Trystane

The cold was shit. That much Trystane Martell had already decided in this short and first outing, so to speak, away from home.

"No," Trystane muttered to himself, clutching a small bundle of wood in his arms, his uncle not even trusting him to gather kindling in the surrounding forest without several knights accompanying him, "those storms were worse."

He would swear that he'd seen the sun maybe all but twice as the fleet awaited the battle south of the Iron Islands. They'd not joined the Greyjoys in ambushing the northern King and his armies, so as to have some cause to protest their innocence, in the event the ambush failed, uncle Oberyn had explained. Which meant boredom, waiting endless days upon their ship, staring out towards gloomy shores and uglier villages, though Trystane was a smart enough lad to understand that boredom was better than dying. Not that he feared war, like most boys his age Trystane yearned for the glory of battle one day, for fair maidens to sing songs of his strength and bravery, but the youngest child of Doran Martell also had enough sense to understand that he was still far to young to do serve any purpose except dying uselessly, in the event of a real battle.

"Still no word from Prince Viserys?"

His uncle shook his head at the pot-bellied red headed lord across the fire. "Not since they met with the Yronwoods."

Trystane looked back towards Jon Connington's horse, and saw the head of the young fellow Dornishman cleaning its saddle pop up at the mention of his family. Cletus Yronwood was barely a few years older than Trystane, but those few years made all the difference. Cletus was a full-fledged squire, fully prepared to fight and bleed or draw blood the day battle finally arrived before them, while Trystane was sure his uncle would seek to keep him sheltered for the remainder of the war, unless the war was to last for many years.

Cletus was also Quentyn's friend, and while his older brother saw the Yronwoods as a second family, having been fostered west in their keep for much of his life, the heir to the Stone Way was little more than a stranger to Trystane.

"We need to march," Connington muttered crossly. "Hells, the Northmen may get here before Stannis the way we're waiting."

"Then we retreat," Oberyn muttered, indifferent to the man's complaints, "compliments of the ships so generously provided by my brother."

"Your brother swore his support to King Rhaegar," Jon said, and Trystane wondered whether tonight, after so many contentious nights, was finally to be the night when the two men would come to blows. If so, he pitied the pot-bellied old lord. They said Jon Connington had once been one of the most dashing young knights of the realm, riding by Rhaegar's side before the rebellion, Prince and lord as close as brothers. Did exile make Rhaegar fat too, he wondered.

A darker thought occurred to him. It'll be exile for me, if we lose this war that my uncle seems none too eager to fight. If I survive, that is.

Though, if the Targaryens couldn't even conquer Dorne with their dragons, what harm could a victorious Stark army do against them, unless by some chance they bewitch an army of direwolves, larger than elephants, he remembered Arianna telling him about the creatures when he was a child, all the way south across the Wall, past King's Landing, through the Boneway and into the Water Gardens.

"What are you smirking about, boy?"

Uncle Oberyn smirked himself, pointedly and purposefully ignoring Connington, whose face was growing as red as his thinning hair.

"Elephants," Trystane said carefully, sparing a careful eye at the exiled Lord of Griffin's Roost, who rolled his eyes at his childish response.

Connington scoffed. "Viserys wanted to bring elephants to Massey's Hook. I'm glad His Grace talked the Prince out of that idea, though...at this point I'll take half a dozen elephants in exchange for five thousand lazy and useless Dornishmen."

Again, Trystane wondered whether the two men would come to blows now.

"You may be eager to waste the lives of Rhaegar's slave soldiers," Oberyn muttered. "The men and boys I bring are brothers to me, all of us, from the Princes, to the Yronwoods and Jordayne's and Vaiths, to all the thousands of Sands." He took a swig of the camp ale, and didn't grimace, even though Trystane knew he hated the taste, much more preferring the sweeter wines of their home. "We will not advance, not until we can be assured of at least one more great house south of the Trident."

He knew this was a war that uncle Oberyn was less than enthusiastic towards since before they'd departed Dorne. It'd been several moons at sea before he'd finally ventured to ask, one of the dozens of nights sailing uselessly around the Iron Islands.

