In the House of the Dragon adaption, Lord Lyonel Strong said something interesting.
“King Jaehaerys ruled over half a century of peace while his children drove him to the
edge of madness ... his daughters, in particular.”
One of those daughters was Daella Targaryen, the mother of Queen Aemma Arryn.
Daella was one of the reasons why Queen Alysanne contemplated renouncing her marriage to spend
the rest of her life with the silent sisters.
In 64 AC, King Jaehaerys and Queen Alysanne had their fourth daughter and eighth child.
Daella Targaryen.
Princess Daella was delicate and shy.
Easily frightened and quick to cry, she did not speak her first word until she was almost
two … and even thereafter she was tongue-tied more oft than not.
Her sister Maegelle became her guiding star, and she worshipped her mother, the queen,
but her sister Alyssa seemed to terrify her, and she blushed and hid her face in the presence
of the older boys.
Since Vaegon was only one year older than her, the prince and the princess seemed well
matched as babes, and the king and queen assumed that the two of them would eventually marry.
Their older siblings Baelon and Alyssa had become inseparable, and plans were already
being made for them to wed.
Why not Vaegon and Daella as well?
“Be sweet to your little sister,” King Jaehaerys told the prince when he was five.
“One day she will be your Alysanne.”
As the children grew, however, it became apparent that the two of them were not ideally suited.
There was no warmth between them, as the queen saw plainly.
Vaegon tolerated his sister’s presence, but never sought it out.
Daella seemed frightened of her sour, bookish brother, who would sooner read than play.
The prince thought the princess stupid; she thought him mean.
“They are only children,” Jaehaerys said when Alysanne brought the problem to his attention.
“They will warm to one another in time.”
They never did.
If anything, their mutual dislike only deepened.
The matter came to a head in 73 AC.
Prince Vaegon was ten years old and Princess Daella nine when one of the queen’s companions,
new to the Red Keep, teasingly asked the two of them when they would be married.
Vaegon reacted as if he had been slapped.
“I would never marry her,” the boy said, in front of half the court.
“She can barely read.
She should find some lord in need of stupid children, for that’s the only sort he will
ever have of her.”
Princess Daella, as might be expected, burst into tears and fled the hall, with her mother,
the queen, rushing after her.
“My little flower,” was how the queen described her.
Like Alysanne herself, Daella was small – on her toes, she stood five feet two inches – and
there was a childish aspect to her that led everyone who met her to think she was younger
than her age.
But unlike Alysanne, she was delicate as well, in ways the queen had never been.
Her mother had been fearless; Daella always seemed to be afraid.
She had a kitten that she loved until he scratched her; then she would not go near a cat.
The dragons terrified her, even Silverwing.
The mildest scolding would reduce her to tears.
Once, in the halls of the Red Keep, Daella had encountered a prince from the Summer Isles
in his feathered cloak, and squealed in terror.
His black skin had made her take him for a demon.
Cruel though her brother Vaegon’s words had been, there was some truth to them.
Daella was not clever, even her septa had to admit.
She learned to read after a fashion, but haltingly, and without full comprehension.
She could not seem to commit even the simplest prayers to memory.
She had a sweet voice, but was afraid to sing; she always got the words wrong.
She loved flowers, but was frightened of gardens; a bee had almost stung her once.
Jaehaerys, even more than Alysanne, despaired of her.
“She will not even speak to a boy.
How is she to marry?
We could entrust her to the Faith, but she does not know her prayers, and her septa says
that she cries when asked to read aloud from The Seven-Pointed Star.”
The queen always rose to her defense.
“Daella is sweet and kind and gentle.
She has such a tender heart.
Give me time, and I will find a lord to cherish her.
Not every Targaryen needs to wield a sword and ride a dragon.”
In the years that followed her first flowering, Daella Targaryen drew the eye of many a young
lordling, as expected.
She was a king’s daughter, and maidenhood had only made her prettier.
Her mother was at work as well, arranging matters in every way she could to place suitable
marriage prospects before the princess.
At thirteen Daella was sent to Driftmark to meet Corlys Velaryon, the grandson to the
Lord of the Tides.
Ten years her elder, the future Sea Snake was already a celebrated mariner and captain
of ships.
Daella became seasick crossing Blackwater Bay, however, and on her return complained
that “he likes his boats better than me.”
(She was not wrong in that.)
