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Arya cocked her head to one side. "Can I be a king's councillor and build castles and become the High Septon?"
"You," Ned said, kissing her lightly on the brow, "will marry a king and rule his castle, and your sons will be knights and princes and lords and, yes, perhaps even a High Septon."
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Jeyne is her father’s favorite and the only girl.
Her brothers run about the hills of Ashemark, content in their childhood, while Jeyne sits in the long summer grass and waits. She already knows she is made for greater things. She can feel it in the wind in the trees, the feel of mother’s velvet gowns beneath her fingertips, the sound of clattering silverware when the Lord of Casterly Rock dines with them twice in a moon’s turn.
Jeyne is her father’s girl and she has been made for greatness.
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Tytos Lannister is not eager for attention, which is a lucky thing as he seldom attracts it. Even as his lord father arranges their match there are no words of praise towards her bridegroom, only the need to secure House Lannister now that his eldest is gone, and how loyal House Marbrand is quite due for a reward.
“You Marbrands were always a capable bunch,” Gerold the Golden states bluntly at the high table. “My boy will need a good, sturdy wife to keep that thick head of his on his shoulders.”
Tytos flushes and looks down, unbefitting of a son to the Warden of the West. His own father is unused to recognizing him, this third son turned second after the death of the first. Jeyne frowns over a bowl of cooling broth, feeling a settling of discontent at her future husband, knowing that when he is not overlooked he is only ever a disappointment, first to his father and now, soon, to her.
Deeper is the pang of sadness she cannot help but feel for this boy (who so clearly is not yet a man) plainly unwanted by everyone. It will not disturb her plans, but it will be something to consider.
Sympathy can not stop her preparing, noting where the molds will be made, the pushes and pulls she will apply. Slowly, of course, and sweet as he pleases. Even a dullard will notice such obvious coercion. But here and there, Jeyne will correct and shape this lump of soft clay into what she needs him to be. However long it will take, she will make him worthy of her.
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The most significant death by far that stemmed from the Peake Uprising was that of King Maekar himself, but the chaos this caused has been abundantly chronicled elsewhere. Less well-known, but no less baleful, are the dire effects the battle had upon the history of the west. Tywald Lannister had long been betrothed to the Red Lion's spirited young sister, Lady Ellyn. This strong-willed and hot-tempered maiden, who had for years anticipated becoming the Lady of Casterly Rock, was unwilling to forsake that dream. In the aftermath of her betrothed’s death, she persuaded his twin brother, Tion, to set aside his own betrothal to a daughter of Lord Rowan of Goldengrove and espouse her instead.
Lord Gerold, it is said, opposed this match, but grief and age and illness had left him a pale shadow of his former self, and in the end he gave way. In 235 AC, in a double wedding at Casterly Rock, Ser Tion Lannister took Ellyn Reyne to wife, whilst his younger brother Tytos wed Jeyne Marbrand, a daughter of Lord Alyn Marbrand of Ashemark.
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Casterly Rock is more glorious than she ever could have imagined, a true fortress, a place where kings once ruled. Even done up in wedding decorations of the finest silks and styles from Lannisport she cannot escape the sense of power that lingers in every hallway, every doorway. She is so close to it all, to the command of such a garrison. And she will not stop at only the second son’s bride-to-be.
The wedding is not to be hers alone, after all. Jeyne does not like the looks of Ellyn Reyne from the first moment she sees her- simpering little wretch that she is clinging to her dead lover’s twin. How much persuasion did their goodfather require to allow such a shameful procession?
Jeyne is outshone at her wedding but Tytos is outshone everywhere he goes, so it is only fitting that she be equal to him. She is his wife now, not another intimidator to cast him into shadow. Jeyne keeps her eyes on him throughout the entire ceremony, reassures his every worried glance with her steadiness, returns every cautious grin with a radiant smile. He grows more and more confident, and begins to take joy in the day, and his bride. His smiles begin to come easier, and he pleases her when he laughs at her small jests.
