July 27th, 285 AC. The Red Keep, The Throne Room.
The sky outside was a brilliant, cloudless blue, and the atmosphere inside the massive Throne Room was absolutely electric.
The 27th day of the 7th month—in a culture obsessed with the number seven, it was considered a day of supreme fortune.
Today was a very "good day" for House Baratheon.
Here, in the Great Hall of the Red Keep, King Robert Baratheon was officially investing his youngest brother, the eight-year-old Renly Baratheon, as Lord of Storm's End, effectively granting him absolute dominion over the Stormlands.
Coupled with the recent, joyous announcement that Queen Cersei Lannister was carrying the royal heir, the mood was triumphant.
Naturally, a double celebration of this magnitude required a spectacle of staggering opulence.
Robert had always possessed an insatiable appetite for life, revelry, and excess. He loved women, he loved feasting and drinking, he loved fine clothes, and he absolutely loved throwing massive tourneys and hunts.
And he didn't just want to do these things; he wanted them done on a colossal, deafeningly loud scale, with bottomless purses of prize money for the winners.
Cersei Lannister was equally addicted to luxury and ostentatious displays of wealth.
With these two at the helm, the crown's gold flowed like water down a drain.
"Arthur Whent, Heir to Harrenhal and Earl of Whitewalls!" the royal herald bellowed, followed immediately by a sharp blast from a brass trumpet.
His name announced, Arthur, flanked by his squires and escorted by royal attendants, strode into the Throne Room.
The Great Hall of the Red Keep was cavernous, designed specifically to dwarf the individual and project the crushing, absolute authority of the Iron Throne.
(Historically, King's Landing possessed an even larger single structure—the Dragonpit—which could easily house tens of thousands of people. But the Dragonpit had long since fallen into ruin, its massive caverns now hosting nothing but vagrants and cheap whores).
Arthur and Ser Lucas Dayne were directed toward the front sections reserved for the high nobility, while his squires, being from minor houses, were directed further back.
Passing through the massive oak-and-iron doors, Arthur looked up. Bright, hot sunlight streamed down through the narrow, high windows, cutting through the slightly dusty air.
Once, the massive black skulls of the Targaryen dragons had hung from these very walls, glaring down at the petty lords of Westeros.
Now, the walls were bare. Robert had ordered the skulls ripped down and thrown into the damp cellars; he despised any lingering reminder of the Dragon Kings.
In their place, the stone walls were now draped with massive, vibrant tapestries. Robert favored hunting scenes woven in rich greens and earthy browns, depicting stags, boars, and hounds in vivid detail.
Today, the floor of the Throne Room was a suffocating sea of velvet, silk, fur, and glittering jewels.
The spatial hierarchy of the Throne Room was a literal pyramid, visually separating the classes of Westeros.
At the absolute apex sat the King, perched high upon the Iron Throne itself, dominating the room.
The second tier consisted of the Small Council members, royal family, and favored guests, seated at the long council tables at the base of the throne's dais. Hovering around them were the elite courtiers—essentially highborn hangers-on whose primary job was to flatter the King and the council, functioning slightly above the level of court jesters.
The third, lowest tier consisted of the visiting lords, ladies, wealthy merchants, and minor nobility who had come to witness the ceremony. This group was kept physically distant from the center of power.
These lords and ladies were packed tightly together at the rear of the hall, standing shoulder-to-shoulder beneath the high windows like fishwives haggling at the docks.
"Over here, Arthur!" called out young Lord Raymun Darry, waving a hand. He had saved a spot for him.
Among the Riverlords present, the undisputed leaders were Lord Hoster Tully and his heir, Edmure. However, as primary architects of the rebellion, they were seated at the tables of honor at the front.
The tension between the eastern and western Riverlords was palpable. The interactions were polite but incredibly icy.
The eastern lords clearly preferred to mingle with the Crownlands nobility, while the western lords gravitated toward their wartime allies from the Vale.
House Whent still commanded significant respect, allowing Arthur to secure a solid vantage point near the front of the standing crowd. He took the opportunity to carefully observe the assembled lords and knights; it was incredibly rare to see this many major players in one room.
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High above them all, dominating the northern wall, sat Robert Baratheon upon the terrifying, jagged iron monstrosity forged by Aegon the Conqueror.
He wore a magnificent tunic of cloth-of-gold, embroidered with dozens of black, crowned stags leaping in motion. Upon his head rested a heavy gold crown fashioned into the shape of stag antlers, encrusted with massive gemstones.
Standing six and a half feet tall, with thick black hair and piercing blue eyes, the King was undeniably the most famously handsome and fearsome warrior in the Seven Kingdoms.
With Rhaegar dead, no one disputed Robert's claim to being the most attractive man in the realm.
He should have been entering the absolute prime of his life and his reign. Instead, Robert was already coasting.
Currently, he was still clean-shaven, powerfully built, and radiated a raw, masculine magnetism that made women swoon.
But his endless gluttony and drinking were already beginning to soften his edges; the slow, inevitable slide toward obesity had begun.
For this momentous occasion, the Kingsguard had turned out in full force, fanning out in a protective crescent at the base of the Iron Throne.
Barristan Selmy, Jaime "The Kingslayer" Lannister, Meryn Trant, Boros Blount, Preston Greenfield, Mandon Moore, and Arys Oakheart.
