Acedia
"They tried to marry me to a Targaryen once, but I soon put an end to that."
- A Storm of Swords
"A great knight with a paramour. She is an old woman now, but she was a rare beauty in her youth, men say." Prince Lewyn? That tale Ser Arys had not heard. It shocked him. Terrence Toyne's treason and the deceits of Lucamore the Lusty were recorded in the White Book, but there was no hint of a woman on Prince Lewyn's page.
- A Feast for Crows
The palanquin joggles them all the way to Sunspear. Once, a score-and-half years ago perhaps, Olenna would have drawn back the gauzy drapes and drunk in all the sights with starved eyes. Now, past her half-century mark, nothing much excites her. She lolls on her pillows, too hot and weary to even pick up the palm-leaf fan. Beside her, Mhaegon drowses in an opium haze, childlike in his contentment. It is the easiest way to travel with him, she has found out - heavily sedated.
From the palanquin behind her she can hear her daughter-in-law, her voice high and fretful. The baby adds her voice too, crying fractiously. Only the little boy, her only grandson, is quiet. Too quiet.
If his father were alive, he would be riding, Olenna thinks, its not good for him to be so much in the company of his mother. She has a half-hearted notion of sending one of her women to Alysha, to tell her that the boy should be riding on his pony. But then she decides that she is too hot to be bothered and her grandson occupies little space in her world and still less in her heart. The child she loved, the son she strained all her life for, lies mouldering under a cairn. His father never came to his grave and yet she had to invite his murderer, Aerys the Scab, came to see him laid to eternal rest.
The child is seven, he can manage very well by himself. There are enough boys with begging bowls in Fleabottom that take care of themselves at his age.
In the outer ward of the castle, young Prince Oberyn is waiting to greet them. In his shadow stand three little girls with linked hands - two of his bastards and his niece, the Martell heiress. They dip into their curtseys, little ducklings in a row, and Prince Oberyn sweeps Olenna theatrically out of the litter. "Cousin Olenna," he says warmly, smacking her on both cheek with rouged lips. He has a great many pointed teeth it seems, they flash every time he smiles - which is often. If a woman were to ask, he would laugh no doubt, and say he sharpened them on his victims' throats.
So like his Uncle Lewyn, she thinks.
"Sweet Alysha, you grew sweeter each time I see you," Oberyn gasps, twirling her like a boy would his darling love. His voice is coated with irony and one of the little princess's ladies-in-waiting stifles a laugh behind her sleeve to hear him.
There was once a time when Alysha Dayne was a beauty - all starry violet eyes and tinkling laughter - but now she is just as sweet as a rotten fruit, a pulp of spongy, sagging flesh and a faintly acidic stench. She seems to believe him - of course she does, Olenna thinks, she's Alysha - because she giggles and then says breathlessly, "Your brother never sends for us often enough. We are most dreadfully bored in the middle of the desert when our place is at court. You must have him invite us more often, Cousin Oberyn, you must!"
Oberyn only smiles, further courtesy evidently strained by the smell arising from her skin and clothes. Even philanderers have their limits. He does not greet Mhaegon of course, no one ever does. Instead, he crouches to little Aerys' level and ruffles his dirty blond hair. "Hello little man. You're looking rather pale."
Pale and stunted, Olenna thinks, comparing him to Arianne Martell. They are of an age but to look at them you would hardly believe it. Mercy, so his mother doesn't feed him enough, after all. Alysha's fear of poisoning runs deep - how could it not after the manner of her husband's gruesome death? - but Olenna had never thought she would actually starve her son. Of course there were rumors, her women would sometimes drop a cautious word or two about the situation in the neighboring palace, but then Olenna had her own grief and her own cares to attend to...
"Would you like to play with your cousins, hmm?" Oberyn offers. The boy looks ready to duck behind his mother's skirts but without waiting for an answer, Oberyn swings him around so that he is face to face with the girls. Princess Arianne, evidently trained in the manner by which she is to receive her cousin, offers him her hand and says very charmingly, "We could play Come into my Castle, Cousin Aerys. Nym, Tyene, you and me. Or any other game that you would like better."
