A Lioness Still Has Claws | Female Tywin Lannister | ASOIAF/GOT

The Defiance Of Duskendale

EDITED: 8th Jan 2022

277AC

Tya had thought very little of Denys Darklyn's proposal at the time. She had been holding court from the Iron Throne - Aerys had been overcome with another fit of uncharacteristic piety and had decided to pray with the High Septon - when the proud Lord Darklyn had come before her with the desire to win a charter for Duskendale that gave the town more autonomy from the crown.

It was a foolish idea to ask, and she would have been a fool to agree. Tya refused him with some sharp words, and when he became angry at a woman telling him no and asked to speak to the king, she dismissed him with some even sharper ones. She then put the matter to the back of her mind - as close as Tya came to forgetting things - believing it sorted.

Darklyn had the nerve to come before the crown with a borderline insulting request for a charter, but she had never thought he would dare to start withholding his payments to the crown. Yet that was exactly what he did.

Evidently, during his time in King's Landing, the man had observed the relationship between King Aerys and Lady Tya; how when she suggested anything, he often made a point of doing the opposite, slighting her at every opportunity and delighting in the (very quiet) rumours that he was the father of her son Tyrion. A matter that she had believed to be a non-issue suddenly became a thorn in her side, as Lord Denys wrote directly to the king himself, inviting him to Duskendale - without the 'nagging presence' of his Hand - to hear his petition for a new charter himself.

It would be unwise for Aerys to accept the visit for multiple reasons, first and foremost that it set a terrible precedent; lords could not be seen to dictate their king's actions and get away with such insolence. Second, because if Darklyn was fool enough to withhold his payments from a court all but led by the woman who had destroyed the Reynes and Tarbecks for doing a similar thing, he was fool enough to do something rash like lay a trap for Aerys.

There were other layers to this, however. In the Small Council meeting where the king read out the letter from Lord Denys detailing all of this, Tya did not immediately weigh in on that matter for this reason. This was not unusual for her - she preferred to listen and then speak her piece at the end after judging the situation correctly, and people tended to do as she said - but now more than ever she needed time to think.

She knew that if she told the king to refuse the visit, Aerys may go anyway just to spite her. And perhaps it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world for him to walk into a trap. Rhaegar could be king then; Tya was starting to feel more comfortable with her position in that event, considering how the prince still sought her out almost regularly to discuss various matters.

But if she encouraged the visit, and it was a trap - or even if Aerys refused to go because she told him to - there would no doubt be (reasonable) accusations of treason flying around. Accepting the invitation was such a blatantly stupid thing to do that for Tya - whom all could admit was not stupid, even if they despised her - to advise the king to accept was as good as a confession of wishing him dead.

No, she would have to work on the assumption that Darklyn wasn't as suicidally moronic as she feared - hoped? - he might be, and tell Aerys to avoid the visit on the basis of not indulging the demands of every lord who fancied a favour from the crown. And he would likely do the opposite.

So far, the king seemed to be leaning towards declining the invitation. Time to remedy that.

"I agree with you, your Grace," She said, and everyone seemed rather surprised; those words had become incredibly rare from her in recent years. "Darklyn presumes too much. If you intend to go to Duskendale, do so with an army and demand the gold he owes you. If he refuses, storm the town and remove his head - his heir should learn to obey well enough. Perhaps take a hostage for good measure, and you'll have no more trouble from Duskendale during your reign,"