Chapter 15: A Crown of Winter Roses and the Cost of a Song
The hunt for the Knight of the Laughing Tree ended as it had begun: in mystery. King Aerys's men had torn through the tourney grounds, their rough interrogations and heavy-handed searches earning the crown little more than the sullen resentment of the lords they harassed. Rhaegar's own search, conducted with the quiet grace of Ser Arthur Dayne and the grim efficiency of Ser Oswell Whent, had proven equally fruitless. The small, scrappy knight had vanished as if they had been a spirit of the woods, leaving behind only a legend and a deeply unsettled court.
The incident was the talk of the tourney, but the mystery was quickly overshadowed by the grand spectacle of the final day's jousting. The greatest knights in Westeros vied for the champion's purse, but from the start, it was clear that this was Prince Rhaegar's tourney. He rode like a man possessed, his silver dragon crest seeming to burn with a cold fire atop his helm. He was poetry in motion, a warrior of sublime grace and deadly precision, unhorsing one celebrated champion after another. He defeated Lord Yohn Royce, vanquished the fearsome Ser Gerold 'the White Bull' Hightower, and in a tilt for the ages, bested the legendary Ser Barristan Selmy to become the undisputed champion of the Great Tourney at Harrenhal.
A great roar went up from the crowd. The lords and ladies applauded their perfect, tragic prince. Rhaegar, ever gracious, rode a victory lap, the chaplet of blue winter roses—the crown for the queen of love and beauty—resting on the tip of his lance. He trotted his magnificent black warhorse to the center of the lists and paused, the entire realm holding its breath in anticipation.
All eyes were on the pavilion where his wife, the Dornish Princess Elia Martell, sat. She was a delicate, beautiful woman, and she watched her husband with a gentle, hopeful smile, expecting the honour that was hers by right.
From his place under the oak tree, Thor watched the proceedings with a profound sense of detachment. He had seen this a thousand times in a thousand worlds. The pomp and pageantry of mortals, their fleeting glories, their predictable rituals. He was about to turn away, to seek solace in his waterskin, when he saw the Prince's head turn.
Rhaegar did not look towards his wife. His gaze, intense and burning with a feverish, prophetic light, scanned the crowd, past the highborn ladies, past the Dornish princess, and settled on the Stark pavilion.
Thor's blood ran cold. A feeling of dread, heavy and suffocating as a burial shroud, fell over him. He knew, with the terrible prescience of a being who had seen fate's cruel jokes play out for millennia, what was about to happen. No, you fool, he thought, the words a silent prayer to a universe that never listened. Don't do it.
But Rhaegar was a man in the grip of a song only he could hear. He had not found the Knight of the Laughing Tree, but he believed he had found the truth. He had convinced himself that the wild, defiant spirit of the mystery knight, the champion of the weak, the laughing weirwood of the North, could only belong to one person. It had to be her. Lyanna Stark. She was the one. The ice to his fire. The third head of the dragon. It was not love, not in the way lesser men understood it. It was destiny. A terrible, beautiful, and necessary destiny.
He urged his horse forward, past his wife's pavilion. Princess Elia's smile faltered, a flicker of confusion and hurt crossing her features. The crowd murmured, a ripple of unease spreading through the stands. Robert Baratheon, who had been cheering Rhaegar's victory moments before, went utterly still, his knuckles white where he gripped the railing. Ned Stark, standing beside him, felt a cold knot of dread form in his stomach.
Rhaegar stopped his horse directly in front of Lyanna Stark. She sat between her boisterous older brother, Brandon, and the quiet Ned. She looked pale, her fierce, wild spirit momentarily eclipsed by a look of stunned disbelief.
Slowly, deliberately, Prince Rhaegar of House Targaryen, heir to the Iron Throne, lowered his lance and placed the crown of blue winter roses, the crown of the queen of love and beauty, into the lap of Lyanna Stark of Winterfell.
For a single, eternal moment, the world stopped. The cheering died. The music halted. The only sound was the gentle flutter of a hundred noble banners in the wind. All the smiles were frozen on the faces of the crowd. The great and the good of the Seven Kingdoms stared, mouths agape, at the public, undeniable, and catastrophic insult the Prince had just delivered to his wife, to House Martell, to Lyanna's betrothed, Robert Baratheon, and to the very fabric of their political reality.
Then, the world broke.
The first sound was a growl, a low, guttural sound of pure, murderous rage. It came from Robert Baratheon. His face, which had been flushed with good cheer, was now a purple mask of fury. "Rhaegar," he snarled, the name a venomous curse. He made to vault over the railing, his warhammer seeming to leap into his hand, but Ned and Jon Arryn grabbed him, physically restraining him as he thrashed and roared, his eyes fixed on the Prince.
