Queen of woe (Rhaella Targaryen) part 2

Bride of a Monster

The relationship between Aerys and Rhaella did not seem, at its outset, as obviously disastrous as that between Aegon IV and Naerys, or Baelor and Daena. If Prince Aerys was eccentric and his desires capricious, he was certainly charming and outgoing; if Rhaella did not love her husband, she at least had no reason at the time of her marriage to hate and fear him. Yet the two were nevertheless ill-matched, and as their marriage continued the personality differences became more apparent – and, for Rhaella especially, more destructive.

The problems in their marriage began early. As Princess of Dragonstone and wife of the heir during the reign of her father Jaehaerys, Rhaella was one of the highest ranking women at court, possibly the highest ( AN:depending on whether her mother Shaera and grandmother Betha had survived Summerhall). One of her duties as a high-ranking royal lady would be to provide places in her court for young ladies of noble families. Placement in the royal household would be a great political boon to the families of the maidens so chosen, given as a sign of royal favor. Rhaella's household would in part serve as a finishing school for these maidens, teaching them the courtly skills and giving them the courtly introductions they would need to be well-bred noble wives (AN:true as well in our own world; both Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour, Queens of England wed to Henry VIII, held positions as maids of honor in the household of Katherine of Aragon, Henry's first wife). Such a role was a natural step in a young noblewoman's education, as much as becoming a squire was for young noblemen; both roles taught their students the skills they would need to be effective leaders of the nobility as appropriate to their gender. Personally as well, Rhaella – lacking any sisters or known female cousins – may have welcomed the companionship of Westerosi ladies, particularly if the tragedy of Summerhall had claimed her mother and grandmother.

History records the identities of only two of these ladies. One, a Dornish princess, would later rule her principality in her own right and be mother to Doran, Elia, and Oberyn. The other was Lady Joanna Lannister of Casterly Rock. As a niece of the ruling Lord Tytos, Joanna had certainly an exalted enough lineage to merit her a place in the court of the Red Keep. Her first cousin Tywin had previously joined the household of Aegon V as page to the king; her own appointment was another sign of royal favor to the lions of the Rock, drawing the next generation away from the poor influence of Lord Tytos and giving them a strong, pro-royalist upbringing (AN:and perhaps keeping them as insurance against Tytos' keeping the king's peace in the West).

If Rhaella welcomed beautiful, strong-willed Joanna, a maiden of roughly her own age, as her lady companion, she would soon have reason to rue her appointment to her household. Her husband Aerys, still young and handsome, took immediate notice of the Lannister maiden. Rumors swirled that the heir to the throne and the lady of the Rock had become lovers at Jaehaerys II's coronation, and that Aerys made her his official mistress soon after that. To what extent this rumor was true – it seems unlikely that Tywin, then at court, would later choose to marry a woman he knew to be the prince's mistress once she lost the royal favor – is unknown, but the very existence of the rumor must have been deeply hurtful to Rhaella.

Even worse, when Lady Joanna wed Ser Tywin in King's Landing in 263 AC, Aerys took his infatuation – and his disregard for his wife – to new levels of insult. That Rhaella must have been present cannot be doubted: this was the wedding of her lady attendant to her husband's close friend as well as his Hand, and such a state occasion so early in their reign could not be ignored by the new queen. Yet at his wife's side at the wedding feast, Aerys drunkenly underlined his rumored affair with the bride by openly lamenting the abolition of the right to the first night. That Aerys' later conduct at the bedding ceremony – taking "unwonted liberties" – was so out of line as to merit mention both in history and narrative suggests the embarrassment Rhaella likely felt at the ordeal. In front of the court, in front of the Hand and her lady, Aerys had reminded everyone that he felt no obligation to be faithful to his wife. It was a far cry indeed from the days of Ser Bonifer Hasty, the embodiment of chivalry, laying the tourney crown in the young princess' lap; Rhaella was now a spectacle of mock for her royal husband and the subject of japes and jeers from every courtier in earshot

The wedding passed, but the insults continued. By selecting women from her lady attendants to be his paramours, Aerys publicly associated his wife with scandal. A place in her court was no longer an enviable education in courtly manners and an introduction to eligible suitors, but a ticket to vice, where a maiden could lose her virtue and, upon the cooling of the prince's passion, be humiliatingly wed to whatever lowly match her lord father could arrange. Every new affair was only a reminder of the failure of her marriage; not only could she not give Aerys more children – her primary duty as both his wife and his queen – but now she had to watch her husband sully the honor of her lady attendants, one of the few aspects of life over which she had much (if not total) control. Worse, Rhaella was severely limited in the ways she could respond to this insult. She could dismiss the ladies she knew or suspected of affairs with her husband Lady Joanna, sent back to Casterly Rock shortly after her wedding, was not the last, but she could not stop her lascivious husband. Instead, as in the days of Aegon IV, she had to watch her royal husband turn the court into a seminary of debauch, where the king could flaunt the highborn ladies including ones, like Barba Bracken, attached to the royal household who filled his bed.

