hello, hello, hello ! it's your friendly neighborhood mac being forced to use the new post editor because tumblr hates me and wants to stunt my creativity at every turn. i'll be playing the loves of my life, rhaegar targaryen ( 35, he/him, daniel sharman fc ) and alerie mooton ( 25, she/her, hailee steinfeld fc ). i can't wait to introduce them to you so without further ado, please look below the cut to find their introductions !
p.s. also i'm at work when this is posted but feel free to ask me for my d*scord and i'll send it to you when i'm done working !
rhaegar targaryen is the king of westeros, the eldest of the targaryen dynasty, and is known for his determined and logical nature. allegedly, he's been known to be a rather wary and shrewd man. i heard that his loyalties lie with the realm and he deeply supports to notion of peace. i wonder if the king's mind has already begun to fray — it's a targaryen's birthright, you know.
rhaegar targaryen was born at sunrise a few months after his father’s coronation as king. he would cry at night, waiting impatiently for the sunrise to come back every morning. his fascination with sunrises as a child persists, even now, in his mid thirties and a father himself.
he has a habit of waking up well before sunrise to get started on the work laid out before him as king — he’s deeply involved in the day to day running of the kingdom, not leaving his small council to their own devices, no matter how much he trusts them with the realm — so that he might sit out on his balcony and watch the sun rise over the horizon. when his children were particularly little, he would hold them with him, enjoying those moments of peacefulness.
there are parts of this man that have always been gentle, you can see it in the way he holds himself. he is a fierce warrior, the wielder of blackfyre, an expert combatant, mounted and not, but rhaegar would trade away all of those things for more precious moments. he has calloused, blood soaked hands but his eyes are kinder than many you’ll meet. he has his failings but watch the way he wraps his arms around his wife, how he greets his friends and enemies with the same warmth, how he acknowledges that he is not the smartest man in the room and wants only for the best when it comes to the people he has been charged with. he wants to be better than those who came before him, someone ready to humbly accept advice and understand opposition.
three years ago, the death of his father came a crown that felt too heavy, to the point he delayed his own coronation two weeks, deeply in prayer and conversation with his father’s hand ( a former advisor to king rhaegar, in an informal capacity ). he wrote a letter to each of the great houses, inviting them to his coronation by personal invitation, written in his own hand. he expressed his desires to each for a personal meeting ( with their current ruler and their heirs ), establishing connections he hoped might be able to serve him through his reign and for the generations after them. before he asked for faith in himself, he put faith in the people he surrounded himself with and those were some of the seeds he planted with the intention of cultivating a vibrant, diverse inner circle.
it is here that we will take a small break to discuss the way that rhaegar interacts with his family. his life has been built on the foundation of furthering the targaryen legacy and he wants nothing more than to usher in a renaissance for them. a century back on the throne ( the brief years of robert baratheon are not a stan — in fact, rhaegar has even noted that they were a necessity that allowed the targaryen family to almost reintroduce their style of rule to the kingdoms ) and rhaegar has made it his life's mission to keep the peace
an audience with the king is not a hard thing to get — be you a member of the great house, a lesser one, or a representative for the smallfolk. he is willing to meet with most at their convenient and his excellent memory for names, faces, and plights make his meetings as sincere as the smile on his face. his ability to bend over backwards with a charming smile to meet the things asked of him within his power is noted, though it seems as though no one has ever been able to successfully abuse his kindness ( after all, how can you take what is freely given ? ).
as far as faith goes, rhaegar has always identified most with the father and has viewed him almost as a patron. he has championed the faith since he was a young man and if he had been a second son, he might have devoted himself as a septon. his faith deepened when his father died and he went into mourning, begging for the redemption of his soul through good works he would make in his name and the names of the targaryens who had come before him. his crisis of faith comes now as the fifth year of his reign begins, a fear that he has not done nearly enough and there will be so much blood on his hands because of it.
do not mistake his kindness for weakness, though, even the wind stills before the onset of a hurricane and this man is a hurricane of cunning and unresolved feelings. he is a good man but good men can have their kind words poisoned, their sincere smiles turned sour. his mercy exists in one hand but his other holds something so much darker and so much more powerful.
support your local targaryen dynasty. rhaegar’s just doing his best !
alerie mooton is the lady of maidenpool, the middle daughter of the sisters three, and is known for her tactful and observant nature. allegedly, she has been known to be stubborn and impatient. i heard that her loyalty lies with house mooton and she's rather indifferent to the notion of peace. i wonder if she can explain why.
