The Provenance || Jon Snow | Game of Thrones

1.04

Robert Baratheon watches as Eddard Stark, a bit hasty, reads the missive hailing from the capital with news that could truly threaten his reign if fostered under the proper conditions. He cannot truly expect Ned to understand--given his lack of worldliness being from the North--but the the man himself seems entirely unalarmed by the news, not a welcome site for the rebel king's eyes.

Ned scoffs, "Daenerys Targaryen has wed some Dothraki horselord. What of it? Should we send her a wedding gift?"

"A knife perhaps," Robert responds in his natural character--always one to expect the worst of those he deems his enemy--Lannister or Targaryen, "a good sharp one, and a bold man to wield it."

"She's little more than a child."

"Gabrielle Baelish is little more than a child, and she has nearly every one of the Kingsguard wrapped around her thighs."

Eddard Stark is truly tempted to roll his eyes if nought for the propriety of the King's presence. A girl of sixteen years...dangerous? Of course, his wife had warily warned him against the daughter of Petyr Baelish--something along the lines of uncertain loyalties--but Ned has a hard time believing a child of her age is as powerful and mature as the others say. Certainly, she is a beauty, but is she not too young for the men of their position, and would her father not protect her chastity?

If only he knew.

But Robert is the King, and the King is not so easily denied, prompting Ned to simply diverge with, "Tell me we're not speaking of this."

"Oh, it's unspeakable to you?" the King scoffs, "What her father did to your family...that was unspeakable. What Rhaegar Targaryen did to your sister... the woman I loved. I'll kill every Targaryen I get my hands on."

"But you can't get your hands on this one, can you?" the new Hand of the King replies, unspeakably grateful for the girl's great distance from King's Landing. He does not need the death of another daughter and young woman on his hands.

"This Khal Drogo, it's said he has 100,000 men in his horde," the King refuses to be denied his stake.

"Even a million Dothraki are no threat to the realm, as long as they remain on the other side of the Narrow Sea. They have no ships, Robert."

"There are still those in the Seven Kingdoms who call me Usurper. If the Targaryen boy crosses with a Dothraki horde at his back, the scum will join him."

Eddard sighs haggardly, even now regretting the choice to follow Robert south if this is a sign of the future, "He will not cross. And if by chance he does, we'll throw him back into the sea."

"There's a war coming, Ned. I don't know when, I don't know who we'll be fighting, but it's coming." Robert Baratheon is certainly not a seer of any sort, but near daft in every line of thought--past, present, and future. But perhaps it's not intelligence that's needed to conclude upon the war coming--rebellions follow rebellions in the cyclic fashion of history. And with the winds of winter rising in the far north, it's not so long a time for them to fight before sheltering.

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"Yes, until my brother killed him," Tyrion tells Jon Snow, the persistent bastard of Ned Stark and a lack of enjoyable company, but better than the rest. It's his youth. "Life is full of these little ironies. My sister married the new King and my repulsive nephew will be king after him. I must do my part for the honor of my house, wouldn't you agree? But how? Well, my brother has his sword and I have my mind. And a mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone. That's why I read so much. And you? What's your story, bastard?"