Original posts here, here, and here. Thanks to AussieHawker for the great prompt and permission to develop it, and to Perfidious Albion for some ideas.
The first post of Act I takes place sequentially between Act II and Act III
King’s Landing, 301 AC
Stannis wakes in a cold sweat.
He does not know why he wakes. Perhaps it is Justin Massey’s fevered singing – the man vexes him less when conscious – or the cold water trickling down from the ceiling. However, he knows why he cannot sleep.
It is the same dream that has haunted him for the past year – a line of silent, accusatory faces, ever lengthening, ever bloodier. They brought their own deaths upon themselves with their treasons, Stannis reminds himself, as if he could will himself to forget the blood on his hands. But there is no peace.
Catharsis is a lie, he has concluded. A fiction invented to provide a false peace to the damned. I did my duty; I never failed to do my duty, Stannis repeats to himself till he almost believes it. Yet the faces still haunt his dreams. Ned Stark, resignation and fear on his face as Ilyn Payne’s blade falls. Robb Stark, defiant to the end. Renly, coughing out his life in these same rooms. One-armed Rolland Storm and the other conspirators, looks of betrayal directed towards Stannis.
“I die King Joffrey’s faithful servant,” Stannis whispers as the darkness of the Black Cells closes back upon him. There is no illumination for the events that led to this.
---
Dragonstone, 286 AC
He broods over the Painted Table, listening to the bitter howling of the storm outside.
Some of the sycophants who infest King's Landing will tell Robert that it is an auspicious augur. The Baratheons are the descendants of Durran Godsgrief, who defied the gods and birthed a kingdom in the howling fury of their watery wrath. The heir being born to Robert will be Durran reborn, born into the storm, and the hope of the nascent Baratheon dynasty.
To Stannis, it is just another storm that he must endure. The port and ships have been secured, and there is nothing to do but wait.
He traces his way down the edge of the table, polished by three centuries of use till it is varnished with a dark, oily finish, and finds Storm's End. Perhaps it was truly built by a Durran, in some age when the earth was young and legends could grow without fear of the truth. But Storm's End was solid stone, as real as the storm breaking upon Blackwater Bay. It was stone that he had grown to know and love. Stannis remembers the battlements that his emaciated hands had gripped during the siege, the wall from which he had watched his parents die, the damp tunnels through which Davos had brought salted meat and onions.
He will never know Dragonstone in that way. Perhaps it will not be so bad losing it, as well.
Robert's heir. Robert had called him that when exiling him to this accursed rock, ‘the traditional seat of the heir to the Iron Throne.’ Robert could not even bring himself to call Stannis ‘brother.’ That would always be Ned Stark, the stranger who had displaced Robert's own blood in affection. And now Stannis would not even be Robert's heir.
Stannis wonders what he will do when Robert takes away his current pittance to give to the expected child. Perhaps he could sail with Ser Davos to Essos. They could leave the corruption and stench of King's Landing far behind, and explore the world. Perhaps they could yet find a cleaner, better place.
There is only one thing holding him back, yet that one thing is as real as a noose around a criminal's neck. His duty.
Robert has not called him brother in years. But they are the sons of Steffon Baratheon and Cassana Estermont, and that is a bond deeper than any other. So Stannis will continue to serve Robert, and his heirs, whatever that brings.
“A raven.” Faithful Cressen has entered, the maester's steps falling as they have for years. “Queen Cersei has borne a healthy child, a son named Joffrey.”
Joffrey. A Lannister name. At least it has not been named Ned, as Robert wanted. He nods, and Cressen knows Stannis well enough to bow and leave him to brood in the storm.
---
King’s Landing, 286 AC
Stannis meets Joffrey for the first time a few months later. He takes the blonde, squalling baby into his arms, wondering what he is supposed to do, and settles for trying to rock Joffrey. The boy only cries louder, punching air with his tiny fists. It is with relief that Stannis hands him back to a glaring Cersei.
