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Such a stubborn child, your youngest. Your face over hers is something strange and unfamiliar all at once, the child who your wife gave you last and who has the least amount of her anywhere, every inch of her silver and gold.
No, this child came out like your sons, not like her sister. Daella who was born as the Dayne are, a girl-child in truth, no trace of Targaryen between her legs when the maester announced you had a trueborn daughter. Not like Rhae, who came screaming the loudest of all your children and touched by the same curse the dragonriders secured your bloodline. You had chosen the name for your brother, sweet Rhaegel, Rhae a good enough name for a prince, you thought.
That had been your intention, after all. A princess could not sire her own children, and so Rhae would be another son for you. You had planned it.
But then sickness had swept through Summerhall, and after the children fell ill so too did your Dyanna. And in your grief you pulled away: left the child to the septas, left the child to chase after her brothers. You had done the same and into a man it turned you. Not so with Rhae: she tried weapons and found them wanting but for the bow. She tried it all, things you did as a boy, things her sister did as a girl, and she picked and chose as she pleased.
Five and ten now, this child of yours, and sometimes when you look at her it is not your face you see but Brynden Rivers’, his body cursed as all Targaryens no matter his bastard roots. You see the face of many a Targaryen over Rhae’s: your father, sometimes, or Aerys. Once Aemon the Dragonknight as he looked in an old portrait, but never Naerys, never Rhaena or Daena or Elaena. Those first few months of her life, you believed Rhae would be a fine son to raise into a man.
But here is Rhae now, who is not a man, for she says so, no matter that she has always done as she pleased, no matter that such things do not match. She wears hose as often as she dons skirts, she embroiders with her ladies and gifts you doublets with golden flames tucked over your heart, she curses worse than her mother did though she remembers not your lady wife’s face. Rhae who is long and lean like an archer might be: her arms a flex of muscle as she trains, her hair a long silver waterfall, her mouth the same angry turn as your own. Her eyes the color of Dorne like your mother’s, the only thing she might have inherited from a woman, for the part of her you do not think on, daughter of yours that she is, is a curse of the blood, not a womanly thing she might use to birth her own daughters.
‘Tis an argument, now more than ever: she old enough to be married and no one to marry her. You have said it a dozen times: Foolish child. Had you chosen to be a man you’d have your pick of a bride by now.
Find me a wife, then, Rhae said. Let me sire my own children, let a woman call me her beloved, too.
The Seven curse us, you told her. As if such a thing could ever come to pass. As if she had not cursed herself when she named herself your daughter and not your son. Be not mad, for what do you mean you want for a wife?
Your own fault, of course. For she picked up the bow but did not call herself brother, did not call herself prince. I am Princess Rhae! she said, all but three, letting her sister dress her up in her old dresses and claiming Visenya when she and Aegon and Daella would play at being conquerors. You tried to correct her: you said a woman does not have the body that she inherited but she would not listen, would scream if taken from Daella, refused to answer to any title but princess. You took too long to remember her, you think, and the shame burns.
Such a strange child, your Rhae. You know what she gets up to, sometimes, not as impetuous as Daeron but reckless like Aerion, reckless like Egg, reckless like Daella, who came to you in tears not a year agone over a child in her belly. Off you sent this daughter to some backwater island in the narrow sea and already comes news of a son, a real son, one named for her husband’s father. And Aerion you had to send away, too, for his violence turned him into something not even you could recognize.
And then there is Daeron who cavorts with whores but cannot get a child of his own from his poor wife, Kiera with her angry eyes at every corner. Daeron who does not wish to be a prince, it is clear, but it is his lot in his life as it is in yours. He must be a man because you said so, you have said it a dozen times, when he was small and your lady wife asked if it might be better to allow Daeron a different fate than that of a prince of the realm.
And this is your punishment, you think, Daeron a drunk, Daeron who babbles his dreams as if they are worth anything, Daeron who does not call himself a man.
Rhae you cannot stifle: you tell her a lady does not cavort, and she certainly does not take strangers into her bed. She tells you the knights of your households are not strangers nor are the women who work in Summerhall and you banish her to her rooms for a sennight. She says, her voice a furious thing, high like the cry of the animal she calls Ember, her companion when hawking, And how many months after your wedding did Mother birth Daeron? and you lock yourself in your solar, knowing Rhae is the daughter Dyanna would have loved best.
When her punishment is lifted she joins you at dinner in a dress her mother once wore and you say nothing, for her face is your own and she will do as she pleases as you did, so many years ago, when you and her mother turned every empty corridor into a place to make love. Rhae is your miniature in nearly everything but she has not chosen to follow you down the path to manhood. She has chosen something else, a thing you cannot lead her towards, a place you where cannot follow her. She will be a woman, perhaps wife, perhaps mother.
You will suffer for it, you tell her.
She says, I will do so gladly.
Nothing you have done has been gladly. But it is a stalemate, or maybe it is the end of one. The days grow longer, Spring slowly ends and you watch Rhae turn into a woman like Kiera, a woman who can run a castle and clothe its inhabitants and chase after Daeron. She would have made a good son, you think, one like Aegon, perhaps, but there is little else to do, for Rhae has been Rhae since the moment she came screaming into this world.
Rhae bids you watch her practice and you do. You correct her form where you can and see that she is quite good at it, nearly as good as Brynden once was, and you commission her a beautiful bow made of black locust. Kiera pierces her ears for her and then her nose and then you demand they stop, for they are two princesses and not street urchins in Essos. Daeron buys her silks and lets her wrap the loose fabric around him and her both and you look away, you look away from your children.
But it will come easier, you think. You dream of it.
(Daughter, you will say, you, girl, come here, and you will let her read Dornish requests for her hand, for the chance to court, and when she laughs at the paltry bridewealths they propose you will think, Ah, that is Dyanna’s laugh, and you will finally forget the son she might have been.)