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thundersnowstorm · 5 years

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Anonymous asked: I loved your RobbxRhaenys fic! How do you think the pairing would work if Rhaegar had won? Is he a ward like Theon, is she a bastard? Do they hate each other?

(posted as a regular text post bc tumblr fucked up and i lost the original ask)

ahh nonny thank you so much!!

i actually have a whole rhaegar wins au planned out in my head (maybe i’ll write some of it at some point, first i gotta finish the crownless fic follow-up oneshot). but here’s a general run down of how robb x rhaenys might play out in this world.

under the cut since this turned out wayy longer than expected

basic premise: rhaegar kills robert at the trident and wins the war. meanwhile in king’s landing, jaime still kills aerys when his madness gets too much, or when he reveals the caches of wildfire. tywin stays carefully neutral throughout the war. upon returning to the city, rhaegar is crowned king. lyanna still dies in childbirth.

rhaenys and aegon are legitimate. show canon and i do not get along lmao. jon, the semi-acknowledged bastard of the king, is taken to winterfell to be raised because elia is not risking another blackfyre rebellion, and ned wants lyanna’s kid to be raised in her home. rhaegar is just guilt-striken enough over lyanna’s death to allow it.

jon visits king’s landing on occasion as he gets older. he and rhaegar have a weird relationship (there’s a lot of angst there, a lot of unresolved issues). jon and aegon do get along though, which everyone is secretly relieved about. it takes rhaenys longer to warm up to jon. she remembers the rebellion, she remembers how hurt her mother was when rhaegar dropped everything for lyanna. rhaenys has never quite forgiven rhaegar. eventually, with encouragement from aegon, she strikes up a tentative friendship with jon.

with lyanna, brandon and rickard dead, house stark has suffered enough and rhaegar lets them go without asking them for much more. however, robb is asked (ordered) to visit king’s landing when he gets older. everyone has suddenly realized that house stark is a much bigger power than previously thought, and it’s a good idea for the iron throne to stay on good terms with the future warden of the north.

(by contrast, jon arryn is sent to the wall at the end of the rebellion. he didn’t have the advantage of being related to the new king’s dead lover to save him. the vale is passed down to harry hardying with one of the lords acting as regent. in the stormlands, stannis bends the knee and becomes lord. he marries cersei and it is the single most entertaining marriage in westeros.)

still, despite all the work queen elia and jon connington and the rest of the small council put into repairing relations with the north, they remain very frosty. ned certainly never forgives rhaegar. he’s not about to go to war again, but he’s also never going to step foot in king’s landing again. robb grows up with a distinctly antagonistic view of the iron throne, and the belief that it’s better for the north to keep to itself and stay out of politics of the realm. still, his childhood is more or less the same as it was in canon.

rhaenys is a force to be reckoned with at court. she grew up at her mother’s elbow, learning the nuts and bolts of ruling, how everything happens behind the scenes. oberyn taught her how to fight with a dagger (same as in crownless), as well as a few tricks to suss out people’s secrets. when she visits dorne, she watches doran, compares his style of ruling to her mother’s, to her father’s. if westeros had absolute primogeniture, rhaenys would make a formidable queen. as it is, she is aegon’s number one pick for hand for when he eventually takes the throne, scandal be damned.

her circle of friends is certainly an interesting mix. myrcella baratheon (a bit older and an actual baratheon this time) and margaery tyrell are conventional ladies in waiting, but they’re also both vying for aegon’s hand. meanwhile the sand snakes are the terror of the court and oberyn thinks it’s hilarious. rhaenys thinks tyene should stop pretending to poison mace tyrell. when arianne visits - well, things can get interesting. no one can quite tell if tyrion lannister and princess rhaenys hate each other or not, but their debates are certainly fun to watch.

