Chapter Text
PRELUDE
How did it come to this?
These words ran through the thoughts of Alicent Hightower, Dowager Queen Consort of King Viserys I Targaryen and Queen Mother of King Aegon II Targaryen. As she stood on a balcony attached to Maegor’s Holdfast in the confines of the Red Keep, Alicent stared down at the carnage that engulfed King’s Landing clenching her fingers tightly around the stone railings.
The Sept of Alicent, a gift from Viserys for their fifth wedding anniversary, was burning from the bright blue dragonfyre of Dreamfyre. The entire hill of Rhaenys, where the Sept was located, was besieged with heavily armored men, bearing banners of the three headed dragons on a ruby red field - Rhaenyra’s sigil.
Those loyal to her son and the rightful King of the Seven Kingdoms, waved banners that consisted of a single golden dragon, dancing on a field of emerald green, complete with seven stars surrounding the focal point. Aegon’s bannerman, identified by their velvet green clothing, littered the grounds with their blood pooling underneath them.
Staked in the center of King’s Landing and displayed for all to see was the broken, but still breathing, form of Aegon “The Younger” Targaryen, Rhaenyra’s oldest child and heir to her unjust reign as the Queen of the realm. He had been captured in the last days before the attack by her second son, Aemond, where he had endured hours upon hours of torture at the hands of Larys Strong, Lord of Harrenhal and Lord Confessor.
Not that it did them any good. Aegon refused to break, now matter how many bones of his suffered the same fate. Instead he looked at them with his silver eyes, alien and cruel, and spoke words in that beastly language of High Valyrian. When Alicent asked what he had said, Aemond - ever the devout student - replied that the boy had cursed Viserys’ bloodline with Alicent and doomed them to the lowest level of hell in the Fourteen Flames.
In response to her son’s torture and the attempted murder on many of her children and grandchildren, Rhaenyra had ordered her armies - outnumbering her Aegon’s own by nearly six to one - to sack King’s Landing, kill or capture anyone who wore the green of Aegon’s faction, and to bring her the Usurper and his family, preferably alive.
Alicent, being the benevolent Queen that she was, had been willing to let Rhaenyra and her filthy bloodline in peace. All they needed to do was swear fealty to Aegon and renounce any claim to the Iron Throne they had, surrender their Dragons, and finally convert to the Faith of the Seven.
Was that truly so difficult?
In compensation for the loss of their privileges and Dragons, Alicent had prepared excellent rewards, rewards she was sure Rhaenyra would accept. Rhaenyra’s oldest son, Aegon, would be allowed to become the ruling Lord of Dragonstone, Aemon, her second son, would be welcomed into the glorious brotherhood of the Kingsguard, and Baelon would be sent to the Citadel where he would become a Maester.
For her younger children, that were of age, they would come to King’s Landing and become wards of the Crown, until they could be given positions or marriages, approved by the King and his Small Council. Rhaenyra, however, had spat on these terms and rewards, citing her children would rather die in glory, atop their dragons, high in the star-filled sky, and with a weapon in their hands.
Never, she had said, would her children or grandchildren kneel to the Usurper. Her babes, whom she had nursed at her own breast and raised at her feet, would prefer dragonfyre and being burned alive, than to live a life of white armor or white robes.
For two and twenty years, Aegon had been Viserys’ declared and legal heir. He had disinherited and banished his only living child with Aemma Arryn, on the advice of Alicent and Otto Hightower, for fear of repercussions. Viserys, instead, should have stripped his daughter of her royal titles and sent her to the Faith or Silent Sisters - punishment for believing that she, as a woman, had any right to become Queen.
Where had it all gone wrong?