Scarlet Woman

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/63292243.

Rating: Explicit
Archive Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con,
Underage Sex
Categories: F/M, Multi
Fandoms: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Relationships: Lysa Tully Arryn/Stannis Baratheon, Lysa Tully Arryn/Tywin Lannister,
Lysa Tully Arryn/Tycho Nestoris, Stannis Baratheon/Original
Character(s), Tywin Lannister/Original Character(s), Tycho
Nestoris/Original Character(s), Stannis Baratheon/Original Female
Character(s), Tywin Lannister/Original Female Character(s), Tycho
Nestoris/Original Female Character(s)
Characters: Lysa Tully Arryn, Stannis Baratheon, Tywin Lannister, Tycho Nestoris,
Hoster Tully, Brynden "Blackfish" Tully, Catelyn Tully Stark, Jon Arryn,
Robert Baratheon, Cersei Lannister, Jaime Lannister, Melisandre (A
Song of Ice and Fire), Qyburn (A Song of Ice and Fire), Original
Characters
Additional Tags: Older Man/Younger Woman, Age Difference, Rape/Non-con Elements,
Child Murder, Political Lysa, Merchant Queen Lysa, Asshole Victim,
Villain Protagonist, Biological Warfare, Poisoning, Murder,
Assassination, Canon-Typical Violence, Isekai and Transmigration,
Technology Uplift, Industrial Revolution, Genocide, Self-Insert, Tywin is
his own warning, Toxic Relationships, disproportionate retribution,
Tywin Lannister's A+ Parenting
Language: English
Collections: Best SI/OC Fanfiction I Can Find
Stats: Published: 2025-02-22 Updated: 2025-07-26 Words: 52,773 Chapters:
16/?
 Scarlet Woman
by ilikeexploding

Summary

These violent delights have violent ends, and all that glitters is not gold. Lysa is a terrible
person doing terrible things, and deserves every terrible consequence that she will bring upon
others and possibly herself as a result. Given that she's been reborn as a woman in Westeros,
however, that's a price she's willing to pay. It's only gunpowder; what's the worst that can
happen?

Or, a villain protagonist makes trainwreck life choices, therefore fitting in with everyone in
this god awful world. Readers may rubberneck in hatred or fascination, at your own
choosing.

Translations:
Français

Notes

The OC is a combination of a few other eventually abandoned ideas I had of a female Petyr
Baelish and an insert of Amy Dunne from Gone Girl. Those stories don't exist anymore, but
I've kept what I think were the best scenes, as well as the general characterization, which was
one of the first things I had set in stone.

This is going to be an experiment in writing an awful, but nuanced character. The goal is to
have someone who is for the most part selfish, mean, and psychopathic even -- someone who
lies, cheats, and steals; someone who isn't afraid to kill other people or toss them under the
bus for her own gain or amusement. And yet, she will also occasionally do good by accident,
and sometimes she will also be a victim whom readers might pity rather than hate, and
sometimes she'll just be a straight up badass you want to cheer on. Whether you love her, hate
her, or love to hate her -- one thing she will never ever be is boring.
 281 AC: Prologue

She will spare everyone the boringly traumatic details of her transmigration and only say this:
in her defense, the four days she spent in a catatonic state in her room after losing her life and
loved ones to the hellhole of Westeros weren't all mental breakdown.

Some of it was legitimate plotting, and some of it was just her brain physically struggling to
integrate the sixteen years of Lysa's memories being dumped into her head all at once.

Speaking of which, she didn't know what the hell the Tully sisters thought they were doing
with Petyr Baelish, but all of it was as weird as hell . Here's the thing: she didn't remember
much of her babyhood as Lysa, thank goodness, but she did remember the first time Cat tried
to initiate the "kissing games" in the Riverrun godswood. Given that she was two years older
than Lysa, and Lysa was two years older than Petyr, it meant that Petyr was too goddamned
young to be doing this with either of them when it all started.

It was easy to see how everything had spiralled so far out of control. Petyr had quickly
become besotted with Catelyn upon first arriving at Riverrun, even before the kissing games
became a thing. Being the eldest, she knew the most, and was Father's darling besides. She
could do no wrong; from a young age she had been trained to be heir and was the acting Lady
of Riverrun when Mother died; she was always graceful and kind and patient and perfect.
The only other girls Petyr probably had ever seen were maids, smallfolk, and mayhaps the
daughters and wives of lesser noblemen visiting Riverrun. But the attraction had only been
the type of innocent crush you'd have on a babysitter, until the kissing. And then Petyr, being
himself, had probably gone around gathering information from older squires about how to
impress an older girl, and now here we were.

And then Cat had danced with him six times during that one feast with Lords Blackwood and
Bracken, and then later that night he thought she'd given him her virginity, even though it was
Lysa – not me, not me – who had raped him. Old-Lysa's memories were full of grief and
jealousy and rage, too caught up in her own feelings for him, but New-Lysa could only ever
see it from an outsider's perspective. The poor bastard probably thought Cat genuinely loved
him, and had been too embarrassed to kiss him in public, even though she'd kissed him many
times in private. The poor bastard probably thought that he was doing the right thing when he
drew his sword to challenge Brandon Stark – thought that he was taking responsibility for the
woman whose maidenhead he took, the woman who loved him as he loved her but was too
embarrassed by society to speak it aloud. He would speak for her, with his sword, where she
could not; he would be her knight in shining armor; he would rescue her –

Stupid little boy with his head full of stupid little songs. Real life had slapped him just as
hard as it had slapped Sansa. Some of it was his own doing, and some of it was manipulation
by the older and more powerful around him.

Lysa felt bad for him, but now she supposed it was too late. Still, she had to try.

"Oh," he said sourly. "It's you."

"That's polite," she quipped back. "I take it Catelyn hasn't visited you once?"

His silence was telling. Denial and grief and rage all rolled into one.

"I would have come sooner," she said, "but I was ill. Not that anyone noticed."

The transmigration had happened sometime shortly after midnight before the day Petyr
challenged Brandon. On one hand, it meant that she had missed the duel and all the resulting
fallout. On the other hand, it meant that her "illness" had been completely overshadowed by
the drama, and so if she behaved strangely, no one paid it any attention.

"If that's all you're going to say, you can leave," Petyr said. "Unless you're going to tell me
that you love me more?"

The original Lysa probably would have insisted upon that and started all sorts of trouble then,
but she didn't want that. She wanted as little trouble as possible. Instead, she just said, "The
past few days have taught me that there's no use loving someone who won't love you back. I
hope they've taught you the same."

Then she drags the pillow over his face.

 281 AC: The War Begins

So, she's a murderer, and she had just murdered an innocent child at that. Well, mostly
innocent. The point is, Petyr hadn't committed any crimes worthy of her summary judgment
just yet, and all the wrongs he had done thus far were mostly forgivable on account of age,
inexperience, or situation.

But as said before, her goal in life was to have as little trouble as possible. And giving mercy
to Petyr Baelish, and letting him live, would have caused so much trouble.

Had she been transmigrated earlier, she would have stopped the trouble in its tracks by
preventing the kissing games from having ever started. She wouldn't have slept with him
after Cat gave him six dances but refused to kiss him. She would have presented herself as
the clever sister to Cat being the otherwise beautiful and perfect sister (though Cat wasn't an
idiot herself, either), and killed his dreams before they turned into delusions. She would have
done something .

By the time of Brandon's duel, however, it was too late to stop the wound from festering. And
anyway, Lord Tully had been planning to kick him out and send him away back to the
Fingers, so he would have been mostly out of reach of Lysa's influence. Mr. Chaos-is-a-
laddah could not be allowed to live, for she really did not like living in interesting times and
certainly abhorred chaos.

What little guilt she did feel did not overshadow the absolute relief that she had eliminated a
massive Problem on her list of Problems. See, the way her brain worked was, when things
got too overwhelming, she made a list. And as she crossed things off her list, the relief would
come back. Sometimes, the things on her list happened to be people. So she and Arya had
that in common, which was nice, though she's not sure if Arya or any of the others will still
be born on schedule.

Well, one Problem at a time.

Solving the problem of Petyr Baelish did introduce the new problem of having to hide the
evidence, but in the end it all came to nothing. The fact that old-Lysa could actively engage in
intercourse with Petyr Baelish without getting caught in the act meant that he had been left
unsupervised for long stretches of time once his wounds were bandaged and he was mostly
on the mend. Murder by pillow took about just the same amount of time and was way less
messy. Just like Old-Lysa, she did the deed (though a different kind of deed), and no one saw
her.

"Petyr's dead?" Catelyn gasped at the breakfast table. "But – they said he had survived the
worst of it. They said he was getting better – "

"It is for the best," Father said coldly. "Now it can be said that he died with honor, in battle."
And he would hear nothing more of it.
"That's cruel, even for you," Uncle Brynden muttered, but even he said little more in defense
of Petyr.

(Because Petyr caused trouble, and we don't like trouble .)

If Maester Vyman could tell that Petyr was murdered, rather than having died in his sleep of
his wounds, he said nothing of it – given Father's behavior he must have assumed that the
order was done at his command. Father probably assumed that Petyr simply died of his
wounds, but even if he did know that Petyr was murdered, he didn't care enough to pursue the
issue. If anyone meant to kill Petyr Baelish, it would have been some servant or retainer
working for either the Tullys or the Starks, looking to avenge someone's honor or curry some
favor or something of that nature. No one would think that the younger, less intelligent, less
beautiful, and mentally weaker Tully daughter would have the guts or nerve to do such a
thing, let alone the motive, because Lysa had loved Petyr best out of everyone in Riverrun.

For this act, Lysa would go on to marry a man of high station, have wealth and power, have
many healthy children, and die old of something boring, hopefully. The first and second were
guaranteed by her birth and her father's bargaining skills, and the fact that she didn't get
herself pregnant out of wedlock in a society that tied a woman's value as a person to her value
on the marriage market. The third was likely given that this time around she wouldn't be
forced into a late term abortion, so there would be no damage to ber physical health – and
given that Catelyn had gotten pregnant with Robb on the first try before going on to have five
more healthy children, while Lysa herself had gotten pregnant on the second try – natural
fertility was probably in her genetics. The fourth was something she was working on, starting
with Petyr Baelish's death.

There truly was no justice in this world. So, she was going to take advantage of that fact as
much as humanly possible.

She spent the rest of her time being silent, and barely only speaking when spoken to.
Everyone assumed this was because she was sad and missed Petyr. Really, she was deathly
afraid of doing or saying the wrong thing and drawing suspicion on herself. Also, she was,
again, busy plotting.

She had many decisions to make. For one, Catelyn's wedding to Brandon Stark was
underway – at this point they were only waiting for the important guests, mostly Brandon's
father from the North and brother from the Eyrie, which meant that Lyanna either running off
or being kidnapped was going to happen any day now. The question was, should she try to
stop it? If so, how? Should she let it happen, but warn Brandon and Rickard Stark? Should
she let it happen, and let Brandon die, but save Rickard Stark? Should she let Robert's
Rebellion break out on schedule, or should she save a few people and see if Aerys and
Rhaegar still destroy themselves out of madness and self-delusion?

Decisions, decisions. Aerys definitely had to go, she knew that. In this case, a little bit of
chaos was permissible, because the known chaos of Robert's Rebellion was better than the
unknown chaos of whatever else Aerys would get up to if the realm just let him carry on as
he did, or whatever Rhaegar would get up to if he was allowed to succeed his father.
In the end, at least one of the choices was made for her. There was no way for Lysa to contact
Lyanna or Rhaegar or otherwise warn them or stop them without making her look like a
complete madwoman or an idiot. And so, when Lyanna's maids who were supposed to be
accompanying her to Brandon's wedding came tearing through the gates, screaming about
how she had been kidnapped, she knew that the time to plot had come to an end, and it was
once again the time for action.

Neither she nor Catelyn were able to convince Brandon or his friends to stop their march of
doom. Lysa, would admit she did not try very hard, but she honestly did not care what
happened to them. If they were fool enough to march into the lair of a mad dragon, let them.
She called that natural selection.

She left Catelyn to her weeping and fled to the rookery instead.

Being the seat of a Lord Paramount, a castle like Riverrun gets a decent amount of ravens
from King's Landing. Enough that she had seen the handwriting of Grand Maester Pycelle
numerous times. Enough to fake a number of ravens to the North, Eyrie, and Stormlands
announcing the execution of Brandon Stark and his companions for treason, and demanding
the heads of Rickard Stark, Eddard Stark, and Robert Baratheon as well – and only the North,
Eyrie, and Stormlands.

It's easier than she expects it to be. From her past life of strict parents and excessive
permission slips, Lysa developed exceptional forgery skills. As the daughter of the Lord, she
has greater freedom of movement than most. If the original Lysa can fuck an injured Petyr
Baelish without the Maester Vyman noticing, she can send a few ravens. Besides that,
Westeros apparently has very little defense against spoofing messages. People cannot easily
tell the difference between ravens, and even if they can, most ravens are trained by being
hatched and raised in their destination castle. A raven from Riverrun headed to Winterfell
will have more in common with a raven from King's Landing headed to Winterfell than
another raven from Riverrun destined for elsewhere. Most maesters therefore rely on colored
ankle tags that determine the castle of origin, along with things like wax seals and
recognizing the handwriting of the lords or their fellow maesters who sent the ravens. Secret
messages can sometimes be encoded, but public announcements that don't need to be hidden
are not.

People just straight up assume that forgeries just don't happen . Which is odd? Maybe the
literacy rate is so low, and the punishment for forgery so severe, that they assume the chances
are one in a million. Unfortunately for them, Lysa is the one, and they are the million.

She works by candlelight, picking off the little tags around the ravens' ankles that deem
Riverrun as their owner and switching them with the tags of the King's Landing ravens that
had not yet been returned. To seal the deal, literally, she peels off the wax seals of the
Targaryens, lightly melts them, and fixes them back on her faked letters. Even if the
recipients notice something is wrong, all they will assume is that someone – likely the Master
of Whispers – opened the message and read it before sending it onwards.

So Lysa finishes her work.

And then she waits.

Shortly after, Rickard Stark arrives in Riverrun.

He arrives with the entirety of the Northern forces already assembled behind him.

And so it begins.
 282 AC: Lady of Riverrun
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

For a second, she was worried that her gambit had failed anyway, and that Father still meant
to marry her off to Jon Arryn to secure some alliances. But her fears are unfounded – her
purity is not in question, and Hoster Tully will not waste a maiden daughter on an old man
who already has grown adult nephews for heirs. The heavy discussion of Elbert makes her
realize – she had only mentioned Brandon's death in her faked raven, not Elbert's. And Denys
Arryn was still alive, for the Battle of the Bells had not yet happened.

Her interference causes a few more changes. Lord Rickard Stark's continued presence is but
one of many. The two men debate Ned Stark's betrothal now, and the question is whether he
should marry Cat, or if he should marry Lysa so that Hoster can save Cat for something
better.

Lysa wouldn't mind marrying Ned. Of all the possible choices, he's one of the decent ones.
He'd treat her kindly. Plus, the North had a great deal of land and natural resources, including
coal – she could work with that.

Alas, it was not to be. A second daughter is worth far less than an eldest daughter, in terms of
order of inheritance, and a warzone was neither the place nor time to haggle over a dowry. So
the eldest daughter of Lord Tully to the heir of the North it remained, and Lysa was the
leftover once again. She did overhear a few conversations between her father and Lord
Arryn, and it seemed they meant to betrothe her to Elbert Arryn, should he still live. Lysa
goes along with it, because she doesn't give much of a shit about Elbert anyway, having never
met him, and because she knows he's going to die.

The Rebellion seemed to go faster this time around, because the rebels had assembled their
men before Brandon Stark had actually arrived in King's Landing demanding Rhaegar's head.
By the time the confusion was resolved, none of it mattered anyway – the rebels had already
raised their banners and could hardly put them down and go back home without the King
coming after them for treason anyway. And so Brandon and Elbert and all the rest were
burned to death, but not because of Lyanna or Brandon threatening Rhaegar – but rather
because their fathers had already crossed the Trident, and there was no turning back.

So the weddings and war commence, and meanwhile she and Cat merely huddle together in
Riverrun. Or rather, Cat huddles as she grows round with the future Robb Stark, and Lysa
does sums in her head. Her sister's first trimester passes into her second, and her second into
her third, and by then Cat was more bedridden than not, her ankles swollen as her belly grew
heavier. It fell to Lysa to be the Lady of Riverrun then, what with her father and uncle gone,
her sister unable to walk, and her brother but a child.

To the surprise of everyone, Lysa does a decent job. It wasn't that hard, to be honest – in a
war, there was no time for planning balls and feasts and playing courtly politics. It was all
resource management and information gathering. And Lysa was still a beginner in the game
of thrones, but she knew how to fucking count and do double-entry bookkeeping. And in her
old life, she played a lot of resource management and optimization games.

Apparently mental math, algebra, and using basic linear regression to project the rate at
which the grain would run out and how much more one needed to buy was considered within
the realm of genius here.

She thought mayhaps she should be offended at everyone's low expectations, but then again,
examining her prior memories of how Old-Lysa used to act, their doubts were warranted even
if she wasn't just fourteen. Old-Lysa had been a foolish, silly thing who froze up and became
tongue-tied in times of stress, who was prone to fits of giggles, flights of fancy, mental
instability, cruel recklessness, impulsive inconstancy, stubborn vanity, and all-around bad
decision making. So, she took their doubts in stride, and turned it back around on them by
simply doing her duty, and later it would be said that she had always been as intelligent and
calm as her sister, and only needed a chance to prove herself.

Throughout it all, she wonders if she should have tried to get an anonymous message to Ned
about Lyanna's whereabouts. But Lyanna living would be a pain in the ass, probably: if she's
not pregnant yet she will be by the time Ned gets to her. Dying was the best thing that could
have happened to the silly thing, because death erases most crimes. Had she lived, she would
have been villainized as some homewrecking, war-starting whore. Instead Robert made her
into a saint. Had she lived, there would be no easy way to hide her pregnancy or transport her
across the length of the war-torn continent, and everyone would know her child as Rhaegar's
bastard, and then it would become a big political issue as everyone tries to figure out what to
do with this inconvenient child. But she died, and so she was a martyr and the babe was
hidden.

Lysa doesn't like trouble, and Lyanna was the definition of trouble. Nah, let her die. Serves
her right for being stupid enough to get seduced by an older man while her brain is still only
half-formed.

It was the rest of the Rebellion that was completely different. With just a few ravens, Lysa
had not changed the outcome of the war, but she had changed everything else about it.

"Your father and Lord Robert have won a magnificent victory at Ashford, my Lady," Maester
Vyman tells her one morning.

"Ashford?" She's still half-asleep, but she remembers. Randyll Tarly. That defeat originally
would have forced Robert to take refuge in the Stoney Sept, and Jon Connington would have
failed to kill the Rebellion there, and be exiled for it. "Who have they fought there? Have we
any news of Prince Rhaegar?"

"No, my Lady. There were the forces of Lord Tarly, and a few other Reachmen."

"So the bulk of the Reach is still behind them."

"Yes, though they are still gathering."

"Where are the Dornish? Where are the Crownlanders? How fare Lord Stark and Lord
Arryn?"

"Lords Stark and Arryn have had successes against the Crownlanders as well, though the
victories there are smaller. They have been defeating the smaller hosts piecemeal before they
can gather, and sent several Hands running back to the King with their tails between their
legs."

"And dismissed for their failure," Lysa understands. "Or has the Mad King started executing
them now?"

"I haven't kept track," the Maester confesses. "He's burned at least one hand, and exiled
another, that I know for certain."

"And the Dornish?"

"The Dornish are marching north, and their host grows by the day."

"So we do not have the men to allow the rebel army to remain split between North and South
for much longer," Lysa surmises. "And even when they join up, they will still be slightly
outnumbered by the forces of the Reach and Dorne together."

"Unless Lord Lannister joins."

"If Lord Lannister joins, he will join the winning side and reap the lion's share of the rewards
for being the last standing army at the end. We must ensure we are the winning side," says
Lysa. "Thank you, Maester. You are dismissed."

Well, fuck. She might have miscalculated in getting the rebels to assemble early. It was an
advantage, to be sure, but the fact that Robert didn't lose at Ashford means that Mace Tyrell
has no reason or ability to march into the Stormlands and waste the biggest portion of the
loyalists' strength on besieging one politically important but strategically useless castle. What
she needs is a different way to take the Reach out of the fight, and even the odds for the
rebels a bit.

That night, Lysa goes to the rookery and writes to Lord Quellon Greyjoy, once again faking
the hand of Grand Maester Pycelle. Afterwards, she uses the same trick she does with the
ravens prematurely announcing Brandon's death. Lysa banks on the fact that the Ironborn will
be so hotheaded that they will not bother to verify the sender's authenticity.

The traitorous rebels have illegally murdered, sacked, and plundered our leal servants in the
Reach. We, King Aerys II Targaryen, Ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, of the Andals, Rhoynar,
and First Men, do order Our subjects who have not roused themselves to come to the aid of
the crown and House Tyrell immediately! Else fear the wrath of the dragon, and We shall
remind you of the fates of the Hoares!

Hammy, yes. But also believable, given how far gone she knows Aerys is at this point. For
the most part, she is copying the exact wording of the letters that Aerys is bombarding Tywin
Lannister with. Every raven going between the Red Keep and Casterly Rock flies through the
Riverlands, and rests near Riverrun. It's child's play to round up a few hunters, hawkers,
trappers, and archers for some full-time raven-napping – when nobody's watching, of course.
She chooses men who are fairly clever and skilled at their craft, but illiterate, so they can't
read the messages too; she pays them from her own pockets and they bring the birds directly
to her through a back gate after the maester has gone to sleep. A bunch of smallfolk with bird
nets, a candle, and a hot metal spoon – that's all it takes to successfully man-in-the-middle the
King and the most powerful lord in the realm. Information security truly is laughable here,
and it's not just the message interception and spoofing: the most complicated encryption she's
come across thus far is a simple substitution cipher. And even then, Pycelle only bothers to
code additional information and secrets; Aerys' direct orders are left open for all to see.

Aerys and Tywin aside, her gamble with the Ironborn pays off. For the low low cost of one
raven (and no one ever sends messages to Pyke anyway), Lysa manages to pin Mace Tyrell
down on the southwestern coast of the Reach, far away from helping Aerys or any of the
loyalists. The Ironborn are both enraged, envious, and greedy at her false words, just as Lysa
planned. Enraged because this greenlander king means to command them after having
ignored them for so long. Envious because if the rebels are pillaging, why can't they also?
Greedy because if the greenlander King is asking for them – and Lysa implied that the bulk
of the Reach's forces were defeated by the rebels, rather than just a small vanguard quickly
scraped together by Lord Tarly – then the Reach and loyalists are in a weaker position than
they thought.

Did she just sic a bunch of bloodthirsty slaving raping pirates on the innocent civilians of the
Reach? Yes. Does she care? Not really. The Greyjoys would have started reaving anyway,
just later in the war. She just sped them along a little. It's not like the Reach doesn't have the
men or equipment to fight them off, and every dead Ironborn is a good Ironborn, even if she
has to sacrifice five peasants per reaver to do it. They're not her peasants. It's their fault for
being born under and serving the wrong lords. She has ensured better odds for her side in this
war, and even if her gambit with the Ironborn fails, she still wins because she's gotten rid of a
bunch of those Great Value Vikings at no cost to herself.

From there things proceed mostly as usual. The rebel coalition is set to meet Prince Rhaegar
near Hayford, where the Stormlands, Reach, and Crownlands intersect rather than the
Trident. Throughout this entire war, the Riverlands has remained untouched, even more so
than the Vale, which did see some fighting around Gulltown. Incredible, what a few lies here
and there could do.

"Tywin Lannister has sacked King's Landing, and Aerys is dead," the Maester Vyman
informs her.

"Has he now?" Lysa asks. "And here I thought he would hide in Casterly Rock until the
victor was decided. What roused him?"

"I know not how his mind thinks," the maester said. "But I am not surprised. The Mad King
had insulted Lord Tywin numerous times before, and that man is not one to forgive a slight."

"Who knows, indeed," Lysa says, hiding her smile behind her cup of mint tea. After all,
pretty much all of the desperate ravens Aerys made Pycelle send to Tywin passed before her
hands and eyes first. Some of them she even allowed to go forth to their destination.
 We bid you make haste to King's Landing immediately, to answer for the crimes of your son
against your liege's person…

[[This is not a joke, he's going to burn Jaime for supposedly spying for you – Pycelle]]

Hell, if it worked for Rickard Stark, it would work for Tywin Lannister too.

Chapter End Notes

https://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/157327-so-did-someone-intercept-aerys-
raven-to-tywin/

Not sure who did this in canon if it happened at all, but in this story it's Lysa. Who
would suspect a teenage girl of masterminding all this? Man, characterization and
motivation is so easy when your main character is unapologetically not a good person
and doesn't even try to deny it. Her logic is always "I will take the path that makes my
life the easiest right now" regardless of who it hurts or future consequences.
 Interlude I: The Old Lion

Tywin doesn't know whether Mace Tyrell is an idiot, or if Olenna Tyrell is a genius. The
Ironborn are pests, true, but he does not need the entire might of the Reach to repel them.
Those men are raiders, not disciplined warriors that might siege a castle. His numbers might
very well have turned the tide of the war to the loyalists' advantage.

There are two things he sees that make him believe that it's the latter, and the Queen of
Thorns is pulling strings behind the scenes. Firstly, the majority of the Reach forces that
supposedly have stayed home to defend themselves from the Ironborn are instead crouched
along their northern border with the Westerlands, not along the coast and the Mander.
Secondly, the token force they've sent to Prince Rhaegar is nowhere near their full might, but
it is a force nonetheless. Of the Reachers that remain at home, they are in sufficient numbers
to not only defend from the Ironborn and West but also what will likely remain of the rebel
forces after they have fought Prince Rhaegar's crownlanders and Dornish.

Which means that the old woman is playing both sides. If the loyalists win, the Reach cannot
be punished because they did help the Targaryens, and they have legitimate excuses for why
they couldn't send more. If the rebels win, they cannot be punished either because the forces
that remain to them are more than enough for leverage at the negotiation table.

The Tyrells have always had to maintain their grip on the Reach through strategic marriages
because their house is too weak and young in comparison to their vassals to hold it militarily.
The power dynamics of the Reach can therefore be seen by the current marriages of House
Tyrell. Lady Olenna is a Redwyne by birth, and her son is married to a Hightower; thus for
this generation at least the center of power of the Reach sits firmly near their southwestern
coast. Conveniently, these lands, along with the lords whose lands sit along the Mander, are
most "in danger" of the Ironborn encroachment and therefore cannot spare any men.
Consequently, the majority of the dying, in the upcoming battle between Rhaegar and Robert,
will be done by northeastern inland Reachers and the Dornish spears – the former are current
internal rivals of the Tyrell-Redwyne-Hightower power bloc, and the latter are historical
rivals of the Reach as a whole. Thus, regardless of who wins, Lady Olenna will have
weakened both of her rivals for free using the blood of other men.

Tywin can't blame her. He'd do the same in her position. Luckily for him, he is not – the
Lannisters' grip on the Westerlands has never been stronger, and it would never return to the
depths his father had left it, not if he had anything to say about it. But for her disadvantages,
the old woman has done well for herself.

The same cannot be said for Prince Rhaegar, who is in a uniquely terrible position. He is
Prince of little and less, at this point. The coalition behind him is mostly Dornishmen,
alongside the aforementioned pathetic display of Reachmen. The Crownlanders who should
have been his support are all but missing, for while he was wasting his time doing gods
knows what in Dorne, the rebels were ravaging those lands with impunity. Without these
lands, King's Landing must rely on the Reach for most of its food.
But Randyll Tarly's initial failure to push back Robert means that the rebels now control the
Rose Road. As Pycelle has informed him, currently, the only thing keeping the city from pure
starvation is the royal fleet keeping Narrow Sea shipping open for grain from the Free Cities
to come in through the ports. But, there are only so many ships, so the supply is limited. In
addition, the long distances mean that the prices, already higher than food shipped from the
other kingdoms, will be unbearable. Despite the fear of burnings and Aerys' cruelty, bread
riots have been breaking out constantly, large enough that they hear about it even in Casterly
Rock.

Tywin does not care overmuch about urchins in Flea Bottom, but he has learned his history.
Angry peasants were enough to overthrow Rhaenyra Targaryen and kill dragons. And Aerys
was no dragon.

Rhaegar may be a fool, but he was certainly intelligent to understand his position just as
Tywin did. The rebels could wait where they were as long as they wanted, and King's
Landing would eventually starve. If Rhaegar wanted to have a hope of winning, he would
need to attack them immediately. Time was not on his side; the rebels controlled both the
board and the clock.

If the Tyrells roused themselves now, they would certainly turn the tide of the war. But they
wouldn't, because they feared Tywin more than they feared the Targaryens. As long as Tywin
didn't move, they couldn't, either. And if he did move, they would take time to react. Forget
Aerys: he is in a stalemate with the Queen of Thorns right now, and besides the matter of the
ironborn, neither of them have lost anything.

So he continues to ignore the ravens that Aerys sends, until one day, he gets one that he
cannot ignore.

And he sees rage.

He force marches his army across the width of the continent. In less than two sennights, they
are at the gates of King's Landing.

Aerys stands no chance, really. The poisonous inbred lizard, thinking he was a dragon.
Preposterous. The fool had truly gone completely mad, if he thought that executing his most
valuable hostage, the only thing that yet stayed Tywin's hand, would make Tywin come to his
side –

"Father?"

"Jaime?"

For a second, Tywin thinks that he has gone mad, and is hallucinating. But no, his son is
there, and he is alive and well.

The same could not be said for Aerys, who lay dead in a pool of his own blood.

"What are you doing sitting there like that, you fool boy?" Tywin recovers quickly. "Get
down here before someone sees you."
"I – "

"Now!"

The boy meekly shuffles down from the Iron Throne. Gods, what was he thinking? It was
clear that years in service to the madman had addled his brain. He'd need to re-educate his
heir, fast.

Afterwards, he speaks to Pycelle.

"What do you mean, you never sent these?" Tywin demanded.

"It is as I said, my lord," said Pycelle. "These ravens are in my handwriting, but it is not I
who wrote these words."

"Then who?" Stupid, Tywin chides himself. He had had other sources of information and
spies other than Pycelle within King's Landing, but Pycelle was the one he trusted the most.
He was also the fastest, being the one with the most direct access to ravens; the others had to
use a chain of messengers to get to Pycelle or some other allied castle with ravens – chains he
had skipped in his rush to the capital. The message had been so inflammatory, he hadn't had
time to check the veracity of the information. And why would he? It had come to him in
Pycelle's hand, bearing the royal seal, using his family's secret cipher.

He searches for a lie in Pycelle's face, but sees none. This is bad. This is very bad. Someone
has broken their cipher. They will need a new one, quickly. What other messages of his have
been read? He needs to know.

"The King's seal is here, but look. The edges are chipped. Someone prized it off another
message, melted the wax slightly, and affixed it to this one. It is an old trick, but an effective
one. Most would not think to look for it, unless one suspected a lie in the first place. And here
– look at how they form these letters. There is a slight wobble in the lines, and their slant is
slightly too much. The forgery is well-done, but their copy of my handwriting is not perfect."

"The raven is from King's Landing, though."

"That it is. This leg tag is genuine. But anyone with a castle along the flight path, in the
Crownlands or Riverlands, could have done this, if they caught the ravens." Pycelle shook his
head. "But it must be a learned man. No half-wit could break a cipher so thoroughly and use
it against us like so. The Spider is a possible suspect, or perhaps it is a maester from another
castle. If not a maester, then at least someone who attended the Citadel and simply did not
complete their chain. Even the most educated lords could not do something like this. Except
mayhaps you, Lord Tywin."