“Do you mock me, too?” Stannis asks the watching Tywin Lannister, with a bitterness that he increasingly wonders why he tries to hide. Tywin must know. All the court knows how Stannis has been exiled to Dragonstone; how dour Ned Stark is Robert's true brother, not dour Stannis; how Robert is always disregarding and belittling him.
Green eyes flecked with gold regard him coolly, and Stannis is reminded that he is but two-and-twenty. “I am not your brother,” Tywin says at last.
“What do you mean?”
“The king's family should not be mocked. If a king is to be respected, he must assure that none dare disregard either him or his representatives.”
“Robert does not understand that.”
“He does not.”
Perhaps the two of them can understand each other, Stannis thinks.
In the end, Robert has not taken away Dragonstone. Stannis is not sure if it is a blessing or a curse. “I have had problems with unruly vassals,” he tells Tywin. The Lord of the Westerlands is a proud man; surely Tywin will understand not wanting to beg for help. But it is help and advice he wants, and Tywin who can provide it.
The Narrow Islands are never rebellious again for as long as Stannis rules them. And it is not just advice that Tywin provides. Lannister gold expands the port and invests in facilities to produce and sell soaps and dyes from the ash that darkens the landscape. Later, Willem Lannister and Joy Hill come as companions for Shireen and Devan Seaworth, and Tywin’s second son is sent to help manage the port. Tyrion, with his senseless promiscuity and acidic humor, grates on Stannis. But the dwarf performs his duties well and Shireen likes him. So Stannis endures the dwarf, and pointedly ignores the stifled laughs that, for some curious reason, seem to follow the two of them.
In return, shipyards and manufacturers of naval stores in the Westerlands are kept busy with acquisitions for the royal fleet, and its textiles and other products are preferred. Renly – he who will soon be getting into bed with the Tyrells – will later ask Stannis how he has been so cheaply bought. But Renly, who rarely even sets foot in Storm’s End, will never appreciate the curious collection of scarred knights, codfish lords, bastards, a dwarf, a mustached lady, and a greyscaled girl that make up Dragonstone’s household. It might be, against all odds, be something like a home.
But everything that he does to improve Dragonstone only brings more mockery from Robert and Renly. This cuts deep, and as the years and winters pass and the Baratheon brothers drift further and further apart, the resentment becomes focused on one man.
---
King’s Landing, 297 AC
Ned Stark.
Ned Stark, whom Robert wants by his side while storming Pyke and who advises mercy for the treacherous Greyjoys when Stannis would have bent Balon Greyjoy’s head over a block.
Ned Stark, who takes one of the Greyjoy whelps with him to Winterfell. By rights, Theon should have been sent to Casterly Rock, Stannis thinks; it is the Westerlands that have suffered the most from the Greyjoys and are the most at risk from future attacks.
And most of all, Stannis resents Ned for taking Robert away from his brothers. Stannis cannot forgive how, almost as soon as their parents were gone, Robert rode off to be with his precious Ned. Robert was the head of House Baratheon and should have been there for his brothers to lean upon; instead, they were left to drift rudderless in life's bitter winds.
Stannis coped by clinging to his duty. Renly instead sought to be like the distant Robert, seeking an elusive happiness in the acclaim of others. And that had included turning against the brother who had starved to protect him, winning cheap laughs from fools who would never truly love him by joining in their mockery of the dour brother.
They are three lonely islands in a sea of people, these Baratheon brothers.
Stannis is introspective enough to know that he is being unduly bitter. Perhaps Lord Stark is not the monster that his long brooding has constructed. But the slights and mockeries take their toll. As the three brothers drift further and further apart, it becomes harder and harder not to hate the Lord of the North.
When Jon Arryn unexpectedly dies and Robert determines his new Hand, Stannis realizes that he cannot bear to be in the same city as Ned Stark.
---
King’s Landing, 298 AC
Stannis returns to King’s Landing to swear fealty to King Joffrey, just in time to witness Ned Stark’s death.
