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She knows that she is not supposed to love the color of gold. She is a Stark and her colors are that of winter, but from as long as she can remember she loves it. She remembers being transfixed at the way the sun would glint off of The Father’s scales or the hilt of The Warrior's sword as only a small child can be when she would look around at the statues as her mother prayed in their tiny Sept. It’s the gold of the setting sun shining through the windows of the Great Hall, making her mother’s hair shine like hers. It’s the color of Lady’s eyes that seem to see into her very soul. When she sees the color of her betrothed’s hair for the first time she smiles, fanaticizing about how soft his natural crown will be when she runs her fingers through it someday.
Later, when she is surrounded by crimson and gold at all times she learns to hate it. The way the sun reflects off of the King’s hair is no longer magical but glaring. The dozens of braids that adorn the Queen’s regal head look like serpents wriggling in a nest ready to strike. The Lannister sigils adorning every banner in sight seem to laugh at her and her foolish heart for being silly enough to have trusted lions in the first place. The only gold that tries to give her the slightest bit of ease is flecked in a sea of green, but even his one sad eye isn’t enough to turn her heart.
When she rids herself of all gold and is instead surrounded by the color of Stone, she secretly comes to miss it. Not the forceful show of power at every turn by her captors, just little things no one else would notice. The familiar goblet left just within reach, the gilded edges on books dancing in candlelight, the rings adorning the stunted fingers that would extend toward her in a hesitant offering or twist at her rejection. She doesn’t know if she will ever see these things or who they belonged to again, she doesn’t know if she wants to, but still they dance through her mind at her darkest moments and for whatever reason they soothe her.
When she is truly a woman grown, having reclaimed her family's colors there is one thing out of place; a simple gold ring she had fashioned when she came into power. The smallfolk whisper it is to keep suitors at bay, for no one but Winter's Queen herself shall govern the North. There is truth to that rumor, as to all rumors spread by her little birds, but there is a certain softness that comes over her eyes if she stares at the ring too long that would dismay her liege lords if they knew. She repeats to them the mantra that kept her safe while she was under the watchful eye of the mockingbird “no man can wed me so long as my dwarf husband still lives somewhere in this world” and that keeps them quiet in her presence. In secret they all agree that the need for heirs will come sooner rather than later and the Northmen can wait out a girl's claim over a traitor husband long thought dead.
Then the dragons came, and on the back of the one of cream and gold sits the man whose ring she supposedly wears. She can’t help but be surprised. After all these years she had grown so used to an idealized memory of him, but to actually have him in front of her is disarming to say the least. They don’t speak of her ring, or at all after their first cool meeting where he greeted her as Lady Stark standing beside his Dragon Queen. There are battle plans to discuss, negotiations to make but it seems that if she is required then he excuses himself, and she doesn’t know how to feel about that. When he finally talks with her after she rightfully accuses him of avoiding her, she finds him a changed man. Yes, he is still sharp witted and will always have the arrogance of a Lannister, but something had tempered him during their time apart.
“I would have thought you would have had enough gold forced upon you for a lifetime” he jested one night in front of the fire as the winds raged outside, motioning towards her simple ring in a haphazard way. Suddenly she is fourteen years old again and as timid as a mouse instead of the formidable Winter Queen she had come to be as a blush takes her cheeks. She laughs his statement off instead of saying anything. Words had never come easily between them, maybe they never would, but she finds his strange familiarity brings to her a calm she can’t rightly name.
Weeks later as the dragons and their riders prepared to depart for what might be the last of the great battles, he mentioned her ring again- and this time he doesn’t joke. He speaks rigidly, coolly even, about how if he makes it back then they have to have their marriage settled once and for all. Then with a smile that didn’t quite reach his mismatched eyes he continued that since it is more than likely he wouldn’t return she will likely only be given a short time to mourn her hated husband before she will have to remarry. “I would think some tall, strong and handsome lord will make your people much happier than the twisted dwarf that was forced upon their beautiful warden, even if our farce of a union has given you the ability to govern alone.” Had she not come to know him better than she ever thought she would, she would have been burned by his callous words. Instead she knew they were the only words he knew how to use to express his feelings for her- and she saw straight through the venom to the fear behind them. “It wasn’t my decision then, nor yours, but it could be now” she whispered, twisting the ring that had come to mean more to her than a simple armor against the men that would use her. He didn’t say anything for once and took her nervous hands into his steady ones, the weight of what she said seeming to have made him speechless. “You came back to me once when I didn’t know if I ever wanted you to, make sure you return to me a second time” she pleaded as tears threatened to overcome her. He remained silent, perhaps unwilling to make a promise he could not keep. The only recognition of her words he gives her is the tender way he runs his thumb over her ring.
After the Battle for the Dawn as it would come to be known, with the dead buried and cried over, something happens that no one save the two involved expect. Instead of the disappearance of her ring of gold and a husband of Northern stock, a ring of silver takes residence on the stunted fingers of her Southern husband. She is only questioned about this once, and once is more than enough. Winter’s Queen, for that is what she was whether a Targaryen sat the Iron Throne or not, stared at the foolish lord as only a Stark can. She reminded all in attendance who their fealty was sworn to, for she never lied to them about her Lannister husband or their marriage. No one questioned her icy resolve ever again.
Years later with his ring of silver nestled gently against her ring of gold she is truly content. She may be a Stark, and her colors may be that of winter, but it is spring’s gold that has brought her happiness at last. She doesn’t hide her love of gold now, especially the shade of red-gold that anoints the tops of her children's heads as they run about the courtyard breathing life back into Winterfell.