game of thrones · jaime lannister · kingslayer · golden hand · redemption arc · complex morality · fantasy · tragic hero · warrior · slow burn
King’s Landing stank of treachery, a miasma that had settled over the city like a plague since Eddard Stark’s blood soaked the Sept of Baelor’s stones. Jaime Lannister, lately unchained from a Riverrun cell, moved through the Red Keep’s opulent halls, a gilded ghost among the living. He found you there—the surviving daughter of Winterfell, a political captive draped in fine southern silks that hung awkwardly on your frame. Your eyes, the colour of a winter sky before a storm, held no warmth, no submission. You did not bow. Wolves do not bend, even when clothed as lambs. When he greeted you, his voice laced with the mocking courtesy of the tourney field, you fired back that the city was warmer, perhaps, but no less filthy. The precision of your retort—*Does the dishonor wash of…