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SINGLE CHAPTER
Once, Rhaegar thought that removing his father from power was a difficult task. While discussing it at the tourney of Harrenhall didn’t work because the surprising presence of the Mad King, it turned out easier than he thought when the alliances made by his supporters turned out useful. The birthing chambers, though, always made him think of blood and death, his wife’s screams coming from the inside while Rhaegar walked endlessly around the hallways, followed by Jon, young Jon who was conceived before they were even married and born eight months after the ceremony.
Jon’s name was one of the few fights between Lyanna and Rhaegar that the court got to hear. While the King expected within reason to give him a Targaryen name, Ned Stark started calling the baby by the name of Jon, between the two of them, and when Lyanna woke up from the hardest birth she would ever go through, that was the name stuck in her head.
It was a fact known in King’s Landing that while King Rhaegar ruled the Seven Kingdoms, Lyanna Targaryen ruled Rhaegar with sweet words and a strong hand while governing by his side. No one was surprised, then, when the babe was introduced to court as Jon Targaryen, future King of the Seven Kingdoms.
Jon was learning how to talk properly when he was introduced to his brother by his slightly hysterical father. Aemon Targaryen was as close in looks to Rhaegar as Jon was to the Queen. The future king looked at the bundle and innocently asked if that was a brother and if he could trade it for something else.
He learned soon enough. The next baby brother dared to be born on his fifth nameday, and Lyanna decided to grant him the power to choose the name of the newborn, since Rhaegar was walking around the Red Keep cursing loudly for the first time in his life.
“Three heads of ice and fire, damn it” he was seen muttering by the gardens. “How do I marry three brothers to each other?” When Jon Connington asked why he was so mad at having a third heir, he was dismissed by a simple fuck off.
Jon, who would rather a new wooden sword to a new brother, took his time choosing.
“Jaeharys was a good king” the five-year-old decided after thinking for a moment. “And Jae is a good nickname.” On cue, the baby lifted his eyelids, showing Rhaegar’s indigo eyes a shade closer to purple, another Targaryen through and through.
At seven, Jon, Aemon and Jaeharys welcomed Daeron to the world, the loudest of them all. Rhaenys was in Dorne, and Jon was old enough to understand that the vague girl with olive skin simply wouldn’t come back unless required. She was sent a raven anyway, and a simple answer came back a week later congratulating the King’s Whore.
Rhaenys had simply never recovered from seeing her father marry again within the same month of her mother’s death. She didn’t mind at the time; it was expected of him, Father told her, but she kept growing distant until the birth of Aemon and she exploded. How did Rhaegar marry without mourning, did he even love her mother… The final sentence was what decided her fate: Was being a broodmare all it took to be queen?
The offer from Doran came soon after, and the eagerness she had as she demanded to go made little Jon frown in his room, crying silent tears and wishing he could do something to help Father. The look of contempt Rhaenys gave Jon every time they crossed made him wary of her in a way only boy of two name-days could.
Lyanna’s screams brought both Jon and Rhaegar back to reality. It pained them, and the King, having seen his mother with multiple miscarriages and stillbirths, feared for one every time a scream came and was not followed by baby cries.
“It’s been six hours already” Rhaegar muttered; Jon quietly watching him. “She only took this long with you, Jon.”
He briefly watched his eldest son, conceived during a love night during a tourney all would remember for the blue crown and the stress that caused Elia to labor when the baby was but five moons in her belly. Before they were married, but born just in time for Rhaegar and Lyanna to lie and make him legitimate.
The King, Prince then, had broken the maidenhead of a highborn without thinking about consequences. They were the only ones in the woods the night before the end of the tourney, and if Jon’s looks didn’t prove his parentage, his personality did: At ten, he was wiser than the squires in the Keep, fought as well as them under the tutelage of Ser Barristan Selmy and played the harp in a way that always ended up with Lyanna weeping. Aye, thought Rhaegar, the boy was his son.
“Mōrī muña sikagon ñuhe valonqar?” he asked, the High Valyrian flowing from his tongue with small, awkward pauses. While Jon would pour over any book in his ancestors’ language, talking came with difficulty. His son indeed.
“What makes you think it’s a little brother?” Rhaegar couldn’t help but ask. “Maybe this time…”
Baby cries filled the air as if on cue, and the King rushed inside the birthing chambers without being invited, Jon trailing after him. “Can I see him?” he asked excitedly.
The bundle was carefully passed to his arms, and Jon examined the baby’s head until noticing its color. “He’s got my hair!” whispered Jon in awe. “Are his eyes –” Indigo met grey, and the heir to the Iron Throne sighed while smiling. “Close enough.”
Lyanna began to sweat and moan from the birthing position, and upon a close look the midwife sent the King and Prince away without bothering with status. They only understood why when the screams resumed, as loud as before, only to be interrupted within fifteen minutes.
Again, a baby was crying, although the bundle was quiet in Jon’s arms.
“Your Grace?” called the midwife from inside. “Her Grace is asking for you.”
She held another blanket in her arms, smaller than Jon’s (Rhaegel, decided the King) but still of a healthy size. “Come closer, boys” she whispered faintly. “Rhaegar, things do change.”
It was then that he noticed that the blanked his other son rested in had faded from red to pink. Rhaegar rushed forward, meeting the same dark hair and indigo eyes as Rhaegel, but in a face with finer traits.
“You gave me a little girl” he realized, checking under the blankets to be sure. The girl huffed, as if offended, before resuming her search for her mother’s milk. “Five boys, and a little girl.”
Lyanna smiled in response. “I know you want a Visenya, but I thought—”
“Rhaella.” He nodded. It was understandable. Rhaella was the mother Lyanna never had, teaching her the ways of court and explaining any doubts she might have. The Queen Dowager (for the Mad King had managed to kill himself in his first year away from the throne) flourished without Aery’s abuse and was as good as a grandmother as she could be, raising baby Daenerys with her nephews.
“Do you mind?”
Rhaegar found himself shaking his head without realizing it. He rarely minded when it came to Lyanna, and his mother would be honored at the same time. “Rhaegel and Rhaella. No problem.”
He had been forced to forget the prophecy years before, when Daeron was born. Though he was as happy with Lyanna and their children as a couple could be, it simply wasn't to happen. Not in this generation, at least, Rhaegar thought with a glance to Jon and thinking of his other four boys. Surely, one of them would have the three heads, since Rhaegar now had six.
Baby Rhaella continued suckling as Lyanna faded to a peaceful sleep, Rhaegel given to the wet-nurse ready for him. Quiet babies, like Jon. Must have something to do with the hair, the King amusedly thought as he played with his daughter’s brown locks.
“Aye” muttered Rhaegar, reluctantly taking his hand away when baby Rhaella finished one breast and started looking for the other. “No problem at all.”