A Game of Thrones ÔÇö Sansa I
By the Trident, Joffrey's cruelty and Arya's temper collide; Nymeria bites the prince and is driven off with stones, and the lie begins.
The chapter retold
On the road south, along the Trident, Sansa's dream of courtly romance and Arya's contempt for it collide badly. Coming upon Arya at play with Mycah, the butcher's boy, Joffrey decides to teach the low-born boy a lesson ÔÇö he draws live steel and cuts him, the casual cruelty the book has already hinted lives under his golden hair laid bare. When Arya moves to defend her friend, the prince turns his blade on her, and Arya's direwolf Nymeria bites Joffrey's sword-arm to drive him back. Bested and bruised by a girl and her wolf, Joffrey lies about what happened rather than own it, setting in motion a chain of consequences Arya can already sense closing around her even as she flees the scene, driving Nymeria off into the woods to save the wolf from the king's justice.
It's the chapter where Joffrey stops being an unpleasant prince in the abstract and becomes a concrete threat, and where Sansa's storybook idea of him takes its first real hit ÔÇö though she isn't ready yet to let the illusion go. The lie Joffrey tells is small in itself, but the book is already teaching its readers that lies told by princes get believed over truths told by servants' children, a lesson that will cost more than one life before the day is out.
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.