November, King's Landing.
King's Landing had never seen such splendor!
Many people had come to witness Prince Rhaegar's betrothal celebration. After all, it was the crown prince's betrothal ceremony!
The lofty Red Keep stood above the land beside the sea, its red color exerting an immense pressure on the commoners and nobles of King's Landing.
Prince Rhaegar was getting betrothed to the princess of the Kingdom of Dorne, Elia Martell, a girl who had yet to come of age. In this era, women had very hard lives.
They had to marry before reaching the best age for childbearing. In fact, the best age for women to give birth was between eighteen and twenty-four. During this period, their bodies recovered best after childbirth, and they had enough strength to make difficult births less likely. So people should neither marry and have children too late nor marry and have children too early. Everything had to be just right!
Once the waters broke, excessive blood loss could kill! That was still true in modern society! Giving birth had always been a dance before the King of Hell!
And inside the Red Keep...
Seated high upon the Iron Throne was the already aging king, Aerys II, Aerys Targaryen! None other than the Mad King!
The Mad King still looked relatively normal at this point. Seated on the Iron Throne, he watched his son lead Elia Martell into the hall.
Royal music rang out as rows of long horns began to sound! Black banners bearing red dragons hung beneath them! The three dragon heads were the very sigil of House Targaryen!
Many important figures were present in the throne room.
Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning. Of course, he would later earn the fine title of "Sword of the Morning Who Holds a Cock!"
Barristan Selmy! Lord Commander of the Kingsguard! An expert at the level of a greatsword grandmaster! He truly was an expert! Though he was very good at choosing sides!
Harbert Baratheon! The current regent of the Stormlands! He was already sixty years old!
A year earlier, his nephew, Steffon Baratheon, the lord paramount of the Storm Kingdom, and his wife had encountered a storm while sailing to Essos to find Rhaegar a crown princess! They had perished!
Yet Robert Baratheon was only thirteen at the time! Thus, the nominal king of the Storm Kingdom was now Robert Baratheon! In practice, however, old Harbert managed everything!
Of course, there was also Tywin Lannister, who was in the prime of his life! The creator of "The Rains of Castamere"! Back then, to wipe out rebels, he had diverted a river straight into the caves where several thousand enemies were hiding. Along with tens of thousands of local civilians, they had all been drowned alive! Bloody and brutal! Cold-faced and bloodthirsty!
That song had intimidated many houses of the Westerlands, keeping them from rebelling!
After stripping his father of power, Tywin had finally succeeded in becoming the head of House Lannister!
He and Aerys II had also fought together in the War of the Ninepenny Kings! He was a supporter of the king! At present, he was still Aerys II's Hand of the King!
The king had once humiliated Tywin's cousin and wife, Joanna Lannister! Tywin had gone back to the Westerlands then, but now he had returned!
What angered Tywin, however, was that Aerys II had actually refused a marriage alliance with him, rejecting the proposal to marry Cersei Lannister to Rhaegar!
A Lannister always pays his debts!
How could Aerys know what Tywin was thinking at this moment?
Not even in his dreams would Aerys have known that Tywin's son Jaime would one day kill him and earn the name Kingslayer!
Tywin's arrival had successfully blinded Aerys!
The other lords had only sent their sons, heirs, and the like to witness the occasion!
House Stark had sent Brandon Stark! He was the very "Wild Wolf" whom the Mad King would execute a few years later, and his younger brother was the famous Ned Stark!
Brandon's younger sister was Lyanna! His youngest brother was Benjen!
House Tully had sent Brandon Tully, the younger brother of its head, Hoster Tully!
Brandon Tully was the famous Blackfish Tully! He had fought alongside his elder brother in the War of the Ninepenny Kings and won illustrious military honors! The nobles had nicknamed him Blackfish!
As for Hoster Tully, the lord paramount of the Riverlands, his daughters were Catelyn Tully and Lysa Tully, and his youngest son was Edmure Tully!
Edmure Tully! The very man who had become famous with two arrows when his father, Hoster Tully, died!
