Chapter Text
i.
Valla is eight years old the first time she speaks the words her father has been dreading.
"Why does Grandfather talk about Matarys as your heir?"
Baelor is a great warrior, a great politician, heir to the Iron Throne and mayhaps the most unpopular man in Westeros, in certain circles. He is a good brother, a good husband, and, he hopes, a good father, but in this, he feels helpless.
"North of the marches," he says slowly, "women are not allowed to inherit things like crowns, my sweet."
Valla, sitting on his lap with a circlet of white gold and pale amethysts holding back her two-toned hair from her narrow little face, seems to consider this, furrowing her brow and taps her fingers against her chin, looking so much older than her scant few years, looking so much like Baelor's lady mother, like his long-gone and hard-missed grandmother.
"I think that Grandmother would dislike that," Valla says firmly, as though that settles any argument Baelor might set forth. For Valla, he supposes that it does - the only person his daughter loves more than Mariah Martell is Jena Dondarrion, and maybe her brother, and Baelor cannot fault her taste.
Grandmother and Jena's word tends to be law, in Valla's simple world, even against his own or his father's. Matarys, who is six, and the sweetest child to have ever lived, tends to believe near anything he is told by anyone save for his cousin Aerion.
Why does Grandfather talk about Matarys as your heir?
Because the world is unjust, and had Daeron Targaryen's first grandchild been a boy and not a girl, that child would be hailed as a bright future for House Targaryen.
Instead, Valla is a princess, and nothing else, and promised to the second child of the Lady of Godsgrace, a handsome boy two years her senior by the name of Prospero, of all things, and will have no crown.
Not with the law as it is, anyways.
ii.
Matarys is the one who helps Valla disguise herself as a boy, so she might join the hunt. He is eight and she is ten now, both tall and strong with their mother's long limbs and Baelor's own broad shoulders, and it is easy to pass Valla off as a boy, especially when the fashion is for boys to wear their hair long.
In clothes stolen from Jena does not know where, with her hair scraped back and held in place with a strip of leather, Valla looks like any other little boy of the court. The silvery fringe of hair by her face is harder to discern when it is tied into the brown, and there are plenty of boys her height who are so girlishly pretty that she does not seem out of place at all.
And, well, Valla ahorse is a marvel - she and Matarys learned to ride from Jena herself, and from their lady grandmother, and Baelor, too, when he has the time to spend with them, and there are no finer riders in the Seven Kingdoms, Jena is sure of it, not for their ages.
And besides, Valla was in no danger - she and Matarys are fiercely protective of one another, and Jena cannot imagine that there was not a single brother of the Kingsguard who did not piece together enough to realise that they had a princess as well as a passel of princes under their watch.
Knowing that does not keep Baelor from losing his slow temper with Ser Willem, who was supposed to be watching the children.
Jena has only seen her husband lose his temper very rarely - he is by nature a peaceful man, for all his skill at arms and war, and has too much respect for the men who have sworn their lives to his family to rage at them for even things that deserve his anger.
But this, endangering his beloved daughter? Jena knows of nothing else that can anger him so quickly and completely.
Baelor loves both of their children, she knows this - Matarys has much of Baelor's nature, but a sweetness all his own to temper the delicacy of his feelings, and they can often be found in oddly serious conversation, discussing anything from dragons to what might be served at dinner that night. Jena adores Matarys, loves him in the way her mother had loved her brothers, but it is Valla who holds Baelor's heart more than anyone else in the world, more even than herself or his mother, more even than his beloved baby brother, Maekar.
Maekar, who is Baelor's truest friend and who was Jena's first friend at court. Maekar, who knows and understands Baelor in a way that escapes Jena but does not know him at all in the ways that she does, and it is in that shared love for Baelor that she and Maekar first found grounds for friendship. That is why she goes to Maekar when Baelor's anger burns so brightly and so long that it begins to frighten her.
Maekar seems less surprised by his brother's rage than Jena is, which also frightens her.
