“Man, I will be fucked.” Setting down my phone after finishing yet another chapter of self-insert fanfiction, I reached the inevitable, inescapable conclusion that I had just exclaimed aloud to the empty silence of my bedroom.
After gorging myself on another five hundred thousand words of ASOIAF self-inserts, I had come to the terrifying realization that if I were ever dropped into the brutal, shit-stained meat grinder of Westeros, I would be utterly, completely fucked.
The main problem with all these fuckass protagonists in online stories was that they possessed the magically convenient brain of a polymath renaissance god.
Within two chapters of waking up in a medieval castle, some twenty-year-old economics major who had never worked a day of manual labor in his life was suddenly explaining crop rotation, building blast furnaces, and organizing standing armies.
How in the Seven Hells do you even reinvent the fucking printing press from memory without any prior knowledge of metallurgy or typography?
I call bullshit.
It made no sense that a normal, modern man would be able to survive, let alone conquer, a world as cold and bloody as the Seven Kingdoms.
Hell, I considered myself a bit of a history buff, but building advanced machinery from absolute scratch in a realm that lacked basic plumbing seemed impossible.
What was even less believable was how these self-inserts waltzed onto a field of battle, surrounded by men getting their guts spilled onto the mud, without shitting their trousers in raw terror.
Of course, if I were placed in their boots, I would be able to lead my troops into the slaughter without breaking a sweat and completely decimate my foes.
But that was simply because I was built different.
Trust me, bro.
Leading thousands of iron-clad peasants into a victory would be the easiest task of my life.
I was born for this kind of glorious, megalomaniacal business.
Letting out a long, heavy sigh, I tumbled back onto my mattress, staring up at the water-stained ceiling.
Was it a bit concerning that I was holding a full-blown debate with myself at three in the morning?
Eh, every great ruler in human history had his peculiar quirks.
Mine was just a healthy dose of vocal self-aggrandizement.
I was not a tyrant or a dictator yet.
All good things required time and careful planning.
I simply needed to bide my time and wait for the precise moment to strike.
Please ignore the obvious fact that lying flat on my ass while muttering to the plaster walls was not actively helping me seize sovereign power over my nation.
Either way, dictatorship was generally considered bad by political scientists, but that was only because the masses had never elected someone as enlightened as me.
If I were made king, no one would suffer.
Trust me on that one.
“Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon…
and then me.” I let out a dreamy sigh, closing my eyes as I envisioned my bronze statue standing tall in some magnificent capital square.
Just wait a few more years, my fellow conquerors!
Soon enough, I would be joining your legendary ranks in the halls of history!
Everyone would remember my name with awe and terror.
The famous three-in-the-morning burst of motivation hit me like a charging warhorse.
I clenched my fists and snatched my phone back off the nightstand.
There was definitely a non-zero chance that some golden-eyed goddess would descend from the heavens, snatch my soul, and drag me into a realm that desperately required a strong, visionary ruler to protect the smallfolk from brutal warlords.
I had to be thoroughly prepared if the cosmic dice happened to roll in my favor.
My fingers flew across the glass screen, launching Google and navigating straight toward Wikipedia with feverish intensity.
I needed to hoard every scrap of technical knowledge required to uplift a backwards medieval society and utterly crush my enemies.
Hell yeah.
The hours bled away into the dark as I scrolled through endless articles, dutifully transcribing critical technological processes into my notes app.
I dove headfirst into the mechanics of metallurgy, studying the precise differences between a primitive bloomery and a true blast furnace, taking note of how charcoal, iron ore, and limestone had to be layered to lower the melting point of iron.
I learned about crucible steel, the chemical composition of black powder using saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal, and how to construct a proper water-powered trip hammer.
For agriculture, I carefully outlined the three-field crop rotation system, noting how planting legumes like peas and beans in the spring replenished nitrogen into the depleted soil, paired with the introduction of heavy iron moldboard ploughs to break through tough clay.
For masonry and engineering, I researched the exact proportions for Roman pozzolanic concrete, combining slaked lime, volcanic ash, and seawater to create a mortar that set underwater and lasted for millennia.
I even took down notes on basic sanitation: boiling water to prevent cholera, creating crude soap from lye extracted from wood ashes mixed with animal tallow, and the mechanics of a basic screw press for printing using lead, tin, and antimony alloys for moveable type.
After two solid hours of frantic academic labor, I felt a deep, satisfying sense of accomplishment wash over me.
The three-in-the-morning motivation was definitely not going to fade by the time I woke up.
Trust!
The following days passed in a blur of hyper-fixation.
As it turned out, the random surge of late-night ambition had not abandoned me.
Taking full advantage of my school holidays, I spent every waking hour studying ancient civil engineering, medieval logistics, and the granular details of grand strategy.
It was abundantly clear from my endless play-throughs of Hearts of Iron IV and Crusader Kings III that I was destined to be the greatest military genius of my generation.
Map-painting was insanely easy.
I constantly wondered why actual historical generals had made such catastrophic blunders when the solution was always as simple as encircling the enemy division and cutting off their supply lines.
Real life warfare was straightforward, and I refused to hear any arguments to the contrary.
