#the caswell dynasty

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

1968 [Chapter 6: Athena, Goddess Of Wisdom]

Series Summary: Aemond is embroiled in a fierce battle to secure the Democratic Party nomination and defeat his archnemesis, Richard Nixon, in the presidential election. You are his wife of two years and wholeheartedly indoctrinated into the Targaryen political dynasty. But you have an archnemesis of your own: Aemond’s chronically delinquent brother Aegon.

Series Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, character deaths, New Jersey, age-gap relationships, drinking, smoking, drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, kids with weird Greek names, historical topics including war and discrimination, math.

Word Count: 5.2k

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Here at the midway point in our journey—like Dante stumbling upon the gates of the Inferno—would it be the right moment to review what’s at stake? Let’s begin.

It’s the end of August. The delegates of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago officially vote to name Aemond the party’s presidential candidate. His ascension is aided by 10,000 antiwar demonstrators who flood into the city and threaten to set it ablaze if Hubert Humphrey is chosen instead. At the end—in his death rattle—Humphrey begs to be Aemond’s running mate, one last humiliation he cannot resist. Humphrey is denied. Eugene McCarthy, dignity intact, boards a commercial flight to his home state of Minnesota without looking back.

Aemond selects U.S. Ambassador to France, Sargent Shriver, to be his vice president. Shriver is a Kennedy by marriage—his wife, JFK’s younger sister Eunice, just founded the Special Olympics—and has previously headed the Office of Economic Opportunity, the Peace Corps, and the Chicago Board of Education. He also served as the architect of the president’s “War on Poverty” before distancing himself from the imploding Johnson administration. Shriver is not a concession to fence-sitting moderates or Southern Dixiecrats, but an embodiment of Aemond’s commitment to unapologetic progressivism. Richard Nixon spends the weekend campaigning in his native California, a gold vein of votes like the mines settlers rushed to in 1848. George Wallace announces that he will run as an Independent. Racists everywhere rejoice.

Phase III of the Tet Offensive is underway in Vietnam; 700 American soldiers have been killed this month alone. Riots break out in military prisons where the U.S. Army is keeping their deserters. The North Vietnamese refuse to allow Pope Paul VI to visit Hanoi on a peace mission. President Johnson calls both Aemond and Nixon to personally inform them of this latest evidence of the communists’ unwillingness to negotiate in good faith. Daeron and John McCain remain in Hỏa Lò Prison. The draft swallows men like the titan Cronus devoured his own children.

In Eastern Europe, the Russians are crushing pro-democracy protests in the largest military operation since World War II as half a million troops roll into Czechoslovakia. In Caswell County, North Carolina, the last remaining segregated school district in the nation is ordered by a federal judge to integrate after years of stalling. On the Fangataufa Atoll in the South Pacific, France becomes the fifth nation to successfully explode a hydrogen bomb. In Mexico City, 300,000 students gather to protest the authoritarian regime of President Diaz Ordaz. In Guatemala, American ambassador John Gordon Mein is murdered by a Marxist guerilla organization called the Rebel Armed Forces. In Columbus, Ohio, nine guards are held hostage during a prison riot; after 30 hours, they’re rescued by a SWAT team.

The latest issue of Life magazine brings worldwide attention to catastrophic industrial pollution in the Great Lakes. The first successful multiorgan transplant is carried out at Houston Methodist Hospital. The Beatles release Hey Jude, the best-selling single of 1968 in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Canada. NASA’s Apollo lunar landing program plans to launch a crewed shuttle next year, just in time to fulfill John F. Kennedy’s 1962 promise to put a man on the moon “before the end of the decade.” If this is successful, the United States will win the Space Race and prove the superiority of capitalism. If it fails, the martyred astronauts will join all the other ghosts of this apocalyptic age, an epoch born under bad stars.

