I have a few headcannons about Daeron and the events in which he became a knight! (A properly shit one too) PLEASEEE comment ur knight!daeron headcannons
Im not exactly sure how canon complaint this list will be but idgaf!!!!! I was trying to think of fun ways i could play around with his dreams hehehee
I think it all starts in 205 when the King sends Aemon away to be institutionalised indoctrinated trained as a maester at the Citadel
To push his youngest son even further to the brink, he demands that his eldest grandson, Prince Daeron, must also be sent away to complete a term of squirehood
Daeron had just had his fifteenth Nameday. Valarr, 6 moons away from being fifteen himself, was considered a man grown in his grandsire and father’s eyes. His cousin had been married to his foreign bride for over a year, had achieved knighthood, became a father and in that time experienced a stillborn grief so harrowing, half of the city wept at the gates for days.
When Aerion heard that the King was sending his pathetic & docile brother to earn one of the highest rankings that can be bestowed upon a man, he almost spat flames with his fury. Aerion raged as if his Grandsire and brother has conspired to scorn him personally.
“A knighthood, father? Does that title weigh so little? Hold no value? No great honor?” The words were venom on his tongue. If looks could kill, Daeron would have perished under his hateful scowl.
The King’s youngest son, had a strop™- dragging all 6 of the Maekarlings back to Summerhall in his fury.
Maekar had his doubts. But who was he to refuse a Kings orders? He refused to accommodate his son’s ailment. If he acknowledged it, it became truth. Pandering to his drunken babbles and ramblings granted it permission to fester. The dreams were not a sickness and not to be treated as such for a sickness could be tended too with medical intention. In Maekar’s eyes, Daeron was not sick. He was a wine-soaked fool that was too glad to drown himself in his grief instead of suppressing it until it was nothing. A fool. A fool that will change or die trying, his father will make certain of it.
Despite himself, he prays that time away from court and 5 moons worth of physical labour will change his first born's behaviour, finally make a man out of him. No wine, no whores and no fucking dreams.
Maekar had compromised with himself. Selfish and contained and a bargain well struck. His desire to send his son to the edge of the known world fought hard and brave against his desire to keep his son close, ultimately he deigned to send him to Dorne.
Of course Maekar would not send his son far. What if he needed his father? What if he needed to come home? So Daeron is sent to Starfall, the house of his recently deceased Ladywife.
Maekar travels alongside him to Starfall Hall. The Lord of Starfall was more than happy to receive him, blood of his blood. It was a great honour to host and train a the eldest princeling, son of Dyanna Dayne.
Upon arrival, the Lord Edwin Dayne could not believe the likeness carved into the boys face. His mother had since departed this world but left a piece of herself, her soul with this child. His eyes were her eyes, large watery violets. His hair was her hair, blonde like the Dornish sand dunes. Maekar growled impatiently.
Before he departed, Maekar clasped one hand onto his son’s slender shoulder. To onlookers, it was a proud gesture, but the weight of his father’s palm was crushing. “Do not embarrass me, boy” he gritted through his teeth.
Daeron trains in earnest. Dawn until dusk. Dawn until his knees give. Dawn until he tastes metal in his throat. Dawn until the alcohol poisons his blood. Swords, defence, lance, armour.
“Again Ser” Daeron breathes, staggering across the courtyard. “My prince-“
He knows he is not a Sword Of The Morning. He knows he lacks fight, he knows he lacks bloodlust, he knows he lacks the desire for violence. His honour need not defending, a mans life need not taking. Dawn comes again and Daeron finds himself in the stables.
The horse spooks at his approach. His father always said that horses are dumber than dogs and only know command and the crop. Horses are intelligent, he thought, intelligent enough to be frightened of him. He was frightened of himself. The horse calmed and Daeron released a shaky breath. “Im sorry” he spoke low and ashamed. “Im sorry for startling you”. He imagined the furious contortion of his father’s features, conversing with the beast let alone apologising to it.
