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[9/20] ASOIAF power couples → Rhaenyra Targaryen × Daemon Targaryen

As a child, Rhaenyra’s father, King Viserys I, doted upon her and took her everywhere with him — even to the council chamber, where he encouraged her to watch and listen intently. In 105 AC, heartily sick of being hectored over the succession, Viserys disregarded the precedents of 92 AC and the Great Council of 101 AC, officially declaring that Rhaenyra was Princess of Dragonstone and his heir. A grand ceremony was arranged in which hundreds of lords knelt to do homage to the princess while she sat at her father’s feet.

[…]

Despite Viserys’s unwavering preference for Rhaenyra, Prince Aegon was convinced to take up his father’s crown shortly after Viserys died. When Princess Rhaenyra learned of it while under confinement with her third child to Prince Daemon, she fell into a rage. But the child, a stillborn girl, proved malformed. “She was my only daughter, and they killed her,” she said when announcing the girl’s name, Visenya. “They stole my crown and murdered my daughter, and they shall answer for it.” And so the Dance began, as the princess called a council of her own.

[…]

At Storm’s End, Aemond One-Eye, upon Vhagar, caused the death of Rhaenyra’s son Lucerys, upon Arrax, in revenge for Lucerys costing him his eye nine years earlier. Rhaenyra collapsed at the news … but not so for Lucerys’s stepfather. Prince Daemon was all that his late brother was not: lean and hard, a renowned warrior, dashing, daring, more than a little dangerous. Indeed, the words he sent to Dragonstone following Lucerys’s death were, “An eye for an eye, a son for a son. Lucerys shall be avenged.”

[…]

Contemptuous of his half-sister Rhaenyra, Aemond saw a greater threat in his uncle, Prince Daemon, and the great host he had gathered at Harrenhal. Summoning his bannermen and council, the prince announced his intent to bring the battle to his uncle and chastise the rebellious riverlords. But Daemon Targaryen was too old and seasoned a battler to sit idly by, and through the friends he still had at King’s Landing, word of his nephew’s plans had reached him even before Aemond had set out. And so Daemon hastened south while Rhaenyra took flight from Dragonstone, and the queen and her prince consort came together at King’s Landing, circling over Aegon’s High Hill. The gold cloaks — many of whom still considered themselves loyal to Daemon — betrayed the officers Aegon had put in charge and surrendered the city with little bloodshed.