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viviae · 4 years

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Dissecting the Newspapers

What are those newspaper articles?

Well, I’m here to give MY interpretation of what is going on. Simply put, I think Anastasia is planning a coup to overthrow Vesuvia.

1) We have Anastasia fixing the canals

First off, Anastasia has no reason to fix the canals, she does not live in Vesuvia and her niece and nephew aren’t exactly permanent residence either. So why? These canal’s have been a long standing problem in Vesuvia’s history, no one knows who built them or why and half of them are unfinished so it’s safe to say they’ve probably been around since the city was founded. And then to have this mysterious benefactor who is putting in some very expensive resources to solve this issue? It’s to gain public approval for her and leave a positive impression on the masses (she did not actually speak publicly at the trial).

Her fixing the canals lead to her digging underground as well which seems to have resulted in the flooded district collapsing.

And speaking of public approval...

2) Nadia had to delay the masquerade

This threat of flooding is so serious Nadia delayed the masquerade. This should be a huge red flag as in all the other routes Nadia cannot cancel the masquerade. It’s obvious Nadia has a lot riding on the masquerade politically speaking. The people of Vesuvia love a good ole fashion masquerade and it’s pretty much the only reason anyone liked Lucio and did not start a revolution.

So we have a public figure who has been absent from the public eye for years who tries to offer two different events to improve her public standing. The hanging, which does not happen, and now the masquerade which is delayed. Even in the parts of the city where Lucio was always disliked and may have had their hopes riding on Nadia it just shows to them they are failing. Not to mention that now a foreigner is now fixing one of Vesuvia’s longest standing problems which obviously looks like it was always an easy fix but the Vesuvian royal family has been to incompetent to fix it. As well as now we have the flooded district being completely destroyed which is only going to hurt Nadia’s image more with the people.

In one fell swoop Tasya just ruined Nadia’s public image. Which if you want to plan a coup, it would be incredibly beneficial to have the current ruling figure fail.

3) Tasya has already won over the court

In the last book we got to see Tasya at work. Giving Valerius an incredibly expensive vineyard and Vastomil some rare worms isn’t exactly cheap. And while yes at face value this was just to convince them to rule Julian innocent I doubt it was just to rule Julian innocent on an even vote. They are indebted to her and have a great respect for her now as well.

And although she only has 2/5 members of the court it won’t be hard to win over the others.

4) a renowned expert in poison has been found mysteriously dead

Acontius Dogwood has been found dead, why would they include this seemingly irrelevant individual’s death for a teaser image? Well I’ll give you the biggest hint and it’s in the pudding.

If you don’t remember Nightshade allow me to remind you of this lovely quote from Julian

This poison is incredibly dangerous in the wrong hands but it’s only safe to be touched because it needs to be distilled. The distilling process for a poison can be pretty complicated and would need an expert to do so successfully. And an expert was just mysteriously killed (probably by his own creation). If he’s used to crafting this poison specifically for overthrowing kings he’s probably smart enough not to live in a city where its being used.

Until what I believe is Anastasia asking for a poison to be crafted for her. I think she killed him to keep him quiet and no one to be the wiser. And where do I think this poison is? Well let’s take a look at the flower itself.

A pale blue with darker veins inside of it.... Now lets take a look at that necklace that Anastasia gifted Portia real quick.

A pale blue with darker veins inside of it...

I think this necklace is a Chekhov’s Gun, its an incredibly odd thing to be drawing attention to as much as it has been, with even Valerius making a comment on it. More specifically I think it’s a reference to the Game of Throne’s necklace that Sansa wears at the purple wedding. It’s a pale blue necklace that has one of it’s dangling gems removed during the events as the gems hold a poison to overthrow a king... and subsequently frames her for murder.

Another point is how in the paid scene with Portia at the pillow fight it’s noted that had taken the necklace off. Now you could make an argument that this is simply because Portia didn’t want any damage to fall to the necklace but I think this was a way to make sure we the readers don’t accidentally break this gem containing an incredibly dangerous poison.

5) What is going on with the crabmen?

Ok, they aren’t actually half crab hybrids.

But what people are seeing at men in carapaces running around under ground. So I believe that they aren’t crabs, but rather men in armor. We know Anastasia is in charge of repairing the canals which has lead to her having to go underground. I think the fixing the canals is also a cover to get her to sneak armed troops underground which people are seeing. And they seem to be quite territorial and aggressive as it’s scaring the citizens... almost like they don’t want to be seen.

