for dilly

[shieldofrohan]

Marriage has been far from her mind for a long time. What time has there been for such things, such planning for the future, when there is no future to plan against? There is only the endless drudgery of the now; of stolid duty, of the daily running of the city and the tending to her uncle's ailing health, of bitter shadows and dark dreams as the stormclouds gather. How is she to think of marriage, then? How could she even think of wedding someone, of being a bride in some foreign city, when all her duty and all her life is here? No, marriage has not been on her mind; but only the quiet grind of life when all that she would live for is fading around her.

This changed all at once, when it changed. Two matters precipitated the change: the first, the death of her cousin, so dear to her heart. All of a sudden, she and her exiled brother are all that remains of the dwindling line of Eorl; all of a sudden, that abstracted future is shorter than ever. It is her uncle, her King, who speaks of marriage then; who clasps her hands where he lies in his sickbed, and tells her through tears that he would see her wed, that ere he dies he must see her happy.

And this might not have changed things so deeply - for she will not rush to wed, when there is no man she would call worthy of turning her from duty - were it not for the second matter. Word that comes in dribs and drabs, tangled by distance; letters that capture her, that she returns in kind. They are, to begin with, a distraction; a fantasy, to sustain her through dark days. A lost prince, wrongfully kept from his throne; an ancient line, a terrible wrong, the promise of a right reclaimed. She has visions of her place in this tale, of the glory that has eluded her in these shadowed halls: how there will come a day when, at full strength, the Eorlingas ride to the aid of another kingdom, as once they rode to Gondor's aid so long ago; and she will be at their head, and she will be Queen, and who then will overlook her in the shadows? Who then will turn away, ashamed, from her pain and sorrow? Then will all be restored, and she will linger no more in hollow darkness, but smile again, and be loved.

It is a fantasy. In her heart, she knows this; in her truest mind, she knows that she can promise nothing but an already-embattled army that will not leave its posts, and a king without a throne can promise nothing but more war. But there is glory in war, too, and there is romance in what she has been told; and she is young, for all her hardness, and her blood has ever run too hot. It is a fantasy, but one she sorely needs; and she has come to love the king whose face she has never seen, whose tragedy is the stuff of songs.

And still it might not have changed anything. It is the confluence of the two, the quirk of timing - that the offer of marriage comes so near on the heels of Théodred's loss and Éomer's exile - that turns the tide. How can she do otherwise? She writes in answer, and seals it with her uncle's ring. Come. To wed, to stay, to await the turning of the tide. And what she does not write: Come, and marry me, and make of my life a song. Come: I have waited too long in dreary duty.

And the days pass, and there is a future to await; there is something to hope for, at last, and even her uncle's continued ill-health will not deter her from the strange blossoming of hope in her breast. The war drags on, and the darkness lingers, and all is not well in Edoras; and yet, there is change on the horizon, and she will not always be alone. She will not always be a ghost in her own halls, the White Lady whose beauty and sorrow are all that are known of her. She will be a queen, even if she is a queen in exile; and she will not be alone.

The king, she has heard, has a sister too. This is another spark that brightens her darkness while she waits; for she has never had a sister of her own, and for all the love she bears towards her brother and her departed cousin, for all her fierce devotion to her kinsmen, how fine a thing it seems to have another woman in her life! She has written again to Magister Illyrio; assured him that the Lady Daenerys will be most welcome, and as dear to her as a true sister; and every word of it she has meant. Excited as she is to be wed, to be loved, to be Queen, she is almost as excited again to have some woman in her life who is neither maid nor servant. She imagines a woman like herself, lonely and chafing against the weight of grief; a woman who will understand, as no man ever has, the burden of womanhood. They will sit together, she imagines, and comb and braid one another's hair, and weave and sew and work, and they will laugh, and they will find a companionship that Éowyn, who for so long has been the sole lady of the hall, has craved since her childhood.

She will have a sister. She will have a husband. She will have a purpose, one more glorious than simple house-stewardry. She will be a queen.

It is a heady thought. It fuels her, and her already industrious days are fuller than ever; she still nurses Théoden through his illness, still oversees the business of the city and the kingdom as she must, but her mind is more thoroughly on the preparations for Viserys' arrival: the feasts to be thrown, and the guests to be called, and how she must be her most regal and her most beautiful, ready for the war to come.

It is, then, a grander hall than ever that greets the Pentosi travellers. She is glad to know that it is a sunny day when they arrive: that they will see from afar how the roof of Meduseld gleams like gold in the autumn light, that the wind that stirs the long grass of the plains and sets the green banners fluttering is not too cold or too harsh. The city bustles with activity; there is music for the first time since the prince's body was borne homewards, and an air of (still muted) festivity; and through the green and white of Rohan's colours, she has contrived to work patches of red and black, a reminder of the union to come.

She awaits them outside the hall itself, and even the presence of Gríma Wormtongue beside her, glowering, will not sink her spirits. Soon, she thinks, you will be nothing to me. Soon, I will see you driven out. When I am queen.

She looks, in truth, like a queen already. She has made sure of it. Her waist-length golden hair is bound back by a silver circlet, her white gown embroidered richly in green and gold, her head held high and her smile both sweet and noble. There is a sorrow in her still, but it is for the moment held at bay, a dim shadow in clear grey eyes. She steps forwards to greet her betrothed, and for a moment, the fantasy seems to hold. He is, perhaps, shorter than she had dreamed, gaunt with hardship, sharp-edged and pinched; but there is a fire in his violet eyes, and he holds himself well enough, and he is handsome in his way. She is not displeased, she decides; he is no Eorl nor Isildur, but he is king enough in his heart, she will not doubt that. She smiles and welcomes him inside, where the firelight plays on carved wood and ancient tapestries, where the tables are set and the lamps are lit, and where her uncle sits (not so tall as once he did; not so kingly now the light has left his eyes) upon the high throne.

It is enough. She will not allow it to be otherwise. Rohan gains by this marriage; there is a bride-price to exchange for her dowry of fine horses and good armour, and there is the promise, too, of renown to come. She gains by this marriage most of all. It is a joy; she will not allow it to be otherwise. Even with her brother gone, it is a joy.

And perhaps, in all of this, she blinds herself to the things that will not fit the tale she wishes to tell. Perhaps there are things she excuses, which she might not otherwise: he is not the most polite, but he is a stranger in a foreign land, and he does not know the customs; he is not the tallest or strongest man she has known, but he is a king; he is a trifle vain, but is she not also too much aware of her looks in this moment? It will be easier, she tells herself, after the wedding. When he comes to know her and her people more fully, to see all the beauty that Rohan has to offer, then it will be easier; and songs are not often sung of these strange early days, when things are between this and that.

His sister is not so impolite. In truth, his sister feels barely present, to Éowyn's admitted grief: a quiet, shy thing, delicate as a bird, too often hastened away. But this, too, will pass - must pass. Daenerys' furtiveness, no doubt a result of that same alien land which brings out her brother's scorn, will pass in time. This will be a home to them, until their own home - her new home - is restored. She will see to it, she determines, with a stubbornness that has seen her through so many trials before; she will not relent, and when the wedding is done, they will know that they are kin here.

The wedding comes soon enough, only a few days later; and she stands before her uncle, dressed again in his robes of state, and she thinks she almost sees him smile through his grief as he blesses their union; thinks, for a moment, that she sees the old spirit return to him. Any doubt is gone. She can only smile, and look at her new husband from beneath modestly-lowered lashes, and think with a thrill of excitement: Queen. I am queen. And they will sing songs of how we reclaimed the throne.

Comments

[raedes]

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."