Save the Dragons
Warning: This story is M-rated for a reason, it contains coarse language and mature themes such as graphic violence, self-harm, and sexual assault as per the source material. Readers' discretion is advised.
F.Y.I: You might have noticed there is another copy of this story in the other Song of Ice & Fire/GoT category. They aren't different stories, and as soon as this site realizes that the show and the books are in the same universe and merge the threads, I'll remove the copy.
I've never really been interested in inserts, and I still have compunctions against self-inserts, but after reading 'The Blacks, The Greens and the Reds' by Loke_Lyon, which I cannot recommend enough, I was inspired to write this.
These early chapters won't be strictly chronological, they mostly just deal with the protagonist's childhood and I flip through the years as suits my purposes.
I'm certainly not going to bash any characters (except from the perspective of the characters, and that most of them have medieval sensibilities) and certainly not Lyanna, but if you're reading this as someone who thinks Rhaegar was like Romeo, you shouldn't get your hopes up.
Chapter 1 – Strange Circumstances
Fun fact: no one knows what happens when you die.
Sure, your body starts to decompose, friends and family pay their respects to your memory, and maybe you were lucky enough to be survived by your children and loved ones. But when it comes to consciousness, there's a staggering lack of evidence on the effects of death. As of yet, prevailing ideas on a deserving afterlife or eternal oblivion still haven't been confirmed by anyone who has died. People who were thought to have died and 'come back' tended to exist only as patients who'd been prematurely diagnosed or figures from ancient religions that he hadn't had the chance to examine personally.
As a medical doctor, he'd always leaned toward the oblivion idea, electrochemical signals seem to be what makes consciousness work, so if those signals stop after brain death, then consciousness should go right along with them.
Lately, he'd been having second thoughts.
Maybe he was experiencing brain death with a warped perception of time and suffering from a prolonged hallucination. Maybe he'd entered a coma and this was all an incredibly elaborate, vivid, lucid dream. Maybe his life was flashing before his eyes and he was overemphasizing the last novel he'd read. Maybe he'd been kidnapped and thrown into a simulation. Maybe there was something to the whole supernatural thing after all.
Maybe that eighteen-wheeler hadn't actually hit him on the way home from work.
It had been a challenge to keep his sanity, in the beginning, he thought it was all a strange dream. One dream about a deadly car accident, followed in quick succession by one where he was trapped inside a woman's womb, cramped and alone in the dark. He slept a lot then, even time seemed to pass differently. But it only got worse when he was delivered into an unfamiliar world in what passed for delivery in medieval times.
Eventually, he realized that it was no ordinary dream, there were only so many times that you could wake to the same dream and not question your sanity or if maybe what you had considered reality had been the real dream. Even trying to kill himself wouldn't wake him up, he was constantly being watched by maids maddeningly worried for his well-being and no attempt ever got further than rolling onto his face for a couple of moments. Finally, he had to face what was passing for reality, this nightmare had become inescapable.
Babies usually don't have existential crises, but it must've made him seem colic.
As his senses developed, he began to notice more and more how real everything around him seemed to be. He'd learned a few reality tests when he took Pysch in school, and it was a terrible realization to find that his surroundings seemed to pass them all. If this was some sort of dream, it was unlike any he'd ever had or heard of. By the time he'd grown capable of suicide, he'd grown afraid of it. Years had passed by, and though he still felt horribly out of place as a grown man inside a toddler's body, living in a strange place, he couldn't help but feel as if it was real enough to not risk it ending.
After years of infantile dread, he came to terms with his fate. No matter how much worse it was than his past life, this was what his life had become now.
Still, he maintained if only to himself, that he had only been so worried in the first place because it turned out he'd been living in a fantasy land. Quite literally so, and not a kid-friendly storybook setting either.
This was the World of Ice and Fire, G.R.R Martin's unfinished magnum opus. King's Landing, Westeros, to be exact.
Did you know that during the medieval period, that three in ten babies would die before they reached their first birthday? He remembered a quote from Martin about maesters having a better understanding of medicine than the real Middle Ages, but that didn't seem to apply to childbirth, if anything Westeros was worse off.
Queen Rhaella for example, from what he remembered from the books, she'd given birth to eight children and only three had survived, and that wasn't even counting all the miscarriages. He imagined it had something to do with all the inbreeding that the Targaryens had been getting up to for centuries. They made the Ptolemies and Habsburgs look tame in comparison, it was a small wonder they could have children at all at this point.
