The princess was raised under the care of Queen Dowager Alicent, who served as regent.
Unlike her gentle-tempered twin brother, Princess Jaehaera displayed from childhood a disposition far beyond that of ordinary children. Yet perhaps because Queen Alicent herself was hardly a conventionally meek and gentle noblewoman, this side of the girl seems never to have been recognized for what it was.
She named her hatchling black dragon Morghul, and from a young age showed no fear of pain. While other children would burst into tears over an accidental scrape or bruise, she neither laughed nor cried—she would simply stare at her wounds with a strange fascination, as though savoring the searing sensation like dragonfire upon her skin.
Very few people had ever seen Princess Jaehaera. Most of those who had believed her to be sweet-faced and innocent in appearance, with a voice that naturally inspired trust. But after Queen Rhaenyra of the Blacks took control of King’s Landing, the princess and her little dragon vanished from the city without a trace. The Red Keep was searched from top to bottom, yet she was nowhere to be found.
Everyone believed Queen Dowager Alicent had smuggled her away.
The good news was that Queen Rhaenyra apparently did not consider one small girl worth her attention. Her orders were to hunt down Prince Maelor, not Princess Jaehaera.
She seemed to have forgotten that she herself had once been a little princess with a dragon.
In any case, by the time the Dance of the Dragons came to its bloody end, nearly every dragon of House Targaryen had perished alongside their riders in the brutal civil war that swept across Westeros.
All longed desperately for a peace long denied.
And so Princess Jaehaera was remembered once more.
Lord Corlys personally wrote to Lady Baratheon, requesting that she return “the kingdom’s precious princess” to King’s Landing. The lady agreed, on the condition that her three daughters be appointed as the princess’s ladies-in-waiting.
Yet something strange emerged after the princess arrived in the capital: some of the Red Keep’s maids noticed that the three Baratheon daughters seemed deeply afraid of the little princess.
She was only a pale, fragile-looking child, shattered by the deaths of her family. A girl so numbed by war that even the sight of executed nobles strewn across the ground did not frighten her. She merely held her blue-dressed doll in silence, still as a silver ghost.
Why would noble maidens fear her?
No one thought much of it.
Least of all Lord Corlys, who, seeing the two children apparently getting along well after their grand wedding, would sigh with relief and remark that had things been this way from the start, perhaps House Targaryen would never have come to such ruin.
But perhaps lacking truly capable informants, he never knew what truly passed between the children.
He never knew how Jaehaera used her words to make the equally young king cling to her like an elder sister—dependent upon her, yearning for her comfort.
Every word she spoke, once carried through the king’s lips, became the king’s will.
Many matters the king had no wish to deal with were handled by her instead.
Many years later, historians writing of the era would often describe it as a period of dual monarchy. Some even argued that the true decision-maker of Westeros was Queen Jaehaera herself.
And Queen Jaehaera seemed the perfect union of Targaryen and Hightower traits: intelligent, cunning, ambitious beyond measure—and never allowing anyone to truly discern what she was thinking.