Highgarden had sent Mace Tyrell, the royal heir of the Rose of Highgarden's house! His daughter was the Little Rose, Margaery!
House Arryn had sent Denys Arryn, the nephew of Jon Arryn, who had just inherited the ducal title. He was currently the heir to the Vale!
Old Gelda had croaked just days after naming Jon his heir!
Dorne had sent Oberyn Martell, the Red Viper, younger brother of Drego Martell, the recently appointed Prince of Dorne! He was the very man whose arrogance had allowed the Mountain to turn the tables and kill him! Right now, he was in his youth!
The bride in this marriage alliance was Oberyn's elder sister, Elia Martell!
Led by a group of the most distinguished people in the Seven Kingdoms, Prince Rhaegar, dressed in formal attire, slowly entered the hall with the beautiful Princess Elia!
Aerys II looked over the assembled nobles and said, "Welcome, everyone, to Crown Prince Rhaegar's betrothal ceremony. Now, let the maester preside over the ceremony."
Pycelle, the minister and maester, immediately took his place on the steps before the Kingsguard, dressed in red ceremonial robes. He looked at the musicians on either side. "Music!"
Rhaegar led Elia into the "Dance of Dragons." The surrounding nobles also began dancing with the female companions they had brought.
The Dance of Dragons imitated the flight of dragons. It was graceful, yet held a wild ferocity! It was a betrothal dance unique to House Targaryen!
After dancing for a quarter of an hour, the nobles left the throne room and headed to the banquet hall for the actual feast.
The betrothal ceremony had proceeded very smoothly! Tywin watched the betrothed couple in the center of the banquet, his thoughts unknown! Then he glanced at Aerys again. He had rejected the proposed marriage between Prince Rhaegar and Cersei, the greatest beauty in the Seven Kingdoms!
He had brought shame upon House Lannister!
After the feast came a tournament that would last several weeks!
Thousands of knights from great and small houses participated in the tournament's three tiers: gold, silver, and bronze!
The bronze field hosted the bronze knights' tournament!
The silver field hosted the silver knights' contests!
The gold field hosted contests between gold knights!
There were three main categories: jousting, close combat, and archery!
There were three formats: individual combat, team combat, and melees!
Finally, the top three from the bronze, silver, and gold fields would compete together!
The tournament champion would ultimately be decided!
The tournament continued in the three areas for several weeks! Each area contained whole clusters of tournament buildings! Only the most luxurious was the true Grand Arena of King's Landing!
The final result was quite unexpected. The champion was Rhaegar Targaryen! The runner-up was Arthur Dayne! Third place went to Barristan Selmy!
Everyone had expected the Sword of the Morning to win!
The next six places all went to members of the great paramount houses!
This was a monopoly of bloodlines!
Without the enhancement of a bloodline, it was a miracle for an ordinary person's attributes to exceed five! Thus, to keep their bloodline pure, the Targaryens mostly married their own big sisters or little sisters!
Aegon the Conqueror had even had two principal wives! Both were his blood relatives as well as his wives!
This tournament lasted an entire month!
The nobles reveled! More than a hundred thousand gold coins were handed out! Yet who cared whether the common people of Featherwood, outside King's Landing, lived or died?
No noble cared how many refugee slums there were on the Street of Rats!
In Su Qin's view, House Targaryen had brought the disaster of the Dance of the Dragons entirely upon themselves!
How much grain could over a hundred thousand gold coins buy? A full five million units, enough to feed five hundred thousand people for a year!
The problem, however, was that grain production everywhere was already insufficient! Grain prices in Featherwood had reached eight coppers per jin!
Highgarden was taking advantage of this opportunity to hoard grain on a massive scale. They estimated that grain prices would rise even higher next year!
Their granaries were filled to the brim, while the people at the bottom gnawed on bark and slept on wasteland!
Yet the lamentable thing was that nobles stood with the nobility by their very nature. Gold and power were all that mattered!
Why would they care whether the common people lived or died?
