Chapter 38: Chapter 38: Civil War
While Aiden was enjoying the festivities with the Mormonts, things were not going well for Robert Baratheon. His fury was causing many problems for his rule, Jon Arryn was recently murdered within the Vale. This outraged Robert greatly.
During his trip to retrieve Lysa and his son Robyn and to bring them to Kings Landing, he was set upon by a contingent of knights under the employ of Petyr Baelish. A dagger was left to point towards the Westerlands, a Valyrian steel dagger.
Petyr wanted as much chaos with the crown as possible, he had thought to blame it on the Reach or Riverlands, however he knew just how dangerous the Lannister's were. Tywin Lannister was Hand for the Mad King for many years, so he was very politically astute as well as a great military strategist.
It wasn't until the tournament at Harrenhal that Tywin stepped down from being Hand of the King, Rhaegar took over as Hand after he retired, the reason for him stepping down was due to Aerys refusing the marriage between Cercei and Rhaegar as well as the Mad King making his son Jaime part of the Kingsguard, taking away his chosen heir completely.
Petyr knew that Tywin was after the throne, so was the Reach, but the Lannisters were much more dangerous. The Riverlands and North were obviously not after the throne, they hadn't made any attacks since the tournament in Lannisport, they mearly began to raise their alert and reinforced their towns and castles close to the Vale, Crownlands and Westerlands.
Places like Harrenhal and Castle Darry were sent additional men to watch the Vale and Crownlands for any invasion forces, both of those castles were near the Trident, which is where the three rivers that snake all thru the Riverlands and into the Westerlands meet before flowing into the sea.
Then Pinkmaiden, Stoney Sept and Riverrun were reinforced against any incursions from the Westerlands. The Reach too had began mearly reinforcing the major towns and keeps that bordered the Stormlands and Westerlands. They already were guarded against Dorne since they have always had a bad relationship with Dorne.
Petyr's goal was to bring down Robert, that way he could either cause Robert to do something stupid and lose the support of the Vale, that way he could move into the Vale and use Lysa and Robyn to control it completely. He could then let Joffrey and the rest of the kingdoms tear themselves apart as he grew his strength in the Vale.
He knew that would cause the most chaos in the realm, especially considering Joffrey was likened to the Mad King himself. Joffrey was sadistic from a young age, he tortured many of the maids causing many to be scarred physically and emotionally, which Cercei covered up, but word still spread of the Crown Prince and his sadistic nature towards women.
He had yet to actually kill someone, but each time he inched closer and closer to killing, his torture got worse each and every time, making it very difficult for the Red Keep to find replacement maids. Most maids were related to the guards, their wives or daughters, and no guard wanted their relatives to be subjected to the treatment of the Prince.
When Robert learned of Jon Arryn being attacked while enroute to the Vale, he was angered by this greatly. He demanded an investigation, to which once he was brought the Valyrian steel dagger, he believed that Tywin was involved. Robert thought that Tywin was after Jon's position as Hand of the King.
So Robert chose Lord Arstan Selmy of Harvest Hall as Hand of the King to spite Tywin. Arstan Selmy was the great-nephew of Barristan Selmy, so they were a very loyal house to the Baratheons, not only because they were from the Stormlands and under House Baratheon already, but Robert spared Barristan's life after he took the throne so that won even more of their loyalty.
This however had just fractured his kingdom even further, not just from the Lannisters but also from within the Baratheon family itself as well. Stannis had expected to be made Hand of the King, he was the younger brother of Robert and was supposed to be Lord of Storm's End, but Robert had stripped him of his inheritance and gave him Dragonstone instead. Their youngest brother Renly was given Storm's End instead.
Upon learning of Robert's choice of Hand, Stannis left Kings Landing and returned to Dragonstone without notifying the crown or small council. When questioned, he mearly stated he had to defend against the Ironborn since they had began attacking once again, which no one believed. It wasn't that they disbelieved the Ironborn weren't attacking, but they never attacked Kings Landing directly since it was on the opposite side of the continent.
