Chapter Text
Cersei had taken moon tea before, of course, many times, and it had always worked perfectly. She had been sure that the babe would not come to term. She had been sure.
And yet, there she was, red-faced and squealing like a little pig in the cradle. Robert was besotted with the babe, and had pronounced his intention to name her ‘Jocelyn’ before Cersei had even woken from her milk-of-the-poppy induced sleep. The babe was a typical Baratheon, big-boned and wide shouldered. Cersei had fainted as soon as the thing was out of her, according to Jaime, and the maesters had been afraid for a time that she would not wake. The stitches were still a flaming agony between her thighs, and she would be bedridden for many weeks yet. So the child had already been taken to the Sept of Baelor a week past, without Cersei, and named in the Light of the Seven and anointed with the seven holy oils as Princess Jocelyn Baratheon. The realm rejoiced. Not as much as they might have for a prince, but happily enough. A healthy princess was a promise of a healthy prince to come.
For Cersei’s part, she was glad it was a girl. She wanted her son to sit the Iron Throne – her true son, Jaime’s son, not Robert’s.
Jaime had attended her even when the rest of the court went to the sept for the naming, insisting he be left behind the guard the queen in her delicate state. He stroked her hair and reassured her that she need never give birth to another of Robert’s children.
“I’ll have to be more careful from now on.”
“Oh, you’d better. I’ll kill him if he gets you with child again.”
She slapped his arm, playfully. He only said such things to please her, she knew.
“In fact, I’ll kill his little piglet right now as well, if you like.”
This time she slapped him in earnest, on the cheek. His hand went to the reddening skin and hovered there. “That hurt,” he said mildly.
“Don’t even say such a thing. How would that look, Robert’s firstborn murdered? It may be for the best that she lived, anyway. Now I’ve given Robert a trueborn child, he may not look too close at the next one.”
Jaime quieted for a moment, sulking. Cersei ignored him.
“Why did he name her Jocelyn, do you think? I thought he’d call her after his mother,” Jaime wondered aloud after a time. Cersei shrugged.
“He preferred Jocelyn. Apparently there was a Jocelyn Baratheon who was a princess hundreds of years ago.”
“Married to a Targaryen, wasn’t she? Wouldn’t that make the babe dragonspawn?” Sarcasm dripped from his voice.
“I doubt Robert had the wits to realise that.”
“She should be named Joanna.”
“Can we stop discussing the wretched child’s name?” Cersei snapped. “Robert could have named her Aerys for all I care. And don’t ever talk about killing her again.”
“Why not? I won’t do it. Gods, what sort of idiot do you think I am?”
Cersei declined to answer that. “Whatever else she may be, she’s my daughter. And a princess.”
Thankfully, she was not also required to nurse the child, so her breasts were not ruined along with the rest of her. Cersei was only too happy to leave the girl to the wetnurse. Her appetite was enormous, and she seemed to grow by the day. Her hair did not lighten as the moons passed, remaining as thick and dark as her father’s, but to Cersei’s satisfaction her eyes also remained green. She also stopped screaming so much, and started laughing, which was something of an improvement.
Cersei supposed she was not all bad. The little girl did giggle and babble when she came into the nursery, and wave her chubby little arms to be picked up. Sometimes Cersei did, and breathed in the soft powdery scent of her black hair. She thought perhaps one day she would walk into the nursery and find the child dropped dead, as babes oftentimes did, but that never happened. The girl showed no signs of ailing health whatsoever.
It took Cersei some time to recover fully from the birth, but she was determined not to let it affect her in the slightest. Robert wanted to claim his rights from her almost immediately after the birth; why should Jaime not have his rights as well? It hurt, yes, but it was a good pain. The sooner she had another child, the sooner everyone would forget the girl, the little mistake. She would have a son, a golden boy. Then Robert would stop doting on the child and shower attention and gifts on Cersei’s son instead. The girl should never even have been born in the first place, but once Cersei had her boy, no-one would remember she had been.
Robert insisted on throwing a feast for her first nameday, as if a one year old knew what a nameday was. Cersei had thought he would have gotten bored of her by now and gone back to his hounds and his whores, but he still seemed interested. He let the girl clutch his beard in her chubby fist and flung her up into the air to catch her in his arms, laughing as the girl squealed with delight.
“Robert, stop that. She’s too young. You’ll hurt her,” Cersei snapped the second time he did it. The noise was grating on her ears.
Robert looked at her like a scolded child. “She’s not hurt,” he whined, but he did hold the girl still at least. She babbled a little and held an arm out in Cersei’s direction.
“She wants her mother. Give her to me,” Cersei said, trying to keep the edge of irritation out of her voice.
Robert’s face clouded over like a stormy sky. “Don’t tell me what to do with my own daughter, woman.”
Cersei felt something in her snap. She could not bring herself to care that they were in public, that all Robert’s knights and lords and his wretched brothers were staring at them. “Give her to me. Now.”
