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RESONANT [AO3] Jon and Rhaegar wake up as children in the Vale during the reign of Viserys I, only to discover that in this life, they are the twin sons of Daemon Targaryen, and hidden since birth.

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obviously Daena’s gonna be suspicious, obviously she is no right mind to start a new marriage or relationship for that matter, especially with the brother she suspects responsible for her husband’s banishment/demise. my question is pretty dark, how long until Viserys runs out patience? how long until he forces her to go through with the marriage and Rhaegar has Aerys and Rhaella flashbacks???? and to that end, how long till Jon commits successful secret regicide to save his mother??

Daena's beyond suspicious, she knows. The person providing proof of her husband's treason was fucking Reyne, who she already told her brother wasn't trustworthy, which means he's absolutely in on it as well, especially given how much he's pushing marriage on her (and how he tried to coax her even before that).

I think Viserys might give it a full year. He knows he did something unforgivable, even if it was for a cause he deemed necessary, and he owes Daena at least that much. But if, after a year, she is still adamantly refusing to even consider it, then I think he's deep enough in sunk costs to start getting ruthless.

He has two main points of leverage if Raymar is alive. First, Raymar himself. Viserys could arrange for something to "happen" to him at the Wall at any time. Even if she has to be apart from him, isn't it better if the father of her two eldest sons is still alive? Perhaps they can even visit him someday.

The second major point of leverage, and a very obvious one, is her children. Daena's gone from warlock trauma to the trauma of someone she loved and trusted betraying her in the worst possible way, and on top of all of that, she has Daemon's trauma over his sons being taken from him (and visions of their deaths). You can imagine that Daena has been clinging to them as her only bastion of quasi-happiness, these little pieces of her husband that are the only things she'll have if Viserys has his say.

Viserys would never threaten to harm them. But wouldn't it be a shame if Rhaegar were to be taken to Oldtown to be fostered with House Hightower? And Jon to a Vale house whose loyalty Viserys can count on, since he is the next little Lord of Runestone? How lonely would that be for Daena, who must remain at the Red Keep for her "protection"?

It's essentially the nightmare Resonant scenario that Daemon assumed he was in when Viserys forbade him from leaving the Red Keep with his sons: one where his sons are hostages to ensure his good behavior. Except in Daena's case, "good behavior" involves marrying Viserys and bearing him children.

We know how intensely Daemon (and Daena) love. We know how much losing Raymar must be killing her. How shattering Viserys's betrayal must have been. If anyone else had done this to her, I think there would have been nothing else left but rage, but I think instead it leaves her a little broken that it was Viserys. And you can bet he's as gentle and apologetic as you can be after forcing someone to marry you against their will after getting their beloved husband out of the way. Daena can still see pieces of the brother she loved, and that makes it so much worse.

Viserys never really has to lay a finger on her. The heartbreak is more than enough for Rhaegar to relive his worst childhood memories of Aerys. For Jon to hold nothing but murder in his heart when he's forced to endure Viserys's presence.

(How awful is it for Rhaenyra, too, to witness all of this at ground zero?)

By the time we're at this point, Jon's maybe six years old? And trying his best to figure out how to end Viserys without Daena taking the blame.

This is extra hilarious because it means Otto was "pulled within the wake" of another Targaryen, which would be Daemon, obviously, who was the only one properly Summerhalled. So his last memory would be of venturing somewhere shady with Daemon, perhaps warlock-related, and then BAM.

For extra fun, obviously his memories don't kick in until the Revocation nonsense really starts up.

Unlike the in-universe Otto, Resonant!Otto has enough of a hang-up with Daemon that I can see him finding Daena begrudgingly compelling, which only adds to the insult of dealing with these new circumstances. Because charming or not, she's hardly bewitching enough to explain why Viserys has abandoned all reason and sense! Though I'm sure he feels a bit validated in his thoughts in Resonant that it's a good thing Daemon was a brother and not a sister.

But @zerousernameideas also floated the scenario of Otto finding himself treating Daena as the reasonable one, Daena as a confidant/ally in getting Viserys to let go of this madness. Which the Daemon part of Daena has to be very o.O about. As would the Resonant!Otto side of Otto lol.

Silver-haired Minka Kelly as Daena Targaryen.

(yes, her hair from Titans)

*taps chin* now for Raymar...

In typical Syn fashion, I did indeed have to look up this person. I've seen one new movie in six years and very few TV shows lol. Look, when I choose an obsession, I am faithful to the obsession!

