Dragon Princess || Aegon II Targaryen

𝖢𝗁𝖺𝗉𝗍𝖾𝗋 2

King's Landing was always a despicable place.

Misery and madness reigned in the streets of the Seven Kingdom's capital while the air was charged with cries of sadness and despair, with screams filled with pleas for help and rescue.

They were wretched people.

They paid taxes and surrendered their possessions, their harvests, to a crown that looked down upon them, a crown that considered them disposable. They swore loyalty to kings they had never seen, who had never lifted a finger to improve their lives. Kings who had never cleaned the waters that started diseases, taking entire families, nor provided more food, letting hunger claim countless lives. Many were forced to kill and steal to escape the same fate. Others... Well, others did it for pure pleasure. The pleasure of seeing blood spill from the bodies of innocents, of seeing mothers weep for their children, of destroying the innocence of many in countless ways.

However, perhaps misery was the only thing that did not discriminate in that city. After all, fear and despair reached everyone. Even the most innocent of souls: children. Children who grew up without fathers, without mothers, sometimes without any family at all. Children who paid for the actions of their parents, becoming targets and ways for revenge. Children who were labeled as bastards, a term that seemed like the worst of the diseases, a curse that often made them wish they had never been born at all. Children who were sold into fighting rings, knowing full well that at least one of them would never return alive.

It lacked happiness, lacked euphoria, lacked innocence and dreams. Lacked will to live.

A land filled with sick thoughts, with violence, with vileness.

In the court, there was a complete disconnection from the reality of the smallfolk.

Ladies competed to display the power and greatness of their houses, showing off the most beautiful gowns, the most dazzling jewels, all to secure the least worst of marriages. Lords behaved like small kings of their own small domains, disregarding those who enriched them and cared for their lands, abusing anything and anyone within their reach, not hesitating to humiliate their wives in every imaginable way. All out of arrogance, selfishness, and egocentrism.

Knights of the Kinsguard, whose function was to protect the royal family and the high borns, quickly found themselves tasked with guarding their superiors' and companions dirtiest secrets. They pretended not to see vows being broken and atrocities being committed. Many of them even participated in such acts for a taste of power, overwhelmed by the benefits of wearing the royal guard's cloak. Either white or gold, it didn't really matter.

Even the smell of King's Landing was unbearable.

The smell of death, misery, and contempt. Everything in the city seemed to collapse in silence, with the people bearing the weight of its decay. Every corner exhaled the despair of souls longing to be seen, truly seen, by someone who could rescue them from this endless misery.

Everything in that city screamed, screamed and screamed. It begged and cried, devoid of any hope and happiness.

It seemed as if all the absent joy from the streets of King's Landing was concentrated in one little girl with silver hair and vibrant violet eyes. A girl that ran barefoot through the corridors of the Red Keep. Her hair was always messy, her eyes gleamed with life, and her smile illuminated even the darkest corners of the Keep.

Nothing about her behavior aligned with the image of the princess that Queen Alicent tried to mold her in. But Rhaenys was more than just a princess of the realm: she was a child. A child on a mission of great importance that couldn't even wait for Septa Elionor to finish her teachings.