Rhaenys Targaryen - The Queen who Never Was

"Beloved daughter of Lady Jocelyn Baratheon and Prince Aemon Targaryen, faithful wife of Lord Corlys Velaryon, mother and grandmother, the Queen Who Never Was lived fearlessly, and died amidst blood and fire. She was fifty-five years old."

- Archmaester Gyldayn

88 AC, Driftmark

"I'm not a girl," she said, shoulders squared and chin thrust out. "I am flesh made fire." She has fourteen years to his seven-and-thirty and tomorrow her lord father means to make her call him husband.

"Princess," the Lord of the Tides says amiably, "then we shall get along capitally, for I'm a storm with skin." And he gives her a smile for her scowl and in place of flowers, jewels for her bouquet.

Her mother's ashes have lain cold in the crypt for seven years now so it is her father who must come to her on the night before her wedding. She has given the slip to her handmaids and the flowered bower they have made of her chambers. Prince Aemon finds his daughter on the rocks below the castle, perched on her dragon in her riding leathers.

"Corlys Velaryon has laid the treasures of N'Ghai at your feet," he tells her, in amusement, "and you would rather wear those tattered old things?"

"I don't want them," she says. "I don't want him." Across the Blackwater Bay she can see specks of light - ships at sea, lighthouses on the shoals and lanterns in windows. "I could fly across you know," she tells him, "back to King's Landing or to the hills in Dragonstone. Or across the Narrow Sea like Aunt Saera. I could, you know."

"Rhaenys," he says, hoisting himself up Meleys' scaled red flanks to sit beside her. The dragon snorts, a ring of smoke spiraling from her nostrils, but otherwise she does him no harm. "Why must you play the part of the child when you are now a woman grown?" He curls his hand over hers, chaining her to him. "You are my only heir and it is time you were wed."

"I might be queen someday!" she bursts out. They never speak of it, not at court, but only a fool would be unable to read the signs. Her father has not sired a child since her birth, not even on his whores or mistresses, and he is her grandfather's heir. "Why must it be to Corlys Velaryon?" A prince, she thinks, I should be wed to a prince not a sea-dog with a peppering of Valyrian blood in his veins. In the days of the Freehold we were lords and they were stewards. Her cousin Viserys' face swims up before her when she thinks of her prince, but he is already wed to another cousin - Aemma Arryn.

"And so you should be," her father tells her, "if the world were but a kinder place. You are a woman, Rhaenys, and to claim a crown you will need a strong husband to fight for you when I am gone. Corlys Velaryon is such a man - they do not call him the Sea Snake for nothing." And he reels off the stories he has told her a dozen times and more since her betrothal half-a-year past - of the fabled riches Corlys Velaryon has found or stolen in the east, of the greatest navy in the world that he commands, of his grace and charm and goodness... fairy stories for a child, she thinks angrily, or a fool. Or a woman's soft heart.

"Sea Snakes are well and good in their place," she says stonily when he finishes, "which is crushed beneath a rock. I am a dragonrider."

"Sweet daughter," he says wearily, "so are we all."

In the morning, she goes to the sept in a velvet gown the red-black of thickening blood. In place of Corlys' bouquet of jewels she carries a dragon-rider's whip, the tip of Valyrian steel, and in place of satin slippers, she hikes up her gown so that men might see that she wears spurred boots. There is much jesting and japes made about who will wear the breeches in this marriage - and bawdier ones still of who will do the hard riding in the wedding bed. To this the bride and groom, handclasped at the altar, both smile - the princess sourly, the lord sweetly.

Afterwards the girl's grandmother is heard to remark that Dark Sister should in all justice go to her.

"You were ill-named, granddaughter," she says, when the new couple come to her to take her blessing, "you should have been a Visenya." Princess Rhaenys flushes with pleasure at Queen Alysanne's words but she never hears the ones that do not slip from her lips. For good. And for ill.

There is to be no ribald bedding for Prince Aemon's daughter and so when Lord Velaryon comes alone to the bridal chamber, he finds it locked and barred against him. "I will send for you when I have need of heirs," an imperious voice informs him, "then and not before."

When duly informed of his daughter's wilfulness, the Prince of Dragonstone splutters and storms and threatens to break the headstrong maid's door down himself. But Lord Velaryon only says, "By your leave, Your Highness, let the princess and I resolve our difficulties by ourselves."

"Stupid girl," her father grumbles to a cousin, later at the wedding feast, "never looks past her own nose." King Jaehaerys says little and less when his son's perhaps unwise words are brought to him. Queen Alysanne, though she might speak of Dark Sister when she speaks of her favorite granddaughter, never mentions a crown.

And four years later, when Prince Aemon bleeds his life away in a summer flux, it is the Queen that the old King turns to when he must choose again.