𝖉𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐨𝐧 𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐞𝐧.

# 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐅𝐔𝐋𝐇𝐄𝐈𝐑 is an independent, private, highly selective && mutuals only roleplay blog dedicated to the portrayal of rhaenyra targaryen, drawing inspiration from fire and blood as well as the hbo television adaptation house of the dragon. this interpretation is grounded in extensive character study, thoughtfully developed personal headcanons, and a variety of alternate universe influences, all approached with deliberate care and narrative intention. themes explored may be mature in nature. 21+ only. est timezone. minors dni. written by snow.

𝐀 𝐒𝐓𝐔𝐃𝐘 𝐈𝐍 a birthright claimed against the teeth of the realm, a girl named the realm’s delight taught too early how love curdles into expectation, motherhood braided with monarchy, house against house, kin against kin. fire made flesh, dragons as crown and threat both.

𝐑𝐔𝐋𝐄𝐒 & 𝐆𝐔𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒 | 𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐄𝐒 & 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐒 | 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐓𝐒 | 𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐃𝐈𝐓

☙ 𝒂𝒎𝒐𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒓𝒕  @serharwinstrong (ship exclusive) + @secondmaegor + @zaldrizdoron + @tyroshiwarrior + @ladyofwinterroses + @starlitsonnets

𝐁𝐘 𝐌𝐈𝐃𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓, 𝐑𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐋𝐑𝐘 𝐇𝐀𝐃 𝐆𝐑𝐎𝐖𝐍 𝐅𝐀𝐓 𝐔𝐏𝐎𝐍 𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐄, flattery, and desires too impolite to name. Wax wept down gilded branches and pooled in pale rivulets upon the tables. Above them hung the black-and-red banners of House Targaryen, their three-headed dragons stirring whenever the doors were opened. Garlands of late-summer roses wound about the columns, red blossoms nodding heavily upon their stems; their fragrance mingled with roasted meat, beeswax, spiced wine, and the close warmth of too many bodies gathered beneath one roof. It was splendid, and it was utterly suffocating. When Ser Harrold called another dance, Rhaenyra accepted the hand of a young lord from the Reach. She allowed him to draw her onto the floor, though she had already forgotten his name. During the first turn she laughed at something scarcely amusing. During the second, she let her hand remain upon his shoulder a heartbeat longer than custom required. Across the hall, Criston’s jaw hardened; the pleasure she took in it was small and sharp and shameful. The lordling beneath her hand mistook her smile for encouragement. His own broadened, displaying teeth white enough to suggest he had never yet bitten into anything harder than sugared fruit. He leaned closer and began telling her how the moonlight upon Blackwater Bay had reminded him of her hair. The song ended. Her partner bowed, flushed with the certainty of his own success. Rhaenyra granted him a smile mild enough to wound no pride and withdrew her hand before he could kiss it again. When the next young knight bowed and requested her hand, Rhaenyra gazed at him for so long that his hopeful smile began to falter.   ❛ Forgive me, my lord. ❜ Her voice remained sweet, though patience had long since soured upon her tongue. ❛ I find myself weary of dancing. ❜

He retreated with whatever dignity disappointment permitted, and her father did not see her rise in return. Viserys sat among his councillors, laughing at some tale Lord Lyonel Strong had told him, his cup cradled loosely between his hands. There were moments when her father seemed almost himself again, as though grief and crown and sickness had loosened their grip upon him, though in truth even his laughter was thinner than she remembered, like sunlight seen through mist. Without herald or farewell, she slipped from the hall and left its gilded clamor to feast upon itself. Only when a proper measure of distance had opened behind her came the familiar tread of boots against stone, followed by armor’s soft silver whisper. She smiled to herself. He followed her through one passage and then another, past sleeping tapestries and darkened alcoves where stone kings kept counsel with the shadows. The farther they passed from the hall, the fainter the music became, until only the drum remained, dull and distant as a heart beating within the walls. Rhaenyra had not intended to lead him anywhere . . .  yet her feet carried her toward the western gallery, where tall arched windows overlooked the sleeping city and portraits of dead Targaryens lined the walls. At that hour it stood deserted; the courtiers had all been drawn toward the feast, and the servants who tended its braziers had long since departed. She entered without hesitation.

A moment later, Criston’s footfalls ceased behind her.

