Chapter Text
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Dragonriders”
Note: Encompassing the interstitial between the end of the first episode and beginning of the second episode of “THE HOUSE OF THE DRAGON.”
1.
“Brother,” Princess Maelora beseeched the king. “You bid us stay for the turn of the moon, yet now, many months have come and gone. Is it not plain that we have no place here?”
Princess Maelora’s plea was sincere, but her complaint must be regarded as facetious. Indeed, the twins had done much in their time in King’s Landing–-disruptive and chaotic as their acts had been, they had nevertheless solved many of the nuisances that had harried King Viserys’s reign.
“You are in King’s Landing,” King Viserys protested. “Do you not partake of any of its diversions?”
Princess Maelora scoffed. “If I set one foot outside of the Red Keep, the gold cloaks report all my moves to Prince Daemon,” she retorted.
“You might engage in activities nearer your own chambers,” the king hinted slyly, with a grin.
“If you mean to wish my brother and I had a child of our own,” Princess Maelora countered, not without a wry and sighing smile, “you would only strengthen Maelor’s claim to your daughter’s throne. We have no wish to sow discord among the family.”
This interaction comes from Lady Alicent Hightower’s accounts of her time in the king’s company. The king, who loved all his siblings well and perhaps too well, smiled sadly at his sister’s rejoinder.
2.
“I cannot help my…fascination with His Grace’s siblings,” Lady Alicent reported to Septon Eustace. Septon Eustace, who kept extensive notes of King Viserys’s household and their failings and sins, transcribed Lady Alicent’s confessions around this time with unusual fervor.
“I have tried to keep my honor always, to think pure thoughts and eschew all temptation…” Lady Alicent continued. “His Grace sent me with a small token to soothe his sister’s ire…and I came upon Princess Maelora and her husband…”
“Abed?” Septon Eustace here broke in.
“Yes, but–-but not like that,” Lady Alicent protested. “They were in bed, but reclining only. Their bed was just beneath a high window of wrought iron, and the princess was gazing out, while Prince Maelor…
“You must be honest, child,” Septon Eustace pressed. “Why do you blush if a married man and wife were merely resting and looking out a window?”
Lady Alicent appears to have continued under some distress.
“They were unclothed, Septon,” she answered. “And Princess Maelora’s breast was bare, and her brother–-her husband, I mean–-he was…suckling at her. I… I wanted to leave, but Princess Maelora invited me in, and I still had the gift from His Grace, and she bid me sit, and…
“I looked at the wine upon the table, and went so far as to pour for myself, as there were no servants about. Prince Maelor never made any sign that he knew I was there. His eyes were squeezed shut, his brow knit up as if in pain. I tried not to look–-to look at the princess’s b-breast, but I… She smiled at me as I took the wine and coughed when I drank too quickly.
“‘He had a bad dream,’ the princess told me. ‘He dreamt he was a newborn monster, with twisted limbs, a huge head, and no eyes. His father had him drowned. He only wanted to live…’
“I meant to remain serene, but the princess’s words… ‘Poor anguished girl,’ the princess crooned. Me, she meant. She reached forth her arm, as though to welcome me to come sit upon her bed…even to rest in her lap or against her breast as her brother–-husband!–-did, and… It was the wine, perhaps, Septon! Just the wine, but…
“I stared, I know I stared, and she began to smile. ‘I will not harm you,’ the princess told me. ‘Poor maiden creature. I would never harm a maiden.’ I swayed where I stood, just looking at them–-I drank down the wine and poured more, and all the while, Princess Maelora only looked amused.
“She did not command me, rebuke me, entice me…she just let me watch as she stroked her brother’s hair and kissed him until his brow smoothed and his eyes opened. His eyes were bloodshot from crying… He sighed deeply against her breast. He seemed to notice me at last. Indifferent. He nuzzled his face into his sister’s breast and fell asleep. And Princess Maelora looked up at me…a different look, and I…”
The Septon here gave a long sermon on the exceptions granted to Targaryens, and another on the resistance of temptation, but the greatest shock was yet to come.