The night sky glows with the ancient debris of the Aurigid meteor shower. From down here on Earth, Jupiter is a radiant white gleam, visible with the naked eye and admired since humans were making cave paintings and Stonehenge. But Io is a mystery. With a telescope, she becomes a dust mote entrapped by Jupiter’s gravity; to the casual observer, she doesn’t exist at all.

~~~~~~~~~~

What was it like, that very first time? It’s strange to remember. You’re both different people now.

It’s May, 1966. You and Aemond are engaged, due to be married in three short weeks, and if you get pregnant then it’s no harm, no foul. In reality, it will end up taking you over a year to conceive, but no one knows that yet; you are living in the liminal space between what you imagine your life will be and the cold blade of the truth. Aemond has brought you to Asteria for the weekend, an increasingly common occurrence. The Targaryens—minus one, that holdout prodigal son, always glowering from behind swigs of rum and clouds of smoke—have already begun to treat you like a member of the family. The flock of Alopekis yap excitedly and lick your shins. Eudoxia learns your favorite snacks so she can have them ready when you arrive.

One night Aemond takes your hand and leads you to Helaena’s garden, darkness turned to twilight in the artificial luminance of the main house. You can hear distant voices, chatter and laughter, and the Beatles’ Rubber Soul spinning on the record player in the living room like a black hole, gravity that not even light can escape when it is wrenched over the event horizon.

You’re giggling as Aemond pulls you along, faster and faster, weaving through pathways lined with roses and sunflowers and butterfly bushes. Your high heels sink into soft, fertile earth; the air in your lungs is cool and infinite. “Where are we going?”

And Aemond grins back at you as he replies: “To Olympus.”

In the circle of hedges guarded by thirteen gods of stone, Aemond unzips your modest pink sundress and slips your heels off your feet, kneeling like he’s proposing to you again. When you are bare and secretless, he draws you down onto the grass and opens you, claims you, fills you to the brim as the crystalline water of the fountain patters and Zeus hurls his lightning bolts, an eternal storm, unending war. It’s intense in a way it never was with your first boyfriend, a sweet polite boy who talked about feminist theory and followed his enlightened conscience all the way to Vietnam. This isn’t just a pleasant way to pass a Friday night, something to look forward to between differential equations textbooks and calculus proofs. With Aemond it’s a ritual; it’s something so overpowering it almost scares you.

“Aphrodite,” Aemond murmurs against your throat, and when you try to get on top he stops you, pins you to the ground, thrusts hard and deep, and you try not to moan too loudly as you surrender, his weight on you like a prophesy. This is how he wants you. This is where you belong.

Has someone ever stitched you to their side, pushing the needle through your skin again and again as the fabric latticework takes shape, until their blood spills into your veins and your antibodies can no longer tell the difference? He makes you think you’ve forgotten who you were before. He makes you want to believe in things the world taught you were myths.

But that was over two years ago. Now Aemond is not your spellbinding almost-stranger of a fiancé—shrouded in just the right amount of mystery—but your husband, the father of your dead child, the presidential candidate. You miss when he was a mirage. You miss what it felt like to get high on the idea of him, each taste a hit, each touch a rush of toxins to the bloodstream.

Seven weeks after your emergency c-section, you are healing. Your belly no longer aches, your bleeding stops, you can rejoin the living in this last gasp of summer. Ludwika takes you shopping and you pick out new swimsuits; you’ve gone up a size since the baby, and it shows no signs of vanishing. In the fitting room, Ludwika chain-smokes Camel cigarettes and claps when you show her each outfit, ordering you to spin around, telling you that there’s nothing like Oleg Cassini back in Poland. You plan to buy three swimsuits. Ludwika insists you get five. She pays with Otto’s American Express.

That afternoon at home in your blue bedroom, you get changed to join the rest of the family down by the pool, your first swim since Ari was born. You choose Ludwika’s favorite: a dreamy turquoise two-piece with flowing transparent fabric that drapes your midsection. You can still see the dark vertical line of where the doctors stitched you closed. Now you and Aemond match; he got his scar on the floor of the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, you earned yours at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. There are gold chains on your wrist and looped around your neck. Warm sunlight and ocean wind pours in through the open windows.

Aemond appears in the doorway and you turn to show him, proud of how you’ve pulled yourself together, how this past year hasn’t put you in an asylum. His right eye catches on your scar and stays there for a long time. Then at last he says: “You don’t have something else to wear?”

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s Labor Day, and Asteria has been descended upon by guests invited to celebrate Aemond’s nomination. The dining room table is overflowing with champagne, Agiorgitiko wine, platters of mini spanakopitas, lamb gyros, pita bread with hummus and tzatziki, feta cheese and cured meats, grilled octopus, baklava, and kourabiethes. Eudoxia is rushing around sweeping up crumbs and shooing tipsy visitors away from antique vases shipped here from Greece. Aemond’s celebrity endorsers include Sammy Davis Jr., Sonny and Cher, Andy Williams, Bobby Darin, Warren Beatty, Shirley MacLaine, Claudine Longet, and a number of politicians; but the most notable attendee is President Lyndon Baines Johnson, shadowed by Secret Service agents. He won’t be making any surprise appearances on the campaign trail for Aemond—in the present political climate, he would be more of a liability than an asset—but he has travelled to Long Beach Island tonight to offer his well-wishes. From the record player thrums Jimi Hendrix’s All Along The Watchtower.

When you finish getting ready and arrive downstairs, you spot Aegon: slouching in a velvet chair over a century old, hair shagging in his eyes, sipping something out of a chipped mug he clasps with both hands, flirting with a bubbly early-twenties campaign staffer. Aegon smiles and waves when he sees you. You wave back. And you think: When did he become the person I look for when I walk into a room?

