The Lion Queen and The Prince of The Sun

Chapter Eleven

The Wall was weeping but the sun was not shining on it and Samwell Tarly knew that it wouldn't be much longer before it was so cold that didn't matter if the sun came out at all, the Wall would not shed a single tear. Winter was not something that he had ever known in the south, the nights might have stretched on a little longer than they did in the Summer but Samwell had never known cold like it till the day he had arrived at the Wall.

He had never seen snow before either, when he and the guards that his Father had commanded to bring him from Horn Hill to the North had ridden past the Neck, which itself had been a terrifying experience that had come close to making him soil himself several times, almost none of them knew what to make of it when soft white something began to fall out of the skies.

Sam thought it had been beautiful, like something out of a song, but then it didn't let up and the snow just kept on falling and falling and falling and it had been so very cold that Sam had thought that he would shake himself out of his saddle. It had taken all that he had not to weep when he realized that he was going to spend the rest of his life being colder than this once he had finally taken his place at the Wall.

He had wanted to hate his Father then but he honestly did not think that he could, not that he had any love for him anymore after he had threatened him into giving up his rights as heir to Horn Hill, in point of fact Sam was fairly certain that any love he might have had for his Lord Father had been destroyed long ago. Fear had ever been his strongest emotion, and it had always been the first thing he felt whenever he thought of Lord Randyll Tarly.

It was not that Sam even wanted to be lord of Horn Hill, he knew that he wouldn't be suitable for it and that Dickon would be a far better one and Samwell wished his younger brother well, he and Dickon had little and less in common and Father had never allowed them to spend much time with one another, less Sam somehow infect his perfect heir with even a single spark of weakness.

He still didn't understand why his Father hadn't just let him go and become a maester, it had seemed to Sam like a perfect solution at the time, Father would be able to get rid of Sam and have Dickon as his heir while Sam would be able to get away from his Father and be able to read so many books and learn so many things and have a position that had honor in it's own way even if it was not the honor that his Father had meant for him to have.

His Lord Father had not seen it that way, to put it lightly. When he had brought it up to him one day in his solar, his face had drawn and he had looked so angry that for a moment Sam had thought that he was going to hit him. It would certainly not have been the first time he had done so but his Father had done so much to him in the effort of making him stronger that a strike to the face was possibly the least awful thing that his Father could do to him.

And Randyll Tarly seemed to have agreed with him, if Sam wanted to wear chains then he would oblige him readily. That was how he had ended up in the dungeons of Horn Hill for what had seemed like a thousand nights but what he was told later had only been three, impossible as that seemed, with his hands manacled to the wall.

His Father had not bothered to feed him during his stay in the dungeons and only allowed him a single cup of water per day and he was commanded not to cry by his Father who told him that he may choose to not bring any more water for awhile and it would be wise for him to save as much as he could. Sam truly had tried not to cry, but once he had started he hadn't been able to stop them after that.

Father might have left him down there for more than three days if not for the intervention of Sam's Lady Mother, for all he had feared his Father he had never held a drop of anything other than love for her. There was little that she had ever been able to do to stop her husband from putting him through the tortures that he hoped would make him stronger but she had always been there on the other side of that hell with a warm embrace and a gentle kiss to his forehead.

Lady Melessa had never made him feel ashamed or weak for seeking comfort from her, in truth it was only her and his sisters that had made Horn Hill even slightly bearable. One night, he had found himself walking the battlements of the castle and he had looked over the edge down to the ground and for a moment he thought of how it would be a kind of freedom, to give himself over the stranger might have been the only way he would ever be free of his Father.

But while he had tried to step up on to the battlements he couldn't make his body move, it was so far down and surely to die by falling from such a great height would be painful? It had started another wave of tears from him then and he had to step back and it was at that moment he came to such a terrible realization, that his Father had been right in the end. He was a coward and he was never going to get any better.

And now his Father stood higher than any other man in the Seven Kingdoms, only the Hand of the Queen standing as his equal and only the Queen himself standing above him. Lord Randyll would hate that no doubt, the idea that a woman was above him. Sam remembered one time when bright, brave and bold Talla had come into her Father's solar when Samwell and Dickon had both been in there with him, one of the few rare times that all three Tarly men had been together, and insisted she would come with them on the hunt the following morning.