In Featherwood, the Brotherhood Without Banners was slowly growing. Many farmers had either fled or joined the Brotherhood Without Banners!
Taxes in the Crownlands were the highest!
Added together, they amounted to a full seventy percent!
But the local nobles also had to hand over thirty percent of the taxes they collected to the royal family! Exploitation at every level indeed!
Thus, Featherwood, such a vast region, even part of the king's directly ruled lands, right beneath the sovereign's feet, had actually been the first to erupt in a peasant rebellion! What an enormous joke!
Yet rumors circulated among the common people that Gulltown, the former great harbor town in the Kingdom of the Vale, was exempt from taxes this year!
Some believed the rumor. With a sliver of hope for survival, families brought their entire households along and slowly made their way north from ferry crossings and aboard merchant ships!
In stark contrast to the prosperity of King's Landing, Su Qin was currently covered in dust and dirt, making an inspection among the rows of corn!
Su Qin was inspecting the farmland with the common people!
The farmland was divided into clearly defined rows! Su Qin strictly forbade private land transactions! Anyone caught would be beheaded without exception! This was currently an iron law of Gull Territory!
Standing among the rows, Su Qin slowly broke off an ear of corn that already looked somewhat ripe. A single stalk had actually produced two ears! Such a yield was unimaginable!
Beside him was Nack, the minister of logistics, who was none other than the tavern keeper's son!
Nack had grown thinner! He had a great deal to learn! He was one of Su Qin's trusted confidants!
Now, every day, he was either working or studying! This was a mandatory task Su Qin had set for him and Luke!
Su Qin had even hired a scholar to teach Luke the Westeros language!
Among the rows of crops.
Nack watched Su Qin, who was dressed in a gold-threaded seagull outfit and carefully weighing an ear of corn in his hand.
The road beside them was packed with guards, farmers, and women. The women and children had also contributed a great deal. It could be said that most of the weeding and tending of the farmland had been done by the women and children!
Looking at the sweating Su Qin, Nack asked:
"My lord, how does it look? How much longer until the corn ripens?"
Su Qin looked at the people around him. Everyone was waiting eagerly!
They were all covered in dust and dirt. It seemed that his grand inspection had exhausted everyone!
Su Qin thought it over again. Corn took about 110 days to ripen. It had been planted in early August, so the harvest should be in late November!
"A little over ten days!"
When the people several meters away heard him, they immediately began passing the news along!
"The baron says the grain will be ripe in a little over ten days!"
"The baron says, in a little over ten days..."
One after another, people began relaying the message. Commoners were not allowed within five meters of Su Qin!
As the people began passing the news along, Su Qin gazed at the endless cornfields on either side of the ten-meter-wide main road through the fields.
He sighed. It seemed he needed a minister of agriculture to help the people farm!
He needed to find someone to teach the farmers exactly how to cultivate their land! But at present, there were no suitable candidates!
Su Qin handed the corn to Nack and said, "Have everyone patrol carefully this month. Don't let wild boars and deer ruin the grain!"
Everyone passed the message along in turn.
After spending a week inspecting the fields, Su Qin returned to Seagull City, or rather, Gull Manor!
There were plenty of matters that required his decisions! He had to oversee the purchase of military supplies, iron ingots, and stone bricks! Disputes between nobles required his mediation! He also needed to pay some attention to the grievances of certain commoners!
How to maneuver and negotiate with merchants from different regions, how to build good relations with the minor nobles and knights who came to Gulltown, how to arrange for people to properly educate the orphans, and how to explain to visiting clerics that the Qilin Faith was not an evil cult-all of it required Su Qin's personal attention!
He was busy! He did not even have time to ride to Runestone to see his wife!
But there was no helping it. It was now early November, and Seagull City's territory already had three thousand households! Those three thousand households amounted to around twelve thousand people!
Those ten thousand-plus lives were all looking desperately to Su Qin for a way to survive! The sixteen thousand units of grain were almost gone, too!
Su Qin was under enormous pressure!