For several breaths, she remained with her gaze toward the window, staring upon a city that would one day be hers if the lords who toasted her tonight remembered their oaths after her father’s death. The thought left an iron taste upon her tongue. Everything in her life seemed promised and uncertain at once: throne, marriage, loyalty, love. Men placed crowns at her feet in one breath and questioned her right to wear them with the next.  ❛ You disapproved of them. ❜ She clasped her hands behind her back, concealing the strange restlessness in her fingers. ❛ The men who danced with me, ❜ she said, when he offered no reply. ❛ You glowered at each as though he had committed some grave offense against the crown. Lord Merryweather’s heir may indeed deserve hanging for his conversation, but I believe even the king’s justice requires a better charge than tediousness. ❜ The distance between them dwindled one measured step at a time. ❛ Or perhaps I mistook you. Perhaps you did not disapprove at all. ❜ She tilted her head, studying him with open insolence. ❛ Perhaps you pitied me. ❜

She came to a halt before him again; the music reached them then, a slow measure seeping faintly through the keep. Strings first, sweet and aching, then the distant pulse of a drum. 

❛ Men of the marches dance differently, do they not? ❜ Pride burnished the words, but it almost pleading, though she would sooner mount Syrax bareback than name it so. ❛ Surely the finest knight in the Seven Kingdoms is not afeared of a little dancing. Come. Show me the way. ❜

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐍 𝐇𝐀𝐃 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐘𝐄𝐓 𝐁𝐄𝐆𝐔𝐍 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐒𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐋𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐑𝐎𝐘𝐀𝐋 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐆𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐒, though the heavens had been threatening rebellion since dawn. None seemed to heed the warning. The lords rode beneath their silken standards, too well pleased to trouble themselves with the sky, as their ladies sweated prettily beneath veils of Myrish lace. Knights in bright enamel boasted of tourneys won before Rhaenyra had been born, while squires laughed dutifully at jests they had surely heard a hundred times before. Somewhere behind the royal wheelhouse, a singer had taken up a ballad concerning a maiden with golden hair, a true knight, and a tower of black stone. He had reached the maiden’s third lament before Rhaenyra decided that death by lightning would be the kinder fate. She had endured three days of such pageantry. Three days of halls made fragrant with crushed rushes and roses already browning at their edges. Three days of bread presented upon silver platters, venison drowned in sauces too sweet to stomach, and proud old men reciting the names of their ancestors until every dead lord in the realm seemed more alive than Rhaenyra herself. Three days of being displayed beneath banners. Everywhere she turned, there waited another pair of appraising eyes. The lords looked upon her and saw a crown not yet worn: their sons saw a marriage bed, and their wives saw a girl whose womb might raise or ruin their house. That afternoon, Lord Bar Emmon had insisted the progress halt beside the ivy-devoured remnants of a watchtower whose every stone, he solemnly declared, had been laid during the reign of the Conciliator. Rhaenyra had listened until she could bear no more. Her mare had been restless beneath her, tossing her pale mane and worrying the bit as though she, too, found the lord’s history intolerable. Rhaenyra had stroked the animal’s neck, murmured something about wishing to see the riverbank, and slipped away before a septa, sworn sword, or overzealous lordling might volunteer to escort her. She knew Ser Harwin Strong would follow. The certainty of it pleased her more than it ought.

Branches caught at her riding cloak; ferns lashing upon her boots. Beneath the thick summer canopy, her mare surged forward at the slightest pressure, and Rhaenyra bent low over the animal’s neck and laughed, as somewhere behind her came the thunder of another horse. She knew the sound of Ser Harwin's riding by then. There was little grace in him of the courtly sort, none of the polished prettiness minstrels bestowed upon their silver knights, yet there was something surer. Rhaenyra urged her mare faster. The woods blurred into green and brown and rain-bright silver; her heart climbed against her ribs, light and fierce as a dragon beating its wings against confinement. For a precious little while, she was only a girl fleeing through the trees. But Ser Harwin gained upon her regardless of every fallen branch and twisting path she placed between them. She glimpsed him once when she glanced over her shoulder—a broad shape astride a dark courser, his cloak streaming behind him, his hair already made blacker by the mist. Even at a distance there was no mistaking him. Breakbones, the court named him, sometimes in admiration and sometimes in fear, though the name seemed ill-suited to the man Rhaenyra had come to know in fragments. There was no cruelty to him.

She faced forward once more, a smile threatening her mouth.

