Fanfic / Strategy Sets the Scene for the Tale

Strategy Sets the Scene for the Tale is a self-insert fanfic written on Archive of Our Own by Tsume Yuki for House of the Dragon.

Cregan Stark's older sister has green eyes and a head filled with memories of another life — combine that and you obtain a Greenseer bent on averting or at least minimizing the clusterfuck that the Dance of Dragons is looming right around the corner.

How does she intends to do that? By seducing Aegon II and teaching him how to love himself. But mainly by seducing him.

If she annoys Otto Hightower and Alicent by doing that, even better.

Contains the following tropes

• Aloof Big Sister: Rhaenyra towards her half-Hightower half-siblings, with Aegon musing he barely knows anything about her beyond the fact that Viserys wants for her to succeed him. She shows hints of defrosting when Aegon bluntly reveals he has no craving for the Iron Throne.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Aegon just won't stop calling his brother Aemond a twat and complain about his more responsible personality.
• Arranged Marriage: The nail derailing the timeline is Viserys agreeing to betroth his eldest son Aegon to a Stark lady, uniting their bloodlines in the hope to join their respective magics.
• Big Brother Instinct: Inverted — the protective siblings tend to be younger.
  • Cregan is obviously worrying about his sister Errya marrying in King's Landing and tells her that he would outright rebel against the Iron Throne if she's really unhappy there. Aemond also frets about the young man beating Aegon black and blue if the prince shames his betrothed before the wedding.
  • At the bedding ceremony, Aemond outright punches a Lord that wanted to rip Errya's bralette when she told him to back off.
• Birds of a Feather: Both Aegon and Errya are hedonistic and really want to stay far away from the Iron Throne, meaning they're surprisingly well-matched.
• Color-Coded Eyes: Errya's green eyes are a strong indicator of her prophetic and warging abilities.
• Commonality Connection:
  • Aemond and Cregan find themselves miserable together as their older siblings are fawning over each other.
  • Alicent tries to make her future daughter-in-law more at ease by pointing both of them lost their mother young. It doesn't work very well since Errya is unhappy with her failing to actually raise her children.
• Everyone Has Standards: Aegon agreed to the Arranged Marriage with a Stark lady because the idea of bedding and impregnating his sister gave him the screaming heebies-jeebies. He considers the prohition of incest as one of the few good points in the Faith of the Seven, and cannot for the life of him understand why everyone else from Targaryen stock seeks to inbreed the family further.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Downplayed since Daemon is more complex than the usual Evil Uncle and Aegon is far from wholly innocent, but the Rogue Prince certainly antagonizes the half-Hightower royal children and immediately accuses his nephew of lying when Aegon admits he doesn't want the Iron Throne. For a man as ambitious as Daemon who will do anything to see his wife ruling the Seven Kingdoms, the very idea of Rejecting the Inheritance when you have a good claim to the crown is utterly anathema.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Aemond won't let Aegon ruin a potential alliance with the North by offending his arranged Stark bride and her brother, forcing his brother to stay sober for the week before the wedding.
• Hormone-Addled Teenager: Errya and Aegon, oh so much. Everyone else is surprised or amused by their determination to explore as many kinks as possible.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: Aegon is extremely vulnerable in front of Errya's kindness because he desperately wants for someone, anyone to accept him, Warts and All. Learning she actually declined the possibility to marry Jacaerys Velaryon and become the next Queen because she only wanted Aegon is enough for him to be gone.
• Insatiable Newlyweds: After their wedding, Aegon and Errya are so busy getting to "know" each other that they don't bother attending breakfast with the rest of the family.
• Intergenerational Friendship: Viserys and Errya have a fantastic relationship, as he's fascinated by her Greenseer powers and she helps him to perfect his Valyria model. Rhaenyra warns Daemon that it will be impossible for Aegon to not marry her, since Viserys really wants to have Errya as his daughter-in-law.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Viserys carefully avoids telling his brother why he wants so badly for a Stark lady to marry a Targaryen prince. Daemon is pretty offended when his wife also refuses to let him in the secret, and Aegon is outright gleeful at the prospect to be more informed than his uncle.
• Meaningful Name: Errya comments on her name sounding like "error", pointing at her very existence derailing the timeline and sending Westeros on another path.
