IMPORTANT: I have done an edit on every single chapter of this story in the last few days, mainly to fix a few glaring mistakes that I am grateful for the readers for pointing out. First and foremost was Jason's character; I agree he was very bland, so I've tried to go back and give him more of a personality. The major plot points are unchanged but I wanted to flag this up just in case you find his character very different from now on, or if there are any inconsistencies with what you have already read. Please let me know what you think of this!

277AC

The king had refused to leave the Red Keep since his return from Duskendale. Nor had he let anyone near him with a blade except the Kingsguard, not even to cut his hair, which had grown long and rather straggly. His nails were worse, either ragged or just starting to curl over at the ends.

It was clear the experience had deeply shaken him, and with all of House Darklyn dead, they would never find out exactly what horrors he had gone through. Not that Tya cared more than morbid curiosity, and the fact that whatever had happened there had plunged the king into what could only be described as blatant madness.

Aerys had always been mercurial and proud, hot-tempered but quick to laugh, and quick to change his mind. In his youth, that had made him charming. To most people, at least; it had always rather annoyed her. In the later years before Duskendale, he had acted rashly and foolishly, particularly in his treatment of his Hand. Yet now, his jealousy of Tya's reputation and his suspicious nature were ten times more exaggerated than ever before, beyond simple spite and into manic paranoia and outright delusion. 

Many people in court had asked Tya why she didn't just resign in the face of such treatment. She had considered it, in truth, but it wasn't like she had anything to go onto. She would always be welcome in Casterly Rock, yes, but Kevan was Lord Lannister despite the fact that they corresponded on a lot of matters to do with the west, and was very capable with her on the other side of Westeros. 

If Tya wasn't Hand of the King, she would fade into irrelevance, as would her children. It said a lot that someone with her pride would rather be publicly insulted on a regular basis than suffer through that.

It was becoming increasingly difficult to put up with it, however. She had not met with the king alone since his forceful attempt at seducing her years ago, something she had initially resented doing as it made her look like she was afraid of him, but now she found herself increasingly grateful for it. The Aerys of several years ago was insufferable, but at least had the wits to realise that raping Lord Lannister's sister - a woman who had lots of allies within his own court - would be a bad idea. She wasn't so sure about the Aerys she was faced with now.

It was the paranoia that was perhaps the most trying thing to deal with, however. The king saw evidence of treachery everywhere, concerning Tya most of all; he still under the impression that she and Prince Rhaegar had intended for him to die at Duskendale so the prince could replace him and make Cersei his queen. 

Whether she had intended that or not was irrelevant; there was no evidence of such a thing, and it wasn't like she had planned for Lord Darklyn to go rogue and kidnap him.

Tya suspected that this was the king's reasoning for inviting Steffon Baratheon to court, appointing him to the small council as Master of Ships. The two men were cousins - Lord Baratheon's mother had been Princess Rhaelle Targaryen, sister to Aerys' father - and had always gotten along in their youth whenever the Lord of Storm's End had come to visit court. The king wanted an ally, someone more loyal to him than Tya.

A glaring issue was that Baratheon had never spent enough time around his cousin to dislike him, particularly not in recent years. That was likely to change the longer he spent at court. Lord Steffon was a genuine and reasonable man, calm and collected, who was intelligent yet cared little for scheming. Not one to needlessly flatter the king or mindlessly agree with him to gain favour, which would mean the two would inevitably come to blows. 

Surprisingly, Tya did not dislike Baratheon, nor think him a fool, only a man who did not particularly enjoy politics. What she did dislike was the whispers going around the court that the king had invited his cousin to court to make him the new Hand, after Tya was executed for high treason.

"I didn't start those rumours, my lady," Lord Steffon had approached her unprompted after one small council meeting, startlingly direct, with that easy friendliness of his. "And I don't know who did. I don't envy you being Hand - if his Grace offered me the post, I'd turn it down," He laughed, then. "Aerys is my cousin, so I am loyal to him of course, yet I don't know how you've put up with him so well all these years, my lady. You know what he says about you when you're not around, surely?"

"That I spend every waking hour plotting to undermine him so my daughter can marry his son?" She raised an eyebrow. "An improvement from what he was saying five years ago," 

"Oh, he still speculates on what you'd be like to lay with, if that's what you're referring to," Baratheon said with a small grimace; at the idea of laying with her, or because he disapproved of speaking so crudely about a lady, she wasn't sure. "And though he never says it, he implies rather heavily that your youngest son is his,"

Tya turned to stare at her husband, stood beside her. He hadn't mentioned that.

"There's only so many times I can relay the same thing to you before it becomes pointless and dull," Jason shrugged. "Believe it or not, I do not enjoy telling my wife how the king lusts after her still,"

He made it up to her by instructing one of their trusted guards to discreetly spread around the nickname 'King Scab' without it being traced back. Aerys had never been careful when sat on the Iron Throne, and throughout his reign normally sported one or two cuts or grazes from the nasty chair, but since Duskendale he would cut himself every day at least three times, shrieking in anger and surprise every time. The king loathed the name, though none were brave enough to say it to his face.

