Game of Thrones: Viserys the Three-Headed Dragon.

Chapter 87 Post-War Matters
"Is this really okay? This is all your achievement, and this is a sacred oath. We shouldn't—"

Daenerys speaks with her brother Viserys in the King's chamber next to the Table Room atop the Drum Tower.

"I can't change back yet, you see." Viserys compressed his body as much as possible and closed his eyes to endure the accumulation of magic power from the Dragonbinder's horn that was like a curse covering his body. He had suppressed his body to the limit, but he was still more than two meters tall, with dragon claws, and his body was covered with terrifying black and red scales. He had a big belly, and his head had become human-shaped, but it was also covered with scales, and there were flaming horns on his head, and the wings behind him were still retained.

He looks like a weird-looking little dragon.

Viserys had taken great pains to transform into a dragon, and now he had to work even harder to transform into a human.

This forced compression of the body is very painful, and the Dragonbinder's magic is very corrosive when applied to the body, like a curse. In Viserys's current form, he feels as if his body is constantly burning and reviving in flames, which is extremely torturous.

He relaxed, transformed back into the form of a three or four meter tall, three-headed, big-bellied dragon, and sat down on the ground.

Daenerys went to support him worriedly: "But——"

Viserys stood up. "I've been growing bigger for a while today, but I've discovered some good news. Perhaps the contact surface has increased after I grew bigger, so I can digest the magic faster. Besides, this ceremony is just a formality. You go there wearing armor, helmet and visor, which means that King Targaryen is taking back Dragonstone with a sword, and no one will have any objection. And we have only occupied Dragonstone temporarily, and Stannis's army may come back at any time. We still have to focus our main energy on the possible war next time."

"Okay." Daenerys was convinced by him.

The battle on Dragonstone ended in the morning, and no reinforcements came from Pointe or Tidemark.

After the battle, Viserys had the Unsullied send all the soldiers and knights guarding the castle who laid down their weapons and surrendered to prison.

Queen Selyse is now under house arrest on the top floor of the prison tower, and a team of Unsullied are responsible for guarding her.

After occupying the castle, they only found Princess Shireen's jester Patchface - Patchface was sent to prison as a member of the surrendered group. The red-robed Melisandre was not found - people said that she did not return to Dragonstone, but went to King's Landing with the army.

Stannis attacks King's Landing, and it will make a huge difference with or without the red woman. Viserys has to consider the possibility of Stannis leading the fleet to counterattack Dragonstone.

Viserys and most people in the castle did not know that the Red Woman had come and gone from the port of Dragonstone two days ago and gone to the castle of Bar Emmon's family in the Point. Queen Selyse and the acting lord Axell knew, but they were not asked, and even if they were asked, they probably would not say.

Many noble knights felt sad because Viserys ordered all those who surrendered to be imprisoned.

Acting Lord Axell reacted most violently. He wanted to continue to resist. When the dragon appeared, he was commanding the defense in the lower level of the guard room. The sense of security inside the castle made him unwilling to give up easily. He served as acting Lord of Dragonstone for Stannis for nearly ten years and gave almost everything for Stannis's cause. When the rest of the Florent family supported Renly, he supported Stannis. He was the original member of the Queen's Party and the first lord to convert to the Lord of Light. But today, everything was in vain.

But after Princess Shireen surrendered, no one stood with him. He dared not be angry at the dragon, but could only glare down at the knights who had sworn to die for King Stannis.

Viserys squatted on the castle arch bridge and watched them take off their armor, throw away their weapons, and line up to enter the prison. Nothing unexpected happened. When all the guards emerged from the castle fortress, Viserys estimated that there were more than 150 castle guards, including those who died. Together with those sent out on the mountain road, there were more than 300 armored guards in Dragonstone Castle.

More than 300 people are the number of people guarding Storm's End after Stannis' defeat in King's Landing in the original book. Until the young Aegon led the Golden Company to land in the Stormlands, Storm's End was said to have not fallen yet.

It is worth mentioning that all the guards left on Dragonstone are from the Florent family, even the maids, and they are all extremely pious or pretending to be extremely pious believers of the Lord of Light. Viserys does not intend to want these people.

Today has not been an easy day.

After occupying the castle, there was no time to rest at all. We had to deal with personnel and clean up the battlefield.

After sending the knights and soldiers in the castle to prison, how to deal with other people is also a complicated task. The original bachelors, officials, maids, stewards, cooks, gardeners, servants, blacksmiths, jailers, etc. in the castle all need to be dealt with.

Think again and again.