Not a comforting thought for a baby who knew about medical statistics.
Having picked up some High Valyrian from his new Targaryen mother, it seemed that his consciousness had found its way into one of those lost children, and somehow had managed to survive when they had not. His initial hope that he'd been reborn as Prince Rhaegar and could save the world by just not kidnapping a teenage girl had been lost soon after meeting his older brother, though thankfully the future tragedy was still only a baby himself, so at least he wasn't Viserys, and hey let's not take being reincarnated or something into the same sex as you were before for granted.
When his name day came around, they'd started to call him 'Jaehaerys'. Jaehaerys Targaryen, Prince of Summerhall, though they'd only started to call him that after his grandfather died when he was two and Aerys became king, and in any case, Summerhall was a smouldering ruin.
It was a decent enough name he supposed. He'd liked his old name, but he'd decided a while ago to make a concerted effort to move on from it, even when thinking of himself, because it made things confusing. Otherwise, you might not notice people calling your name since 'who the hell is Jaehaerys'?
Honestly, being Jaehaerys was easier than he had initially expected. He supposed it was because he hadn't really left anyone behind. In his past life or in the waking world, or whatever, he'd just turned thirty-three and though he considered himself happy with where his life was going having finally finished his emergency medicine residency, his life still hadn't really begun either. He'd never known his parents, and had gone through childhood as a crown ward, never really getting attached to anyone looking after him or having enough time in one place to make friends. In school, he'd been more interested in getting good enough grades to justify the scholarships that were paying his way through. Life as a resident wasn't unfulfilling and it wasn't as if he'd never had a relationship, but he always figured he'd wait until he was settled down before he committed to someone special or do the things he always wanted to do now that he had the money.
Too late. He guessed he'd never figure out why that truck driver had hit him or how the hell he'd ended up here, but the result was the same. He'd died, and been born again as an inbred royal baby to a family of pyromaniac lunatics only a few years before they were all going to die either from a civil war or at the cold dead hands of ice zombies.
A part of him felt like he should just sit back and enjoy whatever time he had left before the world ended in an eternal winter. But that just wasn't who he was, not then and apparently not now either. He hadn't gone into medicine for the money, and certainly not because it was easy. This world was in dire need of saving, and damn it all if he wasn't going to give it his best shot.
"Muna, I'm hungry. Milk, please." asked the high-pitched voice from its place on the bed. It was odd for a toddler too so politely request to be fed, but then he wasn't an ordinary toddler. For convenience's sake, he'd started making his thoughts known through clear grunts and coos earlier than probably any baby ever, but he'd decided to hold off speaking until he learned High Valyrian, which is what his 'father' still insisted be the first language of their family. Thankfully, learning a language when you're a baby is pretty easy. Before his first birthday, well, name-day, Westerosi don't celebrate birthdays, probably something to do with the high infant mortality rate. Anyway, before his first name-day, he was speaking fluently and in full sentences, and now that he was finally walking life wasn't unbearably dull anymore.
Muna was the Valyrian word for mother, and I guess since it's shorter than the word in the Common Tongue, which I still can't get over is basically English, the Westerosi Valyrians like his new family used it like 'mama'.
"Hmm," came the hum of his 'mother', "Are you, Jay? Well, that's easily fixed." The toddler with a mental age of a thirty-five-year-old man was scooped up into her arms and set down in her lap before the unsuspecting woman propped a nipple into his mouth and left him to suckle for his lunch without hurting her while she started to sing hymns and massage his back.
"The Mother gives the gift of life, and watches over every wife. Her gentle smile ends all strife, and she loves her little children."
He hated this so much, but it wasn't like he had a choice. He'd tried to switch to solid foods, but his opinions on anything weren't taken very seriously, and with the absence of formula and baby food, his caregivers were insistent that he rely on breast milk for nourishment. Admittedly, it didn't taste all that bad, and it meant that he was mostly left around his mother or wetnurses, but he could never get over the feeling that he was taking advantage of women by doing it.
"The Crone is very wise and old, and sees our fates as they unfold. She lifts her lamp of shining gold to lead the little children."
Just his luck, she'd picked up on it too, noticing that he didn't like it, and he'd been forced to play it off as a gas problem. He usually put up some fuss with the wetnurses, even though he preferred someone who was getting paid to knowingly feed someone else's child, because he couldn't let her think that the problem was her. By the time his second name-day had come, she'd already been in mourning for her parents and her life before becoming queen, so she'd retreated to the birthing bed. Two successful pregnancies had made everyone expect even more from her, and it was only him who knew how that would turn out.
