#daella

Queen Alysanne and her daughters

by zacckiell on twitter

Daella Targaryen 💙🦋

COMMS OPEN!! msg me for more info!

Canon Daella universe

Daella somehow manages get get out of her room and is explones the the palaces and courtyard before she's caught. She gets scolded, of course, and she's not very happy about having to go back to her tower.

Sweet thing was enjoying her freedom and imagine a new knight not knowing who she is and they talk for a while.

hello everyone! inspired by this post and the discussion in the notes, i've decided to crosspost my aemond x daemyra!daughter fanfic here!

tagging @petals-falling-in-the-wind and @tumtumbltime for now for their initial interest, but i will go ahead and tag anyone who wishes to follow this fanfic as it comes out!

In the night of King’s Landing, Daemon and Rhaenyra Targaryen join themselves for the first time. In the night of King’s Landing, Alicent Hightower bears the pain of royalty for another. Twenty-one years later, on a stormy night above Storm's End, the results of that night change the history of the Seven Kingdoms. OR Aemond Targaryen goes up against Rhaenyra's eldest, and the Dance of the Dragons takes a very, very different turn.

Available on AO3 here.

chapter 1: prologue.

In the night of King’s Landing, Daemon and Rhaenyra Targaryen join themselves for the first time. In the night of King’s Landing, Alicent Hightower bears the pain of royalty for another. 

While the latter bears an intended consequence, the former bears another. 

Months after a bloody, fateful wedding to Laenor Velaryon, is born a child. A girl, a spitting image of her mother with pale skin, silver hair and violet eyes. Premature, the maesters say to preserve Princess Rhaenyra’s dignity and secret. They say that sometimes babes are born looking just like one parent or another and well, what different is this child from any other Targaryen born to another? 

Daella, her mother names her.

She wants to preserve the memory of her own mother Aemma, but that name brings up too much pain, so she honors her by naming the child after her own grandmother. A kind, sweet woman, taken far too early from the world in the battle of a birthing bed. Rhaenyra hopes her daughter will not suffer the same fate. 

Two months before the Red Keep had echoed with the cries of another birth, a boy named by his father in memory of his own brother. A second son, named after a second son. Aemond Targaryen, a Prince of the Realm. Alicent hopes her son will grow up in a world free of pain and pressure, free from the responsibility that rests heavy on the shoulders of his brother Aegon. 

Daella grows up knowing Ser Laenor as her father but Harwin Strong as her brothers’. She grows up with a dragon egg in her crib, a black beast she names Baelon after her own great-grandfather, a name she does not know the dragon shares with a dead uncle. Aemond, on the other hand, suffers the affliction of never having known that companionship since he was little, the egg by his crib turning to stone with every turn of the moon.

While she spends her days behind her mother’s skirts wishing she had a sword in her hand instead of just a book, he spends his days becoming the object of his older brother’s ridicule. 

Laenor indulges the girl at Dragonstone, teaching her the basics of sparring, telling her she has no reason to fully conform to the trappings of society and Rhaenyra notices the change in the way the seven-year old stands, the way her arms rest, giving her husband the flicker of a smile. In a castle many label desolate, Daella Targaryen finds freedom. She spends her days in the skies and in libraries, nose buried in a book or scratched from training, turning into a princess with more callouses on her palms than calla lilies in her hair. 

In King’s Landing, Aemond Targaryen finds structure. He learns the history of his forebears, becomes the scholar that Viserys wished for, but finds the cold sting of rejection from his own father. He hurts and becomes resentful, but never truly angry, learning to keep his harsher impulses at bay under the watchful eye of his measured mother. And then, Laena Velaryon passes. 

Aemond claims Vhagar. Aemond gets ambushed. Aemond loses an eye. 

It is pandemonium. His face hurts, his world swims, and he learns that he is truly alone in this world. He is robbed of his innocence, robbed of his eye, and robbed of his safety. He hears the pained cries of his mother, her beseeching turned to rage as she takes matters into her own hands. He watches as his proud brother is rendered helpless, Aegon a mere spectator to the injustice unfolding amongst them, cruelly reminded of their true worth to their lord father.

Daella is woken up from her bed as she arrives to a commotion, blood pooling in the green-clad boy’s hands. Daella watches her mother bleed. Daella learns that justice isn’t fair.

She sees Lucerys’ broken nose and bloodied face, the angry marks of a hand bruising Jacaerys’ neck. She looks for her father Laenor, who is nowhere to be seen. She sees her mother with Daemon, the man moving swiftly from spectator to protector as he shields their bodies with his, her small frame hidden fully by his towering form.

She watches him crouch to her level, his strong hands on her shoulders as he soothes her fears by telling her they will never come to harm anymore as long as he breathes. She asks him about the boy who just lost an eye, and how it isn’t fair. He tells her that life isn’t fair, but what Aemond has gained is greater than what he lost, a trade that Daemon himself would have made if put in the same situation. 

Aemond Targaryen loses an eye, and gains a dragon. Daella Targaryen loses a father, and gains another. 

