Dole of the Storm Lord's Daughter
Summary: She's been a princess since her brother took his throne, a queen since she married a son of the Reach, and an usurper since her king fell. Like brother like sister.
Author's Note: No time like the present to unleash fem!Renly. Personally, I picture her as Caroline Dhavernas. "Dole of the King's Daughter," a thematic influence, is by Oscar Wilde.
Seven stars in the still water,
And seven in the sky;
Seven sins on the King's daughter,
Deep in her soul to lie.
How fast things go from tourneys to treason.
"The last queen to sit the Iron Throne was eaten by a dragon."
"She was only a princess."
And what am I, if not a princess?
With each stride of her lanky mare she wonders if she gallops away from her death or toward it. The queen—gods curse the beautiful, horrid woman—will take her departure as an act of war. Not that the princess hasn't put a war into motion.
Selfish, overreaching. You defy the laws of gods and men.
Only men, Reanna thinks. If the gods have qualm they can strike me blind or turn me into a rat.
And her brother—no one struck him down when he forged a new crown. Perhaps rebellion runs in her blood. However she'd sighed and drank with him, nodded and smiled when he spoke of the wife he should've had, she thanks Robert for crashing ahead, leaving her a path to follow. It took her around the lives of most ladies. It gave her time to dodge her septas and suitors. And to see—see how laws are the same ink on paper whoever writes them.
Strange, how she used to think tomes of law and history were best used to press flowers for a hair piece.
Did Rhaenyra feel so sure? If she flees her doom only to throw herself to the dragon queen's fate, well, that will be a song to remember. But not the one Reanna plans on inspiring.
You have better friends. Better timing. More desire. My brother could take the kingdom but not rule it. I will drag it back to better.
Reanna races from the city so she can gather her furs and formalize an alliance. Before leaving was denied entirely. Her betrothed still has Westerland blood flecked on his cuirass, from the Lannister guards who protested their escape.
If she twists around, she can still see the Red Keep stretching over the trees, its battlements only now taking the ruddy tinge of morning. With any luck she'll be returning soon with an army.
She's already lived through one war. Two, if she counts the squid lords.
When she rides into King's Landing for the first time, a fortnight after her eighth nameday, all she smells is char. The city was sacked, Stannis said. The smell puts her back in Storm's End, the days she counts by ribs and the shrinking number of animals. Her pony too. He was a sweeter creature than the lazy rouncy she rides now.
"Don't live in the past," Stannis says suddenly, looking down at her from his blood-bay courser. She can hear the snort behind his words. "However absurd, we dutifully ride toward…
"…our duty?" Reanna offers.
His smile is noticeable only because she knows to look at the shadows of his cheeks. They're hollow and haggard, but the light twists a bit when he can't help a terse smile.
"Like a snake devours its tail."
She's never made him smile as much as Davos, the smuggler-man who tossed out onions like nameday gifts, but then again, she wasn't the one with food. Reanna knows she should be happy. Her oldest brother marries today. Her other brother has returned from his sea voyage, though he's even crankier than when he left, even though he's riding a fine new horse.
Once in the keep, she smells more roasted meat than smoky bones. Splashing perfume and flowers atop it makes her queasy—a small part of her is happy Stannis stays on the edge of the revelries.
There are ladies in gowns twice as wide as their hips, wearing teal and carmine—they're almost Volantis-foreign colors to her, and it makes her giggle. Somewhere, she knows she's seen their like, but hunger seems to have gobbled up all her memories before the Siege. It's almost a shock to look down and see the dark blue skirts under her fingers.
A new dress made in blues and blacks—her favorite colors, trimmed in cream—and a small gold choker, antler links, of course, with some black ribbon through it. It was good having ladies to help her dress again. They'd fussed over her worse than her handmaids, calling her poor child and poor deer. "Stag, not deer," she'd finally said, earning a laugh that confused her.
The stag is their sigil, is it not? The only way she knows her family. She certainly can't picture Robert, beyond the tapestry in Storm's End's main hall, where the black-haired man slays another. Stannis told her that was Orys, not her brother…so she does not know him at all.
"Did we win?" she asked when they first rode from Storm's End.
"No."
"We lost?"
"No." Her brother scowled. "We survived. Only an animal counts survival as winning."
He hasn't been happy to see King's Landing. When she'd first asked why, he only replied, "A looming cacophony. I imagine you'll like him."
Perhaps he isn't wrong. As she looks around, she sees every lady murmuring with one another, every lord clapping arms and trading jibes, but Seven save her she can't guess what they're talking about. A long table of food cuts through the hall and they pretend it's not even there. A wedding breakfast, no? Her brother's hand settles on her shoulder and she breathes until she's fine again. Stannis is always stiff and perplexed the scant times she's thrown her arms around his waist, but he'd taken to the small touch during the siege to check her strength. She hadn't been steady, one time. The floor had gone out from under her though she swore she floated—fainted, Cressen said. She'd woken to a plate of steaming meat and it was the loveliest thing she'd ever tasted, even if the maester made her eat slowly. Two days later she noticed her brother's last hunting hounds were gone.
Stannis jerks his chin at a distracted stranger. Not a stranger! Their brother.
Robert is the tallest man she's ever seen! Muscled too, unlike Stannis who puts her more in mind of a winter wolf than a forest stag. Robert's her king now, and they say Stannis is a prince too. And she a princess!
She looks up at her terse brother. Stannis nods, hand still grazing her shoulder when she squirms past ladies and murmurs. Robert stands almost alone at his own wedding breakfast, even if he trades words with the circle around him. Stannis pushes her through the storm of skirts.
"—our sister, Reanna."
Robert looks down and she looks up. Eyes like her brother, but so much more restless. Suddenly his huge hands wrap around her waist and he's lifting her up to kiss her forehead, perching her on a thick forearm like she's a glossy gyrfalcon. His eyes rake her from head to toe.
"Gods, she's skin and bones. Did you forget to feed her?"
"We were besieged for a year." Her brother has gone still, jaw set, arms stiff behind his back.
She squirms inside. She's eight ears old, their own sister, but she can't understand why Stannis and Robert suddenly eye each other like hounds about to fight. Reanna is close enough to kiss his cheek.
"Where is your queen?" she asks in a small voice.
Robert snorts, but his smile eases back. "She's not my queen yet."
When her betrothed sees her dire looks into the inn's smouldering hearth, he assumes she is nervous. He smiles as best he can, though he has not forgotten the Lannister guards they killed to escape the capital. Has he seen blood on his breastplate before? Reanna knows not, but if she has egged on a war, then her soon-to-be-husband should know if killing makes him retch.
"Before your brother, a Baratheon had never sat the Iron Throne. You have better friends than Rhaenrya." They've reminded her of this. "You are not screeching in childbirth while your kin plot your downfall." No, her belly is undisturbed.
You chose, she reminds herself. In the end, you chose.
She'd rather be back in King's Landing or Storm's End, planning Robert's nameday tourney or trading jests with Lord Baelish at council meetings. But you can't have everything you want. Only what you're willing to take. Is it such treason, to realize your brother paid more heed to tourneys than his seven kingdoms? She's sat on the councils he missed, humored the lords he insulted. She even tried to aid his new Hand when Robert left him to flounder.
But Lord Stark never accepted her help. Should she have expected more? King's Landing felt paved in eggshells the moment he arrived, a pack of tromping wolves not meant for life below the Neck. Still, I tried. She can't ride back and force him to accept her help. If she's learned anything of the queen, Lord Stark has given a hellcat free reign. She doesn't regret the aid he refused.