Full text of Aerys and Rhaegar’s scene together after Aerys’ surprise arrival at Harrenhal | Part 2/2 🐉
Aerys: Do it, Rhaegar. Do your duty and leave this room a king, for you have it right. I am mad. My mind is more dragon than man. I have a rage mighty as the Black Dread, I toy with men as I did insects in my youth, plucking off limbs to watch them squirm. The world has ceased to make sense. I only wish someone would give me the honesty of a blade in my heart. Please, my boy, end this! END IT!
Rhaegar: I'm no kinslayer! I'll not begin a reign with bloodshed.
Aerys: You are weak! You lack the spine to be king. A reign is not your intention. It’s the actions you take when fate commands it, one after the other, every day, the thousand tiny cuts. For all their pretty songs of benevolence, the realm would rather a king who gleefully inflicts pain than one who cowers from it. The gods flip no coin, Rhaegar! ‘Tis the Iron Throne makes you mad.
Rhaegar: Then unseat yourself and let me rule, for I have a destiny to fulfill, father. I am the Prince that was Promised.
Aerys: (bursts into laughter) Alas, you are already mad!
Rhaegar: I've spent my life in preparation.
Aerys: Then your life has been wasted! The song of ice and fire, for generations, it was heard only by kings. Now you share it with the realm.
Rhaegar: I am to unite the kingdoms against the coming darkness. Aegon dreamed of-
Aerys: Aegon dreamed of power. The song of ice and fire is nothing but a story. A tale told to legitimize the slaughter, just as you invoke it now to justify your own ambition.
Rhaegar: Everything he saw has come to pass… I was conceived beneath a bleeding star, as was foretold.
Aerys: There was no bleeding star!
Rhaegar: No, the maesters proclaimed it - a red comet above King's Landing…
Aerys: (speaking High Valyrian) The dragon must have three heads. The prince that was promised will be a third born child (repeats in High Valyrian).
Rhaegar: There must be one more.
Aerys: I have but two! And soon shall you, if it lives. Mayhaps your Dornish princess will birth a third. Rhaella never could! We must hope it is but a story, for if the darkness rises, there is no chosen one to save us.
Rhaegar: But I was born into salt and smoke. The fire, the tears of grief…
Aerys: A tragedy caused by this same delusion! A king so desperate to awaken dragons he turned Summerhall to ruin.
(We hear sounds of fire and screaming gradually increasing in volume, as well as red and orange lighting on stage, to show that Aerys is having a Summerhall flashback)
Aerys: I held you, mewling and whimpering while my grandsire burned to ash. The whole world in these little hands... my knuckles blistering, the panic, the bitter smell of scorched hair! Flesh! My grandsire burning... BURNING! Ah, my eyes! I can’t see! Smoke! Help! HELP! Where is my son?!
(Flashback ends, Barristan enters holding up his sword)
Rhaegar: I am before you, father.
Aerys: But-but you were just a baby, I held you.
Rhaegar: I'm no child, father! You are not at Summerhall. Those tragic flames have long died out.
Aerys: No Rhaegar, they burn still. This fate that has imprisoned us, ‘tis gone. We are free, ungoverned by myths and fables. Stories are for the powerless to tell themselves that their little lives have meaning. Ours are not authored by gods. We are gods! The dragons need not rise again, for we hold their power. If I gave word, my pyromancers could set the whole world ablaze. I see it in your eyes too, Rhaegar. A dragon that longs to see it all burn. (Pause) Well, how do I look? Like a king or a madman?
Oswell: (Running in) My prince! You have a son.
(Scene ends, we transition to the scene after Aegon’s birth)
✐ᝰ ergosum_public
“Save my wife, you should have said, but what are wives to men like you?”
“I fed my last husband to my dragon. If you make me take another, I may eat him myself.”
oh Rhaena you may be the cuntiest Targaryen ever… may a misogynistic hbo adaptation never touch you.