Not yet, anyway.

You rest your palms on your belly, vulnerable flesh beneath emerald-green silk, still at least a month away from starting to show. It’s early, very early, but by now you know the signs as well as the sounds of horses, the feel of the hilt of a sword in your grasp. It is your fifth attempt in less than two years. You have no reason to believe that this time will be different, that it will end in joy and triumph instead of ruin. Still, you suppose that anything is possible. It would be traitorous not to hope, wouldn’t it?

At last Aemond and Vhagar appear, galloping across the field to meet you at the edge of the forest. He’s in the saddle with his hair flying like a white banner, the buckles on his tunic glinting in the sun. You smile until he is close enough for you to read his face: tension, vexation, thinly-veiled ire. He dismounts in one fluid motion and Vhagar moseys away to graze beside Midnight, her enormous hooves clomping, dandelions and clovers leveled like fields at harvest.

“When were you going to tell me?” Aemond demands. He comes so close he fills your vision, your air; your lungs draw in smoke and leather, work and skill, every thread of muscle fought for. “After everything, I had to overhear it from the gossip of servants?”

Oh. Oh. “I hadn’t decided how yet. I was trying not to hurt you.”

“I’m hurt that you kept it from me.”

“Aemond…” You hesitate. There’s no delicate way to say this. “I didn’t want you to have to think about that part.” His brother on top of you, inside of you, melding with you to create a new heartbeat.

“I already think about it,” Aemond replies, sharp and stabbing like thorns. “I think about it all the goddamn time.”

Now your voice is bitter too. “Well, soon it will be my turn to be so afflicted, right?”

He quiets and retreats a few steps, rubbing his face with his hands. You try to remember if you’ve ever seen him do that before. He looks genuinely rattled, pained, remorseful. Kunigunde, the lone surviving daughter of Frederick III, will arrive in London any day now. Sometimes you find yourself wishing that her ship would sink to the bottom of the ocean or that some last-minute diplomatic squabble would go unresolved and she would be returned untouched to the Continent…but to what avail? Aemond will have to marry somebody. You cannot seem to produce a son, Nico won’t even be able to start trying until her wedding in August. The Greens need more heirs, more allies. And no ally could be more beneficial to their cause than the Holy Roman Empire. You should recognize the momentous advantage in this match. Instead, all you can think about is Aemond lying with another woman and memorizing the secrets of her body until they begin showing up in his poems, hips and wrists and the bumps of her spine.

“I’m sorry,” Aemond says gently. “I don’t want to argue with you. You’re not at fault for any of this. You’re not who I’m really mad at.”

“It’s alright. I understand.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine. A bit tired, a bit nauseous. Nothing new.”

“Good. But that’s not what I meant.”

You look at him as you stand in the shade together under the vast cedar tree. “I don’t feel anything,” you confess, words you could not share with anyone else. They would think you were in need of an elixir or a prayer or an exorcism. “I don’t feel happy, I don’t feel anxious, I don’t feel excited or afraid or hopeful. I want to be hopeful, it is my obligation to be hopeful, but I’m not. I don’t feel anything anymore. This has happened too many times already. Or maybe I’m just broken in spirit as well as in body.”

“You aren’t broken at all.”

You smile bleakly. “That’s kind, but I don’t think it’s true.”

“Believe me, I’d know. Brokenness and I are well-acquainted.”

And you wonder before you can stop yourself: What does he look like under his eyepatch? How exactly did it happen? Does it still pain him, does it enrage him? Does it make his hands ache for vengeance?

He asks: “What can I do?”

You get your sword from where it’s propped against the tree and twirl it once. “Distract me.”

“Gladly.” Aemond glides his blade out of its scabbard and lunges. You parry and strike him lightly across the back. Then you swiftly retreat, waiting for his riposte, on guard.

“I always wanted children, you know,” you say. “Not just because it was required of me. I grew up in a castle that was loud and full of footsteps. My mother was eternally playing with us, reading to us, tending to us. I imagined the same for myself. I craved it.”

“You’ll have children,” Aemond insists, forever so sure of something that feels impossible.

“You should have been the heir. Maybe this is how it happens. I’ll remain childless and Aegon will drink himself to death, and then you and your sons with Kunigunde will inherit the throne.”

He swings and you block, his blade clashing with yours once, twice, again, driving you backwards until you are pinned against the cedar tree. “I don’t want it that way,” Aemond pants from the effort, your swords locked together above your heads. “Not if it requires your sacrifice.”

You gaze up at him as his eye rakes over you; you’re close enough to kiss if you dared to. But you want much more than that. You want his long hair knotted in your fists, you want his hands on your bare skin, you want his tongue and his heat and his moans. But you have to be careful, so very careful. To be discovered sparring would be bad, but to be branded as adulterers would be far, far worse. For Aemond it would likely mean banishment. For you it would mean death by beheading or burning; only the king could commute the sentence. Rhaenyra would not persuade him to have mercy. And hers is the only voice you are confident Viserys would hear.

“Ivy,” Aemond whispers, a name that only he will ever call you. For a second, and only one, his palm skates weightlessly down your belly. You hear the distant chimes of the Tower of London, bells each hour, and it’s strange how so much time can pass without changing the heart at all. “I wish everything was different. I wish it was mine and you were too.”

And then he retreats in several long strides and waits for you to collect yourself so you can thrust at him with your blade again.

An hour later, Aemond helps you to rebury your sword—you’ve taken to keeping the pink ivory box in a shallow grave under the cedar tree so no one spies you ferrying it to and from Westminster Palace—and then accompanies you back inside once the horses are returned to the royal stables. He is mindful not to appear too familiar within sight of the court, but there are small gestures that he cannot seem to purge himself of: a hand on the curve of your back as you ascend stairs, shoulders and elbows that push others away if they inadvertently jostle you, glances to decipher the mood of your face. He signals to a servant and they scuttle over to bring you a cup of apple cider, cool and crisp and sweet.

“Where in God’s name have you been?!” the Duke of Hightower scolds you from across the hall, departing from a conversation with the Montford patriarchs. They wear serene, confident smiles. They’ve named Joanna’s white-haired bastard Aegon—not very subtle—and are basking in their recent procurement of titles, land, and influence. Already you’ve overheard the idea proposed, more than once and by various nobles: your marriage could be annulled, Joanna wed to Prince Aegon in your place, her son retroactively legitimized. The plan is certainly not without its own obstacles, but the Duke seems to be intrigued by it. Your husband will not entertain putting you aside. When the notion surfaces in his presence—like a shimmering fish from the depths of a pond—Aegon walks right out of the room.

You reply, with practiced innocence: “Just outside strolling through the gardens, Your Grace. The weather is lovely—”

“You shouldn’t be strolling anywhere. Not inside, not outside, not even to the chapel to beg God for the long-overdue deliverance of a son. You should be in bed.”

“Grandsire,” Aemond says. “Surely she cannot be expected to live as a prisoner.”

“She will live in whatever manner gives us the greatest chance of an heir. She may not be a prisoner, but she is a princess and a wife, and sometimes the requirements of these stations are not as divergent as you might believe.”

Aemond’s face goes dark, goes defiant. “You cannot put it all on her shoulders.”

The Duke of Hightower grins arrogantly; he’s caught him in the perfect trap. “But it’s not all on her, Prince Aemond. Within a week you’ll be sharing that burden. Making it lighter, even.”

Aemond glares at the Duke and says nothing.

“You will be married as soon as Kunigunde arrives. Within two days, mark my words. You’ll begin trying for a son in April, Nico in August. Now we have no heirs. But by this time next year we could have three! Isn’t that a happy thought?” And he marches away to resume his scheming, still smiling about it.

Aemond walks you to your rooms and stays there with you. You embroider pillows as he reads to you—a book about Aegon I’s Conquest in 1066—in a voice that is soft and low and secretive. Nico and Daeron join you both for dinner, and then you and Aemond are alone again. It’s wonderous and yet excruciatingly painful, profoundly unwise and yet necessary. You never speak of the night when he touched you beneath your nightgown, but it’s always there between you, a ghost that flutters curtains and creaks open doors trying to get your attention. You’re playing Tric-Trac on the bearskin rug, the fire dying down, when your husband reels drunkenly into your bedchamber.

“Aegon?” you say, startled. Aemond immediately moves away from you, at first just withdrawing to the other end of the rug and then rising to his feet as his brother continues to approach. You aren’t sure what he could want; it is recommended that pregnant women not lie with their husbands, and you’ll gladly take any excuse available to you. He must have forgotten at some point during his fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth cup of wine. “While I’m with child, I can’t—”

“I know, I know. I remember.” Aegon falls down onto the bearskin rug and slings his arms around your waist, burrowing into you. He rests his head on your chest, white-blond hair unruly and tangled. After a moment—long enough to recover from the shock of it—you hold him, tolerantly and sympathetically, like a wife should. Aemond leaves the room, river-blue eye downcast. Aegon doesn’t seem to notice. He sighs contently as you run your fingers through his hair, as your palms trace his back over his plain white shirt. There are red splotches on it, some of them wine, some blood; there are tacky streaks of it around his nose. He’s never done this before. He’s never sought you out for contact that was pure like this, without directives, without prizes to be won.

“Aegon?” you ask after a while.

“Yes, wife?”

“What exactly happened to Aemond’s eye?”

“My fault,” he murmurs drowsily. “He and I were supposed to be practicing our sword fighting with Sir Criston. Aemond was in the courtyard, exactly where he was supposed to be, and I was hiding in a stairwell somewhere guzzling wine, trying to forget who I was. Sir Criston went looking for me and while he was gone, they found Aemond. Jace, Luke, Baela, and Rhaena. Four against one. I don’t know much about math, but that doesn’t sound even to me. Aemond was a lot smaller then. He hadn’t gotten tough and mean yet. I’ve never been clear on who said what first, but eventually he was calling Rhaenyra’s sons bastards and they were calling him a worthless spare, unnecessary and unloved, at least in the king’s eyes. Neither of them were wrong, by the way. Aemond grabbed a rock. Luke had a knife. By the time Sir Criston returned with me in tow, it was over. I remember watching the physicians stitch up Aemond’s face, using tweezers and spoons to clean out the pieces of gelatinous flesh from his eye socket. Father did nothing about it. He cared more about Aemond calling Jace and Luke bastards than the fact that he was half-blinded for life. Aemond started wearing a sapphire in the socket once it finally healed. He still does, as far as I know, though I haven’t seen him without his eyepatch in years. It’s a reference to some folktale about a warrior with two sapphire eyes. Some metaphor I couldn’t appreciate. I think my tutors once tried to make me read that story and I never did.”

You are sickened by grief, revulsion, fury. He was just a boy. A boy who had been neglected and ignored and brutalized, and his own father couldn’t care less. A boy who learned to idolize fictional heroes in the absence of real ones. “Yes,” you reply weakly. “That sounds like something Aemond would do.”

“All my fault,” Aegon says again, clutching you tighter.

“I’m sure he knows you didn’t mean him any harm.”

“He’s disgusted by me. They all are. Because I’m not suited to be king and never will be.” His voice is clotted with wine, shame, self-loathing. “I never asked to be built of disappointments. I didn’t choose to be this way.”

“You’ll make a fine king, Aegon,” you tell him, because you’re supposed to.

“Do you think I’m the cause of our losses?” he asks suddenly, and you think: Our losses, not mine. He called them ours. “You conceive easily. I can have children with others. Neither of us seem to be defective in body. But perhaps I have inflicted great stress upon you with my indiscretions. My drinking, my sloth, my affairs. I did not think I was hurting you. I did not think of much beyond myself at all, to be perfectly honest. But it was horrible to see you that way. At Christmas. So bereft, so wounded. You’ve suffered so much here. You deserve the consolation that children would bring you.”

You comb your fingers through his hair, shorter than any other grown Targaryen’s; he doesn’t want their name, their legacy, their looming war. “I don’t think you had anything to do with the miscarriages. I think there’s something wrong with me.”

“I want to be better this time,” he says, peering hazily up at you and placing one hand protectively over your belly. “A better husband, a better man. For both of you.”

You wish you could feel relief, feel joy, even a whisper of it. Instead, all you can think about is Aemond: his face, his voice, his hands. If I have to watch him touch another woman, I’ll never be able to get it out of my mind. If I have to watch him fall in love with her, it will kill me.

“Maybe it would have been different if we had met somewhere else,” Aegon says dreamily.

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere very far away.”

His eyes dip shut and you stare into the dying embers of the fireplace: red like lust, like blood, like the flag of Navarre.

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s the next morning, and you’ve escaped as far as Nico’s rooms. She has what seems like hundreds of swatches of fabric strewn across a table, silk and velvet and linen.

“What do you think of this one?” she asks nervously, holding a scrap of butter-yellow silk to the bare skin of her upper chest. “It’s not really my best color. But the Duke of Hightower suggested I wear a yellow wedding dress. The flag of Milan has a great deal of yellow, you know. I don’t think he wants anyone to forget where I’m from. Or all the wealth and soldiers I’m bringing to his side.”

“How romantic,” you tease, smiling. “Doesn’t your flag also have a giant, murderous blue snake on it? Perhaps you could dress as one of those. We’ll sew you a nice long tail.”

Nico bursts out laughing, far too boisterously, as usual. “That would certainly get Daeron’s blood running hot, wouldn’t it?” Now she frowns down at the table fretfully. “I so want him to be pleased with me. I want him to remember how I looked that day for the rest of his life.”

How did you look on the day you married Aegon? Miserable, probably. Lonely. Empty. Nico will never have to feel that way. You’re happy for her; but it makes your own predicament louder somehow. “It’s your wedding day,” you tell her. “Wear what you like. What you feel most beautiful in. You can dress in yellow for Aemond’s wedding. The Emperor’s flag is yellow. I’m sure Kunigunde would appreciate that. You’ll make a marvelous first impression.”

“Brilliant!” Nico grins, assuaged. Then her eyes flick to the doorway. “Oh, hello there, Prince Aemond. Have you come to help with the wedding planning? We’re choosing flowers next.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have much acumen in that realm. But do let me know when you begin discussing cakes.” He stares at you expectedly, arms crossed, lurking like a shadow. There is a long, uncomfortable silence.

“Go on,” Nico prompts you, tittering anxiously. “We can continue this later. I’m supposed to be meeting Daeron for lunch soon anyway.”

You bid some goodbye to Nico that you’re barely aware of. Then you meet Aemond in the doorway, feeling very much like someone caught in a mistake, a lie, a trap. He turns away without a word and you follow him through the winding halls, colored by aisles of midday light and the tolling of distant bells. “Aemond…?”

“I’m thrilled to hear how well you’re getting along with your husband. He stayed all night, from what I gather. The servants are buzzing with it. The Montfords are licking their wounds.”

“Are you delusional enough to believe that I have any say at all in where he spends his time—?”