Tywin wasn't too happy about not being named Hand, but he ultimately didn't mind it too much, his daughter and grandchildren were queen and princes already, so the position was just redundant. What he was more pissed about were the Ironborn attacks on his lands.
For months he had been gathering forces to make incursions into the Riverlands and Reach, so his forces were far from the southern coastal cities. This made those coastal towns vulnerable, so the Ironborn were quite successful in their raids due to most of those villages were heavily undermanned.
Tywin had to pull much of his forces that were set to go into the Reach, they had to be withdrawn back, he had them follow the coast back west to try to stop the Ironborn raids that were heading east along the coast. Tywin had lost more ships, as well as many small folk being taken by the Ironborn in their raids.
To top it off, Lannisport had lost quite a few people after the tournament, many of the prostitutes and their families moved to Riverlands and the Reach. They had used their earning from Aiden's fight to move from Lannisport, they didn't want to be against Aiden so moved to kingdom's that declared neutrality or for the Targaryens.
Many saw this building civil war for what it was, a war against the Stag and Dragon that didn't have a definitive conclusion. They saw that their lives had progressively gotten worse under Robert, he had done nothing but raise taxes and drain their savings.
This was mainly Petyr Baelish's doing, he used the higher taxes to drain the common people of their money and buisnesses, using the money he was extorting from the crown to buy up buisnesses, adding to his own wealth and networking.
After Jon Arryn's death the Vale chose to become isolated, Lysa Arryn at the behest of Petyr had refused Robert's summons, refusing to send troops for his war against Targaryen loyalists. This had a dramatic effect on Renly Baratheon.
Renly began to feel his older brothers were incompetent, unworthy of the throne, he felt he could do even better. This was thanks to Varys, he had many incandescent meetings with Renly, these meetings were mostly about Varys' concerns for the people should Robert continue as king.
Varys knew some of Petyr's plans, he was also aware of the issues with Robert's bastard children with Cercei. He was not for the Targaryens returning, but he knew that even the Targaryens were better than Robert at this point.
Robert was seeing enemies everywhere, reminiscent of the Mad King in his later years of rule, it was as if Robert wanted war to break out and was feeding into it by not putting long term thought into any of his plans. He demanded things from the Lords using the crown, however his rule was never strong enough to justify such demands in the first place.
This in turn caused more resentment with the common people to build as the days went by, the throne was already swimming in debt and wars cost money, especially civil war. If you are at war with a seperate nation, there is people and possessions you can bring back as a reward for winning battles.
Civil wars are different, taking gold from your enemy just weakens your own economy overall since you aren't truly adding to your economic growth, just relocating it somewhere else.
This can be seen just from Roberts Rebellion alone, the Targaryens were able to move a lot of wealth before the sacking of Kings Landing but Robert had to clear the coffers to pay the armies for them helping him win. So he already started off with a smaller economy than the Targaryens.
It wasn't as if the North was rich, or even the Riverlands or the Reach, although the Reach did have the second riches lands, they were already a part of the continent's economic structure. So this war only exacerbated the economic issues, now many kingdoms didn't want to pay taxes to the crown, because they couldn't. Its expensive to maintain standing armies.
Dorne too was feeling the effects of this, had the Martell family not had such strong loyalty of the Dornish people, Doran would've easily found himself in dire straits. Even more so if they knew that there was a disconnect in the Martell family itself.
It wasn't just the Lords that were creating issues in Westeros, religion began to step in as well. The Faith of the Seven were calling for a holy crusade against the North, they were adamantly opposed to anything related to magic. They also weren't big fans of the Targaryens who were regular practitioners of incest, this was why the Faith turned on the Targaryens so quickly after Robert took over as king.
The Citadel had also made their moves, they had reached out to the House of the Undying, hiring two Warlocks to resolve the issue with Aiden and the dragons. The Warlocks were known to horde dragon eggs in an attempt to hatch a dragon, they knew dragons were magical beings, so they had been looking to drain one of its magic and increase their own powers.
