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Chapter Text

Chapter 1: Elia / Aerys.  How Elia becomes Aerys's wife and queen.

Chapter 2: Elia /Gregor. Dornish! Gregor Clegane and the sack of kingslanding. Elia doesn't die but Cersei does some time after.

Chapter 3: Elia / Doran /Obeyn vs Elia /Rhaegar. Dornish dinasty on Westeros AU. Ruler! Elia Martell abducts Lord Rhaegar Targaryen before he can marry Lyanna Stark.

Chapter 4: Elia Bolton, the Lady of the Dreadfort. Half Bolton Elia. The rebellion dies before it can start. Neither Rhaegar or Lyanna survive it

Chapter 5: Elia / Addam Marbrand. In this lifetime Elia Martell had  a second  husband and  lived fifteen years longer. It didn’t change anything until the end.

Chapter 6: Darker! Elia AU. Gentle, good, gracious and so frail… in this life Elia Martell is never described as either of them.

Chapter 7: Elia Lannister, the heiress of the Rock. In an universe were Tywin loves not Joanna but the rulling Princess of Dorne, Lady Elia Lannister becomes her parent’s biggest heartache and regret.

Chapter 8: Elia / Robert. When the war doesn't happen because Rhagear and Lyanna but because Robert and Elia.

Chapter 9: Elia / Jon Snow. When a poor bastard orphan falls in love with a deposed queen.

Chapter 10: From the warrior maid of Sunspear to the butcheress of Kingslanding.

Chapter 11: Elia / Roose AU!. Elia’s cousin Roose Bolton survives infancy but no Stark survives the war. Their blades were sharp.

Chapter 12: Reincarnation AU!. Elia Targaryen is the Mad king's only heir and this time Rhaegar Martell would not fail her.

Chapter 13Elia Greyjoy is the only girl from Quellon's seed and Euron's younger twin. See how she fares after the Greyjoy rebellion...

Chapter 14: Elia /Gregor. Opportunistic and ambitious! Gregor Clegane. The mountain changes sides at the war.

Chapter 15: Elia makes a mistake a loses her maidenhead before marrying Rhaegar thanks to the ambitiosn of the bloodroyal.

Chapter 16: Elia is married to Jon Arryn and from then on, all the falcon lords had Dornish and Valyrian blood on their veins.

Chapter 17: AU: When the old Lion makes a suitable decision to allow his blood on the throne young Jaime Lannister marries Princess Elia Martell.

Chapter 18: Elia/Sandor Clegane AU: A loyal pup will never abandon his mistress.

Chapter 19: Elia/Jaime. AU: The dornish lion. When  Queen Elia Martell is accused of having taken a lover

Chapter 20: Lady Elia Blackfyre comes to take back her throne. AU! Lord Steffon Baratheons returns with a woman that should not exist.

Chapter 21:  Red Priestess! Elia AU: R'hllor takes pity on Elia Martell's soul and exchanges her with a failed servant's. Unburdened of the many sorrows of her past life that never came to be, she escapes hell's track and devots herself to the Lord of Light. She will avoid the long Night.

Chapter 22: Elia/ Mace AU Elia of Higharden; When Aerys snatches up silver haired Alerie Hightower for his heir, Elia marries Mace. This time lives she lives a content, happy and boring life.

Chapter 23: Elia/Rhaegar .AU! Elia Baratheon, hers is the fury. A political Elia understands everything.

Chapter 24: Elia/High Sparrow.  Platonic religous devotion AU!: Rhaegar the Faithless and his concubine had broken sacred vows. They can not escape justice.

Chapter 25: Prophecy AU! Princess Elia Martell goes mad after the rebellion.

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Aerys  had been handsome in his youth, he was still young when Jaime Lannister killed him but years of madness had marred his features and corrupted his mind. It is said that only after all the miscarriages of his wife and being imprisoned in dunskedale for near a year he really turned unrecognizable from the charming prince he once had been. In this timeline , aerys never completely succumbs to madness, things change long before he burns his first man and elia martell becomes queen   just shy of her eighteen birthday, she births three children and Rhaegar is the one who falls deep into paranoia and prophecies.

The year is 273 and Queen Rhaella Targaryen, sister-wife of Aerys the second of his name, is dead.

It should not be a surprise since after her many miscarriages, stillbirths and babes dying in the cradle aside  from being confined to Maegor’s holfast for many moons she had let herself fall deep in her grief and decided to end her life shortly after the last Prince Aegon died.

Not many courtiers were surprised though many seemed saddened. The queen had always been a gentle woman and years of enduring accusations of adultery, being forced to share her bed with two septas to ensure her fidelity and receivng only ill treatment from her husband, had pushed her to that decision.

The unstable king reacted poorly to his sister’s death. In turns he sobbed and called her name and asked for forgiveness  and in others he raved about how she had eluded his punishment when finally evidence of her adultery was procured.  He seemed to swing from violent rage to deep regret, perhaps remembering their first years together when he consoled her after their first children’s death. None present dared to offer more than the most brief condolences in fear of attracting attention unto themselves.

Also, as his fear grew, he commanded his only heir, the fourteen year old Prince Rhaegar , to return from Dragonstone and remain within the Red Keep and not leave under any circumstances .

But those were not the only orders he gave. The Hand of the King, Lord Tywin Lannister, who had very recently arrived from the rock after the death of his own wife was left speechless when the King charged him to write to the Princess of Dorne to come to Kingslanding immediately and bring her only daughter with her

Many were sure that his grace intended to wed the Princess Elia to his only heir and thus increase the numbers of the Targaryen dynasty  ,which were currently reduced to two ,or three if one counted the ancient maester on the wall. The lord Hand thought it so too and bitterly regretted that his own daughter was only nine years old and that he rejected the match between his heir and the Princess when the ruler of Dorne proposed it.

The rulling Princess of Dorne who had planned to return her homeland after departing from Lannisport and was already half the way home quickly changed route at receiving the news from a rider and arrived to the capital in less than a moon.  She dazzled everyone with the exotic richness of her party and lost no time in finding out who were the ones who opposed the hand’s influence and who were loyal to the hateful man.

She had not forgotten the insult the Lord Lannister gave her and she swore to pay the debt she owed to the man.

But it was to her dismay and to Lord Lannister’s joy the news the King gave in front all the court in the throne room. His suspicious gaze had fallen on both of his bannermen, the Lord of Casterly Rock and the lady of sunspear, while he announced that he did not intend to wed the seventeen-year-old princess elia to his son the prince rhaegar… but to himself.

Everyone had fallen silent before whispers arouse like flames consuming  dry straw, all dornish were perturbed  and distraught since they had been expecting a different match but with every eye on her and her daughter, the princess of dorne  was left unable to refuse.

But the dornish  were not the only surprised. Many lords, ladies and knights from the crownlands  speculated wildly on his reason to  do so. Some argued that the King had lusted after the Princess Elia since the time she appeared in court more than five years ago and decided to not wait anymore since his queen has passed. Others said that the mother of the bride had wanted his daughter to be queen for years and had sent a sorrowful man after Queen Rhaella so it appeared that she ended her life, that her travel to the westerlands had been a ruse to  avoid suspicion.  But the common opinion was that the King wanted a wife for from valyrian stock for his son but decided to keep the girl for himself after being struck by love at first sight.

And though the King’s mental health was dubious he was not quite mad,  he insisted on a quick betrothal ignoring every overture his future good mother made to prolong it and he ensured the dornish princess could not escape him by feigning illness since he assigned a group of maesters to care for her  permanently.

So in the last month of the year 273, Princess Elia Nymeros Martell married Aerys the second of his name and became his second queen.

Chapter Text

When the mountain that rides is still cruel, evil and a mad beast who ought to be put down but this time he is dornish.

Ser Gregor Clegane has only grow taller  from the last time she saw him. Before she married Rhaegar he had arrived  to sunspear to drag off his errant younger brother and agreed to stay at Doran’s court when the young master Sandor was discovered to have travelled to essos as part of Oberyn’s retinue.

After that he never left. Doran was aware of the reputation the young lord of Clegane’s keep had and made the decision to control the leash of the only remaining offspring of their late mother’s kennelmaster.

Dark rumors surrounded him since before that, It was said that the boy killed his father and sister and burned his brother’s face before trying to kill him too, that he periodically abducted travelers and stole their goods, that his peasants disappearead randomly  and not all lost to the sands as he always excused.

Elia knows it was not so.  Not certainly when sometimes body parts appeared after sandstorms or when up in the mountains, tortured bodies are sometimes discovered by weary travelers.

That was the man Doran offered as her sworn shield at the capital , a boy truly, who was not even a knight. A mad beast.

She had rejected the offer in public and she remembers grey enraged eyes staring at her from a face who looked far to older to be fifteen and now she sees the same eyes after four years looking at her with the same furious, repulsed expression.

‘’Princess’’, his voice is far too deep and he smirks at her with scorn. Her dress is torn and soiled with blood, the westermen knight Tywin Lannister sent to kill her and her children lays in half at her feet, his body cooling and his intestines spilling around foul waste.

‘’ Am I not honorable enough now?’’, his hand encircles her wrist as he pulls her flush against his chest and she has to crane her neck to look at his face.

She’s horrified. He’s the one who ended up being his knight in shining armor and he’s the mad beast who also obeyed the every command the Mad king made. She has seen him in court many times, he has behead men and women, pull out tongues or teared children from their mother’s breasts. She knows he has an habit for drink and rape and she knows that the mad king intended for him to follow in the order of the kingsguard after Ser Darry died.

She looks at the sides. She's alone with him.

All the other dornish soldiers had been killed. The royal guards had taken off to fight on the walls of the keep. Her uncle has died in the trident and the men Oberyn sent would not make it in time with the storms.  Jaime Lannister is probably opening the gates to his father.

She remembers the laughs in the great hall  so may years ago and  now she can feel him hard as a rock against her skirts. He wants her and he has a grudge with her. She is going to die and her children with her if she doesn’t get him to help her.

And she knows he wants her. She has to use it in her advantage instead of allow it to go against her.

When his hands travel to her neck there She starts talking before it's too late.

‘’The former hand would give you nothing but a noose. You were not even named kingsguard yet and he wants nothing that would remain from us Martells. Eddard Stark would execute you when he hears that you assisted Aerys into killing his brother and father. Robert Baratheon has already killed the rest and would not spare a dornish black dog, the butcher of the marchers’’ She uses the insult he has heard muttered only sometimes and her ribs crack.

‘’He would go with whatever Jon Arryn says and he would only keep the honorable Ser Barristan and Jaime Lannister alive.’’ Without pausing to breath some air , she continues after.

‘’But I can give you everything’’ . She wheezes when his fist clench with her neck in his grasp but she keeps going, his black eyes are intent on her and he almost froaths at the mouth when she reminds him how he has none to turn but her, he understands and he knows where she’s going.

‘’Aerys wanted to force a cloak for you but I would give you everything,  my son would  be a generous king for us dornish and he would need strong bannermen.  Another castle, riches, spoils of war, women. Everything you want---’’.

He scoffs at the last she says and starts touching lower, inching to her breasts. ‘’I don’t want whores’’

Yes you do, but you would not make one of me!. She says only one thing she can say that would spare her.  What this black dog wants to get is beautiful juicy bone to tear apart.

‘’Bring me Tywin Lannister’s head and I’ll give his daughter Cersei as your bride’’. Better the so called the ligh of the west  than herself.

His bark is louder than the roaring flames around them, louder than the fight in the floor below or the screaming servants and her knees almost buckle under the heavy weight of his cloak.

‘’Now we are talking, my queen’’.

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‘’Elia the Crown Princess, the Lady of Sunspear . Elia the First of her name. The rulling Princess of Dorne. Queen of the Rhoynars, the Andals, the First Men and the Iron Born. Protector of the seas and the realms of the land.’’

The Valyrians that tried to invade the lands near the Rhoyne and Noyne in Essos lost the wars since the Doom  happened early on. Without the resources to oust their enemies without great cost and steadily losing whatever wealth they have outside of Valyria they decided to relocate far earlier at Dragonstone than in cannon after many failed attempts of other survivors in near colonies to reforge the empire.

With that time gained to grow their own empire, the Rhoynish princes of Essos managed not to just expand it but to reinforce the water magic whispered to be present  in the blood of their rulling houses .They tried many methods and failed many times and finally settled on mixing valyrian sorcery extracted from their captured hostages to empower themselves to untold heights.

And they grew too powerful,  too strong and threatening. After a century or so the rest of the colonies founded by Valyria settled enough their problems to turn their eyes at them. Alongside the states from slaver’s bay they  united against their old enemy.

Despite their power, by cunning and superior military numbers the Rhoynish losy the war against the combined attack and Princess Nymeria and other few Rhoynish Princes were forced to leave their lands and home to avoid being crushed.

The journey was long and full of danger and many died in the way but the warrior princess’s spirit never got crushed. After arriving at Dorne  she married Mors Martell and set off to acquire enough land for her people. Realizing quickly that the neighboring kings rulling Dorne would not tolerate her countrymen’s presence inflating Lord Martell number of vassals she decided to subdue their territories  and the war to unifie Dorne began.

Despite her own military power and magic, she wisely realized the task proved too great to be managed in her lifetime  and since all the other great rulling families from Essos were extinguished by that time she was waging war at Dorne and the minor ones with some talent had no member of the right age,  she decided to adopt the practice of her old valyrian enemies and married her eldest daughter from Mors Martell with her eldest son from Lord Dayne, so their own children could  inherit her power undiluted. Her grandchildren’s own descendants continued the tradition after realizing each generation grew more and more powerful  and capable to achieve her dream and war expanded to the dornish marches as they progressed.

The resistance from the faith and rival reacher king at their customs and progress proved too fierce and almost constant, so the rulling prince at the time decided to change another tradition .  

The Nymeros Martell’s dynasty would eschew the practice of absolute primogeniture early on and let the most powerful water mage rule after the previous ruling prince of princess died.

In all history almost none of the rulling princes or princesses ever took a consort without Rhoynish blood magic in their veins though it was common for them to accept paramours freely from all backgrounds.

The Nymeros Martell dynasty is only consolidated after they forced the fierce iron born into submission and killed the last deformed dragons’ hatchlings from the valyrian’s descendants hiding in Dragonstone. They took especial pride in making former dragonlords  their direct vassals.

House Targaryen from Dragonstone is sworn directly to the Sun Throne of Dorne.

In the current generation, the  holder of the title is the daughter of Daughter of Queen Loreza and Prince Lewyn Nymeros Martell, the former Princes Elia Nymeros Martell,  whose magic was so strong she overcame death  at birth and the frailness of her mortal body as a young child, swiftly displacing with her power  her much older brother who was wildly  talented and considered heir for many years before her birth.  

She  did  her duty and took Doran as  husband as tradition demanded despite only having  a sister's love for him but she also rebelled against her royal mother’s orders by taking her younger brother as her second husband  in the same ceremony since her mother had wanted to marry him off far away to use his outstanding talents and knightly power to subdue a westerlander lord into curbing his ambitions.

After the rulling Princess Loreza passed away many a year or two after she abdicated her title, Elia Nymneros Martell  ascended to the throne with her brothers-husbands at her side,  three years after she had both a daughter and a son with them.

Always praised for her calm for and acute mind,  a surprising change from the wild hotheaded rulling dornish , she shocked the world and her andal and first men subjects and started a rebellion only after four years of her coronation when she abducted Lord Rhaegar Targaryen – known by all as the last dragon - in the death of the night before he could travel to celebrate his marriage to Lady Lyanna Stark.

Then everything was set ablaze and water magic burned with valyrian fire.

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None ever expected a Bolton Queen at the Iron Throne, not when four great houses had daughters in her generation and especially none expected her to actually rule when she married the crown prince, not even as the regent for her infant son and certainly no one in her lifetime ever believed the accusations thrown at her feet despite her family’s dark history… but Elia Bolton defied them all.

She was born a Princess of Dorne, her birthname was Elia Martell and she was also the niece of the last lord of the main Bolton line, whose son  Roose died early on as a small  boy. No one expected for her to inherit anything since her father was dornish and subject to his elder sister, the powerful rulling Princess of Dorne who had one son at the time and quickly birthed another … but fate turned its wheels like never did before.

After the man’s only sister died at chilbirth and her husband joined the kinsguard out of grief, fearing the extinction of his house with the death of the only child he managed to sire,  Lord  Rogan Bolton, old and unwilling to marry, decided to adopt her sister’s only child  who was a babe at the time, the daughter of Prince Lewyn Martell and third in line for the succession of Dorne who had traveled to kingslanding to join the kingsguard as soon as his wife died.

It was not clear why Lord Rogan chose her, many neighboring lords counseled him to remarry and not name as his heiress a dornish looking girl but Lord Rogan’s mind was set, the only answer he ever gave was her eyes ring true.

Not one in the north was happy, it was said that even Lord Rickard had wanted him to marry his cousin but the old Lord remained firm and in the endLady Branda Stark married a minor lord from the Stormlands.

Lord Bolton also had to defy the Princess of Dorne who had wanted to foster the girl at her palace and raise her herself. The only missive he sent to the woman was that Elia was abandoned by her father so she was no Martell anymore.

At the end of her fourth year, Elia was officially acknowledged as Lady Elia Bolton and her title of princess considered abolished when the patent of King jaehaerys II arrived from White Harbor.

Many suits were offered to Rogan for Elia, including one from Lord Rickard again,  offering either of his eldest two sons but the old lord  surprised everyone when he only gave half answers and no promises, as close as refusing everyone as he dared.

He raised the girl in almost solitude, only his guidance and the maester’s ever taught the future lady of the Dreadfort. Her dornish family never was allowed to visit once and their letters were infrecuent.

In time, many pitied the child. With no mother and no companions to brighten up her days and distract from the haunted presence of her uncle’s halls and the screams of the dungeons, the poor girl was all alone and isolated. the lords and ladies whispered.

It was said that her only joy was strolling with her horse and dogs at the forests, so every merchant that wanted a smooth journey and as the apple of her uncle cold eyes they always cared to gift one to Lord Rogan for his heiress.

Time passed on, Elia grew from babe to child to maiden and so on.

Elia remained an unknown and gossip rouse, as soon as they arrived to other lands the rare traveler from the Dreadfort was always compelled to describe her . They never failed to recount how the pale lady acted, how soft was her smile and courteous her manner , how her pleasant voice never raised in anger or joy, but her gaze… it was something that they couldn’t bear.

And when Lord Rogan grew sick for the last three years of his life, Elia started to rule as Lady and Lord  in all but title and started to deal with the other northern vassals.

None of the other lords were happy with her presence, many wanted her role as regent to end and for her to get married to proper norther looking man but  none was so bold since they had no valid complain to bring to Lord Stark. The acting Lady Bolton ruled efficiently and quietly, never a tax to Winterfell was delayed, never a whisper of misrule was heard outside of Bolton lands, the thieves had their hands cut off and the rapists their cocks, other criminals were sent to the wall regularly, commerce was steady and even improved with some dornish goods. She still remained secluded, only her letters left bolton lands.

They all watched for her to make a mistake but none was done and she remained single even when passed her 20^th nameday.

Whether it was her modest beauty and daunting ancestry or the threat of her uncle recovering and unleashing a carnage over them, not even the most grasping nobleman dared to attack her or abduct her as she traveled on her lands. It did help that none of the lords or minor houses could claim a drop of Bolton’s blood in the last century.

Her lands and her people were quiet…….until they weren’t when the lord finally died.

Elia was twenty  two years and she should have long married they said and when the boldest lord dared to write to Lord Stark to grant him her hand, she had already left the Dreadfort with a castellan to fulfill the marriage arrangement her uncle had not been able to refuse.

The notice was met first with outrage and then with envy since they coveted the title of Lord of the Dreadfort and feared whatever foreign man she would bring to the North. Most of the northern lords mocked her at her back since they never ever considered her of one of their own. As she corresponded personally with no one, they thought  she was going to marry one of cousins in Dorne, that the adoption had been pointless and that the bolton lands should be given to themselves to prevent them to fall into a Martell dornish prince’s hands.

Only Lord Rickard and his maester knew where she was travelling and at her petition , he didn’t set the rumors straight and let them talk until the news of her marriage were known to all Westeros.

He had never understood her uncle’s actions before and he seldom understood or knew the young lady who presented herself at his keep with only a letter a day before announcing her presence but there had been something compelling in her eyes, a sureness on her quiet voice that reminded him of her late mother who he once considered as a wife.

Despite his vassals obvious dispeasure, Lord Rickard had a mind  to humor her wishes. In another world he would have betrothed her to Ned since Brandon was going to marry Lord Tully’s daughter but he quickly realized it was not to be. It would not do to antagonize the future queen of westeros.

At the end of the fifth month of 279 ac, Lady Elia Bolton surprised the whole north when she  married not either of his cousins the Prince Doran or the Prince Oberyn at kingslanding,  but the Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, eldest son King Aerys and his sister wife Queen Rhaella.

The courtiers themselves were also shocked, most believed the lady traveled to petition the crown for help to keep her lands in her grasp and none believed that a half dornish northen girl who had been abandoned by her father and raised by her uncle instead could ever be the heir’s bride and win over the most popular choices like the fourteen year old Cersei, the daughter of the hand of the king, the richest lord of the land or even other more conventional choices, like the grown sisters of Lord Mace Tyrell, the second richest Lord. Even the most beautiful maiden of westeros, the violet eyed Ashara Dayne or the second daughter of Hoster Tully should have been queens before her, many said.

The lord of Casterly Rock raged but quickly understood why though and at the wedding feast he watched with wariness and distaste as the Lady Elia, titled Princess again for the second time of her life, dancing with grace by the halls. He felt rage at his own daughter getting robbed a crown  and he fumed the whole feast getting lost in his mind and did not realize the guests at his side had gone away, in a moment he suddenly found himself cold and when he looked up he felt  his breath catch in his throat when pale eyes turned to him. Princess Elia raised her cup at him when all the attendants were observing her husband play the harp and she watched him.

She understood him.  Her soft lips appeared to murmur something.  My blades are sharp.

And despite himself , he shivered as the crowd clapped and turned their eyes on her as she smiled and elegantly kissed her husband’s cheek.

In the end, he was not the only one interested in her.

Though without really knowing her, her aunt and her cousins were not late to offer her support at court the day after. Before she returned to Dorne, the sick and old Princess Loreza apologized to her for not insisting into raising her at Sunspear and by pushing for her marriage at the capital to restrict Lord Lannister ambitions, forcing Elia to leave the land where she had lived all life and which she was lady of.

The powerful Princess Loreza was very weak by then as a rot had settled on her lungs years before and she wept in her niece arms as the young woman only answered ‘’Worry not Mother, I’m very happy to meet Prince Lewyn and our family after all this time’’.

Before she traveled with her son Doran to return to Dorne she left her with a guard of honor of one hundred men-at-arms, five knights and half a dozen of loyal maids aside from her youngest son to act as her sworn shield and commander of her guard.

Elia thanked her also for the chests of jewelry the old Princess left her. Since I have no daughter and you’re my niece and the only woman in our family aside from myself in four generations.

When Princess Elia turned her eyes to Oberyn’s she realized that they had the same shape despite the different color.

‘’Well met cousin’’.

 It was said that was the only time when Prince Oberyn shuddered.

As time at Kingslanding passed, Princess Elia, both named Martell and Bolton by the courtiers depending who wanted to slight her, did not met many of the expectations placed at her feet.

Not cruel and lacking the sinister reputation of her late uncle she was not like her dornish relatives either. Mild mannered and soft spoken, her gentle appearance was much unlike her wild cousin Oberyn despite their physical similarities .   She also was met distrust and struggled to make connections aside from the dornish and the crownlander lords, the heavy influence of the hand of the king keeping her at bay.

Following both the old gods of the North and the seven from the Andals her husband adhered to, she publicly visited the great sept of Baelor every week and founded many orphanages and poor houses.  She expertly settled Prince Rhaegar’s household at Dragonstone and managed her own keep from the island far away, never giving Lord Stark or the other northern lords cause to complain about her absence.

She did her duty in other aspects too; in less than three years of marriage she gave birth to a daughter with her pale eyes and black hair and a son who was fully valyrian.

Her goodfather never dared to touch either of them.

‘’ Less you come at me with a knife, wench!’’

The presentation of her daughter at court was the only occasion the Princess Elia smiled at her goodfather.

In contrast, Queen Rhaella was said to have cried of joy at holding her grandchild,  so long keep away in Dragonstone by the orders of her grandfather. The sad queen  occupied a special place in the quiet princess’s life as Elia and her family officially settled in the capital as she acted like the mother she never had.

And despite never showing any reaction,  Elia always watched.

None really noticed how Elia’s pale eyes grew icily as she saw the mistreatment of the queen at the king’s side, as she realized her own husband never dared to intervene. As every courtier watched and did nothing. As the high septon looked to the other side when the royal family went to the sept of Baelor and the queen’s face was bruised and hidden behind a veil. As the king grew more cruel in his punishment and visited the queen after. As he started burning men and surrounding himself with alchemists. As he started hurting the queen every time she got her moonblood and was not pregnant, or every time she lost a babe.

It was met surprise by all when one of the royal children didn’t die and survive their first year. And for a time, the king was so pleased he agreed to go to a tournament in his new son’s honor.  The whole court traveled to Lannisport when disaster struck.

Nothing is known about the personal relationship between her and her husband , only that they always acted respectful to each other in public, he was polite to her and she kind to him so it was met with surprise that when she was pregnant with his son, the crown Prince Rhaegar crowned a Lady Lyanna Stark, a girl of fifteen, as the queen of love and beauty in a tournament.

It was said that Princess Elia’s face never changed despite all the looks thrown at her. She sat there placidly and watched as the Stark family stormed out and their second son dragged an enraged Robert Baratheon, she watched as her husband’s eyes trailed after the young woman with a pitiful expression and she watched as the king raged later and ordered to his son to sit at once. She watched as her cousin bristled so much that he had to be ordered away. She watched as the hand of the king mocked her before the king told him that his son would join the kingsguard.

She watched as the man who sired her daughter and who sired her son sat awkwardly at her side, a wary expression on his pale face as she didn’t react with anger or tears. She watched as everyone tired of not seeing her react  at all and left for the feast.

But it was said that the prince shuddered as she leaned on his side to kiss his cheek, her darker hand over his own as she put it over her belly, her thin lips murmuring something too low even for the page queen Rhaella gifted her to hear.

My blades are sharp.

She was praised wildly for her forgiving nature. Despite the humiliation suffered and her Bolton and Martell blood, the princess Elia never wavered in her duties or loyalty to her husband, everyone sang. She continued as she had always done and when months later, a son was born to her, she never tried to stop her husband to hold him or name him without consulting her. It was said she didn’t even argue when he said that there must be another when she still laid on a bloody bed.

She didn’t stop him when he supposedly left for Summerhall. In front of his knights and few servants she wished him well and kissed his cheek again before he departed with his group.

She even sent her cousin away in exile when he started to raise complaints in court about the prince’s behavior.

She just sat again in her blood soaked bed as the fool she married outlive his usefulness. The only angry action the Princess Elia took was to order the destruction of the wedding gift her late aunt gave to Rhaegar and she for their wedding.

It was never known why exactly Prince Rhaegar died or why he was so close to the riverlands. Almost a month after he had departed, three weeks after he passed Rosby, he had been found.

 His companions were of no use, most were dead anyway and  almost unrecognizable , killed by a rough group of essosi mercenaries that tortured them when they got drunk on the journey. The ones who survived were left mad and spouting nonsense about shadows, monsters with ripped faces turning on them. The kingsguard Ser Arthur Dayne was never found, neither alive or dead but a year later his sword made his way to his family seat at Starfall and Lord Dayne never pushed the issue further.

Prince Rhaegar’s body itself was found intact, not only from wounds but also from rot even when the weeks passed in the woods should have turned it into green decayed flesh.  His loyal companion Lord Connigton was found clinging to his side, already black and blue from death.

As the mess of how the crown Prince was killed raged, kingslanding didn’t pay much attention to the mess the Starks were doing when their daughter also disappeared. Many have heard her complains of how unhappy she was with her upcoming marriage to Lord Baratheon and after the shameful incident with the late prince most believed the girl had fled her family in despair. When a letter arrived to Lord Tully’s hall signed by Lyanna Stark’s hand apologizing to her family for having found true love no one paid them anymore attention.

Princess Elia herself sent multiple letters at the crownlander and riverlander’s houses asking for the girl to be returned to her family if seen. As the king grew sick to leave his rooms,  and to help with the search, she even summoned her cousin from Essos, as her concern for the Lord Stark  and his sons was rumored to be too great. She was gracious  too and even sent a gift to the newly wedded Lady Catelyn.

