A Game of Thrones ÔÇö Daenerys I
In Illyrio's manse in Pentos, Viserys dresses his sister for sale; Daenerys meets Khal Drogo and learns her wedding will buy her brother an army.
The chapter retold
Across the narrow sea in Pentos, Daenerys Targaryen is dressed by handmaids for her own sale. Her brother Viserys ÔÇö vain, threadbare, calling himself a king with no kingdom left to rule ÔÇö has struck a bargain with the magister Illyrio: Daenerys's hand in marriage to the Dothraki warlord Khal Drogo, paid for in advance with a khalasar's worth of swords that Viserys means to use to retake the Iron Throne. She is thirteen, friendless, and entirely without a vote in the transaction; when Drogo finally looks at her at the welcoming feast, it is the first time in the chapter anyone looks at her as anything other than an instrument.
This is the whole shape of Daenerys's early story compressed into one scene: a girl priced, packaged and handed across a table by the one relative who should be protecting her. Viserys's casual cruelty ÔÇö the promise that he'd let a thousand Dothraki ride through her body if that's what it took to get his throne back ÔÇö sets the floor she has nowhere to go but up from, and Illyrio's oily hospitality is the first hint that everyone in this transaction has an angle Daenerys hasn't been let in on.
This movement: A Hand's Summons
- A prologue in the haunted forest: Ser Waymar Royce meets the Others, and only a deserter escapes to die at Ned Stark's block.
- Direwolf pups in the summer snows ÔÇö one for each Stark child, and an albino for the bastard.
- Robert comes north with the court to make Ned his Hand; Lysa's letter blames the Lannisters for Jon Arryn.
- Bran climbs, sees the queen and the Kingslayer entwined, and flies. Across the sea, Daenerys is sold to Khal Drogo.