King's Landing, an audience with the Mad King

King's Landing-the heart of the Seven Kingdoms.

The symbol of royal power, the seat of the Iron Throne.

In A Song of Ice and Fire, everything began here and ended here.

In his previous life, Ghost had dreamed countless times of making a pilgrimage to the filming locations of Game of Thrones. The place he most wanted to visit was the inspiration for King's Landing-the little old city of Dubrovnik, at the southeasternmost tip of Croatia.

Situated on Dalmatia's white limestone cliffs, the Old Town of Dubrovnik had always been a hub for trade across the Adriatic Sea and between East and West. Enclosed by two kilometers of walls and fortifications, the old city had a distinctly medieval city-state character.

When she arrived here in person, she was filled with emotion, along with an unreal sense of absurdity.

There were no tourists here, no cozy little roadside shops or bright lights. Among the ancient walls and street corners, all she saw were impoverished people in filthy rags that barely covered them. Sewage and stench were everywhere, with animal and human excrement scattered all over...

Ghost nearly vomited. She had to press a scented handkerchief desperately over her nose and mouth. She was immensely grateful to the silent nun who had pressed it into her hands.

At the distant sight of a noble's litter and fully armored guards, the poor scurried into dark corners like rats that could not bear the light.

Even in this rare period of stable royal rule, King's Landing had no shortage of poor people without enough food or warm clothing.

Only when they reached the inner city where the nobles lived did the sanitation improve a little.

The Red Keep, where the king resided, stood in the deepest part of King's Landing.

Successive Targaryen kings had loved conducting affairs of state in the Red Keep's throne room. Even when the Hand of the King repeatedly invited the king to attend the Small Council in the council chamber, the king could not be bothered to shift his royal backside.

As though that iron chair bristling with swords could lend them extra majesty.

In the Game of Thrones series, the throne room was the largest hall in the Red Keep. Rectangular in shape, it had eight enormous carved columns along its sides and tall Gothic stained-glass windows to the north.

The stained-glass window behind the Iron Throne depicted the crimson three-headed dragon of House Targaryen against a black background. Banners bearing the same design hung throughout the upper reaches of the throne room.

But when Ghost stepped into this dim hall with its smell of decay, she thought she had walked into a nightmare.

The source of that nightmare was King Aerys, perched high on the Iron Throne like a psychiatric patient.

Ever since the Defiance of Duskendale ended, Aerys had seemed glued to the Iron Throne. He saw a traitor in everyone and feared assassination from the shadows. Every day, he deployed no fewer than four Kingsguard and at least a hundred Gold Cloaks to protect him wherever he went, at all times.

He did not comb his hair, bathe, groom himself, or even trim his nails. Except when sleeping, he shifted restlessly on the Iron Throne day and night, muttering to himself. Its blades constantly cut him bloody...

The scab king, the Mad King... Aerys Targaryen.

The hall was filled with fully armed Gold Cloaks, standing in several rows along either side. The king's Kingsguard stood beside the Iron Throne, looking from a distance like a row of finely crafted white tin cans...

But no one would dare underestimate them. If the king were in danger, they would draw their swords at once and hack his enemies into pulp.

(It was worth mentioning that Jaime would later find it just this convenient to stab King Aerys in the back and kill him.)

Ghost discreetly surveyed the room. Most of those present were guards and Gold Cloaks, with only a handful of nobles, presumably from families the king trusted.

She wore a veil, revealing only a pair of violet eyes. Her eyes had originally been clear emerald green, but she had drunk a potion supposedly concocted by a wizard. One tiny bottle could maintain her eye color for several months. It could be called another world's version of cosmetic contact lenses in potion form...

But the potion had a small problem: sometimes it could make her nearsighted, or cause other side effects...

It was rather nostalgic; she had been terribly nearsighted in her previous life. But in her view, whether it was for a disguise or to please someone, it was unnecessary. Emerald green was no uglier than violet...

Perhaps the important people had their own considerations...

Ghost's head was full of jumbled thoughts, but her steps never faltered. With her head lowered, she stared only at the ground just ahead of her toes as she slowly approached the king. She looked graceful and serene... After all, with several diopters of myopia, it was best to walk carefully.

She could no longer make out faces more than three meters away, and her gaze was a little unfocused. To outsiders, however, she looked exactly like a noble maiden who regarded everything with lofty indifference, tinged with a little confusion and yearning.

Varys, beside the king, bent down and whispered to him, "Truly worthy of the Targaryen blood she shares with Your Most Noble Majesty. Such a noble and majestic bearing."