“I saw you,” Aemond snaps viciously. “You weren’t just being civil. You comforted him, you had your hands all over him—”

You grab Aemond by the front of his tunic and yank him in close so you can hiss: “And where are your hands going to be once you marry the Holy Roman Emperor’s daughter? I have a few ideas. Would you like to confirm them? And things besides your hands as well, I imagine.”

“You’re unbelievable,” he flings, ripping away from you. You dash after him through empty hallways; he’s headed to your rooms, to a place where you will have relative privacy.

“What do you want from me?!” you whisper fiercely, burying it in him like a knife. “You expect me to sabotage my entire life, to reject my husband and neglect my responsibilities so that you never have to be inconvenienced, so that you never have to experience any pain—!”

“Pain?! That’s a kind word for it, it’s agony, it’s fucking impossible—”

Aemond throws open the door to your rooms. Inside, a servant is fixing you a cup of apple cider…and sprinkling the contents of a tiny silk pouch into it. When he sees you and Aemond, he shoves the pouch into his shirt and scurries away.

“Wait!” Aemond commands. The servant starts sprinting. “Don’t drink that,” Aemond tells you, pointing at the cup, then takes off after the servant. He catches him in your bedchamber, hurls him against a wall, and snatches the pouch from inside his shirt. “What the hell is this?”

“Nothing, Your Royal Highness. Just spices from the kitchen.” But his words spill out in a stammer and sweat pours from his reddening face.

Keeping the servant pinned to the wall with one hand, Aemond pitches the silk pouch to you. A servant shouldn’t have anything silk at all; it’s too expensive, too rare. “Do you recognize that?” he asks you.

Inside is a fine, powdery dust of a dried herb, dotted with shriveled purple blossoms. It smells vaguely of mint. “I don’t.”

Aemond drags the servant out of your rooms and into the hallways. The man is openly struggling now, mewing and slapping at his jailer’s face and hands. Aemond takes no notice of this. He is calling for guards, for physicians. A pack of inquiring spectators materialize around him: Nico, Daeron, Alicent, Sir Criston Cole, many other supporters of the Greens. Aemond does not stop until he reaches the Great Hall, where King Viserys is holding an audience with Rhaenyra, Daemon, and their children, bouncing little Visenya on his knee as she giggles. The violins screech to a halt when you and Aemond enter the room. He throws the servant violently to the floor.

“Good afternoon, Aemond,” the king says with moderate interest, still looking at Visenya.

The Duke of Hightower storms into the Great Hall. “What is going on in here?!” His steely eyes flit from Aemond to the servant sprawled on the floor to the king, back to Aemond. “What’s happened?”

“This man was putting something in the princess’s cider. An herb of some sort. I want it identified.”

“An herb?” King Viserys says blandly. “Have you asked the servant himself? Surely there is a logical explanation—”

“I want it identified,” Aemond repeats. “Now.”

There is chatter from the observers, which is exactly what Aemond needs. They serve as witnesses, as assurance that his accusations will be heard. You wonder where Aegon is; drunk and oblivious somewhere, probably.

“Very well,” the king relents, and waves to a guard. “Fetch a physician.” Then he barks at the crowd: “Out, vultures! All of you! Everyone except family!” The Green-affiliated courtiers reluctantly disperse; Nico goes to leave with them, but Daeron grasps her hand. Alicent clings to Sir Criston. Rhaenyra has Visenya, Viserys II, Aegon III, and Joffrey taken back to the nursery.

The Duke of Hightower glowers at the silk pouch. “Let me see.” You give it to him, and he opens it and sniffs. His forehead crinkles. “I can’t discern this.”

Daemon drifts close to you, clipping by like a comet. “Do you think wearing Green all the time now will miraculously make you one of them? Not until you’ve paid your debts, I think. And women have been known to die in childbirth. Just ask our dear Alicent over there. She owes all her…” His mouth twists cruelly around the word. “Fortune to the late Queen Aemma.”

“It is so wise of you to always dress for a funeral, Prince Daemon,” you say. “You’ll be prepared for your own when it imminently arrives.”

Daemon’s grin doesn’t disappear, but it turns harder, more jagged.

“This is terribly overblown, I’m sure,” the king says, then pauses to cough into his sleeve. He’s been nursing the same chill since January, one that ebbs and flows but never dies. “It’s all just a misunderstanding…”

Queen Alicent gestures to the pouch. “Might I see that, Father?” The Duke passes it to her. She opens the pouch and shakes some of its contents into her cupped palm.

“This is utter paranoia,” Rhaenyra complains, keeping Jace and Luke close to her; but she steals an uneasy glimpse of Daemon.

“They’re always so eager to cast themselves as victims, aren’t they, Mother?” Jace says.

Daeron shouts back: “And you’re always eager to cast yourselves as people who would happily stab someone’s eye out!”

“He slandered us!” Jace cries. “It was self-defense!”

“It was inches away from being murder!”

“And isn’t that the proper punishment for treason?” Baela says smugly. “To lose one’s life?”

“You’re about to lose your fucking life!” Daeron dives for her. Baela howls and scratches at him as Sir Criston leaps in to try to untangle them. Daemon grabs Daeron by the throat and lifts him off the ground; Daeron’s feet kick wildly, his face turning blue. Sir Criston draws his sword. Nico races into the melee, slamming both palms into Daemon’s chest with such force that she stuns him enough to drop Daeron, who falls gasping to the floor. Sir Criston drags him to safety. People are yelling, launching accusations and swears. The king is doubled over hacking.

“You bitch,” Daemon growls at Nico, and rips his sword from its scabbard as he towers over her.

Without thinking, you rush to defend Nico. Aemond’s arms close around you and pull you back. He murmurs through your hair as you battle him: “No, no, no, no.” And then you remember. The baby. I can’t do anything to hurt the baby. And you feel a sudden, overwhelming longing to protect this life, to meet this child, an attachment you didn’t think you were capable of experiencing again.

“I know what this is,” Alicent says softly, and everyone quiets and turns to her. Her face is dazed, appalled. Her hand holding the crumble of dried herbs is trembling. “It’s pennyroyal.”

No one moves, no one speaks. The silence is deafening. And it’s no wonder why none of the men could identify it in its medicinal state, why you couldn’t. You’ve never had need of a plant known to encourage a woman’s monthly blood. Since you’ve arrived in England, you’ve bled far too much. All those months of longing, hope, loss. All those taunts and whispers and rebukes and pieces of fruitless advice.

When the words finally tumble from your lips, they are faint and very small, almost childlike. “It wasn’t my fault?”

Aemond releases you and tears his sword free, holding it to the petrified servant’s throat. “I want him dead,” Aemond seethes, wrath like wildfire, like Plague. “I want him drawn and quartered, I want him awake when they disembowel him, I want him to feel everything. But first I want him racked until he reveals who paid him to commit this barbarism. I want to listen as his bones rip from their sockets.” He turns to Daemon, his blue eye blazing, manic. “And I suspect I know whose name he’ll scream at the end.”

“This is a baseless accusation!” Daemon snarls derisively.

“Dear God,” the Duke of Hightower says, gazing at you in guilt-laden horror. His hands come up to cover his gaping mouth.

“Do you have any proof that Daemon is responsible?” the king asks Aemond.

“Viserys,” the Duke says incredulously. “Prince Daemon has threatened her more times than I could ever count, he has incessantly abused and provoked her, he is her most notorious enemy—”

“There’s no proof,” Rhaenyra says, looking to the king. “You hear them, don’t you, Father? They have insults but no proof. They mean to use this treachery as an opportunity to destroy us.”

“He’s been paid by someone!” Aemond explodes, jabbing the tip of his blade against the whimpering man’s throat until he bleeds. “He’s been recruited! Why would a servant take it upon himself to poison a princess, to risk his livelihood, his life? Why would he have a pouch made of silk to carry his lethal herbs around in? He’s been roped into a conspiracy, and who else would have cause to murder her children in the womb, who else would dare?!”

“There’s no proof,” Daemon says again, and they all join him in a chorus, Rhaenyra, Jace, Luke, Baela, Rhaena: no proof, no proof, no proof.

The king shakes his head at Aemond. “Your lifelong hatred for Rhaenyra’s branch of the family has blinded you—”

“They could have killed her!” Aemond thunders, and there are tears of raw fury gleaming in his eyes. “Don’t you understand?! It wasn’t just the pregnancies, she could have hemorrhaged, she could have died, they risked her life to try to keep Aegon from the throne—”

“The throne will never be Aegon’s.”

“God Almighty, Viserys, that’s not the point,” the Duke says. “If this is true…it would be a most unforgiveable sin. It would be treason. It must be investigated.”

“I simply cannot see any proof being offered here.” The king dissolves into another coughing fit.

“You had no wrath when my eye was taken from me, Father,” Aemond says. “You felt no obligation to protect your son or your wife from the bloody consequences of Rhaenyra’s pride. All those years ago you let her believe she was invincible and now we are all forced to reap the aftermath. Surely you must feel outrage for the grandchildren this has cost you, for the inhuman crimes committed against the princess. She is your family, Father. Aegon is your family. I am your family. Don’t you recognize us at all?”

Daemon stalks towards him like a wolf, each step slow and calculated. “She’s your brother’s wife, Aemond. Not yours.”

“I haven’t forgotten.”

“Oh, haven’t you?” A hellish grin lights up Daemon’s face like the red flush of fever. “Tell me, how did it feel lying awake all those nights, staring up at the ceiling in your cold, lonely bed, knowing that your worthless brother was sinking himself into her again, and again, and again, and all that time he didn’t…even…appreciate it?”

Something breaks in Aemond, something cracks his atmosphere in two like lightning. He lunges at Daemon with his sword, roaring, swinging, stabbing. Their blades clang over and over again, shrieks of metal that echo through the Great Hall. The Duke of Hightower is bellowing, and Rhaenyra is screaming, and Alicent and Nico and all the children are too, everyone understanding that this could just as easily kill one as the other; Sir Criston is trying to help Aemond beat back Daemon, but the blows are so ferocious and swift that he has trouble keeping up with them. The Duke shouts for the guards and they flood in, a dozen men in full armor at last separating the two warriors like continents splitting apart. The king is rasping as he struggles to catch his breath. You are the only one who doesn’t make a sound. In your skull circles the same refrain like the ring of a full moon, like the cyclic chiming of bells: They did this to me. They did this to me. They did this to me.

In the midst of the chaos, the king lurches off his throne and collapses to the floor. Blacks and Greens alike descend upon him. Daemon cradles him in his arms, Alicent is sobbing, the Duke of Hightower is feeling the temperature of the king’s face and neck, Daeron is franticly trying to rouse him.

And even as he plummets into unconsciousness from which he will never recover, the king reaches only for Rhaenyra.

[snowblack-charcoalwhite]

Do you think that Aegon was whitewashed this season? As in, they realised they went too far with him in s1 and wanted to rectify it in s2 at the expense of other characters, mostly aemond and alicent. The problem is, you can't retcon everything. He is still a bully and rapist in show canon, but for some reason they now want to downplay it and focus on his incompetence, but also on him wanting to make something right while constantly being undermined by his family. I can't even enjoy such a confusing arc because it's inconsistent and manipulative. Also, it seems they wanted to nip Aemond's popularity and propping up Aegon at his expense apparently worked. It's true that TGC is extremely likeable, he was even in s1 when they wanted to show his character as a drunken rapist who doesn't understand consent, and he is now when they want to show Aegon as a tragic victim of his traitorous and unsupportive family. However, it's not enough to rely on actor's talent and charm when the writing is all over the place. Finally, I must say that I'm really disappointed with the green fandom, I even had to left their sub on Reddit because of the hate they constantly throw at Alicent and even more, Aemond. Like someone on other blog said, they never turned on Aegon after s1, they were relentlessly stanning him and blamed everything on the writers, but now won't do the same for aemond. Seriously, Aegon stans behave identically as Daemyra stans and that is something. It's sad because I've liked both since s1 but it's a fact that the green side of the fandom is much harsher and unjust to aemond, it's enough to check out the mentioned subreddit and some blogs here to get the picture.

Hello!

I think that Aegon's character was not so much whitewashed as used for a very unsavory purpose which was to make other Green characters, especially Aemond and Alicent look bad (here is the link to a post where I expressed my opinion on that matter). In order for that to work there was not a lot of actual embellishment needed - Aegon's story is a compelling and a tragic one as it is. The problem, however, lies in that the writers did their damnedest to use the most touching and relatable aspects of his arc to the detriment of other characters - who were supposed to love, cherish and support him.

As for the fandom reactions, I have always had an impression that among the hardcore TG supporters sympathies for Aegon run wider and deeper than for Aemond anyway. IMO there is a combination of various reasons at work here: him being the leader and the beating heart of his faction (in the book, that is), his incredible character journey, the way Tom's charm and charisma fill even the underdeveloped and kind of warped show version of Aegon with color and life (if we're talking about the adaptation) - and/or the simple fact that someone likes one character more than the other, sometimes even without being able to name a reason for it.

The thing is - while it doesn't sit right with me when people are not willing to cut one character some slack and at the same time cut the other (their favourite one) all of it - I can't really judge the favoritism per se: we are all human after all. What I do have hard time stomaching is the fans (in that case Aegon's - or more precisely exclusively or heavily prevalently Aegon's fans) being unnecessarily vicious about it.

As someone who loves both Aegon and Aemond, I for that exact reason have always felt disheartened by seeing fans of one Targtower brother shitting on the other one (or even worse, the fans getting personal with each other). Over the two years of being in the Tumblr fandom I have seen a number of posts made by Aemond's fans where they bashed Aegon by downplaying his good qualities and heavily focusing on the negativity ("useless drunk", "atrocious bully" etc) - and obviously have never agreed with them (to put it mildly) and am not about to start agreeing now. But - even in comparison with that - not even the amount of the posts but the intensity of the hate Aemond has been getting from Aegon's supporters is something else. And the worst part is that some of the posts I saw positively reek (sorry, I can't use any other word here) of schadenfreude. Guys, I understand the anger and frustration about having your character being heavily mistreated by the writers (which is exactly what happened to Aegon in season 1) - in fact I was right there with you when it happened. But now, when the exact same thing is happening to other character, maybe you can recall just how much it sucked and hold yourself back a little? Yes, Aemond is being brought down in great part by the script having him treat Aegon horribly, so your current lack of love for the former is understandable. But in season 1 the same was happening in reverse (although to a considerably milder degree - brotherly bullying, as shitty as it might be, doesn't equal an attempt on one's brother's life) - and in spite of some Aemond fans tearing Aegon to shreds in their blogs I personally saw far more people who like Aemond still expressing their irritation and outrage about the way Aegon was written in season 1. I am not trying to shut anyone up - but is making an effort to show some understanding and compassion for your fellow Greenies so much to ask? HotD has all but destroyed the Greens as a team and a family - but the fans don't have to (if you ask me - should not) mirror that atrocity.

