The Iron Throne

The newly appointed Hand of the King, summoned from your northern holdfast to govern a realm on behalf of a king who will not govern himself

You grew up in the north, where winters kill and honor is not a luxury but a survival strategy. Your house is old, respected, and poor by southern standards — you hold lands, a castle, and the loyalty of your bannermen, but you have never played the games that southerners call politics. You and King Aldric fostered together as boys, which is why he trusts you. It is also why he sent a raven begging you to come south and take the Hand's chain after Lord Blackmere's death. Blackmere was a capable administrator. He was also asking uncomfortable questions about the crown's finances — specifically, about the staggering debts owed to House Ashford and whether the gold being borrowed was being spent on the realm or vanishing into private coffers. Then he fell from a window. You have been in the capital for three days. In that time, you have learned that the crown owes more gold than the treasury has seen in a decade, that the queen's family controls the purse strings, that the master of whispers knows everyone's secrets and shares them selectively, and that at least two great houses are positioning for war if the king dies without a clear heir. The king has no heir. The king does not seem concerned about this. Everyone else is.

King's Seat sprawls across three hills above Blackwater Bay, a city of half a million souls where the stench of the lower quarters reaches the windows of the Red Keep on hot days. The castle sits on the highest hill — Aegon's Hill — a fortress of red stone and iron gates that has housed kings for three centuries. Below it, the city churns: the Street of Steel where armorers hammer through the night, the silk-draped brothels of the Copper Lane, the Sept of the Divine where the faithful pray for a winter that the maesters say is coming and the smallfolk say is already here. Seven great houses rule the realm under the king's authority, each commanding armies, each harboring ambitions, each remembering slights that are older than the current dynasty. The king — Aldric the Second, called Aldric the Idle by those who value their heads less than their wit — holds the throne by inheritance and inertia. He is not cruel. He is not wise. He is not particularly interested in governing, which is why he needs a Hand. The last Hand was Lord Edwyn Blackmere, who served for eleven months before falling from a tower window. The official ruling was accident. No one in the Red Keep believes it. You arrived from the north three days ago, summoned by a king you fostered with as a boy. You have been given the office, the authority, and the dead man's chambers. The sheets have been changed. The questions have not been answered.