King Aerys waved Varys back and said quietly, "Come closer. Let me look at you."

Enduring the sour, rotten stench coming from the old king, Ghost took a few small steps forward.

The girl was still at a tender age, but the beginnings of a peerless beauty were already apparent. Her eyes were not like Rhaegar's clear, translucent amethysts. They were paler, with a faint icy blue beneath the purple...

Besides her eyes, her hair color was somewhat different too. Unlike Rhaegar's excessively silvery-white hair, hers seemed coated in sunlight, gleaming and giving a sense of warmth.

King Aerys seemed momentarily lost in thought... None of the children born to House Targaryen over the past century had so closely resembled their ancestors.

He had only read a few scant words about it in the records of family legends. At the height of the empire of the people of Old Valyria, this was how they had looked: platinum blond, as though tempered in dragonfire.

Sadly, after the dragons disappeared, the Targaryens had married into the noble families of Westeros generation after generation, and their children's hair had grown ever paler. As though they were running out of ink...

Ghost was panicking. The king's gloomy stare made her heart pound with fear. With difficulty, she shifted her gaze to the gleaming light bulb on the king's right.

It was a bald head so white it shone, and very distinctive. He had not yet grown stout, and his features were rather refined.

He smelled of cosmetics, and the skin on his face was smooth, without a single visible hair. He wore a loose silk robe beneath a vest sewn with gold thread.

He looked at Ghost with a smile that was both gratified and ingratiating.

Ghost squinted her nearsighted eyes at the boiled egg's face... Aha! Isn't that Varys, the head steward of the household!

Some of her questions were answered. She had been wondering why she had been able to reach King's Landing so smoothly and invent a background without arousing suspicion... It was probably this boiled egg's doing.

In Game of Thrones, the Mother of Dragons and the Beggar King had been introduced to Khal Drogo through the magister of Pentos. That magister was a staunch ally of the Spider. The two had deep ties...

No wonder the luxurious mansion she had stayed in at Pentos had looked somewhat familiar.

And it was hard to say whether Rickard Stark also had dealings with this Spider, or had reached some tacit understanding with him...?

"Lift your veil. Let me see your face." There was no discernible emotion in the king's voice.

Ghost was just about to do it when Varys eagerly came over and bent down to lift her veil for her. She could only keep her head slightly lowered in "bashfulness," staring at her toes.

King Aerys's gaze was gloomy, scrutinizing, and carried a trace of barely perceptible hostility. Ghost could clearly sense that he did not seem to like her very much...

She stood rigidly until cold sweat seeped from her temples before King Aerys finally spoke. "Where is Rhaegar?"

"Bring him here to look at his betrothed."

Ghost could not help letting out a breath, but inwardly she was still terribly nervous. Did the king mean... I passed muster?

Was something this important decided just like that?

The crown prince's consort, settled with two casual sentences, as though this were only a formality?

In ancient China, they wouldn't settle on a crown prince's wife without vetting her hundreds of times and selecting from three thousand candidates...

Wasn't this far too easy? On the way here, I'd even been wondering whether to arrange a chance encounter with the prince first and score some impression points...

Varys looked somewhat apprehensive. "Has Your Majesty forgotten? Prince Rhaegar left to suppress the Kingswood Brotherhood a few days ago. Would you like to receive the Dornish first?"

"Dorne has been pressing this humble servant constantly..." Varys discreetly put in a bad word for the Dornish. "They even said this humble servant was deliberately preventing them from seeing Your Majesty."

"Dorne... Hmph." King Aerys tugged at his beard rather neurotically. "Who came... Oh, I remember. Elia?"

Ghost tried to make herself as inconspicuous as possible. She felt that King Aerys was already showing a hint of madness at this point, and his memory was poor too...

Keeping an unobtrusive eye on her, Varys leaned down and said softly into the king's ear, "The prince should already be on his way back. There is no need for concern. The prince will certainly be pleased with the bride Your Majesty has chosen for him."

The muscles in King Aerys's face twitched unnaturally. He kept scraping his sharp nails across the Iron Throne, making an unpleasant, grating sound...

He pointed at Ghost with his other hand. "What is your name?"

Ghost said timidly, "Your Majesty, I have no Westerosi name."

King Aerys abruptly switched to Old Valyrian. "Since you have no name, I shall give you one. Rhaenys... From now on, you will be called Rhaenys Targaryen."

Ghost, who had used the alias Arya in the North, now officially became Rhaenys Targaryen.