[bloodstained-porcelain-doll]

The Kneeling Queen, ch 4 - Aemond Targaryen x OC

Read on AO3

Summary: Aemond Targaryen and Maelessa Velaryon were childhood lovers. They were each other’s only comfort in a world full of darkness. When they grew up, their love blossomed until they were the only thing the other cared about. Their lives get increasingly complicated due to the fact that they’re supposed to be on opposite sides of the war. Will their love survive or will it burn to ash as the war ensues?

Warnings: Angst, soft loving smut, canonical character death

Chapter 4 - A King's Death

“No! I won’t go! I want to stay here with Aemond!” Maelessa argued, grabbing onto the large stone column as if her mother would grab her by force and drag her out of the city. Rhaenyra, frustrated, reached out to touch her daughter’s arm.

“We are still your family, Lessa. Please. You’ve been apart from us for years now, we want you to come home with us. We all miss you. Come get to know your new siblings,” her mother urged with a smile. It was time for them to pack up and leave, and predictably a fight had broken out between Maelessa and her mother.

“No,” she insisted. “King’s Landing is my home, I belong here. With Aemond.”

“Aemond is not your husband, he is your uncle.”

“As Daemon is yours!” she snapped.

The Targaryen custom of marrying within the bloodline had been the thread Maelessa held onto for support. Her mother had married her uncle, and she was set on marrying hers. It would be a union for love, but also one to strengthen their house, and one to strengthen her own claim as a Targaryen. She was the blood of Old Valyria, despite not looking like it. Marrying a Targaryen prince and birthing his babes would put an end to the rumours and the doubts across the realm.

There was a moment of silence between the two women until Rhaenyra spoke again.

“Daemon and I-“

“Wed each other in an ancient Valyrian ceremony,” Maelessa cut her mother off. “Aemond and I want to do the same.”

Rhaenyra sighed and a look of resignation came over her as she looked at her daughter.

“I’ve truly lost you to him, haven’t I?” she asked, reaching out to take Maelessa’s hand. The girl nodded and her face softened slightly as she squeezed her mother’s hand.

“Many years ago. There was nothing you could have done, mother. Aemond and I are fated, even the king saw it. You’ve told me stories about you and Daemon in your youth, and truthfully I relate to them. We’re not that different, you and I. And Aemond and Daemon are two sides of the same coin… Your father couldn’t keep you and your uncle apart. Three different marriages couldn’t keep you apart. And nothing can keep me apart from mine. Not even this ridiculous family feud.”

Rhaenyra sighed again and pulled her daughter in close for a hug. The women embraced each other, and once again Rhaenyra allowed her daughter to stay in King’s Landing as she left with the rest of the family for Dragonstone.

Not many days later, the worst hours of Maelessa’s life took place. News broke that the king was dead, but before that was a day of silent plotting, and she wasn’t even allowed to witness any of it. The greens had agreed that Rhaenyra was the heir to the throne, but after the death of the king, they changed their minds. Alicent swore that the king had changed his mind as well, in his dying moments saying that he wanted Aegon to succeed him. But everyone knew that was false. She also changed her mind about Aemond and Maelessa’s betrothal, breaking it and insisting that Aemond needed to be free to marry a lady from another house. In a fit of rage, Aemond had thrown a flagon of wine against the window of his mother’s chamber, shattering it.

“She loves me above anything, mother,” Aemond spoke when he calmed himself, turning back to face his mother, who watched him with tear stained eyes. She had loved the king, and his death left her grieving. Now her one son was missing, and the other one furious with her.

“Perhaps when she was a child. Now we can’t be certain. She’s Rhaenyra’s daughter, we cannot trust her. Besides, you must be free to form a marriage pact. Borros Baratheon will need convincing that Aegon is the true king. He has four daughters.” Alicent sat down, clasping her hands in front of her. Aemond scoffed at the suggestion.

“Hmm. I will not wed another when I have a perfectly suited bride imprisoned in her own chamber as we speak. One that won’t even fault me for imprisoning her.”

“Gods, Aemond, if you could hear yourself sometimes.” Alicent shook her head. “She is a woman, not some object you can possess. You are a man. You can wed a woman and father her children, then spend your own free time with however many other women you want.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I won’t do that to Maelī- to Maelessa. She deserves more than to be my mistress, my whore,” he sneered. She would agree to it, he knew, she would do anything for him if he only asked. But it’s not what he wanted for her, or for himself. Yet his mother continued.

“She’s a bastard, Aemond. When Aegon is king she will find herself lacking in options. Besides, this decision is out of your hands, it’s already been decided.”

Maelessa knew nothing as of yet, when she had woken this morning she found the doors to her chamber barred. She was no longer a welcome guest, but a hostage to be used as a pawn in the green scheme for power.

Her dragon Catlys had just grown large enough to ride, and she supposed the greens thought she would flee if given the opportunity. They were wrong, though, as much anger as she now felt towards Otto and Alicent, she would never do such a thing to her future husband. Being betrothed to Aemond had been the biggest joy of her life. She opened a flagon of wine. If she couldn’t leave her chamber, at least she could get drunk. But then the doors flung open.

“Maelītsos,” Aemond greeted as he entered. She threw herself in his arms and he wrapped them around her tightly, lifting her off the floor. 

“What’s happening, my love?” she asked. “Why am I imprisoned? Is it the king, is he dead?”

“Yes,” Aemond said. Maelessa’s heart dropped. She did not know her grandsire that well, but he was kind and he was peaceful, and he upheld her mother’s claim to the throne steadfastly. Yet she knew that everything had gone horrendously wrong. The green snake Otto Hightower plotted for his own house and power. “My brother will be crowned king at dawn. Rhaenys is imprisoned, same as you. Your mother will be considered a usurper if she crowns herself queen,” Aemond continued, confirming her suspicions.

She pulled back from his embrace and her eyes fluttered around the room as tears clouded her vision. So many conflicting emotions tore through her body. Fear and grief for her mother. Fury with the Hightowers. Sorrow for the king. Disgust for Aegon. Confusion. Aemond, he hadn’t been here with her. She had been all alone with her thoughts, without him to comfort her and guide her through it.

“I’ve been locked in here for hours, where have you been? Why didn’t you come sooner?” she asked. Tears fell from her eyes and Aemond wiped them away gently.

“I wanted to come as soon as I heard. But I had to find my brother. He was hiding from his new duties.”

“Ageon doesn’t want the crown?” she asked, and Aemond shook his head. “He’s an imbecile, he doesn’t deserve it. If it can’t be my mother it should be you.” She ran her hands down his cheeks, feeling the soft warmth of his skin and the sharp angles of his jaw. The act brought her peace, the feeling of his flesh against her reminded her that it would always be the two of them against the world.

“I know, my love. I have more news, regretful news,” he continued. “Following the death of the king, my mother and grandsire broke our betrothal. They claim that I am now needed to secure the support of Borros Baratheon.”

“No,” Maelessa cried, tears dripping down her cheeks and grief clawing at her chest. They were supposed to get married. It was supposed to be them against the world, forever. Not some other highborn whore. “No you can’t, you can’t wed someone else, it’ll kill me.”

Aemond pulled her in close and held her, resting his chin on her head.

“You alone have my love. You alone always will.” She sniffled into his black leather jerkin, devastated. She had never been so happy as she had the last few days, and now it was all being ripped from her again. “You understand, don’t you, Mae, that any marriage I may enter will be political only? My heart,” he paused and took her hand, placing it on his chest, “beats only for you.”

The reminder was sorely needed at this time. Whatever happened, he was still hers, and that’s what truly mattered.

“As mine does for you. I will wait here for you, I’ll remain loyal, I’ll make it work any way you want, but…” She trailed off and he wiped her tears again, gently holding her face as she spoke. “Our children… they’ll be bastards like me.” Aemond’s eye searched hers for a solution, and he seemed to come up with something.

“Run away with me again. When Aegon is crowned and all this is over, we’ll take Vhagar and fly somewhere, we’ll marry the old Valyrian way just like your mother and Daemon, like we always talked about. No one will know but us. I know it’s not what we wished for, but it’s the best we can do in the situation.”

Maelessa nodded, her tears finally drying.

“Yes. We’ll do that… I’ll wait for you, my love.”

“I’ll come for you, ñuha ozgūroti,” he promised. She frowned.

“Ozgūroti… what does it mean?” she asked. She thought she was fluent in High Valyrian now after all of Aemond’s lessons, but this word she didn’t recognise. A little smile grazed his lips and he ran his thumb down her cheek, resting it on her lower lip.

“Hmm. It means captive, or prisoner,” he said. She scoffed and smacked his chest.

“Even in a moment like this, you jest.”

“I do not jest. You are my captive. I’ve captured your heart and I intend to keep it forever.”

“In that case you’re my captive as well,” she insisted, and Aemond nodded.

“I am,” he said, leaning in to kiss her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and deepened the kiss, desperately needing him for comfort. He claimed her mouth with his tongue, and she gladly allowed it. When he pulled back she was breathless.

“Do what you have to do. I’ll wait for you.”

Aemond left and barred her doors again. He had left her with his dagger, telling her to use it for self defence if anyone was to enter her chamber while he was gone. She revisited her plan on getting drunk, now sitting on her bed with a cup of wine in one hand and the dagger in the other. Anxiety clawed at her when she thought about how they ended up here. Just a few days ago, things seemed like they were going to be fine. Their house was united, and her mother would be queen after Viserys the Peaceful.

The greens must have made plans long ago, because outside her window, people were moving around, scurrying, rushing and whispering. She drank her wine as she watched them all fuss around. Larys Strong looked on from a corner. Technically her uncle, yet she had barely ever spoken to him. Her thoughts drifted to her poor mother. Her throne was being usurped, and there was nothing she could do about it, because she didn’t know. The castle was so quiet, and Maelessa could only assume it was because the greens didn’t want the news of the king’s death to spread yet. They had to finish their plans first.

She had never loved Alicent. The green queen was stern and absent, never warm, smiling or welcoming. But she seemed to have a good heart and she, just like Rhaenyra, wanted peace. But her father Otto was another matter. Otto Hightower was a cunning serpent, whispering venomous words in the ears of everyone in a position of power. Maelessa’s best guess was that this plot was his doing.

The whole day passed, and it was only in the middle of the night that Aemond returned to her chamber. She woke not when he opened the doors, but when he climbed into her bed. He had already stripped all clothes from his body and his eyepatch as well. She stirred and opened her eyes, and he brushed her hair out of her face.

“Shhh…” he whispered, placing soft kisses all over her face. His fingers, gentle and careful, travelled down her neck and chest, pushing back the furs she slept under. “Ñuha gevives…” His kisses moved down her neck, to her chest and down her arm as he climbed in under the furs and on top of her. She shifted onto her back to grant him better access. “Ñuha gevie ozgūroti.” There was that word again. Captive. Prisoner. It held two meanings to them, sweet and evil. Aemond brought his hand up to her lips, and she sucked his fingers into her mouth, wetting them before he dropped his hand down to her womanhood, rubbing her softly until she was bucking her hips up against his hand, craving more.

”Kostilus,” she begged quietly. Aemond chuckled and slid two fingers into her, still placing soft kisses wherever he could reach.

“Ñuha buzdari…” he murmured, and she gasped. The more chaotic the world around them grew, the more possessive he became. “Mēre ñuha.”

“Aōhon,” she agreed, whining in pleasure as he drove his fingers in deep, curling them and working the spot deep inside her that drove her mad with desire. “Ñuha āeksio… ñuha dārys… ñuha jaes,” she moaned. At this, he captured her lips again and kissed her feverishly, pumping his long skilled fingers into her over and over until she threw her arms around him, digging her nails into his perfectly muscled back as she came for him, receiving praise once more.

“Syz riña… ñuha syz riña,” he whispered, withdrawing his fingers and sucking her arousal off of them, moaning at the taste.

“Mazemagon yeng,” she murmured against his lips when he kissed her again. So he did. One could be forgiven for thinking he ruled and made all the decisions in their relationship, but truth be told Aemond indulged Maelessa’s every whim, he never told her no unless it was for her own safety, and everything she wanted, he gave her if it was within his power to do so. He was enslaved to her just as much as she was to him. 

She wrapped her legs around his hips when he entered her, moaning softly. He kept his hand on her cheek, looking into her eyes as he rocked his hips into her, claiming her with deep and slow thrusts. They both gasped and panted in pleasure, sharing sweet kisses in between his thrusts. He filled her up so perfectly and it didn’t take long before she was nearing that edge again, using her heels to pull him deeper inside her. She fisted her hands in his hair and he bit down on her neck just as she tumbled over the edge, crying out his name when she came for him. Seconds later he withdrew himself from her and with a breathless groan, spilled his seed on her thighs and belly. She couldn’t wait to feel it inside her one day. 

Neither of them bothered with cleaning up the mess, and Aemond climbed back in under the furs. Maelessa pulled him into her arms this time, stroking his silky hair fondly while kissing his face and head. She sang him a song and he slowly began to relax in her arms, and that’s how they fell asleep that night.

When dawn came for them, he helped her dress. He braided her hair, she braided his, and he put her in a green gown despite her protests.

“Can’t I wear black? It would symbolise my mourning for the king. I don’t support your family, I don’t support Aegon. Only you,” she said and pouted as he laced the green corset tightly.

“No.” One word, that he barely ever used with her, was all he needed to silence her objections. He leaned in and kissed her exposed neck. “It’s only for show, Maelītsos. Don’t think too much about it. Everything will be alright, I promise.”

With a resigned sigh she allowed him to keep fussing around with her like a doll until he deemed her perfect. Then he offered her his arm and they walked together through the empty castle all the way to the dragon pit, where Aegon was to be crowned. As expected they received angry looks from Alicent and Otto when they showed up together. Alicent grabbed Aemond’s arm, stopping him when they passed her.

“Why is she here? She was supposed to remain in her chamber,” she whispered. Maelessa heard her of course, and smiled. Aemond had broken the rules of their plan only to have her here, and for that she was glad.

“Hmm. She looks pretty in green, don’t you think?” Aemond replied to his mother with a smirk, ignoring her question to take their places by Helaena who smiled shyly.

Commoners began to seep into the dragon pit, slowly but surely filling it up. Guards made sure to keep the order and soon, the pit was full to the brim with people. The bells of the city rang to signal an important event. When they stopped, it was Otto who spoke.

“People of King’s Landing! Today is the saddest of days. Our beloved king, Viserys the Peaceful, is dead.” Unnerved chatter broke out among the commonfolk. “But it is also the most joyous of days! For as his spirit left us, he whispered his final wish, that his first born son, Aegon, should succeed him!” The chatter turned from unnerved to exhilarated, and men of the city watch entered, forming a passage for the new king. Maelessa struggled to keep her face plain. She wanted to scowl and roll her eyes as Otto spoke, but she bit her lip to stop herself. She glanced over at Aemond who stood next to her, hands clasped behind his back.

Aegon entered, slowly, looking unsure of himself. He didn’t look like a king at all, but a sullen boy who shouldn’t be afforded power in any aspect of life. No matter how much you tried to dress up a pig, it was still a pig. Even Aemond couldn’t hide his thoughts as he swallowed hard, his eyes fluttering while he watched his brother take the stage. Then he caught himself, and resumed his stoic blank gaze.

