Chapter Text
The Wolf King: Year 281
Eddard Stark, so recently made the new Lord of Winterfell through the murders of his father and elder brother, did not believe in the Gods of his southron wife, nor their southern hells. But were he a follower of the Seven, on this day he would believe that war, here in this world, was worse than any of the hells any God could conjure up, north or south of Moat Cailin.
"Your Grace." All the lords of all the realm, those who'd survived this terrible rebellion, now bowed before him in the gilded castle of a ruined city, innocents, women, and children murdered in the name of his and Robert's war. And yet he'd be rewarded with a crown he'd never wanted, this boy, this second son from the land of winter and snow.
I'm a southron. Moreso than father, or Brandon, or Benjen. I've lived more days than they, more years than all of them combined, in the South, in the Eyrie. This is the price I pay, for forgetting my home, the lands of my ancestors.
"You shouldn't be kneeling before me," he cried vainly, hearing his own voice emerge as but a whimper, echoing pathetically against the walls the throne room built by the dragonlords of hundreds of years before, and now occupied by this newly crowned wolf king of the Seven Kingdoms. "This should have been Robert's crown."
"Robert Baratheon's dead, Your Grace." What folly was this, or farce, that the man whom Ned has known as a second father would now kneel before him and not even be allowed to address him by his own name?
"Then crown his brother," Ned protested, though in his heart of hearts he knew just how futile his efforts were. "I've heard the maesters say it, House Baratheon has a claim to the throne, they have in them the blood of the dragon. Stannis won this war as much as I, he held Storm's End against the armies of the south..."
"And you rallied Robert's army to victory at the Trident," Jon Arryn countered, "after Robert fell. You relieved Storm's End against the Tyrell host, after King's Landing...was taken."
"After the bannermen of the Westerlands destroyed the city, in my name," Ned cursed. He looked towards Stannis, this young, glum brother of Robert's, yet Ned knew the man had a heart of steel, regardless of his age, because of all the suffering he'd endured this last war. Did he resent his coronation, he wondered? Did Stannis covet this throne for himself? If he did, then Ned would happily give it to him, if only in Robert's memory...if only the lords of the realm would let him.
"We fought a rebellion to free the Seven Kingdoms from the Targaryen tyranny, Your Grace..." another voice, one belonging to a stranger, echoed through the hall. Ned turned to see Tywin Lannister, the butcher of King's Landing, kneeling obsequiously before him. "I mean no offense to your blood, Lord Stannis, but the time has come to start anew from the history we've known the last hundreds of years, good or ill."
Except I know you argued to crown Stannis, Ned thought, if only so your daughter could marry and become his Queen.
"The war was Robert's," Hoster Tully proclaimed, newly arrived at the capital, and in the company of his wife...another stranger, barely less so than men like Tywin Lannister, "because he'd lost his beloved, his betrothed. Yet, Your Grace, the war was yours also, you lost your sister, your brother, your father...few suffered more than Your Grace because of Aerys's madness..."
Queen Catelyn, Ned thought, whom he'd known all of one night...and who now bore in her belly his son, his heir...the new Crown Prince...or Princess, of the Seven Kingdoms.
"The people suffered," Ned argued. "The smallfolk, the ladies to Queen Rhaella, the servants in Duskendale, who had nothing to do with their lord's rebellions..."
How often the people always suffered through all the wars, because of the whims of highborn such as he, since the beginning of time, when his ancestors had sailed with the First Men westward?
"It makes no matter," Jon replied. "You suffered, the realm suffered with you. Then you freed the realm from tyranny, you ended their suffering, and now they see in you their rightful King!"
They care not who was to blame for the wars that savage their land, only that it's over.
He'd suspected this result when he'd left King's Landing, first for Storm's End, then to Dorne. Ned hoped that his absence would mean that far more powerful men than he...far more deserving men than he, would take the crown for themselves in his absence, so that all he had to do upon his return was the bend the knee, then ride straight home for Winterfell, and never leave again. Even if it meant bending the knee to a man such as Tywin Lannister. Ned'd argued the previous night with Jon, for the Lord of the Eyrie to take the throne in his place. Jon Arryn had refused, as he did now, because of who had suffered more at the hands of the Targaryens.