Now Aemond is beside you in a blue suit—beaming, confident, his glass eye in place, a hand resting on your waist—and Aegon isn’t smiling anymore. He takes a gulp of what is almost certainly straight rum from his mug and returns his attention to the campaign staffer, his lady of the hour. You picture him undressing her on his shag carpet and feel disorienting, violent envy like a bullet.

Viserys is already fast asleep upstairs, but the rest of the family is out en masse to charm the invitees and pose for photographs. Alicent, Helaena, and Mimi—trying very hard to act sober, blinking too often—are chit-chatting with the other political wives. Otto is complaining about something to Criston; Criston is pretending to listen as he stares at Alicent. Ludwika is smoking her Camels and talking to several young journalists who are ogling her, enraptured. Fosco and Sargent Shriver are entertaining a group of guests with a boisterous, lighthearted debate on the merits of Italian versus French cuisine, though they agree that both are superior to Greek. The nannies have brought the eight children to be paraded around before bedtime. All Cosmo wants to do is clutch your hand and “help” you navigate around the living room, warning you not to step on the small, weaving Alopekis. When Mimi attempts to steal her youngest son away, he ignores her, and as she begins to make a scene you rebuke her with a harsh glare. Mimi retreats meekly. She has never argued with you, not once in over two years. You speak for Aemond, and Aemond is a god.

As the children are herded off to their beds by the nannies, Bobby Kennedy—presently serving as a New York senator despite residing primarily on his family’s compound in Massachusetts—approaches to congratulate Aemond. His wife Ethel is a tiny, nasally, scrappy but not terribly bright woman, five months pregnant with her eleventh child, and you have to get away from her like a hand pulled from a hot stove.

“You know, I was considering running,” Bobby says to Aemond, chuckling, good-natured. “But when I saw you get in the race, I thought better of it! Maybe I’ll give it a go in ’76, huh?”

“Hey, kid, what a tough year you’ve had,” Ethel tells you, patting your forearm. You can’t tear your eyes from her small belly. She has ten living children already. I couldn’t keep one. What kind of sense does that make? “We’re real sorry for your trouble, aren’t we, Bobby?”

Now he is nodding somberly. “We are. We sure are. We’ve been praying for you both.”

Aemond is thanking them, sounding touched but entirely collected. You manage some hurried response and then excuse yourself. Your hands are shaking as you cross the room, not really seeing it. You walk right into Lady Bird Johnson. She takes pity on you; she seems to perceive how rattled you are. “Oh Lyndon, look, it’s just who we were hoping to speak to! The next first lady of the United States. And how beautiful you are, just radiant. How do you keep your hair so perfect? That glamorous updo. You never have a single strand out of place.” Lady Bird lays a palm tenderly on your bare shoulder. She has an unusual, angular face, but a wise sort of compassion that only comes from suffering. Her husband is an unrepentant serial cheater. “I’ll make you a list of everything you need to know about the White House. All the quirks of the property, and the hidden gems too!”

“You’re so kind. We’ll see what happens in November…”

“Good evening, ma’am,” President Johnson says, smiling warmly. He’s an ugly man, but there’s something hypnotic that lives inside him and shines through his eyes like the blaze of a lighthouse. He pulls you in through the dark, through the storm; he promises you answers to questions you haven’t thought of yet. LBJ is 6’4 and known for bullying his political adversaries with the so-called “Johnson Treatment”; he leans in and makes rapid-fire demands until they forget he’s not allowed to hit them. “I have to tell you frankly, I don’t envy anyone who inherits that den of rattlesnakes in Washington D.C.”

“Lyndon, don’t frighten her,” Lady Bird scolds fondly.

“Everyone thinks they know what to do about Vietnam,” LBJ plods onwards. “But it’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t clusterfuck. If you keep fighting, they call you a murderer. But if you pull the troops out and South Vietnam falls to the communists, every single man lost was for nothing, and you think the families will stand for that? Their kid in a body bag, or his legs blown off, or his brain scrambled? There’s no easy answer. It’s a goddamn bitch of a quagmire.”

Lady Bird offers you a sympathetic smirk. Sorry about all this unpleasantness, she means. When he gets himself worked up, I can’t stop him. But you find yourself feeling sorry for President Johnson. It will be difficult for him to learn how to fade into disgraced obscurity after once being so omnipotent, so beloved. Reinvention hurts like hell: fevers raging, bones mending, healing flesh that itches so ferociously you want to claw it off.

LBJ gives Lady Bird a look, quick but meaningful. She acquiesces. This has happened a thousand times before. “It was so nice talking to you, dear,” she tells you, then crosses the living room to pay her respects to Alicent.

The president steps closer, looming, towering. The Johnson Treatment?? you think, but no; he isn’t trying to intimidate you. He’s just curious.

“Do you know what Aemond’s plan is for ‘Nam?” LBJ asks, eyes urgent, voice low. “I’m sure he has one. He’s sworn to end the draft as soon as he gets into office, but how is he going to make sure the South Vietnamese can fend off the North themselves? We’re trying to train the bastards, but if we left they’d fold in months. It would be the first war the U.S. ever lost. Does he understand that?”

“He doesn’t really discuss it with me.” That’s true; you know his policies, but only because they are a constant subject of conversation within the family, something you all breathe like oxygen.

“We can’t let Nixon win,” LBJ continues. “It’s mass suicide to leave the country in his hands. The man can’t hold his liquor anymore, getting robbed by Kennedy in ’60 broke something in him. He gets sloshed and shoves his aids around, makes up conspiracies in his head. He’s a paranoid little prick. He’ll surveille the American people. He’ll launch a nuke at Moscow.”

You honestly don’t know what he expects you to say. “I’ll pass the message along to Aemond.”

“People love you, Mrs. Targaryen.” LBJ watching you closely. “Believe it or not, they used to love me too. But I still remember how to play the game. You’re the only reason Aemond is leading the polls in Florida. You can get him other states too. Jack needed Jackie. Aemond needs you. And you’ve had tragedies, and that’s a damn shame. But don’t you miss an opportunity. You take every disappointment, every fucked up cruelty of life and find a way to make it work for you. You pin it to your chest like a goddamn medal. Every single scar makes you look more mortal to those people going to the ballot box in November. You want them to be able to see themselves in you. It helps the mansions and the millions go down smoother.”