It was hell for him to watch her go through this, and he couldn't even imagine how badly she'd feel. He'd been a doctor, sworn to do no harm, and yet he was going to have to watch her put herself through miscarriage after stillbirth in a stupid attempt to restore House Targaryen after most of them burned to death at Summerhall, all while he desperately wanted to tell her what he knew about obstetrics. He'd known OB/GYNs that would kill him for letting some of the things that happened, happen to any woman, let alone his mother. But he hadn't even been taught how to read yet, how was he supposed to explain the dangers of back-to-back pregnancies and sanitation in a world where men weren't allowed in a delivery room?
"The Maiden dances through the sky, she lives in every lover's sigh. Her smiles teach the birds to fly, and give dreams to little children."
He never thought he would grow so attached to her, but it was impossible not to feel sympathy for Queen Rhaella, she was a kind and gentle woman who didn't deserve for a moment to be the abused sister-wife of a mad king. But more than that, she was impossible not to love. She was far more clever than a woman in her situation or era could possibly be expected to be, she was usually so full of joy and laughter that she drew in everyone around her, and she loved her children fiercely. She would sing to him whenever she got the chance, it seemed that Rhaegar had inherited his legendary talent from her.
She amazed him, he doubted he could endure what she'd endured, but she had chosen to survive if only for the sake of her children. She'd confessed, to a babe that she believed couldn't understand her, that he and Rhaegar were the only things tying her to the world. She'd been forced to abandon the man she loved to marry the brother she hated on the advice of a wood's witch. She'd narrowly escaped the horrible fate of her family and friends at Summerhall. She'd watched her parents die before their time, leaving her with a broken marriage and the weight of a crown resting heavily on her head. And that was not even the worst to come.
"The Seven Gods who made us all, are listening if we should call. So close your eyes, you shall not fall, they see you, little children."
He'd never had a mother before, he'd never even found out if he had been an orphan or if he'd been abandoned or if his parents just couldn't take care of him. Any maternal figure that came into his life either from the people he fostered with or teachers in school, they were all careful not to become too attached, either because they knew they wouldn't be able to stick around or because he hadn't wanted to take that chance again. By the time he was nine, he'd given up on ever having that, and having never experienced it in the first place, it wasn't sorely missed. But with Rhaella... she loved him so unconditionally and utterly, that despite his reluctance both from a lifetime of living alone and the strange circumstances he found himself in, he couldn't bear to let that go unreciprocated. So, he pretended, and eventually, that turned into something more genuine than he was capable of describing.
"Just close your eyes, you shall not fall, they see you, little children." she finished the hymn with gusto, as she probably realized that he wasn't near tired, and would have to entertain him instead of putting him to bed. She ran her fingers through the wisps of silver hair on his head and blew into his face when he finally came up for air.
"Thank you, Muna."
"Of course, little Jay." she kissed him on the top of the head, and carried him over to his crib before fetching her ladies-in-waiting. It was always strange to see Tyrion and Oberyn's moms both fussing over him. He still had trouble adjusting to the fact that he was royalty now, which meant having members of the aristocracy be willing to fight for the right to change your diaper.
It seemed that his mother and Joanna Lannister had yet to have their falling out, and he was hopeful that he could do something to prevent it from ever happening. All he was capable of now was having a fit with Rhaella's other ladies in a feeble attempt to draw the women closer together, and it seemed to be actually working, at least as far as they'd show that in front of a toddler. Likewise, he wanted to ingratiate himself with the future Princess of Dorne as early on as possible, the Dornish and the Martells, in particular, seemed to be the only people with who he could actually see spending time.
Princess Myriah was at his side soon, grinning at him with a wide smile and those striking black eyes of hers, "Hello, little one, how are you this afternoon?" Since Myriah was a Princess herself, heir to Sunspear, and had some Targaryen blood, she could get away with being less formal, and tickling his sides with her long nails every time she saw him.
"Good, Myriah," he answered in an uncontrollable and otherwise humiliating fit of giggles. Mother sent the Princess to see to her own children. Oberyn was only a year older than him, and Elia another year older still, and both were still in the care of their mother for the time being, though she'd soon return to Dorne now that Rhaella was queen and no longer with child.
He spotted Lady Joanna digging through a chest for his amusement "And what shall we play with today, Your Grace? The blocks, the rattles, hoops or hobby-horses, or how about-"
"Sigil game, please!" he demanded with flailing arms and legs, he tried to move his little muscles as often as possible. The sooner he could run around the Red Keep without falling flat on his face, the sooner he'd get the independence he so desperately craved.