To be sure, no highborn Westerosi woman would be trained to expect her husband to be faithful. Many men father bastards, and while the Faith openly preaches marital fidelity as pleasing to the Father and Mother above, in private life women are encouraged to turn a blind eye to spousal infidelity. That blind eye is part of an unspoken agreement: in return for ladies' silence, men hide away the resulting children of any affair. Aerys had no bastards, but his affairs with the ladies of her household were just as open and insulting. Instead of employing the discretion expected of extramarital affairs, Aerys flaunted his marital infidelity and forced his wife to endure the resulting shame.

Aerys did not stop at mere flaunting, however; he also drew the queen into his flagrant immorality:

By 270 AC, he had decided that the queen was being unfaithful to him. "The gods will not suffer a bastard to sit the Iron Throne," he told his small council; none of Rhaella's stillbirths, miscarriages, or dead princes had been his, the king proclaimed. Thereafter, he forbade the queen to leave the confines of Maegor's Holdfast and decreed that two septas would henceforth share her bed every night, "to see that she remains true to her vows."

The accusation was patently ridiculous; there is no records of potential lovers of the queen, and the only man for whom Rhaella was ever recorded to have held romantic feelings – Bonifer Hasty – had already put away his lance and was never reported to have contacted Rhaella after that tourney. It was also openly false, considering that Princes Aegon and Jaehaerys were born and died after the queen was confined. Still, it was typical of Aerys' petty cruelty that he would link his wife with a ill-remembered Targaryen queen, to undermine her otherwise-spotless reputation: history remembered Rhaenyra, the woman who had flaunted her bastard sons as trueborn Velaryons and borne a monstrous stillborn daughter, as a tyrannical ruler and usurper to her brother Aegon. Yet there was also a more dangerous element to his proclamation. A Westerosi queen who committed adultery was guilty of treason and punishable by death; Aerys' announcement to his small council suggests that the king had already taken a dark turn in his paranoia, and was perhaps even considering executing her. That no further action was taken confirms Rhaella's innocence – the small council likely realizing it would be an unwinnable case – but the damage to her and Aerys' relationship had already been done.

In 275 AC, however, Rhaella had cause for hope. That year, Aerys – now convinced much to Rhaella's probable satisfaction that his own infidelities were the cause of their childlessness – had sworn to be faithful to his wife. This pious display of conjugal fidelity seemed to work, for the following year, the queen gave birth to Prince Viserys. Although small, the infant was born robust and healthy, with no signs of dying in the cradle as his brothers had. The birth and maturation of her second son must have come as a great relief to Rhaella. No longer would she be the infertile queen, mother of dead princes, able to be so easily insulted by her philandering husband. Viserys' birth allowed Rhaella to hope for a more stable relationship with her husband: living children, a faithful husband, the ugly clouds of Summerhall dispelled forever.

Unfortunately, it was a false hope. Viserys' birth was not the dawn of a new era for king and queen, but the last flicker of normalcy in their relationship; henceforth, Aerys would descend into full madness, dragging helpless Rhaella with him.

The Crowned Prey

They said the queen looked as if some beast had savaged her, clawing at her thighs and chewing on her breasts. A crowned beast, Jaime knew.

By 276 AC, it was plain that the marriage of Aerys and Rhaella had failed personally. Even in ordinary circumstances, they would be remembered as an ill-matched royal couple: he, the philanderer whose hypocritical paranoia drove him to insult her; she, the tragic mother of dead princes, accepting her husband's cruelties without recorded protest. Yet these were no ordinary circumstances. Aerys had showed signs of eccentricity from youth, but as his reign progressed his mental instability tipped into full-blown derangement. If Rhaella thought she had suffered before – humiliatingly being accused of adultery, forced to prove her virtue, confined for actions she did not commit – she had no idea what torture awaited her in the later years of their marriage. If Aerys would be remembered as the crowned beast, Rhaella would be the crowned prey, destined to suffer greatly at her royal husband's hands.

The king had already demonstrated his paranoia shortly after the birth of baby Viserys. Though Rhaella was permitted to nurse her second son a rare privilege not ordinarily accorded to royal mothers, Aerys forbid his wife to be alone with the new prince. It would have quashed, at least in part, Rhaella's sense of triumph in giving birth to Viserys. Viserys, she realized, would not be the symbol of reunion between husband and wife but be a sharp reminder that she would never be trusted by the king. Instead, Rhaella concentrated her energies on protecting her baby son against the worst of the king's madness; her husband and her elder son might be declared enemies, but Viserys, a blank slate, could be hers, a comfort against Aerys.

