You Belong With Me / Jon Snow / Davina Targaryen (3)

15. King

"Blind he may be, but Aemon knows what he's about. I pray the gods let us keep him another twenty years. Do you know that he might have been king?" Mormont remarked and a small smile pulled at Avalon's lips, so not everyone was trying to bring the Targaryen name to ruin, he clearly respected Aemon. Jon was taken by surprise the old man, the maester would have been king. "He told me his father was king, but not ... I thought him perhaps a younger son."

"So he was. His father's father was Daeron Targaryen, the Second of His Name, who brought Dorne into the realm. Part of the pact was that he wed a Dornish princess. She gave him four sons. Aemon's father Maekar was the youngest of those, and Aemon was his third son. Mind you, all this happened long before I was born, ancient as Smallwood would make me." Mormont went on.

"Maester Aemon was named for the Dragonknight." Davina recalled. Mormont nodded to her and Jon was curious to how much she knew about Targaryen history.

"So he was. Some say Prince Aemon was King Daeron's true father, not Aegon the Unworthy. Be that as it may, our Aemon lacked the Dragonknight's martial nature. He likes to say he had-" Mormont went on but Avalon cut him off.

"-a slow sword but quick wits." Avalon remarked.

"Yes.' mormont agreed. "I'm surprised Lannisters know their Targaryen history so well."

"My husband was hand to the king for nearly 20 years." Avalon reminded him.

"Of course." Mormont agreed.  "But Aemon... it is a Small wonder his grandfather packed him off to the Citadel. He was nine or ten, I believe ... and ninth or tenth in the line of succession as well."

Maester Aemon had counted more than a hundred name days, Jon knew. Frail, shrunken, withered, and blind, it was hard to imagine him as a little boy no older than Bran.

"Aemon was at his books when the eldest of his uncles, the heir apparent, was slain in a tourney mishap. He left two sons, but they followed him to the grave not long after, during the Great Spring Sickness. King Daeron was also taken, so the crown passed to Daeron's second son, Aerys."

"The Mad King?" Jon was confused. Aerys had been king before Robert, that wasn't so long ago. Tyon looked to Davina as Jon said it but Avalon didnt flinch, didnt move at all, her face didnt change, her brother was a bad man, she owned up to that. But the rest of her family was good. One rotten dragon didnt corrupt the whole bunch.

"No, this was Aerys the First. The one Robert deposed was the second of that name." Avalon informed him.

"How long ago was this?" Jon questioned looking between them.

"Eighty years or close enough,"  Avalon remarked.

"-and no, I still hadn't been born, though Aemon had forged half a dozen links of his maester's chain by then." Mormont mused. He looked to Tyon and Jon and they were so young compared to him, even the lady Ava looked timeless.  "Aerys wed his own sister, as the Targaryens did often." Avalon swallowed the lump in her throat. Davina saw her shift, rolling her shoulders back. "-and reigned for ten or twelve years. Aemon took his vows and left the Citadel to serve at some lordling's court ... until his royal uncle died without issue. The Iron Throne passed to the last of King Daeron's four sons."

"His name was Maekar, he was Aemon's father." Avalon added softly.

"The new king summoned all his sons to court and would have made Aemon part of his councils, but he refused, saying that would usurp the place rightly belonging to the Grand Maester. Instead he served at the keep of his eldest brother, another Daeron. Well, that one died too, leaving only a feeble-witted daughter as heir. Some pox he caught from a whore, I believe. The next brother was Aerion."