While we do not have his precise words–-perhaps even Septon Eustace was too scandalized-–Lady Alicent confessed to having raced back to her chambers and “angled herself” against the arm of an ornately upholstered chair. She made use of it with great shame until her “knew joy,” only a moment later. Guilt overcame her, and she all but sprinted to the septon to make her confession.
“Her curls were still tangled,” Septon Eustace observed. He instructed her in what prayers she must say, and cautioned her against self-pleasure and unnatural passions.
Whether he went so far as to inform her father, we are uncertain–-but we know Ser Otto Hightower redoubled his efforts to see his daughter married to King Viserys from that night forward, as though a fiend from hell were nipping at the maiden’s heels.
3.
Six months after Princess Rhaenyra’s confirmation as heir to the Iron Throne, the Myrish prince admiral, Craghas Drahar, plagued the Stepstones between the Free Cities and King’s Landing. This prince, called “the Crabfeeder,” had caused great outrage to House Velaryon, whose ships were the most beset by his misdeeds.
Lord Corlys Velaryon–-we have this from his own complaints-–entered the council late, greatly wroth, as Princess Rhaenyra served her father as cupbearer. Prince Maelor and Princess Maelora were present to hear the king’s duties for them that day, but they stood attendant; the Cannibal Twins had no seats, real or metaphorical, upon the small council of King’s Landing.
Lord Corlys Velaryon complained vehemently of the sloth of the Crown in disposing of the Crabfeeder, and went so far as to criticize His Grace for failing to expel Prince Daemon from Dragonstone. “The rogue prince” had, at that time, been in occupation of the seat of House Targaryen for six months, when it by rights belonged to Princess Rhaenyra and was by custom the abode of Prince Maelor and Princess Maelora.
To Lord Corlys’ pleasure, Princess Rhaenyra here interrupted to propose the king send dragonriders to roust Prince Daemon. Two of those dragonriders, Prince Maelor and Princess Maelora, exchanged an expression displeasing to the crown princess.
Lord Corlys Velaryon, however, championed her idea.
“My wife and son are both dragonriders,” Lord Corlys bragged, “and now, even mine own daughter. Laena’s mount is Vhagar, the largest and oldest in all the world. No other dragon can possibly withstand her. With such a show of force, Your Grace–-my wife and children, your siblings and daughter–-”
“Lady Laena is a girl of twelve,” cautioned Lord Lyman Beesbury of Honeyholt, master of coin. “And the Princess Rhaenyra is obviously too precious to be risked in such a confrontation. And Princess Rhaenys and young Laenor cannot be volunteered for such a dangerous and volatile mission…”
“Which means it would fall to us,” surmised Princess Maelora unpleasantly.
Princess Rhaenyra protested angrily that that was not what she had meant–-she asked freely to approach Dragonstone and “roust mine uncle, and bring him back to King’s Landing or send him to the Vale, whatever my father the king commands!”
But Ser Otto Hightower–-who had once been Princess Rhaenyra’s champion in the succession–-advised Ser Harrold Westerling of the Kingsguard to escort the princess away.
With the king’s support, Ser Otto bid the princess to choose a new knight of the Kingsguard, for Ser Ryam Redwyne had passed in his sleep not long before. We are told the Hand of the King soon followed Princess Rhaenyra to the courtyard for this choosing, evidently concerned that he had given offense, but even he could not prevent the princess’s choice.
Whether from wisdom or from pique, of all the assembled knights, Princess Rhaenyra chose Ser Criston Cole, the Dornish son of steward who had unhorsed Prince Daemon during the Tourney of the Heir. This new-made knight of the Kingsguard soon became the cherished pet of the princess; she called him “my white knight” for all to hear, and he served her most nobly at her sworn shield.
A few voices at court would voice concern regarding the intimacy between the princess and her “white knight,” including Ser Otto Hightower. King Viserys, however, gently chided his Hand.