So far, Steffon Baratheon seemed to be no one in particular's ally, but at least she could rely on him to spout sense at most meetings, and the king actually listened to him, as much as he had ever listened to anyone.

Of course, Aerys had to ruin this small respite by sending Baratheon and his wife off to Volantis to find a bride for Rhaegar of 'proud Valyrian blood', seeing as apparently none of the ladies in Westeros were good enough. A gesture that managed to offend every single house in the kingdoms at once. There weren't many who were keen to have a foreigner queen; the last had been Larra Rogare, wife of Viserys II, which hadn't exactly gone well.

Yet there were those at court who were glad for it, of course, those who delighted at the idea of Tya's downfall. She had heard plenty of whispers that once Baratheon returned in ten months, he would be rewarded with the Hand's badge if he was successful. And in that eventuality, Lady Lannister's head would be on a spike before the day was out.

The worst of it was, she couldn't even deny those whispers to herself. No doubt Baratheon would be rewarded, if he came back with the perfect bride. And it was painfully obvious that she herself had fallen in the king's favour increasingly as the years went on, and the only thing stopping her from being dismissed was... well, no one was quite sure. She was an extremely capable administrator and excelled in her job even now, hampered with a mad king, yet Aerys had shown that wasn't something he cared about anymore. Perhaps it was still some misplaced desire to keep her close, although she had made it very clear on multiple occasions that she was never just going to give in to his affections.

She doubted he would actually kill her, though. Surely even he realised that would start a war.  But what if he manufactured some claim of treason she had committed? What if he discovered the actual treason she was slowly and cautiously sliding the pieces in place for? She had covered her tracks well, but that only made the first option more likely. No one could rightly object to her execution because of that.

On top of all those reasonable concerns, in Lord Steffon's absence, Aerys had developed a new interest in wildfire.

Tya had thought that the king could not possibly be harder to deal with, but was proven drastically wrong. Now, there was always a member - or Wisdom, as the pretentious twits liked to call themselves - of the Guild of Alchemists scurrying around the court now, eagerly awaiting the call to set up a pyre.

For it wasn't just displays of wildfire that Aerys had the guild provide for him. No, he was now using it to execute criminals. Or those he thought were criminals, a good number of whom had likely done no wrong at all, or committed some small slight that warranted a fine or a whipping perhaps, even losing a hand, but not a screaming, agonising death being burnt at the stake.

Unlike most of the court, who merely heard about the burnings from behind closed doors, Tya had to be present as the executions were done in the name of the king's justice. She had to look too, unlike many of the guards who closed their eyes or flinched away. Aerys would pick up on it if she acted in such a way, and she had always despised seeming weak.

There were only so many times you could see men burn before you became sick of it. Even Tya's brutality had limits.

The king burning citizens for false or minor crimes was certainly doing him - and the crown as a whole - no favours, either. Previously, his madness - for she recognised his prior behaviour as the beginnings of the madness, now - had been contained largely to the small council; the court as a whole had been generally unaware that it was anything more than just Aerys' being obnoxious. 

It was very obvious now, however, to the city of King's Landing and increasingly the entire Seven Kingdoms, that the king was completely insane.

*

278AC

Lord Baratheon was not successful in his mission to find Rhaegar a suitable bride. Nor did he return to court in ten months to steal Tya's position from under her, potentially signing her death warrant.

She heard the news from Pycelle first. Lord Steffon's ship had sunk in Shipbreaker Bay on the return voyage from Volantis, in full view of his two sons waiting on the battlements of Storm's End. He and his wife had been dragged down to a watery grave, along with any of Aerys' ambitions of making his cousin Hand. 

Of course, the king had somehow found a way to convince himself that Tya had assassinated Lord Baratheon. She was unsure if she was supposed to have sacrificed to the heathen gods of old to summon the storm that killed him, or if she was lying wait in the water with an axe to break the ship's hull. But the king's paranoia was so great, believing himself to be next on her kill list - which wasn't an unreasonable concern, just not for the reasons he thought - that he now insisted on meeting with her with guards of his own.

It made for a spectacle, both the king and his Hand too wary of each other to meet alone, each conducting matters of government with a retinue behind them.

"And his Grace said he cannot even dismiss you as Hand," Pycelle was chuckling slightly as he recounted his private conversation with Aerys to her. "For fear you will have him killed for that as well. He claims he will refuse to see you, unless at least three of the Kingsguard are present,"

"What does he think I'll do?" She turned to Jason. "Leap over the table and claw his eyes out?"

"As if you've never wanted to," He replied. "You look like you might do exactly that, half the time he speaks,"

"If he continues to rely on that scheming eunuch, I just might," She said darkly. 

The newest member of the small council had been a thorn in her side since his arrival. Lord Varys, now Master of Whispers, was a eunuch from Essos. Aerys' logic in appointing him was that surely only a foreigner with no competing loyalties could be trusted to inform him of potential threats. Already the man - if he could be called that - had become known as the Spider, with his vast web of informers and spies. 

