Casterly Rock, 284 AC
POV: Tywin Lannister
The winds off the Sunset Sea whispered through the high windows of his solar, cool and salt-slick. The waves below crashed endlessly against the base of the Rock, a deep, grinding roar that mirrored Tywin's thoughts.
He sat at his massive desk, fingers steepled, gaze distant. Before him lay several ledgers, sealed letters, and a fresh report from Pycelle — still damp with the wax of the Grand Maester's thick ring.
He should have been satisfied. By all accounts, he had won.
Aerys was dead. And not just dead — slain by his own son, the Kingslayer some had dubbed him and while that name was certainly said with scorn in some taverns Tywin was proud to know his son had killed that old idiot.
The Targaryen dynasty had crumbled like old stone, and the realm now bent its knee to Robert Baratheon, a king his daughter had married. The Lannisters had played both patience and steel to perfection.
So why did it taste so bitter?
He broke the seal on Pycelle's letter with one clean motion, his eyes skimming the florid script. More of the same: tales of excess, of indulgence, of Robert's moods shifting with the wind and the wine.
The king had, apparently, shamed Cersei twice in public over the past month. Once for speaking during a council session — "The smallfolk don't want your voice, woman, they want mine." — and once at a feast, when he took a serving girl onto his lap in full view of the court.
Tywin folded the letter with slow precision and set it aside.
Cersei's happiness was a luxury. Not a necessity. Her womb was the true battlefield now. If she gave birth to a boy — a Lannister boy — and soon, Robert's humiliation of her would matter little. The realm would not remember whispers and drunken insults. They would remember golden or black-haired heirs with strong arms and banners sewn in crimson, gold and black.
Let the king rut and rage. As long as the lioness gave him cubs, that would be enough.
Still... there was a part of him — the part he seldom acknowledged — that stung at the thought of his daughter being so publicly discarded. He had arranged her match carefully. Calculated every move. Robert had seemed malleable, eager for a strong alliance. But now it was clear he had been too enamored with the dead.
Lyanna Stark, Tywin thought with distaste. The dead she-wolf had more sway in Robert's court than the living queen.
He rose from his chair and walked to the tall window, staring out over the expanse of Lannisport. The city bustled far below, prosperous but still bleeding. The rebellion had drained the Westerlands more than he would ever admit aloud. Thousands dead in the failed sack of King's Landing — a disaster of epic scale. All for nothing.
The Mountain had failed him but was luckily still alive and still of use to Tywin. Elia Martell had not died. The children had not died. The only thing they'd managed to do was tarnish the Lannister name further and awaken the ire of half the realm.
The Vale murmured. The North remembered. Even the Reach watched with open suspicion.
And worst of all, the North sheltered the last remnants of the Silver Line.
The Silver Prince's children — Rhaenys and Aegon — lived. And so did their mother. Nestled in the heart of Winterfell, under Eddard Stark's watchful eye. Untouchable.
Tywin's jaw clenched.
He had hoped the North would remain loyal — and they had, in truth — but that damnable bastard, Torrhen Snow, had become more than just a local oddity. His and his sister's death and return had turned into legend. The "bastards who lived." There were even murmurs that the boy could see the future.
Absurd, Tywin thought.
And yet... how else had they known of his plans?
And they must have for why else would the Northerners, Valemen and Rivermen seperate their cavalry from their infantry and push towards King's Landing?
His soldiers had failed to find even a shred of Targaryen blood in the Red Keep. The Mountain's raid — timed and brutal — had somehow encountered an ultimately unassailable wall of skilled swords... no he had to take the threat of two Starks (bastards they may be) being able to see the future seriously.
He had ruled the realm once. Aerys had worn the crown, but Tywin had wielded the power.
Now? Now, he was being outmaneuvered by a pair of bastard-born whelps.
He turned from the window and poured himself a small cup of wine. Arbor red. A taste of better days.
He had more problems to consider. Ser Willem Darry had succeeded in fleeing with Viserys and the newborn Daenerys. They had vanished across the sea, a threat deferred but not extinguished. The girl would be a woman soon. The boy already styled himself "King in Exile."
Children grow up, Tywin thought. And fools crown them too easily.
And then there was Jaime.
His only trueborn son. His heir. His legacy.
Wasted on white cloaks and oaths. Still bound to the Kingsguard. Still serving a king who mocked his sister and spent coin like a Braavosi sailor.
Tywin had tried to persuade him. Urged him to reconsider. But Jaime had refused. Laughing, even. "Why would I leave? I already killed one king. Might be fun to see how many more I get to bury."