Ellyn has to tug at her husband to get him to turn to her, and though he lavishes her with attention in those moments it does not take much to distract him. Tion is enthused by the wedding, but more so by his status as heir and his continued increase in power as his father steps back from rule. They have all heard how he pleaded with his father to marry the woman who was once betrothed to his twin, but from looking at them you could hardly guess it. For all he insisted on his bride, she is little more than an ornament to him in the end.
Jeyne feeds Tytos by her own hand as Tion dances with some pretty little Westerling. Ellyn dances with her brother, the Red Lion, their near-identical heads tucked together as she whines and he grumbles. Jeyne catches her eye and turns away, every inch the innocent. A smirking bride would not do at all.
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Twice a widower, and ailing, Lord Gerold did not wed again, so after her marriage to Ser Tion, Ellyn of House Reyne became the Lady of Casterly Rock in all but name.
As her good-father retreated to his books and his bedchamber, Lady Ellyn held a splendid court, staging a series of magnificent tourneys and balls, and filling the Rock with artists, mummers, musicians… and Reynes. Her brothers Roger and Reynard were ever at her side, and offices, honors, and lands were showered upon them, and upon her uncles, cousins, and nephews and nieces as well.
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How humid it has become inside the Rock, as the Reynes gather ‘round and Jeyne is hung out to dry.
Ellyn Reyne may be hot-tempered and quick to spite, but when it comes to women she wields veiled niceties just as easily as the dungeon master wielded the whip on poor Lord Toad. She may give her father and brothers all the offices she wants to procure their places in the Rock, but with a woman she does not need such heavy weapons. Indeed she is surrounded by women; cousins and aunts and goodsisters alike to form the retinue of ladies at her beck and call. Jeyne, the only girl to grow up amongst boys, has no choice but to become one of them.
Lady Ellyn beckons to her from across the Great Hall, and Jeyne can do nothing but pick up her skirts and move to her side as though she were a steward. All around them are servants preparing for the banquet later this week, the third of its kind in as many months, to celebrate Roger Reyne’s appointment as master treasurer of the Rock. Lions heads are at every corner, and for every golden mane there is one of crimson to match it.
Jeyne steps into place as Ellyn is overseeing the last details of her feast. She has spared no expense, frolicking with the Rock’s extensive coffers like a pig rolls in mud. A boar with skin seared crisp and a fine autumn apple stuffed in its mouth. A goose for each table, stuffed with mushrooms and onions before being painted in butter and garlic and sprinkled over with tart lemons from Dorne. Crabs so fresh they’re like to swim in all the butter they’ve been drenched in. Sweetgrass stew and lamprey pies and platters of fruit from the Summer Isles. All of this and more ordered without question for the Lady of Casterly Rock. As Jeyne approaches the lady is flirting with the various courtiers beholden to her whilst the poor steward attempts to go over the final details and save his own hide from the chopping block.
“My lady,” Jeyne clears her throat, knowing from past experience that Ellyn will continue to twirl and trill until Jeyne forces her to focus her attention. There is nothing that woman enjoys more than making others squirm.
Ellyn turns to her, a pleased smirk upon her face. “Ah, sister, I was hoping for your opinion. Do you think it would be in poor taste to serve the Tyroshi pears before my guests retire?” She dimples prettily for the audience. “They were a wedding gift, and they say it is ill done to indulge in such things too soon.”
Jeyne glances at her cooly. “I don’t believe it has been so very short as all that, my lady.”
Lady Ellyn tsks as though she is being a poor sport. “Come now Jeyne, are you so very settled into marriage after a mere four months? I know my Tion still has the appetite of a honeymooner.” She turns back to the steward in absence of a reply. “We shall have baked apples done up in cinnamon and sugar instead, that will fit my autumnal mood most nicely.”
The steward bows deep. “My lady. It will all be done as you say.”