Sam had been terrified that he would hit her, or send her to dungeons to teach her a lesson. He had not, he had simply told her that it was not a woman's place just as it was not a man's place to birth a babe. Men had their wars, women had theirs. It was for men to hunt and for women to ruin the estates of their Lord's castles and he would hear no such foolishness from her again.

He and Dickon had let her down, Dickon had simply repeated everything that Father had said like one of those large, colorful talking birds from the Summer Islands and Sam had not been able to say anything, he had merely nodded. He wished he had been braver but he hadn't and Talla had not spoken to any of them till the moon turned again.

What was Queen Myrcella like if she had put a man like his Father in charge of winning all of her battles for her? Wise, perhaps as no one could deny that Lord Randyll was a great warrior, he had been the only man to defeat King Robert when he had been only Robert the Rebel even if Lord Mace had been the one to claim credit for the victory.

But would the Queen have chosen him if he knew what sort of man he was really like? Maybe she would have, everyone spoke of how Myrcella looked like her Mother and Jon had told him that Queen Cersei was cold and cruel and King Stannis believed that she had cuckolded King Robert with her own brother and had him murdered, somehow.

There seemed to be so many kings and queens about now, and all of them had to be called that. Queen Myrcella sit the Iron Throne had all the strength of the West and Dorne at her back now and Sam was not a warrior at heat but even now he wasn't sure how King Stannis was meant to win against her now, even if he could convince the North to support him and even with his Red witch.

Sam sighed and stepped back from the wall, he had wasted too much time thinking as it was and Jon was expecting him. His new steward Satin had come and gotten him from the archives. He seemed a nice man, though their brothers were quick to tell cruel stories of his time in Oldtown without even knowing if they were true.

Jon was sitting behind his desk when Sam arrived and a letter was in front of him on the desk and King Stannis was sitting on the other side, grinding his teeth and Sam did have to wonder how it was that the man had not chipped a tooth yet. His red woman was in the corner, staring into the flames of Jon's fire, a silent specter cloaked in scarlet. "You sent for me, Lord Commander."

"Yes Sam, I did. One moment." Jon turned his attention back to King Stannis. "Will there be anything else, your Grace?"

"No, I don't believe there will be." Stannis rose from his seat and walked over to the witch and put his hand on her shoulder, gently pulling her away from her flames and Samwell caught sight of her eyes, even those were red. It was like she was a flame that had been shaped into a woman. "Farewell to you, Lord Snow."

"Farewell, your Grace." Jon called back and then let out a sigh once Stannis had left, his hands coming up to brush over his long face. Sam didn't know what to do or say so he merely stayed back until Jon had pulled his hands away from his face. "King Stannis will going on the march tomorrow morning, taking all of his men with them aside from a few who will be staying here to attend the Queen and Princess Shireen."

"Are we-are we happy their going?" Sam asked as he approached Jon's desk, waiting for Jon to gesture at the chair on the other side before he sat down himself. In truth, he was never sure how welcome he should have made King Stannis and his knight's feel. Yes, they had saved them all from Mance Rayder and his host but everyone of the Watch knew their vows said they were to take no part in the wars of the Seven Kingdoms, it felt like a blade had been hanging over all of their heads.

But at the same time if the wildings, or something else, tried to breach the Wall then it meant that they had fewer bodies to man the Wall against it but at the same time Stannis was taking most of the wildings with him to form part of his own armies. It was a game of halves and in truth Sam wasn't sure if they had gotten the best halves for themselves.

"It's not a matter of if we are happy about it or not, I'm afraid. It's a matter of survival. A raven from King's Landing came this morning." Jon pushed the letter on his desk over towards him. Sam picked it up and let his eyes move over the page.

To Lord Commander Jon Snow,

It has come to the attention of her Grace, Myrcella of the House Baratheon, Queen of the Andals, the First Men and the Rhoynar that the traitor and false king Stannis is at this moment present at the Wall. The Queen is distress and confused at these events Lord Commander.

