Kings Landing: The
Usual nest of vipers
Jaime is very very annoyed with his brother for
ungratefully throwing his life away. Tyrion, being much more astute, doesn’t
see any reason to be grateful for being sent to the wall for a crime he didn’t
commit – and yes, the whole farce is a joke. Tyrion also throws some hard truth
at Jaime – Tyrion is always going to be disposable to Tywin. More, Tywin wants
to dispose of him; Jaime protests that Tywin would sacrifice any of them and
Tyrion calls bullshit – Jaime could (quite literally) “kill a king, lose your
hand, fuck your sister” and still be the golden son.
Jaime can’t fight for Tyrion in his trial by combat –
without his hand he isn’t ready yet (though the idea of Tyrion and Tywin both
dying because of the trial is faintly amusing to Tyrion). Tyrion asks Jaime to
find Bronn.
And Cersei chooses her champion – Ser Gregor Clegane, the Mountain. Who is happily butchering some prisoners for funsies.
Unfortunate for Tyrion, Bronn has been nobbled. He has
been married off to a wealthy lady through Cersei’s influence giving him much
more luxury and a considerable lack of need to be chopped into itty bitty
pieces by the Mountain. It’s Bronn’s turn to lay on some hard truths, Tyrion no
longer has wealth to offer him and while he is Tyrion’s friend, that doesn’t
extend to risking his life for Tyrion – after all, Tyrion has never done the
same. They part as friends.
Tyrion gets a visit from Oberyn who, in between making it
clear he knew Cersei was trying to turn him against Tyrion and he tells of his
first visit to Castlery rock when Tyrion was a newborn baby and how rumour had
painted him as so monstrous. But when a young Oberyn was so eager to see this
monstrous baby, he was surprised when Cersei showed him Tyrion – a pretty
normal baby without any of the claws and tails Oberyn had pictured. But Cersei
hated him and blamed him for the death of their mother.
And Oberyn wants revenge on the killers of his sister – the Mountain, Gregor Clegane, who raped and killed his sister and killed her children. Being Tyrion’s champion gives him that chance. I feel this scene would have been far more powerful without Oberyn mentioning cocks every 5 seconds.
The Riverlands:
Arya and the Hound
They find a man, injured from an attack, a wound in his
stomach killing him slowly. The Hound and Arya both wonder why he doesn’t
commit suicide since he is suffering and cannot possibly heal from the wound.
He thinks nothing – death - could be worse but Arya creepily refutes: nothing
can be neither better, nor worse. It’s nothing. The Hound gives him a last
drink before finishing him off, showing Arya a heart blow
And some fool attacks the Hound by biting him. He gets his
neck broken – but that leaves his companion free to tell them there’s a price
on the Hound’s head and that Joffrey is dead. Arya recognises the man as a
prisoner heading to the wall who threatened her. The Hound asks if he’s on Arya’s
death list but alas it cannot be – she doesn’t know his name. So The Hound
asks, the bounty hunter rather foolishly tells them – and Arya stabs him
through the heart. Even the Hound is a little impressed.
When they rest, Arya points out the Hound needs to
cauterise the wound or it will become infected. Of course, he’s terrified of
fire. He pouts and stomps about the trouble Arya’s caused him – before seeming
to regret and telling Arya the truth about his scar; his brother (the Mountain)
held his face into the fire). His brother did it and his father protected his
brother. Arya washes the wound instead.
On the Road: The
Brienne and Pod show!
This time joined by a long absent Hot Pie (one of Arya’s
companions to the Night’s Watch) who makes exceedingly good pies and is
obsessed about them. Very very obsessed. When Brienne mentions the Starks, he
quickly leaves assuring them how traitorous and wrong the Starks are, yes. To which
Brienne merrily declares how she is pledged to Catelyn and swore to bring her
daughters home – Pod thinks this rather unwise. But Hot Pie, being Arya’s
friend, tells them all about Arya being alive, last seen captured by the Brotherhood
Without Banners (remember them?) with the Hound.
Brienne wonders where Sansa would go – and Pod says the Eyrie since he knows Lysa is Catelyn’s sister, something Brienne didn’t know. Pod explains Tyrion expected an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Houses of Westeros.
The Eyrie:
Sansa
Sansa builds a replica of Winterfell in the snow when she’s
joined by Robin. As he talks it’s clear how paranoid Lysa is of the outside
world and how she’s passed the opinion on to Robin – and how much of a vicious
spoiled child Robin is, taking joy in the idea of dropping people through the
Moon Door. Robin damages Sansa’s castle
and he has an epic meltdown temper tantrum when she gently chides him for it –
she slaps him. All watched by Littlefinger who agrees that Sansa shouldn’t have
hit him – but Lysa should have a long time ago.