"Why are we rebelling again? I thought we made our peace with King Eddard after the Rebellion."

"Yes, but the Starks insulted us. They insulted your sister."

From his expression, Trystane could discern that uncle Oberyn cared little for the excuses he'd just voiced.

"I don't blame them," he'd replied with a smirk. "She's a...a bitch, honestly. I'd insult her too."

Oberyn chuckled. "You would, wouldn't you? If you weren't terrified she'd smack your head halfway to Qarth."

"I don't understand why she wants so badly to be Queen. And Rhaegar...he's an old man, isn't he? He'd be old enough to be her father."

His uncle raised his glass of wine in Trystane's direction, and for a fleeting second he'd thought he'd get to sneak a sip of the concoction.

"You're a clever boy, Trystane."

"I'm not." He'd heard the maesters call him dull, hiding behind the curtains of his father's solar.

"You've got good instincts then." Uncle's eyes grew melancholy, as they were prone to do at times, the sadness as sudden as a bout of lightning, and often dissipating just as instantly. "My sister, Doran's sister wanted to be Queen too. Look all the good it did her, now Doran wants to put Arianne through the same shit."

"If we lose this war because of you, Martell," Connington fumed, "your generous brother Doran will be the one to explain to His Grace why his bannermen refused to fight and die for their King. And you'll be the one to explain to your brother and liege lord why you refused to fight the war you are bound to fight by oath."

His uncle chuckled, and finished his glass of ale.

"What," the former Hand to King Aerys challenged, leaning into the fire separating the men. "Afraid say what you're thinking, Martell?"

He laughed again, tossing the small chalice into the dirt. "I don't know what you'll tell Rhaegar, Griff, nor do I much care." Uncle winked at Trystane, before continuing. "But all I have to say to my brother is that...well, I'm not as dumb as you. Don't think he'll take my head either, for speaking the truth."


Sansa

"All those lemoncakes will make you fat."

"Arya!"

"What?" Her bratty little sister shrugged her shoulders. "Queens get fat too."

Beside Arya, Shireen Baratheon giggled nervously, caught in the awkward spot between laughing at her best friend's jibes, or displeasing her sister the Queen.

"No, you idiot," Jeyne cried defensively from across the table, though she'd dropped the lemoncake she was eating. "Only the most beautiful girls in the world can be Queens. Or their favorite ladies in waiting."

"That's not true," Shireen moused nervously. "Queen Rhaenyra was fat."

"What," Jeyne scoffed haughtily. "She was called 'the Realm's Delight', you stupid girl, she wasn't fat like Samtha."

Gods be damned. Sansa always told her to be nice to Shireen, but of course, Jeyne never listened. I miss Samtha, Sansa thought. They'd sent the poor girl to Storm's End, a hostage of Stannis's castellan now, for the crime of being entirely ignorant of and having nothing to do with her uncle's choice to treason.

"She was," Bran added unhelpfully, "later in life, during the Dance of Dragons."

"She was plumper than the pigeons they serve in Highgarden," Arya said, a evil glint in her eye as she looked towards Sansa, "when they fed her to the dragons."

"Now now dear Princess," the Lady Margaery said with a smile, patting her sister's hand gently, "perhaps now's not the best time to speak of feeding any Queens to any dragons..."

Bran. "Rhaegar doesn't have any dragons, everyone knows that."

No, Sansa thought, he'll just take my head with his sword, if I'm lucky. And though her friends at the supper table all knew that Rhaegar's horrible men had landed in both the north and south, Westerosi and terrible mercenaries from Essos alike, they didn't know that practically all of Dorne had also rallied to the Targaryen cause. Then there was Mace Tyrell, Margaery's father. Thought they dared not say it themselves, to her or to each other before the Small Council, Sansa could tell they all feared that the war could be lost entirely were the Reach to declare for Rhaegar too.