6) The storms

Ok, this wasn’t part of my original theory because I thought the storms were the Devil getting mad at delaying the masquerade but I saw @thesanguinerose ‘s post talking about how Julian and Portia’s parents were killed in a storm that mysteriously on the Devorak children and Tasya survived.

And now that there are these violent storms brewing in Vesuvia... in the only route where Tasya is present raises some major concerns. Tasya explained to Portia that she had offered to buy their parent’s merchant ship to add to her fleet but they denied her. And then said parents happened to die out at see on a violent storm with Tasya present. It is definitely suspicious and I think these storms are connected to Tasya and are following her around. Perhaps in the same way that the plague followed Lucio around for having an uncompleted deal.

She does seem quite well traveled and despite being a baroness isn’t at her country ruling like she probably should. Probably to avoid destroying her city but there is no reason she can’t use this to an advantage. But I am making a lot of leaps with this one that I’m not even 100% about.

7) Foreshadowing in Portia’s Route

In Portia’s route there is a certain... theme to it. Portia is pretty bent on solving the mysteries of everything going on around her. Portia in general has a real penchant for snooping and keeping secrets. So we already know what one of the bigger mysteries of the overall story of The Arcana is “Why did Julian kill Lucio" but the problem is... Portia already solved it. She solved it before anyone else did back in book X (Yes Muriel’s route answers the question of if Julian did it at the start but not why) and yet we still have a massive story.

There seems to be a theme in the secondary routes that they take a different approach to the world and story than the main three. Portia has been following the story pretty much beat by beat so far but there is something incredibly special about Portia. She has no connection to the Devil at all.

If you follow (I believe it’s @apprenticeofcups ‘s meta) the idea that Lucio is only as big as a threat in the route based on that character of that route you have an odd situation where... Portia doesn’t know Lucio at all. Portia has never even made a deal with a major arcana like all the other members of the route. Currently, Portia’s biggest obstacle and threat to her personal morals IS Anastasia. It’s not crazy to think that she’d become Portia’s biggest villain and a major villain in general.

Here is also some fun screencaps to show some foreshadowing about Portia’s route maybe holding something a bit bigger. She used to pretend she was a lost princess and says these words exactly:

And well, she might not be betrayed for her own personal throne... the throne she serves is about to be betrayed...

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gascon-en-exil · 4 years

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Joining the Game Late: S3E8 “Second Sons”

Synopsis

The Hound catches Arya up with the main plot. The Titan’s Bastard enjoys money and getting rimmed (by women, of course). Melisandre tells Stannis about the lambs. Davos is Stannis’s morality pet, but he’s not doing a great job at it. So much impending marital incest, and no one’s happy about it least of all Cersei who’d much rather the real thing. Joffrey continues to find inventive ways to be a dick. Melisandre seduces Gendry so he can get sucked off in a very bad way. Tyrion is too drunk and honorable for his own wedding night. The bishonen Second Son betrays his captains for a protagonist, where have I heard that one? Sam explains how names work to Gilly before facing a scene from The Birds and finally doing something with that dragonglass.

Commentary

The wedding at the center of this episode is fantastic, as it leads to a bunch of great scenes and great performances by all my favorites that hit perfectly one right after the other. It’s never explained why the wedding between Tyrion and Sansa has to come before the other two being planned - maybe that’s in the book? - but I’m not complaining. Tyrion shows he can be just as entertaining a drunk as Cersei, Joffrey vacillates between petty bully when he takes away his uncle’s footstool at the ceremony to complete monster when he comes up to Sansa and casually tells her that he’s going to rape her that night (he doesn’t), Tywin is still very much in charge, Olenna’s having her fun (”your brother will become your father-in-law, that much is beyond dispute”), Shae is still pissed but is quietly approving that Tyrion didn’t sleep with Sansa, and Cersei is done with the Tyrells and isn’t bothering with propriety anymore. She delivers the monologue explaining the significance of “The Rains of Castamere,” necessary knowledge for the next episode, which is by itself a not-so-subtle warning, but then she throws Margaery off completely with an explicit death threat. Not at all appropriate, but we know that Cersei has her limits. Also, Sansa still has her symbolic doll from Season 1 that’s obviously meant to represent loss of innocence. I’m surprised it’s still in the show after it was a visual focal point of her scene with the Hound last season.