His mother laughed and quickly found the book on heraldry they used for the game. "Must you even ask? Jay always picks the sigil game."
The 'sigil game' was the only thing they did with children that he actually considered useful, highborn children would be shown a drawing of a sigil or have it described to them, and the child would name the House it belonged to. Since there were hundreds of Houses in the Seven Kingdoms and it was important that you knew them all, people had to start teaching their kids at a young age. Of course, they usually waited until four or five, but Rhaella had noticed that rattles and hoops were only being held long enough for him to discard them and decided to start early.
He'd wanted them to read to him, actually, he wanted them to teach him 'how' to read so he could start figuring out more about this world, but they haven't considered that, and the only stories they ever told him were meant for children, which he paid attention to as to not be ignorant of their culture, but still, at least he could learn something from testing the sigils.
Rhaella collected him again, and propped him up on her knee as Joanna began, "A gold lion on a field of red?"
He faked a laugh to show he'd understood the reason behind her first choice, and bit down a bitter wrong answer of 'House Reyne' since he was trying to save the relationship between their families, not exasperate them, but the Rains of Castamere had been playing on his mind for a while as a stark reminder of his inability to prevent such atrocities from happening in his current state. "Lannister!"
Hearing that he was amused by it, his mother asked one of her own, "Good Jay, and how about a three-headed dragon on a-"
"Targaryen!" he finished for her, with a more authentic laugh, eager to make Rhaella happy. He'd always known the laughter of children was a powerful thing, and he meant to use it as much as he could.
"A gold spear through a red sun on a field of orange?"
"Martell! Nymeros!"
"Excellent, Your Grace, how about a blue falcon flying over a white moon?"
"House Arryn."
It went on like that for a while, with a lot of cooing and baby talk. He tried to make it obvious that none of Joanna's choices were posing the slightest challenge, but she didn't get the hint, at least Rhaella would try to describe the sigils of lesser houses in the book, and she wouldn't show him the drawings on the 'hard' ones, drawings that had the House names written in huge letters beneath them. It was getting to a point where he was considering trying to get her to show all the drawings so he could read what else was said on the page.
There's a thought, and it soon gave rise to an idea.
He bid his time and waited for House Blackwood to be mentioned, that was the only 'hard' one that always got played since his great-grandmother (he only had the one between his parents) was a Blackwood. He also tended to hesitate with Blackwood so he could scrutinize the weirwood on it because he found the magic trees interesting, so it would be perfect for what he was planning.
Eventually, she lifted the book up and turned it towards him so that he would see the flock of ravens surrounding a black shield with a dead weirwood on it.
Instead of shouting the name as soon as he recognized it, he leaned forward in his mother's arms and outstretched a tiny hand towards the letters of the name and began to sound it out aloud, "Bah-bah la-la-lac wah-wud, bahlacwud."
They both stared at him in astonishment, and for a moment he feared he had gone too far. How could he possibly know how to read? When did he learn what sounds letters represented? Children his age probably weren't capable of reading words. Oh no, how would he fix this, but before he could begin to wail as a distraction, Joanna broke through her stupor, "V-very good, Your Grace! Blackwood, yes. B-lack woood."
Rhaella tightened her grip around him as if she was frightened he'd fall, "Joanna, go fetch one of Rhaegar's storybooks, would you?"
"Of course, Your Grace."
Once it was just the two of them alone, she hugged him for dear life, "Oh, Jay," she whispered, "My sweet, dear, Jay, I've always known you were special, always, but a mother knows, she knows..."
He was starting to freak out when she pulled him back and looked straight into his eyes with her purple orbs, "You love your brother, don't you Jay? You love Rhaegar?"
Still freaked out, and not entirely sure where he stood on the subject of Rhaegar Targaryen, but understanding that his mother wanted assurance, he told her what she wanted to hear, "Yes, Muna. He's my brother."
She smiled at him a strange smile he'd never seen on anyone let alone her, and hugged him close again, "You have to promise me, Jay, you'll always love your brother. No matter what."
When he hesitated, trying to figure out what was going on, she asked him again, this time with a sense of urgency, "Please, Jay, you have to promise, for me."
"I promise, Muna." he finally said.
She looked at him again, barked a tearful sobbing laugh, and kissed him on the forehead, "I love you, my little dragon. Always, and no matter what."