If not only for the fact Lord Stannis is a traitor and kinslayer it is distressing in another way that the honorable brothers of the Night's Watch have forgotten their own vows. You are to take no part in the wars of the Seven Kingdoms, to allow Lord Stannis to stay at the wall is breaking that vow and is also to commit treason against the crown and the one true Queen.

Queen Myrcella is not without mercy and the raven we have received from the Night's Watch asking for more men to help to guard the wall has been received and those of us at court when the late King Joffery sat the throne have not forgotten when one of your own honorable brothers came to court and spoke well of the need of more soldiers and King Joffery had so kindly agreed that man of the watch to take men from the dungeons of the Red Keep to swell your ranks.

The plight of the sworn brothers of the Night's Watch is not unseen to us but at the same time we cannot tolerate your must noble order consorting with traitors, lowborn smugglers, vile false knights and foreign born witches. Queen Myrcella hopes that you will find it in yourself to remember your vows and will follow them once again and cast Lord Stannis out.

Again, we all pray for you to see sense Lord Commander, may the Crone lift her lantern high and her light guide back into the Queen's peace.

Written in the name of her Grace, Myrcella the first of her name of the House Baratheon, Queen of the Andals, The First Men and the Rhoynar. Lady of the Seven Kingdoms. Done in the sight of gods and men.

Grand Maester Pycelle.

"Grand Maester Pycelle has an amazing talent, I've never seen any man use a hundred words when one would do." Jon said with a twitch of his lips that some might call a smirk before he let out a sigh that sounded to old and to tired for a man so young. Sam had to wonder when the last time he got any sort of sleep was. Had he done wrong? By making it so that Jon was the Lord Commander, had he hurt his best friend more than he had helped him?

Sam didn't know what to say so he merely kept his mouth shut and waited for Jon to speak again. "But all the same, he could have written a thousand words and I would see the threat here all the same. Get rid of Stannis or draw the wrath of the Crown. The problem there is that Stannis has an army here while the Crown's armies are all below the Neck and Winter will be upon us any day now it seems."

"Thankfully for all of us, when I showed Stannis the letter it seemed that he agree he waited too long here as well and he will be on the march come the morrow." Jon Snow sighed and played with the letter again. "But no, to answer your question Sam, I am not really at all happy about it if I was to be honest with you. You and I both know what's coming and we need as many men as possible to hold against it, to beat it back. They know nothing about what dangers we face, Stannis at the very least understood that. What does Myrcella Baratheon understand?"

"Have you met her?"

"Once, when the royal family came to Winterfell." Jon huffed a laugh. "I thought was clueless, she spent most of the feast looking at my brother Robb like he had hung the sun and the moon and all of the stars in the skies. But I think at the time I was just jealous, I was a bastard sitting at a low table, hidden out of sight while Robb got to march to the dais with a pretty princess on his arm. I was younger then, younger and more foolish."

"Let's not talk about the past, we need to talk about you. I'm sending you to Oldtown. You're going to train to be a Maester, you will be taking Maester Aemon, Gilly and her babe with you."

Jon might have said more but Sam didn't hear it, training to be a maester? Going to Oldtown? His Father would hear of it, his Father was the Lord Protector and he would know of it. The moment Sam imagined his eyes staring at him he suddenly couldn't take a breath, Jon was moving his lips but no sound was coming out and he looked so worried. Sam would be worried too, if the rest of the world had started to spin and went dark as the floor was suddenly a lot closer than it had been before.

End of Chapter Eleven.


First off, timeline. By this point in the books Sam had already left for Oldtown but I decided to move it up a little bit for plot and character reasons. Other than that, I think this will be the last chapter that focuses on people reacting to the fact that Myrcella has the throne. Now Characters will go into their own plotlines, but ever so slightly altered in some places and massively altered in others.

Any who, hope you enjoyed this chapter. Next chapter we are going back to King's Landing for a chapter from Myrcella's P.O.V. Hope everyone is looking forward to that.

With a ton of love,

DiscordantSymphony