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Ned is being childish and making some poor City Watch schmuck’s day a little more wearying by insisting the upcoming tourney be called “the king’s tourney” and not “the Hand’s tourney” in conversation. You lost that fight, Ned, let it go.
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“A Game of Thrones – Eddard and Jon”
Hey, remember when, all the way back in chapter one, I theorized that summer weather in the south sucks sweaty, humid balls? I was wrong. Winter weather in the south sucks sweaty, humid balls. I don’t want to imagine which sweaty, humid body part and/or cavity is resembled by the southern summer.
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Bran has rejoined the waking world and the first thing GRRM does is make the paraplegic boy sit on a windowsill and watch his brother play tag with the direwolves. Remember when life didn’t suck Bran? Yeah, that’s never happening again.
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“A Game of Thrones – Arya and Daenerys”
Arya is angry. She’s angry at Cersei and Robert, at Joffrey and the Hound, at Sansa and her father. Arya has a sword and she wanted to learn how to use it, how to stick people with the pointy end before they stick you and watch them die, so she took a stick and gave a second one to Mycah, the butcher’s boy. She didn’t stick him and she didn’t watch, but he’s dead anyway and in that list of people Arya hates, she hates herself the most.
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“A Game of Thrones – Eddard and Tyrion”
Ned finally gets to King’s Landing, but there’s no rest for the wicked, nor for the terminally honourable. His presence is requested as a council meeting the moment he steps foot in the Red Keep. Exhausted and dressed in borrowed clothing, his own not having arrived yet, he meets the other four who make up the council. Seeing Renly for the first time through Ned’s eyes we are told that the handsome young Baratheon is the spitting image of a young Robert. Lest we think Ned is friends with someone who was always fat and ugly, I guess. What I really don’t get is how Renly beat Ned here, weren’t they part of the same travelling expedition? Ned greets him as having arrived safely, but how Renly managed to beat Ned by enough time to have rested and dressed, I don’t know.
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Tyrion was wrong: Jon has found his home in the Night’s Watch. It’s an organization founded on honour, they train the boys to be men and the social ranks of the outside world mean nothing here. Jon can be himself, recognized for his strengths and accepted for his virtues. It is the place where he fits in this world.
Done laughing? Good, let’s proceed with the real recap.
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“A Game of Thrones – Brand and Catelyn”
Bran is still falling. He’s remembering Maester Luwin’s lesson about what happens to clay when it’s thrown out of a window and thinking that what happens to flesh probably is probably similar enough. A voice is telling him to take the third option and fly. I would say that hearing voices in your head is a bad sign, but right now the inside of his head is all Bran has right now, so I’ll let him have this one without crying “loony bin.”
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“A Game of Thrones – Sansa and Eddard”
Sansa’s first ever point-of-view chapter. You know what, I changed my mind, give me Catelyn back. I’ll take an adult asshole over an adolescent girl any day. Sansa is nobody’s favourite Stark for a reason, at least this early on in the series.
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I’d rather go camping with Robert than deal with Catelyn when she’s being both an asshole and a grieving mother. Unlike Jon, I’m not too proud to give into denial and pretend Catelyn’s chapters don’t exist. That would, alas, make me a very bad blogger and I would feel guilty, and it would all be Catelyn’s fault!
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While the king’s entourage noisily lumbers its way south, the much smaller “dwarves and bastards” party makes its way north. According to Tyrion, it’s a very long and hard way, but as a Canadian, I scoff at his perception of the travel conditions. There’s an actual road, and stone bridges, and occasional villages, so how remote could it be? Tyrion’s just grumpy because the forest of howling wolves isn’t stocked with prostitutes and he’s not used to such a long dry spell.