Daenerys Targaryen and Robb Stark had won the same war separately, and each seemed to find the other the greatest jewel of their respective victories. They came to each other as equals, rather than a beggar king's sister to a still-powerful king's bed.
"Khaleesi, it seems you love this king even more than the last one," Doreah told her. She was skilled in the ways of the bedchamber, not love, indeed, a variety of bedding particularly distanced from love. However, it didn't take a maester to see the queen and king's feelings for each other. Doreah and her fellows Jhiqui and Irri knew Daenerys better than most – at first servants, growing into friends and near-sisters even.
Though judging by her near-future goodsisters Sansa and Arya, sisterly love doesn't always amount to much. Yet the graceful, hopeful Sansa and warriorlike, resourceful Arya both found a lot to admire in their new queen.
Drogo had been chosen for her. She had realized her fate and tried to make the best she could of it. Well, that had led her here. However, she had chosen Robb, leaving no doubts about whether her feelings were real or an accommodation to circumstances. They were real.
"Dany?" a deep yet not booming voice said. Robb was not far removed from the high voice of boyhood, and yet here he was. Daenerys was not all that far removed from her flowering, and she also stood as a ruler. Becoming a man grown was rather more fun than, or at least less obnoxious than, becoming a woman grown. What gods created such, if any at all? Probably deities as obnoxious as the average man.
Yet Robb's presence quickly drew her back out of such bitter thoughts. "Hello, Robb," she said softly.
Robb walked into the bedchamber she was using at Riverrun, and one of the handmaidens added something. "Khaleesi, shall we leave you two alone?" Jhiqui said, also quietly, but with more of a giggle. With a nod from their leader, they did so.
"They're not as boisterous as Lord Umber's son, but they have a mind for rude japes all the same," Robb observed.
"Aye," Daenerys told her beloved simply. It was a curious blend existing in some highborn women and the smallfolk that worked with them, Daenerys added to herself.
"Watch out for him during our bedding, but I am the only man lucky enough to actually have you," Robb continued.
"That you are," Daenerys cheerfully agreed.
She had no interest in batting away the hand at her left breast, none at all. He was even more insistent, when wanting to draw pleasure from it and bring pleasure to it, than Rhaego was when the babe wished to use the mound of flesh for its intended purpose.
Robb gently squeezed it. "So beautifully petite," he panted, "like all the rest of your body. When the legends said Targaryen beauty was otherworldly, they weren't kidding."
"Starks are rather handsome too," she countered. They both had enough of waiting to bed each other until their wedding in a few days' time, but Doreah had given Daenerys plenty of other ideas. She reached past the laces of Robb's breeches and squeezed his member. It had already gotten quite firm via the attention paid to her breast, but Daenerys still felt the flesh pulsating beneath her fingers.
"Ohh!" Robb moaned. The bulging veins under Daenerys' hand made for something excellent to grip onto as she moved that hand up and down within the confines of the breeches. He spilled his seed on the front within a few gleefully agonizing minutes.
"Now what did I come in here to tell you?" Robb mused, and they shared a laugh before he remembered. "Oh. Yes. It turns out I got Jeyne with child before I left for King's Landing. My father didn't run from his bastard and I won't either." He had certainly worked up the nerve to say it with enough force.
"Someone wouldn't need to know you long to understand how much you take after your father," Daenerys admitted. And the degree to which you don't, she added only to herself, not wanting to assault his pride. The Tully men who he also drew from had fiery personality as well as looks. And as the ruler of House Targaryen, she would know fire. That was a large part of what drew her to him, the heat that came out of the young man raised in the northern cold. "You have desires, it is known," she said, amusing herself by using the Dothraki phrase, punctuating the jape by looking at Robb's breeches.
"And my desire for her was nothing compared to my desire for you," he responded, mischievously tugging at the laces. He revealed himself stiff again. It was looking like a better and better idea to have told the handmaidens to leave. She used her mouth instead of her hand this time. The way Robb called out even louder, it was clear Doreah had taught her well. The former whore enjoyed hearing reviews of her techniques, an interest that seemed to be more than just professional pride.
She was four-and-ten with the weight of the world, or least a continent or two, on her shoulders. She had the right to enjoy being lovestruck like many that age. It seemed fitting that the object of her affections understood from being in much the same situation himself.
