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The tome merely laid upon the table before her—yet its presence made Cersei shudder. She chided herself. What could a mere book do to her that her enemies hadn’t done to her twice over? Yet she could not pick it up: the Dance of the Dragons.
The story of long dead beasts and their foolish riders. She had taken the tome from the Red Keep’s library out of nostalgia. Not nostalgia for the Targaryens—she had no love for them, especially not after Rhaegar’s death. Instead it was a nostalgia for her boy and the light on his face when she would read it to him. Albeit that light came from the the gruesome tale of the Dance’s end—with a brother’s dragon devouring his sister. Cersei always hated that story. It reminded her too much of the Valonqar and her own distant demise.
Cersei went for the goblet next to the book and took a healthy swig of wine. The tart Dornish wine tamped down the fire of fear that was feeding from the kindling her grief left in her heart.
She set the goblet down firmly and with a sneer, she picked up the book. It didn’t burn her when she picked it up. Nor was its weight beyond her womanly strength. The book was just that—an ordinary book. Cersei pulled open the cover and brushed her hand across the coarse parchment; then she began to read.
Cersei had forgotten the early history of the Dance. Joff had always begged her to skip to the ‘good parts’, when the Greens and the Blacks (or rather their dragons) were at each other’s throats. Where uncle would fell nephew, sibling fell sibling, and the Dance continued like that, on and on, like the rounds in some bard’s poorly written song—until only three Targaryens were left and their dragons were scrawny lizards barely deserving of the name.
But before the Dance had grown so bloody, there was the Realm’s Delight: Rhaenyra Targaryen. Cersei tamped down the feeling curling up inside her. She wouldn’t dignify it with a name. For a feeling like envy or longing didn’t belong in her chest right now. But the early tales of the Targaryen princess reminded Cersei somewhat of her youth and the days before Robert’s Rebellion. Growing up young and pretty in a relatively peaceful kingdoms. The whole of the kingdoms were hers (both Cersei and Rhaenyra’s) for the taking—the possibilities endless.
But the similarity between their childhood ends when Rhaenyra’s father, Viserys, does what Cersei wishes Tywin had done—claimed his daughter as his heir. The eldest Targaryen child—a Targaryen’s daughter—was set before the whole kingdoms and named the successor to the family name and honors (despite the potential from her younger brothers). Cersei’s hand shot out to the goblet again. She drank heartily from the wine and offered a silent toast to whatever hell her father’s spirit dwelt in.
A part of her wondered how she even bared reading this story to her children when they were young. The resentment she bore her father—that she would have been his perfect heir had she only been a son—was fueled by this story. When she read these words she had to smother the hope inside of her that wished Tywin would have named her heir to Castely Rock, Warden of the West, despite her sex. Even in another life, one where Tywin Lannister had a heart, her father wouldn’t have been so kind to her. But by some feat of impossible strength, Cersei hid this jealous face from her children when she read to them.
Again she drank from the goblet, hoping to drown the vestige of hope that somehow existed in her. That monster Tyrion had killed her father in a manner that was somehow more disgraceful than the way he killed their mother. Cersei’s mind knew this and her heart did too. Yet this foolish whisper of hope still kept a foothold in her heart. A musing that she could still somehow be her father’s perfect heir.
Cersei tore the page from the book and let it fall to the floor as she continued her reading. She wanted to tear the gods damned book up, but then she would be left with the wine and the drowning hope and mourning swirling in her chest. That was the very thing she sought to avoid when she had a servant bring her this book.
Rhaenyra next was separated from her childhood love by her father as she was married off. Despite having the very thing Cersei always wanted, Rhaenyra was subject to the same tragedy Cersei faced in marriage: being separated from her love through a loveless political arrangement. Rhaenyra was wed to Laenor Velaryon, the same way Cersei was wed to Robert. By their husband, the Rhaenyra and Cersei had each had three children. Three children that the women had loved with everything they had. Three children whom the gods cruelly subjected to suspicions about the childrens’ fathers. All because the womens’ own fathers had denied them love in their marriages.
Cersei paused to think of her own children. Beautiful Marcella. Sweet Tommen. . . . . . Joffrey, her perfect boy. All forced to bear the sigil of some other man’s house, rather than the glorious lion of Cersei and Jaime’s house, to keep the world at bay.
Another swig of wine.
Her heartache and brewing rage stir anew—because of the wine, despite the wine. Cersei doesn’t know. She tears another page from the book and tears it into pieces with shaking hands.
Her eyes return to the page left exposed now that its predecessor has been destroyed. Now the Dance is beginning. Rhaenyra’s son, Lucerys is murdered by the Green Targaryen prince, Aemond One-Eye. The blood pounds in Cersei’s ears. A queen’s son slayed by his own disfigured, grotesque kin. Cersei wonders how the madness of the Targaryens keeps bleeding off the page and into her own gods damned life.
The book is thrown to the floor. There are no other torn pages out of the book. But Cersei dreams to see this painful reminder of her son, and the way it mirrors her grief, in cinders. But setting the book aflame is not enough. No. She’ll see her enemies burn for what they did to her boy. Hells, she would gladly watch half of Westeros burn to keep them from harming her remaining children. Perhaps, in that regard, Cersei Lannister wouldn’t mind her story mirroring that of the Dance of the Dragons. Only Cersei will show the world how much further a lioness will go to protect her children than a dragon could ever hope to dare.