A Game of Thrones ÔÇö Eddard III
In Darry's hall the king's justice is done on a wolf: Lady dies for Nymeria's bite, and the Hound rides Mycah down for a prince's lie.
The chapter retold
At Lord Darry's hall that evening, Robert's court dispenses a version of justice that satisfies no one. Cersei demands Lady, Sansa's direwolf, be put down as punishment for what Nymeria ÔÇö who was never caught ÔÇö did to her son, and Robert, unwilling to fight his wife over a wolf, forces Ned to carry out the execution himself since none of the Lannister men will touch a Stark's blood-bond. Ned does it as gently as such a thing can be done, sparing Sansa the sight, and rides Lady's body north to be buried at Winterfell rather than left to rot. In the same hours, the Hound rides down Mycah on Joffrey's word alone and cuts the unarmed butcher's boy to pieces for a fight he never actually won.
The chapter delivers the book's cruelest early lesson in how royal favor rewrites reality: the wolf who bit no one dies for the crime of resembling the wolf who did, and a low-born boy dies for the crime of being convenient to blame. Sansa's dawning understanding that Joffrey chose this outcome ÔÇö and said nothing to stop it ÔÇö plants the first real doubt in the fairy tale she's been telling herself since Winterfell, even as she isn't yet able to admit what she's starting to see.
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.
The fallen ÔÇö spoilers
- Lady ÔÇö Sansa's direwolf, killed in Nymeria's place at the queen's insistence.
- Mycah, the butcher's boy ÔÇö Ridden down by the Hound for a prince's lie.