Towards the Red Star
Rhaenys
They had wished for a son. Instead, a girl arrived, a tiny thing born as darkness drew near, amidst panicked cries because as soon as the afterbirth emerged, her mother started bleeding so heavily that they thought for sure they had lost her. Only when they managed to staunch the bleeding with vile-smelling potions that Elia was almost too light-headed to drink and thick white lengths of cloth they had to change two times before they stopped turning crimson did they think of bathing the newborn and sending a man to Prince Rhaegar's solar.
Rhaegar's first reaction was horror. For a few terrible moments, he was convinced that Elia had just given him another monstrosity in the Targaryen list. The child was purple – not her eyes but the patches of her skin that were not ghastly yellow. As to the eyes… he saw none. There were no eyes!
The maester was smiling and the midwife was pushing the babe at him, as proud as if she herself had delivered her. Rhaegar's panic abated. He took the small bundle and squinted at it. In the candlelight, it still looked nothing like any babe he had ever laid his eyes upon. Rather, she resembled a squire after a good beating. "Why are her eyes closed?" he asked.
"She was under a very bad angle for pushing," the midwife said. "She beat her head against the womb for hours and…" She paused and took the babe back in quite a hurry. Rhaegar was grateful because he felt lightheaded. He had never known that birth might be painful for babes as well.
As well…
"How is the Princess?" he asked, suddenly realizing that no one had told him about her. They didn't look happy to do it now either.
Two days later, Elia's fever broke. She sank into a peaceful sleep but when she woke up, illness had not left her entirely. She seemed to know who Ashara Dayne was but she had trouble recognizing Rhaegar at first. And she seemed to have forgotten that she had given birth. She didn't ask about the babe once, although the maesters told Rhaegar she looked confused when they changed the bandages on her leaking breasts. Of course, they couldn't put the child to the breast when Elia was so ill. They had chosen a healthy wetnurse instead.
At the fourth day, Rhaegar already knew that naming the babe could not be delayed any further and it was clear that Elia was unable to participate. He only prayed that it was temporary, that she'd claim both her body and mind from the low fever that did not seem dangerous to her life but left her unable to leave her bed – or find her way in the halls if she somehow managed to rise. Ashara Dayne was very young and not very good at hiding her feelings, so Rhaegar felt judged and found wanting each time he entered his lady wife's chambers already wishing to be on the way out. The sight of Elia without her charm, without her conversation and laughter, the light gone from her eyes and the sun fled from her skin was terrible to behold.
The babe had started getting better as well. The bruises faded slightly and the sick pallor of her skin turned back to the colour she would keep from now on. Elia's colour. Not the dragon's. Rhaegar felt ashamed for thinking about this at such a moment but he could already hear what his father's court would start whispering the moment they laid eyes on his daughter. The documents regarding Baelor Breakspear, a son of a Dornish mother and Dornish looking himself were still alive in his head. And the child was a disappointment. Not an heir. Not a dragon. So tiny that he sometimes felt irrationally angry – Elia had suffered this long, was still not herself and this was the result? These thoughts shamed him most of all.
"Rhaenys," he finally announced, although there was nothing dragonlike about her. "She will be Rhaenys."
"A good name," Jon agreed. Lewyn and Arthur, though, stood shell-shocked.
"Are you serious about this?" Lewyin finally managed and Rhaegar stared at him, taken aback.
"What's wrong?"
"You cannot name her this!" Lewyn exclaimed and Arthur started nodding vigorously in agreement. Next to him, his sister was staring at Rhaegar, agog. "Do you not know how Queen Rhaenys fared in Dorne? Do you want to name her after torture and drawn out death?"
"The Queen Who Never Was died by fire and was charred beyond recognition!" Ashara chimed in, for the first time allowing herself cross the line of propriety this openly. "That's a bad omen – and I can tell you what exactly we think of the first Rhaenys in Dorne!"
Jon shook his head. "Dornish," he murmured.
"Do you want to tell us something, Connington?" Arthur asked very softly. Lewyn didn't quite put his hand on his sword but the movement was noticeable.
"Stop it!" Rhaegar said sharply. "All of you!" he added before Jon could preen. Looking at them, it crossed his mind that Elia's way of letting her friends get this close was perhaps not as wise as he had started to think. He had followed her lead and that was where he found himself now. Just a year ago, Arthur would have never issued a challenge in his presence, let alone that a Kingsguard would have never allowed himself to meddle in Rhaegar's personal affairs. And of course, Jon would have never let out such a dismissive remark.
"She will be named after the woman who founded our dynasty," he said. "Both the first Rhaenys and the second one were women of note. That's what I want for her."
"Don't you want that her mother be able to say her name without foreboding and revulsion?" Lewyn demanded.
For a moment Rhaegar saw Elia, white under her covers, unaware that she even had a child. His sympathy and guilt were overwhelming. Almost. "Elia will be unable to make any suggestions," he said calmly. "The babe cannot stay nameless any longer. And in any way, the final decision is mine. Both women by the name of Rhaenys were beloved and that's what I want for her," he added, rocking his daughter slightly. She cracked an eye open and closed it again. Her face shifted into something that Rhaegar knew couldn't be a smile but he smiled back nonetheless, he couldn't help himself.
He couldn't say that the little one was disadvantaged already thanks to her Dornish looks – both the olive-skinned Lewyn and the fair Daynes would take it as offense, instead of fact. Giving her such a haloed name would make things easier for her, remind everyone that she was a true dragon, although she didn't look like it.
And Rhaenys had been the queen who had been beloved… He looked down and smiled again at the babe who had fallen asleep.
But when weeks later, Elia looked at him with horror in her eyes, her hands reaching for their daughter frantically as if she wanted to shield Rhaenys from him, he felt the first true shadow in their marriage looming so close that he felt its chilly breath.