Taking breaks from my rigorous academic schedule, I sank dozens of hours into real-time strategy games.
Playing grand strategy was fundamentally an educational activity, and I would not take no for an answer from anyone who dared criticize my screen time.
Just like any other night, I eventually collapsed onto my bed, though a lingering doubt remained in the back of my mind regarding those flawless self-insert protagonists who managed to single-handedly industrialize a continent, build an empire, and charm a harem of highborn ladies without ever running into a single complication.
Dear Dark Lord of the Self-Inserts, I prayed silently into the dark, please grant me these exact same powers of outrageous plot armor!
My eyelids grew heavy, and within minutes, I drifted off into a deep, dreamless slumber.
…
Being a newborn babe once again was not fun, especially when you possessed full, unadulterated consciousness.
It was the single weirdest, most unsettling moment of my existence.
I had fallen asleep in my comfortable bed, and it felt as though merely a second had passed before my awareness snapped back into reality.
It reminded me of a strange moment in my childhood when I had slept for ten straight hours, yet it felt as if I had merely blinked.
This time, however, the sensation was entirely terrifying.
I could not see anything, I could not feel my limbs, and I could not draw a breath.
A suffocating pressure crushed me from all sides, squeezing my very soul until it felt as though I were plummeting down the track of a massive, dark roller coaster.
Finally, my head burst into the cold air, and I drew a massive, desperate breath into my tiny lungs.
Despite my absolute best efforts to remain dignified and composed, I immediately burst into a loud, pathetic wail.
It took a full five seconds of shrieking before I managed to force my vocal cords into silence.
How humiliating.
The dumbass self-insert protagonists in stories never cried when they emerged from the womb.
I would have to take this shameful secret to my grave so that no future chronicler would ever write down that the great conqueror had wailed like a wet calf the moment he entered the world.
That was simply unacceptable.
When I finally managed to pry my heavy eyelids open, the world made even less sense.
Everything around me was a blurry, high-contrast, black-and-white smear of light and shadow.
For a horrifying minute, I genuinely believed I had been reborn into some bleak circle of hell, because it certainly looked the part.
Gradually, however, I made out the shadowy silhouette of a human face hovering directly above me.
It was impossible to discern specific details through the soup of my underdeveloped vision, but I was reasonably certain the figure staring down at me was a woman.
I could not help but wonder which universe I had been dragged into.
Gods above, I silently prayed, please let me encounter some dim-witted, breathtakingly beautiful women who will instantly swoon for me despite my obvious flaws!
Then again, who was I fooling?
I had never had the patience for shrill, entitled women to begin with.
If any highborn lady tried to play mind games with me in this life, I would shut her down instantly.
It was not much, but I possessed a healthy amount of self-respect.
The absolute bare minimum I could hope for was that I had not been spawned into some bizarre world I knew nothing about, or worse, reborn as the scrawny son of a starving serf.
Please, gods, not a peasant.
Being a peasant was the absolute worst-case scenario in any era of human history.
If this happened to be a harsh medieval setting, the chances of me dying of bloody flux before my fifth birthday as the child of some piss-poor farmer were astronomically high.
That was not even factoring in the reality that even noble infants had a habit of catching a chill and dropping dead before reaching puberty.
I had never understood how self-insert characters in web novels managed to thrive as filthy peasants; even with a magical system, the odds were heavily stacked toward dying in a mud hut.
Before my racing thoughts could spiral any further, the overwhelming fatigue of infant biology asserted itself, and I tumbled back into unconsciousness.
…
Being a baby was unequivocally, undeniably NOT fun.
For the vast majority of my existence, I was either knocked out cold, soiling myself, or staring blankly at a dark stone wall, often all three simultaneously.
None of those activities provided the slightest bit of entertainment.
This whole experience sucked absolute ass.
Time completely lost its meaning.
I had no way of knowing how many hours, days, or weeks were slipping past, largely because I was perpetually trapped in a cycle of sleepy delirium and agonizing hunger.
My senses were terribly muted, and my hearing was muffled as if I were submerged underwater.
The only real indicator that time was actually moving forward was that my limbs were becoming slightly less floppy, my vision was slowly resolving into vague colors, and my hearing was improving.
From what I could gather with my recovering senses, I was definitely trapped in some sort of medieval stronghold.
There was not a single modern wire, electric bulb, or glass window in sight.
Wet nurses and maids bustled about, bathed in the dim, smoky flickering of tallow candles.
The absolute worst part of this primitive nightmare was the diaper situation, which was a grand term for what was actually happening.
There were no diapers in this godforsaken world.
Do you have any idea how maddening it becomes to be wrapped in a crude swatch of linen that quickly becomes soaked in your own waste?
Fuck this shit.
It was completely unfair.
I was utterly distraught, yet not a single soul in this castle could comprehend my inner turmoil.
It was the most miserable existence imaginable.
I have no mouth, yet must screa—wait copyright restriction.
Words failed to capture the pure, unadulterated agony of my day-to-day life.
There was no joy, no spark of happiness, only the endless drafty chill of the chamber and the indignity of my physical helplessness.
If things continued at this rate, I was going to go down in history as the first infant to suffer from clinical depression.