Tywin ignores the flattery and concentrates on the facts. He struggles to see how the Spider
would benefit from drawing Tywin into the war like so – it is more likely one of the rebels.
Tywin's entry into the war benefited them the most. But who on their side was tricky enough
to draw him into the war in such a manner? Robert was a young hothead, skilled in battle but
lacking in any other sort of cunning. Arryn was too much of an honorable fool. Rickard Stark
had some low cunning, so possibly him. Hoster Tully might have been the most likely culprit
– he was the sneakiest of the four, and this war had been unique in how the Riverlands had
been left untouched. Then again, it could have been none of them, or one of their many
bannermen working in secret. "Remind me, when were Brandon Stark and his companions
executed?"

Pycelle told him. "Weeks after the rebels had already assembled. I remember the day; we all
saw them burn. But the rebels have been insisting, and still insist to this day, that they
received news of the unjust executions long before that."

Very odd. Very odd indeed. Hoster Tully might have a reason to draw Tywin into the war to
end it before it spread into the Riverlands, but he would not have a reason to lie about
Brandon Stark's execution before it happened. He would not have married his daughter off to
the second son, Eddard, unless he truly believed that the heir was already dead. They could
be dealing with two different liars, but the mode of operation – of sending false ravens –
seemed too much of a coincidence.

"What do you know of Riverrun's maester?"

"Maester Vyman?" Pycelle thinks. "He is reasonably intelligent and skilled, but I do not recall
him being particularly exceptional. Mayhaps I am wrong, and he is hiding the best of his
skills, but…"

"Do you think the rebels are lying about the timing of the execution news, then, to give
themselves a just cause for their rebellion beyond the kidnapping of Lady Lyanna? Or do you
think there is a third force that instigated all this?"

"In truth?" Pycelle whispered, "I think it is the latter, my Lord. I do not believe any of the
original rebel lords did this, even if they benefited. Else they would have sent the messages at
the beginning of the conflict, to draw you into the war immediately. No, whoever did this
waited until both the rebels and loyalists were occupied, and gave you the perfect time to
intervene – " He pauses. "My lord, the more I speak the more I know it sounds like me, but I
promise to you, my lord, it was not me."

No, not Hoster Tully then; too obvious anyway. To anger Tywin would have been too much a
risk; their lands neighbor one another's and Tully's main forces are away fighting. He
benefited from this mysterious forger's interference but likely did not know of it

Tywin thinks more. Jaime, then? Could his son have inherited his and Joanna's cleverness
after all? Mayhaps he had grown bored of guarding the madman and tried to enrage Tywin
enough to come rescue him from such a farce. But that line of questioning also fails to
materialize anything: Jaime is completely confused. Either Jaime has become an even better
liar than Tywin could ever dream of, or he too is innocent of this. Tywin doubts that it can be
his son. The boy is a genius with the sword, but he struggled to form letters and read as a
child, let alone juggle ciphers now. Tywin systematically goes through the rest of his family,
anyone who could have possibly done such a thing, but it's highly unlikely that it's anyone in
Casterly Rock, even the ones who know the cipher. They would have had to intercept that
raven before Maester Creylen brought it to him. Could it have been Maester Creylen himself?
It was a possibility, but then, why would he possibly risk Tywin's ire by lying to him in such a
manner?
What if it was Cersei? The girl did have some low cunning to her, although she was also
impulsive and greedy. It would be like her, to be clever enough to successfully steal the
family cipher and use it to send believable lies, but then absolutely fail at sending
the right lies to better her position. Perhaps they can't discern a reason as for why someone
would lie about Brandon Stark's time of death, because there was no reason; just Cersei
randomly flailing about, testing her powers to see if she could...

But even if Cersei managed to steal the Lannister family cipher, how could she have stolen
the Stark family cipher? She had no access to the North, and had never been in a physical
position to intercept the right ravens without a suspicious delay. The physical location of the
culprit, if it was the same person, had to be somewhere in the Riverlands.

Still, they had to start somewhere.

"Kevan," he orders, "I need you to ride back to Casterly Rock and start questioning everyone
who might possibly be able to interfere with our ravens and break our family cipher, starting
with Maester Creylen. Have Genna and Tygett help you. Once you have completed your
questioning, inform me of what you have found. If it is no one in Casterly Rock, we have a
bigger problem on our hands."

He wants to oversee the process himself, but he cannot afford to be distracted right now.
Whoever played this game, they played it well. Tywin is currently the master of a starving
city. The men are being allowed to have their fun, for now, but tomorrow Tywin will have to
re-establish law and order, and start dispensing food. He does not want to deal with the
whining of the unwashed masses.

There are a few options remaining to this war. The first is that Rhaegar wins a complete
victory against the rebels, to the point where they cannot keep fighting. It is unlikely, but it is
a possibility. This will put Tywin in a poor position, because such an event would rouse the
Reach from their lethargy (they will have known of his attack on King's Landing by now,
meaning the Reacher forces along the Reach-Westerlands border are free to move if they
haven't already), and then Prince Rhaegar's forces, re-bolstered with the Reach, will march on
King's Landing against Tywin alone. Tywin frowns as he thinks of the bloody cloak Gregor
Clegane just dropped off. This cannot be allowed to happen, under any circumstances.
Somehow, he doubts that Rhaegar would feel merciful towards him.

The second is that Rhaegar wins an incomplete victory, where the rebels can still leave and
regroup. If Tywin does not help them, such a situation will end similarly to the first option,
where the Reach finally throws themselves behind Rhaegar and mops up the remaining
rebels.

The third is that the rebels win an incomplete victory, in which case they will request his
assistance to hunt down the remainder of Rhaegar's forces. The man will likely retreat
through the Reach and hope to gather more loyalists to bolster his cause that way. It will be
long and bloody, and just as bad as an outright defeat.

Therefore the fourth option is the only option. Whoever lied about Jaime's execution at
Aerys' hands knew how he would react. Tywin had played right into his hands, and now he
was in a corner of his own making. With the deaths of the royal family – sans Queen Rhaella
and Prince Viserys, who had been sent away to Dragonstone after the defeat at Ashford –
Tywin has thrown in his lot with the rebels, and he can't take it back.

The rebels must achieve total victory, and Prince Rhaegar must die.
 283 AC: The Blonde, the Brunette, and the Redhead

It wasn't until Lord Hoster and Ser Brynden returned from the front that she realized her "Cat,
you must spend time with your babe, he needs you, let me do the work and help you" act (so
sue her for liking the power and freedom that came with being the Lady of Riverrun) might
have gone a little too well. Surely, those two had not expected to come home to Riverrun on
fire, but neither did they expect the castle to be running even better than when they had left,
with Lysa of all people being the one responsible.

(She won't let them know just what else she was responsible for. Tywin Lannister riding his
cavalry straight into Rhaegar's flanks and ending the battle before it began, for a start.)

"It's true, Father," Cat said. "I was bedridden because I was pregnant with little Robb, and I
still needed to rest for a long while after the birth. The babe and I are healthy, but it was
difficult, and I could not have managed without Lysa."

"Well," Lord Hoster said, looking her up and down, "if that is what you say, Cat, then you
have done very well, Lysa, and I am proud of your effort. Your future husband would be most
pleased with you."

"It was only my duty, Father," Lysa said, because she didn't know what else to say, but a
lifetime of corporate politics had taught her how to kiss ass as well as any other professional
bootlicker. "Maester Vyman did much of the work. I only did as I saw Cat do, before."

Maester Vyman, bless him, is only too happy to act to his Lord like he was the competent one
who ought to get credit for everything. In her old life, Lysa would have been supremely
irritated as someone else taking credit for her efforts, but in this life, flying under the radar is
useful to her. In a corporate setting where promotions and pay raises were on the line, such a
thing cannot stand, but Lysa is already pretty much the highest rank any woman can attain in
Westeros. Getting a reputation will not tangibly help her. (For now.)

"Now go pack your things, daughter," Lord Hoster ordered. "You will be coming with me to
King's Landing."

Lysa keeps her poker face on and refuses to let herself be surprised. She was yet unmarried
because obviously, Lord Hoster was saving her for after the war. This time, being "unspoiled"
(they still didn't know about the first time with Petyr that she would like to reiterate she had
no control over), he had higher hopes for her than the old man of the Eyrie. This time, Father
was looking to gain some extra favor, for having been one of the original families to support
King Robert. This time, Father was looking for one thing that House Tully had been
promised but never got – a royal marriage.

By the time Lysa arrives in the fetid cesspool of sewage that is King's Landing, Lyanna's
death was public knowledge. Even with the advanced timeline, it hadn't been enough.
Rhaegar had only left her with three Kingsguards, no midwife or maester, the dumbass.
Northern girl in the heat of Dorne, away from her entire support network, in the middle of
bumfuck nowhere, without anything that could be considered proper infrastructure even by
this ass-backwards world's standards. It was a miracle she'd carried Jon Snow to term at all.

Speaking of Jon Snow, there is no mention of him, or Ned's precious honor, and for a second
Lysa thinks that somehow she's also accidentally killed off the savior of the world or
something stupid like that. She quickly gets her answer, though: Eddard and Rickard Stark
have a stiff distance between them, like they've argued extensively over and over about the
same thing and failed to come to a proper resolution. When she comes to greet them, because
they're her sister's new family, and of course she ought to say good-day! she catches a
glimpse of one of Rickard Stark's men-at-arms carrying a dark-haired infant.

She's a stupid teenager girl, raised to want to marry and have babies; of course she's going to
go over and coo over it, even if it's just a random commoner baby. She's got a reputation to
uphold as a sweet, soft, silly thing – but to the smallfolk she's "one of the 'good' ones" who
bothers to learn their names and stuff. Why yes, says Donal-the-NPC, it absolutely one
hundred percent is his son. He had been sweet on some Crownlands girl, promised to come
back for her and the babe (you know how soldiers are, haha), but then the war had dragged
on and when he managed to finally come back the girl had died in childbirth.

It was a cute baby, sure, but Lord Eddard was oddly protective around it for a baby of a
supposedly random guard. Well, Lysa thought, at least Rickard is more practical than his son.
Cat would definitely be happier in her marriage, Lysa supposed. Good for her.

Lysa was more concerned about her own impending marriage. Robert Baratheon was now
back on the market, and noblemen everywhere were shoving their daughters and sisters at
him, her own father included.

It was not a surprise to hear that she was near the top of the list merely due to her family
name. Lord Hoster must have been wondering to himself if it would have been better to
marry Lysa off to Ned Stark, while saving Cat for potential queenship. Despite having
acquitted herself well as the acting Lady of Riverrun during the war, certainly he still thought
Cat was more intelligent, more graceful, better trained and suited for the position of the two
of them. Or, at least, more able to compete with Cersei.

But this was alright with Lysa, that though she was a serious runner-up, no one thought she
actually had a chance of successfully winning against a daughter of Tywin Lannister. Firstly,
other people having low expectations of you is very useful, because they'll be pleasantly
surprised with the least amount of effort you put in. Secondly, because Lysa herself had no
intention or desire to be Robert's queen. Cersei could have Robert for all Lysa cared. Enjoy
your crown, bitch.

(Also, Lysa had the sense that if she did win somehow, she'd find herself dead of poison
within a sennight, and Cersei would end up queen anyway.)

Well, her father still had a number of backup plans. The first was hoping that Jaime Lannister
was released from the kingsguard, so he could marry Lysa to him as he originally intended.
Now, Lysa had nothing against Ser Jaime, but she knew that if that happened, Cersei would
even more furiously find a way to kill her off than if she just had the crown. Possessive bitch
wouldn't let anyone have her brother.
The second was marrying her to Stannis, under the assumption that Robert would make him
the lord of Storm's End. Of all the husbands to land, Stannis was probably one of the better
ones. He might be humorless, dour, and prickly, but he was also responsible, reasonably
intelligent, not a spendthrift, and didn't sleep around. Therefore, he was unlikely to leave her
destitute or with the pox. Apart from him, Lysa couldn't think of many better choices. Mace
Tyrell was perfectly good to his wife Alerie, but Olenna Tyrell was the sort of person who
was fun to read about and hell to live with, and probably the worst in-law to be around other
than Tywin "a hundred coins of silver and one of gold on a bloody red sheet" Lannister. And
Ned was already taken by Cat.

Lysa shrugs. Throwing the competition to Cersei is an easy sell compared to everything else
she has done or will have to do. So Lysa smiles demurely when she is spoken to, blandly
defers to Cersei whenever she tried to bully her, and all the while fixed her laser sights on
Stannis.

"Lady Cersei," she greets, curtsying. She makes sure that while it's technically fine, it has an
air of uncertainty and clumsiness to it.

Cersei sniffs. "Ah, yes, you're the other Tully girl." She gives a fake smile. "Almost as
beautiful as your sister."

And you're almost as smart as your brother. Lysa hunches her shoulders and gives a
performative wince.

Beside her, Hoster Tully sighs but otherwise makes no reaction. Tywin is as stoic as ever.

She, Lord Hoster, Cersei, and Lord Tywin had been invited to dinner with Robert, Stannis,
and Jon Arryn, while Ser Jaime stood guard. Officially it was a state dinner. Unofficially it
was a cockfight between Lord Hoster and Lord Tywin, with Cersei and her as the roosters in
the ring. One that Lysa didn't care about winning or losing, but Lord Hoster didn't need to
know that.

The dinner continues blandly and by the end of the second course Cersei is already acting
like she's a queen and it's all a done deal. Robert is far too drunk to care either way, and
really, it's Jon Arryn making the decisions here. Jon Arryn would have probably made the
decision to join Robert to House Lannister even if Cersei was the younger, more unsure, less
beautiful one. They needed Tywin in the alliance more than Hoster, now that the war was
over.

"I – I like to spend time with my siblings, Cat and Edmure, my Lord," she says quietly, when
asked about her hobbies. This is after Cersei has waxed poetic about her skill in music,
dance, charity (haha, no), and all the other queenly attributes.

Her father frowns and kicks her foot under the table, because it's very obviously not the sort
of winning answer becoming of a future queen. Lysa ignores him. Cersei's smirking at her
and indulging in her own self-superiority. Good for you, queen. You rule over delululand the
way you were born to do.
Tywin is obviously very bored of this little hissy catfighting, and changes the subject to more
important topics like the political situation, finances, the capitulation of the Reach and Dorne,
and the remaining Targaryen holdouts on Dragonstone. Cersei looks like she is going to
argue, but Tywin shuts her up with a fierce glare. Then he turns his gaze on her in a more
assessing look that has Lysa quickly excusing herself as the "grown men speak".

Their surrender to Cersei Lannister might cause some more trouble in the future, given how
god-awful rulers both Robert and Cersei would prove to be, but Lysa intended to tackle
things one step at a time. It would cause her even worse trouble now if she didn't yield this
one battle that she never cared to win in the first place. Lysa knew that if she did want to try,
she would just seduce Robert while he was drunk, comforting him about Lyanna, and then
the very next morning her father could march in, performatively furious on behalf of her
honor, and force Robert and Jon Arryn's hand that way. Of course, doing so would be a one-
way ticket to being poisoned with moon tea or, failing that, having her and all her children
strangled in the cradle.

Her father was a hard man, but she highly doubted that he had the ability to raise his banners
in war against Tywin Lannister and win. Nor did he have the stomach to murder Cersei
Lannister in cold blood. The Riverlands did not have the wealth or power. They did have
allies, but she doubted Robert would give a shit for anything other than the "easy" solution
and Jon Arryn would also take the more diplomatic solution, which would involve shoving
everything under the rug. Only Ned and Cat might fight for justice for her, but they were far
away and they too would not dare break the King's peace if Robert and Jon Arryn already
came to a settlement about her mysterious demise.

The opposite was not true for Tywin Lannister. He'd have his grandson's arse warming the
throne come hell or high water.

But forget Robert and Cersei. Right now her focus was on someone else, and he'd just walked
into her crosshairs. And unlike his brother, this was big game she actually wanted to snipe.

Stannis Baratheon.

Stannis as a young man was, as she found out, far easier to game. An older Stannis had all his
habits, both good and bad, ossified; a younger Stannis had not entirely given up on the world
just yet. The bitterness and unjustness had not yet had decades to harden.

It was at yet another one of the lavish feasts Robert was throwing, that she slipped out of the
main hall to one of the side balconies where she knew Stannis liked to hide when he got too
tired of socializing but it was still too early to retire politely. There, she waited, until right on
time, Stannis appeared.

"I apologize, my Lady," he said, looking away. "I did not think this balcony was occupied."

"It's quite alright, my Lord. I only needed some fresh air. I would welcome your company, if
you do not find mine too taxing."

"Very well," he said brusquely.

And he stood there, brooding silently. Any other woman would find that terribly rude, but
knowing what she did about him, she only found it endearingly awkward.

"It is a good thing you are here, my Lord, because I meant to speak to you anyway," she said.
"I have a secret to tell you, but only you."

He lifted an eyebrow. "Not a dangerous one, I hope. I have had too many of them."

"Nothing of the sort." She leaned in and whispered, "I purposely hoped your brother would
pick Lady Cersei."

He frowned, confused. She leaned back, triumphant. She had him now.

"Why is that, my Lady?"

"Because I like you better, of course."

Stannis nearly choked on his lemon water. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me."

"You. Like me. Better than Robert?"

"Before you accuse me of anything, it is not a cruel jape, but the truth. And of course none
would say this aloud, lest they suffer the King's wrath, but I heard from my goodbrother," in a
book from a world that didn't exist anymore, "that Lady Lyanna didn't prefer him either."

Stannis shook his head. "I know not what the dead think, but everyone says my brother is
handsome, charming, and easy to befriend. The same people say I am…difficult."

"My goodness! All those people are your wives?"

"Do not mock me, my lady."

"I do not mock you. I only point out the truth. Why should you care what they think? They
are not the ones marrying you. They are not me. They are mere senseless crowds. Their
opinions are fickle, and change like the wind."

"And yet they say there is wisdom in crowds, sometimes."

"Then 'everyone' also knows your brother is a whoremongering drunk who can never keep to
one bed. He's loud and friendly and wonderful to his friends; he is also disrespectful to his
family. He treats you, his brother, terribly; he will also do the same to Cersei, or any other
wife he might have, and her crown will taste like ashes in her mouth. I do not need nor want
another child for a husband; I need a man, a partner who can do his duty. Someone who will
help me manage our holdings and raise our children properly, not a spendthrift who will
squander their inheritance before they are grown."

Stannis is silent, but his eyes are wide. They're very blue, a clearer blue than his brother's,
which are more often than not bloodshot and dulled by drink since the news of Lyanna's
death reached King's Landing. She thinks she likes him. People say Robert is the more
handsome of the two, but Robert's handsomeness is too trust-fund frat-boy for her to feel
comfortable around. In addition, Stannis is more controllable. Both young men are stubborn
in their own way, and Robert is wholly disinterested in ruling, true, but of the two Stannis is
more starved of praise and acknowledgment. He would lean on her in a way Robert never
would.

"Is that what you really think?" he asked.

"If you despise me for insulting your brother then say so now, but I will not apologize for the
truth."

"No, you wouldn't, would you?"

"Family, duty, honor," she said. "Your brother values none, and you all three. What more
could a woman want? False pretty words cannot keep me warm."

Later the news was that Lord Tully's younger daughter had been passed over for queenship in
favor of Lord Tywin's daughter, but she had been offered the King's brother instead to soothe
over ruffled feathers, and the triumph was sweet in Lysa's mouth.

Even later than that, she'd look back and curse herself for being too confident.
 283 AC: Look Back Here for the Blunder that Started
Everything
Chapter Notes

Some homophobic/racist insults. My character does not represent my real personal

views.

The original plan had been a double wedding for the King and his brother – Robert to Cersei,
and his heir presumptive Stannis to Lysa, the daughters of two major figures of the Rebellion.
Signifying unity in their alliance of the Great Houses, and all that jazz. But Cersei had thrown
a fit and didn't want to share her special day with anyone else; she wanted to be the center of
attention at her own wedding and coronation. Neither Lysa nor Stannis cared nearly enough
to fight the issue, figuring that drawing even more of Cersei's negative attention over such a
trifling issue wasn't worth it.

They should have. Oh, they should have. Again, Lysa fucked up, and this is how:

It just so happened that the new ships of the Royal Fleet were finally stocked and ready to
sail for the island in the middle of all the wedding preparations. As a result, these had been
their choices:

1. Delay Stannis setting sail for Dragonstone until after the two weddings were taken care
of. This was unacceptable to Robert, who wanted the last Targaryens taken care of as
soon as possible. ("What if they get away while we're here, partying?")
2. Delay the royal weddings until after Stannis came back. This was unacceptable to
Tywin, who wanted Cersei to be crowned Queen and start with the half-Lannister heir-
making as soon as possible. ("You cannot predict delays caused by the sea or an
extended siege. Best to get it over with.")
3. Quickly marry Lysa off to Stannis right before he leaves, and then have the royal
wedding proceed while he's gone. This was unacceptable to Hoster ("House Tully
ought to get a well-planned special day with all the high lords present too, not some
hasty half-planned thing that makes it seem like a cover-up of some shameful
behavior"), Tywin ("Think of how it would look if the younger brother married and had
an heir before the elder"), and Cersei ("That fishwife in her fishwife's rags will not
overshadow me and have her wedding first!").

So the last plan – Stannis goes to Dragonstone and misses the royal wedding, Cersei and
Robert get married, and then Stannis can get married to Lysa when he comes back – had been
the only one they could go with. Stannis didn't give a shit about parties so it hadn't been
"unacceptable" to him to miss his own brother's wedding the way everyone else had various
excuses to find the other options unacceptable, and Robert probably secretly thought that not
having Stannis at his wedding would make it better and less un-fun.

Do you understand what's going to happen here? Do you?

Well, if you did, good for you, because Lysa fucking didn't, until it was too late. More on
that, later.

She has to admit, Cersei is a true vision, an absolute goddess of beauty (though not of love,
never of love) on her wedding day. She wears a ruby-red dress with gold lace to match her
maiden's (what an utter joke) cloak. The cut of the dress is bold and daring, showing off her
shoulders and cleavage, and emphasizes her narrow waist and curvaceous bosom and hips. A
necklace of pearls interlaced with emeralds that wraps around her neck half a dozen times is
joined by a golden hairnet studded with more emeralds and bracelets of braided gold.
Everyone stares at Cersei with pure desire and envy. Everyone, except for Robert himself,
who has a kind of empty, faraway look in his eyes.

Cersei has triumph in her eyes as the crown is placed on her head, but all Lysa feels for her is
pity. It is Lysa who tastes victory as the waiters and serving maids bring out the courses, all
seventy-seven of them. (Lysa's victory will turn to ashes too, not that she knows it yet.)

The morning after, she only catches vague glimpses of Cersei, but Queen Bitch definitely
looks far less happy than she did the night before. She's also spending pretty much all her
time with Jaime attached to her side, and –

At this moment, Lysa had thought to herself, Hmmm, that's going to be a big problem, isn't
it?

And of course Lysa hated problems, so she set about crossing that problem off her list as
soon as possible.

In retrospect, what Lysa should have done was, instead of waiting for after Cersei was tied
down in marriage (and therefore guaranteed to be stuck in King's Landing) to put her plan
into motion, wait until after Lysa also was tied down in marriage. There – that was her
mistake. She had only been thinking about Cersei in her plan to separate the Lannister twins.
Everything else she did apart from the timing had been an absolute masterstroke, if she had
to say so herself. Instead…

Well, she'll get to that later. Her masterstroke, first.

The trick with handling the Lannisters was knowing that Lord Tywin would always pick
Jaime over Cersei. He'd already gotten Cersei as Queen, true, but what he wanted more was
Jaime returned to him as his heir. And Lysa never turned down an opportunity to curry favor
and kiss ass, especially if the subject in question was the sort to murder first and ask
questions later. Besides, separating Cersei and Jaime could only be a good thing, because it
would lead to less trouble. And anything leading to less trouble was fine in her book. She
spent the rest of the evening scheming and then waited for the following morning, where she
and her father were breaking their fast, to spring her plan.
They're dining alone in her father's chambers, in a corner of the Red Keep that Lord Hoster
had claimed as House Tully's temporary headquarters. The entire place is crawling with spies,
and Lysa isn't arrogant enough to believe they've caught them all, so she continues with her
sweet-and-dumb act like her life depended on it. (It did.)

"What happened to all the wildfire anyway?" she asks, trying to make herself sound as
airheaded and stupid as possible.

"What?" Lord Hoster looks at her sharply.

"You know, the wildfire. That the Mad King liked to burn people with. Surely a man like that
wouldn't have contented himself with a few jars. I heard that he always had giant vats ready,
to dunk people in – " she catches his sharp glare and shrinks into herself. "I'm sorry, Father,
that was foolish of me."

"Don't you dare speak of that nonsense where the King or Lord Rickard can here," he
snapped. Then, his brain processes the rest of what she said, and he frowns. "...But, that is a
good question," he said slowly. "We ought to ask Varys."

"Why didn't he already tell King Robert or Jon Arryn? He's the Master of Whispers. He
served under the last King. He should know already, shouldn't he?" Lysa asked. "If it was me,
I'd tell. Septa Mordane always told me not to tell lies or hide misdeeds."

That was a massive joke, if any. Neither Old-Lysa or New-Lysa gave two shits about what
that dried-up old woman had to say.

"Huh. That does seem like an important thing not to tell," her father muses. "That confounded
eunuch!" He gets to his feet, nearly knocking his chair back in his haste. "I apologize, Lysa,"
he says, and it was a clear dismissal if Lysa ever saw one. "I must cut our meal short."

The next few days pass in a frenzied hurry. Lysa is told nothing, but knowing what she does,
she can guess – the "men in charge", namely Jon Arryn, Tywin Lannister, and Hoster Tully,
have probably interrogated Varys, Jaime, and anyone still living from the old administration
to find the locations of all the wildfire that Aerys and his pyromancers might have left
behind, which would have led them to all the caches buried beneath the city. Afterwards, they
would have to carefully transport all the jars, in secret to prevent mass panic, to be destroyed
far away from the population centers. A tough job, given how many nobles are still milling
about after Robert and Cersei's wedding.

It isn't until a full sennight passes that she sees her father again. "How did you know?" he
grilled her.

"I don't know what you mean, father," she said.

"The wildfire."

"So there was wildfire? I was only curious. I know it was foolish to mention the Mad King so
soon, father, even if it was just the two of us – I'm sorry – "
He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "You need not worry about the wildfire. It has
been taken care of, if you must know."

"Oh, well that's good!"

Acting the airheaded fool is safe. Airheaded fools are not given extra duties, they're not seen
as threats, and they're not expected to be made Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.

"Varys has said nothing of import, but Ser Jaime spoke the truth in the end. Foolish boy, he
meant to keep his silence, out of some damned Kingsguard honor, keeping his liege's secrets.
Aerys meant to blow all of it up at once and kill everyone: the Lannister army sacking the
city, as well as all the half a million souls within."

Lysa makes sure to paint the appropriate shock and horror on her face. Now, here comes the
next part, which must be handled delicately. She bows her head and whispers as softly as she
can while she nervously fidgets with her silverware so that the noise covers her words.
They're in Maegor's Holdfast, which supposedly doesn't have any secret passages, and all
their guards are loyal to House Tully, but Lysa isn't taking any chances. "I can understand Ser
Jaime wanting to fulfill his vows of keeping his King's secrets – " no she couldn't, but an idiot
wouldn't understand such a logical break, " – but why didn't Varys say anything? I don't trust
that creature, Father; he's not a woman, but not truly a man either, and he's a foreigner
besides."

That's the one okay thing about Westeros. She can be as everything-phobic and racist as she
wants and there won't be any meetings with HR. She actually doesn't give a shit about those
things – she hates everyone equally – but those kinds of insults are the easiest sort of low-
hanging fruit, and she hates being asked to hold back in a fight. Every weapon available to
her, she will use, and the prejudices of others are absolutely fair game.

Her father nodded. "Jon Arryn believes we still need him, though less so after this revelation.
Varys claims he had no idea, that Aerys distrusted all but the pyromancers towards the
end…"

"Still, how could he miss all those jars of wildfire? He's either a fool or a traitor."

Hoster Tully turns a sharp eye on her, and Lysa knows that she is dangerously close to
revealing too much of her hand, but as the only witness is her father, it's a small price to pay
for getting Varys out of the way, too. Due to her handling of Riverrun during the war, her
father already suspects that she's actually smarter than she lets on; she only needs to balance
it as her being reasonably bright but also young, immature, and easily distracted. Maybe
imply that Catelyn had done the brunt of the real work as expected, and that her sister had
stuck up for her out of pity than any true competence on Lysa's part. The wildfire situation is
her absolute best weapon right now – to separate Jaime and Cersei, and remove Varys from
the board if she's lucky.

"Stop that, Lysa, that's unbecoming of a Lady. I thought you had better table manners than
this." Fuck you, Hoster, I'm trying to help! "But I agree. How do you think we can convince
Jon Arryn, though?"
She walks back into her "silly little girl" suit, still whispering, clumsily banging her goblet
against her plate. She hopes he gets a migraine. "But surely Robert is the King, and he ought
to make the final decision. I don't understand the hearts of warriors, for I am but a girl, but I
would have thought he would have greater fury at Varys playing us all for fools. Robert can
let all these other nobles bend the knee for the sake of unity, but if he allows Aerys'
spymaster to live like this, he'll look weak and indecisive. Especially since Lord Tywin
already killed Princess Elia and her babes. Varys couldn't even find Lady Lyanna before she
died, and she was with the Crown Prince and three Kingsguards. Surely such a group is not
inconspicuous when they travel."

There. Just enough directness to make her seem simple, but also, with just enough reason
underneath it to drive her father towards the right answer. Rile up Robert enough, and you
can easily drive him to give out impulsive commands in your favor in his anger. Maybe, if
she's lucky, he'll fly into a rage when they're questioning Varys and punch him, and then
Varys falls to the ground and hits his head the wrong way. If she's unlucky, one of his little
birds will overhear this conversation and he'll run off before they even get to him.

Most likely, they'll put him under house arrest in his chambers or some other area, where he'll
certainly manage to escape through a secret passage somehow. They might also put him in
the Black Cells (they can't keep him on the top floor as that's gen pop for a bunch of petty
thieves and lowborn criminals, and the second floor with private rooms reserved for nobles is
currently still full of loyalists that have yet to be ransomed back by their families), which will
hold him as well as if he'd been put under house arrest in a cushy bedroom. Either case is
suboptimal, but workable – Lysa just needs him to be trapped in one place for a few hours, so
that she can kill him herself before he manages to run.

Hoster Tully is once again giving her the side-eye, not entirely sure if his daughter is an idiot
or a genius. He gives her a second test.

"Lord Tywin wants his son and heir, Ser Jaime, back. But the Kingsguard serves for life and
cannot father heirs. What would you do?"

"Can't King Robert just change the law, then?" she asked. Why don't they just kill Varys; are
they stupid? Why don't they just change the law; are they stupid? Why don't they just all hold
hands and stop fighting; are they stupid? "He's the King."

"He would be going against precedent."

"He rebelled against King Aerys, though. That's a greater break of tradition than the
Kingsguard. Besides, the Kingsguard was invented by Queen Visenya for her brother, so
really, it's Targaryens who made up all those rules about the Kingsguard serving for life. The
Kings we had before didn't have a Kingsguard; they just had good loyal men. The
Kingsguard is a Targaryen thing and we both know how much King Robert hates
Targaryens."

