#binchis

@binchis asked for this as well

He doesn’t know how he got here, how the two Kingsguard who had entered the joust had been eliminated or by whom, all he knows is that he’s facing down Willas Tyrell. An excellent jouster, Jon is all too aware, but Willas doesn’t have the same motivation. He would probably crown his sister or his mother, ladies that had been crowned before and would be crowned again.

No, Jon has to win this.

It takes five rounds, enough to make him begin to doubt himself—what would he do if he lost?—but then his lance catches Willas right beneath the shield, and the next thing he knows, the rose of Highgarden is lying on the ground. It takes Jon a second to realize what’s happened, that he’s the victor, and when he does he scrambles to help Willas to his feet, then remounts to accept his prize.

The roses are yellow this time, but they would have to do.

Briefly, he wonders what Rhaenys would do if he gave them to her. Probably throw them back at him. Sansa would love them; it might even put him in her good graces for a fortnight.

But no. As fair as they both are, he will not crown them this day.

Queen Elia stares at him in disbelief when he stops in front of her, but he’s come too far to turn back now. “Your Grace,” he announces, “I wish to remedy a mistake nineteen years gone. Please accept these for your suffering, and for your beauty.”

For one panicked moment he wonders what will happen if she doesn’t accept them, if she called him as despicable as his father for merely existing, but she doesn’t do either. She looks down at the roses on her lap, and when she meets his eyes again, there is a small, but real, smile on her lips. Wordlessly she hands her gilded crown to her daughter—who, he notes with more than a little self-satisfaction, looks completely at a loss—and replaces it with its flower equal.

“The mistake is not yours to remedy,” she tells him quietly. “But thank you.”

He nods in acknowledgement, and as he rides off towards the stables, he feels like a weight has been lifted. From him, at least, though he can’t speak for the queen. She was right, it’s not his mistake to make reparations for, yet all his life he’s lived in the shadow of his father’s actions. Although he considers Elia’s treatment of him fair—that is, almost no treatment at all—there’s always been a part of him that’s wanted her to say, I don’t blame you, Jon. Not that he thinks she does blame him, exactly, but he’s not felt welcomed either.

She doesn’t go so far as to dance with him, as is often customary for the Queen of Love and Beauty and her champion, though he didn’t expect her to. Even more, he doesn’t expect the knock that comes at his door later that night.

Figuring it must be Arya come to ask him more about the joust, or Robb come to make excuses, he is dumbfounded to see not one of his cousins, but his sister. Well, half-sister. He had clearly been an afterthought on her part, for it appears she was in the middle of preparing for bed and can’t decide whether she meant to come at all.

“Did you need something?” he prompts, after several moments of silence.

“I just—” She takes a breath. “Look, I don’t think I’ll ever like you, all right? But what you did today, it…it was very noble. There must surely be some Northern girl you’d have liked to crown but you crowned Mother instead because you knew people would be here to see it, and I just wanted to say that it did not go unappreciated. By Mother, or…or by me.”

Knowing full well that levity is a gamble, he asks, “How many times did you turn around before knocking?”

“Six,” she says. “But don’t make the mistake of thinking this means we’re friends.”

“What does it make us?”

“I don’t know.”

It’s better than he thought he’d get, all told. An uneasy truce is miles better than hostility. “Rhaenys,” he says as she turns to leave, “have a good night.”

I’ve talked about House Lannister’s fate a bunch of times (most recently - 1, 2), but no worries. No, I don’t think they’ll go extinct – there’s a lot of Lannisters of Casterly Rock, not to mention the cadet House Lannister of Lannisport. But Tywin’s line, even Tytos’s line, may be wholly wiped out. Jason’s line – I suppose it depends on how many are attending Daven’s wedding (if it’s the “second Red Wedding” per theories). But I don’t think all of the Grey Lion’s descendants will be gone by the end. Most of them, sure. But not all. Though again, even if those don’t make it either, there are still more Lannisters left, reportedly. You can check out my post explaining the succession of House Lannister in the event of an apocalypse for some details.