A teenager under the influence of alcohol
literally went wild: he became irritable,
aggressive, withdrawn; his behaviour
became alienated. Remember:
alcohol consumption, especially at an early
age when personality is forming, is
is not only undesirable, but also unacceptable.
(from the film "National Hunting Characteristics")
When the mournful bell of the Sept of Baelor announced the death of King Robert, Eddard Stark for some reason thought of Prince Lyonel, whom he liked for some reason and who, with his powerful build and black, unruly hair, now reminded him of his late friend. Now they had another thing in common: Robert had also been orphaned at the age of sixteen and had grown up a scoundrel without a father.
Lionel grew up a scoundrel even with his father alive: at Winterfell, the prince was quite adept at flirting with girls of low birth, so that the conversations of Jeyne Poole and Sansa about how handsome the prince was began to sound indecent to everyone except Sansa, sound somewhat indecent in all their innocence — the prince very successfully hid his frivolous behaviour from the beautiful Sansa, as if his loving glances were intended for her alone.
In training fights in the courtyard of Winterfell, the prince would demand real swords, then agree to fence with wooden ones, pretending to be drunk, but so drunk that it was surprisingly difficult to hit him. Rob and Jon didn't even know whether to be angry with the prince or not: on the one hand, he wasn't mocking them, he really was almost always drunk. On the other hand, the prince could well have been drunk and mocking them.
However, Lionel was not just a prankster, as Eddard discovered the day after the king's death, when Cersei tore up Robert's will in front of him, appointing Eddard as regent and Protector of the Realm, and the city guard in golden cloaks attacked Eddard's few men, knocking them down and tying them up almost immediately. "I warned you not to trust me," Littlefinger grinned, pressing a dagger to Eddard's throat, while King Lionel calmly watched the proceedings from the Iron Throne.
After the northern rebels were led away, King Lionel, who had been mourning his father since morning when the mournful bell rang, deigned to continue the memorial service, with such desperate abandon that the minstrel summoned from the castle gates thought it appropriate to add to the merriment with a bawdy song about the king who had just died and his last battle with a pig, and he was not quite in tune.
"Take him!" ordered the young king, who was already overcome by drunkenness. "Tomorrow, either your tongue will be torn out or your right hand will be cut off. Think about it until tomorrow, choose your punishment."
The young king's face began to twitch, his eyes flashed, and his hand fell on the hilt of a thin sword.
"Trant!" Lionel barked, his voice sounding like his father's as it rang out over the battlefield. "Take as many men as you think necessary and lock the Stark princesses in their tower."
"I dare to report," replied the knight of the Royal Guard, a little timid before the king, who was as fierce and quick-tempered as his predecessor. "Their people will not be pleased with your order."
"You'll figure it out," the young king dismissed him. "We don't need another fight here. And most importantly, if anyone lays a finger on any of the princesses, I'll drown you in the moat like a dog. Sandor! Help Knight Trant!"
"It's getting worse by the minute," thought Merrin Trant to himself as he set off to carry out the order, glancing warily at Sandor, who was looking at him as if he were about to help him move into the moat. "You'll drive these girls back to their rooms without even touching them."
Shortly after Merrin Trant and his squad left, the merry revelers rolled out into the castle courtyard, where an impromptu tournament took place, in which one of the tipsy knights behaved disgracefully, losing both his shield and the lower part of his armour, and was stripped of his rank by the harsh king and made a jester for his lack of both martial and table manners.
"I'd like to make you fight to the death, you drunken fool," Lionel said angrily, annoyed that such an idiot had been chosen to fight in the last pair.
After the knights' less than successful performance, the young king demanded that some inappropriate jesters be brought in, explaining that his late father had hated peace and loved the laughter and joy of battle. Two half-naked whores were even dragged onto the stage, where they whipped each other for their sins under the guidance of a fake septon who looked something like the young king. The knights and the rest of the population of the Red Castle rolled with laughter at the merry wake, prompting the whores on stage with suggestions of other sins they could commit, and only the young king hardly laughed; he was still gloomy and angry and soon left for the city.
Many in the city knew the dissolute prince and his dashing father, and even on this day of mourning, some greeted their new king with quiet cheers, until a drunken knight, who had probably been drinking for a week and knew nothing of the changes in the kingdom, pushed his way through the crowd.
"Give me gold!" the knight shouted at the prince. "Robert owes me gold! Give me two gold coins!"The crowd whistled in outrage at such disrespect for the memory of the cheerful king who had just died, then fell silent, and the new king stopped his horse. When the drunken knight, who had fought alongside Robert at the Stone Sept, pushed his way through the crowd, he saw that the young king was as pale as a sheet, his mouth unnaturally clenched to keep his lower lip from trembling.
"Drown this drunkard in the pond, Your Highness," came a voice from the back rows.
"Yeah, we should beat him up," came a reasonable response from the right, and the crowd surged toward Robert, who had insulted the memory of the king, pushing him in the back.
Perhaps the new king recognised his father's wayward comrade-in-arms, or perhaps he simply took pity on a man left alone against the crowd, but Lionel leaned down from his horse and honoured the drunken knight with a slap across the face.
"Let's go drink some more, you bastard," said the young king magnanimously, and the crowd roared with joy and approval.
Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! Lionel's head was splitting, he felt nauseous, and worst of all, his memory would soon return, and then he would be ashamed. How ashamed Trident had been when he woke up in the same state the morning after his horse ride with Sansa and prayed to all the gods that his memory would not betray him and reveal that he had laid hands on Lord Eddard's beautiful daughter. How despicable it would have been: he got her drunk, lured her away from the camp, and then, in a moment of weakness, let his hands get the better of him and tore her dress... He might as well have gone and hanged himself from the nearest tree.
