Cersei Lannister had waged one war in the birthing bed, but now as she fought her second, she had the strange epiphany that her first birth had been but a trifle compared to this. Her first had been a simple and easy affair with little of the long contractions and pains that her ladies-in-waiting had whispered about over their sewing.
But this one, it felt as though she was being torn in two. She had screamed herself hoarse long ago, and the homely midwife's grating voice had faded into the background shortly after. Black swirls dotted her vision and her head spun violently.
Was she dying? Was Maggy the Frog wrong all along, and that she was doomed to the same fate as her own mother, dying to bring a monster into the world?
She was stronger than her mother. She was a lioness, and a babe wouldn't be the end of her. Hours may have passed for Cersei, but in truth, it was only for a few minutes before, with one last great exertion, the babe finally escaped her.
Skin pale and hair matted with sweat, Cersei Lannister was now a mother twice over. Pride filled her even through the burning ache that coursed her body.
Would she have little golden curls like her Joff and her and Jaime's eyes? She truly hoped so. Cersei had already decided on the name.
Myrcella.
When she saw the flat tuft that crowned the babe's head, her heart sank. Instead of golden Lannister locks, she saw only coal-black hair.
"A healthy baby boy," the old midwife proclaimed. The babe broke into loud lusty cries. "with powerful lungs, just as you'd expect from a Baratheon."
Her Joff had been quiet as a mouse when he was born. Cersei wished she could wipe the smile off the matron's face. She could call the guards just waiting outside and have her thrown in the black cells for trying to murder the queen. None would be the wiser because who would believe a peasant woman over the queen of the Seven Kingdoms?
Instead, she accepted the babe silently, glaring down at the living proof of her failure.
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Cersei Lannister, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, mother of two princes, gazed hatefully out into the city of King's Landing below and seriously weighed the option of pedicide.
The babe's squealing had not abated since she had placed it in the crib and sent the midwives away ostensibly to nurse the child herself, and it rankled Cersei's nerves something fierce.
She looked down. It'd be so easy to simply drop the babe. Of course, Robert would have her executed, no doubt, but he would also lose his heir, and Cersei considered that a fair trade.
"I believe congratulations are in order," her other half said from where he leaned against the doorway. Still adorned in his Kingsguard armor, Jaime Lannister approached the crib. "So this is your newborn?" He gathered up his nephew, nonplussed by his incessant crying. "Robert's still out hunting, but I was able to feign concern for my dearest sister to rush back. He should be bringing you quite a nice stag pelt by sunset."
"How thoughtful of him," she said, words dripping with venom.
"Was your first this fat? I can't quite remember," he asked, holding the babe out for a second opinion.
Our first, she wanted to say.
Cersei's stomach revolted at the sight of her love holding the black-haired babe. It was all wrong. The babe should have been his, it should have been hers. She turned her back to the sight lest she lost control of herself.
"Get it away from me, Jaime."
Unbothered by her coldness, her twin continued to entertain Robert's child instead of killing it.
"He's quite cute in that newborn babe kind of way, all soft and boneless, but by the gods does he have a pair of lungs, and a grip as well," he laughed. "Do you think old Robert was like this too as a newborn?"
The last thing Cersei wanted to think of was Robert Baratheon, much less as a child.
"You don't seem particularly concerned that Robert succeeded in birthing a son," Cersei bit out.
"It was bound to happen at some point. That was the whole purpose of your marriage, was it not, to make babies?"
She whirled on him with anger brimming under her skin. "It was meant to be ours."
Such words would have been treason if the guards had already not been sent away, assured that the finest sword in the Seven Kingdoms was protecting the queen.
The babe cried out loudly, grasping blindly at the white Kingsguard armor. Jaime snickered. "So it was, but the gods like to make a mockery of our plans, don't they?"
"If my opinion matters at all, I don't think you should kill the babe. This one has father's eyes."
His words stopped her in her tracks. Cersei took the babe without a word from her brother's arms, consciously ignoring the welling of warmth in her chest and how the babe's little fists tightened around the fabric of her shift.
She only paid attention to its eyes as they slowly opened. They weren't Baratheon blue. They were pale little green pools that would one day darken into emerald dotted with little golden flecks. Those were her father's eyes, Lannister eyes.
And somehow, the very proof of a connection to her father and to herself, proof that the babe was not solely Robert's creature made the hate that had festered inside Cersei recede just a bit and was replaced with something else.
She had promised herself since that night when Robert Baratheon climbed on top of her and whispered a dead woman's name that he would never have a trueborn child by her.
Did something as simple as black hair truly change that?
This was her son, hers. He would always be hers. He would be never a Baratheon, and never a Stag. He would be a Lannister, a Lion.
And whether it be a coat of gold or a coat of black, the Lion still has claws.
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Robert stumbled into her chambers at nightfall, sweat-stained and hair wind-blown. A raucous smile was blown over his features, red from drink, and the bloodied pelt of a stag was thrown over his shoulders.
And as was their custom, he fell heavily to one knee and presented his bloody trophy to her. She, in turn, greeted him with a curtsey and the babe in her arms.
"My queen," the stag king rumbled, his eyes fixated on the bundle in her arms. "I bring you a gift."
"And I offer you one as well, my king," she replied.
The gifts were exchanged, the pelt of a stag for a second heir. Cersei couldn't help but smile at the irony of it all.
The babe looked so small in Robert's shadow, dwarfed by his hulking frame, so fragile. Cersei had feared that Robert would have crushed Joff like an overripe fruit when she gave him into the king's arms. She had no fear now, especially when she saw the look of awe in the king's eyes.
"A fine son," he murmured. "What is his name?"
"A son, your grace. His name is Roland."
Cersei had thought long and hard on the name, a touch Stormlander but a wholly Westerman name. There had been no Kings of the Rock that bore the name Roland, but it had been borne by many great Lannisters, and even by the Strongboar of Crakehall, one of the few of her father's vassals that held Tywin's respect, and the same man who raised Jaime.
"A good name," Robert said approvingly. "A strong one, worthy of a Stag."
Worthy of a lion, Cersei thought. And what a great lion he would be. She may be no Maggy the Frog, but Cersei could already see it.
Roland Lannister, the heir to the West.