Chapter 20: The Forging of a Crown and the Sack of a City
The journey down from the mountain was far more arduous than the climb. The lords of Westeros had ascended with a sliver of hope, a desperate, unifying belief that a divine solution was attainable. They descended in a state of fractured, grim reality. The god had given them no answers, no blessings, no king. He had given them a mirror, and they had not liked the haggard, squabbling faces that stared back.
The Great Council at Riverrun reconvened, but the fragile unity had evaporated. The air in the Great Hall, once thick with a shared sense of crisis, was now sharp with the scent of circling predators. The shadow of the empty throne loomed over them all, and with the god's indifference confirmed, it was now well and truly up for grabs.
Robert Baratheon, his sullen confusion replaced by a furious, iron-willed resolve, was the first to shatter the peace. "He will not choose," he bellowed, his voice making the Tully tapestries tremble. "He told us to choose for ourselves. Very well. I have chosen." He slammed a gauntleted fist on the table, the sound like the crack of doom. "The Targaryen dynasty is dead. Aerys was a monster, and Rhaegar is a woman-stealing cur who has abandoned his post. Their time is done. I claim the Iron Throne by right of blood and right of conquest."
"The conquest is not yet won, my lord," Ser Manfrey Martell of Dorne replied, his voice a silken venom. "You have rebels at your back, but you have no kingdom. My princess, Elia, still lives, and her son, Aegon, is the true heir by all the laws of gods and men, now that Rhaegar has proven himself unfit. Dorne will not bend the knee to a usurper while a true Targaryen dragon draws breath."
"Let him try to press his claim from Dragonstone!" Robert roared. "I will sail there myself and smash his little whelp's head in with my own hammer!"
The threat, brutal and artless, sent a wave of revulsion through the hall. Ned Stark's face hardened, and even Jon Arryn flinched at the open talk of murdering children.
"This is the king you would have us follow?" Ser Kevan Lannister asked quietly, his gaze sweeping the room. His voice was not accusatory, but analytical. He was gauging the room, reporting the political temperatures back to the Lion at Casterly Rock. "A king who speaks of dashing babes against the rocks before his crown is even forged?"
"My brother is… passionate," Jon Arryn said, trying to smooth the waters. "But his claim is the strongest. His grandmother was a Targaryen. He led the rebellion that saw the tyrant fall."
"The tyrant fell to a god, not to Lord Robert's army," Kevan countered gently. "A fact that complicates all claims. Lord Tywin feels… that in such an unstable time, the realm requires a steady, proven hand. Not a passionate one."
The meaning was clear. The Lannisters were not committing. They were waiting. Watching.
The debate raged for a day and a night. Hoster Tully, ever the pragmatist, backed Robert, seeing a chance to put his grandson, the future child of Lysa and Jon Arryn, in line for a powerful position. Ned, caught between his love for his friend and his own honourable misgivings, supported Robert with a heavy heart. It was the swiftest path to peace, he argued, the only way to end the war before it truly began. The Martells, outraged and insulted, departed the council, declaring that Dorne would recognize no king but Aegon Targaryen. The other, lesser lords, seeing the inevitable tide, began to fall in line behind the rebels.
And so it was decided. In the Great Hall of Riverrun, with the silent judgment of the Seven watching from their sept, Robert of the House Baratheon, the First of His Name, was acclaimed King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men. There was no oil, no High Septon, no crown. Just the roar of loyal lords and the forging of a new, bloody chapter in the history of the realm. His first act as king was a declaration of war. He would march on King's Landing to claim his throne, and then he would march on Dragonstone to extinguish the last of the dragons. The war for the throne was on.
High on his Dornish mesa, Thor felt the world shift. He felt the acclamation of the new king not as a sound, but as a tremor in the fabric of fate, a great, lurching turn of the wheel. He had told them to choose, and they had chosen war. He felt no surprise. It was the mortal way.
His own existence had devolved into a state of near-perfect stasis. He no longer hunted. He no longer brewed his poison-wine. The brief flicker of purpose he had felt in executing Aerys had guttered out, leaving behind an emptiness more profound than before. He had acted. He had made a choice. And the world had simply continued on its path to ruin, his grand intervention a mere stone that had caused a ripple in a river already rushing towards a waterfall.
The knowledge that his inaction was also a choice was a torment he could not escape. He could stop the coming war. He could descend from his mountain, melt the Iron Throne into a puddle of slag, and command them to peace. He had the power. But what then? Would he be their warden for eternity? Would he have to adjudicate every petty dispute, every border squabble, every bruised ego? He had seen what that led to. A kingdom of children, utterly dependent on a king-god, incapable of growth or self-determination. A benevolent tyranny was still a tyranny.
So he did nothing. He sat on the edge of the cliff, his eyes open but unseeing, lost in a waking coma of grief and philosophical paralysis. He was a god caught in a Zen koan of his own making: what is the sound of one world falling when the god who could save it refuses to listen?
He grew thin. The great, bloated belly he had cultivated in his despair began to recede, stripped away by fasting and the sheer, metabolic burn of his internal torment. His skin, bronzed by the Dornish sun, was stretched taut over the immense, powerful muscles that lay dormant beneath. His hair and beard grew longer, bleached almost white by the relentless sun, whipping around his face in the high mountain wind. He began to look less like a broken man and more like an elemental spirit, a god of stone and sky, slowly eroding under the endless, patient assault of time.
He watched the stars at night, stars he knew by names no one in this world had ever spoken. He saw the constellations of Asgard, ghosts of light from a home that was less than a memory. He remembered teaching a young Loki the names of the stars, his brother's bright, mischievous eyes full of a wonder that had not yet curdled into ambition. He remembered standing on a balcony with his father, Odin, looking out over the gleaming spires of a city that was now dust, listening to lectures on the nature of kingship he had found so boring at the time, and would now give anything to hear again.