"It's still war," Jeyne protested, her large eyes betraying her terrible fright behind them. "What if they attack King's Landing," Jeyne asked, looking at Sansa, as if she had any answers, as if after a few moons of being named a Queen she would suddenly and magically learn how to fight and win a war.

Shut up shut up shut up shut up, she wanted to scream, to pull her hair out, to cry. But the Queen couldn't do any of that, the Queen could never lose her temper, her composure, so Sansa just looked sullenly at her half eaten lemoncake, having lost all her appetite for it.

Jon Arryn's voice echoed in her head from that afternoon. "The Targaryen invaders were spotted marching from Massey's Hook towards the Wendwater. They could be at the capital within a week."

"What can we do," she'd asked uselessly, because everyone at the table knew already except the Queen.

Jon Arryn. "Hopefully Stannis hasn't gone too far beyond the God's Eye. We can recall them, but it'll be a race to see who can get here in time."

Grandpapa. "It may come to a siege until then."

Jon. "And the Connington men could catch them in the rear, while they're retreating back to the capital."

Grandpapa. "Maybe it might be better for Stannis to beat them in the field first. We have enough provisions to hold off a siege for a fortnight, maybe two."

Lord Tyrion, the man most of her Council openly disdained, and still probably distrusted. "The Lannister men who accompanied myself and Lord Kevan to the capital will fight for their Queen, my lords, Your Grace. We will man the walls of King's Landing, regardless of where the Council decides to send Lord Stannis."

"King's Landing's never fallen," Bran voiced, trying to help upon seeing the distress in his sister's face, as Sansa pondered the cruel fact that they would have rely on the Lannisters for her family to survive this war. "Not without dragons, anyway. Or traitors inside the city."

"King's Landing won't fall!"

They all stopped talking, or eating. Bran's fork clanged onto the table, and Sansa realized that she'd screamed the words as she stood and pounded at the table with her two small palms, the sounds louder than anything she'd thought she could inflict.

"You're right," Arya said first. "It won't."

Was this a favor from her, for once? Did her sister finally see that she'd pushed her past her breaking point.

Now she tries to help, after she's ruined supper. And my lemoncakes.

All Sansa wanted to do was to be alone. The Queen felt like she was climbing an endless mountain every day, barely the chance to listen to the Council meetings, remember how the wars were progressing, whose banners and which houses had declared for whom, where the soldiers were marching, and all those endless nightmares that would decide whether she'd live, along with all her family, or whether she'd die and be forever remembered as the stupid girl who'd lost a dynasty. Even at night, when she slept, Sansa imagined she could hear the voices of mother and grandpapa and Jon Arryn and even uncle Petyr, though he'd left half a fortnight ago to entreat with the Iron Bank, all blabbing on endlessly about her seven kingdoms and her war with a man whom she'd never met, who'd fled Westeros years before she was even born.

"We'll all be strong," Sansa said, her voice quivering, her fingers shaking, her chest feeling sunken after her eruption, her heart empty and sapped of all emotions, be it rage, or frustration...or fear. The most horrible fear. "The Lord Hand Arryn and the Lord Paramounts Hoster Tully and Stannis and they all have a plan, they will help us win the war, and repel the invaders, and..."

As she spoke, she felt like she lay standing inside a trance, her words not her own, but a recitation of a speech written to her, like the words her Council prepared for her occasional audiences before the Throne Room. She would have preferred solitude each night, to curl up in her bed and sleep the moment supper was over, but they told her a Queen not be isolated, she must be with her people, her family, her ladies...

Is this what a Queen is? A puppet? Forever bound to the commands of others?

An older, raspier voice spoke once the Queen trailed off, lost for words.

"They do have a plan, the Lords Arryn and Hoster Tully. I'd hope so, at least."

"Grandpapa!"

Bran and Arya called out his name. Sansa just stared at him, slackjawed, aghast that grandpapa may have just watched her lose her composure so badly just now, feeling not like a queen, but like a little girl caught red handed stealing candy from the kitchens. These weren't experiences Sansa was accustomed to, she was always so good at listening to her elders, at being good, being the girl they all wanted her to be. Until they made her a Queen.

