A Storm of Swords ÔÇö Tyrion V
A royal wedding approaches that no one will forget; Tyrion counts Joffrey's cruelties, his own dwindling credit, and the days of Sansa's silence.
The chapter retold
As King's Landing braces for a royal wedding no one can stop dreading, Tyrion Lannister spends the chapter taking inventory ÔÇö of Joffrey's escalating cruelties, dispensed now with a crowned boy's total impunity; of his own political capital, spent nearly to nothing since the Blackwater bought him scars instead of gratitude; and of his marriage, where Sansa's silence has calcified into something closer to a locked door than a truce.
Nothing explodes in the chapter, but everything in it is a fuse: Joffrey's appetite for humiliation is visibly outgrowing what even his own family finds useful, Tyrion's credit with Tywin and Cersei alike is running out at the exact moment he needs it most, and the wedding approaching on the calendar is being planned by people who have no idea it is about to become the most consequential meal in the book.
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.