When whispers of Lord Baratheon acussing her, her late husband and King Aerys of the disappearance of his betrothed and summoning armies,  the king left his chambers and returned to sit on the throne. He summoned Lord Stark and his sons along with Lord Robert to answer their treason but sadly none ever arrived. Their summoned armies almost didn’t fought any battle.

Lord Baratheon was thrown of his horse when he rode drunk one month after he feasted for the last time in his hall, the morning after Lady Catelyn’s wedding to Brandon Stark.

Lord Stark and his newly wedded son along with their army and the Baratheon forces were delayed by a pestilence near the southern riverlands and  met with Tywin Lannister and his host close to Rosby. It was not clear what happened, some said Lord Tywin asked the Starks to join him in his rebellion and sit a Baratheon in the iron throne, others said that he intended to take them hostage and bring them to kingslanding but the men were killed by an unknown man in the middle of the Lannister camp.

The Lannister army was massacred by combined front of the Vale, the northern commanders that had wanted justice and the riverlanders knights commanded by the brother of Hoster Tully. At the same time, news traveled from the capital that Ser Jaime Lannister had killed the king.

And everyone knew what would happen.

Rebellion.

 Their objective now was to seat Stannis Baratheon on the throne, who remained trapped in his castle by the Tyrell forces.

 After the unrest in the riverlands was known the Princess regent signed the patent declaring Lord Tywin’s treason and the one for those who supported the still not known late Robert Baratheon.

At the time  the capital had still its doors closed , the pestilence that delayed the Starks ravaged the riverlands, killing many there,  including the Lord Hoster Tully, his second daughter and almost his oldest daughter, who  ended delivering the stillborn son of Lord Brandon.

After a month the plague extended to the Stormlands and with his older brother dead, stuck in his castle and starving inside, unable to leave because of the plague,  Lord Stannis saw  no reason to fight for a missing lady Stark and with no wish to be king he sent a letter to the capital swearing his allegiance to King Aegon and begging for help as he was forced to close his own castle as the people outside died by the hundreds.

When Eddard Stark rode south with a small host after the plague had left the riverlands and expanded to the stormlands and the reach, he was met with a sour situation at Riverrun . His sister still missing, both his father, elder brother and nephew were dead along with his friend Robert Baratheon and he was being hunted down by the loyalist riverlander houses and the new army raised by Kevan Lannister who wanted to avenge the death of his brother.  He also found that his father had made a contract with the late lord Tully bethroting him to his brother’s wife in case Brandon died. An agreement Ser Brynden was forcing him to honor at sword point, despite Lady Catelyn  being deemed too weakened to bear a healthy child again, blaming the northerners by his brother and niece’s deaths as their soldiers brought the plague into the castle itself in the aftermatch of Lord Rickard and his heir’s deaths.

And as he was forced to say his vows and bed a woman he didn’t love and forget the Lady Ashara who he had promised to wed, he started to  consider kneeling to the new king, the babe Aegon. At first the thought was met with distate causinmg him to snarl and thrust harder but as he realized the body under him whining he forced himself to relax and think clearly.

Would it be so bad? The new king was half northern, his mother, despite her Martell looking appearance was a vassal from his father before her marriage to the crown. In the letters his father sent he said  Princess Elia had offered to look for Lyanna and that it was a shame she was involved at all with that arse Rhaegar.

Elia. He racked his brain trying to remember the woman. He had only met her once when she suddenly appeared at Winterfell. Brown pale skin and a slight body, she was not at all like his violet eyed lady, but she was kind and polite and without Rhaegar and Aerys, she would guide her son well.

As he finished inside his wife, he thought tiredly that it would not be so bad to kneel at her feet. He didn’t realize the hateful gaze his brother’s widow threw him.

After two weeks of being trapped at the castle Eddard Stark managed to leave with an honor guard and travel to kingslanding  to answer the Princess regent’s summons.

At Baelor’s sept he knelt at the feet of Rhaegar Targaryen’s widow and his son with the hopes to end the war and spare his men.

‘’Well met, Lord Stark’’

Again he was forced to taste bitter of tragedy after finding his love have killed herself and their child before throwing herself to the sea when she found he had married another,  Two months later, he departed North  with a coffin of his sister which contained the bones of a woman and some tiny other ones. After he arrived at Winterfull he buried quickly it at the side of his family and raged when he found his brother had left for the Wall. The wife he married gave him stillbirth after stillbirth until a weak son was born and she died herself. He didn’t live to see the boy grew into a man and the prestigious influence of the Starks being eclipsed after the half brother of the king, the new L ord Bolton arrived from kingslanding to the dreadfort, twenty years later

Though it was only known one hundred years after the babe king Aegon died of old age a group of four squeletons were found under the rubble of the destruction of Tower of Joy when it was decided to use the boulders for a new city’s walls.  By the grace of the dry weather and protected from the direct sun and harsh winds their flesh had been sunken but mostly remained so it was notorious  some parts were missing and their pained expression were forever etched in death

My blades are sharp.

Chapter Text

The red haired knight feels likes has life has turned upside down. All the years he had been married there was always dark eyes looking at him. She barely spoke to him or to anyone always preferring to retreat to the sept or gardens or hide in her rooms, but her eyes were most expressive and in his mind, they were accusing him of his many faults.

Sometimes he wanted to talk to her, to tell he would never have been able to stand up to Lord Lannister, that he did what he could for her and her children, that it was a miracle that she was still living at all, that the little prince was  dead the moment Prince Rhaegar lost against Robert and Lady Cersei married the new king, that princess Rhaenys’s death was just a terrible accident, he wanted to explain.

But he couldn’t. Guilt ate him and it his behavior before  he married her was ..dishonorable.

He wanted her to confront him, to do anything more than a stare at him like an statue with eyes black as night as she always did when he talked to her but she didn’t.

He wanted her gone too, he maybe could have annulled the marriage after Lord Tywin’s rage have passed but he knew he really shouldn’t . She would have never been allowed to return to Dorne and she would have been married to a worse man than him or sent to the silents sisters. And he could never do that to her.

No matter the problems he himself acquired when he accepted her as his bride, he couldn’t bring himself to speak with her more than superficial courtesies and neither to try to cast her out. He could never bring himself to explain the situation with her.

He has always know  he bears some  fault and despite his intentions he has allowed her to be treated callously.

And he could never bring himself to act callous at her … again. The lady in question is frailer now than she was even in the capital and he doesn’t want to upset her. Not when she’s so close to dying.  They had been married for sixteen years and she’s older than him, nearly forty and sick.

Though he saved her,  she has been dying slowly since he brought her children’s corpses to her. Most of the time she has felt  like a ghost that haunts Ashemark and none here had been able to change that. Despite these days being probably the only ones he has to apologize and justify himself he can’t bring himself to.  He could never provide the comfort she needed nor anyone here in this keep, she doesn’t deserve to be upset more. The only time he tried to visit her  room in this whole marriage, she screamed at him telling to that he would wash out his bloody hands.

He's ashamed of how she has been treated by his family and servants, his mother would have been supportive but she had already died by the time he returned from war and his sister was long married off to Lord Tywin’s younger brother. He has no brothers and his cousins … the less said about them the better.

He closes his eyes and then opens them again.

She has been lying on bed for a week entirely and the maester has told them all that  this time he doesn’t think she would pull out. She doesn’t appear to notice those around her and  keeps calling for her son.

She has not much time left and he dreads the Red Viper’s reaction.

His own father awaits her death with grim patience,  he didn’t like the marriage but he was unable to refute his liege lord and he can’t do anything to speed the death of his wife when the prince of Dorne keeps making an habit of burning trees whenever he leaves Sunspear, not when he was sent a letter after letter written in red bloody ink. The old lord of Ashemark looks relieved that this time he could get a chance to arrange a proper marriage for his heir.

Addam himself doesn’t know what to think . He doesn’t know what he owes to feel but he feels like a failure now that he’s seeing her dying.

The years together had not been happy, most of all he has avoided her as much as he could out of guilt but he shut off early on his father and relative’s complains about the lack of heirs swiftly  by announcing she was barren so there was no point in him going to her room just to give the poor lady some respite after they rode hard to escape Lord Lannister’s ill regard but …

He sometimes wonders if he should not have spoken. Her eyes have looked so hurt and betrayed he had felt compelled to apologize in private but she had remained silent as he spoke then.

And she had remained mostly silent all these years. She had been a shell truly. The late maester that first treated her told him she was sick in the mind with grief, that she would most likely starve if left on her own and that she should be treated kindly and not bare any surprise.

So he had done that, he treated her kindly from afar,  he was careful as if she was as fragile as glass and he has avoided her bed and protected her as much as he could from ill  words and anything else .  He has had mistresses quietly along the years and given her leave to rest on the gardens or the sept with guards guarding the perimeter instead on being on her line of sight as he knows she dislikes people but nothing he has ever done has gotten much of a reaction.

Nothing, not even the letters she read ,the letters her family sent her. She read them and burned them after and she never wrote back until the last time, she wrote a short note saying she understood them and decided to say her goodbyes since she felt her death close.

To him she had appeared no more ill than before but she quickly deteriorated and he wondered if he should have paid more attention.

She coughs loudly, her starved form swallowed under the sheets and when her eyes open she wakes up and tries to sit, the pressure of the action making her spit blood.

He turns to the side to look for a cloth with wide eyes and her dark eyes look at her pleadingly before her hands extend to him, calling him closer.

Unable and unwilling to refuse the dying lady he leans closer until her rancid breath caresses the shell of her ear.

A trembling, guttural low voice emerge from those pale lips. ‘’The red comet is crossing the skies again. He’s coming back  home’’.

The she turns to him and suddenly touches his face as she spats  in his eyes and mouth. The burning is so painful but he finds himself unable to scream as thick black blood burns his tongue and mouth and his eyes start to roll back into his skull.

Before he collapses at the floor he hears her speak in a strange voice. ‘’ My son will kill you all, Lannister dogs’’.

Chapter Text

Tall, strong, big boned with a voluptuous chest and revealing silks Elia Martell  appears to be everything the court thinks about the Dornish.

Next to her brother they could almost be twins with their black eyes and curved smirking lips and the court shudders at the thought of having the female version of the Red Vipper as the future queen.  

She is not pious, they said as she hollers with laughter at the feast after looking bored on the ceremony at the sept celebrating the birth of the second prince.

She is not chaste, they said after she dances the whole night with lords and knights alike never once needing to take a breath. She doesn’t pin after the melodic music of the crown prince like the rest of the ladies and engages in bets and games of cards with the youngest lords from the south.

She is a whore, the westerlanders sneered and some jealous ladies almost screamed at her betrothing feast ….

And Aerys Targaryen  cared not, because whatever she is , she’s healthy and of valyrian blood. As he looks at her, he knows she would provide the crown with more   than two brats in fifteen years like his wife.

She is stronger than his own sickly sister and she is the best he can get as Steffon Baratheon died on his journey without discovering a better wife for Rhaegar. 

He is the king and he will decide.

She would marry his son.

Elia Martell is resplendent, her tanned skin glows like gloss and her light pale eyes shine like the stars in the night sky. She dresses herself magnificently but the gold in her clothes and jewels does not hide the blackness of her character.

After the royal wedding, many courtiers learned  to tread lightly with the dornish princess.

The westerlanders noblemen that slandered her soon found themselves without rooms at the Red keep and were forced to seek board outside the castle, all the respectable inns were already full and they had to lodge with merchants in the same building, losing face against the other nobles.

Elia Martell was petty and vengeful.

The sneering ladies were brough to tears when they had to pay their respects to Queen Rhaella and the new crown prince’s wife as some developed sudden rashes on their bodies that mimicked venerean illness, others found their clothes infested with moths and had to change to a lesser clothing or in some notable case someone ate some odd food that caused her to shit herself in public.

Not even the companions of her husband were spared of her vengeance when she deemed herself insulted.  After sour comments made about her appearance into her husband’s ears, the Lord Jon Connigton was slapped straight in the face in the middle of the feast and challenged to defend his words with steel by the princess herself as it was wildly known she had trained in arms for some years alongside his brother.

Unable to fight the wife of his beloved friend, the lord  had to leave the feast fuming,  and was humiliated  the next day when he was found with no recollection of what happened and a male whore in his bed by a chambermaid, the scandal ended up growing so big and the rumors running wild, being whispered that he had acted like that because he was the lover of the Prince and had been jealous that the young lord was compelled by the hand of the king to return to his keep and seek a wife to not tarnish the reputation of the crown Prince anymore.

The hand himself did not act out of kindness. Tywin Lannister detested her.

Elia Martell stole what he thought was of her daughter... she was a loud , brash, licentious, petty  wench with low cunning and was nothing what a lady should be... except to be so dammed healthy and fertile!.

In two years of marriage and despite her older age by westerosi standarts and different personality than her husband, Lord Lannister watched as she birthed a daughter and a son and was up from the birthing bed in less than a month.

He fumed when it was said in court that she engaged in marital relations before the time the maesters had counseled and soon after started hunting again on the kinsgwood.  He sourly recalled how his own beloved wife had not even managed to survive the birth of the dwarf.

Elia Martell also hated Lord Lannister, despite the known danger and against her husband’s wishes she was more bold than anyone else thought and little by little, with some achievements and some loses,  she ingratiated herself enough with Aerys for him to consider her an annoyance he had to bear and not a threat he had to eliminate and  slowly she filled with her own countrymen  court positions and  shipped off the confidence the man had on his old friend by igniting the fears against his capabilities and the greed of the Lion lord.

Elia Martell was brash. She loudly flaunted her valyrian blood and  her valyrian looking son and the daughter that was so close in age with Viserys and the humilliations suffered by Lord Lannister were so painful to bear that he ended up resigning after three years.

She quickly birthed another daughter, a girl looking like a mix of her and her husband and when Aerys announced this one will marry his second son instead of the dornish looking  one she kept quiet and raised her goblet to her god father at the feast.

Elia Martell was not all knowing.

When her husband informed her that he had read a prophecy and was convinced that he had to provide the world with a child who was the mix of the ice and fire and he was not sure their last daughter was the prophecied Visenya she  was surprised but decided to play along his madness. She suggested several woman that could serve as his mistress and when she discovered that he didn’t plan to have the child  be a bastard and instead planned to remove all their children as heirs and her as his wife and install another woman… she started planning.

Elia Martell had fire on her veins. Never a person heard someone scream so loud after she was humiliated by her husband at a tourney, the day after when she crossed paths with the Lady Stark. She made a scandal so big that none noticed how  her husband was quietly dragged off before he could approach the hall and later oddly absent.

Aerys noticed and was not surprised. He gave the orders and he would not stand for a threat against his dynasty.

Lyanna Stark was slapped in the face twice in front of the whole court and her family. She was going to retaliate  when Elia Martell clutched her belly and Aerys intervened.

Never looking like the warrior reborn not even as his prime, with his lean phrame and tangled hair he was able to inspire the terror only a madman with absolute power could.

Looking directly at the Starks he  expelled them and the northern whore from court, counseling his cousin Robert to marry the girl before she disgraced herself and provide him a bastard for an heir.

The scandal did not end there, out of nowhere the king took his former’s hand son back into court as a kinsguard despite the boy being his father’s heir.

The court was then shocked into silence as the Starks were beyond humiliated. Robert Baratheon started to scream for Rhaegar to stop hiding before he was knocked out by a unknown man, preventing a disaster.

Later on the southern lords and ladies were not sympathetic. They called Robert a fool and Lyanna a she-wolf on the hunt for men and the comments grew so loud and so nasty that Lord Tully decided to delay the marriage of his daughter to Brandon Stark, informing by letter to Lord Rickard of the situation and telling him that Catelyn will only go to Winterfell after Lyanna  leaves, bringing more humiliation.

The lady herself was most distraught, being so honored and revered in her homeland for her interest in weapons and as the only Stark daughter made her think the south will love her the same and the realization that she was not, that she was not the only one who knew how to ride or handle weapons and that she was thought unnatural and barbaric instead of daring, that for rejecting an arranged marriage to a whoremonger and trying to  find true she was thought lascivious brought bitter tears to her eyes. Her father was able to contain her brothers and though he defended her he was unable to look at the eyes of the rest of noblemen and she was packed her in a carriage straight to Storm’s end.

Her own betrothed  was ridding ahead of her with neither a word directed to she or her brothers.

Elia Martell was cruel. A week after her husband crowned the girl he had decided to replace her as his queen of love and beauty, she discovered the letters they exchanged agreeing to run away together. Giving that her husband was furious with her and had recently escaped Aerys’ s soldiers and the girl planned to flee her family, she sent the letters to Lord Robert and asked her brother and their men to ensure that her husband never reached her…

Not willing to take any risks, she also decided to ensure the girl didn’t carry a bastard.

The Starks ended up having to pause many times in their journey as their sister grew sick of the bowels , their three weeks journey  ending being two whole months as they were delayed by having to bypass kingslanding in fear that Rhaegar would appear and try to take Lyanna. They tarried long enough in the Reach that Lord Tully himself grew anxious that the marriage would never happen and send soldiers and his maester to ensure so.

When Lord Baratheon found the Dornish escort close to his lands he thought Aerys was coming himself to humiliate him and saw with resentment the woman he had agreed to marry and the whole company that traveled with her to ensure she arrived.  Looking at her pale and wan face, he clearly thought she has ridden herself of a bastard despite the assurances of the contrary and he drank without stopping at his wedding feast growing enraged when he learned from Ned that his betrothed had been sick enough to warrant a maester’s aid.

Then he remembered the whispers from before the tourney, that Lyanna had cried at hearing the prince sing and poured a drink over her youngest brother’s head when he laughed at her tears. He remembers the  sour expression in Elia’s light pale eyes the day after the debacle and the letters the Princess sent him, so boldly recalling  their past friendship, warning him of the situation. He remembers Aerys words and the mocking of the court. In his mind he pictures Stannis’s disgusted expression and how his knights avoided him now. How most of his bannermen had made excuses to not attend his wedding and how none of those who had come had brought a daughter, sister, mother, niece or any female relation.

Despite Aerys not actually being there to insult him and the silver bastard never trying to recover his lover,  he realizes everyone in his household thought so too. Stannis had even  outright refused to be there and traveled to Estermont out  to avoid seeing the union Robert had insisted on fulfilling until recently, refusing to acknowledge a she-wolf  in the honored position their mother held.

With his suspicion being confirmed in his mind he realized he was a laughing stock and rage consumed him as he recited his vow under clenched teeth.

When the ceremony was over he felt sick himself but realized it was already done and when she was finally deposited naked in his bed he decided to get it over quickly,  even though he couldn’t bare to look at her. After it was done, his had mind cleared enough that he dared to properly look his eyes on her face and body.

Flushed cheeks and dark scowling grey eyes and….His eyes grew round at seeing her slightly distended belly and the white legs below them, with no blood staining them.

Elia Martell was not all knowing.

Lord Robert Baratheon beat his newly wedded wife to death, the screams alerting the guests too late.

 A single punch had been throwed her off the bed,  her skull cracking into the stone floor and when she didn’t move after he shake her he started roaring for the maester. The scandal attracted the guests and her father Rickard attacked him at seeing his fading daughter. Robert ended up killing him with knife to the eye as the man tried to behead him and then  his bed chamber turned into a battle camp.

The lord of Storm’s end ended up  slain by his wife’s brother Brandon who himself  was killed by the Baratheon household guards as they saw their lord holding his guts on the floor. The norther bannermen and the surviving Stark  in their attempt to flee the keep took the youngest Baratheon brother hostage and fought their way out of the castle and killed the boy out of spite after the death of their lords despite Eddard’s protests.

In less than a month, there was civil war in the Stormlands and Stannis Baratheon was hunting down every stark retainer he could until Eddard Stark  and five soldiers were the only who managed to flee the Stormlands.

Aerys cackled as a madman as he learned what happened and when the debacle was known to Prince Rhaegar he was so enraged that he wrapped his arms against his wife’s neck, blaming her for bringing doom to the world before she kicked him in the groin, forcing him to release her.

He confined the princess to their rooms and  Aerys grew suddenly sick, and he openly made plans to throw a coup to depose his father, intending to do something to fix it. He brought back his old friend from the Stormlands and ordered him to seek and bring the Lord Stark from the Riverlands.

Elia Martell was practical. The seed that had taken root in her was small and she quickly lost it, she cried so loud and  so pitifully that Rhaegar arrived to visit her and bring the children to her, ordering her to rest.

Early in her stay at the Red Keep she had made efforts into knowing the tunnels below the castle but she waited until she had recovered enough her standing in her husband’s eyes and his courtiers, postrating herself in front of the throne room before the self called Prince regent, beseeching his forgiveness and promising to stop being a disobedient wife and learn her  place as a woman. To endeavor to always strive to serve him and give  him a spare for his line. To have her family aid him to overthrow the rebellious lord in the south.

Elia Martell was a masterfull speaker, her words were so moving and her devotion to him so firm that her husband kissed her and sealed his fate.

And then Aerys returned to court and threw a fit. Sending his son to kill both Eddard Stark and Stannis Baratheon, the younger man’s plans evapored into thin air.

Before parting, she learned she learned her husband had sent letters to Casterly Rock and summoned the rest of the banners and she knew she had to get away.

 The Starks were pissed at Rhaegar and so the Baratheons, they hated each other but they hated the Targaryens too and they both were declared traitors soon after Eddard Stark had married Catelyn Tully in his brother’s place. The old Lord of the Vale was siding with him and it was rumored that he was going to  travel to Riverrun to marry the youngest Tully girl and seal the alliance.

Elia Martell was scared and she was confined again. A blonde Lannister boy was her most frequent protector.

Rhaegar had taken the army and died on his way and her brother was still there at the Riverlands.  And thought it galled them, the crownlanders and the rest of the royal houses had to bow down to second prince of Dorne as the male most closely related to the royal family even though he was an in-law.

Oberyn Martell was no Rhaegar and he never wished it so. He was not  a noble Prince, he had killed a man with poison after bedding his paramour and had killed countless other with steel,  he had fought in Essos with a mercenary company, seeing more in a few years than what most men see in their lifetime. He was wild and brash but knew strategy and quickly did what Rhaegar wouldn’t have.

He send letters contracting several mercenary companies before swiftly taking the distraught Jon Connignton into his bed ensuring the poisonous redheaded’s  would not meddle with his orders and then charmed the rest of the men with wild tales and promises of rewards while dispatching the most queroulous lords with his uncle Ser Lewyn to fight far way from the main host,

Oberyn Martell surrounded himself with the riverlanders who knew most the terrain and employed the famous dornish strategy of guerrilla warfare instead of leading the whole army to charge against the enemy as the crownlander lords originally wanted.

Avoiding a big confrontation that he would not be sure to win, their army  burned the fields of the lands not loyal to the crown after  sacking them. He made several parleys and tarried long enough to take as many noble hostages as he could ensuring the neutrality of many houses until the mercenary companies arrived.

Elia did not remain idle. She in turns  cajoled, flattered and played the wounded wife, abandoned to her fate to Ser Jaime and with sweet words and touches she promised his freedom to return home to his family.

Traumatized as the young man was into serving Aerys, he soon enough broke down.  The boy killed Aerys when the king started to hide barrels of wildfire beneath the city and with his aid,Queen Rhaella’s absence and Pycell’s compliance Elia secured the capital while her brother took Stannis Baratheon hostage and sieged Riverrun with Eddard Stark’s wife and son inside it.

Quickly offering her son to young Margaery Tyrell, Lord Mace promptly send almost his whole army to the Riverlands and the rebels were forced to kneel.

After many struggles Elia Martell was victorious as the Great septon placed the crown in her son’s head and some later years she married again.

Chapter Text

Lady Elia Lannister was a painful reminder for both of her parents that sometimes love was not enough and the world liked to pull cruel games on soul fated lovers. Forced to become a legitimized bastard she could never inherit either of her parent’s titles  and lived secluded for most of her life until she had to pay for others’s mistakes.

She was born from an outrageous union. The  Princess Loreza of Dorne, long widowed and with a half grown heir already  was smitten with the newly minted knight Ser Tywin Lannister, they enjoyed a brief world shattering romance before he had to travel to war and had married in haste and secret when  the later returned victorious.

It was a torrid love affair, everyone whispered dreamily while  others sneered at the shamelessness the woman used to snare the heir of the Rock in the court of Jaehaerys the second.

No one was happy about it, neither their families, their bannermen, the members of the king’s council or the king himself  and the couple stood side by side after they were humiliated and slandered, hands always locked together as they were summoned at the throne room. Green and black eyes blazing under torment until they were finally confronted when Jaehaerys came to a decision.

The king was very unhappy, he was distrustful of them and didn’t want two of the realms uniting so soon after the war. He feared the influence the children of the couple could have, with the wealth of the west combined with a princely tittle and valyrian blood all while his own family was so reduced in numbers and his coffers were almost empty… It didn’t matter that their child would stand behind their older half brother in the sun throne’s succession.

The king has seen the ruthlessness of the young knight and he had not much faith in the survival of boy barely a few years younger than his own step father. It didn’t matter that Loreza herself had two miscarriages from her previous husband and was most likely barren, leaving Tywin himself with his younger brother Kevan who was much more docile as heir. It didn’t matter that if she birthed a girl she could be betrothed to his first grandson…

Because from Rhaella and Aerys would come the savior of the world!          

From their line will spring the prince who was promised and that could only mean his unborn grandson who could undoubtedly follow tradition and marry his own sister in time.

No! He couldn’t allow Loreza or Tywin to interfere. If the dornishwoman birthed a boy it would be a disaster and if she ever birthed a girl from Tywin then they would push their child to be crowned in place of his granddaughter.

The risk was too great. He couldn’t allow it. The west could not absorve Dorne and neither both could produce a rival to his own blood. They needed to part.

The Princess was already in her thirties and should have known than another man’s heir would not do as her consort and young Tywin was still nominally under Lord Titos’s guidance as his father and head of his house. The boy had married without his approval, with only his even younger brother Kevan as a witness in a ceremony officiated by a rogue septon they pulled from a tavern!

The king thought quickly and found the excuse he wanted.

Loreza Martell was unable to defend her decision against her bannerman for marrying someone who could possibly demand her to fulfill her duties as Lady of Casterly Rock and abandon her place as their ruler, someone who could push his own children over her first son, the child of a dornish knight, who has been her sole heir until now since Prince Lewyn had joined the Kinsguard.

Tywin Lannister was laughed off by the crowlander courtiers  when he asked  his so called brother in arms, Prince Aerys, to plead to king Jaehaerys to keep his marriage. When he wrote to the westerlands for aid, Lord Tyto’s fumbling words and kind, painful excuses sank his cause before he could try to approach the High Septon.

Unequal and unmatched.

The king  decided to break them off and in less than three months the surprising union was dissolved. The Princess returned shamed to Dorne with a babe growing in her belly and Ser Tywin had to be knocked off with milk of the poppy because it was feared that he would follow her. Some of his cousins went to the capital to retrieve him and after arriving to the westerlands he was summarily betrothed to his cousin Joanna and married to her three months later, the same day his former wife gave birth prematurely.

It was an unhappy union.

He forbade the bedding and never smiled at the ceremony and though he also forbad to  mention the princess’s name or the babe’s existence at Casterly Rock and acted as if nothing had happened, as if his actions at the capital had been some kind of collective mad dream, he never forgot them. With the pass of the years he changed,  as the whispers of what truly  has happened in Kinsgalnding extended in to the westerlands he grew bitter at the side of his golden bride as he watched   his own father flop about with his mistresses in their castle

Years passed with  his father coddling more his last whore and dressing her in Tywin’s mother old gowns and  Ellyn Reyne shaming their house by mocking his past dalliance, his lack of legitimate children while asking for more  loans she never intended to repay, he pulled away even more from his wife and until his patience reached a limit.

When things came to an end and the Reynes refused to pay their debts or sent hostages to Casterly Rock, he surprised everyone when he simply confined his father to his rooms and seized Lord Reyne, sending him back to his family in three pieces, one for each hostage Lady  Ellyn had seized.

The Reyne-Tarbeck rebellion ocurred sooner than it should and ended far bloodier, there was no famous drowning of the Reynes in their halls, that was done after everyone was dead as a counter measure against the flames. Ser Tywin choose a crueler approach and instead of diverting the river he cut down the forest near Reyne’s hall and catapulted the trees inside before sending burning arrows and sealing the gates.

He then sieged Tarbeck hall where he killed everyone but the Lady Ellyn, whom he forced to service everyman in his battalion before giving her the option of joining the silent sisters or cutting up her throat.  When the lady choose the latter as her former house was reduced to rubble it was said that Tywin smiled for the first time in years,

After hearing his antics his so called friend Aerys, who just had inherited the throne summoned him to the capital.

