Fic: The Women Kings
Dec. 2nd, 2012 09:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
netgirl_y2kTitle: The Women Kings
Fandom: Game of Thrones
Pairing: Sansa Stark/Margaery Tyrell
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2329
Summary: History will not remember them kindly, the four queens of Westeros. Daenerys Targaryen will be remembered for her dragons, Cersei Lannister for her descent into madness, Sansa Stark will forever be remembered as the queen who knelt. As for Margaery Tyrell, she will be forgotten entirely.
i. the queen of love and beauty
Little Dove, that is Cersei's mocking name for Sansa Stark.
Reluctant though Margaery is to credit the soon to be dowager queen with much wit or intelligence, she can see how the name suits.
When she first comes to King's Landing she only sees the Stark girl out of the corner of her eye; flitting about the Red Keep like a songbird in a cage, the sort of creature who wouldn't know what to do with freedom if she ever obtained it.
When Margaery is queen she vows that she will see to it that the girl's cage is better gilded than it has been thus far. After all, it is Cersei who sees Sansa as a rival, not Margaery, and it befits a queen to be merciful.
Still, she takes care to smile benevolently at Sansa, to seek out her company and speak pleasantly with her.
Loras doesn't understand her desire to befriend the girl; he's been sullen and prone to sulking ever since Renly was taken from them, and Margaery's demand that he accompany her and play guard when she takes Sansa Stark hawking does little to improve his mood.
"Why bother?" he wants to know. "She's the hostage sister of a traitor. She can't help us."
Margaery thinks of the poison Littlefinger has promised to smuggle to them by way of an unwitting Sansa, and decides they were right to keep their plans from Loras; he is a brave knight and a good brother, but he cannot mask his feelings as she can and Margaery would not see him branded a second kingslayer.
Anyway, who knows how long this king in the north fiasco will continue for; they must keep their options open.
"Not yet, dear brother," Margaery says, tugging him up from his seat. "Not yet."
*
In the Kingswood, with the hawks soaring overhead, Sansa seems more nervous than ever, glancing around as though there are Lannister spies lurking behind every tree.
She seizes Margaery's hands and urgently says, "You can't marry Joffrey. He's..."
Margaery wonders how long Sansa has been screwing up her courage for this moment, only to find herself lost for words. "Lady Sansa--"
"You don't understand," Sansa insists. "He's a monster."
Margaery knows this, Joffrey can play the gallant young king all he likes, Margaery will never believe it, but there's no point drawing attention to the fact that Sansa once did fall for it.
"The king will not hurt me. My brother will protect me," says Margaery, shooting a look at Loras; he is lounging against a tree looking bored, but he reads Margaery's expression well and straightens up, placing a hand on the hilt of his sword and looking every inch the dashing kingsguard knight. "As your brother protects you."
"My brother is a traitor," Sansa says, and it's the least convincing thing Margaery has heard since Renly claimed to desire her.
"Well, he hasn't been beheaded as one yet, and a king's heir is a powerful piece on any board."
Margaery thinks about curtsying, but instead adopts a sort of half-mocking bow copied from both Loras and Renly. "Come, my princess, it is time we returned."
Too late, she sees that Sansa's face has closed off; teasing is not the way to win her trust, obviously. Instead Margaery leans forward and presses her lips to Sansa's cheek.
"Joffrey will not hurt me," she promises. "Nor will we allow him to harm you."
ii. the queen in highgarden
It is more than a day's journey to Highgarden, and they stop for the night at an inn off the Roseroad. In their shared room Margaery brushes out Sansa's hair, she insisted when Sansa tried to demure. "Nonsense," she said, "we are to be sisters, you and I."
Sansa does have beautiful hair, and the smile that Margaery sees in the mirror comes and goes quick as a fish, but is as pretty a smile as Margaery has seen.
"When I was a little girl," Margaery says, leaning in until her breast brushes Sansa's upper arm, and adopting a tone of shared confidence, "I played a game with my brothers where they called me the queen in Highgarden. Willas was my lord, and Garlan and Loras knelt at my feet and laid flowers before me, they called me Your Grace."
