Chapter Text
In the year 84 after the Conquest, Princess Alyssa Targaryen took to the birthing bed for the third time.
She would give birth to a girl, who was born kicking and screaming to let everyone know how upset she was at being born.
The daughter of Jaehaerys and Alysanne would die shortly after, taken by the childbed fever - but her daughter would survive.
Distraught, Baelon named his only daughter after her mother.
Princess Alyssa of House Targaryen had pale gold hair and her father's violet eyes. Her grandmother Alysanne declared she would be a great beauty one day.
No one could predict, however, how wild she would become.
Alyssa Targaryen was said to be the living portrait of her mother’s temper. Bold, dauntless, and passionate to a fault. Once she set her mind to something there was nothing that could stop her. When she was six and they wouldn’t let her learn how to fight with a sword with her brothers, she went to the courtyard anyway and hit every single boy there with a wooden sword until her Septa saw and tried to drag her away. She hit the Septa too.
Baelon, who loved his only daughter too much to deny her anything, asked the Master of Arms to teach her too. When others protested, he merely shrugged and reminded them who bore her. My wife Alyssa was just as proficient with a sword as Aemon and I - if my daughter wishes to learn, then she shall. Daemon was more than happy to have another sparring mate - Viserys had quickly proven to lack the drive for the martial arts, preferring to stick to his books, and Rhaenys was away at Dragonstone more often than not, so Alyssa became his de facto playmate.
Learning to fight was harder than she expected.
Alyssa didn't care for the discipline of learning firgures and positions, widely preferring stabbing and hacking to the forms they tried to teach. It took a few good shoves into the ground for her pride to concede and finally listen to her teachers, but she did listen eventually. Alyssa hung on to every word from her instructors, repeating each form until she could imitate it perfectly and lugging around heavier and heavier training swords everywhere to build up her strength. She hacked at every straw dummy in the training yard until they resembled a scarecrow torn apart by a dragon.
Two years went by and Alyssa was finally allowed to practice with the others. The boys in the training yard did not take kindly to a girl suddenly being allowed to train with them, so they made sure their displeasure was felt during their spars. They fought dirty - but unfortunately for them, Alyssa fought like a hellion. She wasn't afraid to kick, scratch, and even bite her way into winning a fight. Eventually, the Lords in the Red Keep took their grievances to the King and Queen after their sons came from the training yard looking like they'd gotten into a fight with a wild animal instead of a princess of the blood.
It made for a funny sight to the jesters in the Throne Room: on one side, the Princess Alyssa smiling proudly with her pale gold hair mussed and tangled, sporting fresh bruises, her red training doublet showing dark blood stains, and her mouth red with blood from accidentally biting a bit too hard. On the other side, a group of four boys with equally disheveled appearances sporting scratches and bites on their faces and arms.
That's a wildling, a lady commented to another on the upper balconies, not a princess. The Good Queen will have her job cut out for her to marry off that beast.
The years go by and Alyssa bleeds for the first time at the age of three and ten.
The Good Queen starts looking for matches.
Alyssa Targaryen would sooner crawl into a dragon’s maw before marrying some useless lord, but that mattered little to the Good Queen Alysanne, who merely a year before had Daemon dragged to the Sept and married to Rhea Royce. Daemon truly had overestimated his luck, as he usually did. He really thought he could plead and beg his way out of it, right up until it was too late. Fool. He’d gone as far as to suggest they marry him to her instead, but she’d been too young and Daemon needed taming sooner rather than later.
The hand of a young Targaryen princess, even one known throughout the realm to fight dirty and draw blood, is still very coveted.
House Manderly still hadn't recovered from the slight they were dealt years ago when Princess Viserra died before marrying Lord Theomore, a man who had recently passed and Alysanne held great esteem for. So when the current lord suggested his eldest son as a match for the Princess Alyssa, the Good Queen Alysanne readily agreed. The boy was six years older than the young princess, with no known instances of abuse or dishonorable behaviour and from a good house in the North. Perfect for the wild princess to finally calm down.
There was no way in the seven hells that Alyssa was going to allow this.
Her protests fell on deaf ears. Subtle disagreements and appealing to family affection led nowhere. Alyssa tried to beg that White Harbor was too far from King's Landing, that she would miss her family too dearly, that the cold did not agree with her. She even tried to appeal to Alysanne's guilt over what happened to Daella - "will I also have to die alone in the childbed, away from my family in a strange place?" - but that only got her a slap in the face and seven hours of kneeling in the sept.