At times, I desperately wished for a simple way to shut down my cognitive faculties and wake up two years down the line, when I would finally possess full motor function and complete bowel control.
Sadly, my silent pleas fell upon deaf ears.
God was dead, and I had killed him, or whatever nonsense philosophy came to mind while rotting from sheer boredom.
To combat the soul-crushing monotony, I eventually fell back on my absolute ultimate weapon: going to sleep.
I had never truly appreciated it in my previous life, but having endless hours to ponder existence brought me to a profound epiphany.
The ability to sleep on command was essentially a localized form of time travel.
Soiled my linen rags again?
Whatever, I will just time-travel past the cleanup.
Feeling a sharp wave of hunger while waiting for the wet nurse?
Nah, I am going to time-travel.
Bored out of my skull staring at the ceiling rafters?
You guessed it, I will sleep and wake up in the future.
Never before had I held such deep, reverent gratitude for the human body’s capacity to pass out.
Weeks drifted past while I remained in my half-conscious, time-traveling state.
Occasionally, I wondered how much longer my sanity could hold out before I completely lost my mind.
Fortunately, my physical hardware finally decided to upgrade.
My sight, hearing, and motor control improved enough that I could comfortably sit upright on my tiny rear end and stare at the stone walls for hours on end!
The servant girls and wet nurses gave me extremely dubious looks whenever I sat there in silence, gazing blankly into the dark corners of the nursery, but I paid them no mind.
I had never been one to care about the opinions of background NPCs anyway.
With my upgraded ears, I began to decipher the language spoken by the women surrounding my crib.
It was essentially a dialect of English, albeit heavily accented and filled with archaic phrasings, strange idioms, and formal cadence.
Unfortunately, they rarely spoke directly to me, which was a massive blow to my ego.
Most of the words I managed to piece together came from quiet, hushed conversations between two wet nurses who hovered near the hearth.
Almost every time they began to gossip, they would wander out of my limited infant hearing range before I could catch anything juicy.
However, I did manage to snag one crucial, life-changing detail: they referred to me as a prince.
When I heard the plump nurse call me “little prince,” I nearly wept tears of genuine relief.
My statistical odds of surviving to adulthood and conquering the known world had just skyrocketed.
Soon, the lords of this realm would bow before the reborn equivalent of Alexander the Great.
In lieu of playing with the carved wooden dragons and crude rattles scattered beside my crib, I spent my days engaged in my favorite pastime: sitting quietly and staring through the wooden bars of my playpen like a tiny, scheming lord.
While I could theoretically have been trying to execute basic physical exercises to build muscle, it felt like an incredibly foolish idea.
The chances of my soft, malleable infant bones snapping under stress were terrifyingly high.
Or at least, that was my assumption.
I had never bothered to study pediatric physiology during my three-in-the-morning research sprees.
As I lapsed back into gazing mindlessly at the dark granite wall, plotting nefarious strategies to conquer this medieval realm, I noticed a small figure approaching my crib.
My eyes struggled slightly to maintain focus, but I clearly spotted a young child walking toward me, followed closely by a tall woman who appeared to be a maidservant.
It was only when the child reached the edge of my wooden pen that I could properly examine his features.
The kid looked strikingly beautiful, although sickly to look at, almost androgynous, with fair skin and long, flowing silver-gold hair.
An albino, I noted internally.
He appeared to be roughly three or four years old, though I was terrible at judging ages.
Perhaps he was somewhat malnourished, though that seemed unlikely given the absurd quantities of fresh milk I was consuming every single day.
Was I inadvertently stealing his food supply?
Eh, who cared?
I was clearly the more important historical figure here, so more milk for me.
Three-year-old kids had no business drinking from a wet nurse anyway.
For a brief moment, I wondered if I was consuming far more milk than a normal child my age required, but I ultimately brushed the thought aside.
Let me be a fat, prosperous dictator-baby in peace.
The silver-haired boy flinched slightly under my intense, unblinking glare, which filled my heart with immense satisfaction.
Yes, boy!
Tremble before your future sovereign!
Despite his hesitation, the boy stepped closer, resting his small, pale hands against the wooden bars of the pen and peering down at me.
His voice was soft, high-pitched, and filled with gentle affection as he spoke.
“My little brother Maegor.
I am your brother, Aenys.” I froze in absolute, unadulterated shock.
I was not shocked by the fact that I now knew who my brother was, nor was I even shocked by the sudden, terrifying realization that I had been reborn as Maegor ‘The Gentle’ Targaryen the future second king of the Iron Throne, the son of Visenya, the rider of the Black Dread, and the brutal butcher of the fuckass Faith Militant.
No, none of those realization held a candle to the utter bewilderment that struck me a second later.
As I sat there processing my destiny, the wet nurse stepped forward, lifted the silver-haired ponce into her arms, pulled down her bodice, and began to nurse him right in front of my face.
My brother was five years old!
He was practically a grown man in medieval years!
Why in the name of the Seven was he still drinking milk straight from the teat?
I stared in speechless horror.
I was going to have to straighten his ass out.
…
I really appreciate it.
Thank you.