Chapter 3: III: A Wedding With Surprises

III: A Wedding With Surprises

The wedding day of Prince Aerys and Lady Aelinor Penrose, his cousin, had come. As fitting for the wedding of a prince, guests from all the kingdoms have come, but most importantly those of Penrose's kin and neighbours. The aged Lord Lyonel Hightower, well over seventy years of age, had come to see the wedding of his grand-niece, though the road had been taxing. The Stormlanders and the Marcher lords had also come in great numbers, the latter eager to see for themselves their new neighbour.

Prince Aerys was dressed in the finest clothes, as fitting for his station. He had insisted on black, with accents of red. His bride-to-be was dressed in a samite dress. Russet was the colour of her house, but to wear such a coarse and cheap cloth when marrying a prince was hardly fitting, so her dress was instead a shade of white the colour of parchment, and she wore a maiden cloak of the same shade, though embroidered with cloth-of-silver and with quills sewn into it.

They came before the High Septon in the Sept of Baelor. Though king Daeron had proclaimed Baelor's work finished, it was not so, for thirty years were not enough to finish a work so great as the grandest sept in the realm. While the treasury had heavily aided in its building during the Befuddled's reign, Aegon the Fourth was less eager to spend his coin on a sept when he could spend it on his vices, on his mistresses and on his favourites. Only Daeron had spent more coin to continue its building. And while it was not finished, it was acceptable for hosting a wedding in it.

They swore their vows there: in the name of the Mother they swore that their marriage shall be fruitful and that they shall leave no quarrel unsettled; in the name of the Father that their children shall be brought in a rightful manner; in the name of the Warrior did Aerys swore to defend his family with his life - if need be, and Aelinor to raise her children brave; they swore to the Smith that they shall build a hearth and home for their family; they swore by the maiden's name that their daughters shall be brought innocent and their son shall defend any women's honour; they swore to the Crone to follow her counsel in their marriage and in the raising of children; and at last, they swore to the Stranger that their union shall never be torn asunder, for it will last until the end of their days.

They received then the Seven Blessings:

"O One Almighty, Eternal and Everlasting, send thy blessing upon this man and this woman, and may they be blessed in thy Name."

"O God bless, preserve and keep them, look with favour upon them."

"O One-Who-Is-Seven be merciful unto them, and bless them, and bestow upon them your light."

"O Seven-Who-Are-One, bless thy servants, so they may in their every deed fulfil your commands, that by obeying thy will, they shall always abide under thy love and thy protection."

"O Holy Name, we beseech thee, that you may bless this man and this woman with children trueborn and brought up in faith and virtue."

"Look upon them with thy Divine Eye and fill them with benediction and grace, that they may so live together in this life."

"Let them be blessed so that they may perform and keep the vow and covenant betwixt them made."

"And may the will of God be one, in the Seven Heavens, in the world, and in the Seven Hells."

And then they spoke their words to one another, his voice eager with anticipation, her shaky but joyous: 

 " I take you to have and to hold. I promise to be true to you in sickness and in health. I take you for better for worse. I take you for rich or for poor. I promise to love and honour you all the days of my life. I pledge to you my faithfulness. And this promise I shall hold until the Stranger would us part."

The choir then sang the wedding song, their voices echoing through the sept: Who shall find a woman of virtue… The heart of her husband trusteth in her…Strength and fairness is the clothing of her… and the law of mercy is in her tongue… Her sons rose up and preached her most blessed .

Then the High Septon spoke: "If any man has any knowledge, of any reason, of secular or religious law, that he and she should not wed, let him speak forth and make his case known."

The king, as the groom's father, and the Lord Penrose, as the head of her house and grandfather stepped forth, to hear and gainsay any such challenge. But none dared, for even if they had any cause, seeing the grim and fierce Erich Penrose put his hand on the pommel of his sword would give even the greatest of knights pause.

Lord Penrose removed them his grand-daughter's maiden cloak, and Aerys approached his bride and draped her in the Targaryen cloak, black with the three-headed red dragon upon it. They knelt before the High Septon and spoke the sacred words and kissed:

"With this kiss I pledge my love and take you for my lady and wife. With this kiss I pledge my love and take you for my lord and husband."

The High Septon then sealed the ceremony and proclaimed the newlyweds man and wife, one flesh, one heart, one soul forevermore, and cursed those would would seek to come between them.

The feast was in full swing, the tables laden with a variety of courses. Most of them were Crownlander and Stormlander recipes, or the Valyrian inspired ones with which Aerys was familiar from his childhood days on Dragonstone. His mother had tried to have a couple of Dornish dishes too, but Aerys disliked spicy food, a fact that followed him from his previous life. His mother was to console herself with the copious amounts of Dornish Red that his uncle Maron had brought as gifts for the wedding, and even some of the Marcher lords sipped it, though if asked, they would loudly deny its qualities.