She does! I'm actually a bit curious as to how much each generation of children/grandchildren (of the current king) knows about the secret tunnels. Like, are they taught by their parents? Do they discover on their own? Is it knowledge passed down entirely from king to heir so that the next ruler is aware of all the ways into and out of the Red Keep, while the rest of the children either figure some of it out themselves or get pieces of knowledge passed down?

I could see the information being more strictly guarded from daughters than sons. If your sons want to go whoring in Fleabottom (*cough* Daemon *cough*), that's not the biggest controversy in the world. If your daughters, whose "greatest asset" is their virtue, were to go about the city unchaperoned OTOH...now you're courting scandal.

So it would be interesting if Daena herself only knew a few passageways, none of them leading out, or even none at all! The real question is, did she share her knowledge gained from her Daemon memories with Viserys ever? (Not that they come from Daemon / strange dreams, but that she knows a particular way out.)

Because if Viserys doesn't know that she knows, then she has a much better chance of using them to escape. If he does know, then doubtless he'll have the various entrances under guard.

- Daemon + Rhaenyra + brothel!mess

- Daemon is sent away to the Vale, Rhaenyra swears nothing happened, Viserys sends her moon tea

- Daemon sulks in the Vale, sleeps with Elys, fucks off

- Resonant!Rhaenyra "wakes up", has mild panic attack

- Rhea finds out Elys is pregnant, starts plotting

- Rhaenyra flies off w/o permission looking for Daemon, finds plotting Rhea + pregnant Elys, has a bad, no good, terrible, horrible, WONDERFUL idea

- Fake pregancy babynapping AU commences

Don't question the logistics of how my brain works, Syn. 🤣

Okay, I am contractually obligated to figure out how this could work.

So the twins are born two years later in this scenario (originally, they're conceived during Daemon's lengthy stay at Runestone after Heir for a Day), which is fine. That might even be how Rhaenyra finds out so quickly; she flies out to the Vale, ready to accuse Rhea of sending her twins away, only to find out that oops, it's not treason, they're Elys's.

The timing is veeeerrry tight here if Rhaenyra wants to avoid a fake!pregnancy scenario where the twins are bastards. Essentially, Elys has to have missed her first period, and Daemon needs to be summoned QUICKLY back to Runestone.

If that all can happen in under a month, complete with Rhaenyra marching with Rhea and Daemon to her father to proclaim that she wishes to marry Daemon above all others and that Rhea will attest that their marriage was never consummated, and thus can be annulled, then it could soooort of work?

Things that Rhaenyra could try to leverage in her favor to make this work:

If the Maidenhead Crisis did not in fact lead her to losing her virginity, she could demand an examination by a maester to "clear" Daemon's name ahead of their marriage.

Dragon dreams! We know how much Viserys loves them. If Rhaenyra can show some kind of foresight convincingly enough, then that could sway Viserys to allow the annulment + match.

A very quick ceremony. Rhaenyra simply cannot wait any longer! The stars have aligned! Whatever she needs to say to make it happen.

Having Elys be assigned as one of her ladies-in-waiting so that they can carry out fake!pregnancy shenanigans in the relative privacy of Dragonstone.

Hoping like hell the twins are born at full term, since twin pregnancies typically come early. To all appearances, they would have been born early, even if for Elys they're at term.

Related to above, pretend that they're born a few weeks later than they actually are and use their "early birth" as an excuse to keep them secluded for a bit.

Sweeten the pot afterwards if Viserys is a little suspicious by distracting him with "look! my babies don't burn! just as I dreamed!" All is forgiven.

I imagine Daemon is very confused throughout all of this, and Rhaenyra also has to work through the emotions she must be feeling about this scenario preventing her from having her own original babies (though I'm sure she and Daemon will have several of their own after).

Let's say things happen the same with the only change being Viserys marrying Daena instead of Alicent. Rhaenyra is declared heir and promised the throne, and is forced to marry to continue her line. And then, Daena gives birth to twins, at first I imagine nothing would change except Daena slowly but surely begining to grow some desires when it comes to what her kids might get. At some point, however, Viserys finds out his twins and prophecy children. Then it's over for Rhaenyra. She's going to get disinherited so quicky her head would spin. How does she react? What does she do? Will she even do something or just accept it? What will she do with her children now that the fallout is going to fall on her and subsequently her babies? What is her relationship with Daena like?

Further, was Daena even aiming for the throne for her kids before Viserys was? Do Rhaenyra and Daena even get along after Daena's marriage or is Rhaenyra taking it as badly as she took Alicent? Because it must be a bitter pill to swallow that your mother died trying to give your father a boy, suffered many miscarriages before that... And your aunt/now stepmother gave him to boys on the first try. And now, they're not even regular boys displacing you, they are prophecy children who do not burn.

