Marionette

The melodious sound of a harp rose once more.

Pairs of men and women danced gracefully in the center of the hall, displaying their most elegant moves to the music.

Samwell picked up his plate again, eating Golden-Tailed Shrimp as he watched Renly and Margaery, a match made in heaven, spinning across the dance floor with a mysterious smile on his face.

He recalled how, in the original story, Renly had shown Eddard Stark a portrait of Margaery and asked whether the girl in it resembled his sister, Lyanna Stark.

Lady Lyanna had once been King Robert I's betrothed.

She had also been the fuse that ignited the famed War of the Usurper!

Lyanna had already been engaged to Robert when Prince Rhaegar Targaryen of the former dynasty abducted her.

After learning of this, Robert, then still the Duke of Storm's End, had risen in rebellion in a fury.

That had been the direct cause of the War of the Usurper.

Although Robert had personally slain Rhaegar and overthrown the Targaryen Dynasty, avenging the theft of his wife, Lyanna had already perished in the war.

It had become a wound in Robert's heart that would never heal.

The reason Renly had asked Eddard whether Margaery resembled Lyanna was clearly because he intended to offer Margaery to King Robert and replace Cersei Lannister as queen.

But judging from how the plot developed later, that scheme had failed.

It made sense. Though Robert had been unreliable ever since taking the Iron Throne, neglecting state affairs all day in favor of drinking, whoring, and hunting, and though his relationship with Queen Cersei was indeed poor, he was not actually brainless.

He would never make such a fuss as deposing his queen merely for a girl who somewhat resembled his old lover.

After all, Queen Cersei had powerful backing. House Lannister, her family, was the wealthiest house in Westeros, and her father, Lord Tywin, was one of the most powerful men in the Seven Kingdoms.

Unless they could seize Cersei's truly fatal secret—her three children by the king were all the products of incest with her own brother, Jaime Lannister!

Otherwise, Cersei's position as queen was not something just anyone could shake.

Unfortunately, while someone in King's Landing probably already knew this secret, or at least suspected it, no one could produce evidence.

Such a thing would be difficult to prove unless they caught them in bed together.

The fact that all three children had House Lannister's golden hair rather than House Baratheon's black hair was not real evidence.

After all, it was perfectly normal for children to inherit their mother's hair color.

In fact, in most people's eyes, it was only natural that the king's three children were blond.

After all, ever since the legendary clever Lann stole the sun's radiance and dyed his hair golden, House Lannister's golden-haired trait had been passed down for over six thousand years—practically a miracle of genetics—while House Baratheon had existed for barely more than three centuries. Thus, it seemed only natural that "the lion's gold overwhelmed the stag's coal-black."

So all these years, King Robert had never doubted that all three of his children were blond.

Renly clearly had no evidence either, which was why he wanted to depose the queen through such a roundabout method.

The true ironclad proof of Queen Cersei's fatal weakness would have to wait until Jon Arryn, the Hand of the King, discovered it in the massive tome <Lineages and Histories of the Great Houses of the Seven Kingdoms>. Sadly, this would also make him a fulcrum for some conspirator to throw the realm into turmoil, formally opening the curtain on this game of thrones.

Of course, that was all in the future.

At that moment, Samwell watched the dashing Renly on the dance floor and pondered the motive behind his scheme.

Judging from Renly's performance in the later War of the Five Kings, he had likely coveted the Iron Throne for a long time.

But as the king's youngest brother, he stood behind Cersei's three children and his second brother, Stannis Baratheon, in the line of succession.

His painstaking attempt to have his elder brother depose the queen was likely meant to strip those three children of their inheritance rights.

That way, the only claimant standing ahead of him would be his second brother, Stannis.

And in Renly's eyes, his eldest brother's disdain for Stannis was almost obvious.

During the War of the Usurper, Stannis had defended House Baratheon's ancestral seat—Storm's End—at the risk of his life. Yet after the war, Robert had made Renly, then nothing but a brat who could only cry and fuss, the Duke of Storm's End, while tossing the highly meritorious Stannis onto Dragonstone.

