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Cersei watched her son beside her chair, her golden hair catching the afternoon light like a crown of fire.
Two years old, and already he moved with a grace that made the nursemaids whisper behind their hands. No ordinary toddler stumbled or wailed for attention; her boy glided through the world as though the very air parted for him.
Every day, he grew more radiant; the blessing the gods had bestowed upon him was no longer content to linger in silence.
It awakened, revealing itself more clearly with every passing sunrise, until even the most hardened skeptics in the Red Keep began to avert their eyes when he looked at them directly.
He was not like any other child; he was far superior.
She had known it from the moment those impossible eyes first focused on her face, eyes that still shimmered with faint, shifting, blue so deep and luminous they seemed carved from the heart of a summer sky.
While other children possessed the dull, milky blue of infancy that faded into something commonplace.
Her son's gaze only brightened, as if the Seven had poured starlight into his veins and left it there to burn forever.
When he looked at her, Cersei felt seen in a way no one else had ever managed: not her father, not the fool she called her husband, not even "Jaime".
Those eyes pierced straight through pretense and pride, and she gloried in it.
But the blessing truly made itself known when the maesters and septas assigned to his education had come to her that morning, pale with a mixture of awe and glee.
Cersei had received them in her solar, seated like a queen upon her throne, while her son was drawing quietly by her side a beautiful picture for her.
He was not building towers or knocking them down like other boys his age.
No, he was far better than that.
"Your Grace," the eldest maester had begun, voice trembling slightly, "the prince… he is unlike any child we have ever instructed. He learns at a rate faster than a normal child should! It wouldn't be long before he no longer has to be taught! By the gods, he knows things even I do not know."
Cersei had felt a fierce, possessive pride bloom hot in her chest. She had leaned forward, eyes gleaming. "Go on."
The septa, a thin woman who had taught half the noble children in King's Landing, clasped her hands so tightly her knuckles whitened.
"He masters letters and numbers as though they were child's play. We began with simple sums and the alphabet only a moon's turn ago, yet he already reads simple scrolls and calculates trades and levies better than some men many times his age. His memory is… frightening, Your Grace."
Cersei's lips curved into a slow, satisfied smile full of pride.
It only made sense; her blood ran in his veins after all, but the gods had added something purer, something divine.
While other children of two still babbled and clung to their mothers' skirts, her son spoke in complete, precise sentences, his voice already carrying the clear, commanding tone of a future king.
He never cried, he never threw tantrums, and he never begged.
When he wanted something, he simply looked at the servant with those luminous eyes and stated his desire as if it were already a fact, and more often than not, he received it.
After all, who can refuse the future king, one who was blessed by the new gods?
He was stronger, too. Not in the brute, bellowing way of Robert's bastard spawn, but in a lithe, effortless manner that made the master-at-arms shake his head in disbelief.
At barely two, he could already hold a small wooden practice sword with perfect balance and mimic the basic forms "Jaime" had shown him once in jest.
She smiled when she remembered her other half grumbling to her about how her son's eyes followed every move with unnatural focus.
Not to mention the way animals behaved around her son. The stable master reported that the horses grew calm in his presence, even the most skittish colts lowering their heads when he approached, as if they recognized something greater than a mere child.
And his beauty, gods, his beauty only deepened the wonder. Skin like polished marble kissed with black hair that fell in soft waves, and those eyes… those eyes that made grown lords and ladies falter when he turned them upon them.
Cersei scowled, she had seen highborn ladies blush and stammer when the prince offered them a polite bow, knowing he would grow into the most handsome man they would ever see.
She had watched hardened knights lower their gaze, muttering prayers under their breath. Even "Jaime", her golden twin, sometimes stared at the boy with something close to reverence mixed with love.
"He learns faster than we can teach," the maester had admitted, apologetically. "We fear we will run out of lessons before he reaches his third nameday. He already asks questions about siege engines, the movement of stars, and the poisons of the Free Cities. Yesterday, he inquired whether wildfire could be tamed if one understood its alchemical nature. We… we did not know how to answer."
Cersei had laughed then, a low, delighted sound that made the teachers shift uncomfortably.
"Good, do not slow him. Feed his mind everything it hungers for. My son is not meant for ordinary lessons for ordinary men. He is meant for greatness."
