Silver Stag

The King's Hunt

~ Aelinor ~

Watching as the men gathered in the field for the hunt her father had planned, Aelinor waited as the stableman tethered her horse to a nearby pole.

Apparently, a white hart had been sighted. A white hart, a symbol of royalty before the lands were ruled by dragons.

Feeling a presence behind her, Aelinor turned around to see one of the Lord's who had traveled with them.

"Quite exciting, isn't it? The hunt?" The man asked. "I don't believe we've been properly introduced. Lord Simon Dondarrion."

"Yes, one of my father's vassal houses."

"Indeed, princess. Wine?"

She slowly took the goblet from his hand before returning to watch the preparation for her father's hunt.

Aelinor could vaguely hear him describing his family's land and castle, Blackhaven.

To be honest, she hardly paid him any mind.

Until he said, "Though it is comparably small and I don't have a plentiful library, I do have the means to build one."

"Why would you need a 'plentiful library'?" If what she heard was correct, he spent more time in war than he did in his ancestral seat.

"I'd do anything for my princess... or lady wife."

Being that she wasn't looking at him, she did not see him scanning her body.

However, these words caused her to spin around.

"Thank you for the wine," she told him, handing him the still full goblet, before storming off in search of her father.

When she finally found him, he was speaking with Lord Stark and a few others.

"Is that all I am to you? A prize to proffer amongst the great houses?" She yelled at her father. If she could even call him that.

He sighed, turning away from Lord Stark. "You're of age, and Simon Dondarrion is an excellent match. Your mother has convinced me to hold off, but I've been slowly drowning in parchment. Marriage proposals, all of them."

"Have you considered that I do not wish to be married?!"

It's true. Life isn't all sunshine and rainbows. Most examples of "love" she'd grown up with, don't leave one to hopeful for their own marriage.

"You're a princess of the realm!" He shouted, now face to face with his eldest daughter, both seething. "Even you and I do not exist above tradition!"

"You're Grace..." Lord Stark said.

It was evident all those amongst them had been listening the squabble, as much as they pretended not to.

Huffing and shaking her head, she made her way to her horse, Morghul.

Ignoring the shouts of "Princess!" she mounted her horse, before commanding it to flee.

She'd had enough of him for today.

The world has a severely outdated view of gender roles.

Many years ago, Visenya and Rhaenys Targaryen, were able to head into war and help their brother husband in his conquest of what we would come to know as the Seven Kingdoms.

The echo of another set of hooves could be heard, but this did not hinder Aelinor in the slightest.

She continued on, only stopping when her sworn shield, Ser Willam Fowler, a Dornish knight, grabbed the reins as she moved to jump a wide bank of water.