“President Johnson!” Aegon says as he saunters over, huge mocking grin. He thumps a closed fist against the Texan’s broad chest; the Secret Service agents standing ten feet away observe this sternly. “How thoughtful of you to be here, taking time out of your busy schedule, squeezing us in between war crimes.”

“The mayor of Trenton,” LBJ jabs.

“The butcher of Saigon.”

Now the president is no longer amused. “You’ve never accomplished anything in your whole damn life, son. Your obituary will be the size of a postage stamp. I’m looking forward to reading it someday soon.” He leaves, rejoining Lady Bird at the opposite end of the room.

You frown at Aegon, disapproving. You’re dressed in a sparkling, royal blue gown that Aemond chose. “That was unnecessary.”

Aegon is wearing an ill-fitting green shirt—half the buttons undone—khaki pants, and tan moccasins. “I just did you a favor.”

“What happened to your new girlfriend? Shouldn’t she be getting railed in your basement right now? Did she have a prior commitment? Did she have a spelling test to study for? Those can be tricky, such complex words. Juvenile. Inappropriate. Infidelity.”

“You know what he brags about?” Aegon says, meaning LBJ. “That he’s fucked more women by accident than John F. Kennedy ever did on purpose.”

“That sounds…logistically challenging.”

“He’s a lech. He’s a freak. He tells everyone on Capitol Hill how big his cock is. He takes it out and swings it around during meetings.”

“And that’s all far less than admirable, but he’s not going to do something like that around me.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he’s not an idiot,” you say impatiently. “He was perfectly civil. And I was getting interesting advice.”

Aegon rolls his eyes, exasperated. “Yeah, okay, I’m sorry I crashed your cute little pep talk with Lyndon Johnson, the most hated man on the planet.”

“I guess you can’t stop Aemond from touching me, so you have to terrorize LBJ instead.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Aegon hisses, and his venom stuns you. And now you’re both trapped: you loosed the arrow, he proved you hit the mark. He’s flushing a deep, mortified red. Your guts are twisting with remorse.

“Aegon, wait, I didn’t mean—”

He whirls and storms off, shoving his way through the crowd. People glare at him as they clutch their glasses and plates, sighing in that What else do you expect from the worthless son? sort of way. You’re still gaping blankly at the place where Aegon stood when Aemond finds you, snakes a hand around the back of your neck, and whispers through the painstakingly-arranged wisps of hair that fall around your ear: “Follow me.”

It’s not a question. It’s a command. You trail him through the living room, into the foyer, and through the front door, not knowing what he wants. Outside the moon is a sliver; the light from the main house makes the stars hard to see. “Aemond, you’ll never believe the conversation I just had with LBJ. He really unloaded, I think the stress is driving him insane. I have to tell you what he said about—”

“Later.” And this is jarring; Aemond doesn’t put anything before strategy. He grabs your hand as he turns into Helaena’s garden, and only then do you understand what he wants. Instinctively, your legs lock up and your feet stop moving. Aemond tugs you onward. He wants it to be like the very first time. He intends to start over with you, the dawning of a new age in the dead of night.

Hidden in the circle of hedges, he takes your face roughly in his hands and kisses you, drinks you down like a vampire, consumes you like wildfire. But your skull echoes with panic. I don’t want him touching me. I don’t want another child with him. “Aemond…”

He doesn’t hear you, or acts like he doesn’t, or mistakes it for a murmur of desire, or chooses to believe it is. He has you down on the grass under the vengeful gaze of Zeus, the fountain splashing, the sounds of the house a low foreign drone. He yanks off your panties, but he doesn’t want you naked like he always did before. He pushes the hem of your shimmering cobalt gown up to your hips and unbuckles his trousers. And you realize as he’s touching you, as he’s easing himself into you: He doesn’t want to have to look at my scar.

You can’t ignore him, you can’t pretend it’s not happening. He’s too big for that. It’s a biting fullness that demands to be felt. So you kiss him back, and knot your fingers in his short hair like you used to, and try to remember the things you always said to him before. And when Aemond is too absorbed to notice, you look away from him, from the statue of Zeus, and peer up into the stone face of Athena instead: the goddess who never married and who knows the answer to every question.

“I love you,” Aemond says when it’s over, marveling at the slopes of your face in the dim ethereal light. “Everything will be right again soon. Everything will be perfect.”

You conjure up a smile and nod like you believe him.

“What did LBJ say?��

“Can I tell you later tonight? After the party, maybe? I just need a few minutes.”

“Of course.” And now Aemond pretends to be patient. He buckles his belt and returns to the main house, his blood coursing with the possibilities only you can make real, his skin damp with your sweat.

For a while—ten minutes, twenty minutes—you lie there on the cool grass wondering what it was like for all those mortals and nymphs, being pinned down by Zeus and then having Hera try to kill them afterwards, raising ill-fated reviled bastards they couldn’t help but love. What is heaven if the realm of the immortals is so cruel? Why does the god of justice seem so immune to it?

When at last you rise and walk back towards the house, you find Mimi at the edge of the garden. She’s on her knees and retching into a rose bush; she’s cut her face on the thorns, but she hasn’t noticed yet. She’s groaning; she seems lost.

You reach for her, gripping her bony shoulders. “Mimi, here, let’s get you upstairs…”

“No,” she blubbers, tears streaming down her scratched cheeks. “Just go away. Leave me.”

“Mimi—”

“No!” she roars, a mournful hemorrhage as she slaps your hands until you release her.

“You don’t have to be this way,” you tell her, distraught. “You can give up drinking. We’ll help you, me and Fosco and Ludwika. You can start over. You can be healthy and present again, you can live a real life.”

Mimi stares up at you, her grey eyes glassy and bloodshot but with a vicious, piercing honesty. “My husband hates me. My kids don’t know I exist. What the hell do I have to be sober for?”

You weren’t expecting this. You don’t know what to say. “We can help make the world better.”

“The world would be better without me in it.”

Then Mimi curls up on the grass under the rose bush, and stays there until you return with Fosco to drag her upstairs to her empty bed.