As she brushes Sansa's hair Margaery thinks that though the title existed only in the imaginations of Margaery and her brothers, Sansa will make a good queen in Highgarden.
"And you, Sansa, who did you pretend to be as a child?"
"My lady mother," says Sansa, and then after a dozen or so more brush strokes she softly adds, "Queen Naerys. Robb was the Dragonknight."
It is said with such regret and sadness that Sansa can only have realised that even if her kingly brother is coming for her he won't arrive soon enough, not before Joffrey marries Margaery and takes Sansa as his unwilling mistress. It's why she agreed to flee King's Landing for Highgarden and to marry Margaery's eldest brother.
It is the cost of being a highborn woman, often the best you can hope for is to pick your cage.
Even being queen is simply the best of all possible cages. Margaery understands that, and accepts it; Sansa does too. Cersei Lannister doesn't, she keeps trying to be king, and that's why she'll fail; no amount of gold or men-at-arms will make the realm accept a woman king.
"You'll love Highgarden," Margaery promises Sansa.
*
It's Loras who bursts into their room in the middle of the night. Sansa smothers a shriek with her hands, and Margaery is forcefully reminded of all those girls who watched the tournaments and who probably dreamt about the knight of flowers appearing in their bedchambers after dark.
"What is it, Loras?" Margaery asks calmly.
"There are Lannister men on the road."
Sansa clutches desperately at Margaery under the covers. "It's the queen, she means to take me back. What will we do?"
Margaery would not be a Tyrell if she didn't know enough to abandon a scheme that's obviously doomed.
"If Cersei is determined to have you back, then of course we must let her."
Sansa cringes away from Margaery almost to the point of falling off the bed, a look of betrayal and self-loathing that she'd allowed herself to trust the Tyrells mars her pretty face.
Margaery wonders if Sansa would feel better for knowing that Margaery had not been lying about Joffrey being unable to hurt Sansa further; the young king will not survive his wedding feast.
iii. the fallen queen
They take her in the Riverlands, and Margaery knew she should have fled south to Dorne, but the Tyrells have ill history with House Martell.
She is escorted to Riverrun, and while she isn't overtly threatened it is clear that not going to Riverrun is not an option.
"Your Grace," says the Tully man who's guarding Margaery in the draughty Riverrun hall, for a second Margaery thinks that he's addressing her, but of course he isn't. She was queen to a Lannister king, and the Lannisters broke before the returning Targaryens; if any of them still live it will only be because they have renounced all claim to the Iron Throne.
Margaery turns and sees Sansa Stark framed in the doorway. She hasn't seen Sansa since she disappeared in the wake of Joffrey's death, and this Sansa looks very different from the girl Margaery remembers pitying in King's Landing; pale and determined, wrapped in furs of white and grey.
Margaery recalls a day, long ago now, when she'd walked in the Kingswood with Sansa and Loras - this was back when both she and Sansa had a full complement of brothers - and teased Sansa about perhaps being a king's heir.
"The Queen in the North, I presume," says Margaery.
Sansa inclines her head. "Queen Margaery, I'm sure you know why you are here."
"I seem to be a prisoner. I have to say that I'm surprised, I wasn't aware that I'd ever done anything to offend the Starks of Winterfell."
Sansa smiles tightly and says, "As a girl I was unaware of what I'd done to offend the Lannisters of Casterly Rock, or the Tyrells of Highgarden."
Well, thinks Margaery, point.
"No, my lady," says Sansa, "my younger brother is hostage in the south, taken with Lord Stannis and that pirate he called his Hand."
That doesn't surprise Maragery at all; the War of the Five Kings, years of Cersei's rule, and the dragons' homecoming have all left their mark on the realm. Many scions of great houses are far from home, wards and hostages, waiting to see if there's anyone left to ransom them, and if they have anything to make the trade worthwhile.
"And now I have a hostage of mine own to trade," finishes Sansa.