He looks uncertainly at his mother but Alysha, undressing Oberyn with her eyes, waves him off. The girls skip off merrily and one of their governesses takes Aerys by the hand, to follow them. "Ser Manfrey shall see Prince Mhaegon and Cousin Alysha accommodated," Oberyn says, "As for you, my lady, if you are not too weary from your journey, my brother would be honored if you would meet him."
Alysha opens her eyes very wide at that. "Why not me too?" she demands petulantly.
"Oh come now, cousin, you are far too young and pretty to be bothered by such tedious affairs. Accounts and penny-pinching - what can they mean to a woman with samite cheeks? No offense meant, of course, to you, Princess Olenna."
"None taken," she says dryly. "But you may tell Doran that as it happens, I am weary and would like to be shown to my chambers."
Prince Oberyn blinks, as though not quite understanding her. "A private audience," he says, shades of meaning layered into the words and in the look he shoots her. She ignores him. "On a matter of some urgency, my lady. You cannot mean to decline."
"Oh heavens, boy, don't you be fluttering your lashes so coy at me," she snaps, "I'm twenty years too old for that. I do decline. I didn't want to be jostled halfway across the desert but I was and now, unless you mean to tie me to a pole and drag me there, I'll not be jostled before Doran Martell. A woman my age wants scented candles and rosewater baths to greet her, not a dour old face."
Prince Oberyn recovers his grace in a moment. "Of course, my lady," he says, recovering a smile from his grimace, "it shall be as you say."
Their quarters are in the Spear Tower, overlooking the shadow city. Olenna lounges in her scented bath for hours, popping sugared almonds into her mouth and ringing every so often for the maids to bring more hot water. An hour into her bath, an attendant comes to tell her that Prince Doran is waiting for her in her solar.
"If he wants to come in, he may," Olenna tells her, "this old sack was once thought charming. but I'll not be pulled out of my bath for the likes of a whippersnapper like him. I remember him when I was married and he didn't come up to my knee, to my knee, you hear..."
She makes him wait and worry and it is only at supper that they finally wait. It is a supper set for three but Oberyn, in the manner of the serpent that he has taken to blazoning on his tunics, darts hither and thither, seemingly not content to sit still in one place. "Mercy, tell him to put his arse down, Doran," Olenna complains, "it worries me like a fly flitting about the food."
"Dear Cousin Olenna," Oberyn murmurs, "you are as delightful as ever."
As it transpires, Mellario is in the nursery tending to the baby, Quentyn. "How did you ever get your mother to agree to her?" Olenna demands of Doran. "A woman who'd rather simper lullabies to her baby than talk treason with the men - I'd love to know what Loreza thought of that."
Doran, ever the gentlemen, blinks owlishly at her. Small talk at the table, treason in the solar.
"Dornishmen seem to set a vast store by their big black eyes," Olenna points out, "all Oberyn's been doing since I've arrived is flutter his eyelashes and now your eyes have gone and gotten as soulful as a lapdog's. So what is the deal, eh Doran?"
Delicately, he puts down his silverware and leans forward. "Cousin, I believe you have had little news of the... war so far?"
"War, what war? A pack of paltry skirmishes, as I've heard it," she says acidly. "The Baratheon boy flexing his muscles over the Stark girl. And you know well enough we never get any news, buried as we are in the middle of the desert. That was Aegon's decision wasn't it, to keep Mhaegon as far away from the center of things as possible."
"Rickard Stark and his heir are dead," Doran tells her softly. "Aerys hanged them. There was a battle at Stoney Sept-"
"-where?"
"A town in the Riverlands. The rebels won. They fought through the streets and on the rooftops and the men that were killed... gods above. Rhaegar's old squire, Myles Mooton. Jon Arryn's heir, the boy Denys. Aerys exiled Jon Connington. The troops are in tatters, Aerys sent Selmy and Jonothor Darry to round them up again. The Tyrell fleet has sailed round to Storm's End, Lord Luthor and his heir, Mace, are leading the siege."
Luthor Tyrell - the name has long since ceased to mean anything to her. And once I might have been his bride, the Lady of Highgarden. But then my father thought he knew better than me, the fool. "Aerys, Aerys, Aerys," Olenna says impatiently. "What good is he ever? What is Rhaegar doing?"
