Chapter 37: The Crown of Thorns
Victory was a heavy mantle. In the weeks that followed the surrender of the Red Keep, Eddard Stark learned the profound and bitter truth of that axiom. He had won the city, but he had inherited its every misery. He was the Lord Protector of a realm on the brink of collapse, the de facto king of half a million hungry, frightened people, and the reluctant keeper of a god who was becoming a religion.
The Red Keep, once the heart of Lannister power, was now the center of his new, makeshift government. The Tower of the Hand was his home and fortress, but the Small Council chamber was where he truly lived, buried day and night under a mountain of parchments. Reports of grain shortages from the master of the port, petitions for justice from citizens long wronged, and frantic, terrifyingly vague messages from scouts in the Riverlands where Tywin Lannister's army, though in retreat, still bled the countryside dry.
He had forged a new order from the chaos. The Protector's Guard, his army of blacksmiths and stonemasons, had become a surprisingly effective and beloved peacekeeping force. Their new, shining steel was a symbol not of oppression, but of the people's own strength. Under the command of the grim mason Kael and the cynical ex-Gold Cloak Arric, they brought a semblance of law to the lawless streets. Under the guidance of Tobin, the martyred smith's son, they organized the distribution of food from the seized granaries with a fairness the city had never known. For the first time, the smallfolk saw the power of the throne being used to protect them, rather than to fleece them.
And through it all, there was Thor.
His role had changed again. He was no longer a weapon waiting to be unleashed; he was a symbol, a living monument to the new age that had dawned. He rarely spoke in Ned's councils, but his silent presence lent Ned's decrees an unassailable weight. He was the ultimate authority, the quiet thunder that backed the Hand's law.
But this new role was a crown of thorns for the Asgardian prince. The "Cult of the Thunderer" had exploded. The crude shrines in Flea Bottom had grown more elaborate. He would see men and women bow their heads as he passed, whispering prayers for his blessing. They saw him as the answer to their suffering, a divine intervention. And he saw himself as a fraud.
One afternoon, Ned found him in the godswood of the Red Keep, a pale, manicured imitation of the ancient, wild heart of Winterfell. Thor was staring at the heart tree, a small, sad-looking weirwood with a face so crudely carved it looked more surprised than omniscient.
"They tried to pray to me again today," Thor said, his voice a low rumble of discontent. "A woman whose daughter has the bloody flux. She held the girl up to me and begged me to lay my hands on her. She believed I could burn the sickness away."
"What did you do?" Ned asked quietly.
"I did what I did last time. I sent for a maester," Thor grumbled. "I told her that her daughter needed boiled water and milk of the poppy, not mumbled words to a stranger from the stars. She looked at me as if I had betrayed her." He kicked at a loose stone. "It was easier when they saw me as a monster. A monster has no responsibilities beyond destruction. A god… a god is expected to fix all the things that are broken in their world. And this world, Lord Stark… it is very, very broken."
"They need something to believe in," Ned said. "You have given them that."
"I have given them a lie," Thor countered, his voice filled with self-loathing. "I am not their saviour. I am a refugee. A failure who could not even protect his own family, his own home. And now they want me to be the protector of theirs." He looked at Ned, his one blue eye filled with a pain that was older than the castle around them. "This is a heavier burden than any throne, my friend."
Ned understood. He felt his own burden every time he looked at his daughters. He found them later that day, in their chambers. The contrast between them was a constant, aching pain in his heart. Arya was alive with a fierce, vibrant energy. He had given her leave to train with the Protector's Guard, and she was in her element. Her hands were calloused, her face smudged with dirt, and her eyes shone with purpose. She was learning the sword from men who revered her father and worshipped his champion. She was becoming a warrior.
Sansa, however, was fading. She was a beautiful, wilting flower trapped in a stone tower. The world of songs she had loved had been revealed as a brutal, terrifying lie, and she had no defense against it. Her prince was a monster, her queen a serpent, and her father, the man she had always seen as the pinnacle of honor, was now a rebel who consorted with a demon. She was polite to him, her courtesies as perfect and as empty as ever, but her eyes were hollow. She was a prisoner of the very people who were trying to save her.
"I have done this to you," Ned said to her quietly one afternoon, finding her staring listlessly out the window at the city below. "I have destroyed the world you believed in."
"The world was what it was, Father," she replied, her voice a monotone. "I was simply a fool for believing the songs." There was no anger, only a profound, heartbreaking emptiness. Ned's victory had cost him his daughter's heart, and he did not know how to win it back.
The victory had other costs as well. It had been weeks since the surrender of the Red Keep, weeks of waiting for the realm to respond to the new power that had risen in the capital. The responses, when they finally came, arrived on the same day, carried by two ravens, one from the north and one from the east. They brought not solutions, but a fresh new set of impossible problems.
Ned read them in the solar, with Thor as his only witness. The first was from Robb. It was written in his son's strong, clear hand, and it was filled with love and pride. It detailed his victories in the Riverlands, the routing of the Lannister forces, the capture of Jaime Lannister. Ned's heart swelled with a father's pride. But then came the devastating postscript.
"Father, after our victory at the Battle of the Camps, the lords of the North and the Trident, in their great council, have done a thing I did not seek, but which I cannot undo. They have named me King in the North. They have declared our lands a free and independent kingdom, and will no longer bend the knee to any southern king on the Iron Throne. I know you serve the realm as its Protector, and have backed the claim of Stannis Baratheon. But the North remembers the Targaryen fires, and they will not trade a lion for a stag. I am my own man now, and king of my own people. I pray you understand. I march to face Tywin Lannister. Your son, Robb."