Margaery has to laugh at that; if Sansa thinks that anyone will trade a fallen queen, a woman thrice wed and childless, for a brother and heir she really has no business calling herself a queen.
"If that's the exchange you have in mind, my queen, we may have a long time to become reacquainted with one another."
Sansa dismisses the guards with a sharp look and steps further into the room, she takes Margaery's face in her hands and strokes her hair back. "I loved you once, you know," she says. "You saved me from Joffrey, I wished to go to Highgarden with you, and I loved you."
Sansa rests her forehead against Margaery's for a lingering moment and when she pulls back her face is cold and pure queen in the north again. "I hope that you will like Winterfell, Lady Margaery, for I suspect that you are right and you will be there for some time."
iv. winter's queen
Margaery's second impression of Winterfell - her first impression is freezing - is that it's ruined. The outer wall still stands but of the living quarters only the inner keep is habitable.
Still, even with few resources and nothing but snow and rubble to rule over, Sansa seems the part of a queen. But her worries about rebuilding Winterfell, about feeding her people, and searching for her siblings pale into insignificance when the attacks in the night begin.
Sansa's counsellors have advised her well; she does not need to hold the North against the southroners, she need only travel north and winter will do the rest. But they could not tell her what to do when the Others came south from the Wall, when the dead rose and made assaults on the living.
Margaery shares Sansa's bedchamber and her bed; Sansa does not have enough men to guard her notional hostage and there is too little fuel to heat more rooms than necessary.
"The men will break soon," Sansa confides into the darkness, after another day of struggling to appear strong and unbreakable for the smallfolk taking shelter behind Winterfell's walls.
Margaery is inclined to think that she is right. Sansa has ordered the outer wall fortified and men rain arrows and pitch down on the wights, but the northern queen has forbidden anyone to leave the castle on the grounds that every man who falls is another who'll rise again and come at Winterfell's walls. But they are running short of both food and fuel, and Margaery has heard some of the northmen talking about dying glorious deaths, as men are wont to do.
"My people deserve a ruler who can fight for them. My brothers should be here, even Arya would know what--"
It is partly because Sansa has turned out to be a better king than all three of Margaery's husbands, and partly because it is very, very cold that Margaery covers Sansa's body with her own and kisses her.
"What--?" Sansa begins.
"Shh, Your Grace," says Margaery against Sansa's throat. She slips her knee between Sansa's thighs and sets about distracting them both from the decaying hands clawing against Winterfell's walls.
v. the queen who knelt
"When I am queen I will make them love me," Sansa says quietly, mostly to herself.
"Your people love you," Margaery says, only because it's true.
"They loved my father. They love my name. Daenerys Targaryen came north with dragons and rained fire and blood on the white walkers. She saved us and this is her price, I can only pay it."
The Targaryen queen waits in the courtyard, her dragons perched on walls and clinging to towers. Margaery hangs back, the Tyrells were Targaryen loyalists during Robert's Rebellion, but they later supported the Lannisters and there is little point in tempting fate.
The terms were agreed in private, and Sansa says the dragon queen was generous, but this part has to be done in full sight of everyone: Sansa kneels in the snow, lays her crown at Daenerys' feet and says, "I yield Winterfell and the North to Queen Daenerys."
Daenerys helps Sansa to her feet and says something in a foreign language that sets men to unloading food and supplies.
Margaery studied history as a child in Highgarden and thinks on how they'll be remembered, the four queens of Westeros.
Daenerys Targaryen will be remembered for her dragons; Cersei Lannister for her descent into madness. Sansa Stark will forever be remembered as the queen who knelt; Robb Stark built a kingdom, Sansa Stark gave it away, no one will remember that it was to save her starving people, nobody will care that it was the price for sending the white walkers back to hell with dragonfire.
As for Margaery Tyrell, she will be forgotten entirely.
Margaery looks at Sansa, crownless and wearing a gown soaked with snowmelt - the Stark in Winterfell - and thinks of her offer for Margaery to remain here at Winterfell with her.
Better forgotten than dead, Margaery decides.
