A Game of Thrones ÔÇö Eddard VIII
The council debates murdering a pregnant girl across the sea; Ned throws down the Hand's badge rather than put his seal to it.
The chapter retold
At a fraught small council meeting, Robert presses again for Daenerys Targaryen's assassination, this time with the full council weighing in ÔÇö and the council, eager to please a king rather than argue with one, largely lines up behind the plan. Ned's disgust finally overflows into open defiance: he throws the Hand's badge of office down on the table rather than put his seal to an order to murder a pregnant girl across the narrow sea, resigning a position he never wanted in the first place rather than be complicit in what it's asking of him.
It's the clearest single statement of Ned's moral architecture in the whole book ÔÇö faced with a choice between his office and his conscience, he chooses conscience without visible hesitation, a reflex utterly foreign to everyone else around that table. The gesture costs him real power at the exact moment he needs it most, and the council's easy willingness to order an assassination shows Ned, in case the tourney and the small council hadn't already, exactly what kind of government he's actually serving.
This movement: The Eyrie and the Heart
- In the Eyrie's sky cells Tyrion confesses to everything but the crime ÔÇö and buys a trial by combat. Bronn fights; Ser Vardis falls.
- Robert orders Daenerys killed; Ned throws down the Hand's badge; Jaime's men kill Jory in the street.
- In Vaes Dothrak, Dany eats the stallion's heart; Viserys draws steel in the sacred city and is crowned in gold.
- Robert, dying breaths away from a boar, restores the badge and rides to hunt.