Sansa takes the chance to ask Littlefinger why he killed Joffrey and he tells the raw truth – he loved Catelyn and Joffrey had her killed. After reflecting that Sansa could have been his child (if they lived in a world where they could marry for love) right before saying how beautiful Sansa is. Because that is quite possibly the creepiest way ever of paying someone a compliment. And he kisses her. Littlefinger is already capable of creepy, he didn’t need to up the creep factor before the kiss
And this little scene is watched by Lysa the-not-entirely-rational-or-stable.
Lysa invites Sansa for a conversation near the Moon Door,
discussing how fascinating it is to watch people fall to their deaths – and how
Littlefinger is hers! HERS DAMN YOU! Littlefinger arrives and tries to talk
Lysa down while she rants, holding Sansa over the drop. She throws Sansa aside
and collapses in tears – and Littlefinger moves to comfort her “silliness”. And
pushes her over the edge.
Dragonstone
Tannis the joyless
Melisandre greets “Queen” Selyse while in the bath
because the show is waaaay behind on its boob quota. She tells Selyse how useful
lies are for getting people onside and how she should be totally ok with
Melisandre having sex with Stannis. Selyse is a good little fanatic – though she
still hates her daughter and wants to leave her behind when she and Stannis
head off – but Melisandre says her god of burning people has plans for Shireen.
Which is a bad sign.
The North: Where
it’s cold and pouty.
Jon and Alliser continue their verbal duelling. Alistair
forcing Jon to keep Ghost out of the keep and they disagree on strategy. Jon
wants to seal the tunnel through the Wall to stop Mance’s army rolling over
them but Alliser thinks that will just cut off their scouting and he’s
confident Castle Black can hold. Alliser refuses to listen and holds too much
sway over the council – he saddles Jon and Sam with night duty to prove his power.
Meereen
Daenerys playing white Ruler lady.
Daario is not taking a hint and has sneaked in to Daenerys’s
private quarters to bring her flowers. She’s not impressed. After a brief and
not very meaningful apology, he complains, basically, of boredom. He’s a
warrior and his soldiers are playing guard (Daenerys isn’t moved by that
either) – with the additional talent of being good with women apparently and
not having the chance to exercise that because of his Daenerys obsession (she points
out there are a lot of women in the city he could pursue). Daenerys sits down
and decides to let Daario do what he does best – and orders him to strip. He
does.
He leaves her apartments sometimes later, retying his
clothes and passes Jorah (if you listen very very very very carefully, you may
hear Jorah whimper). Jorah has a long rant about how Daario cannot be trusted –
but Daenerys agrees. In fact she’s sending Daario and the Second Sons to Yunkai
to take it back – and execute every Master there. Jorah tries to encourage some
level of mercy, that she is seeing things too simplistically and her rule is becoming
as brutal as the Masters’ was; he also adds that, as a slaver himself, Jorah
has committed the same crime the Masters have – and he wouldn’t be here is Ned
Stark had had Daenerys’s sense of justice. Daenerys allows some slackening of
her order – she also sends Hizdahr (the
noble who pleaded to bury his father) with them as ambassador to deliver an
ultimatum.
I liked Sansa in the snow – seemingly
happy. The first time this child of the North has been happy in a long time is
when she is surrounded by the trappings of winter, building a model of home: a lot
of nifty symbolism there. And then Robin comes in with his childishness and
viciousness – but Sansa is almost wistful at the idea of dropping her enemies
through the door (after all she has more than enough cause to hate). In the
same scene she says how girls were not part of executions and dealing with bad
people in Winterfell – which kind of underscores the reality of Sansa – a child
who was so very unprepared for the world she was dropped into, who was too
sheltered and too insulated from the cruelties of the world. In her own way,
she was every bit as over-protected and sheltered as Robin is and equally
poorly served by it.
Is Arya and the Hound having their own
similar moment? The Hound’s history bores a hole in the tragedy Arya has
wrapped herself in; yes she’s completely alone, but he has always been alone.
And Littlefinger? I don’t know how much is
sincere and how much is manipulation? Maybe even both – he loved Cat,
definitely, he’s maybe infatuated with Sansa, but did he arrange the kiss to
drive Lysa over the edge and set up the big push?
This has been an episode with a lot of hard
truths. Tyrion laid plenty down last episode and doubled it over with Jaime
this episode – shattering Jaime’s fool illusions that their father treated them
equally (and continually hitting his brother with the hard truth of his incest).
But along comes Bronn with some of his own excellent truths – about the
entitlement that Tyrion feels, about how his friendships are one sided, resting
on his wealth and privilege and prestige while to meet his side, Bronn risks
life and limb. And this makes me think about last episode with Shae – sure some
of what she said was lies, but how much of it was hard truth? How much of it is
the simple truth of a sex worker belonging to a man who was vastly more
powerful than her? Can we contrast his assumption of Bronn’s willingness to
sacrifice himself with his assumption that Shae genuinely loved him and put
them together to think that Tyrion has mistaken the vast power and control his
gold brings for an extreme level of devotion?
Over in Meeren, Daenerys is continuing to
hit on the hard truths that ruling isn’t just as simple as killing everyone you
see who you deem bad.
