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Maekar had wished for a daughter when Dyanna became pregnant again after Daeron.
They already had a son, and so a daughter seemed fitting, if only to provide some sense of balance.
He would have named his first daughter Aerea—a fitting name for a babe who never settled in her mother’s womb.
She was always moving and fussing while Dyanna complained of sore feet and an aching back. His mother used to say the child had wanted to leave the womb the moment she grew legs; she was so restless she kept Dyanna awake half the night, which meant Maekar stayed awake too, hearing all about her latest cravings.
He used to rest his ear against the bump on his wife’s stomach, listening and feeling the kicks with a proud smile. (He would do the same for the rest of their children.)
“Aerea,” he told her then, humming as he felt a tiny nudge hit his cheek. “A fitting name for a girl who can never stay put.”
Dyanna frowned, but there was a small twitch of a smile on her lips. “The girl who disappeared on Balerion's back? Is it not too ambitious to name our little one after her?”
“So is the name Daeron,” he reasoned. He rose from where he had laid his head and leaned closer to press his lips against her forehead. “Names are just names. Our princess will be far brighter than the predecessor we’ll name her after, just as Father was named after a boy from a branch that brought nothing but disaster to our house.”
The moment was cut short by a cry from Daeron’s crib beside their bed.
When Dyanna’s time finally came, the labor was long and the screaming constant. But at the end of it, the babe emerged with a strong pair of lungs. The daughter Maekar had hoped for vanished the moment the midwives held the child aloft; it was a son, crowned in a wisp of Targaryen silver. His eyes were the pale blue of a morning sky, though they would eventually bleed into the deep violet of his lineage.
Aerion Targaryen was born, and Maekar’s affection did not wane—his son and wife were safe, and that was all that mattered.
A daughter could wait. His son could not, he grew to understand years later.
He was only a week away from finishing his exile and he was already causing Maekar too much grief—the kind that nearly shattered their family when Baelor nearly died in the trial. Aerion was supposed to come home, and yet he continuously chose his own delusion over his own blood.
What would become of him after this? Would he return as Aerea did when she flew to old Valyria—not with a dragon on her back, but she upon his? Aerion had only a ship, a small crew that would have no doubt started a mutiny had they found out where they were headed, and nothing else to his name. His son—
Dyanna’s boy.
Maekar clutched his head, nails digging into his scalp as the council droned around him.
“We should prepare a pyre.”
Silence swept through the council chamber as every eye turned toward him. Some held a fleeting worry; others were heavy with the sort of pity that made Maekar’s skin crawl. He clenched his jaw until his teeth ached, the metallic taste of blood blooming against his tongue as he forced himself to meet their stares.
“If what your informant said is true,” he said, his voice rough and scratchy from a scream that never escaped him, “we should prepare for a funeral.”