court of lies | robert's rebellion

ptii | the florent revolt

Then she turned around elegantly, her hair was a mess, her throat had already started to hurt because of all the yelling, and the lump in her throat was killing her. Her face was red with anger, and her neck was filled with red spots because of the panic and fear. Her eyes were filled with tears and she was gritting her teeth so hard so that she wouldn't cry, but it hurt. A maddening headache was hitting her from the back of her head and yet she straightened her spine and walked with stern steps while holding her skirt and clenching it between her hands. Even through the fabric of the gown, her nails were sinking deep into her hand and the pain was helping her to go through this walk of defeat.

She looked like the Lysene Goddess of War, with her deep blue dress and open shoulders, golden necklace with a huge sapphire in the middle of it, golden long earrings with also sapphires in the middle, rings filled with the same gems and hair that looked like a mess. She was like all the broken queens of old, having a piece of them in her soul.

The Conqueror by her rights, Visenya, the legendary warrior queen, Nymeria, The Black Queen, Rhaenyra, The Queen in Chains, Alicent, The Queen Who Never Was, Rhaenys, The Black Bride, Rhaena, the Witch Queen, Alys...

She spend her entire life trying to emulate them, she wanted to be them, and she dreamed to be them. Being someone who affected the course of history, a woman with power, being able to change the story is told... To become someone was all she ever wanted.

She often wondered about their problems and issues, surely there were people, men, who thought they were not enough. People tried to steal their birthrights, they downplayed them, insulted them, humiliated them, and treated them like they were nothing important and yet generations later all of those men were forgotten and only the names of these women lived.

While going to her chambers with a straight face while trying not to have a panic attack or a mental breakdown, she wondered what would people say about her generations after. She would not marry and have a child, there would not be a bloodline coming from her and now in the short distance to her defeat, she thought about what would be her legacy. Would people remember her? Or would she become just another name on the page without a voice that people look down upon? Like many others before her, like Laena Velaryon and her daughters? Like Aliandra Martell, Jaehaera Targaryen and Larra Rogare, like Naerys Targaryen? Born with a great name and a great potential and let it all go to waste because she had been broken by men, defeated by men, brought to her knees by men?

Was it all who she was? Another name on another page. Worthless, meaningless, unimportant. Thought she was so clever but in truth was nothing more than a pretty face. Mad and weak, weak and mad, wasn't allowed on the board, fade away before she got to play the real game. Never taken seriously by a world full of men, just because she was a fucking woman.

She had wanted to be Alicent Hightower, the woman who orchestrated the whole Dance because of her ambitions, because she wanted to protect her family. But along the way, she had become her mother. A little replica of her. Thought breaking rules would give her freedom and now she was going to rot in a tower cell, waiting desperately for the execution, dying a little every passing day, and losing her sanity, her personality, everything that makes her who she is, and being long dead when the executioner's axe hits her pretty little neck.

Her mother was the anger in her words and the sadness in her silence, the grief in her eyes and sorrow in her face, the fear in her tears and hurt in her smile, the ghost in her heart and emptiness in her bones, the voice in her head and the claws in her mind.

Everything she had done in order not to become her, every path she took, every choice she made, every decision, every turn, every word... in the end they all made her who she is and who she is, is her mother.

Jenica Westerling once walked down the same path, she made similar choices, she broke the same rules, she defied the same men, and she fought in the same war with all her heart to protect herself, to protect her family.

To win the game.

And she had lost the war in the most definitive end. She swore not to be like her, there was nothing in this world that scared her more than the mere thought of having even one similarity with her mother and now at the dawn of the day she had realized that she was her mother.

Was there any free will? Any right of choice? Was someone's path had been already decided, was every thought of having a decision a lie? Was she always meant to be her mother? Then what was the reason for it all? Why she had to walk from this path if it meant death to her anyways? Why the Gods had led her to believe, to hope, that she could become someone just to take it all away from her and sentence her to a forbidden end just like her mother?

No, she thought to herself. I am not my mother. I will not give up the fight, I will not go with grace.

But did her mother go with grace? What did she even know about her mother? What would people even know about her in the future? Losers would become a simple name on a simple page, she promised herself to be a chapter, not a footnote and now the end had come to an end.

Or did it?