Doomed is the man who faces the Eorlingas across the field of battle, Your Grace, the simpering magister had noted aloud often enough. A fool is the man who does not bring them to his side, was the underlying accusation. A rich vein of opportunity left untapped if he did not make that distant country of horselords his own. Very well; he would have them. An arrangement best brokered in marriage, he was duly advised, and at first to his eminent annoyance. What living man would dare think himself perceptive enough to choose a queen for the rightful king of the Seven Kingdoms, and the realm unmapped? Oh, kings have had prospective brides set before them since the dawn of man, he was assured; often a more critical pair of eyes was necessary, for weeding out the lucrative from the hollow. Does a king trouble himself to count the coppers? There are lesser men for such drudgery.
He would not, however, entrust to the magister matters of beauty. A king ought to have a beautiful wife, and if he was going to take beside him a woman of so foreign a name, she must possess a face which did not disappoint the discerning eye. The White Lady, the magister promises, is beautiful. Her breeding is rather exquisite, her temperament in the hall docile, and her face so fair that the moon itself kneels before her, bathing her in jeweled light. Golden-haired, of able build; the sort of woman crafted for the sitting of thrones. She would flicker like a ready ember at his side, ever eager to burst into full flame at his pleasure, or to rest, banked and unassuming, when his work lay before him. Very well; this woman would do.
And she would, in her reverence of so fortunate a union, present to him horses, armies, prestige. With all three he would forge the fury needed to win back his father's throne, to tear asunder at last the treason that has seated there gloating imposters. He would enthrone himself upon that seat of bristling steel, would feel within it still the fire of the dragons' dominion, and perhaps after holding court and severing heads from traitorous throats, he would take upon his lap his lady of Rohan. She would skim her maiden's fingers along his collar and plead for him to demonstrate again the dragon's ferocity.
He writes her letters, and when he describes for her the extravagance of their reign, he cannot help but think of his vanquished brother. A man of song and poetry, it was said; a man who kept company with quill and tome the way other men kept company with squealing whores. Is this what it felt like, the penning of poetry? Are these the sort of visions that kept his valiant brother locked in his chambers, swayed more by fantasy than a true taste for blood? The difference, of course, is that Viserys does not write of fantasy. Where Rhaegar wrote of unrealized wishes and weeping dreams, Viserys writes to his wife of truths only. They read like poetry, he does not doubt, so lurid is his anticipation: they will seize justice like the hilt of a blade; he will cloak his new bride in a love as radiant as living flames. Together they will paint color again into sky and vale too long dashed gray by war. She will be his queen, and they will wait on nothing. Come, she writes. Swords and hearts shall tremble at our joining, he vows in return.
He goes, and he has grown impatient with the magister's dull instruction, the reciting of histories and explaining of those details which count for nothing in the dawn of this rising era. He need not concern himself with past or ongoing difficulties, the failures of men undeserving of wartime command. All would be different once these armies were his. He is thinking not at all of Rohan's recent chastenings when he arrives. His eyes alight upon his betrothed, and he is disappointed: she is golden haired, and it is only golden. It is not the diamond silver-gold of his own hair, of true renown, and while he had known this, still it seems to him that claims of her beauty were terribly exaggerated. Or maybe it is only that her hair is the easiest of the insults to face.
The rest is unbearably egregious: she is no maiden of slim build, budding where it matters. She is built, he disdains, very much like a man: she is not wispy, and she does not wear a lady's demure fear like lace. She does not look like someone made to appeal to him. And she is tall, she stands taller than he, and she must spend more hours astride a horse than she does with needlework in hand. It does not matter what he has been told of her, of the prestige of her country and its name; it matters only that she is not the beautiful wife he was promised. She is fair enough of face, but she is not the queen he envisioned draping herself across his lap the eve he took his throne. She is too tall for that.
And her people - these are not the people who thundered through his visions of laying siege to King's Landing. These are dour folk, apparently partial to plain cloth and leather over proper armor, and they have taken for their sigil only a common nag. Their feast is meager, when he had expected a spread fit for a king; this is rustic fare, with nowhere a true delicacy. Their hall is simple wood and thatch, as if they are people who have taken a particular liking to straw and never dreamed of more, and her uncle (they call this man king?) seems a body for whom a quick blade to the ailing gut would do.
