Chapter 22: The Matriarchy Strikes Back
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Rhaenyra stared at herself in a full length silver mirror, admiring the graceful lines and beautiful curves of her body. Despite the stress and desperation of her situation, her seemingly effortlessly balanced mood, improved energy, non-existent cravings, and existential motivation caused her to take the conditioning of her form seriously, and dedication to dancing - now up to an hour a day - resulted in the return of Realm's Delight with a vengeance.
Her skin flawlessly smooth, her hair thick and lustrous, her eyes bright and shining. This matured beauty was more than a return to form, but a systemic improvement. A form of such feminine excellence as to counter the masculine dominance of the treacherous half-brother that heavily rounded her belly. Once again she wielded the natural charm to enthrall a man with a simple smile or gesture of approval, and she'd used it regularly in the last half year to counter her brother's influence, which shockingly even extended into her own direct vassals in the Narrow Sea Houses.
None of them out and out declared themselves her half-brother's men, but the obvious admiration that even tilted towards a cultish extreme among the youth shocked the Crown Princess and her Rogue Prince husband. Few in their direct circle ever spoke kindly of Aegon, and seeing his influence among houses he'd never overtly courted opened Rhaenyra's eyes further to her social isolation and the terrible threat her myopic perspective created. His nigh omnipresent fame and adoration appalled her, for she knew him as a rapist and murderer, only removed from an outright slaver by thinnest legal fiction.
She expected to need to wrestle back control of the hearts and minds of Westeros, not the need to defend the final remains of her reputation from slipping away into political obscurity. While Daemon raged against the injustice of it, she realized yet another aspect of her brother's might, the Hightower influence over both the Citadel and the Faith. Between the two organizations, minimizing Aegon's deficits and maximizing his merits in the culture barely made for an inconvenience to the Hightowers, who obviously put their full backing behind the potential for a king of their blood to one day sit atop the Iron Throne. She possessed no capacity to counter that level of social influence, incapable of flooding Westeros with a counter narrative to diminish her brother. Since mudslinging was a waste of time and effort, Rhaenyra knew she needed to hit back with something positive and undeniable about herself, and the woman smirking back in the mirror at her had everything she needed for that.
It felt sinful to cover her radiant form, but needs must when countering usurpation, and this night she attended a feast in the Eyrie to bolster her cousin Jeyne's position in the Vale. Her dress, black silk with silver and ruby ornamentation, and milk white pearls. The taxes from Dragonsreach went directly to her coffers, a small favor to her from her father considering the enormous boon he dealt to her rival half-brother, but it bolstered her greatly considering the pittance Dragonstone boosted her royal stipend. She left the copper counting to Lord Beesbury, but now better understood what the year after year gains meant. She got the King's cut of the taxes brought in by her brother, giving her a direct look into her rival's income from his own lands and inter-kingdom trade, and the rising numbers provided her with both a greatly enhanced budget and concerns. For every coin in her pocket her brother gained nine, and that's without his direct siphoning of the Crown's funds at tourneys and his enrichment off his land's resources.
Just another ton of pressure pushing her to maintain her image flawlessly at tonight's feast, with all eyes on her as the servant announced, "Crown Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, Lady of Dragonstone, and her eldest son, Prince Jacerys Velaryon."
Bringing her eldest to foster in the Eyrie was an unsubtle reminder to Lady Jeyne Arryn's rivals of just who the Maiden of the Vale shared blood with. That Jeyne shared some coloring with Jace was a far more subtle deception, meant to muddle the long and poorly contested narrative of her first three son's parentage. A weak deception, but a thin layer between the present situation that required people to submit to her word rather than the suspicions of their eyes, a status perfectly fine before she understood Aegon's intent. The chafing of the double standard between her desperate need to conceal her bastards and him openly fathering entire towns of them rubbed her far less raw than a noose would.
She glided down the rows of tables lined with the Vale's nobles guiding her son who carefully maintained elegant posture with a stron- firm grip on her toned arm. Lady Jeyne and the others rose from the chairs to bow and soon she found herself seated at a glossy polished cool silver cedar table laden with silver tableware atop a sky blue cloth, her seat a throne identical to the one her cousin occupied. Lady Jeyne offered a toast to her cousin the Crown Princess and to her new princely ward, and the pair of them settled in for the subtle work of softly influencing a kingdom.
- Prince Daeron Targaryen -
"Again." Aegon commanded, the man's training sword pointing down at him for the thousandth time in the hanging guard, as if he needed a stance to trounce him.
Daeron grit his teeth and righted his hands on the leather grip, adopting an advantageous stance. The pair moved their swords and bodies seeking an opening until Aegon's sword blurred and rapped upon the thick steel of his training bracer. Even beneath layered steel, chain, and padding he felt the correction sharply.
"Fool's Guard makes a fool of the user most often." his brother instructed, "It is a tool for quickly dealing with chaff, but the wheat will always separate you from this life."
It hurt more to feel it again, the same result as the first time he tried it despite moons of daily training and teaching, drilling till his strength gave out over and over again.
"I'm not getting any better!" Daeron cried out and threw down his sword, "Nothing I do works!"
