Chapter 65-Epilogue-II
Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen, the True Queen, the Good Queen, the Gentle Queen, and so forth. During her life, she was granted a hundred different epithets for her various qualities and achievements. But the first epithet she was granted was 'the Realm's Delight' so called by her own father for her peerless beauty.
She was the only child of King Viserys Targaryen and Queen Aemma Arryn of the Vale, and was doted upon heavily in her initial years, and was known to be rather spoiled. She shared a special bond with Alicent Hightower in her youth, and the two of them were said to be the two joys of the court of King Viserys.
But that was until tragedy struck, and the birthing bed took her mother from her, and through a series of tragedies, she lost her best friend, her uncle, and later on, even her dear cousin Jeyne Arryn.
These tragedies, along with her marriage to Prince Aegon Targaryen of Runestone, are said to have molded her into the Queen and the woman we all remember her to be.
If Aegon Targaryen was the sword of the Targaryen Expansion, then she was the shield ruling over the Seven Kingdoms in the absence of her King and husband. She saw through major reforms in the Seven Kingdoms from the rebuilding of the capital to the restructuring and recodifying of the Kingdom's laws.
She was strong and just as a ruler, flying herself to the Riverlands when House Bracken and Blackwood once killed a thousand of each other's men because of their century-long dispute.
She summoned both of the Lords to the disputed border, flew on her dragon, and used its fire to burn a line into the ground, permanently settling the dispute.
"If I hear that even one more life has been lost because of this dispute, I swear on the Seven that I will build you a second Wall here, and your two lands shall never see each other. Ever!" and her threat cowed the two lords, and now, even two centuries after her death, the Dragon's Border still holds, between the two disputed lands, yet none dare fight over it again lest her descendants fulfill her promise.
The Princess had lost her mother to the birthing bed, and so she took a great interest in women's health and through the newly established Order of Healers, she sponsored the invention and discovery of over a hundred techniques and methods to aide woman during births.
Queen's forceps, and the Queen's(Episotomy) incision are all so named because all of them were discovered because of her patronage, and it was the work done during her reign that formed the basics for the future subject of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
She herself took to the birthing bed five times, and lost only one child. The first time she was blessed with twins, and so she had five children who would all grow up to become influential and powerful figures in the future.
Many call her the bedrock upon which the foundation of the new Targaryen Empire were built for without her, King Aegon would never ever have been able to conquer Kingdoms as he had.
Little is known about the nature of her relationship with her lord husband, but it is often mentioned that the two of them had many disagreements over his actions, but none of these disagreements were ever public, where the couple ruled as one, supporting one another fully.
She was a loving and doting mother, and was closest to her youngest daughter whom she named 'Jeyne' in honor of her cousin who had been assassinated, while trying to protect the young Prince Daeron during the reign of King Viserys.
She loved all her children dearly, and secured good matches for them all, marrying her eldest daughter into the North, while her eldest son married the daughter of Laena Velaryon, against her wishes in a scandalous marriage that shook the realm.
The match was a tumultuous one and caused a great divide in the family for a while, until Princess Rhaenys intervened, and a secret accord was signed which remains a secret to this day.
To the Starks, she gave them back the Gift as a dowry for her daughter correcting the mistake of her ancestor, who had taken the land from the Starks and had given it to the Night's Watch, however the Order remained incapable of farming the relatively fertile land as the Starks lost a valuable piece of farm lands.
She righted that wrong and even visited the Wall with her husband, as both of them tried to take their dragons beyond the Icy Wall, and failed just as the Good Queen had. She herself returned to the capital immediately yet the King remained behind, on the Wall for two more months, and what he did in these months remains a mystery to this day.
Some speculate that he helped broker an accord between the Night's Watch and the Wildlings, others say that he found himself a lover there and the scorned Queen returned to the capital without him in her rage.
There are many speculations about the whole ordeal, but we know that as a result of this stay, the King set a new tradition amongst the watch where every new member of the watch was presented with two ornamental weapons, one sword and one dagger each, made out of Obsidian carved out of the caves of Dragonstone.
A tradition thought useless and futile by many until two hundred years after his death, when the Darkness lying asleep deep in the North woke, and the only weapons useful against it were Valyrian Steel, Fire, and Obsidian.
By then, the Wall had thousands of these weapons, and as the men fought against the Dead in the second coming of the Dawn, people began to question if it was all just a coincidence or a sign of something far more dangerous.
The foundation laid by her during her reign as Queen helped shape the New Valyria into the power it is, and that is why today she is rightly called the 'Mother of Valyria'.
The Realm's Delight saw little joy in her life as she devoted her life to duty, to her King, to her children, and to her realm. But few women have had the effect that she had over the course of history, and many believe that if it was not for her the world would be far different place today.
For nearly half a century, she was the voice of reason, mercy, and peace in a world where war and death were the language of choice. Fuelled by an unadulterated rage, the Dragon King would have burnt the world to the ground, had it not been for her, who often stayed his hand, and offered mercy to his new subjects as the Seven Kingdoms expanded into the New Valyrian Empire.
