Jon x Rhaenyra, yeah. I mean, the central tension is so obvious it almost writes itself. You've got Jon, forever defined by his perceived bastardy and his rigid Northern honor, forced to confront the possibility of being the heir to a dynasty he's always seen as, I dunno, corrupt or foreign. And then Rhaenyra, who has fought her entire life for that same throne, her claim challenged because of her gender. A relationship would be a constant negotiation between his doubt and her absolute certainty, his self-effacement and her fierce, entitled pride. The best fics I've read don't just smash them together romantically; they use the romance as a pressure cooker for those ideological clashes. Does he see her as a validation of his Targaryen blood or a reminder of a legacy he never wanted? Does she see him as a threat to her son's inheritance or as the one person who might truly understand the weight of a crown you have to defend every single day? It's messy. It's about two people carrying the same impossible burden, but from opposite ends of the spectrum of legitimacy, trying to find common ground in a shared loneliness that is still, somehow, completely different.
A lot of writers lean into the 'two heads of the same dragon' thing. They're both outsiders in their own families, both groomed for leadership in ways that left them isolated. But where Rhaenyra's anger is volcanic and public, Jon's is a slow, frozen burn. That contrast is where the real emotional conflict lives. It's not just will-they-won't-they; it's can-they even understand each other's core without one of them having to fundamentally bend. I've seen some great stuff where the conflict is less about yelling matches and more about quiet, devastating moments of misunderstanding—Jon offering a solution based on Stark pragmatism that Rhaenyra interprets as a slight on her authority, or Rhaenyra's Targaryen absolutism horrifying Jon's more democratic Night's Watch instincts. The romance almost becomes secondary to the character study, which is why I find it so compelling.