His sister has come to this place as if she'd stepped directly into an illustrated fable, and her undiscerning delight only aggravates him all the more. She is taken first by the rolling sea of green which carried them here, the simplicity of a humble, picturesque kingdom, and then she is taken by the chivalry with which they are greeted. She is taken by their queer accents, and she is taken by their inferior horses, and she is taken too by his own bride, marveling aloud at how noble a lady she seems to be. She is taken even by the paltry dishes placed before them, as if there were something there to be savored, and he chases her from him when she seems to be hoping rather too desperately that they will stay in this place. She is far too willing to call the first ramshackle den they duck into a home.
But they must stay upon this unassuming hill for a time, and the days are decidedly meandering leading up to his wedding. All ought to be hurried, as urgent as he himself feels for motion, and thus vengeance. That flagging half-king of this place sees them wed, and he must again look upon his wife. She who is smiling, looking as warm as if she were a lovely maiden in truth, a queen born for nothing less. She is, to look at her and her home, born for mucking the royal stables and nothing more.
By his own command his sister is not seated at his wife's side, where it seems she would have liked best to be, for such ease of girlish conversation and vapid cheer is best severed. It is his own wedding, after all, and he will have his wife's appreciation affixed to himself alone. The merriment of this place seems to him no better than the celebrations of those rabid hordes on the eastern plains, rejoicing in something as scant as the light of the moon. How these people have earned the reputation of fearsome warriors, he cannot fathom. His critical eye has not overlooked the red and black stitched among the drab green, as if his House's colors were no more than flecks of blood, waiting to be swallowed in a sea of grass and fool's-gold thatch.
At her table his displeasure is undisguised, his disappointment in food and festivity both. He speaks to the future awaiting them, awaiting them all: the fires which will consume and then see born again the world as it was meant to be. This shall be accomplished with the loyalty of Rohan, and perhaps then they will be esteemed as a country of repute. They will fly banners which bear the splendor of dragons, and they will celebrate no day more ecstatically than the day their White Lady was wed to the rightful heir to the iron throne.
He insists, then, on having her to himself before the feasting can waste away into a show of true savagery, refusing to let his wedding be reduced to nothing more than the trite carousing of peasants. He will have no man strip her bare for the bedding, though it seems they honor here no such custom. For all that she is not, she is his, before gods and men. He will not be denied that.
He takes her by the elbow, and his stride is proud and hard, striving to hold him tall; his voice has, by his own estimation, long held at bay the insult inflicted by her people's reception of him, and of their mundane ceremony. If he is a bit tart, she is fortune to be subjected to his tone only, and to his guiding fingers, though this is not his home.
"It is a glad thing our guests were informed beforehand that it was a wedding they were attending. How difficult it would have been to tell otherwise, when the ceremony and feasting were so ordinary." There is laughter, too, in his voice, and it is not merry. "It is almost as if it is not clear to you who I am."
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sforzinda
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Date: 2022-01-27 11:06 pm (UTC)He would not, however, entrust to the magister matters of beauty. A king ought to have a beautiful wife, and if he was going to take beside him a woman of so foreign a name, she must possess a face which did not disappoint the discerning eye. The White Lady, the magister promises, is beautiful. Her breeding is rather exquisite, her temperament in the hall docile, and her face so fair that the moon itself kneels before her, bathing her in jeweled light. Golden-haired, of able build; the sort of woman crafted for the sitting of thrones. She would flicker like a ready ember at his side, ever eager to burst into full flame at his pleasure, or to rest, banked and unassuming, when his work lay before him. Very well; this woman would do.
And she would, in her reverence of so fortunate a union, present to him horses, armies, prestige. With all three he would forge the fury needed to win back his father's throne, to tear asunder at last the treason that has seated there gloating imposters. He would enthrone himself upon that seat of bristling steel, would feel within it still the fire of the dragons' dominion, and perhaps after holding court and severing heads from traitorous throats, he would take upon his lap his lady of Rohan. She would skim her maiden's fingers along his collar and plead for him to demonstrate again the dragon's ferocity.
He writes her letters, and when he describes for her the extravagance of their reign, he cannot help but think of his vanquished brother. A man of song and poetry, it was said; a man who kept company with quill and tome the way other men kept company with squealing whores. Is this what it felt like, the penning of poetry? Are these the sort of visions that kept his valiant brother locked in his chambers, swayed more by fantasy than a true taste for blood? The difference, of course, is that Viserys does not write of fantasy. Where Rhaegar wrote of unrealized wishes and weeping dreams, Viserys writes to his wife of truths only. They read like poetry, he does not doubt, so lurid is his anticipation: they will seize justice like the hilt of a blade; he will cloak his new bride in a love as radiant as living flames. Together they will paint color again into sky and vale too long dashed gray by war. She will be his queen, and they will wait on nothing. Come, she writes. Swords and hearts shall tremble at our joining, he vows in return.
