My royal mother’s cold, violet eyes slid slowly across the chamber, landing upon my elder brother Aenys where he stood cowering in the corner.
Under the sharp, unyielding weight of her glare, the five-year-old prince seemed to shrink into the stone walls, lowering his pale head as if hoping the shadows might swallow him whole.
Queen Visenya Targaryen stared at her nephew for a brief, heavy beat, her lips set in a thin, unforgiving line, before turning her gaze entirely away from him.
She did not bother to acknowledge the wet nurse at all, treating the poor, trembling woman as though she were nothing more than a wooden stool or a patch of dust upon the floorboards.
I let out a wet, raspy cough into my tiny fist, doing my absolute best to smooth out the agonizing awkwardness hanging in the room.
While clearing my throat, I discreetly rubbed my saliva-drenched toes against the linen sheets beneath me to wipe off the lingering baby drool.
Well, this was undeniably a rather bizarre, deeply ungraceful situation.
It was hardly what any reasonable man would consider a stellar first impression upon his mother.
Then again, this was not technically our first meeting, was it?
The woman had already witnessed me entering the world in a shower of blood, sea salt, and infant shrieks inside the birthing chamber months ago.
Besides, I was currently a fat, helpless four-month-old babe.
No one had any right to judge my long-term leadership potential or my strategic genius based on my casual infant foot-chewing habits.
Still, a troubling thought crossed my mind.
Was the biological hardware of a newborn infant actively leeching into my adult consciousness, making me act far more infantile than I cared to admit?
That realization sent my mind tumbling down an existential rabbit hole of biological and metaphysical philosophy.
Scientifically speaking, it should have been completely, physically impossible for an adult mind to function inside an infant skull.
A four-month-old human brain lacked the developed neural pathways, myelinated axons, and structural capacity to hold thirty years of modern memories, complex English grammar, and grand strategy tactics from Crusader Kings III.
My head should have exploded from cognitive overload, or my consciousness should have been completely erased, leaving behind only the primitive instincts to suckle, cry, and sleep.
So how in the Seven Hells was I sitting here, evaluating my royal mother’s fashion choices while maintaining my full identity?
Was there some bizarre, cosmic bullshit going on regarding the human soul?
Perhaps in a universe governed by blood sorcery, prophecy, and giant flying fire-lizards, human memory and personality were stored within the immortal soul rather than physical brain tissue.
Or, perhaps the infants in Westeros were simply built different from modern earthlings.
After all, didn’t Ned Stark once tell a four-year-old Rickon that he would not stay young forever, right before the kid went off to run wild in the woods with a direwolf?
Medieval children in these fantasy realms seemed to mature at a downright alarming speed anyway.
My deep philosophical ramblings were abruptly shattered as Queen Visenya stroled across the chamber, her boots clicking against the flagstones, and leaned over the wooden railings of my playpen to scoop me up.
Her hands felt remarkably hard and unyielding against my soft baby skin, largely because she was fully garbed in her dragon-riding gear.
She wore a coat of boiled black leather, reinforced at the shoulders and breast with dark steel scales that gleamed like wet obsidian.
The sleeves and high collar were trimmed with heavy scarlet wool, fastened across her throat with a bronze clasp shaped into the three-headed dragon of House Targaryen.
Her hands were encased in thick, iron-studded leather gauntlets that smelled strongly of saddle soap, dragon scales, horse sweat, and old chimney ash.
The whole ensemble was strikingly stylish and intimidating, I must admit, especially with the dark gray and crimson accents woven into the leather dagging.
Yet all that martial finery would have meant very little were it not for the breathtaking, terrifying beauty of the woman wearing it.
As Visenya raised me up to her eye level, holding my small frame in her gloved hands to inspect me, I spent those quiet seconds analyzing her right back.
Visenya Targaryen was a spectacularly, unbelievably stunning woman, and I do not mean that in some superficial, generic fantasy way.
She was simply breathtaking, looking like an otherworldly entity that had descended from the stars.
Her silver-gold hair was pulled back tightly into a thick, elegant braid that hung down her back, revealing the sharp, ruthless contours of her face.
She possessed high, prominent Valyrian cheekbones carved like fine marble, a straight, noble nose, perfectly set pink lips and eyes the dark, intense purple of polished amethysts.
My mother was without a single shred of doubt the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes upon in my two lifetimes.
I could not help but notice that even her neatly arched eyebrows were the exact same shimmering silver-gold color as her hair, lacking a single dark hair.
How utterly bizarre.
It made zero logical sense that a human being this drop-dead gorgeous could exist in a filthy, plague-ridden medieval world without modern skin cream, cosmetic surgery, or ring lights.
