Chapter Text
To our new Master of Coin:
Welcome to the Small Council! I’ve written up a guide that might help you extend your career, keep your head, and maybe, just maybe, benefit the realm. Things have changed around here in the past two months, obviously, and a lot of these changes will take some getting used to.
Point one: the king actually attends small council meetings now. In fact, the king is usually the first to arrive, and often schedules new ones at odd hours of the morning.
Q: Does that mean he is glad to be there?
A: No.
Q: So why...
A: Because they are the closest thing he has to a social life.
Q: Can I show up drunk?
A: If you show up drunk, you will immediately be fired.
Q: By fired, do you mean “set on fire?”
A: Not unless you show up drunk and hit on Melisandre.
That leads us into our next segment:
Point Two: your fellow council members. I’ll start with the obvious one: me.
Me!
As Master of Law, I am the only person remaining from King Robert’s council (probably; see below). I have been doing this job since I was sixteen. Normal people would think this makes me qualified; normal people are not my brother. He spent most of my first week grilling me about the finer points of law in the Seven Kingdoms. Expect him to ask you a lot of math questions.
Q: How fine is a “finer point?”
A: Did you know it is illegal to carry a carrot in your back pocket in the Riverlands?
Q: I did not.
A: The penalty can range from a stiff fine to hanging.
Q: Where were you during the war, when men were dying and bleeding?
A: As I have informed his grace repeatedly, I was in Dorne, overseeing a royal peace between the long-feuding Houses of Tyrell and Martell.
Q: How did it go?
A: I believe that, properly motivated, the combined forces of these two Houses have an enormous amount to offer the crown. The experience was a highlight of my life.
Q: It took six months?
A: It was a fantastic peace.
Moving on to the next most attractive person in the room:
The Lady Melisandre.
A Red Priestess from Asshai, Melisandre (do NOT call her Mel) makes up for being a female foreigner by being batshit insane. However, she makes up for being female, foreign, and batshit insane by stopping assassination attempts, massaging the king’s ego, and honestly sometimes doing a decent job of pretending to be a reasonable individual who offers good advice. The first time you see Melisandre, you want to run. The second time, you realize she’s not that bad. By the fourth or fifth time, however, you realize that, no, you really should have run.
Has appeared sincerely if moderately amused by two of my jokes, which is a plus. Thinks Stannis is the Chosen One, which is not.
Q: Is she sleeping with the king?
A: I have no idea. I say this, honestly, I genuinely have no idea. Probably.
Q: Should I bring up, at any time, the fact that she is probably sleeping with the king?
A: Hahahah GODS NO.
Q: Should I convert to her religion?
A: Doing so will not actually make her shut up about it.
Q: Do I need to pretend I also think the king is Azor Ahai reborn?
A: It honestly rarely comes up. I myself am incapable of handling the idea with a straight face, but do what you think is best.
Q: Does she have genuine magical powers, or is she like that Thoros idiot and his “magic” sword?
A: She can light candles by glaring at them. She might be able to see the future. People she dislikes tend to have really bizarre unfortunate accidents. Otherwise, see the first Q.
Q: If she approaches me with a leech, I should...
A: Run.
Lord Davos Seaworth, Hand of the King.
I first met Davos during the siege of Storm’s End, when I was six years old, and ate so much saltfish that I threw up. My brother displayed his charming personal philosophy by giving him a knighthood and chopping off four of his fingers. For some inexplicable reason, this convinced Davos that the sun orbits Stannis’s head. Is currently Lord of the Rainwood, because if the nobility got pissy about Stannis making a smuggler a knight, surely they’ll get over themselves when he names him Emperor of the Moon.
A generally reasonable individual with one enormous blindspot. His job is to offer the king honest advice to ignore.
Q: Is he sleeping with the king?
A: It would explain a great deal. I’d give it worse odds than Melisandre, though. Note also that such a betting pool is just the kind of thing to get innocent people kicked off the council, and you should certainly not approach Loras Tyrell.
Q: Is he going to rob the castle blind and flee, laughing maniacally?
A: Probably not.
Q: Okay, so if it’s neither of those, what is his endgame?
A: I have no idea. He may just be a genuinely good man.
Q: Oh dear.
A: Indeed.
Q: Can he be bribed to kill the king?
A: You know that horrible smoky smell that permeated the courtyard when you arrived?
Q: Yeah?
A: That was the last guy who thought that.
Q: So he’s down with Melisandre?
A: Oh, no, not at all. Just no treason.
The Current Master of Ships.
Stannis has been king for two months. In that time, there have been five Masters of Ships, not counting the one at the bottom of Blackwater Bay. There is a simple reason for this: he used to be Master of Ships. He is convinced he can do the job better than whichever poor sod holds the office this week, and furthermore that so can Lord Seaworth, and that furthermore probably so can Melisandre. The unfortunate thing is that in several cases so far, he’s been right. Shireen could have done a better job than Number Four.
There will likely be a new Master of Ships by the time of your first council meeting; don’t bother getting to know him.
Q: Five?
A: Five.
Q: What did they do?
A: An excellent question. A partial list of reasons the Master of Ships can be fired is found below, keeping in mind that some of them were responsible for more than one entry, and some entries were responsible for more than one firing.
- Being late to meetings.
- Eating at the Council table.
- Insulting Lord Seaworth.
- Irritating Melisandre.
- Disagreeing with the King.
