CALLING FOR DORNE, rhaenyra targaryen

001

I cannot make you go. But it is an order given to you by your elder brother.

He had laughed, hard and offended at the audacity, then you are making me go!

To travel far and wide was something Juran Martell had always wished to do. With the lack of responsibility that had always dusted upon the shoulders of his elder brother, he had been free to gain much experience in new places, and he had always — since the age of thirteen — taken his stories back to Dorne to share with it's Ruling Prince of the Kingdom.

But King's Landing had never been a place he had been inspired to visit. The curiosity of the Targaryen's was not good enough of a pull to mix himself in with dragons. Some say the Red Keep sucked the living out of a man, turned him into something rotten and ugly, somebody unknown from what they used to be.

Just the thought had placed Juran into the stance of refusal when his brother, Qoren, had come to him with the details of such an offering that had come from the King and Queen themselves. A Dornish embrace was welcomed, an influence at court for others — with their strict religious selves and their uptight manners and their customs — to entertain and gossip about.

And instead of Prince Qoren being the one to travel and greet the King of the Six Kingdoms, it was him who sat on the edge of the ship, staring out at the water.

Him.

Juran Martell.

He was no firstborn, but with the amount of losses their Mother and Father had suffered attempting to have another — for a second child to live beyond a moon's turn — babe, he had been treated no differently to that of the eldest son. An heir and it's spare, but two sons who had been loved equally regardless.

With stress of laws and responsibility, came it's downfalls. Juran always felt most grateful to be a second son whenever he saw the dark rings beneath the eyes of his beloved brother. Their parents had not outlived one another, his Father following his Mother only hours later, and the burden had fallen upon Qoren to pick up it's shattered glass.

Qoren, who was everything Juran wasn't. All good and all bad.

Qoren, who had forced Juran to his feet when he'd fallen at the news of their Mother's death. Their Mother, who used to kiss his palm when he was a child and scared of the dark. Their Mother, who had so desperately wanted him, a second child to love, that she had been willing to sacrifice herself for it.

Qoren Martell, who in his own right was more kingly than anything Juran had ever heard of Viserys Targaryen. First of his name. Soft. Easy to sway. Descriptions that had travelled to his ears when he had ventured to the Reach not so long ago. Words that knocked his confidence.

Soft? A man could be soft. A family man. Juran was soft. Especially in comparison to Prince Qoren — who took everything much too seriously. But easy to sway when the realm was at your fingertips with every which way you turn? It burnt like a disaster waiting to erupt.

It should be Qoren who rocked with every motion on this ship, not him. But his brother had stubbornly refused Juran's refusal to journey up to King's Landing and in the end, declared it a brotherly order. Something more powerful when it came to loyalty than that of his Ruling words.

After all, there was none that Qoren Martell trusted more than his own brother.

Juran.

Second son he may be, and less serious than the elder, but his wit and talent for strategies sailed any of Qoren's away.

He sat at Qoren's side when it came to the council, he walked beside his brother during talks, and he was the one his brother came to first, even before his own wife or heir, and his — Juran's — words influenced much of Qoren's decision making.