Work Text:
The library at Dragonstone is eerily quiet as the prince sifts through its dusty scrolls, not even ghosts his company. His long-dead kinsman, the Blessed septon king, burned much of this vast library, declaring the words within mortal sin. Gone in smoke and fire, in fire and blood. A thousand thousand years' worth of mysteries, lost in an instant. He's heard the lamentations of his husband many a times. Of the truths scattered away as ash in the wind. Much and more lost forever, his husband would say. Little and less, he needs from what remains. Just a word. Just a name. So much is gone, but the ancient genealogies persist. Strange, he thinks, that the Blessed would burn it all away—books of magic, books of the bloody history of the Freehold—yet leave those scrolls untouched. Do they not tell of the cardinal sin of their house? The eons of men marrying sisters, nieces, cousins, and aunts. And the very last, his own, the greatest sin of all. A brother wed to a brother. The wife who claims he is a husband.
He skims past many an Aegon, Jaehaerys, and Daeron. Those names will not do. To prove himself a worthy man, he needs a man's name, but it must be a name all his own. He shall not suffer another's shadow cast over his person, for men to measure him against and judge him inadequate. The Prince of Dragonstone, his eldest brother—beloved and beloathed in equal measure—does that well enough on his own. One catches his eye, the neat Valyrian glyphs so faded he needs squint to make it out. Maekar. He tastes the word on his tongue. A redoubtable name. A name fit for a warrior. 'Tis a name not used by their house since the doom. The deeds of those who bore it long forgotten. Were they warriors such as he? Scholars? Statesmen? Dragonriders? Did they black out the sun with their dragons? Burn their enemies to dust? He knows not. And perhaps it does not matter, all these centuries after the Fourteen Flames consumed Valyria that was in one mighty cataclysm. Whoever these men were, they are dead now, burned away 'til only ashes remain, as King Baelor burned the books that once told their stories. It is his name now, to write into new pages of history however he may choose.