the targaryen dynasty - the queens of old
“they live within you, daenerys stormborn. the warriors, the history-makers, the beloved, the sad and unfulfilled, the ones designed for greatness, the scarred ones who did their duty. you have queens blood in you.”
Fire cannot kill a dragon.
A century after the Doom of Valyria, and three hundred years
before the present day, the Targaryen host landed upon Westeros,
with Aegon the Conqueror, his sisters Visenya and Rhaenys, and
their dragons at its head. The dragons were named for the old
gods of Valyria—Balerion the Black Dread, whose teeth were long
as swords, and his sisters Meraxes and Vhagar.
The Targaryen Court during the final years of the reign of Aegon V
∟PART 2 - The Targaryens and their HouseholdKing Aegon V → Donald Sutherland
Ser Duncan the Tall → Richard Harris
Duncan the Small, Prince of Dragonflies → Alexander Skarsgard
Jenny of Oldstones → Astrid Berges-Frisbey
Jaehaerys II → Ben Foster
Jaehaerys’s wife, mother to Aerys and Rhaella → Alicia Vikander
Aegon’s third son → Bradley James
Rhaelle Baratheon nee Targaryen → Claire Danes
Aerys Targaryen → Gaspard Ulliel
Maester Pycelle → Allen Leech
The High Septon → Peter O’Toole
Septa Myrielle (Rhaella’s Septa) → Frances McDormand
the reds & blacks - a targaryen and blackfyre dreamcast
gaemon targaryen
→josh dallas
He hadn’t believed her. Gods help him, but he hadn’t believed her.
Not when she’d convinced their father to abandon Valyria. Not when they’d boarded the ships that would take them to Dragonstone, the mocking laughter of their friends and neighbors still ringing in their ears. Not when they had married and he had sworn his love for her before gods and men. Not even when she’d told him, just that morning, that the day had come at last and everything would change, had he believed.
The dragons cry out as if dying, the sky blackens like night to the east, and finally, finally, Gaemon doubts no longer.
Balerion’s scream cuts through him like a sword and he can bear it all no longer. He pushes passed the crowd gathered to stare up at the sky in wonder and terror and makes for his chambers, running through the halls like a frightened boy. The wind against his face chills tears he hadn’t realized he’d cried.
Daenys lies still in the darkness on their bed, her body turned away from the closed windows. He wants to weep at the sight of her, to sob like babe from loss and pain and guilt. He wants to cry into her shoulder and have her say that everything will be alright because she knows, as she always has, as he’s never truly believed. He wants to tell her he adores her and that he’ll never doubt her again, because he does and he won’t.
Instead he says: “Don’t you want to see?”
“I saw it all long ago.” Her voice is cold, but he goes to her anyway. He lies behind her and slowly wraps her in his arms, waiting for- expecting- her to push him away. When she grips his hand in her’s and pulls him closer, he doesn’t even bother choking back his sob.
I’m sorry is no where near enough, but he can’t think of anything that is- can’t think of anything that ever will be- so he says it again and again, his lips pressed against her back, her neck, her hair, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, and prays that one day he will be be worthy of forgiveness.
*Note: Check out this post, or else this won’t make any sense at all.
the reds & blacks - a targaryen and blackfyre dreamcast
daenys targaryen
→ viva blanca
The vision burns her. It sears her skin and blackens her lungs from ash and air turned to flames. She wakes gasping. She wakes shaking, still feeling the earth collapse under her, around her. She wakes still deaf from the screams of dragons and burning children. She wakes terrified. But she wakes sure.
There is nothing that can be done. The certainty chills the burns and offers her the merciless comfort of absolute powerlessness.
She rises and dresses, walks the halls of her home with no destination. She walks with her hand trailing the walls, memorizing the feel of the columns, the smell of the heat in the air, the sight of the unending red glow of the Fourteen Fires lighting the night sky through the windows. She thinks of waking her father to warn him of her vision, as she had so many times before.
She slips into bed with Gaemon instead. He stirs enough to reach for her and her heart aches, remembering the sight of him drowning in fire. Daenys holds her brother close and prays that she is wrong.
She sleeps wrapped around him and dreams of the west, and a chance for survival.
*Note: This isn’t going to make much sense if you haven’t read this post. So, you know, read it.
ALL HORNS AND THORNS; a fanmix for Targaryen queens
i. Visenya, the queen conqueror:
1. the mynabirds - generals x (our books and bones are breaking down so fast/and we keep putting all our cash into the next blood bath/and i tell you i’m sick of it/haven’t we paid our dues yet?)ii. Rhaenys, the mother queen:
2. beach house - 10 mile stereo x (they don’t know how far we can throw/with our legs on the edge/and with our feet on the horizon)iii. Alysanne, the good queen:
3. bon iver - perth x (in a mother out a moth/furling forests for the soft)iv. Rhaenyra, the betrayed queen:
4.feist - monarch x (i don’t give a care for the crown or the shield/i will not protect you or happily yield/to the one who makes me come undone)
5. st. vincent - paris is burning x (come sit right here/and sleep while i slip poison in your ear)v. Daena, the queen that could have been:
6. muse - map of the problematique x (i want to be free/from desolation and despair/and i feel like everything i sow/is being swept away)vi. Naerys, the quiet queen:
7.counting crows - anna begins x (‘if it’s love,’ she says/’we’re gonna have to think about the consequences’/and she can’t stop shaking/and i can’t stop touching her)
8. regina spektor - samson x (oh we couldn’t bring the columns down/yeah we couldn’t destroy a single one/and history books forgot about us)vii. Myriah, the bargained queen:
9. the decemberists - the crane wife 3 x (she had no heart so hardened/all under the boughs unbowed)viii. Aelinor, the neglected queen:
10. fleet foxes - someone you’d admire x (one of them wants to be someone you’d admire/one would just as soon throw you on the fire)ix. Rhaella, the last queen:
11.the shins - sleeping lessons x (you’re not obliged to swallow everything you despise/see those unrepenting buzzards want your life)
12. laura marling - made by maid x (i find myself in cautious times/and they say/love’s labors never lost/but labor on to this very day)x. Daenerys, the queen come again:
13. joanna newsom - sawdust and diamonds x (i wasn’t born of a whistle or milked from a thistle at twilight/no i was all horns and thorns/sprung out fully formed knock-kneed and upright)
14. sara bareilles - once upon another time x (once upon another time/decided nothing good in dying/so i would just keep on driving/because i was free)
15. florence + the machine - only if for a night x (and the only solution was to stand and fight)
Daena worshiped her father and idolized her brother Daeron, the Young Dragon. As a child, she always wore black in emulation of her father. After her brother Baelor failed to consummate their marriage, she changed to all white, and vowed to wear nothing else until she had been properly bedded, in hopes of shaming him. She always wore the golden three-headed dragon pendant she had inherited from her father. At court she wore it on a fine golden chain; when in disguise, she hung it on a leather thong and hid it beneath her clothes.
∟Daena Targaryen, also known as Daena the Defiant, the eldest daughter of King Aegon III the Dragonbane.
Queen Naerys Targaryen
“…it was said that only her son Daeron and her brother Aemon knew how to make her laugh.”