Now, as she watched him from above, the boy looked up suddenly, as though he had felt the weight of her gaze. Those divine eyes met hers across the distance, and for a moment, the world narrowed to just the two of them.
A small smile touched his lips, far too wise, far too aware for any two-year-old, and he raised one tiny hand in a gesture that was almost regal.
He showed her the picture he drew of a lion in detail that was more lifelike than any drawing she had ever seen before, and Cersei's heart swelled until she thought it might burst.
Pride, fierce and protective and all-consuming, flooded through her as she pulled her child into her bosom.
This was no mere prince; this was her miracle, her gift from the gods themselves.
While other mothers fretted over sickly, dull-witted offspring, she held in her arms the future of the Seven Kingdoms, a child who surpassed every expectation, every limit, every mortal boundary.
He would not simply rule.
He would stand above all others, he would conquer minds as easily as he had conquered death, and she, Cersei Lannister, would stand beside him, guiding that radiant light until it burned so brightly that no one in Westeros would ever dare question his divinity again.
She buried her nose into his hair; he smelled of sun-warmed skin and something indefinably sweet, like incense from a sept.
"My perfect boy," she murmured against his black hair, pressing a kiss to his temple. "You are so much more than they can ever understand."
He rested his head against her shoulder, those luminous eyes half-lidded in contentment, and whispered in his clear, precocious voice.
Cersei's lips curved into a soft smile as she leaned in, resting her forehead against his. She was utterly lost in his eyes, those haunting, mesmerizing depths that made the rest of the world fall away.
__________
Two years old and he already had enough of this medieval bullshit!
He was going to forcefully drag these sons of a bitches to the modern ages, kicking and screaming if he had to!
It wasn't all bad, however.
While he would never stop loving his first mom, his second one was just as lovely, if a little overprotective.
Even as he lay there in her arms, small, warm, and trapped in a body that could barely reach her waist, he couldn't bring himself not to love her.
Not when she held him like he was the center of her universe. Not when her voice softened for him, when her fingers carded through his hair with a care she showed no one else.
It made things complicated.
But everything else? Everything else sucked.
He stared out from the balcony later that afternoon, perched on a cushioned seat far too large for his tiny but quickly growing frame, chin resting in his palm as he watched the Red Keep go about its day.
There were no cars, no electricity, and worst of all, no internet.
Wait, no, worst of all, there was no plumbing! If that didn't make him question every life choice that led him here…
He had gone from a world of instant access, knowledge at his fingertips, entertainment on demand, food delivered to his door, to this.
Candles.
Fucking candles.
Do you know how annoying candles are?
They flicker, they drip wax everywhere, they smell weird half the time, and if you knock one over? Congratulations, you've just started a house fire and probably a small war if you were unlucky enough.
He watched a servant struggle to light a lantern with flint and steel, taking an embarrassingly long time to coax a spark.
He once had a goddamn smartphone that had a flashlight built in and could turn on with a tap of a finger, and yet here he was, watching a grown man fail to light a lamp for a minute straight.
This was suffering, actual suffering, and didn't even get him started on hygiene!
He had happy, joy-filled memories of hot showers.
Hot.
Showers.
Water pressure, soup that didn't smell like crushed flowers and regret, towels that didn't feel like they were woven from sandpaper and spite.
Now?
Now he had bathwater that he had no idea where the hell it came from and servants that boiled it for him, or he would've had to make do with ice-cold water.
Oh, right, he had servants.
Which, on paper, sounded great, until you realized that meant people were constantly hovering around him, watching him, reporting on him, breathing near him.
You couldn't even take a shit in peace without someone outside the door waiting to "assist."
Assist with what, Susan? Moral support? He suppressed a shudder.
And food… God, the food.
It wasn't bad, exactly. Some of it was actually really good… for medieval standards that is.
No spices worth mentioning on dishes, no delicious fried food, no snacks that came in convenient packaging you could just grab and eat while binge-watching something at 3 AM.
He tapped his fingers against the stone railing, frowning.
And don't even get him started on medicine because he sure as hell had no idea what the fuck is going on in that area, now way was he going to trust medieval "doctors".
But he was going to play it safe and just not do anything to screw himself over; he did not want to die because he contacted a incurable disease fucking around, both literally and figuratively.
