#maelanna

after years of being impoverished and living in exile, maelor, a deranged and bitter  targaryen prince—the rightful heir to the throne that was taken from his ancestors centuries ago—takes his sister anna to wife, and plants his seed in her womb to bring about his heir, whom he is misled by his own misinterpreted prophetic dreams to believe will bring forth the dragon eggs possessed to him and his sister to hatch. instead, it was the death during labor of maelor and anna’s first son, aegon, and the burning of his body in valyrian rites, that reawakened the dragon eggs long petrified to stone for centuries, and hatched little vermithor and silverwing, who anna nursed as her own babies, and raised them to the great beasts they are now. then together maelor and anna restore the targaryen dynasty by conquering and uniting all of modern europe under their rule as king and queen, under its new (old) name the seven kingdoms… and have a whole bunch of inbred targaryen babies together, for whom silverwing lays eggs so they can all have dragons too, dadada, so now iphones and targaryens exist in the same era lol

anna is the firstborn child and daughter of aenar targaryen. her father, who was already plagued by visions of prophecy, took to wife his sister alyssa, a union from which anna was brought forth, their first child. alyssa, however, succumbed to illness when anna was still a little girl. her death sent aenar into a wild spiral of grief, hopelessness, and desolation. believing that he needed to sire a son to hatch the last remaining dragon eggs left as a family heirloom to him from past generations of his lineage, he married another woman—a non-targaryen woman—who bore him his second child, maelor, anna’s younger half-brother. however, the eggs did not hatch for maelor in the cradle, and aenar grew sick with resentment for his son, abandoning him and his new wife after a few years to raise his daughter, anna, alone.

maelor was thus left with his mother, who remarried and had another son with her new husband. because maelor was not of this new man’s blood, his stepfather was cold towards him, and as he grew, mistreated and beat maelor all throughout his childhood. though maelor knew of his true parentage—and that he had a half-sister, anna, who was meant to be his wife, the whereabouts of whom his mother was keeping from him—he was not treated as the targaryen prince he was, and was instead oppressed for most of his early life. because of this, he developed a sense of contempt towards both his true father and his sister, whom he envied, but desired as well. he believed a sister to take to bride was his birthright, and held a bitter indignation with having had that taken from him.  

it wasn’t until the death of aenar targaryen that anna and maelor, now in their late adolescence, were at long last reunited. but such little memories had remained to them of one another, and so long had it been since anna last saw her brother that she had seemed to scarcely remember him. for, out of his own guilt, and in his favor of her, aenar had kept the boy away from her. but when aenar took his own life in such guilt, it was in his will that he had betrothed anna to maelor, his only son, who he had come to realize was “the last hope of the targaryen dynasty.” 

maelor, now a man grown, thus left his mother behind and sought his sister out immediately. amidst her grief for their father, along with her state of destitution, he took advantage of her most vulnerable position to assert his role in her life as her betrothed and as her protector, who would keep her secure, and who would teach her how she was truly meant to live—as a princess, as the dragon’s daughter, with the fire of dragon’s blood in her veins. maelor was strong-willed, determined, yet harsh and aggressive in his desire for her, believing that she was his birthright, and that he was entitled to having her. that, paired with the fact that he so hastily claimed her maidenhead the very same night he brought his presence upon her, meant that for a long while anna was deeply intimidated by him, and sometimes still remains so. 

there were dozens of women maelor had before anna, for he was a handsome young man of old valyrian blood who attracted the eyes of many. yet to him even the most beautiful of women was but a common girl with plain features, and all of them he found dull and boring. he treated them coldly—he took little interest in them beyond the need for sexual gratification, yet looked down upon them for the pleasures they brought him, degrading them, naming them “cheap whores” and “filthy sluts” who would never compare to the sweetness of his sister when she finally came into his life, fixing his eyes upon her and none else. a pure-blooded targaryen girl, and with the valyrian features to show for it, silver of hair and lilac of eyes. he measured all others against her, only to find them lacking, and thought his sister an innocent beauty, a true princess, and desired her for all that made her so pure. and along with it, she shared blood with him, born for him before he was ever conceived, thus she was to be made his wife by right. yet in his adoration he sought relentlessly to instill in her the same arrogance he carried, to teach her to look down upon the rest of the world as he did. she was of the blood of the dragon, which must be kept pure, he told her, thus she was all the more deserving of his strict and oft cruel forms of what he claimed was his protection.

though he was very much besotted with his sister, and considered her the love of his life, maelor himself still grappled with intense feelings of negativity towards anna alongside his lust for her—envy of her for having their father’s favor, resentment for her having kept a soft and gentle nature despite what the world had taken from the two of them… and to worsen the matter, he was plagued with paranoia in his belief that there were men who would want to hurt her. all of this would result in his controlling, over-protective, violent, and possessive treatment of her. an occasion she often struggles to forget is of him slut-shaming her for wearing a skirt too short (even in spite of her being a virgin before he came into her life), then proceeding to force himself on her, to violate her, and show her what men want to do to her. when she’d cried, he’d told her that she should be glad it was him doing this to her—her brother, and not those vile, disgusting men.

and yet maelor would remind anna, constantly, that it was only out of his love and will to protect her that he treated her so cruelly. anna, having been sheltered through her childhood, with very few experiences in life to have learned from, would be confused, and unsure of herself. parts of her identity began to meld into her brother’s, until boundaries blurred between them and she could no longer be sure of who she was outside of him. all she knew was that it was his blood that her heart pumped through her body, that he was a part of her flesh and blood, that he would forever be inside of her, and that he was the only family she had left. the blame for his cruelty to her seemed to so often fall into her own hands, and so she took that shame upon herself in every sense of the word— “stupid girl,” he’d often call her, so that became who she believed she was, waking every morning after a night in his bed with a pounding behind her eyes, faint, sore, and lightheaded. every step she took was on the very tips of her toes, so as to not “wake the dragon.”