It is a great crime to lie to a king - Eddard III

"It is a great crime to lie to a king"

The events that occur in this chapter are important for the analysis of the next chapter.

Arya is found by Eddard's men, but the Lannister men at the gate inform the Queen. She's brought directly before King Robert to talk about what occurred between her and Joffrey.

The royal party is held up in Castle Darry, which is an important point for the next Bran chapter. Castle Darry is "a modest holdfast a half day's ride south of the Trident." It's lord, Ser Raymun Darry, fought for Rhaegar, so there is considerable tension with the Lannisters, Starks, and Darry men all crammed into the small castle. 

Ned enters the audience chamber, asks what's going on, and studies the faces of the men present. He notices that both Jaime and Sandor are missing, leading searches north of the Trident.

There is some bickering, then Robert says to Arya, "Now, child, you will tell me what happened. Tell it all, and tell it true. It is a great crime to lie to a king."

Arya gives her account of the events that brought her there. She tells them truthfully. Joffrey goes after her and gives a completely different account of what happened.

Ned knew Arya was truthful because he was told by Sansa. "Ned had heard her version of the story the night Arya had vanished. He knew the truth."

When Sansa is brought forth to testify, she suddenly has no memory of the events. This is the moment that I began to hate Sansa, but I suppose I understand it. She's infatuated with this Prince who just gave an opposing account of what happened between him and her sister. She tried to remain neutral as she glanced between the two of them. 

Feigning ignorance was a lie though, and it is a great crime to lie to a king. Cersei wants Arya's direwolf punished, but the wolf is not present. Cersie mentions that there is a wolf present though, Sansa's Lady. 

Sansa pleads for her wolf. "All Ned could do was take her in his arms and hold her while she wept."

Ned asks Robert to be the one to swing the sword. Robert leaves without saying anything. Cersei asks for Ilyn Payne. Ned says that he will do it himself. When asked why by Cersei, Ned says, "She is of the north. She deserves better than a butcher." I can't help but think that Ned is also thinking about Arya practicing stick-fighting with a butcher's boy. He doesn't yet know about Needle, but perhaps he is already considering her wild ways. 

No sooner after the deed is done Ned gives a command to have the wolf's bones buried at Winterfell and the Hound returns with Mycah dead on his shoulder. 

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...

Little Ironies - Tyrion II

To to north we go!

Initially we are with only Tyrion, Benjen Stark and Jon Snow. They split from the royal procession out of Winterfell and headed north where the procession went south. Later though, they meet up with Yoren, a brother of the night's watch, and two boy recruits.  The boys are reported to be rapers, which dampens Jon Snow's perception of the Brotherhood being an honorable calling. This leads to tension between Jon and Tyrion, but then they joke about it later and seemingly get along fine.

In the beginning of the chapter, while heading through the tough northern terrain, Tyrion remarks about how the map was one thing and the land quite another.  This is funny because of GRRM's notoriously bad estmations of distances, height, age, and also book release dates. It is, however, an accurate representation of cartography at this point in their fictional history - things aren't exactly as they are presented on paper. Nothing is to scale in ASOIAF, even invidual's representations of events, because everyone is an unreliable narrator.

Tyrion seems to take offense in how he's being treated by Benjen and Yoren during the ride north, thinking that they share a distace for Lannisters just as Ned does. I'm not sure if this is actually the case, or whether they are just hard men and do not spoil Tyrion like he's used to as the Queens brother. I don't see Jon being treated differently.

This is also the chapter in which we discover that Tyrion is a book worm. He says "a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge" in response to Jon asking why he reads so much. This sums up Tyrions character throughout the series, He doesn't have any physical advantages, so his wit and wisdom is what keeps him alive through the game of thrones.

The book that he happens to be reading is about dragon bones. He says that the Dothraki use them incrafting  bows. They are said to be strong as steel yet lighter and more flexible. More, they're impervious to fire. It'd be interesting to see dragon bone used in other weapons/armor. Perhaps a dragon bone suit of armor or shield can be useful in flying and/or fighting dragons. Perhaps a melee weapon can be used to defeat the Others (lightbringer anyone?). I wonder if dragon bone is the same as obsidian like the daggers that Sam finds, and uses, to become the slayer. 

He then goes on to tell Jon about his fascination with dragons since he was young (probably fueling all the Tyrion = secret Targ theories, which I hate). He reminisces about the last of the Targaryen dragons, and wonders if they were the last dragons everywhere (I think not, but we'll talk about that in a later chapter).

He thinks about the Field of Fire, which was a catastrophic loss for the Seven Kingdoms against Aegon Targaryen. In a shock and awe campaign, Aegon and his two sisters use their dragons against the forces of Mern of the Reach and Loren of the Rock, killing thousands. King Mern dies as well, but king Loren is spared and bends the knee. Amusingly, Tyrion is grateful for this as he would not have been born, and Tywin would not have had the chance to almost exterminate the Targaryens. 

There is a strange moment towards the end where Jon loses his temper. Tyrion suggests that Jon imagines his mother and  sister being harmed/burning just as he does. Jon gets very defensive and loud until Ghost attacks Tyrion when he gets too close. When Tyrion asks for a helping hand in getting up from the ground, Jon says "ask me nicely" almost sadistically, like he enjoys the power over Tyrion. It's most likely from the events that transpired before this, but it seems strange to me that he would act like that, especially becoming so defensive. This strange event seems to bond them though, as they get along and joke with each other afterward.

He had never been a patient man, Robert Baratheon- Eddard II

This chapter opens with Robert Baratheon acting only as Robert Baratheon can, rude, reckless, and impractically. On the first few times through, it is hard to see how terrible King Robert is, as he is consistently shown through the eyes of Ned Stark, his oldest friend and near brother. Robert wakes Ned in the early morning, and then proceeds to, without his Kingsguard, take off on a long gallop. Robert takes a lot of secretive precautions to ensure that he and Ned won't be heard...or even recognized.