"You would advocate disbanding the Kingsguard entirely?"

"I am just a girl and know nothing of war," she said, "and I know a man like Ser Barristan is
still very good for his age. But what if he goes blind, or loses a leg, or – develops gout, I don't
know. Even skilled warriors like Kingsguards can grow old and infirm. Should a younger,
stronger warrior be denied while waiting for a Kingsguard to die?"

"So we disband the Kingsguard and Lord Tywin gets his heir back. And," he eyed her, "his
daughter is already Queen."

Lysa lets her lower lip wobble. "I – I swear I tried, Father, but King Robert never seemed to
care for anyone other than Lady Lyanna, and neither Lady–ah, Queen Cersei nor I looked
anything like her. But – Queen Cersei, she's so much more beautiful than I am, and I'm – I'm
not Cat. Cat would have done better, I wish she was here in my stead. I tried, Father, I
promise."

Her father glares at her, then looks away. "I wish you would have tried harder , Lysa, but
nevermind. I never expected you to be picked, anyway."

Lysa droops her head and shoulders, and does her best to hide her smile, even as she also
mentally rolls her eyes and thinks, Gee, love you too, Dad.

"Some might argue we give Lord Tywin too much favor, for a man who only joined the
rebellion at the very end."

"Well, maybe we can say that we won't pass a law disbanding the Kingsguard until – until he
does something we want?"

"Like what?"

"...The crown is still spending a great deal of money to rebuild King's Landing after the sack,
right? And – and Lord Stannis says the new royal fleet is also expensive to build, because the
one Aerys had was commanded by loyalists, and they're all on Dragonstone. So we can ask
him for even more money than he's already given. And – " she gets another idea, "and we can
force him to exchange Gregor Clegane and Amory Lorch for his son."

That gives her father pause. "Gregor Clegane and Amory Lorch?"

"I – I heard rumors that they did terrible things to Princess Elia and her children when they
killed them. They said King Robert called them dragonspawn, after."

"He did."

"But Princess Elia was a Martell. She wasn't a Targaryen at all. She was a victim of the
Targaryens, too. Prince Rhaegar betrayed her. And Dorne is very angry, and they might
secede. The Targaryens had trouble enough conquering Dorne when they had dragons, and
holding it when Prince Daeron made his conquest, and it was only marriage that tied them
back to the Kingdoms. But because Princess Elia is dead, they don't have any more reason to
stay, and maybe they can't afford to fight another war, but neither can we. If they chose to
stop paying their taxes, for example, I'm not sure what resources we'd have to force them. If –
if Lord Tywin gave up the Mountain and Amory Lorch, maybe we could avoid that trouble."
"Trade two dogs for his heir and peace for his royal grandchildren." Lord Hoster looks at her
assessingly. Shit, was that too smart?

"It's just – " she begins to cry. Not loudly or obnoxiously, just a few small tears. There's no
point in manipulative crying if you're going to look ugly doing it, because that will just annoy
people and turn them off; the trick is to only scrunch up the eyes slightly as the tears flow, but
not the rest of the face. The rest of the face must remain smooth, the mouth should be a
pleasant pout without any teeth showing, and under no circumstances can there be any actual
snot. "It's just so awful what they did to them, Father. I know – I know the King hates
Rhaegar but – they were just babes, and surely they are not guilty – and I know you said that
their deaths make the succession less messy but – but they were just babes."

The tears do exactly what she expects them to do, which is make her father turn away in
discomfort. "There, there, Lysa," he says, giving her an awkward pat on the shoulder. "You're
a gentle girl with a gentle heart. But sometimes unpleasant things happen in war, and Lord
Lannister saw that the dirty work was necessary for Robert's throne to be secure. The
Princess and her babes no longer suffer. There is nothing you can do for them anymore."
Under his breath, he whispers, "I knew I should have brought Cat."

And I knew you were a jackass, but we don't always get to turn back time, do we? Lysa thinks
snottily.

In truth she doesn't really give much thought to Princess Elia or her babes, since Oberyn
Martell's revenge fantasies were all pointed at Tywin Lannister and his pet beasts anyway.
But she will never be easy as long as people like the Mountain, or Euron Greyjoy, or Ramsey
Bolton live. The latter two are not in her reach yet, so Gregor Clegane will have to suffice for
now.

He lets her silently weep for a few more seconds, before he says, "Lysa, but you need to be
stronger than this. King's Landing will eat you alive otherwise."

"Yes, Father. I – " sniffle, " – I swear I'll try harder."

"That'll have to do," Lord Hoster mutters.

And you're a worthless bastard who deserves to die of cancer while Tywin Lannister burns
his ancestral lands down around him, Lysa thinks. Aloud, she says, "I love you, Father,"
because she's petty and she knows Hoster Tully is allergic to feelings and that will one
hundred percent make him more uncomfortable than the heat of a thousand mosquitoes.

The Lannister twins, Clegane and Lorch, and if she's lucky, Varys. Five birds. Five birds,
with one stone.

Her current self feels like an absolute genius; her future self wants to punch her in the face. If
only she had waited to free Jaime after Stannis got back from Dragonstone!
 284 AC: The Caged Bird Does Not Sing
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

She had wished that Robert would have simply flown into a rage and bashed the eunuch's
brain in right then and there, of course, but she couldn't get a straight flush every time. It was
a long shot anyway; save for the Targaryens, Robert was not that much of an insane brute.

Well, you know what they say. If you want something done right, do it yourself. Lysa had
taken matters into her own hands regarding Petyr Baelish; she might as well give Varys the
same honor.

The important part here was that between Varys' arrest and any escape he might have made,
he would be confined in a predictable, small, enclosed area for a few hours. Much easier to
access than if he had been roaming free. Robert had made the timing easy for her too; he'd
bellowed for Varys to be taken to the Black Cells so loudly that she probably would have
heard it all the way back in Riverrun.

Now, it should be noted that a successful murder attempt needs to come with proper
preparation and planning to even have the slightest chance of success, especially when your
target is a high-profile character. And even more planning is required, if one wants to also get
away with it.

So, phase one: case the environment.

Speed would be paramount to this operation. While there were benefits to being the forgotten
middle child, one of which was that it took people way longer to notice you were missing,
she couldn't hide away indefinitely. In addition, out of caution, she had operated under the
assumption that despite her clumsy silverware handling, one of Varys' little birds had
overheard the conversation between her and her father, and Varys knew that several important
people within the Rebel faction were pushing to have him executed. If he had intended to
flee, he would be gone by nightfall. He might have even already had the keys to his cell and
all the dungeon gates in his hands. So. She couldn't afford to get lost or otherwise waste time
on bullshit mistakes.

Therefore: she had gathered her intel, mapped out her entire walking path, assembled her
disguise and equipment, and had it all ready to go long before Robert had even ordered the
eunuch frog-marched to the Black Cells.

That is, Lysa had been exploring the Red Keep within days of setting foot inside. Knowing
how to get around without being seen was an undisputed advantage that she would absolutely
not squander. True, she hadn't been making actual, tangible, good progress until recently –
she simply hadn't had as much spare time back then when she and Cersei had still ostensibly
been in competition for the Queenship, and then all the wedding preparations after, whereas
now it was all mostly just sitting around and waiting for Stannis to come back.
To aid in her endeavors, Lysa had stolen a male servant's uniform – she was still flat-chested
enough that she could bind down her chest to look like a boy – with a kerchief and cap to
hide her bright red hair. In addition, she'd swiped a pair of sturdy boots from a sleeping
stablehand. (He was lucky; had it been any other noble that had caught him it would've been
a whipping for sure. They were surprisingly well-made, for lowborn footwear. Kid must have
saved up for it; he'd be heartbroken they were gone. Sucks to suck – if she hadn't stolen them
someone else would've; those were way too nice for a stablehand. Or perhaps he had stolen it
from someone else, in which case he'd gotten what he deserved. Either way, Lysa wasn't
going to be doing all that walking in her delicate noblewoman's slippers.)

In this disguise, she had, after many hours and days of frustration, managed to find and map
out all the secret passageways of the Red Keep that had been mentioned in the books, plus a
few more she'd found by accident that weren't mentioned. All this, done weeks before she
had even brought up Jaime and the wildfire situation, let alone put the idea of arresting Varys
into her father's head, for that matter. She wasn't arrogant enough to believe she knew every
secret passageway on the Red Keep just yet, but she had a good idea of the major ones. There
was the one Arya had found leading from the basement where Robert had stashed all the
dragon skulls, as well as the dragon mosaic room, which was a three-way connection
between the Tower of the Hand, the fourth level of the dungeons, and the Blackwater Rush –
handy if you wanted to escape imprisonment and murder your father while he's on the
chamberpot before getting the hell out of dodge. They were well hidden; you could walk past
them half a dozen times and not know they were there even when you were actively looking
for them. And once you did find them, you had to crawl through them, slowly, with a stick in
front of you, so that you didn't accidentally kill yourself by getting stuck in a trap.
Comparatively, the many other passageways she'd found that weren't quite "secret", just
hidden, were much nicer and easier to explore. These were common fixtures in all the "rich
people houses" everywhere, in this world or the last, because ugh , who wanted to see a dirty
poor do things like carry coals and dirty laundry and the contents of emptied chamberpots?

No one, was the answer to that. Which also played into her servant disguise very well.

A lot of her plan had relied on luck, and not getting caught, of course, but like any luck it was
increased with preparation. She could have gotten in a lot of trouble if she was caught
running around dressed as a commoner, so she had had her lies ready. If anyone had found
her scurrying around like this, she had planned to simply cry and show them a threatening
note left under her pillow (she made the note herself, of course – THE DRAGON WILL
RISE AGAIN AND STRIKE ALL TRAITORS DOWN), claiming that she had been trying
to find out who it was herself because she hadn't wanted to bother her father because he'd told
her not to bother him with her insignificant problems, and she hadn't been sure if it was
actually a hidden Targaryen loyalist or simply a very ill-advised prankster, but she had been
so scared and she hadn't known what to do, and then I got lost, and then I stubbed my toe,
and it hurts Father, and and and –

It was exactly the kind of idiotic bullshit that old-Lysa would have done, so she might have
been punished for it, which would have put a damper in her plans, but she wouldn't have been
in danger for being seen as unusual.
But she'd gotten lucky here, and no one had caught her, because no one ever looked at the
help. Also, a past life of sneaking out past curfew had given her plenty of experience in
avoiding the watchful eyes of authority. Her past parents had had security cameras with
infrared sensors and motion detection running 24/7, for crying out loud. Fucking police state
stooges. Westeros with their very human guards who got sleepy and bored and distracted
could never compete. They thought they were raising an obedient daughter; all they had
accomplished was the creation of a compulsive liar.

Phase two: the false evidence.

When Varys dropped dead, there would probably be suspicion and blame. This would be
easy; Varys was an extremely suspicious character with a lot of people who hated or
mistrusted him, and there were dozens of people who would want him dead before Lysa ever
even entered the picture. Lysa spends hours in her own chambers faking letters in different,
clumsy handwriting, like she's one of the eunuch's mute little children. She doesn't know how
many he has or what their names are or what their identities are, and the best part is, no one
else knows, either . Which means that she can write literally anything and no one will know
whether it's fake or real or where it came from.

She made up a ton of things, mostly with bits stolen here and there from the old world.
Forum posts, fan theories, a little bit of her own imagination, sprinkled with just enough
confirmed knowledge from the books and show. That's the thing about lies; if you want a
really good lie you either have to sprinkle in enough truth to provide an anchor of belief, or
make it so unbelievable that no one would believe it could be made up. Or both at once.

False communications with one Illyrio Mopatis of Pentos. Vague allusions to still-living
Blackfyres. The Dornish, because no framejob is ever complete without blaming those fucks.
Stuff about Aerys, stuff about Tywin, stuff about a Great Council plot at Harrenhal, stuff
about Rickard Stark, Hoster Tully, and Jon Arryn plotting to split the Targaryen vote between
Rhaegar and Aerys to place Robert upon the throne, stuff about Rhaegar and Lyanna, stuff
about Ashara Dayne and the Tower of Joy. She had painted a damning picture of how Varys
had known from the start where Lyanna was and didn't bother to tell anyone for reasons
known only to himself. How Varys and his foreign benefactors had been plotting to sow
discord in the Seven Kingdoms with Aerys as his patsy. Every single crackpot theory from
every single discussion forum she could remember, and then some. The way she had seen it
was, if the information had been true , and verifiably so, then it would have lent credence that
it had really been Varys' communications, because who else would have known all that ? And
if it had been wrong, then, well, at least some of it had been right, so then that could have
been chalked up to Varys' little birds either mishearing things, or Varys himself making up
shit to make Aerys even more paranoid.

Oh, and one last thing.

Lysa had written down the cipher keys that she had brute forced out of House Lannister's,
House Stark's, and House Tully's communications back from the war, and mixed it into the
pile. She knows that now that the war is over and the rebels and everyone are comparing
notes, and seeing mismatches between what they had been sent and what had been reality,
people were going to be suspicious. Varys was a number one suspect in this. He had the
ability and the reach; the only thing he had lacked was motive. But with the rest of this made-
up evidence, she could manufacture a motive. Whether those discussion forum conspiracy
theorists were actually correct didn't matter. What mattered was what people only believed in
a messy situation where the real truth would likely never be found.

Now, the day of. Phase three: the alibi.

She had managed to buy herself some extra time by making everything think she was taking
a bath – she had asked the maids to fill her tub and then sent them away, saying that she
wanted to be alone. Then, she had donned her servant's garb one last time.

This time, unlike the other times, she had completed the look by swinging by the coal room
and wiping coal dust all over her face, so that she hardly looked like a human anymore, let
alone a highborn lady. She hadn't done that the other times she had gone exploring in
disguise, because cleaning up after would have been a nightmare, but this time, there could
be zero chance of being recognized and caught in the middle of her task. If no one was going
to look twice at a relatively clean-looking servant, then no one was going to stop a filthy dirty
coalboy, especially not one that was carrying a giant wicker knapsack full of, well, coal.

Phase four: acquiring the target.

From the coalroom, she had scurried through a series of servants' passageways to the room of
the dragon mosaic. Then, she had taken the secret passageway from the room of the dragon
mosaic directly to the fourth level of the dungeons.

The fourth level, the torture level, had been empty; there was no point keeping anyone down
there that wasn't being actively interrogated. She hadn't been sure if the third level had
anyone else other than Varys, but that didn't matter anyway: the gate between the fourth and
third level had been shut, and she didn't have the ability to steal the key or know how to pick
the lock. Either way, she absolutely had not wanted to risk being seen at this juncture:
servants could freely go to a lot of places without a second glance, but the dungeons of the
Red Keep were not one of them.

Her heart had beaten faster, then. The worst case scenario hadn't been Varys escaping before
she could make her move; it was happening upon him right as he was escaping, because then
he and his accomplices would have killed her for being a witness. She's not as not scared of
dying as she ought to be – she'd already died once – but death is so inconvenient.

She had calmed herself down with logic, however. The entire court had seen him being
dragged down there only less than an hour ago, and it was still daytime. If he was going to
run anywhere, he'd have waited until nightfall and then slipped out under cover of darkness.
Either way, she had pressed forward with her plan because she had already gotten so far, and
there had been nothing else to do. Not to mention, of all the players on the board to worry
about, no one even knew to suspect her.

From there, she had poked around the interrogation chamber – it had been pretty gory and
smelled even worse than it looked, full of torture implements, rusty chains, what looked to be
a bowl full of human fingernails and teeth, and all sorts of things stained with dried blood and
other human fluids, gross . (She steps carefully, making sure not to accidentally scrape
against something sharp or unsanitary or both. If she died from tetanus or black lung or some
weird disease she would make sure to find a woods witch or Red Priestess or Faceless Man to
curse Varys with her dying breath, and he wouldn't see it coming because he hated magic.)
But there had also been half-burnt torches, oily rags, unlit lamps, other miscellaneous
garbage, and the like. Perfect.

With that, she had, as quietly as possible, poured the contents of her basket out onto the
ground as close to the gate to the third floor as possible, and piled it up in a pyramid. Then,
she carefully tipped over a metal brazier, also as silently as she could, with the sound muffled
by some greasy rags, to make it look like it had naturally fallen over and spilled the coals.
The coal pile was far too big for the brazier, but no one would be able to tell by the time it
burned down. She scattered some of the false notes a little further away; the rest she'd plant in
a variety of other places.

Because here was the thing: it was true that she couldn't pass the gate between the fourth and
third levels. It was true that she wasn't going to go around trying to steal the right key from
the right guard. Even if she could, the doors to the cells on the third level were solid wood,
and didn't even let light in, so she couldn't just point a crossbow through the bars and shoot
him like she might have done on an upper level cell. If she wanted to kill Varys with a
physical weapon, she'd have had to steal another key for that cell, or pick the lock to
physically open the door herself – but even that was far too chancy; Varys might not have
been a warrior of great renown, but neither was she, and she wasn't about to get in a big noisy
knife fight in close quarters with a guy that was more than twice her weight. And she couldn't
poison him with food or drink; if he was planning to escape that very same day he wouldn't
take the risk of ingesting anything from a stranger's hand.

But she could do this.

Because gases could go everywhere she couldn't.

This , was phase five: every caver's worst nightmare.

She had never been spelunking, never wanted to go, ever, but in her old life she had watched
enough "caving gone wrong" and "mining disaster" videos to know the basics. The Black
Cells weren't quite as grand as a giant shaft deep beneath the earth, but the air was similarly
dank, stale, and poorly ventilated.

She took one very deep breath and held it. Then, all she had to do was light the enormous
pyramid of coal with her torch until it glowed red, taking care not to burn herself or set her
clothes on fire (and that was the other useful part about disguising herself in mens' clothes –
no skirts), and smother the visible light with a pile of the greasy bloody rags until it went
back down to a smolder. From this moment on, nothing but shallow breaths were allowed.

Fire cannot kill a dragon, but when it comes to combustion, a lack of flame is far more
dangerous than any burning heat.

No windows, poor ventilation, no fresh supply of oxygen. Carbon monoxide is colorless and
odorless, and one kilogram of coal can produce concentrations of over 1000 ppm inside an
enclosed standard-size two-car garage. The torture chamber and third level of the dungeon,
together, were bigger than a garage (though how much bigger she didn't know, because
medieval ceilings were much lower than modern constructions), and maybe the tiniest bit
better ventilated than a completely enclosed space, so just to be safe, she hadn't brought one
kilogram of coal. Instead, she'd brought…well, she didn't know how much exactly, but it was
as much as she could carry at once on her back. So, at least 20 kilograms, but likely more.
Lysa's body may have been that of a skinny noble teenage girl who had never done an honest
day's work in her life, but she had been giving her younger brother Edmure piggyback rides
since they were old enough to walk, and her mental determination made up for the rest of her
physical shortcomings.

1000 ppm would turn someone insensible within two hours; 2000 was certain death in that
same timeframe. 3000 meant death in less than an hour; 6000 meant death in half that time.
And 10,000 ppm caused unconsciousness in a few breaths and death in a few minutes.

(Yes, she'd had that information memorized from her past life. Don't ask why; it's not
important. That loser hadn't been nearly as important or dangerous as Varys.)

Varys might have realized that there was some kind of poison present once he started
experiencing the headache, dizziness, and nausea, but he'd also be dealing with impaired
judgment by then. If he had been able to flee his cell, he would have done so, and it was
likely he'd try to escape through the lower level rather than a higher one. Going up meant
going past more guards back to daylight where he'd be seen; going down meant heading
towards the secret passageway that led straight out of the Red Keep to the Blackwater. But if
he did that, he'd run even deeper into the poison cloud; the carbon monoxide concentration
would likely be even higher on the fourth level where Lysa had smoldered the coals than the
third. Lysa is guessing that the carbon monoxide concentration might get to the low to mid
thousands ppm on the third level or higher, and hopefully rise as as much as high thousands
to ten thousand ppm on the fourth level. If Varys went down that way, he'd probably keel
over from unconsciousness within minutes, and by the time the guards on the upper levels
knew what was going on, it would be too late for him.

If Varys died down in the fourth level, the false notes she had scattered would have been
thought to be his. If Varys died while still in his cell, they would have been attributed to one
of his contacts. Either way, the "evidence" would continue to pile up about everything Varys
had been doing that might make people want him dead, and everyone Varys had screwed over
and would want him dead.

I believe that is what is called check, and mate.

Now for phase six, the escape. Lysa grabbed her torch and her empty coalbasket, and booked
it out of there. She didn't know how long it would take for the coal pile to produce enough
carbon monoxide to reach a deadly concentration, but she wasn't going to be dumb enough to
stick around trying to find out. It would be embarrassing if she fainted and died from the
same method she was using to kill Varys with. On her way back out the secret passage from
where she came, she sealed it as tightly as she could and then jammed a piece of rubble
underneath the door to keep it from opening from the dungeon side again, partly to minimize
her own exposure to the carbon monoxide as she made her way back out, and partly to
maximize her chances of success. Even if Varys somehow managed to make it to the end of
the fourth level by holding his breath or whatever, he'd hopefully get stuck at that last
juncture, and every single minute of his that she wasted was a good thing.

Then it was the dungeons back to the dragon mosaic room, where she dragged a big heavy
piece of furniture in front of the exit from the secret passageway, in the hopes that if he had
somehow managed to open the jammed doorway from the other end and taken this path, he'd
have to double back into her improvised gas chamber. No kill like overkill. If something is
worth doing, it's worth doing right. From the mosaic room, Lysa took a series of servants'
back-passages to get as close to Varys' chambers as possible, which were currently unlocked
and in disarray during the whole hullaballoo. It looked like it had already been searched once,
which was why it was so poorly guarded now, but Lysa was certain that it would be searched
again if Varys was found dead and there were a bunch of incriminating letters addressed to
him floating around in the same vicinity.

Therefore, she needed to hide the letters very well, but not so well that they wouldn't be
found. She recalled a description in the books where Varys' bed could float up to reveal a
hidden staircase. After some fumbling, she managed to find it, and stuffed the letters in a
hinge there, then closed it again – carefully leaving the corner of one poking out so that the
next time people came in, they'd spot it, but also forgive the first round of searches for
missing it. And then more hurrying back through servants' back-passages, until finally she
makes it to her chambers.

She's almost safe. Not safe yet, but almost safe. Her face and hands had been filthy with coal
dust from her little adventure, but this, too, she'd planned for. She had stripped out of her
disguise, moistened the cleanest parts with some leftover water from the washbasin she'd
ordered her maids to set out that morning, and wiped the worst of it off, then got the rest with
a clean washcloth. She hadn't wanted to stain the bathwater – she's a fine lady; the water she
leaves behind should be slightly cloudy, not completely darked with soot. The bundle of coal-
stained clothes, she tore into strips with the help of a sharpened letter opener and then stuffed
in the cold and unlit coal brazier in the corner. Sooty washcloths and boy's clothes are
suspicious items for a lady to have possession of. Sooty rags that some careless maid forgot
while cleaning out the brazier, not so.

Then, she jumped into the bath. It had been freezing; the water had long since gone cold. But
it had been a small price to pay for an airtight (no pun intended) alibi. She had scrubbed the
remaining grime off herself with brutal efficiency and a ludicrous amount of soap, doused
herself in powders and perfumes, and when her father had finally remembered she existed
and summoned the maids to get her, it's as if nothing had ever happened.

"What does my father want?" she asks the maid that had been sent to fetch her.

"I don't know, beg pardon, milady, but we've all been ordered to the main hall by Lord Hand
himself."

"Immediately?" Lysa asks, whining like a spoiled teenage girl would. "But we were just there
this morning! And my hair !"

So Lysa gets the maids to brush and braid her hair before she ends up gathering back in the
throne room along with everyone else. There's all sorts of rumors going on, mostly to do with
Targaryen assassins, and the quality of it is all varying levels of absolute garbage to
completely useless. Someone says that the King is dead, and another says it's the Hand, or
Tywin Lannister, or Lysa's own father. Yet another person claims that there's no one dead at
all but a bunch of thieves were found in the royal treasury, and another person claims that all
the prisoners in the dungeons, including the highborn ones, had been executed, which nearly
sparked a riot.

Eventually, when the sun is low in the sky, the mob of nobles have all been dismissed back to
their chambers, and she gets the truth of it from her father and uncle. It's…actually fucking
hilarious.

"Idiots," her father is muttering under his breath. "Any illiterate miner would have known
better – !"

She knows better than to interrupt her father when he's in one of his moods like this.
"Uncle?" she whispers, "What happened? Why is everyone – is anyone hurt?"

His face is grave. "We don't know yet. How many."

"But what happened?"

"A large number of prisoners and guards in the dungeons suddenly began getting headaches
and fainting. By the time someone thought to order an evacuation, a number of people were
already unconscious, and some may still die, according to Grandmaester Pycelle."

"That's horrible!"

"Maester Pycelle says they all seem to have miner's sickness, and the symptoms align – but I
don't see how that could happen in the dungeons unless the cells were overpacked. And we
took care not to do such a thing. We feared that some vein or vent beneath the earth might
have opened up."

"What's miner's sickness?"

"There are foul odors that come from the belly of the earth, and some miners who venture
down deep in shafts in those areas get sick and die."

"But there aren't any mines here, are there?"

"No, there are not, and that is what vexes me."

"Could it be – could it be poison?" she asks breathlessly.

"It might be. We managed to evacuate the upper level prisoners, but the guards sent to the
lower levels did not return."

"Who would be in the lower levels?" she asks, stupidly.

"Well…" Uncle Brynden looks furious. "Varys. Just him. He is the only prisoner unaccounted
for."
 That could have meant anything from him being dead to a successful escape.

Lysa groaned.

Phase seven: sit around and wait.

Maybe she should have just broken through the bottom gate with an axe and taken her
chances with a bunch of indiscriminate stabbing.

Chapter End Notes

I have nothing against the Dornish, and I think they're pretty cool. But for Lysa, if you
have a convenient target or scapegoat, it's free real estate.

And yeah, Lysa miiight have gotten her hands dirty before. What, you think someone
immediately escalates to murder within a few days of arriving in Westeros, and doesn't
feel the slightest bit conflicted about it? She's experienced at calling hits.
 284 AC: The Curse of Dragonstone
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

It's several more days before she gets some actual fucking news.

The normal prisoners had all been secured in some tower or another while the dungeons had
been left unoccupied to air out. As was the case with dangerous mines, they would send
down men with caged canaries, as far as they could go, until the bird fainted and the men
were forced to turn around to hurry back. It had taken the better part of the week before the
third floor of the dungeons could be safely reached.

Lysa knows this because she's set up camp by the dead bodies. It's a fucking brilliant play is
what it is – go to the Silent Sisters, claim that she wanted to pray for the nobles that had died,
because even though they had fought for the wrong side, they'd surrendered honorably and
had simply been waiting to be ransomed back to their families, blah blah blah. And of course
the septas and Silent Sisters had allowed her in, because she's just an innocent little rich girl
with big blue eyes, and what harm could she do? Well, not much, is the answer to that,
because the harm has already been done – Lysa is just waiting now.

Apparently, now she has a reputation as a good, gentle, pious girl. Praying for dead people to
whom she had no relation, of her own volition! What a little saint! Cersei had been extra
poisonous to her afterwards, but you can't have everything. Lysa cares little and less about
her newfound reputation – it was nice to have one like that, but that paled in comparison to
her other accomplishment.

Because on the seventh day…

And there he was, the fatass!

Varys was dead! Cold and dead! Still reddish from the carbon monoxide, stiff as a board, cold
and DEAD!

THAT FUCK WAS DEAD HAHAHAHA SHE HAD DONE IT BASTARD THOUGHT HE
WAS SO SMART BUT SHE GOT HIM GOOD –

Lysa dips her head in devout prayer before anyone can see her grin.

Varys was gone; she'd done it! Varys and Baelish both! And, if the gossip around court was
any indication, properly framed for her letter-writing campaign, too!

"You think Varys was trying to escape?"

"Well, it was obvious, given that he was out of his cell."

"Where did they find him?"

"My sister's husband said that he heard from one of the guards that he was still in his cell
when they found him."

"Well, my cousin was actually one of the guards doing the searches, and he said that Varys
was on the fourth level."

"Nonsense! Why would he go deeper into the dungeons?"

"Supposedly they found him on the stairs between the levels. Mayhaps he was lost?"

"How do you get lost going down instead of up ?"

"Don't ask me , I've never been in the dungeons…if it was dark he could have just turned into
the wrong doorway and fallen."

"Forget where they found him; he's dead! The question is, was this all an accident, or did
someone kill him?"

"Has to be some foul Essosi poison. Couldn't possibly be miner's sickness, Pycelle must be
going senile."

"How many others?"

"At least one guard and two nobles held on the second level dead. The others have woken up,
though."

" – could have been useful for questioning – "

" – obviously someone didn't want the eunuch spilling their secrets – "

" – on purpose, you think?"

"Targaryens – "

" – the Dornish! – "

"Well I heard that there was some Pentoshi cheesemonger – "

" – Blackfyres!"

"What, them again ?"

"Good riddance – "

No mention was made of her coal pile or anything else; she supposed for someone coming by
so much later it must have looked like normal spent ashes from the brazier, or even a normal
amount of grime and dust in the dim lighting, and the spymaster had tipped it over in his
escape attempt. Varys was gone, all for the low low collateral damage of a few nameless
guards and insignificant prisoners. Her father and uncle think that her good cheer is because
she's a maiden giddy at the thought of getting married soon; she doesn't bother to correct
them.

She remains high off her victory for several weeks, which is why when it does get dashed to
pieces on the ground before her very eyes, it stings all the harder.

Lysa would like to reiterate that were it not for that one single misstep her plot had been
perfect. Because literally the same day Stannis Baratheon returned to King's Landing, Tywin
Lannister had determined his two dogs were worth his golden son. Gregor Clegane had killed
ten men-at-arms who had come to arrest him before they managed to overpower him, while
Lorch had cried and pleaded and been granted clemency at the Wall (and he was going to
make that trip up there with Alliser Thorne and a large number of other Targaryen loyalists,
so who knew if he would even survive that long). And while Lysa should have been happy
that all her dice had come up sixes for those two as well, she couldn't enjoy her total victory
one bit.

"Rights? RIGHTS? I betrothed my daughter to him under the assumption that he'd be a Lord
Paramount! Do you take me for some fishbellied craven, to swallow this insult?"

"I didn't know he was going to do that; he didn't consult me!" Jon Arryn said. That, Lysa can
believe; Robert had impulsively named Stannis Lord of Dragonstone and Renly Lord of
Storm's End before the entire court, when they were all assembled in the throne room. "But
the King can't revert his proclamation now, else he'd look stupid and indecisive before the
entire court."

" The King look stupid? What about me? What about my daughter ?"

Though the heavy wooden doors were locked, her father could be heard throughout the entire
hallway. She and Stannis both stood outside, Stannis sullenly grinding his teeth.

The more things changed, the more things stayed the same. One of those things that stayed
the same was Stannis' rotten luck. This time, there was no storm that had delayed his taking
of Dragonstone; the Targaryens had simply fled to Essos before the new fleet was even built.
Unlike her worthless husband, Queen Rhaella was no fool, and she wasn't going to linger on
Dragonstone like a sitting duck when the rebels had so thoroughly crushed the loyalists in
every single battle. In the other world, Queen Rhaella had been delayed by her late stage
pregnancy – Tywin hadn't sacked King's Landing and killed Aerys until she was so far along
she could no longer move – but Lysa's lies had caused the timetable to shift up by a few
moons. Therefore, Queen Rhaella had only been in her second trimester when news of Aerys'
and Rhaegar's deaths had reached Dragonstone, and so as Dowager Queen Regent she had
taken all the retainers who remained to House Targaryen and fled immediately.