It is perhaps fitting that the man who ripped apart the Baratheon brothers proves to be a false friend for Robert. What true friend would so callously do this? Stannis has been told – and this is confirmed by the traitor’s own confession on the steps of Baelor – of how Robert was barely even in the grave before Ned Stark banded together with Renly to usurp Joffrey’s rightful throne; of how the Queen Mother and new King were only saved by the intervention of the goldcloaks; of how the traitors Renly and Loras Tyrell cut their way to safety, but Ned Stark was captured.
However obvious the man’s treachery, the execution is ill-done. Joffrey has the right to condemn Ned Stark, but Ned Stark has the right to a trial by combat. The new king will have much to learn if he is to rule well. It is no longer a cat over which he has the power of life and death, but a Lord Paramount and millions of people. By executing Ned Stark, Joffrey has ensured that the North will not be pacified easily. Stannis can only hope that in the future, he and Lord Tywin will be able influence young Joffrey for the better.
Yet it is not at Joffrey that the condemned man looks, but at him. Stannis does not presume to say what is in Ned’s eyes, but there is something strange there. Fear? Sorrow? Pity? And then Ned Stark is bowing his head, and Ice falls.
Some of Stannis’ men are whispering mutinously, and the anger breaks out in full force when they are alone. Joffrey has just condemned them to a war to the knife. On the other hand, Renly would overthrow the rules of law and succession and rule by the force of arms, in a world where might made right; and Robb Stark would tear apart the Seven Kingdoms.
In the end, though, there is no true choice. It is to Joffrey that he owes his duty now. Stannis did not want this war, but he will prosecute it to the best of his abilities. Royal galleys are already sweeping the coast, looking for the kidnapped Tyrion Lannister. Stannis and his bannermen will sail shortly to take Maidenpool and Saltpans, then meet with Tywin Lannister. Their plan is to force the North and Riverlands out of the war as quickly as possible before turning south to face Renly. This also allows him to delay the inevitable confrontation with his brother. Renly, little Renly, for whom Stannis had starved. Damn Ned Stark and Robert, Stannis thinks again and again. He tries to put little Renly out of his mind.
“The Iron Throne is Joffrey's, by rights,” Stannis tells his assembled lords and knights as they prepare to sail. “All those who deny that are our foes.”
The first post of Act I takes place sequentially between Act II and Act III
Stannis Baratheon
~Act I: Duty~
King’s Landing, 301 AC
Stannis wakes in a cold sweat.
He does not know why he wakes. Perhaps it is Justin Massey’s fevered singing – the man vexes him less when conscious – or the cold water trickling down from the ceiling. However, he knows why he cannot sleep.
It is the same dream that has haunted him for the past year – a line of silent, accusatory faces, ever lengthening, ever bloodier. They brought their own deaths upon themselves with their treasons, Stannis reminds himself, as if he could will himself to forget the blood on his hands. But there is no peace.
Catharsis is a lie, he has concluded. A fiction invented to provide a false peace to the damned. I did my duty; I never failed to do my duty, Stannis repeats to himself till he almost believes it. Yet the faces still haunt his dreams. Ned Stark, resignation and fear on his face as Ilyn Payne’s blade falls. Robb Stark, defiant to the end. Renly, coughing out his life in these same rooms. One-armed Rolland Storm and the other conspirators, looks of betrayal directed towards Stannis.
“I die King Joffrey’s faithful servant,” Stannis whispers as the darkness of the Black Cells closes back upon him. There is no illumination for the events that led to this.
---
Dragonstone, 286 AC
He broods over the Painted Table, listening to the bitter howling of the storm outside.
Some of the sycophants who infest King's Landing will tell Robert that it is an auspicious augur. The Baratheons are the descendants of Durran Godsgrief, who defied the gods and birthed a kingdom in the howling fury of their watery wrath. The heir being born to Robert will be Durran reborn, born into the storm, and the hope of the nascent Baratheon dynasty.
To Stannis, it is just another storm that he must endure. The port and ships have been secured, and there is nothing to do but wait.
