Rhaella Targaryen

Rhaella was born in 42 AC at Casterly Rock, the younger of twin daughters born to Prince Aegon and Princess Rhaena Targaryen. Her parents were sheltering there under the protection of Lord Lyman Lannister, hiding from the Poor Fellows who had risen against their house. Soon after her birth, the High Septon denounced her from the Starry Sept as an abomination born of incest between siblings.

The following year her father died trying to seize the throne from his brother Maegor. To keep the girls safe, Rhaena dyed their hair, gave them new names, and placed them separately with families who had no idea who they really were — she chose not even to know herself where they had gone, in case she were ever forced to tell under torture.

Queen Tyanna of Pentos tracked the twins down and had them brought to the Red Keep. In 47 AC, when Rhaena was summoned to court to marry her own uncle, King Maegor I, Tyanna held Rhaella and her sister as leverage to guarantee the wedding went ahead.

As the younger twin, Rhaella was sent to Oldtown to train as a septa, while her sister stayed at court as Maegor's heir. When Rhaena fled King's Landing to join Prince Jaehaerys's cause, a furious Maegor sent a rider to Oldtown ordering Rhaella beheaded. The lord of House Hightower refused and had the messenger locked up instead.

After Maegor's death and Jaehaerys's rise to the throne, some questioned his claim, arguing that Rhaella's sister, as their father's heir, had the stronger right. Rhaella's own claim, meanwhile, was simply forgotten.

By late 48 AC Rhaella was in Oldtown for the coronation of her uncle Jaehaerys I, which her mother and sister also attended. Days later, when her twin left for King's Landing with the new king, something seemed to flip between them: the one who left grew bold and headstrong, while Rhaella, left behind at the Starry Sept, grew shy and fearful.

Before that trip it had been the other way round: as a child Rhaella had been the sturdier, more strong-willed of the two, the terror of her septas, while her sister was the timid one. The change, so sudden and so simultaneous in both girls, started rumors that the two had been swapped during their time in Oldtown, though no one ever proved it.

In 50 AC, after his scheme to depose Jaehaerys and crown Rhaella's sister instead had failed, Lord Rogar Baratheon, by then removed as Hand of the King, tried another approach: he sent his brother Orryn to Oldtown to demand that the High Septon hand Rhaella over. He meant to force her to admit that she, not her twin, was the true princess, and crown her afterward. That plan collapsed as well.

In 54 AC, while the king and queen were visiting Oldtown awaiting the election of a new High Septon, Queen Alysanne spent a day with the septas who tended the city's sick and there met Rhaella, still a novice. She described her, in her own words, as 'a scholarly and devout young woman, though much given to stammering and blushing.'

Months later, when her sister vanished flying on Balerion, Rhaena traveled to Oldtown hoping she had gone looking for Rhaella; she was not there. Rhaena stayed with her daughter a while and told her how much she regretted not having been a better mother. Rhaella embraced her and answered that she could not have wished for a better mother than the Mother above.

After her sister's death in 56 AC, Rhaena never again returned to King's Landing or Dragonstone, but she kept traveling to Oldtown once a year to see Rhaella at the Starry Sept.

Around 58 AC Rhaella finally took her vows as a septa. Late that same year the High Septon sent her to King's Landing, where a tourney was being held to mark ten years since Jaehaerys I's coronation. It was said that Queen Alysanne wept at the sight of her, so closely did she resemble Aerea, only older.