Chapter Text
One day, slumbering in the ash-strewn ruins of Summerhall, a silver prince dreams of things to come. In one of his visions of possible futures he sees a red-haired boy born of a red-haired lady of the Trident, contending with mighty magics against a one-eyed shadow with monstrous tentacles and the powers of the dead that march from the far north, starlike blue eyes gleaming with ageless hate.
Shaken, shuddering, Rhaegar Targaryen awakens… and concludes that clearly he must have seen Azor Ahai, the prince that was promised, the saviour of the world. And the mother of this prince whom he has seen is Catelyn Tully.
Prince Rhaegar rides northward with all haste. At the advice of that damnable Spider, his mad father King Aerys has sent Uncle Steffon away to Volantis to find a bride of Valyrian blood within the black walls; but Rhaegar pays that little heed. A far more important goal has arisen. Others may not think so, but Rhaegar knows so. What do they know? Unlike him, they do not have the dragon-dreams that have plagued Rhaegar since he was a young boy, incessant, demanding, like a relentless drumming inside his head, ever urging him and warning him. Unlike him, they do not know what is coming.
The prince’s party reaches Riverrun; and Rhaegar falls on one knee and proposes to Lady Catelyn for her hand in marriage.
Lord Hoster Tully intended to betroth his eldest daughter to Brandon Stark, the heir to the largest of the Seven Kingdoms; but this stroke of luck upsets the applecart entirely. The Lord of Riverrun can scarcely believe his good fortune. Catelyn has taken something of a fancy to the handsome heir to Winterfell, but this is brushed aside by her lord father. At his instruction, she hurriedly accepts Prince Rhaegar’s proposal, and in a grand ceremony at Riverrun the two are wed.
When Lord Steffon and Lady Cassana Baratheon die in one of Shipbreaker Bay’s infamous storms, within sight of their elder two sons standing at the top of the tower of Storm’s End, having sought a bride for Rhaegar, this does not endear the Prince of Dragonstone to Robert and Stannis Baratheon.
Meanwhile, Rickard Stark, Lord of Winterfell—who has arranged a marriage alliance with Lord Hoster, only to have it thrown back in his face—is bitter and resentful of the Lord of Riverrun. Deciding that southrons are all treacherous, Lord Rickard abandons his plans for the south and, heeding the advice of his lady mother, retreats back to the north’s customary isolation.
Prince Rhaegar lies with his pretty young wife upon their wedding night, and fathers a child, for Catelyn Targaryen née Tully is fertile as well as dutiful. Outsiders remark on how devoted a husband the Prince of Dragonstone is, for he is rarely far from his lady wife’s side, ever careful and attentive. But the Princess of Dragonstone herself disagrees. For it seems to her that her husband’s care and heed are not for her, but only for the Targaryen heir that is growing in her belly.
When her time comes, the Prince of Dragonstone paces impatiently outside the birthing chamber, eager to see the red-haired prince who will save the world, his Aegon Targaryen… and then he enters the room, and the midwife congratulates him on the birth of his daughter.
Next time, Rhaegar tells himself. After all, Aegon was not the firstborn of the three siblings, either. Next time.
The little girl, red of hair and blue of eye, is named Princess Visenya—though her mother often calls her Vis—and the Prince and Princess of Dragonstone lie with each other again.
With a fertile wife producing children so quickly, Rhaegar’s position looks more assured. The prince gathers together the lords of the realm, without issuing some grand insult to any of them, and gains sufficient support to carry out a quiet seizure of power from his mad father, Aerys the Second of His Name. King Aerys resists, but the betrayal of some of his own Kingsguard, led by Rhaegar’s closest friend Ser Arthur Dayne, dooms the Mad King’s hopes of retaining power. Prince Rhaegar and the lords supporting him, backed by Tridentine knights, are able to secure the Red Keep and confine King Aerys to a comfortable, well-guarded tower. The Prince of Dragonstone becomes Prince Regent of the Seven Kingdoms.
This state of affairs does not last long. Embarrassingly, the captive king is able to break a window and stab himself with a glass shard, in a final spiteful gesture to his son’s rule. Thus passes Aerys the Mad, and thereupon rises King Rhaegar the First of His Name.
Rhaegar’s friend Lord Jon Connington of Griffin’s Roost is appointed as Hand of the King, replacing Aerys’s friend and Hand, Lord Tywin Lannister. This irritates Lord Jon’s liegelord, Robert Baratheon, and of course Lord Tywin is displeased; but it is even more to the displeasure of Lord Hoster, who feels passed over in spite of the great support that the knights of the Trident provided to Rhaegar’s seizure of power.
Catelyn, Princess of Dragonstone, whose lack of Valyrian blood her goodfather King Aerys never much approved of, journeys from Dragonstone to King’s Landing to join her royal husband. When Aerys passes on, she becomes queen.
Soon Queen Catelyn gives birth again. It is another girl, this time of her father’s look, with hair like moonlight and the violet eyes of Old Valyria. King Rhaegar names the babe as Princess Rhaenys Targaryen. He tells himself not to worry. Aegon was second-born of the three siblings, not third-born, but he did have two sisters. This is only fitting. The dragon must have three heads. Surely the prince that he saw in his dreams, the sorcerer and Other-slayer, the third head of the dragon, The prince that was promised, will come next.
Next time the queen gives birth, it is another girl.
King Rhaegar is furious and dismayed. Where is his prince? Where is the prince that was promised? Such is the king’s anger that he does not even deign to name his thirdborn daughter. Queen Catelyn gives her the name Minisa, and all the affection that her father will not.
At once, the royal marriage becomes distant and cold. While Queen Catelyn dutifully raises her brood of three young Targaryen princesses, King Rhaegar secludes himself in his study, poring over old books. He no longer believes Catelyn will be the mother of the prince that was promised; he must have been mistaken in the way he interpreted that dragon-dream, almost a decade ago. Rhaegar gathers septons and lordlings and forgers and ambitious men, and he concludes that Catelyn must go, and he knows the way to do it. Ever after, a beautiful golden-haired lady is seen often in the king’s company, and the lord Hand, Jon Connington, is replaced with the formidable Lord Tywin Lannister.
To the shock and horror of Lord Hoster and the queen, the king approaches the High Septon in the Great Sept of Baelor and commands that his marriage to the queen be annulled, on grounds of the queen’s evident failure to produce a male heir. Of course, the lack of a boy is blamed on the wife, not the husband.
The queen and her family spring into action, using Tully gold to bestow generous gifts on septs across the realm. The High Septon is ordinarily a pliable man to the wishes of the aristocracy and the cosy, established order, but even for him, there are limits; he knows that the septons across the Seven Kingdoms will be up in arms if he allows this to occur. He protests and refuses to annul the marriage, expecting the king to back down on this unreasonable demand.
The king does not back down. King Rhaegar accuses the High Septon of being bought by Tully gold. The High Septon denies it. King Rhaegar says that his marriage must then be deemed invalid, leaving him free to marry the Lady Cersei. The High Septon refuses; he will not, he says, “cast a torch upon the great edifice of the sanctity of marriage in the eyes of gods and men.”
The Targaryen king has had enough of this defiance, and Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning, marches into the Great Sept of Baelor.
Blood is spilt on the Great Sept’s floors. The High Septon is taken into custody in Maegor’s Holdfast. And a new High Septon hurriedly condones the marriage of King Rhaegar and his latest wife.