He traces his way down the edge of the table, polished by three centuries of use till it is varnished with a dark, oily finish, and finds Storm's End. Perhaps it was truly built by a Durran, in some age when the earth was young and legends could grow without fear of the truth. But Storm's End was solid stone, as real as the storm breaking upon Blackwater Bay. It was stone that he had grown to know and love. Stannis remembers the battlements that his emaciated hands had gripped during the siege, the wall from which he had watched his parents die, the damp tunnels through which Davos had brought salted meat and onions.
He will never know Dragonstone in that way. Perhaps it will not be so bad losing it, as well.
Robert's heir. Robert had called him that when exiling him to this accursed rock, ‘the traditional seat of the heir to the Iron Throne.’ Robert could not even bring himself to call Stannis ‘brother.’ That would always be Ned Stark, the stranger who had displaced Robert's own blood in affection. And now Stannis would not even be Robert's heir.
Stannis wonders what he will do when Robert takes away his current pittance to give to the expected child. Perhaps he could sail with Ser Davos to Essos. They could leave the corruption and stench of King's Landing far behind, and explore the world. Perhaps they could yet find a cleaner, better place.
There is only one thing holding him back, yet that one thing is as real as a noose around a criminal's neck. His duty.
Robert has not called him brother in years. But they are the sons of Steffon Baratheon and Cassana Estermont, and that is a bond deeper than any other. So Stannis will continue to serve Robert, and his heirs, whatever that brings.
“A raven.” Faithful Cressen has entered, the maester's steps falling as they have for years. “Queen Cersei has borne a healthy child, a son named Joffrey.”
Joffrey. A Lannister name. At least it has not been named Ned, as Robert wanted. He nods, and Cressen knows Stannis well enough to bow and leave him to brood in the storm.
---
King’s Landing, 286 AC
Stannis meets Joffrey for the first time a few months later. He takes the blonde, squalling baby into his arms, wondering what he is supposed to do, and settles for trying to rock Joffrey. The boy only cries louder, punching air with his tiny fists. It is with relief that Stannis hands him back to a glaring Cersei.
“Do you mock me, too?” Stannis asks the watching Tywin Lannister, with a bitterness that he increasingly wonders why he tries to hide. Tywin must know. All the court knows how Stannis has been exiled to Dragonstone; how dour Ned Stark is Robert's true brother, not dour Stannis; how Robert is always disregarding and belittling him.
Green eyes flecked with gold regard him coolly, and Stannis is reminded that he is but two-and-twenty. “I am not your brother,” Tywin says at last.
“What do you mean?”
“The king's family should not be mocked. If a king is to be respected, he must assure that none dare disregard either him or his representatives.”
“Robert does not understand that.”
“He does not.”
Perhaps the two of them can understand each other, Stannis thinks.
In the end, Robert has not taken away Dragonstone. Stannis is not sure if it is a blessing or a curse. “I have had problems with unruly vassals,” he tells Tywin. The Lord of the Westerlands is a proud man; surely Tywin will understand not wanting to beg for help. But it is help and advice he wants, and Tywin who can provide it.
The Narrow Islands are never rebellious again for as long as Stannis rules them. And it is not just advice that Tywin provides. Lannister gold expands the port and invests in facilities to produce and sell soaps and dyes from the ash that darkens the landscape. Later, Willem Lannister and Joy Hill come as companions for Shireen and Devan Seaworth, and Tywin’s second son is sent to help manage the port. Tyrion, with his senseless promiscuity and acidic humor, grates on Stannis. But the dwarf performs his duties well and Shireen likes him. So Stannis endures the dwarf, and pointedly ignores the stifled laughs that, for some curious reason, seem to follow the two of them.
In return, shipyards and manufacturers of naval stores in the Westerlands are kept busy with acquisitions for the royal fleet, and its textiles and other products are preferred. Renly – he who will soon be getting into bed with the Tyrells – will later ask Stannis how he has been so cheaply bought. But Renly, who rarely even sets foot in Storm’s End, will never appreciate the curious collection of scarred knights, codfish lords, bastards, a dwarf, a mustached lady, and a greyscaled girl that make up Dragonstone’s household. It might be, against all odds, be something like a home.
