Tyrell Shit

Mother didn't have to tell me to be on my best behavior twice. I'd already resolved to paste a genial smile on my cherubic chops and play as fat and stupid and cowardly I could get away with. It's not like it was far from the truth.

See. The Stannis/Selyse wedding seemed to me like a real shot across the bows to the Tyrells, and evidence that Robert (Okay, Jon Arryn,) wasn't nearly as stupid as people assumed he was at his worst. I'd never met the man, but he somehow sweet-talked Dorne from vengeance into a half-generation of peace while they plotted their vengeance… While managing to miss Littlefinger bilking the Seven Kingdoms and possibly cuckolding him for YEARS, so hey, I guess it was anybody's game.

It was Mother's family, and Stannis' marriage to her cousin Selyse that was possibly the cause of some proximate pants-shitting. Because you see… The Florents really really really really really wanted to be Lords Paramount of the Reach… Which meant kicking the Tyrells out of their nice and flowery seat of Highgarden… Which would only happen if they really really really fucked up and made Robert angry. And after the Greyjoy Rebellion got crushed so mercilessly, that species of idiot was a bit thin on the ground and would remain so until Robert got Boar'd and died.

I smelled Jon Arryn all over tying Stannis into the Florent family, but I couldn't remember if it was him or Robert who mandated it. This whole thing felt like an added little bit of insurance which meant that if the Tyrells put so much as a toe out of line the entire family would get Romamov'd and replaced by large-eared sycophants faster than I could say "Comrade Snowball."

It was just a shame that the marriage itself was a tragicomic mismatch of personalities, tying a devout Sevener-for-now to a publicly avowed atheist who'd sworn off gods after seeing his parents drown in front of his wee babby eyes. Leaving aside Robert schtupping her cousin in their marital bed, and probably neither of them getting "The Talk" from anyone, as I tried really hard not to think about that and the eventual… Rhollorist priestess sex shenanigans and burning people thing.

Either way, this shit was high stakes, and not just because Daddy Dearest had won one of the only battles on the Targaryen side of Bobby B's Rumble Ruckus and had the credit promptly snaffled by Lord Mace "the Ace" Tyrell, (Olenna's possibly-mutton-headed son.)

Impeccably-attired servants with gold badges conveyed us and our baggage up to the castle, drew us baths in our rooms, and departed, leaving finely-wrought sets of soap and fluffy towels in their wake. Even the Tyrells' welcome was a way of flexing their wealth and power, and I thought really hard about stealing one of the cloudlike cloths out of spite. I figured it'd get a servant beaten or something, so as I shrugged on my second-best set of court clothes, after washing the dust of the road off, I left the towel next to the portable tub and marched forward to see how utterly fucked we were.

Mother met me outside the room, perfectly coiffured and perfumed like a fresh spring morning, doing the standard issue mom thing of somehow finding a smudge of dirt I had missed and removing it by means of a licked thumb. Yuck.

Then Pate-the-Page, Easy Pate, and mother's maid met to escort us to Highgarden's… high garden?

I'm not kidding, the private gardens were tucked well out of the way, and seemed optimized for noble picaresques and discreet-ish assignations. While I searched for artillery secreted under giant-floral-patterned tea cozies, even the hallways themselves were lined with painted flowers over an airy maze of whitewashed stone wherever you looked, and I wondered aloud if they ever got sick of seeing them.

Pate-the-page gave a muttered chuckle.

We swept out onto what can only be described as a private balcony garden overlooking the Mander, complete with grassy swards landscaped to within an inch of their and even a folly or two. No word on whether or not they had an authentic hermit hut with an actual hermit in it for flavor though.

The Tyrells were impeccably turned-out, and that, plus the sheer amount of labor it took to keep the castle pristine and the garden in order were three signs of tremendous wealth and soft power.

I took in our erstwhile overlords as mother gave a formal curtsy and I tendered a crisp half-bow appropriate for one's liegelord in a semiformal setting. I might be absolute pants in the yard, but I took to the formal rules of courtly ettiquite like a duck to uh. The wet stuff it swam around in.

As Lord Mace (mercifully) and Lady Aleire were absent visiting another bannerman, the first introduction among unequals was to the young man sitting as lord of Highgarden in their place. And he was sitting. Willas Tyrell had ten years on me, and was far from newly-crippled. The Heir to Highgarden took our bows in a comfortable-looking wooden chair with a cane close to hand, and a leather-strapped leg brace that looked staggeringly uncomfortable on full display, said the usual pleasantries, inclining his head with magnanimity.

