It has recently come to my deeply disappointing attention that I am, in fact, not very big.
Well, that is not entirely true.
I am actually quite a large, heavy-boned babe for my age, but I had been operating under the assumption that I was already at least six months old.
As it turned out, according to the hushed chatter of the handmaidens this morning, I was a measly, squishy three-month-old infant.
How depressing.
At the very least, I was abnormally thick-limbed for a three-month-old babe.
Thank you, supreme Targaryen genetics!
Please do your magic and transform me into an absolute, brick-shithouse, brute unit of a man when I grow up.
I genuinely could not wait to get older so I could start swinging a three-pound steel warhammer into the skulls of my political enemies.
In every grand strategy game and roleplaying campaign I ever played back in my previous life, I always dumped all my available stat points into raw physical Strength while completely ignoring Intelligence.
I saw zero reason why I shouldn’t live by that exact same sacred philosophy in actual medieval reality.
Then again, historical records from my previous life indicated that the original Maegor Targaryen was actually a relatively sane, fiercely capable warrior in his early years.
It was only after he took a spiked iron morningstar directly to his forehead during his famous Trial of Seven against Ser Damon Morrigen and the Warrior’s Sons that his brain melted into pure, murderous mania.
That brain damage, combined with the blood sorcery of his Pentoshi wife, Tyanna of the Tower, resulted in a reign of nightmare terror, missing organs, and winged, dragon-like stillborn infants.
Well, a clear lesson had been learned today: I was definitely going to stay at least a hundred leagues away from scary, dark-magic Pentoshi goth sorceresses in this life.
Looking at my pathetic reflection in the polished bronze mirror propped against the nursery wall, I let out a heavy, infant sigh and collapsed backward onto my padded blanket and began to roll across the stone floor.
At this developmental stage, I could barely manage a pathetic, uncoordinated army-crawl across the blanket.
As a direct result, I had no better, more efficient medium of personal transportation than simply rolling over and over like a fleshy log until I bumped into my intended destination.
After a considerable, exhausting physical effort that left me wheezing, I managed to roll my fat body back into the carved wooden railings of my playpen, flopping onto my back with a long, frustrated grunt.
Yesterday had been thoroughly thrilling with my high-altitude dragon flight atop Vhagar, but today I was once again trapped inside this bleak, black-stone prison with zero hope of escape in sight.
In the far corner of the chamber, my five-year-old brother Aenys was sleeping peacefully upon his soft, feathered cushions.
While it was occasionally amusing to irritate the soft-hearted boy, even picking on my future king got boring after a while.
How in the hell did actual, normal medieval infants spend their waking hours without losing their absolute fucking minds?
Having literally nothing better to do, I stared up at the vaulted, obsidian ceiling, letting my hyperactive brain reflect upon the wild events of yesterday afternoon.
When I had first spotted that ominous black speck descending through the cloud cover high above the Narrow Sea, my heart had leapt into my throat.
I had genuinely believed it was the Cannibal, the monstrous, wild dragon who devoured its own hatchlings, and I had braced myself for an epic, main-character dragon duel early in my second life.
But no, the flying shadow had actually turned out to be none other than Balerion the Black Dread himself, with my royal father Aegon the Conqueror perched atop his iron saddle.
The sheer, staggering magnitude of that black dragon had made me shiver to my very core.
The sheer size of the beast was utterly unnatural.
No living creature on earth should have been capable of growing that massive.
That realization only made another glaring logistical question even more confusing to my modern mind: how in the Seven Hells were the Targaryens actively feeding not one, but three gargantuan, fire-breathing monsters on a daily basis?
Now that Aegon had conquered the Six Kingdoms, it was undoubtedly much easier to keep their massive bellies full by demanding thousands of sheep, cattle, and swine as royal tax tribute from the mainland lords.
But what about the century before the Conquest, when House Targaryen was just a solitary noble family sitting on a barren, volcanic rock in the middle of the sea?
How had the dragons eaten back then?
Did they just fly over to the neighboring kingdoms of the Vale, the Reach, and the Stormlands every single afternoon to slaughter and devour their livestock?
If that had been the case, how had the petty kings of Westeros not banded together to wipe House Targaryen out a hundred years ago?
Perhaps the raw, unadulterated terror of dragonfire was simply far greater than the outrage of having a few hundred cows stolen every week.
Or perhaps the dragons were diving deep into the ocean to hunt giant sea monsters?
Leviathans, kraken, and giant squids from the abyssal depths?
I could not recall whether that particular snippet of lore was another useless piece of fan-fiction I had read on Reddit or actual canonical lore written by George himself.
Could dragons even swim?
It seemed plausible in theory, given that their body mass would feel considerably lighter under the water, but I still doubted a giant, fire-breathing reptile could dive ten thousand feet into the icy abyss without suffocating or drowning.
