Part 13 - What happened till now?

(Escanor POV)

281 AC

The first argument I had with my father was three years ago. I settled for a war axe in the end. It just felt right. I asked my father to have a war axe made and asked for specific augmentations. Naturally ... he refused. After the 'fiasco,' I pulled, there was no way I would get to ask anything from my father for a long time.

My father never forgets if someone crosses him or angers him. He has a good head on his shoulders and is very smart. He tried to change me to obey him because he thought I just wanted to rebel against him and his rule...

Pathetic, why would I care about him or his rule or his legacy? I only cared about spending time with Tyrion and my older siblings and learning things that interested me. I wanted to create profiles of all the important and slightly less important players of the 'Game of Thrones'.

I used this to challenge myself and because it was fun to do. I was already stronger than them all. Most plans or intrigues to remove me from the board wouldn't work but I'm not arrogant enough yet to believe that I'm the strongest ... yet.

With my growing pride, my strength grows too and I'm already broken. Very soon I'm going to be the one who stands above all races.

As the years pass, Tywin understood that I was simply proud. Extremely proud. Like nothing he had ever seen or heard in his life. And he also found out that I had all the reason to be. After our argument, Tywin asked Ser Arrin Hutter, our master-at-arms whether my claims to be stronger than him were true. He was shocked, to say the least, that his six-name-day-old son was stronger than a grown and trained man.

I don't know what went through his head then but I know that things changed after that. He gave me more freedom in a way. He took my strength into account and changed his plans for me slightly. I didn't have to train in the conventional sense, but I had to spar at least once every week to show him that I was still the strongest and not getting weaker.

He began teaching me himself after that as well. Whenever he was home in Casterly Rock and not in the shithole that was King's Landing, he would teach me politics and the current happenings at court.

Over the years, he gave me more to do. I had more responsibility and was asked to be present most of the time when he discussed certain topics with his advisors. I learned a lot from him. His thinking was decisive and ruthless. He was able to change his plans from one moment to the next, if he saw an opportunity, he would take it.

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It's the year 281 AC right now. The relationship between my father and the mad King is at an all-time low. I think it was in 277 AC when it truly started to go downhill. My father advised King Aerys against a meeting with Denys Darklyn, Lord of Duskendale, over a trade issue. The King who already was salty that some people thought that Tywin led the kingdom and not he, went anyway.

He was captured by Lord Darklyn and thrown into the dungeons. Thankfully ... or not ... Ser Barristan was able to infiltrate and get the King out unharmed.

After King Aerys was freed though, he came to believe that Tywin had intended for him to die at Duskendale and be replaced by Rhaegar, who would then marry Tywin's daughter, Cersei. Cersei was still mad at not being allowed to marry the Crown Prince but not as mad as Tywin was when the King told him that he was but a servant and his son would never marry Cersei.

Yeah, that was a bad year for their relationship. The King was getting madder and madder by the year.

Another thing that occurred in year 277 AC was Jaime going to Crakehall to squire for Lord Sumner Crakehall. I was sad at first ... but I got over it pretty fast though. This allowed me to spend some more time with Cersei and influence her bit by bit to change for the better. A hard task that one ...

Speaking of Cersei ... she was taken to King's Landing by Father in the year after in 278 AC. Why? Well to do some lady things that I didn't bother to listen to.

This left only me and Tyrion in Casterly Rock and it was a fun time. We could be ourselves and have fun whenever we liked. Though I made sure not to have too much fun when Maester Creylen was around as the snitch would undoubtedly report our progress and our activities to Father.

Tyrion was a happy child when father and sister weren't here to bully him. I helped him whenever I could and also protected him as that's what Mother would have wanted. I loved Tyrion seriously. I liked to listen to him when he spoke about the Targaryens and dragons and about his greatest wish to ride a dragon one day.

I told him that I'd make it happen and I plan on fulfilling my promise. How hard could it be to tame a dragon? A dragon only accepts one dragon rider who has a bond with him and it has to be a Targaryen? Who decided that?

I'll show the overgrown lizard. He'll come to heel real fast when I smack him around a few times... I digress.

I used the time when neither our siblings nor our father was around to teach Tyrion a lot of things. I tried to change him into someone who was courageous and stood up for what he thought was right. He had a big heart and I loved that about him. His intellect was already apparent and he's 8 name days right now.

2 years ago Uncle Roger (lol) taught us, me and Tyrion tumbling. And while I didn't really have any interest in tumbling, I still attended the lessons for Tyrion's sake. I enjoyed our time together and had a good laugh when he tried to take me to the ground with the moves Uncle showed us.

Father stopped this quickly when he returned though ... buzzkill.

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278 AC Lord Steffon Baratheon and his wife drowned during a storm. Their ship 'Windproud' sank in Shipbreaker Bay, very close to Storm's End. Of course, King Aerys feared that Lord Steffon had somehow been assassinated by Tywin. Aerys decided to only meet with Tywin in the presence of Kingsguard Father told me afterwards. I laughed at that, though Tywin wasn't happy.

As a reaction to all the schemes against him, Aerys thought to see, he had a young man from Essos come to King's Landing and act as his current Master of Whispers. Varys was his name and I thought it interesting that he came at a time like this.

When I heard that Varys entered the 'Game', I immediately updated my profiles about all the 'players' and added Varys as one of the top dogs. The 'top dogs' as I liked to call them were a group of people who were either the most dangerous or had the best cards in the game at this point in time. So the names in this group changed regularly.

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Those were a few things that happened between 276 and now 281 AC. So let's discuss the current moment in more detail...