Chapter Text
Vaedys was not intelligent like Aemond nor charismatic like Aegon nor as well tempered as Helaena nor strong like Daeron. She wasn't soft spoken as her father or shrewd as her mother or nearly as beautiful as her half-sister. The only thing truly special about her was the fact that she had been born into a very special family.
The one thing that she was unequivocally good at was following the rules.
She was awake at exactly the time her mother expected, dressed in exactly the right way. The unbreathable fabric and high stifling collars of her Faith approved dresses always left her feeling caged and uncomfortable and overheated, but she bore it as though it were the softest silk in the Seven Kingdoms. Every hair was laid exactly where it was meant to be, tight braids tied back so as not to show off her luxurious hair. She bathed frequently and smelled of fresh mint, but she wore no rouge or koal on her eyes nor did she stain her lips. She was never late for breakfast, lunch, or supper. She never spoke out of turn at Council meetings or family dinners.
Even if she didn't believe in the Seven like her mother did, Vaedys knew every prayer, could recite every passage of scripture, and knew every tenant of the faith by heart. At her father's behest, she knew the histories of Valyria, could quote several of Aegon the Conquerer's famous dictions (and a few of Visenya's that she learned on her own), and spoke High Valyrian as fluent as Westerosi. She never touched a sword, for that was a man's business, but knew needlecraft, whittling, and weaving expertly.
Modest, pious, pure, and quiet, Vaedys never did anything but exactly what she was told to do.
Her grandfather didn't believe she should be at the Small Council meetings, but Alicent insisted on her presence. The only caveat was that she was not to speak. There were times when she believed she went entire days without speaking, only listening. She heard stories of her half-sister, Rhaenyra, once participating in Small Council meetings when she was Vaedys' age. She'd been a cupbearer and more than once interrupted the men to input her opinion. This was told to Vaedys as a warning, a lesson in how not to behave.
For years, she sat in the same chair and listened to every single thing out of the mouths of those men. They said things that they said which she thought were vile or unsympathetic or downright stupid, and she did not say a word. It wasn't her place to question the will of the king and the lords around her. She doubted that some of the lords in that room even knew what her voice sounded like.
So on one particular day, when her father looked directly toward her, something that he never did if he could avoid it. He was very ill, but still managed to sit amongst the Council. Alicent said that she doubted he'd be able to attend much longer. Vaedys wished she couldn't hear the underlying glee in her mother's voice.
"There is a final matter I wish to discuss," he said, his ailing voice wavering and hoarse. "In regards to my daughter, Vaedys, and her marriage."
The sound of her name on her father's lips made Vaedys perk up. She straightened her spine, her perfectly folded fingers tightening in her lap. It was the mention of her marriage that soured the moment and made her stomach feel tight with discomfort. Ever since she was a young girl, Vaedys had been betrothed to her brother, Aemond. They had been friends, once upon a time, and the thought of marrying didn't used to bother her. But Aemond had grown colder in the years since he lost his eye. He frightened her sometimes. There was a distance between his heart and his eyes and the thought of being tied to him, bound in vow and body, was terrifying.
When the eyes all turned toward her, Vaedys dropped her gaze down to her lap. Her mother was always telling her that she should never try to attract attention, that it was immodest to wear sparkling jewelry or cosmetics that would draw eyes to her. So now, whenever eyes landed on her for whatever reason, Vaedys had this nagging feeling that she had done something wrong.
"I have been on constant communication with my daughter, Rhaenyra-" The way that Viserys said his older daughter's name was very different than how he talked about his other children. Vaedys felt her heart sink. "-and we, in consensus with my wife, have decided to dissolve the engagement between Princess Vaedys and Prince Aemond-"
The ground tilted beneath Vaedys, her lips parting in quiet surprise. The King wasn't looking at her now and neither was her mother. Vaedys' heart began to beat in her chest faster than felt comfortable. She gripped the fabric of her dress, digging her skin into the inside of her lip.
"-in favor of a match between Vaedys and Rhaenyra's oldest son, Jacareys, her heir."
