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Queen Shireen Baratheon, the First of Her Name, chose Ser Davos to walk her to the altar.
Protocol dictated that her eldest male relative alive should accompany her there. This would be one of her uncles on the Florent side of her ancestry, but she chose Davos anyway, knowing it would likely breed resentment. Because with him accompanying her, she thought perhaps she would be convinced she wasn't being completely selfish, that what she was doing wasn't doing something deeply wrong.
After all, Davos had been her father's best friend and closest advisor when he was alive. He wouldn't allow her to go down the wrong path. Right?
Still, she could hear her mother's voice, telling her how disappointed she was by her choice of consort. But worse was imagining her father. He said nothing, just stared at her with disapproval and disgust in his eyes. Eyes so intense, so blue. Eyes like hers, eyes like the one waiting for her at the end of the altar.
Edric Storm was the son of her mother's sister and her father's brother.
By blood, he might as well be considered her brother as well. No one brought this point to her directly, but she thought she could hear it in the whispers around her in the weeks since the royal wedding was announced.
There were more reasons for the whispers than that. Edric was a bastard. Edric didn't bring with him the support of one of the great houses. Edric, to her, was her greatest joy and her only selfishness.
She liked to think that the realm would eventually love him as she did, probably even more than they loved her. But she knew there was a chance this selfishness would define how she would be remembered in the history that would one day be written. And yet there was no hesitation in her steps toward him.
Lord Davos kissed her forehead as they reached the altar, and she stepped in front of Edric, who smiled at her.
"You look very beautiful," Edric said.
That wasn't true, he was the beautiful onee. If anyone else had told her this, she would secretly resent the obvious lie, but with Edric, she thought that perhaps it wasn't for him, that in his eyes, and his eyes alone, she truly was beautiful.
"Thank you."
And the Septon of the Seven began the marriage rites.
This had been one of the concessions she had made upon assuming the crown. Leaving the Red God behind. Her mother's horror at this would probably have been even greater than at her choice of consort. But it had been necessary.
Secretly, she didn't idolize the Seven. But neither did she with R'hollor. She had seen their power during the final days of the war, but what she had seen had awakened only fear, not devotion.
Edric, however, believed that the Seven looked out for the people and had their best interests at heart. There was still something foolish and innocent about him, she liked that, that despite everything, he was still very much a summer child.
And if this was the only life she would have, and she wanted him by her side. Even if it meant giving up being the Queen her parents hoped she would be.
The septon announces that before the eyes of the Seven, they are now married. Despite everything, something in her feels relieved, her children will be born of incest, but they will not be bastards. And if he could truly be counted as her sibling, at least one of they would be better siblings than Robert and Stannis were to each other.
His lips touch hers, and momentarily all whispers vanish from her mind. Her father's disapproving eyes don't disappear, however, but for a moment, she allows herself not to mind.