Chapter III: The Golden Lord and the Silver Prince
Cersei
All that the world had to offer she wanted, but she wanted power most of all. In Casterly Rock, she could not feel it the same way. The walls were cold and unfeeling, and the lords and servants had been raised since birth to be deferential of Lannisters. King's Landing however, was rife with influence from all over the Seven Kingdoms. There was an entirely different feeling to having a knight from the Stormlands treat her with the respect she deserved than a sworn vassal from the Westerlands, to say the least of the open desire with which she was viewed. She had learned to notice it, no matter how well-concealed, since her flowering, when she reached marriageable age and the proposals began.
Every young lord and knight wanted her, even the higher lords like Robert Baratheon of the Stormlands, looked at her with open lust; men turned away from their wives with guilty looks. She held her power over the court, over even King Aerys.
Though I cannot be sure if he wants me to spite the memory of Father... She held sway over Jaime most of all, and she could imagine nothing greater but for possibly one man.
Rhaegar Targaryen, the Prince of Dragonstone, stood in the yard of the Red Keep. While King's Landing was not his seat, the small island holding of the Crown Prince had never been to his liking. He may as well have been a god in human flesh. Silver-haired, and with unearthly dark-purple eyes, his outer looks were matched only by the deep and sorrowful soul within. Every lady of the court could be reduced to tears on but a whim, should he play his harp, and sing.
Had any man ever been so beautiful?. Beside him, in her youth, she had thought of even Jaime as little more than a callow boy.
Years ago, before the prince had been betrothed to drab, sickly Ellia Martell, she had been assured that Rhaegar would marry her one day, and nothing had made her happier. He had been wounded by something, but she would heal him, and rule beside him as queen. The smiles had all died that day in Lannisport, when her Aunt Genna informed her that King Aerys, out of jealousy of his Hand, had declined the match. In the end, her father had failed her, the king had rejected her, and the Prince would never look at her.
Jaime remained the only one in the world she could truly confide in, and even then she was careful. She knew the anger that attraction to others could summon. If he ever confessed interest in anyone else to her, she would do her utmost to destroy them. She didn't need him to be spending his energy destroying the Targaryens... yet.
Aerys perhaps, and Ellia and her child. She crushed that line of thought though. Rhaegar was sullied by his wife, his child Rhaenys, by his father, and most of all by the failure of her own father to betroth them.
Speaking of Jaime, the new Lord of Casterly Rock, and Lord Paramount of the Westerlands was in the yard as well. Unlike Prince Rhaegar, he was armored and mounted, fresh from a joust with a member of the Kingsguard; she could hardly tell which, with their identical armor and the distance between them. He was in his element with the prince and the greatest knights the kingdoms had to offer. Not yet in his sixteenth year, he was every bit the knight that they were regardless, perhaps moreso in some cases. He had also managed to build a rapport with the younger wards and members of the court, Maelys Velaryon, the heir of Driftmark, following him in particular.
Rhaegar's tutelage had been beneficial for him as well. The prince lacked Jaime's natural inclination, but he had made up for it with patience and diligence, learning later in life, but showing skill with lance and sword regardless. For a man who craved honor and recognition as much as him, it was only natural that he approached every bit of training, every bit of study, with all the seriousness he could muster, and the results definitely showed. Already he was a match for Barristan the Bold and Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of Morning, and she was confident that he would surpass them still. She had been rejected by the Targaryens, but Jaime could be better than them. Rhaegar may have been beautiful, but Jaime reflected every bit of perfection she wanted in herself.
It had been months since their stay had begun and it had proven every bit as fruitful and important as she had first suspected. In spite of, or perhaps because of, his state as a eunuch, Varys was underestimated in the capital, but he knew far more than he let on even with his omniscient persona as Master-of-Whispers. There existed a whole different world beneath the life at court she had known. It was a world of secrets. Secret passages ran rampant throughout the Red Keep, there were secrets to eavesdropping on even the most secure locations she had known, and a thousand secrets could be gleamed from the people lords and knights surrounded themselves with. The way they spent their money, the way they treated others, even the way they walked to and from the city outside the walls. It was like being introduced to a whole new language, and while most scholarly pursuits bored her, this was the language of power, and power was anything but boring.
Uncle Kevan, or rather, Lord Kevan, had ventured to the Capital with them. While he remained resolute, in adhering to his brother's will, his new station as a lord, and his duties in representing the Westerlands at court before the king, kept him more than a little busy. The rest of her and Jaime's council were far more pliable, particularly Maester Creylen, who remained at Casterly Rock as regent, loyal to them and without power to make the selfish or damaging decisions that Kevan would have insisted on.
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Still, not all was well in the Westerlands. King Aerys in particular was growing to be a greater and greater burden upon them, and a threat besides. Mid-way through the year, his madness struck in full force, not merely in the form of his usual paranoia, but in outright delusions. He retreated to his apartments for weeks on end, sending only for the Grand Maester, writing supplies, and food. When he emerged at last, his hair somehow even more disheveled and vacant-eyed, he proclaimed that he had completed his legislative legacy, a grand act that would solidify his reign as king, and stand testament to future generations the wisdom he possessed.
What he did present was so ludicrous that it may as well have been the dream of a child. She had poured over every word, as per Varys' instruction, and while she gleamed much from the way the king wrote it, she could find nothing useful from the act itself, nor was there. It was flagrant lunacy, and for the benefit of all, every lord to whom a copy was presented would ignore it.