- Agreeing with the King.
- Gross incompetence.
- Drowning.
I hope that sorts things out.
Not!Varys, Master of Whisperers.
“Proved” his “loyalty” by “discovering” a “plot” “against” the “king.” Probably is not Varys in a hood and large false mustache, but as that leaves him as exactly who he says he is (a poor apprentice spymaster of no importance), it’s not much of an improvement.
Q: What happened to the actual Varys?
A: He got the hell out of Dodge before Stannis could finish “cleaning house.”
Q: Speaking of which, what happened to the last Master of Coin?
A: No one is sure. There have, however, been reports of a strange trail of slime on the road to the Eyrie.
Current Head of the Goldcloaks.
From what I can gather, this is a highly competent man of common blood who was elected into the position by his peers. My brother is insane.
The Jerk In Charge of the Kingsguard, Something-or-Other Florent, I Don’t Care
This man’s primary non-ear-related distinguishing feature is the gross miscarriage of justice that was his promotion to the position over Loras Tyrell. Some might think that the Captain’s position should go to the strongest, truest, and best-looking knight on the guard, but apparently these people were not consulted.
I trust you will work with me to remedy this injustice.
And, of course…
The King Himself. Stannis Baratheon, First of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Defender of the Realm.
Excuse me.
It’s just, you cannot understand, waking up in Dorne one morning to hear that some idiot had made Stannis king
But back to the point.
Stannis convincingly won the Second Battle of King’s Landing, fairly convincingly proved that that little bastard abomination Joffrey was, in fact, a bastard abomination, and somewhat less convincingly argued that he himself was a reasonable human being whom other reasonable human beings would want as their king. Nevertheless, here he is, and I hope you will join me in putting your full support behind him.
You may, at some point during the first five seconds of your first council meeting, get the impression that Stannis does not like you. You may also, if you last until your fifth council or so, get the far more dangerous impression that Stannis does like you, deep down, and in fact values your advice.
Q: Which of these impressions is correct?
A: Here’s a helpful guideline:
How Stannis speaks to someone he is about to have executed:
“I ought to shorten your head for this.”
How Stannis speaks to his best and only friend:
“I ought to shorten your head for this, smuggler.”
I hope this sorts things out.
Q: The King has given me a nickname. Is this good?
A: No. As a general rule, it’s also a bad nickname.
Point Three. What actually happens at Council meetings?
Arrive on time. This is ENORMOUSLY important. If you do nothing else your entire time on the Council (and this is not difficult), always arrive on time. Even when, for some godsforsaken reason, there is an emergency session at four in the morning, arrive on time.
There are certain things that can be counted on to happen at every single meeting. Count on, for instance, every general proposal to be greeted with a variant of this conversation:
Melisandre: We should set something on fire.
Davos: We should not set anything on fire.
They will continue in this vein for some time. Occasionally someone else will chime in, but, take my word for it, this is pointless. The king was very disappointed to learn that he could not simply appoint Melisandre and Lord Seaworth to three council positions each, and cut out the middlemen.
Eventually, Stannis will interrupt, and pick, I don’t know, which ever one is giving him the better shoulder massage at the moment, and we either will or will not set something on fire. If it is a very important something, one or both of them may continue to argue even after he makes his decision. They are the only ones allowed to do this.
Q: Are there any other recurring topics of discussion?
A: I’m glad you asked! The three major recurring non-pyromania-related Council discussion topics are as follows:
The War In the North.
This is, obviously, a very important subject, and it should come as no surprise that we of the Council can often come up with as many as seventeen contradictory opinions on what should be done about it per session.
Recurring points of emphasis with regards to the war include “his father died for my claim the throne,” “maybe winter will just come and kill them all,” and “have we considered setting Sansa Stark on fire?” The problems with all of these points should be obvious.
That Targaryen Girl In Essos
Expect most of this discussion to derail into a debate over the existence of dragons. There’ll be wings darkening King’s Landing before we sort this one out.
Assassination Attempts
The realm put up with Mad King Aerys for almost twenty years before a combination of poor parenting and wildfire got him stabbed in the back. Joffrey began his reign by blatantly ignoring his advisors and killing not only a Lord Paramount, but actual, literal babies, and it still took a war to get him off the throne. Stannis has been king for two months, and people have so far attempted to kill him on at least a weekly basis.
Why is this? It’s a complicated question, a question that will no doubt be answered in five-paragraph format by untold bored history students in the centuries to come. Here is a list of things Stannis has done to piss off the general population of Westeros:
Started a war
Converted to a foreign religion
Attempted to convert others to said foreign religion/is not trying hard enough to convert others to said foreign religion
Severely increased grain taxes
Failed to end a war
Stopped holding jousts
Been generally unlikeable
Has yet to smile in public
Assassinated Tywin Lannister
Keeps setting people on fire
Refuses to let go of grudges just because we all spent a year eating rats
Is suddenly and bizarrely worried about ice zombies
And here is a list of the only thing the average person at court seems to see a problem with:
Made an upjumped smuggler Hand of the King
Q: That can’t be right. Surely they also object to Melisandre?
A: Not to her face, they don’t.
Q: That’s reason- wait. Ice zombies?
A: Your guess is as good as mine.
And that about sums it up. I look forward to seeing you at our next meeting, provided the roads hold up, the North stays put, and grumpkins don’t descend from the sky.
Renly Baratheon, Prince of Storm’s End.