Oberyn's voice is slow and measured, the tone so even that Olenna can only guess at his fury. "No one knows. Shacked up with that Stark slut, perhaps. Dead in the desert, who knows? No one has had word of him nor Dayne for months now, not since Summerhall." He has always loved his sister dearly, Olenna reflects, perhaps too dearly for propriety.
"And what of Rhaella?"
"Aerys intends to send her and Viserys to Dragonstone," Doran says quietly and before Oberyn can butt in, adds, "Elia and the children are to remain in King's Landing with Aerys."
"And Uncle Lewyn," Oberyn spits out, with a malicious side-glance to Olenna, "hostages for the loyalty of Dorne."
Olenna sucks in her lip, wanting for a moment to slap the boy's face. Impertinent brat. But then she composes her face and says, "And why should all this concern me, my dears? I am but an old woman, a twig on the Targaryen tree. Aerys would never think to send for Mhaegon or the rest of us."
"Not Mhaegon perhaps," Oberyn says with a dramatic shudder, "poor sap. But your grandson. He's a bit of a runt, all right, but there's nothing the matter wrong with him."
"He would be Prince Viserys' heir," Doran reminds her.
"He's his mother's responsibility," Olenna says sourly, "you should be talking to her if you think there's any threat to him." Little Aerys, named for his uncle the king, named for his father's murderer. I have no time for intrigue. Not now, not at my age. Thirty years ago she would have been snapping at the bait but she is too old for this.
"One does not talk to a diseased woman," Oberyn murmurs. "One flatters her and then ignores her. It is so much easier."
"I would like to make him my ward," Doran says softly, persuasively. "Betroth him to my Arianne. He would grow up in the Water Gardens with the other children. I know that his mother finds the care of children... taxing to her facilities at the moment. I could have her sent back to Starfall."
The idea is as tempting as a ripe peach. Alysha far, far away where she will never have to hear again that the silly chit has cut her wrists in her bath or swallowed some poison from the maester's cabinet, where she will never have to rush in and swoop the little boy from his mother's less-than-tender clutches or be told that she tried to drop the baby from the nursery window.
"What about me?" Olenna asks quietly. "Am I to go back home all alone? My only child was murdered two years ago and though his widow is a raving fool and his children burdens, I have no one else."
"You have your most esteemed lord, Prince Mhaegon," Oberyn points out, lips curling into a smile.
"Oh yes. Only the best of the bunch for a Redwyne girl," Olenna says dryly. "Do you know what Aegon the Unlikely told me, on the day he slipped Mhaegon's troth-ring on to my finger? He told me it was either a bride or a silk pillow for his nephew. A feeble-witted nephew was nothing by himself, but if he could breed... well even a chipped dragon is better than none, as the saying goes." Yet he never did breed, she thinks, though my son carried his name.
"You could take your place with your grandson," Oberyn suggests. "Uncle Lewyn always spoke so highly of you. He said you were wasted on Mhaegon. Though," he reflects, "a hundred girls would hardly think a royal prince a waste."
A king would be a waste on me, she thinks. A loon like Aerys or a smug snake like Rhaegar. Luthor Tyrell, was a fool, but an honest, innocent, unassuming fool at that. And he married a girl just as stupid, she reflects, Linna Fossoway who only knew how to make cow's eyes and parrot her septa's words. Old Lady Tyrell had never liked her, though Luthor had been wild for her for a time. It might all have worked out, she was clever enough and ambitious enough for that, but for her father's steely resolve. Why waste a daughter on Highgarden when she could be a royal princess instead.
"Perhaps," she says quietly, her face and voice giving nothing away from years of long training. But in her heart she thinks no, my chance has passed. I am too old.
A/N: I was planning to post all 7 together in one chapter but it'll take me a while to write them all down so I'll post them chapter by chapter and then after I've finished all of them, stitch them together in one. Next up is either Dany or Jeyne. I once saw an AU fic done on this same concept only with the virtues instead of the vices, don't know quite where. It associated Cersei with chastity - she became a septa or a Silent Sister. I'd love it if anyone could send me the link.