𝕴 𝖆𝖒 𝖋𝖎𝖗𝖊 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖇𝖑𝖔𝖔𝖉

A small collection of starters connected to arranged marriages. Feel free to adapt them as needed! (edit: I made an updated version that can be found here!)

“You are… very different of what I had expected.”

“I will run away before I ever marry the likes of you.”

“I know you hold no love for me, that we don’t even know each other in truth, and perhaps we will never come to love each other, but we can at least be friends.”

“Love can be built, too. And if you’re willing, I would like to try and learn to love you.”

“You are lovely. Even more beautiful than I was told.”

“What I heard of you before makes you no justice.”

“I must say I never expected to be wed to someone as stunning as you.”

“It is an odd thing, to be wed to someone you never met, to have a complete stranger suddenly become such a great part of your life.”

“I can’t marry him/her/them. I’m in love with another.”

“Please do not make me wed him/her/them!”

“Do not touch me.”

“I do not care what you want, we did not marry for love.”

“You’re mine now, and you will act suitably.”

“Who you loved before does not matter any longer. You are mine now, only mine.”

“Perhaps we should try to know each other better? We can start simple… do you like music?”

“We are only marrying because I need an heir.”

“You love someone else, so do I. Why don’t we make an agreement?”

“I will never love you.”

“Am I not what you expected?”

“I may not be as good looking as you hoped, but I shall never treat you unkindly.”

“You are to be my wife/husband, I want to help you feel more at home here. It shall be your home soon, after all.”

“There are talks of betrothal, even if they haven’t yet told me. I know they plan to wed me off to someone soon.”

“They want to marry me to him/her/them, but I don’t want that. I want you.”

“No need for this pretense. I know all your interest is my claim, not I.”

“I am to leave home and everything I have ever known to wed someone I have never met. It isn’t fair.”

“I marry you because I must. It is my duty to seal this alliance.”

“I will fulfill my duty, but I hold no love for you or your family.”

“We were wed as strangers, it’s true, but we needn’t continue being so.”

“Our marriage doesn’t have to be loveless just because it began as duty.”

“Do you believe in love at first sight? I feel like I have known and loved you for thousands of lives, even if we only met.”

“You will do as you are told and marry who we have picked for you.”

“You’ve been raised your entire life knowing this day would come. Do not begin to entertain illusions of marrying for love now.”

“I will never let them ship you off to a stranger as I was.”

“You are my child, and you will not be sold off to anyone like that. I won’t let them trade you for their alliance.”

“I wish I could undo it, child, but I cannot. This arrangement was made years ago.”

“We have been promised to each other for years, yet I could never meet him/her/them.”

“How odd that we were promised to each other for so long and only met on our wedding day.”

“What of it? It isn’t like I haven’t known for years that my fate would be to wed some stranger my family deemed suitable.”

“How can you be so calm about this? They are deciding who you spend your life with, and you won’t have any say on it!”

“Through them, we will finally join our bloodlines.”

“He/She is marrying my claim, not me.”

@brazenbaela

Rhaena knew that she should have stayed on Sheepstealer and let him carry her far away from all of this. They could have gone back to the Vale perhaps, living wild and free together in the mountains. Nobody would care that they had gone. Nobody would probably care if she had survived or not. Perhaps it would have been better if they believed her to be simply a stain on their honour through memory alone, rather than a living, breathing failure. Rhaena felt the gap between her and Baela had widened so much and went so deep that there was no end to it, and not even the wings of a mighty dragon could cross the distance. Would she ever be forgiven? Would she ever be able to accept forgiveness? Jace was dead because of her. Rhaena couldn't blame Sheepstealer for doing what he had needed to do to survive. She could blame herself and so too everyone else it seems, especially her sister.

"I didn't mean to..." She trailed off, her voice registering as weak and faint even to her own ears. There was nothing she could do to truly make it better. They had lost another loved one. Rhaenyra had lost another child. Baela had lost a future and it was all Rhaena's fault.

