Chapter Text
Rhaenyra feels as if she has been reborn. She is the heir. Fire and Blood. Those were the words of house Targaryen. So it was only fitting her rebirth was created amidst smoke, the crackle of flames, blood and the foul smell of burnt boar bristles.
She emerged from the woods at the camp, covered in a red crust that has found its hold deep under her nails and the stink of the kill. Daemon, she felt, would surely be proud, a true Targaryen he would say, at last having secured her first true kill. They all look shocked, those perfumed lords and ladies, intent on supplanting her as heir, their façade so thin only the King and perhaps his new wife can not see through, so drunk on the feeling he had butchered another wife to acquire. But she can hear their whispers already beginning to swirl like thick sticky tar oozing and permeating into the foundations of her family. She cannot bring herself to care, for in the truest sense the court had only last seen a petulant maid, a dragon hatchling at best. Now she was a true Dragon for the entire court to see, one acknowledged, even if only secretly by the only other symbol aside from a dragon that makes a man a king.
Something new had been born within her that day, not a fire (she had always carried a fire within her) but a tempered steel, that gave her the confidence of a Valyrian steel backbone.
(It makes her wonder if Valyrian steel is simply steel tempered in blood and dragon fire, for she feels like a sword made anew, a blunt blade having finally been sharpened on a whetstone.)
The Blood under her nails make dealing with Aegon’s squeals, her fathers drunken stupor and Alicent’s reproachful stares more bearable on the way back to the keep, the carriage’s shakes and jolts keeping Aegon fussy and screeching with each small lurch. But the air has never tasted sweeter, and the dragon flame, the dracarys inside of her has never felt more steadfast and true. Zaldrīzes buzdari iksos daor.
When her father names her heir in the privacy of the small council chambers, a deep seated vindication runs through her veins. She hates these chambers, she has learnt much here as cupbearer and as heir in name only, but she was only taught the things she forced herself to learn. These chambers are not welcoming to her and all those in it do not bother hiding their disdain for her opinion. She can still remember the smug look on Otto Hightowers face when Viserys had gleefully brought the 9 moon old Aegon to sit on his lap during council, and with each babble the king had smiled and jested and agreed with the infants opinions. Going as far as to jest that the young boy agreed with Lord Beesbury's new port taxation law. In these rooms where an heir was meant to be taught and shown the ways of governing, a small babe who could not even speak was given more consideration to his suggestions than Rhaenyra herself.
But now, a new breeze, a new light has entered the room, and for the first time she feels that's she's actually allowed to covet her birthright, to fight, to put swear, tears, blood and fire into a role that won't be passed off to an infant at any given moment.
The choice of her own groom is also a powerful tool, she doesn't want to be married, but having choice is always preferable to no choice at all and perhaps if she can show her prowess as heir she can stave off all this marriage business for a little while longer. She would not be made a craven and have men puppet her life as they saw fit, sell her off to some Lordling with a large enough castle to house the heirs he will make her birth for him.
She would not be what Alicent has become.
So she immediately gets to work, the council won't convene until 3 days after the hunt has concluded, after all the drinking and whoring has subsided. So she goes and she reads. She reads accounts and letters from her Great Grandmother the Good Queen Alysanne, reads about her policies and the accounts of how she ran her domestic household. She reads the letters and accounts of Archmaester Gyldyn of how the Good Queen had even advocated that their eldest child, Daenerys should be heir before she died of the Shivers. It was a small comfort to Rhaenyra, that there was at least some form of precedence for a girl to inherit the iron throne even before the Council of 101.
She reads the papers and opinions of her own grandfather The Spring Prince, Baelon Targaryen during his tenure as hand to the king. She reads day and night, bookkeeping reports, letters, accounts, journals, books, anything she can get her hands on. With each account she becomes painfully more aware that she knows nothing about the task that's been handed to her as heir and future ruler, how underprepared her father and his councillors have left her to be. It leaves a bitter taste in her mouth.
She reads everyday well into the hour of the bat to the dismay of Ser Criston. And she does not head to sleep until Ser Criston, in a last desperate attempt, recruits Ser Harrold Westerling with his gruff grandfatherly charm, to scold her into resting again in her chambers. They even confiscate the small journal of Baelon Targayen, lest she read longer into the night.
When she wakes on the third morning, earlier somehow still than the sun which is only beginning to kiss the horizon with its red and gold glow and in spite of the reading long into the night and her early rising she feels alive. Like her life-fuel is fire itself. Council will be called sometime after noon, and if her father, her King, wants her to be heir then he will have to support her more concretely than with whispers of promises behind closed doors.
She has a plan, things that need to be broached with the King while she is still in his good graces, she's aware that he sees her similarly to Daemon, a political dragon fire filled headache waiting to happen, she must prove she can be more, that she can do better than what all these schemers promise with their honeyed but poisonous assessments of her capabilities. Her father is too good natured, too naive perhaps to see the poisonous whispers for what they are. She knows it's her fault they can pick apart at her seams, her performance thus far had been ignorant and petulant, a spoiled powdered princess playing at power she should never have grasped.
But she is a dragon, and dragons do not cower at a council of sheep, she will prove them all wrong, with fire and blood if she must.
In the meantime she gets up and gently braids her hair away from her face. Her handmaidens will help her dress, but her hair, that was something that had always been reserved to her lady Mother (the True Queen, as far as she’s concerned) or Alicent or even Laena on occasion when she had visited. But none of them were here for her now, and she could not bear to let another do her hair in the meantime. So simple hairstyles it was.
When she is done she sits at her small writing desk and pulls out the newest piece of reading material, the reports of Daemon's tenure as master of coin.
The report was neat and tidy, which had been initially a surprise when she had read his own reports about his tenure as master of laws. She stared at his uncharacteristically elegant and meticulous handwriting, she remembers a time, when she was younger, how she had asked why his script was prettier than her own, he had laughed, a rich sound warm sound as he explained to her how he had learnt to read and write at the skirts of his grandmother, Queen Alysanne, and how he had inadvertently copied her script style and hadn't been able to shake off the habit.
The ledgers were meticulously done, overflowing, she was sure, with the will to not have a single part of it criticised by the scrupulous, nitpicking hand. Daemon had done an excellent job to be sure, with the ledgers, but Rhaenyra had been fascinated to see that all Daemon had funded during his tenure were old projects from the Good Queen before she passed, only some of which he was able to see through until completion before his expulsion from the position of Master of Coin.
There are some loose papers of her late mother’s last charity efforts she intends to finish in her honour, one of the first requests at council she will make, she is not beneath softening her father’s resolve and swaying him through sentiment to get her job done.
Her maids bustle in, business as usual, if they are surprised at the princess’ uncharacteristic early rise they do not show it and instead help pin and lace her into the dress set out for her. It was a pale blue gown, edged in Myrish lace gifted to her by Rhaenys and house Velaryon on her last name day, a delicate pale thing with swirling golden dragons embroidered around the collar. She hopes it makes her seem more wise, perhaps more fit to being heir, to being a good ruler.
It makes her look like her Mother.