Besides, krakens and deep-sea leviathans probably dwelt at the very bottom of the ocean floor; I highly doubted a dragon could hold its breath long enough to go deep-sea fishing, or maybe it could, actually, their lungs capacity was probably very big to keep that body functioning.
Letting out another wide, toothless yawn, I prepared to drift back off to sleep.
As a developing three-month-old babe, sixteen hours of daily sleep was biologically necessary for my brain to grow.
But my eyelids snapped back open as I heard heavy, iron-shod boots clanking heavily against the stone corridor outside the nursery.
Should I bother turning my head to see who was entering the room?
That sounded like far too much physical work for a lazy afternoon.
Then again, a paranoid voice in my head whispered, what if it was an assassin sent by some vengeful Dornish lord or a bitter Faith fanatic wielding a dagger coated in manticore venom?
If that were the case, I was completely fucked, but it was still vastly better to look my murderer in the eye than to get butchered in my sleep.
Actually, on second thought, getting murdered while fast asleep was probably entirely painless.
If I was awake when the dagger struck, I would likely spend my final moments gurgling on my own warm blood and suffocating in agony on the floorboards.
Fortunately for my survival, I did not need to roll over to identify the intruder.
Heavy footsteps crossed the threshold, and a towering figure stepped directly over my wooden playpen.
I had gotten somewhat accustomed to adults bending down to stare at my infant face, yet it remained an intensely unnerving, deeply weird experience through my tiny baby eyes.
The face currently staring down at me was not one I had seen anytime recently.
He possessed a sharp, regal jawline, a broad, rectangular face structure, and a thick mane of silver-gold hair falling over his forehead.
His features were partially obscured by the dark shadows of the room, making it difficult to discern the exact shade of his eyes, though I was willing to bet my life they were either deep purple or dark indigo.
Standing right above my crib was none other than my noble father, King Aegon I Targaryen, the Conqueror himself.
Reaching down into the pen, Aegon placed his large, heavy hands beneath my armpits and lifted me up awkwardly into the air to take a proper look at my face.
What was with these highborn dragonlords picking me up like a sack of turnips?
Had no one ever taught these people basic infant-handling safety?
Actually, considering this was a brutal medieval society, no one had probably ever written a parenting book on infant care in the first place.
Now that his face was clearly illuminated by the torchlight, I could not help but feel a sudden wave of deep uncertainty.
Aegon was not the invincible, god-like warrior king I had pictured in my mind.
He was physically massive, yes; his shoulders were easily the broadest I had ever seen on a human being, built for wielding heavy steel and riding a titan into battle.
Yet at the exact same time, he looked strikingly meek, worn down, and utterly defeated.
His purple eyes appeared hollowed out and sunken into his skull, surrounded by deep, dark circles of exhaustion.
A dark, unkempt stubble covered his jaw, and new lines of grief were carved into the corners of his mouth.
Aegon the Conqueror looked like a man who had been dragged through the Seven Hells and back again.
Which, historically speaking, was completely accurate.
He had spent the last several years waging a horrific, bloody war of attrition in the scorching deserts of Dorne, losing his beloved sister-wife Rhaenys, her dragon Meraxes, and thousands of loyal soldiers, only to receive a mysterious, soul-crushing letter from Prince Nymor that had brought his entire conquest to a screeching halt.
Eh, what a massive disappointment.
That was a four out of ten first impression at best, unc.
You need to try way harder next time if you want to impress your son.
The King stared at my fat baby face for a long, quiet moment, looking as though he wanted to say something, but ultimately chose silence instead.
He gently lowered me back onto the padded blanket inside my crib, turned on his heel, and walked slowly toward the far corner of the chamber.
I strained my neck to watch where he was going, catching sight of him kneeling beside Aenys’s bed.
Aegon reached out with a soft, affectionate smile, tenderly stroking my elder brother’s silver hair and whispering quiet Valyrian words to him while the boy slept.
He treated Aenys with a gentle, loving warmth that he had not shown me for even a single second.
Unbelievable!
Blatant parental favoritism already?
Well, to be entirely honest, I could not bring myself to give a shit.
I was not an actual, emotionally fragile baby who was going to cry about an absent father or lack of paternal affection.
So long as Aegon stayed out of my way, gave me absolute freedom, and supplied me with enough gold, land, and steel to build my own empire when I grew up, he would be the absolute GOAT father in my book.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Queen Visenya leaning silently against the stone archway of the door.
She was watching Aegon dote on Aenys with an unreadable, stone-cold expression on her face, her jaw set like solid obsidian.
I could not help but wonder what thoughts were racing through her mind as she watched her husband show such tenderness to Rhaenys’s son while ignoring her own newborn babe.
But I was not given time to ponder her marital drama for long, as my mother pushed off the doorway, strode across the chamber, and scooped me up into her leather-armored arms.
“Sīnagon Vēzot King’s Landing,” [We are flying to King’s Landing,] she muttered under her breath in High Valyrian, her voice clipped and cold.
