A Clash of Kings — Davos I

Dragonstone burns its Seven on the beach; Stannis draws a flaming sword from the fire and sends ravens naming Cersei's children bastards born of incest.

The chapter retold

Dragonstone burns its old gods on the beach — carved Seven, driftwood faces, generations of household statues fed to Melisandre’s fire while Stannis watches his own religion consumed in front of him. He draws a flaming sword from the blaze he calls Lightbringer, and the theater of it is meant to answer, once and for all, whether the red god’s chosen champion has arrived.

The chapter’s real weapon isn’t the sword, though — it’s the ravens Stannis sends out afterward, naming Cersei’s children bastards born of incest and himself the rightful king by blood and law both. It is the first time the secret Ned Stark died protecting his daughters from becomes public across the Seven Kingdoms, and once it’s loose there’s no calling it back. Whatever else Stannis is — humorless, joyless, hard to love — he has just done the one thing none of the other claimants managed: told the realm the truth, in service of a claim built on it.

This movement: Wolves and Krakens

• Theon comes home to Pyke and finds his father plotting war on the North — and his sister Asha commanding the ships he wanted.
• Renly weds Margaery Tyrell and parades a hundred thousand swords through the Reach at tourney pace.
• Dany leads her khalasar out of the red waste to the gates of Qarth, three dragons her only argument.
• Yoren's column is broken at a lakeside holdfast; Arya frees Jaqen H'ghar from a burning barn.