What relationship Rhaella did share with Rhaegar is unclear. The king, certainly, believed his wife and son to be plotting against him, but Aerys saw traitors in every non-sycophant. Even if Rhaella secretly sympathized with her son over her husband – not an unrealistic possibility, given Aerys' cruelty towards her – Rhaegar's was not a personality that lent itself to a strong mother-son bond. Not only was Rhaegar melancholic and introverted not one who could comfort a queen who desperately needed a warm, trusted friend at court, but his deep interest in Summerhall could never be appreciated by a queen who had watched too many friends and family members die in the blaze and who likely saw in her son a horrific reminder of the day of his birth. At best, Rhaella might have hoped that if Aerys were to die soon – especially when, in 277 AC, he was kidnapped by the Darklyns – the new King Rhaegar might treat her with the honor and dignity she merited as both a dowager queen and his mother. Prince Daeron had once defended his mother Naerys against the calumnies of Barba Bracken, but there was no like act of filial chivalry recorded for the Prince of Dragonstone to his long-suffering mother.

As it happened, Aerys did return from Duskendale, but he did not come back unharmed. The experience had traumatized him, and the paranoia and ego which had previously been covered by a veneer of charm now reigned unchecked. Rhaella had known him longer than anyone, had been intimate with him for almost 20 years. She could not have failed to recognize the dangerous turn in his personality – his insistence on the entire Kingsguard's presence in meetings with the Hand, his hysterical ban on any bladed objects in his presence save his precious Kingsguard's swords, of course. Having endured his petty cruelties for so longer, however, Rhaella had no will to question or speak out against him.

There was no way, however, Rhaella could ignore Aerys' dangerous new obsession: fire. In one way, his obsession was not entirely surprising: their great-uncle Aerion, who had tried to drink wildfire to turn into a dragon, was a monstrous legend in his own time, and draconic desires had haunted the Targaryens since the dragons' extinction including their own grandfather. Nevertheless, Rhaella, survivor of the inferno of Summerhall, would see fire not as a source of wonder, but as a terrifying reminder of that haunting nightmare echoing back to taunt her. Rhaella likely feared her husband's new obsession; she who had lost her grandfather and any number of relatives in the blaze was now forced to relive those terrible moments on any whim from her royal husband.

Yet Aerys only became more entranced by fire, and soon found an extremely cruel way to involve his wife in his obsession. Aerys soon refused to sleep with his sister-wife unless he had burned a man alive first, and his relations with her after were physically abusive. The physical attraction of their relationship, if there had ever been even a slight one, had long since ceased entirely, but this was a new, profoundly dark dimension of their marriage. Westerosi law does not recognize marital rape as a crime, but the absence of it from law did not in any way lessen the trauma for the queen; theirs had never been a love match, but this level of violence was unprecedented even for normal dynastic matches. Rhaella, so long blind to his mad schemes and largely uncomplaining of her increasingly terrible situation, was even driven to protest:

The day he burned his mace-and-dagger Hand, Jaime and Jon Darry(AN:Jonothor Darryl) had stood at guard outside her bedchamber whilst the king took his pleasure. "You're hurting me," they had heard Rhaella cry through the oaken door. "You're hurting me." In some queer way, that had been worse than Lord Chelsted's screaming. " Even though they are also sworn to protect her as well"

However, there was at least one bright moment in Rhaella's late married life, though in typical Aerys fashion the king robbed his wife of even this small comfort. In 279 AC her elder son Rhaegar wed the Dornish Princess Elia. Gentle, graceful, clever Elia was the opposite of abusive, paranoid Aerys in every way, and Rhaella must have looked forward to taking the new crown princess as her lady companion after all, even Aegon IV never tried to make his daughter-in-law Mariah Martell his mistress. While the queen saw her granddaughter Rhaenys shortly after her birth, however, the enmity between father and son was so strong that visits between the two courts were few and far between; Rhaegar kept his own court on Dragonstone, and Aerys held her a prisoner in the capital. To Rhaella's probable sorrow, she would not often see her sweet daughter-in-law and baby grandchildren.

Worse was coming for Rhaella, however. War, the likes of which the kingdom had not seen since the First Blackfyre Rebellion, was about to rip her world apart.

The Last of the Dragons

Rhaella had never been a political queen, ambitious to assert her own power. If she knew about the politics of the Seven Kingdoms – and living her entire life in the Red Keep, a king's daughter, a king's sister, a king's wife, she must have known something – that knowledge came secondhand, framed in the personal struggles of her family members. So it was with Robert's Rebellion. Hers would be a background role, playing silent witness to the event which would destroy everything she had ever known, and whose end would also be her own.

