A Game of Thrones ÔÇö Sansa III
Sansa dreams of golden-haired princes; told they are going home, she runs weeping to the queen ÔÇö carrying more than she knows.
The chapter retold
Sansa, still nursing her storybook fantasy of golden princes despite everything the tourney and the road south have already shown her, learns that her father intends to send the family home to Winterfell now that his investigation is winding toward a dangerous conclusion. Horrified at the thought of losing Joffrey and the life she still imagines waiting for her at court, she runs weeping to Queen Cersei rather than to her own parents ÔÇö and in doing so, without fully understanding what she's handing over, reveals Ned's plans to the one person in the castle most dangerous to know them.
It's a gutting scene precisely because Sansa's motives are so understandable and so innocent ÔÇö a homesick, love-struck girl confiding in an adult she still trusts, with no way of grasping the stakes of what she's just given away. The betrayal costs nothing in malice and everything in consequence: Cersei now knows Ned means to move against her timeline, and Sansa's fairy tale, which has already taken so much damage, is about to cost her family more than she will ever be told to her face.
This movement: The Wine and the Boar
- Ned tells Cersei what he knows and gives her time to run ÔÇö mercy with a body count.
- A boar opens the king; Robert dictates a will naming Ned Protector; Ned edits one word: heir.
- A wineseller's poison misses Daenerys; Drogo promises his son the iron chair across the poison water.
- Renly flees south; Littlefinger promises the gold cloaks; the trap in the throne room closes.