Robert Baratheon had overthrown the Targaryens with thunder and steel, then taken the Iron Throne for himself.
For a while he’d been the shining hope of Westeros, the man who would drag the realm into a new golden age.
Instead he spent the next seventeen years ignoring the realm completely.
He handed every scrap of real power to his Hand, Jon Arryn, and spent his days hunting, drinking, and fucking anything that moved.
“At least he’s not some power-mad tyrant,” Aragorn thought from his corner of the cellar.
He sipped his own wine and listened to the noise around him.
“But gods help the poor bastard who has to be Hand to a king like that.” The tavern door creaked open and a blast of cold air rushed in.
Everyone pulled their cloaks tighter.
A heavyset sailor with thick eyebrows and small, sharp eyes stepped inside.
He looked like a man who spent most of his life translating for foreign captains and was finally enjoying a rare day off.
He ordered a sour wine, knocked it back in one go, and spotted a regular he liked talking to.
He made straight for the man’s table.
“You hear the news?” the sailor said, leaning in with a conspiratorial look.
“The last Targaryen girl married the Dothraki Horse Lord.” Aragorn’s ears perked up at the word Dothraki.
In the old game they’d been a crude mash-up of every nomadic warrior stereotype the devs could think of—bare-chested men and women in painted leather vests who hated armor but could shoot a bow from horseback like devils.
Players used to complain about how cartoonishly savage they were.
Aragorn had joined those threads more than once.
“What the hell happened?” the other man asked, eyes wide.
“Some Pentoshi magister arranged the whole thing.
Poor girl.
Those Dothraki are animals.
I heard they even fuck their horses—” The sailor took another drink and kept going.
“Robert’s probably shitting himself right now.
They say the Horse Lord has a hundred thousand screamers.
If they ever cross the sea we’re all fucked.
I don’t have much worth stealing, but I’d still like to keep breathing.” “They don’t have ships,” his friend pointed out.
“Dothraki call the sea ‘poison water.’ They won’t get on anything a horse can’t drink.” “True enough,” the sailor admitted.
He lowered his voice.
“But someone gave the girl three dragon eggs at the wedding.” A man at the next table leaned in, suddenly interested.
“Three dragons?
Like Aegon the Conqueror?
That’d change everything.” “You’re out of your fucking mind,” his drunk friend slurred, waving a hand and nearly falling off his stool.
“Dragons are gone.
Extinct.
Dead and buried.” Aragorn stared into his cup.
In the game, dragons had been the ultimate status symbol.
Hatching a dragon egg took a ridiculous amount of experience and gold, but plenty of players ground themselves half to death for the chance.
There had been so many dragons at one point that a big gathering of dragonriders almost crashed the servers.
The devs eventually released an expansion that destroyed the Valyrian Freehold and slashed the dragon population way down.
After the servers shut for good, every last one of them vanished with the data.
The tavern owner topped off a few cups and snorted.
“Your friend’s right.
You’ve lost it.” “Her name’s Daenerys,” the fat sailor said.
“Not Dana or Dara or whatever you said.
Daenerys.
Named after the one who married that Dornish prince back in Daeron the Second’s day.” “Is she pretty?” one of the whores asked.
“If her brother’s stories are true, she’s the most beautiful woman alive.
Silver-gold hair and eyes like purple crystals.” Those were the old Targaryen markers—silver or platinum hair and violet eyes.
For centuries they’d stood out like peacocks among the rest of Westeros.
“Shame she’s about to get ridden like a broodmare by a bunch of horse-fuckers.” “I figured the brother would marry her himself.” Targaryens still followed the old Valyrian custom of keeping it in the family—brother and sister, uncle and niece, cousin and cousin.
The rest of the realm had mostly dropped that centuries ago.
“He didn’t marry her,” the whore said with a smirk.
“Doesn’t mean he hasn’t fucked her.” “The Beggar King’s desperate.
I heard he even sold their mother’s crown.” Aragorn nearly sprayed wine across the table.
He choked it down, shoulders shaking with silent laughter, and had to cough twice to cover it.
Beggar King.
The name fit too well.
A man reduced to selling his own mother’s crown really was nothing more than a beggar wearing a dead title.