Before traveling a the rock he received the news that his lord father was so distraught with what he had done that his heart gave out as he shouted at him.  The opportunity was enough to expel the whore that dared to dress with his mother silks and jewels, she suffered the same fate than the late Ellyn.

Those actions made him hated by some, including his wife but either way their twins were born almost a year later, eight years after the wedding.  It spurred the rumours that the marriage had remained  unconsumed till then,  and the frequent fights with the Lady Joanna before and after the extinction of house Reyne and Tarbeck  could attest it.  

In contrast the Princess did not wait so long to have another child. Soon after the birth of Ser Tywin’s first child and almost as if her sham marriage hadn’t happened, she traveled to Bravos  to deal with some merchants and while leaving her young bastard daughter into the care of her heir.

She spend half a year there and returned to Sunspear  to quickly marry a minor Lord of her lands and gave birth next year, the same year of king Jaehaerys sudden death. Not one said anything then, since the realms was more troubled with the new kings’ s ascension or the end of two nobles houses but  it was noted by history later that Ser Tywin had been in bravos too, after suddenly traveling to Essos with barely a word left to his family.

Still, nothing came of it. The third child of the rulling Princess had the same dark complexion of his mother and his hair was completely black. He resembled much his elder sister without the touch of gold in her fine curly hair however his eyes were as light as his elder brother were, despite his father being a sandy dornishman.

Witt that, the prince Doran remained heir,  his younger brother Oberyn was the spare and   Lady Elia waters was an honored bastard among her family …until it was not so.

King Aerys had ascended to the throne and he still had no daughter for Rhaegar to wed and he was getting worried. Even all of Rhaella’s miscarriages after her only girl stillborn had been of boys. He himself could not provided a half sister either , even his last mistress’s womb had been shown to carry a male fetus  when he executed her and her family and though he had a mind to send Steffon Baratheon in the search of either the female descendants of the son of Aerion Brightflame or the last Blackfyre he wanted to avoid himself the trouble for now.

If that failed, he wanted to have a replacement already.

Tywin’s daughter Elia would do well as queen… the best option not of my seed. She and not the other one, the  Lannister one like sweet Joanna had clearly preferred.

The king felt sentimental of course, he had enjoyed Joanna’s company and Tywin had not minded either, it was a suitable arrangement for the three of them until the dwarf killed her. Though she has remained a bastard she  was just two years older than his son  and she had valyrian blood and a dowery supported by two realms.  And he may as well stop Tywin’s whining and leave him to raise the girl as he always wanted.

So he announced it in court. Let the little golden serpent return from Dorne!

Elia Waters by the grace of King Aerys was to be legitimized as a trueborn Lannister in the accounts of her parents  had been performed a wedding ceremony before her conception and she was to be removed from her mother’s care as she is her father spare.

However some things are simply meant to be and in this life time the rebellion still happens.

Tywin has no love for the children his wife left him and did everything he could to recover the daughter of the only woman he ever wanted,. He killed the bastard dwarf sired by the king while passing the other two children’s care to family relations and servants. He made her daughter the wife of the crown prince and was able to reconcile with Loreza before she died. He didn’t fight off the king as he asked for his bastard in turn and quickly abandoned the fool Jaime to the kingsguard, preferring either the newborn prince or princess as his heir.

When war broke out and the tides changed and the usurper’s armies he send men to recover his daughter and  married Cersei to the oaf that had killed the adulterous Rhaegar to remain power and ensure his blood still ends up on the throne and quickly set up his plan. He could not avoid, however, sending his grandchildren away, the boy to the citadel and the girl to the fate but finally recovered Elia as her heiress. Now he could properly marry her to someone worth and ensure trueborn Lannister’s rule over the Rock.

Stripped from the family who showed her love and care, made to leave her home and live in a castle were people always gawked at her, with a step mother who  sneered at her until she died. Watching as her father killed her newborn brother, having to raise her siblings before being married off to a strange man that ended up shaming her and abandoning her and the children she gave him. Her sister betraying her and losing her and crown and children…..

With her inheritance long installed and with no brother to challenge her, she would pay her debts.

Unbowed, Unbent and Unbroken. They shall hear my roar.

Chapter Text

The many possibilities of when the bards do not sing about the winter rose and last dragon but about the storm and the sun of Dorne.

1.She was foolish, many said.

The foolish princess that did not know her duty. Despite having two children and husband who was more benevolent than most, she appreciated not her good fortune and was vapid enough to let herself be seduced by a roguish man six year her junior.

She got what she deserved.

---

2.She was tragic, some said.

The princess suffered quietly the ill treatment of her good father, the indifference of her husband and the scorn from the court. The callous way in which Prince Rhaegar demanded for her to risk her life again in childbirth after nearly killing her by siring his heir while she still hadn’t recuperated from the birth of their daughter broke her heart. She was easy prey for the rogue dashing knight that only sang sweet words to her ears.

Her crimes didn’t deserve death.

---

3.She was a harlot, a few whispered.

She was dornish and they had loose ways. It was well know that her first child was not of her husband, some even said the girl was sired by her own brother. After birthing an heir for Prince Rhaegar and being humiliated a tourney she grew bold and swiftly took another lover, the young and handsome cousin of her husband! The affair carried on until the old hand Lord Lannister figured out and outed them. Justice was served even when she still dared to try to pass the babe in her belly as her husband’s true born heir.

Long live to King Rhaegar! Long live to his golden heirs!

---

4.She was taken against her will.

She was a weak woman, thin, frail and sickly and had no chance to fight off a man who was even taller and heavier than her own husband, a knight on his own right. It was no surprise that she could be carried off after the man dealt with her escort. She was treated cruelly by the young Lord of the Stormlands in retaliation for the Prince taking his betrothed as a concubine and despite all the efforts made by the crown and the princes of dorne to recover her, she could not be saved.

She never saw her children again.

---

5.She was framed.

Not even her boldest and more bitter foe ever accused her of not loving her children. Despite her husband’s disregard and her broken heart, she would have never risked their lives or her position with an accusation of infidelity that would tarnish not only she but them as an extension.

A shadowy hand put her in harm’s way and brought the notice of Lord Baratheon, who was being courted by Prince Rhaegar into lending his support for a regency to king Aerys’s rule. Both were tricked into a unnoble situation and witness appeared as if emerging from the vert earth.

Fake letters were produced and a sham trial was held.

Disaster was willed by an enemy of the crown.

Off with their heads!

---

6. It was true love.

She was married and he betrothed but no vows made by mortal men can defy heaven sent fate. Bucking against the responsibilities placed on their shoulders and despite knowing that they shouldn’t, no husband or fair lady, no younger brothers or children could stop their longing for each other embrace for what is duty against the touch of the one you love?

However the crown’s honor had to be upheld and when Elia Martell and Robert Baratheon ran away it was called abduction, to spare the crown prince’s dignity.

War erupted and desolated the realm.  Neither he or she survived, his remained family exiled and hers dead or living as mistreated hostage. The prince ascended as king with a golden bride at his side.

But almost not one living knows that the princess bared a third child, a child from her lover, her only living child after the sack because in this timeline Lord Lannister would have his due. A crown for her daughter and his blood on the throne.

It was too late when Prince Oberyn arrived, she was already on her deathbed with a silver haired blue eyed babe at her breast.

Promise me, Oberyn.

--

BONNUS:  She loved the other brother.

Because some things are not like they seem to be....

No one believes it except a lowly smuggler from kingslanding. The princess was fearful of the demands placed in her to bear another child, knowing that if she didn’t agree to it would meant her replacement and war and if she did, she could lose her life and her husband’s  power was absolute as Aerys’s regent.

And when the Baratheon brothers went to court to seek reparation for the insult made against their family in  Harrenahall she was put in charge of receiving them while her husband dealt with the who still chaffed against his takeover of power nor his subtle inquires of bringing back polygamy.

Time proved again than madness ran strong in the Targaryen line and with Rhaegar engrossed with scrolls and prophecies, she sought to warn them of his goal of obtaining a third head of the dragon whatever the cost.

And while plotting against her husband she fell not for the handsome boisterous lord but for the quiet young dutiful man. Two people far too suited to be together despite fate pulling them apart ended in disaster.

The accusation made against Lord Baratheon was baseless, since he did want his lady Lyanna and nothing could change it. Not any reward given by the regent.

When they were discovered they were forced to flee the Red Keep and then history was written by the winners. The dornish queen of Rhaegar the first was said to be abducted and killed by her captor, the usurper Robert. The whole Baratheon family rose in rebellion with their allies and was eventually dealt with, their line extinguished.

But not one but lowly smuggler knew that she had loved the younger brother and not the older.

Chapter Text

It was never meant to be.

Elia wants to scream trough her tears that they never meant to…

To fall in love

She should have known better even  if the boy didn’t recognize the danger with his head lost in the trappings of honor and knighthood. The boy is younger than her Aegon would be, she is ashamed into recognizing it but she has been so lonely, so disconnected from the outside world in her stay at that small  semi abandoned Motherhouse in Hornhill, that he quickly managed to soften up her broken heart.

Are you well, my lady? I’m Ser Jon Flowers.

She didn’t  know who he was at first, the knights usually sent to guard her and ensure she didn’t escape to Dorne were disinterested in her and  the man he was replacing didn’t bother to speak with her more than a few warnings in all her years there.

Elia was growing mad with the years on isolation after Viserys suddenly stopped sending her letters and the septas kept ignoring her pleas for news so she eagerly accepted this new young man’s company and spent months hearing him talk about his life.

Her new jailer had been an orphan with noble blood and he was eager to talk about it.

How he was fostered with Lord Tarly and lived with his children by the grace of his dead father, a hightower knight and the conection by blood between the Lady Tarly and the current Lady Hightower. How he much he wanted to bring honor to his family despite his baseborn blood and how much he loathed having to guard her as a prison master when she committed no crimes. How much people wept at the king’s injustice when it was proven that her replacement had been barren. How the king barely kept the realm together by the grace of all the rebellion’s commanders being death aside from Lord Stark.

He had told her that with such grief in his sad grey eyes and she had sked who was his father one night but never got an answer.

Elia had been jailed for fifteen years by the king at the instance of Lyanna Stark, who couldn’t bare to see Elia having her children when her own child could never be recovered and when the court and the realm blamed her for all the dead in the war.

She  has been left in her tower locked out of the world with the untold threat of  her children being harmed if she rebelled or sought out her family and she had bared it all, for her children.

Ser Jon kept visiting and she realized the reason was that he was simply alone. Jon was not allowed to leave Horn Hill and Lord Tarly had sent his son to the Night’s watch and he had lost the only companion in his life, Lady Tarly couldn’t bare to seem him  when her own husband preferred the bastard’s company than the one of their own son and  the young man felt neglected, devoid of the mother and brother that were never his and unable to bear the company of the father figure that had so despised his own blood.

He stayed in the dilapided mother house and refused to return to his foster father’s castle.

And Elia took pity on him. For the first time in years, she took a needle and a thread and asked to mend his clothes. The boy had been embarrassed to notice the state of his surcoat and undershirt  but she had forced him to accept and then he passed all the afternoons outside her barred door.

How are you? She asked after he came with red wet eyes to her one day.

Have you eaten at all? She asked after he confessed to have roasted to cinders the chicken he was able to caught.

Did you sleep well? Ser Jon was not prone to night terrors but she had heard him scream from his room and he had appeared in the middle of the night to sleep at the floor outside her room.

How good was the hunt? She said while smiling knowing the answer when Jon presented her with do

Did young Samwell send a letter?  Jon went to her with a piece of paper on his hand and a giddy look his face instead of his usual morose expression and she already knew it could only been the young man she knows only in words.

Cover yourself, the night has grown chilly. Weeks have passed and she chastised him when the weather really started to turn and heard him cough in his hand just before standing next to her door, his hands were cold as ice in her grip and she fluttered around him, worried about his health. She didn’t notice his cheeks reddening as she touched his forehead.

It’s not good to drink and then go swimming. Jon’s curly black locks were damp and but it didn’t look like sweat. He has taken a habit to avoid her gaze and she fears he may be falling ill. There is no maester here and only one would come if summoned and that’s for her and not for an errant boy avoiding his foster family. The remaining septas had fallen sick days ago and gone to their original motherhouse to recover and their replacements had yet to arrive. She asks him to go to the gardens and climb the plants near her balcon, to sleep in the small room that was once her maid’s before the girl disappeared.

Please, let me see the cut. Jon had climb down to recover the food in the building’s stock and the climb up to share it her, and then left again for a day and a half and then he returned to her and refused to leave her alone at all despite the wound in his hand being deep enough to make him land in her floor bleeding, she was so caught in the possibility of his demise and being finally left alone in the world that she didn’t catch first what he said.

He confessed his love for her.

Stunned beyond measure she had not know what to say and she was even more stunned when he claimed to not been able to hide the truth anymore.

His words were measured and slow and almost reluctant as he told her how everything started to go down since the king exiled Prince Viserys five years ago after he refused to marry one of Lord Stark’s daughters. She learned how Rhaegar married off her Rhaenys to the nephew of his wicked Princess consort, with her daughter dying suspiciously in a fire the next year.  How just the month before,  Prince Aegon, her beloved son, had  just disappeared after being arrested, two years after he had been disinherited, and now not one knew if he lived or not.

How shortly after he had broken the betrothal between Princess Daenerys and  Prince Quentyn and brought her back to kingslanding to be married her off to Viserys after he forced him to return from essos. How misteriosly Viserys’s wife and sons  died on a shipwreck in their way to westeros from Volantis previous to that.

And  Elia broke. She had wept in the young man’s arms and she allowed herself to be soothed by him, his comfort  and his love being the only things that gave her hope for not so a bleak future.

I’ll get you out! We could leave to Dorne or Essos or even the wastelands if you want it! Please, my lady… Prince Viserys, he has not forgotten you! The realm has no forgotten you! We can visit the prince and the princess! I’ll get you out !

Whatever you want, just come with me, we can’t stay anymore!

And Elia fell for him . He had given her a escape from her horrible life and she had been the family that he had always wanted. But they should have not done it regardless.  In the cover of the night, Ser Jon had drugged the new septas the same day the women arrived and killed the guards that were outside the building after he stole the keys of her prison.

They had spent the next months fleeing and sleeping under the moon in the forests near the stormland’s borders, avoding keeps and villages and running for their lives, enough to get to know each other.

I’ve never knew my mother- he had said and deep down she knew he wanted a replacement even if he hadn’t discovered it.

I couldn’t raise my children- she had answered and he had pushed his head on her shoulder.

They had been together for a short time. Weeks, months, she doesn’t know but  just long enough for Elia to not she was not barren, just  close enough to Dorne for Elia to have hope but—

They failed.

Some huntsman had saw them and thought they claimed to be just a peasant and his mother the lie had fallen short. Elia and Jon looked nothing alike and they had been discovered and surrounded.

They failed.

She knows it the very moment they  take off the sack over her head and she sees Rhaegar scream and the boy’s head to be cut off.

They have been brought in chains and Jon’s charge was treason and rebellion. And hers…

Officially, despite being deposed from her place at the red keep, she is still Queen of Westeros  and wife of Rhaegar alongside the Princess consort.

And now is her turn.

Harlot! Traitor! Dornish cunt!

The courtiers leer and scream at her while most of the peasantry remains oddly silent and somber.

Do they remember Elia’s extensive charities or the orphanages she funded? The food she distributed before being confined by Aerys? Or the one she did after Rhaegar returned with a new wife at his side?

What does Elia care anymore?

They brought some of the Lord Paramounts to witness the trial and she doesn’t understand why Eddard Stark is screaming at the royal couple or why the man turns to her and looks at her belly with horror.

Adultery is the charge.

A fucking lie to be honest, she has not been Rhaegar’s wife for nearly twenty years, she thinks as she dragged to the scaffold.

But Lyanna and Rhaegar  would not be convinced. They want everyone roaring for Elia’s blood to quell any complains about Elia’s children being so mistreated while they had not even a replacement of their own blood to usurp them.

With Doran and Oberyn gone only her eldest niece and young nephews remain and they were being accused of harboring Elia’s son in Dorne.

I hate you both.

She sees the shadow of the axe on the floor as she is forced to kneel and glares at the royal couple in the last seconds of her life.

Somehow she compares the expression on Lyanna’s pale wet crumbling face under the force of Lord Stark furious and desperate pleas like the one she had when Jon told her that her children were gone.

Before the axe falls she sees the other woman grab and shake Rhaegar’s arm, pointing at her and screaming to stop the execution at once, and the regret in her face is so sweet that Elia laughs.

Whatever reason for Lyanna to change her mind it’s not enough to stop him. So many years had passed and there is nothing of the silver prince on before, he looks almost like if he was Aerys’s twin. His eyes focus on her and burn her with  so much hate that the Elia from before would have crumbled.

But not she. She meets hate with hate, scorn with scorn and keeps her eyes open as the axe fall.

The crowd gasps.

It is said, that a person’s head is still able to feel and think a few seconds before one finally dies.

It’s true and she regrets it

She regrets it all the remaining life she lives as a severed head.

Jon has been dead since minutes ago and his eyes are sightless and open.  For the first time she notices two things,  those curls are so like Lyanna’s and his eyes, the ones she had thought a dark grey, are really a dark purple in full morning light.

She understands now Lord Stark’s pleas and horror and feels pity for the boy. The comfort he provided her was not worth his life.

The last she hears is Rhaegar’s scream about the Prince who was promised over Lyanna’s wails.

Chapter Text

Elia Martell is tall. Easily the tallest woman in Dorne and has a body that would be the envy of any knight. She is muscular with sturdy arms and wide legs as thick and hard as saplings, her back is strong enough to carry the heaviest plate that can be used in the burning deserts of Nymeria’s land. Her hands are thick and calloused from handling spears, swords and maces and since childhood she has excelled in combat and statecraft.  She is the most precious jewel in her family and in truth, had she been a man she would have been considered the perfect heir for an Andal.

As it is, she is the perfect heir for a Rhoynar, even though she’s just a spare, the second daughter.

The many riverlanders, stormlanders and reachmen that visited her mother’s court thought her unnatural in body and custom  but they were surprised to see that her ways so measured and her face so delicate.

A woman’s face to be sure, despite the twice broken nose and the occasional bruise from the practice yard. Her black eyes are deep like the night and her voice is soft and kind. Her black hair falls in thick  curls that are pinned to her skull whenever she’s not at the Palace itself.

She acts gentle and gracious and though  she’s not as comfortable  dressed in silks and golden jewelry as she is in boiled leather and chainmail, she knows how to conduct herself with the dignity of  the only daughter of the ruler of Dorne, as a trueborn princess.

Elia Martell is honorable, she gives food to the poor and coins to the beggar children she encounters on the streets and trashes any  thief, murderer or rapist she comes across.

She is charming and humble and she bests both of her brothers in the training matches more often than not but she is always jovial at it. Whenever a bold foreign Lord or knight ask for a spar she never rejects them and always extend her hand to lift them off the ground.

Elia is the apple of the eye of the rulling Princess and she is the hero of Dorne but she’s not so loved outside borders of her homeland.

When she travels with her brother and mother to the West she’s not offended when she’s rejected as the child Jaime’s future bride but she vows to take retribution  and always remember Lord Lannister sneering face as he offered the newborn dwarf in turn.

She visits the Hightower and is utterly charmed by the heir but  washes off any heartbreak when ser Baelor’s letter arrives at Sunspear, informing her he would not propose.

She turns her face away when her mother raves against Aerys’s insults as she is rejected for the Crown Prince when the envoy sent from Kingslanding comes to draw her picture and learns of her appearance. She pretends not to hear when news arrive that the madman betrothed his son to the unflowered daughter of the Lord of Casterly Rock after Rohanne Blackfire died on childbirth.

She acts stoically as she is rejected again, this time by the new Lord Yronwood after her mother proposed a match in reparation of Oberyn killing the man’s father after a duel. She is not surprised and this time she’s glad.

However, with so many slaps to the face and seeing her only daughter so desponded, the Princess Loreza, who initially wanted a dynastic or at least an advantageous marriage   for her daughter finally changes her mind and  tries to act before another chance at happiness could be passed. She selects a man, good, handsome and strong that knows her child and has been kind to her so she proposes a marriage between her daughter and the brother of Lord Dayne, the sword of the morning.

The position itself that the man holds is good and honorable enough for a match to princess despite being him almost penniless but they had been childhood friends and her daughter agrees with her this time.

But it was not to be.

Ser Arthur departs to Kingslanding  before his brother can make a decision for him. Princess Elia is distraught when she learns that her old friend opted to join the kingsguard instead and now she’s truly considered unmarriable by all westeros for being rejected by five men despite her honorable character and princely tittle.

Sneers and mocks and rumors follow her whenever she leaves her mother’s palace

She grows bitter and her younger brother seethes and has to be restrained and watched for months to avoid him killing Ser Arthur before he can reach the capital.

Time passes, her older brother just shakes his head while the princess of Dorne rages and despairs and tries to arrange other countless matches for his daughter that never seem to materialize and she only stops when she dies. Her heir ascends to the throne and he considers the matter best to be avoided and let time settle itself.

Elia Martell’s fame has been tainted by those fruitless attempts and her character has blackened entirely with so many humiliations.

The most recent one have been the one served by the young Lady Cersei with her ladies when Elia went to congratulate her for her upcoming marriage.

That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. She leaves Sunspear for Essos one day and travels extensively from port to port and tavern to tavern. She joins mercenary companies, fights, kills and  fucks and then returns years later with many scars and tales to show for it only to leave again soon, seeking the thrill of death she was not permitted to pursue outside war.

Her behavior gets more volatile and a few times urgent letters from the free cities arrive to Sunspear to request gold for ransom or to collect debts owed by the Princess. Prince Doran eventually gets fed up with his sister’s dissolute life and orders her to remain in Essos and not return until summoned. Prince Oberyn instead, eager for news, writes extensively from the citadel, where he remains until he forges a whole chain but leaves before taking a maester’s vows.

 Elia Martell remains an unwed maid in the eyes of westeros till her late twenties when she travels back to Dorne and joins the dornish army that goes to liberate Kingslanding from the Mad King at her oldest brother’s request and she quickly learns the situation.

The Lannister may have joined the royal family a few years ago when Rhaegar lost his essosi bride and though rich, they have many enemies and no friends.

Elia laughs and ponders in her mind.

They certainly not when Tywin was so focused on getting the desired match for his daughter that he forgot his whole family in turn and made himself despised in court with his greedy and arrogant ways.

Not when Lady Blackfire died so suspiciously from a heart attack after giving birth and her son despite being healthy just appeared cold and blue a night after he was three months old.

Not when the maid that was captured fleeing the red keep by Steffon Baratheon jumped to her death from her cell despite the window being barred.

Not when his dwarf son choose to drink till death after the Lord Lannister killed his peasant wife and the other son joined the kingsguard out of guilt.

And this is her chance for revenge.

The castle is in flames and soldiers die and left and right of her but she knows where to go, once in her childhood when her mother was still handmaiden to the queen she lived on Maegor’s holdfast and she cleaves a path  to it with the sellswords she brough from Lys and Tyrosh.

Her steps are sure and her sword holds steady as she kills the soldiers that dare to stand on her way and then she arrives where she meant to.

The golden lioness of Lannister still looks half a girl when she weeps like that  on the floor. Her face is marred and swelling and her skirts are torn and her hands bloody 

 For a moment Elia remembers the sneering brat from so many years and the young woman who told her that Elia would give strong sons to the man brave enough to mount her.  

And when Cersei looks up from the floor, Elia sees the two men lying dead at her feet. She seems to try to Elia without words… Hear me roar.

Green eyes look full of hate at her and the half grown girl growls at her like a beast from the floor while blood flows slowly out of her mouth.

Elia sighs, and regrets complicating her life. She has a choice to make.

Ser Jaime has died  under Robert Baratheon’s hammer after he cut down Eddard Stark and the dwarf offered to Elia a lifetime ago had been buried just a month before the war began, not  surviving till his fifteen nameday. Lord Tywin is stuck at the riverlands with what remains of Rhaegar’s army and soon would be overwhelmed at Harrenhall. Kevan and his young son were hunted by burned men brought by Lord Royce.

Stafford Lannister died by the hand of Lord Baratheon and his son Devan didn’t survive a festering wound from a dornish arrow.

And there is no dragon in the lioness’s womb.

The girl is either barren or was simply not meant to bear a royal child, certainly not  as she has bled all the months in her marriage. At Essos, Elia didn’t just learn to kill but to  value the importance of information and Lady Rohanne had family that loved her in Tyrosh.

A son for a son, they have said before Elia departed for the last time to Sunspear.

A daughter for a daughter, they have asked of Elia when she got in enough trouble that if not for them paying her ransom she would have lost more than her armor and her possessions in the camp of company of the roses.

And the woman in the floor is Tywin’s daughter.

If she lives, she is the Lady of Casterly rock and if not, the last of the main line of Lannister. An enemy of her family and the realm she and her allies want to form,

In my hand there is a sword … and in the sack hanging from my back are golden feathers.

In her mind, she’s the honorable woman from before . She swings her sword and a golden head rolls.

In this universe  a mute prisoner is brought to the Tower of Joy to serve her mistress for all her life.

Chapter Text

Elia.

She is all he can think of.!

Elia, Elia!

Small as a babe and darker than he or his father but sharing their eyes, she’s a Bolton to her bones. He has never doubted it.

And he almost lost her. Roose Bolton looks down to her  pale cousin’s face and his grip turns harder.

He almost lost her!

He can’t ever seem to remember what a full northern bolton woman could have looked, he doesn’t remember her mother at all, his own lady aunt who died when Roose was not even out of swaddling clothes and then he has no recollection of another female of his line being born in the last one hundred years.

He  does remember his father raging when his only sister died and he remembers her father before he joined the kinsguard. How a knife was pointed to the strange prince’s throat when the man said he would take Elia  to Dorne and give her to his own sister to raise.

And he remembers the blood after the man departed alone and limping, it’s a story he used to tell her when she was a child and it always seemed to amuse her, making her eyes shine like stars.

I want to stay forever.

He wanted her to stay forever. He remembers her words and he wonders why he never asked his father for her hand before this disaster and  in an uncharacteristic moment he simply takes one of her pale sweaty hands on his own, refraining to touch the other one which is gripping the spawn.

Roose frowns, looking at her half unconscious body. Rhaegar’s spawn has changed her, has being birthed by her and she ….

She feels different, thinner somehow despite that she is a mother now and the last babe is not even half a year old.

How many years have passed… He remembers her when she was as small as the babe, her little fingers clenching and unclenching and she giggling a toothless smile whenever he spoke of how she stayed with them.

Elia…

He often sneaked to her nursery into the night and watched as her little chest raised and fell while the wetnurse slept. His father had belted him everytime he found him for sneaking out of his rooms but he kept doing it all nights till she was five, afraid that she would die like the servants said his siblings did before that age. He remembers her looking at him with far too knowing eyes for her age, eyes almost as pale like milk and bright like the stars and then he understood why his Lord father wanted to raise her himself. Why he didn’t give up on her despite her Martell appearance or being born frail, like the rest of babes on the crypts were. Why he fought the princess of Dorne. Why later on he defied Rickard and the North and almost the king.

Her eyes ring true.

She was one of them and they always remembered. Lord Rogar extracted Benjen Stark from Winterfell as a ward when Rickard forced his hand and married off Elia at Aerys’s insistence, eager to curry favor with the madman on the throne.  They couldn’t oppose outwardly   and defy the King just delay as much as they could but short of killing Rhaegar there was nothing to be done.

A fat dowry a fat dowry and  guards in Bolton lively to follow her into the red keep and his best men in rough spoon clothes to  live outside of the castle to watch her from afar was the best he could offer her. Roose was enraged to leave his beloved cousin in a family of madmen and he wouldn’t t take any more risks than he was already forced to.  All his men were efficient and obedient, but the ones not wearing his colors were cunning and had other qualities.

For that reason alone, he was able to save her and finds himself in this situation. Running away from a burning town being sacked by a Lannister army with just a few men.

How… How… dare that stupid fuck shame her?!

How dare that chit humiliate his sister?! How dares she after her father forced Elia to live at the dragon’s maw?

How dare they to put them between the lion’s jaw? To leave her under the stag’s hooves?

It was already bad enough that Elia was forced to leave the Dreadfort three years ago to marry outside the North. And they had to do this? Have the Starks have no sense? Has the she-wolf no shame, no brain? Does Rhaegar think Roose would sit and clap while he cavorts with his whore? Do they think they would get away with it? That Roose would allow them to live?

Does Rickard’s daughter think she can usurp her place? Does the madman’s son think everyone will simply go along with their foolishness? For what? Because they were in love?

He grinds his teeth and clutches her unconscious body closer, shielding her from harm as a nearby house collapses, not caring about the rock or debris  falling on him and his shield, nor the children he is squeezing against the horse’s neck. He rides harder.

