Chapter Text
A drunken mistake is what Rhaella Royce likes to refer to herself as. Practically an orphan since birth, Rhaella was raised by her distant family. She never knew the love of a mother or a father. When she was old enough, Lady Jeyne Arryn told her the story of how she came to be. According to her mother, one day Rhea Royce and Daemon Targaryen drank one too many cups of wine and found themselves tangled in bed. Eight moons later, Rhaella was born. She was born early due to her mother having an accident while hawking. Rhea was able to deliver her daughter safely, hold her in her arms for two days then she was taken away by the Stranger.
Sometimes, Rhaella swears she hears the sweet voice of her mother. In her dreams, she vividly sees a woman with the same chestnut brown hair as her and the same smile. That smile is always directed at her.
No matter how many letters nor summons the Lady Jeyne Arryn sends out, Prince Daemon Targaryen never flew back to the Vale to meet his firstborn daughter.
Rhaella isn’t bitter about it, not really. She might have a Targaryen name, have some Targaryen features and speak the language, but she is a Royce through and through. Although her temperament is one of the things the people of the Vale say she inherited from her estranged father, the blood of the dragon runs thick, they whisper.
(Another thing the Vale men and women whisper, albeit quieter, is how she seems to be the Princess Alyssa Targaryen come again. “She’s got the mismatched eyes and the crooked nose of her grandmother,” people say. “Give her a dragon and then we’ll see how big the similarities are.”)
So really, Rhaella is happy enough to stay in the Vale, under the watchful care of Jeyne Arryn. She is happy to continue her education and finally take her seat as Lady of Runestone once she comes of age.
Though it seems the gods have other plans when the day of her fourteenth name day, she is summoned to Kings Landing by King Viserys himself.