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Baelor has read the histories, the ones written in barely decipherable Old Valyrian on yellowed parchments so delicate that one mistimed breath might destroy an entire tome. He has read them, transcribed them, studied them, pondered them. He has reviewed the diagrams, he has read maester’s notes. He has looked at his body in the low light of his chambers: he has seen every inch of himself.
For he is Dornish, yes. He can see it in the brown of one eye, in the brown of his skin, in the brown of his hair. But so too is he Targaryen. Behold the violet eye, the same nose on his father’s face, and, though the septons despise it, though the smallfolk whisper such a thing could not exist, though his father has tried to thin the blood: the cunt and cock that lie between his legs, the last gift of the dragon riders, dualsexed as their mounts despite the death of the last dragon just months before Daeron the Good was born.
It is a thing about him that he does not know what to make of, only accept as his lot. The septons insist upon the division of sexes, after all. They call upon the seven-faced god that Baelor worships to define man and woman as distinct figures, unchanging and formidable every time Baelor visits the Great Sept. But the Seven do not seem to have space for what Baelor and his kin are: bodies built for seeding and birthing, with many a prince or princess pursuing both to the great embarrassment of their kings and queens.
An impossibility, some say, an abomination. And yet Baelor and his kin exist. They birth and die like any other. Different bodies with different desires and different abilities: Rhaenyra the Cruel who birthed five babes alive and with no trouble, same as her half-brother, though his were without a doubt bastards while hers were simply rumored. Baelor’s own grandfather is rumored to have birthed his own children: Bellegere Otherys had a wife and husband in every port, and none know what lay between her legs, only that whatever it was gifted the old king another three children.
Only a true Targaryen could have cock and cunt alike, a truth that Baelor holds close. For every curse, for every accusation that Dorne has thinned his blood, Baelor can reach for that secret part of him and think, no, I am the blood of the dragon, I was born in their very image. An old maester proclaimed it a marvel, when he went to serve Aegon and Rhaenys and Visenya; and yet the function of such blood does not seem to serve any purpose, at least not for Baelor. He was named a son and raised as such.
Many years ago, he asked his father what would have happened had he desired girlhood. Daeron had taken the question in stride, for Baelor was young, perhaps six, just after Maekar had been born.
We would have called you Baela instead, Daeron said to the child that Baelor once was. You would have been called Princess. Have you decided you would prefer that title, little one?
He had not. Baelor has always felt like a man. He has striven towards it: he has trained and studied and obeyed his king. He is a man grown, now, a man who will march off to war to defend his House and his blood. But still he wonders at that blood. What is it that makes his body what it is? Why is it that manhood and all things the Realm makes of it are the things that most call to him? Baelor had the option, after all. Men who are not Targaryens do not choose. What lies between their legs defines them. Not so for the royal house.
‘Tis the blood of Old Valyria, say the records. And not just Old Valyria but the dragonriders, who bound their blood to their mounts and just poisoned themselves just the same. Daeron the Good has tried to thin it, but a single generation will not be enough, for the histories tell it well. Rhaenys, who was never queen, birthed two Velaryons shaped like man and woman alike, and Daenaera Velaryon beget dualsexed Targeryens.
And a second generation has made no promises: Valarr may have Baelor’s face and that alone is what they share. But Baelor’s two nephews share the Targaryen flesh, though Maekar raises them as sons are to be raised despite their mother asking if he is quite sure both desire boyhood for themselves.
Princes do not get such a choice, Maekar had said, but Baelor is unsure if that should be true. He tries to remember and finds it difficult. Six years old when Maekar was born, he was. He remembers his mother arranging his arms around the babe and how he could not stop gazing at the silver-gold hair or the angry pout.
Baelor had asked, A sister? and Myriah had said, Maybe. Of course, Maekar was no such thing: he took to the training yard as a dragon must have taken to the air. Four Targaryen sons for Daeron the Good. Four sons to uphold the dynasty, four sons to counter the sour memory of their grandfather.
