SANSA
She was on her second lemon cake when he asked her.
"What do you think my aim will be," Joffrey said, "when I sit the Iron throne?"
Sansa set down the cake. She had learned not to answer his questions quickly. He was not the sort who asked a thing only to hear himself agreed with, and she had given him a few carelessly quick answers before she'd understood that, and she had not liked the quality of his patience while she said them.
She thought about it and all she knew of him. She thought about the mentions of what had occurred council meetings and what she had heard.
"You wish to get the crown out of debt," Sansa decided. "And maintain the peace."
He smiled. Not the full smile, but one that meant she was partially right. "That is a means, not an aim." He reached for his cup. "What did Jaehaerys the Old King set out to do?"
Sansa had been reading the histories. She had not told him she was reading them, but in the end she would not have been surprised if he knew.
"To repair what Maegor the Cruel broke," she said. "To keep the dragons exceptional. And to better the kingdoms. He built roads and started to unify the laws."
"He wanted the realm to work," Joffrey nodded. "And the Young Dragon?"
"To conquer Dorne."
"Daeron the Good?" Her prince asked after a sip.
"To bring Dorne into the realm, the same as his namesake but without violence." She remembered. "Through marriages instead. Against advice."
He nodded. His eyes were warm. "Every good king sets out to accomplish something. Not just to reign." He turned his cup in his hands. It was a habit he had when he was arranging thoughts. "The Dragon took six kingdoms. But he never made them one."
She opened her mouth to object and then stopped, because he was right. She thought of Winterfell, so complete unto itself, so entirely its own world. She thought of the way even she had thought of herself as northern first and a subject of the crown second.
"Each region still keeps its own customs," Sansa said slowly. "Its own way of things. Men think of themselves as northmen first, or riverlords, or men of the Reach. Not—"
"Westerosi," Joffrey said.
"You want to change that," Sansa realised. He smiled at her in that way that sent her heart racing.
"The dragons are gone," the prince said. "Fear is gone. All that remains is seven kingdoms who were ruled but never truly joined. I must needs give them common cause." He looked at her steadily, his eyes imploring.
"Marriages you mean."
"Indeed, my lady." He took a bite of his food.
"They must want the realm to succeed and thrive. The crowns successes must be interchangeable with their own. A generation of children who are neither northerner nor southron. Neither riverlands nor reachmen but both. It is ambitious I know, and it will take generations for us to truly become one realm." He paused. "Our children, will need to continue it."
Our children.
Sansa looked down at her plate so he would not see her face, red and immensely pleased.
She was not certain she succeeded, because when she looked up again there was something in his expression that was almost gentle. Joffrey took her hand in his. She squeezed almost without thought and he squeezed back.
"The ladies," she managed.
"Yes," the prince said, and he had the grace not to smile.
She gathered herself and thought. She had been thinking about this for weeks, since the moment she'd understood what the household was really for. "One from each kingdom," Sansa said. "Wynafryd Manderly from the north. The Manderlys are rich and powerful and they also follow the Seven, which makes them easier to speak to across the divide. And Myranda Royce, her father and uncle matter in the Vale."
"Very good," Joffrey said. "Add Roslin Frey."
She thought of what she knew of old Lord Walder, with his scores of children. "The Freys aren't well-loved."
"No, my lady. I do not need them to be. They're rich, and they hold the Crossing, and the riverlands matter. Lord Walder wants his family to be seen as more." He looked at her. "I've already written to him. She'll come with some of her brothers."
Sansa noticed then that he had named no one from Dorne. She was about to say so when a servant knocked.
"Your grace, Lord Tywin Lannister's party has been spotted on the kingsroad, just outside the city."
"I see." The prince replied before he turned back to her. "How would you like to meet my grandsire, Sansa?"
Lord Tywin Lannister's convoy arrived at the exact hour expected, in perfect order, without visible effort. His column had entered the city a clean precision that spoke of how the queen's father ruled his men. When he dismounted in the yard of the Red Keep, he looked at it as though he were taking inventory of something that he felt had long belonged to him.
