In Which Clarke Lannister is Introduced
Clarke couldn’t sleep. The night seemed to stretch endlessly before her, stifling and suffocating in the blue dark of her bedroom. She was tired to be sure—she’d been up since the previous dawn ministering to her mother, as the matriarch of the Lannister clan sorted out the details of the royal engagement.
Anyone who had ever had the pleasure, or misfortune, to encounter Abigail Lannister, knew that she was a force. Clarke had grown up hearing stories of her mother that seemed almost too idealized to be true—stories about a young effervescent girl with a gift for healing and a boundless compassion—who had caught the eye of Clarke’s father and eventually captured his heart. These stories painted an alluring vision of Abigail in her youth, which was apparently vivacious and vivid.
To be fair, Clarke could even recall a time when she had been close to her mother. A time when her father and brother were still living and breathing. Vaguely, as though watching through a fog, she could see back to when they had been some semblance of a family. Her brother letting her play with the hunting knife he had gotten for his birthday, while their mother laughed and scolded the two of them playfully. Their father sitting in a formidable armchair by the great hearth, smiling and staring at the fire until his eyelids grew heavy and drooped into sleep. Before politics ruined everything.
But there was no use ruminating on the past, Clarke insisted to herself. Her mother, as she had once been, was gone from her. The premature deaths of not only her husband but also her eldest son seemed to have insured her causticity. With the loss of her first child, Abigail had removed herself from the realm of affection and attachment.
It was almost as if the possibility of love was too painful to be born. Clarke could sense the revocation of that bond in every interaction that passed between herself and her mother.
It was as though Abigail had given up Clarke, and dived headfirst into the realm of political subterfuge and social advancement. For most of Clarke’s adolescence, she had been on her own, neglected as many court children were. But when she came of marrying age, and her mother finally noticed the easygoing camaraderie that existed between the King’s firstborn and her own daughter, Clarke’s fate was sealed. She would make a fine queen. But more importantly, she would make a fine Lannister queen.
The first time the subject of an engagement had been brought up, Clarke had laughed it off, internally suppressing a flash of panic, which echoed out from the very core of her being. She had always been close to the crown prince.
Wells Targaryen was lovely to be sure, and when he was all decked out in the imperial garb, he made a striking figure. There was something rather lonesome about him though, some sense of tragedy or solitude that made him inaccessible. Abigail merely referred to his aloofness as the result of, “a delicate constitution”, but Clarke knew this was reductive. He had somehow escaped the madness that characterized much of the Targaryen family line, but the generations of inbreeding had still exacted a cost.
The prince had been born with an illness of the blood, so that when cut or lacerated, he could not staunch the flow of life from his wounds. His mother had forbidden him from playing too roughly, from riding horses, or practicing with swords. The risk was too great, and he was the only male heir. When they had been children, Clarke had been the only one who would sit quietly with him while their other playmates went off on courtyard forays or played at dueling.
Perhaps that was why the two of them had always been so close—she had been recovering from the loss of her brother, and he from the denial of a carefree mobility he was forbidden from accessing. But their relationship had only ever been a friendship, and Clarke could not fathom incorporating any hint of romance into their dynamic.
In the beginning, there had been more firmness in her refusals. Clarke was terribly stubborn, had always been. She loved Wells, but not like that. She was a leader, but she had no desire to be queen.
But her mother had not cared about that. The only thing that seemed to matter was ensuring the Lannister position in relation to the Iron Throne. Clarke had a duty, according to Abigail, to put her family before herself.
And so in the end, Clarke had acquiesced. She had never expected the Targaryens to go along with any of it, and she knew that Wells harbored no love for her. But it had never been about love. Power was what mattered at King’s Landing.
And now, as the wedding became more and more of a reality, Clarke felt as though she were becoming less and less of herself. The entire day before had passed in a daze of panic.
That night, as she sat, mostly undressed before her vanity, she had stared down at the long pale lines of her arms, entranced by the way her own skin looked in the candle light. She was fairly sure that if she stared long and hard enough at herself, her whole body might dissolve. At first, the thought terrified her, but as she continued to stare, throat tight and unable to draw breath, she thought that perhaps a profound material dissolution might be better than the life being a political pawn would afford her.