Chapter 2: Presented to the Court, Assessed by the Queen

The gown they gave her was the wrong shade of blue.

Not wrong by much — a courtier's eye, moving quickly through a receiving hall crowded with silk and self-importance, would not have caught it. But Elizabeth had spent the morning in a room with nothing to do but observe the light as it moved across the stone walls and identify every variable she could not control, and she had concluded that the gown was Lannister blue with Tully ambition stitched over it, which was either an insult too subtle to be accidental or an accident too perfect to be subtle. She put it on with the composure of a woman who has decided that the gown is not the battle.

The receiving hall was the battle.