Sansa supposed that made sense, he had been hand of the king and it was said that he had been the true ruler during mad king Aerys' reign before he resigned.
He was a tall man, broad through the shoulders, with a face that had been handsome once and had become something else with age — not unhandsome, but harder, stripped of anything unnecessary. The only hair on his head were the gold whiskers on each cheek. His eyes were green shot through with flecks of gold.
Ah, Sansa realised, that's where he gets it from.
He was looking at Joffrey.
Something passed between them in that look. Not warmth — or not only warmth. The look Tywin Lannister extended to his grandson was different to what he gave to the queen or Ser Jaime, and he did not even glance at Tommen or Myrcella.
"Grandfather," Joffrey said. "You look well."
"Joffrey," Tywin Lannister said. "As do you. We have much to speak of." And then, turning, he looked at Sansa, and the inventory continued.
"Lady Sansa, no doubt." He tilted his head in greeting.
"I am, my lord." She gave him her best curtsy and met his eyes, because she had learned that men like Tywin Lannister drew conclusions from how directly you held their gaze. "Your reputation precedes you."
"That it does." The Warden of the West's eyes flickered between her and Joffrey. "I trust my grandson has been treating you well."
"The prince has been most accommodating, my Lord."
"Very good." Lord Tywin said, his eyes were on Joffrey. If Sansa could describe the emotion in them, if Tywin Lannister even felt such a thing, it would have been approval.
The days before the tourney blurred together in the best way.
They were full of arrivals. Lord after lord, lady after lady, household after household, banners she'd only ever read and named in texts suddenly visible from the windows of the Red Keep. She spent most of it with her new ladies, when they arrived, moving through the castle in a small bright group, learning each other's shapes as one learned a new song, tentatively at first and then more freely.
Sansa found that she liked Myranda Royce, which had surprised her. She was sharp in a way which no doubt spoke to a complicated past which had caused her develope an accurate eye as a matter of survival, and she said things plainly that other ladies wrapped in four layers of courtliness, and Sansa found she could not help liking her for it.
Roslin was gentle and watchful and said less than the others, but what she said was always worth hearing. She was a Frey, which meant she'd grown up in a crowded household where you had to be very quiet or very loud to be heard at all.
The Tyrells arrived not long before the festivities began. Lord Mace was loud and large and pleased with everything, which Sansa had been told to expect. Loras was Loras — he saw Sansa and swept her a bow and said something charming that she laughed at, and then he went directly to Joffrey and they fell into conversation as easily as if they'd only parted an hour ago rather than days. Lady Alerie was composed and watchful. She completed and complimented her husband, and Sansa saw that they were two parts to one whole.
And then there was Margaery. She was beautiful. Sansa had expected that — Loras was beautiful, and you generally got some of it in the same family. But Margaery's beauty was different from her brother's. Loras wore his like armour, and was something to be admired from a distance. Margaery wore hers like a welcome, and when she smiled at you, you felt included in something rather than evaluated for it.
"I have wanted to meet you since the betrothal was announced," she said to Sansa, and she seemed to mean it. "Loras speaks of little else when he writes home."
"Does he? Nothing too embarrassing, I hope," Sansa said.
"Oh no, not at all, my lady." Margaery's eyes moved, briefly, across the courtyard to where Joffrey was standing with her brother. Something passed over her face and was gone. Then she looked back at Sansa and the warmth was full again, real and entirely present.
Sansa did not truly know what to make of her.
The morning of the tourney the world was gold. Sansa felt that was a good sign of things to come. She dressed carefully in a new blue dress she had made herself, the dragonglass stone at her throat, her hair pinned with grey and silver combs, and she came down into a morning so clear and bright it seemed impractical, as if the day had dressed up deliberately.
Beyond the city walls, the lists had been raised along the riverside, the pavilions flying their banners, the common folk already packed four and five deep along the fences with an hour still to go.
She found her seat among the high lords and ladies with Septa Mordane on one side and her father on the other, and Lady settled at her feet and pressed her grey head against her knee.
