Extraction of the Lion's Tooth (Sansa I)

Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It has been so long since I said the words. So long that it feels like another life, and yet I can never forget them. It shall not end until my death. No, my watch has not yet ended. It is late and by all rights I should be asleep beside my wife. I pledge my life and honor… for this night and all the nights to come. I dust off my worn copy of A Game of Thrones. It’s been too long, old friend.

Ok now that I’ve got the corny intro out of the way, just wanted to say thanks for having me and I will try my best to aid in the efforts of this re-reading project. I’ve only read the books once, though I’d like to think it was a thorough read. I am reasonably well-versed in most of the conspiracy theories regarding ASOIAF, but please let me know if I’ve missed anything.

This is the first Sansa chapter in the series. As such, it’s not terribly enjoyable: Sansa is just about at peak level of naivety and obnoxiousness, which is even more painful to read with the hindsight of Joffrey’s evil acts to come. Our first introduction to Sansa, from her POV, is as she is eating honey comb for breakfast. Clearly, Martin is foreshadowing Sansa’s terrible lemon cake addiction. I find this quote from Septa Mordane (RIP) at the start of the chapter to be amusing: “You’re a good girl, Sansa, but I do vow when it comes to [your direworlf] you’re as willful as your sister Arya”. The interesting takeaway is that the direwolves are what connects all of the Stark children; Lady’s eventual murder is the beginning of Sansa’s drifting apart from her family.

The king’s party stays at a large inn, “a three-story structure… the biggest that Sansa had ever seen.” Who the hell built this giant inn? I assume it’s privately owned, but who’s got the money to be building giant inns? Certainly none of the landed gentry. And is business really so great along the King’s Road that you can turn a profit off a three-story inn? As far as I can tell, the only businesses that are profitable in Westeros are brothels, but based on their location this would be the equivalent of staying at a motel in rural Pennsylvania, only instead of a mint under your pillow it’s an underage girl with greyscale. King Robert would be DTF, though.

Note: I realize now that this inn was likely built to commemorate King Robert's victory at the Ruby Ford. I still maintain that it cannot possibly turn a profit.

Ok sorry I’ll get back on track now. Arya indicates that they are at Ruby Ford, where Rob defeated Rhaegar and supposedly knocked the rubies out of his crown. Arya wants to go searching for said rubies with Mycah, not spend the day with the Queen and Princess Myrcella. Myrcella won’t even allow her to bring Nymeria because she’s afraid of wolves! Ok that’s probably not foreshadowing anything, and it actually seems pretty reasonable that an eight year old would be afraid of a fucking wolf.

OK, Martin is intentionally making this difficult to read. All she wanted was for things to be nice and pretty, the way they were in the songs. I’d actually forgotten how insufferable Sansa was pre-Stark murders.

There’s a bit about Sansa questioning Arya’s birth, but since Arya is Catelyn’s daughter I imagine that would be hard to fake, so let’s chalk this up to standard sibling bickering.

Joffrey has a sword, and of course he named it Lion’s Tooth. I’m reminded of the wise words of TV Sandor Clegane, “Only a c**t would name his sword”. Joffrey appears to be a pretty swell guy for most of this chapter, but then again this is being read from Sansa’s POV. Still, he rescues her from an awkward situation (being frightened by Ilyn Payne and the Hound), and is genuinely sweet to her for an afternoon. Unfortunately, Arya ruins everything.

I notice in the re-read that Arya is much more to blame for Mycah’s death than I realized. Yes, Joffrey is a dick. He bullies Mycah and presses a sword into his cheek, drawing blood. He was drunk, and we know what Joffrey is capable of. Still, I am certain that the worst he would have done was to give Mycah a cut on the cheek before Sansa persuaded him to let them go. Arya, being the youngest (and most Stark-like) really and truly fucked things up.

How to get your low-born friend killed: a 4-step process

Step 1: Convince him to fight you and not hold back, even if it means causing you harm and literally putting his life at risk if he is caught by an authority figure

Step 2: Upon being discovered by the heir to the throne, immediately shout at him and disrespect him.

Step 3: Bash the prince over the head with a wooden stick. If prince is still upright, chuck a rock at him.

Step 4: Once your wolf has incapacitated and wounded the prince, threaten him and throw his expensive sword into the river. This will either humble him and teach him a valuable lesson that he will take with him as he becomes a wise and level-headed king, or send him into a murderous rage-spiral that will result in your butcher friend’s death.

A final thought: the chapter ends with Sansa tending to Joffrey and offering to get help. He responds by looking at her with “nothing but loathing” and snapping at her. I’m wondering if there was any genuine affection from Joffrey towards Sansa prior to his humiliation at her sister’s hands, or if this was simply a show he was putting on. The obvious comparison is to Margaery. Though we get very little insight on their relationship in the books, the bit we get from the show (and from the Cersei chapters) indicates that she was making quite an impression on him, so that Cersei felt threatened. Cersei instructed him not to trust Margaery and I imagine she did the same with regards to Sansa prior to their meeting. Still, Joffrey may have genuinely liked Sansa. After getting his ass kicked in front of her, he either changes his mind or lets go of the charade he was putting on for her. Sucks to be Sansa. I’m gonna go pound a lemon cake.

Hot bread, honey, butter and blackberry preserves

This chapter is probably the beginning of many readers' dislike of Catelyn. She spends much of it acting irrationally, and it's easy for a reader to judge. But it's a pretty accurate portrayal of her character, and how she embodies House Tully's words. Until her death she's standing by her family; after it, her personality is distilled to a warped form of duty - her obsession with taking revenge for the family she believes to be all lost.

We can already see Littlefinger's machinations in effect here - Catelyn, having been primed with Lysa's accusation against the Lannisters (not to mention the pre-existing mistrust between their houses) immediately assumes they must be responsible for Bran's fall. Her landing on Jaime as a suspect is halfway between being a sharp assessment of available facts, and a lucky guess, thanks to the suspicions that have already been planted - if it weren't for Lysa's letter, would she have been so ready to put the blame on a Lannister?

It all demonstrates how easy Littlefinger's goals are to accomplish, in some ways. He doesn't need to engineer an incident to set in motion the events that will lead to a civil war - he just needs to spread mistrust and enmity however possible, and dumb luck does the rest. This is assuming, of course, that he didn't directly influence Joffrey to send the assassin, which (IIRC) isn't confirmed. At any rate, the fact that his M.O. is to create disorder makes him one of the most dangerous characters in the story - even Varys, his archrival, has a much more precarious position, both in his foreign origin and lack of a title and house that has his back, and in that his plans (whatever they might be) are much more elaborate and can be upset by one of Littlefinger's Joker-like moves.

The biggest thing that bugs me about this chapter is that it highlights how little sense it makes for Robert's entourage to take the lengthy Kingsroad journey up to Winterfell, while Catelyn plans to take a boat and beat them to King's Landing. Are there no fleets capable of holding Robert and his party? Obviously in this case, characters are moving at the speed the plot requires them to, but just like the mushy sense of distances that crops up more than once in GRRM's writing, this detracts somewhat from the ability to suspend belief. My belief, anyway.

The title of this post is because I couldn't think of a better one, and I was hungry. So the paragraph describing her meal became the chapter's most memorable feature...