Otto continued to speak, but it was Ser Criston who spoke the final words, placing the Conqueror’s crown upon Aegon’s head. When Aegon turned, first Alicent, then Helaena and then Maelessa, all curtsied. Aemond nodded his head, and then Aegon turned back to the public, who applauded him and cheered. It was then he seemed to realise that power came with adoration, and he drew his Valyrian steel sword. For the first time since entering the pit, he smiled. When the crowd cheered him, and he lifted the sword again, egging the smallfolk on.

It was then that the ground broke, dust and debris covering the entire room and a dragon’s screech was heard. The common folk screamed and scattered. Aemond stepped protectively in front of Maelessa and Helaena, who took each other’s hands as they watched the red scales of Meleys come into vision. Rhaenys sat in the saddle, having escaped her imprisonment in her chamber. Meleys roared, her huge claws and her snapping tail taking the lives of many a man as she gained footing and stomped forward to the royal family. As the commonfolk escaped through the opening doors, Rhaenys looked down at Aegon and Alicent. Alicent had stepped forward to protect her son, if Rhaenys were to rain fire on him. Maelessa stared with wide eyes, wondering if Rhaenys was bold enough to slaughter them all in here. 

It would be bittersweet. If she slew the new king, it meant Rhaenyra could come to claim her rightful throne. But in dragon fire, none were spared, meaning she wouldn’t live to see it. Meleys roared again, her hot breath fanning over them all. Rhaenys gave Alicent a meaningful look, then she turned her dragon around and escaped, leaving them all shaken and scared, but unharmed.

Valyrian translations:

Ñuha ozgūroti - My captive/prisoner

Ñuha gevives - My beauty

Ñuha gevive ozgūroti - My beautiful prisoner 

Kostilus - Please

Ñuha buzdari - My slave

Mēre ñuha - Only mine

Aōhon - Yours

Ñuha āeksio… ñuha dārys… ñuha jaes - My master… my king… my god

Mazemagon yeng - Claim/take me

Tag list: @magnificentsapphiresoul

[darkpoisonouslove]

HotD S02E01

Many thoughts, head full, zero ability to articulate so I'm just gonna scream about it... on main. That'll end well.

First thing I have to say is that the atmosphere and tone definitely work very well here. You can feel the tragedy in the air, the way that it's already happened and it just waits to unfold, to be witnessed in its full glory. Everything is so eerie and bleak and everyone keeps going but they cannot escape the framework of the war. They're trapped in it and you feel it.

Daemon is... he kind of surprised me ngl. There are definitely layers of emotion there that isn't just rage or bloodthirstiness. I didn't want to strangle him the entire time so that's a positive.

Emma D'arcy was amazing in this episode and (I could be missing something; too lazy to check but) she only had that one line??? And still, you feel her grief. That was certainly an interesting approach and it worked for them!

Aegon is such a contrast to all the other characters! I know he's supposed to look completely out of place and incompetent but damn, I am On. His Side! He's ready to be so generous to the small folk. He's trying to compensate on what he missed with his own father by spending time with his son. He has no idea how to interact with Helaena but he's trying his best and goddamn, if that's not a summary of his character! 😭😭😭😭😭😭 (this is an Alicent AND Aegon stan account now, I guess)

(that scene of him and his buddies drinking in the throne room has such fuck boi vibes and yet, SOMEHOW he was utterly hilarious and still sympathetic in it (I'll talk about the place of that scene in the plot later))

@ Otto and Larys: STEP AWAY FROM THE CHILDREN!!!!!!

The scene with Otto and Alicent was surprisingly touching. They finally reach some kind of understanding... and then he turns right around and continues to scheme behind her back. Sure, what he was trying to accomplish with Aemond is in line with his talk with Alicent but he's going to have his own agenda 100%. This wasn't just a strategical decision because Aemond is mad at Alicent rn and wouldn't want to hear any of her opinions even if they're also Otto's opinions.

Which leads me to THE SITUATION BETWEEN ALICENT AND AEMOND AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!! I. Am. Screaming (as you can see)! They are both so hurt and angry at each other 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 And I can't even take a side because both of them are correct in different ways. What Aemond did is actively hurting the whole family because it certainly exacerbated the war proceedings. But he's also right to be upset that Alicent would (seemingly) place her old friendship with Rhaenyra above her love for her children. She should feel vindicated that the one that mutilated her son is now dead. But instead, she's angry and has turned away from Aemond. When she was the only one who stood by him (and vice versa) on that awful night when his eye was gouged out????? The disappointment that they each feel in the other is KILLING ME!!!!!!!!! (I have to say that I hadn't thought about the possibility of Aemond being angry but it makes perfect sense and it hurts me so badly. Look at the contrast of this and this)

And now for the absolute fuckery of this episode (pun unintended). I have zero problems with Alicent and Criston fucking. Good for them! Love the moral dilemmas that are 10000% going on in their heads. HOWEVER, the decision to make them have sex while Blood & Cheese is going down? More anti green propaganda from the writers and I am SICK of it. Alicent was originally part of the scene, she was there to experience the horror of it first hand and they choose to switch that for her having sex????? You know the same thing that Rhaenyra and Daemon were doing when the whole fight between the kids in 1x07 was going down and they got no shit for it whatsoever but, of course, Alicent and Criston are going to be torn apart about this, I am 100% positive about that! Once again, the writers are trying to manipulate the viewers by going "See! Not only is Alicent being a hypocrite because she said she wasn't going to do this with Criston again, but that's what she was doing when her grandson was getting murdered" when originally she was bound and gagged and had to watch the whole thing happen in front of her. You could say that they spared her that trauma but they literally could have had her doing anything else if that was the intent. I am ANGRY about this. Not to mention the fact that Helaena literally interrupting Alicole while they're having sex adds an obstacle to Alicent offering her comfort. At the very least she has to get dressed first before she can hug her and try to provide some kind of feeling of safety, which inserts awkwardness if not downright shame into Alicent's actions and choices during that night. (Oh, and this will probably make her stop having sex with Criston, which is going to be another big L; let her be marginally happy and have orgasms, goddammit!)

Let's go back to Aegon now! So while Alicent and Criston are too busy fucking to be any the wiser about what's happening with her grandchildren (even though they literally couldn't have known anything like that would happen), what is Aegon doing? (Probably) drinking and stroking his ego by trying to come up with titles for himself... as the assassins are walking past him, right under his nose. Don't think he's not gonna get shit about that by fans if not by the writers themselves! They have set everything up so perfectly to blame all the Greens for allowing this to happen (since Otto and Aemond are so ready for war and yet were nowhere to be found during this either) but what about the Blacks, who organized all of this? Well...

They are whitewashing Daemon now by making Jaehaerys's murder be the idea of the assassins themselves. You see, Daemon would have never gone after a 4-year-old! He was only going after Aemond! And this is yet another misunderstanding like with Lucerys' death, except that this was way more deliberate but you cannot blame the Blacks when the people that they hired acted on their own. I hate it here! The writers are cowards and cannot commit to the actual characters that they're supposed to be writing so they're just doing whatever they want. And doing it badly at that! (That whole sequence was so fucking disjointed and lackluster also so congrats to whoever wrote this on the terrible job that they are doing!)

Poor Helaena! She's literally not going to get anything in this season. They already did Blood & Cheese so now they're just going to make her lose her mind and give her nothing else to do. I hope I'm wrong about this but I don't think I am given their track record.

Anyway, go team Green!

*I already bitched about this in the tags of another post but the fact that in the extra ("inside the episode" or whatever it's called) they had the gall to say that Alicent was in a "marriage that was loving but not exactly romantic or physical for quite some time" is a fucking insult. HE CALLED HER BY AEMMA'S NAME! HE USED HER AS AN INCUBATOR AND COULDN'T EVEN BE BOTHERED TO CARE ABOUT HER OR THEIR KIDS. SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!!!!

[unicorncornflakes]

Little One - Story AU! | Chapter 7

Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

Paring: Reader x Aemond Targaryen.

Summary: You are the only daughter of Jacaerys Velaryon, future lord of the tides. After the victory of Aegon and his side in the war, your family suffers the rejection in Driftmark. There you must always give an account to the king's new hand, Aemond Targaryen. However, when the time comes, Aegon and his court claim you as Queen Helaena's lady-in-waiting. As a new piece of the Greens' strategy to coerce your father, you are taken to King's Landing to begin your life in high society. Aemond will be, much to his pleasure, in charge of guiding you in this new stage.

Tags: Alternate Universe/ Enemies to Lovers/ Emotional Hurt/Comfort Drama & Romance/ Eventual Smut.

Warnings: This fic includes noncon, dubcon, manipulation, violence, death, forced marriage, and inc3st, at some points.

Tag-List (If you wanna be tagged in thi series or all of my work, let me know):  @thedamewithabook @bluevxnus @tempt-ress @bellameshipper @qyburnsghost @croatianprincess @hopeless-addiction-love

Author´s note:  Pls, enjoy! Feedback, shares and comments are always welcome!

Acknowledgment: To @ammo23 for the brilliant corrections and the wonderull work as beta reader, for all the patience and the love that always shows for my writing. Thank you so much :D

Word Count: 3.5K

"You'll end up being the queen of love and beauty if the tournament goes on like this", Mariam sighed sweetly, and the princess rolled her eyes, annoyed, even though she knew it was true.

Daeron would win in the arenas if business as usual continued. Jaehaera sat at the window that led to the training yard of the Red Keep. You had already been sitting there for a while, and all the young girl did was sit next to you. Mariam moved close, leaning against the thick stone wall but keeping an eye on the training ground.

The truth is that Larys's daughter had become your shadow since the first day of the tournament had ended, and you had an idea of ​​why: she was alone. Very alone. As lonely as you and the princess, that loneliness had ended up uniting three girls who were going from being treated like girls to realising their importance as women.

The three of you were maturing, each in her own way but all locked within the literal and metaphorical walls that the war had raised against you. "Do you think that in the last celebration of the tournament, someone will ask you to dance?" Mariam asked again. While Larys's daughter was growing obsessed with liking a knight, a lord, or a simple man in general, Jaehaera had educated herself not to fall for such trivial topics. Daeron and his presence had greatly helped bring about a silent maturity that had little or nothing to do with young Strong's character. You, for your part, didn't know if you would ever grow up, but you were doing it like the others. Simply, the fact that your father had protected you from everything did not help you to develop into a full woman; after all, everyone referred to you as "little".

You were your father's little girl, your grandfather's little girl, the little one to Aemond. The hand of the King had ignored you for the last three days of the tournament ever since Ser Gargalen had dedicated each and every one of his jousting victories to you. You hadn't exchanged a single word with him, yet he always smiled at you with that sincere, daring grin that only southerners seemed to have, and your heart always seemed to quicken slightly whenever he appeared riding her black hair, muzzle. Strange. According to what your grandfather had told you, those horses were originally from the south, and that same day that Corlys had told you about those desert steeds that always raised their tails when they ran, Aemond had withdrawn without a word to you. You supposed that he had ended up tense and annoyed by all the praise and comments that your grandfather made every time the Dornish boy went out. Be that as it may, Aemond was gone, and a small part of you, a very small part, yearned for his ever-looming, shadowy presence. Something in that imperturbable face drew you in, and you would be lying if you didn't accept that you loved seeing him.

“I'm not worried about being asked to dance,” Jaehaera replied with a shrug, keeping an eye on her uncle, who was practicing with his sword next to his squire. The prince smiled at his niece, and she smiled back with a slight nod.

Perhaps the princess didn't mind being asked to dance, but she did like to feel desired, and Daeron fulfilled all those requests more than gladly. "It's never something that has caught my attention," she said in a whisper as she looked at you. You gazed around the training ground, almost hoping to see the Dornish knight who had dedicated each victory to you, but Ser Gargalen never seemed to train with the rest of the men of Westeros. You hadn't seen a single southerner during those days on the castle walls. While the rest of the men from the west walked around as if the castle were theirs, the Dornishmen stayed outside the walls. As you well knew, Dorne was not yet part of Aegon II's reign, even though he proclaimed himself King of the Seven Kingdoms. "And you, (Y/N)? Do you think someone will ask you to dance?" Jaehaera asked with a half-smile.

"I don't think anyone will.” You smiled innocently, and Mariam approached you with joy and self-confidence. Her crippled leg made her walk slower and wobbly than the others, but that didn't mean she wasn't a girl her age, with the desires of a girl her age.

"Ser Gargalen will take you out, even if he loses. He shows too much interest" She laughed, amused, as she tried to turn as if imitating a dance. "I've always wanted to be kicked out, but, well, I don't think any gentleman wants to dance with a duck." She laughed as if she didn't care, but she did; of course, she did. She knew she wasn't pretty, but her limp didn't help men notice her either. Mariam was the daughter of someone important, so she would marry. However, she would not get the fairy tale she wanted. She didn't know that no woman ever got what she wanted, but she thought it was all down to her leg.

"There will be someone," Jaehaera smiled as if trying to comfort the young girl. Mariam kept trying to dance, and you and the dragon princess laughed with her. At a moment like this, it almost seemed that you were a girl of your age living in a moment of your own. And those moments reminded you of Driftmark. You kept laughing. At that moment, your eyes returned to the training field, it was almost night, but you recognised a silhouette that was hiding in the shadows of the gate.

The princess and Mariam stopped laughing when they saw how you were now looking at the training ground with interest. "Is there Ser Gargalen?" the youngest of them asked, almost elbowing herself open to see the young Dornishman showing off like a peacock, just like he always did. The girl sighed when she saw the King's hand.

"It is only the hand of the King. I guess he's going to practice," you commented without taking your eyes off him. It was the first time you'd seen him in three days, and even in his workout clothes, you still found him attractive.

"He always practices this hour," Jaehaera replied, bored by the shift in focus. The young princess moved away from the window and sat down next to a table where dinner would be served to you sooner or later. "Ser Criston said he could have won all the tournaments he wanted when he was young, but according to my uncle, he didn't care about them," she shrugged. Talking about Aemond always bored her, yet she was always amused by the look on your face when you saw him. She was beginning to think that surely you also felt something for her uncle and that what the one-eyed man dreamed of was not so far from his reach.

"That's because he didn't have a lady to woo," Mariam sighed, almost maddened by the presence of the King's hand. "I would let myself be courted by him..." you heard her say, and you could only look at her without believing what your ears were hearing. "He is so…."

“Arrogant and pretentious?” Jaehaera asked, laughing at the situation. And Mariam looked at her, her eyes bugging out, almost as if her great love had been insulted. "Mariam, fall in love with whoever you want, not with whoever your father tells you to," the princess whispered to her in a confident tone, and the girl blushed. She looked at you, embarrassed, as she looked back to the front. Now Daeron and Aemond practiced in silence, and you all remained without speaking until dinner arrived, perhaps because each one was lost in their thoughts, but especially little Strong, who had never been told that she could be interested in another man who was not liked by his father.

