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For those that are unaware of me, my name is Renly Baratheon. Times have been trying of late, I believe, and we have all been suffering ills that there are few words best to describe. It is for this that I would desire to offer myself as a helping hand or soothing ear for all that desire it or have found themselves lost or without an ally to aid in soothing their turmoiled emotions. You may find me through this network or in my rooms in the castle; the marking of a stag is upon my door and you will be greeted by my fawn, Laurel. I doubt it will be hard to miss.

[ And now for the main point of his post:

LOCKED TO: SANSA, ARYA, MARGAERY, JON, GENDRY. ]

My dear friends and kin; I would hope that I could meet you all sometime in the near future, once your own missions and duties are attended to. I have brought gifts for you all that I would like to pass on as soon as matters are in hand. I would also wish to hear more of the fate of Ned Stark. You have my thanks.

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[ My lord again. If Renly cared much he would be a little more frustrated with it entirely - sadly, he dismisses his title here, death having ripped it from him, no matter what others might say. ]

You are quite welcome. I thought it most apt for your time here.

It's said Cothromach is much colder, where it lies beneath the earth. [There is a definite tone of thank the gods for that in his words.]

Then my gift is fitting. I hope it serves in keeping the cold from your bones.

[ He waves his hand and the squires are dismissed, returning to his room. ]

Are you well?

I am fine enough. [AKA no, because daddy, but he's 2 manly to talk about it such things.] It's my sisters that need your worry.

And they have it, they always shall. I have taken them under my protection and that is no trifle, ser.

As you say. [Ha haaa.... 110% unconvinced, and not bothering overly much to hide it.] Bran is here, that's why Arya and I have returned from Troichean Beinn.

[ Renly raises his eyebrow, tilting his head. ]

I fear I have done something to offend you.

Of course not, my lord. You've done nothing. [Nothing except receive intensely bad PR from a brother. Jon doesn't add that Gendry's plainly been the one protecting his sisters, not Renly, though he's definitely thinking it. Rudely.]

[ Only so much can be done with a sword, Jon. Who went to Truen to make sure no Unseelie captivated an ally that might better help protect his sisters? ]

Nothing save be the brother of Robert and Stannis, I'm sure.

[Don't use your logic on Jon, damnit!]

It might have made sweeping all the Baratheon banners out from under King Stannis more difficult if you weren't. [Hahaaa... yeah he's the one Jon remembers to afford proper titles whoops.]

King Stannis?

[ Renly covers his mouth, doing his best to smother his laughter. ]

Now I understand. I thought Starks had more honour than to follow Kinslayers.

My name is Snow. [Jon's tone is flat and cold (he's not a big fan of being laughed at.) Plus Stannis, a kinslayer? That's news to him. Stannis named the Lannisters guilty of seeing Robert dead, after a fashion, and by all accounts that ever came up the Kingsroad Renly was slain by his own kingsguard. So who, then? Jon doesn't ask, remembering all too well the terrible things he'd done for Mance Rayder's son, for the fear that Stannis would let his red woman burn even a babe in arms for power. For... dragons.] And it's Stannis who rode to the defense of the realm while the Lannisters and Tyrells sat on their golden arses in King's Landing, even with his... diminished army. ["Diminished" is putting it kindly, after the Blackwater.]

But you are your father's son. I had imagined he would teach you better than that.

[ He can't help but chuckle again, lifting his head and looking at Jon with new light in his eyes. What a fool. ]

And I would not have done the same, had I lived? Do you think I would have allowed any of my people to be murdered? I would not have let the Lannisters sit and claim themselves defenders of the realm had I a chance to do otherwise.

[ He waves a hand, absently. ]

Unfortunately for me, and my life, my coward brother had me slaughtered on the eve of our battle. He remains a kinslayer, a false king, and a failure.

In all the time my brother marched his host from the North to the Riverlands, what did you do? Little and less, it seems to me. My lord father died alone in King's Landing, and where were you? Where was that huge army of yours? You let him get murdered easily enough, was he not your people? You called him "near enough as kin."

[Jon could reasonably call Stannis any number of things, a good few of them unflattering, but coward? No, that he doesn't believe. Ruthless enough, cold enough to kill a brother... maybe. Still, though: surely men would have spoken of him executing his own brother for treason, if he had. Jon regards Renly, unconvinced and a tad judgmental.]

Your brother was ahead of you in the line of succession, surely a man of the small council would be familiar with laws. If he is a false king, than you were more false than he ever was. And in any case, what he remains is alive. [Probably. Maybe. More alive, at least, than Renly or Joffrey or Balon Greyjoy... or Robb.]