(hmm, maybe theon also ends up in king’s landing. robert trusted ned to watch over him in winterfell but rhaegar and ned have a very different relationship. idk where i’m going with this train of thought, but it would certainly add a new dynamic to rhaenys’s little court.)

rhaenys is not betrothed. it’s unusual, and people have started to comment on it. she is one and twenty and the most eligible woman in the land. there’s quite a bit of interest for her hand, but elia has decided that rhaenys will have a say in her marriage, and rhaegar oscillates between not caring much about the matter and toying with the idea of marrying her to aegon, in the old tradition. rhaenys has told him that if he even tries to marry them, she will elope with the first man she can find and wouldn’t that be quite the scandal? so rhaenys remains unmarried.

(the biggest difference in rhaenys here from rhaenys in the crownless fic is that here, rhaenys knows power. not only was she born into power but she has grown into it as well. she will do her duty to her family and the realm, but she will not sacrifice her own happiness unless there is no other choice. as practical as she is, marriage alliances are off the table.)

this is a lot of setup to get to robb and rhaenys making out but bear with me lol.

robb goes to king’s landing shortly after turning eighteen upon request (summons) from the throne, accompanied by catelyn, sansa, and arya. it’s skirting on rude for ned not to come, but rhaegar lets it slide. he’s lyanna’s brother, and there’s a lot that rhaegar feels guilty about concerning lyanna. anyway, it’s robb’s second time in king’s landing, but the first time he’d been fourteen and rhaenys had hardly noticed him. now though, there’s a bit of “oh shit he’s hot now” before robb makes it clear he’s only here out of obligation. then rhaenys decides that there’s no reason for the two of them to interact and that is that.

(or is it, asks the author in a leading tone.)

so really, there’s no reason for robb and rhaenys to speak to each other. rhaenys is busy with a discrepancy in taxes coming from the vale, and robb is busy trying to avoid southroners at all costs. but circumstances bring them together somehow. maybe there’s a conspiracy afoot, and they have to work together to stop it. maybe rhaenys is forced to show robb around the keep. or maybe rhaenys finds the quiet of the godswood peaceful and robb keeps coming across her there.

“this isn’t a real godswood. not without a proper weirwood heart tree, like the ones in the north.” “mayhaps you can show me a proper godswood someday, my lord.”

really, they have nothing in common, there’s nothing they should have to talk about, but rhaenys finds robb’s frank honesty refreshing after all the double talk at court, and robb thinks she’s probably the cleverest woman he knows. somewhere along the line they become each other’s refuge from all the politics and mistrust of king’s landing.

there’s a feast one day, celebrating some important occasion or whatnot. and there’s dancing and mead, and rhaenys can’t remember the last time she had this much fun. she and robb slip away into the gardens to cool off in the night air and well. rhaenys will blame it on a few too many cups of dornish red but robb’s lips fit perfectly against hers and he tastes like cinammon.

robb panics. this is the princess he is kissing, daughter of the king who brought so much pain upon his family. gods this is jon’s sister, and robb’s father always told him to behave honorably towards women and the thoughts he’s having are certainly not honorable. so robb runs.

rhaenys is furious. well, really she’s embarrassed but anger is easier. for the next week or so she is a nightmare to be around. not that she’d admit to anyone that she’s in a bad mood. meanwhile, robb is moping and hiding from everyone and probably spending most of his time sparring.

jon, who isn’t blind and is absolutely done with them, practically forces robb to talk to rhaenys. he doesn’t care what happened, he just wants the two of them to get over themselves and stop being so insufferable. also rhaenys made one of the goldcloaks cry and no one quite knows how that happened.

so they talk. and robb apologizes for kissing her, which rhaenys is quick to tell him is absolutely ridiculous, she’s the one who initiated it and besides, it was just a kiss.

well, that one kiss turns into quite a few more.

there aren’t really words for what they are to each other. if she were anyone else, robb would probably ask for her hand, but she’s the princess of the realm, not some petty lord’s daughter. and rhaenys doesn’t want to think about putting a label on them, because that would mean thinking about how the two of them fit in the future. and since they aren’t betrothed and king’s landing isn’t dorne, no one can know about their…. whatever.

then rhaegar starts bringing up the subject of rhaenys’s betrothal again. aegon isn’t on the table, since he and margaery tyrell are all but promised to each other at last, but perhaps willas tyrell would do, or maybe harry hardyng in the vale. lady paramount is a perfectly acceptable role for the sister to the future king.