And Baelor has done it, he thinks. Tonight he looks at himself, readying himself to end his half-uncle’s rebellion, and he sees all that he has been told to be: son and heir, unstoppable, loyal to the House above all. But beneath that, is he not simply a man? A man different from others, but that is the Targaryen truth of him, is it not? He looks at himself and sees the version of himself he has been told to strive for.
But it is strange, sometimes. He can think on it only in the night, when he is alone, Jena in her chambers and Valarr in the nursery. He remembers his wife on their wedding night, and how she looked at him not with lust or fear but curiosity. What did she know of the Targaryen ways? He had taken her as a man takes a wife but that does not mean she did not know of what his body could do. Sometimes he wonders what his family might have done, had he taken to womanhood instead: what nobleman would look upon a wife with a cock like his own?
Perhaps, if Baelor had been a daughter, he would have had no chance but to marry kin. A chill runs up his spine at the thought: who would there have been to wed? Daemon, perhaps, and no rebellion for any to tend to as they must today, Daemon’s throne won as Baelor-the-Queen’s consort. But Aegon hated him, Baelor reminds himself. In the mirror, he is brown-skinned and scarred. His nose is crooked, now, not quite his own father’s shape anymore, from a training mishap. Perhaps he would have been given to Aerys, had they called him Baela, and no doubt the rebellion would have sprung forth anyway.
Aerys would never give him heirs, though, and Rhaegel is too delicate to marry a first-born, for King or Queen Baelor shall be, after all. Myriah had said so, once: it would always be Baelor. Long ago, when Rhaegel was first born, there was a conversation she had with his father over dinner, assuming the boys too young to understand: I have never worried for our children’s inheritance. You promised me once that the first-born would be named heir, son or daughter or both or neither. You have never broken a promise to me, husband.
Baelor was born to rule, he knows, his very birth predicated on the assumption. It is his lot in life, the life of a first-born Targaryen. And son that he turned into, it is his responsibility to fight for the realm now, to lead armies in his father’s name, to bring back his men alive.
All of his men. For on the morrow he will head south, but the men who will head further west include his brother. Maekar will hold the Crownlands and Baelor will ask their mother’s kin for support. Baelor will do it, and he will succeed, for the alternative is to fail and lose Maekar.
Maekar, who as a child he might have hoped would be a sister. He remembers that first year, those first two, of Maekar growing: the infant gowns that he had inherited from Rhaegel, who inherited them from Aerys, who inherited them from Baelor. He remembers the rosebud of his little mouth, how it could scowl so quickly as if the world had already done him wrong. He had asked his mother, When did you know I was a boy? and she had passed a hand over his dark hair and said he told them himself. But when, she would not say.
And all the while Maekar grew. The maesters called him strong, and when he could walk he trailed after Baelor. Baelor who was a boy already, and so he wonders if, perhaps, it is his fault that Maekar did not turn into a sister who could turn into a wife. Instead Maekar picked up toy weapons and chased brothers and slowly, so slowly Baelor did not notice it happening at all, turned into a man that Baelor could stand next to in a war.
If Baelor had been different, in childhood or as an infant, mayhap this life would be different. He lifts a hand and settles it, low, over his pelvis. Not touching either gift of the dragonriders, but thinking of it. Maybe it is his own fault that the most Targaryen thing about him is the cunt he cannot use, for if he had been a girl he might have bore his own sons, may have lain beneath Maekar on his wedding night instead. Or maybe if he had been a different kind of brother, he might have turned Maekar into his bride, and rather than ride out into battle on the morn, his Maekar would be at Dragonstone instead of Jena, mother of sons with silver hair and his own violet eyes.
But Baelor is all that he is: he a man of House Targaryen, he the first-born, he a son to erase the sins of their forefathers. He who planted a son in his lady wife and must plant another. He who looks at this body and thinks it is familiar and different and something promised to him a long time ago, when the dragonriders bound themselves with blood to their mounts. He who has dreamt of the screech of dragons in the air and of his Maekar beneath him and awoken, empty and aching and the same man as he has always been.
He stares at himself in the mirror and he is the man he woke up as and the man he will be forevermore. Tomorrow he goes to war, and when it ends, he knows he will be as Targaryen as he has ever been.