The Child High Septon

[Westeros]

The High Septon is dead—long live the High Septon!

Barely a day since the internment of the remains of the former stonemason raised to the Seven’s Voice on Earth, and the Most Devout has made the swiftest election of a new High Septon that any man can remember. It was not one of the Most Devout, nor some famed septon, nor at least a septon at all—something to mark them as different from their predecessor, who could hardly say the words of a prayer without stumbling over them. No, instead this time the High Septon… is a child, a boy eight years of age, a draper’s orphan it is said.

Why was he elected, though men five and even ten times his age were considered? Because the Seven spoke to King Baelor, that is why. The king had a vision when he heard the boy sing in a choir during the observances, that the beauty of his voice was surely a gift of the gods, and besides there was a light about him that was miraculous. The king’s own agents, he said, swore they had witnessed miracles from the boy, that he would hold forth in conversation with doves and that he could turn water into wine. And so the Most Devout bent to the king’s will with uncommon haste, unlike the delay and efforts to dissuade the king when he said the stonemason was to be the next High Septon.

Of course, there are those at court who suspect a reason for the choice being made so quickly: that the Hand intervened with the most influential of the Most Devout, and that they had bargained out of the belief that a child as High Septon would be the safest course for the realm and the faithful ... and that he could be shaped and molded to be worthy of the crystal crown, and until he was old enough to excerpt his own judgement who could say who might advise him?

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