The air was swept out of her lungs and only years of tempering her true emotions kept her from standing and fleeing from the room. Jacaerys? Her nephew? He was nice to her, in a distant yet polite sort of way. But he had spent the last six years in Dragonstone and the last time she had seen him was after Lucerys took Aemond's eye. There had been so much blood and everyone was screaming and Vaedys had been half asleep so she wasn't even sure what was happening. All she'd been told since then was that her nephews were cruel and violent and had been allowed to grow more so because of their proximity to Prince Daemon. This was the man that the King wanted her to marry? Someone violent and cruel? Aemond was cold, but at least she knew that he wouldn't hurt her.
The rest of the council talked around her, but they all seemed to speak through water. Muffled and distant. Vaedys just sat there, feeling like she was dropped in the middle of a tumultuous sea, and she stared at the middle of the table as they decided her fate around her.
"Vaedys, my dear." It was the sound of her name on her father's lips again that drew Vaedys to the surface of her own, personal sea. She looked up at him and the confusion and panic must have showed on her face because he reached his decrepit hand out toward her across the table, even though her grandfather and mother still sat between them. She was unable to let go of her skirts, the anchor in her storm. "Tell me what you're thinking."
By the heat of her mother's stare, she knew what she was supposed to say. Thank you, Your Grace, nod politely, and shut up. She should not voice her concerns or her confusion or the hurt that she hadn't been consulted or informed before the news was shared with the council. Vaedys' hands were shaking so she gripped her skirt even harder, trying to ground herself before she was swallowed whole.
"Aemond is going to be so angry."
She hadn't meant to say it, really. She'd opened her mouth to say Yes, Lord, but all she had managed was the terrifying truth. She knew her brother and she knew that he was not going to take any of this without seeing it as a slight. Even with her nephews living across the sea, Aemond was in constant competition with them. For them to break his engagement with her only to give her over to Jacaerys? Vaedys couldn't imagine the outrage or the subsequent fallout.
Alicent reached toward her and took Vaedys' hand. It may have been an attempt at comfort, but Alicent's nails dug into her wrist and Vaedys saw it for what it was. She was losing her composure and she could not risk that here, now, with all these eyes staring at her. She had to prove that she was stronger than that, for her sake and because Alicent had vouched for her constitution. Vaedys swallowed and clenched her jaw, trying to relax the tension in her hands.
"I will speak with him, dear," King Viserys said before leaning back in his chair, clearly exhausted from the day's proceedings.
When she hesitated to respond, her head still hazy with shock, Alicent gripped her hand even tighter. It was a firm enough command that Vaedys finally managed to speak again.
"Yes, Lord King. Thank you."
Her voice was weak and strained, but she knew the words that she was expected to say. They slipped off of her tongue with all the ease of water through a stream. Her practiced politeness was separated from her true feelings, although there was no doubt she was not pleased with this change.
She sat and listened to the rest of the lords add their input to her life, her engagement, her marriage, her new husband-to-be. She tried to listen, to engage silently with what they were saying. It was a good decision. It would bridge the gap between the two halves of the family that were steadily growing farther apart. A child would ensure the continuation of a pure Targaryen bloodline. She would make a dutiful wife and queen.
It wasn't until her father began to cough, violently, that Vaedys finally managed to rip herself out of the whirlpool of spiraling thoughts and feelings. It was something to do, someone to help. She stood from her chair and rushed toward the serving table, where she poured him a goblet of wine and grabbed a napkin. She was by his side in moments, dabbing the spittle from his mouth before lifting the rim of the goblet to his lips. The lords in the room pretended not to see the King's sickness, turning their gazes away. Alicent put her face in her hands and Otto simply pressed his lips into a fine line and stared at his hands.
When the king finally stopped heaving, Vaedys fixed his mask over the worse side of his face and set the wine down in front of him.
"Thank you, dear," he wheezed, patting her hand weakly. "You're a good girl, Rhaenyra."
Vaedys sucked in a breath between her lips and nodded once, forcing a smile onto her mouth. The room was rife with discomfort, no one willing to acknowledge either the king's sickness or his forgetting which white-haired daughter stood beside him. There was a pinprick of bitterness, sharp and momentary, right into the center of her heart. All these years as he got sicker and sicker, Vaedys had been there. She didn't hide from him like her other siblings. She didn't run off to Dragonstone. She had remained by his side in the worst of times, and yet all he could think of was his precious Rhaenyra.