Something in her voice caused little Jocelyn to start crying. Robert purpled.
“Now look what you’ve done,” he said, too loud, and now any courtiers that weren’t already looking at them most certainly were. “You’re spoiling it for her. Leave the poor child be.”
Cersei felt tears prick in her own eyes. Every hateful sycophant in the Red Keep was staring at her, hating her, loving Robert and her treacherous little bitch of her daughter, still wailing in her father’s arms. She tried to lift her head and sweep regally from the hall, but she tripped slightly over the long hem of her rich gown and some silly little cunt tittered behind her.
Her torment ended close to nine moons hence, when her golden prince came into the world, fierce and howling. He did not hurt her half as badly as his sister. She was there for his naming, cradling him in her arms beneath the statues of the gods, the rainbow light spilling over both of them. Joffrey, the First of His Name. Destined to be a greater king by far than the drunken lecher who claimed to be his father. He cried whenever Robert picked him up, which gave Cersei a dark sense of glee. Let us see how you like it, my lord.
Joffrey was slim where Jocelyn was broad, fair where she was dark, fierce and brave where she was wretched and timid. Past infancy, Joff very rarely cried, whereas his sister howled at every bump and scrape she suffered. And Robert always scooped her up and cooed over her hurts – when he had dragged himself away from his whores, of course. He indulged the girl when he remembered to, but mostly he left the running of his kingdom to his council, and the raising of his children to his wife. That suited Cersei very well. She did not want Joffrey to be influenced by his ‘father’. Thank the gods he was not truly Robert’s. She knew he would grow into a swordsman as talented and brave as his true father.
Where Robert did interfere with the children, he did so only to vex her. There was that nonsense with the longbow, and his insistence that Jocelyn be allowed to go on hunts with him once she turned ten. Cersei would have done anything to prevent it, but Robert insisted once he realised the girl’s love of riding and killing. A little Robert in miniature, just without a cock. Then there was the incident with Joff and the cat. The bruises Robert had given her on that occasion had ached for weeks afterward.
Jocelyn was highly unsatisfactory as daughters went. Not only did she grow taller and taller by the day, but she had Robert’s shoulders, broad and strong, and his strong jaw as well – hardly the image of the delicate royal princess. Cersei tried her best to love her, to mould her into a noble lady, but the girl had hands like a blacksmith and no talent for singing or musical instruments. She was a fairly graceful dancer, but she looked ridiculous twirling around with her height. She had no head for heraldry or arithmetic or poetry. Her only talents lay in riding and archery, both with crossbow and longbow, and hawking. Pursuits that were not totally unsuitable for a lady, but which gave her arms and legs like tree-trunks and had her trailing mud and twigs everywhere she went. Cersei despaired of her, but Robert delighted in her. No doubt she reminded him of his half-feral Northern girl.
Myrcella could not have been more different from her sister; sweet, delicate, graceful Myrcella. If Jocelyn was the mirror of Robert, Myrcella was all Cersei. She could dance, she could sing, her embroidery was beautiful. Cersei loved to brush her golden curls and dress her up in outfits of pink, yellow, and blue. Myrcella never defied her with inappropriate interests.
If only Jocelyn did defy her. Even when she disagreed with her mother, she hung her head and slunk off to Robert instead of fighting back. No matter what Cersei said to her, the girl would only give her a mournful look, eyes full of tears. It made Cersei uncomfortable. This meekness…she did not know where it came from. Whatever else the man was, no-one could accuse Robert of being meek. If Cersei pushed Jocelyn, if at times she was a little cruel, it was only to make her daughter stronger. She loved her, and she wanted her to be safe, but a woman can only be safe if she can be strong. Her daughter should be a lioness, brave and fierce, not some wide-eyed insipid little doe.
Joff was just that, her little lion cub. Sometimes, perhaps, that fierceness needed a little…curbing. But not too much. A king must be bold.
That was what Cersei tried to remind herself when she heard the screaming.
It was a hot day, high summer, and the children had been playing in the gardens attached to Cersei’s own apartments. She trusted Tommen and Myrcella to Jocelyn. One thing could be said of her eldest daughter; she was responsible enough to leave alone with the children.
Cersei was in her ground-floor sitting room, all the doors open onto the garden, gauzy curtains lifting in the slight breeze. She could hear the children laughing outside.
Then the laughter turned to shrieks, and then to screams. A mother knew the difference between a child’s scream of happiness and their scream of fear. Cersei felt it in her chest, in her breastbone. She was out of her chair and into the garden in a heartbeat.
At first, she didn’t know quite what she was looking at. Tommen was in tears and hyperventilating, his little face bright red, and Myrcella was holding him. She was as white as a sheet. Across the grass, Jocelyn had Joff by the shoulders. At thirteen, she towered over him. She was shaking with rage, gripping him tight, and Joff trembled as she shouted at him.
