3 Chapter 3: Rebellion
As Westeros slowly moved towards war, inside the tower of the Red Keep designated for the Royal family, a young boy with black hair and blue eyes studied his mother.
This boy was Aiden-El, or as he is more widely known as Aiden Sand. He was beloved by Queen Rhaella, Princess Elia, Rhaenys and Lewin Martell as well as many of the maids, however many of the guards and Maesters despised and feared the boy greatly.
The reason was because of the intelligence shown by the boy, he began to understand and comprehend various languages at a very young age. Absorbing knowledge like a sponge, he was caught reading advanced books before he even turned one name days old.
There was even a Maester who had been sent to tend to the princess during her pregnancy that accused him of being a demon, claiming that when he went to give the princess some medicine the boys eyes turned red. The Maester ended up being burned alive by the King, ironically the crime he was burned for was him becoming mad.
Little did they know, the Maester wasn't mad or insane at all, he was there to poison Elia to hopefully harm the baby growing in her womb, the Maester's knew Targaryens had magic in their blood so they wanted to eliminate the magic within the baby before it was born.
Aiden detected this intent and was angered by his actions, unluckily for the Maester who saw this and ran, his death was much more painful than if he had stayed.
Aiden saw Elia as his own mother, she had always treated him as her own, as did Queen Rhaella who visited often. It began as a form of escape from her treatment by her brother-husband the king, but soon she began to notice that she felt better after each visit.
Little did she know that once she had gained Aiden's love, his body unconsciously healed her little by little. Slowly Aiden's power grew, his divinity helped keep his powers in check automatically, thus he never had to deal with the same things Kal-El did when his powers forcefully manifested.
However if angered or if Aiden detected danger, his powers would begin to show, the only reason he has remained undetected is most all the staff that cared for Elia and the children were loyal and truly cared for them.
However, there was one enemy to which Aiden could do nothing about, the Queen's second son Viserys. Much like his father Viserys had showed signs of madness at a very young age.
Viserys and Aiden were like oil and fire, constantly fighting. Viserys treated Rhaenys extremely poorly, making fun of her looks and repeating his fathers words of calling her the snake dreaming it was a dragon.
Queen Rhaella had tried her best to stop Viserys from acting in such a way, telling him that they were family, he was their uncle and that one day they may be wed since Targaryens intermarried more often than wedding another house.
The only reason Rhaegar was married to Elia was only for the simple fact that there was no female Targaryen for him to wed, so they had no choice but to choose a bride from another house.
Unfortunately this proved ineffective, Viserys was heavily influenced by not only his father, but the Three Eyed Raven was also pushing Viserys down the path of madness, it was all part of his plan.
He wanted the world to believe the Targaryen lineage had turned completely to madness, which he had been unsuccessful to some extent with Rhaegar, although he wasn't able to make him mad in the same way as his father. He was able to get his focus on the prophecy, turning him mad in a different way.
The Raven was like a master strategist, placing pieces strategically on the board, influencing events on both sides.
He had seen Aiden, but paid the boy no mind, a dornish bastard had no value to him at all and would soon be dead along with the rest of them according to what he had seen in the future.
Aiden himself also slowly had changed, his innate abilities as well as his attunement as lawful good due to his connection to Zoa, the chaos and building of evil intentions began to slowly unlock more and more of Aiden's powers.
Aiden was completely unaware of this himself, however Elia and Rhaella were able to detect these changes, but only Elia knew what was truly happening which saddened her greatly.
In her mind, Aiden was a god, so she thought that once Aiden awakened he would leave or be taken back by his brother that she met, never to see him again.
The tournament at Harrenhal had come and gone, and just as the Raven wanted, Rhaegar met Lyanna Stark, triggering a line from the prophecy.
The "union of ice and fire", and the dragon having three heads. Instantly Rhaegar knew he needed Lyanna Stark to bare his third child. The Targaryens represented fire while the Stark's were known as Kings of Winter before they bent the knee, so it was easy to deduce that the Stark's represented ice.
Although Lyanna was only 13 name days old, while Rhaegar was in his early 20's, he still courted her. Using his charm and silver tongue he convinced Lyanna to come follow him, promising that they would wed.
Lyanna, who knew her father was in talks with Jon Arryn, her brother Eddard's foster father, regarding her being wed to Robert Baratheon who was also being fostered by Jon Arryn. This was something she didn't wish for, she knew of Robert's reputation when it came to wine and women.
Lyanna agreed and they made arrangements for him to come North after the tournament and sneak her away.
Rhaegar then returned to Kings Landing and told Elia of his plan. Elia felt crushed after hearing Rhaegar's plan, although he tried to word it to sound not so bad, that was to him alone, Elia saw through the sweetened words he spoke.
She saw it for what it was, she was being passed over for a younger woman, however Elia knew she could no longer have children and that even if she disagreed there was nothing she could do to stop it.
So Elia decided to gain something at least, she agreed to willing sign the papers to annul her marriage with Rhaegar as long as she and her three children could return to Sunspear after the wedding with Lyanna was done, once the children came of age then they would return to Rhaegar.
Rhaegar not seeing any other option but to agree, since if she didn't work with him than his plans could backfire resulting in catastrophic repercussions.
Elia signed the document with a heavy heart, but after signing she felt a little lighter, she knew her time as a hostage would come to an end, she only felt bad for the Stark girl because she had no idea what she was truly stepping in.
