Joffrey X (Epilogue)

Joffrey Baratheon lived to see his son and heir a married man, what a wonder!

Rickard stood there at the altar of the Great Sept of Baelor, nervous and fidgeting while he exchanged vows with Jon's daughter, Lydia. He had his mother's auburn hair alongside his father's bright green eyes and broad shoulders. The king had been trying to normalize a later age of first marriage, partially for health, partially for ethical concerns, but mostly to forestall explosive and destabilizing population growth, but more on that later.

Lydia Baratheon had somehow taken Jon's long face and Shireen's square face, and harmonized the features into a fetching, balanced oval. She was considered one of the great beauties of the realm and had lovely violet eyes. Her hair was black as midnight, thick and lustrous. She and Rickard were allowed to have a very cute teenage romance while they waited to come of age, and Joffrey could honestly say it didn't feel like an arranged marriage at all.

Sansa dabbed at her eyes with a white handkerchief embroidered with direwolves. "It feels like I was holding him in my arms only yesterday."

His wife really did love babies. They had ten of their own, two sons and eight daughters, if you could believe it. Their second son, Eddard, would do what Joffrey could not. He was fostered at Sunspear and betrothed to Princess Arianne's firstborn daughter. In time, he would be Prince-Consort of Dorne.

As for his daughters, they were too young, with the oldest, Grayce, being just fourteen. They would wed who they wished, or not at all. It wasn't like he needed political alliances or anything.

Once the ceremony concluded, Rickard's wolf, Sounder, padded up to greet the happy couple. Lady and Nymeria returned from the War Beyond the Wall pregnant and had litters of pups around the time Sansa had their firstborn. Wolves filled the castle. They actually filled the whole North.

The crumbled Wall was now a river, cutting across the continent, allowing ocean traffic to cross from one side of Westeros to the other, but it froze most winters, allowing animals from beyond to migrate south.

You heard that right, winters. Once the Others had been defeated and the Wall taken down, whatever energy it had been holding back started flowing again and equalized. They now had more or less normal years, with four distinct seasons of approximately three months each, uniform and predictable. There was a great deal of fear when the long summer folk had been expecting gave way to autumn and winter so soon, but Joffrey quickly realized what had happened. Their world was normal again.

It took a while for the people to get used to it, but soon the natural rhythm of the world set in. Life would adapt to the new reality. Predictable seasons meant predictable construction projects, much to the king's delight.

Tommen and Arya had Storm's End, and their marriage produced only daughters, big surprise. There were three of them, each as fierce as their mother, and great warriors in their own right. Cerena, the heir, was Joffrey's mother come again, blonde and as beautiful as Queen Cersei Lannister of old, but as fine a lance as any knight. When she won the tourney at Summerhall, Joffrey knighted her himself. Nobody dared complain but Arya, who resented the girl for choosing a lance and longsword over the bravo's blade and the way of the water dancer.

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She was betrothed to the second son of Lord Edmure Tully and his wife, Margaery. Lord Edmure had won great renown in the battle against the last Targaryen, and being the queen's uncle, his new prestige allowed him to make a match with the rose of Highgarden. Their boy, Cerena's intended, Wilmund, was a somewhat bookish lad who studied at the Red Keep's castle school, but he could fight well enough to meet the approval of Arya and Cerena.

The Stormlands was now among the richest of the Seven Kingdoms, producing cotton, rice, and indigo in great quantities. The Weeping Town had been renamed Queensgrave and was one of the principal ports in Joffrey's realm.

They had to wait for Joffrey's grandfather Tywin Lannister to die, but his uncle Tyrion was confirmed lord of Casterly Rock and all its incomes. Speaking of cotton, he wed Mordaena of Myr, a daughter of a guildmaster. She had thick, dark curly hair, olive skin, and was not even five feet tall, but that mind of hers surpassed all. She had studied at her father's knee, learning all she could of gears and machines. With the knowledge of Valyrian engineering Joffrey and Tyrion had, the three were able to develop a cotton engine that quickly and easily separated cotton fibers from their seeds. They had many other successes besides, creating machines to harness the abundant water power of Westeros' many rivers and putting it to productive use.

Myrcella surprised them all by wedding a nephew of Lady Whent, who was heir to Harrenhal. King Joffrey's road builders had broken up much of the old castle for building materials, reducing the holding to a more manageable size, at Lady Whent's request, no less.

With Jon as Hand, they built many roads: wide, Valyrian roads connecting one end of Westeros to the other. There was a spell to make the stone they used malleable as clay, and with Rhagal's fire, they could cast their roads like casting iron, perfect every time.

Sadly, Valyrian steel required actual blood sacrifice, so that was straight out. However, Valyrian iron turned out to be possible! With Joffrey, Tyrion, and Mordaena putting their heads together, they were able to create a dragon-fired furnace that produced cast iron beams, strong and resistant to the elements. With these, they built many iron arch bridges across rivers and streams, great and small. Notably, there were three bridges across three forks of the Trident, connected by a Valyrian road, allowing much speedier and safer land travel across the Riverlands, completely free of tolls. These proved to be a test for Joffrey's white whale:

The Blackwater Bridge!

It took ten years, but he got that bridge at last! A traveler could walk from one end of Westeros to the other and never leave pavement or wet their feet, assuming it wasn't raining. The realm of "Good King Joff" experienced a runaway economic and population boom.

All of that was wonderful, but the greatest treasure of all stood next to him in the sept. Joffrey and Sansa's love had never faded. If anything, they were more deeply in love than the day they wed, sharing the twin tasks of raising a family and building a new world together.

Joffrey at 41 and Sansa at 40