Rhaena Targaryen "Dragon Twin"
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«In 116 AC, in the Free City of Pentos, Lady Laena gave birth to twin daughters, Prince Daemon’s first trueborn children. Prince Daemon named the girls Baela (after his father) and Rhaena (after her mother). The babes were small and sickly, alas, but both had fine features, silver-white hair, and purple eyes. When they were half a year old, and stronger, the girls and their mother sailed to Driftmark, whilst Daemon flew ahead with both dragons. From High Tide, he sent a raven to his brother in King’s Landing, informing His Grace of the birth of his nieces and begging leave to present the girls at court to receive his royal blessing.»
«Baela’s dragon, the slender pale green Moondancer, would soon be large enough to bear the girl upon her back…and though her sister Rhaena’s egg had hatched a broken thing that died within hours of emerging from the egg, Syrax had recently produced another clutch. One of her eggs had been given to Rhaena, and it was said that the girl slept with it every night, and prayed for a dragon to match her sister’s.»
«Only when told that Joffrey was being sent to defend the Vale against King Aegon’s dragons did his brother grudgingly consent to go. Rhaena, the thirteen-year-old daughter of Prince Daemon by Laena Velaryon, was chosen to accompany him. Known as Rhaena of Pentos, for the city of her birth, she was no dragonrider, her hatchling having died some years before, but she brought three dragon’s eggs with her to the Vale, where she prayed nightly for their hatching.»
«Prince Daemon’s daughter Rhaena remained in the Vale as a ward of Lady Arryn, whilst her twin, the dragonrider Baela, divided her days between Driftmark and Dragonstone.»
«Lady Rhaena of House Targaryen, brave Baela’s twin, had brought a dragon’s egg with her to the Vale…an egg that had proved fertile, bringing forth a pale pink hatchling with black horns and crest. Rhaena named her Morning.Though years would need to pass before Morning grew large enough to be ridden to war, the news of her birth nonetheless was of great concern to the green council. If the rebels could flaunt a dragon and the loyalists could not, Queen Alicent pointed out, smallfolk might see their foes as more legitimate. “I need a dragon,» Aegon II said when he was told.»
«The Maiden of the Vale had arrived from Gulltown, bringing her own ward, the Lady Rhaena Targaryen, with a dragon on her shoulder. The smallfolk of King’s Landing, who not a year before had slaughtered every dragon in the city, now became rapturous at the sight of one. Lady Rhaena and her twin sister, Baela, became the darlings of the city overnight. Lord Stark could not confine them to the castle, as he had Prince Aegon, and he soon learned that he could not control them either. When they demanded to be allowed to see “our beloved brother,” Lady Arryn gave them her support, and the Wolf of Winterfell yielded»
«In truth, there were only two claimants the realm was like to accept: the king’s half-sisters Baela and Rhaena Targaryen, Prince Daemon’s twin daughters by his first wife, Lady Laena Velaryon. The girls were now sixteen years of age, tall and slim and silver-haired, very much the darlings of the city. King Aegon seldom set foot outside the Red Keep after his coronation, and his little queen never left her own apartments, so for most of the past year, it had been Rhaena or Baela riding out to hunt or hawk, giving alms to the poor, receiving envoys and visiting lords with the King’s Hand, serving as hostess at feasts (of which there were few), masques, and balls (of which there had been none as yet). The twins were the only Targaryens the people ever saw.»
«Yet even here, the council encountered difficulty and division. When Leowyn Corbray said, “Lady Rhaena would make a splendid queen,” Ser Tyland pointed out that Baela had been the first from her mother’s womb. “Baela is too wild,” countered Ser Torrhen Manderly. “How can she rule the realm when she cannot rule herself?” Ser Willis Fell agreed. “It must be Rhaena. She has a dragon, her sister does not.” When Lord Corbray answered, “Baela flew a dragon, Rhaena only has the hatchling,” Roland Westerling replied, “Baela’s dragon brought down our late king. There are many in the realm who will not have forgotten that. Crown her and we will rip all the old wounds open once again.”Yet it was Grand Maester Munkun who put an end to the debate when he said, “My lords, it makes no matter. They are both girls. Have we learned so little from the slaughter? We must abide by primogeniture, as the Great Council ruled in 101. The male claim comes before the female.” Yet when Ser Tyland said, “And who is this male claimant, my lord? We seem to have killed them all,” Munkun had no answer but to say he would research the issue. Thus the crucial question of succession remained unsettled.»