Then she reminded herself that he was a sick man. An old and sick man who only had small moments of clarity. He had remembered who she was earlier, which was more than she had received from her father in months. So, she released her bitterness with a breath, like she always did. Resentment would only make her wrinkle early. That was what her mother said, at least. Vaedys leaned down and pressed a kiss against his forehead.
"Thank you, Lord King."
Otto stood, his chair scraping over the stone floor in a way that made Vaedys' skin crawl.
"The King needs his rest," Otto said, speaking as the Hand of the King and the father of the Queen. Not for the first time, Vaedys wondered how it was that a mere Lord became the most powerful man in the Seven Kingdoms. "We can reconvene on the morrow."
Vaedys and Alicent helped Viserys back to his chambers, his body so weak now that walking became almost more than he could manage. He was heavy and half asleep, clearly no longer present as he murmured something about Aemma, something about a dragon, and something about his father.
"Rhaenyra and her family will be coming for the King's birthday in a few months," Alicent told Vaedys, speaking over Viserys' incoherent rambling. "Your wedding will be announced then."
"Wedding?"
"Of course, dear." The tension in Alicent's voice told Vaedys that she'd irritated her mother during the meeting. That her response to the news had been unacceptable. "Rhaenyra and I believe it would be best to not extend the betrothal period any longer than necessary."
Vaedys gripped her father's arm harder and she truly hoped that she wasn't hurting him, but she needed something to hold onto. A few months before the announcement and only a few months after that, she would be married. To Jacaerys Velaryon who had attacked her brother and participating in the maiming of his face. Who was, as Aemond and Aegon said, a bastard. Who had a tendency toward violence and cruelty. Her mother was selling her to that man so that the family didn't consume itself. Within the year, Vaedys would be a wife and then soon a mother and then, at some point, a queen.
Taking it all in at once was almost more than she could bare.
"Will...will you tell Aemond?" she asked, trying to swallow her anxiety.
Alicent's hesitation to respond only validated the fear that was eating at Vaedys' gut. Her mother was just as worried about Aemond's reaction as she was.
"Yes, I will tell him. When the time is right."
That did nothing to quell the uncertainty that Vaedys felt. It was just another secret that she would have to hold inside of her without letting anyone see through the cracks. Cracks that she wasn't supposed to have. Cracks that she was desperate to cover up.
"Yes, Mother."
It was the only response she was capable of giving in that moment. She remained silent all the way back to the king's chambers. Alicent told her a few more logistics about the engagement, wedding arrangements, expectations for a couple going through the courting phase, but Vaedys was only half listening. She and her mother helped Viserys back into his bed, drawing the blankets up over his arms as Alicent closed the curtains. Alicent would sit there with him while Vaedys went out to engage in some of her daily duties, but she did it all feeling like she was walking through quicksand.
She spent her day doing her damndest to avoid Aemond. They'd already done their daily walk, so all she really had to do was avoid all of the places she knew he frequented and similarly avoid all the places that she knew he'd look for her. The weight in her chest every time she rounded a corner was almost debilitating and by the time she reached her room at the end of the day, she truly couldn't remember a time that she had been more exhausted. Even behind the safety of her closed door, she was still on edge, because there were times when Aemond came to talk to her, to sit with her and drink a glass of wine, to sleep on her settee on nights when he was especially unsettled. It wasn't often, but it happened, and maybe that night would be one of those nights.
Vaedys paced around her room for an hour before she finally caved and locked her door. She backed away from the door like it was an assailant with a weapon and not a piece of wood. When she finally managed to crawl into bed, all she could do was clutch the blankets to her chest and stare up at the ceiling.
Aemond would be angry. Jacaerys was violent. She would be a wife in less than a year. She had to have a child to keep the family from ripping itself to shreds. Wasn't Jacaerys also betrothed? What were they going to do about Baela? Oh, gods, Baela was going to hate her. She never had the best relationship with her cousins, despite the desire to connect with them. They responded to her letters, but there was never any true kinship like she desired. Taking Baela's husband-to-be was just going to strain that relationship even more, if not leave it completely destroyed. She was close enough with Aemond, despite his aloofness, that the marriage bed wasn't so daunting. But with Jacaerys...he'd laugh at her, wouldn't he? He'd probably be disgusting by her and-
She fell asleep with that whirlpool of thoughts consuming her mind. Her pulse, that had started racing in the Small Council, never settled, not even in her sleep.