"I tell you, you don't have balls", Martell shouted against Trystane Gargalen, the future heir to the tiny and irrelevant house onSalt Shore. The newly knighted boy stared at his comrade-in-arms in disbelief while the Sunspear boy, who had to be his age or similar, pounded the table with the ferocity of southern men. All the young people of more or less his age were gathered outside the castle walls, not only the southerners, those who had not lived through the war or who had only experienced it in the first years of their lives, had gathered around wine, beer and the music that some young man from Sunspear, who knows which one, had organized. It was far from the constrained and sad paternal gazes who longed for and disapproved of that behaviour at the same time.

"You don't know if I have the manhood to do it or not", snapped the young man fromSalt Shore, the one who had dedicated each and every one of the duels he had won to you. All the young people sitting at his table in that makeshift hut laughed at the young man.

A young Rickon Stark, son of Cregan Stark and future Lord of Winterfell, was sitting a few tables further away than that group of young men from the desert, who talked about kidnapping princesses, being mercenaries, or simply claiming things the way things were claimed in the south. With passion and fierceness.

Rickon didn't drink wine like they did; none of the northerners who accompanied him in silence did. He just sipped his beer in silence and with a sulky gesture as those he was listening to the boys from the south made him angry. "I can enter the fortress and take her in front of all the guards, take her with me to Salt Shore and be happy for what's left of our lives," the newly knighted young man cried, and everyone at that table laughed.

"First, you should get laid and see if you two work between the sheets before you do something like that. Suppose she is terrible in bed later," the young Martell chuckled in a whisper as Trystane sat back down. Just as the young Gargalen was about to respond with an even more vile comment, Rickon Stark broke the silence at their table. He had lived through the war, or at least in part, and he wasn't thinking of going through a similar conflict again for you, much less for your family.

"There would be a war if you do that; thousands would die because you made a fairy tale come true," said the northerner, intruding on a conversation that had little or nothing to do with him or perhaps too much. After all, one of Jacaerys Velaryon's pacts had been to promise his first daughter to Rickon; another thing was that the pact had been broken at the same moment that the Greens won the war. "Not to mention that the King's hand would surely emasculate you as it found you. Those women have owners, boy.” Rickon turned his gaze forward, fixing it on the crowd that danced in front of him. His table fully expected the southerner's reaction to such a provocation, but Trystane Gargalen only laughed. All the young nobles were there, perhaps the only ones missing were you, the princess and the daughter of Larys. But few heard the words of the young man from Salt Shore.

"What will a cold northerner know of the hot and burning passion of the south?" replied the young Martell, challenging Rickon to speak with his eyes, but Rickon only shrugged.

"Absolutely nothing, but I do know more than you do about the war that just sixteen years ago filled almost the entire West with Blood and Fire", he responded reluctantly. Both tables fell silent. Up to that moment, all the young people who had laughed and celebrated now remained silent, as well as the grumpy northerners who accompanied Rickon; it almost seemed that all of them were looking for a confrontation. But Dorian Martell just walked up to Rickon Stark and laughed as he put his hands on the northern giant's shoulders. Everyone tensed as the party continued around them.

"Relax northerner. We would never touch something that you consider yours," he whispered in his ear, and Rickon Stark tensed because he knew that the young Martell's words were true. You had only attended the celebrations of Aegon's name day without noticing his presence, that at one time was the man destined to marry you. You had only been a shadow of Aemond; he had heard the rumours running through the city like a virus.

When you weren't with him, you dedicated yourself to making eyes at that southerner, and meanwhile, Rickon Stark, the man who was once going to be your husband, only received your indifference. Martel squeezed his shoulders again, sighing through his teeth. "She must be so tight, only if the King's hand hasn't made his way inside your girl, of course," Rickon rose like an automaton and punched Dorian Martell in the jaw. Those boys engaged in a pitched battle in which Trystane Gargalen ended up punching out the son of Gregan Stark. The young man from Salt Shore had other plans for tonight. Other plans that included your presence, although he wasn't thinking of kidnapping you, at least for the moment.

It was already late, but you were still with the princess and Mariam, now walking through the palace gardens. You listened to the music that came from outside the palace walls, where all the young nobles had gathered that night. Everyone except you. Jaehaera hadn't wanted to go or really knew she couldn't go; neither her eyes nor her hair was easy to hide, and she didn't want to attract attention any more than it already did between the walls of the Red Keep.

Mariam had been left wanting if only to wobble from one place to another while the music played. However, a small part of you would have enjoyed going to the party with the youngest; you have always attended all the ones that had been held in Driftmark. Always with sad faces and serious looks when the King's hand decided to come. But that party was different. It would just be people your age having a good time, much like the camaraderie you had found with the girls you swam with at the beach.

Another part of you screamed that it would be fooling Aemond, finally seeing the young Ser Gargalen. You just sat next to them on one of the benches in the palace gardens, literally watching the night go by. You were all silent, each deep in her own thoughts. One of the knights of the royal guard was following you closely, although it was obvious that the man would have preferred a thousand times to go to rest rather than following closely three young men who should already be in bed.

Finally, Jaehaera began to notice the exhaustion. She was the first one you escorted to her room, then Mariam had her turn, but when you reached your chambers, the royal guard, accompanied by his white cloak, spoke to you in a deep voice, but a whisper that only you could detect. "The hand wants to see you tonight, my lady." You blushed without saying a single word, and the royal guard looked away as if he, too, suspected the purpose of Aemond requesting to see you so late.

"He asked me to tell you once the princess had departed and was not in our presence.” He was a careful man, he wasn't going to let Jaehaera go where she wasn't called, and you just nodded. You followed that knight in silence through the corridors of the Red Keep until you reached Aemond's chambers. You entered the most sepulchral silence while that gentleman pitied you with his gaze. You were the new object of desire from the King's hand. Anyone in the Red Keep would pity you.

Dressed in the colours of your house, you timidly approached the desk where Aemond was taking notes from an old history book. He stopped writing when he detected your presence and tiredly leaned back in his chair. You greeted him with a nod, and he stood up, moving towards you. He smelled like a mixture between ink and steel, and one of his hands grabbed your chin so you could look at it. “Are you enjoying the tournament?” You never thought of sharing a moment of intimacy like that with him. Yet there you were in the middle of the night, with him, caressing your face. You saw that his eye was trying to decipher something that he would never confess to you. He looked at you as if you were the most precious thing in the Seven Kingdoms.

"Yes, my prince", you replied while he now caressed your bottom lip. He ran his thumb slowly, imagining those lips around his cock. Aemond would never admit it, but perhaps he had drunk too much wine that night. That made him braver, and that made him realize what he himself wanted. He, like a simple man, not like the prince, not like the hand of the King. You felt a pleasant chill as he caressed you. You closed your eyes, and he brought his lips closer to yours without actually kissing you. Just imagining what the contact of their lips would be like at that moment.

"The nights are cold in the red fortress", he confessed without any haste, and you opened your eyes at that moment. You saw a broken man. He has always been always upright and formal, aware of his family and his kingdom. You saw the man who was hiding behind so much coldness.

"Above all, they are cold for those who cannot sleep, haunted by their ghosts" He kept talking to you while your eyes, your precious eyes, were still fixed on him. "Hmm... I always wonder if you would like to help me sleep..." That proposition made your eyes widen, and Aemond only laughed at your innocence.

"I…" You swallowed hard, and Aemond pressed his body closer to yours. You felt a strange warmth in your lower belly, and Aemond thought how virgin girls were always fun. Although he had never had the pleasure of being with any. The alcohol made him not think clearly.

"Lord Gargalen sent me a marriage proposal today, for you, with his flagrant son", he confessed, separating his body from yours with what little sanity he had left at that moment. He walked over to the table and poured more wine into his empty glass. He didn't wait for your answer. He already knew it, even if you were afraid to verbalize it. That curse pronounced so many years ago from Alys's lips had shown him that you were part of it too. A fundamental part, much to his regret. "Cregan Stark has done the same with his son, although this proposal has reached your grandfather."

"You said that the Queen's ladies always get the best suitors," you told him in a whisper while he took a sip of his drink, his back to you, after sneering at the words he himself had told you. Now he was simply lost. He didn't look at you, not wanting to face your presence or the fact that he had narrowly taken you as his own, claimed as one of the most prized possessions of the only one-eyed dragon in the realm.

"None of them would be worthy of you," he confessed, looking at you for a single moment. "They may be young and believe they are great fighters, but you don't need a man like that," he approached you again, although this time he did it with a book that he placed in your hands.

“Help me fall asleep. That is all I ask of you.” Aemond took your hand as he led you silently to one of the armchairs that were next to the fireplace in his room. The fireplace was off. It wasn't necessary to have on as there was a multitude of candles that gave the feeling it was on. They were necessary for what he wanted to do with you. He elegantly and courteously seated you in one of the armchairs while he tiredly fell into another of the armchairs placed in front of you.

"You will no longer only attend the Queen. You will come here every night, and you will read for me what I say until I say," he told you tiredly, slipping into his seat. You looked at him confused, surprised that he had only asked you for something so... simple, as innocent as you. You looked at the book. It was a dusty book and yellow pages about the history of dragons in Ancient Valyria. You began to read without knowing that, not far from there, two boys your age were fighting for your favour, while that dragon had you just in one of the many ways he wanted you.

Aemond smirked at hearing your voice, just for him.

[liaa--qb]

Might sound like a hater) I am not, I can't cope with some of helaegons and Rhaenicent. Helaemond hate coming from them is sheer hyporcrisy. I want to stan team green but ain't no chance if #those stans bully only one ship

yes yes....I know right ? And honest advise from me that fuck this team drama. Just be there for good story and enjoy the show.

Rhaenicents and Alicole jumping on helaemond is something really surprising n funny same time like why are you guys hating or being anti of this ship ?😂 bcz Rhaenicent n Alicole were way out of story but show did it and Baited Rhaenicents alot.

Regarding helaegons... bc one of my friends who says helaegon is ok for her because these two share a miserable life alot and it gives Aegon alot sympathy.( 😂 Mainly She loves tom glynn Carney and so do I😍) and how can one not like him ? 😭 that's only answer 😂

I don't think heleagon is supposed to have any love but I prefer it with helaegond( threesome) more. I don't hate heleagon infact I like it and this ship is fine or ok👍 as long as someone don't try to make it romantic which it never was n never could be n show destroyed remaining chance for it.

Aegon doesn't need helaegon for sympathy. His life is enough for that. His whole thing with his son jeh was really good for example. He doesn't love Helaena but he knows that she is his family member who he has to standby nomatter whether he likes or not.

Helaena and Aegon are two people who don't like each other but also would not harm eachother any badly because they are family. But they are stuck forcefully by their family together n left to suffer from their marriage which both of them never wanted. Aegon tries with Helaena in his own way but his way we all know ( is extremely silly, bad n less pateint😅) which never helps him so he hates n gets bored with his relationship. Then suddenly he is finding appreciation and new chance from Kingdom and all people.

Him loving helaena was never any character shaping of huge thing. His own story arc was enough for making him less evil or I say worthy of sympathy.

While reading book I never shipped Helaena with Aegon and Aemond infact I would have shipped Daeron more with her but he was smaller. Though Show became bit different thanks to Ewan n Phia

And one not liking any ship is fine as long as they don't troll or bully any other ship Stans. What I hate about some helaegon Stans is that they ok with history of Aegon n him cheating on helaena on several times and still considering him loving while expecting full purity shit from Helaena n acc to them she should not fuck any other person even if it was with consent.

Same people are now supporting Alicole which was so ooc if I talk about how they were s1. ( Sorry I am Alicole shipper but they way they executed it was not good at all😑 they are doing anything with character of Criston specially at this point) while helaemond despite of being more logical than Alicole n some other ships being Targeted is..😕😒

I myself like Rhaegon more and I find it more interesting than Rhaenicent and Daemyra but I would not harras whole time the other ships of rhaenyra

Mind you Helaegon, Rhaenicent, Alysmond, were way toxic than helaemond but still if people behave this way then...what can one say

[bananadrinkxxx]

THE BLOOD CROWN (23)

[Aemond Targaryen x Original Female Character ! I fem!reader]

[Dark Romance / Enemies to Lovers / Revenge]

Content for adults. 18+

[warnings: smut, sex content, dark romance, angst, fights, domination, murder]

[description: Aemond Targaryen meets his niece under a different name and falls in love with her without knowing that she is supposed to be his enemy.]

Masterlist - click here for all available parts

K I N G S  L A N D I N G

When Daeron Targaryen returned to King's Landing, he had expected many things. 

His brother Aemond with the conqueror's crown on his head was not one of them. As he stepped down from his dragon, he looked dumbfounded at his mother, who welcomed him, dressed as always in green. She smiled, but her smile did not reach her eyes.

Aemond stood a little further off, with Ser Criston Cole and his grandsire Otto beside him, who seemed to be discussing something. As Daeron came closer, they suddenly fell silent and the young prince drew his eyebrows together.

"Daeron, my boy," Otto greeted him, but Daeron had his gaze fixed on Aemond.

"What has happened? Is my brother Aegon dead?" he asked in a weak voice, and Alicent put a hand on his shoulder reassuringly.

"Do not be alarmed, Daeron. Aegon is being cared for by the best maesters in the realm."

"What is his condition?"

"Concerning but he has improved."

"Can I see him?"

He had never had much connection with his brothers or his sister, but he loved them nonetheless. He loved each and every one of his family so much that he would die for them.

His mother shook his head. "He won't see anyone but me." Her voice was bitter. She seemed changed. The war was leaving its mark on her.

Daeron looked to Aemond, to be more precise at his crown, who commented on his look with a raised eyebrow.

"Do you have something to say, brother?" Aemond's tone was challenging. 

Come on, say it, lay in it, but Daeron was not one who liked to pick fights. He preferred to be silent, to not let his thoughts bubble out.

"Are you king now?"

Aemond opened his mouth to reply, but it was Otto who stepped in.

"He is prince regent. Until Aegon recovers," Otto said. "Come my boy, you must be hungry. Tell us about your journey."

Arriving in his mother's room, they took a seat to dine together. Ser Criston kept watch with two other men, always expecting the attack of the blacks. It was only his brother, his mother, Otto and he, and for the first time Daeron felt how much this war had already torn his family apart. Helaena lived in seclusion, not wanting to see or be seen by anyone, Aegon was badly wounded and no one knew if he would survive his wounds and Aemond, Aemond seemed colder and more distant.

The meal was silent. No one spoke, no one listened. They were all caught up in their own worlds and when their stomachs were full and their hearts still heavy, Alicent and Otto withdrew to speak with Ser Criston while Aemond played with the knife in front of him and Daeron watched him.

"Wine, Your Royal Highness?" Daeron watched as an unknown woman poured wine for his brother as he communicated permission with a brief nod. She smiled and Daeron watched as she didn't take her eyes off his brother for a second. He furrowed his eyebrows. Where was Rose? She reported directly to his brother and should have been here. He tilted his head slightly to the side, but except for another unknown servant, they were alone.

