Copyright: I do not own the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series or the "A Game of Thrones" tv show. The rightful owners of these copyrighted works are G.R.R. Martin and HBO.
Hi everyone! Long time no see! I am sorry that this rewrite has taken so long! Took awhile to get everything together and making it just right. But here it is, Reign of the Dragon Queen rewritten! I have placed "Rewrite Notes" at the end of every chapter along with the occasional comment and factoid.
Author's Warning: Suggestive Activity and Royal Incest.
In 103 AC, King Jaehaerys Targaryen the First of His Name died in his sleep. Known as the "Conciliator" for his skill in peaceful negotiations and later as the "Old King" as he reached his advanced years, Jaehaerys was beloved by the Seven Kingdoms for his reforms, fair reign, and most importantly of all, for establishing a long standing peace during his fifty-five year tenure as king. The news of his passing caused all of Westeros to mourn including Dorne, the old adversary of Jaehaerys's grandfather, Aegon the Conqueror. After Jaehaerys was cremated and his ashes were stored away in the Red Keep's crypt beside the crematory urn of his beloved sister-wife, Queen Alysanne Targaryen, who had predeceased him three years earlier, Westeros entered a new era. Due to most of the Old King's sons dying during his reign, Jaehaerys's oldest grandson, Prince Viserys Targaryen, ascended to the Iron Throne as the new King of Westeros.
Viserys was only six and twenty when he was crowned. By his side were his newly crowned consort and first cousin, Queen Aemma Arryn, and their then six year old daughter, Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen. A sweet little girl, Rhaenyra was adored by the Seven Kingdoms and she was called "The Realm's Delight" because of it. Being the only living child of Viserys and Aemma, Rhaenyra was treasured and indulged by both her parents. She was given whatever she wanted and she had no shortage of friends to play with at court.
A year later in 104 AC, a knight from the Stormlands asked for the seven year old princess's favor during the Tourney at Maidenpool. Rhaenyra granted it and the knight went on to win both the jousting competition and melee with his prized morning star, defeating Rhaenyra's beloved and fearsome uncle, Prince Daemon Targaryen. After his victory, the knight crowned the little princess as the Queen of Love and Beauty with a crown of roses. An overjoyed Rhaenyra begged her father to make the knight, Ser Criston Cole, her sworn shield, and her father was more than happy to grant his only child her wish. From that day onward, Criston and Rhaenyra were inseparable.
To add to Viserys's already joyful reign, his wife became pregnant early the following year in 105 AC, and the king hoped and prayed for a healthy son to be born since Aemma's earlier pregnancies had ended in miscarriage, and they had a son who had died in early infancy. Rhaenyra was delighted with her mother's pregnancy as well since she wanted to be a big sister. Queen Aemma did indeed give birth to a son later that year. Tragically, the queen's frail body could not bear the strain of childbirth this time, and she passed away at the tender age of twenty-three. To compound Viserys and Rhaenyra's grief even more, newborn Prince Baelon Targaryen died the next day in his cradle…
Sorrow was soon eclipsed with rage when the king found out through a source that his younger brother Daemon had been celebrating his apparent investiture as his brother's heir to the Iron Throne in a brothel on the Street of Silk in the infamous Flea Bottom slum of the capital city. Upon hearing how Daemon and his lackeys were making drunken and insensitive toasts to the "Heir for a Day," Viserys's recently deceased baby son, the king was absolutely enraged, and he made up his mind on who his successor was going to be. After his grief had passed, the king hosted a grand feast and he was sure to invite the nobility of the realm including his younger brother.
There, in front of everyone who was in attendance, King Viserys I Targaryen announced that in light of his wife and son's passing, he had settled on an heir for the Iron Throne. Daemon smirked to himself as his brother began his announcement, confident that he was destined to become the next king after Viserys. But it was not Daemon that Viserys had chosen to succeed him, but his daughter Rhaenyra. After the shock had passed, nobles and knights from all over the realm swore oaths of fealty to the eight year old girl. The princess's uncle furiously yet silently left the banquet hall, and he rode out of King's Landing seeing nothing but red.
A year after she was named her father's heir, Rhaenyra gained a stepmother through Lady Alicent Hightower, the then eighteen year old daughter of her father's Hand of the King, Ser Otto Hightower. The princess poured her stepmother's wine during the wedding feast, and Alicent brought the girl close to her and she kissed Rhaenyra on her forehead, calling her "daughter". As the first year of Viserys' second marriage progressed, the relationship between his new queen and his daughter was happy. During this time, Queen Alicent Hightower became pregnant, and unlike her predecessor, she was strong, and her womb bore her husband a healthy son, Prince Aegon Targaryen.