At fourteen, she kept company with Denys Swann, Simon Staunton, Gerold Templeton, and Ellard
Crane, all promising squires of her own age, but Staunton tried to make her drink wine
and Crane kissed her on the lips without her leave, reducing her to tears.
By year’s end Daella had decided she hated all of them.
At fifteen, her mother took her across the riverlands to Raventree in a wheelhouse, as
Daella was afraid of horses.
Lord Blackwood entertained Queen Alysanne lavishly whilst his son paid court to the
princess.
Tall, graceful, courtly, and well-spoken, Royce Blackwood was a gifted bowman, a fine
swordsman, and a singer, who melted Daella’s heart with ballads of his own composition.
For a short while it seemed as if a betrothal might be in the offing, and Queen Alysanne
and Lord Blackwood even begun to discuss wedding plans.
It all fell to pieces when Daella learned that the Blackwoods kept the old gods, and
she would be expected to say her vows before a weirwood tree.
“They don’t believe in the gods,” she told her mother, horrified.
“I’d go to hell.”
Her sixteenth nameday was fast approaching, and with it her womanhood.
Queen Alysanne was at her wit’s end, and the king had lost his patience.
On the first day of the 80th year since Aegon’s Conquest, he told the queen he wanted Daella
wed before the year’s end.
“If she wants I can find a hundred men and line them up before her naked, and she can
pick the one she likes,” he said.
“I would sooner she wed a lord, but if she prefers a hedge knight or a merchant or Pate
the Pig Boy, I am past the point of caring, so long as she picks someone.”
“A hundred naked men would frighten her,” Alysanne said, unamused.
“A hundred naked ducks would frighten her,” the king replied.
“And if she will not wed?”
the queen asked.
“Maegelle says the Faith will not want a girl who cannot read her prayers.”
“There are still the silent sisters,” said Jaehaerys.
“Must it come to that?
Find her someone.
Someone gentle, as she is.
A kind man, who will never raise his voice or his hand to her, who will speak to her
sweetly and tell her she is precious and protect her … against dragons and horses and bees
and kittens and boys with boils and whatever else she fears.”
“I shall do my best, Your Grace,” Queen Alysanne promised.
In the end it did not require a hundred men, naked or clothed.
The queen explained the king’s command to Daella, gently but firmly, and offered her
a choice of three suitors, each of whom was eager for her hand.
Pate the Pig Boy was not amongst them.
The three men that Alysanne had selected were great lords or the sons of great lords.
Whichever man she married, Daella would have wealth and position.
Boremund Baratheon was the most imposing of the candidates.
At eight-and-twenty, the Lord of Storm’s End was the image of his father, brawny and
powerful, with a booming laugh, a great black beard, and a mane of thick black hair.
As the son of Lord Rogar by Queen Alyssa, he stood half-brother to Alysanne and Jaehaerys,
and Daella knew and loved his sister, Jocelyn, from her years at court, which was thought
to be much in his favor.
Ser Tymond Lannister was the wealthiest contender, heir to Casterly Rock and all its gold.
At twenty, he was nearer to Daella’s own age, and thought to be one of the handsomest
men in all the realm; lithe and slender, with long golden mustachios and hair of the same
hue, always clad in silk and satin.
The princess would be well protected in Casterly Rock; there was no castle more impregnable
in all Westeros.
Weighed against Lannister gold and Lannister beauty, however, was Ser Tymond’s own reputation.
He was overly fond of women, it was said, and even more fond of wine.
Last of the three, and least in many eyes, was Rodrik Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie and Protector
of the Vale.
He had been a lord since the age of ten, a point in his favor; for the past twenty years
he had served on the small council as lord justiciar and master of laws, during which
time he had become a familiar figure about court, and a leal friend to both the king
and queen.
In the Vale he had been an able lord, strong but just, affable, open-handed, loved by the
smallfolk and his lords bannermen alike.
In addition, he had acquitted himself well in King’s Landing; sensible, knowledgeable,
good humored, he was regarded as a great asset to the council.
Lord Arryn was the oldest of the three contenders, however; at six-and-thirty, he was twenty
years older than the princess, and a father besides, with four children left him by his
late first wife.
Short and balding, with a kettle belly, Arryn was not the man most maidens dream of, Queen
Alysanne admitted, “but he is the sort you asked for,” she told Jaehaerys, “a kind
and gentle man, and he says that he has loved our little girl for years.
I know he will protect her.”
To the astonishment of every woman at the court, save mayhaps the queen, Princess Daella
chose Lord Rodrik to be her husband.
