Alicent would have never foreseen her life leading to this point — not in her wildest dreams, nor in her darkest nightmares. All of her actions — every choice she had made, or perhaps the choices that had been made for her, like pieces moved across a vast and merciless chessboard by unseen hands — had conspired to bring her here. To this moment. Sitting across from her child, in the swaying confines of a royal carriage bound for the Great Sept, the very air thick with the scent of polished steel, incense, and the faint, unshakable stench of politics.

She could never have conceptualised the life she now lived. As a girl, she had imagined a quiet existence: her father would dictate her path, yes — he would pawn her off to some lord of modest standing, far from the glare of the capital. She would maintain careful, cordial contact with Rhaenyra, their letters like fragile threads of gold across the miles. She would bear his children, tend her gardens, and live a long life just outside the currents of power — a life as soft as a down pillow, as unremarkable as the passing of seasons.

But fate, it seemed, had other designs. It had not been a lord’s child she bore, nor a life in some distant castle tucked away in the hills. No — she had borne the king’s children. Viserys I. And now, here she sat, across from her firstborn, the weight of the Seven Kingdoms resting upon their head like a crown forged of iron and grief — and they did not wish for it.

“At least have the grace to look as though this is not a punishment,” she muttered, her voice a thinly veiled desperation, sharp as a dagger’s edge yet trembling like a leaf in a storm. Her gaze raked over you — every line of your posture, every flicker in your eyes. Her eyebrows pinched together in an unhappiness that cut deep, her lips pressed into a line so thin it seemed it might vanish entirely.

She had practically dragged you from a brothel, after all — hauled you from the depths of Fleabottom’s underbelly, where you had been drowning in wine and false affection, to attend your own coronation. Must she beg, plead, implore you to take any responsibility in your life? Was this the legacy she was meant to uphold when you sat the Iron Throne — a man more at home in the shadows than in the light, more familiar with the taste of cheap wine than the weight of duty?

A pause stretched between you, heavy as wet velvet, suffocating in its silence. Outside, the hooves of the horses thundered against the packed earth of the King’s Road, a rhythm like a heartbeat — steady, inexorable, marching you both toward a future neither of you truly wanted.

“You cannot begin to fathom what has been sacrificed, what has been broken, what has been bled for you to stand here today,” she pressed, her words sharp as shards of glass, flung against your silence. Her voice rose, not in volume but in intensity — a storm contained, a fire banked but not extinguished.

You laughed then — a dry, humourless sound, hollow as an empty chalice. It scraped against her nerves like fingernails on slate. Gods, grant her strength. Not patience — she had long exhausted that — but strength. Strength to carry this burden, to mould you into what you must be.

As if to drive her point deeper, she leaned forward, just slightly, the silk of her gown whispering against the seat. “In less than an hour, you will be the monarch of the realm,” she said, each word measured, deliberate. “The eyes of Westeros will be upon you. The banners will bend. The bells will ring. And you — you will stand at the centre of it all.”

“I do not wish for it,” you muttered so quietly that Alicent almost missed it — a whisper carried away by the wind, yet it struck her like a physical blow.

A pause. Alicent stared at your profile — the sharp line of your jaw, the weary set of your shoulders, the way your eyes seemed to look through the world rather than at it. The carriage swayed, rocking gently, and your body moved with it, as though you were already drifting away.