Viserys finally decided to put some of the maids who were found to be of noble birth under house arrest along with the queen and princess, and the queen and princess were separated. The maester arranged the necessary personnel for him, allowed him to vouch for the familiar assistants, and used him as a battlefield doctor to treat the wounded soldiers. There was also Edric Storm, Robert's bastard, who was also under house arrest.

The rest were mostly illegitimate children of nobles or relatives and servants who occupied various positions in the castle. Except for the necessary blacksmiths and apprentices who were left behind, all the others were driven out of the castle to the dock town by Viserys. He couldn't directly employ these people at the moment.

For this reason, Viserys had to summon his first fleet commander, Grole, and asked him to gather the chefs on the merchant ships who had cooked in the Unsullied camp, and hand them over to the kitchen steward Viserys had already identified, formerly under the Unsullied Cook, who was temporarily serving as the castle's chef.

Viserys now treats the castle as a military camp, and does not consider anything else except satisfying the most basic human needs of eating and sleeping.

The Unsullied suffered heavy losses this time. Even though they had a dragon, they still suffered more than sixty casualties, more than thirty dead and more than thirty injured.

The major losses were in two places. One was the siege on the watchtower - a whole squad was directly lost, and the other was the melee on the mountain road - the melee between the armored knights, whom Viserys had no time to deal with, and the Unsullied who were attacking from above was extremely brutal. The Unsullied, who could not form a formation, finally fought with the regrouped knights on the narrow mountain road. The knights were in a dilemma, but refused to surrender, and the battlefield became a desperate duel between the frontline soldiers of both sides.

Now there are only more than 120 Unsullied available. Except for the necessary personnel, the others took a short break and spent half a day just cleaning up the castle and the mountain road battlefield. Collecting the corpses and dealing with the confiscations are not easy tasks. During this period, they also sent people to lead the town's gravediggers to clean up the battlefield at the watchtower.

In the afternoon, after cleaning up the battlefields and taking a brief rest, Viserys had the Unsullied put on the captured armor, randomly destroying the original marks and glaze and wearing them directly - it would take time for the blacksmiths to replace the new marks. Then he dispersed them to serve as jailers, guards, watchtower guards, imprisoned guards, and castle guards.

Two squads were even sent to man the "ships of war." Speaking of "ships of war," the crews of the two galleys and the merchant ship had done their best, and Viserys sent the commander of his First Fleet to appease them.

The first part of the money found in the castle was spent on rewards to the crews of the three ships - openly on the two rowing boats, and secretly on the Cedurian.

Then Viserys asked his fleet commander to temporarily lead the two rowing boats to continue pretending to be Targaryen warships, to help blockade the offshore waters near the dock, and at the same time coordinate with the watchtower to be on alert and prohibit merchant ships that had entered the port from leaving - Viserys guessed that these merchant ships that came to Dragonstone so early were mostly like him with bad intentions and prohibited outside merchant ships from entering the port.

In order to reassure the crew, Viserys allowed them to abandon the castle on board to hide if they discovered an enemy fleet approaching, and the Unsullied duty team on board would cover them.

He also did not forget to ask Grole to continue recruiting fleet crew members for him as the "fleet commander". Viserys promised to give him two hundred regular naval places and also promised that once Dragonstone was settled, he would personally award him a knighthood.

Then there is the dock town. The town guards surrendered quickly, and these people were not soldiers. Viserys decided to continue to employ them. They were coerced by several sergeants of Stannis, and many were killed and injured when they attacked the Unsullied. The original captain was said to have died on the spot. Viserys asked them to elect a new captain to continue to be responsible for the town's martial law that day, control the number of people going out, clean up the aftermath, collect the remains of the bodies that rolled down the hillside, and enforce the curfew after nightfall.

The new captain was called Ashe Sara. He was a well-known man, but not of noble birth. It was said that he was defending the bell tower when the guards were captured by the sergeants. When he saw that the guards had surrendered, they surrendered as well. They were lucky.

When they attacked the town in the morning, five houses were half burned by the flames. Fortunately, no casualties were caused to the civilians. Fortunately, the climate on Dragonstone was humid and the houses were mostly made of stone, so the fire did not spread. Viserys ordered the town guards to compensate for the damage to the houses and ask for money from the castle after they settled the accounts. However, they probably wouldn't dare to come to ask for money in the short term.

Then comes the last thing for today.

Allegiance ceremony.

Viserys rescued several people from prison, one of whom was Gunther Sangras, Lord of Fairhaven. Fairhaven is a small port located on the western border of the Crabclaw Peninsula north of Dragonstone. It is located in the crown area and belongs to Dragonstone.