Lysa realizes now that in both this world and the original one, the task Robert had given
Stannis was an impossible one.

"Worry not. My father's rages are fierce, but manageable. He always does this in negotiations,
to extract concessions. Please don't be offended if he asks House Baratheon for some
ridiculous dowry agreement – it is only his way."
"You're not upset?" Stannis asks her instead.

"Why would I be?"

"Your family surely accepted my suit thinking you'd be Lady of Storm's End, and instead…"
He shook his head angrily. "He insults me, and he insults you."

"I am sad for you because I know you loved your home and how much you suffered for it.
But: all is not lost. Corlys Velaryon was richer than the Lannisters, and they only had
Driftmark. You will be Lord of Dragonstone and the Narrow Sea houses, and you will be
Master of Ships, and so you will control all the trade from Essos that does not go directly to
White Harbor."

"Counting coppers," Stannis mutters.

"Counting dragons," she corrects. "Mines will eventually run dry, and gold sitting in a vault
does nothing, much as stagnant water in a pool festers. It is investment and the flow of
currency that produces value and wealth, like running water makes the rivers and the seas."

"That is basic knowledge," Stannis scoffs.

"If you know that, then you know that Dragonstone is an uncut gem, waiting for a competent
lord to see it to its full potential. The Velaryons overreached in the Dance, and the Targaryens
squandered the rest, but you will achieve what they cannot."

Her plans were so close to fruition she could see it. Renewable sources of gold, borne of
trade. Stealing skilled craftsmen from the Free Cities. Sulfur, for gunpowder. Maybe even a
crown after all, if Cersei decided to play every single card she had wrong…

The door to the Hand's solar slams open, and her father storms out and marches away. She
gives Stannis an apologetic glance and turns to follow Lord Hoster.

Her father fumes all the way across the Red Keep until they arrive at the apartments where
the Tullys were staying. She dutifully followed and waited until he had calmed down over a
goblet of wine, before she spoke next.

"The situation is suboptimal, but still salvageable," she says. "We can use this to extract more
concessions from Lord Arryn, to smooth over the insult. Tax deductions, for both the
Riverlands and the Narrow Sea houses, as part of my dowry contract – "

"The Narrow Sea? What are you talking about?"

"Dragonstone – "

"My daughter? A mere Lady of Dragonstone? Don't be foolish, Lysa," her father chides her.
"You think that you, one of the last eligible ladies of the realm's Great Houses, daughter of a
Lord Paramount, do not have other options? Your sister is the more beautiful and clever one
of you two," Gee, thanks Dad, "but let it not be said that I did not love you equally. She
received a future Lord Paramount and Warden for a husband, and so shall you."
Lysa notes with amusement her father's referral of real human beings as if they were
collectible objects – she imagines trading cards with the Great Lords of Westeros on them –
this one has legendary status, this one is a common variety – when her mind stutters to a halt.
"A Lord Paramount and Warden? But – "

Ned is already taken, by Cat, obviously. Renly is a child. Good God, is he going to marry her
to Jon Arryn, again ? After everything? God, please no. As for the West –

Oh, shit, oh crap, oh no no no . She had dismissed the West because Tyrion was also a child,
and a dwarf besides, but this timeline was different because she had successfully freed Ser
Jaime from the now-defunct Kingsguard, and –

"Lord Lannister offered me his son Jaime for your hand, as we had originally discussed
before the war, as thanks for the proposal I put forward to disband the Kingsguard. And
previously I had to reject him because I could not offend the King by dismissing his brother,
but with this insult of Dragonstone, no one will look twice at me for breaking a betrothal
formed under false pretenses. He has also agreed to a very generous dowry agreement, by
which I mean we are paying him far less than we paid Lord Stark for your sister, and in return
you will receive a far better allowance from House Lannister, even in the event of your
widowhood, and additional trade agreements between the Westerlands and Riverlands
besides. In addition, this alliance will be better for the Riverlands, for the Westerlands is a
closer neighbor, while Tywin Lannister is a stronger ally and a more dangerous enemy. I have
already accepted his suit."

"But Father," Lysa protests, scraping her mind for something more believable than But Daddy
I love him and But Daddy Jaime Fucking Lannister is a fucking sisterfucker and his fucking
sister that he's fucking is going to fucking kill me! "We can't just break a betrothal with the
royal family like this, can we? Won't they be insulted?"

"Hah! They insult me first, thinking I will be satisfied with a pile of rocks in the ocean for my
grandson! What will Robert do, declare war against the Riverlands right after he's finished
this one? A war which we bled to put him on the throne for? Your sister brings us the North,
and he would deny his own goodfather a bride for his heir in the West?"

"The King could…raise taxes on the Riverlands," Lysa says meekly. "For breaking the
betrothal with his brother."

"The King will do no such thing," her father waves a hand dismissively. "Jon Arryn wouldn't
dare. Besides, if they don't agree to your marriage to Jaime Lannister, Lord Tywin will no
doubt tie his son to some wealthy Reacher family. Lady Olenna's daughters, mayhaps? Or
one of her Redwyne nieces, or a Hightower girl? The Reach may have sided with the
loyalists, but they barely sent a token force to the battle; their main strength is completely
unspent if you don't count a few skirmishes with Ironborn raiders."

"I – I only worry that we offend them…"

"I would rather offend ten Jon Arryns and Robert Baratheons than one Tywin Lannister,"
Hoster Tully scoffs. "Anyway, it's already been done; Lord Lannister and I finalized your
match with his heir several hours before I even met with Jon Arryn. You should be joyful –
Jaime Lannister is more handsome and charming than Stannis Baratheon, and as Lady of the
Westerlands you will be richer and more well-cared-for than if you were Lady of the
Stormlands."

Horror overcomes her as the pieces slowly click into place inside her head. She had been so
busy focusing on her moves involving the Lannister twins, Clegane and Lorch, and Varys that
she tunnel visioned and forgot about herself , forgot about the other players that could affect
her .

Of course Jon Arryn's primary goal had been to simply knit the kingdoms back together so
that Robert could have a stable reign. That meant pacifying Dorne, which meant Clegane's
and Lorch's heads in addition to Elia's bones, if he could get them. And he had all the
incentive in the world to hold out for those two, because he knew Jaime was more important
to Tywin than either of them.

But Tywin, for all that he wanted Jaime back, also had the incentive to hold out for as long as
possible to see if he could get a better deal. Clegane and Lorch were two of his most useful
walking bundles of plausible deniability; he wasn't going to give them up without a fight. In
addition, a man like him must have been considering the bigger picture of the main Rebellion
families. In the originally intended alliance structure, where Ned married Cat, Lysa married
Stannis, and Robert married Cersei, the Tullys and Baratheons were the lynchpins. But if
Lysa married Jaime instead, then the Tullys and Lannisters were the centers instead.

However, the alternative was not a sure thing, so Tywin wouldn't have agreed to the Jaime
deal until he knew which way Hoster would swing. And of course Lysa's father would have
been playing both sides from the get-go; no matter who Lysa married, the Tullys would have
been at the center because they were the only Great House of the Rebellion alliance with two
living, marriageable daughters to spare. Since Hoster had been unable to make Lysa Queen,
all he cared about now was how to get best possible deal for her.

The moment Robert had denied Stannis Storm's End, Tywin received the confirmation he
wanted that Hoster was willing to swing away. A King's brother and a Lord Paramount was a
pretty sweet deal, but take away the Lord Paramount and that became less clear. Losing
Clegane and Lorch would have been more palatable if it gave him Jaime and an alliance with
House Tully. Had Stannis been named Lord of Storm's End and Warden of the South, Tywin
would have bargained as harshly for Jaime as he could and then married him to one of the
wealthy Reacher families, as Hoster had pointed out to Lysa. But Stannis wasn't, so Tywin
had the incentive to accept the existing offer on the table before Lysa and Stannis were
supposed to be married, as in, as soon as possible .

"Lord Lannister and I finalized your match with his heir several hours before I even met with
Jon Arryn," her father had told her. It was obvious, so obvious. That extraordinarily generous
offer by Tywin for Lysa's hand – and when Lord Tully showed Lysa the numbers, it truly was
absolutely ludicrous – had not been free. The more her father spoke the more she realized that
the condition for said generous offer was that Hoster would immediately backstab Jon Arryn
and House Baratheon the moment Kingsguard was disbanded (with the excuse that it was
Visenya Targaryen's institution, and anything Targaryen had to be destroyed according to
 Robert). But from her father's point of view, why wouldn't he do that? Casterly Rock and
Warden of the West versus pitiful Dragonstone; to him it was a no-brainer.

In retrospect, Lysa is one hundred percent certain that her father and Tywin Lannister had
been in cahoots from the very start, because there was no fucking way that had been a
coincidence. The same day Stannis had returned, Tywin had supposedly "caved" to their
demands in order to free Jaime from the Kingsguard? Coincidence; I think NOT!

Jon Arryn probably hadn't seen it coming, otherwise he wouldn't have passed that law
disbanding the Kingsguard until after Lysa's and Stannis' wedding. He must have simply been
relieved that Tywin had finally caved on the Jaime deal, thinking that Tywin had just been
desperate for his heir. Lysa is furious that he hadn't, because if she had messed up, then so
had he, but he could have prevented this, and she doesn't want to take responsibility for her
actions. He wouldn't have realized his mistake until after Hoster had reneged on the Lysa-
Stannis betrothal.

"Of course, Father," Lysa answers, pasting a fake smile onto her face. "You truly are so
thoughtful towards your undeserving daughter."

She embraces him, and then quickly runs out of the room back to her own chambers.

Then she grabs a pillow and screams into it.

"FUCK!"

Chapter End Notes

Lysa might be a pretty good schemer, but she's not an omnipotent one.
 284 AC: The Buck Stops Here
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

In isolation, Jaime Lannister is an ideal husband for her. He's easy on the eyes, extremely
rich, a decent and thoughtful sort of person in his own way, and not a complete idiot. As in,
he's smart enough to know what he is good at – fighting with a sword – and what he isn't
good at – logistics, administration, finances, and everything actually important when it came
to running a medieval kingdom. Now, hypothetically, if he were to delegate the latter to
someone else, and that someone ended up being his wife, that would theoretically leave her
with a lot of power.

There was only the teeny-tiny issue of the GODDAMNED SISTERFUCKING.

Seriously, what kind of stupid cosmic joke was this? Did they think she was just going to roll
over and give up? Did they think she was going to take his bullshit lying down? What's the
point of marrying a man if he's already wrapped around someone else's finger?

Screw. That.

The wedding may be tomorrow because her father and Lord Lannister wanted to get it done
and over with before Jon Arryn had time to make a counter-move, but that doesn't mean Lysa
isn't going to march to her doom without a good, hard, knock-down, knuckle-bruising,
dragged-out fight.

Hell, Lysa would have pulled an Olenna Redwyne and allowed herself to be caught in a
compromising position with Stannis, if she thought she could actually get Stannis to part with
his precious duty for her. Stupid? Maybe. Hell to pay afterwards? Of course. But she would
have risked it, and damn the consequences. It's not like she was being Original-Lysa, sleeping
with someone far below her station for not even true love, but one-sided unrequited teenage
love. What was her father going to do, force them to take her in exchange for his continued
support? Stannis was not a Lord Paramount, for that ship had sailed, but he was still the
brother of a King. And forget love, anything was preferable to Death-by-Jealous-Cersei.

No, the main problem here was that such an act, whether or not it succeeded, would make
Stannis think she was some kind of immoral, emotionally-driven, impulsive temptress and
lose his respect for her. She had no interest in being stuck with a man who resented her and
didn't trust her judgment. She'd rather let Cersei just kill her if that was going to be her life.
That was also why she couldn't lie about having been dishonored, either, because Stannis
would not only hate her for casting aspersions upon his honor or otherwise implying he was
like led by his cock like Robert, he'd also probably think that everything nice she had said to
him was a lie, that she had just been using him and tricking him to cover up being deflowered
by someone else. Which was, okay, kind of true, but it hadn't been her fault!

Well, never let it be said that Lysa wasn't flexible with her plans on the fly. As it is, Lysa
already has a different move in mind.
"What are you doing here?" Stannis snapped.

Mere weeks ago Lysa had leveraged her knowledge of the Red Keep's passages to murder
Varys. Now, she had once again drawn upon it, but for a different reason.

"I had to see you," she gasps breathlessly. She knows she looks quite the sight: eyes wide,
hair artfully mussed up, lips bitten and pouty. That was very much the point. "My father just
informed me – he means to have me marry Jaime Lannister."

"I already know that," Stannis said tightly.

Lysa draws upon her most lovesick, petulant, spoiled teenage girl persona. What was it that
Sansa had said, once? I don't want someone brave and strong and gentle! I want Joffrey!
Gods, that dumbass. Funny as hell, though. "I don't want to marry Jaime Lannister!" Lysa
whines in that same voice. "I want you !"

She feels zero guilt – on the contrary, it was the closest thing to the truth she'd told to anyone
since coming to this godforsaken dogshit world – but was he buying it? Would he believe
her? Had she overdone it? She was well aware that this was Stannis Baratheon she was
dealing with, and her plan had a low chance of success in the first place. But she still had to
try. The alternative was meekly marching to her fate, a fate that Cersei had control over. Fuck
that noise. She'd do anything and anyone to avoid it, if possible.

Stannis snorted. "I find that hard to believe." Beneath the sarcasm, though, is an undercurrent
of vulnerability, one that she can use.

"Are you calling me a liar?" And oh, how that rankles him. Good, she has his attention.
"Have I ever lied to you? Did I not prove my truthfulness to you when I purposely made
myself look like a fool so that your brother, the King , would choose Cersei Lannister over
me? What makes you think I would think of Jaime Lannister any differently?"

"Why?"

" Why? Why not ? Why wouldn't I want you? Is that so hard to believe, that I find you
desirable?"

"Surely he's wealthier and better-looking."

Spare her the inferiority complex. Normally it was great because it made him more biddable.
Right now, though, it was annoyingly interfering with her goals. Of course it'd be her luck, to
successfully wear down his resolve, only to fail because of his fucking insecurities. Figures
that Stannis would be more easily distracted by his personal issues than his cock.

"Do you think I am so shallow as to only care about that?" she argued. "His head is filled
with nothing but swords and knightly tales. His father is a cruel man and his sister is a cruel
woman. He'd never defend me against either of them."

"Is that what you really think?" he whispers.

She's so, so close.

"You are the one who knows me, Stannis, even if we've only met each other a scant few
moons ago. You know what it's like for the world to look upon you and find you wanting
compared to your elder sibling, no matter how hard you try. I never wanted some perfect
golden child who has never had to put in any effort to make everyone else love them. I only
ever wanted you , imperfections and all."

Pause. Let it sink into his head. Deep breath. Grab his hands and look up at him. Soft
squeeze. Present someone who is naturally shy, but being bold for once in her life.

She takes a deep breath, and continues. "Because I've never been seen in the way you've seen
me, ever. You've never looked at me and wished I was Cat, and I'll never look at you and
wish you were Robert. You're the only one who understands me. It's like we were put in this
world to be each other's."

She has his full attention now. Just another little push…

So she steps forward to embrace him, and when he catches her she tucks her head under his
chin and weeps into his chest. "I love you, Stannis Baratheon. I love you more than I've ever
loved anyone else, and I will never stop."

He makes a sound akin to a wounded animal, and his arms tighten around her in a vice grip,
so hard it hurts.

"Lysa," he moans.

She feels her bones cracking with his strength. He wasn't sieged to the point of starvation in
this timeline, and he's only a little bit smaller than Robert, still well over six feet and some of
broad shoulders and thick frame and pure packed muscle, that old Durrandon bloodline
boldly present in the both of them.

She powers through the pain because it has to mean that her game is working. There's
dampness in her hair, and it's ages before he lets go.

When he does, he looks at her with such longing that she is honestly confused as hell why
he's just standing there instead of taking what he wants. Goddamn decent men . It sucks
because she'd prefer a decent man 99% of the time (they're much more easily led), but right
now she needs him to be a lesser man . Why couldn't he have been a lesser man? Fucking
hell, what was wrong with him?! Olenna Redwyne had been playing on easy mode, damn
her; she couldn't imagine Luthor Tyrell, the sort of moron to have ridden his horse off a cliff
accidentally (or "accidentally", who knows), would have spent more than a nanosecond
debating tautological morality when there was a woman's naked bosom in front of his face.

But no, Lysa just has to be stuck dealing with the most iron-spined self-flagellating jackass
on the entire continent. Why, oh why, are her options limited to The Literal Benchode and
Mr. Seduction-Ultra-Impossible-Difficulty Mode? They could have just fucked then and
there, or if he was still insistent on her honor, they could have eloped first. It wouldn't have
been hard; there was a septon within a stone's throw of every inch of this godless city and
most of them would happily mumble the vows for a bag of silver and half a bottle of wine.
Does she have to spell it out for him?!

She has to spell it out for him.

"If there was a septon here right now," she whispers, "I'd say my vows. I don't care what my
father or Lord Lannister think."

Stannis wavers. He wars with himself. Gods, he looks so young.

Oh please, please, please…

But he doesn't take the bait.

"We have our duties, my Lady," he says, his face closing off. "As we are unmarried, your
foremost duty is to your father. I cannot – will not – take that from you."

"But then – but then – if you care for me, and I care for you, then why can't we just – it's not
like you're kidnapping me like Prince Rhaegar did to Lady Lyanna; you're not married to
someone else and we've been officially betrothed until just a few hours ago!"

"I won't dishonor you, my Lady. I am not Robert. " His tone is cold on the surface, but she
can hear the heartbreak underneath. "I am not Robert," he repeats. "I won't do this to you."

Wow. He is really fixated on that. Honestly, take a shot every time he says he's not Robert.

"But if you wed me first , then it won't be dishonor, surely?" she points out, because she is
literally handing him the answer on a silver platter right now. She's just throwing shit at the
wall, trying to see what sticks.

"It would greatly enrage your father and Lord Lannister."

"They already enraged Lord Arryn first; this would greatly please our Hand. You know he is
already wroth with my father and Lord Lannister for double-crossing him and House
Baratheon. And my father would be furious, true, but if we're already married then he can
only grant forgiveness, not permission. He is the sort of man who takes the best offer
available to him, so you only need ensure that said best offer who would take me is you ."

"And Tywin Lannister?" Stannis challenged. "He would be deeply offended and probably
seek to punish us for insulting his heir like so. You saw what happened to Elia Martell and
her children, and her only crime was being picked by House Targaryen over his daughter.
What would he do in response to a deliberate rejection of his son ? I won't put us in danger
like that. He wouldn't strike immediately, but he would wait for one day, years from now,
when Jon Arryn and your father are weakened for whatever reason, and he will choose then
to repay his debt."

And he was right, but one day years from now was better than Cersei right away. One day
years from now was enough time for Lysa to set up gunpowder production and a large-scale
trading empire. Let him come after her then; she'd happily take her chances when she had an
array of gatling guns and ironclads behind her. Cersei might not be as good a planner as her
father, but her impulsively flailing around didn't mean she wasn't capable of causing massive
damage.

"That's a risk I'd take, if it's for you." Well, not for Stannis , necessarily, but for everything
else he was attached with compared to all the baggage the Lannisters came with.

"Then we are in disagreement here, my Lady, because I would gladly suffer for you, but I
would not let you suffer for me."

"Let me? Let me? What if I choose to suffer for you?"

"You shouldn't. I'm not worth it."

God fucking dammit Stannis, now is not the time to be a stoic martyr! "Stannis," she pleads,
"if it is duty you choose then I will always support you, but you can't stand around waiting
for your duty to be rewarded, because it won't be. Duty is duty, and deserving is a different
matter entirely. If you want opportunity you must take it as it appears; if you want happiness
you must seize it for yourself. Storm's End was already stolen from you; at least fight for us
!"

But he crosses his arms and turns away. "We cannot."

Damn. Alright, then, time for a different angle.

"You don't understand," she begs. She's normally better than this, but the thought of being
stuck with the fucking Lannisters and all their dysfunction – it drives her brain to not work
like it should. She tries to appeal to his duty, whatever white knight complex to protect his
woman she can play upon – "The Lannisters are horrible, more than you could imagine – "
She considers making up some kind of lie about catching Cersei and Jaime fucking
somewhere, but knowing Stannis, he'd probably go straight to Robert and Jon Arryn with this
information, and then Lysa would be exposed as the source, and she'd be forced to prove it,
and that would piss off everybody in a way that didn't benefit her at all – either she wouldn't
be believed and then everyone would hate her and Cersei would be extra furiously going after
her, and if she was believed then her father would simply take advantage of the situation to
marry her off to Robert after all...

"All the more reason not to offend them, then."

Shit, that was a good point, for someone who didn't know about the incest and the gatling
guns. Alright, alright, play it cool. She had gone into this expecting a high chance of failure.
She'd given Stannis actually cracking under her pressure the same odds as Robert getting
angry enough to kill Varys so she didn't have to do it herself. "Why are you being so
stubborn?" she asks, trying to inject as much sorrow into her voice as she can. She doesn't
have to call up much effort for this bit of acting. "I thought we liked each other. I thought we
wanted each other. Don't tell me – don't tell me you have someone else – "

Now that is bait he does take. "That is nonsense ," he snaps. "I would never have some other
woman on the side. I'm not Robert!" Naturally, he fixates on her accusation against his honor,
that he'd have a mistress, rather than what he should be focusing on, which is that the
supposedly ever-dutiful Tully girl before him is suggesting something extremely risky and
the exact opposite of following the rules.

"Do you simply find me undesirable?"

She's hoping her last ditch effort might make him angry, make him react, something, but he
doesn't. He just stands there silently, with his back to her.

"No," he says, finally, his voice cracking. "But my desire has nothing to do with any of it. We
must do our duties regardless of what it brings us. Please, Lady Lysa. Don't make this more
difficult than it already is."

FUUUUUCK!

She doesn't know why Stannis is being so stubborn about this, except – he's determined to
suffer instead of fight for her, just like he will stonily take the insult of Dragonstone instead
of raging and nonstop haranguing Robert and Jon Arryn until they give in and return Storm's
End to him just so he'll shut up. It would have worked if he had just tried, because Robert was
a lazy piece of shit, and to hell with making Robert look stupid and indecisive. It was clear he
wanted Lysa and he could have gotten what he wanted if he had just tried , and to hell with
the consequences, but no. It was as if he had already committed to the belief that he was
doomed for nothing but suffering, and once that had happened he would refuse to take any
more hope even if it was dangled before his face, because assuming the worst and marching
on stoically in a life of nothing but disappointment was apparently less painful than missing
all the shots you never took.

Lysa's chest is heaving in defeat at this point. She can see a lost cause when she sees it. There
is no good offense against a complete shutdown in face of the unpleasant truth. The war is
over, and whatever hope she had of convincing Stannis to choose desire over duty for once in
his goddamn life is done.

…Fucking fine then. This is what backup plans were for.

If Lysa can't have him, then no one can.

She'll ruin him for every subsequent woman. Bury herself so deep into his brain he'd never be
rid of her. It's only fair.

When you shoot, you better not miss, but if you do, pretend that you were aiming elsewhere
all along. Deny and deflect, diffuse and project, and above all, gaslight to high heaven.

Hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

"I'm sorry, you must think me such a fool," she says self-deprecatingly. "I'm sorry for
thinking that you would – but you're not like other men, are you, Stannis?" She hangs her
head. "I'm sorry. When I'm around you, it's as if I lose all ability to think. I don't want anyone
else but you. Not Robert, or Jaime Lannister, or all the dozens upon dozens of heirs and
spares running around this place at every minute of the day. Just you."
The good news is he believes her; the look on his face is one of internal guilt and self-hatred,
not external disgust. He offers her an olive branch. "I promise you, my Lady, I had no hand in
the breaking of our betrothal," he told her. "That was all your father, and Tywin Lannister. I
promise you that, my Lady."

"Truly?"

"Truly."

She nods. "You're a good man, dutiful and just. Whoever you'll marry, I'll envy her."

"I doubt that," he muttered.

"I will," she insists.

He doesn't answer her.

Lysa reaches into her pocket. "I wanted to give you this," she says quietly. "I'm not Cat; I
can't embroider to save my life. But I thought you'd appreciate this favor more than a
handkerchief."

He took it from her. "What is it?" he asked.

"I call it a storm-watcher. See, I noticed that before it rains, when the air gets wet, my hair
would puff up. Unattractive, but if I could make something useful of it…so I tied the ends to
these pins, and attached it to one of my old embroidery needles. The more it curls, the more
the needle moves, and you can measure it against these markings here. It's not perfect, but
more often than not, when the needle is far on this side, it's warning you that bad weather is
coming."

He takes it from her, holding it in his hands like a baby bird with a broken wing. "You made
this?"

She tucks her hair behind her ear awkwardly. "It's only my hair in a wooden box." It's only a
copy of her shitty science fair hygrometer project from when she was twelve. "If I were a
better lady, like my sister – "

"No, Lysa, don't – " he chokes. "This is greater than any mere embroidered handkerchief." He
looks at her. "This is genius ." He takes a deep breath. "If my parents had this, mayhaps they
would not have died."

Hook.

Line.

Sinker.

"I'm sorry, I hadn't meant to remind you of them." She absolutely had .

He waves her off. "It's fine."

"I meant to give it to you after our wedding. So you'd have a reminder of me on your
voyages. But since that's not – well, I hope you still find a good use for it. Even if we have
nothing left of one another but fond memories, at least this small piece of me may keep you
safe on the open sea."

He clutches it to his chest. "There is nothing I can give you to repay you for this."

"Your wedding cloak is all that I want from you."

"That is the one thing I cannot give."

Close, but no cigar. God fucking dammit. Well, it was worth a shot.

"You cannot, or you will not?"

He doesn't answer her. But he doesn't try to give her the crappy little hand-rigged hygrometer
back, either. She would have bashed someone's brains in if he'd tried to pull the good ol' I
cannot accept such a fine gift, it is improper for me to receive this from you now that we are
no longer betrothed, et cetera. So it's a good thing that he doesn't do that , at least.

He's not ready to upend his entire mental framework of the world and moral code for her just
yet. That's fine. Rome didn't fall in a day. She's got one claw hooked in. Just one, but even a
single ripped stitch will one day unravel the entire seam.

"Good-bye for now," she smiles at him. "But one day we'll meet again."

"Wait," he calls out after her.

When she turns to look at him, he surges forward and kisses her.

He doesn't do more than that. It's only a chaste meeting of their lips – one, two, three
seconds, then release, then a look on his face like he's beating himself up for even going that
far, before he runs away. This is still Stannis, after all. But the fact that he even did that in the
first place had to count for something.

From now and forever more, Stannis is hers, and only hers. He had taken her gift with all the
strings attached, because every gift she gave had strings attached, so that meant he belonged
to her now, and she would be damned if he wasn't permanently dependent on her for his self-
worth for the rest of his life. He might come to his senses too late to prevent her marriage to
Jaime, but he could still be useful to her in other ways, even if it meant spending the rest of
his life making it up to her and regretting not chasing after her in this moment for as long as
he lived. She will tear him apart so that she's the only one who can stitch him back together,
and when she does it'll be in her image.

Value as a husband aside, he's one of the most important assets on the board, though he
doesn't know it yet. One of the most important on the board. Every good player needed a
strong piece in King's Landing. If Tywin Lannister owned Pycelle, she deserved a Small
Council member, too; if Tywin Lannister had a direct connection to the royal family, so
 would she. Lysa wants ships, she wants gunpowder, and she wants everyone to fucking shut
up and kneel before her so she can finally sleep in peace.

To do that, she needs to tie Stannis to her memory, fully and utterly.

To do that, she needs to make sure whoever he ends up with, he'll always be wondering about
what could have been.

To do that, she needs Selyse Florent.

Chapter End Notes

Sorry for the cockblock. I wanted to show that while she's very good at manipulation,
she's not perfect, and sometimes we just roll a natural one. It happens.

She's not done with Stannis yet, promise.

 284 AC: Matchmaker
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Lysa's overarching goal here is to control the narrative around herself so convincingly that no
one can ever remember any alternative. And Westeros loves lost women.

It's in all their stories and songs, all their Lyannas and Lenores and Annabel Lees. Lost
women are perfect and can do no wrong. Memories frozen in time, without the messiness of
daily life. As if it's so hard to keel over and die.

You know what is hard? Setting yourself up as that lost woman without actually dying.

Firstly, she has to buy some time.

"F-father?" Lysa whispers. "I hate to bother you, but – "

"What is it?" he asks curtly.

"I found this and I – I don't know where it came from." And Lysa produced what she had
nicknamed her "hall pass", that note she'd written in preparation for trouble that never came,
the one claiming the Targaryens would rise again. It seemed a waste to not spend it after all
that effort.

Hoster Tully snatches it from her, scanning it once, twice, thrice. As he reads it, his face goes
from his usual stony to table-flipping fury. "Where?!" he demands, inhaling and exhaling
with unbridled rage. " Where did you find this?"

"W-with the c-courting gifts," she stutters, referring to the perfunctory exchange of jewelry
and whatnot they'd received from the Lannisters to cement the deal.

"Which box?"

"This one," Lysa said, holding out a box that contained a ruby necklace in her other hand. A
Westerlands-style ruby necklace that happened to look similar to one gifted to Cersei at her
own wedding from those moons past. She starts crying again. "I don't know who left it there,
or why me. If it had happened a few moons ago, I would have thought that it was just Cersei
trying to scare me off King Robert, but she's already won so – "

Her father jumps up and swears. "Tell Lord Lannister we need to speak, now !" he barks at a
guard, brandishing the note in the air. The man bows and runs off. Hoster Tully spends the
next few hours ranting and yelling at their household guard for their incompetence, for
slacking off on their duties, et cetera et cetera. Dishonor! Dishonor on you, dishonor on your
family, dishonor on your ancestors, dishonor on your cow – she's sure that it would have been
terrifying to everyone else on the receiving end of his rage, but to her, it's just hilarious, and
she has to spend all her effort keeping a straight face. All she can think of is how when you
read or hear a word over and over again it starts to lose its meaning, and when you think
about it, "doody" and "onner" are really funny sounds. In another life, she thinks, Hoster
Tully could have made a good drill sergeant, or a lead singer for some heavy metal band. She
had known professional screamo guys who couldn't shred their vocal chords for nearly as
loudly or as long as Hoster Tully. Truly, he'd missed his calling.

Anyway, berating people is a stupid punishment in her opinion because the longer you spend
talking at people, the more time you give them to come up with good excuses. Interrogate
them first, dumbass, and then punish them, ideally with something that sticks better than
simply ringing eardrums.

Finally, he seems to remember that she exists, and he turns back around and snaps, "Put that
down and don't touch it!"

"A-am I in trouble, Father?" she asks, shakily dropping the necklace and box on the table.

He purses his lips. The rage bleeds away from him, and it settles into something more serious
and tired. "I don't think so, Lysa. Not if no one else has gotten something similar. There are
dozens of people they'd threaten before you." Translation, you're not important enough to kill
(yet).

Which, wow, okay. She'd be more annoyed except that said dismissal allows her lie to do
exactly what she needs it to do. Both her father and Tywin Lannister had come to the
conclusion that while it was prudent to up the security on Lysa, she probably hadn't been the
real target of the note – Cersei made more sense as Tywin's daughter and the new Queen, and
whoever the culprit was, they must have mixed up the boxes while they sat in the Lannister
quarters.