Ellyn flicks her fingers at him in dismissal, and he bows once more before scurrying away. She begins to walk and Jeyne follows, taking the lady’s arm when it is offered as though they are the closest of friends.
“I must confess I have quite outdone myself this time,” Lady Ellyn beams, her cheeks flushed with accomplishment. “There is not a person of influence in the West who will not be attending. The high table is quite stretched to its limit.”
Jeyne hums in feigned amazement. It is hard not to think of all the other feasts and events where she has found herself shoved to the side in favor of her good-sister. The masquerade ball where Jeyne and Tytos were given ugly meerkat masks instead of the bejewled lions the rest of the family wore. Their lack of introduction when the Braavosi envoys were visiting. The repeated disappearances of the offerings she sets before the seven on holy days, always just as the sept’s pews begin to fill.
And now this appointment of Roger Reyne as treasurer of the Rock, despite the position rightfully belonging to Jeyne’s father as part of her marriage agreement. All the while Jeyne must keep her decorum and her head high, for she cannot retreat at the first taste of battle. The enemy may very well tire out before the year is out, even if Jeyne’s teeth grind into dust in the meantime.
Ellyn continues, a familiar gleam in her eye. “I was wondering, would Lord Tytos and yourself mind terribly if you were seated below the salt with little Lord Jason instead? Everyone above is either owner or heir or wife of one with lands, and as you and Lord Tytos are none of those things it does not seem appropriate to seat you there for the evening.”
What can Jeyne do but accept and try to keep her teeth unclenched? Her good-brother Jason is scarcely ten years old. “As my lady decrees.” She replies lightly, careful to keep her chin held level whilst her eyes carefully appraise Ellyn’s slim form. “It will be good for my husband and I to familiarize ourselves with children as we wait for the Seven to bless us with our own.”
Lady Ellyn’s careful smile freezes and her eyes turn dark. She barely utters her false gratitude before shooing Jeyne away to another menial task; inspecting the newly made gown her ladyship has ordered for the banquet.
In this Ellyn has also misstepped, for it gives Jeyne the perfect opportunity to be in her quarters unsupervised but for the maidservants.
And the winds whisper that war is coming.
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Afterwards, the corpses of the Black Dragon’s slain choked the Wendwater and sent it overflowing its banks. The royalists lost fewer than a hundred men. . . but amongst the few leal men who fell was Ser Tion Lannister, heir to Casterly Rock.
The loss of the second of his “glorious twins” might well have been expected to break their grieving father, Lord Gerold. Curiously, the opposite seemed to be the case. As Ser Tion’s body was laid to rest within Casterly Rock, Gerold the Golden roused himself, and took firm hold of the westerlands once more, intent on doing all he could to prepare his thirdborn son, the weak-willed and unpromising boy Tytos, to succeed him.
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In the few moments of respite between the final burial of Tion Lannister and the commemorative banquet to follow, Jeyne allows herself to smile for the first time in days.
She stands in front of her looking glass as her ladies and maidservants bustle around her, attending to their different tasks before they are all called down for the feasting. Those who were once beholden to Ellyn Reyne now dab spritzes of rosewater on Jeyne’s wrists and neck to refresh her after the long service and subsequent burial, and bring her small morsels of fruit and sweetmeats on gilded trays amidst even more flavorful pieces of gossip. It is almost jovial in her chambers now, as all the Reyne women must attend to their mistress in her darkest hour and all the forgotten women of the west are at last permitted to stretch their limbs in the sun.
Jeyne watches herself in the mirror, the only fixed piece in the room. A piece of hair has fallen loose from the elaborate style designed to keep her heavy tresses off her neck in the heat of the sept, and a maid immediately sets to right it. Her dress is as deep and dark as night soil, with billowing skirts that fan out in layers and an orthodox collar lined with black diamonds from Asshai that drip all the way down her sleeves. She’d commissioned it months ago and had been looking forward to wearing it, along with the matching pointed earrings and dove soft slippers to keep her feet from aching throughout the standing portions of the ceremony.
