Chapter Text
Alicent Hightower was a child of sin, as all men of the realm were. She was born with shoulders burdened under the heavy scrutiny of the gods, and she never questioned it. For faith promised salvation, and men could not be saved without being the obedient servants to such holy powers.
“ The gods are a most impetuous and capricious audience,” said her father, Otto, when she was a smaller, more fickle thing. “That is why we must cleave to a life of honor and humility. Let principle guide the path you walk.”
Perhaps he knew it then – perhaps he spotted the festering sickness in his daughter at such a young age. Perhaps he could have saved her.
Alicent is four-and-ten. Her mother is three months buried, and she had been living in the Red Keep with her father, the Hand of the King, since her passing. Alicent’s adjustment to a starkly new reality is approximate to an arduous labor — stalled, and violent.
She is despondent. Destitute. Alone.
And then she met Rhaenyra Targaryen. The untamable, daring, inquisitive princess. The roaring hearthfire in Alicent’s once-shadowed heart.
Weeks crawl into months, and then:
Alicent is five-and-ten, and the castle walls echo with laughter, and she has a best friend.
Alicent’s days are plump with joy, conversation, and adventure shared between herself and Rhaenyra. She revels in the covenant of girlhood: ‘you are not my blood but I will spill mine for you anyway, sister of heart and soul’.
Rhaenyra was but a few months younger than Alicent, who was now a newly-appointed lady in waiting for The Realm’s Delight. And a delight she truly was; to listen to, to watch. Rhaenyra was ever the enigmatic performer. A natural, without a thought to spare to her audience. She was effortless, and with Alicent by her side, she was never short of an admiring gaze.
Rhaenyra is as wild as the golden beast that she rides. Her hair is long and often tangled, blown haphazardly along her brow bone and across the tips of her ears. She detests bathing, and chews her mutton with her mouth open, and spends more time in the air than on the ground.
Alicent looks upon her, and within Rhaenyra, sees her most favored daydream. Rhaenyra makes her laugh. Rhaenyra makes her swoon. Rhaenyra makes her sigh. Rhaenyra is all that she wants, and all that she could never have, and all whom she could never be.
Yes, perhaps Otto knew it then, far before Alicent herself did. Perhaps he saw it in the way Alicent looked at her, the way she recoiled under the Princess’s touch: his daughter was corrupt, and unclean, and broken. Sin ran to her marrow. Sin that could not be expunged.
Alicent had wiped the Princess’s tears herself with tender thumb-swipes when Aemma was butchered. It was said that the late Queen’s blood had soaked deeply into the wooden bed frame, and rotted away at all where it had touched. The King ordered it burned, and commissioned an iron one built in its stead.
And then she was burned, too, in dragon’s fire, and the white-hot hubris of House Targaryen. The infant Baelon burned with her – forever warm, forever safe.
Rhaenyra had never cried in front of Alicent before. Alicent hadn’t known it was possible for someone so perfect as she until it happened.
Alicent felt helpless – she did not know how to comfort her. She was not raised tenderly, except by one person. Her thoughts plummeted to the distant warmth of youth, and she contemplates the memory of Alyrie Florent. Her gentle touch, her soft words, her loving embrace.
Tentatively, she pulls Rhaenyra to herself, flush to her body, and cradles her like a babe. Or at least, how she thinks one would be cradled. Rhaenyra chokes out a sob, barely audible, and clutches the collar of Alicent’s dress. Her coiled fingers claw mindlessly at Alicent’s collarbone as Rhaenyra steadies herself against her.
Alicent did not cry like this when her own mother had passed. She could not afford to be so vulnerable then – she had no pillar to lean on, not in the way Rhaenyra clung to her now. Her stomach churns; her eyes squeeze shut.
You have me, she thinks. It is my duty to support you. I will protect you.
“I am here,” Alicent murmurs. “Always.”
Rhaenyra buries herself into Alicent. Rhaenyra was a pointed weapon, and yet softness came to her so easily, so naturally.
Alicent lives in that moment for days and nights on end.
Months pass, and Rhaenyra is betrayed, and Alicent is alone again.
As Viserys announces his betrothal to Alicent to his small council, everyone and everything else is background noise to Alicent. She was prey in her darling Rhaenyra’s predator eyes – oath-breaker, traitor, words that needed not be spoken for Alicent to hear them . Alicent cannot bear the violence in her stare, and looks to the floor instead.
Later, in the privacy of her quarters, Alicent petitions for the Princess’s understanding and forgiveness. She reaches for Rhaenyra, who pulls away sharply, lip furled back to spit her insult: “Whore.”
They do not speak until the wedding day. Rhaenyra bursts into the Queen’s room with a certain confidence – this was always Aemma’s room, after all. She sends the handmaidens from the room and aids Alicent herself in readying for the royal event.
Rhaenyra’s hands are not experienced like a lady-in-waiting’s, and she fumbles with the fasteners on the waist of Alicent’s gown. Alicent wants to reach for her and guide her hand, but she instead lets the Princess navigate for herself.
I wish you would explore me forever, Alicent thinks.
As if she read Alicent's sin-laden thoughts -- “You look beautiful.” Rhaenyra croaks out, and Alicent shifts, slightly startled. Their eyes meet in the mirror. Heartache hangs in the air, a thick and palpable cloud of smoke.
The wedding stretches treacherously on, and Alicent drowns herself in wine to prepare herself for the impending consummation. Her mind falls to what Rhaenyra had called her just weeks before – “Whore” . So much venom in her words as she spoke, with teeth bared like a serpent.
