warriors don’t show their hearts until the axe reveals is

Set in the Dance of Dragons. After the death of Viserys I Targaryen, civil war broke out because the Dowager Queen and the Kingsguard didn't wish to put a woman on the throne, so despite the late king's wishes, a younger brother (Aegon II) was crowned instead of Princess Rhaenyra. Rhaenyra and her sons were not eager to let this go without trying to claim their throne, and the Vale, the North and the Riverlands joined them in revolt. The country was split between Greens (who sided with King Aegon) and Blacks (who sided with Queen Rhaenyra. I'm willing to tweak details on this so that we can have original characters to fit the plot & just use the premise of an older sister being passed over for the crown.

Most of this plot isn't based on the King or Queen themselves, however. I wanted to focus on Rhaenyra's side, but Rhaenyra was absent for the early part of the war after the death of one of her younger sons - she passed all decisions to her mother-in-law Rhaenys Targaryen and her father-in-law Corlys Velaryon, and her elder sons did most of the fighting. At this point, the Targaryens still had their dragons (in fact, it's this conflict that killed most of them off) and in a bid to get more dragonriders on their side, Rhaenyra's eldest son put out word that anyone who could tame one of the five wild dragons on Dragonstone would gain wealth and titles and a place of importance on their side. My idea was to have one character be the eldest prince, and another being an unlikely dragonrider who befriends the prince during the war (probably more than that because I like forbidden love plots).

Like I said, we don't need to use the exact characters & we can probably just go with using the premise (so long as the details of the characters we create match up to a few key details from the original scenario). Also if you don't know anything about the Dance of Dragons, I can always explain anything you need to know/we can make up minor details.

This plot would essentially be following a last descendant of House Reyne, the house that were killed off by Tywin & what the song the rains of castamere is all about. I was thinking that one or two survived the massacre - exiled to essos or perhaps diplomacy with other houses took them elsewhere at the time of the killing. This plot has a far more open-ended approach because a) it could be set in a variety of time periods; right after the incident, after Tywin's death in the book/show, or in the future where the Lannisters are even weaker. Also I forgot most of my ideas from this morning damn you, illness! So I basically just have the character idea & a broad plot idea that they would want revenge on the Lannisters and to take the Westerlands from them because they won't be safe just reclaiming their lordship. This would give us equal opportunity to give the other character a major plot as well.

This plot is mainly based in Essos. An exiled westerosi noble/knight finds themselves on the wrong side of the Essosi slave trade and finds themselves bought by a wealthy slaver in one of the major cities (Lys, Pentos, Tyrosh, Volantis, etc). From here it would depend on what kind of role the other major character would take - either the slaver who bought the noble gives them as a gift to another wealthy trader (either as a bodyguard, or more of an administrative help depending on their skills) or they are given to Dothraki as an appeasement gift along with gifts of gold and jewels. Either way, I was planning for this to be a very character-based plot where the two characters come to respect each other eventually.

I think that going the Dothraki route for this plot would be more interesting? Especially if the Westerosi character is a knight - their martial skills would mean that the Dothraki could respect them and free them in return for the knight staying with the khalasar??

Okay, for the dance of dragons, I guess the essential stuff would be how it went in canon & then we can consider how to tweak that to fit our version of the characters/plot (here's a hint; it didn't go well for anyone). The major details are probably that Rhaenyra had five (i think?) sons, the oldest three were from her first marriage, but had dark hair that neither the Targaryens or Velaryons had, so many people thought they were bastard children with one of the Kingsguard closest to Rhaenyra. This was one of the arguments that was used to crown Aegon instead, as nobody wanted bastard children on the throne eventually. It's unknown if they actually were bastards, but so many people thought and said it to the point that Viserys decreed that anyone who did would have their tongue ripped out.

There was a natural rift between Rhaenyra's children and their uncles, who were from Viserys' second marriage and the youngest two were about the same age as Rhaenyra's children. They were ordered by the king to have lessons together and such to foster good bonds. Rhaenyra's sons thought that their uncles were going to steal their throne, and one of them secretly bonded with Vhagar (one of the three original Targaryen dragons) and stole that from them as well. During the war Aemond killed Rhaenyra's husband and one of her younger sons with Vhagar, and this, along with the loss of her eldest son at a battle in blackwater bay made her harsh, cold and rather cruel. This didn't win her any favours with the people, who in her younger years had called her the Realm's Delight.

Another mistake, I suppose, was the dragonseeds (they are called this because they were assumed to have a bit of valyrian blood in them somewhere in their family tree to make them capable of riding a dragon, that wasn't proven to definitively be the case). Her eldest son put out the call for dragonriders, but two of them betrayed the Blacks by burning one of the towns they held in the Reach. Nobody really knows why they did this, as they couldn't read or write and didn't have any contact with the enemy to be persuaded to betray them, but the point is that they did. Rhaenyra was so angry that she ordered the deaths of the remaining dragonseeds. One escaped, never to be seen again in Westeros, the others died fighting to prove their loyalty. In doing this, she lost her dragon number advantage, and also lost a key advisor, because one of the dragonseeds had been her Hand's bastard son.

Because of all of this, she was forced to fight Aegon II practically alone, in a dragon duel which killed both of them and their dragons. After that, Rhaenyra's only surviving son (Aegon III, also known as the Dragonbane because the last dragons died in his reign) married Aegon II's only surviving daughter (but they were both like... 10 at the time, so it was more of a betrothal), and solved the problem that caused the war by linking the two branches of the family.