The first few nights at Starfallhall, Daeron cried and wailed in his sleep, writhing in terror. The lords and ladies were cautious of the boy, whispering about his sleep, drink and rumoured whoring habits. The maesters intervened, of course. Herbs, pastes, teas, ointments, spells and rituals. Nothing invasive, not like the Grand Maester back at the keep.
Daeron screwed his eyes shut. He remembered what he could of that night, what was left of the fractured memory. Incense, a balm massaged into his pulse points, leather shackles and a wine-drenched rag between his teeth. He remembers asking him to stop, he remembers crying. He remembers the feeling of the metal instrument pierce the veins at his wrists. He remembers fire and the smell of blood and pain. He remembers the slamming of a door, the clanking of steel tools, frantic footfall and a thunderous crack somewhere in the room. He thinks he remembers his father’s voice but he isn’t sure. If his father was present that night, he never spoke of it. He cannot remember how he came to be in the Grand Maesters chambers nor what happened after.
The maesters that served House Dayne were curious but attentive. One maester urged him to pen his visions, cement them in ink, to dare them to take course. The other maester declared that these premonitions were demonic and he was to forbid them truth, banish them from his minds eye and pray to all seven of his Gods. Dragon dreams, another called them, A recessive Targaryen trait. History has neglected these dreamers but he supposed that all historians are prophets looking backwards. They claimed a thousand scrolls lay sealed in a vault at the citadel. Each roll of parchment scorned and scribed with a fate, an outcome, a variable of what was to be of this world. Some were warnings, some were fables. Glass candles and dragons and krakens and a night that would never end.
Daeron understood a cursed truth, that his dreams were not like the dreams of others men, his dreams came true. Blazes of fire and screaming and death and dragons emerging from the ashes of cities- his dreams were prophecy. The night truly was dark and full of terrors, the red God had promised him so.
There was a dream from his childhood, singular in its horror. A dragon, a giant, magnificent creature with scales that looked as though they were made of oily black slate, lay unmoving before him. As Daeron approached the beast, he realised that he was wading through a pool of its blood, dark and sticky and he was sinking. A million squirming Maggots had begun feasting on its steaming flesh, its wing bones snapped and sprawled across the ground, the fleshy wing membrane torn, shredded. A hot, thick wretched smell consumed him, the stench of rotting bodies. Daeron saw that the dragon’s ribcage had been split open, a streak of silver bone was exposed, pulled taught by ribbons of raw pink muscle- Targaryens had been dragon masters once. It was hard to believe. The dragons are gone and the dreams are all that remain. At that thought, rats, thousands of them burst from within the beasts belly. He gagged, the vile, sickening smell of death making him retch. He opened his mouth to breath or vomit or scream only to find his jaw unhinged, asphyxiating on the dragon’s blood, drowning in its heat. Daeron awoke choking on his own vomit, spewing all over his feather bed. The smell. He would never forget that smell.
He looked to his desk, a flurry of discoloured parchment and spilled inkwells- sloppy handwriting and smudges across the pale oak bureau. He had not been dreaming of death and dragons as of late. His dreams have become much more indecipherable. Perhaps he is lost without the rigid certainty of morbid symbolism within his nightmares, frightened when the dragons appear and conflicted when they do not.
He did not always dream of dragons at Summerhall either, but the dreams were not oft sweet. He is no oracle, he is not a mouthpeice to the gods, should the Gods wrench the world from its heading and set it upon another course altogether at his request? Should he beg mercy? He holds no magic yet where stands the sorcerers? Where stands the dreamer and his dream? His dreams were tragic and melancholy under the domed roofs of the sunlit palace. The dreams left him empty, weeping and filled with a sadness he could not verbalise rationally without wine. He dreams of fire, red, angry and unforgiving yet he wakes up cold, damp and shivering. Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the least gratuitous. The smell of burning flesh became so unbearable, his mother had Daeron move Chambers 4 times to escape what his lord father nor brothers could not smell.