"Your Grace," Hoster bowed slightly, hands playing with his long gray beard as he spoke. "The Queen is needed."

"Lord Hoster," Sansa mumbled, after catching her breath. Terrified to look at her siblings and friends, she turned and ran as fast as she could out of the room. She would have embraced grandpapa, except Sansa was too mortified and ashamed to do so, so she walked several steps ahead of him, barely holding back her tears, her screams, until she realized that she did not actually know where grandpapa wanted her to go.

Her feet stilled, and she turned back towards him, avoiding his eyes.

"What exactly does the Queen's Council require her for?"

"The Queen's grandfather is concerned about the Queen," his voice said gently, his hands placed upon her shoulders, trying to console her as if she were a hysterical infant. "The Queen's grandfather thought the Queen needed a respite from her family and her ladies."

"I'm sorry," Sansa mumbled.

"Sorry for what, sweet child?"

"I'm sure you all regret naming me, you'd take it back if you could." Daring herself to look up at grandpapa, Sansa took a deep breath and asked. "Is it too late to change your minds now? I won't protest, I promise..."

"Why would we do such a thing, dear girl?"

Her lips froze, and seeing a small bench nearby down the hall, grandpapa gestured her in its direction.

"I snapped," Sansa confessed, after they both sat down. A useless admission, she thought, because grandpapa had seen her do it, why else would he have called her away, except because she wasn't even fit to eat supper with her family and friends. "I lost my patience."

"You did. Your kingdoms have been invaded. Kings can and do lose their patience when under the terrible strain of war. Queens too. And who better to lose your patience in front of than your family, your friends, the people you love and trust? Better them than before the lords at court, or worse, the smallfolk seeking the assurance of the crown."

He was trying to comfort her, Sansa knew, but the words rang hollow against the stone walls.

"I don't even deserve to lose my patience," she continued bitterly. "What use am I, if we win or lose this war, I've nothing to do with it, I just sit and try to understand everything you and mother and all of you talk about. And fail at that, too."

Grandpapa chuckled. "Yet it's your war to win, or lose, isn't it?" He sighed, his eyes distant, staring past a distant torch illuminating the castle's empty halls. "Do you remember your first visit to Winterfell, Sansa?"

"Barely," Sansa said, puzzled. "I was five."

"Yes, you were five," grandpapa agreed. Taking her hand, he held it casually before his eyes, examining her fingers in the dim light of the fires. "Arya could barely walk properly, and your mother still carried Bran most of the time in the castle. But you could run, and you did, a lot."

"I don't remember any of that," Sansa said. "Just meeting uncle Benjen and aunt Cersei and Kendron and Jon."

Part of her wished that she could be in Winterfell now, away from all this court, this war business. Let the snows fall, let the Targaryens do what they will, she would be safe in the North, the lands of her father and his family.

"Jon...," grandpapa mused, his voice but a whisper in the night. "He and Robb were friendly from the very get go, I remember. Within a day of our arrival, most would've guessed they'd been brothers all their lives."

"Robb," Sansa said, missing her brother so horribly yet again. Jon had bested him more often than not when they'd sparred, and Sansa recalled Robb still sore at that, saying that he was going to go straight to Winterfell after they put down the Greyjoys, and show Jon a thing or two. "He loved Winterfell. Arya loves it too. I...last time I was there, I just remembered hating the place and wanting to come back to King's Landing the entire trip. Father was pretty cross at me, I think."

"Not cross. Disappointed, because the North is his home, and you're his daughter. Of course he'd want you to love it like your own, just like Robb did." Her grandfather smiled gently at her. "But you liked it enough that first time."

"I did?"

Grandpapa nodded. "Robb and Jon, they'd spar, they'd race, they'd play games, running and hiding everywhere. And you were right there beside them every step of the way."

"I do remember," Sansa whispered, a hint of childish excitement creeping into her voice. "We'd play hide and seek. Jon hid in the vaunts down below...Robb told me so, but I was terrified to go down and look for him there. I thought there'd be ghosts."