Everything else in this hour though doesn’t hang together quite so well. I’m going to use two examples to illustrate this, and leave the other material for when it reaches more of a point (except to point out that when Melisandre is getting Gendry in bed the base of his shaft is visible for half a second...while she’s showing full frontal. Typical.). Let’s start with this episode’s other source of female nudity. Daenerys’s scenes in this episode at first feel like a rehash of the one last time, with her “negotiating” - threatening more like - someone in a tent outside Yunkai while her visitor makes disparaging remarks directed at her, her entourage, and her ideas about slavery. This time it’s a trio of mercenary captains making lewd passes at her and Missandei, and the result appears to be more or less the same...but then the show follows them back to their camp where they draw lots to see which one will have to sneak into Dany’s camp and assassinate her. Turns out it’s the long-haired one who’s morally opposed to prostitution (even as his companion points out that mercenaries also sell their bodies, just in a more violent way), and when he infiltrates the camp and comes before Daenerys he’s there not to kill her but to present her with the heads of the other captains and offer to join her. This setup is such typical Fire Emblem that I laughed a bit while watching it, the most conventionally attractive of a group of enemy mercenaries swayed to the playable side by a pretty woman. They might as well have played a recruitment track over this scene. However, this being GoT the pretty woman in question is naked at the time, which could be considered a power move since she’s so clearly unimpressed by this guy even as he’s ogling her but...I don’t know. Dany’s messaging is just so damn confusing; I get the impression that nobody involved with this show had any idea where her character was headed, so they just threw a bunch of stuff (and fanservice) at a wall to see what would stick. In any case, on top of Jorah we can now add a mercenary army to the list of people following Daenerys specifically because they want to tap that. Lovely.

The other scene I want to talk about is this episode’s climax, given to us by Sam and Gilly of all people. I say that because this is their only scene and the last time they appeared was two episodes ago, and yet for all that scattered pacing the show uses this climax to reveal a plot point that will no doubt be crucial to understanding the big battles in the final seasons. Sam uses that dragonglass he’s been holding onto since halfway through Season 2 to stab a White Walker, instantly destroying it. This would have been a strong climax had there been sufficient buildup to it, but here it feels completely random. The writers needed a big moment to end the episode - the one immediately preceding the Red Wedding! - so they tacked this quick but very important action sequence onto the end of a dialogue between Sam and Gilly about baby names and how much their fathers suck. To be fair I’m not even slightly invested in the two of them as a pairing - Sam is such a painfully transparent author avatar, and the best thing I can say about Gilly so far is that’s she’s not blatant wish fulfillment material but comes with a lot of her own baggage including parental rape - but the lead-in to the White Walker is this confused pileup of symbolism where a flock of cawing ravens roost in a nearby weirwood tree and warn the pair to come out of their makeshift shelter. Are ravens associated with White Walkers now, or was it actually a warning sent by some supernatural being? Is this going to be relevant to any other plotlines any time in the next three or four seasons? No idea on the one, and I rather doubt it on the other. My understanding is that the equivalent book scene comes earlier, when Commander Mormont is still alive, so I can say with confidence that as with Theon this is another case of the show stretching a small and undeveloped story point in the source material out over too long a period of time.

Alright, time for the really big shocking twist!...that I’ve known about for over half a decade, but I’ll try to act surprised.

#Game of Thrones #GoT

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turtle-paced · 6 years

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Revisiting Chapters: Sansa I, ASoS

Fun and interesting chapter! Probably not on my personal favourites list, but one necessary to get to some of my favourites.

Sansa’s ASoS story so far...

Following the Battle of the Blackwater, Sansa’s betrothal to Joffrey is off. Huzzah! But this means that someone else has to marry Joffrey, and Sansa’s about to meet the lucky lady.

Now on to the chapter.

Tyrell Politics

This chapter is aaaaaaall about the Tyrells. The last time we saw them, back in Catelyn’s ACoK chapters, we didn’t really see them because Catelyn was focused on Renly, Stannis, and Brienne. Until now they’ve basically been muscle for other forces. Now we’re getting a proper introduction to several of the personalities behind that muscle, the soft power to the hard power. It’s just as formidable.

That soft power is apparent right off the bat, as Sansa watches Margaery enter the city. It’s a big public procession with flowers upon flowers, and the people of King’s Landing love it. Sansa’s now aware that it’s the images they love, not the person and her deeds.

