Chapter Text
Preface
Archmaester Gyldayn’s Fire & Blood: A History of the Targaryen Kings of Westeros is a vaunted work spanning more than two hundred years, encapsulating the Septon Eustace’s treaty on the reign of King Viserys, the chronicles of Grand Maestar Munkun, and the ribald “testimony” of the court jester, Mushroom, among others.
Yet before the Archmaester’s tome was copied, illustrated, and distributed throughout the seven kingdoms for the lords and libraries eager for their own record, several passages were excised as blasphemous, treasonous, or otherwise poisonous to the minds of righteous and god-fearing men. The Citadel of Oldtown, of course, maintained the original manuscript, and these discrepancies are here provided for scholars who have forged a link in their chain of Valyrian steel and studied the mysteries of their craft.
These forbidden passages include the fate of Princess Aerea, the attestations of the dying survivors of the ill-fated voyage of Elissa Farman–-and the lives of the twin Targaryens, Prince Maelor and Princess Maelora, accursed as villains, turncloaks, and kinslayers during the so-called “Dance of the Dragons” in 129 AC.
In our present year of 207 AC, I, Septa Sabitha of Highgarden, here offer the prohibited texts with limited commentary for those who would read them. I do so under the patronage of the lady wife of Prince Maekar Targaryen, Fourth of His Name, as a gift for her lord husband.
“Now we come to a most profane thread in the tapestry of our history,” Archmaestar Gyldayn wrote. “These twin Targaryens–-later called ‘the Cannibals’–-were to be damned from memory by writ and royal order of the crown. Their names were to be expunged from all tomes for their treasons, and their wickedness excised like rotten flesh from the wounds of the history of Westeros…”
THE CANNIBALS
Chapter One
“Lions”
1.
At the death of Princess Alyssa Targaryen in childbed in 84 AC, Prince Baelon the Brave was thrown into grief. He was consoled in part by the truest friend and confidante of the late princess, Lady Idessa Lannister, a handsome maiden of seventeen, gold of hair and green of eye.
Lady Idessa Lannister was elder sister of Jason and Tyland, daughter of Lord Tymun, and granddaughter of Lord Lyman Lannister, who had hosted Queen Rhaena Targaryen and her “Four-Headed Beast” at Casterly Rock. Lord Lyman had passed of the Shivers during the spring of 59 AC, never having achieved his dream of securing a dragon for the Lannisters and the westerlands. His son, Lord Tymun, as we shall see, kept his father’s dream very much alive.
After five years of mourning for Princess Alyssa Targaryen, Prince Baelon took Lady Idessa Lannister to wife in 91 AC, as was befitting a Targaryen prince and second-in-line to the Iron Throne. In 94 AC, after three years of marriage, at the age of five-and-twenty, Lady Idessa delivered him a set of twins called Maelor and Maelora, though it was the girl-child who was by some minutes the elder.
The twins Maelor and Maelora were noted first at their birth for being the first–-and only–-ugly Targaryens born since the dragonlords had crossed from Valyria and the Doom. The girl was puffy-faced and pudgy, the boy lanky and sharp; both their mouths were fleshy and red.
Prince Baelon’s eldest son, the affable Prince Viserys and future king of Westeros, affectionately called his half-siblings “our little lion cubs,” noting that such cats are often born blind and not much to look at. However, Prince Baelon’s second-born son, young prince Daemon, derided the twins instead as “a piglet and a rat.”
Prince Maelor and Princess Maelora’s appearances certainly troubled their mother, whose House Lannister was known for comely sons and daughters, but the children’s Valyrian blood was visible for all the see. The twins were blessed with the silver-gold hair of the Targaryens, and the emerald-green eyes of the Lannisters. Even though Lady Idessa had plainly and fruitfully done her duty–-two new heirs after but a single pregnancy!–-the twins’ lack of beauty was said to gnaw at her. Moreover, as half-Lannister children, Prince Maelor and Princess Maelora were denied the right to have a pair of dragons’ eggs set within their cradles–-which, Lady Idessa confided privately, soothed instead of slighted her.
Lady Idessa’s grandfather, the late Lord Lyman, had coveted dragons for Casterly Rock, and wished the Lannisters to be a power in the West as surely as the Velaryons were a power in the East. Lady Idessa’s father, Lord Tymun, likewise wished his grandchildren to bring such tremendous grandeur and glamour to the Rock.
While the exclusion of this Targaryen ritual caused some controversy at their birth, the children Maelor and Maelora would in time come to be prodigious and dangerous dragonriders–-proving their mother, Lady Idessa Lannister, had been right to fear this outcome after all.
2.
The twins’ elder half-siblings, Princes Viserys and Daemon, were never especially dear to the young Maelor and Maelora. Prince Viserys, born in 80 AC, was fourteen years their elder, and Prince Daemon, born in 84 AC as his mother died, was ten years the same. Prince Daemon was too young and impetuous to have any interest in children, and Prince Viserys, engaged to Lady Aemma Arryn of the Vale, was soon to be a father in his own right, with less interest in toddling half-siblings.