Over time, the girls she had considered just her cousins become her sisters, and the man she had merely considered her uncle becomes her father. Her trueblood father, she learns on her thirteenth name day. Daemon and Rhaenyra sit her down, telling her of the need to keep her in the dark until now, a sacrifice made only for her safety.

It bridges a gap between her and her brothers in their hearts, the stain of bastardry another tie that only brings her closer to them. 

Daemon Targaryen trains her the way he has trained Baela and Rhaena, a proud smile growing on his face every time the girl bests one of her brothers. She is impulsive and reckless and headstrong, every bit the Rogue Prince’s daughter where she differed from Ser Laenor.

She grows closer and closer with her younger sisters, the three thick as thieves as she finds the kinship only women can offer to one another. They speak of their place in a man’s world, their fears and ambitions, their wants and frustrations as much as they speak of myths and fantasies, rarely seen apart. 

She learns to braid their hair as they tell her stories of life beyond the Narrow Sea, and she tells them of her days in the Red Keep as they twist her waves into a crown upon her head, teasing her as Heir when they do, playing out coronations.

“Baela Targaryen, Lady of Dragonstone and Rhaena Targaryen, Lady of Driftmark,” she proclaims grandly when they play upon the cliffs, mock-curtsying as they call her Your Grace the Queen Daella. 

Childhood gives way to responsibilities, where those daydreams inch closer and closer to reality. Baela is betrothed to Jace and Rhaena to Luke, her other brothers far too young for any worries beyond simply growing up.

She, however, is left unattached.

“We have to find you an equal, my sweet,” Daemon tells her affectionately one day as he tugs on his daughter’s braid. “Not someone who wants your power, but someone who cares without. Besides, you are heir after your mother. The man who marries you, marries the Throne.”

In King’s Landing, Aegon and Helaena Targaryen are wedded to each other in a lavish ceremony, the second son reminded over and over that he need not worry about marrying for power, but for love if he so wishes.

“The woman who marries you does not marry the Throne, sweet boy,” Alicent consoles him. “She will want you not truly for power, but without. As long as she befits our station, you must choose with your heart, not with duty.” It is a modicum of freedom granted to him by virtue of his birth, but the concession is not enough to make up for his losses.

Her mother gives Daella training she was never properly given, seating her through onerous council meetings on Dragonstone and making her practice her High Valyrian until it is muscle memory. Her father takes her on patrols to the Steptones and pushes her to train until her bones ache.

She is taught by Rhaenyra to be calm, composed and driven, to maintain grace under pressure. She is a woman succeeding a woman, which means that she must remain beyond reproach. She is taught by Daemon to keep her mind and her blade sharp, to never bow down or back up unless truly needed. A woman following a woman can be nothing less than a dragon, he reminds her at every turn.

Aemond learns at the foot of his mother and from the absence of his father, becoming everything the former wants him to be and everything the latter is not. He learns to respect the Faith and the Seven as he does the Fourteen Flames, to study philosophy, history and war. He learns that politics requires a sharp mind far more than it does two eyes, his grandsire Otto his guide on what to emulate and his brother Aegon on everything to eschew.

He learns to fight better than anyone else he has met, until his scars hurt and his knuckles bleed. He doesn’t give a shit about tourneys, pageantry the last thing from his mind as he picks up his sword again and again, until the Valyrian steel slices through training decoys like scissors on silk, just as quick and just as deadly. 

Daella and Aemond Targaryen cross paths again a decade later, when her family alights upon King’s Landing to pay a visit to her grandfather the King. She catches his eye in the Throne Room after her father beheads Vaemond Velaryon for leveling insults at their family, her satisfied smile analogous to Aemond’s impressed one.

They see each other again at dinner, her focus turned to her own self as the chatter around suffices to fill her own silence, a finger idly tracing the grooves and ridges of the table as she partakes in what a family dinner is supposed to be.

Her mouth twitches in anger as Aemond insults her family, fingers moving to curl upon the hilt of her own sword as he calls them ‘Strong’ over and over again, but she keeps her cool. A woman succeeding a woman must be beyond reproach, and shows of anger will do her no good. 

But then Aegon smashes her brother’s head into the table, and her mother has to force her back into her seat as she prepares to lunge at the drunk prince. Because while she must be beyond reproach, she must also be a dragon, willing to protect her family at a hair's turn if needed. Her father diffuses the tension while they are all dismissed to their own rooms, and she seeks Aemond out after the affair has ended, her steps hurried and her jaw ticking. 

“How dare you,” she hisses in the dark, her words making him turn around as he marches back to her spot, a curious look in his eyes. “Why, sweet niece,” he says coolly, “I was merely expressing how proud I am of my nephews and my family. Although it seems, they’re not quite as proud of theirs, are they?” 

She has to crane up to meet his eye, her shorter frame engulfed by his shadow. “Don’t play coy,” she snaps, only getting a laugh in return. For the first time, Daella Targaryen is truly incensed by a man, the sound of his voice tinder to her growing blaze of anger.

“They may be a bastard to you in name, but you are the bastard in acts,” she retorts, her boldness taking him by surprise, and for the first time, Aemond Targaryen is truly intrigued by a woman.