The finest oil paintings from my previous life, crafted by masters trying to flatter wealthy nobles, did not look half as good as the raw, natural visage staring at me right now.
What made the realization even more mind-boggling was the fact that according to historical accounts, Visenya was supposed to be the stern, less desirable sister compared to Rhaenys!
If Visenya was this jaw-droppingly gorgeous, then how ridiculously beautiful had Rhaenys been before she got shot out of the sky over Dorne?
To be entirely honest, I had always held a subtle preference for Rhaenys over Visenya back in my previous life.
Mostly because Visenya was far more popular among the mainstream casual fans, and I held a petty, lifelong hatred for sharing popular opinions with the average populace.
Satisfied with her swift physical inspection of my limbs and features, Visenya tucked me securely against her chest and turned on her heel, marching out of the nursery without uttering a single word to anyone in the room.
I was more than a little creeped out by her utter stone-cold silence.
A dark, paranoid thought crossed my mind, making me hope she was not carrying me off to some hidden subterranean vault to perform weird, blood-magic Valyrian rituals to make my bones robust and fireproof.
Please, dear mother, perform your dark sorcery experiments on the local peasant children instead.
There were thousands of serfs scattered across the realm anyway, and the smallfolk could easily breed a fresh batch of infants within a year.
Hell, my own biological mother had not even offered me a single, warm maternal smile since picking me up.
There was definitely something deeply unsettling about this woman’s parenting style.
Yet, at the exact same time, I knew it would be exceptionally foolish to annoy her.
It had been months since she had last seen me, given her military campaign in the south.
Then again, surely no mother would willingly sacrifice her own infant son in some blood ritual, right?
Right?
Let us evaluate the situation from a strictly practical angle.
If she was planning to perform some ancient dragonlord magic upon me, it was almost certainly intended for my own physical empowerment.
Historical records proved that the original Maegor lived to adulthood, grew into a massive, unstoppable mountain of a man, and wielded Blackfyre like a toy until he died on the Iron Throne decades later.
In the end, I was never going to turn down a free stat-boost.
Give me a power-up, please!
All that ultimately mattered in this brutal world was surviving to adulthood without getting stabbed in the back by a treacherous lord, poisoned by a maester, dying of dysentery, or succumbing to the hundreds of other gruesome medieval hazards waiting to kill me.
Visenya stepped through the heavy oak doorway of the nursery, and two iron-clad house guards standing post on either side immediately snapped to attention, falling into formation behind her boots as she traversed the wide, shadowy stone corridors of Dragonstone.
I could not resist craning my neck to observe our surroundings as she carried me deeper into the fortress, the slight, rhythmic sway of her strides keeping me from drifting off to sleep.
The main passageways of Dragonstone were utterly massive in both height and scale.
The ancient Valyrian dragonlords had not constructed this fortress using traditional medieval masonry with carved granite blocks, wooden beams, and mortar.
Instead, the entire interior of the castle felt as though it had been grown out of the earth or carved from the inside of a living, titan-sized beast.
The walls of dark basalt and glassy black obsidian curved smoothly like the petrified ribcage of a leviathan, with thick, stony scales etched into the surfaces.
Giant stone arches shaped like dragon ribs stretched high overhead, framing the vaulted ceilings in long, terrifying rows.
Functional pillars and stone watch-posts were carved into the likenesses of ancient Valyrian monsters: gargoyles with grinning, fanged faces, crouching sphinxes with cold stone eyes, and coiled manticores whose hollow, open jaws served as iron sconces holding roaring torches.
The overall atmosphere of the castle was suffocatingly dark, gloomy, and bitterly cold.
The jet-black obsidian walls seemed to actively absorb the pale sunlight that managed to seep through the high, lancet windows overlooking the fog-choked sea.
The air smelled perpetually of old sea salt, damp stone, sulfurous soot, and burning tallow from the flickering wall torches.
A normal, soft-hearted modern person spending extended time in a bleak, shadowy fortress like this would probably succumb to clinical depression within a fortnight.
Not me, however.
This place was the absolute, ultimate supervillain lair!
Thank you, my ancient, incestuous Targaryen ancestors, for bestowing this glorious black-stone estate upon me!
I promised right then and there to utilize this magnificent fortress to its maximum potential.
Once I grew old enough to rule, I would fully embrace my ancient Valyrian superiority complex: seizing absolute power, marrying my female sisters, nieces, mothers and whoever the fuck was included in this family circle to keep the bloodline pure, and mercilessly torturing any treasonous lords who dared oppose my sovereign will within these cold obsidian walls.