"Valla is his special pet, sister," Maekar says, as though it is nothing. "He has always favoured her - is it so surprising that her safety and security are of such import to him? I think not."
Baelor has always favoured Valla, and that, too, frightens Jena. She loves her husband, but she has never quite been able to ignore the whispers that name him a Dornishman, and her family has always been an enemy of Dorne.
iii.
Valla is twelve years old when Prospero Allyrion arrives at court. He is a year her junior, just as Matarys is a year junior to his wife-to-be, Lady Kiera of Tyrosh.
Valla would rather wed Kiera than Prospero, if she had a choice in the matter, if only because Kiera is so much funnier and more willing to help Valla sneak out to train with her lance. Prospero is handsome, though, for a boy, and clever - he likes Grandfather enormously, and openly admires Grandmother for her clever mind and her influence over the court.
Valla likes that about him - someone who likes her grandmother must have good taste at least some of the time, and must be at least partway sensible. He likes Father as well, and anyone who does not like her father is a fool.
So she likes Prospero, more or less, and thinks Kiera might be good enough for Matarys, which is more important.
Father brings them both for a long walk in the gardens, Valla and Matarys, brings them to the godswood, where no one ever goes, so that he might speak to them in private.
"You have no interest in being King, my sweet boy," he says, sitting on the grass with his legs folded, one of them on either side of them. "And I do not blame you - a crown is a burden so heavy that none but us might understand it."
Matarys is blushing when Valla tears her eyes away from Father's face, embarrassed that Father has seen through his smiles to his fears. Valla has always helped Matarys hide that fear, has always stood as his guard in much the same way Uncle Maekar stands as Father's, or at least so she has hoped.
"But you, my little princess," Father says, "you have always had a Queen in you, haven't you?"
Valla is the one who blushes now, because yes, it is true that she has wanted a crown for as long as she has understood what that entails. She has always known that she will never have a crown, of course, beyond that which is her right as a Princess, and so has thrown all her determination into ensuring that Matarys becomes the best King he is capable of being.
"Many feel that I am too Dornish," Father says. "I take more after my mother than my father, it is true, in more than just my looks - but in this, I have both their support, and that of your uncle Maekar and his lady wife."
"In what, Father?" Matarys asks, as guileless as ever. Valla has been hoping for this day for as long as she has understood just how enormous a thing it might be for her father to attempt, and has known that it would likely never come to pass.
Her lady mother, she suspects, does not approve of this. Mother is a Marcher, and dislikes all things Dornish save for Father and Grandmother, and sometimes Aunt Dyanna, and so of course she will dislike this. Valla feels just a little guilty for how little that worries her, but it has always been her lord father's approval and love she sought before her lady mother's.
"If you agree to support your sister in all she pursues," Father says, his dark eyes on Matarys', and for once, it is Matarys who looks more like him than Valla, "I would make her my heir, little prince."
Matarys hesitates for just a moment before speaking.
"I would not have to be King?" he asks carefully, glancing between Father and Valla as if suspecting this to be some sort of elaborate jape.
"Indeed not, lad," Father says. "You might establish a branch of House Targaryen in Tyrosh, with your Lady Kiera, or you might-"
"Might I join the Kingsguard?" Matarys breaks in eagerly. "Oh, Father, might I become a brother of the Kingsguard? I should like that, then I could protect Valla always!"
"And what of Lady Kiera?"
"Daeron is always making eyes at her," Matarys insists. "Oh, please, Father, might I squire to you or Uncle Maekar and become a brother of the Kingsguard? I have never wanted to be King, Valla is much better suited to it than I am, please, Father!"
iv.
Mother departs for Blackhaven two days after Father informs the small council of his plans to make Valla his heir. She kisses Matarys goodbye, smooths Valla's hair away from her face, and turns her back to Father.
Valla holds tight to Father's hand, in the hope that her presence and Matarys' might hold together his heart, which is so visibly breaking.
"Your mother has her reasons for leaving," Father says, when it is just the three of them at table that night. "I hope that she will return soon, though."
v.
Mother does not return. The Blackfyres do, though.