Ned let the parchment fall from his hand as if it were on fire. His own son. His own bannermen. They had seceded from the realm he was trying to save. He was now in the impossible position of being a traitor to his own king, or to his own son.
Before he could even process the magnitude of this crisis, he opened the second letter. It bore the fiery stag of Dragonstone. Stannis's words were, as always, blunt, rigid, and utterly uncompromising.
"Lord Stark," it began, dispensing with any pleasantry. "I acknowledge your service in securing the capital and arresting the traitors. Your loyalty to my cause is noted. However, your methods are… unorthodox. The use of sorcery and the incitement of the commons are not the tools of lawful governance. Furthermore, the news of the murder of my brother, Lord Renly, has reached me. While he was a traitor who sought to steal my crown, his death was an act of dark magic that I will not condone. The Red Woman has been… disciplined.
"I am the one true King of Westeros. My claim is by right and by law. I will be sailing for King's Landing to claim my throne. You will prepare the city for my arrival. You will hand over the prisoners—Cersei, her bastard son, and her dwarf brother—to me for judgment. And you will present your sorcerer, this 'Thor,' to me in chains, to answer for the use of profane magic within my realm. Do this, and you will be rewarded and confirmed as my Warden of the North. Defy me, and you will be treated as the heretic and traitor the Lannisters have already named you. Signed, Stannis of the House Baratheon, the First of His Name."
The letters were two sides of a closing vise. Robb had declared a kingdom that Ned could not, in good conscience, recognize without betraying his own oaths. Stannis was demanding he surrender the one person who gave him the power to enforce those oaths. He was being squeezed between the love for his son and his duty to his king, between the independence of the North and the unbending law of the South.
He looked at Thor, a desperate, hunted look in his eyes. "They have put a sword in my hand and commanded me to fall upon it."
Thor read both letters, his face grim. "Your son has the heart of a wolf," he said, a note of approval in his voice. "He has been made a king by his people. That is a truer claim than any dusty law." He then read Stannis's letter again, his lip curling in contempt. "And this one… this one is a fool. A man so blinded by his own righteousness he cannot see the axe hanging over his own head. He would have you give up your shield in the middle of a battle."
"What do I do?" Ned asked, the question a raw plea. "If I support Robb, I am an oathbreaker. If I support Stannis, I lose my son and the entire North… and you."
"The oaths you swore were to a dead king and a broken kingdom," Thor said, his voice a low, powerful rumble. "The world has changed. The old rules no longer apply. You cannot serve two kings, especially when one is your son and the other is a fool who would see you dead. So, you must stop serving. And start leading."
He pointed to the great map on the table. "Look. Renly's army is scattered. Stannis is the only power in the south. Tywin Lannister is regrouping in the west. Your son holds the Riverlands and the North. You hold the capital, the richest city in the realm. You hold the moral authority. You hold the balance of power. You are the fulcrum upon which this entire continent now turns."
A new, audacious idea, born from the ashes of Ned's despair, began to form in his mind. An idea so radical it made his earlier rebellion seem like a minor squabble.
He called his new council that evening. Tobin, Kael, Arric, Hallis Mollen. The men who had fought for him, who believed in him. He laid the letters from Robb and Stannis on the table. He explained the impossible position he was in.
"Stannis demands I betray my protector," he said. "My son demands I betray my king. Both paths lead to more war, more division, more suffering for the people of this realm."
"Then we serve neither of them," Tobin the smith said, his voice ringing with the zeal of the converted. "We serve you, Lord Protector! You and the Thunderer! Let Robb be King in the North, and let you be King in the South!"
"No," Ned said firmly, silencing the cheers of assent. "I have told you, I will not be a king." He looked at the faces of his council, at Thor who stood watching him, and he made his choice. He would not be a king. He would be something more.
"The Seven Kingdoms are broken," Ned declared, his voice filled with a new, profound authority. "The Baratheon line has ended in incest and fratricide. The Targaryen line ended in fire and madness. The very idea of the Iron Throne, of one man ruling all others by right of blood alone, is the poison that has sickened this land for three hundred years."
He took a deep breath. "I will not support Stannis. I will not fight my son. Instead, I will use the authority vested in me as Lord Protector to do something that has not been done since before the coming of the dragons. I am sending ravens to every Great House in the realm—Stark, Tully, Arryn, Tyrell, Martell, and yes, even to the Lannisters and the Baratheons. I am dissolving the Iron Throne. And I am calling a Great Council. A council of all the lords of Westeros, to be held here, in this city, under my protection. We will meet, and we will decide, together, how this realm is to be governed. We will choose our own king. Or we will decide to have no king at all. We will forge a new kingdom, a new law, a new way."
It was the most revolutionary act in the history of the Seven Kingdoms. It was not a rebellion to replace one king with another. It was a rebellion against the very idea of kingship itself. It was a declaration of war on a thousand years of tradition.
Thor looked at Eddard Stark, and for the first time, he saw not just an honorable man, but a truly great one. A man willing to sacrifice his own power, his own certainty, for the chance of building something better.
"The lords will never agree," Kael, the practical stonemason, worried. "Their pride is too great."
"They will agree," Thor said, his voice a quiet promise. "Or they will answer to me."
The ravens flew from King's Landing the next day. They carried not a plea for alliance, not a declaration of war, but an invitation. An invitation to build a new world. Ned Stark had declined to play the game of thrones any longer. He had just flipped the entire board over and announced that it was time to invent a new game, with new rules. And the whole of Westeros, whether they knew it or not, had been invited to play.