A/N: To clear things up:
Rickard Stark married Joanna Lannister - an orphaned ward of Casterly Rock - whom he fell in love with when he saw her at court. Tywin Lannister married an orphaned northern heiress, Alianne Stark, a distant cousin of Rickard's whom he also met at court and fell in love with. Both Alianne and Joanna were maids-in-waiting to Princess Rhaella.
However bright a torch might burn, it can never match the rising sun.
She is nine, the first time she sees a whore. She is riding her pony in the winter town with her brothers and in the jeering marketplace a shaven woman is chained to the stocks.
"What did she do?" Cersei asks and Brandon says, without a second thought, "She's a whore, she's been spreading the pox round the town. Brought it north with her."
"What's a whore?" Rickard Stark's sheltered daughter asks.
Brandon gulps like a fish out of water and the guardsman riding by his side supplies the helpful reply, "A low woman of ill repute, m'lady."
"I know that," Cersei says. "But what does a whore do? And what's the pox and how d'you spread it?"
Little baby Benjen says, very superiorly, "Its nothing a lady ought to talk about, Cersei," though he knows as little as she does. She cuffs his head and turns to Brandon but he's frowning.
"Ben's right," her brother says tersely. "Its not something you should be talking about. Ask Old Nan or one of the women at the castle if you like."
She does, though the simpering, whimpering castle-girls frustrate her to no end. After much giggling and coyly fluttering eyelashes, one of them tells her, "Its when a woman uses her parts to lure and entrap a man, so's to speak. And he pays her for her trouble."
"How does that make her low?" Cersei demands. "She's just using what she's been given, same as a man uses his strength to labor or in war. She's not stealing or hurting anyone. Does that make a soldier worse than a whore then?"
They have no answer to that - of course they don't - and in the end they tell her to go work on her embroidery, men don't like women who talk too much.
She is twelve when she sees a whore sit for supper at the same table as her, in the high hall at Ryswell Castle. Barbrey Ryswell's long hair flows unbound down her shoulders in token of her maidenhead, shining like polished mahogany in the light of a thousand candles. Brandon and she sit side by side, almost as though they were betrothed, feeding each other choice morsels from their plates, sharing a cup. The girl's smile is creamy, her voice low and husky, her amber eyes challenging.
Lord Rickard sits as easily on his chair as he would on a bed of thorns. "The whore, parading herself like a virgin," her father hisses through gritted teeth to a retainer, in an unusually unguarded moment.
When the dancing begins, Lord Ryswell urges his ward to take his younger daughter to the floor and Lord Stark accidentally upends a goblet of wine. It seeps through the white linen like blood and drips on Bethany Bolton's silk gown.
"Scarcely a stain," the Lady of the Dreadfort says lightly, "Don't fuss, Father, its less red than I've seen at a bedding." She smiles at her sister and turns to Lord Stark. "Your lady wife was a Lannister of Lannisport, was she not? And your wedding a southron one? Most elegant, those affairs, I've heard - I attended one of the Manderly girls' weddings and found it enchanting. A northern wedding now, much simpler, all you need is a man and a woman and one to hear them speak the words under a heart-tree. And a sheet too, I suppose," she adds with a tinkling laugh. "All very well to sing of forest lasses and beds of grass but most women I know would rather have featherbeds and yellow silk."
"Brandon is betrothed to Catelyn Tully," Cersei can't stop herself from pointing out.
"So he is," Lady Bolton says. She fingers the drenched tablecloth thoughtfully. "But then there's many a slip bet'wixt the cup and the lip."
Cersei studies Barbrey Ryswell - the low cut of her gown, the bright, hard edge of her laughter tumbling forth from scarlet lips, her hair falling down to her waist in waves of light and dark when she throws her head back, the sinuous twist of her hips as she dances. There is not a man who can take his eyes off her that night.
"Do you love her?" Cersei asks Brandon. "Barbrey - do you want to marry her? Father is worried that you do."
"Gods above no," Brandon says, bewildered that she should ask. "She's tremendous fun and I like her and she likes me and that's all there is to it."
Not in her mind, Cersei thinks. "But she's so pretty," she says, egging him on, even though in her heart she thinks no she's not, I've much prettier.
