A Storm of Swords ÔÇö Tyrion II
Tywin's council reorders the realm like a ledger: Littlefinger is priced at the Vale and Lysa Arryn, and Tyrion inherits a wedding's bills and a city's drains.
The chapter retold
Tywin Lannister runs the small council like a ledger that happens to contain human beings. Petyr Baelish is priced out and dispatched to the Vale with the promise of Lysa Arryn's hand and Harrenhal's ruined title, a reward calibrated to buy exactly the loyalty it purchases and no more. Tyrion, still smarting from his own audience with his father, inherits the unglamorous job of financing Joffrey's approaching wedding to Margaery Tyrell ÔÇö a task that comes with responsibility, no real power, and the certainty that any success will go unmentioned and any shortfall will be entirely his fault.
The council meeting is Tywin at his most legible: everyone in Westeros is an asset, a liability or a lever, and marriages are simply the cheapest tool available for moving them. The chapter quietly finishes rearranging the board pieces the book will spend its middle third detonating ÔÇö the Vale under Littlefinger's management, a wedding under Tyrion's, and a family that runs on obedience rather than love picking up the bill for both.
This movement: Dracarys
- In Astapor Dany trades Drogon for the Unsullied ÔÇö then speaks Valyrian, and the whip changes hands: Dracarys.
- Jaime loses his sword hand to Vargo Hoat's Brave Companions and learns what he is without it.
- Arya falls in with the Brotherhood Without Banners and watches a dead man rise from his seventh death.
- Tywin re-arranges the realm at his table: Tyrion to Sansa, Cersei to Willas ÔÇö the children object; the Hand doesn't care.