At the Red Keep, the princeling dreams of violence and savagery. The bloodstone walls of the castle, the jagged Valyrian steel of the throne, the unspeakable horrors in which his family have suffered and caused- haunt him all the same. He has seen it all, past and future. White hot blinding images flash behind his spasming eyes, body flailing and seizing in terror. Blood. There is always so much blood. Staining the tapestries, carpets, bedding. There is a chorus of voices, screaming at the top of their lungs. There is always screaming. It’s probably wrong to believe there can be any limit to the horror which the human mind can experience and the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity? Daeron isn’t sure. His body convulses, his eyelids open yet unseeing. Shadows and figures stalk the dark edges of his peripheral vision, threatening him, tormenting him. He cannot reason with the shadows, cannot bargain, cannot beg, cannot ask forgiveness. When he awakes from such night terrors, he assumes his ears have bled from hours of sharp, violent ringing. His ears ring all day, quieter but enough to make him nauseous. Was it proximity to the dragon bones? Was it proximity to legacy? Was it proximity to the gods that made his dreams worsen at the Red Keep?
His dreams had changed. There was no more screaming, he did not awake to the stench of blistering skin. No fire, no blood. He dreamed of falling stars, silver white horses, comets, and a glowing magical stone. He dreamed of glass candles and a lemon tree. He dreamed of his mother. There was something strange at Starfall, something mysterious and unnamed. Or was it a feeling? Starfall felt unlike the Red Keep or Summerhall. Something ancient, unmoving- something omnipresent existed in the walls of the castle. Daeron was unmoored and unfamiliar with the connection he felt to the milk white stones. Was it knowing his beloved mother had walked these halls, her hands once where his hands lay? Wearing her house colours in place of his blood coloured satins? He dreamed of the summer sea, he dreamed of winter wolves and an endless night- he dreamed that magic would return to the land. Will the world end in darkness because it is foretold? Or because there will be those who believe it so strongly they will make it so, he wondered bitterly. The strangest dream of all began with the sound of a baby crying, quiet and gentle in its despair. Daeron’s feet moved on their own, an instinct of one could call it such. Aegon, perhaps? Crying for his wetnurse? He would check on him anyway. The sun, lazy and warm in its afternoon blaze shone through silk drapes, a soft pink hue enchanting the room. His body was behaving before his mind could approve, nothing he was not fabled for in light of his drinking habits. But his movements in this dream were well rehearsed, natural even. He reached into the wooden crib and lifted the child to his chest. The child lay heavy and against his shoulders, the warmth of their face pressed into his neck. The baby had stopped crying, satisfied with their results and pleased to have finally been held. Daeron smiled. He placed himself, as if rehearsed a hundred times, upon the wooden chair sat in the corner of the room, angled against the flowering ivy dancing across the stone cracks. When Daeron peered down, the child had not been Aegon or Rhae, but a small baby girl with large dark eyes, browned skin and ringlets that bounced with every babble. His fingers stroked her cheek, soft and curious. Her own tiny fingers reached to attack, an excellent show of force against her opponent. Daeron chuckled this time, low and true. The babe in his arms giggled toothless and gummy at him, her eyes widening at the sight of his teeth. He awoke slow, groggy, cheeks flushed with colour and a strange feeling in his chest. The prince listened for infantile distress only to be met with the sound of servants rushing about their duties. He could feel her skin under his finger tips, he could still imagine the weight of her pressed against his chest. He could not produce a name for such a peculiar feeling, the feeling of having lost, misplaced, or missing something that does not belong to him.
He is knighted, his father is somewhat placated. He returns home taller, broader, stronger. More muscular. The Lord of Starfall told him he had the body of a warrior should the desire to apply himself present. Daeron just smiled. His ward understood. His ward understood in 5 moons what his father could not in 14 years. When he returned to the red keep, the graphic horrors returned. The Dornish red dulled his senses and the whores listened for gold. He asked his father to send him back to Starfall as a permanent ward, to be raised under Dayne banners the way his mother was. His father whipped his feet until they bled. He thought about running away, but he already knew he was marked for rot for he was a bystander in his own suffering. A man, at last.
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