“Did I not wish to make Maelor and Maelora her defenders, and you disagreed?” the king smiled. “Now, my daughter has a worthy protector, and one, ah–-well, more to her liking than my odd brother and sister. Let the matter remain settled!”
4.
Shortly thereafter, Lord Coryls Velaryon begged a private word with the king; they were joined by the king’s favorite cousin, Princess Rhaenys Targaryen.
In this meeting, Lord Corlys proposed to strengthen the bond betwixt their Houses if King Viserys may consider for his second wife the young Lady Laena Targaryen, daughter of the Sea Snake and the Queen Who Never Was. The offer was a bold one, and one no man should discount. After Princess Rhaenyra herself, there was no more eligible maiden in the seven kingdoms than young Lady Laena, whose pure Valyrian blood, family’s Velaryon fleet, and enormous dragon Vhagar were already becoming the stuff of songs and legends.
That evening, after retiring from supper for the treatment of his ailments, the king summoned Ser Otto Hightower, Lady Idessa Lannister, and his half-siblings, Prince Maelor and Princess Maelora. He conferred to them Lord Corlys’s proposal.
“Lady Laena!” the twins exclaimed, evidently all in raptures. Immediately they began to praise the good fortune of such a match, and to speak of Lady Laena’s “boldness, breeding, and brains.” So enthused were they, Grand Maester Mellos imparts, “one would have thought the child was their own.”
Grand Maester Mellos tells us, perhaps too candidly, that Ser Otto seemed discomposed by the news, and greatly reluctant to pursue its possibility–-likely, Grand Maester Mellos asserts, because Ser Otto envisioned his own daughter, Lady Alicent, on the throne.
Lady Idessa, likewise, appeared outright “disturbed” by the suggestion. “The girl is a child!” the king’s stepmother protested.
“She will mature,” Grand Maester Mellos here asserted.
“And were we not children when we were wed?” Princess Maelora countered. “Brother, were you not four-and-ten when you wed Lady Aemma?”
“When I think of my grief for my own late lady wife,” Ser Otto told the king, with doleful sympathy, “I do not envy you the duty of remarrying.”
Lady Idessa seized upon this point. “You have a duty to remarry, Viserys, but duty need not decide upon the lady in question!” she protested. “Only a truly great love is worthy of following our dearest Aemma! I could not bear to see some great noblewoman who had not your heart sweeping about these chambers, touching Aemma’s things. Your match must be a love match, Your Grace–-please!”
Though she did not know it, Lady Idessa Lannister gained a lifelong ally in Ser Otto Hightower in that moment.
Her children, evidently, were far less compassionate.
“Brother, you are one-and-thirty,” Prince Maelor announced. “Not one-and-fifty. No one suggests you take that remarkable girl into your bed on your wedding night.”
“Indeed, no,” scowled Princess Maelora. “Tradition urges you wait until she is fourteen–-but you are the king. Wait until she is sixteen, until she is eighteen, until she is twenty or until she is mad with passion for you–-but do not turn down the promise of years of peace, just because they do not begin precisely to your liking!”
Thus caught between his counselors, King Viserys bid them good evening, and returned to ruminate in silence.
5.
A few days hence, Lady Laena was summoned to King’s Landing. While her mother, Princess Rhaenys, would have preferred she arrive by ship, her father, Lord Corlys Velaryon, bid she ride upon her dragon. A compromise was struck–Lady Laena Velaryon would make her progress by landing each day at one of the coastal cities between Driftmark and King’s Landing. Three of her father’s ships sailed beneath her, commanded by her loyal uncle, Ser Vaemond Velaryon.
At the first of these ports, Lady Laena was greeted ardently by Prince Maelor and Princess Maelora, who had arrived upon their own dragons.
“What a sight!” wrote Lord Darklyn of Duskendale to the king. “Vhagar seemed as vast as the sky, and then, through the clouds, broke that frightful shadow, all hooks and horns and coal-black claws–-the Cannibal descended as her honor guard! Behind them, smallest of the lot, came Princess Maelora upon her she-dragon, spotted red and black and yellow like a golden fish in the Water Gardens of Dorne!
