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Chapter 29: The Queen of Love and Beauty
🕑 Added 2025-09-08 07:40:55 +0000 UTCJorah should be ashamed, Daenerys thought. In his whole story, he had not once spoken his first wife's name. It was as if she had been a ghost in his life even before she was a ghost in the ground.
The knight’s voice was a low, melancholy rumble as he continued. "Not long after she passed, my father took the black and went to the Wall. I became Lord of Bear Island in his stead. Suitors came, and I was considering my choices, but then the ironborn rebelled. Balon Greyjoy declared himself a king."
Dany frowned. "When was this? Before I was born?"
A dry, humorless smile touched Jorah's lips. "I am not quite that old, Princess." His face stiffened. "It was the sixth year of the Usurper's reign. You would have been a girl of five or six."
The same age, then, as when Theon Greyjoy became a ward of Winterfell. "What were the ironborn thinking?" she wondered aloud, her mind turning to strategy. "Why wait until Robert's rule was stable? Why not strike during the chaos of the rebellion itself?"
"The ironborn have always been a strange, mad folk," Jorah said, shaking his head. "Perhaps Balon thought the new king’s foundation was weak. Or perhaps he had been held in check. His own father had remained neutral during the war, only declaring for Robert after your brother Rhaegar fell at the Trident. But his fleet was smashed, and he was killed. Balon succeeded him, but by then, the Usurper was on the throne."
"It took him years to consolidate his power," he continued, "but when he did, he raised his banners. And he was defeated. His two eldest sons were killed, and his last, a boy of ten, was taken as a hostage by Lord Stark. To celebrate this great victory, King Robert declared a tourney at Lannisport. And it was there… it was there I met Lynesse."
His voice changed, the gruff weariness replaced by a soft, aching tenderness.
"She was half my age. She had come from Oldtown with her father to watch her brothers compete. The first time I saw her… I could not look away. I had never felt such a thing. On an impulse, I begged her for her favor, to fight for her. I never dreamed she would say yes. But she did."
He looked out over the wasteland, but Daenerys knew he was seeing a tourney field from a lifetime ago. "You must understand, Your Grace. A tourney is a sport for southern knights. We Northmen are not bred for it. But with her favor tied to my arm, I felt as if the Warrior himself was guiding my lance. For days, I was unbeatable. In the end, it was I who placed the crown of blue winter roses upon her head and named her the Queen of Love and Beauty."
"Spurred on by the wine and the glory," he confessed, a look of self-loathing on his face, "I did a mad thing. I went to her father that night, Lord Leyton Hightower, and asked for her hand."
Even Dany, who had spent her life in exile, knew what that name meant. The Hightowers of Oldtown were as old as the kings of the First Men, fabulously wealthy, and commanded a power as great as any of the great houses. Lord Tywin Lannister himself had once offered his son Tyrion to a daughter of House Hightower and had been rebuffed as if he had offered an insult. For Jorah Mormont, lord of a poor, remote island of fisherfolk, to make such a request… it was a miracle Lord Leyton had not had him thrown out.
"But he did not refuse," Jorah said, still sounding surprised. "And we were married."
"The bliss, however, was short-lived. Lynesse… she was a flower of the south. My home was a shock to her. Bear Island was too cold, too wet, too remote. Our great hall, built of logs, felt like a hovel to her after the shining castles of her home. There were no balls, no mummers, no singers to entertain her. The food was plain. My people were happy to have full bellies, but for a highborn lady of the Reach, every meal was a torment."
He gave a sad, self-deprecating smile. "I thought, at the time, that I would do anything to see her happy. So I hired a cook from her hometown. I paid a bard to make the perilous journey to our shores. I bought her silks and jewels for feasts she could not attend. Bear Island is a place where every silver coin is counted, but for her, I became an expert on the price of gemstones. Now you see how I could value that fire opal so skillfully."
"I tried to give her whatever she wanted. The Usurper was a generous king, and the prize for winning his tourney was a fortune—fifty thousand gold dragons."
"So much?" Dany gasped. She remembered Viserys buying two sausages with two copper pennies, and then stealing her half. She knew the value of a single coin. Fifty thousand gold dragons was a king's ransom.
"Yes," Jorah said with a deep, shuddering sigh. "A fortune my island could not produce in a thousand years. For a time, that gold was enough. I bought her a ship, and we sailed the world so she could attend the festivals and balls she craved. We went to Lannisport, to King's Landing, to Lys and Pentos. The farthest we ever sailed… was to Braavos."
"From Bear Island to Braavos?" Dany was shocked. It was a journey of unimaginable length and peril, around an entire continent. For his wife, Jorah had truly risked everything.
"For money, and for glory," he said, his voice turning bitter, "I continued to compete in the tourneys. But the miracle of Lannisport never returned. I never won again. And every loss cost me a warhorse and a suit of armor."
"How much are such things?" she asked.
"A good warhorse costs three gold dragons. A fine suit of full plate, five. And I had to buy the best," he explained, a craftsman's pride touching his voice. "A knight knows armor as he knows his own hand. I can see the flaws in an opponent's plate at a hundred paces. And they could see mine. I could not risk my life in a tourney—a nobleman’s game!—because of inferior steel. Most of the knights who die in the lists are freeriders, poor men seeking a name. The great lords, in their masterwork armor, are almost invincible."
He fell silent, lost in the memory of his own ruin.
"What is the difference," she asked gently, "between a freerider and a knight?"
