A.C 258
The Lady of the Golden Rose.
The winter was winding down, of course, winter in Highgarden meant that maybe there'd be snow for a fortnight and then the thaw would come and there'd be flooding in certain parts of the Reach that would clear away a poor harvest and shift the soils around. A Maester explained it to her once, some arduous lecture or another on the mechanics behind why the soil in the reach was the greatest and most fertile in the world. That was likely the last time Olenna Tyrell ever spoke to that Maester. Maesters… Olenna suppressed a sigh What were those meddlesome morons thinking?! No, the lady of Highgarden realized. That was the wrong question, the proper question was How in the seven hells did we never think that the men we trust to carry our messages, council us in our games, heal us, and help manage our lands, our pedigree and to raise and guide our children would not look upon such a golden opportunity and avail themselves of it.
It was preposterous, of course, they would take advantage of such unprecedented levels of trust and steer the great houses in the direction they wished, in furtherance of some higher-minded goal. Perhaps that was what troubled Olenna the most regarding the whole sordid affair. The faction within the citadel behind such atrocities wasn't doing this for power, they were doing this because of a belief that the world would be better without Gods, without faith, and magic.
A world without the underpinnings that held the entire world together. Forget Targaryen madness, Maesterly Madness was going to become a new phrase among the nobles as the loyal Maesters began to let the ravens fly. Assuming any Maesters survive this madness. So far, four in ten Maesters seemed to still draw breath after the criers, couriers, and ravens carried the news across the reach. In the Storm Lands, Lord Steffon Baratheon had shielded Maester Cressen with his own body from the fury of his father and when the Maester swore his loyalty Ormund Baratheon wept and begged his forgiveness. Typical of the proud and overly emotional fools at Storm's End. Mores the pity though, from what her spies told her most of the Maesters in the crown lands were slaughtered utterly.
Something that shamed her personally because of the overabundance of Redwyne bastards who wore the grey out in the lands surrounding that fetid cesspit of a capital. The bards, poets, and scribes call our machinations the Game of Thrones, a foolish and tactless sobriquet but we are such novices in comparison to those grey jackals. And they've existed for as long as any of the great and old houses. When did they go wrong? The bloody letter made mention of them selectively poisoning and breeding us as though we were animals.
It was a bitter wine that, more so because she understood Why they did it. Or rather, why they had originally begun to do it before they lost their way. The winter's wind passed through along the curtail wall swaying the roses that bloomed from the ancient and relentless vines and brushes that served as secondary barriers augmenting an already formidable castle. Certain bloodlines, both of Andal warrior kings of old and First men were believed to be as mystically imbued as the Valyrian race and there was a degree of truth to it. All Tyrells and Redwynes are beautiful, all Florents have big ears, and all Tarly's are brave to a fault even the ones called craven by their kin. The Hightowers are majestic and mystically inclined. All Lannisters are gold of hair and green of eyes and unreasonably fertile. And the Starks, are strong, grim, and possessed of stamina that isn't normal. Baratheons inherited the Durrandon look and their unnatural strength and vitality.
Perhaps all the talk of Long Nights and monsters beyond the wall was indeed true and not merely the embellishment of wars with ancient primitives like so many in the South believed. If they were, it would explain why the order of Maesters educated a certain way, emphasized certain things, pushed certain notions, and ultimately. This treason was truly insidious and of a scope that went beyond anything she could likely guess at. And as King Aegon prunes the grey garden, he ought to be cautious that he does not miss a weed or two. Else they'll be back to their schemes and games in a century.
The only reason she hadn't agreed with her Lord Husband when Luthor had declared his intention to order the death of every single Maester within the Reach for treason was that most of them seemed to be oblivious to the plot and upon finding out were enraged and indignant and filled with a degree of ire she didn't think was possible from those weird, sexless scholars.
Of course, Garth raised another point that was of paramount concern. Fundamentally, we cannot kill them all because to do so would leave us blind, deaf, and ignorant and we would likely slide back into barbarism. Even if the Stonemason guilds and the textile masters and the millers all knew their craft, the science behind their craft remained exclusively in the purview of the citadel. The only good that would come of this was Lord Ormund's notion that the power of the Citadel ought to be dispersed, which she agreed with and made plans to discuss the creation of a Citadel of the Arbor.