Thank you for hearing me out, let me run off to the shadows once more

Obviously it breaks my heart to think of Daena and Raymar not working out, but there are definitely scenarios where they never progressed past the cold war. In fact, if they never consummated their marriage, Viserys can freely annul it to marry her, and Raymar is probably relieved, as this means he can remarry someone who isn't mutually miserable in their marriage. (If he hadn't been married to the king's sister, it's quite likely he would have requested an annulment already.)

Assuming Viserys and Daena had a similar past as in Revocation AU, where they did care for one another and hope that they would be married, then it's an obvious choice on his part too, even without prophecy vibes driving the decision, though I expect Corlys is still offended.

With Rhaenyra and Daena, so much of the answer is "it depends," I'd say.

If Daena is much like Daemon (aka prioritizing family above all, wanting to be important to Viserys), then marrying Viserys is already pretty much reaching the height of her ambitions. I don't know if Daena shares Daemon's additional dreams of achieving glory, because she isn't in the awkward position of being a second son who can't provide value by marrying Viserys, and thus must prove himself / enforce their family's power another way. So she's not specifically seeking to displace Rhaenyra with her own children, especially since I would bet she had a good relationship with Aemma and Rhaenyra beforehand. If her marriage with Raymar was strained, then she likely often visited KL to avoid him, and spent that time with Viserys's family.

But I also don't know if it necessarily bothers Rhaenyra in the same way to be supplanted by Daena's children? There were extra elements at play with Alicent and her children, where Rhaenyra was placed in the category of "enemy." If she likes Daena and her little brothers, then I could see maybe some bitterness at her whole life being shaped by her father's need for an heir, and her being declared such, and her mother dying in that pursuit, but she's had Daena's support up to now.

I also like to think that Daena, having known the misery of an arranged marriage to someone she couldn't love, sees that Rhaenyra gets to marry someone she actually is into, rather than being "stuck" with Laenor.

There's also the element of which timeline you're using. I've been treating Revocation AU as book-canon timeline, which means Rhaenyra would be nine years old and thus would have brothers replacing her in the succession long before there's pressure to marry. The sons-being-supplanted is more of a show-canon timeline matter, since she's fourteen (I think?) and marries Laenor maybe 2 years later. But even with that timeline, it feels likely that Daena already has her twins by then, so the pressure goes away.

Where I think there is a potential for difficult emotions is the prophecy angle, right? Most daughters expect that they will be displaced by brothers in the succession, because that's how it's pretty much always worked. Viserys declaring her his heir in canon was more about playing defense against House Velaryon, IMO (and Daemon a little), and it just happened that his love for her was great enough that it didn't matter that he had sons after, he kept the unusual succession line intact.

So it's one thing to be displaced / regarded as "unimportant" due to standard succession rules. But per canon, book and show, Viserys did love his daughter. How does it feel when that love is challenged by your brothers being special, being more worthy? How does it feel when it seems like your father loves Daena more than he did Aemma, and thus their children are more beloved, when you were the one person he loved for so many years? Even if she loves Daena and cares for her brothers, that's pretty rough to deal with.

That said, even in the scenario where Rhaenyra married roughly around the time the twins were born, perhaps even to Harwin Strong, and bore indisputably legitimate sons...I don't think she challenges the status quo? Like her father, Rhaenyra tends to share a certain complacency and inclination to withdraw when there's conflict, rather than confront or challenge it (with a few notable exceptions on Viserys's part, of course). She has a helluva lot less support if she's explicitly set aside, unlike in canon, because the there's no ambiguity about what Viserys intends about the succession and it doesn't break with tradition.

(There's also the dragon factor. If Rhaenyra goes to live at Harrenhal, as most princesses wed out of the family would, then she has no access to dragon eggs except that which Viserys allows. I could see him being willing to let his grandsons from her try bonding to dragons, because he can't conceive of how that might lead to conflict, but Daena and her two sons are a formidable trio of dragons, and that assumes she has no more children with Viserys after her twin sons.)

The official birthday ficlet for @marmari33 (the previous Revocation AU ficlet was "just a warmup" 😂), where the trap begins to gently close around Daena and her sons.

For those unfamiliar, Revocation AU = genderswapped Daemon and Rhea, where Daena has Resonant!Daemon's memories.

x~x~x

“Your sons are settled, I hope?”