"Where is Rose?" asked Daeron bluntly, and Aemond's eye straightened.

His mouth became a thin line.

"Gone."

"Gone?"

Aemond snorted at his repetition.

"What happened?"

"Is it relevant?"

"Of course!"

"Why?"

"Why?" asked Daeron, irritated.

"Why does it matter to you whether she is here or not?"

Anger arose in Daeron. He was normally a man who could control himself, but his brother's arrogance made him angry.

"Because she's my friend," Daeron said as if Aemond were stupid. "What did you say to her?"

Now it was Aemond who became angry.

"What?" spat Aemond, looking sharply at Daeron.

"What you said to her, I want to know. Rose would never leave without saying goodbye. Or did you do something to her?"

He saw the anger in Aemond's gaze, but what frightened him most was the coldness with which his brother regarded him. Aemond clenched his fist and slammed it down on the table. Their mother and Otto's attention was drawn to them.

"Aemond?," he heard her ask, but her son ignored her, his focus on his younger brother. His look almost murderous.

"I am now Prince Regent and Protector of the Realm. You will respect me as that, if you already find it difficult to respect me as your elder brother, Daeron."

Daeron snorted snidely.

"I could respect you more if you had also been Rose's protector. You know how much she meant to me as a friend."

"Did you? I don't remember you being there for her."

Daeron's legs made themselves go, and before he knew what he was doing he stepped up to his brother, who was eyeing him with a raised eyebrow. Daeron could feel the anger making him tremble.

"Daeron," he heard his mother ask irritably, and heard her light footsteps as she walked briskly toward him. She reached for his arm, but Daeron still had some things to say.

"That's not fair."

Aemond hissed disparagingly. He stood up as well. He was a head taller than Daeron and looked down on him from above.

"What's not fair, Daeron?" asked Aemond. "That you want to put blame on me? She left me, not I her. I don't owe anyone an account."

Daeron sensed the bitterness in Aemond's words. He was hurt, he realized. When Aemond had revealed to him that Rose meant nothing to him, back in the secrecy of his own chambers, he had believed him. He had accepted it, just as he accepted everything his family did, but this time he could not remain silent. His time with Lord Hightower had often been lonely, it had filled him with sadness that his mother had not loved him enough to want to keep him with her, and Rose had always stood by him, never judging him for his feelings. For that he found more pleasure in men than in women. With her, he could be himself.

But now she was gone, and it was his brother's fault.

D R A G O N S T O N E

When Rose opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was Rhaenyra Targaryen. The black queen looked down at her, looking worried and studying her face. Her throat scratched and when she coughed, Rhaenyra reached for the cup of water and held it out to her.

Rose looked at her suspiciously and looked down at the cup.

Rhaenyra watched her, dressed completely in black. She lived up to her name.

"Don't worry, I don't want to poison you."

Rose raised an eyebrow. 

"But you were going to execute me, right?"

Rhaenyra looked at her apologetically. "That was up for discussion but I would have chosen not to."

Rose watched Rhaenyra. In her face and in her eyes she saw only honesty.

Rose didn't know why, but she believed the princess who called herself Queen. At the Red Keep, she had been portrayed as the evil one. As a cruel woman who wanted to steal the crown from Aegon, but Rose wondered how much truth there was in it.

She decided to drink and Rhaenyra smiled as if proud of her.

"You escaped with my daughter's dragon," Rhaenyra began.

"My apologies, royal highness," Rose said but when she was honest she had no guilty feeling. She had tried to kill them, hadn't she? She had no idea whether she could believe the words of this woman. The last weeks and days had taught her better. Everything in her screamed to believe her, but her head contradicted.

 "I did not mean to steal your dragon. I only feared for my life."

Rhaenyra shook her head. "A dragon cannot be stolen. They have a mind of their own. He was trying to help you. He sensed your fear and decided to protect you."

Rose frowned. "But why?"

The princess smiled gently and took the cup from her hand. She was amazed that she was so kind and courteous to her. Usually, women of her standing were the ones who expected such service. She reminded her of Helaena.

"I can't answer that for you. A dragon does what it wants. It is an illusion that we control the dragons." Rose tried to sit up slightly. Her whole body ached.

"Have you ever had contact with a dragon?"

A memory flashed through her mind. Strong arms wrapped around her as she flew on the largest and oldest dragon in the world. She shook her head and decided to lie. It would not be a good idea to tell her about Aemond.

Rhaenyra nodded. "Then Daemon must have been mistaken when he saw you on Vhagar?"

Shit. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to think a moment longer.

Rose looked at them apologetically. "Forgive me. I was just being cautious."

Rhaenyra nodded and played with her fingers. She looked a little nervous. It was a strange conversation and it was getting stranger.

"Careful?"

"I'm trapped here, aren't I? And I'm on the side of the Greens."

"Are you?"

She had to admit, she didn't know anymore. She had thought she was on Aemond's side, she had been willing to choose his side because she loved him, but she meant nothing to him, did she? She knew that Rhaenyra had been the heiress. King Viserys I had never withdrawn his decision, but now it was Aegon who sat on the iron throne and Rose accepted it as it was. Who was she to doubt his claim?

She was further from the iron throne than anyone else.

It wasn't like she would ever sit on it, so what did she care which family claimed the iron throne. She was just a bastard.

A bastard, without property, without family.

She was silent and Rhaenyra seemed to understand.

"Do you believe in Aegon's coronation?" Rhaenyra didn't look angry. She turned her head slightly to the side and smiled gently at her. Why was she being so nice to her?

Rose lifted her shoulders. 

"He was crowned by the eyes of the people. There's not much to believe in that. It's a fact."

"You are right. They hid the death of my father, their king, and did not inform me. They wanted to present me with a fait accompli, but I am the chosen heir."

"Not according to the Greens." Rose felt that her fall must have driven her crazy. Arguing with the princess about legitimacy was tired of life. But then, maybe she was. Tired of life. 

Why was she defending the Hightowers at all? In their presence, she had experienced nothing but loss and pain.

But she had had good moments, too, hadn't she?

"What exactly do you want from me?" she knew she was overstepping her bounds, but the last few days had made her bitter. "I will not betray the Greens. I don't care who sits on the throne, but my loyalty lies with Aemond."

"Aemond?"

Rose winced. She cursed her mouth. How stupid and naive.

She shook her head. She didn't want to talk about Aemond. He didn't want her and no matter how much she wished he would love her, he had made up his mind.

"Forgive me, royal highness. I mean no offense or disrespect. I do not know you. I am of the common people and have served your family and their kin since I was a little girl."

"Served my family?," she sounded irritated when she repeated her words. Why did it surprise her that she had served them? "Where did you live Rose?" Rose turned her head slightly to the side. Why was the princess so interested in her?

"At Lord Hightower's, the Reach."

Suddenly something flitted across Rhaenyra's face. She looked almost as if she was possessed by an evil spirit, her eyes bulged out, her skin suddenly looked sickly pale and she breathed in loudly. Rose looked at her in surprise. Was her hatred for the Hightowers so high that the mere mention of them made the princess seethe with rage?

"Lord Hightower?"

"Yes, I was employed there as a servant. "

Suddenly, Rhaenyra jumped up and her chair flew backwards from the force. The chair hit the floor so hard that she winced.

Rose straightened up, startled, and watched as the princess ran across the room, utterly distraught and gasping for breath. She turned her back on her and went to the closed window. She didn't know what to do, she tried to get up to rush to Rhaenyra's aid, but then the door was pulled open and she saw a young man step inside. His eyes locked on Rhaenyra and he ran toward her. 

"Mother, what happened?"

Rhaenyra grabbed his arm as if she could not stand on her own. She leaned on her son. She suddenly seemed weak. Not like before. So graceful and so royal. "It's all right, Jace," Rhaenyra assured him.

"What did you say to her?," her son suddenly feinted at Rose and she winced at his hostility. His look was almost hateful, as if he despised Rose's very existence.

She did not know the prince, she did not understand his hatred towards her. He looked at her as if he hated no one more than her.

Rose shook her head, but not a word passed her lips.

"She didn't do anything," Rhaenyra defended her. She still had her back turned to her.

"But you-"

"That's enough, Jace. I'm just overtired. Help me out of this. I need rest."

Rhaenyra avoided Rose's gaze, and while Jace gave her a warning look, the princess and she no longer crossed eyes. Her son helped her out of the room and slammed the door behind her.

Rose stayed behind, confused. She stared at the door from which the princess had been led out by her son. She no longer understood the world. Why had she been here? Why had she questioned Rose? She was a nobody to someone who wanted everything. Had she felt sorry for her? Had Lucerys persuaded her to let her live? No matter what possibilities she ran through her head, Rose had no idea why Rhaenyra Targaryen suddenly had this uvious interest in her.

. . . . .

"She was with them," Rhaenyra screamed and hurled a vase against the wall. It shattered into a thousand pieces. "She served the Hightowers. The whole time. She was their servant! Their servant! A princess. Can you imagine that?"

She shook with rage. She was shaking so much she felt like the ground was shaking with her. Daemon reached for her hand, but she avoided him. She could not bear his touch at that moment.

"Did they take my Aemma to hurt me and then keep her as their slave? A Princess of this fucking Realm. My Realm."

The thought rushed at her like a dragon in a rage. "Did they try to turn my own child against me?"

Aemma or Rose, she didn't even know what to call her own child, hadn't told her how she ended up there, but that couldn't be a coincidence. Her daughter disappeared and ended up with the Hightowers? Not even the gods could be that cruel.

And then something struck her. Suddenly everything was so clear. How could she have been so blind? Aemma had disappeared when Aemond lost his eye. That couldn't be a coincidence, could it? Someone had stolen Aemma from her, torn her away from her family, and suddenly Rhaenyra remembered Alicent's words.

"If the King will not seek justice, the Queen will."

Had Alicent taken her daughter from her? And had she intended to continue with Lucerys until there was no child left?

She had no idea why it had been Aemma and not Lucerys, but maybe they had wanted to draw attention away from them?

"Daemon," she said, looking to her husband. He said nothing, but she saw in his gaze, the clear reproach he had always given her.

I told you so.

Yes, he had always told her that the Hightowers could not be trusted. Starting with Otto, continuing with Alicent.

She didn't know if Daemon had wanted this war, sometimes she had that feeling, but he thirsted for Otto's blood, for the blood of the Hightowers and finally Rhaenyra understood his bloodlust.

She had not wanted to believe that Alicent was capable of cold-blooded murder. But now she believed it. Too much had happened. Harwin, her father, Visenya, Aemma. Even Luke had almost paid with his life.

She had no proof of that, Rhaenyra knew. So she would find out the truth. She would find out if Alicent had taken her beloved child from her, and if she was, if she was guilty, then she would do everything she could to take from Alicent what she had taken from her.

"I tried to protect her, Daemon. But Alicent's heart is full of hate and resentment. I cannot rule this realm if House Hightower is still with us."

They had trampled on her feelings for years, humiliated and degraded her.

That would come to an end now.

She would destroy anyone who came for her family. 

"What do you want from me, Rhaenyra?"

Daemon looked at her promptly. She saw what he wanted to hear from her and she wanted to give it to him.

"I want you to burn them all. Protect your family."

"If I do what you ask, I won't be able to let Alicent live. No one. Not her, or any of her children."

Rhaenyra nodded. For a brief moment she felt sadness, but then she looked at the door. Her room was directly across from Rose's.

"Do what you have to do. Kill our enemies. Anyone who's a threat to us. I want Alicent to know what it's like to see your child suffer like this."

Check out the last chapter. Little hint - it's the end. Any parallels, hmm?

Taglist

@watercolorskyy @marvelescvpe @ammo23 @helaenaluvr @toodlesxcuddles @malfoytargaryen

[ewanmitchellcrumbs]

Ange as I await your post show thoughts 24 hours later, I kinda have to send mine in now (I can't help it...thoughts are swirling, though I will need to lie down)

Thank HBO for sparing us more Alicole fucking....the good thing about Cole being at war is that we don't have to see them fuck anymore thank GOD. This episode definitely felt more blacks-oriented, though the scenes we got of the Greens were still interesting, I think. Annoyingly, only two scenes with Aemond, one of which I definitely have thoughts on. The young Rhaenyra cameo...Matt Smith rlly told so much with his expressions, it was just, wow. Also Alys Rivers intro 👀

Helaena saying she forgave Alicent- my poor girl, she really deserves better than her hot mess ass family. The scene of Aemond caught by Aegon in the brothel....aside from getting so upset on his behalf, cause good grief, Aegon, even your friends know better than to laugh at Aemond, because he's AEMOND- it felt as though they're building up to Aemond being faced with a choice to betray Aegon and take the crown, most likely at Rook's Rest, when he's injured. I know he didn't snap back at Aegon because Aegon's king, and he can't hurt the King, but still. Of course, I have to mention.....FULL FRONTAL AEMOND. Yes, my heart did race fast as FUCK when that came on....I was NOT expecting it, and I am going to lie down now. The scene of Rhaenyra and Alicent meeting was definitely a choice...still not sure how I feel bout it yet to be honest. I liked the episode, despite my issues such as pacing and others, many of which I share with you. One of my biggest is just Aemond screen time, to be honest. He's yet to have. a proper scene with Alicent or Helaena, and idk....I suppose I just hoped for a little more green unity with him and Aegon, but I guess we'll have to see.

-🦋 anon

Hello! Once more using your ask to dump my episode thoughts.

I felt the absence of Otto this episode. I feel like Rhys’s performance has carried the last couple of episodes. It felt a little flat without him.

I know that they aren’t following the plot of the Dance as it happens in Fire and Blood but the show feels like sloppily written fan fiction at this point.

They couldn’t show us even a couple of minutes of the Bracken vs Blackwood battle?!

Very much enjoyed the introduction of Gwayne and Alys, their performances were minimal but incredibly impactful.

I don’t subscribe to Team politics, however, I do feel the writing favours Team Black, but to their detriment. Rhaenyra has been softened to the point she is unrecognisable. Her sneaking into King’s Landing dressed as a septa was utterly pointless, really silly and achieved absolutely nothing.

I’m also disappointed that Rhaena has been dismissed as a glorified babysitter.

And Helaena?! What the fuck?! She is devastated by the loss of Jaehaerys in the book - what the hell are they doing with her character?!

I did like Daemon’s “capture” of Harrenhal. Simon Strong is an absolute G, and Daemon’s horrified reaction to his hallucination of Rhaenyra was fantastically acted by Matt Smith.

I am so disappointed by the brothel scene - don’t get me wrong, Ewan’s acting was phenomenal, but it feels like such a flimsy premise to set the two brothers upon each other (I think we all know at this point that the writers are going to have Aemond betray Aegon) - this is such a ridiculous catalyst for it. I also fear they are going to further darken Aemond’s character by having him kill Sylvie.