Since his arrival, Varys was ever-present at the king's side, whispering gods know what into Aerys' ear, stirring up his paranoia and madness even further. Tya had her doubts over how harmless he was to the king - everyone had an agenda - but even voicing her suspicions would be unwise at this point.

"I despise that sneaking eunuch," Jason scowled one evening as he entered her solar; he was rarely so obviously annoyed about things, tending to mock them instead of raging. "I had near enough persuaded Aerys that the proposed reforms on port taxes were a good idea to put through, but Lord Varys," He said the courtesy title with disdain. "Had to go and whisper in his ear that the merchant guilds were laughing about his foolish generosity. Now he won't hear of it,"

The children were already there with her. Rohanne was pretending to understand the complex history book that Tyrion - aged five - was trying to explain to her, at the same time as dealing with Damon trying to tell his sister about one of his new friends. Tya still felt a twist in her stomach every time she looked at her dwarf son, though it wasn't of hate, or even dislike; she certainly was a little colder with the boy than the other children, enough for Jason to reprimand her for in private on occasion, but not all that obvious.

Cersei was sat at Tya's side, and was meant to be assisting her in going over some reports though seemed somewhat bored and inattentive, to both of their mounting frustration. She looked up in interest as her father came in.

"That eunuch is truly awful," Cersei agreed, nose wrinkling. "Can you not get him sent away, Mother?"

Jason snorted before she could reply.

"He's more likely to send you away," He said to Tya, earning a glare.

"You could let him," Rohanne shrugged. "Or just leave yourself before he can. You hate him anyway,"

"Leave and do what?" Cersei acted superior as ever. Her sister pulled a face. 

"Go back to Casterly Rock. I like it better than King's Landing,"

"You might," Cersei sneered. "But how am I going to marry the prince if I'm all the way in the west? Not all of us are going to be packed off to the savage North to marry a wildling,"

"You won't marry the prince even if you stay here," Rohanne replied easily, unbothered, returning her attention to Damon who was tugging on her sleeve. Cersei loathed being ignored, and bristled, but Tya shot her a look she knew better than to go against. Her eldest daughter was too reactive, too easily wound up.

"Who am I going to marry?" Damon asked Rohanne innocently. Tyrion knew better than to ask the same question, even at his age.

"Cersei, at this rate,"

"Enough," Tya said sharply, as her younger daughter tried to suppress a smile, glaring at her husband who had started to laugh. Her eldest looked ready to throw the ink pot at her sister.

"Cersei, you inherited your mother's sense of humour," Jason told the girl, who seemed to take that as the compliment it wasn't; she loved any comparison to Tya. Rohanne and Jaime had both clearly got his own irritating humour, perhaps Tyrion too. Damon was so earnest that he usually didn't notice when others were laughing at him, so didn't react badly, but at the same time would never dream of mocking someone else.

"If you're not going to do these reports, then give them here," Tya told her eldest daughter. Cersei quickly turned her attention back to the work on the desk.

"No, I will do it," She said hastily, though was clearly bored of it. 

The girl seemed to think that she was her mother born again. They both were very ambitious, willing to be brutal in their dealings and had a great sense of pride, but that was where the similarities ended. Jason had said once that where Tya was ice, Cersei was more like fire, struggling to not let her emotions get away from her, always keen to speak first rather than listen and weigh in later. She was intelligent, however less so than she thought she was.

Jaime, on the other hand, was more intelligent than he gave himself credit for. Though Kevan had ensured her eldest son would be a capable lord, he clearly had no love for such work, preferring to train in the yard and learn about matters of war and strategy. In that sense he was more like Rohanne than Cersei, despite the twins looking like the male and female versions of each other. Rohanne was far more practical, and like her brother had little ambition besides living her life how she wanted to. Though thankfully she was not so reckless as Jaime was.

"Can we ride out tomorrow, Father?" The girl asked Jason hopefully. "I've practiced a lot with that new bow - I want to see if it's as good in the Kingswood as the castle,"

"I suppose so," He considered, smiling wryly. "I won't have to deal with the new reforms, after all. Thank Lord Varys for my free time," 

*

To summarise the differences in Jason if you don't want to do a reread; he and Tya fought often as children and strongly disliked each other; as teenagers, they still bicker and snipe at each other, partially to hide their growing attraction to each other; she's unsure about agreeing to marry him but does so to avoid another unwanted betrothal from her father (yes she is a hypocrite); they sort a few things out during their betrothal and realise they work quite well together, as a 'silk glove and iron gauntlet'; Jason is mediocre with a sword but talented with a bow, enjoys hunting, is often quite harsh with Tya particularly concerning her treatment of Tyrion, isn't anywhere near as soft and loving as I portrayed him before (honestly it was painful rereading those earlier chapters and seeing what a wetwipe he was, apologies everyone). I also picked up on the canon quote that Tywin ruled the kingdoms whilst Joanna ruled Tywin, and tried to incorporate this as well.

Of course, doing a reread would give you a better understanding of all this (hint hint).

Anyway thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed!