[@Sarcelle Renard] yeah it's not that the king doesn't want peace rather, he doesn't want Asher to fall in love with or marry someone who will make him weak instead of stronger, as a person and as a future king

Which is also why he lied about killing Octavia. He believed that she was making him weak but at the same time he didn't want to worsen the war. Thus he lied and said it was Asher's fault that she died to harden his heart and remove, what the king thought to be a possible weakness, from him