Tywin had not laughed. There was no humor in watching your line wither because your heir preferred glory to duty.
With Tyrion as the only other option...
No. Best not to finish that thought.
His mind returned to the letter again. Pycelle had included a few lines about mercenary companies forming in Essos. Many sought employers. Some were even led by veterans from the war.
Tywin filed that away. Westerlands might bleed, but the Rock bleeds gold.
If the realm grew restless, he would remind them that lions had claws — and coin to hire sharper ones.
But for now, he would watch. Wait. See how the pieces moved.
If the dragons dared to raise their heads again, he would be ready.
And if Robert failed to control the realm, or sire an heir with his daughter, Tywin Lannister would not hesitate to act.
He had not waited half a lifetime to secure his and his houses legacy let it all crumble now.
**Scene Break**
The Red Keep, King's Landing – 284 AC
pov Varys
Varys was not happy. No, not at all.
The Spider moved through the narrowest corridors of the Red Keep, slippered feet silent against stone, his powder-dusted face a mask of calm serenity. Servants scuttled past him like blind mice, too used to his presence to fear it anymore. A pity. A man should always be feared a little. Even in silk.
He climbed a forgotten stairwell and emerged into one of his lesser alcoves — a windowless chamber hidden behind a tapestry of Aegon the Conqueror's coronation, soundproofed and accessible only through the walls. A place for thinking. And today, for fuming.
He poured himself a cup of watered wine and took a small sip.
Yes, he thought bitterly, the realm is at peace. The dragons are dead, the rebels have won, and no one is the wiser about the wildfire.
He could almost laugh.
The Mad King's final madness — his plot to burn the city, every man, woman, and babe — had died with him, buried under blood and rubble before Robert could even sit the throne. If the pyromancers had spoken, they had spoken only to Varys, and Varys had made certain their words were swallowed by their own silence. And it seemed like the others, likely Jamie Lannister and perhaps Torrhen Snow, who knew this agreed with his opinion that the wildfire could rot underneath the city...
Or be used for better purposes hehe.
Had that little secret emerged, the Targaryen cause would have been damned forever. Even the most devoted loyalist would have turned their face from the line of Aegon the Conqueror. But they had not. No, they still remembered the dragons with longing.
And so the embers remained. Glowing, waiting.
Ser Willem Darry had done his duty. Viserys and the infant Daenerys were safe across the sea, hidden. They were decoys now, necessary distractions. The realm would hunt the dragon it knew — while the one it did not was molded in secret.
Aegon. His and Illyrio's Aegon.
Born in shadow, cradled by Illyrio's wealth, and shaped by Varys's design.
Not Rhaegar's son, no, but who would dare question the word of the Spider? Especially once the boy was crowned beneath banners of black and red, beneath tales of woe and rescue spun with silver thread. All that was needed was the death of the "true" Aegon — and the tale would write itself.
But therein lay the problem. Elia Martell and her children had survived.
Curse the Mountain and curse Tywin Lannister for trusting him.
Not only had the sack failed to kill the boy, it had created martyrs,survivors, witnesses. And worse — Elia and her brood had been swept north, wrapped in the protection of Eddard Stark and his bastard kin.
The North, Varys thought darkly, is a cold and distant place. Too far from silk and shadow.
He and Illyrio had accounted for many obstacles. Stannis Baratheon's sour honor. The Reach's pride. Even Tywin Lannister's gold. But the North had become something else entirely.
Those bastards.
Torrhen and Lyarra Snow — they had died and returned. Truly returned. The stories were everywhere now: eyes glowing in the dark, animals bending to their will, the slain rising again under their command. Wild tales, surely. But Varys had seen too much of the world to scoff at magic.
He feared it. Deeply.
He had no love for the arcane, no appetite for power that could not be bought or strangled. It was unpredictable. Primal. Disloyal.
No, Varys would not act — yet. Better to watch. Wait. Learn. The day might come when they could be turned… or ended.
He set the wine down and let his gaze wander the walls. Maps were pinned there, beneath candles that never went out. Troop movements. Debt records. Whispered rumors. Every line a thread in his web.
Robert was already unraveling.
The king drank like a Braavosi sailor, spent coin like a Tyroshi merchant, and treated the crown like it was a sword to swing rather than a burden to carry. Varys had hoped — feared — he would be this bad. Now it was proven.