Not that she was entirely convinced otherwise, that ghosts didn't roam the dark chambers of Winterfell. Or the Keep for the matter, angry Targaryen wraiths hateful at her for intruding upon their home, with only men like grandpapa and her Kingsguard...no Queensguard...keeping them at bay. Would she join them, before this war was said and done?

"Yet you went down there all the same." Hoster Tully chuckled, dropping her wrist and wrapping his arm comfortingly around Sansa. "I remember how angry your mother was, when they caught all three of you down there. I also remember His Grace pretending to be angry."

Sansa laughed. "I remember that now. Except...I didn't know father was pretending."

Grandpapa smiled, and continued wistfully. "I remember too one night, when it rained for two days and two nights. When it stopped, the sun still took its time in coming out again, and it felt more like Autumn than the beginning of Summer. I took a walk, that first day after the storms, past the courtyard, through the village, to a field where Lord Benjen's household sometimes trained. It was muddy, everything was muddy, the roads, the clearings. I watched Jon and Robb race each other, again and again, each determined to best the other boy, even as they tripped and fell and probably didn't even know where to begin and where to finish the race, by each time they'd made it halfway across the field...and I remember you, Sansa, running right there alongside with them."

"Hmff," Sansa said, recalling. "Yes, I remember trying to race them that day. And losing. Badly. Very badly."

"Yet you never quit, a girl of five adrift a strange land, trying to keep up with two boys nearly twice her age. I'm not sure if they even knew you were there, so determined those boys were to win and prove themselves the fastest, yet you ran with them all day...well, not with them, many paces behind them, but still...every step of the way. They'd reach one end, and rest, and you'd stagger and collapse next to them, and then they'd take off, and you'd get up follow with barely a breath in between."

Sansa laughed, and thanked the gods for her grandpapa in her mind, that he could always make her laugh, and feel better with his stories. "Mother must have been so angry with me."

"She was," Hoster said with a smile. "She was angry at me too, when I brought three balls of mud back inside the castle, because I didn't stop you sooner. I daresay the Lady Cersei nearly fainted."

"Good."

"I don't think your mother let you leave the castle the rest of that trip, I swear, it seemed as if she locked you up in that tower with your Septa." His frail fingers took her chin, and tilted her head so that her eyes met his. "Your mother made sure that the Princess Sansa acted like a Princess from that day on. And you learned all the your lessons, all your courtesies, all the things a proper lady ought know. But I never forgot, dear child, the little girl who wouldn't give up, who had a heart of iron...who...underneath all her pretty dresses and courtesies, never lost that heart of iron."

They sat in silence for some time, as grandpapa's words sunk in.

Grandpapa's wrong, Sansa was too afraid to say. I don't have a heart of iron. She did remember that day in the mud with Jon and Robb, and yearned for such simplicity sitting where she sat now. But she knew that the little girl didn't run and play with her brothers because she had some special heart, she just did so because...well, Sansa wasn't exactly sure. Because she was a stupid child, too stupid to know better, because she must've been terribly bored and there wasn't much else to do in Winterfell? Or maybe because she was scared, terrified of the strange castle, and being next to Robb was the only way she'd felt safe when father and mother were busy with their duties?

Grandpapa's wrong, she thought again. Does this mean they put the wrong child on the throne? It didn't matter, it was too late now.

"I wish mother had done a better job courtesy'ing Arya up," Sansa said, trying to ignore those frightful, near treasonous thoughts.

Grandpapa laughed, a loud and hearty one, evoking a wider grin upon Sansa's face. "Ah, the younger ones. The things I wish I could have done differently with your Uncle Edmure..." Taking a deep breath, he spoke again, but his tone more serious now. "But I do have news, Your Grace. I suppose one may consider it good news and bad, though war is always far more complicated than such simple expressions."

And just like that, they weren't girl and grandpa anymore, but Queen and Lord Councilor.

"What is it?"

