"Why did you kill your sister and commit the evil of kinslaying? All the world knows that, by the standards of gods and men alike, kinslayers are cursed forever," Earl Yohn Royce asked.
"Because of a wildfire plot? Just like King's Landing all those years ago." Gendry understood the broad outlines.
Daenerys looked at the man who had killed her father, yet felt that he resembled a forlorn, defeated lion.
Jaime looked at the king and remained silent. Yet that posture also amounted to an admission.
"Cersei wanted those pyromancers to burn the hostages in Casterly Rock to death, then burn Casterly Rock itself. Ser Jaime led us in thwarting the plot," Ser Addam Marbrand said cautiously.
"But Jaime Lannister once again killed the False Regent Queen Mother he had sworn to protect, and committed kinslaying as well," the exceedingly rigid Eddard Stark added.
It was like a question with several possible answers: Jaime had reached the right result, but every step he had taken was wrong.
Regicide was a great evil in itself. Though they had indeed deserved death, there had clearly been better ways, with someone else doing the deed rather than the knight personally trampling on his oath of protection.
The Martells and Tullys, who hated the Lannisters most deeply, and even the lords of the Stormlands remained silent, awaiting the king's judgment.
Even those whose hatred ran deepest felt that Lannister corpses now lay everywhere, covered in blood.
"Ser Jaime, you..." Ser Barristan Selmy could not help speaking. "You are in your thirties now, not seventeen."
"But this is how I have acted all my life. It is my sin." Looking at Barristan, Jaime suddenly envied him for the purity of his entire life.
Impulsiveness was a lesson he could never finish learning.
He had impulsively