The maidservants, of course, have long been in her pocket and became loyal to her outright while serving as her eyes and ears in these very chambers before she became the occupant. Even now they are making efforts to smooth wrinkles in her mourning dress from the long hours of the funeral, including drying the spot high upon her skirts where little Jason hid his face to cry as his second brother was put to rest.
Tytos’s hand had gripped hers tightly whilst his brother cried, but she did not see him shed any tears of his own. Her husband has been in a heavy daze since the news arrived of his brother’s fall in the Fourth Blackfyre Rebellion, thoroughly in shock at finding himself exactly where he was never meant to be.
For herself Jeyne has opted for the matronly role of comfort and quiet compassion, the very picture of appropriate mourning for a good-brother who had hardly known her name. The strong sense of relief she felt made it easy to pretend at compassion. Had Lord Tion not had the grace to fall in battle, she may have taken fate into her own hands and to avoid such she was grateful. There had never been any chance that Jeyne Marbrand would settle for being a second son’s wife. And she knew it would ring false if she wailed and wrung her handkerchief as women were expected, especially when all of the west knew just how little she had to grieve. Not as Ellyn Reyne did.
Now Jeyne truly smiled. Poor Ellyn. Some women were beautiful in tears, their eyelashes longer and darker, their faces a youthful flush, their lips pouting and plumped. Perhaps that was how she had been when Tywald had died and was how she’d seduced his brother. Now she howled and screamed and sobbed and wore her mourning as though she’d rather shred the fabric. Her second prize to slip the net; she had no more use for composure. It was a most pitiful sight, and Jeyne could not deny that she enjoyed the look of it. Her rival not a lion after all but instead some lesser beast, soon to be cast down with all the rest.
And how well she knows it. Jeyne thinks, remembering the wild eyes and slumped figure against the Red Lion’s frame in the sept’s pew.
It was an entertaining show, and the West had shown out with whetted appetites. Women whispered behind their fans and gloves, She’s gone quite mad, won’t listen to a thing. And their men, as they toasted and gulped to the lost war hero. A fair prize now, old Gerold would pass her along for half a groat.
It was the truth too. Whilst his last son was lost in a daze, Gerold the Golden seemed as though he had woken from a deep slumber. Gone was the tired old man who let his good-daughter control his lands and rule his castle. Now he watched Lady Ellyn with unbrokered distaste as he sat strong and straight through the service, nodding to Jeyne as the crowd broke for the midday bells, and studying Tytos as he clung to her. He’d permitted Jeyne to handle all the arrangements for the funeral and feast, a task that by rights should have belonged to the wailing widow, and there wasn’t a page boy or serving girl who hadn’t taken note.
Jeyne doubted she would ever have quite as much careless power as Ellyn enjoyed during her brief stint as Lady of Casterly Rock; not with Gerold taken to ruling once more. But she would be thrice as powerful, and permanently, once she’d birthed an heir.
Though she need not rush to the task.
“Marla,” Jeyne calls suddenly to Lord Prester’s eldest daughter, enjoying how the room quiets at once. “‘Twas it my imagination, or was Lady Ellyn quite taken with her belly this morning?”
Her ladies titter amongst themselves, watching the two women anxiously, and now Jeyne knows it was not just her own eyes who saw the shrew’s hands press flat against her belly as though she wished to cradle it.
“Mayhaps a nervous habit of hers, my lady,” Marla replies, careful to keep her tone neutral even as her quick hazel eyes flash with intelligence. “For she had taken up such movements shortly after her husband left for war.”
“I heard,” adds Lady Alessa Crackhall, as she twists the end of her braid. “That she has requested her own personal maester from Castamere to attend her in her grief, and that he provides a matter of potions for her every ailment.”
Lady Marla sniffs. “There is no cure for any true grief.”
