𝑬𝑻𝑬𝑹𝑵𝑨𝑳 𝑭𝑳𝑨𝑴𝑬 | Elia Velaryon x Aemond Targaryen

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Thousands of smallfolk streamed out the Kingslanding city gates, carrying their children and worldly possessions on their backs, to seek safety in the countryside. Others dug pits and tunnels under their hovels, dark dank holes where they hoped to hide whilst the city burned. Rioting broke out in Flea Bottom. When the sails of the Sea Snake's ships were seen to the east in Blackwater Bay, making for the river, the bells of every sept in the city began to ring, and mobs surged through the streets, looting as they went. Dozens died before the gold cloaks could restore the peace.

With both Prince Daeron and his dragon Tessarion absent in the Riverlands and King Aegon himself burned, bedridden, and lost in poppy dreams, it fell to his mother, the Queen Dowager, to see to the city's defenses.

Queen Alicent rose to the challenge, closing the gates of the castle and city, sending the gold cloaks to the walls, and dispatching riders on swift horses to find Prince Daeron and fetch him back. As well, she commanded Grand Maester Orwyle to send ravens to "all our leal lords," summoning them to the defense of their true king.

When Orwyle hastened back to his chambers, however, he found four gold cloaks waiting for him. One man muffled his cries as the others beat and bound him. With a bag pulled over his head, the Grand Maester was escorted down to the black cells.

Queen Alicent's riders got no farther than the gates, where more gold cloaks took them into custody. Unbeknownst to Her Grace, the seven captains commanding the gates, chosen for their loyalty to King Aegon, had been imprisoned or murdered the moment Caraxes appeared in the sky above the Red Keep, for the rank and file of the City Watch still loved Daemon Targaryen, the Prince of the City who had commanded them of old.

Queen Alicent's brother Ser Gwayne Hightower, second in command of the gold cloaks, rushed to the stables, intending to sound the warning; he was seized, disarmed, and dragged before his commander, Luthor Largent. When Hightower denounced him as a turncloak, Ser Luthor laughed. "Daemon gave us these cloaks," he said, "and they're gold no matter how you turn them." Then he drove his sword through Ser Gwayne's belly and ordered the city gates opened to the men pouring off the Sea Snake's ships.

For all the vaunted strength of its walls, King's Landing fell in less than a day. A short, bloody fight was waged at the River Gate, where thirteen Hightower knights and a hundred men-at-arms drove off the gold cloaks and held out for eight hours against attacks from both within and without the city, but their heroics were in vain, for Rhaenyra's soldiers poured in through the other six gates unmolested.

The sight of the black Queens dragons in the sky above took the heart out of the opposition, and the King Aegon's remaining loyalists hid or fled or bent the knee.

One by one the dragons made their descent. Sheepstealer lighted atop Visenya's Hill, Prince Daemon circled the towers of the Red Keep before bringing Caraxes down in the outer ward. Only when he was certain that the defenders would offer him no harm did he signal for his wife the queen to descend upon Syrax. Addam Velaryon remained aloft, flying Seasmoke around the city walls, the beat of his dragon's wide leathern wings a caution to those below that any defiance would be met with fire.

Upon seeing that resistance was hopeless, the Dowager Queen Alicent emerged from Maegor's Holdfast with her father, Ser Otto Hightower; Ser Tyland Lannister; and Lord Jasper Wylde the Ironrod. Lord Larys Strong was not with them. The master of whisperers had somehow contrived to disappear.

Queen Alicent attempted to treat with her stepdaughter. "Let us together summon a great council, as the Old King did in days of old." said the Dowager Queen, "And lay the matter of succession before the lords of the realm."