~~~~~~~~~~

The next afternoon, you’re lying on a lounge chair by the pool. Tomorrow the family will leave Asteria and embark upon a vigorous campaign schedule that will continue, with very few breaks, until Election Day on Tuesday, November 5th. The children are splashing and shrieking in the pool with Fosco, but you aren’t looking at them. You’re staring across the sun-drenched emerald lawn at the Atlantic Ocean. You’re envisioning all the bones and splinters of sunken ships that must litter the silt of the abyss; you’re thinking that it’s a graveyard with no headstones, no memory. Your swimsuit is a red one-piece. Your eyes are shielded by large black Ray Bans aviator sunglasses. Your gaze flicks up to the cloudless blue sky, where all the stars and planets are invisible.

Jupiter has nearly a hundred moons; the largest four were discovered by Galileo in 1610. Europa is a smooth white cosmic marble with a crust of ice, beautiful, immaculate. Ganymede, the largest moon in our solar system and the only satellite with its own magnetic field, is rumored to have a vast underground saltwater ocean that may contain life. Callisto is dark and indomitable, riddled with impact craters; because of her dynamic atmosphere and location beyond Jupiter’s radiation belts, she is considered the best location for possible future crewed missions to the Jovian system. But Io is a wasteland. She has no water and no oxygen. Her only children are 400 active volcanoes, sulfur plumes and lava flows, mountains of silicate rock higher than Mount Everest, cataclysmic earthquakes as her crust slips around on a mantle of magma. Her daily radiation levels are 36 times the lethal limit for humans. If Hades had a home in our corner of the galaxy, it would be Io. She glows ruby and gold with barren apocalyptic fury. You can feel yourself turning poisonous like she is. You can feel your skin splitting open as the lava spills out.

Aegon trots out of the house—red swim trunks, cheap red plastic sunglasses, no shirt, a beach towel slung around his neck, flip flops—and kicks your chair. “Get up. We’re going sailing.”

“I don’t want to talk to anybody.”

“Great, because I’m not asking you to talk. I’m telling you to get in my boat.”

