Chapter 31: A Father's Scorn
The silence of Casterly Rock was a profound and unnatural thing. It was the silence of a tomb, a deep, resonant quiet that had swallowed the echoes of a glorious past. For centuries, the Rock had been a symbol of unassailable power, its greatness echoing in the constant, rhythmic clang of the gold mines deep within its belly and the bustling roar of Lannisport at its feet. Now, both were gone. The mines were drowned, their entrances buried under the weight of a god's displeasure. The port was a graveyard of splintered ships and shattered stone. The silence that remained was the sound of a legacy being unmade.
Lord Tywin Lannister had become a creature of this silence. He rarely left his solar, the grand chamber known as the Lion's Mouth, from which he would once gaze down upon his fleet and his city with an owner's pride. Now, he only saw a monument to his own hubris, a constant reminder of his humiliation. He had lost an army, a fleet, and the entire source of his family's wealth in the span of a single storm. He, the man who had brought the proud Houses of Reyne and Tarbeck to ruin for their insolence, had been utterly and completely broken by a power he could not fight, could not understand, and could not, for all his cunning, manipulate.
He spent his days in a state of cold, controlled fury. He was rebuilding. Not the mines or the fleet—those were beyond repair—but the authority of his House. He sent letters to his bannermen, hosted lords in his now-humbled halls, and meticulously managed the perception of his family's fall from grace. He projected an aura of unshakable control, of a lion that, though wounded, was still a lion. It was a lie. A magnificent, well-maintained lie, but a lie nonetheless. Inside, he was a furnace of cold, hard rage, a rage directed not at the god who had broken him—for what was the point of raging against a hurricane?—but at the world that had allowed such a force to exist, and at himself, for failing to foresee it.
His brother, Ser Kevan, was his shadow, his only confidant, the only man to see the cracks in the stone facade. Kevan managed the day-to-day running of the Rock, his quiet competence the glue that held their broken House together. He had mourned his son, Martyn, who had died in the slaughter at King's Landing, but he did so quietly, his grief a private thing, overshadowed by the monumental, public grief of his House.
It was Kevan who brought the raven.
He entered the solar without knocking, his face a mask of grim foreboding. He held a scroll, sealed with the black wax of the new Baratheon king. Tywin looked up from the ledger he was studying—a pointless exercise in accounting for wealth that no longer existed—and his pale green eyes narrowed. News from the capital was rarely good.
"From King's Landing," Kevan said, his voice low. "From the Hand, Jon Arryn."
Tywin gestured with a single, elegant finger. "Read it."
Kevan broke the seal, his hands not quite steady. He unrolled the parchment and began to read. His voice was a flat monotone, but the words he spoke were so laden with horror and shame that they seemed to suck the very air from the room.
He read of the fire in Flea Bottom, the deaths of the smallfolk. He read of the god's intervention, the sphere of contained flame, the chilling, personal nature of his power. And then he read of the cause. He read that the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, Cersei Lannister, Tywin's own daughter, had orchestrated the arson out of a fit of petty, jealous pique.
Tywin did not move. His face remained a perfect, frozen mask of aristocratic indifference. But Kevan could see a faint, almost imperceptible tremor in the muscle of his jaw.
Kevan continued reading, his voice now strained. He read of Cersei's subsequent madness, of the terrifying, spectral punishment the god had inflicted upon her mind. And then, he read the King's judgment. He read of Cersei being stripped of her title, of her confinement to the Maidenvault for life, of the public and absolute repudiation of the Lannister alliance. He read the final, brutal lines of the decree, which declared her an enemy of the peace of the realm, her crimes against both the crown and the… entity… being too great to forgive.
When he finished, Kevan slowly rolled the parchment back up, his hands trembling. He looked at his brother, bracing himself for the explosion he knew must come. He expected a roar of fury at the Baratheon king for so publicly shaming their House, for casting aside his daughter. He expected a declaration of war, a vow of vengeance, however suicidal.
He did not get one.
For a long moment, Tywin Lannister said nothing. He simply sat there, his gaze fixed on some unseen point beyond the window, beyond the ruined port, beyond the world itself. The silence stretched, becoming a living, breathing thing, a silence far more terrifying than any shout.
Then, a sound came from him. It was a low, guttural sound, like the grinding of tectonic plates deep within the earth. It was a sound of a pressure too great to be contained, of a control that had finally, irrevocably, shattered. It was a laugh. A dry, rasping, utterly mirthless laugh that was the most terrifying sound Kevan had ever heard.
Tywin leaned forward, placing his elbows on his desk, his head in his hands. His broad shoulders began to shake, not with sobs, but with the silent, violent tremors of this awful, internal laughter.
"All of it," Tywin finally whispered, his voice a raw, broken thing that Kevan had not heard since their own father's death. "All of it. For nothing."
He looked up, and the mask was gone. For the first time, Kevan saw the true face of his brother's soul. It was not the face of a proud, angry lion. It was the face of a man who had built a temple of gold and marble his entire life, only to watch his own child burn it to the ground for the warmth of a fleeting, stupid fire. The rage was there, a white-hot furnace in the depths of his green eyes, but it was overshadowed by something far greater: a profound, absolute, and soul-destroying contempt.
"She had it all," Tywin said, his voice a low snarl of disbelief. "I gave her everything. I made her a Queen. I gave her a crown, a kingdom, a dynasty for her children." He slammed his fist on the desk, not with the explosive rage of Robert Baratheon, but with a single, sharp, brutal impact that cracked the ancient wood. "And she threw it all away. For what? Because the oaf she married preferred whores to her? Because her pride was pricked?"
