A Storm of Swords ÔÇö Jaime V
In Harrenhal's bathhouse the Kingslayer bleeds out the truth at last: wildfire under the city, a mad king's last command, and the oath that broke his oaths.
The chapter retold
In Harrenhal's bathhouse, half-delirious with fever and looser-tongued on wine than he has been in seventeen years of practiced silence, Jaime Lannister finally tells someone the truth about the night he killed Aerys II Targaryen. Brienne of Tarth, scrubbing the grime and stink of captivity off him because there is no one else to do it, becomes the first person he has ever trusted with the real story ÔÇö not confession exactly, but something closer to a man setting down a weight he has carried so long he has forgotten how much it costs to hold.
The story itself reorders everything the reader thought they knew about the Kingslayer: Aerys, mad past reasoning, had wildfire caissons hidden throughout King's Landing by the pyromancer Rossart, enough to incinerate the entire city ÔÇö half a million people, friend and enemy alike ÔÇö rather than surrender it to Robert's rebels. Jaime's white cloak meant nothing against that order. He killed his king from behind, seconds before the command could be carried out, and the realm rewarded the act that saved it with a name ÔÇö Kingslayer ÔÇö that erased every reason behind it, because no one thought to ask why a Kingsguard knight would break the oldest oath he had.
Jaime finishes the story and faints in Brienne's arms, spent by fever and by the sheer weight of finally being believed rather than judged. The chapter is the emotional hinge of the entire book: it recasts seventeen years of contempt as a tragedy of silence rather than a character flaw, cements the bond between Jaime and Brienne on a foundation deeper than captivity, and gives Jaime, for the first time since the reader has known him, a reason to want to be understood rather than merely feared.
This movement: The Bear, the Wall, the Bath
- In Harrenhal's bathhouse Jaime tells Brienne the truth of the Mad King and faints in her arms; later he turns back for her and jumps into a bear pit.
- Jon climbs the Wall with the free folk and breaks from them at Queenscrown, arrows in his leg.
- Dany takes Yunkai by night; the Second Sons change sides for a captain named Daario.
- Sam kills his second impossible thing rumor-wise; the Watch's remnants choose a fat man's courage at Craster's.