"Suffering doesn't make a King!"
"It should," Jon argued back. "A king should know pain, so that he may rule justly, and seek to lessen it for his people!"
There'd been the question of succession too. Despite the recent massacres, Ned's family was aplenty, relatively speaking between the two, with a young child soon to be born, the Gods be just. Jon Arryn had just married his third wife who, a modest count of moons into their new marriage, remained childless, same as his last two. He'd relied upon cousins and nephews to inherit the Eyrie and, in the meantime, treated Ned and Robert like the sons he'd never had, precious years Ned would always treasure. But all that Arryn blood died in this war too, leaving any dynasty House Arryn brought to the Iron Throne a short one, unless the Gods could finally grant him a son by some miracle. It was no sure thing. He was no sure thing either, but Cat was pregnant, and Gods forbid the worst happen, he young enough to keep trying.
"You are my King," he heard Tywin proclaiming below him, below this Iron Throne of his, "now and forever."
"Am I?"
All the lords nodded their heads and raised their swords at his seemingly expectant words, not just Tywin Lannister.
"Tywin Lannister, you betrayed your last King and butchered the people of King's Landing. Jaime Lannister, you murdered the King you were sworn to protect."
"A tyrant," Tywin replied, eyes widening in shock. Did he think he could escape justice so easily, Ned wondered. "It was war."
Did he believe him a boy, and a fool?
"Elia Martell did not make war on me. Rhaegar's children did not make war on me."
Standing far behind his father, Jaime Lannister leaned rather nonchalantly against a wall to the side of the throne room. He's just a child, Ned thought. Yet, so am I, so was Lyanna, so were even more so the children his father ordered murdered. Does he not care, what he did, what his family's banners did? Is he such an awful man already, despite his young age?
"Your Grace," the young Lord of Highgarden protested from a distant corner, "it was Ser Gregor Clegane and Ser Amory Lorch who were responsible for the deaths of the Prince and Princesses..."
"And they will be punished for their crimes," Ned proclaimed. If they must make him king, then so he'd reign, so he'd see to justice in the land. "I sentence them to die, by my sword, before the sun sets tonight." The young wolf turned to the lion of the west, the former Hand to the king he'd just betrayed, the man his son murdered while sitting upon the very throne he sat in now. "Along with their liege lord."
"Your Grace!"
It was not just Tywin who suddenly appeared terrified, but all the men gathered before him, even the ones who'd fought by his side at the Trident.
"Ned," Jon cried out in protest, finally forgetting his new title, though not in the way Ned would have liked him to. "I condemn what happened here, what happened to Rhaegar's wife and children...but for men to be punished for the actions of their bannermen..."
"Jon Arryn," Ned interrupted him, the thought once unthinkable during his childhood. "I name you my Hand."
This caught the man dead in his tracks. "Your Grace, it's an honor I cannot be worthy of."
"But it's an honor you'll keep nevertheless. You'll preside over Tywin Lannister's trial. Question whomever you need, including Clegane and Lorch. They will die all the same, but let them die salvaging some honor at least, to speak the truth of the matter before they die, and do one last deed worthy of their titles."
Jon bowed, and Tywin snarled like a lion cornered.
The new King continued. "There's no question your son Jaime slew King Aerys, an unarmed man. He will join the Night's Watch. As will you, Lord Tywin...if my Hand finds you guilty, and you wish to keep your head."
Already, knights and new whitecloaks alike approached the Lord of Casterly Rock, taking hold of the man many once claimed the most powerful in all seven kingdoms, even while Aerys lived. They'd already argued this the last night, he and Jon and Hoster, after it'd became clear that they would not relent in their efforts to place a crown upon his head, Ned adamant that Tywin face justice, Jon and Hoster not wishing to antagonize the richest kingdom in the realm by killing their lord after he'd raised their banners to their cause.