Brandon Stark, the 'Wild Wolf', surged to his feet, his hand flying to the hilt of his sword, his face a thundercloud of fury at the slight to his sister and his house's honour. Lyanna herself sat frozen, the crown of winter roses feeling like a wreath of thorns in her lap, her eyes wide with a mixture of terror and a strange, unwilling thrill.
But the most potent reaction came not from the stands, but from under the oak tree at the edge of the woods.
Thor watched the scene unfold, and he did not feel anger or shock. He felt a profound, soul-crushing weariness. He had seen this before. He had seen his brother Loki, driven by his own glorious purpose, make a choice that had set realms on fire. He had seen Thanos, in his madness, sacrifice his own daughter for a stone, convinced it was for the greater good. He had seen heroes and villains alike, blinded by their own convictions, light the match that would burn their worlds down.
And now he was watching this sad, beautiful, foolish prince do the exact same thing. Rhaegar thought he was fulfilling a prophecy. He thought he was serving a higher purpose. But Thor, who had seen the end of such stories, knew the truth. Rhaegar was not serving destiny. He was its fool. He was not creating a song of ice and fire. He was writing the first verse of a dirge, and its lyrics would be blood and sorrow.
The crown of roses was not a symbol of love. It was a declaration of war. Thor could see the threads of fate, once merely tangled, now being irrevocably knotted. He could see Robert's rage hardening into a rebellion. He could see the Dornish fury at Elia's humiliation leading to their betrayal of the crown. He could see the honorable Ned Stark, forced to choose between his friend and his sister's honour. He could see the cold, calculating eyes of Tywin Lannister, watching from his pavilion, seeing not an insult, but an opportunity, the final crack in the dynasty he so despised. He saw it all laid out before him, a roadmap to ruin.
And the worst part, the part that felt like a physical knife twisting in his gut, was that he knew he had played a part in it. His careless words to Lyanna—be a warrior—had set her on the path to becoming the Knight of the Laughing Tree. Her defiance had captured the Prince's obsessive imagination, confirming his fatal theory. Thor's attempt at a small kindness had become the catalyst for a continental war. Just as his failure to aim for the head had led to the Snap, his casual words had now led to this. The universe, it seemed, had a special talent for turning his best intentions into cosmic disasters.
He closed his eyes, the roar of the crowd and the furious shouts of Robert Baratheon fading into a dull hum. He was overwhelmed by a wave of cosmic despair so vast and so powerful that it almost drove him to his knees. He was a curse. A walking, breathing plague upon any world he touched. He had tried to hide, to drink, to be nothing. But his very presence, his very nature, was a catalyst for chaos.
He felt a presence beside him. He opened his eyes and saw the boy, Finn, staring up at him, his face a mask of confusion. "My lord?" the boy whispered. "Why are they angry? The prince gave the pretty lady flowers."
Thor looked down at the boy, at his innocent, uncomprehending eyes. How could he explain it? How could he explain the intricate, suicidal folly of mortal ambition? How could he explain that the pretty flowers were the seeds of a war that would likely get this boy, and thousands like him, killed?
He couldn't. So he did the only thing he could. He stood up. His movement was slow, deliberate, but it commanded the attention of everyone nearby. His followers fell silent, their eyes turning to him. Even the chaos in the stands seemed to lessen as people noticed the god was finally moving.
Thor looked across the field at the cause of it all. At Rhaegar, who was now looking back at him, a strange, triumphant, yet tragic look on his face, as if seeking the god's approval for his grand, terrible act.
Thor gave him no approval. He simply held the prince's gaze for a long, heavy moment. And in that look, he poured all of his contempt, all of his pity, all of his millennia of experience with fools who thought they were kings of fate. Then he turned his back on the prince, on the tourney, on the whole pathetic, self-immolating spectacle.
He began to walk, not back towards his encampment, but away from it, towards the dark, quiet woods of the Gods Eye.
"My lord!" the Storm-Crier shouted in alarm. "Where are you going? The people need you!"
Thor did not reply. He just kept walking. He needed to get away. Away from the whispers and the prayers. Away from the sound of a world breaking. Away from the consequences of his own existence.
His followers, confused and alarmed, made to follow him. But Thor, without looking back, raised a single hand. A low rumble of thunder echoed in the clear blue sky, a sound that was not a threat, but a command. A command to be left alone.
The crowd of his followers stopped dead in their tracks, watching in fearful silence as their god walked away from them, abandoning them at the moment of their greatest triumph and the realm's greatest crisis.
He disappeared into the shadows of the ancient forest, leaving behind a broken king, a spurned princess, an enraged lord, an honourable wolf caught in a trap, and a dragon prince who had just crowned his love with the kindling of a war. The Tourney at Harrenhal, the event that would be remembered as the beginning of the end, was over. And the god who had accidentally helped to start it all had walked off the stage, seeking a darkness deep enough to hide from the echoes of his own thunder. But the world was small, and the echoes were only just beginning to sound.