#( ♛ — part three: the dowager queen. )

[dowagergreen]

@wolfell continued from here [x]

alicent gives no reaction to the raising of his voice. she's endured a lifetime of men and their passions. she sits still and resolute, back still straight in the chair even as it breaks, bloodied finger tracing shapes on the table. what's the point of it all, she wonders, explaining it to him now? he's taken his side and made his judgments and what he thinks of her holds little consequence. all of this is true, and yet there is still something sparking up in her chest. a desperate, vulnerable need to be understood just once. or at the very least, heard. history will paint her a monster, ambitions twisted into claws sprouting through her fingertips. but in her mind, the story is far more complex than a simple succession.

"do you have children, lord stark?" her mind is addled by lack of sleep, and an even deeper lack of rest. if she'd ever known the answer to this question, it's left her. she doesn't even really care to know it now, but it calls forward a point that must be made. "my son was born with a blade to his throat. from the moment he arrived, any peace i'd ever had was ripped away from me. my son, my first." -- and my last. the pain of it nearly causes her to curl forward but she just winces through the aftermath.

that's all this had ever been. despite what has surely been said, she never reached for power that was beyond her station. she would never have reached for it at all had it not been her children at risk. she turns it over and over in her head, spinning back into the past until she arrives at the beginning. a young, motherless girl caught in the current of a father's unyielding ambition. a child bride and mother left to the wolves by her own husband. the inevitability of it doesn't vindicate her, or inspire comfort. it suffocates. it always has.

"i have no doubt that the version of this tale you were told is convincing so you may hate me if you wish." she adjusts in her seat, smoothing her palms along her skirts. "but if you want to know the full truth of it, you should perhaps attempt to consider what you would have done if it was your son. would you have naively trusted the safety of your children to chance? to the goodwill of someone who had already proven to you that self-preservation was paramount to honor or decency?"