Plagues of the Westerlands
Year 292 A.C, a few weeks before the planned abdication of King Théoden:
Thanks to the awakened magic, House Martell could now watch various events in Westeros beyond the Red Mountains better without needing to travel. Most often, it was by using some form of water as a mirror to see.
"Hm...it looks like Holly has done a fine job with trying to make the Baratheon heirs have more common sense than wish for glory. I would not mind seeing young Lyonel on the Iron Throne within a few years, if he does not allow his future role to affect him too much," Doran said as he, Mellario and their two oldest children were watching together what happened in the capital. Right now, they witnessed his younger cousin and the three oldest royal Baratheon children together on a more private walk out in one of the castle gardens because it was nice weather. They could hear Holly testing Lyonel and Argella about various tropics by her asking a random question and even change the following ones to challenge the children. Even Elinor got a few questions to see if she had been paying attention in the few school lessons she had currently at her age.
"Somehow it feels like King Robert takes more of an interest in his children, even his daughters, as if he realizes that Westeros is unlikely to do well under a underage King with the Lannisters as the main Regents…"
Arianne was not wrong. Many had also noticed that Robert paid more attention to his children since the previous year, and whispers spoke of how he did not just focus on Lyonel and one-year-old Tommen because they were the male heirs Cersei had given him, his three daughters would get their share of his attention too.
"Lady Selyse looks like she will not have long before the birth of her second child, look at how big her belly is," Mellario commented when they checked on how things were at Storm's End. There, Mya Stone and Brienne Tarth seemed to have formed a friendship over favoring masuline clothing over dresses and not seeing traditional pretty girls. Eric Storm had found a good friend in Devan Seaworth, the fifth son of the former smuggler Davos Seaworth, as the boys shared a birth year and likely would serve Stannis together as squires in a couple of years when they were older. As for little Shireen Baratheon who was three years old now, well, she loved her mother's pregnant belly, showing affection by hugging her mother even if others saw it and eagerly asked the embarrassed Selyse when her little brother or sister would arrive.
"Um...padre, do you think that Tywin Lannister may actually end up demanding that Dorne sends disaster relief in the form of food that we honestly may end up needing for ourselves? I mean, we have the hottest climate in Westeros and even if this summer may still last for a few years, the harvest of various foods could be better needed in Rohan given the very possible war against Mordor that will likely happen soon or later," Quentyn asked, looking like he wanted to say more but perhaps found it a little difficult to find the right words. Given his personality, this did not surprise his parents or sister.
"Yes, Tywin Lannister is exactly the sort of man to try that, even using his daughter, Queen Cersei, as the way to get his hand on food and water that the Westerlands now are lacking more and more for each passing day. Look, the cattle that have not yet been emergency slaughtered, show signs of serious illness. I do not know the reason, but given what happened when your sister came of age, it may not be too far-thinking that something else happened as well when we saw Suleiman," Doran said, thinking that even if they had managed to escape from Khamûl, some of the dark magic might still have slipped past them when the portal had closed.
"More like that cousin Rhaenys caused something since she seems to be the current life of princess Mara, and given what Lannister tried to do nine years ago…"
Rhaenys herself may not remember the events of the Sack of King's Landing very well because she had only been three years old at the time, but surely something inside her as Mara must have been triggered, not merely for her prophecy foretelling the return of her descendants to Middle-earth.
"Hold on...is that orcs?! In the Westerlands!?" Mellario suddenly gasped in horror when the water changed the scene, revealing what just happened to the entourage of King Robert as he was visiting the Westerlands himself to see the damage left by the drought.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Indeed, Robert had arrived in the Westerlands to personally make a judgement on the situation there, so Tywin did not send reports that exaggerated or claimed that the problems were even worse.
"What in the seven hells?!"
And now, right as his father-in-law was showing him one of the underground mines that somehow had been filled with sand and making it impossible to dig for metals thanks to all the amount of sand that would need to be removed by shoving it away before the miners even reached the deeper parts of the mine, something happened.
"Your Majesty!"
The same, strange creatures that had nearly killed his heir and two oldest royal daughters a year ago, Robert noticed in the middle of the fight, again proving with his use of his trusty warhammer why he had stopped eating and drinking so much at the royal tables each day and instead spent more time to get himself back in shape as the feared Demon of the Trident as he had been named after that duel against Rhaegar where everything looked like the Targaryen prince had downed after getting hit by his warhammer and then no one finding his body because of that the rebel soldiers had done what was common after a battle; looting of weapons and armor from the dead bodies on the battlefield.
"Damn it Jon, get back to a safer place! You are too old for battle now! Do you want to leave the world with only one surviving son from Lysa after losing all your previous male heirs?!"
It was not the King speaking to his Hand, it was a former ward showing alarm for his now very aged foster father, since Lord Arryn was one of the oldest men present in the entourage.
"I have no plans to let Ronnel remain my sole son for long…!?"
Sadly for Jon Arryn, those words would be his final ones. An Orc arrow buried itself deep into the throat of the current Lord Arryn, ending his life in the same manner as Lysa could have found herself widowed a decade earlier during the Rebellion, only with the major difference that she now was left as a widow with three young children.
"JON!"
The sight of his foster father falling out of the saddle, seemed to drive the King into a rage akin to how he had felt over learning that Rhaegar had been brazen enough to lead the royalist army at the Trident, as he thought that if he just showed up from wherever he had been for several months, everyone would forget his disappearance with Lyanna and act as if it never happened in the first place.
Finally, all the orcs had either been killed or were being hunted down by the knights in the entourage outside the Kingsguard members that followed Robert and the household knights coming along with Tywin. But Jon Arryn and several others had died as a result of the large group not expecting this sort of attack.
"Damnit...Ned is going to hate that Jon has died like this…"
And Robert knew another problem that he also would face with this; that the office of being Hand of the King now was empty. Cersei would most likely insist on that her father would have the role, as he had been Hand to Aerys for twenty years. But with this drought in his own domains, Tywin might be more needed at home in the Westerlands than in the capital right now.
"No, I need a new Hand right now, and Ned traveling from the North would take too long a time to arrive…"
Really, this was not how Robert had hoped that the day would go.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
When Lysa learned that Jon Arryn had died, she perfectly played the role of a mourning, humble widow in public. A young woman with three small children, who was devastated that her aging husband had died without blessing her womb with another son before he died.
And of course, with Jon Arryn now dead, all the focus went to the three Arryn children, the two daughters Celia, Amanda and the little "cuckoo" Eorl, with his official name Ronnel, who was assumed to be the legitimate son of the dead Lord.
"No," she muttered at throwing away a letter over her shoulder, "I will not accept that offer of fostering my only son among the Lannisters of all people!"
A letter from Catelyn in Winterfell and given to her personally by Edmure when he arrived after the burial of Jon Arryn, offered the same idea, that the three Arryn grandchildren of the late Hoster Tully could be brought up with their Stark cousins in the North.
"Am I selfish, Edmure, for not wanting to drag my daughters away from their friends among the royal children? And my son is still an infant, I would never forgive myself if he fell ill during the journey north and possibly died!" Lysa asked her brother, who was sharing some apple pieces with his two nieces because he wanted them to not be scared of this young man who shared the same colouring as their Mama but still was a stranger.
"Selfish? No, not if you ask me. You have three wonderful children that now needs their mother, and Ronnel is the new Lord Arryn despite his tender age. Many other Lords have had their mothers as Regents if their fathers died when they were still young, so you would not stand out in that manner at all."
Edmure had visited the North last year, and personally he found Winterfell a little too isolated for his Arryn nieces and nephew to be fostered there. The ancestral castle and seat of power for House Stark may be the capital of the North, but the distance to King's Landing and the Vale, risked to make his Arryn nephew a stranger to his own subjects and bannermen, for all of that the Stark children would be close relatives.
"Can I trust you with a secret, brother?"
Raising to her feet, pushing her black lace veil out of her face, Lysa came close enough to whisper to Edmure in his ear:
"I will ask House Martell to foster my children. My late husband was part of the new reign that could have done awful things to Elia Martell and her children, Rhaenys and Aegon, because of Rhaegar Targaryen. If my children are fostered at Sunspear, then they will remain in the South, but not in the hands of people that will harm or use them."