"The good, well, I guess it might or might not be entirely good. But we have word the Targaryens have moved west into the Reach, rather towards King's Landing."

"There won't be a siege then?" Could she dare hope?

"Not right away. But the Targaryens are seeking allies in the south. They may very well come back north and attack the city, except with a much stronger army."

And then siege or not, the war is truly lost.

"That's the good news," Sansa asked. It never ends. "What's the bad then?"

Hoster Tully held out a small slip of parchment.

"It would appear that the Lannisters lied about their relationship with the Targaryens."


Varys

"This is treason you speak of!"

Did the Lord of Highgarden's face also blush so red whenever he rose his voice, Varys wondered. Mace Tyrell wasn't an unpleasant man, but nor was he all that pleasure either. Such as the lot of the seven kingdoms, he supposed, that the so-called greatest lords of the realm ranged not just through the few great men such a Rhaegar, or Jon Arryn, or even the older Baratheon brothers, to the greatly terrible men like the former Lord of Casterly Rock, but more often than not, the mediocrities like Mace Tyrell or, from what he'd heard, Hoster Tully's heir in Riverrun.

"I mean this most politely," Varys said, finding the diplomacy of things much easier with the Prince absent from their little meetings. "But the treason was already committed when you surrendered to Eddard Stark at Storm's End six and ten years ago."

They were encamped a few days away from Tumbleton, and while the Footly's had made no decision regarding their loyalties, awaiting instead the pronouncement of their liege lord, they were already decidedly committing treason of a smaller variety by allowing Rhaegar's brother a room in the castle, which the young man happily took, savoring his first taste of relative luxury since sailing from Pentos.

"What would you do," Randyll Tarly snarled, a grim, war-hardened man whom Varys was most eager to win over, considering he'd given the Crown practically its only victory in the war against the usurpers. "It was surrender, or die. We've wives and children here, not all of us can flee across the Narrow Sea to suckle at the teat of eastern potentates like Rhaegar did."

"You make a valid point," Varys pretended to concede. "Rhaegar had no wife nor children, not after the usurpers massacred his family." His tone gentled. After all, the purpose of this meeting was diplomacy, and he was not Prince Viserys. "I assure you, my good lords, the King Rhaegar understands your predicaments. You all knew him before the rebellion, he was loved through all the realm because of his chivalry and generosity...not because of his cruelty or capacity for grudges. Considering that the main instigators of the rebellion are dead...including the Mad King, he will forgive any who'd bent the knee to the Starks...even a Hoster Tully or Jon Arryn, should they surrender and pledge their loyalty to their true king."

Mace Tyrell's nose twitched. "That's certainly generous," he mused, having obviously not expected this tact.

"It's stupid," Randyll muttered.

"His Grace may allow the high traitors to live," Varys added, his voice more clipped than before, "but he never said anything about allowing them to retain their power, or their titles."

And therein lay the threat. Men like Mace Tyrell had committed far less treason than the Tully's and Arryns...but only up to their current shared moment in time. There lay still a war to be fought in the days to come, a war which could see the scales of many swing one way or the other.

"We bent the knee to the Starks, like everyone else," Mace said, and Varys sensed that though the man was coming closer to a decision, he was not at all happy about it, wherever his whims may land. "There's no reason for us to change things, the Starks have been good to our family, my daughter Margaery serves in the Queen's court..."

"A hostage," Varys suggested.

His words seemed to stun the man to silence.

"Maybe," Randyll said to the horrified lord, and Varys wondered whether he'd not considered that particular implication before now. "Maybe not. But Robb Stark's dead. Margaery's not the Queen, she'll never be the Queen, by naming the girl over Prince Bran it's obvious the value King's Landing places upon their alliance with your family."

"Maybe the girl can marry Loras," Mace Tyrell stuttered, before gawking at his vassal. "Are you seriously considering this, Randyll?"

The old warrior grimaced. "Aerys was an awful king, but he was my king, and I fought for him. I've no quarrel with the Starks, they won the war fairly, I bent the knee to King Eddard...but for them to put some dumb girl on the throne is an insult to the realm."