“He seems good and wise, like Father,” she told Queen Alysanne, “and he has four
children!
I’m to be their new mother!”
What Her Grace thought of that outburst is not recorded.
Grand Maester Elysar’s account of the day says only, “Gods be good.”
Theirs would not be a long betrothal.
As the king had wished, Princess Daella and Lord Rodrik were wed before year’s end.
It was a small ceremony in the sept of Dragonstone, attended only by close friends and king; larger
crowds made the princess desperately uncomfortable.
Nor was there a bedding.
“Oh, I could not bear that, I should die of shame,” the princess had told her husband
to be, and Lord Rodrik had acceded to her wishes.
Afterward, Lord Arryn took his princess back to the Eyrie.
“My children need to meet their new mother, and I want to show the Vale to Daella.
Life is slower there, and quieter.
She will like that.
I swear to you, Your Grace, she will be safe and happy.
And so she was, for a time.
The eldest of Lord Rodrik’s four children from his first wife was a daughter, Elys,
three years older than her new stepmother.
The two of them clashed from the first.
Daella doted on the three younger children, however, and they seemed to adore her in turn.
Lord Rodrik, true to his word, was a kind and caring husband who never failed to pamper
and protect the bride he called “my precious princess.”
Such letters as Daella sent her mother (letters largely written for her by Lord Rodrik’s
younger daughter, Amanda) spoke glowingly of how happy she was, how beautiful the Vale,
how much she loved her lord’s sweet sons, and how everyone in the Eyrie was so kind
to her.
After a year and a half of marriage, Daella sent her mother a letter by raven.
It was very short, and written in Daella’s own uncertain hand.
“I am with child,” it said.
“Mother, please come.
I am frightened.”
Queen Alysanne was frightened too, once she read those words.
She mounted Silverwing within days and flew swiftly to the Vale, alighting first in Gulltown
before proceeding on to the Gates of the Moon, and then skyward to the Eyrie.
It was 82 AC, and Her Grace arrived three moons before Daella was due to give birth.
Though the princess professed delight that her mother had come, and apologized for sending
her such a “silly” letter, her fear was palpable.
She burst into tears for the slightest reason, and sometimes for no reason at all, Lord Rodrik
said.
His daughter Elys was dismissive, telling Her Grace, “You would think she was the
first woman ever to have a baby,” but Alysanne was concerned.
Daella was so delicate, and she was carrying very heavy.
“She is such a small girl for such a big belly,” she wrote the king.
“I would be frightened too, if I were her.”
Queen Alysanne stayed beside the princess for the rest of her confinement, sitting by
her bedside, reading her to sleep at night, and comforting her fears.
“It will be fine,” she told her daughter, half a hundred times.
“She will be a girl, wait and see.
A daughter.
I know it.
Everything will be fine.”
She was half right.
Aemma Arryn, the daughter of Lord Rodrik and Princess Daella, came into the world a fortnight
early, after a long and troubled labor.
“It hurts,” the princess screamed through half the night.
“It hurts so much.”
But it is said she smiled when her daughter was laid against her breast.
Everything was far from fine, however.
Childbed fever set in soon after birth.
Though Princess Daella desperately wished to nurse her child, she had no milk, and a
wet nurse was sent for.
As her fever rose, the maester decreed that she might not even hold her babe, which set
the princess to weeping.
She wept until she fell asleep, but in her sleep she kicked wildly and tossed and turned,
her fever rising even higher.
By morning she was gone.
She was eighteen years of age.
Lord Rodrik wept as well, and begged the queen’s permission to bury his precious princess in
the Vale, but Alysanne refused.
“She was the blood of the dragon.
She will be burned, and her ashes interred on Dragonstone beside her sister Daenerys.”
Daella’s death tore the heart out of the queen, but as we look back, it is plain to
see that it was also the first hint of the rift that would open between her and her king.
The gods hold us all in their hands, and life and death are theirs to give and take away,
but men in their pride look for others to blame.
Alysanne Targaryen, in her grief, blamed herself and Lord Arryn and the Eyrie’s maester for
their parts in her daughter’s demise … but most of all, she blamed Jaehaerys.
If he had not insisted that Daella wed, that she pick someone before year’s end … what
harm would it have done for her to stay a little girl for another year or two or ten?
“She was not old enough or strong enough to bear a child,” she told His Grace back
at King’s Landing.
“We ought never have pushed her into marriage.”
The king’s reply was not recorded.