A Game of Thrones ÔÇö Tyrion V
In a sky cell open to the wind, Tyrion confesses to everything except the crime ÔÇö and buys himself a trial by combat; Bronn steps forward.
The chapter retold
In a sky cell with nothing between him and a seven-hundred-foot fall but open wind, Tyrion faces Lysa's demand for a confession ÔÇö and gives her one, of a wild, escalating sort, cheerfully admitting to every crime and disaster in recent Westerosi history except the one he's actually accused of, mocking the whole proceeding as the show trial it plainly is. When that theater of confession fails to produce the conviction Lysa wants, Tyrion falls back on Vale law's oldest mechanism: trial by combat, demanding a champion to fight in his place. No one at the Eyrie steps forward for coin or honor until Bronn, a hardened sellsword with nothing to lose and an eye for a good wager, volunteers.
It's Tyrion at his sharpest under the worst possible pressure ÔÇö using wit as a weapon when he has no other, turning a hostile court's own performance of justice back against itself by simply refusing to play the expected role. Bronn's appearance is a small hinge with outsized consequences: a mercenary with no particular loyalty to anyone becomes, from this chapter forward, one of the most consequential relationships in Tyrion's life, bought not with friendship but with the promise of gold, which suits them both fine.
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.