#userrhaella

You never knew Lyanna as I did, Robert. You saw her beauty, but not the iron underneath.

there are things you are born with, and things you come to know as you grow older.

elia knows this. 

she is born with her father’s widow’s peak and her aunt’s name.  

she crawls about on the floor, gurgling and playing with her big sisters.  “you have given me a clever daughter,” her father says, though she will not remember it.  she is too young.  her mother smiles, and leans against him.  

“bright,” her mother tells her father.  “bright as the rising sun.”

her father does not say anything, but he squeezes her mother’s hand.  

elia does not know until after her father dies that the grandmother she never knew used to call the aunt she never knew her rising sun.

she is lady elia, not princess.  

she is elia, and not elia.  

she will be elia, and refuses to be elia.

it is the day she learns her aunt’s fate–her aunt’s true fate, not the gentle “she died before you were even a twinkle in my eye, sweetling,” that she’d gotten for so long–that elia picks up a lance for the first time.  she has always liked riding, the wind in her hair, the feel of the horse moving beneath her, and the lance is a fitting weapon for horseback.  

she rides until her legs are sore, tilts until her hands blister, bleed, and harden, striking at quintain after quintain until she could unhorse any squire in sunspear–and a few of the knights as well.

lady elia, not princess.

she’ll be a knight, perhaps.  she will never be a princess, though her father was a prince.  the savor of being a princess, the beauty of princesses in songs faded the moment she learned the truth of her name.  she’d be a finer knight than ser gregor, she’d defend and protect and not smash babies heads into walls and not rape princesses and carve them open with a great sword, she’d defend her father’s memory, she would be her aunt’s champion for a name can be a champion as well as any knight.

this she must be, for this is all in her name.  

modern gods;

so rhaegar and robert die at the tridant

the last three leaders of the rebellion are hoster tully, jon arryn and ned stark

are they traditionally bloodthirsty?? not really. and you can damn well bet that they wouldn’t just keep pushing forward after robert’s death in single combat. 

they would pull back to regroup in terms of leadership and plans after the war ends. 

ned stark just wants revenge for his family, aerys dead and his sister saved. he doesn’t truly care who ends on the throne. but he certainly doesnt want it like lord tully and lord arryn strongly suggest.

ned believes the throne by right should go to the baby aegon targaryen.

and meanwhile tywin is rewriting his plans as well.

robert is no longer available for cersei to marry. his house will have no way of becoming the new royal power with that path.

but he could be hand of the king once more if aerys was out of the way. and there is a convenient young prince ready to be manipulated as he grows. tywin could even be regent as hand of the king. 

so tywin plans to go to kings landing, not to sack it but to arrange an accident with the mad king and negotiate peace with the more amenable ned stark, hopefully with a recovered lyanna stark as a hostage.

but another ripple effect was with the rebel army paused rhaella doesn’t flee to dragonstone straight away with viserys. she stays in kings landing and while the mad king gets worse and worse rhaella snaps and stabs her brother killing him after he tried to order the deaths of rhaeneys and elia for being ‘dornish traitor sluts’. 

ser jaime lannister and princess elia martell help the queen in covering up the kings murder by burning his remains. the offical story is that he set himself on fire out of madness. 

tywin arrives to find that queen rhaella has been named king aegon’s regent and doran martell was on his way to be hand of the king for his nephew. (if only temporally because he didn’t want to stay forever at kings landing)

ravens are sent out from nearly every side of the battle to try and find lyanna stark. the new key to peace. 

ashara dayne responds to elia’s letter of her suspicions where her brother and lyanna stark are. 

it was the dayne’s and martell’s who came for lyanna and brought her temporarily to starfall for the remainder of her pregnancy (any further then that being too much for her at this late stage)

lyanna survives.

the now princess lyanna and prince jaeherys (jon) are brought under the protection of her grace rhaella targaryen. (ashara and arthur come back to kings landing with them)

with the safe recovery of princess lyanna and the death of king aerys peace is achieved and while tywin continues to plot to become hand of the king or get a granddaughter to marry aegon he doesn’t rebel with so many things uncertain. 

but how do elia and lyanna coexist as the wives of the dead rhaegar targaryen? 

well first they bond over their hatred of rhaegar and also their conflicting emotions that mourn and love him. 

then they bond over being the hated princesses of the realm.

then they bond over their children.

they form a close relationship as they raise their family and help heal the realm. 

that relationship falls into true love over time. simmering into a complicated adult love that lasts. 

rhaella steps down as regent after daenerys is born to recover and elia and lyanna step up.

Brienne regarded her with eyes as blue as her armor. “Winter will never come for the likes of us. Should we die in battle, they will surely sing of us, and it’s always summer in the songs. In the songs all knights are gallant, all maids are beautiful, and the sun is always shining.”