Aethan Waters

Maekar Velaryon

**Aethan Waters** is the firstborn son of Lucerys Velaryon, a bastard raised in King's Landing and adopted at an early age into the ranks of the Golden Company. His twin brother, Alyn Waters, is his near-constant companion.

## Appearance and Character

With Myrish blood in his veins, Aethan little resembles his father's line, or even his twin brother. His hair is thick and dark, and his eyes hazel. He is a robust and broad-shouldered man, with a plain but kind face, half-hidden by a full beard, and a nose that has been broken many times. He bears the scars of his service in the Golden Company with pride, and has a story to tell for every nick or bruise. Aethan has a booming laugh and a penchant for telling tall tales, and is very susceptible to the joys of wine and women. He carries himself with confidence and charm, despite his rustic looks.

Despite his humble birth and current circumstances, however, Aethan has always held a flame of searing ambition - causing him to chase after further authority in the Golden company, after ties to his father's trueborn relatives, and most of all, after the distant possibility of becoming a dragon rider. His self-esteem is endless, bordering on delusional, and he believes himself invulnerable to serious harm.

Only his twin's constant vigilance has kept him out of mortal peril thus far.

## History

Aethan and Alyn were born across the Narrow Sea, the product of a brief but tumultuous affair between a young Lucerys Velaryon and a daughter of a prominent Myrish house. Utterly unwanted by their mother, the girl tried several times to end her pregnancy, downing moon tea, consulting with witches, and putting herself through serious physical harm. All of it was to no avail when not one, but *two* sons came into the world.

The pair were handed off shortly after birth to their disinterested father, who in turn left them first to the supervision of nursemaids, and then to their own devices. Strapped to the back of a dragon, the toddlers were totted across the Free Cities, settling briefly in Pentos, before returning to King's Landing due to their father's marriage to the young, vulnerable Gael Targaryen.

There, the curious boys took to the street in order to avoid suffering through their father's frequent tempers and beatings. Though their new stepmother was concerned for their welfare, they rarely spent more than evenings in the Velaryon apartments, and tried to stay out of notice whenever possible. Their chief protector and guardian was their elder sister, Zahra Waters - a shy and subdued young girl who had a far more difficult time making herself invisible, due to blossoming beauty and the obvious stain of Summer Islander heritage.

After months as ertswhile urchins, Aethan resolved - at the tender age of seven - that their future lay in the ranks of the Golden Company and began trailing its commander, Corlys Velaryon. After realizing the boys were indeed his own neglected nephews, Corlys sought to take them under his wing, seeing that they were fed, rested, and free from most of their bruises. He assigned them petty tasks within the company, fetching water and delivering messages, and most frequently spying on those whom he wished to keep track of. Aethan in particular was overjoyed to call himself a man of the Company - clinging fiercely to an ideal of the organization as principled, disciplined, and ferocious.

Corlys would, however, disappear and be presumed dead within a year, leaving the boys once again unprotected and without a mentor to look up to. They continued persistently to work for the Golden Company, out of both dreams of the future and a grateful attachment to their uncle. Their lives at home briefly improved with the birth of Gael and Lucerys' trueborn son, Maekar, who took up all of the couple's attention. When the Velaryons departed for a diplomatic mission abroad, Aethan, Alyn, and Zahra were left behind with a manse and its servants - a fate all of them were rather relieved of.

Lucerys Velaryon breathed his last when Aethan was fifteen years old - a man near grown, already squiring for an older knight within the company. He did not mourn his father's death, but he did rage and rant at his stepmother's good fortune - for within a fortnite of his passing, Gael had mounted Seastar and claimed the dragon for her own. Aethan felt one childhood dream die, then, his father's greatest legacy stolen from him, and only Alyn could coax him out of the gloom that followed.

What little remained of the boys' childhood was tempestuous and brief. Gael tried to appease them with an inheritance fit for princes - one egg apiece, taken from Seastar's clutch and hidden carefully by Lucerys for more than a decade. Neither egg, however, showed signs of hatching in the twins' hands. Maekar proved an incorrigible brat, always eager to torture his older siblings and then play innocent before his mother's judging eye; too often, Gael sided with her own child, and Aethan's disdain for his trueborn brother only grew.

His place in the Golden Company, however, was far more secure. Dutifully, Aethan climbed the ranks of the mercenary company, forsaking the thought of a wife or lands or any proper inheritance in favor of ascending into the same glory that Corlys Velaryon had once held. In time, he became a war-hardened veteran - hard drinking, hard living, and hard to deal with this. His passion for women was exceeded only by a passion for wine, gifts he had surely inherited from his roguish father. Aethan, at least, was also born with a conscience.

Today, he is a middling commander in King's Landing, whiling his days away at brothels and taverns when drills are over. His brother serves often as a steady hand to reign the worst of his excesses back in, and to temper his fiery ambitions. He has a tentative relationship with his trueborn kin, Lord Vaemond Velaryon, admiring both the man's prowess at drinking and his kindness to the common people.