[Phase 1] Lord Foulmouth [Roland]

Lord Olyvar appears to have started the drinking already, remarking that Roland actually is as tall as tales would have it, and he who had braced himself for more disappointment. Although a second son of a petty lord seems to him a poor match for an Yronwood, but hardly worse than Lord Abomination. Lady Merryweather would have been a suitable station for one of her pedigree, but perhaps just as well if the line of the Bloodroyal is not mixed with pig's blood. The man bitterly laments that the king had not consulted him in this matter, merely agreeing to Lord Leo's suggestion, and the Longthorn, everyone knows, is so easily seduced by prowess at the list and the rescuing of maidens he should have protected better. He asks bluntly why Roland should be granted her hand, since he so obviously desired it. Or, is the two of them in the same boat perhaps, he wonders aloud, tied up by expectations of some glorified tourney knight thinking himself their better?

Lord Yronwood snorts at the idea of uniting Dorne with the rest of the Realm, would that House Yronwood did not sit on the wrong side of the mountains, once, honor was prevalent in Dorne, a righteous kingdom under the light of the seven. But this purity was extinguished by the coming of the Rhoynar, the deeds and nature of men south of the Red Mountains darkening just as much as their skins, poisonings, daughters inheriting before sons, paramours openly kept. What sort of house will Lady Alicent become part of, he asks. One where all the scions are bastards? Does he think he can defeat bastards with honor alone?

Only if such things can be proven, Lord Yronwood remarks dryly. Lady Joanna had a Great Bastard, the Spongeholder and Lord Durwell lined up against her. Lovely Laena, he had heard rumors of a fabled party in some Gardenton tavern turned pleasure house, if half those tales were true, he would not mind getting to know her better. But one of her kind inflaming the hearts of men against the Queen of Winter, then Lord Levalle to drag her down to be soiled by the unworthy's memory, it must be good to be king, if one could live as him and die of one's own excesses. And finally, Lord Durwell, whose man stood ready to inherit, more than those two together, Lord Olyvar muses, it was the machinations of Lord Marq, or the wish to be seen as his friends, that drove that outcome.

But what possible motivation would men such as he and others of the magnetism of dragons have to come to Roland's aid in this matter? Last he checked, the dragon was the accused, not the accuser. And Lord Durwell and other lords of influence and power? They might find it more expedient to support the side that seemed to be the more likely to win in the game of thrones, usually the one that is honorable only when it suits them, no? But who knows what game Lord Durwell really plays, no two Reachmen he asks seems to be in agreement on that account.

Lady Alicent was once infatuated by Lord Durwell, did Roland know that? He was described as the most handsome and dashing knight that ever had graced the realms with his existence she wrote their father once, though most of the letter was dedicated to pleading for a way out of her betrothal to Lord Abomination. Not yet a woman grown and yet with a will of steel. Olyvar doubts that she was a maid, then. Surely a man so idolized as Lord Durwell, with his looks, would have some flaws, no? The words of a drunkard's jealousy is on his tongue. Surely he must have plucked many many flowers after his knighting, why else would he care to stay unwed? Most young lords considering their honor to be more than just words spoken when it suits them were in quite the hurry to be wed the maiden fair so that they might bed her without fearing for their soul. Lord Marq strikes him not as the sort of man that has figured that just as it is with men, so it is with The Seven. Forgiveness can oft be obtained where permission never would have been granted?

But, Roland would not be the first knight or lord to find that the supposed maid coming to his bed is no maid at all, Olyvar cannot stop the marriage, or he could, but loosing the king's favor would likely cost him more than he might gain from some lord willing to pick up a lady of five and twenty, once promised to Lord Piggy and like as not slightly used by Lord Durwell. Surely he and others would not have missed her flirtatious ways?

Roland is free to demand whatever dowry he wishes, seeing that it's the crown that will be paying it, or the Tyrells, maybe both? He cares not. Though it would indeed seem that the ladies of the Reach would sooner give up their maidenheads to steeds than men, he rhetorically and mockingly wonders why. All the Rhoynar girls seems to have a heat come upon them at the moment of flowering, caring naught for chastisity, why, half the time one could never know if an olive skinned lord actually were the son of whoever claims to be his father, the other half they would share features restricting the other options to uncles and cousins. But Roland should rest assured that the Yronwood have only ever married women of unquestioned Andal lineage from the godly kings of old, unsullied by the blood of the common rabble with their common lusts brought across the sea by Nymeria.