Fire And Gold

chapter 8:

Rhaenyra fiddles with the rings on her fingers as the next lord in her long line of suitors rattles on about his family’s oh so impressive history. Her wedding tour is something she barely tolerates, only having agreed to attend it at all after her father had insisted on it.

She understands that she needs to marry. After all, her claim will be nothing but strengthened if she has heirs to call her own. She appreciates her father for permitting her the freedom to choose her own match, but what she doesn’t understand is why she has to sit in Storm’s End -- a dreary old castle in her opinion -- and listen to even drearier old lords vie for her hand despite none of them being worthy of her.

It’s painfully obvious to Rhaenyra that these men see her as nothing more than a valuable womb that would give Valyrian blood to their sons and heirs. Half of those she has already listened to today dedicated their entire speeches to how mighty their children could be, as if she would ever willingly have children with those self-aggrandizing cunts.

Rhaenyra is a Targaryen princess, and a future queen at that, yet you wouldn’t have thought so given the stock of some of her suitors: men older than her father, children not much older than Aegon, with a fair share of oafish lords who have clearly never seen the outside of a castle before.

Lord Dondarrion is speaking now, and is turning out to be both older than her father as well as an oaf. She had stopped listening to him a while ago, but her attention is drawn back towards him when he pauses mid-sentence to take a drink of water.

She hopes for a brief moment that this signals the end of his speech, but is disappointed when he begins talking again.

"The view across the Marches is inspiring!" he declares, "so said Queen Alysanne herself when she-"

"And tell me, Lord Dondarrion" she cuts in, having had enough, "was my great-grandmother as beautiful as they say?"

"This was half a century ago, Princess" he replies hesitantly.

"Yes, it was" she remarks, prompting a ring of laughter around the hall.

"That was unseemly, Princess." Lord Baratheon says from his seat next to her.

Maybe he’s right. It has been a long day for Rhaenyra, but that isn’t entirely Lord Dondarrion’s fault. It wasn’t fair to humiliate him publicly like that.

"You’re right, my lord" she apologises, "but the man is old enough to be my grandfather. Was it not unseemly of him to put himself forward as a contender for my hand?"

"Such arrangements aren't unusual in the Seven Kingdoms, are they not?” Baratheon replies, “isn’t our Queen closer to you in age than the King, for instance?"

The reminder of her father’s marriage to Alicent feels like a punch to Rhaenyra’s gut. "That may be so, my lord, but I am to sit on the Iron Throne. I need a consort who can defend me, not one who will be on his deathbed by the time I ascend."

"As you say, Princess," Baratheon nods. "Next!" he then calls out, ushering the next candidate to come forward.

A child.

"Willem of House Blackwood," Baratheon announces, “his family used to rule as kings in the Riverlands,” he tells her, as if the fact will make the lad any older, "the blood of the First Men still flows in their veins."

Rhaenyra zones out again as the boy begins to talk. She feels sorry for him, certain that his father is forcing him to be here to vie for her hand just like her own father is forcing her to be here to entertain such offers, but there is absolutely no way she’s seriously considering his proposal. None of these men have pleased her so far, but some were at least nicer to look at. No matter what, though, she will never look at one of these children in this way.