“Since Aegon the Conqueror, faith belongs to the Seven, honor on earth to the king, and the crown is forged in blood and fire.” It was the height of spring, April, when all things stirred and the grass lay green and lush.
A towering fortress crowned the rolling hills, a monument that had witnessed the rise of a dynasty.
Princes and lords, knights and counts had all walked its halls, their footsteps shaping the fate of this land.
Its name was the Red Keep, perched at the heart of Westeros’s political center: King’s Landing.
King’s Landing was a city of the eastern seaboard.
From its shores, one could sail east to Dragonstone, that jagged, volcanic island that served as the ancestral seat of House Targaryen.
Within the Red Keep’s gardens, a silver-haired maiden sat slumped beneath a heart tree, her eyes half-lidded as though drifting through an idle afternoon nap.
A red leaf spiraled down, landing on the open pages of her book.
The pale hand resting on the text betrayed a mind far from rest.
So it’s really over.
I can’t go back.
The soul within this young body was no longer the same.
She had been a university graduate, brimming with excitement for the life ahead, until fate cruelly dragged her into this world.
“Ah.” The girl sighed, her face expressionless.
She had seen the hit series House of the Dragon, of course, and had even read the author’s original novels.
What could she say?
The protagonist she had been thrust into, Rhaenyra, the “Realm’s Delight,” was no simple figure.
As the king’s firstborn daughter, Rhaenyra would one day wage war against her half-brother Aegon II for dominion over the Seven Kingdoms.
And in the end?
She would be betrayed by her own, fed to a dragon by the very brother she fought.
How did she lose so completely?
The original Rhaenyra was hardly a saint.
When she took King’s Landing, she ruled with heavy taxes and cruelty, squandering the people’s goodwill.
She mishandled the great houses at every turn, and a string of disastrous decisions sealed her fate.
Her brother Aegon, for his part, was no better, a tyrant in his own right.
Together, the Blacks, Rhaenyra’s faction, and the Greens, Aegon’s faction, plunged the realm into an age of slaughter known as the Dance of the Dragons.
It was the beginning of the end for House Targaryen.
The dragons dwindled and died, until only Daenerys, the Mother of Dragons from the tales of a later age, would hatch the last three from stone eggs in the red wastes.
But that was still centuries away.
Now, Rhaenyra was the eldest child of King Viserys.
Her mother had fallen ill not long ago, and though they had tried to keep it from her, Rhaenyra already knew the truth.
The queen had died in childbirth, and the baby brother she had tried so desperately to bring into the world had perished in his swaddling clothes.
All because the kingdom demanded an heir, and of all the children born to the king and queen, only Rhaenyra had survived.
At this very moment, the king and the Hand of the King, Lord Otto Hightower, were conferring in the Red Keep.
Their subject: Prince Daemon Targaryen’s treasonous provocations.
And the matter of succession.
Rhaenyra finally gave up on returning to her own world.
From the first panicked moments of her arrival, she had slowly clawed her way to something resembling calm, though the grief still shimmered in her violet eyes.
“Gods.
What a nightmare of a starting hand.” Her uncle Daemon.
Her closest friend, who would one day become her enemy.
Oldtown.
House Hightower.
The half-brother not yet born who would destroy her.
Ser Criston Cole, the knight who would turn his cloak.
Endless plots, endless schemers.
The hatred of her own subjects.
Honestly, she had no real allies.
Everyone around her was waiting to stab her in the back.
Even the dragonseeds she would later try to win over, sons of bastards and minor lords, would abandon her the moment they mounted their dragons.
The garden smelled of flowers and warm earth.
Sunlight trickled lazily through the branches overhead.
Rhaenyra exhaled softly.
Yet she did not let despair consume her.
I am here now.
And I have time.
Time to change my fate and avoid becoming dragon-fodder.
Besides, this world, this Westeros, still hummed with the power of the old gods.
The age of magic had not yet faded, and the great beasts of House Targaryen were not the only wonders in the land.
