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The singers craft their ballads of valiant knights upon the field of battle, but few are the songs that praise the women who endure hardships no less severe, and who require a courage not found in any book of chivalry upon the birthing bed.
Aemma Arryn, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, wanted to scream it, to let it be known that she was not losing due to her own weakness, but to the immense, crushing weight of the event itself. The sheets, once fresh and fragrant with lavender, held now the stench of blood and despair. Each wave of pain was a distant, crashing thing, seen through a mist of sweat and milk of poppy. Yet, behind the veil of agony, her mind — the mind that was once sharp with wit — remained cold and clear.
Some say that in the final hours, a life flashes before one’s eyes — a parade of regrets and cherished memories. But Aemma did not see the past. She saw the future.
Viserys, her kind, pliable Viserys, would not remain a widower for long. He was a man built for comfort, not solitude, and the realm would not suffer its king to grieve alone. The hands of the lords of the Small Council — and indeed, of every great house — would find his back and guide him steadily toward a new bride and a fresh alliance. Who would this woman be?…
The question answered itself with grim simplicity and cut through the pain — or was it the sharper pain of a new contraction?
The Hightower girl. How impeccably timed her appearances had been: an interesting book for the convalescing queen, a cup of honeyed wine for the weary king. Every gesture a quiet stitch in a grander design, each thread pulled by her father’s meticulous hand.
A perfect choice of bride, indeed. Was it not? All comfort and familiarity, the very things Viserys prized above all else. Alicent was not a stranger from a distant, frost-bitten keep, but a gentle, known face from his own court. A girl who understood his losses, who shared his grief, who had already proven her devotion through a hundred small, silent services. Otto had not just prepared a daughter; he had made the perfect salve for a grieving king’s heart. And a salve, once applied daily, becomes a necessity.
The prospect of a new queen, in itself, troubled Aemma less than the scent of rain on a distant wind. It was the natural order, a political necessity she had long understood might one day follow her. But this particular queen, this carefully cultivated Hightower rose, was not merely a successor. She was a weapon, and the target was Rhaenyra.
Under the shadow of a new queen — and a new heir, should the babe that was killing Aemma not survive — Rhaenyra would slowly, politely be made a guest in her own home. The claim of the king’s firstborn child would be cast aside for the sons of Hightower blood.
Aemma squeezed her eyes shut, allowing the maids to dab the sweat from her brow. Then, pressing her lips eagerly to the cup, she took a sip, but immediately spat it back out — instead of the desired water, she was met with the thick, cloying taste of poppy milk. It promised oblivion, but right now, faced with the possible future, the queen needed to preserve even a few drops of her clear mind.
Were they already so impatient? a thought flashed through her consciousness. Eager to put the queen to sleep so the new one can take the stage. Mellos, of course, had ordered the poppy to ease her suffering — a merciful act that would leave her with neither the strength nor the will to act. With a force Aemma did not know she still possessed, she batted the maid’s hand away, and the cup clattered across the stone floor.
“Water,” the queen rasped, “Clear. Now.”
The maids bustled about, but in their eyes she saw not just fear, but confusion.
They had been told to ensure she drank the poppy milk, perhaps with a promise of favour for their diligence, and they had not expected a refusal.
This small act of defiance gave Aemma a strange, fragile strength. The pain remained monstrous, all-consuming, but now it was fueled by a fire of rage. She would not allow herself to be drugged like livestock before slaughter. She would die as sober as possible, clutching not her husband’s hand, but her daughter’s fate. And she would wrest that fate from Otto Hightower’s grasp, even if it meant prying open her own, already stiffening fingers.
Many would have considered her a failure, and perhaps she was one, but there remained one person for whom she would have moved mountains. For Rhaenyra, she would secure a final royal grace, a final royal promise. It would be a poison chalice for Otto, disguised as a sacred vow. Let him choke on it.
While Aemma was lost in the depths of her thoughts, the chief midwife leaned close, her voice like whisper against the roar of pain. “The babe is breeched, Your Grace. The Grand Maester says…”
“I know what he says,” Aemma breathed. Mellos was Otto’s servant. They thought her broken, a life to be spent for the sake of a son.. A clean, tragic end. But if the son died too, as breech babes so often did… then the field would lie open, ripe for Otto to sow his own daughter in her place.
A cold fury, clearer than any poppy’s haze, washed through her with new force. They thought her only a womb. They forgot she was Arryn blood. As High as Honor. Honor demanded a queen protect her line. Not just the babe struggling within her, but the child already breathing beside her.