Where was I? I was the man that offered your father a means to save his head. I offered him a route to protect our realm and save ourselves from war - I urged him to do as my brother wanted and reign as regent, to protect the Seven Kingdoms from the slaughter than ensued. It was not my doing that your father lost his life - that was all the Lannisters, Jon Snow. Do not dare to lay blame at my feet when I did all within my power to save the man our kin called brother. I would have ended Joffrey's life had I the chance for the things that he did to your family.

[ He's furious, now, feeling it burst in his chest. He steps forward, hand gripped tight at his side. Perhaps he loathed Ned, at times, for the closeness he shared with Robert, their relationship, and he shifts as he shakes his head and bows it. ]

I was the king the people chose. Had you been there, on the lines of war, instead of upon the wall you might have known that. I had an army numbering the hundreds of thousands and the common folk wished to have me as their king - and they wished to keep me, not just for my kindness but for my knowledge. Stannis would, and does, make a king the gods themselves would shit upon had they half a chance. He is no king, no leader. Good soldiers do not make good kings, Jon Snow, look at my eldest brother.

[ His breathing comes out as a hiss and he leans back, eyes flickering. ]

My brother created a monster that came to me in the night, the eve of the battle he knew that he would lose. It came to me in my chambers and slid a blade through my chest and ended my life. I am sure he has not told you that tale of my demise.

Words are wind. [Renly can say he did such things, he can even say he'd have ridden to vouchsafe the realm when the Wall began to beg for aid, but the plain fact is that he didn't. Stannis did. And Eddard Stark lost his head, alone on the steps of some southron sept.

When Renly steps forward, Jon's hand goes halfway up to the hilt of his bastard sword, strapped across his back and peeking over one shoulder. He is reminded all at once just how Baratheon the man is, no matter how little he resembles the fat old sot that visited Winterfell so many years ago, or the gaunt king with eyes like bruises that came to fight for the Wall. He wishes in that moment that he'd thought to bring Ghost in with him before meeting anyone (but he hadn't known how far to trust the other, wilder direwolves inside such a populous castle, so he'd left them all out in the forest.) Ghost tends to make men keep their distance better, no matter how bloody tall.]

He leads well enough, I've seen that. And I'd sooner a man that fights when all the fury of the wildlings and the worse that follow after them threatens to spill over into the realm than a tourney host who is popular enough. [And really. A monster in the night sounds absurd. It sounds like some fool tale that Old Nan might have told little Bran when asked for a scary story. ... It sounds like the Red Woman, all over. He thinks of Mance Rayder wearing Rattleshirt's old bones, and of Stannis' refusal to spare him no matter how much easier it might have made things for him. Jon recalls his exact words being something like laws should be made of iron, not pudding.] That much, he didn't say. No.

Words may be wind, but they are truth. Would I waste my time here playing fanciful words with you and speaking with your sisters, caring for them, if I loathed Ned Stark so much to have wished him dead? I may be capable of speaking naught but words but I have actions and history to prove it. [ Renly is a trueborn Baratheon, as angry and as wise as his brothers could be if they had worked together. He knows he might not be able to best Jon Snow in hand to hand combat but he would, certainly, have means to injure, wound, impair. He's strong enough.

He moves, shifting, dropping his cloak. He turns, summoning back a squire and throwing it to the man before he undoes the silken links on his shirt. Slowly, Renly shifts and tugs down the fabric, baring his scar. It's healed, of course, but there is nothing that can hide the influence of the shadow marking upon it; it's tinged black around the edges, the wound deep and dark, not made from human means. ]

My brother and his ham God murdered me. You follow not just a kingslayer but a kinslayer, too. I was not just some pretty face that dared rise up to claim the throne. I am not a soldier, true, but a king cannot be soldier and leader both. That cruelty is best left for generals. I was raised on laws and books and I was raised as a leader. I did not shy away and bury myself in the cold of Dragonstone. You see naught of my brother save the falsehoods he claims to his name; you did not grow with him, learn from him. Do not dare think that he cares for any realm, Jon Snow.

[ As he does up his clothes he shakes his head. ]

He cares for nothing more than his own bitterness.

[For a long, tense moment, Jon thinks Renly seeks a fight, maybe an uneven one when he calls back one of his scribes... Then he begins to disrobe. Just in time, a myriad of (flustered) protests die on Jon's lips when the last layer of fabric parts and the wound is revealed - if he had any doubts before, they are washed swiftly away. Power to make life, Lady Melisandre had once told him. Power to make light. Power to cast shadows. It is unsettling to look upon, but damning? Jon is not so certain.]