"It is better than the songs," Sansa said.
Her father looked at her with the expression she recognised as fond and slightly worried, which was his default expression for her since they'd arrived at King's Landing.
"Aye," the king's hand said. "I suppose it is."
The knights of the realm came out. The seven of the Kingsguard rode first, six in their white enamel, and then Ser Jaime Lannister, the Kingslayer, all in gold, his lion's-head helm catching every ray of the morning sun. Some whispered that that was the very armour Jaime had worn when he had slain the king.
Ser Gregor Clegane came after him, huge enough that his destrier looked like a pony under him, his grey armour plain and brutal and as monstrous as the man himself.
Sansa saw Ser Barristan sit his horse at the far end of the lists, his white cloak snapping in the wind, and felt a sudden rush of fondness for him — she had watched him train Bran in the yard of the Red Keep for weeks now, patient and precise and entirely unimpressed with himself. Bran was to hand him lances today.
He is going to win, She thought, for moment, then, no, he isn't. Ser Jaime will. Wait or maybe Ser Loras.
Loras had won the last tourney held in kingslanding, but Joffrey had said that it didn't guarantee he would win this one. Sansa supposed her prince was right, there were so many in attendance, great knights and lessers, it would be folly for her to pretend to know how it was going to go.
That did not stop the nobles arranged around her from betting. A little man spoke to Lord Renly and put fifty gold dragons on Ser Jaime. The kings brother laughed and took the bet with a grin.
The hedge knights and freeriders and sons of great houses came next, a river of steel in every colour. She named those she recognised for Myranda, who had arrived to share her bench, cataloguing each one as they rode past.
Ser Andar Royce was obvious in his bronze filigreed armour, with detailed runes down the arms. The Redwyne twins, their grape cluster shields burgundy on blue. Ser Horas had been kind to her first meeting with Desmera and she decided privately to cheer for him. Patrick Mallister, son of Lord Jason, rode by with silver eagle wings on his helm. They giggled at the red priest Thoros of Myr and his flowing red robes as he came strutting out.
The exiled prince Jalabhar Xho, thought to ask for the queens favour, to the kings amusement and his queen's displeasure. The summer islander was rebuffed but he took it in stride.
Six Freys rode together and she thought of Roslin and hoped they would do her credit.
Lord Beric Dondarrion came out in black with a lightning bolt slashed across his shield and Myranda made a sound beside her.
"Don't," Sansa told her, stifling her smile.
"I said nothing." The vale girl giggled.
"You were about to."
When Loras came forth, the sound the crowd made for him was its own particular thing, different from any of the others — louder than respect, warmer than admiration, the sound of a multitude of people who had decided at some point that he was theirs. The prince's friend rode out on a white mare caparisoned in roses, real ones, red and white, and his armour was the flower-enamelled silver that Sansa had heard described and still had not been prepared for. Margaery's favour was pinned at his shoulder, a rose in green and gold.
"Oh," Sansa said softly.
Myranda nodded. Even Septa Mordane straightened.
Jon came through quietly, in retrospect.
Sansa almost didn't place him at first — dark armour, a dark horse, nothing announced or decorated, but for a snarling while wolf on one shoulder. It was simple in way Jon approached most things. The crowd's welcome was warm rather than wild, the welcome for a knight they knew and liked, who had acquitted himself well in the last tournament and who everyone knew was the prince's companion and natural son of the Lord hand.
Sansa watched her brother move to the starting position and thought back to when Jon had still been with them at Winterfell, to the knight he had become now.
Jon's first match ended in a single run. It seemed to be over in a blink, with his lance crashing into Ser Hosteen Frey and driving him from his horse. The knight lay dazed on the ground and had to be carried off.
She saw what Joffrey had meant. It was hard to put into words, watching Jon on a horse. There was no gap between him and the animal, no moment of consultation or adjustment. They were simply one thing moving, like a river flowing, and when his lance found his mark, it was as if there could have been no other alternative.
