Three days later, news that King's Landing had been burned by wildfire swept across the Seven Kingdoms.
Hundreds of thousands of lives, along with Renly, nearly half the noble elite of the Reach and the Stormlands, and seventy thousand elite soldiers inside the city, had been reduced to ashes in the raging wildfire.
Rumor had it that the Lannisters left behind in King's Landing had orchestrated the blaze, colluding with the pyromancers of the Alchemists' Guild to bring about the massacre.
The "masterpiece" the Mad King Aerys had left unfinished had been completed by the Lannisters themselves.
Then rumors that the siblings Cersei and Jaime were the children of the Mad King and Joanna spread ever more fiercely through taverns great and small across the Seven Kingdoms, for the madness the supposed culprit, Cersei Lannister, had displayed in burning the city was exactly like that of Aerys II.
After that, another piece of news emerged: King Joffrey had gone mad and slaughtered commoners during the siege of King's Landing, only to be executed by the commoners in turn, his head hung above the Gate of the Gods.
This news set off another storm of public outrage across the Seven Kingdoms.
By now, no one doubted the rumors anymore. Everyone believed that Cersei and Jaime were the Mad King's children!
Only those of dragon blood would love their own siblings, and only those of dragon blood would be so mad.
The Stormlands were the first to respond to these monstrous crimes.
In the formidable fortress of Storm's End, the acting castellan, Cortnay Penrose, summoned the few surviving lords of the Stormlands.
The castle hall was cold and grim. Candlelight swayed in the drafts, illuminating faces stricken with grief and burning with the fire of vengeance.
"Lannister!"
Cortnay's voice was hoarse as