“Send for the king,” Aemma gasped, clutching the woman’s arm. “Alone. Do you hear me? Alone! Tell him the queen requests a private audience.”
The old woman with the wrinkled face pursed her lips but obeyed. She likely expected tears, pleas to her kingly husband — the spectacle of a dying queen clinging to life. Let her think so. Let them all think so.
When, minutes later, Viserys stumbled in, his face was pale, eyes swollen and red-rimmed. Useless. Helpless in his grief and indecision. A single glance from Aemma’s pain-clouded eyes was enough to understand what strings the Small Council — what strings Otto Hightower — would pluck upon him, using the king for their own end.
“My love, they say… Mellos says there is a choice.. a chance to save the child, but the risk to you…” the king began, his voice trembling, thick with guilt.
He has already accepted it, Aemma realized, a colder, sharper pain lancing through her than any physical torment. He is asking for my permission to sacrifice me.
“This procedure is practiced in the Citadel—” the king continued, lowering himself onto a velvet cushion beside her bed.
“Viserys,” she interrupted, her voice suddenly, strangely steady. She drew him close, his ear to her lips. The scent of her blood and sweat filled the space between them. “You must listen to me. Not to Mellos. Not to Otto. Listen. To. Me. This one time.”
His watery gaze finally met hers. In it, she saw the boy she had married, kind and overwhelmed, and the ghost of the king he might have been, buried under a mountain of other men’s counsel.
“They will give you a choice,” she said, trying to appeal to his conscience. “A son’s life, or a wife’s. And you will choose the son. Because you are a good king, and it is the reasonable choice. The choice for the realm.”
She saw him flinch, confirming the truth she spoke.
“But I am your queen,” she continued, the title a shield she had seldom used, but which now felt like her only armour. “And I demand a queen’s privilege.”
“What privilege?” he asked, taken aback by her sudden, bold request.
Another contraction seized her, a vise of pure agony. In the silence it brought, the voice inside her shouted, clear as a bell: Not a privilege — a bargain. A queen’s life... she swallowed against the metallic taste of blood and poppy, ...for her daughter’s future.
As the wave receded, leaving Aemma trembling and slick with sweat, she fixed Viserys with a gaze that held no pain, only cold, absolute clarity.
“You must swear to me. Two things.”
“Anything,” he vowed fervently. He was always eager to please, to smooth things over, and especially now, when the ultimate sacrifice for him and his reign was being laid upon the altar.
Good, she thought. His guilt is a door. I must walk through it before it closes.
“And then you will swear it before witnesses,” she pressed. “Not to me in this bed, where promises are whispered and forgotten with the dawn. Swear it before Ser Harrold Westerling. Swear it before the Grand Maester Mellos. Swear it before your Hand. Let them hear the decree that will outlive this day.”
Aemma saw the flicker of hesitation — the instinctive flinch of a man who preferred his decisions to be soft, private things.
She gripped his hand. “You wish to ease my passing? This is how. Give me your word, vow in public, and I will face their knives with a queen’s peace. Deny me, and you leave me to die a broodmare, knowing my daughter will be next. Which memory will you live with, Viserys? The king who honoured his wife’s last wish, or the man who broke his word to a dying woman?”
It was a brutal choice, but he had to make it. A choice of personal honour and sentiment. And he crumbled, as she knew he would.
“I will do as you say.” he agreed, some hesitance still ringing in his voice.
“First,” she began, carefully choosing her words despite the pain that threatened to shatter each one. “If our son lives, he is the heir as the gods will it. But if he does not… if this room brings you only loss today… then Rhaenyra must be your named heir. You will stand before the Iron Throne and proclaim it to the court, and then before the lords of the realm. You will not let it be a quiet succession, debated in whispers. You will make it law, as irrevocable as your own coronation.”
Viserys blinked, surprise momentarily replacing his grief. “Rhaenyra? But… the Great Council… the precedent set by my own ascension…” His voice was confused, almost childlike in its bewilderment. He had loved their daughter, delighted in her, but to name her heir over any possible future son from a new wife? The concept was alien, a disruption to the natural order as he understood it. He had not looked that far ahead, he never did.
“The Great Council chose you,” she cut through his weakness. “It did not make a law for all time. It was a choice for a moment. Now you are king. Your word is the law. Or would you let the next precedent be set by some lord when he places a son of his own blood on your throne before my body is cold?”