The ladies murmur their ascent, and Faye Lefford’s clear voice suddenly rises above the rest. “My washerwoman tells me she’s refused any seamstress to prepare her mourning attire and has left the task to her own women.” She raises her chin haughtily. “She who once lavished in attention from jewelers and dressmakers, and called upon them to compete for her favor.”
And now they will vie for mine. Jeyne muses.
“But it has been months since Lord Tion rode for war,” little Evaline Westerling points out cautiously. “That is to say...it is peculiar for her to take up such habits at this point.”
The room falls into silence, and the women turn to their mistress to see her reply.
Jeyne merely tilts her head thoughtfully, never turning away from the glass, and waves her hand for the room to flow once more. At once the servants continue their busy work and the ladies presume their idle chatter as though there had been no interruption.
No, it certainly was not the time to be comfortable. Ellyn had lost her power but gained desperation, which could be far more dangerous. Already her hungry eyes tracked Tytos as a fox watches a mouse, narrowing as Jeyne provides the shelter that keeps her from her meal. Even cornered as she is, Ellyn certainly wouldn’t go without a fight.
Jeyne would plan, and plan well and in advance, with no allowance made for her own delicacies. She would not be cowed by a strumpet’s final death rattle, especially not on the eve of her triumph.
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The “Reign of the Reynes” was at an end. Lady Ellyn’s brother soon departed Casterly Rock for Castamere, accompanied by many of the other Reynes.
Lady Ellyn remained but her influence dwindled, while that of Lady Jeyne grew, The rivalry between Ser Tion’s widow and Tytos’s wife now became truly ugly, if the rumors set down by Maestor Beldon can be believed. Though Lord Gerold forbade any man to speak of the incident, on the pain of losing his tongue, Beldon tells us that in 239 AC, Ellyn Reyne was accused of bedding Tytos Lannister, whilst urging him to set aside his wife and marry her instead. However, young Tytos (then nineteen) found his brother’s widow so intimidating that he was unable to perform. Humiliated, he ran back to his wife to confess and beg her forgiveness.
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Jeyne arranges to be found praying in the sept with her ladies. Her skirts are good Lannister crimson, they pool like spilled blood as she kneels before the Mother with her hands clasped together. Her most trusted servant kneels to whisper in her ear, and she already knows where to go, and what has happened. She is surprised though, by the sudden rush of weakness that floods her when she at last arrives to the chambers she shares with her husband.
A Reyne would do anything to insure her own power, a whore even more so. Her mother had trained her to see an enemy’s movements in advance, just as her father had to her brothers. A lord’s hall was not so very different from a battlefield. And yet to hear her husband confess such a thing to her, in the dead of night, surely mere minutes after he had that wench’s body wrapped around his own, is another thing entirely.
This soft, gullible, idiotic creature, who has never spoken a harsh word to her, and shared her bed with such tenderness. This loving, attention-craving, fool, who had betrayed her in the easiest way a man can betray his wife.
Jeyne is facing the window as he tells her, so Tytos does not see her face as he stumbles his way through his confession. She cannot help the way her heart drops a measure in her chest, or how her face twists as she battles a threatening display of weakness that she dare not show. She can almost feel the sting of a septa’s sharp lash at this measure of imperfection. It takes her longer than she cares to admit to swallow the emotions that would overtake her. Those minutes tick by, and she knows her husband’s anxieties are increasing tenfold as they do.
“I-I am truly sorry. Jeyne. M-my lady. I could not...I would not have if it weren’t for-”
Jeyne rises from her seat with the grace of a queen, cutting off his rambling with the same efficiency as a slice from a knife. Her heavy skirts swish as she turns towards him, like an icon of nobility, of his father’s disappointment, of the Westerlands’ disdain. Tytos is sweating, his face a mess of fear and panic and the beginning of tears.