"Gods." Said Myranda beside her. "He's—"
"I know," Sansa said.
She pressed her fingers to her necklace and watched him ride his circuit of the field, acknowledging the crowd with a raised hand. Ser Jon brought his lance up to where she was, and suddenly Sansa felt a bright burst of affection for her brother.
He wanted to win for her. She remembered his words. "Since the prince has taken ill… and he likely would have not been allowed to ride, I shall win this one for you sister, so that the realms may know that there is only one true Queen of Love and Beauty."
Sansa felt she should have given him her favour but she only wanted one person to wear that, and the prince was not in attendance today.
It had come as a surprise for all to hear from Grand Maester Pycelle that the prince had taken ill the day before. The guests had been looking forward to looking upon their prince, there were days of tourney and feast still to come however, they hoped to glimpse him when he was better. The septons were said to be praying for his recovery, with a not small amount of the small folk doing the same.
Sansa wished to be by his side, but the tourney was in her father's honour and to announce her betrothal, she had to be in attendance. She vowed to bring him something from the feast later and tell him all that happened.
The morning wore on. Match by match, the field narrowed. The jousting went all day and into the dusk, the hooves of the great warhorses pounding down the lists until the field was a ragged wasteland of torn earth. The commons would cry out each time riders crashed together, their lances exploding into splinters and decorating the field.
Ser Barristan rode with the patience a man of forty years the elder to most of his opponents, finding the right moment, placing his lance with learned precision Three matches, four, five. Sansa found herself gripping the bench.
Then he eventually came to face Ser Jaime. Both had just been flush from victory. With Ser Barristan having unhorsed Ser Andor Royce to Myranda's annoyance, and the kingslayer having defeated Bryce Caron with ease.
They rode seven passes. The crowd counted each one aloud by the third, voices rising in unison, until the seventh lance hit Ser Barristan at the precise angle that sent him backward off his saddle in a slow, terrible arc. He hit the ground and lay still for a moment that stretched badly, and then he sat up, and the crowd's relief was loud enough to feel in her chest.
Ser Jaime cantered to him and dipped his lance, and Ser Barristan raised his hand from the dirt, and Sansa's eyes stung unexpectedly at the chivalry.
It was then that sansa heard it, now that the tournament had narrowed. A low murmur, rippling through the crowd from somewhere behind, the specific sound of thousands of people turning to look at the same thing. She turned with them.
He was at the far end of the lists. His horse was a pale grey, caparisoned in blue and gold. His armour was rose-gold, the metal worked so finely it seemed to shift colour as he moved, and from his helm and his pauldrons and his arms, from the horse's mane and its caparison, streaming in the morning wind—
Blue silk.
Hundreds of strips of it. Every one of them the same shade. Moving around him like water, like smoke, like something from a dream.
Tully blue.
Sansa knew that shade. She knew it the way she knew her own name. She had cut it from her sewing basket on a morning in Winterfell when she was six years old and she had pressed it into a princes hand in the yard because she had decided to be brave about it, and he had taken it with both hands and said thank you, my lady, as seriously as any knight, and tucked it inside his doublet.
He kept it, she had thought when he showed her at Winterfell, years later. He kept it still.
She pressed both hands flat against her chest and could not breathe properly. It could not be.
Around her, the crowd was working it out. She heard it spreading, the whispers, the princes name, the laughter that was warm rather than mocking because everyone who watched this understood exactly what they were looking at. She heard her father beside her make a small sound she had never heard from him before.
Sansa's eyes drifted to those in the royal box. King Robert had both hands on the railing, his whole enormous body leaning forward, and his face…
His face was the face of a father watching something he had not dared to hope for, and she felt, despite everything she knew about the king and his failings, a sudden rush of fondness for him in that moment.
Queen Cersei sat straight as a lance, her beautiful face composed, her jaw set in a way that Sansa had come to learn meant she was not pleased.
The Knight of Favours.