"I'm sorry." The words flew from her lips and Rhaena twirled on her heel and fled, running as fast as she could to get away from her sister before Baela could see the tears that she couldn't stop from falling.

Weak.

Pathetic.

Unworthy.

Failure.

Not blood of the dragon.

She didn't move at first.

Just stood there in the space Rhaena had been occupying a moment ago, in the silence her sister had left behind, and felt the specific particular cruelty of watching someone you love run from you when running is the last thing either of you can afford right now.

Her first instinct was to go after her. It was always to go after her.

Her second instinct — and this was the one that frightened her, the one she would examine later in the dark when there was no one to see her examine it — was something that wasn't anger and wasn't grief and wasn't blame but lived in the territory between all three and had no name she was willing to give it yet.

Jace.

She pressed her eyes closed for just a moment.

Then she went after her sister.

She found her before she had gone too far — Baela had always been faster, always, it was one of the immovable facts of their shared life — and she did not call out to her. Did not announce herself. Just closed the distance, and when she was close enough, she reached out and caught Rhaena's arm and held on.

Not pulling her back. Just — holding.

❛ Don't. ❜

Low. Frayed at the edges in a way Baela's voice almost never was.

She came around to face her sister and looked at her — at the tears, at the devastation of her, at Rhaena who had always been the quieter one, the gentler one, the one Baela had spent her whole life placing herself between and the world — and felt something move through her chest that was so large and so contradictory she couldn't have named it cleanly even if she'd wanted to.

She was angry.

She was so angry she could feel it in her back teeth, in the place behind her sternum, in every part of her that had flown above the Gullet and found Jace in the water and carried him home and known, known even before she touched him —

She was angry and Rhaena was right in front of her and it would have been so easy.

She didn't.

❛ You don't get to run from me, ❜ she said instead. Her voice was doing something complicated. She was letting it. ❛ Not you. Not from me. We don't— that is not what we do, Rhaena. ❜

Her grip on her sister's arm didn't loosen.

❛ I can't— ❜ she started, and stopped, and the thing she couldn't name moved through her again, enormous and ungovernable. ❛ I can't talk about Jace right now. I cannot stand here and talk about what happened and what it means and I cannot! ❜

Her jaw tightened. Her eyes were very bright.

❛ But I need you to stand here. I need you to not run. Because if you run then I am alone with all of this and I cannot— ❜

She stopped completely.

Looked at her sister. And the anger was there, it was still there, it would probably be there for a very long time in some form she hadn't worked out the shape of yet — but underneath it, older than it, stronger than it —

She held very still when her mother kissed her forehead.

The way she always did when affection came at her directly — not pulling away, never pulling away, just going still the way small animals go still when something gentle surprises them. Like she needed a moment to receive it properly.

When she looked up, the young girl's eyes were very serious. The way Baela's eyes got when something mattered enough that she couldn't quite make it light.

❛ You mean both of us, right? ❜ she said. Not challenging. Just — making sure. ❛ Even Rhaena? You're proud of both of us the same? ❜

Because that was the thing underneath the thing. Not her own pride, not her own accomplishments — Rhaena, always Rhaena, the quiet worry she carried like a second heartbeat that her sister somehow didn't count the same way, didn't measure up the same way, in someone's eyes somewhere.

And she needed to hear it said plainly. Needed her mother to say it plainly. Baela's shoulders came down a fraction of an inch.

“She was the strongest woman I have ever met. Your grandmother has always known what she wants and how to make peace with what she has.” How he had admired her. The moment he saw her, met her, he had known she was the one for him. Beautiful, ambitious and a true equal. His daughter had been just like her and now his granddaughter followed their lead as well.