You don’t reply. You don’t think you can without your voice cracking. Aegon crouches down beside your chair and pushes your sunglasses up into your Brigitte Bardot-inspired hair so he can see your face. Your eyes are pink, wet, desperately sad. Deep troubled grooves appear in his forehead as he studies you. Gently, wordlessly, he pats your cheek twice and lowers your sunglasses back over your eyes. Then he stands up again and offers you his hand.

“Let’s go,” Aegon says, softly this time. You take his hand and follow him down to the boathouse.

Five vessels are currently kept there. Aegon’s sailboat is a 25-foot Wianno Senior sloop, just roomy enough for a few passengers. He’s had it since long before you married into the Targaryen family. It is white with hand-painted gold accents; the name Sunfyre adorns the stern. He unmoors the boat, pushes it out into the open water, and raises the sails.

You glide eastbound over the glittering crests of waves, slowly at first, then faster as the sails catch the wind. Aegon has one hand on the rudder, the other grasping the ropes. And the farther you get from shore, the smaller Asteria seems, and the Targaryen family, and the presidential election, and the United States itself. Now all that exists is this boat: you, Aegon, the squawking gulls, the school of mackerel, the ocean. The sun beats down; the breeze rips strands of your hair free. The battery-powered record player is blasting White Room by Cream. When you are far enough from land that no journalists would be able to get a photo, Aegon takes two joints and his Zippo out of the pocket of his swim trunks. He puts both joints between his lips, lights them, and passes you one. Then he stretches out beside you on the deck, gazing up at the September sky.

You ask as your muscles unravel and your thoughts turn light and easy to share: “Why did you bring me out here?”

“So you can drown yourself,” Aegon says, and you both laugh. “Nah. I used to go sailing all the time when I was a teenager. It always made me feel better. It was the only place where I could really be alone.”

You consider the math. “Wow. You haven’t been a teenager since before I was in kindergarten.”

“It’s weird to think about. You don’t seem that young.”

“Thanks, I guess. You don’t seem that old.”

“Maybe we’re meeting in the middle.” He inhales deeply and then exhales in a rush of smoke. “What do you think, should I get an earring?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“It might shock Otto so bad it kills him.”

“I’ll get two.” And then Aegon says: “It’s not cool for you to mock me.”

You are dismayed; you didn’t mean to hurt him. “I wasn’t.”

“Yes, you were. You were mocking me. You mocked me about the receipt under my ashtray, and then you mocked me again last night. I’m up for a lot of things, but I can’t handle that. Okay?”

“Okay.” You turn your head so you can see him: shaggy blonde hair, stubble, perpetual sunburn, the softness of his belly and his chest, flesh you long to vanish into like rain through parched earth. “Aegon?”

He looks over at you. “Io?”

“I don’t want Aemond to touch me either.”

He’s surprised; not by what you feel, but because you’ve said it aloud, a treason like Prometheus giving mankind the gift of fire. “What are we gonna do about it?”

If you were the goddess of wisdom, maybe you’d know.

[drakaripykiros130ac]

“Errors were made in the hours following King Viserys’ death.”

So much said through that line alone in the teaser. It would have been more believable to have Otto’s voice trembling while saying it.

By errors, he should mean the multiple crimes the greens have committed. Kidnapping, seizure, theft and murder for starters. I mean Otto himself hanged Lord Caswell for the simple suspicion that he was leaving to warn Queen Rhaenyra of her father’s death and the usurpation.

But that’s not what Otto meant. He doesn’t give a damn and in no way acknowledges the crimes his faction committed. What he meant was that the murder of Lucerys before a war had even officially begun, would give the Blacks just cause to retaliate. And he knew perfectly well that this is the opportunity Daemon had been waiting for.

Daemon had wanted to gut him for many years, and now that there was no Viserys to stop him, Daemon would come for all the Hightowers. And what’s more, Lucerys’ murder gives the Blacks the right to shed some Hightower blood and be perfectly justified for it.

I have seen posts with people blaming Rhaenyra for Lucerys’ death (the absurdity of it!)

First of all, at the time, no official war had been declared. Rhaenyra was even considering peace terms.

Secondly, Jacaerys and Lucerys were sent as envoys, not soldiers in battle. What certain people fail to understand is that even in war, there is a code of honor to be respected. You warn the enemy in advance that you intend to declare war, for starters. Another important aspect - envoys are not soldiers! Therefore, envoys are not to be harmed. Borros Baratheon understood that, and even he tried to protect Lucerys from Aemond’s wrath.

The boy was sent as an envoy, and as such, especially when war had not yet been declared, should be given safe passage back home.

Aemond went after him on a dragon 50 times the size of Lucerys’ and directly attacked him. Lucerys was murdered in cold blood before he could reach home from his mission.

Rhaenyra did not send her sons to their deaths. They are not babies. They are teens, on dragonback, sent with messages to the great Lords of the Realm. Jacaerys is a perfect example of a successful envoy. He did his job well and secured the support of the Vale and the North (who have the most powerful armies in Westeros).