Now what he is supposed to do?

What I should have done then!

Despite his nature, the  tricky succession of the Bolton line and his own familial love, when he and his father were confronted with Rickard’s orders and his veiled threats to expose some of Rogar most outlandish misdeeds,  Roose would have married her himself if he had not been already married.

Bethany was a beautiful woman and a fine lady for his keep and she had given him a son at that time but he never felt anything for her. Nor she for him. Their marriage was arranged and she stayed calm and silent as a corpse whenever they conceived children and then she was out of his hair running the castle until it was time to mate again. And Elia liked her.

Still, the solution would have been simple, he remembers thinking.  He had already an heir and an accident were easy to arrange but the idea seemed somehow unpalatable. Domeric loved his mother and Elia liked Bethany too and it would have ended in she replacing her. The idea of bedding cousin Elia was too strange in his mind, enough to stay his hand and let things be.

He sighs, knowing the future that awaited them, he feels a flick of regret. He got nothing for being wary, the many stillbirths buried in the crypts proved it. And his beloved Elia…

He almost lost her completely.

But he did lose her then.

When the Starks finally cornered Rogar with Aerys’s decree  and a royal ship that awaited at White harbor, Elia discarded them.

Gone were the spontaneous laughs from their childhood or her company whenever he sat in his solar or hunted with his men. Gone were the conversations shared around the fire with Domeric drooling on her skirts or the dinners while they and Bethany shared a table. Gone were the worry on her eyes when his blood acted up and he started to resort to bloodletting.

Her eyes grew sharp whenever she saw him, her words grew cold like they were never before. She never took his hand  again when offered and she turned her back to his father too, to the man who raised her.  Never spoke to him again, even refusing to visit him on his deathbed before she departed.

She cut them deeply with her rejection, where she knew it would hurt more than a flaying knife.

Roose never knew if she poisoned Rogar or not but when the maester asked if he should investigate, he simply refused and assumed the lordship.

She never wrote to him later.

Then he spent years with a stranger for a wife, his heir sent away as his siblings died on their cribs and no Elia. With no incentive to care, he let his blood  rise high until  he finally indulged his appetites with no restraint for a full sordid year and ended up siring a bastard in a Millers’s wife  occasioning an incident that almost was known to Benjen Stark and his father when the woman came to beg for coin at the Dreadfort.

That had been sobering enough that he finished the matter quickly despite the blood shared with the babe and before the Stark guards in his keep could catch something. His wife instead raged to him later on, behind closed doors while his men dug in the frozen mud and he reached the end of his patience with her.

From later on, the perversions he indulged on then remained strictly private. Months passed and when his liege went south and returned without his children and his spies sent word of how  they shamed themselves with their antics in front of their hosts, he cared not.  Benjen was not permitted to roam freely or to write to his father without his letters being read beforehand and Roose, completely unmotivated, sank again on his depravity.

Until her letter arrived.

Roose knew she still hated him and knew of the men he sent,  and he feared what could it be. When he read the letter he understood and knew what it needed to be done .

He exhales and looks up before grunting and nodding to his men as they are finally pass the last alleys and are near the mudd gate and his mind goes elsewhere, thinking on how he is to conceal them.

He takes a few moments to look down to the girl and the babe in Elia’s lap. For their coloring alone  they are Targaryens and Martells and he knows he can’t hide them deep in the North . He does not care as those children are no Bolton but they are Elia’s and she would not part from them and while that is enough for him to shield them it is not enough a reason for other lords to make an exception.

The rebellions must end. Stark, Baratheon must not survive. Tully and Arryn must be crippled and brought to their knees but he has already  lost all but three of the men he brought in this city in killing the mountain and the westerlander prick that tried to grab the girl and he is not supposed to be even at kingslanding. At least the rest of his soldiers and what remained of Elia’s guards should be waiting for them along with Oberyn Martell near Stokeworth or even Rosby if they are lucky.

He can’t afford to make a  mistake in the way and encounter a rebel ally, especially since the fool Oberyn has disregarded their plans and traveled here instead of south, to look the threat to Elia’s life.

He yells to the three men to hurry up and gather close now they have finally left the city and take a detour in a small hovel near the kingswood to change clothes and give the horse a small rest.

He takes a time to think and doesn’t look past Elia’s neck as he undresses her and puts on her a thick sturdy doublet, pants and strong boots. She remains unconscious until he tries to change off her wailing daughter out of the ridiculous tiny ruby and pearl studded dress and her hand darts to his own and grips.

Both of their eyes meet and Roose’s breath catch in her intense stare.

When he waves off the clothes she relents but she is the one to grip the knife out of his hands when he brings it close to the girl’s head and she cuts the hair herself. Elia also takes  his cloak to bundle the babe better and conceal his fair blonde hair.

And then she looks at him expectantly.

He wants to ask many things but he knows they can dally anymore. They ride.

After reading his cousin’s letter he instructed the Maester to close off the keep with the excuse of a pest to have the excuse to burn the bodies and then he had  all the Stark guards, his lady wife and some of the prisoners on the cells killed.  It had taken near a week a with the maester busy  selecting some pox ridden sailor to present as the first case,  he wrote a letter back to Elia   and sent several letters to the capital and after two days of  burying the supposedly infected corpses, he rode with a small group in the cover of the night  to White Harbor to wait and history rewrote itself.

Rickard Stark had been burned alive alongside his eldest son and the second son, their new Lord Stark never returned. Roose made sure of it.

 Amongst the northerners, Eddard Stark was believed to have been lost at sea, drowned from an ill fated journey from Sisterton and now in the eyes of the north, Benjen Stark was Lord of Winterfell. And Roose was his foster father and regent.

However the late lord’s letter had long arrived communicating his decision to call the banners under Lord Baratheon as their new king but with his death and with the absence of the young Lord Benjen, who was quarantined on the Dreadfort, the bannermen gathered in Winterfell under the castellan’s view butted heads against each other trying to decide who would command their host and came with no decision.

Roose himself  had to arrive a month later, having been careful in his return to his castle to take in properly sick people and have some of his peasants die of the sickness to shut up any suspicion and properly arrange things despite the urgency to see Elia again.

After announcing Lord Benjen was alive but sick which relieved everyone since they have tarried long enough that the Stormlords and Riverlanders along  with the Valemen were already gathered at Riverrun, he assumed command and quickly shut down any other proposal from Lord Karstark and Umber by reminding them he was  Benjen’s regent as the late Lord Stark agreed in his fostership.

However, his good fortune didn’t last. When they arrived at the Riverlands it had been a disappointment to know there was a child born from Eddard Stark’s loins and the fight that Lord Tully made in his grandson’s name to unseat Benjen from the winter throne and to obtain control of the northern forces caused a long  delay, longer than he anticipated and enough that he feared it would cost him Elia’s life.

But at the end, with the southerners brawling for power in the council room and the bustling of several men congregated in Riverrun, no one seemed to notice his informants contacting him from time to time and without Eddard Stark alive, his younger brother fostering at the Dreadfort, the suspicion against the southerners and the grasping Hoster Tully and officially a half southerner newborn as their lord,  it was easy to keep his place and provoke disunion.  His proclamation that the North needed to remain independent settled badly with the  southerners and it was enough to stall Robert Baratheon being proclaimed a rebel king.

With only the Stormlands and the vale behind him since the alliance with the North seemed shaky and Hoster Tully was the opportunistic sort to only back up the one who was already sure to win they could not march together.

Jon Arryn hated him  and accused him to work in his cousin’s interest but as  his answer was that the match was arranged by Rickard Stark himself and that Roose served only a Stark and no southerner, clearly pointing without saying that the newbown Robb looked all Tully and he had no dealings with Baratheon, Tully or Arryn. He told them boldly that if they were displeased, for further instructions they should wait for Lord Benjen to recover and act as his nephew’s regent and nothing could be done to against his person since he had the brat in his hands and was his regent in turn.  

Still, his actions cost him his spot as regent and his place on the army when Arryn along with Tully bribed Umber, Karstark and Manderly to take the command and send him back to the Dreadfort to ensure Lord Benjen’s survival and the North’s stability.

Making a show of it,  he send a man with his full armor and all of his host except one hundred men at arms that had dispersed on Maidenpool and Seagard long since he returned to the Dreadfort and marched home.

And then he was on the loose.

Leaving behind any motif of the flayed man and after three weeks, with the help of his informants he managed to travel far enough to reach Jon Connignton’s host, who had desperately  been trying to find Robert Baratheon as he had hidden on a town.

Noticing that the fool was not  brave enough to pull the whole place to the torch and cut down the rebellion where it stood and without wanting to reveal his place and make his traition known to the rebel lords, he and his men infiltrate inside and discovered the stag hiding in the brothel. Under the guise of being merchants fleeing the armies and inns having been full while the town was sieged, they took rooms on taverns of ill reput and brothels and let their hidden cargo inside. The cargo being nothing more than hay and oil.

The barred doors outside were enough to do what it needed to be done and when Robert Baratheon managed to tear the door and ran out screaming covered in flames, the small folk could only catch a glimpse  the lone archer that put him out of his misery.

With a covered face and donning  grey common armor, the only piece visible of the man was his pale flat eyes.

However someone discovered  him shortly after. Roose Bolton noticed it quickly as he  was leaving. Another man approaching him in the shadows of an alley and his right hand went to his belt, to caress the long flaying knife he favored in places small enough to make a sword fight inconvenient.

When the man revelated himself, Roose quickly noticed how he had Elia’s coloring and the shape of her vicious eyes and that was enough for him to stay his flaying knife, for one second at least.

´´Well met, Prince Oberyn’’

The man looked at him with a appraising look and then his lead inclined to a side. ‘’Well met, my lord’’,

And their plan was hatched. With Robert dead and Rhaegar alive and who knows where, ready to try to fulfill a mad prophecy and overthrow his father to push Elia aside and install his mistress in her place,  Roose knew well the chit and her bastard could not be allowed to live.

He knew she was in Dorne  from the letters she sent to Benjen after he felt sick and Roose burned with rage thinking that the fool had been eating at his own table while discussing with his sister how Elia was being dishonored. The dornish was outraged too and seemed to fight for Elia and kill the rebels but wanted to spare the babe  and favored the idea to sent Lyanna to the silent sisters instead of killing her,  making Roose scoff.

While he debated if Prince Oberyn Martell truly understood the danger the whore and the babe represented, he trusted him less to not stand out in Kingslanding and have enough subterfuge to blend in and take Elia away so he and his hidden men traveled with haste to the capital with some of the men of the dornish prince while the man himself was to travel to Dorne to take care of the issue before Rhaegar could catch them.

Thus Roose ended like this, with his cousin in his arms and her children in his horse.

He sighed wearily went he saw Elia’s cousin acompained by one hundred men, knowing they would be to conspicuous and slow to slip away and would have to fight whoever they encounter in their path.

Still, he refused to part with Elia and when she asked for Prince Oberyn to ride with her children instead, despite the wounded expression of the man, he knew she had not forgiven him still.

They rode at night and rest and hide at day in the kingswood to avoid the Lannister men who had joined the rebels to seat Stannis Baratheon on the iron throne as a precaution insisted by the dornish but Roose was confident they would not be followed.

When Elia interrogated him on why he was so sure, he answered that some others had died in their place and that if Rhaegar deigned to return to Kingslanding after the rebel armies defeated his own host at the Trident just to fight the rebels and the Lannisters and defend the throne of his family  instead to run back to his mistress he would find only corpses.

He ignored the dark looks sent by Prince Oberyn and his dornish men but shuddered when pale lips spoke close to his ear while a deceitfully delicate hand caressed his jaw.

‘’Our blades are sharp’’.

Oberyn Martell looked at them with a mix of weariness and jealousy and a strange rage burned inside him when the man took Elia’s hand to kiss and swear he would give her justice, however dark satisfaction settled in his chest when Elia snatched her hand back and asked him to sent one of his riders to  Lord Meadows’s keep with a letter signed in her own hand for the Tyrells offering Aegon to their Margaery as long as they captured Storm’s end. Another letter was also sent to Horn hill offering to foster Lord Randyll Tarly’s heir at Sunspear when the boy came of age and a place on the council for him in Aegon’s reign as long as he finished the siege and took the Baratheons captive.

With the confirmations received  by the time word of their arrival sent at Sunspear was sent, they traveled far by land until they finally reached Starfall with an additional escort from Tarly men only to discover by a tear cheeked Ashara Dayne that her brother and other two kingsguards had been guarding Lyanna Stark at the Tower of Joy the whole time and  that Ser Arhtur’s letter arrived recently asking for them to send a midwife.

That Rhaegar had indeed returned to the capital with Ser Barristan and Prince Lewyn but with less than half of the men he brought to the trident only to find the city overrun by Lannisters, his father slain, the kingsguard Jaime nowehere to be found  and the butchered corpses of a dark skinned woman, a girl and a babe on his apartments along with the bodies of Ser Gregor Clegane and Ser Amory Lorch just a day before the Stark forces commanded by Lord Umber and Karstark, some stormlonds fighting for Stannis Baratheon and the riverlander men from Ser Brynden arrived to the city did not set well with Elia.

When they were told by Prince Doran that the battles extended to the streets, alleys, roofs and markets and while the population suffered heavily, with the Prince arriving at the city the peasants and the goldcloaks rallied  enough hope to defeat their enemies and to defend their homes and after two weeks bloody carnage, the heads Ser Brynden, Lord Umber, Lord Karstark adorned the gates  while the surviving stormlords all bent the knee.

With such news both his cousin Elia, himself and the Princes had to take a day to decide if they were to depart inmediately and look for the Tower of Joy where Lyana and three kingsguards were staying and leave Elia and their children in the care of Lord Dayne and trust his dubious loyalty giving that the man and his sister knew were  where the Prince’s mistress had been or wait for the men of Prince Doran arrive to secure Starfall and march and army.

After deciding to tarry for two more days  nonetheless to wait for the extra men,  when they finally arrived  they found a scene they never thought would receive them.

Young Benjen Stark along with a cranongman Roose identified as Lord Reed, Lord Willam Dustin, Ser Mark Ryswell, Ethan Glover, Martyn Cassel and Theo Wull already fighting with the three kinsguard.

Soon enough the men started to die and Roose and his men quickly went to retreat to give their crowsbows enough advantage to cut down the survivors and give the dornish spearmen enough time surround the tower.

 And when only the last of the Starks and the cranogman who had  poisoned Ser Arthur Dayne stood Roose quickly ordered the men to release their crossbows.

Thwack!

Blood gushed from their wounds and mouths and then they collapsed to the ground and were gone. Oberyn Martell threw him an annoyed look   but Doran nodded to him.

When both the Princes and him entered the tower he spared not a look after killing the midwife despite their screams but stood with a sword in hand by the birthing bed without moving until Oberyn hauled him back by the shoulders.

There was nothing to do with Lyanna. She was already dead or would be since childbed fever was too advanced for it to be cured, even if they wanted to bring a maester, or already was one of them here.

He didn’t hear as the younger man screamed at his face and looked flatly as Doran took one her sweaty wrists when the girl stopped shuddering and he idly recalled his own lady mother die of the same trying to give his father a spare when Roose  was barely old enough to form a coherent thought.

When the babe’s cries were finally hear all three of them stilled.

A soft hum was heard and they turned quickly to find Elia cooing at the babe. She had come to them and stayed with a small group behind the main host and with them occupied ensuring none of the men lived they have not noticed how he approached them.

Roose watched how she held the babe close to her chest, her pale eyes flat despite her gentle smile.

Then there is the moment that changes the future, with a different decision anything can happen.

In some universe Elia Bolton - because despite her Martell name she is a Bolton to her core - just keeps squeezing the bastard until his little ribs break and his heart still. Her only words at the disgust showed by Oberyn and the unease on Doran’s brow were My blades are sharp.

In another universe Princess Elia stays behind, and Roose is forced to recognize the babe as his own bastard with the wetnurse he killed by Oberyn Martell and many years later on when his own trueborn heir dies and he has no other issue, he betroths him to the youngest daughter of Princess Rhaenys just to ensure to have the heir of Bolton blood he so desires.

In some strange other universe were Martell blood is warmer than the icily bolton one, pity sneaks in the woman’s heart without being overwhelmed by the damage Rhaegar’s other son could cause so Queen Elia raises her cousin’s bastard carefully at court at the side of her own children and when the boy joins the kingsguard she is the one who claps harder.

However, regardless of the actions of the crown prince’s wife in every universe, Roose Bolton has his course set already. Killing Benjen was incidental, he couldn’t be allowed to live and tell the world how Roose has sneaked off to protect his cousin but his absence now just leaves the newborn Robb uncontested, the fight for his regency would be fierce and it the one who rules could never be Eddard Stark’s widow.

She is a southerner follower of the seven and when she tried to have a small sept built in Winterfell itself the lords almost forced her to leave the keep and return to her lands. When Roose himself returns to his keep, after feigning coming from the North instead of South and leaving all the credit of rescuing Elia to  Doran and Oberyn to teary eyed King Rhaegar, he’s satisfied to discover that his servants held his orders.

Benjen sneaked off while the plague was still supposedly going one but it was before the decoy he sent in his armor arrived so he never learned or told anyone how Roose hadn’t actually arrived. The stunt would not last, Roose knows but he only needs to spin that tale until the truly loyal bannermen of the starks spend their troops fighting the new king. After that the child Lord of Winterfell will die, as frail babes are wont to do in harsh weather and none could lift a finger to accuse him.

He waits and its rewarded.

Hoster Tully has been beheaded by Jon Connignton and his son had been sent to the faith to be a septon while with Jon Arryn has been sent to the wall and the girl he married before that, Lysa Tully, has been married off to a Ser Myles Mooton as soon as she was found not pregnant by the falcon lord and her Mooton child would be the new Lord Paramount of the riverlands. The new Lord Arryn is the babe Harrold Arryn, previously call Hardying and with that disaster the Vale has enough problem on their own to meddle with another realm.  

Stannis Baratheon has been pardoned and joined the Kingsguard  instead of marching to the wall while his young brother Renly has been sent to the citadel.  Jon Lonmouth is now the new Lord of Storm’s end.

The Lannisters had fared better in turn but not by much. After Tywin Lannister had been killed in battle by Rhaegar and Cersei Lannister sent to Sunspear to marry Prince Oberyn, the dwarf is the new lord as not one knows what happened to Jaime and their uncle Kevan is regent while his young son Lancel fosters with the Velaryons and Daven Lannister is squaire of the Ser Barristan, the new lord commander of the kinsguard. Genna Lannister is handmaiden to the Elia and her daughter. 

The Tyrells had taken the lion’s place of eminence with their daughter bethroted to the babe Aegon and their son Garland being promised the lordship of Castamere, with the place being rebuild with Lannister coin and their bannermen flood the capital, including not just Lord Tarly as the master of war but Lord Crane and the heir of Lord Hightower, while Gormon Tyrell replaced Pycell.

With that, there is enough caos for Roose to plant the seeds of  his ambitions and after seven years pass allowing Manderly, Glover and Mormont to fight over Robb Stark and his mother while he retreats into his castle, the child Lord climbs a the tower of the first keep at Winterfell and falls to his death  and Rhaegar dies of a burst belly two months after without much fanfare.

Elia rules as Queen regent and everything is as it should be. The Bolton line forever holds the ancestral seat of the kings of Winter. 

Chapter Text

Princess Elia Targaryen was a figure much attacked in her lifetime. Her own name even was a cause of dispute as her own mother, the young princess Rhaella in an unseemly bold act eschewed tradition and named her in honor of not her own lady mother or Targaryen relations but in the one of her distant Martell ancestors, her third time great grandmother, Princess Myriah Martell’s dornish mother in gratitude to the help provided by the rulling princess of Dorne, her beloved lady in waiting for attending to the birth of her daughter when Summerhall burned and she was left alone and scared as Ser Duncan tried to get out the people trapped inside before never returning.

Barely out of the womb of her mother, Elia Targaryen  was considered to be the new heir of the Targaryen dynasty and a few years after the death of her sickly grandfather, from whom many argued she inherited her innate frailness, she was made crown princess and heir to the throne.

And she could never rest easy.

Like the first Rhaenyra, many men hoped that the birth of a son would displace her as heir but as the years passed and none of her siblings survived either the womb or the cradle, people grew anxious with the knowledge she would be the King and Queen’s only child.

From babe to girl to maiden, she was the sole living child of her parents and Aerys’s fragile mind depended solely on her continued living. She was a woman, thin and sickly and many times both the queen and king feared for her life and summoned healers from the corners of the world to treat her.

The lords fret both at the possibility of she surviving without brothers and not surviving at all. In their minds it was clear they would have either a rulling queen or the end of the Targaryen dynasty …and the ascension of the Baratheon family to royalty was something many would not accept lightly and would cause war.  

And the king was most wroth when courtiers started to make suggestions.

He would not allow the fat babe Robert or Steffon’s other reedy son to sit on his throne and convert his only heir into a broodmare and kill her with their giant offspring. He would not allow Tywin have his golden kitten to rule in his stead when Aerys dies and make his daughter birth lion after lion.  He could not chance to bring a blackfire back to Westeros if even one of the male one still lived, there was too much bad blood and the man would be less accepted than either Robert or Jaime by being essosi and descended of a bastard. He would also not suffer the descendants of Aerion Brightflame to argue that their line had preeminence instead of the one of his own grandfather Aegon the fifth and turn Elia into a simple queen consort. And the Hightowers could show their Brightsmile heir as cattle as much they liked but the boy was worth barely more than nothing with the scant blood they have from Rhaena of Pentos, he didn't even inherited the silver hair like one of his aunts. The descendants of his grandfather’s sisters were barely considered nobles and not even of the right age or gender!

No option was adequate!

Elia is his heir! If he has no son with the simpering wretch of his sister-wife, she would have to do! And no one was allowed to shame against them, they were dragons!

So King Aerys summoned all the lords to her ten name day celebration to swear fealty to her at Kingslanding but the whispers continued for years after and he grew enraged when his Lords starting to form factions to choose would rule through Elia as her husband when he refused to marry off his daughter after she started to bleed!

He would not, could not risk her to die at childbirth ot have her already too fragile body ruined by extreme youth like Rhaella's was when their parents forced then to marry  and then they could only produce one living sickly child. He would not, not when none of his mistresses had bore a living bastard and then tragedy struck.

Just after Princess Elia’s seventeen nameday he was kidnapped by Lord Darklyn at Dunskendale for half a year and almost died.

When he was released he realized he had been as passive as his ancestor Viserys the first when his heir was female and his lords this time had schemed  to kill him  because he didn’t have any other heir than Elia… And he recognized that only his daughter’s refusal to marry without his consent when he was in captivity along with her insistence for his retrieval and Ser Barristan’s daring rescue spared his live. And he was livid!

None of his lords were loyal! Their oaths meant nothing!

And he needed to teach them what happen when they try to stand against him!

Marriage between the families of two Lord Paramounts was forbidden! Tywin’s girl would be handmaiden to Elia along with the Tully chit Hoster wanted to send North to marry the brother of the boy who fostered with Robert. He was not blind and he would not allow an alliance that would favor Steffon’s get!. His cousin has grown too bold but Aerys knew he needed to plan before he acted.

Rickard Stark would join his council in the guise of being compensated for the broken  betrothal of his daughter but would stay so Aerys can make sure the North behaves.

Elbert Arryn would join his kingsguard and he would give a fertile widow for Jon Arryn so he doesn’t complain about being robbed an heir. Aerys doesn’t care if the man likes it or not but he would obey and with that compromise and his would be allies neutralized, he can’t raise in arms. Most likely he would sire a child on princess Rhae’s daughter and die before the boy can learn to walk or the Vale would pass to one of his nieces and their daughters. He doesn’t care as long as there would be an ally or at least no strong leader that could raise armies against his Elia! Jaime Lannister would be betrothed to his distant kinsman’s daughter from Tarth  or the youngest of Hightower’s daughters and that’s the most Tywin even would have from him!

And Tyrell... he supposes he can bribe the fat flower  with another spot in his council so he doesn’t yowl anymore, as if his eldest brat would was even more than the get of an upjumped steward or old enough for his heir!

After many treaties and negotions, all was done and in five years all the plans of his grace were completed and the King was pleased when he realized some of his lord’s bannermen had started to reach out to him when they realized his cunning and some other had not even realized who they had been cut down at their knees.

However all the arrangements were not out love for the girl. King Aerys was incapable of love or compassion since he was tortured  most cruelly on Dunskedale and barely escaped with his life but he saw clearly the enemies that wanted to usurp him and he couldn’t tolerate a threat against him.

He knew his daughter was still a maiden unwed and had no male heir but he would not allow alliances behind his back! He would not suffer his enemies to conspire against him. And despite his council’s pleas he would only betroth Elia when the time is right! None can decide but him! Not one can conspire against his heir!

And his only child belonged to the crown. An offense against her was an offense against him. Dissent against his only choice of heir was treason.

Courtiers, Lord Staunton, Steffon and his brats, the queen of thorns,  the Tyroshi Archont, even his own wife were not spared of suspicion . All were bullied, insulted and cowered into submission in one way or another.

For the tricky ones Aerys was not shy of hiring assassins and keeping his royal hands clean. After all, many of the traditional nobles who thought Elia insufficient  and in need of a husband to guider her were old… and old people are bound to die.

But for his blood only fire would do despite his daughter’s pleas. He is the King and if Elia dies, he needs to plan too.

Queen Rhaella, acussed of infidelity and dying of childbirth and up to the eyes of milk of the poppy thanks to the youngest kingsguard Ser Elbert who out of pity sneaked a vial to the midwife, burned at Dragonstone after she delivered a blond haired sickly boy that the King denied fathering. No news were released to realm of the charges  but only of her death at delivering a child that didn't survive  and the kingsguard were sworn to silence... but that was the break on the trust they had on him and made them see him as the madman that he was, that was the moment that caused them to turn to his heir. And Elia started to arrange with Ser Lewyn  to send letters to Dorne, whose royal family had loved her mother so. 

Not long  after the queen's death, the whole Baratheon family traveled to offer their condolences but their ship burned for inexplicable reasons and then sunk to the bottom of the ocean and their deaths were marked as too suspicious.

Aerys’s mind degenerated even more and he burned alive the most important stormlander lords who arrived at kinsglanding despite Rickard and Tywin’s advice who were dispatched to the black cells for their troubles.

Accusations flew and his reign turned to one of terror with the stormland’s bannermen raising in arms and with the unrest at the North where Eddard Stark tried to convince his brother to avenge Robert Baratheon and release their father. Those actions caused Brandon Stark to ride south and join Kevan Lannister’s men and with the armies of the West and North along with the stormlanders combined and approaching  the goldroad, just a week away from the capital with the threat of the end of his dynasty, the King’s mind snapped and he intended to blow the city up  with wildfire. 

All being arranged Aerys remained with his pyromancer and send all but the kingsguard on duty away while Elia pleaded  openned the gates of the throne room and begged him to stop Rossart but he refused while he yelled at her that they would be reborn as dragons!

And then he was stopped.

A sword to the back courtesy of Elbert Arryn did the deed and the former princess was pleased and relieved.

As he watched the blond blue eyed man with who had a hard gaze Elia knew well she no friend of his and wondered if she would be next. The man had isolated himself since he joined the white brotherhood and was too bitter of being robbed his place as his uncle’s heir and she knew nothing she could do would make it up but then he turned his sword to pyromancer who callously burned her mother and next  beheaded the eunuch who slandered her so much against her father’s royal ears.

After three corpses laid on the ground, Elia’s ears heard clearly Ser Elbert’s voice on the throne room.

The King is dead! Long live to the queen! Long live to Elia the first!

So she allowed him to live and they conjured an excuse blaming Rossart that only the Lord Commander insisted on not accepting but as all the kinsguard bent then knee at Elia’s insistence, he was forced to let it go and Elia found herself alone surrounded by them on the Red Keep. Not one could lnow what really happened beyond that her father had passed and the remaining courtiers and her ladies were too frightened to approach her and didn’t trust her. And both Rickard and Tywn needed remain in prison if not in better acomodations until Elia decided they were not dangerous.

She knew she needed to marry and soon, she was already an old maid but the only men she trust were the kingsguard- queensguard!- and they could not – they would not, despite what she may want – break their vows to give her lawful heirs.

She can’t marry them, they have no children she can marry, she had no brother, her father's cousins were all dead … so she listened to their advice  and she naturally  is more suceptible and favors the Kingsguard who treated her and her mother most kindly.

Lewyn Martell lounged as careless as a cat at the meeting table on the tower of the Kingsguard with all his brothers in attedance and replied to the Lord Commander's sugestion after Ser Oswell Whent's proposal for her to marry either Hoster Tully or his son was rejected by all. 