Not long after the tournament ended Tywin Lannister officially stepped down as Hand of the King, not only had his offer of marriage to his daughter Cersei to Rhaegar been shot down quite disrespectfully by the king a few years ago, but the Mad King even took Tywin's oldest son and heir as a Kingsguard after the tournament.
This basically took Tywin's favorite son and heir from him, since members of the Kingsguard all took vows of holding no lands or fathering any children, this left Tywin with only a daughter and his youngest son Tyrion who everyone knew he dispised since he was a born with dwarfism as well as Tywin's wife dieing after giving birth to him.
Aerys knew this would anger Tywin the most, so he made Jaime his personal Kingsguard, planning to use Jaime Lannister in the same way he was using Elia, a hostage to guarantee Tywin stayed loyal to the throne.
This however had the opposite effect, this made Tywin lean more towards working with the rebel faction rather than against it as Aerys wanted. It even opened a new opportunity for Tywin.
Tywin wanted to upgrade from a noble family into a royal one, so he put forth that should Rhaegar die and Robert agree to marry his daughter Cersei, then he would sack Kings Landing and end the Targaryen lineage.
Jon Arryn at first had told Tywin that Robert was adamant on marrying Lyanna Stark and that he didn't think that they could get an agreement. Both men brainstormed and came up with a solution, to kidnap Lyanna and murder her and make sure clues lead to her being raped and murdered by Rhaegar, thus Robert would have no choice but to agree.
Not only would this get them a firm alliance with each other, it would also pull the north onto their side as well, which would seal the Targaryens fate.
Although the north had less people, their armies were the most fierce. The issue was the north historically was extremely loyal to the crown, so they had to first turn them against the crown.
They both knew that if they could make the north think the throne had kidnapped and raped a Stark girl, which was the most beloved house in the north by other northerners, then they would turn against the crown.
Just like all knew how loyal the Stark's were to the crown, they were also aware that they were known to be fiercely protective of their own as well.
Little did they know that before their men could enact their plan, word spread that Rhaegar kidnapped Lyanna Stark. Both houses thought their men successfully had done the deed, they had instructed their men to be as brutal as possible in her rape and torture so that when her body was found it would create the most anger as possible. So they began to added to the rumor that not only was she kidnapped, but was being viciously raped daily.
In reality, Lyanna and Rhaegar wed in secret and Rhaegar began to do what he originally planned and began to work hard to impregnate Lyanna as quickly as possible since he knew his actions could have serious consequences.
But the alternative would be worse, if he was unable to fulfill the prophecy then the whole world would be lost. He also had in the back of his mind that all it would take was a few letters from Lyanna to her father and it would keep the north loyal, although they may not like how he handled everything, if he showed that he really wed her, even doing so under northern customs as well as southern ones, they would have to step back and fight for him.
As months passed and countless letters were written by Lyanna, but seeing that the situation only worsened, only then did Rhaegar truly understand that the situation had somehow spiraled out of control.
He bagan to have doubts about his choices, but he knew there was no going back, what was done was done.
A few more months passed and when Rhaegar received a emergency summons, Rhaegar knew the shit had hit the fan. War would be upon them. He learned of his father executing both Rickard Stark, the Warden of the North, and his first born son and heir, Brandon Stark.
After he passed the news to his wife Lyanna, the pain and anguish she suffered was immense, she knew it was because of her choice to run away with Rhaegar was the cause. This broke her heart, which in turn caused her health to begin to faulter as the pregnancy wore on.
Rhaegar, unable to bring her along due to her health, left his two most trusted Kingsguard to guard her at the Tower of Joy in Dorne while he marched off to fight a war which never should've began.
He was worried not only for Lyanna and their unborn child, now he was worried for his two children still in Kings Landing. All three of his children needed to survive for the prophecy to be fulfilled, and now two of the three were in very real danger.
His father was obviously completely mad, any sane man would know that executing a noble, especially one who was historically the most loyal of any house, they were never late on paying taxes and always heeded the crowns calls to war, would immediately spark war.
So began a bloody war between House Targaryen and the rebels made up of House Arryn in the Vale, House Baratheon of Storms End, House Tully in the Riverlands and House Stark and all the north. Rhaegar found himself losing at every turn. Their strongest support, House Tyrell of the Reach, was locked down in seiging Storms End, the seat of House Baratheon which was currently being defended by Robert's younger brother Stannis Baratheon, so they couldn't afford to send troops to aid Rhaegar. Especially since they were winning in the seige, cutting off all supplies to the castle in an attempt to starve them into surrendering.
Seeing his army of Targaryen loyalists losing and being pushed back, Rhaegar knew he needed to win a decisive battle or all would be lost.
Using the tacticle map of Westeros that was drawn by dragon riders long ago, Rhaegar saw his opportunity at the Trident. He knew the rebel army would need to march through the Trident in order to seige Kings Landing, which is something he couldn't allow.
He had tried to move Elia and the children to safety only to be overturned by his father who was adamant about Elia and the children remaining.
He didn't even receive permission to move Aiden Sand, so to protect his two children and Elia as best as possible, Rhaegar took what armies he did have, which was largely made up of Dornish soldiers and marched for the Trident.
If he could crush the rebels there, then they would win the war in one fell swoop, since the army marching towards the Trident was the bulk of the rebel army. It was exactly what he needed, although it was risky since by fully committing to the battle, if he lost then so too would the entire war for him.
In Rhaegar's mind, he was the prophesied "Prince who was Promised", so his victory was all but assured. So the army moved out to put an end to the rebellion.