Daena accepted her brother’s offered embrace gratefully, ignoring the shadowy sensation of being enveloped by a much thinner frame, almost frail. Not now, Daemon, she thought tiredly. Viserys was half a head taller than her, and though he did not have her husband’s compactly muscled build, the squeeze of her brother’s arms was reassuring.

“They are,” she said. “Thank you for parting with Rolen’s services during our stay.”

Settled though her sons might be, Daena was anything but. Since arriving in King’s Landing on Caraxes, she had been beset by apprehension. Daemon’s memories were sharper here, strong to the point of overwhelming her own, and she did not know how much of the tension was his or hers. It had started in the throne room, when she had presented her sons to court and glimpsed her brother’s Hand, Otto Hightower, and her vision had gone red upon encountering her brother’s master of whisperers, Lord Reyne.

They kept my sons from me, before.

She could taste Reyne’s blood almost, could imagine swinging her blade in a single arc to part him from his head. But her memory of how she had earned the man’s enmity eluded her.

See, I suspect that Qelebrys and Shadow have a net-neutral impact on the rat population. Qelebrys keeps scaring off the cats who ordinarily would be serving as mousers, which is balanced against Shadow treating rats as mini sheep to chase. If anything, they're probably more effective at pigeon control, since they enjoy chasing things in the air.

They also take their job as little protectors very seriously, so time and energy that might otherwise be spent going after pests is more concentrated on watching for suspicious men with ill intentions.

Regency AU aside, Baela and Rhaena were very popular even in canon after the Dance, so there may have been some sentiment along those lines already. It just would get dialed up when a second pair appears and is also charming and competent (although, most importantly for the lords of the realm, male).

But it also wouldn't surprise me if not many had thought about Daemon-as-heir in years. (Which is itself a show-only thing that Resonant keeps; a daughter inherits before an uncle almost 100% of the time traditionally.) He was set aside nearly 25 years ago in favor of Rhaenyra, and after that, the debate would have moved on to Rhaenyra vs her half-brothers.

I think the bigger gossip/hot takes will be about Resonant!Daemon, and whether he should rule instead, given that he has two sons with dragons. If he had wanted to pursue that, he probably could have tried, but given the hard times ahead, it would mean absorbing a lot of the unhappy sentiment later, and potentially making things worse by further destabilizing things at court. Then there's the fact that he's essentially enforcing the Greens' victory here, which means Rhaenyra's claim won out, thus her sons are worthy of the throne. Rejecting Aegon and Viserys means rejecting her claim after the fact, unless the logic goes "only male heirs should inherit" which would also restore them? Since the only surviving male line is Daemon > Aegon & Viserys.

Look, "magical copy of Daemon with different children" throws a big wrench in a lot of things, including figuring out what the heck the succession looks like and where he fits into it! 😂

As for reactions to the twins (either set)...there are two sides to it. Baela and Rhaena's PR was mostly concentrated on the smallfolk who inhabit the city, and had little actual oomph to it in terms of measurably improving their lives, due to their own power being very limited (and even moreso by the council of regents) and resources in general being scarce. So in terms of being impressive in that arena, it's all about appearances: having a dragon (or multiple dragons) to remind the realm that House Targaryen still is special, spending time amongst the people to show that they are approachable, etc.

The real eyebrow-raising would happen at court, where there's more awareness of the logistical problems that the Iron Throne faces, and more visibility into who is fixing said problems. (And you know that Daemon is proudly bragging about any solutions his sons come up with to anyone who will listen.) So if a deal is reached to import grain to replace the badly depleted stores in King's Landing and beyond, then they know who was responsible. The alternative is that Daemon is the one singlehandedly restoring the realm, which is maybe easier for some to believe than others.

But I doubt that same level of awareness trickles down to the people of the city who don't starve. Responsibility bubbles up to those in power (either the king, or the Hand + regents and small council) and those are who get the credit and the blame.

That all said, those at court probably whisper about Baelon and Rhaegar being far better material for king than Aegon and Viserys, both of whom are older. It's an unfair comparison, as we know, given that two of those are severely traumatized children who were taken advantage of by power-hungry adults, whereas the two were either raised or forged to do this sort of thing and benefited from having been with their father for the past year.

I've always been partial to Otto-obsessing-over-Daemon/Daena-in-totally-normal-ways-your-honor, but you're probably right that the stars just don't align in Revocation AU proper.

I mean, she does become fairly relevant the moment she and Caraxes bond, because any dragonrider is relevant. But she's not going to really register as a threat, either to him or his ambitions, until she and her sons get kidnapped by warlocks and completely derail his Viserys/Alicent plot midway through when Viserys becomes wholly unhinged about his sister.