With their clothes laced back up, she called the handmaidens back in. Jhiqui was cradling Rhaego. All three of them, and most other people besides hard-hearted warriors, loved the royal babe. Yet the thick bodied translator seemed particularly affectionate with him.
"How'd you like to hold a son several months early?" Daenerys asked Robb. "Not your son of course, but you're probably the closest thing to a father Rhaego will ever know."
Jhiqui walked up with Rhaego, and Robb smiled at the thought. The pale lad looked a natural with the swarthy babe. A good thing; they'd probably have many princesses and princes to raise once they started bedding each other.
Catelyn Tully Stark had raised five ladies and lords even with her husband's time – and head – cut short. "We were not so old," she complained to Daenerys. Indeed she wasn't, at three-and-thirty, her Ned having been not much older. Catelyn had room in her heart for a new daughter despite, perhaps because of, losing her husband and two of their sons.
"Queen Rhaella died in childbed bringing you forth, did she not?" Catelyn asked of her current queen. The marriage was still a fortnight away, yet now Robb claimed only the North, leaving Daenerys undisputed queen by birth of the Riverlands as well as the five other southern kingdoms.
"She did, but as you'll have a new daughter, I'll have a new mother," Daenerys admitted through tears that were mostly happy. She admired the woman's resolute sense of purpose, though certainly quieter than her own.
Catelyn had made a lot of plans for the wedding itself. She was the only parent of either the bride or the groom left alive, and being so pious towards the Seven, she had an enthusiasm for making those arrangements. Daenerys enjoyed hearing Catelyn explain the details. She hadn't had much time for religious education running from the Usurper's sellswords. Or, that being necessary, she had doubted the quality of the Father's justice. Yet sitting the throne that was rightfully hers, she wasn't so skeptical. More to the point right now, she had walked through the fire and flames and survived, but a mother's love was one warmth she hadn't felt until she reached Riverrun.
She needed to inform her Dothraki followers of the arrangements. "Khaleesi, this is far too important to happen inside," Jhogo said of the sept.
"I married a Dothraki man in Dothraki fashion, I shall marry a Westerosi man in Westerosi fashion," Daenerys tersely insisted.
Ironically, she found it appropriate to use an example of Dothraki sexism to help make her case. "Your people say nothing of whether important events in a woman's life should happen under the open sky."
She finished with another order. "I will consider it a good thing if there are less than three deaths. You are tasked to help ensure that is the case."
To stop preferencing sons in inheritance was of major benefit to highborn women. The laws for the Iron Throne had been especially strict about sticking to the male line, giving priority to any male heirs, however distant. Not anymore. That was the first thing she fixed the Targaryen seal to once she physically sat the Iron Throne. Many practical administrative matters had been handled as verbal orders; this seemed a much more auspicious inaugural use of the sealing wax.
Unfortunately, females of any age and station found themselves needing to be concerned about the realm's rape epidemic. She promptly took that seriously as well, announcing what she had done to Cersei's aggressors. The law often didn't punish what it called rape, and many things that seemed like rape weren't even called that in the first place.
A husband could take his wife whenever he wanted, whether she wanted to or not. She felt in her heart Robb would never do such a thing, but Drogo had at least come closer to that more often than Daenerys would have liked to admit. To hear Cersei tell it, and she ought to be trusted as the one to know, it had been a regular habit of Robert's. Daenerys was not at all surprised to hear of more of the Usurper's vile behavior.
Daenerys had been married off young and had been relatively lucky and she would marry again still young, favored by the gods as a bride amongst many other things. However, those odds did not work out for many in Westeros. She didn't like the thought of "but she's flowered" as an excuse for underage girls getting deflowered.
Once the queen herself became six-and-ten, it would be flatly outlawed to bed underage girls, and until then, girls younger than her. The decree could be written with an exception for men only slightly older, say Raynald Westerling at three and a half years older than Sansa Stark. There were many changes Daenerys Targaryen wanted to make, but only so many she could make and implement effectively right from the start. Similarly, waiting for Edmure to succeed Hoster as Lord of House Tully would allow time for the realm to absorb the change in inheritance laws. Yet right now she focused on thought of changing herself back into a wife.