“More than I would care to say,” Benifer allowed. “They are not oft spoken of, for fear that other men might do the same, but…”

“The first night is an offense against the King’s Peace,” the queen concluded. “An offense against not only the maid, but her husband as well…and the wife of the lord, never forget. What do those highborn ladies do whilst their lords are out deflowering maidens? Do they sew? Sing? Pray? Were it me, I might pray my lord husband fell off his horse and broke his neck coming home.”

King Jaehaerys smiled at that, but it was plain that he was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. “The right of the first night is an ancient one,” he argued, though with no great passion, “as much a part of lordship as the right of pit and gallows. It is rarely used south of the Neck, I am told, but its continued existence is a lordly prerogative that some of my more truculent subjects would be loath to surrender. You are not wrong, my love, but sometimes it is best to let a sleeping dragon lie.”

“We are the sleeping dragons,” the queen threw back. “These lords who love their first nights are dogs. Why must they slake their lust on maidens who have only just pledged their love to other men? Have they no wives of their own? Are there no whores in their domains? Have they lost the use of their hands?”

The justiciar Lord Albin Massey spoke up then, saying, “There is more to the first night than lust, Your Grace. The practice is an ancient one, older than the Andals, older than the Faith. It goes back to the Dawn Age, I do not doubt. The First Men were a savage race, and like the wildings beyond the Wall, they followed only strength. Their lords and kings were warriors, mighty men and heroes, and they wanted their sons to be the same. If a warlord chose to bestow his seed upon some maid on her wedding night, it was seen as…a sort of blessing. And if a child should come of the coupling, so much the better. The husband could then claim the honor of raising a hero’s son as his own.”

“Mayhaps that was so, ten thousand years ago,” the queen replied, “but the lords claiming the first night now are no heroes. You have not heard the women speak of them. I have. Old men, fat men, cruel men, poxy boys, rapers, droolers, men covered with scabs, with scars, with boils, lords who have not washed in half a year, men with greasy hair and lice. These are your mighty men. I listened to the girls, and none of them felt blessed.”

“The Andals never practiced the first night in Andalos,” Grand Maester Benifer said. “When they came to Westeros and swept away the kingdoms of the First Men, they found the tradition in place and chose to let it remain, just as they did the godswoods.”

Septon Barth spoke then, turning to the king. “Sire, if I may be so bold, I believe Her Grace has the right of this. The First Men might have found some purpose in this rite, but the First Men fought with bronze swords and fed their weirwood trees with blood. We are not those men, and it is past time we put an end to this evil. It stands against every ideal of chivalry. Our knights swear to protect the innocence of maidens…save for when the lord they serve wishes to despoil one, it would seem. We swear our marriage vows before the Father and the Mother, promising fidelity until the Stranger comes to part us, and nowhere in The Seven-Pointed Star does it say that those promises do not apply to lords. You are not wrong, Your Grace, some lords will surely grumble at this, especially in the North…but all the maids will thank us for it, and all the husbands and the fathers and the mothers, just as the queen has said. I know the Faithful will be pleased. His High Holiness will let his voice be heard, never doubt it.”

When Barth had finished speaking, Jaehaerys Targaryen threw up his hands. “I know when I am beaten. Very well. Let it be done.”

And so it came to pass that the second of what the smallfolk named Queen Alysanne’s Laws was enacted: the abolition of the lord’s ancient right to the first night. Henceforth, it was decreed, a bride’s maidenhead would belong only to her husband, whether joined before a septon or a heart tree, and any man, be he lord or peasant, who took her on her wedding night or any other night would be guilty of the crime of rape.

As the 58th year after Aegon’s Conquest drew to a close, King Jaehaerys celebrated the tenth anniversary of his coronation at the Starry Sept of Oldtown. The callow boy that the High Septon had crowned that day was long gone; his place had been taken by a man of four-and-twenty who was every inch a king. The wispy beard and mustache that His Grace had cultivated early in his reign had become a handsome golden beard, shot through with silver. His unshorn hair he wore in a thick braid that fell almost to his waist. Tall and handsome, Jaehaerys moved with an easy grace, be it on the dance floor or in the training yard. His smile, it was said, could warm the heart of any maiden in the Seven Kingdoms; his frown could make a man’s blood run cold. In his sister he had a queen even more beloved than he was. “Good Queen Alysanne,” the smallfolk called her, from Oldtown to the Wall. The gods had blessed the two of them with three strong children, two splendid young princes and a princess who was the darling of the realm.

In their decade of rule, they had known grief and horror, betrayal and conflict, and the death of loved ones, but they had weathered the storms and survived the tragedies and emerged stronger and better from all they had endured. Their accomplishments were undeniable; the Seven Kingdoms were at peace, and more prosperous than they had been in living memory.

It was a time for celebration and celebrate they did, with a tourney at King’s Landing on the anniversary of the king’s coronation. Princess Daenerys and the Princes Aemon and Baelon shared the royal box with their mother and father, and reveled in the cheers of the crowd. On the field, the highlight of the competition was the brilliance of Ser Ryam Redwyne, the youngest son of Lord Manfryd Redwyne of the Arbor, Jaehaerys’s lord admiral and master of ships. In successive tilts, Ser Ryam unhorsed Ronnal Baratheon, Arthor Oakheart, Simon Dondarrion, Harys Hogg (Harry the Ham, to the commons), and two Kingsguard knights, Lorence Roxton and Lucamore Strong. When the young gallant trotted up to the royal box and crowned Good Queen Alysanne as his queen of love and beauty, the commons roared their approval.

The leaves in the trees had begun to turn russet and orange and gold, and the ladies of the court wore gowns to match. At the feast that followed the end of the tourney, Lord Rogar Baratheon appeared with his children, Boremund and Jocelyn, to be warmly embraced by the king and queen. Lords from all over the realm came to join the celebration; Lyman Lannister from Casterly Rock, Daemon Velaryon from Driftmark, Prentys Tully from Riverrun, Rodrik Arryn from the Vale, even the Lords Rowan and Oakheart, whose levies once marched with Septon Moon. Theomore Manderly came down from the North. Alaric Stark did not, but his sons came, and with them his daughter, Alarra, blushing, to take up her new duties as a lady-in-waiting to the queen. The High Septon was too ill to come, but he sent his newest septa, Rhaella, who had been Targaryen, still shy, but smiling. It was said that the queen wept for joy at the sight of her, for in her face and form she was the very image of her sister, Aerea, grown older.

It was a time for warm embraces, for smiles, for toasts and reconciliations, for renewing old friendships and making new ones, for laughter and kisses. It was a good time, a golden autumn, a time of peace and plenty.

But winter was coming.

On the seventh day of the 59th year after Aegon’s Conquest, a battered ship came limping up the Whispering Sound to the port of Oldtown. Her sails were patched and ragged and salt-stained, her paint faded and flaking, the banner streaming from her mast so sun-bleached as to be unrecognizable. Not until she was tied up at dock was she finally recognized in her sorry state. She was the Lady Meredith, last seen departing Oldtown almost three years earlier to cross the Sunset Sea.