[ASOIAF SI] The Gilded Stag: A Ruthless Joffrey Uplift | Chapter 2: JOFFREY II (Public) (Patreon)

The nursery was a prison of soft things.

Soft pillows, soft blankets, soft voices, and worst of all, soft food.

Joffrey sat on the floor, surrounded by wooden blocks, apparently engrossed in stacking them. To his nursemaids, he was a quiet, unusually focused child. A "perfect little angel" who rarely cried and slept through the night.

In reality, he was running a comprehensive audit of his own development.

He was three years old. The initial battle for colostrum was won, and the results were already visible; he was in the ninety-ninth percentile for height and weight, broad-shouldered even as a toddler. But the next phase was critical. This was the window for craniofacial development.

In his previous life, he had read the journals. He knew that the modern "malocclusion epidemic"—weak chins, crowded teeth, mouth breathing—was a result of soft, processed diets. The human jaw needed stress to grow. The masseter muscles needed to exert force to stimulate the osteocytes in the jawbone, triggering the release of IGF-1 and encouraging the maxilla to widen.

If he wanted the broad, commanding jawline of a king—and the deep, resonant voice that came with a wide palate—he needed to chew.

"Here, my sweet prince," his nurse, Wylla, cooed, offering him a bowl of mashed turnips and stewed peaches. "Open wide for the spoon."

Joffrey looked at the mush with concealed disdain. It was poison to his goals. Soft food meant a narrow face. A narrow face meant a weak chin and a high-pitched voice. He would not be a squeaking tyrant.

He opened his mouth, let her feed him a spoonful to maintain the charade, and then gave her a wide, gummy smile that he knew melted her heart.

"Meat," he said, pitching his voice high and innocent.

"The meat is in the stew, love," Wylla said, tapping the bowl. "Cooked soft for you."

Joffrey shook his head, his golden curls bouncing. He pointed to the side table where a platter of cold cuts—tough, dried beef and crusty black bread—sat for the guards.

"Big boy meat," he insisted, widening his eyes. "Like Father."

Wylla hesitated. "Oh, that's too hard for your little teeth, Joff. You'll choke."

I won't choke, he thought. I have the swallowing reflex of a grown man.

He stood up, his legs sturdy and thick, and toddled over to the table. He reached up, grabbing a strip of the dried beef—jerky, essentially. It was tough as leather.

"Joffrey, no!" Wylla started forward.

Joffrey shoved the meat into his mouth and clamped down with his molars. It was like chewing on a boot. Perfect.

He gnawed at it, feeling the resistance. He could feel the tension in his jaw muscles, the strain radiating up through his temples. Good, he thought. Stress the bone. Trigger the remodeling.

He turned to Wylla, holding the jerky between his teeth like a cigar, and gave a muffled, triumphant giggle.


"By the Seven," Wylla sighed, stopping in her tracks. "He really is his father's son. He has a man's hunger in a babe's belly."


She let him keep it. Lesson learned: If he framed his bio-hacking as "emulating Robert," no one would stop him.

From that day on, Joffrey's diet changed. He rejected paps and mashes. He demanded the crusts of the bread, the gristle of the meat, the raw carrots and apples that required vigorous grinding. He spent hours "teething" on hard leather rings he'd pilfered from the kennels, gnawing with a rhythmic, calculated intensity that the maesters mistook for simple hunger.

He was sculpting his face from the inside out.

Later that afternoon, the trumpets sounded.

Joffrey stood on the balcony of Maegor's Holdfast, clutching the stone railing. The wind whipped his hair, but he didn't blink.

Below, the courtyard was a sea of steel. Robert was leaving.

Cersei stood beside him, her hand resting on his head. She was tense, her fingers digging slightly into his scalp.

"Look at him," she whispered, her voice thick with a mix of pride and resentment. "Riding off to play his war games."

Joffrey looked. He saw the King, enormous in his antlered helm, laughing as he swung onto his warhorse. Robert Baratheon was a mountain of a man, terrified of nothing but boredom.

Joffrey tugged on his mother's skirt. When she looked down, he didn't give her the hardened stare of a general. He gave her the trembling lip of a son who would miss his daddy.

"Mama?" he asked softly. "Father fight bad men?"

Cersei's expression softened instantly. She scooped him up, holding him close. "Yes, sweetling. Father is going to smash them."

"I help?" Joffrey asked, resting his head on her shoulder. "I be strong?"

"You are strong," Cersei promised, kissing his cheek. "You are my little lion."

Joffrey hugged her back, his face buried in the velvet of her gown so she couldn't see his eyes.

He needed access. He needed the training yard. And to get that, he needed to be "cute" enough that they wouldn't fear him, but "aggressive" enough that they'd indulge him.

"Want hammer," he mumbled into her neck. "Like Father."

Cersei laughed, a genuine, delighted sound. "A hammer? Oh, Joffrey. We shall see."

As the column of knights rode out the gates, the sun glinting off their armor, Joffrey watched them go. He chewed on a piece of hard, dried apple he'd hidden in his tunic pocket, his jaw working rhythmically.

Go, Robert, he thought. Go crush the Greyjoys. Leave the castle to me.

He had six months before the King returned. Six months to manipulate Pycelle into teaching him history, six months to charm the Master-at-Arms into letting him hold a sword, and six months to ensure that when the King came back, he found a son who was not a disappointment, but a terrifying promise of the future.

He took another bite of the apple. Crunch.

The remodeling had begun.