Now, Lysa should reiterate that she doesn't like trouble, but if the trouble is unavoidable, then
she's going to drag everyone down to her level so that everyone else has to suffer along with
her. Cersei, most of all.

The wedding is delayed again as the Red Keep is turned upside down while a variety of
innocent servants are questioned, whipped, or dismissed. (She had hoped that the extra time
would allow Stannis to come to his senses, but of course he hadn't – that had just been a long
shot anyway, so she hadn't banked on it.) The security is tightened even more, especially
around their lovely new queen.

Which means the bitch can't sneak around or otherwise get anything done, either.

Lysa sees her at breakfast the next morning, looking positively murderous at her new
babysitter detail.

It's glorious. If Lysa could bottle it and sell it as wine…

Of course, Cersei wouldn't give up there; Lysa would be disappointed in her if she had. So
Lysa begs her father for a poison taster to accompany her just in case because all the cool
kids had one, and her father agrees because he'd already shelled out for extra guards just in
case the Targaryen note had been meant for her. Not to mention, even if she wasn't, she was
constantly dining with people who were .

Her wish is granted not a moment too soon because the very next day Lysa gets an invitation
to a tea party with Cersei, claiming she wished to get to know Lysa as her new sister, even
though Cersei had never once wanted them to voluntarily socialize one-on-one before this.
Lysa, of course, can't say no; the Queen outranks her and they can't offend the Lannisters and
courtly protocol and blah blah blah.

Cersei's face when Lysa shows up with her own guards and taster to match Cersei's own.
She'd been sitting there, all smug and everything, with her array of tea and cakes in front of
her, and the speed at which her smile had dropped when she realized whatever plan she had
wouldn't work had truly been a sight to behold. To her credit, she recovers quickly, and when
Lysa's taster predictably gets sick fifteen minutes in, Cersei's act of fear and shock is – not
amazingly convincing, but enough to fool bystanders who had no reason to suspect her.

Explicit knowledge that your future goodsister is actively trying to murder you is unpleasant
to have, but it's not the worst thing in the world because Lysa was already expecting it. In
addition, the failed poisoning attempt further confirms Lord Tully and Lord Lannister's
suspicions, meaning Lysa gets off scot-free with her lie about the threatening note, while
Cersei gets an even more restrictive safety detail, effectively stymieing any further action
against Lysa. Try to get out of that bind, you stupid bitch.

So Lysa will call it a wash. Lysa had no doubt that Cersei would eventually figure out a way
to try again, but at least she could breathe a little, for now.

Which lets her put the next part of her scheme into motion.

If at any point Stannis had come to her with a changed mind and outlook on life, of course
she would have eloped with him immediately. It is a very long shot at this point, though, and
as a rule she does not like to lean on hopes and dreams. She relies only on plans, and backup
plans, and backups to the backup plans. Good luck is a pleasant surprise. Bad luck is a skill
issue.

Stannis can avoid her and brood as long as he wants. He can hide behind the shroud of duty
for as much as he likes. He can claim that even if her duty was not his, his duty was still to
obey his King and older brother, to marry whatever woman Robert and Jon Arryn foisted
onto him. He can claim that true love would mean protecting her from Tywin Lannister's
wrath. It doesn't matter. Lysa will end up getting what she wants because Lysa always gets
what she wants.

As Hoster Tully had predicted, Robert and Jon Arryn (mostly Jon Arryn, because Robert
avoided responsibility like Targaryens avoided good life choices and sanity) ended up
looking for marriages for Stannis in the Reach. A lot of names are being floated around,
including Mace Tyrell's sisters, some Redwyne cousins, and Leyton Hightower's gaggle of
daughters.

Lysa wondered if Stannis had originally personally rejected any Tyrell or Tyrell-adjacent
brides for his grudge, and that this time he'd be more open to some of the Reachwomen that
Hoster Tully had mentioned as alternate brides for Jaime because her meddling had
butterflied the Tyrell siege out of existence entirely. No matter. He wasn't going to get any of
them anyway.

He wasn't going to get them, because Lysa won't let it happen.

Under no circumstances can Stannis have an attractive, lovable wife who will give him
plenty of healthy children he can grow to love. She put in too much goddamn work to forge
him into the man she needed him to be to just fucking let him go so some other woman could
enjoy the fruits of whatever newfound self-confidence she might have given him.

Step one, eliminate the available options.

The Reach had long been the most populous of the Seven Kingdoms, but their power was
limited by their fractiousness. For the Iron Throne, ensuring that House Tyrell was always
weaker than their vassals was key to managing them. A Reach that was properly unified
under a powerful family – which might be the case if Mace Tyrell got royal in-laws – the way
the West was under the Lannisters, would make them too powerful compared to everyone
else.

All Lysa had to do was strategically let certain rumors slip to remind King's Landing of this
fact. In front of Cersei Lannister and the Westermen she constantly prattled on and on about
how pretty the Hightower, Tyrell, or Redwyne girls were and how the fashions of the Reach
were truly exquisite and everything she could think of to make the vain woman feel
threatened. In front of Robert and the Stormlanders she played up their traditional rivalries
with their southern neighbors and how wonderfully gallant those Reacher knights were and
how there were so many of them, think about how impressive they must look if they all took to
the field at once! In front of Jon Arryn and the Valemen she talked about how she was so
relieved the Targaryens were gone, and how there really wasn't a single actually good
Targaryen ruler apart from Jaehaerys I, and remember the Dance of Dragons which was
started by a Hightower queen?

By the time she was done, the major power brokers of King's Landing were fully in favor of
weakening the Reach instead of bringing them back into the fold. That meant that the entire
Tyrell-Redwyne-Hightower bloc, and their associates like the Fossoways, were completely
excluded from a royal marriage.

Step two, sunder the Reach.

Of the remaining Reach families with eligible daughters of Stannis' age, it had to be the
secondary alliance of the Florents, Cranes, and Tarlys. There were a few other houses, but
they were smaller and less powerful, not good enough for the the royal family, for all that
Stannis was merely Lord of Dragonstone instead of the Stormlands. Within that rival alliance,
House Florent was the wealthiest and most powerful, as well as the one with the best claim to
Highgarden based on House Gardener's marriages during Aegon's conquest – not to mention,
the Cranes and Tarlys had no eligible maidens of the right age anyway.

Melessa Florent was already married to Randyll Tarly. Rhea Florent would eventually
become Leyton Hightower's fourth wife and link the Tyrell-Hightower-Redwyne alliance
with the Florent-Crane-Tarly alliance, but that wouldn't be for many years yet – at the
moment she was still too young.

So there were only two options, Selyse and Delena. The latter of whom was an idiotic slut,
and the former, well – if you're going to be ugly and infertile you should at least have a good
personality, and Selyse couldn't even manage that.

Step three, the illusion of choice.

When a card shark runs their little shell games, it doesn't matter if they're playing with a full
deck or not, because you always end up with the cards they intend to give you.

Somewhere out there is an alternate universe where Delena Florent marries Stannis instead.
She probably won't be happy with him and he won't be happy with her, because she would
want someone who's a bit more fun and he would want someone who didn't constantly wish
he was his brother, obviously. But she'd be capable of giving him healthy children, and no
matter how he felt about his wife, Stannis was the sort of half-decent guy who would feel
love and duty towards his children, even if he struggled to connect with them.

Lysa couldn't compete with literal babies.

So she wasn't going to.

Lysa had made sure, then, to befriend Delena at one of Robert's feasts. And then introduce
her to Robert. And then pour the wine for them, copiously. And leave them both alone
together while she went to socialize with other guests.

Voila, a bastard in Delena's belly, and Stannis betrothed to Selyse Florent.

As it was written.

She doesn't feel one bit bad about this. If Stannis hadn't wanted to end up like this he
should've eloped with her when she had offered. In fact, he should be thanking her. She had
prevented the humiliation of Robert from screwing Delena at Stannis' wedding in his own
marriage bed. Had it been Lysa in that situation, she would have demanded a new room and
ordered the mattress burnt, at the very least – and Delena packed off to the Silent Sisters.
(Delena was a huge chatterbox and social butterfly, so surely she'd enjoy the rest of her life
under a vow of mute chastity tending to dead bodies, right?) Anyone who ruins Lysa's
wedding like that, Lysa will ruin her life. Seriously, it's not that hard to keep your legs
together for a few hours, and if you can't even manage that, at least find a room that isn't
meant for the newlywed couple.

Was he regretting his actions (or lack thereof) yet? She fucking hoped he did. He certainly
looked miserable, almost as miserable as Lysa felt, and the worst part was, she couldn't even
brood like Stannis always did, because proper ladies were always cheerful and pleasant. Lysa
had to fucking pretend to be happy at her impending nuptials, but not too happy, because
Cersei was already plotting her demise as it was.

Speaking of which…
"Well, don't you two look lovely tonight."

Lysa barely remembered her own wedding when it finally happened. It had been grand, to be
sure. Not as grand as Cersei and Robert's – no need to outshine the golden bitch herself – but
it had been grand. The food was excellent, the middling entertainment as good as it could be
for Westeros, the incessant refrains of Rains of Castamere in-tune at least, and her father
relatively bearable by his standards. Lysa was wearing a dark blue gown that matched her
eyes, and some elegant jewelry made of sapphires and rubies set in wrought silver. Everyone
told her she was beautiful, which was probably true, though of course no one could be more
beautiful than the Queen.

Now Cersei is at Lysa's and Jaime's table, her smile dripping with poison, her congratulations
as soft and menacing as ever. It's more plainly obvious than ever what little triumph she had
gotten from gaining a crown had quickly evaporated in the reality of being Robert's wife.
Robert was already extremely drunk and feeling up some serving maid.

"Sister," Jaime greeted her, looking half miserable and half desirous. Lysa was sure the two of
them had had several jealousy-driven arguments involving plenty of "how dare you enter a
purely political marriage with that ugly limp fish in her fisherwoman's rags while I have also
already entered a purely political marriage with another man" and "I swear babe I only love
you, she means nothing to me" leading up until today.

Cersei was wearing a rather audacious dress (scarlet and gold, shocker) that showed off her
curves, shoulders, and cleavage even more than her wedding dress had. Normally Lysa
wouldn't be angry – she's got it, she has a right to show it – but by god it was infuriating that
Cersei was obviously trying to show up Lysa at her own wedding. She probably thought she
was being clever, rubbing it all in Lysa's face like that. She couldn't be satisfied with just her
special day, so she had to go take over Lysa's too.

Well, Cersei was going to hate her anyway, so she might as well feed into Cersei's delusional
assumptions about her and be as boring and insipid as possible.

"Your Grace!" Lysa smiled. "You look so beautiful as well!"

"And you," Cersei replied, looking her up and down in thinly veiled disdain. "A
commendable effort, for someone like you."

This bitch, here.

"Oh, thank you so much, your Grace! It truly means the world to me, to hear that from you."
The fun thing about being a stupid bimbo is that you can let insults fly over your head and
watch the mean girls struggle in frustration as nothing lands.

"I dearly hope your sons and daughters are as beautiful as lions. The Rock is a bit far above
the water, I'm afraid…we did try to keep fish in tanks there once, but they all died. I suppose
they were eaten."

…Does she think she's being subtle? That was a pathetic threat. What, she doesn't think
Lysa's even worth an, If you call me 'Sister' again I'll have you strangled in your sleep?
 "Oh, I do hope they'll be as beautiful and golden as you and your brother, your Grace, and be
loyal cousins to your princely children as well."

Cersei's eyes flash at the word "loyal". "Yes. Let's."

She sweeps away in a swirl of brightly colored skirts. Jaime takes another deep pull from his
goblet of wine. Lysa sighs, reapplies the fake smile to her face, and takes tiny bites of her
food.

The bedding is as chaotic and traumatizing as she expects it to be – actually a little less,
because her uncle Brynden is there and gets her out of the way of all the clawing drunken
men as fast as possible. She still has her shift and one stocking on when they deposit her in
the room. Jaime also arrives reasonably clothed. Cersei probably scared all the other women
off, because when his side of the door opens, she's the only woman there. She shoots Lysa a
poisonous look, which Lysa pretends not to see, and then the door closes and the two of them
are alone.

Jaime immediately collapses drunk on the bed face-first and goes to sleep.

Lysa sighs and turns his head to the side so he doesn't choke on his own vomit. That bitch-ass
punk better be grateful.

Chapter End Notes

Like I said last chapter, she's not done with Stannis yet.

And yes, the tags are correct.

 284 AC: Industry Baby

Jaime wakes up the next morning and immediately freaks out. Morning being a rather big
stretch of the word. The sun's not up yet, it's barely even dawn, and as a result Lysa is still
half asleep and utterly unprepared for what comes next. In other words, she's woken up quite
rudely by the mattress shifting and Jaime yelling loudly.

"Did – what happened – " he pants out in short spurts, still flailing about like a veteran with
PTSD on the fourth of July. He pulls back the sheets and stares at her, and then at himself,
only calming down when he realizes they're both still in the same smallclothes they wore to
the wedding, and the sheets are bone dry.

"Whaaa?" she responds, because sue her, she's still half asleep. Then she jerks awake when
she sees the glint of a knife. "WHAT THE HELL?!" she screams, grabbing the closest thing
and throwing it at him, which happens to be a pillow.

It hits him square in the face and he drops the knife, and he swears loudly she hears the thud
of it on the floor. Probably dropped it on his own foot, the dunce. He whirls upon her. "What
was that for?!"

"You pulled a knife on me!" she accused.

He angrily gestures at the sheets as he swings his bleeding foot into the bed. Gross. "It was
for that!"

Oh, nice. Wonderful. Fuck, now she's really stuck. Stupid old-Lysa, she doesn't have a
maidenhead anymore so she can't claim annulment by non-consummation, and now the literal
bloody sheets have sealed her fate. She wonders why Jaime is playing along with this crap,
but she supposes he must be more scared of Tywin than Cersei. Tywin wouldn't suffer such
an insult, he'd probably just drag them both in by the ears and force them to get on with it,
with him glaring at them both from the foot of the bed.

Not to mention at that moment the guards burst in. "We heard a commotion – "

"It's nothing, return to your posts," Jaime orders.

"Are you sure, my Lord – "

"Night terrors. Mad King. Just leave!" Jaime said angrily, and from his tone it's not a
complete lie.

The guards duck out quickly.

Jaime glares at her, like this is somehow her fault . He stuffs the knife back in its sheath with
a huff, bandages his bleeding foot with some clean linens soaked in strongwine, and lies back
down in bed with his arms crossed and his back to her.
The next morning, Cersei has a victorious smirk on her face. Jaime must have told her the
trick with the knife, probably even showed her his injured foot, the little freak. Whatever. She
hopes his foot rots and falls off, along with the rest of Cersei's face.

Robert pulls a serving girl into his lap and Cersei's smile immediately turns into a frown. Ha-
ha.

They leave King's Landing not a day too soon. She truly had forgotten the oppressive nature
of the stench in that god-awful city until they were out on the open road. Lannisport and
Casterly Rock, in comparison, are a balm of fresh salty ocean breeze. That's about the only
positive, though. Even ignoring the fact that Cersei's agents are all over the Rock, this place
is an absolute disaster.

When she arrives, she immediately understands two things. The first is that Tywin runs the
place with an iron fist, mostly by himself (the assistance of Kevan, Genna, the maester, and
the castellan notwithstanding), and therefore expects absolutely nothing of her but to keep her
mouth shut, look pretty, and start popping out heirs. The second is that even if Tywin wasn't
there, Genna isn't going to let her do anything either, because she's been the de facto Lady of
the Rock for decades and she wasn't going to unhook her claws from the reins of power
anytime soon. Tygett was kind of cool, but he would die of some pox in about a year, and she
didn't know if she could prevent that. Gerion was very cool, and she got along with him, but
he had little authority – and unless she did something to prevent it, one day he'd sail off to
Old Valyria and never come back.

So Lysa sits in her chambers and tries to figure out her next moves. She's in a real bind, here,
but she's gotten out of worse.

First order of business: get Cersei off her back and buy herself some more time for a
counterstrike. She is perfectly capable of conducting the right investigations to convert,
isolate, or dismiss Cersei's creatures, but she can't do it all overnight. And the timing of all
this will be very tricky.

Though Jaime visits her chambers at night and breaks his fast with her in the morning to keep
up appearances, he hasn't touched her even once, so even if she seduces some blonde-haired,
green-eyed Lannister relation, Jaime will know it's not his right away. If she doesn't produce
an heir, Tywin will rain hell down upon their heads – hers especially, because she's the
woman and the non-Lannister-by-blood besides. However, if she does manage to get Jaime to
give her an heir to secure her position…well, Cersei was already trying to kill her over any
minor perceived slights, but that would go beyond perceived. Lysa still has her guards and
food taster and everything, but her security detail is focused on threats from Targaryen
loyalists, not their fellow Lannister guardsmen.

So Lysa decides to leave the matter be and doesn't pressure Jaime at all beyond being friendly
enough. Unlike Stannis, who had come to her as a blank slate, Jaime is a much tougher nut to
crack. (Seriously, what did she have to do to get a blonde wig around these parts? She'd
admire Jaime's dedication to his lady love it wasn't his own goddamn sister .) Lysa's eventual
goal is to convert all of Casterly Rock to be on her side, but that also takes time, time that she
has very little of at the moment. So all she can do for now is leave Jaime tiny breadcrumbs
during the short interactions he does deign to grant them both.
That is, Lysa will constantly, innocently , bring up the names of all the other potential brides
for Jaime.

"Oh, I'm still not too familiar with all the bannermen of the West…that was Lord Serrett who
came to visit yesterday, wasn't it? His daughter seems quite nice, mayhaps I'll ask your lady
aunt to write to her for me."

"I hear another one of Lord Hightower's daughters have been married."

"That lady with the red hair, almost like mine…was that Lord Marbrand's sister? Oh, that's
right, they're your cousins, aren't they?"

"Mace Tyrell's younger sister, the one who married her Redwyne cousin…she's with child
already. Goodness me, but she moves fast, just like her mother."

"Lord Redwyne's other daughter is still unmarried. I wonder who he's intending her for.
When I was still betrothed to the King's brother, I heard he was in talks with your father,
but…I apologize, that was ill-done of me. I ought not to speak of such things, my lord
husband."

That last one had gotten Jaime to choke on his wine a little, and Lysa knows that her efforts
have been successful because she succeeded in intercepting Jaime's letters to his sister. His
learning disability makes his writing very slow, which means that he often leaves unfinished
letters out on his desk for ages at a time before they get sent. Though Father is impatient for
an heir, Lady Lysa is not yet with child. We ought to continue to pray for her health. Father
will not; one gooddaughter is the same as any other, as long as she has the wealth and titles.
He'll just keep throwing them at me, forcing me to remarry, over and over again. Lady Lysa
and I are still not close, but she is obedient and meek; she has not ever questioned me.

A few weeks after the letter gets sent, Lysa notices that some of the more suspicious maids
hanging around her quarters have either disappeared or retreated to another part of the castle,
and she breathes a sigh of relief. It seems that Cersei is going to write her off for now, leaving
her there as a biddable and stupid placeholder so that Tywin won't marry Jaime off to
someone smarter and more ambitious.

(If only she knew!)

But now for the second task that she has to simultaneously juggle. Tywin was under the
impression that an heir would arrive any day now. He would absolutely flip the lid when he
finally found out that she and Jaime weren't doing their duty, considering that it was the one
real job they actually had (after all, he and his siblings were managing the rest of the numbers
and administration of the Westerlands, so what the hell were the kids doing to pull their
weight)? Lysa fully expected to get the majority of the blame when that happened, being the
woman and the non-Lannister-by-birth besides, so she absolutely had to impress Tywin and
gain his approval before then. If she had that, then she could be relatively sheltered from his
rage while he used his influence to force Jaime to give her an heir, and if that was a little
rapey, then sue her, this was Westeros.
Luckily, she had many years of experience being a favorite child, a teacher's pet, and a
corporate ass-kisser so this was nothing new. She knew she could impress Tywin, if only she
had a chance .

Unfortunately, even this couldn't be made easy for her.

All her attempts to learn the ropes of ruling (or even just managing the castle) are being
stymied by Genna, who doesn't want to give up any of her existing power. Her power and
blood means that there is no one who can order her to stop save for Tywin himself, and Lysa
knows that if she does go to him for help, he'll just ignore her because he has better things to
do than listen to the whining of an insipid little girl. Lysa will need her own allies and power
base before she can even think of looking Tywin Lannister in the eye, and to top off the crap
cherry on the shit sundae, her Uncle Brynden wasn't even here.

Canonically, he had taken service with Lord Arryn during the Rebellion, after which he had
followed Lysa to the Vale and become the Knight of the Gate. Probably because he had pitied
her and believed she needed him more, considering she was married to a man old enough to
be her grandfather. But here, Lysa was married to a handsome young man her age who didn't
even have the stain of being a Kingslayer as he did in the original story, so Uncle Brynden
was instead going to accompany Catelyn to the North, where he meant to keep her company
in an unfamiliar land.

Lysa didn't think Brynden would be happy serving a man like Tywin Lannister, anyway, nor
would Tywin Lannister have allowed a skilled warrior like him not completely under his
thumb hanging around. It was extremely inconvenient, however, because he would have been
a valuable ally. Original-Lysa would have been devastated at Cat the Favorite being chosen
over her once again; but current Lysa is just exceptionally annoyed because that's one fewer
card she has to play from her already limited hand.

But "few" didn't mean "none".

A bit of observation shows that Casterly Rock's system isn't as ironclad as it appears at first.
Though everyone is ostensibly loyal to Tywin, in reality, there are two distinct factions. The
true believers consist of people such as Kevan and Genna, most of the guards, and the high-
ranking servants such as the castellan or maester. Meanwhile, people like Tygett or Gerion,
various ignored wives, and the more menial servants formed what she called the outer orbit –
kept loyal only by fear and inferiority, they therefore had more exposed chinks in their armor.

For people like Tywin and Genna, their biggest weakness was that they were blind to the
people they considered beneath them. She knew they had agents observing her; she let them.
Meanwhile, she simply behaved kindly to all the servants she came into contact with, learned
their names, spoke to them, and treated them – not as equals, because that would just make
her look like a weak-spined fool – but as humans. There were many techniques for
psychological interrogation that left the target walking away without realizing they had been
interrogated at all, especially targets who were awed by the fact that any highborn would
deign to give a peon like them even five seconds of positive attention. Genna might have
been able to pressure the maester and castellan into always being too "busy" to engage with
her, but she couldn't control everybody all the time. And in this way, she was able to gain
need-to-know information that Tywin's inner circle deemed she didn't need to know.
She used the same techniques on Tygett and Gerion. For Tygett, she just had to play
psychologist for about an hour every sennight, as she listened to him whine over and over
again about his big brother issues, while poking at his ego and telling him he was smart and
talented and worth it and better than Tywin at a few things here or there. "I understand; you
and I have much in common, Ser Tygett. I grew up in my sister's shadow, too. Beautiful Cat,
perfect Cat. She could do no wrong, in our father's eyes. I suppose that's one advantage to
being a woman – we leave our homes and start a new life for ourselves when we marry. But
unless your brother gives you leave to find service to some other lord, you're trapped here."
And Gerion, she simply laughed at his jokes and returned to him a few of her own, and traded
stories and dreams of travel and exploration.

In addition, the core group of true believers wasn't totally impenetrable either. Kevan
Lannister was loyal to a fault, but he had one major weakness: he loved his wife. And Dorna
Swyft, bless her heart, was a sweet woman, but also a complete and utter simpleton. She,
Darlessa Marbrand, and many of the other lesser wives of the Rock had spent years being
bullied by both Genna and Cersei alike. Lysa was only too happy to listen to their woes and
pray with them (the boring old bitches should be grateful, as this was one of the most tedious
and boring chores Lysa ever had to do), and coo over the toddler Lancel on command.

Lysa presented herself as an innocent young maid, eager to please and serve and do her duty,
and in desperate need of motherly direction ever since her own had died when she was
young, poor thing. Dorna bought it hook, line, and sinker. And since Dorna liked her, Kevan
was also predisposed to do the same thing; and since Kevan believed her to be trustworthy,
inoffensive, and easily malleable, neither Tywin nor Genna had any reason to believe
otherwise.

So, after a few false starts, everything was going smoothly. She was settling in, establishing
herself, and learning the ropes. She was making connections and getting people to like her.
She was grabbing allies left and right under Genna's nose.

And luckily, the last, and most important, ally she was looking for was right there. Mainly
because Qyburn hasn't been expelled from the Citadel yet.

"Lord Tyrion," she said cheerfully. "I'm pleased to finally meet you! Your brother has told me
much about you."

"Hello, Lady Lysa," Tyrion said shyly. He hid behind his nurse, who seemed horrified. She
had probably been tasked with keeping Tyrion out of sight and out of mind; Lysa knew
Tyrion hadn't been part of the welcoming party when she had arrived at Casterly Rock for the
first time. Lysa smiled kindly at the woman. Don't worry; I actually wish to speak to him, not
just to stare and jeer.

Gerion Lannister was standing behind the two of them, smiling and observing. He looked
almost exactly like Jaime, just older. Actually, all the fucking Lannisters looked basically the
same, down to the hair color. Lysa swears she's not being racist here. They legitimately all
looked the same to her. Weren't the Durrandon-Baratheons supposed to have some kind of
freaky Storm God genes that ensured all their kids would have the same coloring? What the
fuck were the Lannisters doing, sacrificing to the Aryan Cult?!
"I have a brother who is also your age. We were very close. I shall miss him dearly, but I
should also like you to be my brother. Shall we be friends?"

Tyrion perks up at the word "friends". Poor kid. "Really?"

He was an ugly little child who was going to grow up to be an ugly little adult, but he was
clever and she would need him for the next steps of her plan. Namely: she had a major secret
advantage over Genna, that being knowledge of the industrial revolution.

Lysa nodded. "I heard you like books."

"I love books! I'm reading a book about dragons right now. Did you know the Valyrians – "

She lets him info-dump on him for several minutes while they aimlessly wander around the
library. He is only eight now, but one day, she will need a competent #2 to handle the details
while she does the scheming. Best she starts the training early. Tyrion is one of the few
reasonably bright and creative thinkers in this world of sheep and numbnuts.

"Hey, Tyrion? Have you ever heard of something called a spinning jenny?"

"No, Lady Lysa."

"A spinning jenny?" Gerion pipes up. "I might know a Jenny who spins."

Lysa cracks a grin. "No, this is even better."

"How so?"

"Do you want to pull the most epic prank ever on your older brother, Ser Gerion?"

His eyes widen in delight. "A prank ? On Tywin ? My lady, I believe you must be the bravest
soul in all of Casterly Rock – no, the Seven Kingdoms!" He mock-gasps. "Surely throwing
yourself off the cliffs would be a swifter and more painless death."

"Not a jape, Ser Gerion," she says. "I intend to pull the greatest trick ever on Lord Lannister,
and at the end of it, he will thank me for it."

" Truly? " Gerion gasps, and then grins down at Tyrion, who offers a shy smile back. "Well,
this ought to be interesting."
 Interlude II: The Right-Hand Man
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

"This has to be a mistake," Ser Kevan said. "Our revenues are high, but not that high." An
accounting error of this magnitude is extremely concerning. He does not want to face Tywin's
wrath again; that business with the ravens and Jaime's supposed death had been an absolute
disaster, especially after Kevan had failed to turn up anything useful at Casterly Rock. He'd
only been eventually forgiven when it had turned out that Jaime had been in fact alive, and
even later when it had been discovered that the crafty eunuch had been to blame after all.
Stirring up trouble to gods knew what ends; this was why foreigners could not be trusted.

"That's what I thought, too," said the castellan, "but no matter how I add the numbers…"

"Not that having too much money is a bad problem, quite the opposite," Ser Kevan said, "but
where is this coming from? If something has changed, we need to know about it. If the extra
money is caused by some overly excitable young lord over-mining his lands, then it'll turn
into a disaster in another year."

"We had an unusually good harvest in the lands nearest to Casterly Rock," the castellan
ventured, "but that only accounts for one-fifth of the increase. And it's not the mining," he
added, turning to another page. "Here. It's all coming from our weavers and cloth merchants."

"All that money? Merely from cloth ?" Genna asked.

"Well, we normally export our raw wool for coppers, and the weavers of King's Landing and
Essos sell it back to us for stags and dragons," the castellan explained. "But now it seems that
we are selling the cloth, which…I don't know when this happened, as the Weavers' Guild of
Lannisport is still as small as it ever was compared to…"

Gerion suddenly began laughing uncontrollably.

"Would you care to share your amusement with us?" Tywin whispered menacingly. "By all
means, continue to sit there being absolutely useless."

In typical Gerion fashion, he let the words roll right off his back. "The answer is obvious, if
any of you ever bothered to pay attention."

"Oh, really? Do enlighten us."

Gerion let them all stew in their confusion for a little longer, before he finally said, "The girl,
of course."

"The girl?" Kevan asked.

"The Tully girl? Well, the Lannister girl now, I suppose. You ought to know her, you did take
her for your son, stolen out from right underneath the Baratheons' noses, too."
" Her? " Genna sniffed. "She's just an empty-headed little – "

"Sister, I love you, but you can be such a fool sometimes, especially when it comes to other
women. She's quite bright, you know. If you took the time to speak to her instead of simply
thinking her to be an empty-headed little chit and preventing her from learning anything
useful so you can keep being Lady of the Rock. Don't think I don't see what you're doing."

"Gerion, stop talking in circles, please, and answer the question," Kevan sighed.

"I mean, I don't know what she actually does , I just know that she and your son have been
building these things that just make the cloth for them, and then they turn around and sell it
for a tidy profit, and…"

"Who? Jaime?"

"Jaime? Yes, of course Jaime, voluntarily doing sums. No, your other son! Tyrion!"

Tywin's lip curled into a sneer. "Get to the point."

"What, she engages in trade ?" the maester asked.

"No, the merchants engage in trade. The merchants just…give her a cut."

"By whose authority does she tax them?"

"Well, it is her cloth. She has a right to own her own property."

"Gerion – "

"ENOUGH!" Tywin thundered. "I tire of this." He turned to a guard. "Fetch the girl then, and
we shall have her answer the questions herself."

Kevan feared for her then, only to find out it his worry was all for nothing. When she entered
the room, she was straight-backed, calm, and carrying a sheaf of papers. She seemed
prepared. Almost as if she had expected this day.

Tywin interrogates her, and she answers every question without delay. Mills, she explained;
they were machines that could perform the labor of a weaver, for a fraction of the cost, for
mills did not need to rest or eat; they made fewer mistakes, and did not need training. She
showed them extremely complex diagrams, like the sort of architectural drawings that
engineers used to build castles, except that this was no castle, but something else entirely.
These things were powered by streams, she said, but she had ideas of how to build some in
areas away from water, powered by fire instead. Of course, she could show them one
tomorrow, if they would ride out with her.

"Where did you even find the time to do this?" Kevan asks.

"I did not realize I was not allowed to, Ser," Lady Lysa says. "Back at Riverrun, my sister Cat
and I were always busy; we were tasked with caring for the servants and supplies, see,
because with our mother dead it became our duty to administer the castle. But here, Lady
Genna has already been doing such excellent work – there was nothing for me to do that she
was not already doing better."

"Surely there are more proper things for a Lady to engage in than craft and trade," Maester
Creylen exclaims derisively. "What of your sewing circles and reading prayers and charity?"

"But that was what I was doing," Lady Lysa gasps. "Charity."

Tywin fixes a stern gaze upon her. "You call this mill charity?"