Brandon rises gallantly to the gauntlet. "Not as pretty as you, little sister," he says. "And you're a pretty fool if you think a pretty face and a warm cunt is enough to sway a man from the path of duty."
"But you've bedded her."
Brandon shrugs, clearly impatient with the turn that the conversation is taking. "I've bedded half-a-dozen girls and women. That doesn't mean I'll take all of them to the heart-tree. Besides Barbrey's too much for me."
"Too much what?"
Brandon doesn't even think about it. "Oh you know, too much everything," he says, waving his hands about as though at a loss for words, "Paints her lips too bright. Wears her gowns too low, gads about too much. A little desperate, you could say - she's not getting any younger, she should be looking for a husband now, not playing around."
"So you think she's a whore?"
"I never said that," Brandon insists, "she isn't, she's a perfectly lovely girl and I'd duel any man who called her that but you know, she's ah, not the thing. Not for me."
So she's a whore, Cersei thinks and learns her lesson. Never be too much. Never be so obvious. Men don't like women who talk too much, who laugh too hard and enjoy life too vicariously.
A year later, Brandon leaves the Rills forever and begins to write love-letters to Catelyn Tully. A year later, Barbrey Ryswell is still unwed and unwanted and the maids whisper that her father, frustrated with her failure, beats her when he is in his cups. Two years later, Robert Baratheon arrives at Winterfell with the dawn of spring and Lord Rickard tells his daughter to smile and make herself beautiful for her betrothed.
Cersei Stark hurls her hairbrush at the mirror after he leave. The glass cracks, seven years of bad luck but as she stuffs her face in her pillow, weeping, she does not notice at first.
Lyanna Lannister is ten the first time a man gives her a flower at a tourney. A crown of roses, to be precise, the pale gold of the winter sun. Beside her, Jaime sucks in his lip, but Lord Tywin is all smiles as he puts the crown gently on his daughter's hair.
"The Prince was smitten by your beauty," her Aunt Genna tells her exultantly that night, while helping her dress for supper. "As he should be. You are the queen of his heart, just as you will be his queen in name soon."
But I don't want to be, Lyanna thinks and when she blurts it out, some of her women laugh as at a child's foolishness. Aunt Genna's brows snap together and she asks, "And why, pray?"
"I'll be trapped," she says awkwardly, fiddling with her sash, "I'll always have to do what people tell me." I bet they don't let princesses play in the mud or fight with sticks with their brothers. Or hang around the smithy, getting coal dust in their hair and dress, and stealing meat-pies from the kitchens.
"You're girl," Genna Frey points out, "you'll always be expected to do what people tell you to. Doesn't mean you have to." It is a novel idea, a foreign concept and her aunt laughs, not unkindly, when Lyanna's eyes widen in astonishment. "Silly child," she says, patting her cheek, "you'll learn."
At the great feast to mark the end of the extravagant tourney at Lannisport, she sits beside Prince Rhaegar. He scarcely speaks to her and she feels like an awkward child, a little fool. She has only ten years to his seventeen and she wishes she could sit next to Jaime, as she always has at feasts, that they could make jokes of the fat, pompous western lords who come to attend on their father. The king does not look too happy but then, ever since she has seen him, he has always seemed unendurably sour-faced so Lyanna ignores him. Her father's glee glows as bright as lamplight though - midway between the meal Uncle Kevan whispers something in his ear and his face darkens, his expression softens like shutters drawn over a bright light.
And at the end, Prince Rhaegar sings and she falls in love as only a child can. He sings of a woman long awaited, like a flower in bud just beginning to blossom in the springtime, a woman-child seen only in dreams and the children she will bear. Queen Rhaella herself summons Lyanna and Genna to the dais, when the dancing begins.
"You don't look at all like your twin," she remarks, "such a handsome boy."
"Lyanna takes after her mother, the Lady Alianne," Genna says.
"How unfortunate," the silver queen sighs, brushing a strand of Lyanna's dark hair. "But remedied, I suppose, with time and patience. Still, my son has seen something in you."
"His Grace and my brother, Lord Tywin-" Genna begins pompously and Queen Rhaella brushes her words away as she might swat a gnat.
"My brother and yours are as nothing in this matter," she says coolly, "it is Rhaegar to whose will men must bend. And they shall - he is the greatest man that was ever born to a woman, or ever shall be." Her limpid eyes shine with love as she looks upon her son and Lyanna fidgets uncomfortably.