Corlys knew with absolute certainty that Baela understood the deep pain of his loss. The way she spoke about Jacaerys, about losing him and bringing home; it was similar to his own heartbreak. Looking at her, he reached out and took her hand in his, giving it a squeeze, offering comfort when it couldn’t be quite enough. “What the two of you did was honorable. I couldn’t be more proud. I wish it had ended differently but without you two… the fleet would have been lost. I am so proud of you for doing all this.” If only he could tell Jace the same. One last time. 

Corlys set his gaze on High Tide once more. “Let us go,” he decided, knowing it would not get easier.

The smoke still lingered but it had settled enough for them to walk the ruins of the once glorious halls of the keep. His heart was heavy and every step felt like an even bigger burden. As they walked the halls, visions of the past haunted him. The laughter of children as they ran through the halls, the warmth that filled the castle. Baela remained close and he was grateful for that; it kept him grounded. 

Then there it was, the Hall of Nine. His breath got caught in his throat. 

Nothing was left, all the treasures he had brought home were reduced to ash. The driftwood throne was gone. He remained near the entrance, unable to move. As his gaze slowly moved through the room, the ghosts of the past followed him. 

He saw himself as he carried his new bride into her new home. The laughter and joy had filled the space all those years ago. He saw his wife on the throne as she waited for him upon his return from one of the voyages; she had looked like a true queen. And he saw them in each other’s arms, heads resting against each other, hands interlaced. It was hard to tell where he began and she ended. The whispered promises of love and devotion.

They were so happy in these halls where they had raised their family. But now there was nothing but ashes. Corlys could hardly bear it. His hand gripped the nearest thing to keep himself steady. It was too much. 

She did not say anything immediately.

That was the first thing she gave him — silence, and her presence inside it, close enough that he could feel she was there without her crowding the grief. She had learned this, somehow, without being taught it. Some things you learn by losing enough people that you understand what presence costs and what it's worth.

She looked at the Hall of Nine.

She had run through here as a child. She and Rhaena both, shrieking about something that no longer mattered, and the Lady Rhaenys's voice finding them from somewhere down the corridor—not scolding, never quite scolding, just the sound of her knowing exactly where they were. She had always known. She had that quality of absolute attention that made you feel located, specific, seen.

The ash was very quiet under their feet. ❛ It wasn't, ❜ Baela said.

Soft. Certain. She did not look at him when she said it because she understood instinctively that he did not need to be looked at right now, he needed to be stood beside.

❛ It wasn't a mistake. ❜

She moved to him — not rushing, not making it into something performed — and simply stood close, her shoulder almost against his, both of them facing the ruin of the room that had held forty years of a life that was now ash and memory and the ghost of a woman who had known exactly how to inhabit a space.

❛ She sat on that throne, ❜ Baela said quietly, ❛ and she looked like she had built it herself and was simply allowing everyone else to be in the room with her. ❜ Baela smiled a little wistfully at the memory, as though it was but only yesterday, and not a legion of days long gone, of ones filled with blood and battles.

A breath. ❛ I used to think I wanted to be like my father. Daemon's daughter, all fire and movement and— ❜ she stopped briefly, letting out another soft exhale before continuing, ❛ —and I am, I know I am. But when I watched grandmother in these halls I thought— that. That is the other thing I want to be. That particular kind of a Targaryen. ❜

She searched for the word and didn't quite find it.

❛ Certainty, ❜ she settled on the right word she had been searching that would best fit her grandmother, finally. ❛ The kind that doesn't need to announce itself. ❜

She was quiet for a moment. The ash settled around them. Somewhere distantly, the sea said what it always said, which was nothing and everything and carry on.

Her hand found his. Not taking it the way he had taken hers on the boat — different from that, less comfort-giving, more just — holding. Two people holding on to the same thing in the same ruined room. ❛ She was here, ❜ Baela said. Very quietly. ❛ In every part of this place, she was here, and that doesn't— ❜

Her voice did something she hadn't given it permission to do. She steadied it.