long before house mooton became a vassal to the tullys, in the time before the andal invasion, there was a heart tree that the first men protected. the original mootons worshipped the old gods of the forest, the mooton sisters still do. when the andals invaded, the first men stood their ground as best they could, hiding away their stories under floorboards and in the hearts of their children, praying they would be passed down. the old gods of the forest heard their prayers, the old gods of the forest made sure their stories were told.
when the andals brought the light of the seven with them, house mooton found what similarities they could. they promised the children they would protect the tree in the center of their household and the children gave them a gift in exchange. they approached the lady mooton who was newly pregnant and placed their hands on her stomach, promising her prosperity, foresight, and good fortune. the children kept their promise and so did the mootons. the daughters born from this promise millennia ago came in a set of three, each utilizing a different aspect of foresight. every few hundred years, three little girls come again. and again. and again. as long as they are needed, they will come.
the mooton sisters, regardless of which three you speak of over the course of the last few thousand years, always come in the same three order and always pay the same three prices. the middle of the sisters, the one who we will get to know, uses bones and fire, a risk every time she reached in her hand to the fire. wait too long and the bones crumple to ash, not enough and a false reading comes through. all gifts come at a cost and this gift balances on a moral scale: how many times are you willing to put an end to one thing’s life to learn more about a future that isn’t guaranteed ?
each of the daughters also corresponds with one of the three faces of the seven that typically have feminine characteristics. though they do not follow the faith, they make appearances as though they do so they may blend in with other houses who do not embrace the old ways, especially in the riverlands. the oldest represents the crone, the middle represents the mother, and the youngest represents the maiden.
her childhood was one of confusing, vivid dreams and intuition too sharp for a small child. she was too keen, too curious, too wild, and then the birth of her little sister came and things started to make more sense. these are the next three, the children once more keeping their promise. gods save the king.
alerie has a memory, from when she was a little girl, that told her to scatter the bones on the ground. not to clutch on to what she knew but to scatter them against the wind, to have faith in what they would say. in the beginning she wanted everything to have a meaning, for everything to be structured, and to have a clear, individual voice. but they are bones and for all their rigidity, they were fluid in meaning. every time, they might change their tune or stop speaking completely. alerie learned early on that she needed to find her own way of listening, one of those methods was fire. her proclivity for fire is inherently different from a red priestess. she did not see the lord of light in the flames or understand his message or hear his voice. instead, fire was the conduit for the bones and the noises the bones make as they burn in the fire is as important as the bones when they’ve been pulled from the fire.
quick interjection: alerie’s a greenseer ! what she thought was just “the bones speaking to her” is actually true tongue, the language of the children of the forest. rather than a language as we understand it, true tongue is the sound of the leaves rustling on a tree, the babbling of a brook, and the winds whistling through mountains. she understands and can even mimic aspects of true tongue though it’s hard for most humans to speak the language. her greenseer blood is also the reason why her eyes are almost unnaturally green, like the leaves in the height of summer’s sunlight.
so, when your life is predicated on the belief that you are gifted, and you are taught that you are gifted from a very young age, all of the things that go along with your gift are presumed to be normal. but no one ever taught alerie how to cope with the voices that sat in her head and whispered all together a discordant set of prophecies. so many things want to be heard, want to make their mark on the world, and so little of it filters through when she’s not doing a reading. she constantly feels on the edge of sensory overload.
she is not short tempered but when her anger flies, it’s with the anger of a thousand crones trying to tell her what will happen next. when she wallows in her grief, a thousand mothers try to comfort her. when she desires love, to be held, to hold, a thousand maidens rush forth and attempt to soothe her. but you can not soothe what is already broken and you can’t close the floodgates that have already opened.
alerie feels most at peace when she’s doing a reading. when she’s a functioning conduit for all the people who want to be heard. they don’t all rush forward or try to make themselves known. those with the most valuable knowledge are usually first and they all speak a little differently. some whisper easy riddles while others say nothing at all and play images through her head. some speak as though they are old friends and some are discontent that she’s asking for their help. sometimes it’s the same guides she’s heard before and those are some of her favorites. years of working together informs a healthy relationship. without them, perhaps this gift would only ever be considered a curse.
the mootons of maidenpool have had good luck in marrying their daughters into more advantageous houses for the last seven hundred years. alliances with families with a wide influence over bannermen have always been at the top of their lists and in exchange gold worth ten times their daughter’s weight. the newest alliance drawn for house mooton has come clearly through each sister’s reading — a stark for alerie to marry. elric was in their sights before his late father had made the decision to marry him off and the mooton girl, a pretty little thing plucked from the heart of the riverlands, arrived to winterfell in a rather short time after the agreement had been solidified. now she rides south, a soon to be member of the stark household.
