8 Years Later

Red Keep - 292 AC

Damon Baratheon had inherited his father's black hair (though his mother saw that it was kept short) and his mother's handsome facial features. Curiously, his eyes were a deep blue-purple, slightly different from his father's sapphire orbs.

Damon and his brother Joffrey, were the apples of their mother's eye and she indulged their every fancy. Although their father didn't come to visit them much, he occasionally took them hunting or to watch a joust.

Damon had witnessed many of his parent's arguments and was well aware of their tumultuous and strained marriage, but his parents never let their lack of love for each other affect him.

The births of Myrcella and Tommen a few years later meant that Queen Cersei was more occupied with her motherly duties, giving Damon and Joffrey more time to play and learn. Damon recalled out day, only a few months ago, when he and Joffrey, who were mischievously hiding from the Kingsguard members assigned to them, had stumbled across an open window, where they had witnessed their father, King Robert Baratheon, as naked as his name-day, doing something to a young red-haired women, who was equally naked, causing her to writhe around and moan loudly. Joffrey, had burst into tears and ran to their assigned Kingsguard saying that their father was killing a woman, before Damon could stop him.

This episode led to an awkward conversation with Ser Meryn Trant, as he gave a crude explanation of what the King was actually doing. Damon had persuaded a red-faced Joffrey not to speak to their mother about what they had seen.

Only a fortnight after Damon had witnessed his father bedding, as Ser Meryn had called it, an unknown women, Damon witnessed another, more shocking, illicit act. On his way back from a tiring afternoon sparring session with Ser Barristan Selmy, Damon decided to go to his old nursery in Maegor's Holdfast, to visit his baby siblings and mother.

Once he arrived however, he found the door to be bolted shut with no Kingsguard member standing outside the door. Curiously, he heard noises inside that sounded like whimpering or crying. Wanting to make sure that Myrcella and Tommen were okay, Damon grabbed onto some stone precipices on the stout tower and began climbing to the other side, where he could enter the nursery through the window that looked onto the Blackwater Bay. Panting with exhaustion, Damon finally reached the other side of the tower and peeked inside the window. The sight inside caused him to inaudibly gasp and almost lose his balance.

His uncle Jaime, still clad in his Kingsguard armor and white cloak and his mother, her elegant jade-green dress hiked up to her hips, were doing the same thing that Damon had witnessed his father do with another women just a few days before. Queen Cersei was bent over a table, facing away from him, while her brother furiously pumped her from behind, as the Tommen and Myrcella lay sleeping in their cribs just a few feet away. Damon realized the whimpers and moans he had heard from nursery weren't coming from the babies, but from his mother.

In disbelief, Damon haphazardly climbed down from the tower, ran to the nearest privy, and vomited. He retired in his chambers for the rest of the night.