"So child," Queen Rhaella says abruptly, looking down at Lyanna with the air of a martyr, "How would you like to come with me to King's Landing?"
Not at all, Lyanna thinks but she curtsies and says she would be delighted to, when her aunt pokes her back.
"It won't be easy," the queen warns her, "they'll be after you. They don't want a Lannister girl on the throne, they don't want Tywin Lannister's daughter on the throne."
"Who's they, Your Grace?"
"Oh," the queen gives a tinkling laugh, "Why, everyone of course. Don't you worry about not knowing them, child, they'll be all around you."
Lyanna Targaryen is not quite fifteen, the first time a different woman wears a crown of flowers at a tourney. Her gown is stiff and tight over her gravid belly, her head aches and sweat pools under her armpits. She smiles through it all though, like a princess in a fairy story for the people to admire, even when her husband rides slowly down the field, past her seat and to the Stark girl, sitting with her father.
The roses are blue, as though kissed by frost, like the green-eyed girl's gown. Her hair is long and golden, like a Lannister's, and the roses are as bright on her hair as Lyanna's shame is on her face. Elia Hightower's hand closes over hers, beneath their wide silk skirts, and Aunt Genna squeezes her shoulder. Rhaella will rejoice, Lyanna thinks, she always likes to see me taken down. Aerys too. The Spider. The blue-faced pyromancer. Everyone who hates me father, who hates me and the child in my belly.
"Why her?" Lyanna whispers to her husband and he side-steps her when she tries to hold him, murmurs something about overexertion in her condition. "Why would you shame me with that woman, out of all?"
Because she is the most beautiful, she wants him to say, cold and clean and clear. But that is not something her husband is very good at - the truth. Because she shines as bright as the rising sun.
"Lyanna, my love, you are so young," he says, brushing her cheek with gentle fingers. "In time I will tell you all, I swear to you, but now..."
She is still crying in her bed when her father visits, without notice. Her aunt trails after him, looking as devastated as Lyanna feels, but Lord Tywin snaps his fingers at her and Genna half-drags Lyanna out of her bed. Jaime, awkward and gawky in his squire's uniform, follows him. Where her father is pale and taut in his rage, her twin's face is red.
"Wash her face, brush your hair and change your gown," he says curtly. "You are a lioness of the Rock, not some moonstruck girl playing at love. I expect you to look the part."
She fingers the hairbrush on her table but her aunt picks it up quickly, before she can launch it at her father.
"Bear us a son," her father promises her, "and I will not let the Starks live out the shame they have dealt us." He turns on his heel and leaves her and Genna follows him, to call the maids to attend Lyanna.
Jaime grabs her hand and holds it tightly. "Son or daughter," he promises her, "I'll have revenge on them, Lyanna. I swear it by the old gods and the new." By our mother's gods and our father's, Lyanna thinks and for the first time since she was eight, since after their mother died, she kisses him full on the lips.
"You don't need to," Lyanna whispers, burying her head in his shoulder. "We'll both have revenge on them. Together."
At the hour of the ghosts, a man and a woman meet at the heart-tree at Harrenhal. The man's hair is as bright as beaten metal, the woman's as dark as polished oak. They kneel before the weirwood, whispering a prayer first learned when they lisped it at their grey-eyed mother's knee. A slash of the knife, a splotch of blood to feed the hungry roots of the old gods and it is done. They linger though, speaking of old times, warm laughter turning to soft kisses, warm, eager fingers touching, stroking, sighs slipping out from yearning lips. Their bodies fit together like pieces of a long-lost puzzle, in the darkness they live out a fantasy-world they have dreamed of. At the end, he holds her heel, below her swollen ankles, just as he did when they lay together in the womb.
At the hour of the wolf, a man and a woman meet at the heart-tree at Harrenhal. The man's hair is as silver as the moon, the woman's as golden as sunlight. His face is as grave as a mourner's at a funeral wake, hers as joyful as a bride's at her wedding. To see them, you would think the desire was all on her side. You would be wrong. They speak and though the woman's fingers linger on the man's face, they do nothing more. He kisses her hand as they part and she draws his face to hers, his yielding mouth down to her hungry lips. He stays, though he had not intended to. He stays a long time.