Game of Thrones: Path of the Hungry Bear-Chapter 94 - 20: The Great Tourney of Dragonsreach Part 8

Chapter 20: The Great Tourney of Dragonsreach Part 8

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Queen Alicent Hightower

The Queen felt adrift on the day of the tourney finals, the shortest day of jousting in the event in which the team with the highest total wins breaks up and competes against itself for the individual grand prize. She should feel only intense pride as her sons placed first and third in this grand and exhaustive tourney, but the cheering of her hated rival Rhaenyra for her oldest son, and the polite applause when he knighted his younger brother after winning the tourney by striking down Lord Commander Criston Cole, only made her feel confusion and mild betrayal.

What had her children done behind her back to bring this about?

She observed the interplay between Aegon, Helaena, and Rhaenyra as the nobility of Westeros returned home - the royal family staying behind during Daemon's bed bound convalescence - and found herself growing more and more wrothful as suspicion crept in and made space in her head. Wide genuine smiles, lingering touches, the Crown Princess looked more a maiden in love than a mother of five. She laughed freely around her son such as right now.

"You laugh, but it is sincere." Aegon explained to the too close harlot at a family meal in the lord's chambers of the Blue Keep, "My disdain for the Dornish is a matter of the intellect, a reasoned position free from emotion. In fact, emotionally I'm quite fond of them. The pride and passion, I understand it." his head tilted towards her as his lip turned up at the side of his mouth causing Rhaenyra to gaze at his lips with a whorish longing that curdled the Queen's guts, "If I walked in their shoes, that defiance I so loathe would blossom in my bosom, just as in theirs. They've the right to self determination, to resist domination, and are rightly proud of their achievements no matter how serendipitous." the pair drew closer as Aegon's tone lowered throughout, "That said... I'm a Targaryen, and Dorne must be destroyed. This peace between Father and Qoren, it won't last. The Martells are merely bolstering their strength and waiting for us to become complacent. The renewal of the conflict is inevitable, as is its conclusion, dragon banners shall fly from the Red Mountains to the Summer Sea."

"So certain, as if you've foreseen it already. Do you Dream, Aegon?" Rhaenyra asked him, coyly, tone between humoring him and hanging off his ever word.

"Dream?" his countenance rose briefly, nostalgic, then settled into a familiar smugness, "No. I have Dreamed, and have a dream, but I Dream no more. My eyes see neither history, nor mystery, only the present, and I find it such a gift." he spoke the last with a rumbling hunger.

Soon after Rhaenyra took her leave and not long after that so too did Aegon. He returned to the larger family gathering hours later with a lightness in his steps she recognized. A lightness of the balls. Alicent retreated into a private chamber in the apartment she and her husband occupied and screamed into the throw pillows on a couch near the fireplace.

"Summon Aegon." he commanded Ser Criston after regaining her composure.

Her mind composed diatribes and tossed them aside with a speed expected of a woman who remained on top of the hierarchy her entire adult life, and when her son finally appeared at the doorway, her verbosity failed and she only asked, "Why?" in a tone of broken confusion.

For a young man known for his stoic composure, Aegon had a pair of very judgy eyes. He languidly stalked across the room and poured himself a drink before easing down into a leather chair.

"Do you know why men build castles?" he began and his mother cut him off.

"Spare me the rhetorical tricks! This isn't about me, it's about her! Why Aegon? Why?" Alicent shouted at her eldest as he gazed on her evenly, non reacting to her heated plight.

She admired that about him, Aegon's ability to school his countenance to the point he looked more like something carved of stone or ice than flesh. She'd seen him out solemn lords from the North, the most dour of kingdoms, and then cheer and out drink them. As admirable as it may be, it riled up her wrath.

"False security." he responded, unbothered by her tone, "It's the blows we don't see coming that end us, and this is just another in a long line of deceptions designed to prey on her feminine mind. Just enough tension to keep her from thinking me too tame, and thus a liar, and enough affection to bait the trap. I've invited her to blindfold herself in lust, and she tied the knots so willingly."

Aegon emptied his chalice, and provided the emptiness a look of lament more sincere than any he'd ever given a suffering or dead person. It caused her skin to crawl, those little gestures that let her know that he is capable of genuine human emotions, simply not for others. That alien mindset makes working with her son incredibly trying, for how can one reason with a man that counts two and two as blue?

"How could this have possibly been necessary? You have denigrated yourself, dishonored your wife, and scorned your children. Is this some disgusting plan to raise your son with HER as King? To avoid your sacred duty?"

Aegon leaned forward in his chair and fixed her with an unamused and unperturbed glare, "Speak not of duty to me woman, for the yoke I shoulder self selected is far beyond your ken. Necessity? Nay, mitigation. Preservation of my resources for the wars to come. You think this ends at the Iron Throne. I know it only begins there."