Words alone would clearly not sway the King and Queen, and so Alyssa had to resort to threats - this time, with vivid accompanying imagery.
The entire family had gathered for dinner - her grandparents, her father, her sweet aunt Gael, Viserys with his counsin-wife Aemma, Daemon, and herself - and eventually Alysanne made an off-handed comment about how "Alyssa's wedding will be the chance to rectify the royal embarrasment that was the last one", glaring at Daemon the whole time.
"If you think Daemon's wedding was an embarrasment," the young princess starts, glowering at her grandparents, "- then I will do everything in my power to make sure this wedding is a catastrophe! I will kick and fight every step of the way and you will have to drag me to the altar! I will not say the vows, I will yell over whoever has to speak them for me, I will bite the septon and tackle the groom and punch whoever stands in my way!" Alyssa threatens, disregarding the Queen's horrified expression and the way the King's rage becomes more apparent. "And then, if you still manage to put me in the wedding bed, then I will simply-" she stabs the butterknife right into the neck of the roasted suckling pig they served for that faimly dinner. The handle still shakes from the force of impact but remains upright, the blade nestled in the flesh of the meal. "I promise you that."
Gael had startled when she stabbed the pig and was now crying softly, Aemma and Alysanne trying to calm her down; Viserys was horrified by her words and taken aback by how quickly she had resorted to violence; Daemon was trying and failing to cover his snorts with his hand; Baelon the Brave was heartbroken.
Say what you will about King Jaehaerys Targaryen, but he did not become such a respected monarch by capitulating to the first glint of bared steel. He would not be cowed by his own descendants - most certainly not by his granddaughter. "Ser Ryam!" He called and the knight quickly entered the dining room from his post outside, bowing and awaiting further orders. "Take Princess Alyssa back to her quarters and go through her belongings. I want every sword and blade in her possession removed from the premises and if she so much as steps a foot into the training yard you are to drag her out by the hair if need be."
Prince Baelon's expression dropped and he immediately jumped to his daughter's defense. "Father, surely that is uncalled for-"
"No, Baelon." Alysanne stopped him. "You've done enough. I obliged with your desire to see to your daughter's education yourself and instead of a Princess of the Blood, you've produced a wild animal. She is to be married and will need to learn what that entails. I will be seeing to her education from now on."
Ser Ryam came to stand behind her chair and Alyssa was secretly grateful that she wouldn't be made to make good on her threat of fighting everyone now. For one, the burning shame of being brushed off so easily made her eyes prickled with tears - and she actually liked Ser Ryam and didn't want to have to fight him. As the knight herded her back to her rooms, Alyssa started making a mental tally of every blade hidden in her room and how she would go about replacing them.
The King and Queen would not be moved? Fine.
Escape it is.
...
At least the Good Queen seems to have learned her lesson about the consequences of an early bedding, so she won’t have to marry the Manderly man until she comes of age at six-and-ten. But it also meant her grandmother has two years to turn her into an acceptable wife, and not even Baelon the Brave can save his daughter from the embroidery, harp, and household management lessons that would now consume her days. Fighting was acceptable enough when she was a little girl born of another swordswoman - but now that she was a maiden that would be the Lady of a house, Alysanne tightened her grip on the young girl and cancelled her fighting lessons.
In between those lessons, Alyssa plots.
If she escaped now, she would have the entire family (and their four fully-grown dragons) search every corner of the world for her. If she waited a little longer, prepared and played her cards right, she would be able to leave and have a fighting chance at building a life outside of the constraints of Westeros.
For all her fire and dragon blood, Alyssa Targaryen is more patient than most give her credit for - so she waits.
During those two years, she learns. She begs her father to accompany him when he goes on hunting trips, the one comfort he can provide, so she can learn how to butcher animals properly. She sneaks into the city whenever she can to commission more weapons for herself. She makes sure to have multiple leather riding habits and breeches made for her as she grows into a woman’s body, claiming to her grandmother that women in the North were excellent riders and wouldn't begrudge her for it.
But perhaps the riskiest and most reckless part of her plan is the one she leaves for last: claiming a dragon.