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When his eyes opened there was stillness in the air. No smells of his dying body or the ointments and potions to soothe him. The air smelled clean with hints of fire. Viserys rose from his bed finding that his fingers, toes, and body was whole once more. He walked with no need for a cane or with a limp. His chambers looked anew as they did when he first became king.
A knock on his chamber door drew his attention, yet when he opened the door, no one stood waiting for him. He heard voices in the distance and Viserys walked through the halls hoping to find who awaited him. As he drew near the voices he realized that many were in conversation. He turned the corner to enter the throne room and saw many heads with hair alike his. The smile came easy to his face as his eyes landed on his beloved,
“Aemma! My love!”
Viserys boasted in jovial glee. The hall went silent and she turned to see who called her name. Aemma’s face was still, her blue eyes that haunted and warmed his dreams came to him. His arms opened to her. Expecting a warm kiss of longing.
***SLAP***
The sound echoed and pain swelled across his face. The force nearly knocked him off balance.
“Butcher.”
The only word his dear wife said before she was guided away by Alysanne. Aemma rejoined the group of women she had stood with. All whom Viserys soon recognized. All of his aunts and Princess Daella, Aemma’s mother.
Footsteps approaching him tore his gaze from his departed kin. Thundering towards him was none other than King Jaehaerys with fury he had never seen. The Old King gripped Viserys’ shoulder and shouted into his face,
“You fool! Peacetime King? A lie. You undo what placed you on the throne in the first place for a daughter? A daughter, even after you have sons? Mayhaps Rhaenys should have been voted on? Mayhaps Saera’s sons should have been placed before you? You beseeched the very notion of the Great Council destroy our house? For what reason?”
Viserys was not calm in the face of such questions. No one had ever spoken to him this way. Not his mother. Not his father. Both of whom he glimpsed nodding with Jaehaerys’ words.
“Do you know what your decision will lead to? Our house will surely end. Only we can destroy ourselves, boy. You set the stage for our house’s destruction. A daughter over a son. Preposterous.”
Viserys began to shake under the stares, glares, and looks of disappointment. The Old King was pulled away, and a woman he had never seen gripped his collar and hoisted him to her height,
“Pathetic. More Andal that dragon. A king? I laughed watching you, a weak, pathetic idiot. You rode Balerion? Barely. Barely a dragon rider, barely a dragon. Not worthy to rule. Our house held strong men in my time. Then came Aenys’ line, Jaehaerys’ line, your line. All weak. Bendable to the Andal’s and other whims. Disgraceful. Malleable. Little to no fire. What Valyrian do you speak? What of our customs? We are the blood of the dragon, and our blood does not call to you, nor do dragons.”
Visenya dropped Viserys, and he remained on the ground. Confused, dazed, feeling small under the gaze of his kin.
Weeks passed then months before the children came. Viserys often sulked in corners, he wept often. He wept when he saw the deaths of each of his grandchildren and every word said of his character proved true.