The rain thickened then, and what had been a maiden’s veil became a widow’s shroud; the sky groaning overhead. Within moments, the heavens opened, rain falling in generous sheets.It silvered the air, battered the treetops, and poured through the canopy in sudden cold rivulets. Rhaenyra’s hood was down, and before she could seize it the wet had soaked through her hair, her cloak, the velvet upon her shoulders. Her mare shied when thunder broke over the wood, throwing up her head and slipping sideways in the mud. Rhaenyra caught the reins and fought to steady her, but the path had become a treacherous ribbon of black earth; the mare’s hindquarters swung perilously close to a tree, and for one sharp instant Rhaenyra imagined bone breaking, silk tearing, a dozen lords declaring afterward that such was the ruin brought by a girl’s willfulness. Then Harwin was beside her. His courser pressed close enough that their stirrups nearly struck. One of his hands closed around the mare’s bridle, broad fingers sure against the wet leather, and the horse quieted beneath the strength of him, though rain continued to roll along the muscles of her trembling neck. Wet hair clung to his brow. Water traced the hard line of his nose and gathered along the dark bristle at his jaw. His cloak was plastered to his shoulders, making him seem broader still, some rain-soaked giant out of the old tales who had wandered down from the hills to guard a foolish princess from herself.

Rhaenyra lifted her chin. ❛ I had her, Ser. ❜ Whether he believed her or merely possessed the good sense not to challenge her mattered little. Harwin released the bridle only once the mare had settled. Another growl of thunder rolled across the heavens. She pushed wet hair from her cheek. ❛ We ought to return before my father sends half his guard into the wood. ❜

Even as she said it, she knew they could not; the storm had swallowed all direction, and every tree appeared the same beneath the downpour.  They rode in a silence filled by the violence of the rain as it drummed against leaves, armor, leather. Her cloak grew heavy upon her shoulders; the cold crept down her spine and beneath her shift, stealing feeling from her fingers. She clenched the reins more tightly to disguise their trembling. It was Harwin who found the shelter. The hut crouched beneath the shoulder of a hill where the forest thinned into open grazing land, though no sheep had wandered there in many years. It was a poor, forsaken thing, built of rough stone and roofed in sagging thatch, half-hidden beneath ivy and lichen. One shutter hung crooked beside a narrow window. The little yard before it had gone wild with nettles, and the remains of a sheepfold leaned drunkenly beneath the storm. She dismounted before Harwin might think to help her. That was her intention, at least. Her skirts had twisted around her knees, heavy with water. Her boot slipped against the stirrup, and the earth seemed to tilt beneath her. A breath later, a strong arm encircled her waist. Harwin caught her before she struck the mud. For one suspended heartbeat she hung between saddle and ground, held against him by the sheer certainty of his strength.

Rhaenyra felt the heat of his hand even through sodden velvet. She felt the hard breadth of his chest close to her shoulder, the leather and wet wool beneath her fingers where she had grasped him without thought. The world narrowed to the place where his palm spanned her waist.  She looked up at him; the rainwater clung to his lashes. Harwin’s hand fell from her waist. Rhaenyra stepped back with as much dignity as one could muster while dripping like a half-drowned cat.

❛ . . . You may forget that happened. ❜  She turned toward the hut before he could answer, though she imagined amusement in the silence behind her. The door had swollen in its frame and resisted them, but Harwin forced it open with one shoulder. The wood groaned, the rusted latch giving way with a brittle crack. Inside waited darkness, cold ashes, and the stale scent of abandonment. The hut contained little. A narrow pallet stood against one wall, stripped of bedding. A three-legged stool lay overturned beside the hearth. There were hooks along the rafters where herbs or game might once have hung, though only cobwebs remained now, silvered faintly by the light that entered through the broken shutter. But the roof held, and in truth, that was enough. Harwin shut the door against the storm, and at once the rain became distant; its roar softened by stone and thatch. She drew down her hood. Her hair, half escaped from its braids, tumbled wetly over her shoulders; silver-gold strands clung to her throat and cheeks, ruined beyond repair. She reached back and pulled free the remaining pins. One by one they fell into her palm until the last of the braid surrendered. Her hair spilled down her back in a pale, dripping curtain. When she looked toward Harwin, she found his gaze upon her. A hot little triumph rose within her, swiftly followed by something more uncertain.