His mother made for a difficult sight in this state, and it was all the more disconcerting since he couldn't tell why she was in it. Obviously, it was to do with him reading the word, but it seemed like more than that, much more.
"I love you too, Muna."
That made her smile, then she pressed their heads together and rocked him in her arms a while.
When Joanna came back, it was clear that she noticed the queen was upset, "Your Grace, are you unwell?"
His mother shot her head up, she wiped the tears from her face and regained her composure. "I'm fine, just a bit overwhelmed." She stood up, and passed him to her, "If you'll excuse me, Joanna, I should go see to Rhaegar."
"Are you certain, Your Grace? I could find him for you if you wish."
"No, no, I'll get him, I must speak with my bro-", she caught herself mid-sentence and locked eyes with him again, "I have to speak with His Grace as well, so it's no bother. Please, stay, and if you would, start going over the words in the book with Jaehaerys."
Joanna was similarly confused, "Your Grace, surely it's too soon for the prince to start with lessons."
"Just his letters, for now. If he can make any sense of them at all, then I'm sure it's soon enough."
The lady wasn't going to argue with the queen, so she nodded her head, and began to move with him towards the table to start, as his mother took her leave, muttering to herself.
He managed to make out some of it before she was too far to hear, "She was right... this whole time... Seven save my boys..."
From that, he finally put together what had happened. He had just convinced his mother her second son was some sort of wonder kid, and she had married her brother for the sole reason that a maegi had predicted that their union was of the utmost importance.
His mother thought he was the prince that was promised.
Fucking prophecy.
Loving Rhaegar had not been his first idea.
His first idea had involved discretely causing an accident wherein Rhaegar would die before he caused a civil war, the deaths of his parents, wife, and children, and quite possibly the apocalypse. He didn't want to hurt anyone, but he figured since Rhaegar was going to die for nothing anyway, it'd be like killing Hitler via time machine. Of course, that was antithetical to the Hippocratic Oath he'd sworn to uphold, but doctors had been ignoring parts of that for ages, and besides, Hippocrates had never even existed in this world.
In any case, he concluded that it would be too risky to even try. If he got caught, the world would end, that's too much of a risk when he could go with his backup of just ignoring his 'older' brother and making sure he didn't screw everything up. Yeah, that seemed like a good idea.
But he had promised Rhaella, and that women had 'taught' him how to read. If she needed him to love Rhaegar, then he would. Did he wish he could just explain to her that he wasn't the mythological saviour of humanity and didn't plan on usurping his brother? Absolutely. Could he? Absolutely not, because he wasn't even sure if those things were true.
Prophecies had always felt like a bad story device to him, the idea of them being real was up there with the Tooth Fairy, and yet somehow he'd ended up being reborn into a family that had dragon skulls lining their sitting room. He never had a brother before but he didn't imagine he would have fought them over who's head of the family, and yet Rhaegar was on a crash course with canonical history and I, as the next in line to the throne, being the only one who can stop him.
On to Plan R – Love Rhaegar. Love the problems right out of him so that he doesn't grow up to get mom killed. Try to mould his brother into the sort of man that's unfailing faithful to his wife, or get him a wife that he can have three kids with, or keep him away from teenager girls, or pick girls whose family won't show up on dad's doorstep ready to be murdered. Plan R still had some kinks to be worked out.
"What's the next part, Jay?" asked the focus of his contemplation.
This was the first phase of Plan R – bonding time. He'd never really been interested in prophecies, or hanging out around the ruins of where most of their family died, but they did have one thing in common, they both loved music even if Rhaegar was the only one of them who actually knew how to play an instrument, thankfully, Rhaegar was only a year older than him in this world, so it's not like he'd gotten in so much more practice.
"It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift, the baffled king composing hmph..." Shit.
"What's wrong? I thought it was good." The weird thing about trying to love Rhaegar is that he could see the appeal. He seemed to be a genuinely nice kid, if it wasn't for his prior knowledge of what Rhaegar would grow into, Jaehaerys probably would have grown to love him ages ago. Still, Rhaegar trying to teach how to play the harp wasn't without its own share of problems.
Namely, the songs that had stayed stuck in his head even after being jettisoned into a story tended to include words and sayings that didn't make any sense to Westerosi. 'Well Rhaegar, you see the song I'm trying to show you is called 'Hallelujah', which I can't explain to you the meaning of because there are no Hebrews in this world, and I almost slipped up again!'
"Forget about it, Rhaegar. I can't figure out where to go from there."
