The Talons and the Wings

The talons and the wings were two incipient factions that had been forming around the sister-wives of King Aegon VII Targaryen, since wedding Queen Visenya Silvermoon in 430 A.C. The half-sisters had sometimes maintained a rivalry in the past, but this proclivity was exacerbated after Aegon’s taking of a second bride. Given their powerful and magnetic personalities, deep political divisions run through the royal court, with lords and courtiers lending their ears to one queen or another in the hopes that they might garner royal favor.

Origins
Queen Rhaenyra and Queen Visenya’s rivalry had been an on again, off again affair since their teenage years. This however, for the most part, was a harmless affect of sisterhood. A true rift did not begin to grow between them until Rhaenyra’s brother and husband, Aegon, who then was the Prince of Dragonstone, took Visenya as a second wife. Rhaenyra had, in the years since her marriage to her brother, experienced difficulties becoming pregnant, and it was feared that she could well be barren. Visenya, however, had fruitfully born two children to her previous husband, and there were rumors that she and Aegon had endured a long-standing affair.

Their rivalry, however, is not simply borne of personal dislike, the vagaries of romantic entanglement, and the ambition that comes along with it. There are serious ideological differences between the two queens that can be traced back to their respective modes of advocacy during the many conflicts that plagued the reign of their father, Rhaegar II Targaryen, during the Bleeding. This divide and counsel have continued since. The king, and so the realm, has often found himself torn between the two viewpoints, compelling as both could sometimes be.

The titles derive from a remark made by Grand Maester Godwyn shortly after the coronation of Aegon VII and his queens. If Aegon was the head of the dragon, he said, then Rhaenyra constituted its talons while Visenya was as its wings. Queen Rhaenyra, he reasoned, embodied all the terrible power that the great dragons curated by House Targaryen could bring to bear. Her methods were direct, and as her enemies during the Second Hammer Uprising learned, could be fatal to those who opposed the Dragon’s will. Visenya, however, was a gentler soul, who often advocated more genteel methods such as diplomacy. Hers was an image of observation, preferring a complete view of a situation as a dragon might when aloft in the sky.

The youngest of Aegon’s brothers, Prince Daemon Targaryen, was so amused by this that he commissioned a gilded brooch in the shape of a dragon’s claws and presented it to Queen Rhaenyra as a gift for her nameday that year. At a banquet held before a tournament to celebrate King Aegon’s nameday, Lady Elyana Dayne, wife to the Prince of Summerhall, followed suit by presenting a new gown to Queen Visenya upon which the wings of a dragon were prominently featured. These two scions of the court were not the only ones to embrace these images, as many began to align themselves with one sphere of influence or the other.