But why had no divine miracle revealed itself in living memory, save for the dragons?
Perhaps the shadows in the Red Keep had already begun to stir.
The old gods whispered in the dark, and no one had the wit to listen.
Too many secrets.
Rhaenyra’s fingers traced the book in her lap, a journal belonging to Septon Barth, the most trusted Hand of her grandfather, the Old King Jaehaerys.
It chronicled the significant events of House Targaryen, but between the lines, Rhaenyra had begun to sense something else.
Something lurking beneath the Iron Throne.
The maesters.
In the chronicles of old, historians had mastered the art of writing between the lines, veiled criticism hidden in glowing praise.
And here, in this age, though nobles held titles and lands, the maesters held the reins of governance.
Without them, the lords’ domains would fall apart.
A maester could manage ravens, oversee accounts, compound medicines, and advise on countless other matters.
Lords depended on them utterly.
But was that truly wise?
She thought of the great families of history, how noble houses had always been the ones to topple dynasties, to choose kings and unmake them.
Here in Westeros, it was no different.
Second sons, even firstborn heirs, frequently joined the Citadel.
In some cases, princes themselves had become maesters.
Vaegon the Dragonless came to mind.
Any king with a shred of ambition would find it impossible to sleep soundly in King’s Landing.
Worse still, the Citadel’s power was controlled by a single family: House Hightower of Oldtown, the very house of her future rival, the queen who would replace her mother.
And the rumor mill would favor them, always.
The maesters controlled not only knowledge, but how it was spread.
Rhaenyra closed her eyes.
This was something her predecessor had never truly grasped.
The pen is mightier than the sword.
And the Hightowers held both.
She would need to change that.
But first things first.
For now, King’s Landing was still under the watch of her uncle, Daemon Targaryen, and her father was furious about it.
A Targaryen with a dragon was a Targaryen in truth.
But dragons, and their riders, were not all equal.
That much was common knowledge.
The man on the Iron Throne was a gentle, easygoing king.
They called him the Prince of Summer, fond of music, tourneys, and celebration.
His brother, Daemon Targaryen, rode the blood-red dragon Caraxes.
He was handsome, bold, and fierce.
But the Hand despised him, and so he had been shuffled from post to post until he had finally been named Commander of the City Watch.
Now he led two thousand Gold Cloaks through the streets of King’s Landing, meting out harsh justice: hands for thieves, feet for criminals.
Some called him the Prince of the City.
Others whispered a darker name: the Lord of Flea Bottom, king of brothels and gambling dens.
And his elder brother was currently roaring about him.
Word had come from the Gold Cloaks.
Daemon, on the very night the queen’s body grew cold, had drunk himself senseless in a brothel and toasted his dead nephew, the infant prince, as the “Heir for a Day.” “Treacherous wretch!” King Viserys slammed his fist against the table, coughing with rage.
“That ungrateful bastard.
I am his brother.
And this is how he honors his blood?
His own nephew?” Beside him, Otto Hightower watched the king’s fury with narrowed eyes.
“Prince Daemon has shown nothing but contempt for the Iron Throne, Your Grace.
His ambitions are plain.
You must act.” The winds of succession were already howling through King’s Landing.
Otto had not yet offered his own daughter to the widowed king as his second queen, but his mind was already set on Rhaenyra as heir.
Better the Realm’s Delight than the rogue prince.
In Otto’s calculation, Daemon Targaryen was Maegor the Cruel reborn, and Rhaenyra, however flawed, was far preferable.
Viserys heaved another racking cough, then turned to the corner of the room where a member of the Kingsguard stood in vigil.
“Cole.
Find Rhaenyra.
She has been sulking these past days.
Bring her to me.” A pause.
He amended his words.
“No.
On second thought, go protect her.
Stay by her side.” “Yes, Your Grace.” The white knight bowed and withdrew from the dim chamber, his footsteps fading into silence.