"You shall be queen, my child."
Queen, he said, her lord father. For her husband - the stranger she had married and lain with, the stranger who had put a babe in her belly and then left to fight a war - had taken the Iron Throne. They said Jaime Lannister, the Kingslayer, sat on the throne when Eddard Stark had marched into the room with his men, and the quiet wolf had forced the young lion of the Rock to stand and bend the knee as he took the throne for himself.
And now Catelyn Tully - no, Catelyn Stark, for she had married a Stark in the end, even though he was not the one she wanted - was to be queen of the Seven Kingdoms, she was to sit by a stranger and bring little princes and princesses into the world to please her husband, the king. She was uncertain when she arrived in King's Landing, unsure of whether she could be a queen, a good queen. She had not been taught how to be queen, after all, no more than Eddard had been taught how to be a king, it seemed; and even though he was a stranger, even though she felt no deep love for him and she was only bound to him by duty, by law and by the babe in her belly, she comforted him on the night of her arrival, when she realized how scared he truly was.
"You will be a good king, my lord," she whispered to him, her hand on his shoulder, and she smiled softly when he rested his forehead against her swollen belly. She still smiled when his large hands stroked her stomach through the thin material of her gown, and smiled even more when he looked up and regarded her with something akin to fondness, somehow uncharacteristic on his long, solemn face.
"With you by my side, my lady, I could be," he said, and Catelyn knew then that perhaps she could have loved this stranger she had married; this solemn man who had made her queen.
THE END