Thus left to their own devices, the twins Maelor and Maelora were shrewd and secretive even when quite young, rarely crying, rarely laughing, and rarely engaging with other playmates in the Red Keep. The boy was rowdy and sometimes vicious, leading to the first concerns that he may be slow-witted; but the girl took him as her especial companion, and would herself become an unholy terror if any septon or septa attempted to chastize her brother. The girl spoke early, and learned her letters well, though the boy uttered nothing any but his sister could understand until he was nearly four years of age.
Their mother, Lady Idessa Lannister, had in hand their educations, and tended them closely. Lady Idessa, sadly, was ill-at-ease in a court full of Targaryens. She was by all accounts a winsome, gracious, kind-hearted ornament to King’s Landing, though prone to nervousness later in life; she felt quite keenly her state as a mere lone Westerosi lioness in a den of fire-breathing Valyrian dragons.
And while Lady Idessa adored her husband Prince Baelon the Brave most sincerely, she had a dread of her ten-year-old stepson, the hot-headed Prince Daemon, who she feared resented her existence and the existence of her children.
Lady Idessa is said to have once caught Prince Daemon trying to feed Prince Maelor a small piece of cheese, inside of which a sewing needle had been concealed. When in distress she called upon her lord husband, Prince Baelon, the young Prince Daemon protested that he had not intended to feed the morsel to his half-brother, but rather to a stray dog that had vexed him. The truth of this cannot be known, but Prince Baelon had chastised the young Daemon for the cruelty–-even if the bait had indeed been intended for the most savage dog in the seven kingdoms, it was not the young prince’s place to distribute such wicked punishment.
Nevertheless, Prince Daemon continued to shadow and frighten Lady Idessa for years to come, as we shall soon see.
3.
This brings us to the first crucial event in the childhood of the twins, Prince Maelor and Princess Maelor.
In 99 AC, when the twins were but five years of age, a priest of the Dragonpit came unto Old King Jaehaerys, and informed the aged king that Balerion the Black Dread-–oldest and grandest of all the dragons, the last creature to have seen Valyria before the Doom–-had perished at last. Balerion had been in decline for decades, and had never recovered from his sinister voyage across the Narrow Sea with the star-crossed Princess Aerea, but the news of the loss of so great and divine a creature grieved the Old King mightily.
Preparations were made that Balerion’s body be burned, that his bones might be preserved and his anointed skull look down forever in protection over the scions of his House. Valyrian rituals were conducted, to the disquiet of the Faith, and Lady Idessa’s stepson, nineteen-year-old Prince Viserys–-the last to ever ride the Black Dread, even if it had been but once, and years ago-–mourned.
The smallfolk spoke of omens, and great lords were heard whispering, and in the tumult, a bedmaid discovered that the young twins Maelor and Maelora were missing from their chamber.
No alarm was sounded at first–the boy Maelor was prone to mischief, and the girl Maelora often aided him, insofar as indulging him while preventing injury to himself and his playmates. The other bedchambers of their uncles, aunts, cousins, and half-siblings were searched, and Lady Idessa began to fear that in the chaos, Prince Daemon–-now five-and-ten–-had perhaps struck at last. Lady Idessa was greatly afraid of accusing Prince Daemon to her lord husband, though, cognizant that she would seem the jealous stepmother attempting to besmirch the younger son of his beloved late first wife.
Had Lady Idessa’s children snuck out? Been absconded? Slipped at Maegor’s Moat and died impaled upon the spikes in the gully below? When she could no longer bear the terror, Lady Idessa appealed to Prince Baelon-–saying nothing of her suspicions of the origin of her distress–-and Prince Baelon at last summoned the Kingsguard.
The search was called off nearly as soon as it was begun, as a priest of the Dragonpit sent word that the two “lion cubs” had been unearthed. The five-year-old twins Maelor and Maelora had been discovered in the Dragonpit itself, and “no harm had come to them.”
While here Prince Baelon’s household records end, the chronicles of the Dragonkeepers tells us a far darker tale. Our records are translated out of High Valyrian, from the chronicler Vhanor of the Dragonpit, late of Dragonstone.
“No harm had come to them,” the Dragonkeepers wrote, “though it was a difficult thing not to kill the blaspheming twins where they crouched upon the dusty stone floor of the Dragonpit. The children had been found, aye–-
“The children had been found eating of the carcass of the dead Balerion, the Black Dread.
“The prince and princess were slick and steaming with gore, bathed from head to foot in ichor and offal,” Vhanor the Chronicler inscribed. “Only their eyes and teeth were visibly white through the red-black slurry of scalding blood and dragonflesh.”
The Dragonkeepers were horrified at the desecration, calling the children defilers and blasphemers. Saelys the Dragonkeeper, particular attendant and priestess to Balerion, wished the prince and princess to pay with their lives. The Kingsguard hastily bundled the children away to the Red Keep, where their mother frantically had them bathed and washed. Her bedmaids later said the dragon blood burned like acid when she sought to touch her children before they were clean.
Then the priest of the Dragonpit came again before the Old King, and told them of the horror that had taken place.
