Late at night, Dragonstone, the Painted Table Chamber.
The salty sea wind carried the roar of the waves, battering Dragonstone's black cliffs without cease.
Stannis Baratheon stood beside the stone table carved with the terrain of all Westeros, his posture straight.
Deep shadows lay beneath his sunken eyes as he gazed through the narrow stone window at the midnight ocean outside, which had swallowed the moon and stars.
Flickering candlelight fell upon his sparse, fine black hair, faintly tracing the outline of a dim crown.
Not far behind him stood his most trusted confidant, Ser Davos Seaworth.
They had returned to this fortress from King's Landing a month earlier.
Immediately after returning from Tyrosh, Stannis had searched King's Landing for evidence alone, without alerting anyone.
Following the hint Eddard Stark had given him that night, he had secretly sought out several of Robert's bastards scattered throughout Flea Bottom. After confirming their striking black hair with his own eyes, Stannis realized that Eddard's suspicions were very likely true.
He had immediately sought out the Hand of the King, Jon Arryn, and laid out Eddard's conjecture and his own preliminary findings in full.
The two leading men of the realm, one renowned for his fairness and strictness, the other guided by the law, had immediately begun a deeper joint investigation.
In the end, it was Jon Arryn who had found the crucial book, The Lineages and Histories of the Great Houses of the Seven Kingdoms, among piles of dusty old records.
On its yellowed pages, the cold, conclusive genealogical records showed that black hair was an unshakable trait in every known descendant of marriages between House Baratheon and other houses.
The evidence was irrefutable!
Robert Baratheon's three children, Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen, were Queen Cersei's bastards.
Just as Jon Arryn had finished