Chapter 30: The Broken Queen and the King’s Hard Peace

Chapter 30: The Broken Queen and the King's Hard Peace

The screams began just before dawn. They were not the distant, collective screams of a burning city, but a single, piercing shriek of pure, undiluted madness, echoing from the very heart of the Red Keep, from the royal chambers of the Queen herself. The servants and guards in Maegor's Holdfast froze, their blood turning to ice. It was a sound of absolute terror, a soul being flayed by a horror unseen.

Inside her lavish chambers, Queen Cersei Lannister was living in her own private hell, a masterpiece of psychological torture crafted by a grieving god. The fire in Flea Bottom had been extinguished, but a far more intimate flame now burned behind her eyes. Every reflective surface had become a portal to her own damnation. The silver-gilt mirror showed her a charred, weeping corpse. The polished surface of her water basin reflected a skeletal face with hollow sockets. Even a drop of spilled wine on the floor would coalesce into a tiny, perfect image of her own beautiful face, melting like wax.

She had smashed the great mirror with a heavy candlestick, but the shards on the floor only multiplied her torment, showing her a thousand fractured images of her own burning soul. The smell of scorched flesh and burning silk clung to her, a phantom stench no perfume could mask. The ghostly whispers of the children who had almost died in the fire echoed in her ears, a constant, accusatory chorus.

Her ladies-in-waiting found her huddled in a corner, her nails broken and bleeding from where she had clawed at the tapestries, her beautiful face a mask of insane terror, her eyes darting around the room, fixated on horrors only she could see. She shrieked at them, calling them demons, their faces twisting into fiery skulls in her perception. She babbled of burning, of a god's cold blue eyes, of a reflection that would not stop screaming.

By the time Ser Barristan Selmy and a contingent of the Kingsguard arrived, the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms had been reduced to a quivering, hysterical animal. She was wrapped in blankets, still shrieking, and taken to Maester Pycelle, who could find no wound upon her, no cause for her madness save for a profound, all-consuming terror. But the servants whispered. They had heard her frantic, broken confessions. They had heard her babble about hiring men, about starting a fire, about teaching the King a lesson. The truth, as it always does in the Red Keep, began to seep through the cracks.

The news was brought to the King in the Small Council chamber. Robert had not slept. He, like the rest of the capital, had been awake all night, listening to the unnatural silence that had followed the god's intervention. He had been staring at a map of his kingdom, a kingdom he felt he did not truly rule, when the report of his wife's madness was delivered.

Ned Stark, Jon Arryn, and the other members of the council listened in stunned horror as Lord Varys, his face a perfect mask of solemn concern, relayed the servants' whispers and the Queen's own mad confessions. The story was pieced together with chilling clarity. The Queen, in an act of petty, jealous spite, had ordered the arson in Flea Bottom. And the god, in turn, had not attacked the crown or the castle. He had attacked the Queen's mind. He had broken her sanity with a whisper of his power, a personal, precise, and infinitely cruel punishment that fit the crime.

Robert Baratheon's reaction was a volcano of conflicting emotions. A part of him, the part that had come to despise his cold, prideful wife, felt a surge of grim, terrible satisfaction. She had played with fire, and the dragon—or in this case, the storm—had burned her. But the greater part of him, the King, was filled with a rage and terror so profound it left him breathless.

"She what?" he finally roared, his voice shaking the rafters. He swept a flagon of wine and a stack of parchments from the table, his fury a physical force. "She dared? After everything? After I made an agreement with that… that thing? She tried to burn down half my city and kill gods-know-how-many innocents to spite me for visiting a whorehouse?"

The sheer, suicidal stupidity of it was staggering. It was treason. It was a declaration of war against a power that had unmade armies and shattered mountains. It was an act that had endangered not just her, but him, his children, his crown, his entire kingdom.

"The agreement is broken, Your Grace," Jon Arryn said, his voice heavy as a tombstone. "The god laid out his terms. 'Leave me alone,' he said. 'Do not provoke me.' The Queen, your wife and the mother of your heir, has broken that peace. She has committed a crime not just against the smallfolk of this city, but against him."

"And what is the penalty for that crime?" Lord Stannis Baratheon, Robert's stern and humourless younger brother, asked from his seat as Master of Ships. His expression was grim, his jaw set like iron. "What is the punishment for provoking a god into burning down the realm?"

The question hung in the air, cold and sharp. They all knew the answer. Thor had not yet acted against the crown. The psychological torture of the Queen was a personal affair. But he had been provoked. The agreement was void. They were now living on borrowed time, waiting for the other boot to drop, for the storm to return and finish the job it had started with the Lannisters.

"He is watching us," Varys murmured, his voice soft as falling ash. "He did not strike you down, Your Grace. He punished the perpetrator. He is waiting to see what you will do. What the King's Justice is. This, I believe, is your test."

Robert stared at the Spider, then at the faces of his council. He saw their fear, their panicked uncertainty. He saw them looking to him. To the King. For years he had chafed under the crown, feeling like a fraud, a king of a kingdom that was not truly his. He had hated the endless meetings, the ledgers, the political games. He was a warrior, a man of simple, direct action.

And now, he was faced with a choice that required not a hammer, but a crown. A choice that would define his reign and decide the fate of his kingdom. He could protect his wife. He could try to hide her crime, to shield the mother of his heir, to preserve the fragile Lannister alliance. To do so would be to condone her actions, to make her crime his own in the eyes of the god. And he had no doubt what the consequence of that would be. The sky would turn black, and his reign would end in fire and thunder.

