Prologue: daughter of Tarth
My name was Jaime of Tarth, and I was named after her deceased father, whom no one dared to mention. Once, my mother had been fiercely and desperately in love, and that love was what I was born from.
Then, on a dark night, my father had left, leaving Brienne of Tarth heartbroken. That story I heard more than once, anger and pain hidden within her sharp features.
But never did I hear the swooning love story, how they came together. In all reality no one talked about what kind of man my father had been, just that they called him king slayer.
That information wasn't shared by my mother, just by someone who called me a bastard. At that age, I didn't know what that meant. I was 5 when I heard his name was Jaime Lannister.
She remembered she asked about her father when she was only 6; Mom told me that it still hurt too much and that I should ask again when the pain wasn't that fresh. I kept asking until I was 13, when I realised I would never get another answer. I wondered about him, why he had left my mother and whether they were truly in love. I was 16 when I learned he was no longer in this world. He had been crushed beneath rocks when Kings Landing was attacked. That I hated most, I would never know the man he was. I would never know his embrace, I would always remain that unloved bastard of Tarth, looking for someone who could tell me something about him.