❛ . . . You are staring, ser. ❜ She waited only long enough to see whether he would deny it before turning toward the hearth. The wood stacked nearby was old and damp at the edges. Harwin knelt before it, stripping away the worst of the rot with his dagger and arranging the driest pieces beneath the chimney, and Rhaenyra perched upon the stool once she had set it upright. It listed dangerously beneath her. ❛ I pray your skill with kindling exceeds Lord Bar Emmon’s skill with history. Else we shall be frozen stiff before he reaches his fourth grandsire. ❜ A spark leapt from flint to tinder and died. Another followed. Rhaenyra watched Harwin bend over the meagre nest of wood, shielding it with hands broad enough to close around both of hers; the third spark caught. A faint orange tongue trembled to life beneath his breath. Soon the fire began to feed. Flame crept along the shavings, curled around the smaller branches, and found purchase in the split wood. Warmth breathed slowly into the room. Smoke climbed the chimney, though some of it escaped into the hut, making Rhaenyra’s eyes sting.

She stretched her hands toward the heat.

❛ There. A deed worthy of song. Ser Harwin Strong, Breakbones, conqueror of damp firewood. ❜

𝐒𝐋𝐄𝐄𝐏 𝐇𝐀𝐃 𝐅𝐋𝐄𝐃 𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐁𝐄𝐃 𝐀𝐒 𝐒𝐔𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐘 𝐀𝐒 𝐀𝐍𝐘 𝐂𝐑𝐀𝐕𝐄𝐍 𝐊𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 from dragonfire. It came near enough to taunt her, brushing pale fingers over her brow whenever her eyes grew heavy, only to flee again the moment she reached for it. Rhaenyra turned once more beneath the coverlets, though the linen seemed suddenly too close, too warm, too much like burial cloth. At last she flung it aside and rose.  Her attendants slept in the adjoining chamber, though she did not summon them; she had no desire for careful hands, hushed questions, or a cup of warmed milk sweetened with honey as though she were still a little girl frightened by thunder. She wanted neither comfort nor counsel. She wanted only to escape the chamber that had grown too small around her thoughts. She drew a dark robe over her nightshift and left her silver hair loose down her back as she thrust her feet into soft slippers and crossed the chamber with the stealth of one committing some secret treason. The door opened with scarcely a murmur. Ser Criston Cole stood upon the other side. Rhaenyra halted upon the threshold, and for one traitorous heartbeat, she wished to retreat, finding herself suddenly loath to be seen thus: barefoot beneath her slippers, her hair unbound, face scrubbed clean of all the pride and ceremony expected of the Realm’s Delight. But Ser Criston had already turned toward her, and so Rhaenyra lifted her chin, gathering what remained of her dignity about her like a cloak. ❛ I cannot sleep. ❜  Before he might answer, she stepped into the corridor and drew the door shut behind her. The latch settled softly into place. Rhaenyra began to walk. Three steps. The long corridor stretched before her, swallowed in shadow, and all at once the thought of wandering it seemed unbearably tiresome. She had spent the better part of the evening pacing—first before her father, then within her own chambers—wearing the same furious path until it seemed she had carved a trench through her heart. Without warning, and without asking leave of dignity or custom, the heir to the Iron Throne lowered herself to the floor. Her back came to rest against the cold stone wall beside Criston’s post. She gathered the folds of her robe around her legs and drew her knees toward her breast, heedless of what some passing servant or sleepless courtier might think should they come upon her there.  ❛ . . . You may cease looking at me as though I have taken leave of my senses. ❜ She could feel the weight of his attention even without lifting her eyes, resting her head against the stone and at last, turning her gaze upward.  ❛ It is only that my father believes I make a sport of defying him. ❜ Her fingers found a loose thread upon the sleeve of her robe and worried it between them. ❛ He thinks every refusal is an arrow loosed deliberately at his heart. So he would have me smile at men old enough to remember my birth, and he would have me listen while they speak of my womb as though it were a parcel of fertile land to be bargained over. And when I object, I am told it is duty. ❜ Her gaze fell to her hands. ❛ I know what they say of me. That I am difficult, proud, and I was given a crown and still found cause to complain of its burden. ❜  The ruby upon her finger caught the torchlight. A tiny dragon coiled around her knuckle, its golden wings spread as if in flight, its jeweled eye bright with a fire it could never truly possess. Rhaenyra turned the ring slowly. She had worn it so long that the flesh beneath had grown pale. ❛ . . . Perhaps they are right. ❜

Rhaenyra shifted upon the stone, scarcely at all, a subtle gathering of limbs and shadow, no more than was needed to open a slender crescent of empty space beside her.

