I had to have been about thirteen when reality occurred to me. Thirteen was when it hit me—really, really sank in. I woke up one morning with a crippling agony in my abdomen, sat up, and saw enough blood to drown in soaked into my sheets. The day my red flower bloomed. That was the day I realized that I would never, ever leave the Twins. I suppose it was sort of possible that I would—someday. But there were just so many of us, so many in line before me—that it made the idea of me ever getting married a far-fetched one. It was possible, true. Just not probable. I don't deal in possibles. Possible isn't a guarantee of anything. I deal in probables. Absolutes. I have and always will deal in absolutes, not miracles or shady half-ways or maybes or possibles. And because I deal in absolutes, I knew that applying an absolute perspective to my situation would present this very clear outcome: being the fifteenth born of twenty one eligible daughters, by no means a very prominent one, and having no really impressive maternal connections to recommend my suit, the probability of my someday marrying and leaving the Twins was not going to happen. That probability didn't increase in the slightest when my father struck a deal with Robb Stark to exchange a bride for a bridge.

Five Key Factors to Selecting a Bride—Westeros Edition

Factor One: Beauty

Whether or not he'll ever admit it, the first thing a man looks for is beauty. Realistically, I am a beauty of a girl. Not a conventional beauty, but a beauty that people can clearly notice and I know this because people have told me so on multiple occasions. From a beauty standpoint, there are about twelve possible choices, the least probable of which would have been Jaclyn or Rhea, depending on one's definition of beauty, which tends to be a rather subjective trait. The most probable of us would have been Reina or Aradel. Again—beauty seems to be largely subjective so that makes it hard to tell. I sit somewhere in the upper middle because I have enough pretty in me to be called a beauty but not enough to be showered in attentions simply for being beautiful, like aforementioned highly probable candidates Reina and Aradel.

Factor Two: Fertility

Men have overlooked beauty in favor of fertility before. A beautiful, barren woman is dirt on the shoe of the ugly, fertile baby breeding machine. From a fertility standpoint, it is difficult to determine how many choices are available. My father switched wives too quickly. Some of them lasted a while, though, and using this knowledge I suppose the most likely candidate would be Bria. She's not on the list of beauties, mind you, but her mother bore Father eight sons before she finally had her, the only girl, and then died delivering another son maybe two years later. Father still talks about Bria's mother sometimes, how she might have been kissed by the Gods to have given him so many sons. So Bria, with not much else to recommend her, would be the most probable of us to wed because people would be inclined to believe that she should also have this stroke of luck. On this scale of fertility, I would be in the low negatives. As in a fifty year old yak would probably have a better chance of birthing a son. My mother didn't get pregnant for three years after she wed my father, and then was unable to become pregnant again after I was born until she died when I was four. The only child she ever gave my father was me. If son-bearing is the most important factor, then I am the mentally unsound child with leprosy that no one wants to play with.

Factor Three: Politics

Father has enough old blood to offer, but because he's had so many wives over the years, his offspring give him a very wide range of politically sound connections. Neither Reina nor Bria can make this list since their mothers were insignificant, but here Aradel has made the cut again. Her mother was a Mormont by birth, and the Mormonts are hardly a connection to overlook. There are maybe two or three other significant choices. Again, I'm not on this list. My mother was the daughter of an architect. There was barely a thimble full of noble blood in her family that enabled her to marry my father. He chose her more for her looks than for anything else she could offer him.

Factor Four: Manners

The men who can afford to have this be their only real concern are limited in stock since most men concern themselves with children or money or beauty. But for the rare few that do consider this, then the options are really quite extensive. I don't think there is any single one of us who doesn't know her basic courtesies. We're all bred well enough. Whichever one of us has a mother who died before she could teach her manners had a Septa instead. I learned most of my own manners from my mother, and the rest I gathered from our Septa. Beyond the basics, that's where it gets convoluted. Some of us go above and beyond the basics, and some choose only to be polite enough to not be called rude.

That's it, I suppose. Nothing else to consider. Not if you're noble, anyways. So when the deal was struck and the war was won and Robb Stark walked away from the burning South as a fully recognized king, I paid him no mind because I knew that he'd be choosing from that range available to him based on the four key factors in finding a wife, and the four key factors rendered me pretty much obsolete. And then the day came when he arrived to make good on his word. He walked into these halls looking like the hero in the novel that dies at the end and asked for a week to be able to choose. I was—at this point—ignoring the 4.7 percent chance that I'd be selected. Now that 4.7 percent existed at all under the assumption that each of us Frey daughters had a perfectly equal chance of being chosen. Twenty one daughters in all, excluding the ones that could not be chosen—three were too old and seven too young—but twenty one that stood a chance, ranging in ages from thirty four to thirteen, each had roughly 4.7 percent chance of being chosen if the king was impartial. But humans, by nature, are not impartial people. Everyone has preferences and the fact that Robb Stark has twenty one Frey daughters to choose from means that he can afford the luxury of searching for one he has good chemistry with. So technically, we all have that 4.7 percent, but in the undercurrent some of us have a higher percentage than others. But I don't like undercurrents. It's too gray in there. I prefer the crystal clear world of black and white. No confusion, no possibles and no disappointments. Only absolutes.