"…Yeah," he muttered under his breath, voice far too calm for a two-year-old. "This place sucks."
And then there were the looks, the way people reacted to him, and at his mere presence.
He could see it, see the color around them shift and change rapidly as they saw him. It took him a while, but he was slowly putting together what each color represents.
There were a lot more colors, but these were the colors he knew so far.
Piss yellow was the color of fear, Awe and reverence were the colors of gold, and of course, red was the color of Love.
He had seen grown men, knights, nobles, people who in his old world would have thought nothing of a normal child, lower their heads when he looked at them too long.
He leaned back, letting out a slow breath as his gaze drifted toward the horizon, where the sun was beginning its descent.
The horizon burned gold as the sun dipped lower, its light spilling across the towers of the Red Keep like molten fire.
He watched it in silence, chin still resting in his palm, eyes distant in a way no child's eyes had any right to be.
This world was behind, painfully, miserably behind.
No electricity, no medicine worth trusting, no stable systems, just tradition, pride, and people clinging to ways that made life harder than it had any right to be.
It wasn't just inconvenient; it was stupid.
He exhaled slowly through his nose, gaze sharpening as something settled deep inside his chest.
"…Alright," he murmured, voice calm and steady.
If no one else was going to fix it, then he might as well try.
Not all at once, he wasn't an idiot. He knew enough about history, enough about how fragile power structures were, to understand that forcing too much, too quickly, might cause a war.
No, he would take it slow, one step at a time.
He would drag this world forward, piece by piece, until it resembled something that didn't make him want to bash his head into a stone wall.
…Fuck! He was sounding like a fucking politician! Oh, how low he fell, truly.
His fingers tapped once against the railing, then stilled.
"But first," he muttered, eyes narrowing slightly, "we fix the most important issue."
Food.
His face twisted faintly at the mere thought.
He could tolerate a lot, but even he had a line that could not be crossed.
The lack of internet? Painful but manageable. The lack of plumbing? Criminal, but doable. But the food? Unacceptable.
Absolutely fucking unacceptable.
No seasoning, no variety, no creativity, just roasted this, boiled that, and bread that could double as a weapon if you threw it hard enough.
He pushed himself off the cushioned seat with a small grunt, landing lightly on his feet.
Behind him, the faint rustle of silk.
"Where are you going, my sweetling?" Cersei's voice drifted after him, warm and curious.
He paused just long enough to glance back at her over his shoulder. Then, with all the casual authority of someone who had never been denied anything in this life.
"The kitchens."
Cersei blinked, surprised by his words.
"…The kitchens?" she repeated, faint amusement coloring her tone. "You simply order a servant to get your meal, my love. What need for you to go to the kitchens yourself?"
He nodded once, already turning back toward the door.
"I'm going to cook."
A perfectly reasonable answer, for a cook that is, not a prince, much less the future king. But who was going to deny him?
His mother and father sure won't, she allowed him to do anything he wanted, which was rather worrying, and his father didn't give a shit as long as it didn't cause a war.
As he stepped out of their room, she soon followed, along with their guards. She always did, never once leaving his side in the two years he was alive.
Servants scrambled out of the way as the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms swept through the halls along with her blessed son, who was rarely seen.
That alone was enough to make heads turn.
By the time they reached the kitchens, the place had already begun to stir with unease.
Cooks froze mid-motion, knives paused against cutting boards, and the head cook herself nearly dropped a pot when she saw them.
"Y-Your Grace!" She stammered, bowing so quickly it was a wonder she didn't fall over. "Had we known you were coming-"
Cersei didn't answer the cook, her eyes only on her son; he didn't stop as he walked straight past them and straight into their domain as if it was now his.
The cooks exchanged glances, uncertain, confused… and afraid.
He ignored all of it.
Instead, he scanned the room, eyes moving with sharp, deliberate focus as he took in everything: ingredients, tools, fire pits, and preparation surfaces.
He turned to the nearest table and dragged a stool over, climbing up onto it without assistance.
The room held its breath as they waited for the blessed prince's judgment.
Cersei watched silently; there was something like fascination flickering in her green eyes.
Primitive, messy… but workable.
"Yeah," he muttered under his breath as a smile appeared on his handsome face. "I can work with this."
It was said that on that day, the blessed prince cooked the food of the gods.