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“And my father ... he never thought the throne would pass to him, and yet it did. He used to say that was his punishment for the blow that slew his brother. I pray he found the peace in death that he never knew in life.” (A Feast for Crows)
You get towards the end of life – no, not life itself, but of something else: the end of any likelihood of change in that life. You are allowed a long moment of pause, time enough to ask the question: what else have I done wrong? […] There is accumulation. There is responsibility. And beyond these, there is unrest. There is great unrest. (The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes)
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The table was laid out with Baelor’s favorite dishes. A leg of lamb which had been roasting in its own juices over a bed of onions, carrots, lemons and blood oranges, hot peppers stuffed with cheese and diced gull’s egg, mushroom-and-leek soup to cool the tongue after the hot peppers, and a bowl of olives (purple, not green) – these were some of the dishes Maekar had specially ordered for this day, this day of remembrance.
The wine was Dornish. It was Baelor’s favorite, although in the interest of tact and diplomacy, he always drank Arbor wine as often as he drank the Dornish variety. Only to Maekar’s ear had he once confided that Arbor red tasted like grape juice to his palate, and watered-down grape juice at that.
There was no dessert course, no cake, pastry, pie or poached fruit to end the meal. Baelor never had a sweet tooth, not even as a boy. His youngest brother was most often the beneficiary of this, being passed a second serving of whatever sweet concoction they were having at the end of the meal. Blackberry tarts had been Maekar’s favorite, followed closely by honey-poached figs (with a dash of cinnamon).
He could still see it now, Baelor’s winking smile as he handed over his portion of the dessert course to his youngest brother, and Baelor’s amused grin as Maekar’s lips and fingers were stained with blackberry juices. It was a damnably cursed thing, without a doubt, and a clear sign of the gods’ taste for cruel japes, how memory and recollection seemed to work. Before his brother’s untimely demise at his own hand, Maekar had not thought of those details in years, and had firmly set them aside the same way he had long ago set foolish games and childish toys aside.
There was a distinct and particular point in time when Maekar began to despise his sweet tooth, seeing it as a weakness that must be overcome and a grave failing that had to be conquered. For how could he ever hope to be his father’s sword, a sword greater than Blackfyre, greater than the Targaryen’s ancestral sword that his father had been unjustly robbed of, if he could not master his own weakness for the taste of oh-so-sweet delicacies on his tongue? What sort of warrior would go weak at the knees at the sight of dessert, of all things? questioned the seven-year-old boy Maekar had been, the boy who had just witnessed his father being humiliated in front of the whole realm by his own royal grandsire.
Baelor had counseled moderation, as opposed to complete self-denial, which was the drastic measure to which Maekar had resorted. “You do not have to eat a second serving of dessert, but there is nothing wrong with eating your own portion, if you still have a taste for it,” Baelor had advised Maekar, to no avail. This was to be the first of many occasions that his counsel for moderation would be ignored by his youngest brother, in favor of more strict and severe alternatives.
Moderation, judged Maekar, was entirely insufficient. Moderation was not even close to being enough, under the circumstances, considering the dire threats they were facing. Their enemies were circling them, circling them like lions circling their prey, just waiting for the opportunity to pounce. Moderation was not going to save them from being devoured by a king who despised his only trueborn son for the sin of being a better man than the king himself could ever dream of being. Moderation would not save them from an over-ambitious bastard who thought himself more deserving to be that king’s heir by virtue of being granted a sword. An over-ambitious bastard who lacked neither supporters nor male descendants, whose call to arms for treason still resonated in the realm long after his defeat and death on the Redgrass Field.
Do you still believe the same thing about moderation, brother, even now?
Maekar believed it even more fervently, since the death of the man who had counseled him to choose moderation. His bitter regret about his own part in causing that man’s death had not changed his mind about this particular matter in the slightest. If anything, it served to further harden his resolve.
He poured the Dornish wine from the flagon into two silver goblets, after checking again to reassure himself that the door to his bedchamber was securely locked from the inside. What was about to transpire in this room was not for the eyes and ears of anyone other than himself.
You always need to be sure, to be absolutely certain. When will you learn that there is no true certainty in life, Maekar?
Maekar disagreed, as he had always disagreed with Baelor on this particular point. There was certainty in one thing, at least. There was certainty in numbers, in hard numbers, the type of certainty entirely lacking in flowery words and gushing sentiments. A secret kept by one man and one man only would always be the secret that had the best chance of remaining a secret. Promises could always be broken, and confidences foully betrayed. The only person you could fully trust not to betray your secret was yourself. Yourself, and no other.
One of the goblets of wine he placed directly opposite him on the table. The seat facing him had been empty for these last twelve years. He raised his own goblet and muttered under his breath, “For you, brother. Shall I begin?”
