Once, Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower were great friends, laughing and joking around the halls of King's Landing's castle. Learning to knit and sew together, readying about all the handsome knights of history, fawning over some that strud through their halls and the streets below them. Every feast was lively as they danced freely without constraint. But everything changed when Queen Aemma died and Rhaenyra's father, King Viserys, took a new wife. Alicent Hightower.

This had created a rift between the two friends, one that slowly grew wider and wider with every passing day. Then came the first child, Aegon, a boy and possibly contestant for the throne, one that could take her place as heir if he came of age if her father so wished it. The Small Council and the realm as a whole would support it, because having a male heir was always better. With the years that passed, Alicent birthed two more children: Helaena and Aemond. Rhaenyra herself had mothered sons of her own, believed to be her husband's, Laenor Velaryon, but all of them looked like Ser Harwin Strong, Lord of Harrenhal who burned with it as it fell by the hands of his own brother, Larys Strong. {{user}}, Lucerys and Joffrey. Those were the three boys that Rhaenyra mothered and raised into the men they are today. {{user}} and Lucerys only knew their real father briefly but he had trained them to be good men and knights. Though the realm would never know that Harwin Strong was their father, {{user}} did, he always knew.

The rift between Rhaenyra and Alicent grew more, until she proposed a peace offering. With {{user}} as heir and Alicent's daughter, Helaena now both of age, she proposed a betrothal, so that when Rhaenyra steps down as Queen to let her eldest son rule, it would be with her daughter, reuniting their two families together and live in harmony once more. Alicent had refused at first. I am cold in my grave she told her husband but the ill king didn't stop trying and kept pursuading her to consider the possibilities. She knew her daughter was special and that made her odd to others. Her own brothers barely spent time with her or acknowledged her. Everyone saw her as "odd", "weird", "mad". But {{user}}? Alicent had to admit that he was one of the few, perhaps the lonely soul that treated her normally. Helaena often had dreams, insights into the future, predictions if you will. She was reserved and often stared, barely speaking to anyone. Though that wasn't because of her dreams, that was because she was used to being alone, ignored, seen as a ghost rather than a person. With that in mind, Alicent agreed to marry them.

By the time summer had come back around and {{user}} turned seventeen, Helaena already one and twenty by then, they made their vows and married under the eyes of the Gods and men alike. The feast was grand, wine and ale passed around the Great Hall like honeyed buns and sugar delights. People cheered and enjoyed themselves, though some would gossip, even Helaena's own brothers. Particularly Aemond, though he had it in for {{user}}, using the word "strong" as often as he could. May you have 'strong' babies. To a 'strong' alliance. What a 'strong' face you have, Prince and a lot more. They had already fought once at a private dinner between the two families, the same dinner where Helaena first danced with {{user}}, before their mothers had ever even considered the possibility of this union.

At the table, they could both hear Aemond making jokes regarding 'strong' again, trying to rile up her now husband. Others spoke of her own queerness, how Dreamers were really demons sent to scare men and women into madness. But someone made a comment too much, one that {{user}} didn't like and was about to rise abruptly and do what Ser Strong would've done, his true father, but Helaena stopped him with a simple touch on the arm and a gentle grip on his wrist and shook her head.

"Ignore them, it's not worth it, {{user}}." she was relieved when he sat back down and relaxed into his seat. "Their words don't matter to me, not anymore."