The same smallfolk who pulled me from my horse and would have killed me, if not for the Hound. Sansa had done nothing to make the commons hate her, no more than Margaery Tyrell had done to win their love.

But it’s just such a pretty picture. Sansa’s got the idea behind this now. First we see these tactics pointed at the people of King’s Landing, and then we see them pointed at Sansa.

As soon as we start with the Tyrells in person, starting with Loras, we see a family working together, with just about every Tyrell present brought into this scene save Mace. Loras escorts Sansa to dinner, past Garlan training in the yard. Not only are Garlan’s skills hightlighted, they’re highlighted by Loras himself - and there’s no envy in Loras when he says straight out that Garlan’s a great knight, and the better swordsman.

Then Loras hands Sansa over to Margaery, who starts to work on Sansa like the professional she is. The rest of this chapter is devoted to a good-cop-bad-cop act aimed at extracting relevant, sensitive information from a young girl who’s seen her father murdered in front of her and recently been through a siege, aside from whatever else Joffrey might have done to her. They’re doing this in order to verify for themselves what Littlefinger told them about Joffrey, before they commit themselves to regicide. Cautious, and very sensible. Through this scene, Margaery and Olenna work as a team to get the information from Sansa. Alerie Tyrell’s role is less clear, but I wouldn’t be shocked if she did the background work of keeping the conversation and food service going in the rest of the room while Olenna and Margaery did the interrogation.

Let’s get into the play-by-play.

Step one: make sure the environment is comfortable as possible. Physical comfort, yes, with the firelight and the sweet rushes, but just as important is making sure that the room Sansa walks into is one she feels she can talk in. First, Sansa has to walk past the very impressive-looking Erryk and Arryk, physical security for the room. Next, Margaery refuses to stand on formalities, getting on first-name terms with Sansa within thirty seconds, and sending Loras away with a gesture of physical affection. Then she brings Sansa into the aforementioned comfortable, nice-smelling room, into a social environment more welcoming than dinner with just Margaery would be - the aim is to make sure Sansa feels she is amongst friends. They also feed her, not just a good dinner, but her favourite lemon cakes as well.

Note also that the ladies in the room are from all over the Reach. This is partially to make up a gap in GRRM’s worldbuilding (in which neither Catelyn, nor Lysa, nor even Queen Cersei have ladies-in-waiting), and partially a good indication of how the Tyrells manage dynastic politics and access to power.

Step two is Olenna’s job. What a character. Literally, what a character. I take her funny speeches with more than a grain of salt; she knows that there are people listening in. (She didn’t pull that trick with Butterbumps out of nowhere.) She’s fine with people finding out the light dinner conversation.

Olenna starts by launching a comedy broadside at Sansa.

On Renly:

“Gallant, yes, and charming, and very clean. He knew how to dress and he knew how to smile and he knew how to bathe, and somehow he got the notion that this made him fit to be king.”

On Loras:

“Loras is young,” Lady Olenna said crisply, “and very good at knocking men off horses with a stick. That does not make him wise.”

On Mace:

“As to your father, would that I’d been born a peasant woman with a big wooden spoon, I might have been able to beat some sense into his fat head.”

“My son ought to take the puff fish for his sigil, if truth be told. He could put a crown on it, the way the Baratheons do their stag, mayhap that would make him happy.”

On the Tyrells more generally:

“If truth be told, even our claim to Highgarden is a bit dodgy, just as those dreadful Florents are always whining. ‘What does it matter?’ you ask, and of course it doesn’t, except to oafs like my son.”

Olenna carefully lets the air out of some equally carefully constructed political images, in order to construct a persona for herself. She starts by insulting her family (in on it), the Baratheons (dead), and the Targaryens (also dead), firmly establishing that she’s a rude old lady who’ll say anything about anyone, before she moves on to saying rude things about the Lannisters. She establishes the irreverent pattern before heading into things that may or may not be interpreted as treason. Her honesty (or “honesty,” depending) also helps set the tone. If she’s blunt, it helps others be a bit more honest as well, to return her candour.

She also waits for the meal to be served and attention to be directed elsewhere - namely, at Butterbumps. This is also where she starts in on actually being the bad cop.

Lady Olenna was growing impatient. “Why are you gaping at Butterbumps? I asked a question, I expect an answer. Have the Lannisters stolen your tongue, child?”