Garlan was a few years older than me, and if he'd ever been as pudgy as I was and remained, it didn't show. The second-oldest Rose was a wall of solid muscle with handsome features. They could likely all be Hemsworths, but in a film, he'd be played by Chris. I tried not to instantly hate him. Or let it show on my face.

I'd like to think I succeeded, but I was then waylaid by the Creepy Irish Twins Loras and Margaery, Loras only a year older than I, and Margaery around my age, angelic-looking kids with mops of chestnut curls and fluctuating between outgoing and shy.

And all I had to do was try to play it very dull and boring without going full Augustus Gloop as we lunched.

"Lady Olenna, an honor."

"Your son is very considerate," Olenna said to my mother, "Nothing at all like his father, even if his featherbrained affability reminds me of my oaf of a son"

The small older woman moved her wrinkled apple face even closer to mine, moving it back and forth like a serpent, assessing my bearing and carriage with a gimlet gaze.

Well, my grandma back home was four foot something, taught high school in bad neighborhoods and liked to stump up to bikers to get the particulars on their rides because motorcycles were interesting. She was, in short; TERRIFYING.

The Queen of Thorns couldn't touch her, but it was a nearer-run thing than I'd like.

I let myself relax as Olenna pulled my mother into a conversation and the Tyrells burbled on.

The food was delicious, the sun was warm, and honeybees and birds drowsed pleasantly around the gardens, passing pollen and eating insects, and I lost the plot a bit.

I was staring out at the sunlight glinting off the massive and slow-moving Mander below us. If I tilted my head just so I could pretend the town wasn't there and that just down the river there would be a modern steel bridge with some asphalt, and further down a decent taco stand, a 76 station, and maybe they'd have a rotating display of cheap reading glasses I could-

"Samwell? Sam!" My mother in this world rarely, barked, but when she did… Hoo boy.

"Lady Olenna asked you what you think about the wedding, Samwell"

"'m sorry Lady Olenna. The view was so pretty from up here. Well. What I could see at any rate."

"Surely you have some thoughts bouncing around in that gargantuan head of yours."

"Uh." I said, drawing out the silence and reaching for something hopefully anodyne.

I had nothing, but spoke anyway.

"I'm surprised they haven't offered to squire any of your children to Lord Renly to soften the blow of the wedding. Everyone knows the Reach is why the Crownlands and King's Landing aren't starving."

Olenna didn't drop her fork, but she came close, evaluating me with a head-tilted gaze.

"What makes you think that our King would permit us that sort of influence, Young Lord Tarly?"

I squirmed a bit more than I felt like under her gaze as I answered, "King Robert is famously generous Lady Olenna, known to give while taking with the other. "Besides," I said, with a child's piety, "Septon Runcifer always says that when the Gods close a door, sometimes they open a window, and surely we are all brothers and sisters under the light of the Seven."

Olenna sniffed, "As though I hadn't heard that a dozen times before."

Willas piped up at that, "Is not wisdom wisdom because it has some use and therefore bears repeating?"

"Sometimes child," Olenna said in a low voice that she thought Loras and Margaery and I could not make out, "The Gods do not open a window when they close a door. Sometimes there are no good options. Frequently, we must make do," she paused, making a minute gesture at Willas' cane "With the adversity the Gods hand us and change our plans completely."

Willas' face fell. "I take your point, Grandmother. Still," he said, levering himself up with some effort and twirling the cane in his hand like an arming sword, "Mayhaps it is a sometimes wisdom. It would not do to miss an opportunity, in whatever cloak it wears."

Lady Olenna harumphed approvingly, and then turned to my mother, "Lady Melessa I am told by my Steward it will take a few days yet for the next grain shipment to load on the barges you have chartered. Your party may impose on our hospitality for that time, as I do not find your company as vexing as that of most noble ladies, and your son may benefit from being schooled, however briefly, along side mine own family."

"I am honored to be so considered, Lady Olenna." Mother said with a voice like clear glass.

"Perhaps young Samwell would like to match swords with my smaller siblings in the yard as he matches wits in the garden?" Willas said in a warm tone, "Ser Vortimer Crane is one of our finest knights, and serves as Master-at-Arms for Highgarden."

Loras practically glowed. Garlan,curse him, gave a beneficent smile and leaned slightly back.

Mother spitted me with an inquisitive stare.

What else could I do but incline my head and say, "I would be honored, Lord Willas."

Oh hey look, it's time for another in SI pet peeve of mine to rear its ugly head.