But everything that he does to improve Dragonstone only brings more mockery from Robert and Renly. This cuts deep, and as the years and winters pass and the Baratheon brothers drift further and further apart, the resentment becomes focused on one man.
---
King’s Landing, 297 AC
Ned Stark.
Ned Stark, whom Robert wants by his side while storming Pyke and who advises mercy for the treacherous Greyjoys when Stannis would have bent Balon Greyjoy’s head over a block.
Ned Stark, who takes one of the Greyjoy whelps with him to Winterfell. By rights, Theon should have been sent to Casterly Rock, Stannis thinks; it is the Westerlands that have suffered the most from the Greyjoys and are the most at risk from future attacks.
And most of all, Stannis resents Ned for taking Robert away from his brothers. Stannis cannot forgive how, almost as soon as their parents were gone, Robert rode off to be with his precious Ned. Robert was the head of House Baratheon and should have been there for his brothers to lean upon; instead, they were left to drift rudderless in life's bitter winds.
Stannis coped by clinging to his duty. Renly instead sought to be like the distant Robert, seeking an elusive happiness in the acclaim of others. And that had included turning against the brother who had starved to protect him, winning cheap laughs from fools who would never truly love him by joining in their mockery of the dour brother.
They are three lonely islands in a sea of people, these Baratheon brothers.
Stannis is introspective enough to know that he is being unduly bitter. Perhaps Lord Stark is not the monster that his long brooding has constructed. But the slights and mockeries take their toll. As the three brothers drift further and further apart, it becomes harder and harder not to hate the Lord of the North.
When Jon Arryn unexpectedly dies and Robert determines his new Hand, Stannis realizes that he cannot bear to be in the same city as Ned Stark.
---
King’s Landing, 298 AC
Stannis returns to King’s Landing to swear fealty to King Joffrey, just in time to witness Ned Stark’s death.
It is perhaps fitting that the man who ripped apart the Baratheon brothers proves to be a false friend for Robert. What true friend would so callously do this? Stannis has been told – and this is confirmed by the traitor’s own confession on the steps of Baelor – of how Robert was barely even in the grave before Ned Stark banded together with Renly to usurp Joffrey’s rightful throne; of how the Queen Mother and new King were only saved by the intervention of the goldcloaks; of how the traitors Renly and Loras Tyrell cut their way to safety, but Ned Stark was captured.
However obvious the man’s treachery, the execution is ill-done. Joffrey has the right to condemn Ned Stark, but Ned Stark has the right to a trial by combat. The new king will have much to learn if he is to rule well. It is no longer a cat over which he has the power of life and death, but a Lord Paramount and millions of people. By executing Ned Stark, Joffrey has ensured that the North will not be pacified easily. Stannis can only hope that in the future, he and Lord Tywin will be able influence young Joffrey for the better.
Yet it is not at Joffrey that the condemned man looks, but at him. Stannis does not presume to say what is in Ned’s eyes, but there is something strange there. Fear? Sorrow? Pity? And then Ned Stark is bowing his head, and Ice falls.
Some of Stannis’ men are whispering mutinously, and the anger breaks out in full force when they are alone. Joffrey has just condemned them to a war to the knife. On the other hand, Renly would overthrow the rules of law and succession and rule by the force of arms, in a world where might made right; and Robb Stark would tear apart the Seven Kingdoms.
In the end, though, there is no true choice. It is to Joffrey that he owes his duty now. Stannis did not want this war, but he will prosecute it to the best of his abilities. Royal galleys are already sweeping the coast, looking for the kidnapped Tyrion Lannister. Stannis and his bannermen will sail shortly to take Maidenpool and Saltpans, then meet with Tywin Lannister. Their plan is to force the North and Riverlands out of the war as quickly as possible before turning south to face Renly. This also allows him to delay the inevitable confrontation with his brother. Renly, little Renly, for whom Stannis had starved. Damn Ned Stark and Robert, Stannis thinks again and again. He tries to put little Renly out of his mind.
“The Iron Throne is Joffrey's, by rights,” Stannis tells his assembled lords and knights as they prepare to sail. “All those who deny that are our foes.”