Chapter Text
Saepe creat asperas mollis rosa spinas.
-- Ovid
Olenna Redwyne was not beautiful but that was hardly a consideration when a potential bride brought with her a dowry measured in hundreds of casks of Arbor gold and the alliance of House Redwyne and its fleet. From the moment that she was old enough to join her parents for banquets, men looked into Olenna's eyes and lied. They lied with snippets of song, with the latest ballads and posies from King's Landing and Highgarden, but they lied all the same.
Redwynes were not known for their wits, so it was a blessing of the Seven that Olenna's mother was a Hightower of Oldtown who presented her daughter with books instead of looking-glasses. You can win a kingdom with beauty, Yseult Hightower was known to have said, but only wits will keep it for you.
The Arbor, though nominally sworn to Highgarden, tended to keep aloof from most troubles on the mainland. No matter who won or lost, there would always be a market for Arbor wines. That might as well have been the Redwyne motto: All men must drink. When Olenna suggested it to her father, he laughed hard enough to nearly spill his own glass of strongwine--in his eyes, a sacrilege on par with blaspheming against the Seven beneath the stone eyes of Baelor the Blessed himself.
"Gods be good, wife, our child has a viper's tongue. What has that septa of yours been teaching her?"
Olenna just smiled and turned back to her book.