During the week that he was with us, I got to wheedle out which ones had a higher chance in the undercurrent. Reina seemed to click with him, and although this is a political marriage, let it not be said that chemistry is out of the question. He was equally enamored by Aradel, who of course would seem like an even better decision because of her ties to House Mormont. Their probability rose to maybe ten to fifteen percent each, give or take a few decimals. The rest of us slowly sank. In the Twins, there isn't much to be found in the way of amusement if you're a girl. I must find my amusements wherever I can, and while Robb was with us I found amusement in the early morning on the stone wall separating the riding fields from the gardens, sketches and blueprints in hand, where I had a perfectly clear view of Robb and his mother on their morning walk through the shrubbery. They couldn't see me from my hiding place atop the wall because I always sat on the space that extended underneath the cherry tree, obscured from view by the branches and leaves. Robb and his mother always chose the morning walk to discuss my sisters and which of them would make a good bride because of the distance it gave them from prying eyes and eager ears. So from what I had heard day in and day out, Aradel had the highest probability. It was reaching maybe thirty to forty percent, and both the beauty factor and the political one played a role in it. Up close behind her was—what do you know?—Bria. I knew that fertility factor would get her somewhere, so it was hardly surprising. She had a good twenty five to thirty percent. Reina wasn't even close to consideration.

"Why?" his mother asked. "She's a pretty girl."

"She's too…too…"

"Too what?"

'Too what', indeed?

"Too blonde," Robb said at last. "She's too blonde."

"Too blonde?" Catelyn repeated skeptically. "Good heavens, Robb, what a snob you are. Objecting to a perfectly beautiful girl because she's a blonde? Poor girl can't help it."

"I suppose not. But we just…there's nothing there. It just didn't rub the right way."

"Well, chemistry is important," Catelyn agreed, taking him arm as they proceeded up the path. "Well, how about that Marlow? You seemed to get on well at dinner last night."

And on and on they went. Every day, the statistics changed. Robb Stark is many things—indecisive is definitely one of them. An indecisive groom means that Catelyn will do the choosing, which in turn means that politics and fertility might be the focus factors in this decision. So we're back to Aradel and Bria, neck and neck.

It was late afternoon on the seventh day when we were all summoned to assemble in the main hall. There we stood before our family and friends and allies and the king, and the time had come for Robb to select his bride. His advisor, Lord Bryndon Tully, carried a scroll in his hand and the paper was old, curling back outward at the ends. I got a distant look at the stationary, and then something occurred to me. I had forgotten factor five.

Factor Five: Practicality

Sometimes, you just need a wife with a brain. A person who knows how to handle people, think on her feet, be mentally flexible. The sort of girl who knows that receiving a yearly allowance of 150,000 gold pieces does not mean that she can spend 100,000 on accessories alone and count on her darling husband to make up for the deficit. The sort of girl who knows better than to wear black feathers in her hair to a funeral. The sort of girl who can listen and respond rationally. A girl who can see reason. The North, only just having crawled out of a great war, is in desperate need of a queen like that. I had forgotten that Robb Stark is not only selecting a wife for himself, but a queen for his kingdom. This is where how many sons you have or how pretty you are or how noble your bloodline is just can't help you. This is where the girl stands alone for judgment. So with practicality in consideration, which of the twenty one eligible Frey daughters could possibly make the cut?

I looked again at the faded border pattern on the scroll in Lord Bryndon's hand. The blueprints for the watchtower are expertly drawn on that rolled up page, and I know that because I drew it with my own hand not three years ago. There, tucked into the corner, is my signature. A bitter storm rolled into the area not long after construction on that tower was completed. It had not taken a single smidge of damage. Of course it hadn't. I'm an architect's granddaughter. I know how to build things that last. And then the poetry of it had kicked in.

Architects build things. The Northern kingdoms are building their own history from the ground up. Who better to lay out the groundwork than an architect?

"Lady Israel," Robb held out his hand and caught mine, pressing his mouth to my knuckle. "Will you marry me?"

I'm fairly sure that I didn't have the option to say no.