He stood up and began to pace the room, his movements stiff, like those of an automaton. "I could have weathered the storm. I could have rebuilt. The gold is gone, but the name remained. The reputation for cunning, for control. I could have worked with that. I could have used the fear of this… god… to my advantage. Let the other houses exhaust themselves in their wars and their politics. And in a generation, a Lannister, through my grandson Joffrey, would still sit the Iron Throne."
He stopped and turned to face Kevan, his eyes blazing with a cold, intellectual fury that was far more frightening than any madness. "But she has destroyed that. She has not just shamed herself. She has made our entire House a joke. She has proven to the world that the daughter of Tywin Lannister has the political acumen of a spoiled tavern wench. She has shown our enemies that our bloodline is tainted with the same brand of suicidal vanity that brought down the Tarbecks."
He walked to the window, staring down at the wreckage of his port. "That god… his retribution was immense, but it was impersonal. It was a force of nature swatting a fly. This," he gestured vaguely towards the east, towards King's Landing, "this is the true ruin. This shame. This public declaration that my own daughter, the Queen, is a fool and a criminal, imprisoned by the man I had hoped to control through her."
He fell silent for a long time, the only sound the distant, mournful cry of a sea-bird over the ruined harbour. Kevan waited, knowing that his brother's mind was working, calculating, cutting away the dead flesh to save the body.
"She is no longer my daughter," Tywin said finally, his voice devoid of all emotion, as cold and as final as a headsman's axe.
Kevan stared at him, horrified. "Tywin, you cannot mean that. She is your blood. She is the mother of your grandchild, the heir to the throne."
"She is a disease that threatens to kill the entire body of this House," Tywin countered, his voice absolute. "Her actions have given Robert Baratheon the perfect excuse to sever all ties with us, to nullify our influence, to isolate us. He has taken our hostage and called it justice." He turned from the window. "If we protest, if we defend her, we associate ourselves with her crime. We become complicit in her folly. We give our enemies the sword they need to finish us for good. They will say that the whole of House Lannister is treacherous and stupid."
He walked to his desk and pulled out a fresh sheet of parchment, a quill, and an inkpot. His hands were perfectly steady now. The rage had been channeled, focused into a single, cold, pragmatic point.
"We will not defend her," Tywin said, dipping the quill in the ink. "We will condemn her. We will cut the diseased limb off before the rot can spread."
"What are you going to do?" Kevan asked, a sense of dread creeping over him.
"I am going to agree with the King," Tywin said, the corner of his mouth twisting into a bitter, humourless smirk. "I am going to send a raven to King's Landing, to be read before the entire court. I am going to thank King Robert for his swift and decisive justice. I am going to praise his wisdom in protecting the realm from the foolish, prideful actions of a woman who has proven herself unworthy of the name she bears."
He began to write, his script sharp, precise, and brutal. Every word was a knife, carving his own daughter out of his legacy.
"And then," Tywin continued, not looking up from his work, "I am going to formally, and publicly, disown her. She will be Cersei of the House Lannister no more. She is a ward of the crown, and her madness is her own. The debts of her folly will not be honoured by Casterly Rock. Her name will be struck from our family records. She will be forgotten."
It was the ultimate Lannister act. Not a payment of a debt, but the cancellation of one. He was declaring her, and her catastrophic failure, bankrupt. He was sacrificing his own child on the altar of his House's survival.
Kevan watched him, his heart a cold stone in his chest. He was seeing the essence of his brother, the terrible, brilliant, and utterly ruthless core of him. He was a man who would burn his own house down to save the foundations.
"And Jaime?" Kevan asked quietly. "And Tyrion?"
Tywin paused in his writing. "Jaime is a Kingsguard, a glorified servant sworn to the Baratheon boy. He is lost to me. As for Tyrion…" He looked up, and for a fleeting moment, Kevan saw a flicker of something in his brother's eyes, a deep, abiding pain. "The gods gave me a monster for a son, and a fool for a daughter. Perhaps Tyrion, for all his deformities, has the only true Lannister mind among them. He will be my heir. He is all I have left."
The admission was a stunning one, a quiet earthquake that shook the foundations of their family far more than the god's storm had. To name Tyrion, the dwarf he had so long despised, as his heir… it was the ultimate proof of how broken his world had become.
He finished the letter with a flourish, sprinkled it with sand, and then sealed it with the dire lion of his House. He handed it to Kevan.
"See that this flies with the morning raven," he commanded. "Let the whole realm know that House Lannister cleans its own house."
Kevan took the scroll. It felt impossibly heavy, as if it contained the weight of all their family's sins. He bowed and left the room, leaving his brother alone once more.
Tywin Lannister stood at the window of the Lion's Mouth and looked out at his ruined kingdom. He had lost his army, his fleet, his gold, his queen, and his pride. He was left with a crippled dwarf for an heir and a name that was now synonymous not with power, but with divine retribution.
He had spent his life trying to control the world, to bend it to his will. He had finally encountered a will far stronger than his own. And then, he had watched his own flesh and blood, in an act of supreme, idiotic vanity, dance on the precipice of that will until she had fallen, dragging the honour of their House down with her.
The Lion of Lannister did not weep. He did not rage. He simply stood there, a silent, hollowed-out monument of a man, and watched the sun set on the wreckage of his world, his heart a cold, hard stone in the tomb of his own making. The god had not killed him. He had simply left him alive to preside over the ashes. And for a man like Tywin Lannister, that was a fate far worse than death.