The realm would suffer under Robert. Debts would pile like corpses after a harvest. Lords would grow restless. Fertile ground for instability. And instability bred opportunities.
But still — it posed problems.
Every stag that falls still crushes the grass beneath it.
Illyrio's son, once on the throne, would inherit not only a kingdom in need of healing, but one deeply in debt, mistrustful of dragons, and haunted by living memories of a different heir.
That could not stand.
The boy must die. Aegon. The real Aegon.
And not in Winterfell, no, where his death would only harden the North against the Iron Throne. No, he must die in the South. In the capital. Or near it. In a place where Varys could weave a story of loss and secret salvation.
"He was ambushed in the streets by unknown assassins." he would say. "But before he perished, I spirited him away, changed his name, raised him in secret. For the good of the realm. For the legacy of Rhaegar."
Lies, yes. But sweet ones. Necessary ones.
So then, the challenge remained: how to bring Elia and her children back to King's Landing. Briefly. Subtly. Without alerting the direwolf and his damnable bastards.
It would require time. Care. Perhaps a marriage alliance? A royal pardon? A fabricated illness in the capital? Varys would find a way. He always did.
He laced his fingers together and closed his eyes.
The game is not yet won, he reminded himself.
But the board was set.
And the spider was patient.
**Scene Break**
284 AC – Gulltown
pov Petyr Baelish
Petyr Baelish was smiling.
Of course, he always smiled. It disarmed, deceived, and discouraged. The smile was a mask, and behind it he measured coin, power, and opportunity with the cold precision of a butcher's scale. But this time, it was more than habit. This time, he was genuinely amused.
He flipped an old letter over in his hand — parchment from the Eeyrie, sealed in deep blue wax, a letter from Lysa, likely sent before she made her way to King's Landing where her old man of a husband was now Hand of the King.
Whispers confirmed it. The Snow twins live. Again.
He let out a soft chuckle and poured himself a small goblet of sweet Arbor red. Resurrected, the stories said. Wolves who refused to stay dead, blessed by the old gods and now able to bring back anyone to life and control as they wanted. No doubt half of that was nonsense. The North was always drunk on myth and winter.
And yet.
"Magic," he murmured, sipping. "As if the North needed another excuse to be irrational."
He didn't care if it was true. Not truly. The gods could lift the twins from their graves by hand and bless their foreheads with moonlight, and it wouldn't matter to Petyr Baelish unless it interfered.
That was the thing people never understood. Power wasn't born from prophecy or blood or even steel. It came from knowledge. From control. And the Starks — dead, alive, or undead — had always been in the way of that.
And now they're more in the way than ever.
A sigh escaped him, light as the steam rising from his wine.
"Stark," he muttered. "The name itself is a fortress."
The North was secure now. Too secure.
Since that fateful day where he got disfigured by the Stark heir, he had always planned to bleed the Stark name out of power — slowly, subtly, until no one remembered they had ruled anything.
That desire became even stronger when his dearest Cat was married off to the second son of Rickard after the eldest had deceased, which was in parts of course due to yours truly.
But if these twins were becoming symbols, living legends in the icebound North, that plan became far more difficult.
There were two paths to power in Westeros: up or through. Up through marriage, coin, influence. Through via fire, treachery, and war. Petyr preferred up — it was quieter. More elegant. But the more the North insulated itself under the watchful eyes of the man who had truly earned his nickname the Quiet Wolf, the harder it would be to infiltrate. To poison. To own.
He idly tapped the letter's seal with a finger.
Perhaps the time had come to reexamine options. He had hoped to bring Catelyn south in the future after driving a wedge between her and Eddard — perhaps with whispered rumors of bastards and betrayal, of Eddard Stark raising Jon Snow besides Cat's son as if he was a trueborn.
That still might work, but it appeared that his sweet Cat, who he knew hated bastards as much as she reasonably could, was far less hostile to her husband's bastards than she should be, information he got from a traveling merchant who's tongue had been a little too loose... and apparently quite deep inside one of the castle's servants.
Still... nothing was unbreakable. All things could be turned, with the right lever.
He thought of Catelyn, the way her eyes had widened at him once, a thousand years ago, before she'd thrown it all away for that humorless wolf of Winterfell. A shame, really.
It seemed like the realm needed a little chaos for his plans to come to fruition.
And Petyr Baelish had always known: chaos is a ladder.
He sipped his wine again, smiling now in full.
Let the Starks with fire and ghosts. Let them grow loved, feared, mythic.
So long as they made mistakes — and all mortals did — he would be there to watch them fall.