With the fall of Rhaegar at the Trident, the tide of the war turned against the Targaryens. Robert and his allies were racing toward the city which represented one of the last footholds of the Targaryens' crumbling kingdom. The many caches of wildfire under the capital might ensure that the king would not be taken alive – but with Rhaegar dead, and with the new heir Aegon only an infant and the son of Aerys' deeply distrusted heir anyway, Aerys still needed to secure his line's succession. Accordingly, the king dispatched his wife and remaining son to Dragonstone, ancestral seat of the Targaryens, where – at least in theory – they could be kept safe.

The queen could not have known at that moment – though she might have suspected – that she would never see her home again. Still, Rhaella was likely comforted by her new island home, no matter how grim it appeared on face. If the Usurper attempted to take her, he would need to battle his way through the royal navy protecting Dragonstone, and the ancient citadel itself had not fallen since Aegon II flew his battered dragon there at the tail end of the Dance. It could almost be a holiday – mixed with sadness to leave Elia and the children, of course, and deeply uncertain, but a chance to spend more time with the son with whom she had already shared key moments (and an escape from her torturous husband).

The Sack of King's Landing or the Rebels like to call it The liberation,.

however, shattered her fragile island peace. Dark wings bring dark words, and no words could have been darker for the woman who was now Queen Dowager of the Seven Kingdoms. Her capital and birthplace had been mercilessly taken over by the enemy. Her gentle and sweet daughter in law trapped there now in the mercy of the those Rebels. And only Gods knows what are they doing to he. And her baby grandchildrens somehow escaped from Kingslanding by the Brave Knight Alban Whitesteel and his friend, Nobody know where they went. And brave young Jaime Lannister – the boy who had guarded her and Viserys during the Tourney of Harrenhal – had killed her husband. Rhaella was now the only adult Targaryen left; And currently, she, her second son, and her unborn child represented the entire legitimate Targaryen line left in the world.

To be sure, Rhaella could not have loved Aerys entirely by this point, or else had patience to rival the Mother; there had been too many years of abuse and insult, rape and torture. Yet she may still have felt a reasonable amount of shock at his death, and perhaps even a little mournfulness. She had known him longer than anyone except their own parents; for over 20 years they had shared not simply a bed but many intimate moments together. He was a survivor of Summerhall; only he (and what few others remained) could understand that shadow of tragedy which had haunted her since her girlhood. He was the father of her children, the living and the dead, and had shared her maternal grief (at least early and at least in part). She, more than anyone, had watched him decline from charming prince to cruel madman. He had not always been the monster he became, and for that former man – the one for whom she felt, if not love, at least some sisterly affection – Rhaella would have been reasonable to mourn.

Mourning, however, would not preserve her safety, nor that of her remaining family. If she waited to be captured on Dragonstone, she would be left to the mercy of the usurpring Robert Baratheon – the same man who had caved in her son's chest on the Trident, the man whose ally Tywin Lannister had directed the brutal occupation on her home. She herself would likely face permanent confinement with the Faith – a traditional Westerosi punishment for politically troublesome ladies, offered to Alicent Hightower and Helaena Targaryen during the Dance and imposed on the Tarbeck daughters after the Reyne-Tarbeck Rebellion. That itself was not so terrible a fate; gentle Rhaella might have welcomed spending her remaining years in prayer and quiet service, free from the burdens of queenship. Her children, however, might instead meet much crueler fates. As the new Targaryen pretender, eight-year-old Viserys was too politically powerful to be allowed to live as a private citizen under the new regime.

So it was in such a bleak situation – meteorologically as well as politically. – but Rhaegar was dead, and his wife got captured and his childrens are God knows where? She did like the fact that her family in so much grief.

Then the letter arrived via Reven . Not one but seven in total, In it explained how much bad the situation she's currently in.

They want her to officially abdicate the throne to usurper Robert Baratheon and all her family's crime will be forgiven. Or if she refuses then her daughter in law and her grandchildrens will receive the punishment instead.

Also they will also punish the family of her loyal Men that currently protecting her if she refuses to surrender.

She doesn't know how they captured her grandchildrens ? Even if true or not ? She currently have two options .

1. Leave Dragonstone and go to Essos.

2. Peacefully surrender her kingdom to the userpers.

She made her decision. She'll go to kingslanding but not with her son Viserys. She still believes that it is a plot to lure her there.

Thus the only place she could send her son is to the North. There, at the castle black she has a member of her family. Her great-uncle Maester Aemon Targaryen. She hoped that he'll take care of her son. She also found a lot of loyal Men to follow her Son to the wall. Ser William Darry is one of them.

She looked at the master of ships lord Velaryon " Lord lucerys please make preparation. We'll return to the kingslanding"