"Oh, alright then, do you want to try 'Seasons of My Love' again?" Of course, Rhaegar only liked sad romance songs. That sense of Doom, Barristan had told Dany about in the books was right on the money.
"Not yet, I've got something else I can try."
"Whenever you're ready. You're getting a lot better with the harp, Jay."
"Thanks, Rhaegar..." he took a deep breath and tried again with a different Leonard Cohen song, "Dance me to your beauty like a burning violin, dance me through the panic till I'm gath-"
"What's a violin?" By the way, harps don't sound great when they abruptly stop.
"A what?"
"You said burning violin, what's that?"
"Oh, it's a kind of fiddle." Yeah, a fiddle, fiddles exist in this world. No problem.
Unfortunately, Rhaegar was a musician, "What kind of fiddle?"
"Well, it's not a kind of fiddle per se-"
"Per-what?"
"You see," he corrected.
"Oh, sorry."
"It's a different word for fiddle."
"What's wrong with 'fiddle'?"
"There's nothing wrong with it, it's just another word from another language is all."
"What language?"
"I don't know, Rhaegar, maybe Quartheen or Ghiscari, one of them, I saw it somewhere and it just rolled off the tongue, okay?"
"Alright."
"Thank you."
"What's a 'tungohkay'?"
"Rhaegar, can you just let me sing the song, please?"
"Whenever you're ready, little brother."
"Good, thank you." Phew, this was exhausting, "Oh, let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone. Let me feel you moving like they do in Babyl-"
"Gods damn it!" he screamed in a fit, throwing the harp to the ground and snapping it beneath his foot.
Rhaegar dissolved into a fit of hysterics at my frustration, and I decided to abandon Plan R for the time being.
By the time the Kingsguard came to investigate, we were rolling on the floor as Rhaegar easily held off his much smaller brother even as he struggled to catch his breath, laughing as hard as he was while I was alternating between calling for muna and desperately trying to kill him, having realized that love was never an option.
It was inevitable that people were going to notice what a 'talented' child he was. It was bound to be obvious given that said child was actually an adult man who'd benefited from centuries of scientific advancement and had a modern, formal education to boot.
If he'd been reborn even in his old world, he'd still be considered a boy genius, a child prodigy without rival in the entire history of the human race. Yet he hadn't been reborn in a world where all he knew was known by other people who even in his chosen field still knew more than he did, he had been reborn into a world that hadn't even progressed as far as the renaissance in many ways. He'd literally forgotten more about science and technology than every maester that ever lived, ever knew.
It made learning from a royal tutor kind of frustrating.
Grand Maester Pycelle was actually quite intelligent when he wasn't acting like a senile invalid with a brown nose. Jaehaerys figured that since Pycelle was still trying to prove useful to Tywin, he hadn't put on the act yet. That, or he didn't see the need to act around a kid.
He was usually glad to go to one of Pycelle's lessons because it either gave him an excuse to start writing down what he remembered on certain subjects, or the maester would actually provide him with some useful information about the history, traditions, laws, politics, and astronomy of this world. He remembered what he'd considered to be a great deal about the setting from when he read the novels, but he'd needed a lot of reminding, and obviously, most information in this world just hadn't been covered in the books.
That's not to say it was all smooth sailing. Pycelle was legitimately one of the most knowledgeable men alive, and he was still a dullard compared to him. It wasn't his fault, but it made for interesting lessons.
For example, today they were having a math lesson.
"Why hello Your Grace, how are you this fine morning?"
"I'm good, Grand Maester."
"Excellent. Shall we begin?"
"Please."
A great leather-bound book with parchment for pages was laid out in front of him and was soon followed by a quill and inkpot, 'By the Seven, the first thing on my to-do list is inventing pencils'. Thankfully, paper existed in this world, but since printing had yet to be developed, parchment was still in wide use and preferred for it's quality.
It was really weird to have to do a math lesson with a swan feather and lambskin.
"Today, Your Grace, we will start with sums – the addition of any number and another, or even several others, to equal a total, or sum. I trust Your Grace recalls his numbers from our last lesson?"
"Yes, Grand Maester."
What a chore that had been. It'd taken an hour just to go over the digits, he'd had to pressure Pycelle just to go past ten. Thankfully, Westerosi used Hindu-Arabic numerals so that was a plus.
"Splendid. If you'll excuse me, Your Grace, I shall go fetch some treats for us to practice with, I do believe they will make this lesson all the sweeter."