She saw the fear flicker in his eyes — the fear of conflict, of being a difficult king, of Otto’s silent disapproval. She used it. “This is not a request from your wife, Viserys. It is the final counsel of your Queen. Secure your line. My line. Or condemn our daughter to be a pawn in the game they are already playing outside that door.”
A contraction, worse than all the others, tore through her. She arched against it, a silent scream locked behind her teeth. When it passed, leaving her trembling and breathless, her eyes found his again, brighter and harder than before.
“Swear it,” she demanded, the words a bare exhale. “Swear it by the Seven. Swear it on your crown. Swear it on the memory of your mother, who died for your brother, as I die for this child. Or I will face the Stranger knowing I left my daughter utterly undefended.”
The invocation of his mother, the holiest of oaths, was her winning gambit. As a man of sentiment he crumbled.
“I swear it,” he whispered, the sound choked. “By the Mother and the Father. By my crown. I swear it.”
“Good,” she said, her strength fading fast, “Now… the second thing. Swear you will not take a second wife. Ever.”
His eyes widened in surprise and defiance as he spluttered: “But the lords! They will expect me to have a queen! The succession…”
“The succession will be Rhaenyra’s, if our son dies,” she cut him off, her eyes locking on his. “A new queen means new princes, and new princes mean war for our daughter. Is that the peace you wish to leave her? A legacy of bloodshed?”
He shook his head in horror at the picture she had painted — a vision of a blood-soaked future where ambitious half-brothers, spurred on by a power-hungry stepmother-queen, laid siege to his daughter.
“I ask for no more than King Jaehaerys gave to Good Queen Alysanne: one wife, for life.” She saw him waver, saw the fear of loneliness, of expectation, in his face. She softened her tone, making concession: “After a year of proper mourning, take a dozen mistresses if it pleases you. Fill the Red Keep with joy and laughter. I will neither haunt, nor begrudge you for that, take comfort in the flesh.” Her grip tightened, her nails biting into his wrist. “But no queen to sit my throne, wear my crown, and make my child a guest in her own home. Swear it! For me. For Rhaenyra. Let your heart be free, but your throne remain ours.”
She offered him a release from celibacy, understanding the needs of men, while denying Otto the ultimate prize of a crowned daughter. A mistress could bear bastards, but bastards were not heirs.
Tears streamed down Viserys’s face. “I swear it,” he choked, the words muffled against her hand. “By the Seven, I swear it, Aemma. If the boy dies, Rhaenyra is heir. And I shall take no other queen, only you, forever.”
Playing him was easy. And the ever-obedient queen felt a sharp pang of regret for not having done it sooner.
“Now,” she whispered, exhaustion threatening to pull her under. “Bring in Ser Otto, Ser Harrold. And the Grand Maester. Let them hear your decree.”
Viserys nodded, accepting her final order. He rose heavily, swayed, then straightened his shoulders and wiped the tears from his cheeks with his palms. For what he was about to say, he needed to reclaim a kingly bearing.
He did not shout. He did not rang the bell. Instead, he walked to the chamber’s great oak door. The maids and midwives parted before him, their whispers dying in their throats.
At the door, he paused. His hand, still damp with his own tears, rested on the iron ring. He drew a breath, calling for strength, then pulled the door open.
In the torch-lit antechamber, a small crowd had gathered in respectful, anxious silence: ladies-in-waiting, stewards, and a few lords who had heard the dire rumors. At its center, stood Ser Harrold Westerling, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, Grand Maester Mellos and the King’s Hand Ser Otto Hightower.
Viserys’s eyes found them immediately: “Ser Otto. Ser Harrold. Grand Maester. Attend.”
From her bed, with eyes whose light was dimming by the minute, Aemma watched as the silent procession entered the chambers.
First came Ser Harrold, in a white cloak and with unblemished honour, ready to carry out any will of his sovereign. Then Grand Maester Mellos, clutching a small leather case in his hands — the instruments for her impending torture. And finally, Ser Otto Hightower. Impatience was written all over his face; he was waiting for the performance to finally conclude and was clearly displeased that the queen was still conscious. He began to reach for a handkerchief to cover his nose from the unpleasant stench of blood, urine, and medicines hanging in the air, but caught himself in time and withdrew his hand.