I was ninety-nine percent certain my conqueror ancestors would thoroughly approve of my glorious ambitions.
Eh, okay, maybe sleeping with my own biological mother was pushing the Valyrian blood-purity thing a bit too far, even for a dragonlord.
I might need to re-evaluate the specifics of my incestuous harem plans down the road.
But the grand goal remained unchanged: it was time to bring House Targaryen to unprecedented heights of absolute dominion!
Which, historically speaking, was not saying much, considering the Targaryens were merely a minor, secondary noble house back in the Valyrian Freehold before the Doom.
But if there was one skill I excelled at above all else, it was roleplaying an absolute tyrant.
And roleplay I shall.
Honestly, the sheer volume of chambers and side passages branching off these main corridors was utterly mind-boggling.
There were dozens of arched doorways carved into every single wall, and I was fairly certain I had not even witnessed one percent of Dragonstone’s true layout.
I felt a surge of genuine excitement at the prospect of exploring these dark halls once I mastered the ability to walk.
Perhaps one day I would stumble across a secret, forgotten passageway hidden behind an obsidian gargoyle that contained dusty spellbooks of Valyrian fire-magic, or a forgotten chamber containing an ancient dragon egg.
Yes, give me power!
My wild fantasies were abruptly interrupted as my mother descended a sweeping flight of black stone stairs that led directly toward the outer courtyards of the fortress.
It surprised me slightly just how long we had been moving, as Visenya had been marching at a brisk pace for ten straight minutes just to reach the ground level.
Just how ridiculously massive was this black rock castle?
Unfortunately, I could not easily see over her shoulder because she was holding me awkwardly around my waist with one iron-clad gauntlet, letting my legs dangle in mid-air.
This woman genuinely did not possess a single shred of maternal instinct, did she?
Who holds a four-month-old infant like a sack of groceries?
Visenya was carrying her newborn son more like a scruffy, wet alley cat than an imperial prince.
Finally, after navigating through the wind-swept, rocky stone paths of the outer yard, Visenya brought her march to a sudden halt.
I scratched my neck, suddenly feeling a wave of blistering, suffocatingly hot air wash across my bare baby face.
Had my mother dragged me out to the edge of an active volcanic pit to toss my fat infant body into the magma like a sacrifice?
I did not genuinely believe so.
Visenya might be a cold, terrifying warrior queen, but she was still my biological mother, and she had spent months defending my claim to the throne.
To test my volcano hypothesis, I strained my tiny neck around her leather sleeve, squinting against the harsh glare of the morning light to locate the source of the intense heat.
Well, well, well.
If I were any ordinary medieval infant, I would have instantly shitted my linen rags in raw, unadulterated terror.
But of course, I was not an ordinary child.
I was a reincarnated soul in the body of Maegor Targaryen, destined to be the mightiest, most terrifying ruler in all of Westeros.
Looming directly above us, her massive, reptilian head lowered to within a few feet of the ground, was none other than the legendary dragon of my mother: Vhagar.
The dragon was a terrifying, colossal mountain of bronze and emerald scales that glinted wickedly under the cold morning sun.
Her eyes were massive, glowing orbs of molten gold with dark, vertical slit pupils that locked directly onto my tiny, infant frame.
Hot steam continuously hissed from her barrel-sized nostrils, carrying the suffocating stench of scorched meat, sulfur, and ancient ash that scorched the cold air between us.
Rows of jagged, pale teeth, each as long and broad as a knight’s broadsword, lined her massive, leather-lipped jaws.
Visenya shifted her grip, raising me up in both gauntleted hands and presenting my tiny, dangling form directly to the face of the bronze beast.
Vhagar leaned her snout forward, drawing in a massive, rumbling breath that rustled my sparse silver hair, sniffing her rider’s newborn child with deep, reptilian curiosity.
I stared back into the gigantic, scaled snout hovering inches from my face.
Every grand tale of legendary conquerors, god-kings, and mythic heroes begins with a single, defining moment of absolute audacity.
Something that instantly sets them apart from the mindless, pathetic plebeians who wander the earth without ever leaving a mark upon history.
Here I was, experiencing my very first excursion outside my nursery walls, standing on the wind-scoured rocks of Dragonstone at four months of age.
If I wanted to kick off my new life as a legendary dragonlord with an unforgettable, historical bang, this was the ultimate, golden opportunity handed to me on a silver platter.
Therefore, like any completely rational, sane reincarnated person, I executed the only logical action available to me in that glorious moment.
I wound up my tiny, fat baby fist, leaned forward, and slapped Vhagar right across her massive bronze snout.