Francis' age is one of the things you then have to map backwards - because in Game of Kings he's so very very much younger than one first supposes (or at least as I first supposed). So setting fire to the castle with his mother inside is really an outbreak of extended adolescence - and all the things that were done to him before the series starts were done to a child. A very self-possessed and intelligent child, but a child. And I have only just realised that in many ways Philippa's arc is a mirroring of that (this is why Dunnett fans tend to be devoted re-readers. One reading is never enough).