That was what the commons were calling him, she heard it moving through the crowd. The mystery knight levelled his lance and rode his first pass, and his second, and his third, and Sansa watched and could not look away. His riding was not like how Jon rode, with that quality of wholeness, no gap between the man and the animal, but his spoke of hours of tireless practice, and the blue silk favours flew around him and caught the light and Sansa knew.
She was crying.
She did not try to stop it. She pressed her fingers to her face but the tears would not stop. It was fine however.
A great lady could cry at a tourney. Songs were full of great ladies crying at tourneys.
She sniffed, once, Myranda smiled softly at her and passed her a cloth without comment, which was exactly the right thing to do.
The mystery knight seemed unstoppable, he unhorsed Ser Balon Swann, Patrick Mallister, Ser Perwin Frey, and Ser Robar Royce. With every bout, the whispers increased and Sansa felt eyes on her from almost everywhere.
By nightfall, it was down to six.
The Knight of Favours, Ser Jon, the Hound, the Mountain, Ser Loras, and Ser Jaime.
There was talk of postponing until tomorrow, but though most already suspected, everyone wished to discover the identity of this mystery knight in truth. The king bid that the jousts must finish today and so it did and the wine continued to flow.
Loras and Jaime rode first. Three passes without result, and then a fourth that sent Jaime's helm spinning sideways until the eye-slit was at the back of his head when he crashed to the ground. The lists erupted in laughter, hoots and shouts of joy took over the crowd entirely and could not be stopped, bouncing off the stands and coming back twice as loud.
Ser Jaime struggled to his feet, completely blind, while his horse picked its own direction philosophically and left its rider looking a fool.
The king was laughing harder than anyone, helpless with it, his face red, flushed from the wine and the sight before him, with both hands on the railing again. Even father beside her had a smile on his lips.
Lord Tywin Lannister's face was carved from ice, there was no laughter from him or the Queen.
The Clegane brothers rode against each other and it was nothing like anything else she had seen all day. Eight lances they broke, eight, each pass harder than the last, until on the eighth the mountain put his lance through his brother's horse as the hounds lance smashed against his chest.
Both of them hit the ground simultaneously and the crowd erupted and they rose and called for swords and fought. It looked as if they would kill each other until King Robert stood at the railing and bellowed.
"STOP THIS MADNESS IN THE NAME OF YOUR KING!"
Some twenty knights had rushed down to separate them, and when they were, Robert Baratheon declared it as the hound's win, for his older brother's display with the horse was most unseemly. Sansa thought that fair.
Ser Gregor drove his sword into the earth and walked off without a word.
The Hound looked at his dying horse, his face— half of it burned and ruined— twisted into something between anguish and hatred. He would not return to joust again.
Sansa watched Jon tilt against the knight of Favours with her hands clasped tight in her lap, her jaw set, her whole attention fixed on the field and apprehension pooling tight in her belly. They were well-matched.
She had known they would be. Four passes, each one harder, and on the fourth the knight of favours hit Jon precisely on the shoulder at the exact right moment of the gallop and Jon went backward off his horse in a fall that he turned almost graceful. He got up to a knee, looking up at the rider who was hanging off the side of his horse by one leg, before being able to pull himself upright.
Jon did not call for swords. He knew. They had trained together for years, it would have been obvious to him, if indeed her brother did not already know before hand.
He conceded and Sansa felt something tighten in her throat. Jon Snow had spent the better part of the day on a horse trying to win a crown of flowers for his sister, and yet…
Sansa saw him come off the field, and she saw him look up at the stands to find her, and she raised her hand to him, and he smiled and winked and she pressed her fingers to the stone at her throat.
It was the final two at last. They rode five passes, both with the same immaculate form, their horses flowing down the lists with charges smooth like silk. Both lances landed and shattered on the centre of each shield time and time again, but neither men would go down. The crowd was almost silent by the third.
This was what a tourney was supposed to be, Sansa thought, two men at their absolute best, spending everything they had.
On the sixth pass, Loras placed his lance just there, clear in mystery knight's chest, forcing him from his horse and the impact seemed to come through the ground itself. She felt it. It felt as if the whole world stood still when she heard it and watched her Knight of Favours fall.
