George Martin - Rogues

He began by giving her kissing lessons, Mushroom claims. From there the prince went on to show his niece how best to touch a man to bring him pleasure—an exercise that sometimes involved Mushroom himself and his alleged enormous member. Daemon taught the girl to disrobe enticingly, suckled at her teats to make them more sensitive, and flew with her on dragonback to lonely rocks in Blackwater Bay, where they could disport naked unobserved and the princess could practice the art of pleasuring a man with her mouth. At night he would smuggle her from her rooms dressed as a page boy and take her to brothels on the Street of Silk, where the princess could observe men and women in the act of love, and learn the “womanly arts” from the harlots of King’s Landing.

Just how long these lessons continued Mushroom does not say, but unlike Septon Eustace, he insists that Princess Rhaenyra remained a maiden, for she wished to preserve her innocence as a gift for her beloved. But when at last she approached her “white knight,” using all she had learned, Ser Criston was horrified and spurned her. The whole tale soon came out, in no small part thanks to Mushroom himself. King Viserys at first refused to believe a word of it until Prince Daemon himself confirmed that the tale was true. “Give the girl to me to wife,” he purportedly told his brother. “Who else would take her now?” Instead King Viserys sent him into exile, never to return to the Seven Kingdoms on pain of death. (Lord Strong, the King’s Hand, argued that the prince should be put to death immediately as a traitor, but Septon Eustace reminded His Grace that no man is as accursed as the kinslayer).

Of the aftermath, these things are certain. Daemon Targaryen returned to the Stepstones and resumed his struggle for those barren storm-swept rocks. Grand Maester Runciter and Ser Harrold Westerling, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, both died in 112 AC. Ser Criston Cole was named the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard in Ser Harrold’s place, and the archmaesters of the Citadel sent Maester Mellos to the Red Keep to take up the grand maester’s chain and duties. Elsewise, King’s Landing returned to its customary tranquility for the best part of two years … until 113 AC, when Princess Rhaenyra turned sixteen, took possession of Dragonstone as her own seat, and married.

Long before any man had reason to doubt her innocence, the question of selecting a suitable consort for Rhaenyra had been of concern to King Viserys and his council. Great lords and dashing knights fluttered around her like moths around a flame, vying for her favor. When Rhaenyra visited the Trident in 112, the sons of Lord Bracken and Lord Blackwood fought a duel over her, and a younger son of House Frey made so bold as to ask openly for her hand (Fool Frey, he was called thereafter). In the west, Ser Jason Lannister and his twin Ser Tyland vied for her during a feast at Casterly Rock. The sons of Lord Tully of Riverrun, Lord Tyrell of Highgarden, Lord Oakheart of Old Oak, and Lord Tarly of Horn Hill paid court to the princess, as did the Hand’s eldest son, Ser Harwin Strong. Breakbones, as he was called, was heir to Harrenhal and said to be the strongest man in the Seven Kingdoms. Viserys even talked of wedding Rhaenyra to the Prince of Dorne, as a way of bringing the Dornish into the realm.

Queen Alicent had her own candidate: her eldest son, Prince Aegon, Rhaenyra’s half brother. But Aegon was a boy, the princess ten years his elder. Moreover, the two half siblings had never gotten on well. “All the more reason to bind them together in marriage,” the queen argued. Viserys did not agree. “The boy is Alicent’s own blood,” he told Lord Strong. “She wants him on the throne.”

The best choice, king and small council finally agreed, would be Rhaenyra’s cousin, Laenor Velaryon. Though the Great Council of 101 had ruled against his claim, the Velaryon boy remained a grandson of Prince Aemon Targaryen of hallowed memory, and a great-grandson of the Old King himself, with dragon blood on both sides of his lineage. Such a match would unite and strengthen the royal bloodline and regain the Iron Throne the friendship of the Sea Snake with his powerful fleet. One objection was raised: Laenor Velaryon was now nineteen years of age yet had never shown any interest in women. Instead he surrounded himself with handsome squires of his own age and was said to prefer their company. But Grand Maester Mellos dismissed this concern out of hand. “What of it?” he is supposed to have said. “I am not fond of fish, but when fish is served, I eat it.” Thus was the match decided.

King and council had neglected to consult the princess, however, and Rhaenyra proved to be very much her father’s daughter, with her own notions about whom she wished to wed. The princess knew much and more about Laenor Velaryon and had no wish to be his bride. “My half brothers would be more to his taste,” she told the king (the princess always took care to refer to Queen Alicent’s sons as half brothers, never as brothers). And though His Grace reasoned with her, pleaded with her, shouted at her, and called her an ungrateful daughter, no words of his could budge her … until the king brought up the question of succession. What a king had done, a king could undo, Viserys pointed out. She would wed as he commanded, or he would make her half brother Aegon his heir in place of her. At this the princess’s will gave way. Septon Eustace says she fell to her father’s knees and begged for his forgiveness, Mushroom that she spat in her father’s face. Both agree that in the end she consented to be married.

And here again our sources differ. That night, Septon Eustace reports, Ser Criston Cole slipped into the princess’s bedchamber to confess his love for her. He told Rhaenyra that he had a ship waiting on the bay and begged her to flee with him across the narrow sea. They would be wed in Pentos or Tyrosh or Old Volantis, where her father’s writ did not run, and no one would care that he had betrayed his vows as a member of the Kingsguard. His prowess with sword and morningstar was such that he did not doubt he could find some merchant prince to take him into service. But Rhaenyra refused him. She was the blood of the dragon, she reminded him, and meant for more than to live out her life as the wife of a common sellsword. And if he could set aside his Kingsguard vows, why would marriage vows mean any more to him?

Mushroom tells a very different tale. In his version, it was Princess Rhaenyra who went to Ser Criston, not him to her. She found him alone in White Sword Tower, barred the door, and slipped off her cloak to reveal her nakedness underneath. “I saved my maidenhead for you,” she told him. “Take it now, as proof of my love. It will mean little and less to my betrothed, and perhaps when he learns that I am not chaste he will refuse me.”

Yet for all her beauty, her entreaties fell on deaf ears, for Ser Criston was a man of honor and true to his vows. Scorned and furious, the princess donned her cloak and swept out into the night … where she chanced to meet Ser Harwin Strong, returning from a night of revelry in the stews of the city. Breakbones had long desired the princess and had none of Ser Criston’s scruples. Thus it was he who took Rhaenyra’s innocence, shedding her maiden’s blood upon the sword of his manhood … according to Mushroom, who claims to have found them in bed at break of day.

However it happened, from that day forward the love that Ser Criston Cole had borne for Rhaenyra Targaryen turned to loathing, and the man who had hitherto been the princess’s constant companion and champion became the most bitter of her foes.

Not long thereafter, Rhaenyra set sail for Driftmark, accompanied by her handmaids (two of them the daughters of the Hand and sisters to Ser Harwin), the fool Mushroom, and her new champion, Breakbones himself. In 114 AC, Rhaenyra Targayen, Princess of Dragonstone, took to husband Ser Laenor Velaryon (knighted a fortnight before the wedding, since it was deemed necessary the prince consort be a knight). The bride was seventeen, the groom twenty, and all agreed that they made a handsome couple. The wedding was celebrated with seven days of feasts and jousting. Amongst the competitors were Queen Alicent’s siblings, five Sworn Brothers of the Kingsguard, Breakbones, and the groom’s favorite, Ser Joffrey Lonmouth, known as the Knight of Kisses. When Rhaenyra bestowed her garter on Ser Harwin, her new husband laughed and gave one of his own to Ser Joffrey.