“You said that. You know, child, some say that you are as big a fool as Butterbumps here, and I am starting to believe them.”

Sansa’s repeated attempts to deflect by saying Joffrey’s handsome, and also handsome, and if you’re looking for something nice to say about him, he’s handsome, go absolutely nowhere - but nor can Olenna get anything else out of her until she swaps back to kindness as a means of getting Sansa to open up. And not just fobbing her off with “don’t be scared,” but actually providing sympathy for her position.

The old woman turned back to Sansa. “Are you frightened, child? No need for that, we’re only women here. Tell me the truth, no harm will come to you.”

“My father always told the truth.” Sansa spoke quietly, but even so, it was hard to get the words out.

“Lord Eddard, yes, he had that reputation, but they named him traitor and took his head off even so.”

Just words, sure, but a firmer implication of what Olenna believes about Ned’s execution than she ideally might have wished to give. Especially where someone might hear her. At this point, Margaery interjects, showing that she’s been paying close attention to what’s been going on.

“Go on.” It was Margaery who urged.

“Calm yourself, child,” the Queen of Thorns commanded.

“She’s terrified, Grandmother, just look at her.”

Olenna also has to speak a bit more openly about the fact she knows people are listening. She calls in Butterbumps to provide that extra layer of security and make sure Sansa knows it’s an extra layer of security. The Tyrells have to work hard to get this information out of Sansa.

Step three is the follow-up. Having given them the information they want, the Tyrells promise Sansa a reward for her cooperation.

“You will love Highgarden as I do, I know it.” Margaery brushed back a loose strand of Sansa’s hair. “Once you see it, you’ll never want to leave. And perhaps you won’t have to.”

Note the physical contact here, too. Sansa’s not had a lot of non-violent physical contact in the past year, let alone affectionate physical contact.

Close reading this is creepy as hell. Sansa’s emotionally exhausted, people are offering her affection and safety and explicitly “the beautiful magical court she had once hoped to find at King’s Landing”…if only Sansa will agree to marry Willas. Willas might not be so bad, but the rest of it, and the method of presentation and procuring Sansa’s consent feels more than a little sinister. The Tyrells’ offer is backwards for Sansa, the easy way out. It takes her backwards to a time where she couldn’t see how things worked.

Of course she wants it. And of course the story can’t let her take it.

Here’s another interesting thing that comes out of the conversation.

[Olenna] patted Sansa on the back of the hand. “Now, child, the truth. What sort of man is this Joffrey, who calls himself Baratheon but looks so very Lannister?”

So we know that Olenna knows about the incest. Given that Margaery’s right there and stays silent, it’s a fairly safe bet that Margaery also knows about the incest at this point too.

Sansa’s Lessons

Underpinning the Tyrell politics is the development of our PoV character, whose analytical abilities are tested here in her first chapter and, as fitting for a first chapter not even halfway through the series, not yet up to the challenges around her. Oh, she’s closer. We see her do some good thinking right at the start.

She’s to be queen now, she’s beautiful and rich and everyone loves her, why would she want to sup with a traitor’s daughter? It could be curiosity, she supposed; perhaps Margaery Tyrell wanted to get the measure of the rival she’d displaced. Does she resent me, I wonder? Does she think I bear her ill will?

We’re seeing Sansa work through options and possible hidden motives, based on the disparity in their social status. She even considers that Joffrey might have put Margaery up to this in order to humiliate her. She’s partially right; getting the measure of her is one of the objectives, but not for the reasons she thinks.

Perhaps she was doing Margaery Tyrell an injustice. Perhaps the invitation was no more than a simple kindness, an act of courtesy. It might be just a supper. But this was the Red Keep, this was King’s Landing, this was the court of King Joffrey Baratheon, the First of His Name, and if there was one thing that Sansa Stark had learned here, it was mistrust.

She’s been learning that quite well. Worse, that passage is followed by this one:

Even so, she must accept. She was nothing now, the discarded daughter of a traitor and disgraced sister of a rebel lord. She could scarcely refuse Joffrey’s queen-to-be.

Sansa knows it could be a trap. She knows there could well be malice at work here. The idea that the night might end with her stripped naked and beaten occurs to her. And she can do nothing about it except play along. Playing along is the wise move, because Sansa’s now consciously sticking it out until a deadline (which I’ll talk about in a bit).

