In AC 103, Jaehaerys I, the Old King, the fourth Targaryen king, passed away.
His throne was decided by the lords and people of the Seven Kingdoms, who chose Viserys, the eldest son of the late heir Baelon, to succeed him.
Viserys was a male heir, but a king of weak character.
Now, the fifth king of House Targaryen was facing a similar choice.
…
AC 111.
Oldtown, the Great Sept of the Seven.
“Great Father, in Your boundless mercy, forgive this devout servant before You.
Pardon him for the sins he has committed!”
As he spoke, the High Septon closed the Seven-Pointed Star in his hands.
He took a cup from a tray held by a nearby septa and poured the morning dew it contained over the head of the golden-and-silver-haired boy kneeling before him.
“May the Seven bless us.”
There was not the slightest trace of joy in the boy’s voice.
As always, he offered his thanks in a low, emotionless tone.
His name was Baelon Targaryen, eldest son of Viserys I Targaryen, the fifth king of the Targaryen dynasty and lord of the Iron Throne.
The moment he was born, his mother and queen, Aemma Arryn, died during the attempted childbirth.
As a result, the newborn crown prince had spent much of his young life trapped in a strange state between sleep and wakefulness, more corpse than living child.
Desperate to save his long-awaited heir, King Viserys summoned maesters from across the realm.
Yet no matter what they tried, nothing could restore the prince to normal.
In the end, the High Septon himself came to King’s Landing.
After performing a series of mysterious prayers, he declared that the prince had been cursed by the seven.
The only hope of waking him, he claimed, was to send the child away from King’s Landing at once and have him perform penance at the Great Sept of the Seven in Oldtown.
King Viserys naturally refused to believe such foolishness.
But his long-awaited firstborn remained asleep day after day, and sooner or later, the boy would surely die.
With no other choice, the king sent his eldest son to Oldtown before the babe had even seen his first moon turn full.
Under the rituals of the Seven’s faithful, the prince actually awakened.
From that moment onward, the king came to believe that his son truly had been cursed by the gods.
He allowed the Seven’s servants to give the boy the name Baelon and left him in Oldtown, sending letters only from time to time to inquire after his condition.
He dared not interfere too much with his eldest son’s sacred penance.
…
…
When his morning penance was finally over, Baelon Targaryen returned to the sept where he was confined, assisted by Maester Orwyle.
“Maester Orwyle, do you believe I truly was cursed by the gods all those years ago?
Is that why I woke?”
Baelon slowly turned his head.
Beneath the heavy dark circles around his eyes, an undisguised killing intent flickered.
As the Grand Maester personally appointed by Prince Baelon and one of his most trusted confidants, Orwyle dared not conceal anything from him.
After carefully avoiding the eyes and ears of House Hightower, he slowly shook his head.
“As expected.
My condition has everything to do with House Hightower.”
Baelon smiled without the slightest hint of surprise.
Because there were simply too many coincidences.
It was quite the coincidence that only three months after he had been sent to Oldtown, Otto Hightower’s daughter, Alicent, became his father’s queen.
It was quite the coincidence that Baelon awakened with the Seven’s supposed help only after Alicent Hightower became queen.
And it was quite the coincidence that House Hightower had secretly intercepted Viserys’s letters to him from King’s Landing time and time again, thoughtfully replying to them in the king’s place.
“Prince Baelon, what matters most right now is that you recover your health,” Maester Orwyle advised.
“I know.”
Baelon nodded.
More than returning to King’s Landing as quickly as possible, what troubled him these days was the fact that he could no longer sleep peacefully.
He did not know when it had begun, but strange fragments constantly appeared in his dreams.
There were wars.
There was trade.
But most of all, there was a dragon so enormous that its size defied imagination.
It breathed green dragonflame, devoured the corpses of its own kind, and then, in the end, opened its enormous jaws and swallowed him—the helpless observer—whole…
“Maester Orwyle, tell me.
What is the situation in King’s Landing?”
Baelon rubbed his head before asking the question.
Though he spent his days in Oldtown performing penance before the Seven, he was far from ignorant of what was happening in King’s Landing.
He kept himself informed about the great lords of the realm, the various regions, and the wars that threatened to reshape the Seven Kingdoms.
Maester Orwyle thought for a moment before summarizing the three matters most worthy of attention.
“First, the war in the Stepstones has erupted once more.
Prince Daemon and the fleet of House Velaryon are fighting the Triarchy with everything they have.”
“Second, Queen Alicent and Otto Hightower are working together with the great lords of the Seven Kingdoms, attempting to make the king’s second son, Aegon Targaryen, the heir to the realm.”
At the mention of the succession, Baelon could not help laughing.
“What?
I haven’t even died yet, and they’re already so eager to put their own blood on the Iron Throne?
They must be tired of living.”
Maester Orwyle’s fingers clenched involuntarily.
A chill ran down his spine.
He knew better than anyone that this 6-year-old crown prince, who appeared so frail that a strong wind might blow him away, was nothing like the “Sleeping Dragon” of the rumors.
He was a boy who had once taken a dagger into his own hands in the dead of night, stabbed a Hightower who had dared to speak too cleverly for his liking, cut off the man’s head, and thrown it into the woods outside Oldtown.
“Third, the king will hold a royal hunt seven days from now.”
After finishing his report, Maester Orwyle lowered his head and respectfully said, “Prince Baelon, this royal hunt will be an excellent opportunity for you to return to King’s Landing.”