(robb isn’t mentioned as an option. he might be of the right status, but relations between ned and rhaegar are still quite frosty, and the realm still doesn’t quite see the north as equal to the southern kingdoms.)

rhaenys knows, intellectually, that she must marry someday. and really, willas tyrell and harry hardyng are just suggestions. she could always look for a second son for a husband, so she could stay in king’s landing. but she doesn’t want to marry a stranger, and she doesn’t want to leave the city, and the only person she can think of is her cousin quentyn, and arianne would kill her if she married quent.

robb learns about the discussions for rhaenys’s hand from rumors floating around the court. and really, he shouldn’t care who rhaenys marries, it’s not like they’re anything more than good friends who kiss sometimes. or at least, that’s what he tries to tell himself.

he’s not very good at convincing himself.

“marry me,” robb blurts out. rhaenys stops dead in her tracks. “what?”

rhaenys says no. winterfell is about as far as it gets from king’s landing, and she does not wish to be sent away to a frozen wasteland where she knows close to nobody. there is so much she can do at court, so much change she could help affect, and she cannot do that in the north.

she explains this all to robb and he shrugs. “we could stay in the south.”

rhaenys is not often surprised. this makes it twice today that she has been struck speechless.

robb does not like court, as she is quick to remind him.

“no, but i like you.”

they talk late into the night. the sun is starting to peek out behind the treeline when rhaenys says yes.

(the issue was not that she did not wish to marry robb. quite the opposite. but if she is to be a part of the politics of realm, she cannot do so effectively in winterfell all the time. so they talk, and debate, and eventually a plan is drawn up for where they will reside.)

of course, this is all dependent on rhaegar and ned accepting. robb’s time in king’s landing is drawing to a close, and so he returns to winterfell to ask for his father’s permission. rhaenys goes to talk to rhaegar and elia.

rhaegar is surprised, to say the least. elia, who has been quietly watching her daughter’s flirtation-turned-courtship for the past months, is not. in the end, the discussion is rather short. robb stark is heir to one of the great houses, and the iron throne desperately needs better relations with the north. there’s little to oppose.

ned, on the other hand, is more reluctant to bind the starks to the royal family so officially. he loves his nephew dearly, but he cannot forget the circumstances under which jon was born. but robb seems to care for this southron princess, and catelyn is right, they cannot try to stay out of southron politics forever.

robb and rhaenys are married in the godswood at riverrun, halfway between their families’ castles. for the wedding of a royal princess and the heir to the north, it’s a surprisingly lowkey affair. but robb hardly notices much other than rhaenys, resplendent in dornish silks, and rhaenys for once lets herself forget about the politics and the future, and just lets robb lead her around in a sloppy rendition of the bear and the maiden fair.

(robb is not a great dancer, but he is definitely an enthusiastic one. rhaenys thinks it’s charming.)

it isn’t easy all the time. splitting time between winterfell and king’s landing means endless amounts of travelling, and they aren’t always in the same kingdom together. there are fights, and long nights working, and sometimes the politics at court get to be too much for both of them, but for all their differences, robb and rhaenys love each other. and maybe that’s all that’s needed.

god this got long, and this is really only a sketch of what that scenario would look like. maybe i’ll write a proper fic for this universe sometime, we’ll see.

thanks again anon!

#rhaenys targaryen #robb stark #asoiaf au #asks #anonymous #asoiaf #sara writes stuff #asoiafrare #robb x rhaenys #my headcanons

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