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The anguished scream of Viserys Targaryen echoed throughout King’s Landing as the bells began to toll for the death of Queen Aemma. It had been a terrible labor, prolonged for days, and in the end both the child and the mother had perished. Only Rhaenyra remained, her violet eyes brimming with tears as she watched her father collapse before the coffin of the woman who had been the center of his world.
Aemma Arryn had been everything a queen should be: beautiful, noble, devout, perfect. Years of marriage, Viserys had never turned his gaze to another woman. There had been no favorites, no mistresses, no whispers of infidelity. His devotion had been absolute, legendary, the kind of love sung of by bards and sighed over by ladies of the court.
The months that followed were filled with profound mourning. Viserys sank into a melancholy that seemed endless, rejecting every attempt of the Small Council to mention a second marriage. Rhaenyra, now his official heir, became the only ray of light in his shadowed existence.
It was Otto Hightower who, with his characteristic cunning, began sending his daughter Alicent to comfort the king in his darkest hours. The eighteen-year-old, with copper hair and brown eyes, possessed a beauty that was different but undeniable. Where Aemma had been ethereal and distant like a goddess, Alicent was warm and earthly, with a smile that promised solace and a soft voice that read aloud the stories the king so loved.
At first, Viserys scarcely noticed her. But gradually, Alicent’s constant and gentle presence began to crack the armor of his grief. She never mentioned Aemma, never tried to take her place—she simply existed as a silent balm for his wounded soul.
When Viserys finally announced his intent to marry Alicent Hightower, the court divided. Rhaenyra, now fifteen, felt betrayed not only by her father but by someone she had considered a friend. The wedding was a magnificent ceremony, but cold, lacking the joy that had marked his first union.
At first, Alicent believed she could win Viserys’s heart as Aemma had. She gave herself wholly to the role of queen consort, bearing him three children: Aegon, Helaena, and Aemond. Each birth filled her with hope, believing that this time—with this child—Viserys would look at her with the same love he had reserved for his first wife.
But the comparisons began from the very first day.
“Queen Aemma would never have allowed such extravagance at court,” murmured the ladies.
“Do you remember how Queen Aemma handled audiences? With such grace...”
“The king never had to correct Queen Aemma in public.”
Each comment was like a small dagger stabbing into Alicent’s heart. She tried to emulate her predecessor, studying every story, every anecdote, every gesture that had made Aemma so beloved. But the more she tried, the clearer it became that she would never be more than a pale imitation of the “perfect queen.”
The first real blow came when Alicent was twenty-five. A young lady of Lys, with platinum-gold hair and violet eyes faintly reminiscent of the Targaryens, arrived at court as part of an ambassador’s retinue. Her name was Lysara, and she was barely eighteen.
Alicent immediately noticed how Viserys’s gaze lingered on the young woman during dinners. At first she thought it was paranoia, the result of years spent living under the shadow of a ghost. But when Viserys began to find excuses to speak with Lysara, when he began showering her with jewels and silks, the terrible truth became undeniable.
Her husband—who had remained faithful to Aemma, who had sworn eternal love before the gods—was taking a mistress only seven years after marrying her.
The confrontation was devastating.
“How could you do this to me?” Alicent cried in their private chambers, tears streaming down her cheeks. “After everything I’ve done, after giving you three children?”
Viserys looked at her with a coldness he had never shown Aemma.
“You are my queen, Alicent. Nothing will change that. But do not pretend to dictate how I live my life.”
“You never treated Aemma this way!”
“Aemma...” he sighed the name like a caress, and Alicent saw his eyes soften as he remembered his first wife. “Aemma was different. What we had... it cannot be repeated.”
What followed was a systematic humiliation that stretched for years. Viserys did not bother to hide his affairs. After Lysara came Myrella of Tyrosh, then Daena of Dorne, then a widow from Pentos. One after another, beautiful young women, foreign and some noble, paraded through court as royal favorites.
Worst of all was how Viserys elevated them. He did not restrict his affection to discreet encounters in hidden chambers. He paraded them through the court on his arm, gifted them titles of honor, named them “Special Ladies of the Crown” with salaries and their own chambers in the Red Keep.
Alicent watched as these women received everything she had longed for: Viserys’s full attention, his genuine smiles, his public caresses, his extravagant gifts. While she, the legitimate queen, was treated with formal courtesy but cold distance.
The whispers in court were merciless:
“Do you see how the king smiles when he looks at Lady Myrella? He never smiles like that at the queen.”
“They say the new Lysene favorite receives more jewels in a month than the queen in a whole year.”
“Do you remember how the king used to look at Queen Aemma? It was different... it was true love.”