After all, she's still a Tyrell, and Tyrells always land on their feet.
Fandom: Game of Thrones
Pairing: Sansa Stark/Margaery Tyrell
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2329
Summary: History will not remember them kindly, the four queens of Westeros. Daenerys Targaryen will be remembered for her dragons, Cersei Lannister for her descent into madness, Sansa Stark will forever be remembered as the queen who knelt. As for Margaery Tyrell, she will be forgotten entirely.
i. the queen of love and beauty
Little Dove, that is Cersei's mocking name for Sansa Stark.
Reluctant though Margaery is to credit the soon to be dowager queen with much wit or intelligence, she can see how the name suits.
When she first comes to King's Landing she only sees the Stark girl out of the corner of her eye; flitting about the Red Keep like a songbird in a cage, the sort of creature who wouldn't know what to do with freedom if she ever obtained it.
When Margaery is queen she vows that she will see to it that the girl's cage is better gilded than it has been thus far. After all, it is Cersei who sees Sansa as a rival, not Margaery, and it befits a queen to be merciful.
Still, she takes care to smile benevolently at Sansa, to seek out her company and speak pleasantly with her.
Loras doesn't understand her desire to befriend the girl; he's been sullen and prone to sulking ever since Renly was taken from them, and Margaery's demand that he accompany her and play guard when she takes Sansa Stark hawking does little to improve his mood.
"Why bother?" he wants to know. "She's the hostage sister of a traitor. She can't help us."
Margaery thinks of the poison Littlefinger has promised to smuggle to them by way of an unwitting Sansa, and decides they were right to keep their plans from Loras; he is a brave knight and a good brother, but he cannot mask his feelings as she can and Margaery would not see him branded a second kingslayer.
Anyway, who knows how long this king in the north fiasco will continue for; they must keep their options open.
"Not yet, dear brother," Margaery says, tugging him up from his seat. "Not yet."
*
In the Kingswood, with the hawks soaring overhead, Sansa seems more nervous than ever, glancing around as though there are Lannister spies lurking behind every tree.
She seizes Margaery's hands and urgently says, "You can't marry Joffrey. He's..."
Margaery wonders how long Sansa has been screwing up her courage for this moment, only to find herself lost for words. "Lady Sansa--"
"You don't understand," Sansa insists. "He's a monster."
Margaery knows this, Joffrey can play the gallant young king all he likes, Margaery will never believe it, but there's no point drawing attention to the fact that Sansa once did fall for it.
"The king will not hurt me. My brother will protect me," says Margaery, shooting a look at Loras; he is lounging against a tree looking bored, but he reads Margaery's expression well and straightens up, placing a hand on the hilt of his sword and looking every inch the dashing kingsguard knight. "As your brother protects you."
"My brother is a traitor," Sansa says, and it's the least convincing thing Margaery has heard since Renly claimed to desire her.
"Well, he hasn't been beheaded as one yet, and a king's heir is a powerful piece on any board."
Margaery thinks about curtsying, but instead adopts a sort of half-mocking bow copied from both Loras and Renly. "Come, my princess, it is time we returned."
Too late, she sees that Sansa's face has closed off; teasing is not the way to win her trust, obviously. Instead Margaery leans forward and presses her lips to Sansa's cheek.
"Joffrey will not hurt me," she promises. "Nor will we allow him to harm you."
ii. the queen in highgarden
It is more than a day's journey to Highgarden, and they stop for the night at an inn off the Roseroad. In their shared room Margaery brushes out Sansa's hair, she insisted when Sansa tried to demure. "Nonsense," she said, "we are to be sisters, you and I."
Sansa does have beautiful hair, and the smile that Margaery sees in the mirror comes and goes quick as a fish, but is as pretty a smile as Margaery has seen.
"When I was a little girl," Margaery says, leaning in until her breast brushes Sansa's upper arm, and adopting a tone of shared confidence, "I played a game with my brothers where they called me the queen in Highgarden. Willas was my lord, and Garlan and Loras knelt at my feet and laid flowers before me, they called me Your Grace."