Fortunately, the Trident got off lightly: it turned out that he had only slashed some commoner in a drunken rage, Arya's wolf had grabbed his hand, it was nothing really, he was even grateful to the wolf that morning, he looked at his hand and immediately remembered everything. When they approached the river, Sansa was telling them that her sister had been coming home covered in bruises lately, and then there was this scene by the river, with Arya fighting a guy much taller than her. Lionel was a true Baratheon after all, not a clerk — Baratheons strike first and ask questions later...
But what embarrassed him most was that, due to the unexpected bite from the wolf and his excessive drinking, Lionel dropped his sword, and Arya threw it into the middle of the river, and the next morning, the hungover prince dived into the cold morning river until he surfaced with the sword, and then vomited a mixture of moonshine and river water on the bank for a long time. And afterwards, he felt ashamed that his sisters had quarrelled because of him, and Arya didn't speak to him for two weeks. Probably still doesn't, for locking her in her room on his orders," but Lionel was not ashamed of that order.
"Your Majesty, would you like some wine?" the servant interrupted the king's heavy thoughts as he sat down on the bed.
"Something nice in the morning," Lionel replied angrily. He was not happy with his new title, quite the opposite. The wine did not help; his chest ached at the thought of his father, and it continued to ache. Perhaps he had been wrong to try to escape his pain yesterday. At least Lord Eddard's daughters hadn't seen it.
In the courtyard, a minstrel who had suffered greatly during the night rushed up to the young king.
"Cut off my hand, Your Majesty," he whispered with white lips. "At least I'll still be able to sing."
"Did you drink too much yesterday?" replied the young king: with a hangover in the morning, it seemed to him that he had punished the daring minstrel too harshly yesterday. Lionel had no intention of cutting off his hand, he just wanted to scare him — and he did. "Go sleep it off. Come back in the evening and sing something for me."
Having got rid of the minstrel, Lionel glanced fearfully at the wall: it seemed that yesterday he had boasted of impaling someone's head on a pike. No, the gods protect fools and drunkards: he hadn't impaled anyone.
"Come out, friend, you're pardoned!" Lionel declared, perhaps a little too cheerfully and insolently, as he opened the door of the cell where Lord Stark had been brought yesterday, and added in a lower tone, his feigned merriment quickly fading: "I'm sorry. Couldn't you have let us out for a day?"
"What were you celebrating, lad?" Stark replied angrily as he left the cell, and immediately regretted his words when he saw that his mockery had struck a raw nerve, and the young king simply accepted the blow as deserved punishment.
"How are my men?" Lord Eddard asked in a more businesslike tone, and Lionel waved his hands vaguely.
"Slynt is not entirely stupid," King Lionel reassured his right-hand man. "He took blunt swords; everyone knows that if you don't want to go to the Wall, you listen to Littlefinger and do the opposite. You have many wounded, but hardly any are seriously injured. Littlefinger already had a battle sword. They took it while we were making noise in the courtyard. I filled half the prison with work for you, Barristan helped a lot. As my father would say, better to betray them now than later in battle.
"And your mother?" asked Eddard, and the king's pale, hungover face, which looked completely white in the dim light, framed by black hair, froze like ice.
"What does she mean to me, to my father..." And the young king patted himself on the back of his strong, firm neck, then threw his hand down in despair. "Listen, sort it out yourself, even my father said I was unfit to rule."Lord Eddard had already figured out a lot, including why King Lionel's brother and sister were blond, and now he was even sure that the wrath of the foolish but noble young king would fall on the head of the dissolute queen mother, and not on the head of the honest and impartial right hand, but that was why he felt sorry for Lionel. The Lannisters would then have to be expelled from the capital, some even from Westeros, and Robert's brothers were little better: one was a faggot, and the other, they said, had joined a sect. The boy would be left with no family at all, thought Eddard, you might as well take him into your own.
"I beg you before all the gods," said the young king suddenly, lost in his hangover thoughts. "Take your daughters away from me. Nothing good will come of this."
Eddard should perhaps have been offended by such frankness and asked what the king was hinting at, but a guilty head does not deserve to be cut off, and besides, light footsteps could be heard in the dark corridor, suggesting that "nothing good" was about to happen to King Lionel, and not the other way around.
Released from house arrest, Sansa's hot Tarly blood was boiling, and the torch in her hand looked like a weapon.
"I will not set my guards on you!" Sansa shouted and struck Lionel with the torch, but he very deftly took the blow with his crossed arms and was almost unharmed. "I will punish you myself!"
"Did Trant dare to raise his hand against her, the beast?" thought the young king in horror, slipping past Sansa and running down the corridor. "I'll drown him in the moat, and I won't even feel sorry for him! Or did I go to her later that night and do something wrong? I don't remember anything. I promised myself I would never go near them when I was drunk!"
"I'll throw you off the wall, traitor!" Sansa promised, rushing after the monarch and her fiancé, angry at him only for what he had done to her father: disgraced him by putting him in prison as a usurper, even though he had already been released. And suddenly Sansa laughed — Lionel had managed to escape on his knees, there was something cheerful and indestructible in him, just like his father, and not all of his jokes were cruel and gloomy.
"Maybe something good will come of it," Eddard Stark said to himself, limping after the children who had run away down the corridor. "Young Robert wasn't so remorseful when he was hungover, let alone old Robert. Maybe something good will come of them."
***
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