Then, ‘cause she’s still a kid, most of her analysis of Margaery goes out the window when who should come to escort her to dinner but Loras, and - in a moment that’s kind of funny, really, before the conversation goes sour - she realises that he’s still super hot, incredibly mega-hot, and she is very distracted by this fact.

Sansa was finding it hard to walk and talk and think all at the same time, with Ser Loras touching her arm.

For the remainder of the chapter, we see exactly where Sansa’s still got plenty to learn. Her encounter with Loras is the chapter’s pattern in miniature; she realises quickly that Loras doesn’t actually remember her from the Hand’s Tourney, but continually puts her foot in her mouth afterwards. It’s plain to see why Sansa does so - it’s a happy memory and she doesn’t like it being hollowed out in her currently miserable situation, and there’s no way she could know about Robar. Analysis of the general situation is coming along nicely - but Sansa’s application of skills to a new and changing situation is still a bit shakier.

It’s always worth keeping in mind, too, that all Sansa’s analysis is running against the repeated accusations levelled against her in-universe of being stupid. The poor girl keeps second-guessing herself.

As we see, a great deal of the good-cop-bad-cop goes right over Sansa’s head. She’s learned caution and mistrust, but only got to the first layer of Margaery and Olenna’s objectives. They genuinely did want to hide this conversation from the Lannisters, as much as possible, and this is what Sansa picked up. The offer to marry her to Willas is likewise genuine, and this Sansa can believe. What Sansa doesn’t think of is that she’s a secondary objective, great to have but not needed for House Tyrell, expendable if that advances the primary goal of making Margaery queen.

In terms of the thrust-and-parry of the conversation, Sansa is continually on the back foot. Normally, conversational grace is a strong point of hers, but this is an interrogation and Sansa’s aware of the fact (if not everything that went into carrying it out). She’s more than aware of the potential consequences of actually saying it. Up to and including a scenario where the Tyrells call the betrothal off.

Oh, gods, thought Sansa, horrified. If Margaery won’t marry him, Joff will know that I’m to blame. “Please,” she blurted, “don’t stop the wedding...”

In terms of characterisation, we see Sansa’s courage throughout. She’s petrified. The whole time. That’s why the Tyrells have such a hard time getting the information from her. But she manages to say it. It’s all right there.

“Joffrey,” Sansa said. “Joffrey did that. He promised me he would be merciful, and cut my father’s head off. He said that was mercy, and he took me up on the walls and made me look at it. The head. He wanted me to weep, but...”

“A monster,” she whispered, so tremulously she could scarcely hear her own voice. “Joffrey is a monster. He lied about the butcher’s boy and made Father kill my wolf. When I displease him, he has the Kingsguard beat me. He’s evil and cruel, my lady, it’s so. And the queen as well.”

The truth. Whatever illusions she had about her past interactions with Joffrey are long since gone.

Moreover, Sansa retains her loyalties to her family. She knows her abusers are abusers. She’s determined not to bond with them, and not to think of Joffrey and Cersei as anything but evil and cruel - even if that means she has to hold her tongue, terrified the whole time that she might be found out and beaten for her opinions. This is a pretty damned impressive feat of psychological resistance.

A Note on Loras

Ouch, that conversation with Sansa.

“That was when Lord Renly was killed, wasn’t it? How terrible for your poor sister.”

“For Margaery?” His voice was tight. “To be sure. She was at Bitterbridge, though. She did not see.”

“Even so, when she heard...”

Clear implication: Loras is the one for whom Renly’s death was terrible, not Margaery. Sansa picks up on this a mite too late. In the meantime, we see that Loras’ mourning for his lover is severely crimped by the fact he can’t openly say that they were lovers. One wonders how many times he’s already heard people give their condolences to Margaery, totally ignorant of Loras’ own grief. And yet he must carry on performing heterosexuality for this clueless little girl. No wonder he loses all warmth.

Then there’s the fact that the conversation touches on the fact that Loras murdered Robar Royce. He says “slew,” but the fact is that Loras found Renly dead, and in his grief, he didn’t just punch the men who were guarding him, he killed them.

“It was after you unhorsed Ser Robar Royce,” she said, desperately.

He took his hand from her arm. “I slew Robar at Storm’s End, my lady.” It was not a boast; he sounded sad.

This is also part of the deconstruction of Sansa’s romantic image of the Tourney of the Hand; what was to Sansa an innocent sporting occurrence is now known to her to end in real violence, the interaction of murderer and victim. Loras feels guilty, as we can see right here (and will see again later), but Robar is still dead.