His liege lord wasn't convinced. "More of an insult than what Aerys did to the realm?"

"Aerys invited war with his actions," Randyll said, and Varys thought that perhaps the man had made up his mind before even arriving at Tumbleton. "So do the Starks now, tempting all the lords with their weakness every day the girl sits on a throne far too big for her. Maybe I made a mistake with Aerys, I don't care, that's all history now. But I know this, the seven kingdoms will never accept a girl in the throne. Even if they offer her hand in marriage to Dickon, I'd refuse them. She'll lose that crown one day, sooner or later, and I wouldn't want my son to lose his head for it too." He looked pointedly at Mace. "Or my daughter."

"Even if they made Dickon a King," Mace inquired, though he'd obviously heard Randyll's last spoken words.

A wry grin from the man, and Varys thought this was the first time he'd seen the Tarly man smile.

"Such talk would be treason against both Houses Stark and Targaryen, wouldn't it?"

"Lord Mace, I understand your predicament, I really do. You're a man of honor, of integrity...and your lovely daughter resides in Red Keep. I don't expect His Grace to begrudge you, were you to refuse his cause...so long as you do not oppose his cause."

"What do you mean," Mace asked carefully, Randyll's eyes eagerly observing both of them.

"I understand the Queen...ahem," Varys coughed, "the Queen's Council has summoned you to the defense of King's Landing, so refusing them outright may be construed as treason. But say, were the Lord Randyll Tarly to decide upon raising his banners for King Rhaegar...against your wishes, of course...well, that would deprive you of a rather substantial piece of your army, wouldn't it? And you ought be wary of Dorne, seeing as how the Martells have declared for House Targaryen, you must also not neglect the defenses of the Reach and its eastern borders, which are just as much the domains of Queen Sansa as is King's Landing."

"Do nothing, while allowing my lords to commit treason?"

"It's a reasonable course of action," Varys said with a smile, "and His Grace is a reasonable man. I doubt Rhaegar will begrudge you for it, considering the position you're in. Or the Regency Council, for the matter, on the rather unlikely chance that House Stark wins this war."

Shaking his head, Mace Tyrell stumbled out of the tent without saying another word. Which was good, Varys knew, having seen the defeated look on his face before departing.


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Notes and Responses: As always, thanks for reading and taking the time to review! Regarding Jon, Ned would've probably seen no reason to hide his identity with Robert dead and himself King, and he would've certainly wished to legitimize his late sister's only child, so Jon's parentage is known to all in this story. As for Viserys, you're right, he has a different background here than in the show. However, there could be other factors at play as well. Rhaegar is essentially his father here, and while I wouldn't necessarily say Rhaegar is a bad father, I wouldn't be too sure that he'd be a good father, considering his own baggage. Certainly, it seems that Rhaegar is more fond of Danaerys than Viserys, and that alone would be enough to cause some resentment, if not also for the fact that Rhaegar is determined to prevent Viserys from marrying to bedding a sister he lusts after. And while Viserys doesn't have to carry the weight of all of House Targaryen in exile, I do imagine any young man, especially a prince, would have their own ambitions. And, with the whole nature vs nurture thing, who knows how his coin landed?

He's not as cruel as he is in the show, thus far at least. But it does appear he's rather arrogant about it all, a bit resentful of his older brother, yet eager to prove himself to him.

And yes, I love myself an independent Sansa as well, and try to write that in a lot of my stories, even if she is eventually paired with someone or anyone. Both her childish compassion and naivete are on display when she tries to give Renly a soft landing, so to speak, so we'll see whether it will haunt her in a good way, or bad. And I write this story very interested in the opposition. Rhaegar and Lewyn give me some new characters to write and develop, as well as a Daenerys that will be the same as canon Dany in many ways, but also very different in other ways.

As to Littlefinger, I can't speak much about him now. But he certainly seems to have the trust of both Cat and Jon Arryn, same as the beginning of the books/show. And I imagine he's not at all sad about Ned dying either...