Chapter Text
Stannis Baratheon & Robert Baratheon, loss
“When we saw Tywin Lannister that day, sitting on the throne, I thought it would be so glorious to live as long as that, to grow that old and powerful, to sit there so majestically with everyone bowing and scraping, hanging on to your every word. Little did I know …” Robert’s voice trailed off into silence.
“Tywin Lannister was only six-and-twenty at the time. Hardly an old man.”
Robert groaned. “Don’t be so bloody literal, Stannis.” He added, “Though, it is strange to think of my good-father as a young man. Remember what Great-Uncle Harbert once said about him? ‘Born and fashioned a man of middle age, that one.’”
“You are mistaken. Great-Uncle Harbert was referring to me, not to Lord Tywin.”
“No, you are mistaken.”
“I am not!”
“We could ask Cressen, I suppose. How old is he now? Eighty? Close to it, I’d wager. Soon he will be gone as well, and there will be no one left who remembers.”
Except us.
But they recalled such different things, Stannis and his brothers. Shared experience very seldom translated into shared memory for them.
Stannis did not want to think about Maester Cressen dying. He changed the subject. “Did you ever tell Lord Tywin about us mistaking him for the king?”
Robert laughed. “Do you take me for a fool? Of course I never did. No need to inflate his hubris and his sense of his own importance even more.” Robert paused, staring into the distance. “I should have said no, when Jon proposed the match with Cersei.”
Stannis had even less of a wish to discuss his brother’s marriage. “You should have sent Jaime Lannister to the Wall,” he said instead.
Robert shook his head. “He did me a favor, killing Aerys.”
“Aerys should have paid for his crimes, but he should have been punished according to the law. That was ill done, how he died. It was murder, not justice.”
“You and Ned are in agreement about that. Except Ned spoke of honor instead of justice.” With a sly glance at Stannis, Robert said, “See, I don’t always listen to Ned either.”
“Or to Jon Arryn. Or to Father when he was alive.”
After a pause, Robert asked, “Why don’t we ever talk about them?”
No need to ask who Robert meant. Their father and mother.
“You only ever want to talk about Lyanna Stark.” It was as if her death had overshadowed everything, had become the defining tragedy of his life, as Robert saw it. As if the death of their father and mother had been relegated into some distant and musty corner for Robert, Stannis thought, not without resentment.
“Her loss was something I thought I could avenge. But smashing Rhaegar’s skull did not feel so good in the end. It did not bring her back, and that was the only thing I wanted.”
You could not smash a storm, or the sea, or the gods, with your warhammer. Though, Stannis had felt like smashing all seven idols in the sept with his bare hands while he and Robert were keeping vigil for their parents’ bodies.
“You should have done it. It would have made you feel better. At least in that moment.”
“Done what?”
“Smashed the gods in the sept. You wanted to, I know you did. I saw the way your fists were clenched. That was how I felt just before I smashed Rhaegar’s skull.”
“What good would that have done?”
“What good does silently brooding and seething with fury do? Except to make you lose your hair prematurely, and annoy people with the exasperating sound of your teeth grinding at all hours.”