This chapter was written as part of the Facebook challenge "Sur Votre 31":
- Invite : ''Desire''.
- Number of words: From 100 to 1000 words.
All the universe of Game of Thrones belongs to GRR Martin, DB & DW.
Context: Pre-serie – Before the birth of Joffrey, Myrcella and Tommen.
Enjoy reading!
It is common knowledge that all women want to look like Cersei.
Cersei is beautiful. Cersei is young. Cersei is rich.
But, above all, Cersei is queen.
And all women dream of that. To be queen, to attain supreme power, to be desired by all men and envied by all women, to be dressed in the finest and most expensive silks and to own jewels of gold and silver, precious stones and diamonds.
Yes, this life, all women want it.
Well, almost all of them. Except one.
The more the days go by, the more Cersei tells herself that she no longer wants to be the queen.
The ladies of high birth and the commoners who want it don't know what they want.
Of course, Cersei too has, like all little girls her age, wanted to be queen. She was even closer to it than most of them. After all, her father had intended to marry her to Prince Rhaegar, and her father, as the most powerful man in the kingdom, perhaps even more powerful than the king himself, always got what he wanted.
If her father wanted her to be queen, then she would be queen.
Only she did not want it for the same reason as all the other children.
Cersei had wanted to be a queen because she thought that by becoming the king's wife, by offering her father the power he so longed for on a platter, maybe he would treat her a little better than he did, maybe he would care for her a little more, at least as much as he cared for Jaime.
What she didn't understand at the time was that her father would never treat her as Jaime's equal.
Jaime was a boy. Jaime was his son. Jaime was his heir.
Jaime would one day become the lord of Casterly Rock and the Westerlands, would one day take over the Lannisters' immense fortune, the largest fortune in the whole kingdom. Cersei, on the other hand, was only a woman, a woman that Tywin Lannister could dispose of as he wished, that he could sell without more consideration than a mare, destined to reproduce, a mere pawn in a huge chessboard.
She had not understood, at the time, that whatever she could do well, she would never be worth more in the eyes of her father than what she had between her legs and the heirs she could produce, and the crown she had on her head.
He would never see her for what she really was, he would never see her as his heiress, as a pupil whom he had managed to teach far more than he thought.
When she had married Robert, at her father's insistence, she still had that part of innocence, of unconsciousness, which had allowed her to believe that this marriage he so longed for, this marriage that was to make his daughter a queen and him one of the most powerful men in the kingdom, would have allowed her to make him see her worth, her true worth, and the place and role she could occupy in the prosperity of the House Lannister.
But this marriage had brought her nothing but misfortune, unhappiness, and pain.
The other women absolutely all wanted to be queen, well, Cersei would gladly give them her place.
She would have given everything she had to exchange her crown and diamonds for freedom.
The freedom to be able to love Jaime, without the need to hide, without the need to just enjoy each other's presence only when they were sure they were alone, and no one could see or hear them.
Cersei no longer wanted to live that life.
But she had realized this too late, much too late.
She had realized that she should have run away with Jaime as soon as she had the chance, just as that crown that was the will of each of the women in the Seven Kingdoms had been placed on her head, and the diamonds had come into contact with her white skin.
But no one understood that.
No one except Jaime. Only he knew and understood how she felt. After all, they were one being, one soul, two halves of the same whole. It made perfect sense that only he could understand. He was the only one left in the middle of the Red Keep.
There had once been a servant woman, an old maid, whose name was Hannah, if Cersei remembered correctly, and who looked after her as if she had been her own daughter.
But even that maid couldn't understand her as Jaime understood her.
One day, she found her crying, and Cersei didn't even really know why the tears were flowing freely down her beautiful ivory cheeks.
She had wiped them off with a handkerchief before taking his hand, bringing him to a mirror, sitting her down, and talking to him.
Cersei still remembered their conversation:
''Look at you. You are beautiful. You are young. You are a queen. Through this, you give hope and strength to thousands of people, thousands of women.''
She remembered looking up with emerald eyes with a few more tears in the corners, and turning to the old woman standing behind her so she could look into her eyes.
''And me, who gives me that?''
Of course, she hadn't answered. She didn't know what to answer. No one would have known how to answer that.
Cersei no longer wanted to be queen. Cersei just wanted to be able to love the man she wanted. But no one understood that. No one, except Jaime, because he wanted the same thing.
Thank you for reading!
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Don't be too hard on English, it is not my mother tongue.