As she brushes Sansa's hair Margaery thinks that though the title existed only in the imaginations of Margaery and her brothers, Sansa will make a good queen in Highgarden.
"And you, Sansa, who did you pretend to be as a child?"
"My lady mother," says Sansa, and then after a dozen or so more brush strokes she softly adds, "Queen Naerys. Robb was the Dragonknight."
It is said with such regret and sadness that Sansa can only have realised that even if her kingly brother is coming for her he won't arrive soon enough, not before Joffrey marries Margaery and takes Sansa as his unwilling mistress. It's why she agreed to flee King's Landing for Highgarden and to marry Margaery's eldest brother.
It is the cost of being a highborn woman, often the best you can hope for is to pick your cage.
Even being queen is simply the best of all possible cages. Margaery understands that, and accepts it; Sansa does too. Cersei Lannister doesn't, she keeps trying to be king, and that's why she'll fail; no amount of gold or men-at-arms will make the realm accept a woman king.
"You'll love Highgarden," Margaery promises Sansa.
*
It's Loras who bursts into their room in the middle of the night. Sansa smothers a shriek with her hands, and Margaery is forcefully reminded of all those girls who watched the tournaments and who probably dreamt about the knight of flowers appearing in their bedchambers after dark.
"What is it, Loras?" Margaery asks calmly.
"There are Lannister men on the road."
Sansa clutches desperately at Margaery under the covers. "It's the queen, she means to take me back. What will we do?"
Margaery would not be a Tyrell if she didn't know enough to abandon a scheme that's obviously doomed.
"If Cersei is determined to have you back, then of course we must let her."
Sansa cringes away from Margaery almost to the point of falling off the bed, a look of betrayal and self-loathing that she'd allowed herself to trust the Tyrells mars her pretty face.
Margaery wonders if Sansa would feel better for knowing that Margaery had not been lying about Joffrey being unable to hurt Sansa further; the young king will not survive his wedding feast.
iii. the fallen queen
They take her in the Riverlands, and Margaery knew she should have fled south to Dorne, but the Tyrells have ill history with House Martell.
She is escorted to Riverrun, and while she isn't overtly threatened it is clear that not going to Riverrun is not an option.
"Your Grace," says the Tully man who's guarding Margaery in the draughty Riverrun hall, for a second Margaery thinks that he's addressing her, but of course he isn't. She was queen to a Lannister king, and the Lannisters broke before the returning Targaryens; if any of them still live it will only be because they have renounced all claim to the Iron Throne.
Margaery turns and sees Sansa Stark framed in the doorway. She hasn't seen Sansa since she disappeared in the wake of Joffrey's death, and this Sansa looks very different from the girl Margaery remembers pitying in King's Landing; pale and determined, wrapped in furs of white and grey.
Margaery recalls a day, long ago now, when she'd walked in the Kingswood with Sansa and Loras - this was back when both she and Sansa had a full complement of brothers - and teased Sansa about perhaps being a king's heir.
"The Queen in the North, I presume," says Margaery.
Sansa inclines her head. "Queen Margaery, I'm sure you know why you are here."
"I seem to be a prisoner. I have to say that I'm surprised, I wasn't aware that I'd ever done anything to offend the Starks of Winterfell."
Sansa smiles tightly and says, "As a girl I was unaware of what I'd done to offend the Lannisters of Casterly Rock, or the Tyrells of Highgarden."
Well, thinks Margaery, point.
"No, my lady," says Sansa, "my younger brother is hostage in the south, taken with Lord Stannis and that pirate he called his Hand."
That doesn't surprise Maragery at all; the War of the Five Kings, years of Cersei's rule, and the dragons' homecoming have all left their mark on the realm. Many scions of great houses are far from home, wards and hostages, waiting to see if there's anyone left to ransom them, and if they have anything to make the trade worthwhile.
"And now I have a hostage of mine own to trade," finishes Sansa.
Margaery has to laugh at that; if Sansa thinks that anyone will trade a fallen queen, a woman thrice wed and childless, for a brother and heir she really has no business calling herself a queen.