She is the Queen of a Hundred Names, though each of them thoroughly deserved. Her statue still sits in the Throne Room of the Red Keep, where it serves as a symbol of mercy and duty, and to this day, thousands of little girls wake up and aspire to follow in the footsteps of the woman who changed the fate of a world of Men.
She died at the age of sixty-four, leaving behind five children and twelve grandchildren, and her last moments were spent with her Lord Husband, who would outlive her by many years.
And on her funeral, the King himself spoke of her life in only three words, which are still engraved on her tombstone.
'Mercy. Love. Duty.'
~The Tales of the Most Influential Women of the
Targaryen Empire by Archmaester Alicent Redwyne~
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RHAENYRA TARGARYEN
Death was inevitable. It spared no one. Not even the most powerful woman in the world. It had come rapidly for her, for a few months ago she had been just fine, flying into the skies on Syrax, but now she lay here, weak and helpless, waiting for her final moments.
Her children and grandchildren, all of them, had come to see her. They had cried beside her bed, even as she had tried to give them false reassurances, and yet their tears and love for her were greater than any treasure in her room.
The healer had asked them to leave just as she had begun to feel tired, and then he had come. Aegon, the most powerful man in the realm, the King of the New Valyrian Empire and her lord husband.
And while it was said that wars and kingship aged a person, Aegon had broken that norm along with a thousand others, and even at sixty, he sat beside hardly looking older than their eldest in his early forties.
His lush brown hair had finally begun to whiten, and it gave him a more Valyrian look, as he wore those glasses of his, for the vision his age had taken from him.
She looked into his eyes, as he sat impassively by her side, and she wondered if he would even cry at her funeral. Thought about the last time she had seen tears in those eyes, seen an overt emotion in those eyes, which had become hollow and lifeless decades ago.
"You never could stop hating me," she whispered, making him frown.
"What do you mean?" he asked, his words spoken with a slight caution as she smiled and pushed herself up. He moved to help her, and she sat straight and looked him in the eye, the fear that she had once felt from him now long gone.
"The hate in that gaze. The hate, the anger that you bear me. You never could let it go," and he frowned, waving away her concern.
"I don't know what you are talking about," he dismissed her words with a small, casual wave, yet she saw through his lies. As difficult as it was, she had learned to see through them after spending nearly half a century with him.
"I can see through your lies," she added in a whisper, as he turned to face and looked her in the eye.
"It is the one thing I learned in these fifty years of our marriage, it is the ability to see through your lies," and even then, the person in front of her remained an enigma to her. The kind, caring, and compassionate Aegon from years ago was now long gone, and she could hardly remember him even if she tried.
What had remained was a cruel, ambitious, and vengeful man who had burnt down the world to satiate his rage.
"You still hate me for my betrayal, hate me for the pain that I caused you," she whispered, and the truth was that she did not blame him for this hate and rage.
How could she, after all, have been the one at fault? She had betrayed him, broken his trust, and given him a wound that could never heal.
"You have killed millions, burnt thousands, and yet even all that was not enough to satiate your anger," she whispered.
"You say that, yet you sit here so unafraid," he asked, finally admitting to his falling, and she smiled, as she looked up again.
"Because you are a man of extremes, Aegon. You hate fiercely, and yet you love with equal ferocity. And as much as you may hate me, you love our children. You love them to death, and would never do anything to put their happiness in jeopardy," and it was why he had swallowed his anger, swallowed his hate for her.
Not for her.
But for their children.
"Why bring it up now, of all times?" he asked, and she reached under her pillow and took out a dagger and placed it infront of him.
"Because I wish to free you from this hate. I wish to remove this burden from you," and she opened the dagger and offered it to him.
"I offer you your revenge. Kill me and be free of this rage, so that you may live your remaining life with some semblance of peace," and her eyes became wet as she said those words.
"You are in pain because of me, and now I give you a chance to lessen it, to take it away once and for all," and she saw him reach for his dagger, as he finally opened his mouth.
"You are right. A part of me does hate you, a part of me is angry with you," he began, as he took the dagger from her hands and spun it in his hands, as she closed her eyes for the upcoming pain.
Yet despite the wait, it never came, and all she heard next was the thud of the dagger sliding back into its sheath.
"But I have never wanted to kill you, not ever," and her eyes widened as he put the dagger back on the bed, and looked her in the eye.
"We are both flawed, Rhaenyra. Flawed in our ways. You made your own mistakes, and I have killed a million men. Neither of us is a saint, we are flawed creatures just as every other human, each with their own sins and faults," and this was the longest conversation apart from ruling, governing and parenting that they were having in decades.
"In all these years, you have stood by me through my most heinous of phases. You have accepted me at my worst, and I have done the same for you," and with that, he reached for her face and gave her a small smile.
"Rest, I will send in a healer," and he helped her lie down, and just as he was about to walk away, she called him out.
"Aegon," and he stopped and turned towards her.
"I hope for you that in the future you may find the happiness that I took from you with my mistake," and he sighed.
"I chose legacy over happiness years ago, and you have given me a legacy that none will be able to match even in a thousand years..."
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