"What else would one call it?" Lady Lysa asks innocently. "Initially I meant to simply give
the gold to orphans to buy bread with, but if they took the gold and bought bread with it,
within a moon's turn the gold would be gone and they would be begging again. I could pay
apprentice's fees for some of them, but there are only so many masters who would be willing
to accept an apprentice of uncertain origin and education. A mill, on the other hand, can
provide honest and regular employment for little training; these children may receive steady
wages from the profits of the sold cloth instead of turning to crime."

"And how much have you spent thus far on this charity? " his brother snaps, flipping through
the pages and pages of accounts. "These mills of yours did not build themselves. How have
you paid the carpenters, the blacksmiths, the craftsmen – all these people you have written
down in your personal accounts?"

"My allowance was more than enough for the first mill," she says confidently. "I didn't think
it was wrong to spend it in that manner. Lady Genna informed me that it was for dresses and
jewels, but I asked Lady Dorna if I could put some towards charity instead, and she said that
it was permissible, and Ser Kevan did not correct her, either."

Tywin looks at him. "Is this true?"

Kevan can't lie to his brother, so he nods. "It's true, but I didn't think she would build a mill
with it. The entire allowance was hers, to allocate as she saw fit. While the standard
recommendation by the Faith is to put one part in seven towards charity, she said she wanted
to give more than that, and of course Dorna would never advise against such a thing."

"And what about these other half-dozen mills you've built all over the place?" Tywin
demanded.

"My first mill made back four times its initial investment within a moon's turn," Lady Lysa
said. "It's in my report. And I did not think it right to take money meant for charity to buy
myself dresses and jewels, so I just built more mills with it. Honest employment for
craftsmen and keeping cutpurses off the streets is surely a good thing, is it not?"

"Made back four times – so you are engaging in trade!" Maester Creylen said. "Either that, or
you are taxing without Lord Lannister's direct approval!"

"No, I do not trade or tax at all," Lady Lysa said. "The merchants of Lannisport trade. I
merely accept donations from them, as thanks for benefiting from the produce of my charity.
I use the donations to keep the orphans fed and clothed and housed." She smiled sweetly.
"But of course the merchants of the Westerlands are so wealthy, pious, and generous, that the
donations ended up being far more than was required. So I used that excess to build more
mills, so that I could employ more orphans."

"What of the land usage? You did not get permission to build things upon the Lord's lands,
did you?"

"This is charity for orphans, Maester. The lands belonged to Faith-run orphanages. The local
septons I spoke to were happy to rent it out to me for a very small fee. Except the newest
mill; that one is located on land belonging to a pious freeholder. He was happy to allow it as
well; he wished to tithe more, but previously could not afford it. He had only been using that
land to graze sheep before, as it was too poor for crops." She bowed her head. "I apologize if
I have overstepped, my Lords. In the Riverlands the Faith and freeholders are not required to
petition their lords directly on what they choose to build on or do with their lands. If the laws
of the Westerlands are more stringent then I beg your pardon for my ignorance, and I will
immediately go and tell them that Lord Tywin has personally ordered these illicit structures
to be torn down."

She said everything with such an innocent smile and look that one could almost believe that
she had tripped and fallen by accident into a bigger pile of money than the Westerlands' most
fruitful gold mines.

Kevan sneaks another glance at his siblings. Tywin's face is as inscrutable as ever, while
Genna's cheeks are pink in embarrassment. Kevan knows that Tywin had delegated the task
of keeping an eye on the Tully girl to her and her maids, at their last family meeting. That she
had done all this without anyone realizing…well, he can imagine his brother would surely be
having words with her later, and he feels a stab of pity for his sister. After all, how could
Genna have known the girl was so crafty? Dorna dined with her nearly every day and neither
she nor Kevan had reported anything amiss, either. She was a girl of six-and-ten, by the
Seven! What secrets could she have possibly had? Even Tywin had not predicted her
capability; that was why he had delegated the task at all.

Genna's maids were skilled at seeing where people went and who they spoke to; a few were
literate enough to intercept letters, usually of the illicit love affair variety. But Lady Lysa's
behavior there was not unusual at all; Kevan's own informants also told him that she mostly
interacted with members of the main Lannister family, the daughters and wives of visiting
noblemen, the help and household around Casterly Rock, or the various septas who ran
orphanages in Lannisport and throughout the countryside. Nor were poorhouses and
charitable donations activities out of the ordinary for a noble lady; the maids would not have
understood the financial implications. And if Gerion had been involved as a willing
accomplice, a nobleman visiting craftsmen where a lady could not, well, that solved the rest
of the question of how the buildings were constructed in the first place. (Gerion was sneakier
than many gave him credit for, because of how he always laughed and japed on the surface.)

"Enough," Tywin snaps at Maester Creylen, before he can open his mouth in protest again.
"There will be no need for that. I will go and see these mills for myself, and see what your
'charity' is all about."
The next morning they saddled their horses and rode out to the closest mill and walked
inside. It was a cacophonous clatter of wood and steel, but at its core, it was a marvel that did
all that she purported it to do. Before their eyes, Kevan saw enormous sacks of wool
disappearing into machines that cleaned them, and then thread and yarn spinning itself into
existence right before their eyes, almost as if by magic, and then other machines where
perfectly woven rolls of yarn and cloth grew in length at a speed and consistency several
times greater than that of master weavers. The young children walking around the factory
floor would occasionally replace the rolls of wool – to go through so many rolls in less than a
turn of an hour! – and once, one of the machines did grind to a halt with an ugly screech, but
they quickly untangled and righted it again.

"Huh," Genna said, jaw open in wonder. "To think they said you were the less beautiful and
intelligent Tully daughter."

Blunt as always, Genna. Still, Kevan was impressed that his sister had recovered quickly. No
doubt seeing the success of her good-niece must rankle at her pride, after everything Genna
had done to retain power now that Jaime was married. Gerion had been right, and truth be
told Kevan had seen it as well, but he had been too busy and tired to truly confront his sister.
Perhaps another girl might have been bullied into submission, but this Tully girl had found
her own path instead, and that was worth his regard – and Genna, too, must have been too
impressed to actually hate her in the moment.

"My sister is the epitome of womanly education, and has surely always been superior to me
in manners of embroidery, music, dancing, and reciting the Seven-Pointed Star, my Lady,"
the girl – Lysa, her name was Lady Lysa – said. "And as we all know, armies are paid in
songs and prayers."

The false humility would have been irritating elsewhere, but in this case, Kevan could
understand Gerion's amusement. He chanced a look at his brothers. Gerion was grinning
widely, and so was Tygett. As for Tywin, he was standing straighter in his boots and giving
his gooddaughter an assessing stare.

Kevan recognized it. It was not the assessing stare he usually gave – namely derision at
incompetence – nor was it the look he gave at those who proved themselves to be more
useful than average – which was the same kind he gave to prize stallions. Rather, it was the
rarest kind of respect he could give anyone, and here he was, giving it to a slip of a girl less
than half their ages.

There was even a hint of a smile on Tywin's face.

Tywin. Smiling.

"You did all this yourself?" he asked.

"Your brothers, Ser Tygett and Ser Gerion, helped me find the right trustworthy craftsmen
and merchants to do the actual building," she stated. "The local septons and septas provided
the land and found the children and beggars in need of employment. And your son assisted
me with the designs."
Kevan noticed that she had cleverly not specified which son. Given his knowledge of Jaime
and Tyrion, and Gerion's earlier outburst, it was quite obvious that it was Tyrion she spoke of
– judging by the looks on all his siblings' faces, they too knew which one. He was pleasantly
surprised that the girl was kind to his dwarf nephew, and did not treat him mockingly for his
deformity, but Dorna did say she was a very kind girl, and he trusted his wife's intuition in
these matters. It was only Tywin who seemed to ignore that fact, but then again, his eldest
brother could be blind to certain things.

"Can these mills create anything besides cloth?" Tywin asked her. He wasn't even berating
her for doing all this in secret under his nose! (Though, given how the girl had responded to
their other questions, no doubt she would have said something clever, like "I did not think to
waste your time with insignificant paltries such as orphans, weaving, and other womens'
work, my Lord.")

"Given time and the assistance of better learned men than I, I am sure of it. I began with
thread and cloth, because it was what I knew as a woman, but my most recent one builds
tools to improve the yields of farms – we house orphans who have had some experience in
woodworking and metalworking there. I have designs for others that can make books and
glass, though I have not built them yet."

Books! Glass! Those items would bring in even more money than cloth, and the bolts of wool
cloth Kevan saw being taken out were some of the finest and most perfectly even he had seen
in his life.

"What of steel?" Tywin pressed.

"Eventually, I can see a mill for steel will be possible. I am afraid, as a woman, I am not well-
learned in the arts of smithing."

Tywin was silent for several seconds. Then he said, "You will bring to me a report of all the
work you have already done or plan to do. You will work directly with Maester Creylen and
the smiths to design a mill for steel, and you will report your progress directly to me. In the
meantime, Tygett and Gerion will oversee the mills and merchants you already have in place.
You have permission to construct additional mills based on the designs you already have
ready. Ser Kevan will see about acquiring the requisite lands and construction permissions for
you."

"Yes, my Lord."

His slight smile disappeared. "This is an impressive thing you have made. To think you
accomplished that, before making an heir."

"The Mother shall bless me soon, I am sure of it."

He set a stern gaze upon the girl. "See that She does." The dark look faded slightly, and there
was something more akin to affection on his face – though if it was affection, it was more
than anything he had ever shown his own children.

"You know," he said suddenly, "you remind me of my late wife sometimes."

 And he saddled his horse and rode off ahead of the rest of them.

Even Lady Lysa, who had been entirely self-assured throughout the entire tour – as she
should have been, given that she knew more of this than anyone in the entire world, probably,
save for perhaps Tyrion and whatever craftsman she had helping her – seemed gobsmacked.
She had lived in Casterly Rock for long enough that she surely understood the reverence with
which everyone spoke of the late Lady Joanna. To have the comparison come directly from
his brother's mouth…

"That's the highest compliment I've ever heard him give anyone," said Genna, and Kevan
could only nod in agreement.

It was a testament to Lady Lysa's intelligence – an intelligence none of them saw coming –
that she did not receive this news with immediate joy. Her smile was more of a pained
grimace. "No pressure," she muttered to herself.

Oh brother , Kevan thought, please be kind to her.

Chapter End Notes

I'm going to handwave away how Lysa managed to get her factories built and running so
quickly by the fact that Westeros might be behind technologically, but it's insanely ahead
architecturally. GRRM has no sense of scale when describing castles and walls and
whatever; nonetheless, if Westeros is capable of building such things, via leftover magic
from Brandon the Builder's era or whatever, then it's also consistent that they can put up
a simple early 1800s-style shed with a water wheel absurdly quickly if they had the right
instructions.
 285 AC: Kingslayer

She and Jaime had been married close to a year, and still no pregnancy or child to show for it.
As she feared, Tywin's patience wore thin. However, as she planned, his rage fell upon Jaime
and not her.

She might have overdone it with the "playing stupid and innocent" act. It was a marvel that
she was still able to pull that off after showing off the factories. But when Tywin and Genna
had both pulled her aside and interrogated her about the matter, she decided to see what she
could get away with and said, "My mother died when I was a girl. It was my septa who
taught me that a man would give me a child." This would be the real test of her standing
within Casterly Rock: who was going to be the whipping boy for this mess? Tywin's perfect
golden heir, or the girl who was singlehandedly responsible for making House Lannister even
more ridiculously wealthy and powerful than they already were?

"And what exactly did she say?"

"She said that he would do something on my wedding night – she wasn't clear – she said that
a man and a woman lay together, whatever that meant. When I inquired further, she scolded
me about being a proper lady. She said that my husband would show me everything and I
should simply follow his lead politely. So I focused on my sums instead and did not press the
issue."

"And when Jaime lays with you, what exactly does he do?"

"Well, he comes in, some days quite drunk, and he lays with me."

"As in?"

"He lies down next to me and goes to sleep."

"Does he do anything else ? Between lying down and going to sleep?"

"No, my Lord. Well – I embrace him and kiss him, and wait for him to give me a child. As
my septa bid I ought."

"What did you do the first night?!"

"What, the wedding night? The same thing as he has done every other night."

"But there was blood on the sheets?!"

"He had a night terror about the Mad King and jumped out of bed and began brandishing his
knife. I threw a pillow at him, and he dropped his knife on his foot."

"So that was his blood, not your maiden's blood?"

"That was his blood, my Lord. But I've bled since then? Every moon?"
"That's different, that's your moon blood," Lady Genna cut in hurriedly, before Tywin
Lannister could blow up again and tear them all a new hole.

"Yes, moon blood. Women need that to make a child, right? The girls who are too young to
have bled, or the women who are too old and have stopped, no longer have children. Or when
a woman is with child, she stops bleeding. Isn't that why they show the sheets, so that they
know a woman is fertile but not with child, and therefore still a maid?"

Lord Tywin put his head in his hands.

"That is not how it works. At all," Genna said.

"Then what's all the blood even for? "

"Forget the blood!" Lord Tywin snapped. "Did you not once think to question why no heirs
were forthcoming? I thought you to be brighter than this!"

"Considering King Robert easily leaves his bastards all over the Seven Kingdoms, no, I did
not question that creating children required any more competence than collapsing in a
drunken heap," Lysa protested, with all the false indignity she could muster. "Isn't that why
bastards keep appearing in places where tavern wenches pour drinks so freely?"

Lord Tywin's face slipped further into his palms, while Lady Genna threw her head back in
raucous laughter. "King – Robert – drunken – !" she wheezed. "Oh, the girl truly is too clever
for her own good."

"I'm glad you find the matter of the succession amusing!" Tywin snarled angrily. "Genna! Go
– educate her properly. And bring my worthless idiot lump of a son to me!" he barked at one
of the guards.

Genna quickly took her to a side chamber and gave her the birds and bees talk, and Lysa
made sure to hem and haw at the right places as if this was the first time she was ever hearing
this information. "Between our legs, where women have a chamber, men have a staff."
Between our legs where women have a chamber, men have a staff, Lysa mocked silently in
her head. She didn't care that she was throwing Septa Mordane under the bus. The old hag
deserved it, playing favorites and pitting daughters against each other, her against Cat and
Arya against Sansa. Stupid bitch expected to teach noblewomen when she barely knew her
own arse from her own cunt.

"What, the way dogs do it?" Lysa wrinkled her nose.

"So you have seen it?" Lady Genna asked.

"Once or twice. Yes, I have seen dogs and animals mount each other. But my father or uncle
or septas always made me look away, because it wasn't polite to stare at such things. And I've
never seen birds or fish do it that way, so I didn't think to assume that men also did so either."

"Well, now you know. Though it is more proper for a man to face his lady wife during the
act."
"That the man's staff must enter and the emission must occur inside, and it only works for
that hole, correct?"

Genna smiled wryly. "Yes."

"And men find this…enjoyable?"

"They ought to, yes, unless the woman is unbearably ugly. Or he is a sword-swallower."

"Oh yes, what is that, if it isn't impolite to ask? My septa only said it was a sinful thing that
men did and would speak no more of it. I would hate to do it by accident."

Lady Genna made a face, and Lysa smiled internally as the woman was forced to explain
homosexuality and sodomy to her in extremely medieval terms. Serves her right for trying to
stymie Lysa's rightful place as Lady of the Rock when she first arrived.

Eventually, Lysa finished her questions, and Genna took her back into Tywin's solar, where
he seemed to be in the middle of a severe tongue-lashing at Jaime's expense.

"The girl has been educated. I am happy to report that she is not simple – merely obedient
and unfortunately saddled with a fool for a septa."

"What a relief," Tywin snarled sarcastically.

"It should be a relief," Genna said. "The girl is as innocent as a lamb. A little too innocent,
some might say, but better a maiden than a harlot. That's a good thing considering how clever
she is in every other respect."

Tywin didn't answer. He could be a cruel hypocrite, but at least he recognized intelligence
when he saw it. Even with his hatred of Tyrion, he had to admit that his youngest son was
reasonably clever. Lysa's only fear had been that he might still dismiss her altogether for
being a woman, given how he treated Cersei, but then again, Cersei was nowhere near as
intelligent as she thought herself to be, and he'd conversed perfectly well with people like
Joanna, Genna, and Olenna Tyrell. So perhaps it was that, due to the usual standards of
sexism that plagued all of Westeros, women as a whole would have to hit a higher bar to gain
his esteem, but he gave those few who did their just dues. Besides, hitting said bar was a
good deal easier when one had an entire past life of education in economics, international
relations, engineering, military history, and game theory. He still didn't trust her as much as
his siblings – after all, she's only been in Casterly Rock for a year – but as she'd hoped, once
she proved herself to be more than a simple broodmare, she continued to rise in influence.
She suspected that, since men of letters were rare enough – many lords, such as Randyll
Tarly, were functionally illiterate, and women were educated even less (beyond basic
arithmetic to run a castle and reading the scriptures) – that anyone able to even talk to him on
even footing could be counted on one's fingers.

It was an unfortunate turn of events for Jaime, who had always enjoyed the position of
golden child for years with little effort on his part and had therefore been unpleasantly
shocked to find that someone not even of Tywin Lannister's own blood had usurped him
while he had been complacently inattentive.
"Well, there you have it," he said, turning back to Jaime. "Your wife has pleasantly waited for
you to do your duty so she can do her duty, and I know you have been educated by better men
than some virgin septa, so you have no excuse for not knowing, and even less of an excuse
for lying about it!"

"Yes, yes, duty. Why is it always duty?" Jaime mumbled.

Ooh, big mistake, Lannister. You need to learn to put a filter on your big mouth. And your
pride. You've spent too long as the golden child. Actions have consequences.

"Duty? DUTY? What in the name of the Seven is WRONG with you?!" Tywin raged. "It is
the SIMPLEST of duties, and not even an unpleasant one. You spoiled child! After all the
trouble I've gone through, to find you a wife – of all the eligible ladies and maidens available,
I've secured you the daughter of a Lord Paramount, goodsister to another future Lord
Paramount, and she's not even ugly or stupid! Here I am, waiting like a fool, and it turns out
that all you have been doing this entire time is collapsing next to her like a common drunk!"

Oh god please , Lysa thought to herself. In truth, she wondered how much of this was
actually worth it. A son would secure her position, but for now she supposed that the lack of
attempts on her life from Cersei's side was probably due to the lack of news of a pregnancy.
Jaime probably wrote her every fortnight promising her that he hadn't touched Lysa at all,
that he was being true to her until the very end. If she did become pregnant, well…Casterly
Rock was a well-secured castle, and Lysa was pretty sure she'd finally gotten rid of or
converted all of Cersei's agents but… pretty sure wasn't 100% sure. And also, yes, a child
would secure her position, but Lysa really didn't care for pregnancy and childbirth in a
medieval hellhole like Westeros. She was fine with putting it off until her hips were wider.
The fact that she was now in charge of the industrial policy of the Westerlands – and that she
was the only person capable of the task for the foreseeable future – gave her far more power
and leeway than most other women in her position, while staying childless disadvantaged her
far less.

"Gods above, you're not a sword swallower are you?" Tywin continued his rant.

"No, Father," Jaime muttered.

"She even meets with the people, the castellan and maester, and all the other tasks that you
should be doing instead of continuing to play at knights in the training yard! When I am dead
and gone mayhaps they will call her Lord of the Westerlands instead of you!"

If it had been any other young lordling, that would have spurred him to action out of envy,
maybe even made him hate Lysa more, but knowing Jaime, he was probably fine with that.
Let Lysa do the boring shit, and he could be a pretty golden figurehead for everyone to ooh
and aah at. If not for Cersei he'd be the perfect little pet.

"Shall I walk to King's Landing right now, and trade her for Selyse Florent? Her father
thought you worth more than the royal family, brother to a King; must I march you back
there and admit we were wrong?"

"If you like her so much, maybe you should marry her instead," Jaime snapped rebelliously.
SMACK.

The backhand was swift and brutal, and Jaime's head swung like a whip from the blow. Lysa
internally winced. Then again, it could be worse. A smack to the face was extremely lenient,
by Tywin Lannister's standards.

"You will bed her and put a child in her, boy," Tywin said, "even if I have to tie you down
myself and watch you two do it ."

Jamie, cowed, whispered, "Yes, Father."

"Now go. I have important things to do and I do not have the time to mother you like some
kind of wetnurse."

That night, she and Jaime spoke candidly for the first time, as in, Jaime was not completely
falling-over-himself drunk for once. "I didn't marry you expecting love, and I still don't,"
Lysa said, offering him an olive branch.

Jaime looked miserable, and Lysa almost felt sorry for him. "But you deserve better, my
Lady," he said. "Uncle Gerion was right. You deserve someone who loves you."

"We don't always get what, or who, we want," Lysa answered simply.

"I heard you and Stannis Baratheon actually liked each other. Is that true?" Jaime asked.

Lysa debates on whether to tell him the truth, and then shrugs. "I thought we could get along.
It doesn't matter anymore."

Jaime stares in response to her question, then snorts. "What? Stannis Baratheon , really?
Him?"

"What's wrong with him?" Lysa said, somewhat offended on the other's behalf. Stannis was
awkward and boring and uncompromising and probably on the spectrum, but he was at least
halfway competent , which was more than what could be said for a lot of the lords of
Westeros.

"Well – he's – Stannis ," Jaime said lamely. "He's completely humorless and – "

"He is not a drunkard or a philanderer, and not a brute who would beat his wife," Lysa said.
"And he would do his duty, which is more than what I can say for you."

Jaime winced again. Good . Lysa lets him stew again, before rubbing away the hurt she
caused. "I figured, after the first month, that you were in love with someone else. Aren't
you?"

"Yes," he admitted.

"She was someone you knew before or when the Mad King took you prisoner into his
Kingsguard. Someone whose love got you through the worst of times. Someone you can't be
with, because of politics or other reasons. Am I wrong?"
Jaime shook his head. "No, you're not."

"I'm not angry. I understand you can't control these things, and you barely know me, a girl
who came after. You don't have to tell me who she is. It's fine. We just need to work together
to get your father off our backs."

"That's fair."

Jaime was silent for awhile, and suddenly, he began speaking. "The Mad King…he'd burn
people alive, and make everyone watch. It would – excite him. And then he would rape his
wife, Queen Rhaella, after. I would have to stand guard and listen to them. Queen Rhaella
would scream and plead. She'd come out of there with bruises and scratches and cuts, sprains
and broken fingers. Her pain excited him just as much as the burnings."

Oh gods, spare me the trauma. You're not even being called Kingslayer this time around.
After all, your father got to King's Landing days before Ned did. Either he killed Aerys
himself, or he covered up the fact that you did.

"He was a monster who did not deserve to rule a privy, much less the Seven Kingdoms," Lysa
said. "But we took our justice, in the end."

"I'm the one who killed him!" Jaime shouted.

Lysa is silent. Called it.

Jaime goes on, hanging his head. "Everyone thinks my father did it, but it was me. He found
me in the throne room, covered in the blood of the king I swore to protect. Burn them all , he
said. Let them rule over charred bones and ash. "

"He was no King," said Lysa. "Mad dogs must be put down, no matter if they wear a crown.
Even if it wasn't for the wildfire. He deserved death long before."

"I'm an oathbreaker!"

Lysa elbowed him. "Your oaths to defend the weak and uphold the good surely must come
before your oaths to some worthless king. If I was a kingslayer, I'd wear it like a badge of
honor. Let the others kill common knights and poorly armored levies in the mud. What's
more impressive to you, hunting rabbits or hunting a dragon? Your only crime, in my
opinion, was that you didn't do it sooner."

Jaime's eyes widened in surprise, and then he grinned at her. For but a second the curtain
between them lifted, and Lysa saw the friendly young man she might have married had it not
been for Aerys and Cersei. But then it dropped again, and Jaime turned away miserably.
"Yeah, my uncle was right. You do deserve better than me."

"Stop that self-pity!" Lysa snapped, but it was too late. Jaime had closed himself off again.
"Please – "

"Please, no more," Jaime begged. "Not tonight. I swear to you, my lady, I'll – I'll do my duty
to you. Just give me time."
Dammit! Sure, it was unreasonable to expect to undo years of trauma in a five-minute talk,
but it was still disappointing.

Lysa sighed. "Fine, but it's not me you should be begging for time, but your father."

"Ugh, don't remind me."

"Tomorrow, then? Shall we at least try? Can we at least be friends?"

Jaime swallowed and didn't answer for a long time, but finally he muttered, "Fine, I'll try."

Lysa thought it would be the end of it, but the next night came and went, and the night after
that, and Jaime still failed to try . He just jerked around awkwardly and occasionally tried to
engage her in conversation, but mostly just avoided her and beat himself up with a guilt
complex even worse than Stannis'. And by the end of the week more unwelcome news hit the
castle – the royal family was coming for a sudden visit. The Queen was homesick, and
wished to visit her family, was the excuse.

At this point any patience or empathy Lysa had had for Jaime evaporated along with Tywin's.
It was immediately obvious to her that Jaime had played her for a fool – however candid he
had been that night after Tywin's lecture, he must have gone tattling to his beloved sister
shortly after. And everything after that had been him just stalling for time once again, and
now Cersei was running interference the best she knew how. Well, then, if this was how
Jaime was going to play the game, then fuck him, she'd have to take matters into her own
hands.

After, well, she mostly figuratively but occasionally literally whipped these servants into line.
And went back over the accounts with the maester and castellan. And double-checked their
stores because the goddamn smallfolk don't know how to count properly. And, and, and –

This was bullshit. Absolute bullshit. Lysa had JUST finished clearing out Cersei's leftover
weeds and now thanks to Jaime, she was going to have to start all over again once the royal
party left. Forget securing her position for a second: there was no point in consummating and
getting an heir if Cersei was just going to arrive in a fortnight and then poison her with moon
tea or actual poison. Before getting any of that done, she had to deal with Cersei. Now, she
did finally have Tywin's approval, which would make this task easier than it would have
otherwise been, but she still had to be careful about it. Simply going up to the man and saying
to his face, "Your son isn't doing his duty because he's too busy dreaming about fucking his
sister instead" would surely revert all her progress.

So she kept her head down and followed orders. There was no time to stop and rest, because
royal visitors arriving was a big deal, and there could be not even the slightest hint of a single
mistake. Overnight Casterly Rock had become a blur of activity and preparation; Genna was
so overrun she had long gotten over her silent vendetta against Lysa for perceived (and real)
threats to her position and drafted her into helping. Jaime was given charge of drilling all the
already-competent guards of Lannisport and Casterly Rock into even better shape, which he
actually excelled at. Tywin himself was too distracted to actually follow through on his threat
to personally witness a couple of teenagers have sex. Said tasks Tywin set himself to – and
also roped her into – was hide evidence of her mills and threaten everyone who knew into
silence.

Of course. He surely recognized that the ability to shit out cloth and seed mills and books and
glass and steel at will was an incredible, priceless advantage, worth even more than shitting
out gold. Lysa was surprised he was even attempting to hide any of this in the first place, but
then she recalled that with Varys long dead due to her interference, the new Master of
Whispers – some random crownlander she hadn't remembered mentioned in the books – was
certainly better at fawning than being competent. Lysa herself engaged in plenty of fawning,
and she saw that as a perfectly valid means to survival, but she was also competent – she had
some pride, thank you very much.

"LYSA!" Genna screams. "WHERE ARE THE ACCOUNTS FOR THE ARBOR GOLD?"

"The head cook has them!"

"Why don't YOU have them?!"

"BECAUSE THE COOKS ASKED FOR THEM FIRST AND LORD LANNISTER WAS
MAKING ME OBFUSCATE HIS REPORTS!"

"Forget those reports, GET ME THE ARBOR GOLD ACCOUNTS!"

Well, fuck you Genna , but Lysa isn't going to fucking disobey Tywin Fucking Lannister for
some fucking wine! Fuck Genna, fuck the fact that there were only 24 hours in a day, fuck
Cersei and Jaime and Robert, fuck literally fucking everybody for making Lysa actually have
to do work to prepare for a royal visit! Even if Jaime was taking the whole "making an heir"
thing seriously, Lysa was ready to kill him with her bare hands for this shit alone!
 285 AC: A Lady's Armor
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Decisions, decisions.

The royal party was due to arrive today and Lysa was still picking her strategy. Should she try
to provoke Cersei into anger so she'd do something stupid to stake her claim over Jaime? Or
should she provoke Cersei into overconfidence so she'd do something stupid to stake her
claim over Jaime? Either way, she was doing something stupid to stake her claim over Jaime.
That was unavoidable.

Anger was useful, but anger might also make Lysa Cersei's target instead of Jaime. No, it was
better for Lysa to continue flying under the radar. Her continued existence depended on
Cersei thinking her to be a joke instead of a threat. If she was going to be tricking Cersei into
sabotaging herself anyway, she should do it in a way that puts herself least at risk.

"The sky blue gown, I should think," Lysa said, and her maids rushed to comply. It was one
of her plainer pieces, though still exceptionally well-made as befit her station, of course.
Flowy, loose, and empire-waisted, it also had the added benefit of making her look like she
was twelve, especially when she braided her hair into pigtails and did her makeup to make
her eyes look bigger.

"My lady, those brushes are so small…wouldn't these be faster for your face powder…?"

"Watch and learn," Lysa simply answers her smugly, and begins to apply the face powder,
blended with rouge and light clay to match her natural skin tone so she doesn't look like a
ghost in a Halloween mask, around her orbital socket. Westeros doesn't have a million
different shades of eye shadow – they only have white face powder, rouge for the cheeks,
charcoals and kohls for the eyeliner, and a small number of natural plant-based dyes and
paints. All she can say is, thank the gods chalk-based whitening was the norm here, not lead.

She then mixes a little bit of the charcoal and the white powder in a smaller dish to make a
very light gray, and applies that in the folds of her eyelids and the outer corners of her eyes.
And then, tiny amounts of white paint, carefully painted around her inner eye and lower lash
line. White powder plus rouge for a bit of light pink to make her cheeks rounder. Finally, a bit
of kohl tinged red with the rouge, to make an eyeliner that matches her lash color; she applies
this below the white lines. The result is an optical illusion that makes her eyes wider and
further apart, while the rest of her face is bare of makeup, fully selling the "I am an innocent
stupid child" look. If men find out we can shapeshift they're going to tell the church!

So transformed, to the impressed but confused looks of her maids, she walks out extremely
confident and ready to take on anything. She is a wee innocent stupid little baby and she is
completely helpless and incapable of doing anything like standing up to Cersei –

"What are you wearing?"

She looked up. Lord Tywin was there, and the glare on his face was exceptionally
disapproving.

Shit.

He was mad.

…Wait, why was he mad? Why did he give a shit about how she dressed? Tywin never paid
attention to "women's bullshit".

"The royal party is mere hours away, and you, wife to the heir and future Lady of the
Westerlands, dress like a child in Riverrun? Where are your jewels? Where is the dress we
commissioned for you? Have you spent your entire allowance on mills?"

"I thought it looked nice?" she tried.

He gave her a glare that clearly said pull the other one, it's got bells on it .

"I did not mean to outshine your daughter, the Queen, my Lord – " she stammered.

He loomed over her. "Let me be clear," he sneered. "You are no longer a Tully, to kneel to the
most powerful as is convenient." Gee, thanks for dissing my ancestors' survival instinct
before literal fire-breathing dragons, after yours had gotten roasted alive. "You are a future
Lady of the Rock, a Lannister , even if you are merely one by marriage. And a Lannister
does not cower before the crown, even if it is worn by a Lannister by birth. Now go change
into something more befitting of your station, and wear it with the pride you are supposed to .
The gold one Lady Genna had made for you will do."

