Prince of Storms

Prince of Storms: Chapter 1

   All in all, Rynden found he liked Winterfell.
  

 He had never been to the north in his life and had spent a good portion of his time in King's Landing with the rest of his time spent going back and forth between Storm's End and Casterly Rock.

His father had often told him stories about the north and his dear friend who was the Warden of it, Ned Stark. King Robert would often regale him with tales of his boyhood in the Eyrie with Lord Eddard under the watchful care and eyes of Jon Arryn. His father never failed to talk about what good days those were, how those were the days when you didn't become a man until you had tasted the warmth of a woman's flesh at age fourteen or your speared a bore at three and ten years of age.

Needless to say his father's passions did not lie in politics.

So when Robert Baratheon announced that he would be moving the entire court to Winterfell to see his old friend Ned and ask him to replace the recently deceased Hand of the King Jon Arryn, Rynden was of course very interested. He had heard of the rugged beauty of the north and after the stories his father had told, he was eager to see it.

His mother on the other hand was the most vocal about her desire to not go. She whispered to his younger siblings that it was a land of perpetual snow and ice and that the people who dwelt there were savages by nature.

It all served to make Rynden roll his eyes. His mother had never been to the north either, so what gave her the right to judge before seeing it?

It was within her character however as she judged people without speaking to them and had spent her entire life doing it. She judged his father, she judged her children, she judged his uncles and more importantly she judged every other house as unworthy to live in the shadow of House Lannister.

Gods but it was tedious at times.

Rynden absolutely refused to ride in the wheelhouse with her during the trip because of it. He rode his own horse beside his father all the way there and ignored Joffrey's grousing about the constant cold as they rode.

His father would simply reply that it was good for his lungs and that he had spent too much time breathing in the stink of King's Landing to know what good clean air actually was, causing Rynden to laugh. For his part, Rynden loved to ride a horse, he had been doing it since he was a child. He was the only one with the Baratheon looks and so it made him more of interest to his father as they had something to connect them.

His mother would often say he looked more Baratheon than Lannister while Joffrey was the complete opposite and that she had one child to represent each house.

Joffrey's golden hair and green eyes were stark contrasts to Rynden's raven locks and sea blue eyes. Rynden had also inherited his father's build which gave him several inches on his brother even though they were the same age. It was a constant burr in Joffrey's side when they would stand side by side and Rynden would be three inches taller than him and twice as lean. Joffrey was slight and had an almost sickly pallor to his skin. Rynden's skin was tan and healthy from spending long hours with his father in the sparring yard and going on hunts with him.

As the second prince Rynden had time to do all this as he would not inherit the crown, didn't have to worry about a realm to rule and had more time on his hands to pursue other interests.

While he loved to spend time with his father, Robert wasn't the most intellectually inclined person and so the one man the second prince did go to for that was his Uncle Tyrion.