"I spent hours in the yard and got super-de-hoooper amazing."

Great! And I'm sure that in the body of Ae(gon)-Ae(mon)-Jon Snew or Rhae Rhae the Wondertarg, you fully remembered the sword lessons you received as a small child and effortlessly folded them into a fast and furious combat routine and never had to think about it again.

Did you learn anything, or just hit a pell for a few hours and think you leveled up? Is that how this works? Look, I get that it's a power fantasy, but I'm stuck here for the foreseeable future and despite being born to nobility, physically at least I feel anything but powerful.

I had hit pells and been hit by squires for years at this point. Effortless it was not. I was almost certainly better off than your average smallfolk levy dude, especially with the armor I'd almost certainly be wearing, but that was small beans in a tourney (vital for socializing) or on an actual battlefield where twenty of the fuckers would want to knock me down and either ransom me or shove a dagger through my helmet visor.

My sense of distance was still shit, and with my eyes the way they were, my sense of timing in the smaller body was worse, and my sword technique wasn't quite "Jab like a sewing machine needle trying to connect with a fencing foil," but it was close.

At least my nearsightedness didn't impede my blocking. I could interpose a shield, buckler, or the strong part of my blade fairly well, but if I wanted to hit what I was aiming at with any regularity, I had to close distance and hack hard.

But even that small skill was of little account. I was matching wooden wasters with some of the best swords of Westeros as not-quite-wee-babbies.

And in the coarse sand of Highgarden's yard, Garlan and Loras were brutal in the fight, but kind after it, blasting through my attempted defenses with swift, sure strokes and leaving me on the ground coughing, with my ears ringing from blows to the helmet.

Ser Vortimer, the platonic ideal of a knight-at-ease and resplendent in a near-pristine set of sparring pads stared down at me with a discerning look, "Do you know what your problem is, young Lord Tarly?"

"Erm." Both my hands swept down the sides of my padded form from head to thigh.

All of me.

Crane, Garlan, and Loras chuckled, which had what I was going for, but which still hurt.

"You do not commit to an attack. You strike hard enough to for someone to mark it, but you do not follow through. A feint is a feint, but each swing you intend to land must have power behind it. Take you my meaning?"

"Yes Ser."

"Loras, come over here and position yourself just so…"

Shuffle, shuffle shuffle. THUNK. BONK. Boiiiiiiiiing.

Well, I wasn't much better than I had been at Horn Hill, but at least Crane and the Tyrells were nicer about it, even if they were just as persistent. We were all training to be feudal warlords, after all.

I supposed I was more of a futile warlord, natch.

While mother sat closeted with the ladies, embroidering and holding her own against the Queen of Thorns as well as anyone married to Randy "Manliness Compensator McWinonebattle"Tarly could (which was pretty well) I hied myself to the castle's Maester for some lessons with the Tiny Tyrell Terrors.

Oh, you thought I could just skip out on lessons about a realm I had to fucking live in? Welcome to SI Pet Peeve Numero Dos.

"I haunted the library and learned everything there was to know about the REALM to bring it up with perfect recall later."

Oh? You can read the handwriting of every single Maester aspirant copywriter in the library? In Common, High and Low Valyrian without difficulty?

The language and colloquialisms haven't shifted in centuries?

You can list off all the large and small houses with ease without having Wiki of Ice and Fire right next to you after you read it over once?

Besides, I already knew "Obsidian kill others and maybe walkers, Fire Kill Walkers, Dragons Bad and Wildfire worse." What more ancient lore did I need to bone up on?

Motherfucker, I barely scraped a C in High School SPANISH and I was gonna do six doctoral dissertations in near-dead languages to find stuff I knew already?

Fuckall that.

I did try to find anything I could on northern myths to give my future concerns more credence, but any credible or even actionable information was thin on the ground. I did get scolded for bringing tea to do my reading, as certain types of brews could smudge even the best iron gall ink and parchments.

I spent a few sun-kissed days introducing the Tarlys and their servile hangers-on to some games I remembered from my first childhood. Freeze tag went over well, but somehow Hide and Go Seek transformed into "Catch and Kill" fought all through the castle with wooden wasters and whatever came to hand. Olenna looked outwardly peevish, but her blandishments had no belly to them, and I caught a glint of good humor that reminded me of my actual grandmother.

And then the grain shipment was ready, and as my Mother and I made our farewells and our party boarded the massive hulk of a Mander grain barge, I idly wondered if Olenna would ensure we'd have an accident on the way to the wedding.

Fucking Westeros.