queen who never was and aegon the dragonbane!
aegon the dragonbane — [when fear drives destruction.] what is my muses greatest fear, and why or how has that fear been instilled in them? how do they react when faced with that fear? how does it impact their daily life?
it's something happening to his family. it's not something that was ever explicitly installed in him per se. but he was put into training when he was three, which was earlier than what it usually happened. he was given a knife that same year, and it was live steel which was not ? normal. children that age are not usually handling actual steel, not even in westeros. it also led to him being included in the shared lessons, despite the age differences. but that was when he realized rhaenyra could be worried over him and his brothers' safety (he ends up not using that knife properly. but that is another matter) and he ended up bringing that knife with him everywhere he went, until it became second nature for him to grab it when getting out of bed. the only place he did not wear his knife was at dragonstone, and even there he still took it with him at the start. it took him a lot of attempts to eventually leave it behind while at the island - and any time he was not there, he did bring it with him everywhere he went, even if he had other weapons with him. he doesn't like that he finds the weight of the knife comforting, would rather he didn't, but he does find it so.
he reacts badly, really. there is not much he wouldn't do to ensure they are safe and his reactions are not measured ones, when it comes to this, but it's such an extreme fear that it doesn't tend to impact his life (well, unless one sees it from the perspective of ' luke saw aemond beating jace up, panicked, slashed towards his face and half-blinded him and that led years later to his death '. that did have an impact)
in canon, he's the first to die and therefor he doesn't see his family die, so it doesn't really impact him (in his survival verse he is... pretty overbearing of his younger brothers after all they went through. but in canon ? he doesn't see the death that follows the dance).
(a sillier fear he had when he was young and before laenor died, though, was deep water. he was perfectly content with playing at shore gathering shells, and he spent a lot of time on it, and one would assume someone who was raised on an island would have a better relationship with water - but he didn't. he learnt to swim first and that let him get into the water in the first place, and eventually he'd force himself to stay on ships long enough he'd stop fearing it. couldn't be the lord of driftmark if he was terrified of water, after all. but he wanted nothing to do with entering the water when he was very small )
queen who never was; rhaenys — [remaining graceful in disrespect.]