They already did this with humans, much like Brynden Rivers, they sacrificed living people with innate magic to increase their own, it was why they were so feared and loathed by the people of Essos. They were the reason that even in Essos, magic was rare. They actively searched for untrained people, and would sacrifice whole families if they found even one child or member with magic potential.
The Citadel offered the Warlocks the dragons and the Targaryen children for their services, which was something they couldn't refuse. Not only would they get five dragons, but five magical children that they could use as birthing cauldrons. They could use the boys to not only impregnate the girls to produce more magical babies, but the boys could impregnate multiple girls at once, giving the House of the Undying a unlimited source of magically potential babies that they could drain.
When word came back to the Citadel that the Warlocks were already enroute to Westeros, they were ecstatic. Although they hated magic, they felt the only way to fight magic was with magic. Scorpions were just too ineffective.
Although a bolt fired from a Scorpion could kill a dragon, Dorne had done it before, it was hard to hit a dragon in a way to actually kill it with a bolt. It was more luck than anything else, you had to hit it thru the eye or mouth to get a kill, otherwise you just piss the dragon off should you not kill it with that bolt.
So unlike Tywin who trusted the technology of the Scorpion, the Citadel felt that getting the Warlocks to do the deed would be the best since they would also have plausable deniability should they fail.
The last thing the Maesters wanted was a pissed off dragon coming to Old Town and burning their Citadel to the ground. This was why they had been working against the Targaryens in the shadows for hundreds of years. By using mothers as test subjects for different concoction's if the child had even a small chance to have Targaryen blood.
The Reach was facing the worst of the troubles, they had the most food of all the kingdoms, so they were being targeted the most. The Westerlands, Stormlands, Crownlands and Dorne all tried to take what they could.
Even with Randyll Tarly, who was said to be the best military commander in Westeros since it was only him who ever defeated Robert Baratheon in a military scuffle during the rebellion, the Reach suffered many losses since he could only be at one place at a time.
Just because he laid out the defenses across the Reach, the battlefield is fluid and ever changing, without additional commanders who had a keen sense of how to react as the battle progressed, they suffered casualties on many fronts.
If not for the Westerlands having to pull back much of their forces to try to defend against the Ironborn and Riverlands, Highgarden would've been in danger. Randyll Tarly could only keep Dorne and Stormlands in check since Horn Hill was in the southeast of the Reach.
Not only that but not all in Dorne were against the Reach, Starfall knew more about what was going on than other Dornish houses since that was the seat of House Dayne. So their refusal to send soldiers had also caused many other houses in Dorne to question what was going on.
It was widely known that House Dayne and House Martell were close, so when Starfall didn't answer Doran's call, this caused a lot of doubt within Dorne. So this coupled with the common peoples love for the Tyrells added a little relief for the Reach, it was easy to recruit men to fight for them.
Olenna Tyrell also was very astute, she was able to move events in a way to receive mercenaries from Essos to bolster her forces enough to prolong the war. She had ordered that their armies only defend, not to chase fleeing enemies. Time was on their side, she knew Robert couldn't maintain a long war, each day the war continued inched his rule closer to bankruptcy.
She had one thing she could count on, the Iron Bank. Robert was heavily indebted to the Iron Bank in Braavos. Similar to the Lannisters who had their well known saying "A Lannister always pays his debts" the bank had one of their own, "The Iron Bank will have it's due."
Given time, Olenna knew that the Iron Bank would begin to send collectors to Robert, and unless he pays, they will work against Robert as well. They would back the Targaryens to take back the throne, or anyone who would agree to take on the debt the throne had, they would even back a foreigner if they wanted the Iron Throne.
This was why Olenna aimed for a conservative defensive war. Time was on their side, all they needed to do was keep Robert at bay. She was also aware the Maesters were up to something, she had spies within the Citadel and was close with the Hightower family who basically ran the Citadel.
Upon finding out from Leyton Hightower about the small faction within the Citadel and what they planned, Olenna sent out ravens to Winterfell, Riverrun and Starfall. She wanted to cement themselves with Aiden and the Targaryens. It was the wisest of choices, unlike others, she knew the devastation a single dragon could bring upon the world, and the Targaryens had five.
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