Fire on Fire||an ASOIAF fanfiction

Prologue

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE CENTURY FROM THE TARGARYEN RESTORATION TO THE SECOND DANCE

When Daenerys Targaryen died, only two years after her conquest of the King's Landing, most of the realm rejoiced.
They had not trusted her, a stranger come from Essos to invade their lands with armies of slaves and brutes and dragons, and they had not loved her.
But they had loved Aemon—or Jon Snow, as he had been known for most of his life at that point—, her nephew and husband, hero of the Long Night, Azor Ahai reborn.
After the plot that assassinated the queen, of which the culprits were never found, the lords and the common people acclaimed him as king Aemon I.
He was the beloved prince Rhaegar's son, just and brave, and he was a man. A feat, that last one, which his only child by Daenerys was unable to accomplish.
Though reluctant, the prince had known duty. He knew that, for the the stability of the realm, he must accept the crown.
Again for duty—duty is the death of love, he used to say—he wed again.
His young daughter Rhaena was soon set aside in favor of the son borne by his second wife, Princess Arianne Martell.

From the prince Aegon and his descendants, House Targaryen would grow.
Princess Rhaena, born to be queen by right of her mother's claim, was given to the fate of all women: at the age of six-and-ten, she was wed to Lord Edmund Baratheon, four years her elder.
And despite it all, she found herself content as lady of Storm's End and mother, and had no wish to challenge her brother whom she loved well—almost too well, according to some accounts.
But her claim had not gone forgotten.
Not by her lord husband and his vassals, and not by her eldest son.

Orys Baratheon, heir to Storm's End, despite his name felt closer affinity to his mother's House than his father's.
He took to the skies at age four-and-ten, on a dragon whose egg had hatched into his crib as per Targaryen tradition.
By eight-and-ten, he has set his eyes on marrying his own sister Daena. The wedding was permitted by his grandsire himself, legitimizing Orys to think himself a true Targaryen heir.
And he did style himself as one: to Lord Edmund's discontent, he called himself prince Orys Targaryen, son of the princess of Dragonstone. Again, king Aemon granted him the right to the name, though not that to the title.
Rhaena herself rejected the title that was rightfully her half brother's, but her son was ambitious.
Manhood only increased that aspect of his personality: when the princess fell from the stairs and cracked open her skull, some whispered that it had been Orys to stage the accident. But the rumors were never proven, for by all accounts he had loved his mother, and he wept with his siblings at the funeral.

What resulted, wherever the truth may lie, remains unchanged: the claim to the Iron Throne through queen Daenerys's line passed to him, and Orys would take advantage of it.
He wed his only daughter, Rhae Targaryen, to his brother Viserys according to Valyrian tradition and proclaimed that their children should take the Targaryen name (a proposition that was well received by Viserys himself, feeding into the rumor that he and his twin sister Daena were actually the product of an affair between princess Rhaena and prince Aegon*).

By the time the king himself passed away, Orys was five-and-thirty and his closest kin possessed three grown dragons (ridden by himself, Viserys and Rhae) and four hatchlings (one for each of Viserys and Rhae's children).
It was then that he declared himself the rightful heir to the Iron Throne, as the firstborn of both a regrant queen's and king's firstborn.
The war was brutal and bloody—the maesters would later call it a second Dance of Dragons—but was eventually put to an end when a pact was reached, in order to avoid the complete destructions that a war of dragons was known to bring: to king Aegon VI and his line would go Dorne, the Crownlands, the Riverlands, the Vale and the North; Orys and his heirs took possession of the Stormlands, the Reach, the Westerlands and Dragonstone (from where they would rule).
Henceforth Orys became known as the King on Dragonstone, Orys I of the Houses Targaryen and Baratheon.
His heir was his daughter, chosen over his brother in virtue of the absolute primogeniture based on which the king himself had claimed the throne.
However, it is said that this was also done to prevent prince Viserys from ascending to the throne merely because of a dislike Orys bore towards him (attributed by some to the fact that Orys saw him as competition, for Viserys was a rumored son of Aegon VI, in which case he would have been more Targaryen than Orys himself was).
Regardless of the truth, the royal decree stated that to Orys and Rhae would follow her first child by Viserys: a son named Aemon, who would tie the lines and secure House Targaryen-Baratheon's uncontested power over their dominion once and for all.
But threats to the realm's peace are rapidly approaching from the least suspectable places, and sometimes it only takes one spark to light a fire.

*Note that the rumor of an affair between princess Rhaena Targaryen and her half brother Aegon, younger than her by a year, was founded on the evident closeness of the siblings and the extreme likeness that Rhaena's twins (Viserys and Daena Baratheon) bore to their mother's side of the family rather than their father (a Baratheon)'s. They had in fact inherited the silver hair and violet eyes of the Targaryens, rather than the Baratheon black hair of their father Edmund and brother Orys.