Then he sees her and, oh, how could he have doubted her? Kind and loving Jeyne, his very heart in front of him. Tytos’s fear melts away in an instant. His wife approaches him with a sympathetic face and forgiving hand, and he reaches for her as if he is drowning, desperate for the rescue he knows she will provide.
“My poor, sweet lord,” Jeyne soothes him, stroking his cheek with the most gentle hand he’s ever known, wiping away his tears with one elegant finger. “Of course it was not your fault. That whore tried to seduce you away from me, your lawful wife, but you knew in your heart it wasn’t right, did you not?”
Tytos nods, so eager to please.
Jeyne smiles her kindest smile. She is his most dutiful wife, after all. “She tried to take advantage of my loving husband, but now she will never lay a hand on you again. I swear it. We will send her from Casterly Rock in disgrace, and she can rot away her widowhood in Castamere for the rest of her days.”
Tytos falls to his knees and weeps into her skirts at her forgiveness, her mercy. Jeyne strokes his head as he vows he will never betray her again, that he will be true and loyal to her for the rest of their days together.
He keeps his promise.
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Lady Jeyne was willing to pardon her young husband his fumbling infidelity, but was less forgiving of her good-sister, and did not hesitate to inform Lord Gerold of the incident.
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Jeyne knows the course she must take, and this, finally, is the action she will relish. She gathers her skirts and glides down the hall in triumph, her head held high, her expression revealing nothing. The servants do not meet her eye, thinking her dishonored, but no matter. It will be scant hours before all are made aware of her victory.
Why is she unsurprised to meet her foe along her way? Ellyn Reyne no longer looks the proud lioness she has schemed to be. The red-handed harlot is flushed, out of breath, disgraceful. She has run out into the unforgiving hallways of the Rock to give chase to escaped prey, only to meet the predator she hadn’t thought to fear.
At this moment it’s easy to see her from a man’s eyes. Thrown from her bed at the wolf’s hour, her honey-wheat tresses are all a-tumble, her dressing gown thrown haphazardly across her body to reveal a fair bit of creamy white leg and a heaving bosom, as the lady is quite out of breath. An appealing sight for any man. For a night, for an hour. Whores have their uses, but they're so desperately common. Jeyne struggles to find the caution she once so carefully wielded against this woman.
Ellyn is clearly startled by the sight of her. “You- what are you doing here? Where...what did he tell you? Where are you going!”
Jeyne has never felt more regal as she looks down her nose at the woman who tried to take what was hers. “I am on my way to inform my good-father of the shameful procession that has taken place this night, my lady. My husband and I have been wronged, and I am sure it will be in his best interest to right us.”
The bewildered stare she receives reminds her that she has never dared to speak more than simple niceties to this woman. It is as startling to her as being spoken back to by a mouse. Lady Ellyn seems to remember herself, pushing back her hair and tying the robe more securely around herself.
“Well! How unbecoming to interrupt his lordship’s careful rest for such a trifling matter as a domestic dispute.” She says haughtily. “And at this hour? I fear you will seem quite pathetic.”
Jeyne, whose maidservants tell her Gerold the Golden scarcely sleeps these days, is not worried. “We shall see.”
Ellyn’s desperation is palpable, her demeanor slips as her words betray her panic. “How mad you will seem, against the woman who holds the heir of Casterly Rock in her belly!”
Jeyne’s smile is laced with pity, just as Ellyn’s tea was once laced with tansy. Has she lost her wits to hold to this illusion? Ellyn’s false pregnancy made her the laughingstock of the castle as the moon turned thrice over and her belly stayed flat, but Jeyne cannot help but wonder if her good-sister did in fact miss her moon’s blood a time or two, only for it to return especially heavy. Who was to say which precautions had been unnecessary?
Jeyne inclines her head politely, then lifts her crimson skirts so she may make her way to her good-father’s chambers.
“‘Tis a fool who wakes a sleeping lion!” Ellyn calls from behind her.
Oh yes. Jeyne agrees silently. A fool indeed.
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