Chapter Text
The news of Daeron's betrothal was a genuine shock. An unpleasant surprise could be soothed by wine and whores, same as most other unpleasant things (save one, where they became less effective the longer he indulged), but what he felt upon being told that Maekar had arranged a bride for him was gods-honest bafflement. He couldn't react any sort of way, good or bad, because he didn't understand how such a thing had happened.
As most things that happened to their lowly end of the family, it was a strategy of King Daeron's. Brenn Marsh, heir to a house of not crannogmen, just swampy northerners, had rescued Aemon from a runaway horse. There was a debt to be settled there, and after consulting with his lord father it was decided that the Targaryens should put forth a groom for Marsh's eldest daughter, Jedys. Maekar handed him a small portrait of the girl, which he took as if he'd been handed an alien fruit he wasn't quite sure how to eat, his father's face grim. It would have been perfectly acceptable for the royal family to throw them some middling heir to wherever, a vassal, a third cousin whose hair was so dark they hardly counted.
King Daeron had only briefly consulted Prince Baelor before putting forth Daeron.
Targaryen Dreamers...—if Daeron could comfort himself at all about his lot, and he couldn't, it was because he was hardly the first of his line to suffer the dragon dreams or whatever form of whimsical madness happened to take them every now and again (he had spent enough time around the smallfolk to suspect the sisterfucking, although which product of generations of sisterfuckers liked to dwell on it?). A little under a hundred years earlier there had been Haelena Targaryen, married to her brother Aegon. Aegon the Conquerer had had at least one, and he wed both his sisters. Daenys Targaryen had forseen the fall of Valyria, and she'd been married to her brother Gaemon.
Dreamers, madmen...they didn't leave the Targaryen marriage pool. There was too much at stake to begin agreeing with the smallfolk that perhaps the inbreeding was slowly making their line unviable. They—the king's sons and grandchildren—were playing a very delicate game. Dilute the blood and suddenly you had brunettes like Uncle Baelor and Valarr, so every Stark, Baratheon, Tully, and Lannister thought that they had as much a right to the throne as the Targaryens. Keep each other too close, and you risked alienating them. King Daeron and Maekar had married Dornish women. Uncle Baelor and Uncle Aerys had married women from the Stormlands. Rhaegar had married a woman from the Vale.
His cousins and siblings, then, had been course correction. Aerion was betrothed to their cousin, Rhaegar's daughter—generally the sort of inter-house marriage nobody minded. Aelor and Aelora, Daenora's twin siblings, were to be wed to each other, and they toyed with marrying Egg to Daella, both of which were outright incest the likes of which made the smallfolk uneasy. The exceptions had been Valarr and Daeron, both too old for Rhae.
What went unsaid, of course, was that neither of them were the picture of Targaryen purity anyway. Valarr may have been a brunette, but Daeron was worse: Daeron was mad on top of having darker hair than Aerion. Aerion could at least serve the house by dropping silver-blonde babies back into the line—Daeron just had to not make things any worse for himself.
What noble house was safe enough to hand a mad son to, one that didn't even look particularly Targaryen? Which Baratheon would keep their mouth shut? Which Martell wouldn't take offence to one of their daughters being sold to a drunk who wasn't even close enough in line to the throne to be standing in the doorway, who shrieked and thrashed in his sleep and lost time by the hour?
House Marsh, apparently, was the solution: a family so honoured by their minor inclusion in the royal family that they could hardly argue when they ended up with the three-legged dog of the dynasty.
"You agreed to this?" was the first coherent thing he was able to say, his eyes glazing over the picture of the bride and taking in no detail. It may as well have been a picture of a tree or the shoreline.
"The king and Balor agreed," Maekar said, which meant no. "It was my debt to pay," he added, which meant your grandfather can tell I can't handle you animals without Dyanna, and "The boy saved Aemon's life," which meant there were worse ways we could have gotten to this point.
"I-I..." he began haltingly, then winced. "Father, what am I supposed to do?"
Maekar looked briefly annoyed, but it was overtaken by an exhaustion. "Well don't play coy, boy. I know you know where to stick it."
He bleated out a laugh, not amused so much as just instinctively responding to the joke. "This is going to be a disaster," he nearly mouthed, pressing his hands to his head as another gut-laugh wrenched out of his body. "I can't do this."
"If I give you advice, will you listen?" Maekar asked shortly, and Daeron dropped into a nearby chair, hiccupping with involuntary laughter. Everyone was going to find out what was wrong with him. Being a drunk was ignoble, but it wasn't an unusual thing for a man to be. Saying strange things while drunk kept the nobility from wondering what the fuck was wrong with him.
"Oh, I would love to hear how you think I'll be able to unfuck this disaster," he laughed, his eyes suddenly wet. He was being thrown to the wolves. First it was Aemon, now him, because he was a failure of an heir whose hair was too dark and wasn't as clever or useful as Valarr to make up for it.
"Something happens when you get married," Maekar began, ignoring his clear distress. "I married your mother for love, and you'll marry this girl for duty, but it happens in both cases: you become responsible for a person who relies on you for everything." Was that meant to be comforting? "She may not want to. She'll almost certainly be fucking better suited to handle your duties, but you were born with a cock and so it's you. You have to become the sort of person she can rely on, because she's fucked if you don't."
He felt like vomiting, worse now that he was being saddled with a puppy who could hate him. "Father, the vaguery is exhausting. Speak plainly."
Maker nodded a few times, then leaned forward. "The entire time she's in King's Landing, people will be watching her—a maiden from the low north with nearly foreign manners and taste—and waiting for her to do something wrong so that they can try to place their girls back in line. If you can't fuck her on your wedding night because you're too drunk, people will think less of her, and her place in the marriage is uncertain. If you don't fuck her enough, with enough witnesses, the legitimacy of your heirs is in question—something that can disgrace her even if it isn't true, and between the two of you I wouldn't count on your children popping out looking like Aegon the Conqueror even if they are legitimate. The only person she'll know once her family goes home is you. You can run off to drink and fuck whenever you please, but she can only go with your leave. Your mother felt the same pressure—women, whether we love them, hate them, or simply don't know them, are trapped with us."
Daeron had been wryly thinking that it was like being saddled with a child before the sex even happened, until he'd mentioned his mother. He was no stranger to indignity; it was a close and constant companion in his life, far more reliable than its opposite and one of the few things attainable by all regardless of their birth. He earned it. He revelled in it. He wondered at it being thrust upon him because of his proximity to a stranger: at having all the freedom of a child, but in an adult's body with an adult's mind that chafed against it.
"People will say that wives make their husbands men, but that's bullshit. Some men could have a harem of wives and still be utter fuckwits, and some are men well before they ever meet the women they'll marry. She will not cure you; it's possible she doesn't have the experience to even understand the drink let alone the dreams. The hard truth is that by marrying her, you are becoming the world in which she lives: the least you could do for this woman who has no other choice is to pretend it's a pleasant one."
He looked back down at the portrait, still unable to see much more than vague impressions: dark hair, green dress, pale skin, nothing that mattered. Nothing that told him anything. He looked up again and Maekar was gone, the light in the room having fled; he'd lost hours again. He didn't know if his father had tried to say anything more before he left and found Daeron unresponsive, or if he'd just left after making his point.
He wondered what Jedys Marsh would think of her new world occasionally flickering like a wet candle.