Lucerys was unlucky to find Aemond at Storm’s End. How was Rhaenyra to know that the psycho would be there or that he would dare break a code of honor, attack and murder a child sent as an envoy?

Alicent clearly didn’t instill any honor and decency in her own sons, regardless how much she preaches those two qualities. Shows what a terrible mother she is.

Did she do as Rhaenyra did before sending Aemond to Storm’s End? Did she tell him that he is to go there as an envoy and not take part in any fighting, because no war has yet been declared? Did she tell him the importance of respecting a code of honor? I doubt it. But even if she had done so, I doubt Aemond would have listened to her now. She should have raised him right when he was a child and told him a few things, like:

1. It’s not ok to hit young girls

2. It’s not ok to insult someone’s recently deceased parents!

3. Throwing the word “bastard” around is dangerous

Oh and…

4. Outright killing an envoy gives the opposing side the right to wage war and spill blood as well!!!

Alicent really is “mother of the year”, isn’t she? Maybe she could have used the time she spent rubbing her feet for Larys’ pleasure to actually educate her children.

So yeah, all the “errors” made will cost the greens greatly. It will cost their entire bloodline.

For all Daemon and Rhaenyra lost themselves, they still won and achieved what they set out to do: they eliminated the greens’ bloodline and ensured the Iron Throne for their own children and descendants for the rest of the Targaryen dynasty.

[snowbreeze64]

HOT D S2 OP Details

So the s2 opening of hot d seems to show the history of the targaryen family in the form of a tapestry (of which i am a big fan).

First we open up with a close view of the tapestry, with blood staining through it and spreading throughout it, showing how the targaryen dynasty is woven with bloodshed (fire and blood and all) and how the blood shed can't really be untangled from the legacy itself.

This first shot is of valyria. we see the massive buildings, the tall spires, and central to it is the blood running through the central tower. valyria is built on blood and sacrifice.

Next is what i believe to be some valyrian sorcerers doing sorcery shit. those candles at the bottom might be burning obsidian candles, too. as for the thing in the center, i'm not sure what it is. looks like some sort of chimera. possibly some sort of valyrian sorcery experimentation with animals. or it could be a depiction of the fourteen flames, as there appears to be fire spreading out of its back, that the blood dripping from the previous image quells.

This is a closer view of the previous tapestry. the sorcerer is doing some wack shit, and there's someone approaching them from behind with a knife. if this is a sorcerer thatt is maintaining a spell to keep the fourteen flames from erupting, then this could be a depiction of the moment of the doom itself -- one of the theories for the doom of valyria was that the sorcerers maintaining the spells around the flames were assassinated. possibly by the faceless men, who brought the gift of death to the valyrian masters.

anyway, this could be taken as a confirmation for what caused the doom of valyria, but idk. i'm more of the mind that this tapestry is supposed to show what history remembers, which is why it looks like one of those narrative tapestries. in which case, this would just be a depiction of how history thinks the doom went down.

Next we see two people, who appear to be valyrian, with dragonstone in the distance. i think this is daenys the dreamer, and it shows her vision of the doom, and she's holding a family member who would have been killed in the doom as rivers of blood flow around them. dragonstone in the distance is where the targaryens fled to after daenys shared her visions.

And in the closeup, we see blood spreading out from daenys's head, as well as golden thread. i think this is symbolic of the legacy of the targaryens that spread from this moment -- they have been motivated by dragon dreams and prophecy (the golden thread that emerges from daenys's head), which has brought bloodshed in its wake. targaryen prophecy brought about aegon's conquest (according to season 1), viserys's deathbed words (although it's arguable how much this contributed), and rhaegar's whole...thing.

The doom of valyria. volcanos erupting, dragons falling out of the sky, the same tall tower from the beginning in flames, the blood from the people sacrificed to it no longer running down its center. this is probably the closest we'll ever get to seeing the doom of valyria on screen.

In order: aegon i riding balerion, rhaenys riding meraxes, visenya rising vhagar. i can't quite see the sigils on the ships below them, but the one in the middle is probably velaryon.

This shows a lot of major battles during the conquest -- balerion and vhagar teaming up to burn the shit out of a bunch of soldiers from the reach -- there are a couple shields with the green hand of the gardeners on them. the other shield i'm not too sure about. i thought it looked like the caswell sigil, but idk. could be the lannister sigil as well, as they were one of the notable participants (participants is a strong word, they participated in dying) of the field of fire, but i don't think it's shaped like the lannister sigil.

the guy in ironborn armor with the axe who's dead in the center is harren the black, the burnt up castle behind him is harrenhal. and above it, you can see meraxes falling in a hail of scorpion bolts in the dunes of dorne.

the fire the dragons breathe is colored using the blood flowing through the tapestry -- fire and blood.