No answer could be found to how the twins Maelor and Maelora had made their way to the Dragonpit, though Prince Daemon was under suspicion, for his dislike of his half-siblings was well-known. Suspicion likewise fell on a Dragonkeeper called Shaemithor, who was rumored to believe ancient tales of shadow-binders and have an unwholesome interest in the history of Valyrian blood magic. Indeed, at the death of Balerion, the Dragonkeeper Shaemithor vanished from his post and was not seen for many years thereafter.
But Princess Maelora, when questioned, gave a far simpler and more disturbing answer.
“My brother dreamed we should go,” she is said to have informed the Kingsguard who swaddled her in their white cloaks, that they may transport her and her brother without being burned. “In his dream, Maelor saw how to do it.”
“Dreamers,” as the Targaryens call them, are known as seers, prophets, and various other names throughout the seven kingdoms. Daenys the Dreamer, indeed, was said to have foreseen the doom of Old Valyria and urged her family to cross the Narrow Sea to safety in Westeros. Throughout the lineage of the Targaryens, Dreamers have cropped up here and again, but madness, drink, and misery have followed them in nearly every instance.
It is not hard to imagine why Prince Baelon and Lady Idessa were loath to imagine their son Maelor was such a one, regardless of what their daughter Maelora said.
Once cleaned and parsed for injuries, the twins Maelor and Maelora were brought before King Jaehaerys-–one of the few times the Old King is known to have shown interest in his half-Lannister grandchildren. So disturbed was he by the tale the Dragonkeepers brought him that he had the children washed once again, dressed, and commanded they be sent to the Starry Sept of Oldtown for seventy-seven days of prayer and fasting.
4.
Upon the day of their leaving, the twins Maelor and Maelora were garbed and guarded so that any onlookers would believe them merely pious, and not punished. They were only five years of age, after all, and children so young can scarcely be held accountable for the spoiling of a gown or the breaking of a cup, let alone so great and terrible a sin as eating of the flesh of a dead god, as Balerion was accounted by the Dragonkeepers. A small crowd gathered outside the Red Keep to see the young twins off, praising their piety and the bond between the Crown and the Faith.
As the twins ascended into their carriage, surrounded by knights and attendants–-though crucially, not their mother, who wept in her husband’s arms from the steps of the Red Keep-–the crowd gasped in fright. A castle dog bolted from the throng, and set upon the girl Maelora ruthlessly. The boy Maelor leapt to his sister’s defense, and with a little dagger that had been a parting gift from his father, he stabbed the dog repeatedly until it relinquished its hold upon his flesh.
The boy was punctured and bitten across the left side of his face, shoulder, and chest, but in the end, it was the Kingsguard that had to pry the boy from the dog and not the other way around. Prince Maelor had strangled the mongrel, and the crowd scattered, making signs of the Seven, and warding against evil.
The children were tended, and the knights and attendants fiercely castigated for their failure to protect the young prince and princess. One knight-–a younger son of House Mormont, from the wilds of the North-–insisted the dog had been “a warg,” a skin-shifter, who was in truth “the missing Dragonkeeper Shaemithor in the guise of a fell beast.” Such superstitions do not exist among reasonable men, however, and this explanation was rightfully discounted.
Three months the children were given to recuperate, though Prince Maelor was to bear the scars ever after, and every one of their servants and guards were substituted for the voyage. Prince Baelon went so far as to dismiss Ser Stevron Crakehall as head of his household guard.
But in the end, Old King Jaehaerys had his will. In 100 AC, the children were sent from King’s Landing, though unsettling reports of their progress returned. Horses refused to pull the children for more than a single passage from sunrise to moonrise, and fresh mounts were perpetually sought. Castles where the young prince and princess were received as guests reported strange noises and sightings. The prince screamed in his sleep unless the princess was there to soothe him. Rumors began that the twins Maelor and Maelora were cursed.
Only the King, the Dragonkeepers, the Kingsguard, and the royal family knew of the twins’ act of desecration of the body of the dragon called Balerion the Black Dread, however. If such a tale had spread throughout the realm, no one can say how their lives would have altered.
5.
Upon the twins’ arrival at Oldtown, though, the High Septon put aside all talk of Valyrian curses and blood rituals.
For seventy-seven days, the children bowed, prayed, knelt, confessed, fasted, memorized, and recited-–they took cold baths, ate coarse bread, and drank boiled water instead of soft ale or watered wine. They were chastised as acolytes when they spoke out of turn or showed their will; they slept on straw tick mattresses and endured several crucibles of purification.
Their father’s sister, the kindly princess-turned-Septa Maegelle, saw that their spirits were not broken, though their mortal bodies were humbled. The rumors of animals disliking the children abated; shades and shadows were not seen in the Starry Sept.
After seventy-seven days, the twins Prince Maelor and Princess Maelora were pronounced clean in mind, heart, and soul.
The children returned–-well-dressed, courtly, quieter, and more subdued-–to King’s Landing.
And one year and seventy-seven days after their return, their father, Prince Baelon the Brave, died after a return from a hunting trip in 101 AC. He had been four-and-forty years old.