Chapter Text
Revaena came into the world as a living embodiment of a curse. Her mother nearly died during childbirth, but that didn't diminish her love for Revaena. Daemon Targaryen despised his daughter because she resembled her mother so closely.
"Oh, my own child"," Lady Rhea Royce declared as she held her daughter for the first time, "Your name shall be Revaena, for your hair is as black as mine," Rhea said.
A year after Revaena Targaryen was born, Rhea Royce went hunting. She wanted to bring back something special for her little daughter. "My daughter deserves something special for her first nameday," Rhea said to herself.
As she rode her horse through Runestone, she spotted a hooded man whom she recognized immediately—her estranged husband, Daemon Targaryen.
Rhea began, "Husband. What brings you to the Vale? Or have you finally come to consummate our marriage again?" She sneered, recalling the night she conceived Revaena. "The Vale's sheep might be willing, even if I am not. Our sheep are prettier, after all. Or perhaps your brother has finally tired of your company and cast you aside in favor of a little girl."
Rhea continued, "Our little girl has not met her father at all."
Daemon smirked, "She is not my daughter."
Rhea ignored his remark and said, "What will you do now? Will you strike the child down? Or?"
Daemon's gaze bore into Rhea with a cold, murderous intensity. His eyes darkened, and his expression twisted into something feral, as if he were teetering on the edge of violence, barely restraining the urge to end her life right then and there.
Rhea's horse, sensing the tension, panicked and reared up, throwing her off its back. She crashed to the ground with a sickening thud, the impact snapping a bone. As she lay there in pain, Daemon glanced at her briefly before turning away, indifferent to her suffering.
Rhea, wincing through the pain, shouted after him, "I knew you couldn't finish it! Craven!"
Daemon picked up a rock and strode toward Rhea with cold determination. As he raised it above her, Rhea's vision blurred, then blacked out as the rock came crashing down. She died instantly. Runestone, her ancestral home, passed to Revaena, who was just a year old.
Daemon glanced at the nameday-old Revaena and sneered, "She looks like the bronze bitch." But as his eyes lingered on her, he saw something unmistakable—his own reflection staring back at him.
Daemon, being in exile, arranged for Revaena to become a ward of Queen Alicent of House Hightower, wife of his brother, King Viserys. Revaena thrived in her new environment, particularly enjoying the company of her cousins, especially Aegon.