in a situation where the events of ashford still take place and aerion is banished to lys, would aerion cheat on lady stark while they're apart? would they even be apart? would ls leave her place and title because she loves him or would she have to let him go? (i feel like the last question leaves room for love triangle between valarr and ls if she decides to stay in westeros and is lonely...👀)
so if we're talking DM verse where you and aerion marry after the engagement with daeron is pulled apart, aerion would literally rather gnaw his own dick off than cheat on you.
like this man's one universal constant across every verse is that he's obsessed with you to a degree that should probably be studied by scientists deadass. there's no version of him that strays. none. he doesn't have that in him. you are essentially same as his dragon obsession. the war crimes he would commit for you are genuinely concerning. he's insane. every single fixation point in his brain is already occupied by you and there's no vacancy for anything else.
(also lowkey you would wreck his shit so bad that he knows better than that 😭 you're truly the bride of his dreams and his biggest nightmare)
self-preservation is not his strongest instinct but it does exist in trace amounts.
also (and this is the beautiful thing about married!aerion in DM verse) ashford plays out differently because the trial of seven never happens. why, you might ask? because aerion is too busy absolutely terrorising everyone within earshot of your shared pavilion.
the puppet show incident requires him to be wandering around unsupervised and bored, and married aerion is none of those things. he is supervised. he's very much occupied. he's dragging you back to the tent every other hour and making knights set up camp further away. baelor lives because aerion is getting laid enthusiastically. boom. butterfly effect.
BUT. for the love of the game, let's say it did happen anyway. baelor died. trial of seven. the whole nightmare yadayada. aerion is sentenced to exile in lys.
he would demand you come with him. immediately, without question, without hesitation. you are his wife. the idea of being parted from you is so far outside the realm of what he considers acceptable that he wouldn't even frame it as a request. for him it would be an assumption at a bare minimum. of course you're coming. why would you not be coming? pack your things!
now, here's where it gets interesting. maekar, who just lost his brother because of aerion's actions, who is raw with grief and guilt and fury, puts his foot down.
you are lady stark. you are the north's link to the crown. you have a title and a duty and a father who will burn king's landing to the foundation stones before he lets his daughter follow a banished prince to a pleasure city across the narrow sea. so you stay. either you go north to winterfell or you remain in the red keep, but either way, you are in westeros and aerion is in lys, and there's a sea between you now.
and this is where valarr comes in.
because valarr has just become heir to the iron throne. his father is dead. the man who made sense of the world for him is gone, and the weight of everything baelor carried has just been dropped onto his shoulders without warning.
he's grieving and furious and terrified in ways he will never, ever admit, and everyone around him is either too careful with him or too ambitious to be trusted.
and then there's you.
you don't pity him. you never have. you treat him like a man who is expected to stand up and be king, and that steadiness (that cold, clean, northern certainty) is genuinely the thing that keeps him from cracking open.
you've always been someone he noticed at a distance, but there were always a thousand people between you. his father, the court, aerion, duty, your marriage. now half of those barriers are gone. you're alone in the red keep. he's alone at the top of a succession he never thought he'll have to deal with for years. you're both just... connecting properly for the first time.
but whatever grows between you would be pretty one-sided from valarr's end, because you love aerion.
you chose him with your eyes open, knowing every flaw, every cruelty, every sharp and ugly edge of him. you're married and you're loyal to the bone, and your heart is already occupied by a man who doesn't deserve it but has it anyway.
valarr would know that. he would feel it in every conversation that goes exactly far enough and no further, in the way you're warm but never soft, present but never his. and he'd keep coming back anyway because he can't help it. because a small, ugly part of valarr cannot stand the idea that aerion's rash actions caused his father's death, and now he gets to keep you as well.
and then... the rumours from lys begin arriving.
and oh what sweet knife they are.
because they're false. genuinely, categorically false.
aerion is spending his exile drinking too much and terrorising lysenese merchants and writing you letters that alternate between unbearable arrogance and rage or something so raw it hurts to read.
he's not touching anyone. he doesn't want anyone. he wants his wolf, his wife, the ice to his flame. but lys is a pleasure city and aerion is a beautiful targaryen prince with a reputation, and the court back in westeros is vicious. people talk. people invent. they poke at you specifically because you're too composed, too controlled, too visibly unbothered, and now alone.
your composure reads as a challenge, as arrgoance, to every courtier who wants to see the wolf crack.
so they whisper. oh, have you heard? the prince has found comfort in lys. well, who could blame him, really? those pillow houses, you know. and he always did have such appetites.
and you hear it and you know it's false and it doesn't matter because the image still lands behind your ribs. and you can't write to him and demand reassurance because that would mean admitting the rumours reached you, which means admitting that there's insecurity to prod.
and valarr is right there, solid and present and looking at you with those mismatched, hungry, kind eyes like he's trying very hard not to offer you something you haven't asked for.
the angst potential is genuinely so good. you have aerion across the sea going half mad with the distance, you'd have valarr falling for a woman who is kind to him but will never choose him, and you're stuck in the middle.