‘’Of course Ser Baelor is adecuate but he can not wed you, your grace. He’s already an heir and his father very much old and his second brother incapable, the choice  would also offend  their overlord, the Lord Tyrell who has two sons whom while younger than you are old enough to father children inmediately. If you plan to choose from the Reach, then it can only be a Tyrell and Lord Lannister would not abide a cripple or a second son succeding over his golden son. However either my second or third nephew are princes on their own right and would be much more a convenient choice than the other options the Lords of the realm would present giving their wealth and blood. To renew the ties between our houses that were made with Daenerys and Maron would be most pleasant and Prince Doran would be as dear friend to you, as his mother was to yours, almost as the brother you never had.’’

Queen elia choose.

With his help and the one of Dayne, Ser Elbert and the Lord Commander she treated with the would be rebels for weeks and tried to negotiate a trust that allowed her to reign as Queen and them to return without the taint of treason but she had to revoke many of his father’s edicts and struggled to fend off the Lord Hand and the master of laws and coin with their proposals and balance the reparations that her house has to do to appease the realm.

She desired not to marry the fifteen year old boy Lord Tywin ordered Kevan summoned from the Westerlands  and she labored to understand if releasing a kingsguard- queensguard!- was lawful as Jon Arryn demanded. She though unwise to allow her friend Lady Catelyn to marry Brandon Stark as his father insisted and risk weakening her already tenuous grasp at power and  she didn't even trust the devout lady will be happy with such an astringent man.

...Nor she does trust the grasping Lord Tyrell who almost named himself Master of Coin after he arrived two weeks later by ship or his  two perfect sounding sons

At the end, it was just in time when  Ser Barristan and Ser Jonothor both men of honor, brought her intended with all pomp deserved and a  contract of marriage with the late king’s seal on it.

With the old dragon failing in scared away all the other beasts, at the end it was only right that the serpent’s cunning allowed the young viper to scurry beneath all the debris to mate with the dragoness.

Despite the fuming lords, the Martells who wisely decided to remain in Dorne since Aerys’s coronation and subsequent decline had grown rich with the reigning Prince marrying one of the daughters of the God -emperor of Yi-Ti many years ago and had outgained them all with their enforced armies and navy.

Queen Elia announces her decision with the support of the Lord commander of the Queensguard and Prince Lewyn at her side and with such illustrious would be in laws, nothing can be argued.  The master of coin is easily is brought by her side when she promises her heir to any daughter he may have. The Starks she appeases with the Hightowers’s heir by promising the hand of the master of Laws’s only daughter in lieu of the match with the deceased Robert that her father broke.  

For the stormlanders she has them put forward the claimants for the lordship and selects the one with the closest and most recent blood ties to the late Baratheons while reducingr Storm’s ends surrounding lands to distribute to the families of the lords killed by the King. Lord Selwyn of Tarth ascends to Lord Paramount with young Galladon as his heir for the stormlands and his daughter as heiress of Tarth.

To Lord Arryn, she promises to enquire with the High septon and have the crown pay the indulgence to release his nephew after seven years of service.

Against the force of the remaining small council, the Lord hand is forced to renounce with only the betrothal to his daughter Cersei to Lord Velaryon to appease his pride  and the promise of one royal princess as the bride for young jaime’s future son.

Conniving serpents!, Lord Tywin almost screams at the dornish retinue as he leaves the city with his children.

Playing the long game the dornish waited till Aerys dug his own grave and with the precious information passed by Prince Lewyn of the Kinsguard they made a decorous proposition to the first successful rulling queen to help her quell the incensed stormlander bannermen, the wounded honor of the falcon lord, to fend off the greed of the Lion Lord.

It was decided since many years ago when they received Queen Rhaella’s letter along with a precious parchment that the king signed in a  moment of agitation that forgot after.

The first brother could not go, he was married and already master of their own lands. The second brother didn’t want to go, he was a free spirit and abhorred responsibility and duty and by the time had already sired three bastards so the remaining brother was sent to the queen. A strange man for a dornishman, a quiet and knightly prince too decorous to have the red viper as a brother and almost somber and sad in temperament but one with the blood of Daenerys Targaryen burning most in his veins and the dreams and color of old Valyria  in his eyes.

At the end of the year, Prince Rhaegar Martell sat next to his wife at the iron throne.

He knew his duty well and was well liked despite his origins. He never strayed from her side and he accompanied her every time she faced the birthing bed.

He would not fail this time.

He would help the Princess that was promised in the Long Night and sire the three heads of the dragon.

Chapter Text

Elia Greyjoy lived by the grace of the Drowned Lord.

She was the only girl ever born from Lord Quellon’s seed and she was the weakest from his children. The only female issue born of his three rock wives.

She was born almost a day after than her oldest twin, Euron, and she was so small and frail compared to him and she stayed like that, remaining so when the years passed and another brother was born and then a couple more and so after her mother died, so not no one really expected her to grew into adulthood in those  barren rocks her family called home however despite her constants bouts of sickness and coughing she kept living as she continued to be fed and  since Lord Greyjoy was sort of a progressive man amongst his people it was decided to let things be. 

She kept living despite her weak health, the harsh weather from the isles and  even recovering from greyscale without a scar and outliving her sturdier brothers ant it was deemed a miracle.

More years passed. Her brothers grew tall and brawny and her father’s hair greyer and she remained frail but she lived and the question of her future arised. 

As the only daughter of a Lord Paramount, even the pirate one, her marriage should have bind an alliance for her family but since she had been so frail the maesters were sure she would never survive the birthing bed and her father dissolved the betrothal he once made  with Lord Harlaw and  proclaimed she would remain unwed. And thus she remained a maid till she was thirty.

And Elia  was lonely. Since her mother died soon after the birth of Urrigon and her father’s last rock wife was almost the same age as she and also  died soon with her Greenlander children, among an horde of brothers all except Euron never  knew what to make of her. They mostly left her alone, only acknowledging her in passing and sparing short courtesies for her, only occasionally bringing a trinket for her or asking her to mend their clothes. 

Euron was different, they shared a womb and he never forgot her. In their early childhood he was close to her, always indulging her plays and when they grew and he started to learn to sail and reave, he always made sure to still have some time for her.

He even called her his sun, for her warm personality so at odds of a proper iroborn, even a lady. Elia never liked the moniker, but something of it called for her and she loved him and was happy for his continued company after Balon and Victarion decided were too old to play games with her anymore.

At least, she loved him until she grew up more and realized what he was,  realized the depth of his cruelty. 

Iron born were harsh people, she was as soft as suet between them but she had seen men and women, thralls,  die from punishment and she was not the shrinking greenlander maid her brothers thought her to be and she had still loved her father and brothers. 

And she loved Euron until she didn’t. Until she learned about the dog he kicked at sea in their childhood or his habit of torturing thralls. Until she learned how he suffocated Harlon who always had favored her even when  their brother was already dying, just because Euron could never stand him taking her attention away from him. Until she understood more of the reasons of Aeron’s deep fear and hate, how once there was blood on his sheets and young Aeron would not meet her eyes. 

And her blood froze when she noticed how the saltwives he took and brought back looked just like her .Her youngest living brother had noticed the last too and the boy attached himself to her skirts and guarded Elia’s door whenever Euron landed on Pyke.

Her father and elder brother  suspected Euron's behaviour but since there was never a concrete action she or anyone would point out they just always kept him at sea, giving him long missions that would make his returns short and far between. 

More years passed. His eldest brother married and had  children in quick succession, her father grew older and there was discontent between them about the old ways.  Elia was of age, many ladies in her place were several times mothers. And for the first time, Elia was wary of her family.

Time passed. Euron kept bringing far away treasures for her which she accepted with a pained smile when he kissed her cheek and then he left again. 

Euron was cruel since childhood, much more than Balon or Victarion were put together and he seemed to consider her as part of him, both an extension and a possession of him. He always make sure to repay everyone who mocked him for his grandiose gifts and gestures of affection toward her, including their own family, Victarion’s own saltwife could attest to that and that was enough rucus that Euron got expelled from the Isles

She saw Aeron breathing easier.

Already an old maid by anyone standards, she had remained on her brother’s keep  and helped  her good sister Alannys to care for her children and manage the household.  

By the time Alannys’s four children were old enough start their lessons, Elia had already resigned herself to never wed but then Baratheons rebelled against the dragons and Balon convinced their people to sack the reach and soon after their father died.  The captains returned with some plunder and life at  Pyke continued for several years more.

But then the ships returned to dock and many lords met re many with her brother at Balon’s study, planing something the current Lord of Pyke told her were not the business of women. 

After three weeks or so, everything was decided and war was declared on the whole realm. Elia could not believe them. Was she the only one with brains in the family?

Did Balon not know how to count? Even if an ironborn is worth ten greenlanders they would still be crushed?. 

No one paid her any mind, not even Aeron or Victarion and the latter only kissed her forehead before sailing away. Only a paltry force was left on Pyke and every other departed with the fleet. She remained with Alannys and the children.

The war began and they lost.

The first to fall was her eldest nephew, Balon’s heir. Rodrick was killed on the riverlands in the first skirmishes. Then Aeron was captured by Casterly Rock after a month and no one knew if he lived or not, no letter asking for ransom arrived at Pyke. Later Maron was killed and Stannis Baratheon smashed their priced Iron fleet and Victarion was injured. And finally Balon himself lost a major battle and had to flee back, just in time to receive the new King and his allies.

The walls of their castle were shattered that day. Many of the thralls were killed from the debris and even some by the same greelanders whose birthplace their shared. Her handmaidens were raped and Elia herself was almost carried off by a Greenlander knight when  Eddard Stark gutted the man and ordered his men to bring her and every living Greyjoy to the throne room. 

She heard Alannys before she saw her. She wailed as she clutched young Theon and Asha until the roaring king silenced her and all the chatter of his men.

Baratheon then forced her brother to his knees in his own halls and under the threat of a Warhammer, Balon had to swear his fealty to the new dynasty.

Then Elia’s life fell apart.

They took Theon to the north and Asha was to foster in a few years at the capital under Cersei’s care and she herself had to go to the Westerlands….where she was to marry Lord Lannister.

The journey in a vessel commanded by the smuggler of Stannis Baratheon is something she wishes to forget, if only to not feel grateful to such a lowly man serving her family’s enemies. She had not wanted to leave her cabin, to avoid the King and his ilk but still the Onion Knight had realized her deep fear at her impending wedding. Such an unassuming man, having the kindness to  have his own wife to travel to Lannisport while grand preparations were held so she could have some sort of advice is something she would repay in the future even if she doesn’t know how. 

Elia exhales.

Elia stands alone in the house of some gods she doesn’t believe. She stares impassibly as a septon recites words and like a parrot from Euron’s travels she speaks her part. She doesn’t care for the words and neither does she when it ends. She sees the queen’s raging green eyes wild with bloodlust- the same as Victarion's the last time he looked at Euron's- and the flat eyes of the kingslayer, her new stepchildren. The dwarf is not on sight. Her good brother Kevan eyes gazes at her sternly while her new good sister turns up her nose at her.

And when cold big fingers grasp her chin she doesn’t close her eyes. Cold lips presses against her and almost none of guests cheer up.

When the feast ends and scores of men approach her to tear off her clothes she wants to scream. She wants to tell them she’s a high born lady not a peasant wench and that Euron still lives free and they would all die when he returns and learn what they have done… but she stays silent. 

Still, they don’t dare to manhandle too roughly. Her knew husband arrives and she suffers through the bedding awkwardly. It’s painful and she bleeds but her body is no stranger to pain. Later she  regrets that Tywin didn’t remain in the room and dreams that night about him staying and she smothering in his sleep.

He only beds her once but she births a child within the year. A girl with blue eyes the same shape of hers and  Euron’s and the black Greyjoy hair. The child grows healthy and hale, not an inch of disfigurement or frailness. Her husband sees her and leaves. 

Life at the Rock is nothing like at isles and she wonders how many peasants could eat from the plate of gold used by Genna Lannister to eat. She wonders if famine wouldn't have been a real threat Balon wouldn't have rebelled. She receives her good family at her apartments when they visit the child and something like guilt sets in her stomachs. The girl grows and Elia would like to tell herself that she loves her but she feels empty and can only summon curiosity at her development.

Out of spite she starts hanging out with the dwarf when he first approaches and finds his companionship more tolerable than the rest, the action is enough to involuntarily gain the goodwill of her goodsibilings and people stops falling mute when she arrives at a room. The dwarf and apparent heir of the Rock and the only daughter of lord Greyjoy and current Lady of the Rock are still the outcasts of the keep and when she learns the story of the crofter’s daughter she makes an effort to stay out of sight of Tywin but time goes on but after a while Lord Lannister beds her again.

The continued health of the girl seems to have given him hope for a new heir and she knows it. She knows she's still a hostage and never tries to deny him entry to bedchamber. He in turn barely talks to her but her rooms are improved, only one guard is posted at her door and she's given leave to folllow Genna and the Castellan and only the finest silks and toys are delivered for the youngest daughter of the Rock. 

Two years after the girl, a brother is born. 

A perfect looking Lannister boy, well formed, with golden hair and green eyes and with good enough health despite the disastrous birth that in  less than six years Tywin sends his dwarf son packing to the Citadel.

The queen rages on. Tywin Lannister’s youngest son was born the same day that Tommen Baratheon and Elia’s husband doesn’t care enough for his first two children to present their new sibling at court, one look to the woman's odious letter was enough for Tywin to recal half the redcloaks from the capital and now Elia sits at his side when he holds court at the westerlands.

She says nothing while lords and peasants brought their complains and she entertains herself by thinking of melting all the gold adorning the hall and pouring out in Tywin’s throat. By having the guard protecting his own halls do the same to him that they did to the crofter’s girl. By taking the knife she keeps under her bedding and putting in his eye socket as he beds her. By  unleashing Euron on him and watching what remains of such a proud lord. 

Lord Lannister bids his time for one year to make sure everyone knows no one orders him but they leave for kingslanding eventually.

He's still disentered in her is not to bed her and Elia remained silent and didn’t left the Lannister retinue after they arrived the capital. She heard the queen’s veiled insults, her claims that Tywin cared nor for her, that he won’t ever love her as he loved her mother. That young Gerold was nothing and couldn’t ever compare to Jaime. That he was an unwanted replacement for him, barely above a dwarf and that her daughter was a squid and not a lionnes like herself…She didn’t answer her not out of cowardness or a sense or property. She just didn't care about the sounds that a  wretch emited and simply decided to watch the court and learnt.

Then they returned to the Rock and Elia confirmed the rumors. Tyrion had turned moody when his disenheritance had been revealed and he was eager to complain about Tywin and his dubious parentage. After several bottles of rumm she finally understood. The morning after, he begged her to forget it and never let it slip what he said and she agreed to the last.

A few years passed. 

Both she and Tywin  were aware of the queen’s ambitons and only in protecting their children are they in accord. And when Elia reveals the truth of the Princes and Princess’s parentage to her husband after Jon Arryn dies and asks him.

And what are you do about it?

It’s really a coincidence that the Lion Queen died so suddenly and young Joffrey was betrothed to the rose of Highgarden  while Eddard Stark’s daughter married the King?

All was well for Elia. The Lannisters she was currently allied remained into the king’s peace and Tywin’s days were numbered. 

He won’t live to see his youngest’s son next name day if what Euron sent about a Targaryen queen was true.

Chapter Text

‘’Do you want your children to live?’’

It was enough a sentence for her to make her choice.

The man Elia Martell marries for the second time is 9 years her junior  and more than one head taller than her. A soldier through and  through, a man or war. A knight who was inducted by her own former husband but more than that, as a Princess she had attended several tourneys and had never seen anyone like him. A combination of the Stranger and the Warrior, he doesn’t even see human at all when he cut down the Lannisters men.   He has not removed the heavy  armor which she ponders weighs  much more than her and is still stained with the blood of the soldier who tried to drag Rhaenys from under she had hidden, another westerman Elia hardly knew but who was sent to the Stranger after Gregor found him with a knife trying to kill her daughter.

She shifts in her spot and he grunts.

He glares at the septon, a thin man he abducted from a crumbling sept that was going down in flames. The man’s robes are stained with dirt and blood and his voice trembles as he coughs but he dares not to stop the ceremony. Elia knows he has recognized her. Has recognized the trembling toddler who clings to her skirts and the pale bundle that wails in her arms. He has recognized Gregor too, for there is no other so tall as him. Still, aside from the halting screech when he saw her being pulled by the arm he dared not to rebel with a sword pointed at his neck.

Do you want to live?. He had asked the same to the old man.

Gregor’s eyes were two little hard black specks in a face far older than his years and Elia had to crane her neck to look up, he had asked that after he punched the septon in the face and knocked the man down when he started to titter after the ceremony was over.

She knows not if he has killed him but the old man’s face is sunken and he drips blood as he is tied belly down over the gigantic stallion that Ser Gregor rides while he throws her his cloak and  boots to replace her torn silks slippers.

When she runs back to him  to where the foul tempered animal was tied, he snaps her to hurry up and gives a disgruntled glare to Rhaenys as she’s having a crying fit.

He pulls Elia up like a doll and sits her in front of him while she has to grip Rhaenys with all her strength as she is beside herself with fear. They ride and everything burns and  many people scream  but he tries to stick they to the most deserted part of kingslanding. The few unlucky soldiers and peasants that ride close to Ser Gregor end up beheaded.

As they approach the gates Rhaenys’s screams awaken Aegon who had cried himself to sleep before and now she has two screeching children in her arms and Clegane’s face is growing darker.

‘’Shut them up ‘’ his voice is raspy as he barks and Elia remembers the blood in his armor and her cloths, the blood in the animal they sit on and she tries to sooth Rhaenys as best as she can and when she sees Gregors’s arm rising in their direction, she grips Rhaenys’s jaw hard and shuts her up. 

He just bundles the children under the cloak completely covering to not let them being seen. Rhaenys’s eyes are full of fear under the fabric and Elia whispers about the need to be quiet as they leave the city and ride hard to the beach, where a small ship with some rough looking men are waiting for them.

Elia gathers her courage as Gregor doesn’t even let her descend on her own and simply carries her and her children in his arms like they weigh nothing.

‘’Where are we going?’’, she asks as the men see them and leer at her, falling silent with just one grunt from the young man while he deposits the unconscious septon near some rocks.

He says nothing as they step in on the ship with the horse and the men loosen the ropes. He pushes her to a corner and looks for a crude wood box were he retrieves another thicker cloak and some piece of hard cheese with a flask of beer, leaving Elia stunted and hopeful t for the first time that he was not going to sell her to the rebels or his liege lord.

But she doesn’t understand despite how much she tries to find a reason in her head of why he would help her at all .

He’s a westerman too, he had been Tywin Lannister’s dog and he had come with his army to sack kingslanding,  his loyalty has been always to the Lannisters…before. House Clegane is a new house, a masterly house without connections and they had no other dealing with proper nobility aside House Lannister or Rhaegar himself and the last was barely just the last year, just a favor for the first ones. She doubts it is some kind of odd belated loyalty to her dead husband for the knighthood and she knows by the stories that are whispered that is not by the goodness of his heart. He kills people with a blank face, carves them out like pieces of soft meat suet. 

After two hours of tense silence, she confirms the last when there is a flash of steel and two heads roll over. The bodies swiftly are dispatched overboard and she tries her best to not let Rhaenys from under the cloth.

‘’Where are we going?’’, she repeats unsurely after he kills two of the men when they tried to take the few jewels she managed to snatch in Aegon’s swaddling clothes.  The captain looks at them warily and his low voice trails barely above the rising waves ‘’ Ser…?’’

Gregor smiles at him darkly and the man quivers, his voice now sounds sharper. ’’Why, to Dorne of course?’’, then he turns his eyes to Elia and takes her chin with his fingers.

 The hand is enormous and though the touch is unshakable he doesn’t hurt her. As he looks at her, she realizes how young he truly is when not scowling or sneering.

‘’Prince Gregor has a nice ring to it, hasn’t it?’’

She freezes. She supposes… that would be his proper title now. She is a widow and in Dorne in any other circumstance he would be her consort but he surely doesn’t mean to…

‘’I get what you’re thinking Elia but we are perfect for each other’’. He says as he grins at her, the gesture odd in his face and she can see  two rows of perfect white teeth.

He seems to notice her stiff form. ‘’Don’t worry. I’m your friend , a friend to your children’’. He lifts his heavy broadsword and points to it. ‘’ I’ll do my best to keep you three safe and restore the throne to your boy, I won’t even demand most of my rights as a husband, I just ask in return to let me enjoy a better status than being the master of a knightly house, so what you say?’’

Gregor has really gone to much trouble to save them all and he even rescued the septon from his crumbled building… if she thinks to fuck off his plans he wou–

‘’We are in accord, Ser’’. Elia’s voice is  high with anxiety but when he smiles to her agains she smiles back.

Chapter Text

Elia feels a warmness in her body that’s odd. The wine she drank is the kind she usually avoids for its bitter flavor but she feels happy. Rhaegar Targaryen had chosen her!

The crown has chosen her as the wife of the heir! Despite the frailness of her body, her dornish blood and older age and the opposition of the courtiers and the hand of the king, the Lord of Casterly Rock, she has been chosen!

The letter has just arrived yesterday but her mother was wise to foresee it!

The alcohol  gives her strength to dance almost the whole night giddy with joy and she’s happy that all the lords have made an attendance or sent their heirs!

From Spootwood, to Starfall and Yronwood all had come to congratulate her!

The knights and lords and even the squires spin her around and she moves her arms in remembrance of the old rhoynish customs so happy she is!

She doesn’t mind at all their sharp smiles and commanding hands holding her waist! She doesn’t mind them passing her quickly to other dancing men, making her head spin, the whole hall is celebrating with her!

A few of them and the ladies come close to her to congratulate her personally and kiss her hand and cheeks and she smiles at them all, her heart beating wild and her body bathed in a thin layer of sweat under her blue and golden silks.

When a handsome older man lingers in her presence while she rests against a pillar, she turns up her eyes and struggles to catch his name as he introduces himself.

Tall and strong with thick arms and blue eyes in a somehow weathered face, she knows it has to be one from the stony dornishmen’s houses and she realizes she has drunk too much as she can’t recall his name.

She pants and blushes to the tip of her ears as he kisses her hand and turns her head away with embarrassment when she realizes how she absurd is acting.

Her eyes scan quickly the dancing hall but not one appears to have noticed. Her mother is old and has retired early on and Doran is drinking moderately with their father’s cousins. The others are dancing with each other or retiring to dark corners of the palace.

Her eyes feel heavy.

And the man notices quickly. His smile reveals a row of white sharp teeth while he takes her hand to put a palm over his chest and asks her for another dance. 

She agrees and she smiles as he spins her around, her contentment increases as he whispers sweet nothings to her ears, calling her the most beautiful maid in the world and lamenting that he could have not married himself.

The dance continues and she feels so happy that when he asks her if he can kiss her she agrees, surprising herself by how much she wants him. 

His lips make contact with her and the feeling hits her like explosion in her heart. She has never kissen anyone since she was a child playing up and this feels so different. His lips are soft and hard at the same time, his grip is so sure and strong that she feels cherished and desired, he doesn’t make her uncomfortable even when she’s overwhelmed so much by the sensation that she moans against his mouth when he pries her lips with his tongue.

He grinds his body against her and the man repeats her name like a prayer over and over and she asks for his in turn while they embrace. 

Ormond.

She moans against his mouth again and then keens as he sneaks a leg between hers, her back against the pillar at the edge of the hall where she was previously resting.

Elia, Elia, Elia!

Her blood feels like liquid fire. She has never met a man so handsome and strong and sure of himself! She’s glad she has not to wait for a child to grow up to marry her nor have the kind pious bland Ser Baelor who blushed even when he had to kiss her hand.

With his chest pressed tightly against her breasts she feels the most desired woman on the world and she doesn’t reject his offer to keep entertaining themselves in private.

She smiles and laughs and the handsome man answers in turn as they sneak up inside the palace, towards the rooms of the guests.

They share some good laughs as they evade the guards, hand in hand and when finally the rooms of his rooms close behind them she feels joy as he carries her toward the bed, entwining her hands against his neck as he hooks her legs against his waist.

Elia is a maid, untouched by man but she knows very well what is poking against her belly. There is slim sliver of wariness that soon evaporates as his hot lips descend on her neck and then skim over her breasts as he tucks down her dress.

She pants against his body as he settles over her, quickly diverting himself of his garments while he calls for her and begs her to let him make love to her. She doesn’t notice when undresses her completely but she whines as she feels a thick finger breach her channel. 

The light sting fades quickly and she blinks as he asks her if she was a maid. She says nothing as her head is spinning wildly but the she feels her blood pulsing on her womanhood, anticipating being breached.

But the knight lingers and doesn’t take her maidenhead immediately. He takes time to open her petals and look on her flesh making her blush so fiercely that she feels her heart is going to explode.

When his other fingers softly caress her flesh her passion ignites and the finger that was inside easly slips deeper. 

And Elia aches. Her body wants something that she doesn’t understand and she begs. 

She begs and begs and begs and when the knight  askes her if she’s sure she screams that she is, that she wants him.

When he in turn just adds another finger she feels like she can die any moment. The knight's fingers are bigger and it’s too much and at the same time not enough and though she sometimes decided to play with herself to giver body pleasure this is nothing like that.

She wants, wants, wants and she doesn’t know what it is but she wants it!

His body is wider and heavier and his tongue so skilled that she cries and begs even more pathetically with mewls, not even being capable of uttering complete words.

She barely feels him doing something between their bodies when he puts his manhood inside her.

It hurts so much that she screams even though he’s only half inside. A flash of wariness ruins his fine features before he quickly silences with a demanding kiss before rubbing the pearl over her folds in aggressive circles. Her body clenches and spasms in pleasure against his shaft and it hurts so much that she whimpers like a pathetic dog.

The knight is quick to sooth her, laying sweet kisses against her cheeks and forehead and after a while the pain lessens enough that she doesn’t want to throw him out of the room. 

She listens to him warily as he explains that the pain soon will pass and entertains himself looking at the dark blonde eyebrows on his head.

He calls her his precious sun and most beautiful princess and he kisses her again as he slowly inserts himself deeper. 

Her channel hurts but not so much like the beginning and when he starts thrusting up his kisses really make up for the pain she feels. 

She feels so tired that her eyelids flutter shut several times before his thrust start speeding up and by that, her body has loosen up enough that there is no pain at all, just a slight uncomfortable silence as he pants over her.

Then he finishes and draws her in his arms despite the seed leaking out of her. 

The last Elia feels before falling asleep is a kiss over the crown of her head and the man calling her his lady wife.

The morning after is a scandal.

She hears screaming outside the door and she foolishly hides under the pillows before the door opens.

They find her asleep in his bed with her blood staining his white sheets and he dressing himself with new garments.

Before long the guards bring them on her mother’s solar.

The Princess of Dorne is furious. She resembles more a dragon than a woman and her ire turns on her as her worry disappears while Elia is forced to disappoint her, denying that she was forced and shamefully blaming the wine she drank since the beginning of the feast for her lack of judgment. 

Doran stands silent at her side and Elia turns her head away, not wanting to see the eyes he shares with their late father so chagrined and cold towards her. Oberyn is not here in Dorne and she’s glad, she messed up and she knows before her mother announces it that the newly bethrotal with the crown is broken, she doesn’t want her little brother to start a blood feud with a vassal.

The knight- The lord Yronwood-  instead doesn’t appear so despondent even when faced with the wrath of their ruler. While emphasizing the lack of judgment of both of them, he quickly express his desire to remediate his part in the debacle by marrying her before the day is gone and taking full blame of the situation with the crown and he goes so far as to offer to travel to kingslanding the morning after the wedding to offer and explanation to the king and his hand.

He agrees to everything her mother and Doran demands so he can have her as his wife, arguing with them that despite he already having an heir and a spare Elia will still be Lady Yronnwood until the day he dies and after that, she will live in luxury with the dower lands he would've left her for her natural life.  He affirms that for  the insult against the Martells he would no longer demand the heir’s second child’s presence at Yronwood. That he would in turn send his son’s heiress to foster on the water gardens and  if the child resulted in a boy, he would offer them for the boy to be young Ynis’s consort if they desired.

Elia notices quickly how Doran settles with that, how his shoulders relax and she doesn’t have it with her to resent him, the strain in his marriage with Mellario that the agreement to repair the relationships with House Yronnwood has caused certainly deserves his relief.

Lord Ormond handsome face only curdles like milk when her mother calls him a foul name and accuses him of planning to this, to avenge his honor for his father’s accidental death  by despoiling Elia and for a moment he seems ready to scream at her before he forces a calm expression and repeats that he would offer retribution by agreeing to leave their bad blood behind and using his conections with the reach to secure more advantageous agreements to Sunspear with food and wood and promised that he would even found a cadet branch of house Yroonwood within his territories so if Elia conceived, their child either a boy or a girl with hold the status of landed knight.