"If that's the exchange you have in mind, my queen, we may have a long time to become reacquainted with one another."
Sansa dismisses the guards with a sharp look and steps further into the room, she takes Margaery's face in her hands and strokes her hair back. "I loved you once, you know," she says. "You saved me from Joffrey, I wished to go to Highgarden with you, and I loved you."
Sansa rests her forehead against Margaery's for a lingering moment and when she pulls back her face is cold and pure queen in the north again. "I hope that you will like Winterfell, Lady Margaery, for I suspect that you are right and you will be there for some time."
iv. winter's queen
Margaery's second impression of Winterfell - her first impression is freezing - is that it's ruined. The outer wall still stands but of the living quarters only the inner keep is habitable.
Still, even with few resources and nothing but snow and rubble to rule over, Sansa seems the part of a queen. But her worries about rebuilding Winterfell, about feeding her people, and searching for her siblings pale into insignificance when the attacks in the night begin.
Sansa's counsellors have advised her well; she does not need to hold the North against the southroners, she need only travel north and winter will do the rest. But they could not tell her what to do when the Others came south from the Wall, when the dead rose and made assaults on the living.
Margaery shares Sansa's bedchamber and her bed; Sansa does not have enough men to guard her notional hostage and there is too little fuel to heat more rooms than necessary.
"The men will break soon," Sansa confides into the darkness, after another day of struggling to appear strong and unbreakable for the smallfolk taking shelter behind Winterfell's walls.
Margaery is inclined to think that she is right. Sansa has ordered the outer wall fortified and men rain arrows and pitch down on the wights, but the northern queen has forbidden anyone to leave the castle on the grounds that every man who falls is another who'll rise again and come at Winterfell's walls. But they are running short of both food and fuel, and Margaery has heard some of the northmen talking about dying glorious deaths, as men are wont to do.
"My people deserve a ruler who can fight for them. My brothers should be here, even Arya would know what--"
It is partly because Sansa has turned out to be a better king than all three of Margaery's husbands, and partly because it is very, very cold that Margaery covers Sansa's body with her own and kisses her.
"What--?" Sansa begins.
"Shh, Your Grace," says Margaery against Sansa's throat. She slips her knee between Sansa's thighs and sets about distracting them both from the decaying hands clawing against Winterfell's walls.
v. the queen who knelt
"When I am queen I will make them love me," Sansa says quietly, mostly to herself.
"Your people love you," Margaery says, only because it's true.
"They loved my father. They love my name. Daenerys Targaryen came north with dragons and rained fire and blood on the white walkers. She saved us and this is her price, I can only pay it."
The Targaryen queen waits in the courtyard, her dragons perched on walls and clinging to towers. Margaery hangs back, the Tyrells were Targaryen loyalists during Robert's Rebellion, but they later supported the Lannisters and there is little point in tempting fate.
The terms were agreed in private, and Sansa says the dragon queen was generous, but this part has to be done in full sight of everyone: Sansa kneels in the snow, lays her crown at Daenerys' feet and says, "I yield Winterfell and the North to Queen Daenerys."
Daenerys helps Sansa to her feet and says something in a foreign language that sets men to unloading food and supplies.
Margaery studied history as a child in Highgarden and thinks on how they'll be remembered, the four queens of Westeros.
Daenerys Targaryen will be remembered for her dragons; Cersei Lannister for her descent into madness. Sansa Stark will forever be remembered as the queen who knelt; Robb Stark built a kingdom, Sansa Stark gave it away, no one will remember that it was to save her starving people, nobody will care that it was the price for sending the white walkers back to hell with dragonfire.
As for Margaery Tyrell, she will be forgotten entirely.
Margaery looks at Sansa, crownless and wearing a gown soaked with snowmelt - the Stark in Winterfell - and thinks of her offer for Margaery to remain here at Winterfell with her.
Better forgotten than dead, Margaery decides.
After all, she's still a Tyrell, and Tyrells always land on their feet.