A Game of Thrones ÔÇö Tyrion I
Tyrion breakfasts heartily, slaps his royal nephew for mocking the Starks' grief, and decides he will see the Wall before returning south.
The chapter retold
Tyrion Lannister eats an enormous breakfast at Winterfell, unbothered by the household's obvious distaste for him, and when his nephew Joffrey mocks the Starks' grief over Bran's fall, Tyrion slaps him across the face without a flicker of hesitation ÔÇö a small, satisfying violence that nobody else at the table has the standing or the nerve to commit. Then, characteristically restless, he announces his intention to travel north to see the Wall for himself before heading home, a whim dressed as tourism.
The slap tells you almost everything about how Tyrion operates: he has no love for his family's cruelties and no illusions about them either, but he also has the rare freedom ÔÇö as the family's despised son ÔÇö to act on his conscience in small ways that a more dutiful Lannister never could. His curiosity about the Wall is not idle; it's the same appetite for the actual mechanics of power and the world's forgotten corners that will make him, later, both a superb administrator and a man who never quite belongs anywhere he's put.
This movement: A Hand's Summons
- A prologue in the haunted forest: Ser Waymar Royce meets the Others, and only a deserter escapes to die at Ned Stark's block.
- Direwolf pups in the summer snows ÔÇö one for each Stark child, and an albino for the bastard.
- Robert comes north with the court to make Ned his Hand; Lysa's letter blames the Lannisters for Jon Arryn.
- Bran climbs, sees the queen and the Kingslayer entwined, and flies. Across the sea, Daenerys is sold to Khal Drogo.