The negoatiaions continued until afternoon but after that Elia already tunned out their voices, her head heavy with tiredness and dissapointment.

The next morning she married him and learned the story they would weave. t was a flimsy excuse but it did pay off since her mother have not wanted to reveal anything until the moment she was to depart.

The letter from the crown was lost, the raven never arrived and Elia herself had married the same afternoon the older lord she had met when he came  a few months ago to argue over his father’s death,  long believing that she had been rejected for the crown prince since the last dealings with the crown had been made months ago. 

The marriage had been held without her mother’s approval in  the presence of Doran and three of their paternal cousins and as such, when it was discovered, the ruling princess forced them to perform the ceremony again in front of the court.

The Martells could communications and by the time the truth leaked outside their borders, when the other letter from the capital arrived asking to settle on the dowry and dates, there was nothing to be done.

Elia was swelling with child and her older husband very much alive and healthy despite both Oberyn’s rage and Anders Yroonwood’s unexpressed anger. 

Aerys raged for a time before he forgot about them and at the end Prince Rhaegar married another and she remained at Dorne.

When war erupted a few years after, she had already borne a child and was pregnant with another and her husband's last action before riding away was to name their daughter the landed Lady of the Boneway in detriment of the inheritance of her much much older half brother.

Elia was wary, she had grown to love Ormond but she knew his actions had not been  blameless and she was very aware that in that regard, her stepson had the same feelings.

Anders never forgave his father for dividing their holdings for a Martell princess's get and marrying in less than a year after his first wife's death, the lady mother of Anders and his brother, despite vowing to never remarry.

Ormond did not return and she only could bear Anders sharp gaze on her and her children for long enough to travel to the small keep built for young Nymeria. She had no proof of foul dealings and even if she had, people on the keep would accuse her of being ambitious and needlessly sowing discord and she herself knew any man can die or grow sick, her own daring younger brother was proof of that. 

She was a young widow and though she never married again, she took several paramounts and lived in luxury with family till she was seventy.

In her deathbed, at the end of her life surrounded by family and friends she felt whymsical and  wondered what would have happened if she had married the prince that died more than forty years ago.

Chapter Text

The princess could not escape the frequent fate of many highborn ladies. After the Essosi bride of the crown prince arrived from the arm of Lord Steffon Baratheon and having been rejected years before by Lord Tywin Lannister for his son Jaime, the Princess Elia of Dorne was  swiftly married to the old Lord of the Eyre by her mother to avoid lose any face and other prospect, even more against Lord Tywin’s daughter. 

When Elia saw her husband for the first time she felt dismayed. 

The man in front of her was old, near sixty and had buried two wives before and it showed . Though strong of frame and with a straight back,  he was almost forty years her senior and his skin was weathered and leathery,  his mouth lacked some teeth and up close, he had a foul breath.

Then, after he greeted her mother and the rest of the party he  bent to kiss the back of her hand and she had a feeling that he should not be in the business of fathering more heirs when he had a living nephew. She felt it keenly when some knights and minor lords of his party surrounding a young blond man with a falcon pin looked at her with coldness and disdain. 

As if accusing her of intruding. 

She later learned that it was  Ser Elbert Arryn the one glaring daggers at her but there was nothing to be done now and Elia married Jon the same day. However despite all that, for an awful moment she regretted that her husband was not the sour young blonde man instead of his ancient uncle.

The lord  had reject her mother’s offer to marry the knight arguing that he would be betrothed to a lady from the Vale and though Jon himself had not thought of marrying again, it would only proper for him to be the groom instead of his nephew since it would not matter if they didn’t have children as the alliance between Dorne and the Vale would still stand but it  if she married Ser Elbert and the marriage turned barren  it would mean the end of the Arryn line.

Despite all that, her mother had not argued, she knew. 

Not with Elia’s ever delicate health. 

Not with Doran marrying for love without her consent and with the previous rejections of the Crown and the West. 

Not with Edmure Tully too young and his father and uncle vowing to never marry. 

Not with the Tyrells having no son to offer.

Not with  Greyjoy’s unsuitable brothers or barren lands.

Not with Hightower and Dayne already married. 

Not with her brother Oberyn souring relationships with House Yronwood. 

If Elia was to  at least maintain her status, the aged falcon lord was her best remaining choice at that…and the last lord paramount. Her mother knew clearly that and didn’t even argue as to not offend him despite the disparity in ages. 

And Elia knew her duty, she didn’t argue as well though she screamed at Oberyn when he tried to intervene. 

So she just closed her eyes when he kissed her on the sept. Elia shudders when she remembers what happened after.

The wedding night was an awkward affair. She didn’t enjoy the bedding and it was painful but her husband truly made an effort to treat her well. He told her from the beginning he didn’t expect heirs of her body as agreed  due to her delicate health so he would not visit her bed often but that he would cherish any child they had  since the Arryn line with the proper name currently was currently composed of him and his nephew  and if she delivered  any living child, they would be his heir. 

Elia didn’t believe him, not if she ever had a girl ….but he eventually maintained his word. 

Life passed  little by little and Elia gained more terrain with the household staff and was able to act with enough grace towards the subtle affronts from the nobles that the sneering remarks at her supposed dornish wild behaviour stopped.  She invited her husband’s wards and his nephew to dine with them to better their relationship and strived to create a relaxed environment. She cared for her old husband's well being, mended his clothes and offered  pleasant company and an ear to soothe his troubles and  he grew to care for her in turn, even beyond what duty required. His favor reflected well on her and she was truly accepted as lady of the Vale even when  years passed and she didn’t get pregnant. Life continued and Elia endured Jon’s weekly visits and resigned herself to maintain the castle, indulge in music and to dote on the children of the staff and orphans of one motherhouse from Gultown she was patron of and even of the newborn bastard of Lord Robert despite her husband’s objections.

By the time  her courses stopped for the first time Ser Elbert’s narrow gaze had progressively lost  its bite  and the man was already almost pleasant to her, his own marriage with a half Arryn Waynwood and the thought of her being barren lifting his hopes to inherit and lessening the affront of her presence.. then, all that was broken.

Having passed four years since the wedding and not wanting to disappoint her husband or needlessly ruffle the knight’s fetters without being sure if the pregnancy would end on miscarriage, she decided to tell no one. Elia attended Ser Elbert’s wedding to a niece of Lady Waynwood at the side of her husband when she grew sick enough that a maester had to be called and the man  cautiously confirmed the news to her husband’s joy.

Both Ser Elbert and the father of the bride seethed but the knight bit his tongue and said nothing aside from a curt congratulation to her husband when it was publicly announced the morning after. In contrast, none aside from Jon seemed so happy as  Lord Robert Baratheon and Eddard Stark. They were effusive with his praise and joy  and so were most of the Lords of the Vale who came to the Eyre to offer gifts and praises to the obvious annoyance of the Waynwoods who saw one of them so overshadowed as a newly bride by Elia.

But the pregnancy was difficult and when six months after she delivered a daughter with her brown skin and eyes, the enthusiasm of the valemen dropped like a stone and  tensions eased with the Waynwood faction and Ser Elbert… until the moment her husband lifted the babe after seven days have passed and called her Jeyne and addressed his court.

Like the first lady of the Vale so she can draw inspiration and follow her path if no son is ever born of my wife.

It was done, then. Jon Arryn named their daughter Jeyne heiress over his nephew.

She was surprised, knowing Andals preferred male rule and surely that would throw a rock on the path of the nephew he raised with so much care but Jon Arryn stood firm. When inquired again by a bannerman, he called the babe his heir and made an appeal to Ser Elbert to always watch over his cousin and obey her in due time. 

The younger man seethed in silence, his hand clenched over the one of his wife.

When many lords argued against it, Jon reminded them that if there was no son of his seed it was only lawful for Jeyne to follow after him and he would not allow anyone to make a mockery of his line and the Arryn honor.

He even made sure to send a raven to the capital  declaring that Lady Jeyne Arryn was his heir and at the event of his death if Elia didn’t bore a son, she would rule after him and not his nephew. And Elia would be regent with help of Lord Royce and Lord Redfort.

And Ser Elbert threw a fit. There was a big discussion she was not privy to however both his husband's wards had to intervene after her husband’s nephew got drunk before going to confront his uncle and Ser Elbert was sent packing to his good family house with the threat to never offend his uncle again or face consequences, their relationship soured forever.

In the meantime when Elia healed and Jon Arryn struggled to pacify Lady Waynwood, one of his most prominent bannermen, with a promise of a future marriage, she took time to get to know more of her husband’s wards.

She had been polite but distant with them , having wanting to avoid infidelity accusations but she felt sure she could do more than simply provide for one of the older one’s bastards  and ensure all the family letters from the siblings arrived to the younger one and she was surprised to notice how much the young men seemed to care about Jon and the babe. 

Both Robert Baratheon and Eddard Stark were the children her husband had truly raised and after the conflict with Ser Elbert reached it’s peak, they swore to her that even if their foster father ended up joining the stranger sooner than her due to his old age, they would protect his daughter's rights.

Both were younger than Elbert and had never much to do with him given his responsibilities as his uncle’s heir but they appealed to her to forgive him despite confessing of feeling ashamed of his behaviour and pitifully begged her to understand that it was surely the influence of his godfather, Lady Waynwood’s cousin, the husband of the late Alys Arryn who was instigating him against Jon.

Elia heard their words and nodded. She decided to let it go until the man showed himself to be a true problem.

Time passed and after the maester and the midwife judged her healed from the birth, Elia was surprised that the visits to her chamber increased and for more than one year she was sharing a bed with her husband nearly every other day. 

She disliked it and when she didn’t fall pregnant  after a year, his visits decreased to what was before and word came from Ironoaks that Ser Elbert’s wife was pregnant. Elia grew fearful, since she knew many Lords favored Elbert over her dear Jeyne.

Then everything changed.

They attended the tourney of Harrenhall when King Aerys inducted young Jaime Lannister to the kingsguard and Prince Rhaegar shamed his pregnant wife by crowning even younger Lady Lyanna as the queen of love and beauty. 

Elia felt like she was seen something for a second time when she watched those blue roses of the girl’s lap and a void opened on the middle of her chest that compelled her to urge her husband to leave. Jon didn’t understand her but had enough sense to see it would not do them well to stay longer and after offering their apologies to the host they departed to the Eyre. 

Their intention was to travel later to Riverrun to Brandon’s Stark wedding after ensuring Jeyne continued to be well but Elia didn’t feel well. She started to vomit the moment they arrived at the Vale and had to slow their ascend to Jon’s ancestral castle and remain a couple of weeks on the Gates of the moon where they met Ser Elbert who was on his way to the Riverlands.

After exchanging short greetings Elia left him to Jon and settled on the chambers prepared for her. Eventually she improved enough to ride for the ascent and at the Eyre, her suspicions were finally confirmed. She was pregnant again.

Jon decided to remain with her and trust his nephew to represent him while sending gifts for Lady Catelyn and Lord Brandon and only a month later they received the news.

The wedding was interrupted by Lady Lyanna’s disappearance and Lord Brandon along with Ser Elbert along with other valemen and rivermen had traveled to Kingslanding,  for Prince Rhaegar was blamed  as the lady’s abductor. 

But they didn’t know Aerys was mad. The king  killed Elbert and the rest of the party ended up beheaded and the shock of the news when they traveled to the Eyre was enough for Ser Elbert’s widow to lose the babe she was carrying and the despair ended up making her fall into sickness with no will to live.

Then Rickard Stark was summoned from the North to answer for Brandon’s action and both died a awful death.

The banners were called. The stormlands and the North raised first. Then followed the Riverlands and Dorne and at last the Vale itself and Jon left with the army.

Prince Rhaegar died first and then his wife and their golden haired children on kingslanding. Young Jaime Lannister killed the king but was caught fleeing with his sister and they were butchered by  some mercenaries. His eldest niece was captured and taken as a hostage while the youngest two were trampled to death by a mob. Queen Rhaella crowned her youngest son Viserys as king and later died, birthing another royal prince. Both children had to flee to Essos no long after with only a few remaining retainers. 

 Lady Lyanna was found dead near the ruins on Tarbeck hall by Eddard Stark along with the burning bodies of the missing kinsguards.

Robert Baratheon took the throne and sent the late prince’s only remaining girl to a motherhouse in Sisterton as a silent sister. Mace Tyrell was brought in chains to kingslanding by her uncle Lewyn after he freed Storm’s end and the other two baratheon brothers. 

Elia’s husband sent for her only two years after the war. She came to him with her four year old daughter and toddler son. And from them on, despite all the new wars, House Arryn endured and all the falcon lords had Dornish and Valyrian blood on their veins.

Chapter Text

Tywn Lannister is a cold calculating man that would stop at nothing to seat his daughter as queen and would do whatever it takes to put his blood on the throne. When the Princess of Dorne’s ship got stranded for months on her way to his wife’s funeral the incandescent rage he felt for her death cooled enough to not cloud his senses. Seeing Elia Martell as the only  true threat to Cersei’s crown he does what needs to be done to ensure the legacy of House Lannister and the future changes for ever

-----

He received those letters almost a year ago.

The odious woman had wanted to pay a visit to his beloved Joanna and he would never have had a heart to reject his wife’s dearest wish so he accepted it with bedgrudgment and prepared himself to tolerate the odious woman until he had to make it back to kingslanding after the birth.

However, things turned for the worse and he is glad the dornishwoman didn’t make it on time. It would have coincided with the birth of the dwarf and Joanna’s death and his despair and rage at the injustice of the gods would have clouded his mind and not have allowed him to see the situation in a way that could benefit House Lannister.

He can almost feel the despair of that time closing his throat again.  With the death of his wife so raw in his heart, Tywin would have offended the dornish Princess in some way, he’s sure of it. He has always disliked the onerous way she decides to clothe herself or the laxness of her manners and he would have made some humiliation rebuke to her suggestion to betroth her daughter to his golden son.

He would not have seen past Elia’s age, nine years older than Jaime.

He would not have seen past Elia’s thin slender body that boded ill for surviving the birthing bed.

He would not have seen past Elia’s fragile health that would surely cause a difficult pregnancy.

He would not have seen past  the contempt he felt for her mother and their dornish customs. 

Tywin scoffs at himself.

He would have been blind so deep in his mourning and he would have not seen the threat for his legacy.

Elia Martell and her mother were all that… but they were so much more.

The young princess is a fine lady, he is forced to admit, even if his loathing for her mother has not abated. She is smart and kind and has a sweet wit and it’s everything a man could wish for a lady wife aside from her frailness. 

She is pretty too and though her beauty could never rival the one of his dear Joanna he supposes none could ever be, aside from Rhaella at her prime before being marred by Aerys’s touch. He only hopes that the years that pass before Jaime grows enough for their marriage to be consumed would serve to mature her beauty into something more tangible and  not so fragile.

She has also expertly managed a household and put order in the servants and granted council to Jaime alongside Kevan since Tywin himself has departed with Cersei to the capital.

With her influence, Jaime has been able to grow past his sister’s shadow, especially since Tywin had stopped both of their letter to each other after he discovered their… unnatural relationship, he thinks with a scowl. Princess Elia was a smart woman and had suspected something else was going on when no matter the months that passed she couldn’t get Cersei to stop attacking her presence at Jaime’s side. He had to admire her cunning at requesting Kevan to accompany her because he wouldn't have believed her words alone. And he would have likely made something rash…

He feels a cold rage course his body at remembering the careful words from Kevan’s letter. And the chat he had with his children later was something he wishes he could be able to forget but at least it all sorted itself in the end with Cersei’s betrothal to Rhaegar all but signed on.

Everything. 

And he is glad that had seen the good sense of the alliance and thus  increased the chance of his own daughter becoming queen  because without Elia in the picture that allowed him to parade his golden daughter in front of the court and the crown prince without any other lady being able to be a true threat to his blood.

Taking his daughter with him to the capital after the fiasco with his son  to entice the king  was the best decision. He would eschew a  betrothal and marry her off as soon as the papers are signed  to ensure his bet comes to his benefit  at the same time of not allowing   Mad Aerys to change his mind -  with the long betrothal and later unconsumed marriage  while his son grows - and decides for a woman of valyrian blood ready to bear children for his dynasty.

Aerys has rumbled enough but with Steffon not returning for his voyage, he has been forced to concede. Cersei would sit at Rhaegar’s side on the throne.

Granted, the marriage would probably remain unconsummated for a time much like her brother’s but women mature earlier than men and his daughter would do his duty sooner than later.

His blood would sit on the throne.

As for Jaime, he would do his duty too. Joanna’s own father had married a 30 year old widow when he was fifteen and still managed to sire five trueborn children on her and Elia is six years younger than that woman and a princess with royal blood on her veins.

Jaime has no room to complain and if Tywyn is honest with himself also has no fucking excuse. The princess would have been in her rights to ask for an annulment and to be returned to her family after she and Kevan found him in bed with his own twin sister at eleven!  

Not even saying that if she was allowed to leave the Rock she could have also divulged the whole revolting situation to the realms, tanking every chance of honor or respectability of his children and his house! Revealing the sordid relations of his heirs would have tarnished the Lannister legacy forever!  Would have made his family even more mocked than they were in his father’s lifetime! 

That she asked in place of staying married to his ungrateful brat  and keeping her silence was only for Tywin  to separate his children and properly teach them  their duties speaks to her credit if not so of Tywin’s own parenting.

He grits his teeth as he watches his daughter trying to charm the young prince from the balcony.

Everything could have been lost if not for Elia Martell being there and  opening his eyes. 

Fine! He thinks to himself. 

A Lannister always pays his debts.

He turns suddenly to write on the desk of his solar. Jaime is nearing twelve and soon should be able to sire his own children. Having half dornish grandchildren is not something Tywin will relish but given the situation his children had landed him, he   won’t complain, not even if they come resembling more the mother than the father. 

Elia Martell has gained her place as Lady Lannister and he doesn’t think any other lady would have been so gracious at that.  If she manages to birth one healthy son after Jaime returns from  Crackehall, he would stay his hand completely and let her do as she sees fit as at the Rock no matter what Cersei might say. He knows how to deal with his savage daughter and he would do whatever it takes to curve her behaviour now that success is so close.

He would forget all his plans to arrange some accident to befall the Princess Elia to ensure no word of his twins ever comes out and neither would he arrange for any maester to botch her treatments or let her die when her time on the birthing bed finally arrives.

As long as she can provide just one male heir to be the next Lord of the Rock, she has free rein of his home.

A Lannister pays his debts.

He returns to the balcony and looks down as Rhaegar has finally conceded to entertain Cersei by playing the arp at her side. 

Now, he only has to ensure those two come to be.

Chapter Text

Princess Elia was beyond kind.  She was a newly bethroted woman and had been travelling with her soon husband to a tourney  held in their honor  at the Westerlands when she decided to stretch her legs. She was walking near the forest of the keep where they were staying when she heard small sniffling’s sounds.

Intrigued, she dismissed her handmaidens and decided to approach the source near a small clearing. Her features crumpled in sadness when she saw the face of a hulking lad crouching by the stream dressed with worn travelling clothes, desperately trying to cool the pain on his very recent burns, so deep that the bone of the jaw could be visible and even his hair appeared to be singed.. and her heart broke with pity.

Despite his size, when the boy turned his face fully, she saw a child… a sad child’s grey eyes looking at her with fear. When she moved her arm to pull his hair away from his cheeks she would never imagine someone so bigger and taller than her already to screech and flinch away.

When her escort heard the noise she was beyond appalled that they surrounded the boy with spears and could only watch those grey, big desperate eyes and the chest moving up and down before the boy passed away, falling cold like a rock on the forest ground.

Princess Elia was s true lady, her heart was kind and held boundless compassion. She ordered for the boy to be brought to their camp and be tended by her brother’s own maester. She stayed at his side when they treated him, the old man sure that he was going to die anyway and  she heard him raving about his brother and the fire and after a single conversation when he awoke and he denied anything with huge scared eyes…. her mind was set, she had no evidence and the boys’s father would deny his younger son’s words.. but she knew she had to get him away.

Elia knew her new betrothed had already decided to knight his older brother the very same week as act of goodwill for Lord Lannister and she suspected it was to gather his support against the King ….but  now that she knew what Gregor Clegane had done and despite not being able to bring punishment to the wicked knight, she decided to put her foot down and boldly requested in front of everyone to take the young boy as her page and later in private  convinced the prince to take Sandor as his new squire after they married and he recovered from his injuries.

So the boy traveled back with the Prince and Princess’s party to king's landing.

And young Sandor was grateful.

He had escaped the Clegane keep and managed to  grow up on the Red Keep at the side of the most pious lady he have known… in a way, the princess Elia reminded him of his beloved older sister so he took upon himself to guard her and serve at her side and ignore the comments and looks about his scars as much as he could and hide in secret corridors when the words got to heavy for his young mind to bear. He ignored the letters his old father sent to him and avoided his brother whenever he came to present himself to the hand of the king, Lord Lannister. 

Despite the loneliness in the fortress…for a time he was able to believe he had escaped all the monsters but … then he met the king and kingsguard shortly after the princess’s wedding.

He stood frozen as the king mocked the princess for keeping such an ugly mutt and only his blunt force in fighting a squire four years older than him was what it kept him from being dismissed to the streets  as soon  the king grew bored as he was not battered down and turned to his queen, a pale sad woman that Sandor never saw without bruises.

Princess Elia’s warning to stay away the from the king and his knights was something that settled deep into his mind and he obeyed her and just clenched his jaw and turned his head away when he saw the many abusive behaviours of the lords in the court, quickly recognizing he could never do anything since with his low status as the brother of landed knight he was not considered above from  a dog they picked from the streets.

Thus, he pushed everyone away except his benefactress. He grew stronger and taller and with the princess’s support and the odd gift sent from Dorne from the princess’s younger brother, he trained hard and bashed boys and men alike in the training yard, slowly gathering some respect for himself even when he grew a  black fame among the youngsters for his  sour character and his habit to hide himself in some secluded corner.

His relationships with other  adults were strained too.  When he was eleven he officially left his position as the princess’s page to squaire for the crown Prince but he resented it. Rhaegar himself was somewhat strange to Sandor’s eyes and he knew the Prince thought the same of him and they were never close.

The man appeared to not know how to speak to Sandor but soon realized the  sneers and gawks from the knights and  courtiers at the feasts  so the Prince mostly let him by himself and ensured he was well fed and dressed and Sandor was satisfied.

So still, despite being almost as tall as a grown man he still gravitated near Princess Elia and her ladies and  he started acting as their guard, not trusting the kingsguard to stop King Aerys as they never stopped him with queen Rhaella.

Time passed on and Princess Elia got with child.

Sandor stood guard after the babe was whisked away and remained there to ensure the Princess continued living. He first thought the princess would resent the babe for almost killing her and the harsh words of the king regarding the babe’s dark color but soon realized how  much loved the girl was and swore to protect her as he would protect the princess.

But he appeared to be the only one. Aside from the Kingsguard Ser Lewyn and her dornish ladies, Sandor realized the Princess had no true friend at the keep. Her husband the Prince remained silent at every insult the king spewed against his wife and his mother and the courtiers remained mute with fear or with smirks adorning their twisted faces while the hand of the king’s obvious delight could not be hidden under his usually impassive face. 

Sandor was very aware the man commanded the leash of his brother.

The king’s character deteriorated, soon the prince took his wife and daughter to Dragonstone but whispers about the king grew how about he played with fire and eschewed the laws and instead burned criminals and  consorted with alchemists.

Too soon the  Princess got with child again, having barely recovered from the first birth and being bedridden. He was worried, he remembered how his own mother grew sick and died after birthing his sister and him too close together.

Then the tournament of Harrenhall happened, Princess Elia along with her usual entourage followed Prince Rhaegar as he insisted on attending despite the King’s presence.. even when the old man has not left the capital for years in fear of assassins.

The tourney got to shit soon, Sandor refused to enter the square’s melee and remained near Princess Elia’s side and was able to see from the stands how Lord Tywin’s heir was installed to the kingsguard despite being barely older than himself and heir of a great house.

Still, he still had some duties as Rhaegar official squire and later realized something else was going on. He was dismissed from the Prince’s side as the king commanded him to bring to heel a masked knight with a laughing tree shield, however the prince returned empty handed and with a pensive look on his pale face.

A few days later everything went to shit when the Prince won the tourney and crowned a waif of maid, the betrothed of the Lord of the stormlands and the daughter of the lord of winterfell in the presence of all courtiers including his wife and the king. 

From the on, he kept being dismissed by the Prince and his company but he could catch some whispers of their conversations about planning a trip and two nights before departing to the capital one he realized what the prince had done when he saw the man returning with a few kings guards and a pale maid with black hair from the isles of faces.

 He was commanded into silence and he obeyed and Prince Rhaegar never looked him at the eyes again. 

The black haired maid returned with her family and him with the Princess along with returned to the capital. And Sandor hoped that whatever  happened remained there in the riverlands but it was not so.

The Prince rode with his redhead friend and a Darry knight and as soon as they arrived to the Redkeep and princess elia entered her confinement and he disappeared again with a group of Kinsguard and left them in the care of the Mad King.

After a couple of weeks another man appeared to look for him. 

Brandon Stark and a group of companions came accusing Rhaegar of kidnapping his sister Lyanna and were thrown to jail until his father came to retrieve them. By that time Rickard Stark appeared, the King was fully insane and had killed all but Brandon Stark and Ethan Glover, including the heir of the Eyre.

In a sham trial, Brandon Stark choked to death while RIcakrd Stark burned alive and before their corpses were cold Mad Aerys called for the heads of Robert Baratheon and Eddard Stark, commanding to the ancient Lord Jon Arryn to break guest rights with his own foster children.

Banners were called under the usurper Robert Baratehon and the king pressed the princess to write to her brothers to send troops while holding her hostage at the keep while the former hand of the king refused to answer any letters and battles were starting to be fought between royalist and rebel houses …and still, Rhaegar was nowhere to be found.

The forces of the reach had surrounded the keep of the usurper while most of the royal army was being blooded on the riverlands by the rebels and in the midst of chaos the Princess gave birth to a pale, silver boy to alike to her husband for Sandor to not grow resentful of the babe.

Only then, Rhaegar appeared with red dust on his clothes and he held the babe for a nary a second before proclaiming there must be another. And he soon left with what remained from the royalist army, leaving only the Kingsguard Jaime Lannister to guard the whole royal family and barely a skeleton crew for the Red Keep.

Sandor saw the princess' tears many times in the upcoming months but most of it was when news arrived that Lewyn Martell had died. When news came about her husband’s death she sent her maids to Dorne and closed the doors of her apartments.

The king grew angrier and frequently berated the Princess and her children while exalting his second son’s place at his side,even claiming that the boy Viserys would be made his heir in place of a Dornish mutt as he surrounded himself more frequently with pyromancers.

No one told him anything but Sandor knew they were losing the war when both the Queen and her remaining son were sent to Dragonstone while Mad Aerys refused Prince Doran’s letter to bring back Elia to Dorne and instead demanded more troops as the fighting grew closer to King's Landing, soon reaching Rosby.

Very soon, his confirmation that all was lost was  when the Lannister army that was supposedly coming to defend the keep started sacking the city and the Princess’s own servants disappeared. At that moment, she locked up her children in her rooms and offered to try to smuggle him out the keep while trying to compel  dead eyed Jaime Lannister to find a way to pass him as a servant boy before he was summoned to attend to Aerys.

Sandor refused and glared at the knight when he babbled some nonsense to do it when he returned as he thought him to have no guts to do more than Aerys’s bidding and not scurry back to his father the moment he could. Also Sandor did not trust at all that Lord Lannister would not send his own brother to attack the Princess and her children. 

The screams and sounds of things breaking grew more and more and the poor Princess swaddled her babe as if he were a common woman and did her best to calm her crying daughter, a toddler girl that called him Sandy and played with him, never shying from his scars.

So he kept watch inside the rooms and when he couldn’t bear more the wait as the few guards that remained started to try to content the rebels to other sections of the keep he  got out despite his Princess’s objections.

And he was right, as he ran around he saw how some parts of the keep burning while soldiers fought and corpses dressed in different livery laid bloodied. As he kept advancing he saw  all type of servants from stewards, to scullery maids and kitchen boys running on the corridors or dead on the ground, their bodies mangled or their throats cut, even some of the women with their skies torn. Sandor himself had to kill his first man as a bearded lordling dressed in   yellow tabard with seashells tried to gut him as he saw him dressed in targaryen livery, the older man died with a mace to face and bashed skull but his companion was not so easily dispatched and this man Sandor recognized as a westerman from House Crackehall. The flat of his sword cut into the meat of his arm and sent him sprawling into the floor and the only reason Sandor did not die then and there was the man falling backwards as Sandor cut the tendons of his heels with a poisoned knife courtesy of the Prince Oberyn, the impact making him lose his sword…and giving the chance that sandor used to bash his shield against the man’s pelvis over and over, shattering his bones before he was thrown away only for the man to stagger  three steps in his direction after punching him in the face and falling dead, frothing at the mouth.