Lysa gaped at him, before remembering to curtsy in obedience and scurried back to her room.

…Are you kidding me.

Are you fucking kidding me!

Her plans, ruined, because Tywin was salty that she wasn't decked out head to toe in Made in
Westerlands crap? He's taking it as a personal slight against House Lannister that she's, god
forbid, choosing to wear something that isn't hideously blinged out like a rapper and a
Christmas tree had a baby?

And she has no choice but to obey. She didn't want to draw Cersei's ire, but picking between
the two, she even less wanted Tywin to think she was a weak coward. Or worse, if she
actively disobeyed him, he might think she was not a coward, but that she was actually
making some kind of protest statement about Jaime's refusal to bed her, in front of their royal
guests. Now she's stuck choosing between Cersei – who will view her wearing anything
Lannister as a challenge and an usurpation attempt – and Tywin, who will view her wearing
anything not Lannister as defiance and quite possibly treason. And both of them had the
power to make her life hell, Cersei by sheer brutality and carelessness, and Tywin by
everything else. And while Tywin is her long term play, given that he's the one with the real
resources and intelligence here compared to his daughter, Cersei is far more willing to flip the
board even if it means hurting herself.

While she stands there, seething and trying to find a way to walk the tightrope so she is
simultaneously dressed up yet not a threat, Genna comes barging in and starts ordering her
maids around. To their credit, they look to Lysa first because Lysa's been spending the past
year asking after their families and slipping them extra money and getting their poorer
relatives jobs in her factories – suck on that, Genna, she owns them now – but the fact that
Genna's girth is taking up all the air in this room at all is unacceptable. And yet Lysa has no
choice but to let it happen, because it's obvious that Tywin sent her. Genna might be a
busybody, but she should be double-checking the supplies right now, not playing dress-up
with Lysa as her doll.

What Genna ends up tossing at her is the dress Lysa terms The Monstrosity. Not because it's
ugly – far from it, the tailoring and quality are the most incredible Lysa has ever seen, in this
world or the last. But it's…to put it politely, the Lannisters don't know the definition of the
word "excessive".

And it is excessive. The Monstrosity is by far the most expensive dress she owns. Made
entirely from gold silk (as opposed to the other dresses with gold thread in it, because the
Lannisters put that shit on everything ), it is worth more than her entire wardrobe from when
she was still a Tully. Considering her mills should have made the price of textiles and thread
cheaper across the board, well.

Long story short, a few moons ago, near the end of the previous year, Lysa had had a very
large amount of money left over in her allowance for dresses and jewels, even when
excluding the extra profits she'd made from the mills. The new dresses she had commissioned
after joining House Lannister were on the more practical side of things. High quality, to be
sure, but practical. Pretty much all fine wool, to keep her warm in the alpine climate of the
Rock – the same wool cloth and thread that her mills had severely deflated the prices of – and
of a slim straight cut so that she could ride a horse and walk through the mills without getting
tangled up in something. She favored mostly darker shades of blue, with some gold detailing
so Tywin couldn't get all bitchy about her not representing House Lannister properly. It's not
that she doesn't want to wear red, but red hair plus red dress makes her look ridiculous and
too much like Melisandre for comfort, so. Blue to match her eyes, greens and jades to allow
for a little variety, and a few gold-embroidered lions it is.

Now, Lysa had most of her assets hidden around all her investments and mills. House
Lannister, and Tywin by extension, technically owned her things now, but she wasn't going to
let them embezzle it all out from under her under the pretense that what belonged to her
belonged to the family, so she deliberately kept her connections with the merchants and
craftsmen as obtuse as possible. Security through obscurity, as they say. They might get their
hands on some of it, but it was nowhere near close to all, or even half of it. For this reason,
her cultivation of Tygett and Gerion had been priceless. Tygett absolutely loved the mills
because they were one thing that Tywin didn't automatically have an advantage over him in –
a completely different source of means than traditional feudal land ownership – and Gerion
enjoyed pulling the wool (hah!) over Tywin's eyes in any capacity.
She even managed to open her own secret account in the Iron Bank and stashed some savings
in Braavos. Not that she was planning to flee to Essos anytime soon; she'd rather form her
own bank somewhere in Westeros (conveniently, she was already in the Westerlands, the best
place to do it) first – but the opportunity had been there and she'd taken it because it was so
easy. Her merchants had already started running out of Westerosi ports to product dump in, so
they started doing so in Essos as well, and that meant stashing profits somewhere so that they
wouldn't have to carry all their loose gold back and forth across the pirate-infested Narrow
Sea, and that meant opening up accounts in the Iron Bank. She had dozens of merchants in
her joint-stock company at this point, and all of them had set up business vaults at the Iron
Bank out of convenience; no one noticed that in the jumble of numbers she'd also slipped in
her own personal account.

But she still had to keep an emergency fund lying around.

And, well. The point is, somehow Genna had gotten wind of where she had hidden one of her
war chests, probably by threatening the castellan and sending her maids to spy on Lysa. The
interfering old harridan had immediately descended on Lysa one morning, dragged her to the
Rock's seamstresses, given them the absolutely absurd budget of all of Lysa's spare cash ,
and told them to go wild.

Well, if you're a seamstress and you know nothing else and the Lord's sister is giving you
permission to go to town, you go to town. By the time Lysa found out about this brouhaha
and tried to claw the cash back, the damage had already been done – the Myrish lace, Yi Tish
silk, cloth-of-gold, diamonds, and pearls all paid for. Yi Tish silk was as expensive as ever
because Westeros did not produce its own silk yet – Lysa decided that whenever Gerion went
on his ill-fated Valyria trip, she'd convince him to sail past it and steal silkworms instead.
Same for Myrish lace; she and Tyrion hadn't figured out how to make a machine that could
weave lace yet (their attempts so far had resulted in tangled and broken thread). And Myrish
lace made from Yi Tish silk – oh, boy. Even the Lannisters would have been afraid to pay for
that , had it not been for the extra profits being brought in by her mills.

To have even a collar of that silk lace was considered a great luxury; to have one's entire
dress hemmed in it was something only queens and princesses could afford. Until now. This
dress had a solid silk outermost layer, but then the skirt split to reveal an inner skirt made
entirely of golden silk lace. Not a trim, the entire skirt. And most other Lannister-style
dresses were simply embroidered in gold thread, but oh no, that would be too easy and plain
for this one – no, this embroidery was done with pearls and diamonds. As in literal beads of
pearls and diamonds put into every single stitch, which by the way was also gold thread,
because why the hell not. There were hundreds of little filigreed leaves and laurels blooming
all over her bodice and along the bottom hems of her skirts and sleeves, maybe even
thousands, and any single one of them could have fed a village of smallfolk for a year.

Lysa suspected that the lining of this dress alone would have paid for all of Catelyn's finest
gowns from Riverrun in addition to hers. Gods, the waste. Still, Genna's sheer joy at seeing
the final product made Lysa think that perhaps this act wasn't entirely malicious, and that
maybe this was the interfering bitch's way of being "helpful" or whatever. Especially since
Genna hadn't immediately gone and commissioned one like it or better for herself, as Cersei
might have done. "You're young and pretty, girl; you might as well enjoy it while you still
have it! When you're old and fat like me you'll look back on these days gone by and miss
them, I'll tell you that much. Ach, I wish I had a daughter like you, but my worthless good for
nothing Frey will like as not only give me things ugly and dull as he is."

So that was the story behind The Monstrosity, and Lysa hadn't touched it since it was finished
because there hadn't been an opportunity to wear it. But visiting royals, she supposed, was a
sufficient occasion. This dress was less a dress as much as it was a power statement, look at
me House Lannister powerful blah blah blah .

Her internal temper tantrum aside, she had to admit the end result was a sight to behold. The
seamstresses couldn't be blamed for just doing their jobs, and they had truly done their best
work with this one, even without taking the materials into account. This gown, like so many
others, had been made in the Westerlands style, meaning a sharp, deep neckline exposing the
shoulders and cleavage. No one knew where it originated, but as Lysa found out, it had been
popularized by Cersei, who favored gowns of that style since she was old enough to have
cleavage, and the entire realm came to know it as the Westerlands style when she became
Queen. It was considered extremely daring for the time, and only Margaery's Highgarden
style years later – which exposed the belly and lower back in addition to the shoulders and
cleavage – surpassed that. Lysa, unlike Cat or Cersei, still doesn't have any proper cleavage to
show off. To make up for that, the seamstresses had sewn the dress using several layers, each
pieced together from individual panels, to better fit her body and give the illusion of curves
over the reality of her more flat, still-girlish body. The stitches, meanwhile, were so small and
even, and the seams so well-matched, it looked like one continuous piece. Add the cut of her
skirt and the lacing of her corset, and voila, the illusion of otherwise non-existent hips and
waist.

Great. Just fantastic. While she in theory loves the idea of showing Cersei up and pissing her
off, in practice she would rather make the optimal winning moves, and this is about the
opposite of optimal as you can get.

At least her hair and makeup still look stupid , like a little girl playing dress-up in her
mother's clothing. The contrast with the gold dress is even more laughable than the
deliberately childish gown from before –

"We're redoing your hair, girl," Genna says, brooking no tone for argument, and why does
Lysa even try anymore.

She's expecting one of Cersei's elaborate Leaning Tower of Braids concoctions, but in the end
Genna takes one of her oh-so-helpful maids' suggestions for an elegant updo held together by
gold jeweled combs that match the dress. It was one that Lysa had taught her several moons
ago, because it looked extremely nice for something that was so low-effort. At the time, Lysa
had thought it was a good idea; it was a hairstyle that she wore around very often. Now, she
wants to stab that stupid maid in the eye. It's technically not her fault; that maid's one and
only job is to make Lysa look pretty and she is very competent at that, but right now it's the
opposite of what Lysa wants. She's a little worker bee who has no idea about this stupid
invisible tug of war game of politics that she and Tywin and Genna and Cersei are all playing
over the top of Jaime's head. Suffering from success and all that. She's being forced down
Cersei's furious path instead of her overconfidence path all because of Tywin's incessant
dick-measuring contest with the Iron Throne, no matter who sits on it.

"Begging your pardon, milady, but you simply look stunning!" Celle gushes, clapping her
hands together.

"See, you ought to listen to your Aunt Genna every now and then; she still has things to teach
you," Genna said, looking very self-satisfied.

Aunt Genna? Excuse me? You've never been an aunt to me in the entire time we've known
each other. Fuck you and the vagina you crawled out of, Lysa rages internally.

Genna doesn't notice how fake her smile of wonder is, still prattling on. "Why I daresay you
look like a true Lannister now."

Bessa rushes to agree. "Lady Genna is right! The last one was lovely in its own way, my lady,
but this one would make even Queen Cersei green with envy!"

You stupid bitches.

Lysa can't blame them; they don't know much about this stupid invisible tug of war game of
politics that she and Tywin and Cersei are playing over the top of Jaime's head. They're not
wrong, it does look better. But again, she doesn't want to look better, and of course they have
no conceptual understanding of why she wouldn't want to.

She's so grumpy that it's not even a balm to her ego when she steps out and everyone does a
slight double-take. Genna takes pleasure in immediately telling everyone that she is
responsible. Kevan and Dorna are both extremely kind, as usual, Tygett gives a rare smile
(He was supposed to die this year. Why wasn't he even sick yet? Oh, gods, did she
accidentally save his life by roping him into the factory business, and thus making him too
busy to go wherever he went originally that caused him to catch the pox?), and Gerion gives
her a wide grin as well.

Tywin's face is his usual catlike I-hate-everyone-you-are-all-beneath-me, though he does give

her a single eyebrow lift that could mean anything from, So she's not completely useless after
all, to Nice to know that all the money Genna threw away on this one dress wasn't a total
waste.

Even Jaime stares for a bit, though he turns away guiltily soon after. What a complete and
utter clown show. If he had just fallen in love with literally anyone else, he could have made
that girl so happy – a young man as handsome and rich as he is could be pulling as much
pussy as a young Robert, and here he was, self-policing over a single glance at another
woman. The sheer dedication, wasted, on Cersei .

She forces herself to smile back at them while trying not to squint at the sun reflecting off
everyone else's clothing. It's so goddamn bright. So much gold, literally everywhere , these
people . Whatever, she hopes that Robert will get bored and drag them back to King's
Landing soon enough so she can get back to doing the actually important things.
 The royal party arrives and the usual introductions are made. If Jaime's staring was the icing,
then Cersei literally stopping short as she disembarked from her ridiculous wheelhouse was
the entire cake. To her credit, Cersei recovers quickly and hides her surprise and jealousy
underneath her default sneer of smug superiority and hateful condescension. When it is time
for introductions and greetings, Cersei barely even spares her a glance in an obvious snub.
Once again, Lysa pretends to stupidly not notice.

Lysa can't wait to get rid of her.

First, though, she must steel herself through Robert's greeting. He's still handsome, not yet
turned to fat, but it's morning and he already smells of alcohol. There's a bunch of kneeling
and standing and back-and-forth snippiness from Tywin that goes flying way over Robert's
head, some more cattiness from Cersei that Lysa pretends flies over her head, a legion of
retainers that they all have to house and feed, and then –

Stannis .

…Wait, what the heck?

If you think she's happy that he's here, you'd be wrong. Forget everything about love and
control and mind games for a second. When important people such as the royal family come
to visit, knowing things like the size of the retinue and the identities of all the important noble
visitors are generally the most basic of information. Stannis was the brother of the King.
Stannis one hundred percent counted as an important noble visitor.

There had been absolutely no indication from King's Landing or any of the castles they would
have stopped at along the way that Stannis had accompanied them. For something of this
magnitude failing to reach her ears…she needs to find out why. This is an intelligence failure
of the highest order and a complete disaster and a possible indication of a compromised
network and AAAAAAAAAAAAAA –

Chapter End Notes

Next up on Scarlet Woman: an interview with both of Stannis Baratheon's brain cells
 Interlude III: The Raging Storm
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Love is the death of duty.

Every time he closes his eyes, she haunts him.

The touch of her hands, the softness of her lips, the gentle sound of her voice, so unlike
Selyse's thin, pinched frown and shrill tones. The smell of her perfume. The bright red color
of her hair, like a flame in the dark. She is the opposite of everything he must suffer now.

He'd done the right thing then, he'd thought. The honorable, dutiful thing. What kind of man
would he be, to take a highborn maiden out of wedlock? Men like Robert, that was who. He'd
wanted to, he'd wanted to so much, but he had stayed himself, even as she wept, because he
was nothing like Robert.

And this was his reward. A pile of rocks in the ocean and an ugly, cold woman he refuses to
acknowledge as his wife.

It didn't make sense. He did what he was supposed to do. He obeyed, he did his duty, and yet
–

"You're a good man, dutiful and just," she had told him, then. "Whoever you'll marry, I'll envy
her."

He didn't remember what he had said in response, but he remembered what he'd thought.
You're a fool, he'd thought, because I could have married the Maiden herself, and you'd be
envying a woman whose husband will always be loving another.

Love is the death of duty.

He'd chosen duty over love, and what had that brought him? His duty had not been rewarded
with opportunity and happiness. Those were things he had to seize for himself. As much as
he despises Robert, he understands. He understands, now, why Robert chooses to bury
himself in his cups and his grief over his lost Lyanna instead of trying to be a proper King.
What's the fucking point, Robert had raged, when she's dead?! I went to war for Lyanna, not
the crown; I'd give it up in a moment if it meant bringing her back to me!

Every day Stannis wants to throw himself into the sea, and Lysa isn't even dead. So yes,
contrary to Robert's accusations, he does understand, does have a heart. What he doesn't
understand is how Robert can grieve with his parade of other women. Stannis feels disgusting
even touching Selyse, like he is betraying Lysa somehow, even though Selyse is his legal
wife while Lysa is married to another.

When he beds Selyse he closes his eyes and imagines Lysa beneath him, her soft red waves
that fall loosely to frame her face instead of Selyse's coarse limp mousy brown, pulled up in a
tight bun that exposes her large and unattractive ears. Every day Lysa's soft loving words ring
in his head, while he must sit across from Selyse and listen to her shrill complaining. He
imagines her kind blue eyes instead of Selyse's dark judging ones. Her body is slim and
pleasing, soft waves, whereas Selyse is – also thin, but in an angular, square way, like a
sharpened pitchfork that will cut his hands and leave festering splinters behind.

Pretending, pretending, pretending. For all that he scorns the pretense of the courtiers, his
vassals, the entire world, he's been doing nothing but pretend, these days. Lysa was the only
true thing he'd had. Was this what Robert told himself every time he strayed from his
marriage? But Stannis wouldn't have done what Robert is doing right now; he'd be true to
Lysa in body, not just in mind. After all, for all that he was unhappy with Selyse, he had not
betrayed her anywhere except in his dreams.

Love is the death of duty.

Selyse is dry and cold and stiff when they try to make a child. Maester Cressen had
prescribed them an oil which helped, but it still rankled him greatly. Lysa wouldn't have
needed it, he is sure. Lysa had been warm and soft in his arms with only a kiss. Happiness
was a foreign sensation to him, but she had made him happy . She had brought him a joy he'd
never felt before, and seemed to be one of the few people in the world who experienced joy
in his presence, in turn. It's not even the fact that she is by far comelier than Selyse could ever
be. Though that does play a role, Stannis has devoted his life to not being Robert; it is not
matters of the flesh that primarily appeals to him. Lysa could have been born a dwarf like
Lord Lannister's younger son for all he cared, and he would still want her, because she
wanted him back .

The two of them were put upon this world for each other, she had said then, the two forgotten
younger siblings. She had understood him, made him feel wanted and seen the way no one
else had. No one else had done that for him. Not his friends, for he had none; not his brothers,
though they should have; not any other woman, more likely to be charmed by Robert to the
point of forsaking their own honor rather than his dour, unlikable younger brother. But Lysa –
Lysa liked him of her own volition and wanted him, and had been willing to choose him over
Robert. Over Jaime Lannister. She'd given up a crown for him. He doesn't care what Jon
Arryn says about keeping the Lannisters close; he's seen Lysa for who she truly is and he is
certain that had she tried, she could have made Robert forget Cersei, forget Lyanna Stark
even. How anyone could possibly want either of those women over Lysa, he doesn't know.
Then again, he doubts that even Lysa could stop Robert from his whoring.

(Lysa Lysa Lysa Lysa Lysa Lysa LysaLysaLysaLYSA)

He pretends that that night, he had done more than just kiss her. Run off together and find an
intoxicated septon, mayhaps – or worse, had he been more like Robert. He could have
changed the course of their entire lives, if only he had done it, done that terrible, wonderful
thing a man can do to a woman that he can't take back. Would she have agreed to it? If they'd
found the septon first, surely. She was an honorable woman, not like Delena Florent…and
yet, she was the one who had suggested it first, after all. If they couldn't – he was taller and
stronger than she was, he could have – he's not that type of man, to visit such violence upon a
woman, but if she had already agreed and he had had the courage to follow through, he thinks
they could have done it. And then afterwards he would have lied about her choice in the
matter later, to protect her honor at the cost of his own. He would have borne it gladly –
Robert and his courtiers already dishonor and disrespect him every day – what was another
drop in the bucket, if it meant having Lysa beside him?

Just thinking about it turns him into an animal, makes him hate himself. But it's the only way
he can bring himself to finish when he lies with Selyse, pretending that it's Lysa he's with
instead, just like Selyse pretends this time it won't end in another miscarriage. Like a man
taking his lady's favor before he marches off to his grim duty in war, he sits in his chambers
and holds Lysa's storm-watcher to his lips before he marches off to his grim duty in Selyse
Florent's marriage-bed. He sits and breathes slowly until he sinks into his delusions, and these
lies would be enough to carry him through his duty until Selyse inevitably breaks through the
illusion with her complaints.

Love is the death of duty.

In his darkest moments Stannis dreams of murdering his brother.

Rhaegar Targaryen had stolen away Lyanna Stark, and for that, Robert had caved his chest in
with his warhammer. (At least that's what Robert claims; less biased reports say that the
prince had gone down with his horse under Tywin Lannister's cavalry charge.) Stannis doesn't
know what he'll do to Robert yet, but one day, one day , Robert will laugh at him before
forcing him to do his duty yet again, only for Stannis to turn on him when his brother needs
him the most.

A knife in the dark isn't good enough; he wants to look in his brother's eyes as he does it. He
could run him through with his sword, Stannis' preferred weapon, but there is something
poetic about doing it with Robert's own warhammer. Or Stannis could do it with his bare
hands, choke the life from him, dunk his head into a barrel of wine and hold it there. The
nightmares where Stannis wakes up with the sticky cloying feeling of his own brother's blood
on his hands and the stain of kinslaying upon his soul bring him nothing but joy.

But the fantasies are just that, mere fantasies. Because Stannis knows he is being punished.
Not by the gods, because he doesn't believe in them. No, he's being punished by himself.

The lies we tell ourselves are the most dangerous ones of all.
He had pretended that he was above it all. That he was better than Robert, to be swayed by
women. That he was making his choice, for duty and honor. But no – he had made his choice,
not for duty and honor, but for cowardice .

Love is the death of duty.

On the surface, he still blamed Robert. He blamed Robert, and Jon Arryn, and Hoster Tully,
and Tywin Lannister, but Robert most of all.

On the inside, he knew he had no one to blame but himself. This regret was a burden he'd
carry with him for the rest of his life.

That was the truth. Stannis Baratheon had been scared . He had wanted, so badly. And he had
shied away from it because he had been scared. Scared of how much he wanted it. Scared of
being compared to Robert for losing his mind over the fairer sex, even though Robert's
weakness was women, plural, while Stannis' weakness was only one woman, singular. Scared
of being looked upon by Lysa and having her find him wanting.

His flesh had been weak, but his mind had been weaker. Lysa had given up his handsome,
kingly older brother, and had been willing to give up Jaime Lannister and all the wealth of the
West as well. But what if, after making that decision, she arrived on small, smelly
Dragonstone and immediately regretted it? It happened all the time, young ladies marrying
for love only to grow old and bitter as the glow wore off and life turned out different from
what they thought. The fief of Dragonstone was small and poor; he would not be able to give
her the quality of life she surely would have been used to in Riverrun, let alone as Lady of
Casterly Rock or Queen. He couldn't bear the thought of disappointing her, of having her
bright smile look at him and slowly turn to disgust, her clear blue gaze laying judgment over
him and finding him unworthy. He wanted to preserve that memory of her saying that she
preferred him over all these other people, so that he would never have to know what it would
be like to have her finally treat him like everyone else who had compared him to his brother.

You're a coward, Stannis Baratheon, he berates himself. Remember this moment in your
misery. Before you blame Robert, or Jon Arryn, or the Lannisters, or my father. You had the
chance, and you didn't take it. Because you were scared of the pain of rejection more than the
pain of a sword.

And for that cowardice, he had lost her.

Love is the death of duty.

One day, out of nowhere, Cersei suddenly demands that she wants to visit her home in
Casterly Rock. She refuses to take no for an answer and is so insufferable about it that Robert
caves within less than five minutes – only to regret it right after when Jon Arryn informs him
that no, Robert can't just stay in King's Landing while the Queen goes home, because that
would imply that he and his wife were quarreling, and the two of them had to go together or
not at all. (Everyone and their mother knew that Robert and Cersei were always quarreling,
but heaven forbid they implied it.) In the end, Jon Arryn and politics got their way, and
Robert had to accompany Cersei to Casterly Rock or else the entire realm would know that
the alliance was on shaky ground. And now both Cersei and Robert were being completely
insufferable, but for entirely different reasons.

Stannis had intended to ignore them. It would have certainly been better this way. Once
Robert and Cersei departed, sniping at each other back and forth the entire way to Casterly
Rock for all he cared, there would be at least one moon – two if he was lucky – of pure peace
and quiet in King's Landing. Peace and quiet to do his duty and run the realm without either
of those two causing problems.

But peace and quiet do not come. It is like trouble is a hole dug in beach sand, always filling
up with water no matter how much is bailed out. The void of trouble Robert and Cersei leave
behind is instead filled up with trouble concocted by his own mind, trouble in the form of
flame-red hair and bright blue eyes. Stannis tells himself that it is only coming back because
of all the mention of Casterly Rock in the past fortnight before Cersei's departure, Casterly
Rock where she is. But he's lying to himself and he knows it – it had never left, and he had
simply been drowning it out by working himself to exhaustion every day cleaning up after
Robert's messes.

Impulsively, he goes to Jon Arryn.

"I'm going," he says.

"What?" Jon Arryn rubs his weary eyes. "Lord Stannis, you can't – "

"We've already received three ravens in half as many sennights. He deflowered the daughter
of one of House Hayford's retainers, laid with the wife of a knight sworn to House Piper, and
laid with some other bastard relative of House Sarsfield. None of them are as highly ranked
as Delena Florent was, but it's clear – your man you slipped in with their retinue might be
good at reporting Robert's behavior but he's absolutely useless at stopping it."

Jon Arryn looks even more old than he does now. Stannis has no sympathy for him. Jon
Arryn had a reputation as an competent and honorable man, but in truth he was just a simple-
minded fool who always saw the best in those he loved, to his own detriment. Jon Arryn had
taken Robert away from the Stormlands and he hadn't even bothered to discipline him
properly. Jon Arryn hadn't stopped Robert when he took Storm's End from Stannis, hadn't
stopped the Lannisters when they took Lysa from him. And now he was surprised that Robert
hadn't magically grown up and learned the slightest hint of duty?

"Stannis, I know you still – "

You know nothing, old man, Stannis thinks venomously. "We cannot let Robert disgrace
himself. It's one thing to be openly unfaithful to his wife in King's Landing; it's another thing
entirely to dishonor her in her childhood home in front of her father, whose usual response to
slights against the Lannister name, real or perceived, is iron and blood. We do not have the
strength to fight Tywin Lannister over a mere woman , you said so yourself," he throws what
Jon Arryn said back in his face.

Stannis lets the door slam behind him before Jon Arryn can throw back another word.

Love is the death of duty.

It's an impulsive decision, he knows, but he is beyond the point of caring. He drives one
horse to exhaustion and then another, trading them out at every roadside inn and farming
village he can find, only eating and sleeping the bare minimum to prevent himself from
collapsing in the saddle.

Stannis has been riding hard for several sennights now, and he doesn't look much of a lord at
all besides the fine castle-forged steel and armor he wears underneath his travelling clothes.
He had been riding alone, anyhow. Jon Arryn would have certainly called that a foolish
decision and insisted on at least a small guard, but those additional men would have just
slowed him down. For all of Robert's mismanagement, the realm was in a time of plenty and
the last summer harvests had been good – there had only been one group of bandits, and
Stannis hadn't even had to slow his horse's gallop to lop off their leader's head, which had
made the rest scatter.

The dutiful thing would have been to chase the rest of them down and dispense the King's
Justice, but Robert's idea of justice was a joke anyhow, and Stannis had more important
things to do.

It is only fortunate that Robert insists upon stopping at every tiny holdfast along the way to
feast and make merry, while Cersei insists upon riding in her truly enormous gilded
wheelhouse that constantly gets stuck in the mud. This is how, despite only departing after
Robert and Cersei have passed House Sarsfield's lands, he manages to only be an hour behind
them as they approach Casterly Rock, even after making use of a freeholder's hospitality to
bathe and make himself look reasonably presentable. He has no use for fripperies or
frivolities, but he won't give either Robert or Cersei yet another excuse to make fun of him.

(And he can't present himself before Lady Lysa looking like a homeless hedge knight.)
Love is the death of duty.

Robert is not happy at all to see him.

"What are you doing here?" he grinds out. As if Stannis is some unwanted beggar, not his
own brother.

"Did you really think Jon Arryn and I wouldn't find out?" he asks. "You couldn't keep your
breeches laced for one day?"

Robert's face goes dark, and immediately he settles in for another rant about Jon Arryn and
Stannis forcing duty on him, ruining all his fun, how all he wanted was Lyanna, and any other
number of completely pointless complaints that Stannis no longer cares to listen to because
he's already heard it all. It's almost a relief when they finally arrive at the Rock.

Almost , because the moment he sees her, he wishes he had just stayed back in King's
Landing instead of torturing himself like this.

If Lysa was beautiful before, then now she is more radiant than the sun. Among the mostly-
red Lannister crowd, she is the one spot of pure gold, glowing in the midday light like a star
brought to earth. She is cloaked in Westerlander excess, but her face is still the same one,
wide-eyed and innocent and pure. She is the same girl he loved and yet time and wealth have
made her something more ; she wears sophistication and power in a way the desperate,
heavily powdered, deceitful dolls the capital could only dream of.

Even Cersei Lannister is taken aback, their cold and haughty queen suddenly feeling less
haughty and more threatened. Stannis has never liked her, but he derives no joy in her
suffering because he is suffering more. Lysa is so beautiful Stannis wants to drag her onto a
horse in front of everyone and steal the two of them far, far away – damn the consequences.
He wouldn't get very far, but he'd die with her in his arms. Was this what Rhaegar Targaryen
had felt, to make him sunder the realm? Is it Stannis' Targaryen blood, diluted though it may
be, that sings madness in his ears now?

The only thing stopping him is that Lysa would be hurt by it, too. He spends the whole visit
both watching and avoiding her instead; denying himself is something he is well-versed in.
He won't have doubts cast upon her honor; her goodfather is not a merciful man. Besides,
how could she ever want him , now? Him, and dreary Dragonstone? How could he possibly
compete with the might and wealth of the West? Though she had promised him her love
when they had last parted…he does not want to think of her as the sort of woman who would
be swayed by pretty dresses and jewels, but given what House Lannister can offer her that he
cannot, Stannis wouldn't blame her if she was. He cannot ask her because he doesn't know
what would be worse – that she has forgotten about him in the face of her new family, or that
she still wants him in spite of it all. The former is a blow to his pride, but the latter is a dagger
at his heart: that they could have had each other, but for his cowardice, and now they can
never be.
 Love is the death of duty.

Every time Stannis means to approach her he loses his nerve and flees. He can face down
thousands of enemy soldiers out for his blood without flinching, but he cannot do this. He
knows what he will do in battle. He does not know what he will do before Lady Lysa.

Lysa only looks at him sadly before she turns to others with her usual courtesies. For all of
Cersei's criticisms, he can find no fault in her as a hostess. She does not flaunt her new wealth
in his face the way the other Lannisters do, does not make him feel lesser for their difference
in circumstances, every inch dutiful and gracious. One would think that this would be better,
but it just makes him feel a million times worse. If she had turned cold and haughty like her
new family, he might have been able to harden his heart against her, but instead he just in
more love than ever.

He curses the day he ever met her, because having never known happiness at all would have
been better than having it ripped away from him like this. He should have known better –
nothing ever goes well for him; he can never, ever have anything nice, because nice things
just don't happen to him. Instead he let himself be taken in, and now that he's had a taste of it
he can never go back to how he was before. He resigns himself to a lifetime of only watching
from afar, that sweet sweet torture that he nonetheless hangs to, because he would rather have
a bitter draught than die of thirst.

It's this bitter draught he drinks now, to rid himself of hope. Hope is not a sweet thing, on the
contrary, it is a vicious, treacherous whore, lifting men high so that they can be dashed
against the ground that much harder. This is a reminder to himself, of what happens to men
who hope , so that he never dares do something as stupid as hope again –

Then Jaime Lannister gets poisoned.

Seven hells. No, no, no – don't do it, you stupid bastard –

Too late.

Hope swells in his breast once more.

Chapter End Notes

I hope Lysa isn't being too much of a Mary Sue here. I'm trying to keep Stannis as true
to character as possible even through the divergences.