❛ That doesn't burn. That's the thing no one tells you. You can take the hall, you can take the throne, you can take forty years of everything that's been built, and you can reduce it all to this, ❜ she gestured, barely, at the ash and the ruin and the absence of everything that had been, ❛ —but you cannot take what she was in it. What she was to the people who stood in it with her. ❜

Today is the third episode of House of the Dragon, so for fun I thought I’d do a post of the dragon names for all the dragons we’ve seen thus far in High Valyrian (both in the orthography and in the romanization). In the writing itself there are many ways to spell names, so the spellings you see here are just those that I decided on for this post; they’re not the only possible spellings for each dragon.

First is Arrax (Arraks) whose name is built off the glyph used in arrigon, which means “to show” or “to display”. Arrax’s (Arraks’) name doesn’t necessarily derive from this word, but it’s close enough that it can be spelled with that glyph. The last glyph is a special glyph for names that end in -x (-ks).

Next Balerion, the Black Dread. The bal- portion of the name comes from the glyph for soil balon. Next is the glyph for repetition commonly used in participles. This word isn’t necessarily a participle, but that glyph is used when there’s a -Vr extender in a name (cf. Daenerys, Jaehaerys, etc.). The last glyph is the glyph for iron āegion, which is used for the -ion ending. Both the glyphs for soil and iron imply darkness, chosen in part due to Balerion’s black scales.

Sheepstealer’s name you will have heard several times this season. The name is a direct translation, with the first glyph for bianor “sheep”, and the second two glyphs being laodio, an older word for “thief” (the more common word is laodikio). To form a compound, bianor reduces to its second stem, biādr-, which then assimilates to the following l, giving us biāllaodio.

Seasmoke’s (Embrōrbar’s) name is a standard compound. The first glyph is embar “sea” and the second ōrbar “smoke”. To combine the two, embar changes to its genitive embro, and then it merges with ōrbar. The name is literally “smoke of the sea”.

Silverwing’s (Gēliotīkun’s) name is also a direct translation of the common. Gēlio is the genitive of gēlion “silver”, and tīkun is the word for “wing”. The first two glyphs give us gēlio and the second two tīkun. It’s literally “wing of silver”.

Another Common Tongue name is Moondancer (Hūrlilio). This is less obvious in High Valyrian, as the root for moon hūra is used smashed onto the word for dancer lilio. The first glyph is the glyph of the moon; the second the glyph for dancing; and the last a glyph that gives us -io, Valyrian equivalent of -er.

The name of the great Caraxes (Karakses) derives from the Valyrian word for great kara. Following that initial glyph is the special x (ks) glyph seen in Arrax (Arraks). The last glyph is the dragon glyph which gives us the -es ending.

Meleys (Meles) is a much simpler name. The name derives from mele “red”, which uses the same glyph as the glyph for a rose. The last glyph is the dragon glyph which gives us -es.

Syrax (Sȳraks) is Rhaenyra’s yellow dragon, and its name derives from sȳz “good”. In its modified forms, the root of sȳz is sȳr-, and so when it combines with the -x (-ks) glyph it’s Sȳraks, not Sȳzaks.

The old god Vhagar (Vagar) lends its name to this dragon. As an old god, the name has many spellings, and its old pronunciation has been lost. This time I spelled it with the consonantal glyphs V, H, and G with the blood glyph giving us the -ar ending. Whatever the V and H were supposed to represent has been lost to time, but the H will stick around in the spelling as a vestige of the old god’s name.

The name Vermax (Vermaks) is a combination of the glyph used in vermagon “to warn” and the -x (-ks) terminal glyph.

Vermithor (Vermitor) is another old name which has many spellings. In this instance, I used the same glyph as with Vermax (Vermaks), added a consonantal T, and used the shadow glyph to give us the -or ending.

Finally we have the Common Tongue name Sunfyre (Vēsperzys). This is a simple compound, with the sun glyph vēzos being sandwiched onto the front of perzys “fire”, similar to the moon glyph in Moondancer (Hūrlilio). The z of vēzos assimilates to the following p of perzys, devoicing to s.