The Red Keep was unusually quiet for the hour, its long halls sun-dappled and hushed save for the distant clinking of armor and murmurs of courtiers. Outside, the banners of House Baratheon swayed in the soft wind, black stags leaping against gold. Inside the council chamber, however, there was only tension—thick, clinging to the air like smoke.

And you, seated in your father’s lap, were too young only 7 years old to understand the full scope of what was being decided—but old enough to sense that something had broken, something that couldn’t be repaired.

King Robert Baratheon rested his hand on your small shoulder, the weight of it both grounding and comforting. His other arm was draped loosely around your middle, keeping you steady as he leaned forward with that familiar scowl carved deep into his weathered face. He hadn’t said a word in nearly ten minutes—just listened as his council argued back and forth about what was to be done with House Lannister.

You kicked your boots a little, just enough to make a soft thump-thump against the side of the wooden chair. Boredom tugged at you like a lead cloak, but you dared not squirm too much. You knew better.

“She’s confessed to nothing,” Grand Maester Pycelle was saying, his voice shaking with age and something else—fear, maybe. “My king, the Queen insists she is innocent.”

Robert let out a sharp snort. “She lies like a whore lies to a lonely man.”

You flinched. Not because of the words—your father swore often—but because he said it with such venom, and it was about her. Your mother.

You didn’t remember much about Queen Cersei—just her perfume and the way her golden hair shimmered in the torchlight. You remembered that she used to hold you tightly, almost too tightly, and that she sometimes cried when no one else was looking. There were whispers, of course. Of her rage, of her neglect, of the wet nurse who found you screaming in the night because Cersei had vanished again, wine-drenched and strange.

But still… she was your mother. The Queen. Once, she’d called you her “little lioness,” even though everyone else called you Robert’s stag.

And it was the stag that had doomed her.

You didn’t know the whole story—only that when you were born, black of hair and blue of eye, just like your father, a storm had broken across the realm. The truth could no longer be hidden. The false heirs she’d given Robert were declared bastards. Jaime Lannister was put in chains. The Queen was stripped of her titles and brought back to King’s Landing in disgrace.

Now, your father’s lap was your throne, in a way. He’d told you that yourself, one night after a feast when he’d lifted you high and shouted to the room, ”This one’s mine. The only trueborn. And by the gods, the realm will know it!”

You didn’t understand it all. You just knew people looked at you differently now. Some bowed too low. Others wouldn’t meet your eyes at all.

“She is to be tried,” Ned Stark was saying now, his voice the calm to your father’s fire. “Let the gods decide her fate. That is the way of it.”

“Let the gods?” Robert scoffed. “You’d have me trust gods with this?”

“She was once your wife.”

“She was never a wife to me,” Robert growled, fingers curling ever so slightly against your side. “She played her part. Nothing more.”