Jon questions the Kingslayer on his loyalties and learns of more problems

Turning his gaze to the Kingslayer—Jaime Lannister, armoured and cloaked in white, his golden features dulled by the spell—Jon drew a steadying breath.

"Your loyalty," he began, voice low against the rustling leaves, "to whom does it truly lie? Speak honest of your oaths to the king."

Ser Jaime's response emerged mechanically, stripped of his usual wry edge, yet threaded with the bitter truth that had long simmered beneath the surface. "My loyalty belongs to Cersei first, and to House Lannister second."

The words hardly surprised Jon, but before the Bastard of Winterfell could inquire further, the Kingslayer pressed on. "The white cloak ties me to the king in name alone, for Robert Baratheon commands none of my true fealty. He occupies the throne as a bloated shadow of the warrior he once embodied, while my sister embodies the faithful queen—dutiful in council chambers, welcoming in his bed whenever he staggers there sober."

"My sweet sister mends the realm's wounds even as he carves them deeper," Jaime added, his teeth grinding visibly in Jon's view. "Yet Robert repays her devotion with whores scattered from Flea Bottom to White Harbor, casks of wine emptied to the last drop, and endless days squandered on hunts or tourneys that drain the royal coffers."

"I guard him solely out of duty to her, not from any affection for the man." Jon reflected that the Kingslayer's tone would have carried far more flippancy before the changes he had wrought upon Cersei Lannister.

Jon's stomach twisted, a cold realization dawning like frost creeping over glass. In mending Cersei—forging her into a queen of duty and justice, severing her twisted bond with Jaime—he'd chained her to a marriage rotten at its heart.

The King’s vices were unchecked, her fidelity a one-sided vow, love demanded from her alone while the king wallowed in excess.

A loveless union, festering like an untended wound, where she bore the crown's burdens and he the revels.

Honour curdled in Jon's throat; had he played the healer or the jailer?

He shifted his attention back to Cersei, her green eyes vacant but holding that newfound spark of introspection. "Tell me of your marriage to Robert," he commanded softly, probing the depths of the mess he'd uncovered. "Do you love him? What plagues the union, and how fares the realm under his rule?"

Queen Cersei's voice flowed steady in the trance, tinged with a melancholy wisdom that her reshaped heart had birthed. "I grew to love Robert, aye—in the early days, when the fire of the rebellion still burned in him, strong and fierce, a storm lord who toppled dragons.”

“Despite how badly he had hurt during the Rebellion and what he believed to have lost, Robert was the man I could stand beside, not the ghost he has become,” the Queen explained

Closing her eyes and shaking her head sadly, the Queen continued just after letting out a little sigh, “But his vices rule him now: the drink that clouds his judgment, the whores who drain his vigour, the endless hunts and feasts that shirk the throne's weight.”

“And Lyanna Stark—your aunt, boy—haunts him like a spectre, her name on his lips in fevered dreams, her shadow eclipsing any warmth he might spare me. My husband the King obsesses over her memory, building shrines in his mind while the realm crumbles around him."

She paused, as if the words weighed heavy even in her dulled state, then continued with a queen's measured poise. "Robert has no interest in ruling; he leaves the Hand and council to scrape together order from his chaos.”

“Chaos?” Jon questioned.

“The crown drowns in debt—six million gold dragons owed” The Queen answered. “At least half of that is manageable, since three million to my father, Lord Tywin Lannister, for loans that propped up his early reign.”

Sighing Jon heard how weary the Queen was as she continued, “the rest scattered: to Mace Tyrell for his Rose's ambitions, to the Iron Bank of Braavos who send collectors like vultures, to Tyroshi trading cartels demanding repayment in blood if coin fails, and even to the Faith of the Seven, whose septons whisper of divine retribution for a profligate king.”

“I've urged reforms—taxes tightened, expenditures curbed, alliances forged to ease the burden,” the Queen states strain in her voice as if the prospect is painful to her. “But my husband laughs it off, calls it woman's fretting, and orders another cask uncorked. The realm teeters, boy, on the edge of ruin, and he cares not a whit."

Jon recoiled a step, the grove spinning faint around him as the depth of the problem sank in like a blade to the hilt.

Not just a queen's personal rot, but a king's decay poisoning the Seven Kingdoms from the throne itself—debts that could summon wars from across the Narrow Sea, a ruler lost to ghosts and goblets while his dutiful consort pleaded in vain.

His fixes had mended one half of the crown, only to expose the festering other: Robert Baratheon, the once-mighty usurper, now a hollow bloated shell dragging the realm toward the abyss.

What honour in reshaping a queen if the king remained unbroken, his flaws a yoke around her neck and the land's? The power hummed insistent, tempting further meddling, but Jon's hands trembled at the scale—tamper with a king, and the threads of fate might unravel beyond mending.