Chapter Text
Late year 105 after the Conquest:
The Winter Child.
The nickname Gael had been cursed to have followed around her, due to being born when her mother Alysanne was 44 years and almost at the end of her childbearing ability.
“Damn you, Viserys! ” she cursed her oldest nephew, the current King of Westeros as her dragon Frostfyre flew towards the capital in the highest speed the female dragon could do on the request of its rider, “Damn you for taking after the man who sired me despite my mother pleading with him to stop knocking her up, and going to indirectly murder Aemma though this pregnancy! ”
Aemma was doomed to die in childbirth, and the boy fated to follow her less than a day after killing his mother.
This was what Gael had seen in a rare vision of the future, and she still felt sick at recalling the image of Viserys choosing his unborn child over his long-suffering wife, of Aemma cursing and screaming as she was being held down despite her protests, the bloody baby that was handed to Viserys, and finally, the two bodies on a shared pyre.
“I must warn her! I must warn Aemma that Viserys will prove himself like so many other damn men here in Westeros and think that the lack of a cock between the legs means that a daughter is undesirable as heir!”
It was this sort of thinking that had caused her niece Rhaenys to be rejected as a future Queen, despite being the oldest grandchild of Jaehaerys and Alysanne. And if her gut feeling was right, then history was about to repeat itself again with the coming generation.
“Ugh, men and their idiotic egos that are so fragile that they can not accept having a daughter as heir and spare their wives from being killed, all because said husbands desire a new child!”
Landing a safe distance away so Frostfyre would not be seen too clearly with her snow white scales, Gael switched to her broom. With her simple clothing and a plain black topped hat with a headscarf to cover her tell-tale Targaryen hair, she was looking like every common-born Northern Witch that was visiting the southern covens for whatever reason.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Not long after, the private chambers of Queen Aemma Targaryen neé Arryn:
It was likely for the best that King Viserys I was away meeting the Lords and other people, because if he had met his wife face to face at this moment, she would have looked at him like he had been a monster.
“He…will…have me… cut open?! Like a pig for slaughter?! Against my wishes? With none of the witches with healing-magic present to help me during the birth?!”
To be honest, Gael would not have faulted her niece if she had fainted in horror and shock over this reveal. This was a reveal of a horrible death, and knowing that it would be all in vain, on top of it?
“No…” Aemma whispered, her eyes being filled with furious years, her hands trembling as she felt any remaining love for her cousin-husband fade away over learning that he would do such a betrayal of her trust, “No! I refuse to let that happen! I will not spend my last moments alive like that, bleeding out like an animal sacrifice!”
With her history of struggling to have more children than her only daughter Rhaenyra, Aemma had a very justified fear of dying in childbirth and how it would be a delayed death caused by Viserys knocking her up in yet another attempt to have a son.
“Why…why is my next child…fated for death as well? Is it because my health has not been the best during this miserable pregnancy?”
Gael shook her head, after shutting her eyes closed for a moment.
“He will be born with a fatal heart problem from the moment of his existence beginning in your womb. Not even we witches can do anything about this sort of medicinal problem, despite all our magic, and especially not on such a tiny little heart.”
And Aemma seemed to lose all hope at this brutally honest answer. She did not collapse to the floor in tears of despair, but something still broke in her.
“Aunt…aunt Gael…please…please…is there anything you can do to prevent the Maesters from killing me with the consent of my husband?”
Oh, what a hard and painful question! Both knew that Gael was an outcast among the Targaryens, for being a witch. Jaehaerys had grown a fear of witches after that he and the Sisterhood had teamed up to wipe out the Iron Islands and its culture, because in the witches he saw the opposite of the kind of woman Alysanne had been slowly forced to become over the marriage: Able to live independent of a man or family, with a freedom not to have to obey norms or gender roles.
So when Gael had been born in year 80, and her magic revealing itself already in the cradle by freezing everything in the nursery yet the baby princess itself had been unharmed, Jaehaerys had refused to have anything to do with his youngest child and basically thrown her away by having her be fostered in House Umber, as far away from the royal court as possible.
“The only way I can help…would be to kill you before you were to be cut open in that barbaric way, Aemma. By stopping your heart though a freezing spell that is slowly spreading. ”
Gael chose to be blunt and honest, because while Aemma would hardly be the first woman she had to kill in this manner to prevent a horrible death, it felt extra painful over that it would be a family member this time. It was only two years between them in age, and yet Gael knew that her life as a witch had allowed her knowledge and choices in life which Aemma was denied from the start.
“Aunt…”
Aemma was only 23 years old. She should have many more years more of life to enjoy, yet the trappings of a royal wife and a demand for a son was going to kill her.
“Do it. Please, please, I would rather die from my heart suddenly stopping and them not being able to make it beat again…rather than…”
Taking four great steps forwards, aunt and niece were almost face to face.
“Are you really sure? You are going to last only a day with this deadly cold slowly stopping your heart. In fact, you may not live long past the sunset,” Gael asked, just to avoid one of those last-moment chances of mind. Aemma could already feel the breath against her skin become colder, a sign that Gael had started her magic.
“Yes. And I will spend those last hours of my life with Rhaenyra. ”
A good choice. The child that she loved and adored, rather than the husband who would choose to save his unborn child over his wife.
“I am sorry that you have to die this young, sweet daughter of my older sister Daella, and that once again, I can not do anything to change the fates of my female relatives.”
A bang of old regrets was felt in her heart as Gael kissed the forehead of Aemma, a faint layer of frost covering the pale skin before vanishing like it had never been there in the first place.
“Aunt…please help Rhaenyra get crowned as the first Targaryen Queen regnant of Westeros. Do not let her share the fate of cousin Rhaenys and witness a male relative to be chosen because of what he had between his legs…please.”
Gael closed her eyes, recalling the fates of her sisters and her own criticism of the late Jaehaerys I despite their few meetings over the years as she grew up.
“I will, Aemma, this is a promise I have made to myself over the years, as not even my own father, called the Wise and the Conciliator, proved himself willing to accept a female heir despite half of his own children being daughters.”
~X~X~X~X~X~X
The next morning at dawn, the bells in all septs across Westeros were rung in mourning of the pregnant Queen Aemma, who had died from a sudden heart stop in the late evening before after spending a meal with her daughter Rhaenyra.
And the son who had been cut out from her belly in a desperate attempt to save his life, also joined his mother in the afterlife before the following dusk.
“I am sorry, sister Daella…but I could not stand the idea of your own daughter dying in the same situation as yourself,” Gael whispered with bitter tears from her eyes, her disguise as a septa working to hide her identity as she knelt in front of the grave of said sister in the Vale of Arryn, praying that Aemma would find peace in death alongside the mother who had died at her own birth.
“Heh…I hope that Viserys enjoys the magical tattoo that I branded him with the moment Aemma died…”
For the rest of his life, Viserys I would be marked by a tattoo on both his palms with her magic of winter and cold:
Wife-murderer
This because he had indirectly murdered Aemma though this fatal pregnancy, and would view a unborn son as more important than his own wife, because a wife could be replaced by another woman in both the marriage and birthing bed.