• Mirror Character: Aegon in this fic shows how much he's Daemon's nephew and how much he's not — if he's utterly lacking the sheer drive and ambition that led Daemon to become The Dreaded in Westeros, he shares his sexual appetite, his distaste for court intrigue and his devotion to a bride with the same interests than him. Daemon himself reflects on the parallels between them.
• "Not So Different" Remark: When a maid reveals Aegon is too "busy" with his new wife to come at breakfast, Daemon bursts out laughing as he muses he totally understands the need to enjoy yourself with your bride the day after the wedding, and comments on his nephew being a true Targaryen since he has such an appetite for carnal pleasure and the shamelessness to seize this pleasure, a sentence that might describe Daemon himself.
• Obnoxious In-Laws:
  • Errya cannot bring herself to like Alicent and Otto Hightower for messing Aegon, Helaena and Aemond, Daemon threatens to feed her to Caraxes when she reminds him of his mistake in bringing his niece to a brothel, and she's aware that Rhaenyra would be very happy if she failed to give heirs to a potential rival for the Iron Throne. However, she's very much a Cool Big Sis to Helaena and Aemond.
  • Cregan knows of Aegon's infamy as a drunkard who enjoys his whores, and doesn't truly believe his sister when she claims he can change for her.
• Parental Neglect: Viserys connects more easily with his future daughter-in-law than his older son, with Aegon bitterly musing he's only there for Errya to fall pregnant.
• Parental Sexuality Squick: Inverted with Alicent's distaste for her eldest son's potent sex drive. It's first justified since Aegon is frequenting prostitutes when he's about to get married, but it actually shows how deeply repressed the Queen is when she's horrified to learn Aegon has serviced his bride, on their wedding night, when it's expected and even encouraged.
• Powerful People Are Subs: Aegon is socially the dominant partner in his marriage, as a Targaryen Prince, the king's eldest son and a dragon rider. However, Errya quickly establishes herself as sexually agressive and confident by casually announcing her intent to change him through sex, rewarding him with intimacy when he studies well and not letting him actually lay a finger on her until their wedding night on which she sets the pace. Aegon is first intrigued by her fiery attitude, then grows to enjoy it a lot.
• Sex Is Evil, and I Am Horny: Consequence of her deeply religious education and her Awful Wedded Life, Alicent cannot imagine sex as something pleasant and treats it as a chore needed for producing children. She's so repressed that she's disgusted to learn her son is servicing his wife, and Daemon immediately throws salt in the wound by congratulating her on her upcoming grandchildren.
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: Aegon and Errya won't stop staring at each other, giggling and holding hands when they are in public, to Aemond's thorough disgust.
• Super Breeding Program: The reasoning behind Aegon and Errya's Arranged Marriage — by giving his son a powerful Greenseer and warg as a bride, Viserys ensures they will produce extremely gifted dragon riders. Aegon is pretty ambivalent on the matter, seeing that as degrading and dehumanizing, and Errya isn't fully at ease with the prospect either in spite of working hard to marry her prince.
• Teen Pregnancy: Aegon and Errya actually want to avert this, because it's dangerous for a sixteen-year-old girl to have children, they're not mentally ready yet for parenthood and would like to strengthen their relationship first before adding the complication of a newborn baby to the mix.
• Troll: Daemon, of course. He startles his nephew when said nephew seeks to quietly leave a brothel with his betrothed, invites Errya to dance all night because it will piss Aegon something fierce to see his future wife at the Rogue Prince's arm, and gleefully congratulates a mortified Alicent on her upcoming grandchildren as she's humiliated by her son being so "busy" with his wife that he won't come for breakfast.
• Unfit for Greatness: Aegon would be a piss-poor king, he knows it and he won't stop reminding his whole family of this little point. So far, Rhaenyra is the only one to listen — everybody else believe he's lying or insist to whip him into shape anyway.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Gender inversion — when Daemon threatens to feed Errya to Caraxes for reminding him how he was accused of deflowering his niece, Aegon pushes his betrothed behind him and snarls his dragonless cousin Rhaena will pay the price if his uncle goes through his threat.
• What Does She See in Him?: Nobody in the Targaryen family gets why Errya is bent on marrying Aegon, who drinks like a fish and slept with so many whores already he ought to have several veneral diseases.