A Game of Thrones — Daenerys IV
In Vaes Dothrak Daenerys eats the stallion's heart and the crones name her son the stallion who mounts the world; Jorah stops Viserys stealing her eggs.
The chapter retold
In the sacred city of Vaes Dothrak, Daenerys undergoes one of the more visceral Dothraki rites of passage: eating the raw heart of a stallion whole, without vomiting, to prove her fitness as khaleesi and to bless the son she carries. She manages it, barely, and the dosh khaleen — the crones and widows of dead khals who read omens for the Dothraki — proclaim that her unborn son will be the stallion who mounts the world, a prophecy of conquest that ripples through the whole khalasar's regard for her. In the same stretch, Ser Jorah Mormont, her loyal exiled knight, stops Viserys from stealing her dragon eggs to fund his own ambitions — a theft that would have been unforgivable.
The chapter is doing two things simultaneously: cementing Daenerys's standing among the Dothraki as something more than an outsider bride, and marking how far Viserys has fallen — reduced now to petty theft against his own sister rather than any real bid for power. Jorah's intervention, quiet and unthanked, is also the clearest evidence yet of where his loyalties actually lie, in a story that will spend a great deal more time testing exactly how far that loyalty runs and what it's really made of.
This movement: The Eyrie and the Heart
- In the Eyrie's sky cells Tyrion confesses to everything but the crime — 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.