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[holyposition]

WELCOME TO THE SALTBURNT NETWORK

USERNAME:
t.laughlin

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[holyposition]

They're dead now, you've outlasted them. There's no need to insult them further.

You'd be settling ingering hostilities from back home, that's what the others will say when they accuse you.

Which I am not doing, to be clear. I'm trying to prevent it.

[provoke]

I swore to keep peace. I gave my word several times over on my mother's honour, I have given this promise multiple times when I have not so much as issued threat or challenge — which Jace has done, mind.

If I'd taken their lives I would make it known it was by my hand. To pretend otherwise is craven. I know what it would cost me to break this tenuous peace, Laughlin, I am not an imbecile.

[holyposition]

That's all I need.

Will your uncle believe that? It may be hard not to engage if he trues to pin it on you.

[provoke]

He killed his first wife and then his cousin. Who was my sister's first husband, mind, and his second wife's brother.

Allegedly.

He has several reasons to blame me.

[holyposition]

Would he kill his wife again just to make you look bad?

cw: allegations of grooming, sexual acts with a minor

[provoke]

Before Father made Rhaenyra his living heir — before Father wed my mother — Daemon was first in line to inherit the crown. Father had exiled him for

[ —disgracing his half-sister and taking her maidenhead as a girl, or so it's said. ]

challenging the line of succession more than once.

[holyposition]

So he would stand to gain back home if she were gone.

What about Jacaerys?

[provoke]

You've not been told? He has two sons by Rhaenyra, bearing our colours. Pale of hair, pale of skin, purple of eye. Joffrey alone would remain of Rhaenyra's get before Daemon, and Joffrey's six.

[holyposition]

Right. Forgive me, we don't do this where I'm from.

Leaders are elected, I mean.

And do you think him cowardly enough to remove them in secret in the dead of night?

cw: child murder

[provoke]

[ oh, tim. ]

He sent assassins to have me killed, when I took my nephew's life fighting on dragonback. They found my sister instead, and made her watch as they cut my nephew's head off in his crib.

[holyposition]

[ One sec. He's gonna be sick. ]

So, yes, he's an animal.

[provoke]

He is mine uncle. Father loved him so.

[ add it to the list of crimes his father has committed against his mother. ]

[holyposition]

Check the network. The doctors found a long blond hair on Jacaerys.

10 minutes later after he's PUNCHED SOMETHING FIERCE

[provoke]

[ "...a silly man who had no knowledge of swimming and chose to do so all the same. but we have found a long, blond hair on him..." ]

I am not the only one with blond hair in this keep.

[holyposition]

Yes, I know.

There's your uncle. And one of the vampires, Lestat. Another woman was drained of blood.

[provoke]

Another allied with my mother.

The selection of victims is rather pointed, if I might say.

[holyposition]

Does he know your business? Maybe he thought he was helping.

Parisa was the suitemate of Embry Moore. It might not be a coincidence.

[provoke]

I have not spoken with him, but I've met with Daniel Molloy who in turn knows of him. Daniel is a dependable character, and currently indisposed through means unknown.

There are only so many of us here as guests, it stands to reason that friendships and alliances overlap. But these are too close to my understanding. Too easily connected in a tight web.

If it is not an enemy masquerading as a friend, then it's someone who knows enough to pretend to be one.

[holyposition]

I know him. A little. He...has an affinity for younger brunettes.

[ Do NOT read too much into that. Thank you. ]

I think anyone who saw your butler profiles could put enough pieces together to wreck havoc if they wanted to.

[provoke]

How young?

[ he will absolutely read into that, thank you. his uncle never married someone he didn't know as a minor by choice, great-grandma alysanne had to have arranged the royce marriage for a reason. ]

I'm proud of my family. Though it's true that I've not been the most diplomatic, naming my half-sister and my nephew as I have.

[ take it as a win that he's even admitting to that much. ]

[holyposition]

He's hundreds of years old and I'm 24.

You should be, messy or not. Family is important. I miss mine horribly.

[provoke]

Ah.

[ yes, he mislikes it already. ]

Has your family ever given you cause to desire their deaths?

That was rude of me. I'm sure your family was less... intricately entangled as mine.

[holyposition]

No. But we're normal.

I mean, not royalty. My father is an accountant. My uncle a priest. Our problems are more mundane.

[provoke]

You can say it, Laughlin. I will not be offended. Marrying blood to blood is queer.

Your father was a man of numbers?

[holyposition]

Queer means something else now, remember?

But...yeah. It's frowned upon in most societies. Science has learned a lot of things about inbreeding, none of them good.

Yeah, he is.