«This uncertainty did little to spare the twins from the fawning attentions of all the suitors, confidants, companions, and similar flatterers eager to befriend the king’s presumed heirs, though the sisters reacted to these lickspittles in vastly different ways. Where Rhaena delighted in being the center of court life, Baela bristled at praise, and seemed to take pleasure in mocking and tormenting the suitors who fluttered around her like moths. As young girls, the twins had been inseparable, and impossible to tell apart, but once parted, their experiences had shaped them in very different ways. In the Vale, Rhaena had enjoyed a life of comfort and privilege as Lady Jeyne’s ward. Maids had brushed her hair and drawn her baths, whilst singers composed odes to her beauty and knights jousted for her favor. The same was true at King’s Landing, where dozens of gallant young lords competed for her smiles, artists begged leave to draw or paint her, and the city’s finest dressmakers sought the honor of making her gowns. And everywhere that Rhaena went came Morning, her young dragon, oft as not coiled about her shoulders like a stole.»
«Rhaena was slender and graceful; Baela was lean and quick. Rhaena loved to dance; Baela lived to ride…and to fly, though that had been taken from her when her dragon died.»
«This time, at Ser Tyland’s insistence, the girl herself was made a part of the discussions. Lady Rhaena proved to be as tractable as her sister had been willful. She would of course wed whomever the king and council wished, she allowed, though “it would please me if he was not so old he could not give me children, nor so fat that he would crush me when we are abed. So long as he is kind and gentle and noble, I know that I shall love him.” When the Hand asked if she had any favorites amongst the lords and knights who had paid her suit, she confessed that she was “especially fond” of Ser Corwyn Corbray, whom she had first met in the Vale whilst a ward of Lady Arryn.»
«The last half of the year proved calamitous in other ways as well. The court rejoiced when Lady Rhaena announced that she was with child by Lord Corbray, but joy turned to grief a moon’s turn later when she miscarried.»
«Yet it would all be undone in a trice by the king’s half-sisters, the very twins whose succession Unwin Peake had been so determined to prevent. Fewer than a dozen maids remained, and the press had thinned considerably, when a sudden trumpet blast heralded the arrival of Baela Velaryon and Rhaena Corbray. The doors to the throne room were thrown open, and the daughters of Prince Daemon entered upon a blast of winter air. Lady Baela was great with child, Lady Rhaena wan and thin from her miscarriage, yet seldom had they seemed more as one. Both were dressed in gowns of soft black velvet with rubies at their throats, and the three-headed dragon of House Targaryen on their cloaks.Mounted on a pair of coal black chargers, the twins rode the length of the hall side by side. When Ser Marston Waters of the Kingsguard blocked their path and demanded they dismount, Lady Baela slashed him across the cheek with her riding crop. “His Grace my brother can command me. You cannot.” At the foot of the Iron Throne they reined up. Lord Unwin rushed forward, demanding to know the meaning of this. The twins paid him no more heed than they would a serving man. “Brother,” Lady Rhaena said to Aegon, “if it please you, we have brought your new queen.»
«Ladies Baela and Rhaena, riding just behind the royal litter, were greeted with exuberant cheers as well. Only a few took note of the King’s Hand farther back, with “his face as grim as death.»
«The meeting did not go as well as the twins might have hoped, however. The prince paled at the sight of Lady Rhaena’s dragon, Morning, and commanded the northmen guarding him to “get that wretched creature out of my sight.»
«Lady Rhaena, at the age of nineteen, was flying her dragon, Morning, for the first time. That first day she circled once around the city before returning to the Dragonpit, but every day thereafter she grew bolder and flew farther. Only once did Rhaena land Morning inside the Red Keep, however, for not even the best efforts of Prince Viserys could persuade his brother the king to come see his sister fly (though Queen Daenaera was so delighted with Morning that she was heard to say that she wanted a dragon of her own). Shortly thereafter, Morning carried Lady Rhaena across Blackwater Bay to Dragonstone where, as she said, “Dragons and those who ride them are more welcome.»
«Lady Baela, went to Dragonstone to comfort her widowed twin (and incidentally make certain that Lady Rhaena did not attempt to avenge her husband’s death herself on Morning).»