He called for swords immediately.
She pressed her hands flat against her thighs and held still. They fought for a long time. She had no way to describe how long, because time felt different—heavy. All she could hear was the clash of steel against steel as their swords kissed. Once, twice, again and again. Blood was rushing in her ears. Sansa felt she might faint. It was like she was back at Winterfell, watching them in the yard.
They were extraordinary, and beautiful and it was more a dance now than any fighting Sansa had seen. It was different than the brothers Clegane. There was no hatred emanating from each swipe. Instead, they seemed to predict what move the other would make before the thought had finished. They parried and feinted, the tempo picking up, the crashing of their swords together made a music that Sansa would never forget.
Sansa felt she could watch them for an eternity and no doubt others felt the same, the crowd was silent, looking with bated breath.
"He's slowing." Her father said.
And it was true. Loras was slowing. It would not last much longer. Her heart seemed about to explode in her chest. She saw the moment Loras understood it. A step backward, a slight change in how he was holding his sword, and Sansa felt the whole crowd breathe out at once.
Loras yielded.
He raised his hand and stepped back and bowed his head, and the knight of favours lowered his sword and they stood facing each other on the field, both of them panting, and then Loras laughed — she could see it even from the stands, his shoulders shaking — before he reached forward to hug the knight that had bested him. The crowd found its voice and the sound it made was enormous in the face of such a display of skill.
King Robert came down from the stands.
He moved onto the field with the rolling, massive gait of a man who had once moved differently and still remembered it, and he stopped before the Knight of Favours, and said something too quiet to carry. The knight's shoulders shook with laughter.
"Remove your helm," the king said, louder, for everyone.
The knight reached up. His gauntleted hands found the clasps, and the helm lifted, and his hair came free, damp with sweat, gold in the moonlight, and his eyes — she could see his eyes from where she sat, gold as coins— found her in the stands.
They seemed to know everything about her, all of who she was and who she would be and wanted to be. The crowd's roar was the loudest sound she had ever heard and it brought her back to reality.
The king pulled his son into an embrace so fierce and so unself-conscious that Sansa felt the tears start again despite herself. Robert Baratheon held his son as if he were the most precious thing in the world and then he held him at arm's length and looked at him, and then he drew his sword.
"Kneel." The command rang out from the field, swallowing up all other noise.
Prince Joffrey went to one knee. The blade touched his left shoulder. Then his right. The words were spoken, the old words, the words of knights, and so I charge you to be brave, and Joffrey Baratheon rose from the dirt of the lists as a knight of the realm at fourteen, and the sound the crowd made went on and on and would not stop.
He spoke some words to his father that Sansa could not hear, before he mounted his horse and then Sansa realised what would come next.
Myranda was squeezing her hand, and she was surely saying something but whatever it was Sansa did not know, she only had eyes for the prince.
Someone had the crown ready — roses, dark red-purple, twisted together, simple and perfect — and he took it and turned his horse toward the stands, and the crowd parted before him, and Sansa stood without knowing that she had stood, Lady rising at her feet, her heart in her throat.
The prince stopped before her.
He was still breathing hard. There was blood at the corner of his mouth and dirt on his pauldron and his hair was as much a disaster as she had ever seen it, and the hundreds of blue silk strips fluttered around him slightly in the wind, and Sansa looked at him, her fairytale prince come to life.
The crown prince spat blood to the side, because he had been riding for hours and he was not going to pretend otherwise, and then he looked at her with those golden eyes and held out the crown of roses.
There had never been a sight so beautiful. She felt as if she were dreaming.
"I would crown you my Queen of Love and Beauty, my lady," Joffrey said. "If you'll have me."
Sansa reached out and took the crown from his hands. The stems were cold and real against her fingers.
"There is no one else I'd have," Sansa said. The warm tears on her face felt like a thousand tiny kisses. "My prince."
If this is a dream, Sansa thought, I never wish to