It has approximately 0.5% impact on anything but my joy, which it has 95% impact on.

All my hopes and dreams are pinned on somebody somewhere commenting about Jon's gray eyes being inherited from Rhea's great-grandmother. How impressive; the Stark eyes making it through four generations...

And Daemon conveniently realize Elys was not the Royce sister with a Stark great-grandmother. 😂

Even better because Resonant canon is like 95% certain Elys is the mom. 🤣

(I love Targaryen-Royce!Jon but Stark!Jon is just... you can take the boy out of Winterfell but you can't take Winterfell out of the boy. 😭)

Wellllll, the Stark great-grandmother is through Yorbert, so it still could technically be either sister! But I don't have Rhea's maternal family tree mapped out beyond her mother (Adrianne Redfort, who is Corwyn Redfort's aunt, which makes Rhea and Corwyn first cousins actually) and maternal grandfather. So who knows, there could be a little extra Stark on that side. Heck, it could be through the same Stark great-grandmother, even; I'm sure there were some Royce-Redfort cousin marriages.

It doesn't help that Yorbert also had Stark-grey eyes, so if anything, someone who knew the twins' grandfather would compare them to his. Look, all we need is some Starks/Starklings to visit King's Landing (or a trip to Winterfell) so that they're surrounded by grey-eyed Starks for Daemon to go "hmmm" about.

OTOH, Daemon is just as likely to la-la-not-listening about any genetic traits that are not directly attributable to him. Jon's eyes? Unique! Appeared out of nowhere! No connection to anyone else! Jon seeming to fit in perfectly at Winterfell would be like nails on chalkboard to him. We're talking mama cat grabbing her kitten by the scruff to drag away from the strangers and grooming him fiercely until he smells right again.

- so, Revocation is basically F!Daemon right? Daena. and Rhea becomes Raymar but they still have the twins. (quick q: the twins names- are they now Baelon and Rhaegar or do they stay as Jon and Rhaegar?)

- SPEAKING of the twins, here’s where my head spun ok.

- AU where the twins, after living through what we assume to be Resonant, with Daemon as their father and eventually the Dance comes to its fruition, let’s say they get Summerhalled again. only this time, when they wake up at Runestone, it’s not Rhea as their mother but Daena and their father, Raymar.

- so, their parents have switched genders and they know this but Daena doesn’t know that they know. you know?

(They are Jon and Rhaegar, as that's what Daena remembers from her dreams about them.)

Hmmm, so we're saying the twins lived to at least early adulthood before getting re-Summerhalled, but Daena's memories are still early!Resonant!Daemon?

It'll certainly be weirder for them, because Daena is not the same as Daemon, before or after the memory flood at warlock kidnapping o'clock, but she's like him in many ways.

Also, even though he's lived an entire life separate from his first, Rhaegar's Aerys-dar has to go through the roof when they're in the Red Keep and Viserys decides that Daena must wed him, no matter what he has to do.

They're certainly protective of Daemon, but that's probably turned up a few extra notches for Daena, both by virtue of ingrained ideas about gender and the circumstances of their original lives (Rhaegar with his Rhaella memories, Jon as someone who never got to meet his mother).

Then there's Raymar, who is much more of a stranger, due to how little time they got with Rhea. Also because he's so much more secure in his rule, and he really loves Daena, what? And Daena loves him?

I wonder if the flashes of Daemon are painful, because he's never going to be who he was for them, and most of those glimpses are of Daena working through his pain. But maybe it's not, because those memories live on, and Daena is living the life he perhaps might have hoped for, if he could have conceived of not loathing Rhea.

I'm sure we get some heartwrenching moments here as well, aka Rhaegar bracing for coldness from Raymar, only to find that he's extra precious to him for bizarrely the very same reason, aka looking so much like Daena/Daemon.

Lol I just realized that Allard is still likely being raised at Runestone in Revocation AU, and that Daena inexplicably cannot stand the kid. Which may trigger certain emotions in Jon on behalf of a bastard child being raised with his uncle's family, even if Allard's not his favorite person.

Also, eep, when they're captured by warlocks and Daena doesn't burn?Terrifying. By that point, they must have half a clue as to what Perzōñys wants, and that Daena ticks basically every box on his wishlist. These poor kids are four years old, and now they have to stress about both Viserys and warlocks when it comes to their mother!

Is there a minimum number before we start calling it a hoard? He definitely has passed the threshold in Regency AU (in regular version, IIRC it's 8-9 depending on if you count Nettles, +1 if it's the Vet!Jon variant).