But the birth of her younger half-brother did not bring joy to Rhaenyra. She did not want Aegon to take away her title as heir to the throne, and Rhaenyra acted coolly when she first visited her newborn half-brother in her stepmother's bedchamber. To add to the situation, Viserys did not name his baby son as his heir. This greatly confused the Young King's Hand and second queen along with the more traditional members of his court. Six years earlier during the Great Council of 101 AC, Viserys was named as the heir to the Iron Throne because he was the Old King's eldest grandson, bypassing the claim of his cousin, Princess Rhaenys Targaryen, who was the firstborn grandchild of King Jaehaerys I and Queen Alysanne Targaryen.
Viserys I keeping his daughter as his heir to the Iron Throne defied the very edicts of the Great Council of 101 AC that allowed him to inherit the throne in the first place: being the eldest son or other male relative of a reigning king.
After the king refused to name Aegon as his heir, the once warm relationship between Alicent and Rhaenyra began to grow cold. This division between stepmother and stepdaughter only grew larger as the queen gave birth to two more healthy children: Princess Helaena Targaryen in 109 AC, and Prince Aemond Targaryen in 110 AC. The crown princess despised her younger half-brothers, and Aegon and Aemond in turn loathed their older half-sister.; Rhaenyra had a small degree of fondness for her half-sister Helaena though. The year 111 AC brought these domestic tensions to light during the tourney that was held that year to celebrate the fifth year wedding anniversary of Viserys's second marriage. Queen Alicent wore a splendid gown made of rich green silk and she looked truly elegant and regal in the royal box as both she and her husband enjoyed the festivities.
Her fourteen year old stepdaughter, meanwhile, wore an extravagant gown of her own. It was a magnificent dress of crimson and sable silks, the colors of House Targaryen. Both outfits clashed against the other and to add to the tension, Rhaenyra's beloved sworn shield, Ser Criston Cole, unhorsed and defeated the queen's younger brother, the princess's step-uncle, Ser Gwayne Hightower, as Rhaenyra looked on with smug satisfaction. Visiting dignitaries took note of the frigid atmosphere surrounding the queen and princess during the rest of the tourney and the subsequent feast thereafter. The colors of the dresses caught on, and henceforth, the two parties of the schism at the royal court were called the "Blacks" (the group that supported Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen's succession over that of her younger half-brothers) and the "Greens" (those who supported the claims of Queen Alicent Hightower's sons to rule after their father over their older half-sister).
As the tensions at the royal court worsened, Rhaenyra grew older and got closer to being of marriageable age, and noblemen from every corner of the Seven Kingdoms tried to court her in hopes of securing their future as her consort. With men swarming about the princess in hopes of winning her heart, the pressure for her to remain "pure" for her future husband increased tenfold. Along with pressure came contempt when doubts regarding Rhaenyra's virginity began to surface. Following 111 AC and onwards, rumors abounded about the Realm's Delight's supposed budding promiscuity. Rumors like Rhaenyra taking special "lessons" from her Uncle Daemon on how to please men and using those techniques to try and (unsuccessfully) seduce Ser Criston Cole.
Some said that the princess and Ser Cole had actually had an affair sometime in 113 AC. Others claimed that Rhaenyra had rejected Criston when he confessed his love for her one night after he had snuck into her bedchamber. But the raunchiest of these sordid tales involved incest. Daemon was said to have encouraged his niece to "experiment" with him during the lessons, and he may have even taken her virginity. By making the Princess of Dragonstone "spoiled goods," Daemon believed that his brother would have no choice but to annul his unhappy and childless marriage to his first wife, Lady Rhea Royce (whom Daemon referred to as his "Bronze Bitch"), and marry Rhaenyra to him, thus securing Daemon's ascension as his niece's king consort.
Regardless of the validity of these rumors, Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen's reputation began to steadily decline. Things went from bad to worse for the princess when she was engaged to her second cousin, Lord Laenor Velaryon. She protested the match, saying that Laenor was homosexual and that her half-brothers would be more to his liking, but her father threatened to strip her of her rights to the throne if she did not comply with the marriage. Rhaenyra begrudgingly accepted the match, and early in 114 AC, she and Laenor were married. The tourney held to celebrate the wedding was won by Ser Criston Cole, however, this time he wore the favor of the bride's stepmother instead.