Alicent flinches at the thought, and holds back bile. She dwells on it when Viserys climbs on her later that night.
Her mind stays on Rhaenyra, where she tries to find some comfort – her mind paints a picture of the Princess’s face, scrunched up and ugly and wrinkled back into a snarl. Her anguish and rage look so similar, she thinks. And what of the faces she makes in pleasure? And what sounds, I wonder?
The scenery within her thoughts crumbles to ash when Viserys grunts in her ear.
Queen Alicent would never take a woman, for duty had not decreed it to be so – for her faith abhorred it, and the Gods were always watching.
Her memory is wounded, and she cannot think of Rhaenyra without drawing blood. The two girls let months pass by and share no words.
Alicent speaks to her growing belly, instead. She imagines a daughter. Silver-haired, gentle, and beautiful. She imagines a friend.
The birth of Alicent’s first son is, in a word, perilous.
He stays within the Queen’s belly for longer than the maesters, much less the Queen herself, were comfortable with. The tardiness of the birth is one thing – the act itself is a separate strife.
He comes out feet-first and fighting, and Alicent howls in agony when she feels herself tear like ripened fig-flesh.
There is a murmur of confusion from one of the maester’s apprentices when the babe takes his first breaths and sounds his first cries. Alicent, through all of her pain-wrought delirium, knows something is wrong.
“What, what is it?” The words drag out of her throat, which is raw from screaming. Her head lolls back onto the pillow as her sweat-slicked brow is dabbled with a towel by one of her handmaidens.
Indistinct murmurs were the only response she received. She tries to repeat herself, but instead mumbles breathlessly and incoherently. Her heart thuds with panic, and her head rouses in time to see her husband, standing at the foot of the bed.
“A healthy boy!” Viserys declares, elated. “I have a son!”
The room rings out in scattered applause and low cheers from the maesters and midwives. Alicent’s head falls back onto the pillow, satisfied. She is dizzy, and someone is speaking too loudly in her ear about the afterbirth, but she is not listening.
“Where is he?” She mumbles.
Viserys has his back to her.
Alicent gathers the strength to prop herself up on her elbows, grunting with effort, and repeats herself. “Where’s my son?”
Viserys turns, and she sees him in his arms. Flailing, wailing. He hands him to her, and she reaches languidly. “His name will be Aegon,” The king says to her, softly, through a beaming smile.
She holds him. It is unfamiliar. His head lays awkwardly against her, and one of the maesters gently moves Alicent’s arm, suggesting it to a more suitable position. She has never held a babe before. She had practiced with dollies in girlhood, which felt but only a moment ago in her life.
Alicent is seven-and-ten, and she is terrified.
But when she looks to her son, bleating like a newborn lamb, Alicent feels the gash of her lacerated heart at last begin to clot.
He is brown-haired, and dark-eyed. He has the beauty of his mother, and none of his namesake.
Alicent takes it as a sign from the gods: her gift, her son, proof that Alicent could make something good. He is her redemption. He is her hero. He is salvation.
“He shall be named Aegon, after the conqueror!” Viserys celebrates loudly from somewhere in the room. To Alicent, everyone was leagues away; in this moment, it was only her, and her son.
You have conquered my heart, she thinks as she holds him. My Aegon. My love.
Rhaenyra successfully evades her newborn brother for two days after his birth. She leaves the Red Keep well into the deep hours of Alicent’s labors, in the hour of the owl, on the back of her dragon.
When she at last returns, the dragonkeepers have a fat sheep, freshly slaughtered and ready for Syrax’s consumption. The famished beast consumes one of the keepers with it.
Rhaenyra is dragged into the King’s quarters by Ser Harrold. Her violet eyes are wild and pierce her father with an indignant glare. Soot is smeared on her face, and her silver tresses are frizzed and windswept. She stands before Viserys, who is incensed.
“I’ve only come back because Syrax was hungry,” Rhaenyra declares, raising her chin. She does not seem to notice Alicent curled on a seat in the corner of the room.
“So, I have a brother now?” Rhaenyra looks up at her father, her expression uninterested, inconvenienced, even. But her eyes are like fire and Alicent can sense her contempt from where she sat.
Rhaenyra's face is smug. For a moment, Viserys looks as though he could erupt. But then his face softens, and his hands furl and unfurl in and out of fists.
“Yes, you do. He is healthy, and strong, as is the Queen.” His arm extends outward, and Rhaenyra follows its movement, visibly startled when her eyes fall on Alicent. Her purple gaze drags downward to the bundle in her arms. Alicent looks down to Aegon as she feels Rhaenyra's eyes gore through her heart.
“His name is Aegon,” Viserys nods at his firstborn child, encouraging her to investigate. Rhaenyra tosses her father a long glance as she shuffles closer to Alicent, her eyes narrow as if in disapproval, or perhaps analytically. She looks down at the infant, studying him. She stands a considerable distance from Alicent, still.
"You can approach," Alicent says, lowly. Rhaenyra does not acknowledge this invitation.
The Princess does not say the obvious as she stares at Aegon. Instead, she smirks briefly.
“Congratulations, Father. Step-mother.” She says bitterly. Rhaenyra turns on her heel and leaves, pushing past Ser Harrold with purposeful force. The door slams behind her with a thunderous sound, and Aegon begins to cry.
Alicent exhales sharply, rocking the fussing infant to the best of her ability. Ser Harrold trails after Rhaenyra, and Viserys simply sighs.
"Give her time," The king says. "She is young."
Time. Time was something that the gods had not granted her to share with Rhaenyra.
"As am I." Alicent replies, staring at her weeping babe.