Chapter 54 - Lord Doric Bolton is a Bachelor
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Winterfell Castle
POV of Catelyn Stark
To anyone else, his stoic face might look like it has always been. After all, he had never been good at showing any emotions and hid behind his icy expression whenever sothing bad happened. But Catelyn had lived with him for a decade, so she knew.
She knew that he was worried about sothing.
But she also knew that he would never share his burdens with others, so she decided to confront him about it after dinner at bed once their children had been sent off.
And once she confronted him about it and learned what had worried him so much, she was shocked.
"Four tis more food than normal tis? And 15 tis more iron than past years?" she asked, not really believing what she had heard.
After all, how was it possible that the peasants of a particular land are able to increase the quantity of their food production by such a large amount within the duration of a few years?
Had the Bolton lands suddenly turned as fertile as the lands of the Reach and the Riverlands?
Such a thought was rather foolish but how else were the peasants within that area able to produce so much grain?
As for the 15 tis iron being produced by the Boltons, she had no idea what to even think about it.
After so prodding, she found out that before Doric Bolton beca the lord of Bolton lands, they only had 2 mines, they now have 16. And the increased number of miners from both the Iron Islands and the Westerlands made it so that each Iron mine is producing much more Iron ore than it earlier did.
Not only that, the Boltons now also had a silver and a few copper mines.
She almost felt her mind shut down from all the information.
Where did all these mines spring up from within the Bolton Lands?
Was it true that Doric Bolton was blessed by the old gods?
Once upon a ti, she would have laughed at the absurdity of such a thought but now she was not so sure anymore.
And from the way her husband looked at the paper, she knew that he had similar thoughts about Doric Bolton even though he would never admit it to anyone else.
Still, did they not know of the significance of a person owning a silver mine?
It was, after all, the second most precious tal in Westeros followed only by the Gold.
Did her husband not understand how much wealth a person could accumulate if they just owned a Silver mine?
From the worried look on his face, she felt that he had a good idea about what having a silver mine might an but so far Lord Bolton had not done anything wrong, so her husband didn't know how to deal with this situation.
Still, The Boltons had been the enemy of the Starks for a long amount of ti, and watching your enemy grow stronger day by day was very frustrating.
After all, she might be born a Tully, but she was a Stark now and had children with the sa na whose lives would be in danger if the young Lord Bolton continued to amass his wealth and power like that.
"Ned. What are you planning to do about the Boltons?" she asked and couldn't help but shake her head at the irony of it as there was only a single Bolton alive in the North at the mont.
A single Bolton who has taken his house to the height of prosperity never reached before by any Northern house.
"Nothing." Her husband said with a self-deprecating smile.
"Nothing?" she asked incredulously.
"Yes. He may be gaining power but growing crops and opening new mines as well as creating paper and books is no cri, Cat." He said with a tired sigh.
"Yes. But we still need to do sothing that would curb his growing power. Or the Boltons would beco too powerful, and we won't be able to do anything in the future." She said imploringly but her husband simply shook his head with a sigh.
"I truly cannot do any harm to him without any reason. He has done nothing wrong except to make his lands more prosperous. Sothing that every lord desires to do. It would not be honorable."
She almost grimaced at that. Almost.
Because even if she was proud of her husband being an honorable man, she knew that sotis honor can create more problems in the long term than solve them.
Sotis, honor needs to be sacrificed in order to do what is right. Unfortunately, this was a lesson that her husband never managed to learn.
But after thinking for a while, she was able to see a solution that would not go against her husband's sense of honor but that would stop the young Lord Bolton from plotting against them.
"Lord husband." She said and, sensing the change in mood, he put down the paper and turned to look at her with a serious expression.
"What is it my lady?" he asked gently.
"Lord Doric Bolton is a bachelor." She said.
"Lord Doric Bolton has not even reached his teenage years. Of course, he's a bachelor." He said with a smile though she could feel that he understood where she wanted to go with this but didn't want to say the words himself.
"Our little Sansa is only a few years younger than him." She said imploringly and he grimaced as soon as he heard those words.
"I'm not going to betroth one of my daughters at such a young age." He said with a sad expression and a faraway look on his face. "I don't want to put such heavy responsibility on her at such a young age."
"I don't want to do such a thing either." She said, thinking about her young and naive girl "But we need to bring Lord Bolton in the fold sohow. And what better way to do so other than to form a marriage alliance with him."
He still didn't look at all that convinced so she sat up and looked at him seriously.
"I know you don't want to do this Ned. But this is sothing that needs to be done. And quickly before Lord Doric Bolton is betrothed to soone else."
"I know." Her lord husband said miserably "I just... hoped that I wouldn't have to betroth my children for the benefit of the family."
"Yes. But doing so might stop a civil war in the Northern land in the future." She said, hoping he would realize how serious this situation was.
Because if the reports that they occasionally receive about Lord Bolton were true then House Bolton must have already gained more power than House Stark. Sothing which was a clear recipe for a disaster.
And her husband understood this as well because after thinking about it for a while, he took a deep breath and nodded at her.
"I'll see what I can do." He said and she knew that she had convinced him about the betrothal.
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