In the books (unlike the show) it's actually not explicit if he has a sexual relationship
with Melisandre. If they do have sex then it's not clear if he's doing it perfunctorily for
the shadow baby magic or if he actually enjoys it. My interpretation is that he isn't 100%
asexual, he's just given up on love and happiness / cloaks himself in asceticism to cope
with the sheer horrible luck that life (and Robert) have visited upon him.

This obsession that Stannis has with Lysa now is 100% artificially manufactured.
Stannis didn't magically love her for being her lovable self – Lysa's true self is the
furthest thing from lovable you can get. Lysa simply told a younger, more vulnerable
Stannis exactly what he wanted to hear, the one thing he's ever wanted to hear, and then
set things up to ensure he remains isolated and emotionally dependent on her after she
had to leave.
 285 AC: The Royal Visit

Lysa sneaks a glance at both Genna and Tywin, and they're both completely unreadable. If
Genna is displeased at the appearance of an unannounced guest, she doesn't show it, no more
than the usual disdain and haughtiness that graces her face. Tywin, naturally, is Tywin.

Back to Stannis. Lysa stands up a little straighter to make sure her eyes are working properly.
Yep, it's him, alright. Stannis Baratheon, here in the flesh, and definitely not on the guest list.
Last she checked, he was supposed to still be in King's Landing, running the realm with Jon
Arryn while trying (and failing) to produce the next generation of the Baratheon dynasty.

Speaking of which. Selyse isn't here. She waits for the woman to appear, but she doesn't. This
makes zero sense because Robert and Cersei were being forced to travel together for
appearances' sake, to present a united front even if everything else about their marriage
behind the scenes was a complete dumpster fire. Stannis should have been subjected to the
same protocols. Stannis' presence anywhere is by definition an official visit because of his
surname, but Selyse's absence means…

What does it mean? Because Selyse Florent isn't a complete nitwit. Even if Stannis was
widely believed to be too unyielding and dutiful to do anything untoward, no sane wife was
going to let her husband make such a trip alone. This was Westeros, so Selyse wouldn't have
the power to stop him from going – considering Stannis didn't give two shits about keeping
his wife happy or doing anything beyond the duty of making an heir, he probably had just
packed up and left, ignoring any protests his wife had against it – but she still had the power
to bully herself onto the delegation alongside him, and if she was too ill or pregnant to travel,
she'd still send one of her Florent retainers to stalk him. Unless she was stuck on Dragonstone
or elsewhere? No, that couldn't be it; her presence in King's Landing was public knowledge –
as long as Cersei remained childless, Jon Arryn was forcing the Baratheon couples to stay
close, even if both Robert and Stannis would probably prefer to ship their wives beyond the
Wall and forget about them.

If Selyse wasn't around, and it was highly unlikely that either Robert or Cersei had invited
him for the pleasure of his company, then what the fuck was he doing here and why didn't any
of her intelligence operatives know? Why didn't Selyse know? Why didn't Jon Arryn know?
Did he know? What if he did, and this is yet another dick measuring contest between Tywin
Lannister and Jon Arryn that Lysa had been deemed too young and female to know about?

She desperately goes over the options in her mind again.

Option one: The royal party deliberately concealed his presence for some unknown reason.
Conclusion: unlikely. That would require Robert and Cersei to work together. The only thing
both of them seemed to agree on was that neither of them looked happy that Stannis was even
there in the first place.

Option two: Robert and Cersei did not voluntarily invite Stannis. This was Jon Arryn's doing.
Conclusion: maybe. Though, for what reason, Lysa didn't know – if they wanted to spy on
House Lannister or find out why cloth was being dumped by the boatload all over all the
ports of Westeros or steal blueprints, there were surely better options than Stannis. And if
they suspected something going on between Stannis and Lysa still, then surely keeping them
apart .was the better move than sending him here.

Option three: this was some game on Cersei's part to throw Lysa off-guard, hopefully getting
her caught with Stannis so Jaime would be forced to set her aside or send her to the Faith or
kill her. Stannis didn't trust Cersei at all, but she might have manipulated him using some
other means. It was a plausible scenario, but then that wouldn't explain why none of the
castles along their travel path even gave a single inkling that Stannis had accompanied the
delegation – and again, it would have required Robert to cooperate with Cersei to keep his
mouth shut about the whole affair. Conclusion: also unlikely.

Option four: the intel had been there all along and it was only Lysa who was out of the loop.
Lysa's intelligence network is still small, and limited to Casterly Rock itself, with the
occasional letters from her family in Winterfell and Riverrun, and the merchants from her
trading network. Everything beyond that, she has to piggyback off Casterly Rock's existing
intelligence network – that is, Tygett, Gerion, and her own maids and servants bring her
information that made its way to Tywin, Kevan, or Genna first.

Tywin and Genna probably knew she had some kind of personal intelligence network. She
couldn't hide that forever. The more important thing was to make them continue assuming
that her network was limited to her maids and such. The could not be allowed to know the
true depth of her network.

Because about two moons ago, Lysa managed to flip one of Tywin's personal footmen.

This had not been an easy task – his manservants were all old, trusted servants of the Rock,
all having served for decades, many since before Lysa had even been born. They did
everything from dressing Tywin when he woke up, to secretarial work that not even Maester
Creylen was entrusted with.

This had taken nearly a year of Lysa sending her own lower-ranking servants – scullery
maids, coalboys, and the like – to spy on, not Tywin himself, but on the people with access to
Tywin. A classic privilege escalation scheme. It had taken a long time, but eventually, it had
worked: one of Lysa's coalboys managed to overhear Rogar when he was praying in his
private chambers.

That was how Lysa had found out that Rogar had been raped by one of the Rock's household
knights back when he was just a pageboy. Rogar had said nothing because medieval
homophobia and also because if Tywin had to pick between a knight or a common-born
servant, he'd pick the knight every time – nonetheless, it had been something that Rogar had
carried inside of him for decades. Being Westeros, when Lysa had confronted him with the
matter, he had fallen to his knees and thought that she was there to punish him for his sins,
possibly cart him before Tywin and have him dismissed. So when she had instead told him
that it wasn't his fault, and that she'd take care of Ser Blackley for him, Rogar had
immediately fallen on his knees and sworn himself to her. Shortly afterward, Tywin had had
Ser Blackley flogged, mutilated, and sent to the Wall for embezzling from some of the new
factories. (Ser Blackley had been embezzling…just no more than anyone else in this shithole
world. So she'd planted evidence that embellished the true cost of his crimes, enough that
Tywin personally took notice. In the end, Ser Blackley hadn't known that Lysa had been
responsible for his downfall at all – but Rogar had.)

It was a very nice carrot for someone in Rogar's position…and an even worse stick if he had
chosen not to cooperate. After all, given how easily Lysa had ruined Ser Blackley, she could
destroy Rogar by some other means even without knowledge of the child abuse and sodomy
incident. And once Rogar brought her the first bit of information, she had him completely
locked down. If Lysa got caught spying by Tywin, as long as she hadn't actively committed
treason against House Lannister, she could play it off as "I never meant to betray you, my
lord; I only wanted to see how trustworthy our servants really were." At worst she would be
confined to her chambers and have her freedoms and privileges curtailed to teach her a
lesson, along with a secretly impressed admonishment – "you thought you were clever, girl,
but you have much to learn". After all, Lysa had proven herself in every other way:
competent, diligent, polite, obedient (as far as they knew), and an absolutely indispensable
source of income and military might.

Rogar, on the other hand, would probably be tossed in an oubliette for betraying his lord.

Sucks to be lowborn.

Thus far, all the intel being brought to her by her spies have been more or less consistent, so
she's going to assume that it's trustworthy for now. Because the alternative would be that
Tywin had compromised literally everyone in her network and all of them had been caught
and turned double agent, feeding her only the information he wanted her to know, the way the
Brits did to the Germans in World War II. This would be an absolute worst case scenario…

…but now that her mind had latched on to that possibility, the paranoia took root and refused
to be shaken off. Was this why Tywin forced her to change and then sent Genna after her?
Because they knew Stannis was coming and they wanted to, what, rub it in his face that the
Baratheons lost the fight over the alliance with House Tully? Lysa is freaking out so hard she
can't even enjoy the 3D glasses and popcorn she'd normally partake in when watching the
Baratheon brothers interact. This was extremely unfortunate and unfair, because Stannis'
relationship with Robert was far worse than what it was in canon. It wasn't just coldness or
disdain, but sheer hatred in his gaze whenever he looked at Robert. And Lysa can't even
entertain herself with any of this because she's too busy holding off Cersei with one hand
while trying to figure out what Tywin and Genna are up to with the other. She should be
taking advantage of this moment; instead, 100% of her brain is occuped with more important
matters and and and —

Suddenly, Stannis is right in front of her, having already greeted Lord Tywin and all the
others. He's still staring at her.

It's indescribable.

The grief, the rage. Ours is the fury, indeed . The yearning in his eyes is almost too much to
bear.
After all, in this timeline, Stannis didn't just lose Storm's End while being saddled with an
ugly wife. He also had Lysa's mind virus shoved deep into his skull, multiplying unimpeded
for basically a year now. Not just his home, but also someone he thought was the love of his
life. To have a taste of that and then have it ripped away from him at the last possible moment
was even worse than never getting it at all, for canon Stannis had at least had the comfort of
resigning himself that he would never experience anything more than a boring misery.
Suddenly, she almost understands why the original Lysa was so desperate to get away from
Jon Arryn, if she thought she could get this with Petyr…

Wait.

Is Stannis not actually here on official business?

Lysa was good at her game and she knew that her tricks would work, but damn, she didn't
know how well it would work. If he ever let any of this even so much as slip around Selyse –
and knowing Stannis, he probably was the opposite of subtle about it…she must have known,
if the court gossip didn't tell her (after all, Stannis being denied Storm's End and House Tully
breaking the betrothal as a result had been quite the public affair), that she was but a second
choice. Third or fourth or fifth choice, if you counted all the nicer and prettier women who
Lysa sabotaged before they were even considered.

…Selyse Florent might be a problem, too, after Lysa got rid of Cersei. Lysa was an actual,
active, living threat to her. Fuck, Lysa does not need a jealous, scorned Selyse spreading
rumors about Lysa back in King's Landing…she just hopes that Selyse is so fucking
friendless that no one listens to her or cares about what she has to say.

Lysa sneaks a glance at Tywin, who is looking extremely smug and triumphant – moreso than
usual. Now Lysa is sure he's forcing her to wear Genna's absurd Monstrosity on purpose. One
year ago, he'd stolen Lysa out from beneath the royal family's noses, with Hoster Tully's
approval, and now he's rubbing it in their faces. Look at House Lannister, treating their
brides so much better than House Baratheon. Look at House Lannister and what remains of
the Stark-Tully-Arryn-Baratheon alliance. Surely, even a drunken Robert would still be able
to understand the implications. And Robert does, if the slightly guilty glances he throws at
Stannis are anything to go by.

Slowly, like a great lumbering termite queen, the royal party makes their way inside, along
with all their horses and carriages and the horrible wheelhouse Cersei demanded to travel in.
Jaime disappears from her side pretty much instantly to go to his sister's, though nothing
happens because they're all still in full public view. A small scuffle breaks out between some
of the Rock's stableboys and the royal ones, because Kingslanders can't fucking organize
their own sewage let alone prize horses to save their lives, and when several men-at-arms
intervene to calm everyone down it escalates into something that drags in both Tywin and
Robert at the same time.

Lysa is left standing in the back with Stannis.

…He's still staring at her.

Was he here to apologize to her and tell her she was right, then? Well, it was slightly too late
for that, but Lysa would accept him doing whatever she told him to do as a temporary start.

"Lord Stannis," she says, because if anyone's going to give her proper information it has to be
him, "I don't mean to pry, but I should inform you that you were left off the guest list despite
being the King's brother. If there are those who are discourteous of your rank, you must
inform me."

At that, he actually looks shocked, and then abashed. "...There are discourteous people
everywhere. But in this case, I departed King's Landing after the royal party and travelled
alone. Jon Arryn and I thought it prudent to curb the King's proclivities before the Queen's
blood family. The retainers we sent before were too low-ranking to have any real effect on
the King."

…Uh, what?

That sounded like a reasonable-ish explanation, except the way he was looking away from
her was extremely suspicious, like he was lying about something, except why would Stannis
lie to her? What the fuck was the point of everything she had gone through the trouble to do if
he was just going to show up unannounced and fucking lie – did Jon Arryn put him up to
this? Did –

At that moment Genna swoops in between them and clamps one of her fat claws around
Lysa's bicep. "Now, Lysa darling, you mustn't keep your husband waiting!" she chides. Then
she throws Stannis a poisonous look and snaps, "Lord Stannis, your royal brother requires
your assistance!"

Immediately, Stannis stiffens like a board, head jerking between her and Genna. Just as
suddenly, he averts his gaze, grinds out, "Lady Lannister," and stalks off. He does not say
another word to her or spare her another glance, face still dark as a storm. Figures. He
technically hadn't even used the correct title for her; she cannot be Lady Lannister until
Tywin dies and Jaime becomes Lord. But "Lady Lannister" is certainly far more impersonal
than "Lady Lysa", and it's not a huge faux pas considering the last true Lady Lannister had
been dead for over a decade at this point.

"Lord Stannis," she says, with a single nod and perfunctory curtsy.

Well, thank the gods she made it through that without humiliating herself. She's proud of
herself. She used her best professional corporate voice there.

Because gods FUCKING DAMMIT!

Why is she even TRYING anymore?!

What's the point of wrapping a guy around your finger if he's just going to be a steel bar and
spring back open? Lysa wants to scream in frustration. Every time they come within three
feet of each other, he just denies himself like some flagellate during a plague.
Yes, she understands that psychologically he's a complete mess and this is the medieval
version of pretending you're cool enough to not drunk text your ex while you're stalking their
social media. Considering that he's an orphaned teenager in a world with no therapy, he's
doing better than many others would in his position. However, his grief is currently extremely
inconvenient to her and so for that reason alone she has a right to be salty.

Fine. Let him stew in his own regrets and misery for longer, then. Lysa would spend the
entire time prodding that open wound, except she has bigger fish to fry, namely the Lannister
twins. Judging by the look on his face, looking between her, and her dress, and the rest of the
Lannisters, he's probably convincing himself in his head that Lysa must be happier with
Jaime why would she ever want someone like me . And it's just, that's the stupidest thing in
the world to think. Why would he ever think she doesn't want him, even if she could have
Jaime? A woman can never have enough trained monkeys dancing to her tune. Instead, Lysa's
getting a cross between Heathcliff and Eeyore, with the biggest Karen in Westeros running
interference all the while.

"Now, Lysa, dear," Genna pats her shoulder as she steers her towards the rest of the women,
"Lord Stannis may be known to be honorable and just, but he is still a man, and you ought to
be careful."

Ugh, this conversation again about the only thing men want and it's fucking disgusting , other
than all the other shit men want (power, riches, revenge, ego, and six hours of uninterrupted
video game time in their pathetic little man-caves)? That fat old bitch is worried that a single
tiny conversation in public with her ex-fiance will mean some kind of dishonor to the
Lannister name? She should keep an eye on her niece and nephew then. Lysa doesn't have
time for this and she honestly wants to shove Genna off the mountain cliffs for disrupting her
information gathering session.

Alas, that will probably get her locked up in an uncomfortably tiny room somewhere, so the
next best thing is to milk the data out of Genna instead. "Lady Genna," she whispers
fearfully, "Lord Stannis informed me that Jon Arryn sent him to prevent King Robert from
doing anything foolish before the Queen's family, given how he behaved at the other castles
on the way. This means he'll be staying the entire time, won't he? He wasn't on the guest list –
we don't have the rooms prepared – "

The bait distracts Genna's immediately. Away from everyone else's eyes, her cheerful mask
drops. "I'll take care of it, don't you worry, my girl," she says, and the absolute fury on her
face says it all: she hadn't known that Stannis was coming, either. That doesn't discount the
possibility that Tywin had known and chosen to say nothing, but she can't think of why he'd
embarrass his own sister like that.

So option two, then? Maybe Jon Arryn hadn't intended to hide Stannis from them , more like
he wanted to hide Stannis from Robert until it was too late for Robert to make Stannis turn
back around? Which would be a more forgivable situation, but even so, it's an intelligence
failure. Even if Robert hadn't known Stannis was coming, House Lannister should have
known that Stannis had left King's Landing in the first place.

Getting properly updated information is so much harder without wiretapping and spy
satellites. Regardless of whether Tywin and Genna have actually compromised Lysa's
network or not, this was a wake-up call. Lysa's been working so hard expanding her factories
over the past year that she let her other tasks fall to the wayside, and now she has to catch
back up. She needs to recruit more spies, and more importantly, she needs to do a thorough
audit of the ones she already has.

She doubts that any of them are truly disloyal. Like with Rogar, she's been cultivating them
all for quite some time. Some of the younger ones she hired personally; others were
converted from Cersei's former maids; still others were stolen out from under Genna. She has
been kind to all of them and spoken to them face to face, human to human; she addresses
them by name; she's heard their woes and solved their problems, given them opportunities
and justice that they never had or expected before. Their more friendly and intimate
interactions are done in private only, as she can't be seen being associating too closely with
lowly servants in public – but the fact that she treats them as people rather than chattel at all
has made them love her more than they ever loved Cersei or obeyed Genna. They all still fear
Lord Lannister over all, but because he thinks so little of them, they can be safely overlooked
to do her bidding most of the time. But she still has to check . Trust, but verify . If some are
being fed counterintelligence by Tywin and Genna, the discrepancies will make themselves
known eventually. If all are being fed counterintelligence, eventually something will come up
that will disagree with Lysa's personal known truths from her old world.

So the moment they make their way inside, Lysa makes her move. A glance over her left
shoulder: Cersei is busy with Jaime. A glance over the right shoulder: Genna is busy
readjusting the guest accomodations for Stannis' presence. A glance up ahead: Tywin is busy
playing King in front of the actual King.

The coast is clear. Lysa sidles her way over to her servants, pretends to look busy helping
with getting the royal party settled in, and starts giving out her real commands. Everyone gets
a slightly different set of orders and need-to-know information. Some get tasks to find out
things she already knows the answer to, either from her past life or things she witnessed
personally.

All of them do have one task in common: follow Jaime and Cersei, and report back to her
immediately the moment they disappear together.

After all, if there was anywhere Cersei would be able and motivated to slip away from her
own guard detail, it would be the home she grew up in and knew all the secret passages of,
during a time when she hadn't seen her brother-lover for close to a year while simultaneously
feeling threatened by that very brother-lover's legal wife. Your move, Cersei. I'm waiting.

Anyway, she doesn't have to wait long. It starts pretty much instantly.

Cersei makes some poisonous insinuations about Lysa's family, upbringing, and relationship
to Stannis. Lysa gives Cersei gushing compliments about her beauty and tells her how brave
and gallant Jaime is.

Cersei immediately plasters herself to Jaime's side while glaring daggers at Lysa. Lysa
observes how cute it is that the siblings are so close and comments about how much she
misses her own brother and sister.
Cersei sends two of her King's Landing maids to slip among the Casterly Rock servants. Lysa
catches them pretty much immediately. (Amateur. Lysa already has half a dozen of her spies
following Cersei and Jaime.)

Cersei sends one of her servants to spill wine onto Lysa's gold dress at the welcoming feast.
Lysa doesn't give a shit because she never asked for the damn dress in the first place, so
hilariously it's Genna who's incandescent with rage, to Cersei's great confusion.

"What a shame – " Cersei begins with a soft smile –

"A SHAME?! Is THAT all you have to say?! You can't even train your own servants properly
–"

"Ah, yes, I'll have that wineboy flogged, no need to – "

"Flogged? He ought to be sent to the Wall – !"

"Lady Genna, calm yourself," Tywin orders. He turns to Cersei, his voice dangerous. "Your
Grace, you really ought to choose your employees more strictly. It would…reflect poorly
upon you otherwise."

The look on her face at being admonished by her own father for Lysa's sake is worth every
drop of wine and then some, even if Lysa had cared as much about the dress as Genna. Which
she doesn't; in fact, she now has an excuse to never wear The Monstrosity ever again. It's
great.

Lysa hides her smile as a fuming Genna shuffles her off to change. "Honestly, it's like the
clumsy little fool did it on purpose."

"I think they did," Lysa comments loftily. Hey, just because she doesn't care about the dress
doesn't mean she's not going to take every opportunity she can.

Genna looks up. "What did you say?"

"I did tell Lord Lannister that I did not wish to outshine the Queen, but he deemed the pride
of House Lannister to be worth the consequences," Lysa said innocently. "I apologize, that
was unbecoming of me. I ought not to make such accusations towards your blood niece – it's
just – it's such a beautiful dress and now it's all ruined!"

Genna's face darkens and Lysa knows she's got the hook in. Genna may be loyal to House
Lannister above anything else, but even she can't deny Cersei's nature. "Don't you worry, the
damage is not as bad as it looks. The wine was only splashed on two of the panels. We can
have those seams cut out and replaced, and the gems can be reclaimed as well."

"I am sorry, Lady Genna; I know how hard you worked to have this dress made." She cared
about the dress a million times more than Lysa ever would, as if she had been holding the
needle in her sausage fingers herself.

"We'll add the cost to the royal debt to House Lannister," Genna says conspiratorially, and for
once Lysa doesn't have to fake her smile back.
Luckily, Lysa doesn't have to change completely. The outer gown of the dress was thick
enough that the wine hadn't soaked through to her kirtle and tunic, so it's only the surcoat that
needs to be switched out. She attempts to go for the baby blue empire-waisted one again, but
Genna interferes and brings out her second most expensive dress, royal blue with gold and
silver embroidery. To make up for its relatively plain (key word being relatively) look
compared to The Monstrosity, Genna starts throwing a truly absurd amount of jewels at Lysa,
like a preschooler playing with glitter.

Whatever. Lysa decides to let Genna play dress up doll with her because it suits her purposes
of dancing the tightrope between intelligent but obedient. You'd think that with how over-the-
top Genna is being, she'd look ostentatious and stupid, but somehow Genna has a talent for
making that style work.

Shame. If Lysa looked ostentatious and stupid then Cersei might view her as less of a threat.

"Thank you for your help, Lady Genna," Lysa said. "Truly." Not .

"I think you might in truth be the more beautiful of the Tully sisters," Genna sighed, spinning
her around. "You just needed time to grow into it."

Okay, something is definitely going on here and Lysa is going to get to the bottom of this if
she has to stab Genna in the face for it, because she sure as hell wasn't going to magically
start trusting Genna after all she'd done. The only Lannister she was going to hold hands and
sing Kumbaya with was the mentally deficient Cousin Orson. And, fine, Gerion and Tyrion
were pretty cool, too, mainly because Tyrion is a literal child and Gerion might as well be one
given how he acts half the time. But no one else! Genna wants something from her and if she
had been original-Lysa that old biddy might have even succeeded. Unfortunately, she didn't
feel any of that pathological level of pain, and so Genna's words had fuck-all effect. Instead,
she keeps her mouth shut.

"Cersei could never stand someone outshining her," Genna continued. "Even as a girl she
would force her handmaids to change if she thought they looked too pretty."

"I take it our Queen was a more independent sort as a girl?" Lysa asked.

"She was strong-willed, yes, and not in the way you are," Genna continued. "I told Tywin that
it would lead to trouble when she became older, but he never cared about the fripperies of
women. To him, it was natural that a Lannister would always be the best."

Robert is already well and fully sloshed by the time they get back, but for once, he isn't
embarrassing himself or Cersei. Earlier, Genna had deliberately arranged for the food servers
and wine pourers provided by Casterly Rock to all be male. Meanwhile, the only women
present at the high table are all members of the main Lannister line through blood (Genna and
Cersei) or marriage (Dorna, Darlessa, and Lysa). There were women who came with the
King's Landing contingent, but they've all been strategically forced into position by the more
numerous Casterly Rock servants so none of them are within grabbing distance of Robert's
hands. Lysa would have loved to sabotage that if only to make Cersei angry, but having
House Lannister mistreated in their own home would also piss off Tywin as well and Lysa
doesn't want to deal with both of that at once.
No doubt Robert will find a way to cheat on Cersei later, since they can't hide every single
woman in Casterly Rock from Robert forever , but at the very least the first day is quiet. For
now, though, he's just alternating between glowering at Stannis and looking at Lysa guiltily.

Despite all the effort Genna had gone through to make Cersei feel welcome back at home,
though, it's all for nothing. Lysa could have told Genna that from the start, but it's better to let
her hear it directly from Cersei instead: nothing they do will ever be good enough. She sneers
at the food, she comments on insignificant changes from when she used to live there, and
when Lysa tells a servant to do something Cersei will swoop in and give them contradictory
orders just to assert her dominance. This is my home, not yours. You will be never welcome
here. Always an outsider.

If Lysa were someone else, it would have worked on her. But Lysa has spent the past year
playing and beating Genna at her own game, and Cersei is laughably transparent in
comparison. Lysa always demurs to Cersei, assures her she is right; as you say, Your Grace .
It's hilarious, watching Cersei's face twist up in confused pity – she thinks Lysa is so
dimwitted and meek that she can't even be insulted properly; either the backhanded
compliments fly over her head completely, or criticisms are painlessly agreed to. Cersei
might as well be punching water.

The truth is, Lysa has a number of unfair advantages. The first, of course, is that she literally
does not give a single shit what Cersei thinks; being found wanting by her is the equivalent of
being called a poopyhead by a toddler. It's like David Benioff and D.B. Weiss criticizing the
script of Breaking Bad 's finale for poor writing – the only correct response to that is
condescending bemusement.

The second, more importantly, is that Lysa has no personal connection to the things Cersei
insults and derives no self-worth from any of this. She likes her industrialization projects,
thank you very much. It's Genna who picked the menu, and the wine, and the decorations,
and so on, which means that when Lysa provokes Cersei into her insults, most often when
Genna is within earshot, it is her own aunt she demeans, her own family she alienates. To
Lysa, that is far more entertaining than anything. If Lysa is lucky Cersei will assume that the
dismissal of all of Cersei's agents within the Rock were also Genna's fault, because Lysa is
clearly too stupid to accomplish such a thing.

Never let it be said that Cersei isn't persistent, however. The very next morning, Cersei shows
up at breakfast, sits down right next to Lysa, puts a hand on her arm, and invites her on a
walk. "So much has changed since I have left. You must really tell me all about it. There truly
is nothing like going home…even if that home is now different." The entire Great Hall can
hear them, and Lysa can't exactly turn down an invitation from the Queen without looking
unspeakably rude.

"Why of course, Your Grace!" Lysa looks down and pokes at her food. "Your lady aunt has
been so kind in showing me around…it's so big and beautiful, I still get lost sometimes. Isn't
that right, Lady Dorna?"

"Oh, I agree." Ser Kevan's wife is seated on her other side, and Lady Darlessa two seats
down. Lysa isn't stupid; she's not going to ever be alone at any given moment in time while
the royals are here. "You never truly get used to the splendor."
"Well, I suppose it can't be helped. I was born here so I've never known anything else."
Cersei strokes her arm, and it takes Lysa all her effort to act naturally. "Well, what do you
think? I can show you around all the secret places I knew as a girl."

"We're all so grateful for your kindness, Your Grace," Lysa grins, and it takes Cersei several
seconds and excited giggling from Dorna and Darlessa for her to realize what has happened.
We . There are now two witnesses coming along on the little outing, and she can't exactly
uninvite her uncles' wives without looking unspeakably rude. Her fingers tighten around
Lysa's arm.

To her credit, Cersei has an exceptional poker face. She bears the failures regally, the haughty
beauty as frozen as the Wall. Not a single tear or show of weakness. Just the slightest twitch
of impatience, if you were looking for it. It's pretty impressive. If only she wasn't an
impulsive brother-fucker, she might actually accomplish something useful. Sadly for her,
she's not nearly as subtle as she thinks she is.

(The moment she realizes that chunks of her old network from within Casterly Rock has gone
missing is visible from orbit.)

"WHERE IS JEYNE?!" she storms into the wine cellar with all the grace of a raging bull.

"...Which Jeyne? You'll have to be more specific," Genna drawls back, extremely
unimpressed.

"You know which one I'm talking about! The knight's daughter who carried my linens!"

Lysa is surprised that Cersei bothered to learn that girl's name, but she supposes that some
who is highborn, if only just barely, had that right. Jeyne Lannley, of one of the many
Lannister offshoot lines who provided mid-ranking services within Casterly Rock. Cersei had
only recruited her spies from people she deemed worth talking to, meaning all of the
smallfolk chambermaids and chimney sweeps and stable boys had been completely free for
Lysa to grab. "I can double-check the employment registers, but didn't she leave to be
married, Lady Genna?"

"Married? Without my permission?"

"It was Lord Lannister's order, and Ser Lannley approved of it," Genna said shortly. "Stupid
girl was lucky someone would even take her."

" WHAT?! "

"She was pregnant, what other choice did we have? We couldn't keep someone like that here
."

Cersei whirls on Lysa. " You! You did something! What did you do?!"

Lysa hides her smile and only has to partially fake the panic on her face, because Cersei is
right…in the way someone spraying birdshot from a sawed-off shotgun will eventually hit
something .
"Cersei, my girl, I know she was your friend, but be reasonable – that stupid Jeyne girl
brought it all upon herself!"

Poor little Jeyne Lannley. Smart enough to be a semi-competent spy, dumb enough to get
caught, and too loyal to flip – loyal to Cersei for whatever reason. So Lysa had sent one of
her smallfolk chambermaids, Etta, to sabotage Jeyne's stash of moon tea while she was out on
a moonlight rendezvous with her lover, some lowborn sailor she'd met in Lannisport. Three
moons later, and Lysa didn't even have to lift a finger – if Cersei did any digging, it would be
Genna who found out and fired the girl, Tywin who ordered her lashed and banished from the
Rock, and her own father who had seen her hastily married off to a distant cousin in the
countryside.

"Don't you Cersei my girl me – I am the Queen , and you are but the wife of one of Lord
Frey's second sons – "

Immediately Lady Genna's face shuts down and she turns pink with fury. "Crown or not, I am
your Lady Aunt , need I remind you – "

Lysa stands awkwardly by the door and points to her raised clipboard – another small
invention that had taken off in popularity – mouthing, Should I…? Genna gives her a single
glance and waves her off, and so Lysa goes to record the latest inventory report and leaves
the two to their little catfight. Never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake,
after all.

Shortly after that incident is when Cersei goes from bad to absolutely insufferable. She
doesn't even know that her entire network is gone; she's only aware of the retainers who were
fired (or framed) for perfectly legitimate reasons, not the ones turned double agent. But the
former category is big enough to notice even if she wasn't a paranoid wreck.

Before, everything was never good enough; now, if a servant did things even slightly
differently from how she remembered, Cersei would accuse them of treason. If Lysa dared to
give any orders in her presence – not even the royal household, just the servants of Casterly
Rock, legally under her command by all measures of the feudal contract – Cersei would
swoop in and give them contradicting orders just to assert her presence. And the Seven help
anyone who tried to give her the slightest bit of reasonable criticism: she was Cersei
Lannister, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, the Most Beautiful and Gracious and Deserving
etc. etc. and everyone should lay themselves on the ground before her feet so that she may
walk on them and be thankful for it because that was her due for being born, so Uncle Kevan
who is only a second son and lowly knight who doesn't even own any of his own land should
shut up before she has his tongue removed for him.

"Jesus Christ," Lysa whispers under her breath.

"Who's that?" Tyrion asks.

"Uh, nothing!"
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