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In the end, it was not insane, easily-ignored laws that remained the limit of King Aerys' acts. What truly had Cersei seething was his act regarding the position of Warden of the West. It appeared that if he could not strip Tywin of his heir, in a final insult he deemed fit to strip Tywin's heir of a title that was legitimately his, with the benefit of currying favor with a possible threat to his reign.
Robert Baratheon was a great soldier, true. He was older than Jaime as well, and had family ties to the throne, but he was not the Warden of the West. The insult he had done to Jaime, her Jaime, kept her up in the evenings sometimes still, seething with rage.
Aerys and Robert alike will pay. She vowed to herself. She knew, or had figured out rather, that Varys was shaping her into a weapon against the Mad King, and trusting her to use Jaime to carry out her vengeance. He had insinuated without saying that Aerys had murdered their father, and he had promised her the power and control over her life that she craved. If he did not know about her and Jaime, it would be a small miracle in and of itself.
He'll have to be next, after Aerys, or perhaps first.
She was hardly alone in wanting Aerys dead or deposed besides. Factions had risen up throughout the Kingdoms, some dedicated to overthrowing their king, others to lowering the power he had over them. They were limited however, by the fact that Aerys had yet to do something to truly merit his being deposed. He was a mad king, but not yet a truly bad king. That the factions were composed of high lords, unable to determine their own leaders and goals from one day to the next limited them as well. Jaime's regency prevented them from truly taking part in the politics of the realm, but she was unsure if it was worth doing regardless. Such things were rife with dissent, and she would tolerate none of it.
Aerys and the greater politics of the kingdoms could wait. Unfortunately, there remained problems in the midst of the Westerlands. Their capacity for learning the intrigues back at the Rock were limited from King's Landing, but word still reached her and Jaime in the capital, usually of only the most grave matters. Lord Renly of Deep Den, a lord once adhering to Castamere, seemed intent on taking Ser Harys Swyft's position as castellan of Casterly Rock, and was ready and willing to murder him to do so.
It had been a long night when her and Jaime discussed what to do about the plot. The man was disrespectful and incorrigible, and any request sent to him would just be sent back with insults. Likewise, with the state of the Rock's authority, an attempt to arrest him would more than likely end in failure, and a rebellion would crop up. In the end, he had agreed with her on a course of action. If Lord Renly did rebel, then it would be House Lannister that would profit. The armies of the Westerlands would be raised, and there would be a demonstration of Casterly Rock's might to silence opposition.
It was a small rebellion, trivial to say the least. In the end, he managed to convince no one of his goal to overthrow his lord. While Jaime had yet to completely earn their respect as vassals, the lords of the Westerlands looked up to him and the Lannisters regardless, and the begging of a petty lord with delusions of grandeur would not reach them. The small army that Renly rose was dwarfed by the hosts rallied by their neighbors, and while they could strike out in one or two directions, it was only a matter of time before the net of Lannister bannermen that encircled them would close around them like a noose.
Amazingly enough, it was Gerion Lannister who proved to be the greatest threat of the rebellion. Rather than sit back and simply wait for the world to pass him by, he exploited the chaos of war to leave the Westerlands and flee to Darkdell. Her uncle was apparently intent on hiring men and seeking out financial backers to take the West for himself, and was promising vast, extraordinarily vast, sums of wealth from the bowels of Casterly Rock to those that aided him in staking his claim.
She was incensed with the betrayal, though somewhat relieved. Gerion would always have been a threat, but away from the Rock he was only a threat if he timed his campaign right. Whatever host he could raise would not be the equal of one of the Seven Kingdoms, and he had openly declared himself a traitor to the family. She resolved to watch Tygett more closely, but for now there was little to be done.
The war, if one could call it that, proceeded as well as could be expected. The rebel host was pinned by Lannister bannermen and overwhelmed. Lord Leo Lefford of the Golden Tooth led the charge, with Jaime's regency still ongoing. However, the time it had taken had given Lord Renly time to fortify Deep Den and prepare for a stubborn, if futile siege. That suited Cersei just fine, she had no intention of allowing him to succeed, but the weeks the siege had taken so far would allow Jaime to declare an end to the regency and take over the siege personally in time for its conclusion.
It's been a... productive year. She reflected the next morning, as their horses were bridled and their escorts readied. The both of them had come of age at last, and Jaime was set to return home to the Rock, though not before stopping in Deep Den to oversee the siege. She might have remained at court, waiting for the day when Ellia Martell died, and Rhaegar was free to marry her, or perhaps when Viserys, Rhaegar's brother, came of age, but she was tired of that game. Even though Queen Rhaella, and Ellia as well, were both pregnant, and Ellia was unlikely to survive such a strenuous act as childbirth a second time, she had no interest in being a mere carrion crow, taking the leavings of her father's plans and legacy.
Jaime rode at the head of the column, golden hair matched by the shining armor he wore, gilded steel crafted by the best hands in the kingdoms. She had learned much and more in King's Landing, and Jaime had grown in the wake of their father's death as well, becoming a more calm and deliberate leader.
He may come to resemble Father on the battlefield, but I'll show the realm that Tywin Lannister's leadership as well did not die with him.
Although she was the first-born of her siblings, it was Jaime who ruled the Rock, and she was growing used to that. They had been born together, two halves of an incomparable whole. He could be the face of their reign to the lords, and the strong sword-arm needed to hold and build power, she would provide the true wits, daggers in the dark, intercepted letters, and the unstoppable ambition to rise. The Targaryens had slighted her father, slighted her house, and held themselves above the laws of gods and men. Perhaps it was time for another house to do the same. When they'd had their dragons, Aegon and his descendants had flown above the other houses of the realm. Without them, their wings were clipped, and it was time to learn that this was a time for lions.