Ham-- what? [In that moment he is reminded absurdly of Pyp, and of the crushing loneliness he'd felt following his lord father's advice and sending the last of his friends far away. The night is dark and full of turnips. Jon shakes his head, dismissing the absurdity of the stray thought and Renly's nickname.] It's not Stannis whose prayers the Red God answers, if he ever even prays. [Somehow Jon doubts that he does.] Lady Melisandre acts as her god wishes, to hear her tell it, not as her king does. Her plots are her own, and she is no kin of yours- [Wait a hot minute.] --Whatever you say he is, I follow him no more and no less than I follow any other man who names himself king. The Night's Watch takes no part - it's not his war I fight in, it's him who came to the Wall to fight in mine.

[Let's not talk about the fact that Jon explicitly talked him through exactly how to wrest the North away from the Lannisters. Words are not swords, but Stannis had taken some of his swords and far too much of his food and a castle on the Wall as well. Let's just definitely never mind all those things right now, though.]

[ Renly is aware his rage has gotten the better of him; it is hardly the first time. He recalls, a time bare months ago in his mind, that he had raged at his brother, at Robert, for his own false ideals of kingship. It was a disgrace and a fallacy of kingship, everything that the Renly as King had felt kingship to be rubbed in his face and dismissed entirely. He shakes his head, forcing himself to do himself up and force himself back into the clinical clarity of his own mind. He refuses to allow himself to fall prey to that anymore. ]

Ham God. Born amidst salt and smoke; my brother is naught more than a ham prepared for the burning. [ He leans back, arms crossing over himself and his expression souring. ] Lady Melisandre acts as lunacy concealed within the arms of religion. Stannis is a pawn in her games as much as the next man - and you do not wonder what drew him to religion in the first place, Jon Snow? I highly doubt it was a pious nature that made Stannis turn to the Lady herself; I suspect it was more to do with what her cunt could offer him in the meantime.

[ He steps back, summoning his squires and redressing himself properly, smoothing down his silks and repairing himself to look all the king he once had been. ]

You follow him and I am sure the Watch does no more than follow you, with all your intelligence and honour. You follow a kinslayer and kingslayer both, an abomination in the eyes of the Old and the New. It is your shame that you must bear for these choices. You may say that you follow him no more than anyone else but your words belay you. You are Stannis' boy and he poisons your mind with his lies and whispers. I had thought better of you.

[Jon still remembers the warning Stannis had given him about Val. Beauty can be treacherous, he'd said. No, Jon can't picture the man turning to Melisandre for what she had between her legs, as much as he seemed to scorn women and his duties in marriage: some men think with their cocks, that much is plain, but to do so Stannis likely would have had to dust his off first. For power, though, that Jon can believe. For an angry red god that actually answered prayers when all the south's seven new gods were silent. For that the strength which Renly had yanked out from under him by calling all his banners and setting them up prettily in some field while Eddard Stark got his head taken off.]

Might be you should have asked my lord father while he was yet here. [Or, you know, alive.] Stannis' claim is the one he supported. Likely on account of Stannis actually having a claim.

[Being Lord Commander has made Jon more bold than he ought to be, in truth.]

[ Renly simple laughs, shaking his head and waving a hand. ]

Perhaps he had a claim better than my own, but Stannis was unfit, unwelcome and unloved. He was a solider and we have long since seen that soldiers do not a king make. He would have fallen no sooner than he had rose to take the crown.

[ He shakes his head, amused by Jon's staunch support. ]

The people would not have accepted him nor his Red God. They would have loved me, my lady wife and the gifts and kindnesses we would have given them.

[ And, then, a nod. ]

I hope your gift comes to be useful.

[Like you? Jon wants to ask: he wants to offer up some bitter laugh and say that it's Stannis who still lives, all this time after putting the fiery crown on his brow, but he keeps it in. That much, he'll do for Sansa. Though besides, it's the strength of that selfsame lady wife's House that held the throne for the mad Lannisters and their bastard boy-kings who even now persisted in tearing up the land: Westeros needed those golden monsters less than anything else in the world, it seems to Jon. Less even than this youngest Baratheon with his pretty face, and his pretty clothes, and pretty words.]

I'm sure it will, [is what Jon says instead of any of that, his voice stiff and grey eyes like cold chips of ice, though there's a seething defiance underneath them that might look out of place on the face so like his father's. Lord Eddard Stark never had Jon's hot bastard's temper - must be, he got it from his mother.] I thank you for the gift, and the thought, my lord. [But no more than that, clearly.]

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