When all was said and done, it was not the Lannisters who prevailed, nor the Dragon Queen. It was not the Tyrells or Greyjoys, Wildlings or even White Walkers. It was a little bird who was no longer a girl, a woman stripped years ago of her innocence and hope. A wolf groomed by an old man wishing for a different Stark, a wolf who learned the Game through whispered words and wandering hands.
She had once been a quiet little thing, dreaming of knights and flowers. She had porcelain skin and blushing cheeks,with trusting eyes and a mouth that chirped praises. But her hand was given to a pretty boy with a black heart, a boy who slaughtered her family and ripped her open for the world to see. And so the little girl with fire in her hair froze herself, becoming so cold even the softest touch could not warm her shielded heart.
After a failed marriage and a poisoned King, the girl with Winter in her veins was taken away, flooded with pretty lies and sugarcoated secrets. There, while the snow blanketed the realm and creatures slunk out from the shadows, she was taught under a different name by a man she once knew. She learned of the Game that had killed her family and turned her home to ashes. She learned how to pillage and conquer, manipulate and destroy. She learned how to win.
And so, years later, the lone wolf returned to the city that destroyed her with red lips and dull eyes. It cost her warriors and soul, but in the end she took what countless men had died for.
Her heart was ice and her skin was stone, but the wolf ruled with a firm hand and just laws. The people forgot her traitorous father, her rabid brother, her bastard cousin. They loved their Winter Queen that would not laugh, that refused to take a husband or produce an heir. And though the girl who was no longer a child got what she was taught to need, she knew there were those wearing masks, waiting in the shadows. Women like Cersei Lannister and Margaery Tyrell. Men like Petyr Baelish and Stannis Baratheon. All waiting for her to slip, to forget the most important lesson she was ever taught.
One does not win the Game of Thrones. One only survives.
