The Weight of Honest Words
Twenty-Sixth Day of the Twelfth Month 293 AC
Making a mental note to dispatch inquisitors to Bandallon at once with more to follow at the beginning of next month you bid farewell to its fearful lord, cutting the pleasantries as much as courtesy allows. You would almost have preferred the quarrels about Dornish influence. Lya unsurprisingly notices your bleak mood before you had traveled even two leagues down the road. "What's the matter?"
"That man probably shouldn't be in command of a fiefdom with all the power and responsibility it implies, but he is going to be anyway because he was born into it, it's really no different from formalized corruption. Oh..." you motion to the town behind you. "Others will fill the gap; inquisitors, administrators, legion commanders even, but they are likely going to have to go over and above their own mandate. If we assign someone ambitious they will likely use the lord's weakness to their own advancement."
"Not everywhere can be a model of efficiency," she points out. "People aren't Valyrian servitors to all fit neatly in a row."
"I know, I know, grit in the gears, it's accounted for in most places, but not being properly aware of the dangers of the changing world, of fiends and Deep Ones and other foes...? That is a far higher risk than taxes not being paid on time."
"Not that different from a lord who couldn't keep brigands off the main roads and slavers off his coast," Ser Richard offers. "There's a reason weakness makes for contempt among bannermen and neighbors both. Likely as not it'll be even worse with Lord Tybalt, so when someone else should slip the reigns from his hands they'll look the other way. Better than it be one of Lady Alinor's clerks or an inquisitor than a scheming wife or brother with usurpation on his mind."
"Fair point," you nod, your mind more at ease on the matter, though you hope the next lord you visit will be more adept in carrying out their duty.
***
Thankfully, Lady Glenda Ball lives up to that hope. While your meeting did begin with wariness enough to almost chill the very air of her otherwise bright and airy study, as soon as you confessed your actual opinion of your father and his reign hostility quickly gave way to bemusement.
"I will be entirely frank, my lady, my father was a worse king than Robert Baratheon and he would have likely dealt with current circumstances even more poorly than the Usurper currently does."
He would have probably sold his kingdom and his soul to the Abyss within a week of meeting his first demon with a glib tongue, you think but do not add aloud.
"So you say the rebels were right to raise their banners?" she challenges.
"No," you answer instantly. "A Great Council would have served the realm better and spared its people having to bleed and die at Ashford, at the Trident and in dozens of other battles. It would have spared the butchery of the Sack of King's Landing. Aerys the Second of his name was unfit to wear a crown, that does not make Robert Baratheon worthy of the Iron Throne."
"And how would this council have imposed its will on the king?" Lady Ball asks, eyes narrowing in thought. You are evidently not what she had been expecting.
"A palace coup." The words leave shocked silence in their wake.
When it is clear the lady would not break it herself you add: "There is, my lady, a pact between the monarch and their bannermen, the very kingdom they rule, not the sort of pact that is forged in sorcery or inked in blood, but no less real for it. When a king breaks the trust of his lords and his people he should be removed. I will see that oath upheld with every skill and power at my disposal."
"Very well... Your Grace," the lady dips into a simple courtesy and offers her House's pledge.
The next lord you are to meet presents an interesting prospect. It is said Lord Martyn Mullendore is an avid collector of exotic birds. You can certainly provide him with interesting gifts in that regard, from the farthest corners of the world and beyond, you could even make him a unique bird in feather and song both in the Flesh-Forge. An interesting prospect for introducing magic not of the fey to the Lords of the Reach.
What manner of songbird to you gift Lord Mullendore?
[] A rare Sothoryi bird
[] A bird from the Endless Sky itself such as the world has never known
[] A flesh-forged bird of extraordinary song and plumage
[] Write in
OOC: Not a very weighty vote I'll grant, but it should be an interesting moment and it will have some impact on how you want to introduce the Reach in general to the wider implications of magic.
. Just trying to imagine what those hulking mass of bloodlust and anger would do to the Material World. Especially within our purview.
)