“Bē ēnosa, emilūso qīdītsos hūrenka.” [Beside me, we shall have a fortress of mud.] King’s Landing?
That was the only words that I could make out.
Now that sounded interesting!
If my historical mental timeline was correct, King’s Landing at this point in history was not the massive, foul-smelling metropolis of half a million citizens, cobble streets, and stone septs that it would eventually become.
For now, it was merely a fledgling, chaotic boomtown built around the crude, timber-and-earth walls of the Aegonfort atop Aegon’s High Hill.
To be entirely fair, I would have much preferred to stay in the dark, majestic stone security of Dragonstone, but it made logical strategic sense that the royal family was returning to the mainland now that the bloody war with Dorne had officially ended.
Deep physical exhaustion overtook my infant body not long after, my brain completely drained of energy from all the philosophical thinking and physical rolling.
…
A day later, I was flying through the freezing sea sky once again, strapped securely to Queen Visenya’s leather-armored chest atop Vhagar’s back.
Why in the hell couldn’t these highborn Targaryen dragonlords travel like normal, civilized human beings on luxury sailing ships or comfortable wooden carriages?
Just kidding, of course!
If I possessed a mountain-sized, fire-breathing dragon of my own, I would never set a single foot on the muddy ground to travel like a pathetic, NPC peasant ever again.
The icy sea wind whipped savagely past my baby cheeks as I narrowed my purple eyes with a loud, dramatic huff.
Why did my mother insist on strapping me to the front of her chest plate where every stray gust of wind, sea spray, and bug smacked me directly in the face?
Eh, actually, looking at it from a purely logical perspective, this arrangement was vastly safer.
If she had tied me to her back instead, I might have accidentally slipped out of the leather harness and plunged ten thousand feet to my death without her even noticing until we landed!
Just how ridiculously fast were Targaryen dragons, anyway?
That was the scientific question I had been attempting to calculate for the past hour of flight.
While I had no accurate way of measuring our exact elapsed time because I had fallen fast asleep during our departure from Dragonstone, I was ninety-nine percent certain that dragon travel was infinitely faster than medieval galleys.
It was undeniably the fastest mode of transportation in this entire fantasy world.
At the same time, I severely doubted a dragon could fly anywhere near the cruising speed of a modern commercial airliner.
Or perhaps they could?
It was difficult for my modern brain to gauge proper atmospheric velocity without a speedometer, but I was fairly certain that if Vhagar were moving at five hundred miles per hour, the sheer air pressure would have flattened my baby skull and ripped the skin right off my face.
Anyway, that topic was better left unanalyzed.
It was a universally acknowledged truth among fantasy readers back in my previous life that Georgie was notoriously terrible with his numbers, distances, and wall heights to begin with.
It is known.
As Vhagar tilted her massive bronze wings and began a long, sweeping descent through the grey cloud cover, a far more important geographical sight caught my attention directly below us.
Stretching out along the muddy banks of the Blackwater Rush was the infant settlement of King’s Landing.
The sight was a chaotic, muddy mess.
The fledgling capital looked less like an imperial seat of power and more like a sprawling, filthy war camp that had spiraled completely out of control.
Thousands of crude wooden hovels, leather tents, thatch-roofed taverns, and wattle-and-daub hovels were packed tightly together along narrow, winding dirt tracks that were churning with brown mud, horse dung, and raw sewage.
Dozens of merchant galleys, longships, and fishing smacks were crammed into the docks along the riverbank, their wooden masts looking like a forest of toothpicks from our high vantage point.
Smoke curled lazily into the sky from hundreds of open campfires, forge chimneys, and cook-spits, hanging over the settlement like a thick, greasy haze that smelled faintly of roasted fish, wet wood, and unwashed bodies.
Perched atop the highest hill overlooking the muddy chaotic expanse stood the Aegonfort.
It was a crude, formidable structure, constructed entirely from thick timber logs, earthen ramparts, and heavy wooden palisades, with tall watchtowers bristling with iron spikes.
It lacked the dark, ancient majesty of Dragonstone’s fused black stone, looking more like an oversized frontier fort than a royal palace, but it possessed a raw, martial grandeur nonetheless.
“Vhagar, rybās,” [Vhagar, listen,] Visenya commanded, her voice ringing out like a steel blade as she pulled on the heavy leather reins.
The gargantuan bronze dragon let out a deafening, earth-shaking roar that echoed across the entire bay, sending thousands of birds exploding out of the trees and causing the tiny, ant-like people in the muddy streets below to scatter in sheer terror.
Vhagar banked hard to the left, her massive shadow sweeping across the sprawling timber roofs of the fledgling city as we lined up our landing vector directly toward the wide, muddy outer bailey of the Aegonfort.
I leaned my heavy baby head forward against the leather straps, staring down at the muddy capital of Westeros with a wide, wicked infant grin.
Time to start planning my eventual rise to power.