Aegon rested his training beater against the boulder he called a shoulder and frowned, the expression mostly hidden under his thick silver gold mustache, just a shifting of the vivacious hairs alongside his mouth.
"Nothing ever will." he declared and Daeron felt as if his brother ran a blunt sword through his heart.
"How could you say that!" Daeron's voice cracked as reacted to the betrayal of his mentor.
"When a man walks west, no matter how far he walks he never arrives at west." his brother spoke in frustrating riddles, but as much as he wanted to run away from him Daeron remained rooted, unable to look away, "West is not some distant place, it is the direction. So too is it with swordsmanship. No matter how far down the path you travel, you will never arrive at me. I am not some distant place, I am the direction."
"And how oh, great god of swords, did you become the cardinal direction of the craft?" Daeron clapped back, his young mind resilient and petulant.
"By means barely understood and so improbable nigh impossible." Aegon explained with his typical obtuseness, "A man can follow the path of the sword all his life, and never come close to reaching the level of skill I was born with. I am not a tool of measurement, but of orientation. I show you the true path, and it is up to you how far you walk it."
Daeron shook his head at the statement, and shouted, "Has anyone ever told you, you're an asshole?"
Aegon threw his head back and laughed uproariously before looking back down and him and smiling widely, perhaps his least attractive trait on his otherwise perfect face, that too wide maw as if his brother was a hungry beast in the shape of a man, "They have indeed, little brother, and many worse things besides, more than you can possibly imagine, and in every tongue spoken in the known world."
Daeron doubted it, but at least it matched his brother's massive ego perfectly.
"Now pick up your sword. Your sister wants a turn." Aegon's words filled Daeron with dread.
The beatings his brother gave him at least had a purpose beyond petty sadism, but Helaena delighted in her superiority over him, short lived as it will be, for he may be a boy today, but some tomorrow he will be a man, and Helaena will still be a woman. The look on her face as she strode towards him, pregnant belly covered in thick padding and a blunt sword in hand had him wishing he knew all the languages he needed to properly curse his evil older siblings, for surely the crazy of the wife is merely the mirror of the husband's crazy.
- Prince Aemond Targaryen -
The apprentice Master of Laws felt a phantom ache in his wrist as he took notes of the Small Council meeting. He stilled his quill till it passed, and luxuriated in the ease of life in the capital. While he missed his stable of easy and quiet women back in Dragonsreach, he'd taken like a fish to the devious games of politics, his mind sharp and his body steely. While he enjoyed the benefits he'd gained in that land of martial brained apes, and the advantages it gave him in this soft and sinful place, he gladly left behind the savage steel-plated simians that his brother leads so proudly. He loved being the only hammer in a land of sophistication.
He looked to his allies, his mentor Ironrod Jasper Wylde, and the Clubfoot Larys Strong. The two men worked with him to great effect under the direction of his grandfather, the Hand of the King. Together they orchestrated a great purge of King's Landing's criminal underbelly, and were ready to move on to the more quiet purging the undesirables and their political opponents when a great red menace descended and began obstructing their plans.
Daemon is back.
"Brother," the too smug man sat at the table with the Small Council despite lacking any official position in the regime, "I've gone over the numbers with Lord Beesbury, and he has convinced me that the recent recruitment numbers of the Gold Cloaks is simply unsustainable. While they may have done good work in the city, there are simply too many to service the needs of King's Landing, leaving many hands idle yet still held out for our coin. The Master of Coin and I have drafted a proposal for releasing those guards hired in the last year, which will bring us back to the correct number for keeping the peace and the law."
Of course Daemon felt there are too many Gold Cloaks. In the last year many loyal men from the Reach and the Westerlands entered the institution with the backing of himself and the Master of Laws fast tracking them for promotions once positions started 'opening up' in the hierarchy, yet now in the toddling years of their conspiracy descends a rogue messiah, come down to deliver his miscreants and minions from the proper authorities.
"The population of King's Landing is far higher than it was during your tenure as Commander of the City Watch." Ser Otto Hightower, the wizened Hand of the King, intervened to cast down his old and hated foe once more, "The current numbers of the Gold Cloaks not only reversed the criminality of the city, but also serve as the bulwark keeping that element from seeping back in. Prince Aemond can speak of the current situation, and our needs."
Aemond leaned forward to deliver his countering address, but Daemon raised his hand for peace and in his hesitancy declared, "I'm not here to argue the matter, brother. As I said, we've drafted a proposal for you to go over at your leisure. We can discuss the matter after you've thought it over. There's no pressing need for it, but it is simply something to address before the problem drains away too much of our funds."
"Thank you, Daemon." the masked king nodded to his younger brother, and moved the days schedule forward.
Aemond grit his teeth as his grandfather frowned in contemplation at Daemon dodging the confrontation. Historically the man went at every issue that mattered to him like a dog with a bone, relentless in his appetite for every win, small or large, and seething whenever it escaped his jaws. Now, they apparently needed to wrestle with a version of the man calm and reasonable, capable of picking his battles, an evolution hitherto unprecedented and promising a genuine challenge to their domination of the capital. This wasn't the same man who pissed away his place in line for the throne. Aemond fixed his two purple eyes upon him and wondered, how do we get that man back?
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