Jaehaerys faked a conspiratorial giggle and nodded his head. Honestly, Pycelle seemed like a decent teacher, sure slow by his standards but it was clear that the maesters meant to impress the throne by sending Pycelle. He could advise kings on war or lords on trade, all while serving as a physician, tutor, court historian, and messenger as well as any in his order could.
A lot of math teachers get asked by their students 'What's the point of learning this?', he doubted any of his ever thought to answer that if you ever find yourself reincarnated in a medieval fantasy setting, you'll be the only person alive who knows how to do logarithms. Six years, he hadn't done virtually any math in six years. It had never been his favourite subject, and there were times when he downright hated it, but he had not busted his ass in school trying to get an A, only for it to be utterly worthless.
Turning to the blank pages, he dipped his quill into the ink and began to draw a twelve-by-twelve grid before filling it in with the multiplication table from 1 to twelve. Once that was done, he started writing the various mathematical laws he remembered on the next page. At this point, he had no idea if there were equivalents of Archimedes, Euclid, or Pythagoras in this world, but if there weren't, geometry just advanced a great deal there on page two.
When he was twenty-three, Issac Newton invented calculus (kind of) in 1666. In his previous life, he'd only been slightly younger when he learned about it in University from a professor who'd forgotten more about math than either of them knew.
Now, it had been 266 years after his ancestor's conquests, and at the age of six, he was re-inventing calculus on page three.
He kept at it, silently weighing in his head if progress was actually worth the suffering of so many students, but eventually, Pycelle came back.
By the time Pycelle walked back in with a tray of lemon cakes, he was on page twenty-nine and wondering if he should get another book for statistics.
"Ah, Your Grace, I see you've started without me." The older man said, pleased his pupil had some initiative and desire to learn.
Jaehaerys had been waiting so long to do this, that he might have forgotten how he was going to explain exactly how he went from arithmetic to differential calculus before his first math lesson had started, so he said the first thing that sprang to mind, "Two plus two equals four."
Pycelle chuckled as he sat down beside him, and slid the book over to himself, and flipped back to the first page. "Yes, yes, indeed, Your Grace, as does one and three or three and one for that matter, or one less than five but let us not get ahead ourselves al-"
In hindsight, it was kind of funny to watch Pycelle's eyes bulge out of his head like that, as he scanned the pages. He might be ignorant compared to the pseudo-time traveller, but he wasn't stupid. The multiplication alone probably would have gotten him moved up a grade, the geometry into some sort of school for gifted children, the formulas that Pycelle couldn't even make heads or tails of, well those might have surprised the man.
The Grand Maester came around sooner than he'd expected him to, he turned to his student and stuttered "Y-Your Grace, has anyone entered the room since I've left?"
That might've been a good out if they were in a school, and not inside a castle with an armed guard outside the door, instead he shook his head.
As might be expected, Pycelle was skeptical, "Your Grace, would you mind writing this again?"
He did so, saving some time by starting and then just ignoring the rest.
Pycelle was quick to realize that he was actually the one to write everything down and asked if anyone had taught him. Again, a perfect excuse for a modern school child, not so much for a prince whose every interaction with a person is monitored and has only ever met one maester.
"Would Your Grace care to share the meaning of these 'logs' and symbols?" asked the old maester, as he ran his hand through this beard.
They were there for hours going over it all, servants even came and replaced the tray and brought them supper.
Jaehaerys was just about to start teaching Pycelle about factoring, when the man seemed to realize how much time had passed and the import of what had happened.
"Yes, I think that is enough for one day, Your Grace, until tomorrow."
The maester held his hand as they went to his mother, once they arrived at her rooms, Jaehaerys bid the maester goodbye and went to his books, deciding to indulge his only real hobby here and cracked open The Lord Commander so he could re-read it again, all seven of the Dunk and Egg tales all existed in this world, and Martin had only written three by the time he'd been sent here. It was weird sure, but at this point, it didn't phase him.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his mother and the Grand Maester whispering and glancing at him, clearly talking about him like they were at a preschool and he was playing in the sandbox, dead to the world. At one point, he even saw his mother bring a hand up to her mouth to stifle a gasp.
Pycelle took his leave, and Rhaella came over to sit next to him. She wrapped her arm around him, lodged her head on his, and asked him to read it aloud, and he obliged her.
They stayed like that until the night, he'd only just passed the part where Ser Barristan the Bold won his spurs by unhorsing both Ser Duncan the Tall and Prince Duncan the Small, when she ruffled his hair and closed the book to look him in the eye.