The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, white-cloaked and stern, stood at the foot of the bed, while Mellos fussed with his instruments, avoiding the queen’s gaze. Otto folded his hands expectantly in front of him, his eyes shifting from the king to the Grand Maester. He hardly looked at Aemma. She had ceased to be a person; she had become an obstacle soon to be removed. His thoughts were already beyond the door of that chamber, where his daughter, ambitious and with hands clasped in prayer, awaited her hour to offer the king what this weak queen could not: a future.
“Your Grace, the time—” Mellos began.
“There is time for this,” Viserys said. His voice was thick with tears, but it did not waver. “Ser Harrold, Grand Maester. Witness my oath, sworn here at my queen’s side. Should the prince not survive this day, my daughter, the Princess Rhaenyra, shall be named and confirmed as my heir to the Iron Throne, her right paramount and absolute. Furthermore, in honor of my beloved Aemma, the only queen of my heart and reign, I shall take no other woman to wife, now or in the time to come. This is my decree, as king.”
Through the haze, when Aemma thought the deed was done, came Otto’s honeyed voice: “Your Grace, in the heat of compassion and grief, we may believe we are doing the right thing, the thing that will remain right through the years, but... For the good of the Seven Kingdoms, a king must always retain the right to adapt. To… reconsider, when the storm of emotion has passed.”
He did not look at Aemma. He spoke past her, to Viserys alone, as if the queen were already a memory.
Aemma’s breath hitched, not from pain, but from a fury that gave her one last, clear surge of strength. With a sound that was more a rattle than a voice, she spoke. Not to Otto. To the white knight.
“Ser Harrold... you heard... the oath. Your king... has sworn. Before you. Your duty... is to remember.”
The knight gave a single nod, but Grand Maester interrupted any words Ser Harrold was about to say, clinging to the matter of succession again, “Prince Daemon as the potential heir...”
“...would never do harm to his niece,” Aemma rasped, finishing the thought. She locked her fading gaze on Viserys. “He is... a sword. A dangerous one. But swords... can be pointed... away from home.” Each word cost her dearly. “He protects what is his. Make her... his. If not by marriage... but by duty. Name him... her Protector. Her Shield. Bind him... with honor and purpose.”
“I will…” Viserys declared, his eyes flashing with decisiveness.
“The King has spoken.”
The words came not from the Hand, nor the Grand Maester, but from Ser Harrold Westerling. He was a man of oaths, and he would ensure this one was kept.
The Lord Commander took a single step forward, his white cloak shifting silently. His gaze swept over Otto, over Mellos, and finally rested upon his king.
“We have all heard His Grace’s vow. And thus,” he continued, his voice dropping into the solemn rhythm, “I swear, by the old gods and the new, to cherish this vow. And to ensure it is known, from the highest lord to the lowest smallfolk, that Princess Rhaenyra is the rightful heir, and that our king does not take a new queen, should Her Grace Aemma pass.”
Aemma’s eyes found the space where Otto Hightower stood. She could not see his face, but she could feel the fury, cold and sharp, radiating from him. She had outmaneuvered him. Not with dragons or armies, but with a king’s guilty love and a concession that was no concession at all. He could still push Alicent toward the king, but she could never be queen. She could only ever be a mistress, a scandal, her children bastards.
The pain returned, colossal and final, parting Aemma’s cracked lips with a low moan.
“Your Grace, we must proceed—” Grand Maester implored.
“Do what is necessary, Grand Maester,” Viserys said, his voice breaking.
Aemma Arryn did not scream when the knife bit deep, she simply let the Stranger take her by the hand and lead away. A final, rending pain washed over her, and she did not fight it. As the darkness rose, a grim cold satisfaction settled in her soul. She had been a broodmare for most of her marriage. But in her final moments, she had been a queen, a mother who saw the trap and sprung it on the trappers.
The prince, named Baelon, lived only a handful of hours. Viserys, true to his word, proclaimed Rhaenyra Princess of Dragonstone before all the lords of the Seven Kingdoms, while they pledged fealty to the king’s chosen heir and their future queen. And though Alicent Hightower would, in time, bring the king books in the quiet of the evening, and though her dresses would slowly shift from blue to green, she would do so under the unyielding weight of a dead queen’s decree. She could be a companion, a confidante, even a secret. But she would never be Queen Alicent.
The Queen in the birthing bed was gone. But her will, etched into royal decree and a king’s public oath, proved harder to slay than any dragon. She had written the next page of the history — the one she would not live through, but secure for her only child.