A Game of Thrones ÔÇö Tyrion II
Riding north to the Wall, Tyrion trades truths with Jon Snow and watches the boy's illusions about the Night's Watch die one by one.
The chapter retold
Tyrion rides north with Jon Snow as far as the Wall, and somewhere along the kingsroad the two outcasts ÔÇö one a dwarf despised by his own house, one a bastard raised beside heirs who could never quite call him brother ÔÇö trade the kind of unsparing truths that only strangers with nothing to lose from honesty tend to share. Tyrion is characteristically blunt about what waits at the Wall: not the storied brotherhood of children's songs but thieves, rapers and debtors doing penance in the cold, and Jon's illusions about the Night's Watch start dying, one by one, well before he ever takes the oath.
It's one of the book's best odd-couple pairings, and it works because both men recognize something of themselves in the other's specific, particular unbelonging. Tyrion's advice ÔÇö that the world will always see the thing that makes you different first, so you'd better decide what to do with that fact before the world decides for you ÔÇö becomes something close to a thesis statement for both of their arcs, delivered here as travel conversation rather than lesson.
This movement: The Road South
- A catspaw with a Valyrian dagger comes for the sleeping Bran; Catelyn's hands and Summer's teeth stop him.
- On the kingsroad, Joffrey's cruelty costs Mycah his life, Sansa her wolf, and Arya her innocence.
- Jon takes the black and finds the Watch is boys and broken men; Tyrion goes along to piss off the edge of the world.
- Catelyn rides south in secret with the dagger ÔÇö and in a crossroads inn, arrests Tyrion Lannister.