From left to right: sharra arryn and her son ronnel kneeling to vhagar, torrhen stark and edmyn tully kneeling to balerion. aegon and visenya aren't visible in this shot, but the scales of balerion and vhagar are. the targaryens are seen as synonymous to their dragons, from which they derive their power. they'd surely have a difficult time holding onto that power were the dragons to die but surely that won't happen!

The targaryen sigil over the red keep in king's landing, where aegon made his capital.

Maegor the cool, getting got on the iron throne. those are vermithor and silverwing beneath him, roaring.

Joe and alysanne, with vermithor and silverwing behind them. again, pretty much every time a targaryen ruler is shown, it's with their dragon. would be a real shame if something happened to them.

anyway, next to joe is the symbol of the faith of the seven, showing how he reconciled the targaryens with the faith, by making the argument that "targaryens are really more gods than men anyways, and so should be allowed to marry their siblings. and if you don't like it, take it up with the dragons."

there also seems to be blood emerging from the symbol of the seven, possibly showing the strife between the targaryens and the faith, something that joe was able to patch over during his time but would continue to persist in other ways. notably, the hightowers are the lords of oldtown, the center of the faith.

next to aly are gold pieces, to show how the realm was prosperous during their rule. that might also be a well next to them, to show how alysanne was responsible for wells that would bring clean water to king's landing.

The great council of 101. rld joe in the center on his chair. on his right is ryam redwine, lord commander of the kingsguard. on the left is septon barth. (or at least, those are my best guesses based on the scene from s1 that this tapestry shows). further to the right is corlys and rhaenys, pressing the claim of rhaenys('s son laenor). to the left is viserys and aemma, pressing vizzy t's claim.

and above jaehaerys is an inexplicable black dragon. considering the blackfyre rebellions happen like...60 ish years after the dance of the dragons, and an entire 80-odd years after the council.

Alicent on one side, rhaenyra on the other, their respective families between them, divided by a stripe of red that fades into black. On rhaenyra's side is daemon, rhaenys, corlys, and her three sons jacaerys, lucerys, and joffrey, which is one more son than she had at the end of season 1. and on alicent's side is helaena, aegon ii, aemond, and i'm guessing the one in white is criston cole and the one after him is otto dickwad hightower.

alicent with her green dress and the blood seeping in the archway behind her looks sort of like the high tower aflame. at least i think so.

anyway, it sort of looks like they're seated at tables with plates in front of them. i think this is a callback to the feast from s1, and how it's no longer possible because of the blood spilled that's come between them.

Aegon ii on the iron throne, rhaenyra at dragonstone, the bases of power each of them start with. aegon's wearing a green cloak and has got aegon i's crown, rhaenyra's wearing a black cloak and is wearing aenys i's crown.

A zoomed out version of the scene with aegon and rhaenys. from aegon's side, a green hand sends ravens flying, informing the nobility of westeros that viserys finally died to death and that aegon is the new king. from rhaenyra's side, a black hand sends two dragons (vermax and arrax) to the north and storm's end, respectively, to secure their allegiances. blood seeps from both of the hands, showing that these efforts to peacefully-ish secure the allegiance of the realm are not to be.

around them are various sigils.

on the top, left to right: looks like corbray (vale) in the top left corner, then fossoway (reach), then tarbeck (westerlands), then what looks like the falwells (westerlands). the one to their right i'm gonna be honest i have no idea what it could be maybe buckler (stormlands)? and then in the top right corner there's stark (north), probably.

on the right: under stark is arryn (vale), followed by velaryon (crownlands), then tully (riverlands), then...i want to say frey (riverlands).

on the bottom: to the left of frey(?) is beeeeeesbury (reach), bar emmon (crownlands) i think, stokeworth (crownlands), the one to the left of that i have no idea, but it sort of looks like an animal roaring. and then in the bottom left we have the celtigars (crownlands) of krabby patty, i think.

on the left: above celtigar is baratheon (stormlands), hightower (reach), and lannister (westerlands).

the positioning of each house on each side of the tapestry seems to roughly correlate with the side they took during the dance, but not completely-ish. idk.

anyway, in the zoomed out version, you can also see how each square of the tapestry connects to the sections before it.

and here you see aemond doing a hit and run on a middle schooler with his fire-breathing truck. aka the point in time where it all hopes of a peaceful resolution were quashed and it was killing time.

Final shot of the iron throne literally looming over everything but also out of reach.

Anyway i stopped mentioning it because it was like, everywhere, but the blood from the opening appears on pretty much every scene, from the red capes some of the targs wear to the literal blood from the people dying. bloodshed is literally baked in to the targaryen story, from valyria to the iron throne. also, it being a tapestry, and the final shot of the tapestry, shows how the past weaves into the present and all that, and also how the targaryen's dreams shaped their future (usually for the worst, honestly). as heleana said, "Hand turns loom; spool of green, spool of black. Dragons of flesh, weaving dragons of thread."