บท 33: Green Dream of a Green Boy
Mid 278 Summer
Ulfric felt a sense of relief when his father left Winterfell and Brandon Stark and his friends chased after him, something about learning at the foot of the master or some such. His father warned him not to get too attached to Brandon, nor to get pulled into his stupidity, but it felt a bit hypocritical considering the friendship he forged with Jon Umber on this trip. The giant from Last Hearth seemed to drag his father along for all kinds of stupidity.
Somehow Ulfric and Brandon beating each other with training swords then marathoning whores is fundamentally different than Jorah and Jon wrestling like a pair of bull aurochs locked together in a pen and then running around Wintertown looking for wine and sluts. It was likely another 'Do as I say, not as I do.' scenario. Such a familiar and tiresome concept.
His father's life charted true along the same lines as some of the more legendary figures of Westerosi history, a study in many precocious heroes and villains. Perhaps his father wanted a different path for him, as his own seemed to follow a similar beat to the Red Kraken of House Greyjoy, and that story did not end well for that legendary villain of The Dance. Yet Ulfric expected his father to triumph where Dalton Greyjoy failed, after all he already outlived that man despite the similarities in their paths through life.
A man can chart his course through life if he knows enough of the past, and keeps his head on a swivel in the present so events can't pass him by without his notice. Everything happening has happened before, and if you're lucky you might do as well as those in your shoes previously. If you're studious, and smart, and self aware, you might just avoid the mistakes they made too. That's why his dad insisted that he spend so much time with Maester Lyle learning history. Ulfric appreciated the sentiment even if he loathed the effort.
His father loathed Winterfell, the giant fortress around him, but Ulfric loved it. It lacked the hallmarks of great wealth like Rockhall, and even most of its comforts, but it had space and a supreme lack of his horde of younger siblings. Even after Jorah moved most of his Salt Wives and their children into new houses, he and his full siblings still had to deal with Helga and her always growing descendants. It felt like there was always some rugrat underfoot at home, and if he wanted to find peace outside the underhill mansion, the nearby street was filled to capacity with roving bands of wild siblings. Further afield ran the risk of encountering Maege.
Truly, some days Ulfric considered taking to the wilderness and competing with the bears for survival. At least they were only half as ravenous and cantankerous as his kin.
Winterfell, this palace of peace, would only be his to enjoy for another two years at which point his father will summon him home to marry Theodora Wull, daughter of the legendary gut-lord of the mountains known as Bid Bucket. Theodora was an alright girl, and certainly fun in the wrassle, but Ulfric felt quite sure that he and she would have the same type of relationship his father and mother had, that of friends.
There was a time when he would have been fine with this, would have thought it was real love between a man and a woman, but sailing with his father these last few years, following him around as he competed in tourneys and bought and sold goods up and down the coast showed him otherwise. He'd never been able to see much of a difference between the kind of love his father and mother shared, similar to that of Ser Lionel Lannister and his wife, and Ulfric never saw a relationship better than those two.
Then he saw his father and the Princess of Dorne, and he knew better.
When he saw the way his father looked at Elia, the way he moved and behaved around her, it became all the more apparent that his father and mother had been two people on a ship together at sea, facing the challenges together as amicably as possible. His father didn't look at Elia like she was someone adrift with him. He looked at her like she was the lighthouse.
Ulfric wanted that for himself. He almost loathed himself for it, for feeling the same way as some naïve maiden with a head full of songs, but was it wrong to want to feel the fullness of the hearts capacity with your spouse? No.
So the boy knew he needed to find it with someone, and it had to be someone that his father couldn't put aside. No tale of a small folk girl's love would move a Lord of Westeros, and Jorah Mormont wasn't some limp dick cuck lord his children can run roughshod over. His father is a reasonable man, but he is known to ask his children things like 'If you wish into one hand and shit into the other, which hand fills up first?' A man of cold Northman logic, and if you persist stubbornly in your whimsy he will make you do it. Many a Mormont lad and lass learned the hard way that shitting fills faster than wishing.
So gross.
Now who, oh who, could a young man in search of a bride his father cannot deny pursue? Perhaps the girl from the royal line of the region whose family continues their overlordship despite their demotion at the hands of dragon riding blood mages who now have neither dragons nor blood magic.
Lyanna Stark lacked the delicate beauty of his father's princess, but it would take a particularly poor judge of appearances to declare her less than lovely, if in a far more wild way. Jorah might call the look feral, but he has a strange bias against the Starks and seems to believe following them blindly is the path to doom. But that's silly considering the Starks unbroken eight thousand year rule of The North. Seems quite strange to believe that this is the generation that will destroy that kind of steadfast tradition.
So the boy set his sights on the slender girl nearby, closing distance with her as they watched his father and her brother's cabal leaving. Seeing no time like the present, Ulfric opened with a subject line that is a proven princess seducer, "What kind of paintings do you like?"
Nailed it. Princess Elia, a princess full grown and wise to the world, fell helplessly in love with his father because of paintings. Surely this half grown girl stood no chance against this surest of romantic subjects.
Lyanna Stark looked at Ulfric like he was a special kind of stupid and declared, "Paintings are for sissies!" before she kicked him in the shin and ran off.
He watched her go and wondered if he would ever find love in this life. For if not even paintings can secure him love, then what else can?
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