Or, he could act as King. He could dispense justice, not for a common crime, but for a sin of an entirely new magnitude. He could judge his own Queen.

The weight of the decision seemed to suck the very air from the room. Robert looked at Ned, and in his friend's quiet, steady gaze, he saw not judgment, but a sad, solemn expectation. Do your duty, the look said. Be the king you were meant to be.

A great, shuddering breath escaped Robert's lips. The choice was no choice at all. It was a matter of survival. He squared his shoulders, the fat, drunken king momentarily vanishing, replaced by the warrior who had faced Rhaegar at the Trident, by the leader of men who had forged a rebellion.

"Bring her to me," he said, his voice a low, cold command. "Bring the Queen to the throne room. Now."

The throne room was cold and silent, the braziers unlit. Robert sat not upon the Iron Throne, but on a simple wooden chair placed before it, as if he were a judge in his own court. Ned and Jon Arryn stood beside him, along with Ser Barristan and a handful of the most trusted Kingsguard.

Cersei was dragged in by two of her ladies, her arms bound in silk scarves. She was no longer screaming. She was whimpering, her body trembling, her wild, terrified eyes darting at every shadow, at every polished suit of armour, expecting to see her own burning face staring back at her. Her golden hair was a tangled mess, her fine gown was torn. The most beautiful woman in the Seven Kingdoms was a broken, pathetic creature.

She was forced to her knees before her husband. She would not look at him. She stared at the floor, muttering to herself about the fire and the screaming.

Robert looked down at his wife, and the rage he had felt was replaced by a cold, hard disgust. "Do you know what you have done?" he asked, his voice devoid of all its usual warmth and bluster.

Cersei flinched at the sound of his voice but didn't look up. "The reflections… they burn…" she whispered.

"You set a fire in my city," Robert continued, his voice like the chipping of ice. "You caused the death of at least thirty people, including five children. You did this out of spite, because I would not give you the attention you crave." He leaned forward. "But that is the least of your crimes. You broke the peace. You broke the one, simple rule that has kept this kingdom from being turned into a crater. You provoked a god."

He stood up and began to pace before her, his steps heavy on the stone floor. "For five years, I have lived with this fear. I have swallowed my pride. I have let a foreign creature dictate the laws of my own capital. I have done this not for myself, but for the realm! To protect the very people you tried to burn alive in their beds!"

He stopped in front of her, forcing her to look up by grabbing a handful of her hair and yanking her head back. Her eyes were wide with a terror that was not of him, but of the things only she could see.

"You have endangered my life, my children's lives, and the lives of every man, woman, and child in this kingdom," he snarled, his face inches from hers. "You have committed an act of treason so profound that there are no laws to cover it."

He let go of her hair, and she collapsed back into a whimpering heap. He turned to his council. "She is the Queen. The mother of the heir. By law, she is untouchable." He looked at Jon Arryn. "But these are not normal times. The law of men is secondary to the law of survival."

He walked back to his chair and sat down, his face a grim mask of royal authority. He had made his decision.

"Cersei of the House Lannister," he said, his voice now formal, carrying the cold, hard weight of a king's final decree. "For the crimes of arson, murder, and high treason against the peace and security of the Seven Kingdoms, you are hereby stripped of your title as Queen."

A collective gasp went through the few witnesses. This was unprecedented.

"You will be confined to the Maidenvault, here in the Red Keep, for the remainder of your natural life," Robert declared. "You will see no one but your handmaidens and your children, and only at my discretion. Your name will be struck from the royal record. Your son, Joffrey, will remain my heir, but he will be raised here, under my care and that of Lord Arryn. You will have no part in his life or his education."

He was not just imprisoning her. He was erasing her. He was severing the Lannister connection to the throne, a brutal, public repudiation of the alliance.

"As for your… affliction," Robert continued, a note of cold contempt in his voice, "You will live with it. Consider it a reminder of the price of your pride. A small penance for the lives you took."

He was making a public spectacle of his justice. He was showing the silent god in the gutter that he, the King, was dealing with the transgressor. He was hoping, praying, that this would be enough to appease him, to restore the fragile peace.

"And a raven will be sent to Casterly Rock," Robert concluded, his gaze turning to the spot where Varys had once stood. The Spider was not present, but the King spoke as if he were. "Lord Tywin will be informed that his daughter is a guest of the crown, indefinitely. He will be informed that his house's influence at court is at an end. If he has any objections, he may address them to me. Or, if he is feeling bold, he may address them to the entity his daughter so foolishly provoked."

It was a declaration of political war against the Lannisters, a final severing of the ties. Robert was burning his own bridges, gambling everything on the hope that this judgment would be enough.

Cersei, upon hearing her fate, finally broke completely. She let out a long, animalistic wail of despair and rage. To be stripped of her title, her power, her very identity as Queen… it was a fate worse than death. She was no longer Cersei Lannister, the beautiful, powerful queen. She was just Cersei, a madwoman in a locked room, haunted by burning reflections for the rest of her days.

As the Kingsguard dragged her, still screaming and sobbing, from the throne room, a heavy silence fell once more. Ned Stark looked at his friend, the King. Robert's face was not triumphant. It was grim, weary, and aged. He had done his duty. He had acted as a true king. He had sacrificed his queen and his most powerful political alliance to save his kingdom.

The act was done. The judgment was passed. The king had punished the transgressor. And now, the entire realm would hold its breath and look towards a small, squalid tavern in Flea Bottom, waiting to see if it had been enough. The God's Peace was broken. The King's Hard Peace had begun. And no one knew if it would survive the dawn.