I hate this fucking show so much, and yet I love it and its characters so much, so I will return week after week, despite the fact it continues to break my heart.

[aegons-queen-rhaella]

So, I watched HOTD ep. 1... My thoughts:

My first thoughts about the ep are...it was fine. Just fine.

Getting into specifics: team green, B&C, sex, and some team black dynamics will be talked about. If you want no spoilers, scroll (This was a lengthy post. Sorry).

Team Green was somewhat disappointing and I'm not surprised. The first scene we see of Alicent and Sir Cole is them having oral sex. Why? Why are the even fucking? They shouldn't be doing that cause it makes them look like hypocrites. It makes them lose their values. It undermines their characters in a gross way. The character assassination is heavy in this first ep. The show runners did this on purpose to make them look bad. Honestly think about it, with all the shit that is going on why is now the time to show them having relations that they didn't have in the book? They did this for the sake of getting a sex scene. Disappointing!

The dynamic between Aemond and Sir Cole is one of friendship, maybe father & son dynamic. I like to see it. What I didn't like was hearing Aemond trash his mother and if I remember right, he trashed papa Otto too. I don't believe he would do that. He was fiercely loyal to his family even though he had ambition. I also like how Cole tried to defend Alicent from Aemond's ridicule.

Aegon. I loved him this ep. I love how they showed that he cares for his kids. He took his heir to the council. That is something that old man Vizzy never did with Aegon. I love how they showed how he was trying to be a good, fair, king to his people. He was trying. His humor was nice tension relief when needed. From what we saw of his dynamic with Helaena, it gives very much still a sibling relationship. They didn't want to marry so they don't act like loving spouses to each other, just siblings. I want to see what else TGC will deliver of Aegon throughout the season.

...I have to talk about how this show did Blood and Cheese. I thought they would have stuck to the book more. Them having her say "I have a necklace, a very expensive one" to me down played the terror of this event. She could have said "take me instead but leave my babies be" I was pissed that they cut so much of this horrible event from the show. This was supposed to deeply effect Alicent and Helaena. They were supposed to share this experience. Helaena was acting like this was no big deal and gave up her son quickly. Then she just walked into the room while Alicent is riding Sir Cole (again a pointless scene). I guess it was her being in shock but, damn was there no emotion. It should have been heart breaking to see, instead it was bland. Nothing like the book. They should have just did what GRRM wrote.

Now for team black dynamics. I'm going to keep this short but, us seeing Rhae grieve was good. I'm glad they showed it and it made me feel something for her character.

Jace and Cregan Stark having conversation on the wall was interesting. I'm a bit annoyed that we didn't see their pact and we didn't see Jace at the Vale. We missed out on how Jace was handling his emotions through the rest of his quest.

Rhaenys blowing off funky ass Daemon was great to see. He was trying to command a woman he has no power over. What a clown.

Anyway, let me know how y'all felt about the ep! Enjoy the Aegon gif!

[nashiriel]

I have to say both Consanguinity and Victory stand out for me as usually I can't stand reading A/B/O often all feelings seem...removed? Good or Bad and the hyper feminization of any "omega" often just...makes them nothing like the character they are supposed to be?

In Victory were Luke, for all almost every control is taken from him...he fights back (with help).

In Consanguinity sure Addam especially finds Luke very cute, but at least the (saner) members of houses Targaryen and Velaryon still respect that he is a living breathing person. He also still feels like Luke.

This is rambly but anyways, glad I took a chance of those two after reading Carrion. ^_^

I wrote such a long response to this and Tumblr ate it 😑 Thank you so much for such a lovely comment! I’m so happy that you took a chance on both of those fics and found it worth it. You’ll have to forgive the incoming recreated essay:

I have to admit, I’m not massively fond of some common tropes in A/B/O fic gender dynamics - at least, not when they’re played straight. Considering ASOIAF already features pretty strict gender roles with characters who struggle massively against them, there’s definitely a lot to explore when you introduce A/B/O into the mix!

When I was picking prior Targaryen omegas, Alysanne seemed an obvious choice - not just for the sheer number of children, but the fact that she was so focused on gender roles and improving rights, whilst being married/bonded to a guy who very much fell short in that regard. So the idea of her and Jaehaerys being held up as the Targaryen ideal pair as a bonded alpha/omega in that context was quite interesting.

I did think about Vaegon being an omega for the lol factor, but given Jaehaerys’ treatment of his daughters, I didn’t see him letting Vaegon off with a Citadel career if that had been the case.

And then I chose Visenya for the other, because I quite liked the idea of one of the fiercest, deadliest members of House Targaryen being an omega (you can bet Rhaenyra, Visenya fangirl that she is, helped hype Luke up with stories about how badass omegas could be after he presented), and also because that was quite an intriguing dynamic to me - an omega who could only produce the one child, the multiple bride aspects (I don’t think Aegon ever actually bonded with Visenya) and with Rhaenys being the more traditionally feminine one who Aegon preferred as a beta instead.

So for Luke in both fics, I definitely wanted to write him in a similar way to how I’d write in non-A/B/O fics. The fact that Jace is an alpha in Victory and yet is in a similar situation was quite important; he and Luke empathise with and empower each other, and Luke is very much the ringleader of their whole plan there (fun fact: his expression at the end is very much reminiscent of him smirking at Aemond over the roasted pig in canon).

Even with other characters, my rule of thumb is generally that their personalities should not really shift depending on what I’ve assigned them as but rather on the situations they find themselves in. Aegon III, who is obviously quite withdrawn and traumatised in canon, getting ready to dump wine on Aegon II’s head at the start of Victory because of the treatment of his family despite being a beta is probably a good example.

In Consanguinity, the power dynamics between Luke and Addam - Luke is younger and rides a smaller dragon, but he’s future Lord of the Tides and was massively higher on the social totem pole than Addam until a short time ago - and the fact that Addam is so laidback, makes writing them as a pair quite fun! The bit where Luke admits he’s not sorry for taking Aemond’s eye and Addam finding his feralness pretty appealing was in my mind from the start. You can see hints that here as well the Greens are far more traditionalist in their mindset, which is a definite cause of friction between both sides.

As Joffrey demonstrates, the Blacks very much consider Luke to be every much a fighter and future lord in his own right as his brothers, and if someone objects, they’re very happy to introduce them to their dragons. Which is going to be a pretty important factor for certain characters going forward.

[chromiumagellanic06]

The Silver Knight: Warrior, Princess, Wife

Daemon Targaryen/Original Fem [Targaryen] Character

Chapter 5: Khaleesi

MASTERLIST

Summary: Another day, another vision, another lack of silence in the Godswood.

Word count: 4.1k

Warnings: nothing, really

Naera wore white to breakfast—a loose white dress to beat the summer heat, and let the sun burn her bare arms as she slowly walked to her father’s solar. Family meals, she mused, resisting the urge to spin on her heel. She felt inexplicable and complex, but the sensations boiled down to simplicity in pleasure. She felt fine, in every meaning of the word. Free.

The corridors of the Red Keep leading up to the King’s chambers were naturally guarded, armoured men with white capes raising curious eyebrows as she walked with a dazed smile on her face, head of black waves left loose. She hadn’t seen her father, her sister, or anyone other than her maids and Daemon and Alicent, in weeks.

She had avoided them, almost, but then again, she had no cause to speak to them if they saw no reason to meet with her. A knight stood outside the King’s chambers, with a brandished Morningstar sword, clear green eyes and coal-black hair, but the clear indication of green in his chosen features made her frown. Ah, Queen Alicent’s sworn sword, “You must be Ser Criston Cole,” she smiled, dazzling, shining, bright and lively, and almost innocent, were it not for the Valyrian Steel dagger at her waist, “It is a pleasure to finally meet you.”

She shook his hand, much to his hidden confusion, and a thought came to her head as she peered at his features. Kingmaker, whatever that could mean. She exchanged pleasantries and entered her father’s chambers.

She entered to face a plethora of plates and cutlery, and a spread of fruits and breads and cheeses and meats. Her father was helping himself to some plum slices, and Rhaenyra attempting to assist him, while Alicent tended to her youngest son, Daeron. Jacerys and Lucerys bickered with each other, as well as with the others, and Aemond spoke in hushed tones with his sister Helaena.

“You came,” her father smiled, and she made her way to greet him with a kiss on his cheek. “I like the hair,” he added with a fondness that made her cringe. Hair like Alicent?

“Of course,” I keep my word, she didn’t say, and took a seat beside her good-brother Laenor, away from the children and close to her father. Naera took some bread and fruits but took no plum slices. She had liked plums if her father recalled at all.

“Now, what is this I hear about a tourney at the wedding?” Viserys began with furrowed eyebrows, gazing at the dark wavy curls wound around your head, biting away at cheese and bread. Ah, there goes the illusion of a functioning family. She had seen Dothraki bloodriders hold greater affection for their Khal’s horses than her father did for her comfort.

“You always enjoyed them, did you not?” Naera questioned instead, earning a chuckle from her father. A tourney could raise some bitter memories for her father, and to some depth, she wanted that. She wanted him to remember her mother, to remember Aemma, who died by his command. She wanted him to remember how Alicent came into his life.

“I am much too old to enjoy much, daughter, but a feast—”

“Alright,” Naera interrupted, “A feast shall be fine in the stead of jousting, I suppose, if you insist,” There, and there’d be plenty of opportunity to get Aegon very drunk and stage a misdemeanour of the gravest nature.

“There is no reason we cannot have both,” Laenor suggested. Of all the folks in this new and expanded family, Naera had decided that Laenor Velaryon tried his best to make her friend, be it with suggestions like these or with his general demeanour. He was alright.

“Very well,” Viserys agreed, almost chuckling, and irked an eyebrow at her plate, “Take some plum slices,” and lifted his plate to her, “you used to love them as a girl.” Naera smiled and loaded her plate.

He remembered, and as insignificant as it may seem, it mattered to her. She felt nearly guilty for what she had planned on orchestrating with Daemon. It would drain her father of colour, and in moments such as these, she wished to retract her plans completely.

“How do you even recall?” An annoyed Aegon called out. A spoilt child always burns when one showers another with attention, and the saying had never run truer. “Years have passed since you even met,” but his words had no poison that could be reprimanded. It was in his tone, all his ire and his irritation, and his flaws. It was also in his deeds.

“When you have a child of your own, dear brother,” Rhaenyra started with a glance at Helaena, “you shall learn how the most minute facts do not flee the mind,” but the fear that passes over Helaena’s face, and the regret that shadows over Aemond’s lips, as Aegon rolls his eyes is something strange.

Naera brushes it off. It is not her place to interfere, and it shan’t be for very long, indeed.

She turns her eyes to Rhaenyra, who smiles back, fake and bitter, as Alicent settles down next to her husband and speaks, “The wedding nears just three moons, does it not?” Rhaenyra turned back to her food, bitter, bitter, bitter, and then to her son Joffrey, just three name-days old, and tended to him.

“Yes, it does,” Viserys spoke before he thought, and then perhaps the thought of his brother wedding his little daughter overcame him, so he went silent. It was your decision, father, Naera wanted to guilt him, to coax him, to make him hurt. She couldn’t.

No, because whence the wedding came, she would put down the Hightowers and all would be well. She would flee to Dragonstone, and when her sister is secured as heir, she will mount dear Wisestone and flee east to wherever she wished. Her due would be paid and her duties fulfilled. She smiled also, something easy to be confused with the bliss a young maiden would feel filling her heart upon the mention of her impending nuptials.

No, the wedding was nearing, and then the Greens would fall.

In the weeks nearing the royal wedding of Prince Daemon of the House Targaryen, brother to King Viserys Targaryen, former Prince of Dragonstone, former King of the Stepstones and the Narrow Sea, the Rogue Prince, and the former claimant Lord of Runestone, and Princess Naera Targaryen, daughter of King Viserys Targaryen, the Silver Knight, the Master of the Mereenese Pits, a Red Priestess of Asshai, one of the Thirteen of Qarth, a former Khaleesi of the Dothraki, the Bane of the Unsullied, the Scholar from Westeros, and former consort to the heir to Sunspear, tragedy struck.

King Viserys’ cousin, the very woman whose throne he had been given, Princess Rhaenys Targaryen, and later Velaryon, wife of the Sea Snake, lost her only daughter, Lady Laena Velaryon, during childbirth. Her blood brother, Lord Laenor, was the lord husband to Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, and Lady Laena’s two daughters, Lady Baela and Lady Rhaena, now left to be raised by their father, a Yunkish nobleman, had been betrothed to the two oldest sons of Princess Rhaenyra, in classic Valyrian custom.

The family grieved the loss of Lady Laena greatly, other than Princess Naera herself, who had never met the woman in question prior to her death. Tragedy once again struck, near immediately, as all the members of House Targaryen gathered at Driftmark, the seat of power of House Velaryon, for the proper rites to the dragon rider’s death. Queen Alicent Hightower’s second son, Prince Aemond, stole Lady Laena’s dragon, Vhagar, the very dragon ridden by Visenya, and claimed the beast for himself.

This was in the great controversy because all had presumed that Lady Rhaena, the young daughter of Laena, would claim her mother’s dragon as she did not have one for herself. This caused a great disagreement, as Princess Rhaenyra’s children, Prince Jacaerys and Prince Lucerys, as well as Lady Baela and Lady Rhaena, discovered Prince Aemond in the midst of committing the act. A brawl ensued amongst the children, and Prince Aemond lost an eye to Princess Rhaenyra’s children.

This heightened the strife in House Targaryen to a great extent, as Queen Alicent demanded that Prince Lucerys have his eye put out by her in exchange for blinding her son’s eye, and in the big disagreement that ensued, it was discovered that the cause behind the brawl was Prince Aemond’s snide declaration that Princess Rhaenyra’s children were bastards, by calling them “Strongs”, thereby referring to the rumours of the Princess’ affairs with Lord Commander Harwin Strong.

When questioned, Aemond let it go that it had been Prince Aegon that had told him of such misdeeds, who in turn claimed that “everybody knows”. His foolishness, however, would return to harm him, as King Viserys put down any questions of her oldest daughter’s children as being illegitimate.

Following that, he also declared that Queen Alicent and their children were to return to King’s Landing and remain there, while Princess Rhaenyra confines herself to Dragonstone with her children and lord husband, following her sister, Princess Naera’s wedding.

While this seems as cruel as a declaration by the King to order the removal of his daughter from the political scene, it is important to remember that the rightful seat of the heir to the Iron Throne, since the Conquest, has been at Dragonstone. The King’s decision to confine Princess Rhaenyra, the very Princess of Dragonstone was not as much a neglection of her status, but instead a finalized blow to any prospects of Prince Aegon sitting on the Iron Throne in her stead.

The Greens, however, would not surrender easily and continued their struggle for power against the King’s wishes.

Naera wanted to laugh.

She had spent barely any time in Westeros and had, in that time, written Sixteen (King’s Landing I), Seventeen (Driftmark I), Eighteen (Driftmark II), and was halfway through Nineteen (Driftmark III – King’s Landing II). Driftmark had been eventful if her half-brother stealing the largest dragon of the time, losing an eye and openly questioning the legitimacy of her nephews could be considered much.