The part that would become intolerable, however, was the fact that they would have to allow Citadels in the North and the Riverlands, one in King's Landing and even one in Tyrosh which had become the de facto seat of House Blackfyre and whose mainland demesnes boasted almost as Westerosi now as they did Essosi. The exchange of knowledge and commerce and peoples between East and West had benefitted the Reach immensely but the dispersal of the power concentrated in Oldtown would mean the weakening of the Reach. Ah well, sometimes a bull is too violent to stud and must either be put down or gelded and left as a plow beast.
This was a weakness though; it would mean a weakening of the institutional power which House Tyrell wielded through House Hightower and that would mean they would have to rely more on their vast wealth and military might than on more subtle means. And this is where that oaf I call my lord husband has the right of this. The extent of their depravity made manifest or not, this intolerably benefits, the Narrow Sea, the North, and House Targaryen and makes their dream of Empire all the easier.
They would have to proceed with caution, her good brother Garth might have been a disgusting glutton, but he saw things more clearly than any other and even her invalid of a husband had his moments. She reached up and traced a thumb and index finger calloused and ink-stained from constant needlework and exchanging letters on the matter. Through thick brown hair. yes, she thought. We will have to proceed carefully, lest Highgarden end as the Citadel did, with not but tears and brothers mourning brothers as they try and clean up the blood.
...
The Winter Dragoness
It had been more comfortable than she imagined, travel on a Northern sailing ship. In general, it had been more than she could have imagined, being delivered from the clutches of a brother she held little in the way of love for. A betrothal was done to attempt to fulfill a prophecy that was misinterpreted, and life was uprooted on account of that error, in a fortnight Rhaella Targaryen, Princess of the blood and only surviving daughter of Prince Jaehaerys Targaryen went from being doomed to a life beside a brother she detested, to a life beside one of his friends. At first, she was uncertain how to feel about it, other than the profound sorrow at once again being denied a life with her sweet Ser Bonifer, whom she loved dearly and missed. Rickard was kind, she knew him to be several years older than her brother and all of his friends even Tywin who was the eldest of their circle. He was handsome, in that Northern way. Tall and grim, with broad shoulders and calloused hands, he had scars on his arms and there was a full thick beard of dark brown hair, and his eyes were a gray that gave them the impression of being flint-like.
There were streaks of silver in his hair despite his youth and that was rumored to come from the infamous Lord Cregan's wife Jaenara Aetheryon. Lord Stark rules over the largest population of pure Valyrians in the world. She thought with a sense of awe, Oldtown and Lannisport boasted of large populations of Valyrians descended from former slaves and mercenaries and merchants and smiths who lacked mystical talent but were skilled at forging weapons and jewelers but that population had been mixing with the Westerlanders and Reachmen for nearly nine hundred years. The peoples that came in the thousands of ships that descended upon the Western coast of the North bathed in flame and steel by the Ironborn had settled one of the most sparsely populated spots on the continent and then made it their own.
House Aetheryon ruled the largest territory in the North, except for the domains of House Stark. From the new gift to Cape Kraken Valyrians ruled the coast in honor of and in the name of the Stark in Winterfell. These peoples kept their culture and their language and speaking with them was akin to the few times she spoke with Lord Aenar's Wargs. It was a language from the past, their dialect of High Valyrian being seven centuries older than Aegon the Conquerors, and the blood of the first men seldom mingled with the Valyrians of the North outside of Bear Island and the Barrowlands. In that sense it was magical and when Lord Stark spoke to her in High Valyrian she realized that, like the royal court. The Court of Winterfell spoke in two tongues, the old tongue of the First Men and High Valyrian. That explains their accents when they speak common, though Lord Wyman is more adept at hiding it. His Valyrian is different, accented strangely, in an older way.
Volantis might be the only place besides King's Landing or Sea Dragon point that boasted of men and women descended from Dragon Lords and in that sense, Volantis had a greater number thereof but the longer she spent with Lord Stark the more Rhaella Targaryen thought she was stepping into the past.
And he's fair and honest with me as well and kind in his way.
Aerys had…been...cruel.