It was Queen Alicent Hightower's turn to look smug as her knight fatally struck down Ser Joffrey Lonmouth, the supposed lover of the newly knighted and married Laenor, and he also broke the bones of her stepdaughter's new sworn shield, Ser Harwin Strong, resulting in the court fool Mushroom giving him the nickname "Breakbones." Adding to the rumor where Rhaenyra had failed to seduce Criston, she may have taken Ser Strong as her lover as well. Whatever affection the princess and the Kingsguard knight may have had for each other died out for good that day.
One month after the wedding, the newlywed Crown Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen and Ser Laenor Velaryon moved to Dragonstone and were accompanied by Ser Strong. Shortly after arriving at Dragonstone, the princess announced her first pregnancy and a few weeks later, her father's second wife revealed that she too had become pregnant herself for the fourth time, greatly exciting Viserys. Later that same year, Rhaenyra and Laenor had their first son together, Prince Jacaerys Velaryon. Two weeks after his first grandchild's birth, the king and queen welcomed their third son together, Prince Daeron Targaryen. In the years 115 AC and 117 AC, Rhaenyra and Laenor had two more sons, Princes Lucerys and Joffrey Velaryon, the latter who was named in honor of Laenor's beloved "Knight of Kisses".
Scandal greeted each boy upon his birth due to the glaring fact they that they did not look Valyrian at all. The Velaryon Princes each had brown hair and eyes and pug noses, physical traits that were suspiciously similar to that of Ser Harwin Strong. Despite the non-Valyrian appearance of his grandsons, Viserys still refused to revoke his daughter's claim to the Iron Throne. Due to his stubbornness, the marriage between King Viserys I Targaryen and Queen Alicent Hightower began to sour, as did the relationship he had with his sons. To make things even worse, the year 120 AC would prove to be an especially bad year for the royal family and their allies.
Looked back on as the "Red Spring," 120 AC was plagued with death and the further deterioration of the relationship between Alicent and Rhaenyra. Kicking it off, Lady Laena Velaryon, the princess's beloved sister-in-law and the second wife of her Uncle Daemon, died three days after giving birth to a deformed son who lived for only an hour after his arrival into the world. After that, a mysterious fire broke out at the dreaded castle Harrenhal, killing both Ser Harwin Strong, who had been removed from Dragonstone on the order of the king, and his father Lord Lyonel Strong, who was also Viserys' second Hand of the King. After Lyonel's death, Viserys reinstated his father-in-law, Ser Otto Hightower, as his Hand. Making things even worse, Rhaenyra's husband Laenor was murdered at Spicetown at the hands of his lover, Ser Qarl Correy, after an argument between the two men became deadly.
During the funeral for Ser Laenor Velaryon at High Tide, the seat of House Velaryon on the island of Driftmark, a fight broke out between the Velaryon Brothers and one of their half-uncles, Prince Aemond Targaryen, in the castle's courtyard. Aemond was trying to claim the dragon of the recently deceased Laena, Vhagar, when his youngest half-nephew, Joffrey, caught him and tried to stop him. Aemond battered the three year old boy and pushed him into a pile of dragon dung before taking off on the back the ancient dragon. After flying around the castle, Aemond descended back into the courtyard and after he dismounted Vhagar, Joff and both his enraged older brothers ambushed him. The ambush soon escalated into a vicious brawl amongst the four boys, and during the heat of the moment, five year old Prince Lucerys Velaryon took out his dagger and he cut out his half-uncle's right eye with it.
Aemond's partial blinding enraged his mother, while the ten year old prince insulting and beating up his half-nephews stirred the ire of his widowed half-sister, and both women argued viciously that night over who they felt was at fault for the incident. Rhaenyra claimed that it was her half-brother's fault that he lost an eye because he was bullying her sons, while her stepmother countered that such violence was unnecessary and that Lucerys should lose an eye as poetic justice for what he had done to her son. Viserys somehow managed to calm the two women down and he forced both sides of his family to apologize to each other, but everyone except the king knew that the apologies were false. The next morning, Rhaenyra departed from Driftmark for Dragonstone with her sons in a veil of icy silence. Accompanying the princess and her children on the trip back home was her Uncle Daemon.