"Is there anything else, Your Grace?"
Mace Tyrell, the young Warden of the South, a stout, red faced young man who'd yet come so close to defeating Stannis and taking Storm's End, asked.
"No," Ned replied, shaking his head and stepping away from his ill gotten throne without another word.
"There's a coronation to attend to," Mace protested, suddenly eager to win the approval of his new King, his loyalty surrendered as easily as his banners below the castle Robert had been born in.
"Then my lords will attend to such matters," the King answered. "I have a wife and a nephew to attend to."
The Wolf King: Year 297
In the last moments of his life, as he swung his sword again and again helplessly outnumbered on a stormy day in a strange castle, Eddard of House Stark, First of his Name, the Just King so they called him, thought of his wife and children. Beside him fought his eldest son and heir, the boy they called the Young Wolf, Prince Robb, as good and valiant a Prince the realm had ever seen, so they told him, and sincerely so, Ned believed...and who would die young, years younger than even the man Ned named him after.
"Father!"
He watched Robb's face twist in anguish. The man who'd just struck his sword through his son's side had just been vanquished, half his skull knocked cleanly off by Jory Cassel, yet that did not change their odds, or the newest wound struck through his eldest child, one of many he'd taken during this battle. The last or close to it, Ned knew in his heart.
"Robb," the King cried out. "Forgive me, I failed you."
In hindsight, he should've known better the moment they took Pyke with barely a half day's battle, the Ironborn giving nary a fight after their walls had been battered down through half a fortnight of siege. Ned knew something was wrong the moment they told him the man claiming to be Balon Greyjoy was not, but rather just an old fisherman who'd served his self-proclaimed king in his kitchens. Hearing that most of the Greyjoy rebels had retreated to Pebbleton on the island of Great Wyk, he'd diverted much of his army west in pursuit. It'd been a risk, but one taken with the expectation that the Martell fleet would soon arrive to support his position.
They never arrived, but another fleet did, led by Balon's brother Euron, and accompanied by thousands of mercenaries from Essos. The besiegers had become the besieged, and in his last days living, Ned regretted that he could not spend more time agonizing over the uncertain fates of his men he'd sent away, not when he looked into the eyes of his son, aged six and ten, a Crown Prince of the realm trapped with his father in a decaying castle on a faraway island not worth the salt he'd carried trying to take it from its rebels.
"Hoster," Ned whispered, his arms weakening with every blow as he invoked the name of his goodfather and Master of Law, "protect your daughter and grandchildren. Protect our family."
The King feared for his family, little children of summer and all younger than Robb. Would they crown Bran, he wondered, his eldest son, yet a child of merely nine? Or perhaps Sansa, three years old than Bran. His beloved daughter, who took so much after Cat, who was growing more clever by the day, but so sweet and innocent, so caring...and so far sheltered from the cruelties of the world, even the castle they lived in all their lives, because Ned had never expected to die so soon, or to watch Robb die before him, before his royal eyes, fighting a rebellion against some fishermen he'd hardly given a second thought to when he'd left King's Landing.
It was not just the pirates and mercenaries who would complete this royal slaughter. Recognizing not just the sigils of the Ironborn, but that of the chevronels of House Rosby in the Crownlands, or the black leopards of House Vaith in Dorne, or the griffins of House Connington upon the man, the former Hand to King Aerys, who'd just struck the last, killing blow against his son, King Eddard of House Stark understood too late the depths of this betrayal...just how long his enemies would have plotted against him...and just how much danger his family was in, far away in the Red Keep. Would they eliminate them entirely, kill off all his children and his blood, as they'd done the Targaryens, in order to crown him a King?
"Forgive me," he cried, lying in a pool of his own blood, agonized, though not from the pain. "I've failed you all."
The Dragon King: Year 297
"Your Grace, the usurper Ned Stark is dead."
"Good."