Sandor fled again when he noticed soldiers coming close. He was covered in blood and when he stopped to catch his breath it was with horror that he saw from a window his own brother and some of his cronies climbing the walls of Maegor’s holdfast.

His heart felt like it would burst.

He had lost his knife and his shield and he only had his sword. All the guards he knew were gone and even if he could make the trip back in time to the Princess’s apartments he could not win against the Mountain alone.. never even wounded as he was as he suspected the cut in his arm needed a maester’s touch and he could feel a crack on his cheekbone. 

His only chance was… Ser Jaime Lannister.

And he has to be close. The men he killed had no reason to be this near to the throne room except to look for the King and …his youngest kingsguard and the young knight had been summoned just before he spoke with Princess Elia. Sandor…he  could convince him to come with him to save the Princess… and if he could not, he would kill him, he thought as a heavy darkness settled in his chest.

He knew well that Lord Lannister had wanted his daughter in place of his princess as the future queen and he had left his position as hand when he was robbed of his heir, leaving him only with a child dwarf to inherit his title… but if Sandor could not save his Princess he would  die avenging her ….so when he arrived to great hall to find  the king face down on the floor and covered in blood while the young Lannister sat on the throne he did not blink.

And when the fool looked at him and told him to tell that Aerys was dead and to spare all that surrounded he nearly throated him, screaming at him that he had no honor if he planned to sit on the ugly chair and let Princess Elia die. It was pure luck that his words worked and the knight’s eyes snapped out of his daze to follow him as the wound on his gaze kept bleeding.

They ran to the royal wing just in time to hear  a young girl’s screams.

 A stout  man was dragging young Princess’s Rhaenys under her father’s bed and the girl was stabbed into her small leg as she kicked at him.

 But before Sandor could react Lannister beheaded the man, splashing the crying girl with blood. The man cradled the bleeding girl in his own white cloak before trusting her up into Sandor’s arms as he limped behind him. 

Then they arrived at the princess apartments and saw The mountain approaching her and the bundle in her arms. Sandor shouted  with despair that they saw the monster grab the babe and fling it to the wall while it kept crying, alerting the mountain of their presence.

Ser Jaime threw himself between the princess and his older brother attacking the monster and managing to avoid him approaching them, giving Sandor the chance to recover the swaddled baby.

There was blood on its mouth and nose and one of his arms was bent weird and his cries were low unlike before but it was still alive. As he tries to scurry away with the bundle in his arms and recover the silent Rhaenys he left on propped against the doorframe he can’t avoid a powerful kick from a steel boot that makes him spit blood. 

He barely sees Lannister trying desperately to contain the Mountain away from the whimpering sprawled form of Princess Elia but it’s clear that whatever caution his elder brother initially had in fighting against his liege lord’s son is finally gone. 

The screams of the children and the men fighting on the walls seem to have enraged him and the thrusts of his sword had cut the kingsguard’s many times now for him to walk away without heavy damage. The men keep darting around the room so focused on each other that Sandor finally manages to crawl near his Princess whose eyes widen in surprise.

Her pale brown face is wet with tears and blood but on seeing her two babes in his arms she seems to recover strength and even manage to grit her teeth and sit, clutching a vase in one hand while pushing herself between the men and her children. 

The mountain roars in rage every time he’s hit on the gaps of his armor but the Lannister knight is bleeding heavily now and they watch the fight and know with certainty that when the mountain slews Ser Jaime, they are dead too. 

And Ser Jaime knows it too. 

He gives them one short look and a strange nod before he makes an unusual move. He allows the Mountain to stab him fully on one side before grabbing the flat of his sword with his steel gauntlet and spinning them both towards the window. 

Both of them fall. 

To his shame, the first to recover from the shock is the Princess and she luckily appears less harmed than he initially thought. The first thing she does after examining her children is cutting up the sleeve of his leather armor and draping a tight piece of cloth from her own dress around his bleeding arm, slowing his bleeding before turning around to gather in a small sack a cloak, a simple dress and whatever jewels she has on hand while she discards her silk sandals over leather boots.

She is the one who has to help him to stand as they move outside the room to the only route of escape he knows.

From his first years as a page when words and sneers could still hurt him, the only passage he discovered that was close to them now opened into the corridor next to the crown prince’s rooms and he had to get the Princess there. 

Then they would scurry out to the kitchen and avoid the training yard and with  luck they’ll arrive at stables, then to the beach and scavenge whatever else they need on the way.

Sandor is tired and lightheaded but he refuses to close his eyes as they finally close behind the opening of the secret dusty tunnel. 

He can make it. 

They can make it.

One step more. Then another step. 

They have gotten away.

They have gotten away.

And he would never abandon his Princess.

Chapter Text

It’s known that the wife of the crown prince eschewed her marital vows when her husband returned from the war with a pregnant second wife in tow and as revenge, decided to have a bastard of her own. 

Bitter and hurt, the princess found solace in the arms of the man who protected her and her children while his husband was cavorting with his mistress in her homeland and in a twist of fate, her supposedly barren womb quickened.

The news were met with bewilderment by most but it sent her husband in a flying manic state since his new consort, the Princess Lyanna -who was wildly unpopular even within her own people- had bore him a son, a prince named Jahaerys and the not supposed Visenya he had been praying for and to make matters worse the birth had been hard enough that she had lost her womb in a desperate effort to spare her life and stall the bleeding. 

Doubting his prophecies about the Ice and Fire, the new king’s desperation and anxiousness soon turned into obsession and he eschewed anyone’s company in favor of that of his first wife, to be sure that the third head of the dragon was to be born safely, fearing that as her health was always fragile the pregnancy itself would kill her and their child. 

When the child was born a healthy boy it is said that first King Rhaegar cried with joy thinking it a girl but as he saw the babe…everyone felt silent. The midwives and court ladies remained still as statues as the newborn babe was presented to the king, a healthy cry and a tan skin was accompanied with a head of gold and black serpent eyes greenish tint.

It is said that the king only lifted his head and saw his youngest kingsguard guarding the door and felt that the truth was revealed to him…. treason. 

It can not be…not again. It must not… Surely, it can not….It’s them! Treason! Treason! How… dare they? They..betrayed me… they ruined the world… the three heads of the dragon…. No! No! No!

He roughly passed the babe back to a wetnurse to be later be held as a hostage and ordered both his wife and the young lion’s arrest to the surprise of every courtier and no matter the argument made by his small council or even the rest of the kingsguard, he had already decided in his mind. 

Both were guilty and they were to pay.

Queen Elia and Ser Jaime Lannister were dragged back to the dungeons in chains and in less than one month a trial was being held.

Sitting next to his only loyal wife Rhaegar the first sat in his throne and heard the charges made against both the child’s mother and supposed father. 

Despite the scandal, the pleas and the arguments made both in the queen Elia and Ser Jaime’s defence of their honor and loyalty or the reminders of several Targaryens being born blond in the past, the judgment was made. No westerman or dornishman sent by Lord Tywin or Prince Doran could move the king’s heart. Not the pious letters sent from the Starry sept or the Hightower achieved anything…And as the court filled with crowlanders, riverlander and some northerners, the lowborn people in kingslanding grew agitated.

Both guilty parties end up beheaded in front of the sept of Baelor and war starts anew.

Once bitter enemies, the dornish revolted along with the West and they unrest caused was so big that  remnants of the stormlands loyal to Robert Baratheon and the Vale who missed their Arryn ruler and had to content themselves with a newborn great nephew that took the Arryn name also joined their efforts into attacking the loyalist forces despite have been enemies themselves in the war. 

Attacked from several fronts, King Rhaegar amazed his tired army along with some loyal riverlander houses and left his three recognized children and remaining wife at the capital and rode to war after the head of Jon Connignton was sent to him  but in one of the few battles he was able to fight an arrow hit him on the arm. Soon the wound became infected and by the horror of his commanders and companions, he died of infection in less than a month. 

The news brought great unrest to the red keep. The queen mother Rhaella had recently died in childbirth leaving the king’s only sister and brother as orphans at Dragonstone and the only other adult member of the royal family that remained was the king’s second wife, the Queen Lyanna. Suddenly presenting a will signed by the king before riding to war, she insists on crowning her son  Jahaerys as King, arguing that the late queen’s actions had rendered her children bastards per the King’s decree.

The orders are uniformly accepted but as soon as her son is crowned and the widow of Rhaegar Targaryen orders her stepchildren’s capture, some courtiers loyal flee the Red Keep and move to take away the Prince Viserys and Princess Daenerys from Dragonstone.

Realizing she was being deserted, Queen mother  Lyanna is sent into a frenzy and orders the arrest of the some subject while she writes daily to her brothers and good family and bannermen only to be confronted by the fact many do not recognize her as queen and call her young son the bastard, even the ones more bold or pious accusing her of slandering both the late Elia and Jaime and calling her a whore. And the common people hate her, they throw waste at her litter when she dares to leave and keep blaming her for the war and Good Queen Elia’s death and more people flee the castle. 

Prince Viserys and his sister end up being abducted but are soon saved by Dragonstone’s castellan and are  sent to Dorne for protection and the capital is sieged by the forces of Prince Oberyn Martell and Lord Tywin Lannister while the army amazed by the late Rhaegar drags its feet near the Stoney sept, blocked by Tywin’s bannermen and the loyalist riverlander houses that favor the older Aegon son of Elia as king. 

In three weeks assassins infiltrate the keep and take the little bastard king as a hostage and queen Lyanna opens the gates to negotiate a truce in an effort to stal Lord Tywin to harm her child. The armies storm the capital and spare not one loyal to the queen or her allies and despite the carnage…  The older children of the king are not be found anywhere and only using torture on the queen’s handmaidens and some of the courtiers, Prince Oberyn aND Lord Tywin are able to be found them, having been hidden on a tavern by the old master of whispers by her request. 

The eunuch does not last long and neither do the members loyal to Lyanna on the small council. Holding Lord Tywin the bastard king hostage and the deposed queen and Prince Oberyn the trueborn and declared baseborn children of his sister, they summon Lord Stark, the regent of the riverlands Ser Brynden Tully and and their bannermen to the capital.

In truth, it was discussed that it was for show. Only the presence of his living sister made Eddard Stark return and the threat of naming another Lord Paramount on the Riverlands was what made the other  man go.  The other reasons were that for the first man, both the stormlands and the Reach had refused to sell any food and for the second man, the threat of the riverlands being divided into the other realms was very much real. 

The terms that were put into paper were the following. Lord Eddard’s brother was to take the black and his Lady wife, the lady Catelyn was to send a letter renouncing for herself and her children any succession on Riverrun, her line effectively disinherited. Lord Edmund was to marry one of the bastard daughters of Oberyn Martell or the granddaughter of the castellan of Sunspear  Ser Manfred Martell if the man had one in less than a two years while his widowed sister, the Lady Lysa was to marry one of Lord Tywn’s nephews at once. Some northern heiress were to wed westerman or rivermen and several  aging river lords without heirs were to marry dornish women..but most importantly, the toddler king Jahaerys was declared an usurper, backed by his mother Lady Lyanna who was crowned unlawfully and as the new High septon decreed, was no true wife of Rhaegar but his concubine. The babe as not truly guilty of treason in reason of his age was to return with his uncle to the North to be raised at Winterfell while he will join the watch or the septry as soon as he turns fourteen and his mother will join a motherhouse in white harbor after a walk of atonement on the captail. 

Foaming at the mouth, knowing that Ser Brynden held no love for him or for his sister Eddard Stark found himself alone in  a corner with bannermen who were tired of fighting and disdained both his actions and detested Lyanna’s behavior so he agreed to all. 

However some things were not to be.

At the end in  barely less than two years after arriving to King's Landing, King Rhaegar’s lady love starts her walk as a penitent from the palace and in a middle of a crowd near fishmonger’s square is dragged off by the mob. She disappears in the sea of people despite the many guards charged to escort her.

When Lord Stark finally arrives to where she was supposed to arrive to collect her, he rages but finds nothing.  It does not matter if the men they interrogate after are from the West, the Riverlands or even the North, all swear up and down they were overwhelmed and she is never seen again despite her family’s  several efforts to recover her or at least.. her body. 

He stays on the capital another month in a desperate effort to find anything left of her but ends up empty handed. When he is to depart, he curses both Lord Lannister and Prince Oberyn and swears to never return to that cursed place. When her son  just turns purple the morning after the week they sail, the maester on the ship tells him it’s doesn’t appear like poison and some infants just fail to thrive. He throtles the man and the maester is only spared by Lord Manderly, who swears the old man was always loyal to him and the North. Eddard Stark arrives at home with just a tiny coffin and the promise to never return.

At the capital once that the north is licking its wounds things are much complicated. 

After much back and forth, an accord is made between the West and Dorne. For his war efforts, the infant Aegon the sixth legitimizes his youngest half brother as a trueborn Lannister and Jaime’s heir and the babe is sent packed to the West to be raised by his grandfather at the same time little Daenerys travels to the Reach to foster and eventually marry the young heir of Highgarden and the young man’s toddler sister is betrothed to the King to appease Lord Tyrell. Prince Viserys remains in Dorne while he grows to be Ariane’s consort and is allowed to visit his sister several times.

Jon Lannister, legitimized son of Princess Elia Martell and Ser Jaime Lannister is raised as her grandfather’s heir. Affectionately called, Jon once as a little boy asked his uncle who is barely taller than him who he will marry later and Tyrion Lannister snorts. 

‘’ Only the most perfect woman will do for you, Jon. Your grandfather will not accept less for the only remaining thing from Jaime. If Princess Daenerys was not betrothed or Princess Rhaenys was younger and not your sister… it would be them’’

Jon is happy and safe at the Rock, he’s loved by Tyrion and his great uncle Kevan and thinks of Lancel as the brother he never got to have and tries not to think of King Aegon

who he has met a couple of times and his grandfather insists he calls ‘’your grace’’ and not brother as he is not a Lannister. 

He grows into a man and marries a glowing bride and his life is filled with happiness. When at twenty his grandfather dies, he assumes the Lordship and his uncles travel to congratulated him as his wife swells with child, calling him the perffect blend of Elia and Jaime, a dornish lion...then he realizes what he lacks. Despite never knowing her, he misses his mother’s presence and wonders how different his life could have turned if their parents would have lived and been allowed to marry as both of his grandmothers wanted.

When his first child is born with green eyes and silver hair, he holds the child to his chest with love and calls him a mix of his mother’s valyrian heritage and his westermen paternal blood.

Chapter Text

The herald announces her name high and loud.

And so Lady Elia Blackfyre arrives from the arms of Lord Steffon Baratheon and his wife to Westeros, her true home.

With a blank face and a straight back, the long onerous silk sleeves she wears are enough to conceal the scars from her past and the smile knives and vials of poison she must need to keep her safe… she won’t make the same mistake again.

-A flash of a memory pass, a handsome silver haired man laughing before some cuts off his throat-

She does not flinch and advances closer to the throne as she is instructed. She would not be kept defenseless on a foreign court no matter the flattering words from the supposedly honorable Lord Baratheon and his kind wife…and she remembers her old and won grandfather, who both carried the bodies of his daughter and her husband to be buried as he split up curses against the king and his hand….Elia now… she has no choice.

Lady Elia Blackfyre was not what they had been expecting , she saw at meeting the rest of the courtiers. Truly, she was not a beauty full of valyrian silver hair or glowing pale skin  that they were hoping for nor was she  the maiden reborn  from Andalos’s dreams. 

She is small in stature and thin, her skin is  soft and tan and her eyes are serpentine and black  with a shade of indigo around the iris and she conceals this too and her black treastes beneath a cowl with a veil from black silk in the manner of a pious woman as the courtiers mutter about her foreign ways.

She is not the Essosi noblewoman, ignorant and afraid that many were expecting just to tear apart but she has to remind herself to be strong. That her father and mother did not suffer countless indignities with a proud face and confronted several dangers to save her life only for their daughter to break with the few sneakers thrown in her way. Her grandfather will tell her she has the blood of Nymeria and the Red Dragon in her veins, that the true claim was hers too as the trueborn daughter of the man who was usurped from his rightful throne.  

She is a Princess of the Blood, her manners are Impeccable as she maintains her deep courtesy even when her muscles burn because the King -the usurper- is  gazing at her, his queen at his side is pale and mute but  the rest of the nobility whispers about her and her  parentage, from whence she came. She does not blame them for doubting her origines and knows only Lord Baratheon presence here and the documents left at the ship is what would ensure she has her due.

Her throne.

She bows.

And then snorts as she hears a male voice near the king. 

‘’She was known to be the last descendant of the Blackfyres through the female line but it was said the dragon’s blood on her did not come only from that. It had long been believed by many that Maegor Targaryen, the son of Prince Aerion, the brother of Aegon V the unlikely, before dying young a tavern brawl on Pentos had bought off  a courtesan from a house of pleasure on Lys and married her, siring the lady on question’’ .

Lord Lannister argued vehemently that she was the grandchild of one blackfyre that survived the carnage on the last rebellion and she had been kept at a brother and he  was not to be stopped at the side of Aerys.

For Elia it was obvious how he could not hide his displeasure: his own daughter was far too young  and an unlikely option compared with a lady of royal blood, despite her bastard birth.

She looked up from her deep curtsy and a pale man with golden whiskers and green eyes was the one speaking. She remembers why is he the one most opposed when the rest of the king’s council remain mostly surprised with the master of laws remained tight-lipped and silent and the master of coin looked as pale as a sheet for some reason. 

She could feel from a side glance Lord Baratheon increasingly frowning as Aerys appeared to believe Tywin’s tale.

‘’Enough! My King, dear cousin. I have completed the order you gave me. A suitable bride for your heir. A fine lady of noble blood’’’

The King violet’s eyes erupted like flame ‘’A bastard! A bastard from a whore born most likely on a whorehouse! A whore herself! Do you think to mock me? With her sullied blood  even more, you dare to bring this wretch back so proudly’’

Elia stands up suddenly. The insult is not something she expected so directly and her fist are clenched at her sides. Her eyes focused on the floor.

‘’You have something to say girl?’’

Before Elia can speak , Lord Baratheon steps in front of her ‘’I promised her grandfather and grandmother that if she was allowed to return with my party I will see to her protection and guard her honor. Do not make break my word so easily’’

Aerys appears ready to snap back but this time the blond man goes ahead before he can start. ‘’Lord Baratheon, we were expecting a lady of noble blood from a family that kept the traditions of Old Valirya like the Volantenese or even the Lyseni, someone who can bring a useful alliance or political stability to the realm. This…woman…even if she descends from the bastard traitorous line of Daemon Blackfyre her other backgrounds makes impossible for her to be  considered like other more prudent local choices.’’

‘’Do you think I'm a fool, Tywin? She is a well bred maiden and her blood is royal from both of her sides, even if you disqualify the Blackfyre grandmother, the only daughter of Maelys the monstrous’’

People gasp in interest. Now tongues wave fully. As Aerys narrows his eyes, focused and losing the tint of rage and madness.

Tywin almost snorts ‘’ Oh, are you not from Myr, fathered by a prince, are you, my lady?

The question surprises her completely and she finds herself nodding.  He can’t know….

Then Tywin does snort’’ …royal blood? Lord Baratheon…surely  you were not lied to by the he Myrish merchant princes that fathered her and her mother? Even is she is not a bastard…a merchant’s daughter as crown princess…is most unsuitable’’

People laugh and Elia boils. The queen at Aerys' side frowns when she sees her upturned face.

She speaks for the first time ‘’What noble blood is speaking lord Baratheon child?…you claim your father was a prince?’’

Elia frowns. She did not want to reveal this until far later but Tywin Lannister had pushed Aerys into rejecting a Blackfyre match even if that is what he wanted in the first place.

Her voice is loud and calm,’’ Your graces’’ he addresses the King and Queen ‘’ I do not share Blood with no other but you’’ she makes a pause for the words to sink ‘’ My late father was your kin, first cousin of your late father and mother, the King Jahaerys and the Queen Shaena….On Essos in Myr he met my grandfather on a mercenary company and served under him, being informally adopted he later met my mother and married her after two years of betrothal. Sadly both were taken by a plague when I was seven years old and I was raised by my grandparents since then’’

Tywin can not seem to shut ‘’Raised by a sellsword and his wife? A future queen must have manners and educations beyond which those individuals can provide’’

Some around him were nodding.

Elia raises her head high ‘’ My grandfather was no lowborn sellsword and his wife not a simple common essosi woman. Both conserved their princely titles despite him deserting her older sister….The princess of Dorne’’

Many eyes open wide and everyone ask why? who? what?

Tywin snaps it up ‘’ Speak clearly, my lady.’’

Elia sneers for a second ‘’ I am not lady but a Princess, my father was prince Maegor Targaryen and my mother the only child of Prince Lewyn Martell and Viserra Blackfyre, the only child of Maelys the monstrous and last of the blackfire line’’.

Aerys gapes at her, entranced as he appears he has noticed the indigo ring on her iris while Rhaella appears to drink in every detail of her face and mutters Obarra, the name of the Princess of Dorne, who was too sick to come for kings landing.

The king, pale and lean and with wild hair ,walks closer to his hand, the other man could not be much different black haired and bulging with muscles. He mutters something with bright grateful eyes and the other man squeezes his shoulder briefly.

She looks around to the courtiers and bows ‘’ And now lord Baratheon was brought me here to marry your son ‘’ she pulls some letters from her belt with the seal of the Sun and the Spear and others even more older with the three headed dragon on it‘’ and my grandfather demands for reassurance from his head of the House that he is welcome now since he has not been an obedient subject to his elder sister and wishes to return to see the wedding’’.

All eyes are on a young man that Elia had not noticed. With a pale tan and placid features the most surprising of him is his garbs, suns with golden threat and richly dressed, he stands out from the crowd. He does not know more than to bow the moment he feels Aerys’s rabid eyes on him and softly murmur that his mother would be delighted to see her brother after thirty years.

Elia can not pay more attention to the one who is surely her cousin and the heir of Dorne because something else happens.

In a moment Aerys seems to have forgotten every insult or threat he made against her as he sweeps her into a hot uncomfortable embrace before kissing her cheek and calling her daughter before starting to drag her with the crow to the next  room, so she can meet her betrothed.

Chapter Text

‘’ Watch your step, priestess’’- Stannis Baratheon’s voice is curt as whip and had she not the knowledge of her past life and lived and practiced sorcery for many years, with her formerly princely coddled education, Elia would have flinched. 

However, Elia of Asshai does not. She was born a slave  and was sold several times before ending up  as the Lord of Light’s servant and with the power to carve her path.

She does not . 

She is without the burden of having loved and mourned children of her own body,  children who were never even born in this world. She has never been murdered by a beast of a man covered with her babe’s brains, a man who was never brought into justice. She was never humiliated and abandoned by a husband who should have protected her. She has never had a family who  mourned her death.

And without living that life, she is free.

In that past life, it was another woman in this place but that woman failed and Elia was given a chance. Princess Melissandre Martell died long ago with her children without ever remembering a past that never came to be  or her failures.

And thus,  the Lord of Light took mercy on Elia’s soul and broke the hell’s track of repeating her suffering and gave her a breath of life, a new one and only ordered her to help Azor Ahai. To stop the Long Night.

Granted, this time her life was harsher but she prefers it to the previous one. She is alone, she has forged herself alone with only determination. 

Her will is carved from iron and steel and she would not back on her goal.

To find Lightbringer. To prevent the long night. To serve the Prince that was Promised.

And so, she has traveled from afar to serve her Lord and ended here on the Wall in a soldiers’s camp at the side of a man she barely knew in her past life.

Stannis Baratheon’s blue eyes do not soften as she stares at him. He lacks the social graces many more affable men have and he stares back as she looks and looks until some of his men call to him and he turns his head and she exhales. 

He is the one.

The man in front of her may lack all the grace that her once husband did in a past life that never came to be, but he is what an able commander and what a westerosi lord must be if things are to be changed for the Long Night draws near and the night is dark and full of terrors.

He has to win. He will sit on the iron throne.

She allows herself a sigh and takes Stannis’s offered hand. She does not miss the grit of his jaw nor the slight blush beneath his beard by the cold win and for a single second, she pities him so much as his burden is the most heavy but it passes. 

He is what he is. Azor Ahai reborn.

In the end she doesn’t pity him more than his wife. 

Poor Selyse had latched to Elia from the moment she sought an audience with the Lady of Dragonstone and has not left her side since, she had been elia’s most arduous supporter and her most devout follower and a very strange remain of her former life as a Princess, warms at her loyalty but Elia of Asshai looks at her as tool from her lord. 

Lady Selyse venerates Elia of Asshai in the same way Elia Martell venerated the seven in her past life and she regrets that she will not be able to grant her the sons she so obviously desires, the sons that the Lord of Light is capable of giving her but won’t as far as Elia knows.

She will not suffer long.

Still, the hope of a son to be heir for Stannis is the sole reason only that he comes at all to his wife’s bed and Elia does not have the heart to break the illusion for the true danger comes near.

Azor Ahai has to forge the true Lightbringer on Nyssa Nyssa’s heart.

Stannis Baratheon does not entirely like Elia. He doesn’t trust her as much as he did the other priestess in that past life but he heeds her words. Even today, when Elia  Elia knows how to present herself best to the Westerosi nobles, he doesn’t trust her completely but  he distrusted her even more the first time he saw her at Dragonstone.

Still, he remains  a work in progress.

The knowledge of the castle itself and her polite manners was what first catched his attention and gave her a chance to prove her powers before the men who served him convinced him to throw her out and her foreign god. Her sage advice and support when news of his brother’s death finally reached him was what allowed her to remain near him. But what cemented her place at his side was her help, her powers. When he refused to bring her with him at Kingslanding he lost and the Lannister butchered his bannermen, he shut himself away from everyone on Dragonstone and only reemerged when Elia catched one of his wife’s kinsman trying to abduct shireen and give her to traitors.  He has lain with her to bring shadows that will kill his enemies  and knows her word is true. His brother, Balon Greyjoy, the illborn Joffrey Waters and Robb Stark, all died. He follows her words and advice and when not, he knows he will suffer losses.

And now they are here. Still, he doesn’t have any charm and is regarded as stubborn and bitter but little by little she has changed things and been able to bend him without him noticing her. Stannis is a hard man and doesn't smile more than he did in the past life but he never avoids her touch or eschews her company, unlike he does any other woman.

With Elia’s beauty and easy courtesies outshinning the ones of his own wife, she had been smoothing his blunt ways and without being so overt or bullheaded to spread her faith, he has more allies now than then and his brow is less heavy as they march against the wildlings. She is satisfied with her work despite some of his men calling her his true queen in whispers.  Regardless of any word, she will help him to reclaim his throne, fight the long night and the others and rule afterwards and spread the word of the Lord of Light.

That is her mission and what she must accomplish but still… Her heart is filled with more pity than Melissandre of Asshai’s ever did and she has not forgotten other minor players.

As her father had not opposed Elia’s tutorship for the heir to throne regarding the Lord of Light, Elia had spent enough time with the child to diminish some of  her loneliness while also being was able to strengthen the bond between mother and child. Selyse had been delighted for Shireen to be knowledgeable on their faith and Elia had been able to soften her many resentments towards her child derived from her Selyse’s own inability to conceive a son or Shireen being scarred by greyscale.

At least this time, the poor girl is not so alone.

Elia of Asshai never fails to greet Princess Shireen with a kiss and a touch on her cheek marred by greyscale and the girl doesn’t fear her and smiles at her whenever Elia visits her.

Elia will not use a child to give to the flames. 

She has seen the future and while the girl doesn’t play an important role to fight the Long Night  and Stannis could and should remarry after using Selyse to forge Lightbringer, the girl is a kind and gentle soul that will grow to be a calm and wise woman and be everything a ruler should be. 

There could be a chance to have a queen on the iron throne after everything ends, her Lord has shown her.

She gives another step to stand next to the King. The men around her look at her queerly first and then leer.

Stannis glares at them, standing in front of her and they scramble away and she hide a smile under her sleeve. She doesn’t mind their lustful looks nor the desires that bloom in their dark hearts regarding what they want to do with her. 

Her lord protects her and only a ruinous end they will find if they try to drag her away from her path.

She will avoid the Long Night and the end of the world.

Elia of Asshai will not fail.