He began by describing the year that had been, the twelve moons that had passed since the last time he faced Baelor’s shade across the table. Another year gone, another year that his brother had not lived to experience, courtesy of Maekar’s mace that had dealt the fatal blow to Baelor’s skull.
A neutral observer would have been struck by the seemingly detached and impassive nature of Maekar’s long recitation, but Baelor would have known better, would have understood the churning turmoil behind those words.
This was the private side of the memorial, the remembrance ceremony Maekar held in secret each year on the anniversary of his brother’s death. This morning’s ceremony in the Great Sept of Baelor – a grander version of the previous eleven ceremonies he had held in Summerhall’s sept – that was the public side of the memorial.
His second son Aerion loathed the notion of a public memorial, of any kind of memorial. “Was it not enough that you held a public memorial at Summerhall, every year without fail? Do you have to do it at the Great Sept of Baelor, now that you are king? Do you wish it to be said that your brother would have made a better king than you, Father? Surely it cannot be your wish to be compared to him endlessly, to live under his shadow for the entirety of your reign? Uncle Aerys never marked the anniversary of Uncle Baelor’s death when he was sitting on the Iron Throne. He never saw the need to do such a thing. Why should you, Father?”
(Aerion had become far more assertive and outspoken in front of his father, ever since his return from exile in Lys. Lately, he raised Maekar’s wrath more often than Daeron did. Or perhaps Maekar saw his second son more clearly now, no longer blinded by Aerion’s smiles and parades of chivalry, and most of all, no longer blinded by his own disappointment and dissatisfaction with his oldest son and heir. This, at least, was one matter in which Baelor’s previous counsel, which Maekar had not heeded during his brother’s lifetime, did take root in his mind.)
“It was not Aerys’s blow that slew Baelor. It was mine,” Maekar forcefully reminded his son.
Aerion shrugged. “And what of it, Father? It was a mishap, a bitterly regretted mishap, you have always asserted that. Do you wish the realm to be reminded of that unintended blow again and again? Be done with it, once and for all. Leave Uncle Baelor to his fate in the golden hall of the Father Above. Leave him to the splendid feasts that the septons promise to those who have crossed over to the land of the dead. Do not invoke his memory year after year with this self-defeating public flagellation of yours.”
Maekar did not wish to be done with it. Being done with it would be a reckless neglect and an avoidance of responsibility. And he did not wish to make himself forget. The willful and deliberate act of forgetting would be an even more unforgivable transgression than the unintended blow that slew his brother.
The unintended blow that had the equally unintended consequence of putting him on the throne, of turning him into King Maekar, First of His Name, something he had never envisioned as the youngest brother of four. Altogether, there was too much that was supposedly unintended and inadvertent to be entirely credible, certain rumors and speculations claimed. Maekar knew this well enough. And there were many in the realm who strongly believed that a kinslayer was still a kinslayer accursed by the gods, regardless of the lack of intention and the lack of malice behind the act.
He removed his crown from his head, placing it on the table at exactly the midpoint between his goblet of wine and the goblet of wine meant for Baelor. The band of red gold shimmered. The black iron points, as sharp as the tips of arrows, looked dangerous and menacing, as they were intended to be.
Needless to say, it was not the kind of crown his brother would have commissioned and worn. Too warlike, Baelor would have said. Not tactful, moderate and diplomatic enough, he would have no doubt added.
A true knight protects the weak and the innocent, Maekar, or he is no knight at all. And a true king protects his people, or he is no king at all.
Maekar could never be the kind of king his oldest brother would have been, had Baelor lived to be crowned. Nor would he wish to be. Their goal was the same, but his methods would be his own, had to be his own.
A crown of thorns, his oldest son Daeron had japed about his crown, on the day of his coronation.
A crown of swords, his youngest son Aegon had countered. A crown of swords to represent all the loyal swords in the Seven Kingdoms who will march to assist Father to protect his people and to keep his realm safe.
He, too, had once been the youngest son, and now he was the last – the last survivor, the last to remember and to memorialize. That was fixed and unchanging, as unchanging as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. Until the day of his death, he would be the sole surviving son of Daeron Targaryen and Myriah Martell, the last of the four brothers.
And he would be king until the day of his death, with all the duties, responsibilities and culpabilities that came with the position. That, too, was fixed and unchanging, a fact of life that must be faced and dealt with, regardless of his personal doubts, qualms and reservations. If the throne was indeed his punishment for the blow that slew his brother, then the only possible choice was to accept that punishment without flinching, without turning away from it, without trying to escape the consequences. The only possible path forward, he believed, was to do whatever it took to be the kind of king who would protect his people and keep his realm safe, no matter the cost.
Because regret without atonement, without a good faith attempt to make amends, was equally as pointless as regret without remembrance. Remembrance and atonement were the two pillars that prevented regret from merely being a self-pitying and self-indulgent exercise in futility.
There was some measure of peace to be found in that, at the very least, amidst all the unrest within Maekar.