“When they landed, the dragons groaned and roared to one another. The Cannibal snapped and snarled, mistrustful of mighty Vhagar, but Vhagar raised her wings and shook her gorget at him, and Sycorax nuzzled and crooned against her mate. Vhagar then permitted Sycorax to coil and caress about her sagging neck and scarred old face, and the Cannibal’s grunts and growls became the most haunting and terrible song. Then Sycorax joined in the frightful melody, and at last, Vhagar’s roar completed the chorus.
“I wept, Your Grace. I have never before heard dragons sing-–and I think, were I to hear it again, it would break my heart past repairing.”
6.
Princess Rhaenys, we know, squandered no love upon the cannibal twins.
The Queen That Never Was suspected something foul in Prince Maelor and Princess Maelora’s interest in her maiden daughter, but Lady Laena was passionately defensive of her mother’s cousins. Lord Corlys, likewise, was no ally in this–-Prince Maelor and Princess Maelora were the foremost champions of his daughter Laena’s ascension as queen. The cannibal twins must not be slighted as they pled his daughter’s troth to their half-brother, King Viserys.
We know a great deal of Lady Laena’s progress with her “honor guard” of Prince Maelor and Princess Maelora, but it is difficult to know how much of it signifies-–the amount of pork ordered, the number of chambers readied, the clothing the young Lady Laena wore, the amusing stories her royal “honor guard” told to please her. Reciting here each bit of fancy-–the gardens Princess Maelora showed the Lady Laena, the fish that Prince Maelor caught for her, the games they played for her amusement-–can be of little interest to a scholar.
But well we know that the maiden’s progress to King’s Landing was a happy one. Each hosting lord and lady commented upon the joy in the child’s face, of her praise of her “honor guard,” of her love of flying with their dragons. Lavish dinners just short of feasts were held in her honor–-for, Prince Maelora insisted, they wished to limit broad attendance for the Lady Laena’s safety.
Lady Laena’s uncle, Ser Vaemond Velaryon, was initially as distrustful of the twins as Princess Rhaenys. The progress, however, altered his views.
Ser Vaemond Velaryon wrote to his wife on Driftmark, “Once I had a hunting dog, a black mastiff fierce as Balerion himself. That dog could tear the gullet of an elk at a trice. And yet, among the castle cats who dwelt in the yard at High Tide, he was as gentle as a rabbit. He would lap at the newborn kittens, warm them under his jowls, growl at any man who attempted to disturb them. He was not a gentle dog, neither obedient nor intelligent nor kind towards men and women…and yet.
“I think much of that mastiff when I watch these Cannibals with my niece. I do not know why they have chosen our Lady Laena as their kitten–-perhaps as the daughter they do not have. But I know too that the blessing of the gods is not to be questioned. The gods sent this queer prince and princess to serve Lady Laena–-and I shall see it done.”
7.
When Lady Laena Velaryon arrived on her dragon in King’s Landing, the smallfolk came racing into the streets. The Cannibal was the largest dragon they’d seen since the days of Balerion, more than ten years prior, but Vhagar, the ancient mount of Queen Visenya, was between a third and a quarter again his size.
Lady Laena, flushed from her ride, was taken at once to see His Grace. Her “honor guard” tolerated no delay. When Lord Corlys and Princess Rhaenys greeted their daughter in the Red Keep, Princess Rhaenys despaired of her daughter’s hair, but Prince Maelor blurted out, “Let our brother see she isn’t some pampered mermaid! She has been riding VHAGAR!”
Lord Corlys–-to Ser Vaemond’s own astonishment–agreed. Lady Laena–-windswept, bright-eyed, and full of high, glad temper–-met King Viserys nearly at once in the gardens above the bay. Indeed, the king had to hasten so as not to keep the young Velaryon waiting.
Lady Laena was not a nervous, polite child, but a true and bold young Valyrian lady-–a maiden dragonrider. From the balustrades overlooking the gardens, Lord Corlys and Princess Rhaenys watched their daughter, just as Princess Rhaenyra watched her father, and Prince Maelor and Princess Maelora watched their brother.
