- Laena Velaryon: Your Grace. It would be a great honour to join our houses, as they were in old Valyria. I would give you many children, of pure Valyrian blood, so that we might strengthen the royal line and the realm.
- King Viserys Targaryen: Is that what your father told you to say?
- [a pause. Laena does not reply]
- King Viserys Targaryen: What did your mother tell you?
- Laena Velaryon: That I wouldn't have to bed you until I turn fourteen.
- Lord Corlys Velaryon: To elude a storm, you can either sail into it or around it. But you must never await its coming.
- Princess Rhaenys Velaryon: Whether it's to my daughter or to someone else's, your father will remarry sooner than late. His new wife will produce new heirs, and chances are better than not that one of those will be male. And when that boy comes of age and your father has passed, the men of the realm will expect him to be heir. Not you. Because that is the order of things.
- Young Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen: When I am queen, I will create a new order.
- Princess Rhaenys Velaryon: How I wish that could be, Rhaenyra. But the men of the realm already had their opportunity to appoint a ruling Queen at the Great Council and they denied it.
- Young Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen: They denied you, Princess Rhaenys. "The Queen Who Never Was". But they bent the knee to me and called me heir to the throne.
- Princess Rhaenys Velaryon: Do you remind your father's men of that as you carry their cups? Here is the hard truth, which no one else has the heart to tell you. Men would sooner put the realm to the torch than see a woman ascend the Iron Throne. And your father is no fool.
- Lord Corlys Velaryon: We are the realm's second sons, Daemon. Our worth is not given. It must be made.
- Young Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen: The king must take a new wife.
- King Viserys Targaryen: I could never replace your mother, no more than I intend to replace you as heir. But you are my only heir and our line is vulnerable, too easily ended. And by marrying again, I may begin to ensure that we are better defended.
- Young Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen: Against whom?
- King Viserys Targaryen: Whomever may dare to challenge us.
- [pause]
- King Viserys Targaryen: I do not wish to make us estranged.
- Young Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen: You are the king. Your first duty is to the realm. Mother would have understood this... just as I do.
- Prince Daemon Targaryen: It was never my brother's strongest trait.
- Lord Corlys Velaryon: What?
- Prince Daemon Targaryen: Being King.
- Lord Corlys Velaryon: If those shipping lanes fall, my house will be crippled. And I will not have Driftmark beggared while our King idles himself with feasts, and balls, and tourneys.
- Prince Daemon Targaryen: I will speak of my brother as I wish. You will not.
- King Viserys Targaryen: Ever since my name was read by the archmaesters at the Great Council, I have felt Corlys Velaryon's envious gaze staring at me from across the Blackwater.
- Lord Lyonel Strong: You sit upon the highest seat in the realm, Your Grace. Proud men don't like having to look up.