Chapter Function

It’s a first chapter - it’s there to make an opening play without revealing the author’s whole hand. Critically, for both audience engagement and the character’s psyche, what this chapter establishes right out of the gate is that Sansa can now see the finish line. This also advances the buildup to the Big Event itself, working on the mentions in Tyrion I, and hints that it’s not going to be quite as glorious an occasion as Tywin thought it might be.

No one can save me but my Florian. Ser Dontos had promised he would help her escape, but not until the night of Joffrey’s wedding. The plans had been well laid, her dear devoted knight- turned-fool assured her; there was nothing to do until then but endure, and count the days.

Joffrey’s wedding. Then things will be different. The end is in sight. We just have to hang in there, with Sansa, until Joffrey’s wedding. It goes without saying that the author will make it as hard as possible for Sansa to endure until then. The issue of matrimony comes up at the start and finish of the chapter, first emphasising by implication that Sansa’s now unattached, and then proposing an alternative. So there’s no possible way this could work out - could this possibly be linked to the endurance test the author’s putting her through?

In terms of Sansa’s ongoing skill development, we’ve got a progress check of sorts. We see how far she’s come, and then we check in with Olenna and Margaery to see how far Sansa still has to go to attain mastery of her political skillset.

We also get a good look at a bunch of the smaller pieces that go into the “Kinsglayer stew” and Joffrey’s assassination. In bringing up Robar Royce, we’re reminded of Loras’ murderous temper. The fact that the central conversation even takes place is a hint to future events, because the conclusion that Olenna and Margaery are verifying Littlefinger’s intelligence is a conclusion only possible with hindsight. Most telling, perhaps, is this:

Lady Olenna Tyrell and her granddaughter exchanged a look. “Ah,” said the old woman, “that’s a pity.”

Olenna and Margaery, looking at each other and saying, “Ah.” Again, Margaery has acted throughout this chapter as a partner in Olenna’s interrogation. At no point does she express surprise or shock. It very much seems as though she’s familiar with all the background information Olenna is. She’s just as much “ah, that’s a pity,” in learning that her betrothed is a monster as her grandmother. And she shows just as little fear. When you go back and read, you know that you saw the moment House Tyrell committed itself to the Purple Wedding.

Without the foreknowledge, you just have to wonder what their nonchalance means.

Miscellany

Garlan’s sword skills look like a bit of a Chekov’s Gun, don’t they? Also featured in that brief snapshot of training are the Kettleblack brothers. Of particular note is Osfryd beating up on Morros Slynt - Morros Slynt being not only a squire, but a recently-made squire at that, which the reader knows. Good guy, is Osfryd.

This chapter provides us with our first sighting of Taena Merryweather, “a sultry black-eyed Myrish beauty.”

Willas Tyrell too rates a mention, with his bad leg and good heart, and his love of reading. Another probable Chekov’s Gun.

The final few lines of the chapter give us our first ever mention of Oberyn Martell, introduced as someone that the Tyrells (or Olenna, at least) Do Not Like. “That snake of a Dornishman,” specifically. Already snake imagery and the sense of the Dornish as a cultural other.

Clothing Porn

A bit vague, but Margaery Tyrell is described as “splendid in green with a cloak of autumn flowers blowing from her shoulders.” Ditto with Loras later in the chapter, his clothes are basically described as “white,” but his cloak is fastened with a brooch in the shape of “the rose of Highgarden wrought in soft yellow gold, nestled on a bed of delicate green jade leaves.” (Sansa’s a bit too distracted by Loras’ intense hotness to focus on much more.) We also have Erryk and Arryk, “two guards in gilded halfhelms and green cloaks edged in gold satin, the golden rose of Highgarden sewn on their breasts.”

Food Porn

Broth of leeks and mushrooms. We know that Alerie Tyrell was planning to serve boar and lemon cakes, and eventually cheese, but the actual food isn’t described in more detail.

Next three chapters

Melisandre I, ADWD - Davos IV, ADWD - Jaime VIII, ASoS

The list runs through to about August at the moment, but if you have a chapter you want analysed, send me an ask with that specific chapter, and I’ll add it!

#ASoIaF #revisiting chapters #cw: violence #sansa stark #margaery tyrell #olenna tyrell #loras tyrell #a storm of swords

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