As a vassal of Dragonstone, Earl Gunther had previously supported Stannis in his fight for the Iron Throne. After Melisandre led his men to burn down the Sept of Dragonstone, Earl Gunther directly told Stannis that he could no longer support Stannis's kingly cause, so he was arrested and imprisoned. Viserys released him, and then the earl was willing to swear allegiance to King Viserys. Although his army, knights, and ships were taken to King's Landing by Stannis.

In addition to Earl Gunther, the prison also has the two sons of Ser Hebe Lambton, a noble of the royal domain. Hebe Lambton originally supported Stannis's cause and followed him from King's Landing to Dragonstone, but when the queen's party went to burn the sepulchre on Dragonstone, Ser Hebe Lambton and his three sons defended the sepulchre. In the battle, they killed four of the queen's party, and Hebe and one of his sons were killed.

The remaining two brothers were Hubbard Lambton, the elder, and Howard Lambton, the younger. Viserys made Hubbard Lambton the successor to the title of the Lambton family and obtained their oath of allegiance.

The Lambton family was aristocratic family, but they were actually new nobles of the Baratheon dynasty who did not yet have a castle. They were one of the many new nobles of the crown who were granted titles when Greyjoy attacked Pike Island during the Rebellion. They were initially worried that Viserys would not recognize the legitimacy of their family. The two brothers were all the fighting power that the Lambton family had.

But no matter what, it's better than nothing.

The allegiance ceremony was presided over by Septon Baal. Septon Baal was originally a monk serving the Seven Sacred Septs of Dragonstone. He was imprisoned in the castle for protesting against the burning of the Sept by the queen's men. Viserys released him and allowed him to continue serving the master of Dragonstone.

When the monk was released, he cried bitterly, and lamented that the gods were above, and the glory of the Seven Gods had once again descended on Dragonstone. When he learned that the Targaryen king, who had dragons, released him, his mouth was so wide open that he could fit two apples. The first thing he did after meeting Viserys was to go to the sept to destroy the altar of the Red God that Queen Selyse had placed after her conversion. However, the statues of the Seven Gods had been burned, so he could only use a piece of cloth with a seven-pointed star symbol brought by Viserys to temporarily replace the gods.

Viserys couldn't say anything about matters between faiths, but no matter what, from now on, the Seven Gods would be the sect he nominally believed in - he had played Crusader Kings before and knew the importance of pretending to believe in a sect at times like this.

For example, when he marries Daenerys in the future, he will need the endorsement of the Church of the Seven to tell the world that this is a reasonable and legal union within the Targaryen family that is approved by the gods.

And in the future, if the Prince of Dorne comes to inquire about the secret engagement, the Seven Gods will also be needed to negotiate a secret agreement to break off the engagement.

At this allegiance ceremony, King "Viserys" and his "three-headed dragon" were present together. The king sat on the throne in the main hall of the castle, with a black background and a red dragon banner above his head, representing the Targaryen family. Seven Unsullied men put on armor and wore black background and red dragon banners - only these banners could be spared - and stood in a fan shape on both sides of the king.

Shireen Baratheon and her trembling maids were invited to watch, Lady Selyse was invited but declined to attend. "Daenerys" was still on the merchant ship and would not be brought to the castle until after the night curfew.

Although this ceremony was just a formality, it was solemn. Septon Baal was the witness, and the oath was the sacred oath of the Westeros people's faith in the Seven Gods.

The first one to step forward was Earl Gunther. He took a deep breath, not daring to look directly at the three-headed dragon and King Viserys on the throne, and knelt on one knee: "Gunther from the House of Sanglath in Wonderhaven swears allegiance to you. I swear that I will be truly loyal to His Majesty King Viserys Targaryen, your heir and successor. The gods are my witness."

Sir Hubbard Lambton also came forward and said something similar.

A voice came from the throne: "I accept your allegiance."

The air in the main hall suddenly became hot. The three-headed dragon on the throne moved and stretched out his left wing under the throne. A huge shadow covered the heads of the two people who swore allegiance to Viserys.

The two people kneeling in front of the throne couldn't help but look nervous and swallowed secretly.

Septon Baal, who was witnessing the ceremony, stood up straight, held his breath, and tried not to tremble in his hands that were holding the seven-pointed star cloth that temporarily represented the god. He tried to imagine that the monks of the Great Septon of King's Landing witnessed the oath for the Targaryen king with a dragon in this way a hundred years ago.

The wings with hot air fell in front of the two knights who knelt down under the throne and swore allegiance. A voice came from the throne: "Kiss my dragon wings, and you are kissing the king himself."

(End of this chapter)