"Jay, Pycelle tells me that you did very well today in your lessons."
"Thank you, Muna."
"He also mentioned that you wrote some very unusual things in your book."
He didn't really know how to answer that, so he just nodded his head and tried to appear bashful or contrite or something that makes mothers stop asking questions.
"Would you like to tell me how you learned these new numbers?" It was clear that she didn't entirely grasp what had happened, nor could she have, but it did have her concerned.
While they'd been reading though, he'd come up with something. Luckily for him, there was already a surefire excuse that allowed Targaryens to know things they had no business knowing.
He bit his lip and looked her in the eye. Mothers can usually tell if their children are lying to them, but that's really only because their children aren't actually full-grown men in a child's body.
"I saw them in a dream, Muna."
Jaehaerys heard her breath hitch, felt it even. She clutched him tightly and laid a kiss on his head before whispering into his ear "We mustn't tell your father about this, do you understand?"
"Yes, Muna, I understand."
"Good boy, now let's get back to your book, shall we?"
Dragon dreams, green dreams, premonitions, whatever you wanted to call them, were not something that any Targaryen ignored. Out of forty ruling families, and millions more living in Valyria before the Doom, only one had escaped, because Daenys Targaryen had a dream that the Doom would come, and sure enough, it did. In truth, many Targaryens since had been born with the gift, or the curse, and while each dealt with it differently, did none of them believe that their dreams were as others were.
Later, he would find out that Pycelle had gone to the Small Council that day and counseled the king that his second son was a prodigy, who for the good of the realm was best sent to the Citadel to forge a chain. His Grace had been pleased his son was exceptionally clever and made sure to brag to all at court that his loins had sprung forth a genius, but no son of his was going to be a gray rat.
The next lesson he had with the Grand Maester, Pycelle asked what he would like to learn, and from that day on, neither of them acted like he was a child.
Jaehaerys soon learned that the old man had much to teach him.
Walder Frey was dead. At three and sixty. Survived by more descendants than anyone cared to count.
He hadn't even done anything, yet...
Crabs in the belly. What they used to call stomach cancer. An unpleasant way to die even with modern medicine.
The man had so many kids running around Westeros, that everyone in the Seven Kingdoms learned about his death just by word of mouth.
It was difficult to take in. On one hand, it couldn't have happened to a nicer fella! But it was a harrowing confirmation that things in this world were going to be different now, even without his actions.
Was it the butterfly effect? Did his mere existence in the world cause Frey's 'premature' death? Hijack one baby's body and the Dragonmont erupts?
Maybe life really is just more random than he'd given it credit for.
What did that mean for him?
He'd been relying on having a leg up on the opposition, what with him having prior knowledge of future events. But this, this proved that things were susceptible to change, and the more things changed then the more likely they are likely to snowball until the world one day becomes unrecognizable.
Despite himself, he prayed to the Seven that he had long enough to put this world to rights before that day came.
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Next chapter will deal more with Jay's early childhood, learning how to fight, ride a horse, etc., adapting to the local culture, and maybe a scene or two to do with his family.
Something that has put me off a lot of insert stories in the past, is that so many ignore the quirks of the setting and the entire premise revolves around the character knowing everything about the story, and not changing anything. Anyone who has Googled gunpowder would be able to recreate it (if you don't want it in a story, just deal with it in the story like Loke_Lyon, don't act like it's impossible for the average person to figure out, it's only three common ingredients put together, this story won't even have 'gunpowder' because I know how to make a better propellant that's about as easy to make) and a doctor who has a pre-med degree in biology or chemistry would be able to do a hell of a lot more than that. Any change in the story ought to result in a change to the plot, let alone a noble who knows the future.
I don't begrudge people writing themselves into a story and like whatever you wanna like, but I do think that making the story cozy and familiar is a wasted oppurtunity. Seriously, slavery, sexism, magic, and feudalism are all dealt with in canon, and people with modern sensibilities in these kind of stories don't even seem to notice. It's hard to care about you cosplaying as Sansa hooking up with Sandor when you're ignoring all the noteworthy things around you.
Again, this is not a self-insert. The protagonist is Canadian, and a doctor. I am also Canadian and a pre-med student, but that is where the similarities end. I'm sure parts of my personality will bleed into the character simply because I wrote him, but those similarities I mentioned are just my frame of reference for what a modern man is. I would have to research in order to write an American engineer, and I'd still probably get it wrong.