Desperation pushed Alicent into increasingly extreme measures. She tried to have her allies slander the favorites, spreading rumors about their past or their intentions. She sought to have septas accuse them of immorality. She even bribed servants to put bitter herbs in their food, hoping they would fall sick enough to be sent away.
But Viserys seemed to have a shield around his mistresses. Every attempt by Alicent failed. Worse still, she began to suspect that her husband was aware of her schemes, which only pushed him further from her.
The breaking point came when Alicent tried to subtly poison Lysara, who had returned to court after a year’s absence and immediately regained royal favor. The poison was subtle, meant to cause fevers and weakness that would seem natural. But Lysara not only survived—Viserys named her “Crown Companion Lady”, a title invented specifically for her, placing her above all the other favorites.
Throughout all these years of humiliation, Alicent had hoped to find at least understanding in her stepdaughter. After all, both of them had been displaced in Viserys’s affections.
But Rhaenyra, now a woman of twenty-five, found only amusement in her stepmother’s suffering.
“Did you see how Father gave that pearl necklace from Lys to his new favorite?” she would remark to her ladies with a cruel smile. “It’s three times larger than anything our dear queen consort has ever received.”
“I remember when my mother was queen,” she would sigh theatrically in Alicent’s presence. “Father never had eyes for anyone else. He said she was the only woman in the world for him. Of course, that was true love—not like... well, not like these political arrangements.”
Every word was calculated to wound, to remind Alicent that she would never be more than a poor substitute, that her place in Viserys’s heart was, at best, temporary and shared.
The final insult came when Rhaenyra married Daemon Targaryen. It was a scandal that shook the Seven Kingdoms: the heir to the throne marrying her uncle, the Rogue Prince, after years of rumors and speculation.
But what pained Alicent most was not the scandal—it was the evident, undeniable happiness the couple radiated. Daemon adored Rhaenyra with a devotion bordering on obsession. At state dinners he could not keep his hands off her. He looked at her as if she were the only person in the room, whispered in her ear to make her laugh, and defended her fiercely against any criticism.
It was exactly the kind of devotion Alicent had dreamed of receiving from Viserys, but never had.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” Rhaenyra would say with false sweetness after dinners. “Daemon says he cannot imagine life without me. That he would pay more attention to a stone in the road than to any other woman. Of course, Father used to say the same of my mother...”
The implication was clear: Targaryens were capable of true, eternal love—but only with the right women. Alicent would never be one of them.
The most humiliating moment came during the grand celebration of Rhaenyra and Daemon’s tenth wedding anniversary. Viserys had arranged a sumptuous feast, and of course, his current favorite—a young woman from Volantis named Valeria—sat at the high table, only three seats to the king’s left.
Alicent, dressed in her finest but feeling invisible, watched as Viserys fed grapes to Valeria, whispering with her in low voices. She watched Rhaenyra and Daemon exchanging kisses and caresses without a care for who might see. She watched the entire court pretend not to notice that the queen consort was the only one at the high table who seemed utterly alone.
When the bards began to sing love songs, Viserys requested a particular ballad—an old song about a king who loved his queen more than life itself. Alicent recognized the melody: it had been Aemma’s favorite, the one sung at her wedding, the one Viserys used to hum when he thought no one was listening.
As the music filled the hall, Alicent saw her husband close his eyes, lost in memories of his first love. She saw Valeria place a consoling hand on his arm, offering the comfort she, his lawful wife, had never been able to give. She saw Rhaenyra smile in cruel satisfaction, knowing that her mother was still the queen of Viserys’s heart—even from the grave.
In that moment, Alicent understood the terrible truth she had denied for years: she was nothing more than an intruder in the love story between Viserys and Aemma. Everything she had built—her marriage, her children, her crown—was nothing but an awkward interlude in her husband’s great romance.
Years later, when Alicent’s hair had turned gray and lines of bitterness were etched permanently into her face, she still lived in the same golden palace that had become her prison. Viserys, now an older man but still powerful, continued to collect favorites as other men collected swords or books.
Alicent had become what she most feared: a pathetic figure, a queen in name only, a woman who had sacrificed her youth and dignity for a man who saw her as little more than an obligation. Each day in the halls of the Red Keep was a reminder that some ghosts are too powerful to exorcise, and some shadows too long to escape.
In the lonely nights, when the wind howled through the towers and Viserys lay in the chambers of his latest favorite, Alicent sometimes wondered how her life might have been had she rejected the king’s proposal—if she had chosen a humbler, but more authentic marriage. But such fantasies never lasted long—there was no escape from the golden hell she had chosen for herself.
And somewhere in the crypts beneath the Red Keep, Aemma Arryn rested in peace—eternally young, eternally perfect, eternally loved by the man Alicent had believed she could conquer. The dead queen had won the war without ever knowing it, and her victory would be remembered for as long as dragons flew over Westeros.