Chapter Text

The day has been bright with the full sun shining through the few remaining clouds from autumn and she smiles when her dear daughter comes toddling back to her. 

With a red rose in hand and courtesy, her girl is every bit the princess besides having the title. Elia smiles and then laughs as her youngest boys come running towards them to  carry off his small sister as she shrieks with laughter.

She’s not young anymore as she was when she married Mace and in contrast to that time, she’s happy and fulfilled. She almost wants to laugh at herself for being so despondent at being passed over as Queen by a silver haired Hightower lady that her husband’s mother almost  pouched into her house. She avoided such a mess!

She sighs. Elia had been to the capital once before her own marriage and she’s ashamed into admitting that she had burned with envy at seeing the then Crown Prince and his wife. 

Both silver haired and pale handsome tall people matched well as Aerys was fond to remind everyone in the presence of any Martell. Alerie had been gentle, soft spoken and pious and so much like the old queen both in character and looks that Elia understood why Aerys had stopped so abruptly her betrothal to Mace and caused offence with a Lord Paramount. 

The new royal couple produced proper valiryan looking children as the old madman boasted through his court and though that had been the reason of Elia’s own dismissal as a candidate it did not matter in the end.

The crown prince was mad and poor Queen Alerie did not deserve to be humiliated in such a way. She had been the perfect wife by Andal’s standards and despite that, her husband had not only spurned her and abandoned their children in the care of the King to go like a wild man with his mistress only to emerge when her own great uncle, the lord commander of the kingsguard revealed their location to her family and the girl’s and the girl’s betrothed.

It had been a disloyal move that cost him his post and a trip to the wall as soon as Rhaegar wore the crown but with the Lady Lyanna publicly declaring that she had left of her own will with the prince and being presented in front of her brother and former betrothed, there was nothing that the rebels could do with such loss of face.

Elia had by that time bore all her children and had been happy and cozy at Highgarden while many noblemen died or lost everything and the realm went into flames.

That Rickard Stark and Brandon Stark had both died at Aerys’s hands had been Rhaegar's final excuse to seize the throne and name himself Prince regent without any being able to accuse him of usurpation and it only served the man’s purposes. He sent back Eddard Stark to the North with his Tully wife but kept his heir to foster alongside his own children, both of the Princess and his then mistress. The northerners that remained from Brandon’s company also returned, each one with a bag of gold as compensation by the Prince Regent.

Jon Arryn had been finally pacified when Elbert Arryn had been produced from the blackcells -much weakened but alive- as he had been exchanged with another prisoner and both had been officially pardoned and allowed to return to the Vale with the condition that Jon Arryn’s own son with the youngest tully sister or Elbert’s own heir if Jon did not sire any children should be sent to foster with one of Rhaegar’s allies. 

Lord Tully though fared the worst of all the rebels. It had not gone unnoticed how he easily bartered his daughters and secured advantageous marriages before throwing his loth with Lord Baratheon and Lord Stark and the only thing that saved his life is that him and his bannermen had only fought in some small minor battles but he had been sent to the wall and his house had lost the title of lord paramounts and two thirds of his lands in favor of House Darry, the new overlords of the riverlands.

Robert Baratheon was more difficult, He had been made the laughing stock by the Prince and the Lady Lyanna and would not settle for anything except blood in defense of his own tarnished honor. A duel had been fought between him and Ser Arthur Dayne and after many heavy blows Lord Baratheon ended up losing. His sentence had been merciful in the eyes of many, exile or the wall. He chose exile and left his castle to his younger brother, Stannis who had been made to kneel in front of Rhaegar after his second wedding in a bigamous marriage and soon left the capital to never return.

Her own family had not gained or lost anything. The men they sent as troops for the crown were the bare minimum as her brother neither forgot nor forgiven Elia being spurned and they had barely gotten to reach her husband’s host, sieging Storm’s end when all ended. Their most notable contribution had been allowing the passage of the Prince and Lady Lyanna while they confronted the rebels outside the gates of Storm’s end.

It had been rumored that Rhaegar and his mistress intended to travel south, possibly near the marches or into Dorne itself along the desert and Elia wondered what might have happened if the lady had not been left in some forgotten holdfast as she swelled with child and did not have proper care or even died without seeing her family.

It did not surprise Elia how little time Rhaegar had the title of regent. Before the year had ended his father had died of ‘’old age’’ and he legitimized his bastard son as Jahaerys Targaryen before marrying his mother in the sept of Baelor while the old lord commander say his good byes to his great niece and left Queen without her most important ally.

What happened after was nothing but a series of battles between the two women of the King and the progressive loss of respect towards the crown from the most pious seven believers subjects. 

It did not affect Elia. She had long accepted her marriage and found happiness alongside her husband despite his mother’s occasional meddling but in many ways Mace was superior to Rhaegar and it would have been unjust to compare Olenna to Aerys.

The woman not always seemed eye to eye with Elia and aside from the occasional barb against the dornish she had never begrudged Elia’s place on the family.

Mace himself had not been Elia’s first choice either. As a young maid she liked the idea of being Queen as Rhaegar had been a promising young handsome knight but he had not been her mother’s only candidate. They had been on a tour with Oberyn to find spouses for them and they had just visited the most prominent dornish holdfasts and the Hightower itself and she had liked Baelor Hightower. 

Maybe she could have married him had not been just on their visit when the news of Alerie’s betrothal to the crown prince arrived and her mother had been furious under her frozen politeness. From then on, Baelor nor any of his sisters were a choice for Elia or Oberyn.

At first their mother wanted to travel to westerlands to visit her beloved friend as they had previously arranged but she had decided to travel to Highgarden itself and see if an alliance could be made between the jilted parties.

Mace had been older than her and their first interactions were awkward and that did not change into the beginning of their marriage.  She had not liked his overbearing mother and he had disliked her dornish customs but they had grown to see more of each other than they would ever have in another life and one day, the steps they had been playing in their marriage had no longer been practiced and calculated but natural. They had grown to love each other.

He had been also a loyal man, faithful unlike almost any other man in the world despite barely knowing her when she had grown round with child the first time. 

His kindness and gallantry with her delicate health was not a consideration she thought he will extend to her as they were at first strangers nor his insistence on having several maesters on hand to tend to her in her pregnancy and after the birth so she could heal and not push out her body’s limits by bearing children in quick succession. His true happiness when holding their firstborn had melted Elia’s previous misgivings. 

She had given him her respect and trust and  grown to care for him and as they built a life little by little in their home, always surrounded by greenery and the most benign weather on Westeros. Their only difficulty had been his lady mother’s sometimes overbearing self and that had been barely a difficulty at all after they had their first child. Between his gallantry and her own efforts at extending true kindness there was a time Elia found herself smiling on her own at the thought of her husband and her heart had swollen with love.

He loved her too, she knows. He was an easy going man, generous and benevolent and though he had been at first wary of her, she was always treated with the utmost courtesy.  Their children brought them together and with every birth she could see his brown eyes softening whenever she entered a room.  Even when Elia had not been so fond of the most onerous styles of jewelry of the reach, he often made gifts of them to her on a whim. Occasionally he purchased good from her homelands, dornish oranges or honeyed dates. He even hired a dornish cook on her second pregnancy and ate with her the roasted snakes dishes she so loved. How he never refused to host her brothers and made an effort to bond with Oberyn and Doran when they visited despite being so different in character. 

His mother doted on all their children. She had been Elia’s support when her own mother died and she had to birth her first child and though Olenna was not a warm woman they respected each other and worked together to guide their house as Mace often acquiesced to everything they decided. On Highgarden there was never any knight, servant, bannermen or relation that could dare to insult Elia’s dornish heritage without being dealt by the Lady Olenna before being swiftly dispatched elsewhere.

Elia’s life had not been what she once hoped to but she won’t change it now. From Princess to Lady she has not mourned the loss of her title that she would have kept if she had married the crown prince. Not at seeing how Rhaegar’s wife birthed so many children in quick succession. How he disgraced his wife with a mistress and the second wife. How Aerys had endangered her family. How the court was a cesspool of snakes that were ready to bite her at the most minor misstep.  How she could have never been at peace, never had the safety to enjoy her home nor children nor had the security of having her husband's loyalty..

Chapter Text

Elia Baratheon is a tall woman, many men had to turn their chins up to look at her and she has been described as one of the most beautiful ladies of Westeros with black hair failing in ringlets to her knees, blue eyes as stormy as her homeland and wide hips aside from her valyrian blood by both of her parents. The only thing she has from her deceased mother is her dark skin and she would have been considered the only suitable choice for the crown prince since the King never got a Princess with his sister wife but…she in the eyes of many, she is sickly.

The famous solid build of the Baratheons makes the leanness of her muscles and the lack of fat even more noticeable. Unkind tongues had described her as starved -looking and wan faced….Prone to lay on her bed at the mention of a storm coming soon…Sickly as many men put it and with the King and his wife losing babe after babe and having only one son after seventeen years of marriage….Elia had almost been displaced.

While true that she’s not the strongest woman, Elia agrees passing a page of her book, the comments had been long exaggerated and it had cost her several years of her prime age being wasted as the crown dragged their feet into finalizing her betrothal into a marriage.

She does not resent it truly. She has met the crown prince and though the man is pretty and not entirely useless, he has a certain melancholic air that Elia is glad she did not have to suffer these past three years and all thanks to Lord Hand Himself, Lord Tywin Lannister.

Sure, the man was a fool for believing anything will make Aerys forget the valyrian blood of Daenerys  and Rhaelle Targaryen for a golden cub but things are like they are. And now all the heirs are already married.

Standing up from her seat on the couch she stretches her muscles before coming up to the balcony near the training yard. 

It’s odd to see Robert around and even more in Stannis’s company but she is glad of it. 

Their family has been apart for many months and she wonders how distant they would have grown if they had not seen each other for years. Even more if they did not have their father with them to guide them.

Robert and Stannis are far too different in nature to truly get along but as the oldest and more responsible they are prone to mind her words she has been closing that gap all these years. She has no hope to do the same with the little one since she will already live on the capital when baby Renly has more thought than those of milk and warm arms so she will have to let that to his father, since the lady Cassana died of miscarriage the same year Aerys almost  send father to Essos after they had one big fight.

She was never close to her father’s wife. Cassana Estermont had been the daughter of a minor lord and certainly was a poor replacement to a princess with royal blood on her veins but  with her father smitten and marrying her five years after the younger sister of the ruling princess of Dorne dying in childbirth things were like they were.

And with the lady Cassana giving birth to male issue in close succession, Elia’s far down the line to worry about inheriting the castle and despite what many of her father’s bannermen thought regarding Dornish's customs she followed to pay her respects to her mother’s memory,  Elia never hoped to be the ruling Lady of Storm’s End, having quickly made peace with it by the time Stannis was born. 

Not having a sister was lonely growing up as she never bonded with the lady Cassana and her brothers had different duties but still, her father never forget her and as she had interest, allowed her the same classes that Robert had with the maester and himself.

Her father Lord Steffon is a shrewd politician and she was the one who benefited the most, given that Robert had no interest and spent many years on the Vale before following him to the capital and Stannis being sent in his place. Elia knows what to expect with the mad king ruling and she knows she owes to befriend courtiers and as many lords as she wants to gather support for a regency.

Elia knows she’ll have many ladies in waiting to keep her company!  To put the golden cub in her place and have a tight grip on the roses. To befriend the lady fish and the eldest granddaughter of Alys Arryn. To have her dornish cousins guard her back. To watch at a distance what the squid does and how the wolf will plan its approach.

The north. The riverlands. The vale. 

It is obvious that the lords had tried to make an undercover alliance against Aerys giving than her father with the Stormlands and her cousin with Dorne have necessarily allied with the crown and even when Elia grants them the right to be wary, she can’t allow it to happen.

The first step was to break off the betrothal Robert foolishly accepted without consulting father but the next it’s trickier. The Lord fish still has one daughter to barter off and she needs something to offer the roses to avoid them dragging their feet should Elia require their help. And she has to do something with the lion cubs, both of whom exhibit no true intelligence and have an… inappropriate relationship for being brother and sister from what Elia saw at the capital.

Father will help her with all that at least. 

He was not pleased with Robert's choice of a bride and less without consulting him as the head of their house and that had been enough to recall him from his fostership with the Falcon Lord. He avoided confirming the betrothal with Lord Stark for years as the man was far too presumptuous and only agreed recently to meet Rickard Stark and his family and only then decide if their girl is a good fit for being lady of Storm’s end. Elia knows nothing of her save her appearance and taste for riding but only for Robert’s sake, she hopes she’s a magnificent administrator since her brother will need much help and Stannis was granted a minor keep close to the border with the reach.

She sighs, all that has happened  without her betrothed noticing.The prince writes poetry and trains at arms and is very pretty to look at…but he knows nothing of politics. Of what his lords are planning. 

She has much planning to do but Rhaegar himself can keep reading his scrolls in his free time for all Elia cares as long as he does his duty. She will marry him and be queen and she will do her duty and provide the crown with many princes and rule in all but name. Rhaegar will be the figurehead and sire her children and live his life in whatever world he wants to, entertaining his time with any activity that takes his fancy. Books, scrolls, hunting, jousting, archery, clothes…she will not begrudge him…as long as he does his duty to her, to their family and to the realm.

She has the blood of the dragon, of Durran Gods’sgrief and his divine wife Elenei and Nymeria’s.

Lions, Roses, Fishes, Wolves, Squids, Falcons and Dragons… they will all kneel and claim her name.

Chapter Text

An old man kneels in front of the Gods. His tunic made of threadbare undyed cloth and bereft of shoes to shield his feet.

He has come from preaching at Fishmonger square and was thankfully able to distribute the food donated by the Faith’s most devout benefactress to the poorest of the city folk, from the orphans that roam the streets to the beggars and cripples and the poorest of widows with children at their breast….they know who has not forgotten them.

And as loyal and true believers on the gods, they praise her name.

Pious, gracious and dutiful Queen Elia is second only to the Maiden and the Mother herself. Her wisdom is the one of the Crone and despite her feeble womanly body, her resolve has the strength of the Warrior at opposing the seductress’s detestable attempts in turning the  court into a whorehouse with her licentious ways. Her righteousness and sense of justice is the same as the Father’s  and she has shown the diligence of the Smith in putting wrongs to rights despite the King’s lascivious indulgence and she keeps the Stranger at bay, with her fierce protection of the poor and destitute.

The High Sparrow shakes his head in dismay. Truly, is only Queen Elia’s infinite forbearance at suffering affront after another and  remaining at her undeserving royal spouse’s side the only thing that tempers the court and prevents kingslanding being overrun with the harlot savage kin and the perverted sycophants similar to the Griffin Lord who is almost sure to share the King’s bed!

He beats his own chest in consternation. Such abomination should not be borne! 

Many people,high and low alike, had both feared and detested the Mad King for his tyranny and cruelty and had been hopeful to have his son, the former beloved silver Prince Rhaegar to inherit the throne and return peace to the realm but sadly, the apple did not fall far from the tree. 

A sneer is put on his weathered lips. His royal highness had the same appetites of his ancestor the Unworthy and was as destructive as the son of Visenya the sorceress for all the deaths he caused. A kinslayer to booth! He slew the son of his father's cousin when the man raised against the Mad King, not in search of glory or to sate his ambitions but to escape death as the Mad King had called for his head when Rhaegar disappeared with his own betrothed. 

The High sparrow decides to pray for the Warrior in his stead, and wish for the late Lord Robert to be granted justice in the afterlife, his only fault  was not possessing the Crone’s wisdom and been deceived by the two faced, scheming witch of the north and his false friend, the treacherous savage wolf who slew countless of good pious men from the Riverlands, Crownlands and even the few loyal Dornishmen who sought to protect their princess and her children.

Of course, the illustrious heroic shadow that Rhaegar the Faithless sought to cast shattered when his own actions were known far and wide. He both eschewed his duty and common sense to abandon his lawful wedded wife, a good woman from a noble family who gave him heirs of his body in quick succession despite her frailness to sate his base desires with a seductress that tore the realm apart and had brought disgrace to everyone around her, even her own family as she climbed over the bodies of her own father and brother to land into the crown prince’s bed!

He does not even want to think about the concubine.! A shudder shakes his body in disgust,  her mere thought taints his devout mind with her wretchedness and villainous nature!

The demoness from the North had made use of her foreign magics to ensnare the weak willed King’s mind afar from his lawful wife and under this disastrous monarch all the poor people of Kingslanding starve.

Since she had been brought here from the King’s arm the realm is besieged by disgrace, one after another! Plagues, poor harvest by dry water, torrential rain in turns aside from ill humors that do not seem to leave either the capital or other great cities like Oldtown or Lannisport aside from common bandits bullying the country folk and the corruption of Rhaegar’s officials infiltration far and wide…. The common people had barely anything left to eat after the crown collects its taxes while the court enjoys lavish feasts and distractions under the King’s mistress’s rule and forget that their amusements are paid with the back breaking labor of the smallfolk that they so despise.

The only succour of the poor are donations made by the gentle Queen Elia and her children, the gallant  and brave Prince Aegon who is the only one who dares to defy the King openly for his excesses and the gentle Princess Rhaenys, who is as pious as her own mother, having no use of frivolities or extravagances unlike most ladies of the court and assists the septas in their prayers and works running orphanages. 

Both the prince and princess have been raised as devout followers of the seven and himself does not speak false when he names them made on the image of the gods…. unlike the abomination born from sin that follows the barbaric practices of its mother and prays to demon trees and makes sacrifices to bloody the roots of the weirwoods its mother uses to spy the court!

The ….boy named for the most wise king of the Targaryen line is no true prince at all, despite their unworthy king’s words and decrees shunning his own trueborn heirs in favor of placing the son of Lyanna the harlot before them and his own trueborn brother on the succession, the boy is at best a baseborn bastard born from the blood of countless good honest, loyal men and at worst…..a demon himself spawned by atrocious unholy rituals made by the barren witch! It’s not surprising that the repugnant female only conceived once away from all the eyes of the nobles, common and maesters in a solitary tower amidst the desert and never conceived in full view of the realm as assuredly the enchantments she used could never be conceled.

The indignation he feels almost chokes him and he reminds himself he’s not a young man anymore, prone or willing to allow himself to be swayed by earthly passions, even when they were most justified.

He exhales and makes the sign of the seven over his forehead.

All will be well. Things will change. The Father who judges all shall serve justice. Rhaegar Targaryen swore vows and lied. To his wife. To his children. To the realm.

A lifetime of wealth and power had left Rhaegar blind. He can not escape the justice of the Gods.

As the High Sparrow, he serves the Gods and the Gods demand justice.

Chapter Text

Eddard Stark’s horrified eyes are focused on Elia Martell as Robert Baratheon starts to scream.

The woman looks thin, far too thin to be just her build and she also looks sickly, her once elegant silken skirts are dirty rags barely held together and her bodice hangs from her body as if she had lost weight recently. Her black hair is matted with grease and there are dark rings around her eyes and …

Her eyes are black and terrible.

Over then screaming he notices how everytime she breathes, the air in her lungs produces a horrible sound but he can see she’s beyond caring. She matches Robert scream by scream and the moment she notices the red Lannister’s cloak her pale bloodless lips turn from refusal to speak to inconceivable horror.

The sound she makes then is something he knows would haunt him till he dies, he imagines it now…an old sickly version of himself with white hair and skin spotted by age and he’s terrified that his last thought will be of her… of Elia Martell’s screams.

The knights around them stand uncomfortably. Many were here because of the promise of justice being served and now being confronted with such butchery they have no way to deny their own sins.

Eddard knows it all too well. Even from his own soldiers who he had tried to restrain…murder, rape and torture has been abundant. He doesn’t even want to think about the sins of the men commanded by Tywin Lannister.

And Robert for all his bravado doesn’t know what to do. He believes himself the hero from a song, fighting to rescue his lady love and live happily ever after but he stands dully at one side, like an overgrown child unsure after making a mistake.

A big mistake.

There are no children being butchered on the songs nor sitting on a throne covered by blood.

Despite knowing what could happen and not regretting fighting to avenge his family and save his sister, Eddard somehow feels he has done wrong.

The Princess doesn’t seem human anymore. She tears at her face with broken nails and screams and screams and screams until all of their ears are ringing.

Lord Roland Crackehall is a tall burly man but even he can’t be able to stop the Princess’s rage as she pushes him to the ground and lunges towards Robert. The woman’s face twisted with rage and despair scares his friend enough despite her small build that he  takes a step back before she finally catches him.

Her fists are bony and birdlike but she punches him again and again until it is very clear her bones are broken but she can’t seem to feel it or have the wish to stop. Robert stands there dumbly, not appearing to know what to do , as if entranced by a horrible spell as she hits him over and over.

After a few moments, some of the men are able to collect themselves and between Ser Elys Westerling and some westerlander men at arms, they are able to pull Elia Martell away.

Eddard is put out by  the harshness they use to handle her but the moment he tries to intervene one of the men turns to look at him and his hold on her wrist slacken  and that it’s enough opportunity for her to lunge at him.

Five bloody  stripes are forever etched in his left cheek, the scars will accompany him all his life, the same as her face snarling at him like a beast. 

Whore’s brother.Murderess’s brother. I curse you there, your false honor will get you killed. All your family will follow you to the grave. Your broodmare will never rest in death. Your brother will freeze on the wall. Your children shall be the last of the Starks.

Her words break the spell on everyone and Eddard stands frozen, his hand craddling his cheek. Rober roars at her, flinging both insults and orders and Elia turns her neck to rage at him, howling like an animal.

It’s an eerie spectacle.

He had seen her before at Harenhall and there’s nothing from the delicate elegant lady in front of him.  Eddard is not unused to pain but he feels oddly detached now that the burn of the cuts Elia gouged on his flesh feels as if someone had used a knife to carve out his skin.

The princess keeps screeching, the sound is both high and low as if there were many voices leaving her mouth and  now the men holding her twist one of her arms behind her back while they force her to her knees in front of the throne.

Everyone stands in silence and the only things heard are the grunts of the men struggling to keep her down, pushing her head towards the ground and finally after a while, she falls silent, her posture taut and her head concealed by shadows.

He doesn’t know why or how blood is dripping down her mouth.

Both his companions, the vale men behind Jon Arryn and the westerlanders from Lord Tywin’s entourage wait a little more for her to break the peace and start howling again but her energy appears totally spent. She barely moves at all and there is a moment he fears she has died of exertion but then he notices her chest moves slighlty.

Robert looks at him uncomfortably and then turns his eyes to Jon Arryn, who Eddard realizes has a face as white as paper and seemed to have aged ten years in less than hour.

His foster father is a good man, he raised both him and Robert with kindness and fairness but he knows Jon has more concerns than honor and justice.

This is bad.

Despite disagreeing profoundly on what to do with the children, all three favored the idea to keep Princess Elia a prisoner until her family’s rage cooled and their loyalty to Robert was proven. She was to be treated honorably and her station as a Princess of Dorne respected. Maybe even she could have been allowed to raise her daughter, even if only a few years more before the girl was sent away to a sept or to marry Robert's heir but now….

There’s no concealing this mess.

He wants to groan because now the Princess will never sue for peace. Not after seeing her butchered children. She will have to be watched because Eddard fears she will slit her own throat to free her family to rise in rebellion and support the boy Viserys on Dragonstone.

And she blames Robert. She blames all of them. 

Only Eddard was close enough to hear what she whispered in his friend’s ears.

The crown will be your shroud. No more stags rutting around, only a small sickly scarred doe crying and surrounded by flames. A stag strangled by shadows and another gouged open as a hod devors him.

There’s an unease that doesn’t lift from him and when the doors are thrown open he feels his stomach sink. 

Tywin Lannister stands tall with a blank face, completely unbothered by the savagery he ordered or the destruction he left on his path as the city burns and his son trails behind him.

Younger and leaner, the man is almost a copy of the lion lord with longer hair. 

Elia Martell’s blood still drips to the ground.

Jaime Lannister appears to not notice her, he struts behind his father with a cold face that crumbles in confusion the moment they get close to the iron throne. Tywin Lannister’s eyes only flicker towards Elia once as his bannermen still hold her down. 

Cold green eyes land on her cheeks with concealed derision before they turn to Robert.

But Tywin Lannister does not have a chance to do more. With the strength of the truly desperate, Elia Martell flings herself to him, tumbling him to the ground. She grabs the man’s jaw with both of her hands and sinks her teeth in his neck. The kingslayer's eyes widen before he draws his sword but he’s pushed aside by Eddard Stark who closes his arms around the princess’s waist as other men approach to help him. Lord Tywin screams curses at the dornish princess when they finally pull her out, her front teeth dripping blood and broken.

The man chockes in his own blood as he glares at her.

Laying on the floor bleeding and pale he no longer cuts such impressive figure. The kingslayer kneels at his side as he presses a strip of cloth from his own white cloak. The frabric soaks red so quickly and all the westerlanders crowd against the lion lord. All know the man shall not live long. 

Golden crowns and golden shrouds. No legacy but shame, no heirs but rotten fruit. All gone before with games. All gone now in flames.

Elia Martell looks at Lannister as if she had never seen him and then laughs, she laughs as if two people were cackling at the same time and she tears at her hair while she screams her children’s names. She curses both the Baratheon and Lannister and her last jab at the Starks is to reveal their hidden pup.

Eddard's blood freezes.

The false prince. The dragon in a wolf pelt. In the tower of Joy from my homeland!  The dragonspawn you so wanted to butcher ! One more to rip apart! The one to go at night!

Rober Baratheon goes pale as a ghost and grabs her by the shoulders , shaking her and demanding she speak the truth. Elia shakes her head and she screams and screeches and a gauntlet bump on the back of head from the Kingslayer is what finally shuts her up.

In the following weeks she’s confined first to Maegor’s tower and then to a motherhouse outside Rosby as both Baratheon and Stark race towards Dorne. Jon Arryn rules in all but name as Robert has ridden to the dornish marches with a small contingent of men.

Heavily sedated to keep her calm, Princess Elia lives in a world of dreams with her beautiful children still there to keep her company and the moment she’s awake she throws curses at the septas. Her jabs about their past are so accurate that they tend to avoid her as much as they could and the same does the maester that visits her.

Some courtiers pity her as she turns…strange. Nothing remains of the witty kind princess of before as her head is up in clouds whenever she's not spouting nonsense or curses. And after a three years pass -two years that show that her mind would not return again- it's decided she will suffled back to Dorne.

The Dornish Prince Doran Martell has treathened to secede from the crown if his sister is not returned and all know that Oberyn Martell has long departed from Sunspear to Essos, there are many reports he's contacting mercenary companys and with one of Robert's principal allies stranged and the disaster that ended up being House Lannister being directed by a child dwarf, Jon Arryn knows he can't afford anymore trouble, especially because there's still no heir on the golden lioness's belly after a two years of marriage. His own line just hangs up in the air...Lady Lysa has only provided him with miscarriages and stillbirths.

 So... the Princess is presented to the court one last time, she's up to the eyes on milk of the popplyto keep her calm and she sways gently on her feet as some maids and guards direct her to the throne and she just mutters nonsense as she's being dissmissed...but before leaving her eyes turn sharp and she manages to make her way towards the Arryn lord, lunging at him to whisper in his ear.

Only a sickly mockingbird on the nest picking up at rotten eggs cracked open.  Rotten shit and crystaline tears… no more falcon on the air.

Lord Arryn has enough to deal with than her so he ignores it in favor of trying to mend the gap between his former wards. Robert Baratheon turned alone to Kingslanding  and will not speak about what he did or saw…Lyanna is never again mentioned. And the only thing he knows of Ned is that he’s alive, his former ward never again answers any letter from the capital and the only thing Lysa could pry from Catelyn before her own letters stopped being answered is that there was just on coffin that was interred on the crypts.

Elia's antic doe not last long. The guards quickly subdue her, her body far too weakened to show the extreme strength from the night Kingslanding burned.

She’s forced to bow before the new king and she complies easily, doing so with a smile of broken teeth that makes the courtiers close grimace, her face with red scars on her cheeks as she had tried weeks before to gauge her own flesh again when finally news of the death of her beloved Lady Ashara arrived.

Her eyes are dark and glassy as she stares at the haughty queen whose hand is held by the usurper.

Golden cubs shocking on wine, suffocated by roses and crying red tears. Golden fawns crushed beneath a stag's hooves, ripped their neck by wolves!. A little doe against a pack of wolves, against the butcher of the bloody smile! The stag coming to them burning under the sun and moon. Always the same!

Elia Martell does not live long after she arrives to Dorne. 

She only hangs on to life for a couple of months before succumbing to a strange illness no maester can explain. 

Broken skull and a knife at the back! Death by dragonfire. Sunk by a kraken. A bite at the eye by other serpent….all always the same.

Elia Martell only finds peace after her death.