Though the title Duke of Dragonstone had always implied heir to the Iron Throne, that was a Targaryen Dynasty custom. What did it have to do with the current House Baratheon?

Dragonstone was not House Baratheon's ancestral homeland.

The Stormlands were.

Enjoying the service of the entire Stormlands at Storm's End while watching Stannis endure the sea winds on barren Dragonstone, Renly likely no longer had any doubts about his elder brother's favoritism.

Thus, in Renly's view, once Queen Cersei was deposed and her three children stripped of their succession rights, he would surely become first in line to the Iron Throne.

Samwell set down his knife and fork and suddenly thought of another question—what role had House Tyrell played in all this?

Then an amused smile appeared on his face.

When he had watched the television series in his previous life, he had noticed that many characters considered protagonists often died suddenly soon afterward, as if the author deliberately used this method to reveal the cruelty of power struggles and the unpredictability of fate.

Yet upon closer consideration, one would discover that these protagonists' deaths only seemed unpredictable. There were clues to follow, and they had even been fated long ago.

This game of thrones was, in truth, merely a game played by a handful of conspirators. Hidden behind the scenes, what they did and thought was almost impossible for viewers to perceive.

Those so-called "protagonists" were merely marionettes in the hands of these true players. Pulled by threads of honor, hatred, love, power... they fought, slaughtered, and died at center stage... performing one magnificent, stirring drama after another. Yet even at the moment of death, they might never understand why they had died.

Wasn't the young, noble, and dazzling Renly before him precisely such a "protagonist"?

And the person holding the thread behind him was likely one of the game's greatest players—Lady Olenna, the "Queen of Thorns."

Think carefully: how had Renly learned that Margaery resembled King Robert's old lover?

Samwell guessed that the most likely explanation was that the Knight of the Flowers, Loras, had mentioned it to Renly "by chance" during some bit of horseplay.

Then Renly, who had long coveted the Iron Throne, had eagerly rushed over to Highgarden—

No, not Highgarden, but Hightower.

The shrewd Lady Olenna would never have allowed Renly to go to Highgarden. Wouldn't that have made it obvious that House Tyrell was involved?

Using a family visit as a pretext to arrange for Margaery and Renly to "run into each other" at Hightower was far less conspicuous.

If the plot to depose the queen succeeded in the future, House Tyrell could completely feign innocence and let Renly bear the wrath of House Lannister in the Westerlands.

And if it failed... House Tyrell would not have lost anything anyway.

Just one "unintentional" mention by Loras and a portrait of Margaery had sent Renly, that big fool, running all over the place for House Tyrell's queenly ambitions while shouldering every risk himself.

The more Samwell considered it, the more certain he became that such exquisite, seamless political maneuvering had to be the work of Lady Olenna, the "Queen of Thorns."

Moreover, he was certain that if Margaery truly became queen, Lady Olenna would abandon Renly at the first opportunity. Whether she used him as a scapegoat to quell the Westerlands' fury or cleared him out of the way to remove succession obstacles for future princes and princesses with Tyrell blood, Renly's tragic end was destined.

Poor young Duke of Storm's End. He could not see this at all and was still foolishly working for others for nothing.

It seemed the Smith in King's Landing had truly evaluated the three Baratheon brothers quite accurately—

Robert, the eldest, was true steel, able to endure the forge; Stannis, the second, was cast iron, too hard and therefore easily broken; Renly, the youngest, was bright copper, pretty to look at but worth very little.

When the song ended, the men and women on the dance floor all stopped and headed off to the sides.

Renly, meanwhile, took Margaery to a small room nearby.

Watching his "future" wife being led away, Samwell was not worried in the slightest.

Because he knew Renly's plan would never succeed in the first place.

If it had been someone else, he might have worried that they would do something other than paint while they were alone. But Renly?

Not only was the man "bright copper," he was also gay.

If he said he was going to paint, then he really was just going to paint.

Samwell chuckled and lowered his head to take another Golden-Tailed Shrimp, only to discover in astonishment that his plate was empty!

Damn it, he had eaten them all.

Should he ask Count Leyton to bring out more?

But wouldn't that be a little too much...

Sir Caesar, who saw through everything, fell into troubled thought.