Alysanne Lannister was, by all accounts, a lion.
When Melissa Blackwood bore six children, each entered the realm with the various dark shades of hair familiar to the Blackwoods, descendants of First Men. The Lannister line was no match. Until Alys...
Choices. Each person made them and each of them would be forced to live—or die—with the consequences of them.
It had been her late father, Lord Devron Blackwood's choice to marry his only daughter to Alastor Lannister, heir to Casterly Rock and the Westerlands and Commander of the City Watch in Kingslanding. It had been her choice to attempt to find contentment in such a strained arrangement and it had been her husband's choice not to do the same.
Alastor Lannister chose his honor as a gold cloak over his duty as a husband and father. He died for that choice in the Rebellion.
Left widowed with six young children during wartime and trapped in the Red Keep with a mad king, Melissa Blackwood made choices to survive, to keep her children alive. In a never ending swirl of danger, betrayal, and wildfire, she would not allow herself and her children to become needless victims like many before and surely after them.
News of the seventh came and Melissa had never felt a need to escape with her life more.
No mortal could escape war. It came for everyone. And for Melissa Blackwood, it finally came in the form of the Sack of Kingslanding. Never had she experienced the bloodshed, the terror of man to this extent before. As a woman born of nobility, her fight had always been on the childbed and among quick-tongued lords and ladies.
When they came she'd been forced to hide her children within Maegor's tunnels. If they were found by Aerys, he'd slaughter them for Tywin's siege of the city. She'd tried to find Elia, her dearest friend, and instead found the Mountain with the brutalized remains of her and her young children. It was a sight that would haunt Melissa for the rest of her life, plaguing her nightmares with images of her own children in Aegon and Rhaenys' place.
When Gregor Clegane had turned his stare onto her tearful form, Melissa knew she would not be spared from the same fate. She was no Lannister any longer.
She ran and she ran.
She ran right into Tywin Lannister, the man behind it all and Melissa made another choice.
She would stand behind the lions so they would not turn their blood soaked claws and fangs onto her first.
there i was again tonight forcing laughter, faking smiles same old tired, lonely place walls of insincerity shifting eyes and vacancy vanished when i saw your face all i can say is it was enchanting to meet you —enchanted, taylor swift
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—pre-episode i of season i occurs over several years act i: to be seen is to be loved