The memories were no longer just a source of pain. They were becoming his only reality. The world below, with its wars and its kings, felt distant, unreal, a dream he was having. He was slowly, deliberately, detaching himself, not just from Westeros, but from existence itself. He was trying to become a memory. A ghost haunting the mountaintop of a world he had failed, just like all the others.
The city of King's Landing was a frightened animal, listening to the approach of two different packs of wolves. From the north, the armies of the new self-proclaimed King, Robert Baratheon, were on the march. From Dragonstone, whispers came of Targaryen loyalists gathering ships and men, preparing to defend the rights of the true heir, Aegon. The city was the prize, and its people were caught in the middle.
The Small Council, under the frantic leadership of Lord Merryweather, did what it could. They sent out riders, tried to raise armies, and reinforced the city's defenses. Lord Varys's little birds scurried everywhere, gathering information, assessing loyalties. But it was a government in name only. The real power in the city was fear.
Jaime Lannister, still reeling from the events in the throne room, found himself in a position of strange, de facto authority. With the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, Ser Gerold Hightower, away with Prince Rhaegar, and Ser Barristan trying to rally what was left of the royalist forces, Jaime was the senior Kingsguard knight left in the capital. He was the guardian of the empty throne, the protector of a city holding its breath. He found the irony bitter.
The first sign that a new player had entered the game came not as a raven, but as a cloud of dust on the horizon to the west. A large army was approaching. But it flew no banners.
Jaime stood on the battlements of the Red Keep, peering through a Myrish eye. "Whose colours are those?" he asked the captain of the City Watch beside him.
"None, Ser Jaime," the captain said, his voice trembling. "They fly no banners."
An army that flew no banners was not an army that came to parley. As the force drew closer, a cold, familiar dread settled in Jaime's stomach. The discipline of the marching columns, the quality of their steel, the sheer, ruthless efficiency of their approach… he recognized it. It was the army of Casterly Rock. It was his father's army.
A rider approached the gates under a flag of truce. It was Ser Kevan Lannister, returned from the council at Riverrun. He was granted entry and brought before the Small Council.
"Lord Tywin has sent me, my lords," Kevan announced, his face a mask of grim sincerity. "He has heard of the usurper Robert's proclamation. He has come to protect the city. To secure it in the name of the true king, Aegon, until Prince Rhaegar can be found. He offers you his swords in defense of the Targaryen line."
The Small Council was awash with relief. Lord Merryweather practically wept with joy. The mighty Tywin Lannister, the Lion of the Rock, had chosen their side! He had come to save them from the rebels! Grand Maester Pycelle, ever a Lannister sycophant, argued passionately that the gates must be opened at once. Only Varys was silent, his eyes narrowed, his mind racing. It was too simple. Too clean. Tywin Lannister was no man's saviour. He was an investor, and he never made a bad one.
Against the Spider's silent misgivings, the decision was made. Lord Merryweather, in his final, fatal act as Hand of the King, gave the order. The gates of King's Landing were thrown open to the Lannister army.
For the first hour, it seemed that Lord Tywin's promise was true. The Lannister soldiers marched into the city in perfect, disciplined columns. They secured the city walls, took control of the key intersections, and set up patrols. A sense of order, of safety, began to return to the beleaguered capital.
Then, the bells began to toll. And the screaming began.
Jaime watched in absolute horror from the walls of the Red Keep as the disciplined soldiers of his father's army broke ranks. As if on a single, silent command, they became a ravenous mob. The disciplined patrols became death squads. They began to systematically sack the city.
This was no chaotic riot. It was a cold, calculated, and utterly brutal act of terrorism. They swarmed into the homes of nobles and merchants, looting everything of value. They cut down any Gold Cloak who tried to resist. They dragged women and girls from their homes, their screams echoing off the stone walls. The beautiful, terrible city of King's Landing was being put to the sword, not by a foreign enemy, but by the very men who had been welcomed as protectors.
Jaime felt a rage so pure and so white-hot it almost blinded him. This was his father's work. This was the steady, proven hand he had offered. This was Lannister ambition, writ large in fire and blood. He saw it for what it was: a brutal, violent seizing of the prize. Tywin had not come to save the Targaryens. He had come to eliminate them as a rival claim, to sack their capital, and to present the city as a gift to the new king, Robert, thus securing the Lannisters a place of power at the heart of the new dynasty. It was brilliant. It was pragmatic. And it was monstrous.
He drew his sword, his mind reeling. He had to do something. He had to get to the Maidenvault, where Princess Elia and her children were being sheltered. He had to protect them. It was his duty as a Kingsguard.
But as he turned to run, he looked south, his gaze drawn by some unknown instinct. He looked towards the Red Mountains, a distant, hazy line on the horizon. He thought of the god on the mountain. The god who had judged and executed his king for being a monster.
And now a new monster was devouring his city. A monster wearing the face of his own father.
The god had said it was not his concern. He had chosen to be left alone. He had washed his hands of their world.
But as the screams of the innocent rose from the streets below, a desperate, hopeless question formed in Jaime's mind. Could even a god of sorrow remain indifferent to a sound like this? Could a being who had judged one king for his cruelty truly stand by and watch as a thousand new atrocities were committed in the vacuum he had created?
The sack of King's Landing had begun. The lions were feasting. And far away, on a lonely mountaintop, a storm was sleeping. Jaime Lannister, for the first time, found himself praying that it would wake up.