A Game of Thrones ÔÇö Eddard I
Robert comes to Winterfell; in the crypts before Lyanna's statue he asks Ned to be his Hand and offers Joffrey for Sansa.
The chapter retold
Robert Baratheon's arrival at Winterfell is a small invasion of banners, wagons and appetite, and underneath the reunion-feast noise, Ned takes his old friend down into the crypts, to the tomb of Lyanna Stark, for the conversation the whole visit has been circling. Robert asks Ned to be his Hand ÔÇö command dressed as request, since a king's asking is a subject's ordering ÔÇö and sweetens it with a second offer that lands harder on the Stark children than on Ned: young Joffrey for Sansa, binding the houses together the way Robert's own marriage to Cersei never quite managed.
The crypt setting is doing quiet, heavy lifting: Robert stands over the sister he loved and never had, still grieving the war he fought to avenge her, while Ned stands over the same statue keeping a promise he has told no living soul ÔÇö the single secret buried under everything the book will build. Ned's reluctance to leave the North reads, on the surface, as a good man's distaste for southern politics; underneath, it's a man who knows exactly how much more there is to lose by going.
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.