He goes, and he has grown impatient with the magister's dull instruction, the reciting of histories and explaining of those details which count for nothing in the dawn of this rising era. He need not concern himself with past or ongoing difficulties, the failures of men undeserving of wartime command. All would be different once these armies were his. He is thinking not at all of Rohan's recent chastenings when he arrives. His eyes alight upon his betrothed, and he is disappointed: she is golden haired, and it is only golden. It is not the diamond silver-gold of his own hair, of true renown, and while he had known this, still it seems to him that claims of her beauty were terribly exaggerated. Or maybe it is only that her hair is the easiest of the insults to face.
The rest is unbearably egregious: she is no maiden of slim build, budding where it matters. She is built, he disdains, very much like a man: she is not wispy, and she does not wear a lady's demure fear like lace. She does not look like someone made to appeal to him. And she is tall, she stands taller than he, and she must spend more hours astride a horse than she does with needlework in hand. It does not matter what he has been told of her, of the prestige of her country and its name; it matters only that she is not the beautiful wife he was promised. She is fair enough of face, but she is not the queen he envisioned draping herself across his lap the eve he took his throne. She is too tall for that.
And her people - these are not the people who thundered through his visions of laying siege to King's Landing. These are dour folk, apparently partial to plain cloth and leather over proper armor, and they have taken for their sigil only a common nag. Their feast is meager, when he had expected a spread fit for a king; this is rustic fare, with nowhere a true delicacy. Their hall is simple wood and thatch, as if they are people who have taken a particular liking to straw and never dreamed of more, and her uncle (they call this man king?) seems a body for whom a quick blade to the ailing gut would do.
His sister has come to this place as if she'd stepped directly into an illustrated fable, and her undiscerning delight only aggravates him all the more. She is taken first by the rolling sea of green which carried them here, the simplicity of a humble, picturesque kingdom, and then she is taken by the chivalry with which they are greeted. She is taken by their queer accents, and she is taken by their inferior horses, and she is taken too by his own bride, marveling aloud at how noble a lady she seems to be. She is taken even by the paltry dishes placed before them, as if there were something there to be savored, and he chases her from him when she seems to be hoping rather too desperately that they will stay in this place. She is far too willing to call the first ramshackle den they duck into a home.
But they must stay upon this unassuming hill for a time, and the days are decidedly meandering leading up to his wedding. All ought to be hurried, as urgent as he himself feels for motion, and thus vengeance. That flagging half-king of this place sees them wed, and he must again look upon his wife. She who is smiling, looking as warm as if she were a lovely maiden in truth, a queen born for nothing less. She is, to look at her and her home, born for mucking the royal stables and nothing more.
By his own command his sister is not seated at his wife's side, where it seems she would have liked best to be, for such ease of girlish conversation and vapid cheer is best severed. It is his own wedding, after all, and he will have his wife's appreciation affixed to himself alone. The merriment of this place seems to him no better than the celebrations of those rabid hordes on the eastern plains, rejoicing in something as scant as the light of the moon. How these people have earned the reputation of fearsome warriors, he cannot fathom. His critical eye has not overlooked the red and black stitched among the drab green, as if his House's colors were no more than flecks of blood, waiting to be swallowed in a sea of grass and fool's-gold thatch.
At her table his displeasure is undisguised, his disappointment in food and festivity both. He speaks to the future awaiting them, awaiting them all: the fires which will consume and then see born again the world as it was meant to be. This shall be accomplished with the loyalty of Rohan, and perhaps then they will be esteemed as a country of repute. They will fly banners which bear the splendor of dragons, and they will celebrate no day more ecstatically than the day their White Lady was wed to the rightful heir to the iron throne.
He insists, then, on having her to himself before the feasting can waste away into a show of true savagery, refusing to let his wedding be reduced to nothing more than the trite carousing of peasants. He will have no man strip her bare for the bedding, though it seems they honor here no such custom. For all that she is not, she is his, before gods and men. He will not be denied that.
He takes her by the elbow, and his stride is proud and hard, striving to hold him tall; his voice has, by his own estimation, long held at bay the insult inflicted by her people's reception of him, and of their mundane ceremony. If he is a bit tart, she is fortune to be subjected to his tone only, and to his guiding fingers, though this is not his home.
"It is a glad thing our guests were informed beforehand that it was a wedding they were attending. How difficult it would have been to tell otherwise, when the ceremony and feasting were so ordinary." There is laughter, too, in his voice, and it is not merry. "It is almost as if it is not clear to you who I am."