It had only spurned Daemon on—he seemed eager, and eager to ruin Alicent’s children’s reputation, while she had begun worrying for Rhaenyra. Her sister had stopped attending family meals, as did her lord husband, and all her children, choosing instead to leave Alicent's children with the King.

Breaking fast with her family felt like dining in a grimy pit of spiders. 

There was some good news, of course, like the impending arrival of Elysabeth Tyrell to the capital, and her agreement to their ploy. It would work out perfectly, and even if it did not, none would be harmed. Another morsel of joy came with Melisandre’s letters, which seemed to arrive faster and more frequently. She had begun to journey, and it made Naera smile—oh, for we shall meet again, ‘tween sand and salt, when the sun dips below the sea for hours spent in delight in your embrace, and the hours neared frantically, she could feel it so, in the thundering and hammering of her heart, in the flicker of every candle’s flame, and perhaps, even Daemon could tell, when her eyes glossed and sparkled for no reason as they spoke, and she sighed incessantly and sweated and crawled away from his casual embraces even further.

She would hold her red woman in her embrace soon, and in anticipation, she had begun painting her lady love with the utmost care and patience. Her planned visits to Wisestone, or Daemon, or the Godswood to work on her papers had all dwindled, and she spent hour after hour in her solar, surrounded by the finest colours gold could buy, as she struggled to recall every line and curve of Melisandre’s body.

The painting was in its process, and Naera was focused for the longest while on perfecting those beautiful expanses of skin and flesh, from her sharp cheeks and melancholy, but burning eyes, to her neck, and then lower, and lower…this painting would be scandalous for display, she realised and hid it from her maids. She would always rest it behind herself, facing the wall, and rest another painting, a landscape she had abandoned weeks ago, on the side that faced the room. It was the perfect disguise—to be hidden by something nearly identical to itself.

Melisandre had taught her that one, in a way, but that was a tale for another moon to recall.

My Princess, the last she had received, just the previous night, had read, your marriage nears thus, but I saw in the flames that you intend to make the day of another’s stage. I wish you only success in your endeavours, with no mention of her journeys. Strange, cryptic, the very epitome of her.

On this fine day, Naera was being fitted for her dress, nearby her closet, away from the portrait and the papers and weapons. The dressmaker was a gentlewoman, frail and soft and sweet and meek and timid. Boring, she’d love to say, but as she fastened her first trial at a gown onto Naera’s chest, she wondered if this is how Daemon saw her.

Gentle. Meek. Fragile. Probably, she knew, with the way her refusal all those dusks ago had slid off his mind as do silks over the skin, without a blemish. He was just as forward, if not more, buying her gifts he knew she’d love, and then leaning too close and then kissing her, soft and then fast, and every once, in a while, she’d forget to resist.

“Well,” Rhaenyra had returned to the scene, thankfully, as the wedding neared, and was as a calm, tempering force on her soul as the green wench was a poisoning arrow on her temperament. “This one does finely,” she grinned at Naera and joined her side, before the mirror, and began smoothing the fabric around Naera’s chest and waist.

White, embroidered with flowers in beige, with a neckline hugging her collar too closely and a skirt hooped and large and covered in meshes and laces. No.

Naera shook her head, “Too white,” for she was anything but a pure, dainty maiden, and she scoffed when Rhaenyra rolled her eyes. Her sister adjusted the fabric by the shoulders, tugging it behind and holding it in place.

“The next one, then,” Princess Rhaenyra directed the dressmaker.

Naera sighed, collapsing onto a chair, and said, “Why don’t you choose?”

Her sister shook her head and sent the dressmaker away, taking a seat by Naera’s side and raising each dress to stare it down. Her eyes held melancholy of a sort, like a great regret chained away at her core that poured out in invisible tears down her spirit.

Naera laid her head back on her chair. It was about Daemon, of course, it was. The way she saw it, Naera would be happier with Laenor, free to travel the world and spend her life with her lady love, as Daemon would certainly be happier with Rhaenyra. Fate had played a dangerous, ill-fixed game with the four, and denied them all joy while forbidding them all choice.

No.

“Rhaenyra,” Naera began, turning to her sister, taking her hands and holding them tight, “Cry over your losses openly if you will, but live never by my side with an unquiet spirit,” and she leaned forward to embrace her sister, who smelled vaguely of milk and dragon.

“I am well, Naera,” Rhaenyra told her when they parted, but refused to meet her eyes. She instead busied herself with the fabrics, pulling up something in grey patterned with silver, “I choose this,” and raised the gown to Naera’s inspection.

It was a darkened grey, but light enough to respect tradition. It widened past the waist to just spread off at the ankles, like a ballgown, Naera thought, but with silken sleeves to cover her arms and a narrow waist adorned with clear jewels. Perhaps, a ruby could be switched out amongst them, a memoir of actual love to dangle against Naera’s breast as she wed Daemon. Perhaps, the fire within could lend her the strength to see it through and then walk away.

“Very well, sister,” Naera smiled. It would do just fine for the sham her wedding was sure to end as.

The sea is dry. There is dust and dying shrubbery behind the mountain pass, where the sandy cliffs conjoin, and the sun peeks past. There were horses, many, many horses, and a man, or a woman, or a child mounted on each one, armed with sickles, dressed in leather. Dothraki.

The Great Grass Sea is dry.

Naera saw scales—gruesome, brown and black and charred and horrendous. She saw jaws lined with teeth, hungry, bloody, filthy. She saw wings, scaly and fleshy, but grazing the sandy dust by the grounds. Zaldrizes. A Dragon.

It was that woman again. The Breaker of Chains. She sat on the dragon’s back, staring down at the men on horses.

The woman had her white hair braided in part, the other curls dangling down her shoulders, flourished by the wind. She was dressed in leather, by the way of the Dothraki, and sat upon her dragon, and she said, loud and clear, she commanded with every word, “Ei khal, fin thir nakhaan okke sen dothrakhqoy, aloji qisi mae m’avijazeri athdinar mae,” Every khal, who ever lived, chose three blood riders to fight beside him and guard his way. The men on horses calmed their creatures, blood rushing through their veins.

“Vosma anha vos khal.”

But I am not a Khal.

“Anha vo vokkak sen dothrakhqoy.”

I will not choose three bloodriders.

No. She was a Khaleesi. The Breaker of Chains was a Khaleesi of the Dothraki. The Khaleesi of all the Dothraki.

“Anha okkak ei yeri.”

I choose you all.

“Anha aqafak san ale yeroa ei Khaloon ray qaf khalasaroon mae,” I will ask more of you than any khal has ever asked of his khalasar.

“Hash yeri adothrae hrazef ido yomme Havazzhifi Kazga?” Will you ride the wooden horses across the Black Salt Sea? Every Dothraki warrior, now bloodrider, raised his spear, his sickle, and his sword up at their leader and swore some vow of allegiance with a shattering roar. Yet, the Dothraki had never sailed—the Dothraki do not sail. Me nem nesa. It is known.

Yet, for her, they would. For their Khaleesi, they would break the laws, the bonds, and the faiths of their ancestors forging. They would bow to her might, for she was no man. She was a Targaryen, and closer to a god than to a man.

“Hash yeri vaddrivi dozge anni ma khogaroon shiqethi mori majin vohhari okrenegwin mori?” Will you kill my enemies in their iron suits and tear down their stone houses? Yes, they answered, surely, but the noise drowned it out, the shrill neighing of their horses as though they could discern their riders’ minds.

“Hash yeri vazhi anhaan Rhaeshis Andahli, jin azho me Khal Drogo astasqoy mehas hatif Maisi Krazaaji kash shieraki vitihir asavvasoon?” Will you give me the Seven Kingdoms, the gift Khal Drogo promised me before the Mother of Mountains as the stars looked down in witness? The warriors, all the different khalasars, under all those different khals. Those khals were dead now, and the forces were united. They were united under her.

 “Hash yeri m’anhoon, ma jinne m’ayyeyaan?!” Are you with me, now and always?! They clashed their weapons against their chests and breasts, promising their hearts to the Targaryen warrior, to the conqueror.

Chaos erupted, as the men closest and farthest declared her with pride, raising their weapons to pledge their allegiance, roaring in acceptance of her rule. They cried, every single one, “Ze Qoyi qoy!” Blood of my blood. You are the blood of my blood, Khaleesi.

Khaleesi.

Naera awoke in a cold sweat, drenched, breathless and lost.

Sunlight poured with ease through the open windows of her chambers, illuminating her surroundings in the glowing gold that came with dawn. Her mouth felt dry, as dry as a desert, perhaps.

Khaleesi. 

Targaryen. Breaker of Chains. Mereen. Three Dragons. Conqueror. Queen. Dothraki. Khaleesi. Khal Drogo. Rhaenys by her side. Sylvie Rhaenys,

Wise Rhaenys. She needed more—these glimpses, these random sixth senses were not enough. She needed more to piece this together.

Visions in the flames. The Dothraki Grass Sea. Khaleesi.

She wondered what occurred after she left. Had the bloodriders taken over, fought for control, killed, and won? Were one of them now leading her khalasar?

No.

Roq’ko’s Khalasar. It wasn’t her khalasar. It was not her burden to bear. No. She wouldn’t wonder. She wouldn’t think. She wouldn’t let her curiosity make her worry about what she has already left behind. She will not be shackled. She will be free.

Naera had made her choice, and she did not regret it. They had tried to keep her with them—Freya and Roq’ko, and she had refused. They had tried to force her, and she had fought. It had been her choice, her choice, and not one made by circumstance. It had been her decision to leave them alone, and it had been for the best.

She felt dry, scratchy and blistered and burnt.

Did it ever rain in King’s Landing? Naera couldn’t recall.

She laid back against the hedges of her spot in the Godswood, a bronze dusk towering over the horizon. The air was cold and wet, the kind one would feel before the rain—before a hurricane, or a storm that would devastate the crops and ruin the lives of thousands. She knew those storms too well, but her skin was still as dry as a forgotten plot of sand.

She did not carry her journals this time. She sat only in silence, feet crossed and arms folded. Defiant, to a God, surely, but she could not bother. She knew the gods, trusted them, and trusted their idiocy. She’d survive their wrath once again.

Hark, footsteps. She seems to never have silence in the Godswood. The steps were loud, and confident, breaking twigs and dried leaves without a care for those who prayed. Daemon. Naera sighed, letting her head drop down in agitation. The silence had been splendid, had it not?

“There you are,” he greeted, almost, and climbed over the tall hedge to sit by her side, “Laenor was looking for you. What’s that about?” A mention of her good brother made her curious—Laenor never searched for her, never bothered her, and that was what she loved best about him. On this fine day, yet, the sourness in Daemon’s voice made her smirk.

“Don’t be jealous, uncle,” Naera clicked her tongue, “it doesn’t become you,” Naera folded her knees up, and hugged them to her chest as another headache plagued her countenance. Daemon twirled a finger around her blackened curls which never quite settles within her braids, and he dragged a heavy hand down her back, comforting.

“What’s wrong?” Ha.

Where would she even begin? Her headaches, and her visions, and that she had hardly seen Wisestone three times since her arrival at the Capital, all those months ago, but she couldn’t be bothered to make the time, or that the wedding was nearing and she needed it to be done with, but none of it mattered when all she could think about was that tribe of raiders, robbers, rapers who had called her Khaleesi.

She heard voices, every now and again, often of that very woman, even when she did not sleep. Valar Morghulis, another voice echoed in Naera’s mind, shrill enough for a woman’s, soft and gentle, reeking of oppression, but with an able tongue which screamed translator, and then the voice of the conqueror answered, All men must die, but we are not men. It made Naera want to smile. No.

Naera sighed, “Nothing—it is nothing;” but irked an eyebrow then, “Laenor? Whatever for?”

“And Rhaenyra. They had one of the Dragonkeepers with him,” and Naera shot to her feet, eyes widened. What? “When? Where?” but the Silver Knight was already climbing over the tall bushes to haste her way out of the Godswood. The dragonkeepers? Whyever, would they need her? She had not—

Naera ran with stumbling steps but caught herself from falling over and eventually made it to the exits. Rhaenyra stood there, alone, frantic, glad to see her sister, breaking the fashion of the previous days in which they had been positively avoiding the other.

“Naera,” she caught her by the shoulders, gasping, “Wisestone is gone.”

MASTERLIST

[cutepeachesss]

us vs. them (greens vs. blacks)

I think as soon as the time jump happens and we get to see the kids it’s pretty clear that this is no longer one family and hasn’t been for a very long time. Even though the children all ‘train’  together (aegon joining in to bully his younger brother along with the strong boys) we get this sense that they aren’t supposed to. Especially with how the costumes in that scene they basically said here are Alicent’s kids (white hair, and green robes) and here are Rhaenyra’s kids (plain-faced is a pretty good description lol). They play together, but they aren’t supposed to, they’re not all in red targ colors because they aren’t all simply targs, they are their mother’s children before all that. 

Then we have Alicent going to Aegon after finding out about the pig situation and she says “aemond is your brother, in the world we must defend our own” which very clearly draws the line. ‘We aren’t one family, they aren’t like us, so protect your baby brother,’ she basically tells him. And none of that really clicks for Aegon until driftmark. 

Which like I kind of loved that scene of Aegon talking to Aemond about the fact that he has to marry their sister. It makes it very clear that they are decently close to each other. Standing to the side (in their green robes) watching their sister do her thing, Aegon complains about how weird she is, and Aemond talks about how if he was in his brother’s shoes he’d do what their mom tells him to do. Aegon, rebellious teenage brother, with younger bro and mama’s boy Aemond.

When Aegon wakes up from his drunken stupor he finds out that his brother has lost an eye. There’s no way he’d be able to look at his old playmates the same again, his brother’s been mutilated. When Aemond says that it was Aegon who told him the strong boys were bastards, he’s shocked to hear his brother’s lie, but he doesn’t deny the lie. In that moment he realized his mother was right, they aren’t one family, and she’s the only one who would protect them out in the real world. 

Which like imagine the pain of that realization and the reason why I kinda expected Aegon to have a way better relationship/marriage with his sister after he realizes this. I didn’t expect them to be madly in love, but I did expect some kind of closeness or like one small scene of Helena rambling about some bug and he’s just sitting there nursing a  hangover and nodding along (mirroring that scene of Alicent with child Helena), he doesn’t really care but she’s not an outsider, she’s his sister (someone in need of protection from the outside world, like his brother was that night).

Then flashfoward to the scene of Aemond’s toast and the aftermath. Alicent literally calls that side of the family ‘these people’, these are strangers and her kids needed to keep up appearances in front of strangers. And that little fight after the toast, Aegon was so ready to fight their nephews, no questions asked. He wasn’t going to let his brother stand alone, definetly not in front of ‘these people.’ 

Someone probably already talked about this, but I really like that. From the green dress moment that family stopped being one.