“They made me feel like a young bull put to pasture with his first heifer,” King Viserys complained bitterly to Lady Alicent Hightower later that evening-–a remark that “he immediately and deeply regretted, so deep in his cups he had been,” says Grand Maester Mellos. Lady Alicent had blushed, but delicately absolved the king with such gentility that she sounded as if she thought “newborns were found under cabbage leaves.”
Lady Laena had bragged happily to the Young King of her young suitors on Driftmark, of her voyages to Gulltown and Tarth on her father’s ships, of her flights on Vhagar, and even the pods of dolphins and whales and great creatures she had seen out in the sea.
“Princess Maelora told us we should catch one of the whales,” Lady Laena reported happily, and with glad, gruesome detail, she told the king how the three dragons–-Vhagar, Sycorax, and the Cannibal–-had feasted upon the poor beast they’d hunted to the shore. “Prince Maelor says it’s better if we can feed our dragons from the sea, instead of expecting our hosts to do so. They told me Balerion could eat fifty head of cattle a day! Is that true, Your Grace?”
Nor was Lady Laena demure about the matter of a political marriage.
“I have never known anything but peace,” Lady Laena announced, “and I wish it to always be so. If I must marry for duty, and only love riding my dragon or playing with our children, I don’t suppose that’s so bad, do you?”
And nor was she shy of her wants and expectations as queen.
“I do love to travel, Your Grace,” Lady Laena informed King Viserys. “I understand that a king’s place is in King’s Landing, but perhaps between providing you with heirs, I might make a grand tour, as did Good Queen Alysanne. I might ride Vhagar to the North, or the Reach, or even Dorne or across the Narrow Sea. I could convey the friendship of the Crown to your allies and make you new allies, even! I think I would be very good at it. I hate to stay in one place for too long.”
Perhaps if the Lady Laena could have been more humble and deferential to His Grace, Septon Eustace later opined, things would have fallen out differently.
But, after the promenade in the garden was concluded, Ser Otto, Lady Idessa, Prince Maelor, and Princess Maelora were summoned once again.
“She is twelve,” King Viserys repeated. “And if you wish me to have more heirs, I must needs choose a queen of mine own stage and station in life.”
Princess Maelora protested, but King Viserys was adamant. “You would have me wait for the girl’s coming of age, Maelora, and I commend you for that. But I have no more desire to bed a young girl than she would have to bed me. I would wish to wait not until she was fourteen, but aye, eighteen, as you proposed. Otherwise I would feel a lecher and a monster.”
Against this declaration, Princess Maelora had no counterargument. “An engagement, then?” the princess “nearly begged,” says Lady Idessa.
“Six years before the consummation of the marriage,” drawled Ser Otto Hightower. “And that is if the new queen quickened at once. Nine months for a birth. ‘Twould be on seven years before a new scion joined the House of the Dragon–-and there would be no guarantee of the child’s health, sex, or any other qualities.”
Princess Maelora “grew very still,” and “wild thoughts flickered across her face like shadows on the fire.” Yet in the end, she but curtseyed deeply to the king, and sighed, defeated.
“Let me find eligible ladies at court!” pleaded Lady Idessa abruptly. Her kind, careworn face always glowed tenderly when turned upon the king. “Let me aid you in this, Viserys. Maidens of more appropriate age, with Valyrian blood–-or else hale and sweet-natured widows, whose fertility has been well-proven.”
To this, the king stammered and blushed his gratitude and assent. Ser Otto was at Lady Idessa’s side the instant they rose–-“no doubt to make certain his own daughter was first upon that list,” says Grand Maester Mellos–-and the king dismissed his siblings.
“Why are you so fond of the girl Laena?” the king asked, as Prince Maelor and Princess Maelora made their exit.
The twins exchanged a look.
“She makes the idea of children one worth having,” blurted Prince Maelor–-a little nonsensically, but the gist was there.
Then they went out.