“Why did you do that? Why did you do that? You’re awful!” she was screaming, shaking Joff hard as she did. His head wobbled sickeningly on his neck. Cersei was too shocked to move at first. Then she strode over, as if she were a mechanical figure suddenly wound up, and grabbed her eldest child by the arm.
“Stop that! Leave him be!” she shrieked, voice high and tight with shock.
“Look at what he did!” Jocelyn protested, turning to her mother but still keeping her hands tight on Joff’s shoulders, red-faced with fury. “Just look!” She let go off Joff with one hand and pointed a finger at what seemed at first to Cersei to be a pile of red silk.
When she realised the silk had fur on one side, and was bleeding profusely all over the grass, her stomach heaved. Tommen’s sobs were high and ragged in her ears.
“He skinned it,” Jocelyn said, voice trembling with anger. “Tommen’s little pet fawn. He skinned it and dragged it in here and showed it to him. You have to punish him, Mother! You have to punish hi –”
Cersei reached out and slapped her daughter.
She had only meant for the girl to stop shrieking, just for a second, just so she could gather her thoughts. Between her and Tommen, she could not hear herself think. Besides, she should not have been so rough with Joff. She got that from Robert, too.
Jocelyn did fall quiet. She clutched her red cheek and looked at her mother with accusatory eyes, and then fled the garden.
It was Jaime who found her, hours later.
By then Robert knew of the whole incident, Tommen had been administered milk of the poppy by Grand Maester Pycelle to get him to sleep, Myrcella was sitting still whey-faced and silent in her bedroom surrounded by septas, and Joffrey had been confined to his bedchamber until Robert decided his punishment. Cersei had spent hours arguing back and forth with him. She thought that giving Pate a whipping would be enough to ensure he never did it again; Robert wanted to beat poor Joff bloody himself. Cersei would not allow it. Robert refused to even talk of Jocelyn until she had been found.
Jaime brought her to Cersei first, not Robert.
The girl at least had the sense to look contrite. Her head was lowered, her thick black hair falling over her face, as Jaime led her into the room. His own face was like stone.
“I am most disappointed in you, Jocelyn.” To her own surprise, her voice was like poison. She had not realised how angry she was.
“I am sorry, lady mother,” Jocelyn replied in a voice barely above a whisper. “I hope I did not cause my brother any serious injury.”
Cersei glanced at Jaime with suspicion. Did he coach her to say these things? Why would he care? He had always taken care to be as distant with her eldest daughter as he had with those he shared with Cersei.
“Be thankful you did not,” she replied coldly. “How dare you lay hands upon your brother? He is the heir to the Seven Kingdoms. Imagine if you had hurt him. Imagine if you had pushed him too hard, and he had fallen, hit his head, died, even.”
Jocelyn paled. “I never. I never would have, I swear.”
“You wouldn’t? I think you would. Perhaps you thought you would be the heir, then. You wouldn’t, of course, but perhaps you’re stupid enough to believe that.” Cersei almost didn’t know why she was saying these things. Jocelyn was near tears.
“Cersei, that’s enough -”
“- Shall I tell your father the King that you meant to hurt Joffrey? Should I ask him to take your hand, as punishment? That is the traditional punishment for striking a person of royal blood.”
Jocelyn raised her head, then, and Cersei was taken aback by the pure hatred she saw in her daughter’s green eyes.
“Or maybe he’ll take yours, for striking me,” she said, soft as sin.
The breath vanished from Cersei’s lungs. Silence reigned.
“How dare you!” she finally gasped. The hatred vanished from Jocelyn’s eyes and was replaced with fear. She took a step back as Cersei stood. “I will take you to your father and have you answer for that insolence, child. I will not allow you to speak to me that way.” She grabbed her daughter by the arm and dragged her from the room.
Jaime followed as she pulled her daughter down the corridor. The girl was crying once again, sobbing and making her feeble attempts to get away, but Cersei could not hear her over the ringing in her ears. If she had not started this, if she had not grabbed Joff and shaken him, this would not be happening to her. To either of them.
“Mama, stop! Stop, please! You’re hurting me! You’re hurting me!” Jocelyn blubbed. She had not called her mother ‘Mama’ since she was eight.
“Cersei.” Jaime’s voice was so cold that Cersei stopped in her tracks. They had argued before, many times before, but he had never sounded like that. “That’s enough.”
Cersei turned to look at him. He was white, and his lips had disappeared into a thin line. “What?” she asked stupidly.
“I said that’s enough. Leave the girl be.”
Jocelyn gawped at him just as her mother did.
Slowly, Cersei released her daughter’s arm.
With a gasp, she scampered away from her mother and towards her uncle. She cowered behind him, putting him between her and her mother. The twins looked at each other for a long moment.
“I’ll take her to Robert,” Jaime said shortly. “Come, Princess.”
Cersei stood rooted to the spot long after they had gone.