Alicent grit her jaw and furrowed her brow as she boiled in rage and then unleashed her vitriol in low growling, "You speak to me, ME, the woman who has been Queen for decades, the woman who raised you, the woman who bore you, as a half wit. As if anything is beyond my ken! Get out!" she commanded her son, "I can't stand to look at you."

The relief on his face as he rose from his chair caused her to cry after he left the room.

-Prince Daeron Targaryen-

The Great Tourney of Dragonsreach imprinted itself on young Daeron's mind. The beauty of the city, the chivalry of the contestants, the spectacle of scale, the variety of delights and entertainment. People said it's a once in a lifetime event, and all who missed it are forever lesser, and at the top of it all, his family, his brothers, Aegon and Aemond, champions. One day, he'd stand beside them in honor and glory. Daeron, though young, knew what he wanted in life, and he wanted nothing more than to serve as the master-at-arms for his eldest brother. He wanted to make Dragonsreach his home.

He visited the city-in-waiting as often as possible. Tessarion, his beautiful Blue Queen, eagerly made the flights, and often urged him to fly to this southern bastion. She loved spending her days in the foothills of the Red Mountains alongside the larger Dreamfyre and Sunfyre. His agile and graceful partner danced in the warm air and hunted rich game in idyllic bliss as he enriched himself in the martial culture his brother fostered amidst the beauty their father built.

The Blue Keep felt right and good in ways the Red Keep never had, and King's Landing a blight compared to Dragonsreach. Daeron intended to never return from his squiring with his oldest brother. Aegon commanded order where their ancestors tolerated chaos. He demanded beauty where they accepted squalor. He restored Valyria when they allowed it to slip away. Daeron wanted nothing more of his life, than to do his part.

Dragonsreach brought their family together and allowed them to be happy. All his life, Rhaenyra's presence in the Red Keep, increasingly infrequent, caused strife. Everyone came away the worse for her visits, but this time, this time in the Blue Keep, not the Red Keep, his family smiled, they laughed, they danced. He still loathed his bastard nephews, and wished they didn't mar the beauty of the gathering with their loathsome First Man features, but even they seemed slightly tolerable when their mother twirled in his brother's arms, face alight with joy and love.

It's why he didn't understand her reaction to the precious gift he brought her. She looked at it like he looked at a frustrating puzzle.

On the day of the family's departure from Dragonsreach, the entire royal family journeyed to the hot springs in the hills that served as nesting ground for the dragons, and upon his arrival he obviously ran off to find Tessarion in her usual spot. The long sinuous cobalt and copper beauty coiled under a rock overhang, and around new life. Seven scaly eggs, each different mixes of golds, blues, coppers, and pinks.

The sight saw him running back to get his brothers, and Tesarion easily trusted the three of them to take her clutch. Aegon carried four, Aemond two, and the joyful Daeron carried the final powder pink and copper egg himself.

"Come look, everyone!" he gleefully announced, "Tessarion laid her first clutch!"

No one ever really bothered to make a big deal of the older dragons, Dreamfyre, Meleys, and Syrax, laying a new clutch, and Daeron never heard of Vhagar bring forth new eggs, but he loved Tessarion and wanted to celebrate her achievement and honor her new status.

"Seven eggs?" their father mused as her rubbed his remaining gloved hand over the pink and copper egg in his arms, "A full clutch. Sunfyre must be as virile as his rider."

Daeron's jaw dropped at how close that statement was to acknowledging Aegon's army of bastards. People joke that in Dragonsreach, Aegon doesn't practice the Right of First Night, but instead the Right of Any Night, but their father never tolerated any such 'slander' of his eldest son.

Recovering, Daeron moved towards Rhaenyra and declared, "A blessed number! And lucky, six for my brother's six children, and another," he presented the egg in his arms to his eldest half-sibling, "For your next babe."

That's how they found themselves, awkwardly standing there while Rhaenyra looked at his gift like it somehow did her wrong. Finally, she took control of whatever bothered her before it caused a scene and smiled, taking the egg from him.

"Thank you, Daeron." she said while looking him in the eyes with an expression like she just figured something out, "For this gift."

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Obviously, the Great Tourney of Dragonsreach is a parallel to the Great Tourney at Harrenhal, but an inversion of the MC's role. Whereas Jorah destroyed that rose tinted nostalgia about the event in Path, Aegon creates it in Reborn. Jorah rejected the idea that before Harrenhal, the knights were more chivalrous, the ladies more beautiful, and the princes more perfect, but Aegon instilled all of that.

Of course, someone had to put Aegon's plans in jeopardy by fucking someone he shouldn't have, and this time he didn't pull out. The plot is now locked in to the finish, all that's left is execution and motivation, the hardest parts!

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