Baelon gave a quiet laugh.
“If that is so, Maester Orwyle, I have a favor to ask.
Write two letters for me.
Tell my sister that her dear little brother misses her, and ask her to mount her dragon and come to Oldtown.”
“It would be my honor, Prince.”
Orwyle slowly rose and left the sept.
Soon, the only person remaining inside was Prince Baelon, kneeling before the statues of the Seven, accompanied by the tolling of a bell that rang once every fifteen minutes.
Baelon remembered very clearly who had given him that bell as a gift for his penance before the Seven.
The current head of House Hightower, Lord Ormund Hightower.
Heh.
How thoughtful of them.
…
When his morning penance ended, a group of septas brought Prince Baelon his midday meal.
A few slices of bread, an egg, some boiled vegetables, and half a smoked pork sausage.
That was his simple lunch.
It had almost no flavor, but it was still better than the bread and vegetables he had been given at the beginning.
At least, that was what Baelon told himself.
He added the egg, vegetables, and pork sausage to the bread, then began eating at an unhurried pace.
“Prince Baelon, eating meat before the Seven is a grave act of disrespect.
It may shorten what little life you have left.”
Lord Ormund Hightower slowly entered through the great doors, his tone carrying the same concerned warning he always seemed so eager to offer.
“Maester Orwyle examined my health and determined that going without meat for too long would affect my ability to perform penance before the Seven.
He therefore petitioned King’s Landing and obtained special permission for me to eat meat.”
Baelon calmly swallowed his food before wiping his mouth.
His expression became unreadable as he looked toward Ormund Hightower.
“Or is it the opinion of House Hightower that the health and life of a prince are far less important than his penance before the Seven?”
Baelon deliberately paused.
Then, with an expression of profound regret, he continued, “If that is the case, perhaps I should write a letter to my father in King’s Landing and ask him to withdraw his order permitting me to eat meat.”
Author’s Note:
This is about the Baelon’s Dragon Dreams:
What troubled Baelon these days was the fact that he could no longer sleep peacefully.
His dreams had changed.
At first, they had been nothing more than strange, fragmented visions—brief flashes of places he had never seen, people whose names he did not know, and voices speaking languages that should have been dead for thousands of years.
But as the years passed, the dreams became longer.
Far longer.
A single night in the waking world could feel like weeks within those visions.
Sometimes months.
Sometimes years.
Baelon had watched kingdoms rise and fall beneath skies filled with dragons.
He had walked through cities built from black stone and towering fused structures that seemed impossible even to imagine.
He had stood upon the smoking slopes of the Fourteen Flames and gazed across the vast cities of Old Valyria before the Doom had ever reduced them to ash.
He had seen dragonlords dressed in strange garments, merchants bargaining over treasures from distant lands, slaves marching beneath the banners of powerful families, and armies disappearing beneath clouds of dragonfire.
He had seen creatures that no maester’s book had ever properly described—great beasts sleeping beneath volcanic mountains, monsters moving through black seas, winged things that were neither dragons nor birds, and shadows that seemed to possess minds of their own.
And, more often than anything else, he saw dragons.
Countless dragons.
Young dragons.
Ancient dragons.
Dragons larger than castles, and creatures so old that even their scales appeared to have become part of the mountains themselves.
Sometimes Baelon was merely an observer.
Sometimes, within those dreams, he seemed to live entire lives.
He had learned languages he had never been taught.
He had watched men negotiate wars and kingdoms.
He had seen merchants build fortunes large enough to purchase armies.
He had witnessed betrayals, assassinations, marriages, rebellions, and the countless small decisions that could determine the fate of entire families.
Years passed within those dreams.
Decades, perhaps.
Yet whenever Baelon finally awakened, he was always the same boy lying in the Great Sept of Oldtown.
Six years old.
Small.
With frailty still clinging to his body.
It was a strange feeling.
His mind had been shaped by the countless things he had witnessed in his dreams.
Decades of memories—wars, betrayals, kingdoms rising and falling, and the lives of people long dead—had forced his thoughts to mature far beyond those of an ordinary child.
In many ways, Baelon thought and acted like an adult.
Yet that maturity existed only within his mind.
His body was still that of a six-year-old boy, and beneath all the knowledge and experience those impossible dreams had given him, his heart remained painfully young.
He still missed his sister.
He still longed for his father’s attention.
He still felt anger, fear, loneliness, and happiness with the overwhelming intensity of a child.
His mind had grown old in dreams.
And sometimes, after waking from particularly terrible dreams, Baelon would lie silently beneath his blankets and wish that someone would simply stay beside him until he fell asleep again.
But when morning came, those weaknesses disappeared behind the cold expression of Prince Baelon Targaryen.
Because there was one dream that returned to him more often than all the others.
A dragon.
A dragon so enormous that its size defied imagination.
It breathed green dragonflame, devoured the corpses of its own kind, and then, in the end, opened its enormous jaws and swallowed him—the helpless observer—whole.
Every time Baelon woke from that nightmare, his entire body would be drenched in cold sweat.
And every time, he remembered one terrifying certainty.
Whatever he had seen in those dreams was not merely imagination.
It was memory.
[In this fanfiction, Baelon and Helaena Targaryen think and behave like adults because of their dragon dreams, even though they are still single-digit in age during the initial chapters.]