Ned and Robert proceed to have a conversation that shows the format for their future dealings, Ned advises Robert of prudent, practical moves, and Robert ignores him entirely.

The first conflict is over Daenerys' marriage to Khal Drogo. Robert wants to send assassins after the Targaryens, Ned says no.

The second conflict is over who to appoint as Warden of the East. Ned favors choosing Robert Arryn, or failing that, Stannis or Renly. Robert says no, he wants Jaime Lannister.

The third conflict is over Jaime Lannister himself. Ned distrusts Jaime and believes he lacks respect and seriousness. Robert again disagrees.

Ned ends the chapter realizing what a terrible mistake going to King's Landing is.

This chapter serves primarily to serve as insight into the kind of leader Robert is...a poor one. He's stubborn, and while he makes decisions quickly, he doesn't appear to ever be happy with any of them. Take, for example, his decision to leave his Kingsguard Knight behind. We later find out that the knights on the road, Ser Boros and Ser Meryn, are largely useless as bodyguards anyway, but it is very suspect that Robert would have no trust in two men he appointed himself. The chapter also lets us know that the Lannisters have some sort of hold over Robert, a prelude to the Westerosi debt crises we discover in Kings Landing.

All in all, you cannot help but to pity Ned, who has taken on an impossible job working for a man who only remembers being his friend.

No? - Daenerys II

This chapter begins with everyone a little bit on edge.

The free city Pentos and its magisters are on edge because all 40,000 of Drogo’s Khalasar are squatting outside of the city. Viserys is brooding because he has to take a back seat to his sister for the time being. Daenerys is nervous about consummating her wedding night with her big, strong, rough husband. Of course Illyrio is an enigma, but this is a big part of his master plan so he must be a little bit apprehensive about the wedding proceedings. Mormont the spy is also probably curious about what’s going to happen.

Illyrio’s response to Viserys’ impatience about getting his army is an early indication of how he wants things to proceed slowly. As we know later thanks to his discussion with Varys under Kings Landing, he wants to take things slow, but Varys is having trouble juggling many events at once. In response to Viserys asking how long he must wait, Illyrio states, “You have waited most of your life, great king. What is another few months, another few years?”

Mormont tells Viserys that the Dothraki are true to their word but they do things on their own time. Viserys snaps at him and tells him to guard his tongue. He states that he is the “rightful Lord of the Seven Kingdoms” and that “The dragon doesn’t beg”. To this, Mormont bows his head, but Illyrio “smiled enigmatically” and ate sloppily as if disregarding Viserys claims as nothing more than an arrogant child.

If the Dothraki are true to their word, then perhaps Viserys “golden crown” was a part of Illyrio’s plan all along. When talking to Viserys, Illyrio says “I have told you, all is settled. Trust me. The khal has promised you a crown, and you shall have it.” It doesn't seem that far fetched for Illyrio to have plotted this since he shows contempt to Viserys right to his face and seems to understand Viserys’ character.

Then there was the wedding party. “A Dothraki wedding without at least three deaths is deemed a dull affair.” Funny, since the red wedding definitely outmatched Dany’s in excitement, the purple wedding was a dull affair and a future wedding might have the same potential as the red wedding.

The wedding gifts are as follows:
Viserys gives Dany the three handmaidens, Irri, Jhiqui, and Doreah. (One each to teach riding, language, love)
Jorah gives her books of history and songs from the Seven Kingdoms
Illyrio gives her the chest that contains the dragon’s eggs from the Shadowlands beyond Asshai.
Haggo gives Dany a leather whip with a silver handle
Cohollo gives her a gold-chased arakh
Qotho gives her a dragonbow
(Per Dothraki custom, she was to refuse these three gifts and hand over to Drogo)
Finally Drogo's gift to Dany is her horse, Silver. Which she gets on, rides through the crowd and, upon approaching a fire-pit, "The silver horse leapt the flames as if she had wings." This is clear foreshadowing of her riding a dragon.

Then it came time to consummate the marriage. She says "No" twice before finally, after being fondled by Drogo a bit and after he asks No?, she says "Yes". Was it rape? No, it wasn’t in the context of the story. Also, we're in her consciousness as readers, and she doesn't react that way.

"What are You doing here?"

Jon II

This chapter is perhaps the penultimate "anti-Cat" chapter. It features our favorite bastard, Jon Snow, seeking a final audience with his comatose brother.

The mood in Winterfell is fairly dark at this time. Bran is lying, comatose and broken in bed. Catelyn has broken, and resorted to living in her son's room. Jon is leaving Winterfell forever, headed to the Night's Watch.

This is a relatively short chapter, and the main takeaways are as follows.

Jon describes Bran as a type of skeleton, a leaf, with bones "like a bird". This, I believe, is meant as a clear allusion to Bran's future as a greenseer, a skeleton sitting on a throne.  We'll get to Bran's future more in Bran's next chapter (to be expertly exegeted by James), but its clear from the many hints in Bran's chapters that his storyline is perhaps the most important in the series.

The second takeaway is Catelyn's speech, about her prayer to the Seven for Bran to stay in Winterfell, by any means possible. There is a lot of talk in the fandom that the Seven "don't have any power", compared to R'hollor, the Old Gods, and the other religions of Martin's world. I think Catelyn's statement is a kind of direct contradiction (among other things, like Lancel Lannister's prophetic visions) of this idea. The Seven do hear prayer, but like the other gods of Westeros (or ancient mythologies) they rarely answer them in the desired fashion.

The chapter ends with a scene the cements Jon's place in the readers heart, Jon Snow gifting Needle to his youngest sister Arya.