He never touched her, to be sure. Jaehaerys would have beaten him bloody if he had and her grandsire the King would have exiled him (and Aerys would probably have trouble living with himself. He did seem to care for her on some level. ) but he was always mean to her. In subtle and disparaging ways, he always demeaned her and then confused her by showing kindness and compassion in the next moment. He seemed to regret his outbursts, but it was as though he used her as a font for all the darker impulses he kept from the world, and she was acutely aware that had they married those darker impulses would have worsened from the stress of the throne and she would have died alone and unloved. None of this could be said to anyone, she had born this in silence but her betrothed knew. Somehow, he knew, and when he waited for her to broach the subject she had begun to feel a stirring of something other than ease at his company in her heart.
Ever since I was a child, I would watch him in the yards when he came South. I'll admit to that if only to myself. I have fancied his flesh, but I never knew the man behind the direwolf or the direwolf behind the man. When they neared Shipbreaker Bay a storm blew them off course and so they sailed for Gulltown the Eyrie where Lord Jon Arryn and his heirs Denys and Elbert feasted them. What a kind and gracious man, if old and overly fond of crumbly cheese. It was as they departed that Rhaella became acutely aware that she was departing one world for an older world. The North seldom involved itself in Southron politics, but their merchants and trade fleets ensured that they had a voice. Of course, that wasn't true, a half dozen Manderly's served as master of coin and old Lord Aenar had been hand to two kings and showed no signs of feeling the need to step down from his office.
Much of the "civil services" were inspired by the Valyrian systems set up in the North, Westerlands, and Reach. She knew that much, and it was more like than not that much of the obsession with roads and canals came from a North that had a population nearly as gargantuan as the Reach yet could only feed half of its number on its own. The sheer volume of coins that passed between Dragontown (The city that grew around Sea Dragon Keep.) White Harbor and the Arbor and Oldtown had been the object of lust for Ironborn raiders and Lyseni pirates for centuries. During the reign of Viserys the first, there was even a YiTish pirate fleet captained by a self-styled queen of the pirates who raided the treasure fleet. The queen for a year, Rhaenyra Targaryen, and her husband Laenor cemented themselves as gallant dragon riders when they at last burned that immense fleet and sent the foreign butchers to their doom.
I'm to be the lady of the House that rules the largest of the seven Kingdoms, that consumes more food than any other save the reach and that is populated by two ancient races, who hold different Gods than me and of whom, House Targaryen was among the youngest members thereof. But I do not feel nervous, I am excited.
Rickard never dismissed her; he never told her to know her place. He was physically demonstrative in barbaric ways that she found exciting (The first time he pulled her down onto his lap during a border discussion with Lord Jon as though he were a Wildling King and she a common spear wife had set a wildfire in her heart.) and he included her almost every council he was forced to endure on the voyage. We're not even married and he's involving me in the governance of the North and makes a point to be seen doing so.
That almost made her cry.
He was doing it for her. So that her wisdom and intelligence could be seen and understood. So that his servants and vassals could judge her on her own merits. A girl who might have been queen consort was supposed to take offense at the notion of needing to prove herself worth listening to. But the challenge excited her and after she'd said something she thought was foolish, Lord Jon gave it ample consideration before taking her idea, adding to it, and then asking her what she thought of the amended proposal as if her words mattered to such an experienced lord, she felt a satisfaction that she hadn't thought she'd ever know. When she arrived at White harbor she was welcomed not merely as a Targaryen princess but as the future lady of the North, the mistress of Winterfell, and the winged mother of wolves.
Cousin Rohanne Rhaella thought. Keep my brother, I find that I am not for the hot climes of the South. For I am an Ice Dragon, and I will be nothing else until my dying day.
Winterfell was unlike anything she could have imagined either, less a castle and more a city that happened to have baileys, walls and two dozen keeps each one older than the last connected by walkways a magnificent Godswood so ancient it was old when her forefathers were still sheepherders. As with her family, the Starks seemed to be numerous, but most were Snows. It was a castle-city run by bastards who welcomed her as though she'd lived here all her life. It was challenging, daunting, fun, and magical and she never wanted to leave here. Even if that did mean she'd never see her Ser Bonifer again and she was even starting to care for Lord Rickard.
It had scarce been six turns of the moon before the summons came.
Targaryen, Blackfyre, Tully, Sunfyre, Aetheryon, and Velaryon.
The great Valyrian houses of the realm descended from dragon riders and or their cadet branches were to produce two members to attend the King.
…At Summerhall.