Rhaegar Targaryen had never been one to rejoice in the deaths of others, whether friend or foe. But that had been several lifetimes ago, it seemed, when he was a Prince, when his children still lived, along with his wife, and the woman he loved.
Lewyn Martell stood at attention before him, the aged knight who'd followed faithfully first his Prince, then King, ever since the day they'd been forced to sail east, away from his family, the only home he'd ever known, and his rightful inheritance. He was the last surviving of his Kingsguard, Ser Gerold and the gallant Arthur Dayne cut down in Dorne, so that the usurper could take from him the last he had left in this world...his youngest son and last surviving child.
The King rose to his feet, and walked steadily towards the small fountain gracing his manse overlooking the ocean. Volantis had been good to him, Volantis was a good place for a rich man, a powerful man, to live out through the end of his days. But though Rhaegar was a King, he was not a rich man.
And the rich men harboring him and his small court in exile would have little reason to continue doing so if they suspected that he would intend to remain their guest for the rest of his life.
"We set sail for Pentos tomorrow." A glance towards the table, where a well used map of the seven kingdoms lay, but Rhaegar had little need for the parchment. He could leave it gathering dust tomorrow, having long memorized in his mind every detail of the domains of his family during the first of his agonizing years in exile. "Tell Connington to bide his time in Pyke. The Westerlands will support us, I believe, they're no friends to the Starks, but we must not be rash."
His voice was deeper, raspier, more weary than what he remembered in his youth. Could he still sing, Rhaegar wondered. He had not tried for so long, not since he'd heard of the deaths of his children...of his Lyanna.
Lewyn nodded obediently, and Rhaegar wondered just how many battles the old man had remaining in him. "Will you lead the attack on Massey's Hook yourself, Your Grace?"
The rightful King of Westeros, the Last Dragon Rhaegar Targaryen shook his head. "If I die, Prince Viserys needs to prove his worth as my heir. He needs to prove his worth to House Targaryen."
And were his younger brother to die leading his armies to victory, they both knew, it would not be the worst consequence of the coming war. It was not that Rhaegar disliked the young Prince, but Rhaegar had little love for him either, Viserys being far more bluster than heart. He had another heir, a true heir...except one trapped and raised with wolves far north in the kingdom of winter. So until Aegon, or Jon Stark, as the realm called him sacrilegiously, bent the knee towards where his true fealty ought lie, Rhaegar had no choice but to allow Viserys to continue believing that he was the future of their House.
His legs shaking, Rhaegar hobbled back to his seat, dropping his cane upon the floor as he collapsed until the chair. Under his silken robes were legs were marked with scars, permanent memories of that day upon the Trident, when he'd killed one rebel, yet lost a battle...then a war...then a family and seven kingdoms...
"What of the Princess?"
"Daenerys will stay with me in Pentos. But start sending ravens across the Narrow Sea, inquire whether any lords may wish the hand of marriage with a Princess of the blood, whether for themselves, or their sons."
It did strike him as odd, that Rhaegar never saw his younger sister in a sexual way. Perhaps it was because he'd known of her most their lives as a child, and because she was a child still. Did that make him less a Targaryen than his ancestors, that he'd never wanted someone Valyrian?
And isn't she approaching Lyanna's age, now?
Their mother had died birthing Daenerys, the former Queen reduced to the indignity of passing aboard a small ship crossing the Narrow Sea, yet another gift the Usurper bestowed upon his family.
It did not matter, even if he did covet his sister, he would have needed to exercise restraint, for a King in exile had little choice but to make alliances any way he could, and any Targaryen wasted in marriage with each other could be the waste of a shield which would have warded off a sword against their family, their House, their dynasty...any such sword poised to strike what could be the last and lethal blow against House Targaryen.
"Your Grace, know that I stand with you...this war, this last war."
Rhaegar could hear the exhaustion in the old man's voice. So many who'd once stood by him had died for him already. He'd rather Lewyn Martell live, one last reminder of the life he'd once lived himself.
"You'll stand beside me, Ser Lewyn, when I sit on the Iron Throne. Of this I promise, of this I know."