#i have to embrace the spirit of the source material and that means muppet tully naming conventions have to be in here somewhere

[wakeofvultures]

The Introduction of the fanfiction I am working on called Neither Snake nor Dragon on AO3

Most of the chapters won’t be completely fake history chapters, like there will be normal prose but not in this first one.

I also would not say my writing is romance-centric, but it will include Helaena x OC and kind of(?) Aemond x OC (is it romantic to pine after one bestie and marry the other one? Are OC and Aemond in a QPR? Find out with the author as she desperately tries to write during a very busy time in her life.)

1. Introduction

(Beware spoilers for HOTD and Fire and Blood)

Excerpt from the “Introduction” of Alysanne Tayne’s Neither Snake nor Dragon: A Biography of Elayne Tully

Lady Elayne Tully has recently been the subject of much debate. In fact, prior to the last few years, many scholars believed mentions of her in histories and literature during King Aegon II’s brief rule to be complete apocryphal invention. Many theorized that her character was meant to help the king’s brother, the late Prince Aemond Targaryen’s memory garner sympathy from the Riverlands and those that still dared openly decry him as kinslayer. 

Funnily enough, many of the tales of Aemond Targaryen were often cited in dismissing the existence of the Lady Elayne. The story of Prince Aemond  supposedly choosing a wife among Lord Borros Baratheon’s daughters, the Four Storms, being the most common event used to discount the possibility of his marriage to a Tully daughter before and during the Dance. 

With the recent turn in academic research, however, much attention has been turned towards the often overlooked writings of women. Recent scholarly investigations into the writings of Queen Alicent Hightower during her final years after the Dance provide definitive proof of the Lady Elayne’s existence and her marriage to Prince Aemond. These discoveries fueled the investigations into Lady Elayne’s life leading to the most basic biographical facts:

Elayne was born in 111 AC when her brother, Elmo Tully was already eleven years old. 

Three years later, their parents died, and the siblings were left to be raised by their grandfather, Lord Grover Tully, the current Lord of Riverrun and Lord Paramount of the Trident.

In 118 AC, at the age of seven, she was sent by her grandfather to King’s Landing to serve as a companion to the Princess Helaena who was two years her senior. 

Elayne Tully grew close to the princess, and seven years after her arrival to King’s Landing, Elayne Tully found herself betrothed to Helaena’s younger brother, Prince Aemond. 

In 128 AC, Elayne and Aemond were married in the Royal Sept. 

A year later, the civil war known today as the Dance of Dragons officially began, the next year, Elayne Tully was dead, and two years after that, Elayne Tully disappears from all known historical record, except the writings of Dowager Queen Alicent Hightower.

Now, before we embark on the main body of this book, the author recognizes that due to the Dance of Dragons’ status as a well-worn subject among historians, many of the ideas presented in this book may feel as if the author is calling into question indisputable fact. This author would like to remind her readers of the persistence of bias even in today’s histories. 

Historians must often times find something to pontificate about and aggrandize. The glory of the Dance of Dragons was in its battles, and there are countless histories detailing the blood, guts, and strategies of these engagements, an area most commonly dominated by men, particularly on the side of the Greens. The backroom deals and politics of the ordeal have often been shrouded in mystery and have therefore become the realm of invention and fiction. The Elayne Tully that this book presents is preserved in the outskirts of both these realms. She is an Elayne Tully that might have been and at times, even fragments of the Elayne Tully that was, but herein lies the ultimate tragedy of the past is that writing, then or now, can never capture the whole truth. It is with cold acceptance that scholars must accept that there is somethings that we will never know, and yet it is the author’s greatest hope that in the coming years more will be unearthed about the Lady Elayne, even at the expense of rendering this little book obsolete.