After returning to Dragonstone, the two time widower Daemon began to court his widowed niece, and shortly afterwards, the two were wed and the couple each received stepchildren from their new spouse: Rhaenyra's three sons became their granduncle's stepsons, and the Rogue Prince's twin daughters, his only surviving children from his second marriage to Laena: Princesses Baela and Rhaena Targaryen, became their first cousin's stepdaughters. News of the avunculate marriage* shocked King's Landing because uncle and niece had remarried so soon after the passing of their previous spouses. King Viserys, although flabbergasted, still did not take away his daughter, now third sister-in-law's claim to the Iron Throne, but he did not speak with his younger brother again for some time out of anger. This incestuous marriage soon proved to be fruitful since Rhaenyra became pregnant for the fourth time shortly after marrying Daemon, and as the year 120 AC drew to a close, she bore her uncle-husband his first surviving son. The boy, who bore pure Valyrian features this time, was christened with the name Prince Aegon Targaryen.
The name enraged the baby prince's step-grandmother since she felt that Rhaenyra and Daemon were trying to slight her by naming their son Aegon while she had a child who had the exact same name. To differentiate the boy from his half-uncle, baby Aegon was referred to as Aegon "the Younger", and his mother's half-brother as Aegon "the Elder." Two years later in 122 AC, Daemon's niece-wife gave birth to yet another son, Prince Viserys Targaryen, whom she named in honor of her beloved father. Years passed, and the tensions between the Blacks and the Greens worsened even more. Rhaenyra's sons had to be trained in swordplay and educated alongside their hated half-uncles by the decree of their grandfather whenever they came to visit him at the Red Keep.
The boys would pick fights, argue frequently, or undermine each others studies during their lessons. Even their dragons snapped at each other in the Dragonpit. When Lord Corlys Velaryon, the father of the late Laena and Laenor, became terribly ill in 126 AC to the point that it appeared that he would die, his former daughter-in-law came to his sickbed and to try and persuade him to name his second born grandson, Lucerys, as his heir to High Tide. This caused an uproar amongst Corlys's nephews, grandnephews, and cousins, and the men went to the Red Keep to beseech the king to prevent Lucerys and his brothers from inheriting House Velaryon's wealth and titles on the grounds that the boys were bastards. Viserys was enraged by these men calling his beloved grandsons bastards, and in his fury, the king slashed two of his fingers to the bone on the sharp armrest of the Iron Throne.
The king ordered for the tongues of the men who had slighted Lucerys removed, and he decreed that this would be the fate of anyone who called his three oldest grandchildren bastards in his presence again. Viserys's health began to worsen as his fingers became infected, and he later had them amputated by Maester Gerardys, who served Rhaenyra on Dragonstone. During the feast to celebrate the recovery of his health the following year in 127 AC, Prince Jacaerys Velaryon asked his half-aunt, Princess Helaena Targaryen, if she would like to dance with him. Aegon the Elder, the princess's older brother and husband, took offense to this, and blades were drawn and the Kingsguard had to move in before the princes could gravely injure one another. Prince Aemond "One-Eye" was bold enough to insult his half-sister's oldest three sons by toasting them as "three strong boys."
Viserys's health began to decline again that same year, and he would never recover. The king spent most of his time in his bedchamber (he never sat on the Iron Throne again after the incident with the Velaryon's) where his courtiers, small council members, wife, children and the three grandchildren born from the incestuous marriage between his son and daughter: twins Prince Jaehaerys and Princess Jaehaera, and Prince Maelor Targaryen, visited him. As his health continued to worsen, an anxious feeling crept into the souls of the inhabitants of the Red Keep. In the event of the Young King's passing, who was going to keep the Blacks and the Greens from going after each other's throats? What would the future hold after the king would die?
One fateful night, King Viserys I Targaryen would make a decision during his final days that would change the course of history for Westeros forever…
*Avunculate Marriage: An incestuous union between an uncle and his niece or an aunt and her nephew. This can also apply to marriages between granduncle and grandniece or grandaunt and grandnephew... Believe or not, Adolf Hitler himself was the result of this kind of inbreeding. His parents, Alois and Clara, were half-uncle and half-niece. This could explain a few things...
Rewrite Notes:
1. Standard grammar editing.
2. Mentioned the Great Council of 101 AC.
3. Added more details about the relationship between Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen and Ser Criston Cole including some other interesting tidbits from the history of "A Song of Ice and Fire" prior to the onset of the canon Dance of Dragons. Other than that, the prologue is mostly unchanged.