Just Spain without S

Your camera roll if you were dating Peter Parker

Later historians couldn't decide what Jocelyn Blackwood actually was. Some called her Jacaerys's greatest protector. Others called her a murderer who used a dead prince as an excuse for vengeance. Both were true. She genuinely loved Jace. She genuinely tried to save him. She genuinely failed. And afterward, she committed terrible acts against people who had nothing to do with his death. That is what makes Jocelyn tragic rather than merely evil. Her villainy was born from a virtue. She had spent years believing that one person was worth protecting at any cost. When that person died, she simply applied the same principle in reverse. Anyone who had taken Jace from her was worth destroying at any cost.

Jocelyn Blackwood came to court as a child and became one of Rhaenyra's closest childhood companions. The two girls were very different. Rhaenyra was born wanting to be seen. Jocelyn preferred watching. She was clever, dryly funny, difficult to embarrass, and possessed of a remarkably stubborn streak. Rhaenyra trusted her because Jocelyn never treated her like a princess when they were alone. When Jacaerys was born, Jocelyn became particularly attached to him. She was not his sworn sword. She wasn't even formally his protector. She simply made herself indispensable. She taught him which courtiers could be trusted. She warned him when conversations were becoming dangerous. She learned which lords were whispering about his parentage and which servants carried gossip between the royal apartments. Jace regarded her as an older sister. Jocelyn regarded him as the one person in the royal family whose future mattered to her more than her own. When war came, Jocelyn followed Jace's movements whenever possible. She disagreed with Rhaenyra at times. She disliked Daemon. She distrusted Corlys. She considered the Blacks' willingness to sacrifice young people for political objectives deeply hypocritical. But she remained because Jace remained. Her loyalty was therefore conditional in a way people failed to understand. If Jace had decided to make peace with Aegon, Jocelyn would have helped him. She wasn't protecting the Black cause. She was protecting Jacaerys Velaryon specifically. And then came the battle that killed him. Jocelyn had warned Jace repeatedly about the dangers of flying into contested territory. She understood his desperation to help his mother take back her throne, but she didn't want him to go nevertheless. He went anyway. She failed to stop him. And after Jace died protecting his little brothers, something fundamental in Jocelyn broke. The woman who emerged afterward was considerably worse. Jocelyn stopped caring about the distinction between enemies and obstacles. A Green sympathizer might be killed. A neutral lord might be ruined. A Black commander who had ignored Jace's warnings could find his career destroyed. A servant who carried information to the enemy could disappear. She began collecting the names of everyone who had, in her eyes, failed Jace. Not just those responsible for his death. Those who could have prevented it. Those who had advised him poorly. Those who had mocked him. Those who had treated him as expendable. And eventually, those who simply survived him. Her relationship with Rhaenyra became tragic. Jocelyn still loved her childhood friend. But she increasingly blamed her. Not necessarily for Jace's death, but for creating a world in which Jace had been expected to die for a crown. Rhaenyra eventually realized that Jocelyn no longer fought for her. She fought for the ghost of her son. And that made Jocelyn impossible to control. When Rhaenyra ordered her to show mercy toward several captured Greens, Jocelyn obeyed publicly. That night, the prisoners disappeared. Rhaenyra knew. Jocelyn knew she knew. Neither spoke about it. Jace was the great love of Jocelyn's life, though not romantically. He trusted her with his fears. She trusted him with her loyalty. His death transformed that loyalty into something poisonous. Jace had been the reason she restrained herself. Once he was gone, there was very little left restraining her. Rhaenyra loved her, then feared what she had become. Jacaerys had he lived, would probably have been the only person capable of stopping her. Baela Targaryen understood Jocelyn's grief but despised the cruelty that followed it. Daemon respected her ruthlessness but warned that grief had made her stupid. Aemond wanted her captured alive because he believed she knew exactly which Green families were vulnerable.