A Game of Thrones ÔÇö Sansa VI

Joffrey shows Sansa her father's head on the walls and promises her Robb's next; the Hound's rough counsel keeps her alive on the battlements.

The chapter retold

Joffrey summons Sansa to the battlements to show her a fresh horror: her father's head, mounted on a spike among the traitors, and he promises her ÔÇö with the casual cruelty that is by now entirely familiar ÔÇö that Robb's will join it soon enough. Septa Mordane, who raised Sansa in every courtly grace that has proven useless against exactly this kind of viciousness, has already been executed and her own head set beside her lord's on the wall. It is the Hound, of all people, who talks Sansa through the ordeal without her fainting or breaking in front of the boy who would enjoy watching her do either ÔÇö rough, unsentimental counsel that keeps her alive on the battlements in the only currency that matters there: composure Joffrey can't take credit for breaking.

The scene is the book's cruelest inversion of the courtly world Sansa was raised to expect: the man showing her mercy, if it can even be called that, is the same scarred, violent knight whose burn story horrified her chapters ago, while the boy she once dreamed of marrying delivers atrocity as a kind of courtship gift. Sansa's survival here is not passive endurance so much as the first real exercise of the skill that will define the rest of her arc ÔÇö keeping her face still and her voice steady while everything underneath it screams, because in this castle, that composure is the only armor left to her.

This movement: The Green Fork and the Whispering Wood

• Tywin's van tramples Tyrion's hill tribes on the Green Fork ÔÇö a battle Robb never meant to win.
• The real blow lands in the Whispering Wood: Jaime Lannister taken, his host shattered under Riverrun's walls.
• Ned trades a false confession for his daughters' safety; Joffrey trades Ned's head for eternity's contempt.
• Khal Drogo takes a wound in Lhazar; Mirri Maz Duur's blood magic costs Dany her son and her sun-and-stars.

The fallen ÔÇö spoilers

• Septa Mordane ÔÇö Her head set on the walls beside her lord's for the crime of loyal service.