❛ You are charged with guarding me, are you not? ❜ The faintest curve touched one corner of her mouth, though it held more sadness than mirth. ❛ I see no reason you cannot do so from here. ❜

𝑶𝑵𝑬 𝑴𝑰𝑮𝑯𝑻 𝑶𝑵𝑳𝒀 hope that her mercy not be mistaken for pliancy —— for she is the blood of the dragon . . . and to confuse her grace for weakness would be a perilous folly.

𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑 𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐑𝐇𝐀𝐄𝐍𝐘𝐑𝐀'𝐒 𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐋𝐃𝐑𝐄𝐍 𝐅𝐄𝐋𝐋 𝐈𝐋𝐋, all her customary scorn for omens and old wives’ tales was said to desert her. She would summon the finest maesters in the realm, demand every physic and poultice known to the Citadel, and sit beside the sickbed until her eyes grew red for want of sleep, though reason alone did not content her. Red thread would be knotted thrice about the bedposts to bind the child’s spirit to the living world, whilst small offerings of salt, silver, and dragon’s glass were left beneath the window before nightfall. Some claimed that the princess could even be heard whispering ancient Valyrian prayers over her children as they slept, though the words came brokenly to her tongue, half-remembered from the old women of Dragonstone whom she had mocked in her youth. Rhaenyra laughed at such rites when the danger had passed, but whilst fever held one of her own, she left no god, ghost, or forgotten charm uncalled upon.

𝐁𝐘 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐀𝐓, 𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆’𝐒 𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐒. Its gates had opened before her; its bells had proclaimed her coming from every tower. The gold cloaks had cast down the usurper’s banners and lifted the three-headed dragon in their stead, whilst men who had named her traitor at sunrise knelt in the mud before dusk and called her queen with trembling mouths. The city was hers. The Red Keep was hers. The Iron Throne awaited her beneath the skulls of dead dragons, every blade of it black and hungry in the torchlight. Yet when at last Rhaenyra was left alone, victory came to her as only silence, and it descended upon the royal apartments after the servants had gone, after the last lord had bowed himself backward through her doors, after the guards had taken their stations beyond the threshold and the castle settled into that uneasy stillness which followed conquest. The chambers had once belonged to her father, and Viserys remained everywhere within it, though he had been dead for moons and buried beneath stone. He lingered in the carved model of Old Valyria upon the far table, half-hidden beneath a linen cloth. He lingered in the faded dragon worked into the bed hangings, in the silver cup beside the hearth, in the faint sweetness of myrrh and old medicines that no amount of aired linen could wholly scour from the walls. Rhaenyra stood before it in her shift, her hair unbound down her back, and thought how poor a thing a crown was against the dead. In truth, she had imagined this night a thousand times, and she had thought, perhaps naively, justice would have a taste. Wine . . . or salt, or the bright copper tang of vengeance. Instead, it tasted of ashes. A servant had left wine warming beside the hearth. Rhaenyra had poured herself one cup and taken no more than a swallow. The red upon her tongue had brought to mind too many things: blood upon Luke’s empty cloak, blood beneath the nails of silent sisters, blood running between her own thighs as Visenya came too soon and too still into a world already bent upon destroying her. She had set the cup aside so sharply that the wine sloshed over the rim. Now it remained untouched, a dark stain spreading beneath it.  The realm had called her cruel for asking blood in answer to blood. They had whispered that grief had maddened her. Men who had never borne a child presumed to teach her the proper shape of a mother’s mourning, as if sorrow might be measured like grain or coin. A queen, they seemed to think, ought to weep prettily and for no longer than was seemly. She ought to bury her sons, straighten her crown, and speak of duty. They did not know that grief was a beast without a bridle. And Jacaerys . . . gods, that name remained the sharper blade. Luke had been taken by storm and dragon, torn from her so violently that some part of her had refused to comprehend it. For days afterward she had expected him through every door. She had thought she heard his footsteps outside her chamber, light and quick and hesitant, as they had been whenever he came bearing some confession he feared would disappoint her. But Jace had gone to war as a man, and the realm had devoured him for it. Her throat tightened.