Most of the White Swords wore gleaming, unadorned white plate armor, heavy milk-white cloaks, and bore pure white shields on their arms.
Jaime Lannister, however, defiantly wore his own spectacular, custom-made gilded armor. Given his reputation, no one dared tell him to change.
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At the base of the dais, the second tier of the political elite was engaged in a silent war of opulent display.
Every time the High Septon moved his head, his massive crystal crown threw blinding, rainbow-colored refractions across the room.
Seated at the main council table, Queen Cersei Lannister was breathtaking in a gown of deep burgundy velvet slashed with gold silk. She practically glowed, though a distinct, haughty fury tightened the corners of her eyes.
Standing near her was Varys, draped in a flowing robe of pale lilac silk, radiating an incredibly strong, cloying perfume.
The rest of the Small Council was present in full: Jon Arryn (Hand of the King, Master of Laws, and de facto Master of Coin), Stannis Baratheon (Master of Ships), and Grand Maester Pycelle.
Joining them at the tables of honor were Lord Hoster Tully and his son, the young Lord Renly himself, and the envoy from the North, young Wylis Manderly.
The Manderlys were the perfect choice for a Northern envoy. They worshipped the Seven, they controlled the North's only major port, and they were generally far more accustomed to southern politics than the rest of the gruff Northern lords. The young heir was already quite portly.
Commander Janos Slynt of the City Watch stood guard near the council tables, aggressively showing off a highly ornate, clearly expensive suit of black-and-gold armor topped with a ridiculously tall, feathered helm.
Then there was Renly. Though just a boy, today he was expected to play the part of a Great Lord.
In a matter of weeks, Renly Baratheon had gone from being a landless third son to one of the most powerful men on the continent.
He was eight, perhaps nine years old, exceptionally handsome, and dressed in a rich, dark green velvet doublet.
Looking at him was like looking at a perfect, miniature clone of a young Robert Baratheon.
Seated nearby, Jon Arryn wore a fine silver doublet beneath a pale blue cloak. His weathered face was completely unreadable, projecting nothing but stern, absolute authority.
His wife, Lysa Tully, should have been beside him. But after suffering multiple traumatic miscarriages and stillbirths, Lysa had chosen to remain in her chambers rather than subject herself to the exhausting, whispered gossip of the court.
While every other noblewoman seemed to be effortlessly producing heirs, Lysa had yet to give her elderly husband a single living child.
Hoster Tully, grown heavy and broad, wore a cloak of vibrant blue and red. Though he held no official seat on the Small Council, his status as a primary leader of the rebellion and father-in-law to the Hand guaranteed him a place of honor.
His heir, Edmure, born in 272 AC, was only thirteen. Hoster had brought the boy along specifically to expose him to the brutal realities of high court politics.
Arthur studied Hoster's face carefully. The old trout's complexion was a slightly sickly, ashen grey.
If Jon Arryn hadn't been assassinated years later, the elderly Hand would have easily outlived his younger father-in-law.
Hoster was a large man, but his health was visibly failing.
This was partly due to lingering wounds from the war, but it was also a sickness of the heart. His second daughter, Lysa, deeply resented him, and his relationship with his brother, the Blackfish, was permanently shattered over the issue of forced marriages and aborted pregnancies.
Hoster was aging rapidly. Robert had taken near-fatal wounds during the war, yet he had bounced back with terrifying, unstoppable vitality. Hoster simply didn't possess that kind of physical resilience.
During the Battle of the Bells two years ago, Jon Connington had severely wounded Hoster Tully and personally slain Jon Arryn's heir and nephew, Denys Arryn.
In that same battle, Robert had personally killed six men, including the legendary knight Myles Mooton (Rhaegar's former squire), and had nearly killed the Griffin himself on the steps of the town's old sept.
Seated further down the table was Stannis Baratheon, the new Lord of Dragonstone. His face was a mask of dark, grinding fury. He had a harsh, square jaw and eyes that burned with perpetual resentment.
Compared to the overwhelming, godlike charisma of Robert and the charming, striking beauty of Renly, Stannis was famously grim, rigid, and utterly unlovable.
Arthur mentally mapped the political landscape represented by the men at those tables. This was the exact power structure Robert and Jon Arryn had engineered.
The grand alliance: Stag, Falcon, Lion, Fish, and Wolf.
But the Wolf and the Fish had essentially removed themselves from the daily grind of King's Landing.
The harsh truth was that the bombs currently ticking under the Iron Throne had all been planted by Robert himself.
By stripping the Stormlands from the crown and creating two entirely distinct, massively powerful cadet branches—House Baratheon of Dragonstone and House Baratheon of Storm's End—Robert had critically fractured his own family's power base.
As a result, the true, daily struggle for power in King's Landing would ultimately boil down to five distinct factions: the King, the Queen, the Hand, and the King's two brothers.
One King, one Queen, one Hand, two Dukes. Five massive egos trapped in a single room.
Throw in professional chaos agents like the Spider, Pycelle, and the soon-to-arrive Littlefinger, and the situation was guaranteed to spiral completely out of control.
Right now, watching Robert cheerfully hand the entire Stormlands over to an eight-year-old boy, both Cersei and Stannis were privately burning with homicidal rage.