At the beginning of the feast, the king had asked for silence, and had asked Aerys to kneel before him and had bestowed upon him lands and title, and bade him rise as Prince of Summerhall, a title confirmed to him and to his heirs lawfully begotten.

Aerys swore then his fealty to his father, the king, the words of the oath chosen by himself: "Here do I swear fealty and service to His Grace, the king, my father, to speak and to be silent, to do and to let be, to come and to go, in need or plenty, in peace or war, in living or dying, from this hour henceforth, to give unto him my fealty, to serve him with valour, until death take me, or the world end."

His standard as a cadet house was then unveiled, to join the three-headed dragon of the royal house. Aerys had been inspired from his ancestry in his former life and had chosen as banner the draco, the military standard of the ancient Dacian, with the form of a dragon with open jaws with several metal tongues. The hollow dragon metal head of black could be mounted on a pole with a red fabric tube in the rear, and when held up in the wind, or by a horseman, it would make a shrill sound as wind passed through it. He also had a more normal banner - with the same figure in red, on a field of black.

The merriment continued then, and as the guests ate and drank, and drank and ate, they grew drunk and rowdy, a behaviour most seen and loudly heard amidst the marcher lords of Stormlands and the Reach.

From songs like Two Hearts That Beat As One, The Vow Unspoken, Fair Maids of Summer, Flowers of Spring, My Lady Wife the bards advanced to marcher ballads, at the bidding of such lords, and convinced by the clinking of coins.

Then followed bawdy songs: A Cask of Ale, Fifty-Four Tuns, The Bear and the Maiden Fair, Her Little Flower, and many more. Once they grew even more drunk, one of them even paid a bard to sing The King Without Courage, and though king Daeron frowned, he chose not to stop it.

But one of the Peakes,a certain Ser Barquen, his wits lost in Arbor Gold, promised one of the bards to sing yet another ribald song. And soon the melody came forth, and its lyrics too.

Aerys was busy eating and whispering sweet nothings in his wife's ear, trying to make her laugh, when he saw her face stiffen and her hands wringing. He stood silent, and then he heard the bard singing: "... and I've tasted the Dornishman's wife!"

In the short time, Aerys had grown fond of Aelinor, or even fallen for her. And to see the words of the bard displease her so, and the implications of the song known by all guests, Aerys grew wrathful. He rose from his table, approached the singer and beckoned him forward, towards him.

He grabbed the bard and threw him to the ground, and with one knee on his chest, he opened his mouth by force, and drew his dagger out, and with a swift motion, cut off the offending singer's tongue out.

He rose then and kicked the prone body of the bard, bawling on the ground - for good measure. His father and mother and his brother Baelor were looking at him with disapproving looks, but he did not relent. He went over to the table were the Peakes stood, and looked straight at Barquen Peake and spoke:

"'Tis a wedding, and an occasion for joy is hardly the time and place to call a man out. But I would have you behave the rest of the night, lest I give credence to the Dothraki saying - that a wedding without at least three deaths is a dull affair."

He returned to his table, and Aelinor leaned, and whispered in his ear: "You should not have done that. It was nothing of import."

"It matters not if your honour was not impugned that much." answered Aerys. "I saw your smile disappearing on your wedding day, so the bard had to pay for it. And Peake shall answer for it too - neither law, nor league of swords, nor even the Doom come again shall spare him from it - be it now or a decade hence."

The feast proceeded from then one in a more demure manner, and the other bards were afraid to perform any other bawdy songs, lest the prince misinterpret them.

The prince meanwhile summoned a servant and sent him for some parchment and a quill. He wrote on the parchment, shielding it even from the eyes of his wife. He tore it in two, and the servant was to give half of it to the old Lord Erich Penrose, and the other half to the even older Lord Lyonel Hightower. As each of them received their missive, they laughed aloud, though they refused to disclose its content to the rest of the guests.

The time for the wedding had come at last, as drunk ladies hurried towards him and drunk men tried to grope and undress his wife. But the usual revels descended in anarchy soon after, as the men began to brawl, and to women, suddenly afraid, hurried out of the way.

Aerys profited from the occasion to recover his wife and they hurried towards the bedchamber, Aelinor laughing with relief.

Missive found on the floor of the feasting hall, the morning after the prince's wedding and discreetly burned by a loyal servant:

"My lord, it would greatly please me, that instead of having your family try to grope and undress their own kin when the time for the bedding comes, you would instead profit from the clamour and the confusion to teach that Peake cur a lesson of honour and decorum. Draw no blade if the others do not, and though it is a heavy thing to ask, do not take this as a chance to settle a quarrel with a Dornishman or other.

I offer you my deepest gratitude,

The Prince of Summerhall"

As people would tell of it afterwards, the wedding of Prince Aerys Targaryen of Summerhall and of the Lady Aelinor Penrose was not considered by posterity as a dull affair.