It was an odd choice of a family to ask to foster her children, Edmure thought, but as a parent himself those days, to a toddler son named Axel, after the first known Lord Tully who founded Riverrun, he had a better understanding of how someone's personal feelings as a parent could affect different decisions and actions. Besides, Dorne was closer to King's Landing so it was not like Celia and Amanda would never meet their friends at the royal court again. A longer time traveling than before, yes, but Sunspear would not be isolated as Winterfell.
"If Catelyn finds it an insult to the House words of House Tully to not have her own nieces and nephews to be raised together with her own children in Winterfell, then I can remind her that it is the same with the Queen and the children sired by her brothers so far. And I am not too eager to let Axel forget the faces of Lynesse and myself by being fostered out within a few years either. We are adults now, all three of us who are the surviving children of our father, and we all have our own growing brood of offspring to care for," he summarized, referring to that Lynesse was also among the known pregnant high born Ladies who would have a new child this year alongside Selysa Baratheon and Queen Cersei.
"She wrote in her latest letter that if you have a girl this time, she will be named after our mother Minisa," Lysa smiled, grateful that her brother at least tried to support her decisions about the children's future for the next few years even if their older sister would not understand. In his crib, little Eorl began to softly cry as a signal to Lysa that he now had woken up and was hungry after the nap, so Edmure left the chamber so Lysa could nurse her baby son.
"Oh, right. Before I forget; Stannis Baratheon has been named Hand of the King after your late husband, Lysa. Look forward to seeing harsher laws with him in office."
"Rather him than one of the Lannister relatives of the Queen or King Robert insisting that Eddard Stark will have the office! Lord Stark may be a childhood friend with the King, but some limits have to be on given favors when such relationships are involved!" Lysa called after her brother, hearing him agree in the distance that Stannis may be a difficult man, but right now with the situation in the Westerlands, he could likely be the person best needed to avoid a rising number of crimes caused by the current events.
Once he had finished nursing from her, Lysa held her son close.
"You will meet your real father as soon as we arrive at Sunspear, sweetie. By law you may be the son of that horrible old man, but you are born of love and he cares for your sisters as if they were his own as well."
In a secret letter from Tirwald, carefully put together as he was not that used to writing even if King Théoden and his father Thengel had tried their best to increase literacy among the nobles of Rohan, Tirwald offered Lysa a official betrothal between them though handfasting once her mourning year had ended, thus promising to wed her at a more suitable time and making Eorl legitimate though their wedding.
In that way, Lysa may not be able to show openly in Westeros that she had remarried, but she would gain a very good reason to refuse other Lords and knights trying to woo the young widow of Jon Arryn.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Author note: In this chapter I tried to present a logical reason to why everyone thinks that Rhaegar is dead as in canon when he actually was teleported to Mordor though the water by the ancient Martell magic being awakened by Lewyn's dying breath; his body was NOT found at the Trident, but few doubted that he could have survived what looked like a fatal hit to the chest by the warhammer that Robert used
And yes, Robert is slowly moving away from his fantasy of Lyanna, he has realized that he can not act as he always pleases or live in the past when Westeros has an economic crisis (Littlefinger died in the Rebellion in this AU, remember?) alongside this mysterious drought that seems to affect only the Westerlands and while he have a heir in Lyonel, his spare Tommen still only one year old and no one knows if Stannis and Selyse will have a son at the end of the next pregnancy
As Davos is born in Flea Bottom and is a former smuggler before he was knighted by Stannis for smuggling in much-needed food to the defenders of the castle almost a year into the siege of Storm's End during the Rebellion,I do not think he would make a big fuss about his fifth son Devan Seaworth being friends with Eric Storm. After all, his low birth could very well mean that Davos too is a possible bastard, but born to a set of commoners instead and likely was orphaned at a young age
Handfasting is a traditional practice that, depending on the term's usage, may correspond to an unofficiated wedding (in which a couple marries without an officiant, usually with the intent of later undergoing a second wedding with an officiant), a betrothal (an engagement in which a couple has formally promised to wed, and which can be broken only through divorce), or a temporary wedding (in which a couple makes an intentionally temporary marriage commitment). The phrase refers to the making fast of a pledge by the shaking or joining of hands.
