Gwyn
👩 = What’s your muse’s relationship with their mother, what made it that way?
✨ = How important is family to your muse?
Slowly returning to all these questions! Had a really busy May and June until now but I was looking forward to answer these! So thank you so much for the questions ❤︎
👩 = What’s your muse’s relationship with their mother, what made it that way?
Gwyn doesn't know her mother, Aleana Egen. She died a few weeks after Gwyn was born because of a fever. As her mother was the younger sickly sister to Aemma Arryn, Aemma offered to raise Gwyn at the court, though Rhaenyra was already 14 when Gwyn was born and Aemma had just lost another child. Gwyns father - Aaron Egen - was kind of indifferent to the child because she was a girl & his wife died, so he was kind of glad to get her off his hands. Sadly he died half a year later because of a cold too.
Gwyn grew up the first two years as Aemmas ward. Aemma loved her dearly. Then Aemma died and Gwyn was there. No one really knew where to put the little girl. Viserys didn't brought if over him to send her away because of Aemma but Alicent was not prone to raise another girl that was not hers. So Gwyn actually has no mother figure in her life and when she gets older, she kind of is glad because she has seen what kind of Mother Alicent was to Aegon. It's nothing she ever really misses until she becomes a mother herself and finds it hard to be a 'good' mother to her children.
✨ = How important is family to your muse?
Family is a foreign concept to her. As mentioned, she never really had a family of her own. She was always more of an extension of someone else's family, but never truly felt as though she belonged there or was wanted. The family she grew up with was far from a loving one.
She forms bonds within that family, admittedly rather unhealthy ones, mostly with Aegon, but she does not see him as part of her family. When she is ten, she finally meets her uncle, but he has a family of his own and shows little interest in building a relationship with her beyond what is necessary. His main concern is finding her a suitable husband, though even that he does rather leisurely, hoping for an heir of his own. As a result, she rarely sees or hears from him.
When she claims Grey Ghost, she becomes more a part of the royal family, though mostly because Aegon drags her along everywhere as his cousin who happens to be a dragonrider, close to his age and neither his "crazy" sister nor his little brother. Viserys is also reluctant to send her away after that because she is a dragonrider not because he wants her there.
Even later, after Alicent marries her off to get rid of her, her family still does not feel like one. At some point, that simply becomes Gwyn's normal understanding of what family is supposed to be. She grows to hate the concept because it feels more like a cage than something to be desired.
For herself, she would only consider Grey Ghost a true part of her family. The dragon is the only reliable relationship she has from the age of twelve onwards, until the day he leaves her, which she does understand.
